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Creating Real Estate Empires in Monopoly
The Great Depression and the Dust Bowl: The fact that a board game called Monopoly became popular during the Great Depression is ironic in itself, but it’s even more ironic given the game’s backstory. The game’s inventor, Elizabeth J. Magie, first patented it in 1904 as the Landlord’s Game to teach players about the evils of capitalism. And for a few decades, it did. -
Jazz Was Born
1920s and Prohibition: One of the best musical fun facts about the 20s is that this decade was also known as the “Age of Jazz.” The pioneer of the new style of music was Louis Armstrong. Jazz became the music of choice in the popular (but illegal – the 1920s was also the Age of Prohibition) speakeasies of the day. -
The Decade of Women's Rights
1920s and Prohibition: A 1920s fact we can all be proud of is that the decade saw significant improvements in women’s rights. This was the decade when the 19th Amendment was ratified, officially giving American women the right to vote. This coincided with an increasing sense of independence among women in the country, many of whom held jobs and were much more daring in their fashion sense. -
Watching Dance Marathons Where Contestants Danced Till They Dropped
The Great Depression and the Dust Bowl: Before reality television, Americans who wanted to see strangers do unusual or dangerous things for money and attention went to dance marathons. These marathons started in the 1920s as part of an endurance contest craze; but when the Great Depression set in, dance marathons became more than just a form of recreation for the contestants. -
The Changing of the American Landscape
1920s and Prohibition: The U.S. population in 1920 saw a significant migration of people from rural areas to crowded urban centers. By the end of 1920, more than half of the population reported to be living in urban areas. Modern-day America was beginning to take shape. -
Tulsa Race Massacre
1920s and Prohibition: The 1920s saw one of the worst incidents of racial violence ever in the United States. The event in question is known as the Tulsa Race Massacre, in which an angry white mob committed acts of violence within the predominantly black neighborhood of Greenwood in Tulsa, Oklahoma. -
A Lot of Household Brand Names Originated in This Era
1920s and Prohibition: One 1920s fun fact is that many of your beloved food brands began during the 1920s. This includes favorites like Kool-Aid, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, Velveeta Cheese, and Baby Ruth Candy Bars, among plenty of others. -
A Classic American Novel Was Published
1920s and Prohibition: In the 1920s, the American author F. Scott Fitzgerald rose to prominence with a string of successful novels. But none has proven to be more enduring, or endearing, than The Great Gatsby. His tragic novel gives us a glimpse into the highs and lows of the Roaring Twenties. -
The Scopes Trial
1920s and Prohibition: One of the more controversial cases of that era was the Scopes Trial, best known as the Scopes Monkey Trial. The defendant in question was John Scopes, a public school science teacher in Tennessee. His crime was teaching Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, something that was prohibited at the time by a law called the Butler Act. -
Advances in Aviation
1920s and Prohibition: What happened in the 1920s in the world of aviation paved the way for airplanes to become a mainstream way to travel. Two great feats took place in the decade. The first one was the historic accomplishment of Charles Lindbergh, who successfully flew solo across the Atlantic from New York to Paris in May 1927. -
The Great Crash of 1929
1920s and Prohibition: The end of the 1920s saw one of the most significant economic downturns in history. The Wall Street Crash, also known as Black Tuesday, saw the collapse of share prices on the New York Stock Exchange. The $26 billion loss was the beginning of a total meltdown of financial markets, leading to the Great Depression in the following decade. -
Seeing High-Tech Hollywood Movies
The Great Depression and the Dust Bowl: The Great Depression was a largely successful decade for Hollywood. Tickets on average cost under a quarter for the whole of the 1930s, down from 35 cents in 1929, so spending time in the cinema was an affordable form of escapism for many. -
Reading the Comics and Complaining About How Political They Were
The Great Depression and the Dust Bowl: Every Sunday, kids around the country grabbed the funny pages to read about the adventures of Dick Tracy the detective, Flash Gordon the Yale polo player and Little Orphan Annie, the plucky young girl with surprisingly pro-business, anti-labor views. In one 1933 comic, Annie cheerfully exclaimed. -
Binging on the Lifestyles of the Rich and the Famous
The Great Depression and the Dust Bowl: One of the time-honored traditions in American history is reading about the torrid lives of celebrities. For Depression-era Americans, this meant reading about “Cafe Society.” -
Lining Up to See People Sitting on Poles
The Great Depression and the Dust Bowl: Another 1920s endurance challenge that continued into the Great Depression was flagpole-sitting—i.e., sitting atop a pole for as long as possible. The man who started the trend was a Hollywood stuntman named Alvin “Shipwreck” Kelly. In the summer of 1930, as many as 20,000 people came out to see Kelly eat, sleep and shave atop a 225-foot flagpole in Atlantic City for 49 days. -
Building Soap Box Cars and Racing Them
The Great Depression and the Dust Bowl: Soap Box Derbys started in the 1930s as a competition for kids that didn’t require a lot of money. In 1933, a journalist named Myron Scott noticed some kids in Dayton, Ohio, were racing in soapbox cars they’d made themselves. -
Tuning in to Hit Radio Shows About Masked Avengers
The Great Depression and the Dust Bowl: Radio was an important source of news and entertainment during the Great Depression. Over the decade, the number of American households with radios grew from roughly 40 to 83 percent. -
Venturing into Haunted Houses
The Great Depression and the Dust Bowl: Halloween traditions like trick-or-treating, costume parties and haunted houses began during the Great Depression as a way to keep young people out of trouble. October 31 had long been a night for mischief-making, but after one particularly bad Halloween in 1933—in which hundreds of teenage boys around the country flipped over cars, sawed-off telephone poles and engaged in other acts of vandalism. -
Gaping at Students Swallowing Goldfish
The Great Depression and the Dust Bowl: Dance marathons and flagpole-sitting may have started in the 1920s, but the Great Depression has one very weird contest all to its own: goldfish-swallowing. The contest started at Harvard University in 1939 when some students bet a freshman $10 that he couldn’t swallow a live fish. -
TV Was Invented
1920s and Prohibition: A little-known 1920s fact is that the decade saw the invention of what eventually became a staple in American culture: television. However, TV sets back then were bulky, blurry, and very expensive. It took until the late 1950s for TVs to become a staple of living rooms across the U.S. (thanks to significant price drops). -
US military aid and advisers sent to South Vietnam
1960s and public protests (Civil Rights Movement and Vietnam): Cold War era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975 -
Eisenhower sends troops
1960s and public protests (Civil Rights Movement and Vietnam): Troops were sent to little Rock to ensure that students would be integrated at the Little Rock High School. -
Civil Rights Movement
1960s and public protests (Civil Rights Movement and Vietnam): The protests started during the late 50s early 60s and was based around the segregation of African Americans. -
March on Washington DC to protest in support the Civil Rights bill
1960s and public protests (Civil Rights Movement and Vietnam): March was organized by a group of civil rights leaders, which included between 200-300 thousand people and also included Martin Luther King Jr's speech. -
The Women’s Movement
1960s and public protests (Civil Rights Movement and Vietnam): The contemporary women’s movement began in the late 1960s. Many women who participated in the movement had also worked in earlier movements, where they had often been relegated to menial tasks, such as photocopying and answering phones. Some began to protest these roles and to question the traditional roles for women in U.S. society. -
The Student Movement
1960s and public protests (Civil Rights Movement and Vietnam): The student movement was the next major social change movement to develop in the 1960s. Many of its early organizers had first become politically active in the early 1960s working alongside blacks in civil rights protests. Composed mainly of white college students, the student movement worked primarily to fight racism and poverty, increase student rights, and to end the Vietnam War. -
Civil Rights Act Passes
1960s and public protests (Civil Rights Movement and Vietnam): Outlawed major forms of discrimination against blacks and women, including racial segregation. It ended unequal application of voter registration requirements and racial segregation in schools, at the workplace and by facilities that served the general public. -
Voting Rights act passes
1960s and public protests (Civil Rights Movement and Vietnam): Outlawed discriminatory voting practices that had been responsible for the widespread disenfranchisement of African Americans in the U.S. -
US troops go to Vietnam
1960s and public protests (Civil Rights Movement and Vietnam): Troops are sent to southern Vietnam -
The Anti-Vietnam War Movement
1960s and public protests (Civil Rights Movement and Vietnam): A variety of people in the United States had become active in a vocal movement to end U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. The U.S. government had become involved in the war because it did not want South Vietnam to be defeated by Communist North Vietnam. The United States government feared that if South Vietnam were defeated, Communism would spread throughout Southeast Asia.