Prohibition
Story Stream
Americans Knew Their Booze Was Poisoned April 15, 2025
During Prohibition, the U.S. government added toxins to industrial alcohol, knowing it could kill. The result? A chemical war that targeted the poor and reshaped public trust....
Americans Knew Their Booze was Poisoned April 14, 2025
During Prohibition, the U.S. government added toxins to industrial alcohol, knowing it could kill. The result? A chemical war that targeted the poor and reshaped public trust....
This Shipwreck Was Once a Big, Floating Speakeasy January 25, 2023
On January 17, 1920, the United States ran dry. It was the beginning of Prohibition, which banned the manufacture, transport and sale of alcohol. In New York City alone, authorities shut down 15,000 bars. But the government’s plan to temper the natio...
Prohibition Was an Economic Boondoggle October 28, 2021
When the Mayor of Berlin, Gustav Boess, visited New York City in the fall of 1929, one of the questions he had for his host, Mayor James J. Walker, was when Prohibition was to go into effect. The problem was that Prohibition has already been the law ...
Opium Wars Led to Unraveling of Qing Dynasty October 07, 2021
By 1856, largely thanks to the influence of Britain, ‘chasing the dragon’ was widespread throughout China. The term was originally coined in Cantonese in Hong Kong, and referred to the practice of inhaling opium by chasing the smoke with an opium pip...
Eight Men Out: Explaining the Black Sox Scandal July 06, 2020
It was almost unthinkable: players throwing the World Series? Yet, that's what happened--or maybe didn't happen--in the fall of 1919.The players on the Charles Comiskey's 1919 Chicago White Sox team were a fractious lot. The club was divided into two...
Capone's Competition Was Reduced to Petty Crimes July 06, 2020
Adelard Cunin, better known by the pseudonym George "Bugs" Moran, was a convicted gangster who was active in the Prohibition-era Chicago. A native of Minnesota, Moran hailed from a French immigrant family. He studied at Cretin High School, a private ...
How Amistad Mutineers Ended Up Back in Africa July 02, 2020
IntroductionIn June 1839, 52 African captives revolted as they were being transported on the Spanish schooner Amistad from Havana to Guanaja, Cuba. Led by Joseph Cinque, a Mende from the Sierra Leone region of West Africa, the rebels ordered two surv...
Economics, Freedom, a World Gone Wrong July 01, 2020
No American must be reminded that the year 1776 was momentous. But few Americans realize just how momentous it was. That year witnessed the publication not only of Thomas Jefferson’s eloquent Declaration of Independence; it was also the year of Adam ...
Bucks for Booze Turns Deadly February 14, 2020
Thursday, bloody Thursday.It was on a cold Chicago morning 90 years ago today when four men – two of them dressed as police officers – burst into a brick garage on the North Side and told the seven men inside 2122 North Clark Street to line up agains...
100 Biggest Moments in American Booze February 05, 2020
Now that we’re at the 100-year mark of that milestone legislation — which was thankfully repealed 13 years later — we decided to look back at the biggest moments in American booze since the 18th Amendment initially went into effect. Below, you’ll fin...
47 Ronin Give Birth to Japan's National Creed February 04, 2020
Introduction The story of the Ch?shingura (literally, the 'Loyal League'), better known in the West as the 'Forty-Seven Ronin' (a ronin - literally "wave man" - is a masterless samurai, one who is tossed about, like a wave in the sea) is perhaps the...
The Man Who Turned Off the Taps December 05, 2019
On the last day before the taps ran dry, the streets of San Francisco were jammed. A frenzy of cars, trucks, wagons and every other imaginable form of conveyance crisscrossed the town and battled its steepest hills. Porches, staircase landings and si...
The Lessons of Prohibition December 04, 2019
This Friday, Dec. 5, is the 75th anniversary of Repeal Day, the day America repealed its disastrous alcohol prohibition. Prohibition was the pièce de résistance of the early 20th-century progressives' grand social engineering agenda. It failed, of co...
Repeal of Prohibition December 03, 2019
Time to Stop Blaming Women For Prohibition January 14, 2019
One hundred years ago this month—on January 16, 1919—the 18th Amendment was ratified, enshrining alcohol prohibition in the U.S. Constitution. And for the past hundred years, we've largely blamed women for that. Why?With the obvious exception of the ...
Prohibition, 'Boardwalk Empire,' and Hooch December 05, 2018
On December 5, 1933, history was made that would change the United States (back) forever! Well, you never know, so maybe not forever. In any event, this date was the day Prohibition ended in the United States, although its legacy lives on in HBO's ...
Prohibition Failed and Gave Rise to Gangsters January 16, 2018
On Saturday, 17 January 1920, the Manchester Guardian reported with mild incredulity on one of the most extraordinary experiments in modern democratic history. "One minute after midnight tonight," the story began, "America will become an entirely ari...
End of Prohibition: 'What America Needs Now Is a Drink' December 05, 2017
The 18th Amendment, which prohibited the production, distribution and sale of alcohol, easily ranks as the least popular amendment in U.S. history — and the only constitutional amendment ever to be repealed.When the 21st Amendment was ratified on thi...
The Lessons of Prohibition December 04, 2017
This Friday, Dec. 5, is the 75th anniversary of Repeal Day, the day America repealed its disastrous alcohol prohibition. Prohibition was the pièce de résistance of the early 20th-century progressives' grand social engineering agenda. It failed, of co...
The Man Who Turned Off the Taps December 05, 2016
On the last day before the taps ran dry, the streets of San Francisco were jammed. A frenzy of cars, trucks, wagons and every other imaginable form of conveyance crisscrossed the town and battled its steepest hills. Porches, staircase landings and si...
