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Timeline
1933 - Detail
December 5, 1933 - The 21st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is passed, ending prohibition.
Jason Donovan, Author
Prohibition, like any other law or government policy, requires three pillars for it
to function as intended. The three pillars are government support, state and local law
enforcement support, and overwhelming public opinion. When one of these pillars is
weakened, the two others can bear the weight. Unfortunately for the supporters of the
18th Amendment, their victory was doomed as all three pillars were weak and
crumbling from the start. With the weak amendments' pillars, it would only take a
slight breeze to blow it over. The 1930s would provide the supercharged storm that
would finally, after 13 years, bring down the 18th Amendment.
The problems with Prohibition started with the Volstead Act itself. An article on
senate.gov entitled "The Senate Overrides the President's Veto of the Volstead Act"
states this best … "The Eighteenth Amendment banned but did not define "intoxicating liquors."
Some of the members of Congress who had voted for the Amendment assumed that it
referred to hard liquor and would exempt beer and wine. However, the head of the
Anti-Saloon League drafted a tough enforcement act, which was then sponsored by the
chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Minnesota representative Andrew
Volstead. The National Prohibition Act, better known as the Volstead Act, defined an
intoxicating beverage as anything that contained more than one-half of one percent
alcohol"…"The Volstead Act made it illegal to "manufacture, sell, barter, transport,
import, export, deliver, furnish, or possess" such beverages."…
As the above excerpt shows, the foundation of the 18th Amendment was laid by
men who cast their votes without fully laying out what their vote meant. Thus, this was
the first flaw in the Amendment itself. This flaw would leave room for the strictness of
the Volstead Act, which the federal government did not wholeheartedly support. It was
just a vote-getter.
Volstead Act
From the start of Prohibition in 1919, there were signs of no across-the-board
support for the Volstead Act. As stated in the above excerpt, President Woodrow Wilson
vetoed the bill, and Congress was able to override the president's veto, making the
Volstead Act the law of the land. The president’s veto would not be the first time
officials in the highest echelons of the United States government would either push
back or, at the very least, not give their full support for the law, at least in public. A way
to see how committed to a project or policy that carries penalties is how well the
government's enforcement arm is funded and supported.
The Volstead Act needed a large, robust, well-funded enforcement organization
to have a chance at legitimately enforcing the law. That was the dream; unfortunately,
the reality was much, much bleaker. There was one major issue that would hamstring
the Bureau Of Prohibition throughout the entirety of its operational lifespan. The main
overarching issue was a woeful lack of funding throughout all levels and ranks of the
Bureau, which contributed to the abysmal agent retention. The Bureau was founded in
1920 within The Internal Revenue Service Department Of The Treasury with a budget of
$4.4 million ($68.8 million circa 2024). The Bureau's budget would increase over the
decade to 13.4 million ($274.8 million circa 2024). The dire state of the Bureau's staffing
situation can be found in the pages of the Wickersham Commission Report of 1931, a
congressional committee report on the effects of the 18th Amendment on the nation.
Within the pages of the report, the numbers are laid out in black and white. As per the
report, as of 1930, there was a total of 1,786 people broken down as:
Agents - 1,484
Investigators - 109
Special Agents - 193
The commission's report goes on to make recommendations for increasing the number
of staff:
"... recommended an increase of 60 percent in the number of prohibition agents and of
100 percent in the number of investigators and special agents. The adoption of these
recommendations would mean the employment of addition of ...":
Agents- 890
Investigators & Special Agents- 302
"…or an aggregate of additional 1,192, bringing the total prohibition field force for the
entire country to approximately 3,000."
So few people were employed with the Bureau because of a strategic plan to focus on
"... large conspicuous cases and the organizing minds which direct the distribution of
illicit liquor, the sources of supply may be effectively broken up."
Unfortunately, there is a flaw in this plan. That is, the entire country is saturated
with small-scale operational networks that were becoming evermore sophisticated. The
Wickersham report also gives an example of the situation by comparing the seizures of
stills in 1913 and 1929. In 1913, the number of stills confiscated was 2,375. These
confiscations, because the practice was so entrenched in certain communities, that the
government was trying to save the Titanic one bucket at a time. By 1929, that number
would increase sixfold.
Buy Chronology
Prohibition Bureau
Not only was the Prohibition Bureau battling a tsunami of alcohol, but there was
a slow corrosion of morale. Morale was continually on shaky ground from the Bureau's
start, top to bottom. The the Bureau's yearly turnover rate was part of these morale
issues. According to data in the Wickersham Report, the enforcement arm suffered from
an average turnover rate of 39.78%. The rates ranged from 15.94% in 1920 to 96.28% just
a year later. Over the remaining nine years of data, the rate would not fall below 22.78%.
That was just the enforcement arm. The administration arm had similar statistics, with
an average of 29.74%. Even though the percentage is lower, the damaging effect of not having solid, stable leadership could cause a lack of direction and focus for the whole organization. This disorganization was a contributing factor that stifled effective
cooperation with other governmental agencies, such as the Coast Guard. The Bureau's
personnel issues were the least of its problems. Arguably, the most destructive issue
would come from officers seduced by the large amounts of money to be made from the
dark world of criminality.
Corruption is the virus that infected every level of society. The corruption of law
enforcement, as a whole, was a massive problem for the success of the Volstead Act.
There was not only corruption within the Bureau, but also within other organizations
along the chain of jurisdiction that did the most damage. The criminal element thrived,
permeating all parts of the state. The government knew how bad this situation was,
with reports that corruption had seeped into all departments even those thought to be
unimpeachable. The criminal element, many of which would lay the groundwork of
organized crime in this country, thrived. The money flowed like the intoxicants they
produced. It was this money that hamstrung enforcement efforts.
There are court records of cases brought against law enforcement for bribery and
conspiracy involving payoffs from their involvement in the illicit alcohol system. Due to
the higher arrest rates, the court system was buried under an overwhelming caseload.
Due to this mountain of cases, the courts would resort to using the plea bargain as a
common practice. The public was aware that corruption was wholly endemic
throughout the system. They experienced the acidic effects in their daily lives. As a
result, the respect the citizenry once had for the law, as a whole, was slowly being
chipped away. This erosion of public respect towards the law, in general, was only part of the
reason for the change in public opinion towards The Volsted Act. There was also the
hypocrisy displayed in the differences in enforcing the rules between how society's
upper class and the average person were treated. Police used draconian tactics with
your average person. On the other hand, the wealthy had the resources and connections
to protect themselves from the possibility of prosecution.
Quality of Product Leads to Illness
Another way the wealthy flouted their wealth during this era was the quality of the beverages they could afford.
Unlike the rotgut or bathtub gin the average person drank the wealthy could afford the
best or "the real McCoy". The term came from a particular smuggler named Bill McCoy.
McCoy made a name for himself by reportedly only selling top-quality products.
For most, "the real McCoy" was financially out of reach. The average American
used options like moonshine and, as mentioned above, bathtub gin. The quality of the
end product ranged from just having a bad taste, the rise of the cocktail, to death. Death
was due to the shortcuts that some producers used to make their products. This quality
roulette many times lead to sickness and in some cases death.
These entirely preventable adverse health effects, which were in no way as
common before Prohibition, were only one straw that started piling on the camel's back.
The quality of the product was only one aspect of the process that could put a person in
danger. A 2019 piece by John Phelan on americanexperiment.org entitled "Seven
Lessons of Prohibition. Phelan states, "The potency of most alcoholic beverages rose by
50% to 100% compared to either before or after Prohibition ... The product also became more dangerous. Some producers used methyl alcohol.
In small quantities, this made watered down liquor taste more potent, but in only
slightly larger doses, it could blind, or even kill a consumer. Some moonshiners used
automobile radiators, which have lead in them, to condense the alcohol vapors, leading
to lead poisoning. And, with little in the way of branding, consumers were unable to
distinguish a reliable product from a dangerous one.
In early 1930, the Outlook and Independent magazine said ... "The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company has published the fact that the alcoholic
death rate among their nineteen million policyholders has increased nearly six hundred percent in the last ten years – double what it was in 1918 and approximately the same as in the years preceding. This removes the last doubt from any reasonable person's mind
that the time has come to move for the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment ... During Prohibition, the death rate from acute alcohol poisoning (due to overdose) was more than thirty times higher than today."
This rise in deaths was partly due to the "Iron Law Of Prohibition," a term coined by cannabis activist Richard Cowan in 1986. The "law" basically states "... the more intense the enforcement the the more potent the banned product." The reasoning is simple: make as much money per load as possible. To maximize profits, smugglers had to carry as much as they could conceal. It just so happens that the profit margin was higher on a
load of liquor than on a load of wine or beer. The high alcohol by volume (ABV) meant that the road to an overdose was much shorter than it had been pre-prohibition. Yet more straw being laid on that camel's back.
On the whole, Americans began to see Prohibition as a solution to something that was not really a problem. Even though the deaths were a horrible result of the Volstead Act, the loopholes written into the law and how they were exploited by individuals and
companies alike are, arguably, quite amusing. One loophole was that "medicinal alcohol" was still legal with a doctor's prescription. A famous case of this loophole being used was in 1931 when Winton Churchill, then a member of parliament, was hit by a car
while crossing the street in New York. As part of Churchill's recovery, his doctor
prescribed him "indefinite quantities of alcohol" with a minimum amount of roughly
eight ounces per day. Medicinal alcohol was not the only amusing aspects of the
Volstead Act.
An interesting loophole was how companies put "warnings" on items that could
be fermented into alcohol. An example of these "warning labels" is one placed on Vino
Sano Co Inc.'s "Sano Grape Brick", that states "... Instructions: After dissolving the brick in a gallon of water, do not place the liquid in
a jug away in the cupboard for twenty days, because then it would turn into wine." Sometimes, additional warnings on the front of the package stated, "... To prevent fermentation, add one-tenth percent benzoate of soda." Grapes were not the only substance sold that was used to homebrew. Before the
start of Prohibition, thousands of breweries were in existence. To stay afloat, they had to
come up with another product. One option was to sell malt extract. The advertised use
for malt extract was to replace sugar in bread making. In reality many people used it for
brewing homemade beer. These warning labels show how people still wanted to enjoy a
libation.
As time closed in on the end of the 1920's the end of Prohibition was drawing to
its own end. The increase in negative public opinion helped fuel the spread of pressure
groups working toward modifying or repealing the 18th Amendment. The Association
Against The Prohibition Amendment(AAPA) was the most influential group. The AAPA
was founded in 1918 by William H Stayton, concerned over government impeding on
state and local rights was backed by men such as the Du Pont Brothers of the Du Pont
Chemical Company and John J Raskop, a businessman with links to DuPont and
General Motors who would go on to become the national chairman of the Democratic
Party. The AAPA linked repeal to the democratic party platform for the 1933 election.
The AAPA did this because by the time of the 1933 election, the economic event that
would sound the death knell for the 18th Amendment, The Great Depression, was in its
full brutal swing.
At the end of the day, the 18th Amendment was the victim of the financial
markets. As long as the twenties kept roaring, the status quo would remain because the
government could use other avenues in order to offset the losses from liquor taxes.
Conversely, when the bank is empty the government will find all the revenue it can.
Prohibition came in on a wave of good intentions but was tossed out as necessary for
financial survival. Thus, the straw that broke the camels' back was not just public
opinion as much as it was a need to fund the government. Those pillars we spoke of at
the beginning had flaws baked into them that made a shock, such as the great
depression an amendment killer.
Photo above: Revelers upon end of prohibition in New York City, 1933, New York Times. Courtesy Wikipedia Commons. Below: Coast Guard Prohibition Police target Rum Runner, 1924, Unknown Author. Courtesy Library of Congress. Info Source: "Why the Repeal of Prohibition Actually Made It Harder to Get a Drink," Olivia B. Waxman; "Why Prohibition Failed," Lisa Lindquist Dorr; "Repeal of Prohibition", David J. Hanson, Ph.D.; Library of Congress; Association Against the Prohibition Amendment; “The Memoirs Of Herbert Hoover The Cabinet and the Presidency 1920-1933,” Hoover Institute; "Unintended Consequences Of Prohibition", Michael Lerner; "Prohibition Legislating Alcohol in America", unknown author, theworldwar.org; "The Money Cost Of Prohibition", L. Ames Brown, theatlantic.com.
History Photo Bomb
President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who served four terms as
President. Courtesy National Archives.
Out of work workers during the Great Depression. Courtesy National Archives.
Timeline Book
During the decade of the 1930's, World's Fairs of various sizes were held throughout the United States to stimulate the local economies as public works projects to pull the country out of depression. They were also used a public confidence projects to buoy the spirit of a nation in economic turmoil.
Chicago 1933-4
San Diego 1935-6
Cleveland 1936-7
Dallas 1936-7
New York 1939-40
San Francisco 1939-40
ABH Travel Tip
Take the time to listen, not only to the guides at the various historic sites you visit, but also to the ambiance around the sites themselves. Imagine yourself back in time. It's easier to do in the early morning or evening when crowds are low and the bustle lessened, but it can be a wonderful experience to imagine for yourself the past that happened on the ground where you stand. Above photo, the salient at Spotsylvania Battlefield, Virginia.
Night view of the Trylon and Perisphere at the New York World's Fair of 1939-40, 1939, New York Daily News, Courtesy Pinterest. During the first year of the fair, World War II would start.
Official Souvenirs
America's Best History
Buy Chronology
Great Book for the History Fan with Fifty Short Essays Telling the Story of American History.
Prohibition, like any other law or government policy, requires three pillars for it to function as intended. The three pillars are government support, state and local law enforcement support, and overwhelming public opinion. When one of these pillars is weakened, the two others can bear the weight. Unfortunately for the supporters of the 18th Amendment, their victory was doomed as all three pillars were weak and crumbling from the start. With the weak amendments' pillars, it would only take a slight breeze to blow it over. The 1930s would provide the supercharged storm that would finally, after 13 years, bring down the 18th Amendment.
The problems with Prohibition started with the Volstead Act itself. An article on senate.gov entitled "The Senate Overrides the President's Veto of the Volstead Act" states this best … "The Eighteenth Amendment banned but did not define "intoxicating liquors." Some of the members of Congress who had voted for the Amendment assumed that it referred to hard liquor and would exempt beer and wine. However, the head of the Anti-Saloon League drafted a tough enforcement act, which was then sponsored by the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Minnesota representative Andrew Volstead. The National Prohibition Act, better known as the Volstead Act, defined an intoxicating beverage as anything that contained more than one-half of one percent alcohol"…"The Volstead Act made it illegal to "manufacture, sell, barter, transport, import, export, deliver, furnish, or possess" such beverages."…
As the above excerpt shows, the foundation of the 18th Amendment was laid by men who cast their votes without fully laying out what their vote meant. Thus, this was the first flaw in the Amendment itself. This flaw would leave room for the strictness of the Volstead Act, which the federal government did not wholeheartedly support. It was just a vote-getter.
The Volstead Act needed a large, robust, well-funded enforcement organization to have a chance at legitimately enforcing the law. That was the dream; unfortunately, the reality was much, much bleaker. There was one major issue that would hamstring the Bureau Of Prohibition throughout the entirety of its operational lifespan. The main overarching issue was a woeful lack of funding throughout all levels and ranks of the Bureau, which contributed to the abysmal agent retention. The Bureau was founded in 1920 within The Internal Revenue Service Department Of The Treasury with a budget of $4.4 million ($68.8 million circa 2024). The Bureau's budget would increase over the decade to 13.4 million ($274.8 million circa 2024). The dire state of the Bureau's staffing situation can be found in the pages of the Wickersham Commission Report of 1931, a congressional committee report on the effects of the 18th Amendment on the nation. Within the pages of the report, the numbers are laid out in black and white. As per the report, as of 1930, there was a total of 1,786 people broken down as:
Agents - 1,484
Investigators - 109
Special Agents - 193
The commission's report goes on to make recommendations for increasing the number of staff:
"... recommended an increase of 60 percent in the number of prohibition agents and of 100 percent in the number of investigators and special agents. The adoption of these recommendations would mean the employment of addition of ...":
Agents- 890
Investigators & Special Agents- 302
"…or an aggregate of additional 1,192, bringing the total prohibition field force for the entire country to approximately 3,000."
So few people were employed with the Bureau because of a strategic plan to focus on "... large conspicuous cases and the organizing minds which direct the distribution of illicit liquor, the sources of supply may be effectively broken up." Unfortunately, there is a flaw in this plan. That is, the entire country is saturated with small-scale operational networks that were becoming evermore sophisticated. The Wickersham report also gives an example of the situation by comparing the seizures of stills in 1913 and 1929. In 1913, the number of stills confiscated was 2,375. These confiscations, because the practice was so entrenched in certain communities, that the government was trying to save the Titanic one bucket at a time. By 1929, that number would increase sixfold.
Buy Chronology
Corruption is the virus that infected every level of society. The corruption of law enforcement, as a whole, was a massive problem for the success of the Volstead Act. There was not only corruption within the Bureau, but also within other organizations along the chain of jurisdiction that did the most damage. The criminal element thrived, permeating all parts of the state. The government knew how bad this situation was, with reports that corruption had seeped into all departments even those thought to be unimpeachable. The criminal element, many of which would lay the groundwork of organized crime in this country, thrived. The money flowed like the intoxicants they produced. It was this money that hamstrung enforcement efforts.
There are court records of cases brought against law enforcement for bribery and conspiracy involving payoffs from their involvement in the illicit alcohol system. Due to the higher arrest rates, the court system was buried under an overwhelming caseload. Due to this mountain of cases, the courts would resort to using the plea bargain as a common practice. The public was aware that corruption was wholly endemic throughout the system. They experienced the acidic effects in their daily lives. As a result, the respect the citizenry once had for the law, as a whole, was slowly being chipped away. This erosion of public respect towards the law, in general, was only part of the reason for the change in public opinion towards The Volsted Act. There was also the hypocrisy displayed in the differences in enforcing the rules between how society's upper class and the average person were treated. Police used draconian tactics with your average person. On the other hand, the wealthy had the resources and connections to protect themselves from the possibility of prosecution.
Quality of Product Leads to Illness
Another way the wealthy flouted their wealth during this era was the quality of the beverages they could afford.
Unlike the rotgut or bathtub gin the average person drank the wealthy could afford the
best or "the real McCoy". The term came from a particular smuggler named Bill McCoy.
McCoy made a name for himself by reportedly only selling top-quality products.
For most, "the real McCoy" was financially out of reach. The average American
used options like moonshine and, as mentioned above, bathtub gin. The quality of the
end product ranged from just having a bad taste, the rise of the cocktail, to death. Death
was due to the shortcuts that some producers used to make their products. This quality
roulette many times lead to sickness and in some cases death.
These entirely preventable adverse health effects, which were in no way as
common before Prohibition, were only one straw that started piling on the camel's back.
The quality of the product was only one aspect of the process that could put a person in
danger. A 2019 piece by John Phelan on americanexperiment.org entitled "Seven
Lessons of Prohibition. Phelan states, "The potency of most alcoholic beverages rose by
50% to 100% compared to either before or after Prohibition ... The product also became more dangerous. Some producers used methyl alcohol.
In small quantities, this made watered down liquor taste more potent, but in only
slightly larger doses, it could blind, or even kill a consumer. Some moonshiners used
automobile radiators, which have lead in them, to condense the alcohol vapors, leading
to lead poisoning. And, with little in the way of branding, consumers were unable to
distinguish a reliable product from a dangerous one.
In early 1930, the Outlook and Independent magazine said ... "The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company has published the fact that the alcoholic
death rate among their nineteen million policyholders has increased nearly six hundred percent in the last ten years – double what it was in 1918 and approximately the same as in the years preceding. This removes the last doubt from any reasonable person's mind
that the time has come to move for the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment ... During Prohibition, the death rate from acute alcohol poisoning (due to overdose) was more than thirty times higher than today."
This rise in deaths was partly due to the "Iron Law Of Prohibition," a term coined by cannabis activist Richard Cowan in 1986. The "law" basically states "... the more intense the enforcement the the more potent the banned product." The reasoning is simple: make as much money per load as possible. To maximize profits, smugglers had to carry as much as they could conceal. It just so happens that the profit margin was higher on a
load of liquor than on a load of wine or beer. The high alcohol by volume (ABV) meant that the road to an overdose was much shorter than it had been pre-prohibition. Yet more straw being laid on that camel's back.
On the whole, Americans began to see Prohibition as a solution to something that was not really a problem. Even though the deaths were a horrible result of the Volstead Act, the loopholes written into the law and how they were exploited by individuals and
companies alike are, arguably, quite amusing. One loophole was that "medicinal alcohol" was still legal with a doctor's prescription. A famous case of this loophole being used was in 1931 when Winton Churchill, then a member of parliament, was hit by a car
while crossing the street in New York. As part of Churchill's recovery, his doctor
prescribed him "indefinite quantities of alcohol" with a minimum amount of roughly
eight ounces per day. Medicinal alcohol was not the only amusing aspects of the
Volstead Act.
An interesting loophole was how companies put "warnings" on items that could
be fermented into alcohol. An example of these "warning labels" is one placed on Vino
Sano Co Inc.'s "Sano Grape Brick", that states "... Instructions: After dissolving the brick in a gallon of water, do not place the liquid in
a jug away in the cupboard for twenty days, because then it would turn into wine." Sometimes, additional warnings on the front of the package stated, "... To prevent fermentation, add one-tenth percent benzoate of soda." Grapes were not the only substance sold that was used to homebrew. Before the
start of Prohibition, thousands of breweries were in existence. To stay afloat, they had to
come up with another product. One option was to sell malt extract. The advertised use
for malt extract was to replace sugar in bread making. In reality many people used it for
brewing homemade beer. These warning labels show how people still wanted to enjoy a
libation.
As time closed in on the end of the 1920's the end of Prohibition was drawing to
its own end. The increase in negative public opinion helped fuel the spread of pressure
groups working toward modifying or repealing the 18th Amendment. The Association
Against The Prohibition Amendment(AAPA) was the most influential group. The AAPA
was founded in 1918 by William H Stayton, concerned over government impeding on
state and local rights was backed by men such as the Du Pont Brothers of the Du Pont
Chemical Company and John J Raskop, a businessman with links to DuPont and
General Motors who would go on to become the national chairman of the Democratic
Party. The AAPA linked repeal to the democratic party platform for the 1933 election.
The AAPA did this because by the time of the 1933 election, the economic event that
would sound the death knell for the 18th Amendment, The Great Depression, was in its
full brutal swing.
At the end of the day, the 18th Amendment was the victim of the financial
markets. As long as the twenties kept roaring, the status quo would remain because the
government could use other avenues in order to offset the losses from liquor taxes.
Conversely, when the bank is empty the government will find all the revenue it can.
Prohibition came in on a wave of good intentions but was tossed out as necessary for
financial survival. Thus, the straw that broke the camels' back was not just public
opinion as much as it was a need to fund the government. Those pillars we spoke of at
the beginning had flaws baked into them that made a shock, such as the great
depression an amendment killer.
Photo above: Revelers upon end of prohibition in New York City, 1933, New York Times. Courtesy Wikipedia Commons. Below: Coast Guard Prohibition Police target Rum Runner, 1924, Unknown Author. Courtesy Library of Congress. Info Source: "Why the Repeal of Prohibition Actually Made It Harder to Get a Drink," Olivia B. Waxman; "Why Prohibition Failed," Lisa Lindquist Dorr; "Repeal of Prohibition", David J. Hanson, Ph.D.; Library of Congress; Association Against the Prohibition Amendment; “The Memoirs Of Herbert Hoover The Cabinet and the Presidency 1920-1933,” Hoover Institute; "Unintended Consequences Of Prohibition", Michael Lerner; "Prohibition Legislating Alcohol in America", unknown author, theworldwar.org; "The Money Cost Of Prohibition", L. Ames Brown, theatlantic.com.
History Photo Bomb
President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who served four terms as
President. Courtesy National Archives.
Out of work workers during the Great Depression. Courtesy National Archives.
Timeline Book
During the decade of the 1930's, World's Fairs of various sizes were held throughout the United States to stimulate the local economies as public works projects to pull the country out of depression. They were also used a public confidence projects to buoy the spirit of a nation in economic turmoil.
Chicago 1933-4
San Diego 1935-6
Cleveland 1936-7
Dallas 1936-7
New York 1939-40
San Francisco 1939-40
ABH Travel Tip
Take the time to listen, not only to the guides at the various historic sites you visit, but also to the ambiance around the sites themselves. Imagine yourself back in time. It's easier to do in the early morning or evening when crowds are low and the bustle lessened, but it can be a wonderful experience to imagine for yourself the past that happened on the ground where you stand. Above photo, the salient at Spotsylvania Battlefield, Virginia.
Night view of the Trylon and Perisphere at the New York World's Fair of 1939-40, 1939, New York Daily News, Courtesy Pinterest. During the first year of the fair, World War II would start.
Official Souvenirs
America's Best History
Buy Chronology
Great Book for the History Fan with Fifty Short Essays Telling the Story of American History.