Bizarre Historical Trivia

100 years ago....

Only 14 percent of the homes in the United States had a
bathtub.

There were only 8,000 cars in the US and only 144 miles of
paved roads.

Alabama, Mississippi, Iowa, and Tennessee were each more
heavily populated than California. With a mere 1.4 million
residents, California was only the twenty-first most
populous state in the Union.

The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower.

The average wage in the U.S. was twenty-two cents an hour.
The average U.S. worker made between $200 and $400 per
year.

Sugar cost four cents a pound. Eggs were fourteen cents a
dozen. Coffee cost fifteen cents a pound.

Most women only washed their hair once a month and used
borax or egg yolks for shampoo.

Drive-by-shootings - in which teenage boys galloped down
the street on horses and started randomly shooting at
houses, carriages, or anything else that caught their
fancy - were an ongoing problem in Denver and other
cities in the West.

Plutonium, insulin, and antibiotics hadn't been discovered
yet. Scotch tape, crossword puzzles, canned beer, and iced
tea hadn't been invented.

Some medical authorities warned that professional seam-
stresses were apt to become sexually aroused by the
steady rhythm of the sewing machine's foot pedals. They
recommended slipping bromide - which was thought to
diminish sexual desire - into the woman's drinking water.

Marijuana, heroin, and morphine were all available over the
counter at corner drugstores. According to one pharmacist,
"Heroin clears the complexion, gives buoyancy to the mind,
regulates the stomach and the bowels, and is, in fact, a
perfect guardian of health."

Coca-Cola contained cocaine instead of caffeine.

There were about 230 reported murders in the U.S. annually.

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