Musings of the Chronologically Challenged™ Fourth Generation

 
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.
-Eleanor Roosevelt


"Chronologically Advanced"
Judiu sent this email. Da Goddess furnished the "Chronologically Advanced" heading, and it should have TM, but I don't know how to make one!!!

100 Years Ago

YEAR OF 1903: This ought to boggle your mind.
The year is 1903, one hundred years ago... what a difference a century makes. Here are the U.S. statistics for 1903....

The average life expectancy in the U.S. was forty-seven.

Only 14 Percent of the homes in the U.S. had a bathtub.

Only 8 percent of the homes had a telephone.

A three-minute call from Denver to New York City cost eleven dollars.

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

The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph.

Alabama, Mississippi, Iowa, and Tennessee were each more heavily populated than California. With a mere 1.4 million residents, California was only the 21st most populous state in the Union.

The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower.

The average wage in the U.S. was 22 cents an hour.

The average U.S. worker made between $200 and $400 per year.

A competent accountant could expect to earn $2,000 per year, a dentist $2,500 per year, a veterinarian between $1,500 and $4,000 per year, and a mechanical engineer about $5,000 per year.

More than 95 percent of all births in the U.S. took place at home.

Ninety percent of all U.S. physicians had no college education. Instead, they attended medical schools, many of which were condemned in the press and by the government as "substandard."

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.

Canada passed a law prohibiting poor people from entering the country for any reason.

The five leading causes of death in the U.S. were
1. Pneumonia and influenza
2. Tuberculosis
3. Diarrhea
4. Heart disease
5. Stroke

The American flag had 45 stars. Arizona, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Hawaii and Alaska hadn't been admitted to the Union yet.

The population of Las Vegas, Nevada was 30.

Crossword puzzles, canned beer, and iced tea hadn't been invented.

There were no Mother's Day or Father's Day.

One in ten U.S. adults couldn't read or write. Only 6 percent of all Americans had graduated from high school.

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."

Eighteen percent of households in the US had at least one full-time servant or domestic.

There were only about 230 reported murders in the entire U.S.

Just think what it will be like in another 100 years. It boggles the mind!

It's hard to believe that our grandparents were teenagers, just starting out in life at times like these. WOW!



Betsy's Page
It may be necessary for me to reimburse Betsy for the material she so diligently brings to her blog that I need!!! Here are a few notables. Of course, it is recommended that you visit her page and read the entire entries.

~~ A mother in Detroit got in trouble for letting her three year old go topless at the water park. It's okay for boys, but not girls.
~~ A Harvard study shows that conservative papers are more partisan than liberal papers in their editorial pages.
~~ It's amazing that we're still fighting the wars between bilingual education and English immersion when the evidence is so clear that English immersion works and bilingual education doesn't.
~~ Michele at No Small Victory is upset that the Clintons made the John Hawkins list of Worst Figures in American History and challenges list-makers to explain why they included Clinton. Well, full disclosure: I participated in the survey and included both Clinton and Nixon for the same reasons. They damaged the presidency and split the American people in ways that we're still recovering from.





posted by HCL at 4:33 PM