Prohibition - Drying Out | 2

Prohibition - Drying Out | 2

When a German U-boat torpedoed the RMS Lusitania on Friday, May 7th, 1915, Americans found two new enemies: Germany and the beer it was so associated with. Anti-German sentiment grew, and with it hostility to the breweries founded in the 19th century by German immigrants. Soon, the war effort and the temperance movement were linked: it was patriotic to abstain, and Prohibition became law.

How did America cope? They swapped their stool at the bar for a seat at the soda shop, listening to new radios and the first ever baseball broadcasts. But Americans’ thirst wasn’t ever fully quenched: they turned to family doctors who prescribed “medicinal alcohol,” and then finally to the bootleggers, moonshiners and rum-runners who made, smuggled and sold hooch of all types, from top-shelf French cognac to homemade swill that might just kill you.


For more about the Lusitania, check out Dead Wake: The Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson.

Daniel Okrent’s Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition has more information on medicinal alcohol and how it was prescribed by doctors. To learn more about medicinal beer, this article by Beverly Gage for The Smithsonian is excellent.

The 1991 study “Alcohol Consumption During Prohibition” by Jeffrey A. Miron and Jeffrey Zwiebel, is considered the definitive study about how much people actually drank during the noble experiment. For more information on how Prohibition played out in the early days, check out Professor David J. Hanson’s, “Alcohol Problems and Solutions,” a comprehensive, interactive site that outlines all the various stakeholders in the Noble Experiment.

To read more about Americans behaving badly in Cuba and other places during Prohibition, check out Wayne Curtis’s And A Bootle of Rum: A History of the World in Ten Cocktails, as well as Matthew Rowley’s Lost Recipes of Prohibition. And, to learn more about rum-runners, Daniel Francis’s book, Closing Time: Prohibition, Rum-Runners and Border Wars is an excellent reference.

Further references can be found in America Walks Into a Bar: A Spirited History of Taverns and Saloons, Speakeasies and Grog Shops by Christine Sismondo.


Support this show by supporting our sponsors!

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Jaksot(463)

Shootout at the O.K. Corral | Thirty Seconds | 3

Shootout at the O.K. Corral | Thirty Seconds | 3

Tensions boil over in Tombstone, Arizona as the Earp brothers confront the Clanton and McLaury outlaw gang, resulting in a 30-second shootout that leaves several dead. With the town divided over the E...

22 Loka 202537min

Shootout at the O.K. Corral | Law and Disorder | 2

Shootout at the O.K. Corral | Law and Disorder | 2

After several months of anxiety, the tensions in Tombstone finally explode into violence as Ike Clanton and his friends provoke the Earp brothers and Doc Holliday into a deadly showdown.Be the first t...

15 Loka 202535min

Shootout at the O.K. Corral | The Road to Tombstone | 1

Shootout at the O.K. Corral | The Road to Tombstone | 1

In the 1880s the booming silver mining town of Tombstone, Arizona was home to one of the most famous gunfights in American history. Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, and Wyatt's brothers try to bring law and ...

8 Loka 202538min

Daring Prison Escapes | Escape from Libby Prison | 5

Daring Prison Escapes | Escape from Libby Prison | 5

In early 1864, a group of Union prisoners made a daring escape from Libby Prison in Richmond, Virginia - the capital of the Confederacy. Known for its sadistic guards and horrific conditions, Union Of...

1 Loka 202540min

Daring Prison Escapes | Nazis in the Arizona Desert | 4

Daring Prison Escapes | Nazis in the Arizona Desert | 4

During World War II, the United States housed hundreds of thousands of enemy soldiers who had been captured as prisoners of war. Camp Papago Park, located in Phoenix, was built to hold captured German...

24 Syys 202537min

Daring Prison Escapes | Escape from Leavenworth | 3

Daring Prison Escapes | Escape from Leavenworth | 3

In 1909, a young convicted train robber named Frank Grigware began a life sentence at the United States Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas. Leavenworth was the nation’s first federal penitentiary, to...

17 Syys 202534min

Daring Prison Escapes | Fleeing the Rock | 2

Daring Prison Escapes | Fleeing the Rock | 2

Located amid the treacherous waters of the San Francisco Bay, Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary was designed to hold the most-wanted prisoners in America, and developed a reputation as an unbreakable fort...

10 Syys 202535min

Daring Prison Escapes | Bastille of the Confederacy | 1

Daring Prison Escapes | Bastille of the Confederacy | 1

In February 1864, more than 100 Union Army officers broke out of Libby Prison, an infamous Confederate prisoner of war compound in Richmond, Virginia. It was the largest prison break of the Civil War....

3 Syys 202540min

Suosittua kategoriassa Yhteiskunta

olipa-kerran-otsikko
siita-on-vaikea-puhua
kolme-kaannekohtaa
gogin-ja-janin-maailmanhistoria
i-dont-like-mondays
poks
antin-palautepalvelu
sita
aikalisa
yopuolen-tarinoita-2
mamma-mia
kaksi-aitia
rss-murhan-anatomia
rss-ootsa-kuullut-tasta
meidan-pitais-puhua
rss-nikotellen
ootsa-kuullut-tasta-2
rss-palmujen-varjoissa
lahko
terapeuttiville-qa