Short answers, pulled from the story.
Joseph Priestley, an Englishman, first discovered a method of infusing water with carbon dioxide in 1767 by suspending a bowl of distilled water above a beer vat at a brewery in Leeds, England. He published his method in 1772 in a paper titled Impregnating Water with Fixed Air.
The first marketed soft drink was lemonade sold by the Compagnie des Limonadiers of Paris, which was granted a monopoly for its sale in 1676. Vendors carried tanks of lemonade on their backs and sold cups to Parisians directly.
Johann Jacob Schweppe founded the Schweppes Company in Geneva in 1783 to sell carbonated water, then relocated the business to London in 1792. The company received a royal warrant from King William IV after commercializing Malvern Water at the Holywell Spring in 1843.
Over-consumption of sugar-sweetened soft drinks is associated with obesity, hypertension, type 2 diabetes, dental caries, and low nutrient levels. A 2013 study found soft drink consumption linked to a 23% higher risk of kidney stones, and a 2019 study of over 450,000 Europeans found that drinking two or more soft drinks per day was associated with higher all-cause mortality.
In the United States, "soda" is the most common term, preferred by over half of respondents in a 2003 Harvard Dialect Survey, while "pop" is favored in the Midwest and Pacific Northwest and "coke" is used generically in the Southern United States. In the United Kingdom, "fizzy drink" is common; in Ireland, "mineral" is used; and in South Africa, "cool drink" refers to any soft drink.
Per-capita soft drink consumption in the United States peaked in 1998 and has declined every year since, according to one estimate. From 2003 to 2014, the proportion of Americans drinking a sugary beverage on any given day fell from about 62% to 50% for adults and from 80% to 61% for children.