A tavern is a place of business where people gather to drink alcoholic beverages and be served food, and in some cases, where travelers receive lodging. An inn is a tavern which has a license to put up guests as lodgers. The word derives from the Latin taberna and the Greek ταβέρνα/taverna, whose original meaning was a shed or workshop. In the English language the tavern was an establishment which served wine whilst the inn served beer/ale. Over time, the words tavern and inn became interchangeable and synonymous with one another. Travelers stayed in taverns.

Americans drank heavily, for rum was cheap. In 1770 per capita consumption was 3.7 gallons of distilled spirits per year, rising to 5.2 gallons in 1830 or approximately eight one-ounce shots a day for every adult white man. That total does not include the beer or hard cider that colonists routinely drank in addition to rum, the most popular distilled beverage available in English America. Benjamin Franklin printed a "Drinker's Dictionary" in his Pennsylvania Gazette in 1737, listing some 228 slang terms used for drunkenness in Philadelphia.

Mary Hopkin (born 3 May 1950), credited on some recordings as Mary Visconti, is a Welsh folk singer best known for her 1968 UK number one single "Those Were The Days". She was one of the first musicians to sign to The Beatles' Apple label.

Hopkin was born in Pontardawe, Wales into a Welsh-speaking family; her father worked as a housing officer. She took weekly singing lessons as a child and began her musical career as a folk singer with a local group called the Selby Set and Mary. She released an EP of Welsh-language songs for a local record label called Cambrian, based in her home town, before signing to The Beatles' Apple Records. The model Twiggy saw her winning the British ITV television talent show, Opportunity Knocks and recommended her to Paul McCartney. She became one of the first artists to record on the Beatles' Apple record label.

Her debut single, "Those Were the Days", produced by McCartney, was released in the UK on 30 August 1968 (catalogue number APPLE 2). Despite competition from a well-established star, Sandie Shaw, who released her version of the same song as a single that same year, Hopkin's version became a number one hit on the UK Singles Chart, and reached Number 2 in the US Billboard Hot 100. It sold over a million and a half copies in the United States alone, and was awarded a gold disc by the R.I.A.A.. Global sales topped the eight million mark.