50 Fun Facts About Prohibition

National Prohibition took effect on 17 January of which year?

The 18th Amendment was ratified a year earlier, on 16 January 1919, and by its own terms the country went dry exactly one year later.

Which amendment to the US Constitution established Prohibition?

It passed Congress with a 68 percent supermajority in the House and was ratified by 46 of the 48 states; only Connecticut and Rhode Island opted out.

Prohibition's enforcement law was popularly named after which Minnesota congressman?

Congress passed the National Prohibition Act on 28 October 1919 over President Wilson's veto; it banned beer at home but let families make 200 gallons of wine or cider a year.

Which president's veto of the Volstead Act did Congress override in October 1919?

Wilson objected on technical grounds; the same Congress had already banned wartime beer production before the war even ended.

Which pressure group, run by 'dry boss' Wayne Wheeler, did the most to push Prohibition through?

Wheeler, an Oberlin graduate from Ohio, perfected single-issue pressure politics: back any candidate, of any party, who voted dry.

Which temperance activist, arrested more than 30 times, smashed saloons with a hatchet?

After wrecking 'the finest saloon in Wichita' in 1901 and serving two weeks in jail, she walked out and vowed to raid more.

In 1881, which state became the first to write a ban on alcoholic beverages into its constitution?

Maine had passed the first statutory ban back in 1851, and a dozen states copied the 'Maine Law' before it was repealed in 1856.

The Woman's Christian Temperance Union, the movement's grassroots base, was founded in which year?

Its second president, Frances Willard, framed the goal as 'reforming the drinking classes' and pulled it into wider social reform.

Senator Sheppard said repealing Prohibition was as likely as a humming-bird flying to which planet?

He was one of the amendment's authors; it took just 14 years to prove him wrong.

By 1925, roughly how many speakeasies were estimated to be operating in New York City alone?

Other names for the illicit bars were 'blind pig' and 'blind tiger'; the modern speakeasy-bar revival started with Milk & Honey in 2000.

Roughly how much did doctors earn from legal whiskey prescriptions during Prohibition, 1921-1930?

About 11 million prescriptions were written a year, and one doctor was cited for writing 475 in a single day.

Which drugstore chain grew from 20 to 525 stores in the 1920s, helped by medicinal alcohol sales?

In 1931 alone, 400 pharmacists and 1,000 doctors were caught in a scam selling signed prescription forms to bootleggers.

'Wine bricks' of grape concentrate carried a label warning buyers not to do what?

The 'warning' was really a recipe; California grape acreage grew about 700 percent in the first five years of Prohibition.

As many as how many people died drinking industrial alcohol 'denatured' on government orders during Prohibition?

New York's medical examiner Charles Norris said the government must bear 'the moral responsibility for the deaths that poisoned liquor causes'.

'Canned heat', jellied alcohol that desperate Prohibition drinkers strained and drank, was sold under what brand name?

The result was poisonous though rarely fatal; Prohibition also boosted output of legal grape juice, which quadrupled during the era.

'Jake leg', a paralysis that struck tens of thousands in 1930, came from an adulterated patent medicine made from what?

The extract was 70 to 80 percent alcohol; a plasticiser added to fool federal testers turned out to be a nerve toxin.

What percentage of liquor smuggled into the US during Prohibition is estimated to have come through Detroit?

The Detroit River, with Windsor, Ontario on the far bank, was almost impossible to police, and Canada's distillers boomed.

Rum-runner Bill McCoy's reputation for what practice is (falsely) said to have given us 'the real McCoy'?

He sailed a Gloucester schooner renamed Tomoka from Bimini to just outside US waters, until the Coast Guard cutter Seneca caught him in November 1923.

Which Canadian founded the Distillers Corporation in 1924, then bought Seagram and profited from Prohibition?

He was born on a ship en route to Canada from Bessarabia; Seagram became the world's largest liquor distiller.

Home-distilled liquor was called 'bathtub gin' in northern cities. What was it called in the rural South?

Runners souped up their cars to outrun 'revenuers', and stock car racing traces its roots to those drivers.

Which motor sport openly traces its origins to Prohibition-era bootleg drivers racing for pride?

Bill France Sr. started organising races on Daytona Beach in 1935 and founded the sanctioning body in 1948.

Al Capone was finally sent to federal prison in 1931 for what crime?

Charged with 22 counts, he was convicted on five and sentenced to eleven years; neurosyphilis left him debilitated before his release.

How many North Side Gang members and associates were murdered in the 1929 Saint Valentine's Day Massacre?

Two of the killers were dressed as police; the intended target, Bugs Moran, had not yet arrived at the garage.

What nickname did Eliot Ness's incorruptible Chicago Prohibition agents earn?

Ness later became Cleveland's Safety Director during the Torso Murders; his memoir came out months after his death and made him famous.

Who won Best Supporting Actor for De Palma's 1987 film about Eliot Ness and Al Capone?

David Mamet's script was loosely based on Ness's 1957 book, though most of the plot is invented.

New York agents Izzy Einstein and Moe Smith became famous for using what tactic to raid speakeasies?

They racked up 4,933 arrests before being laid off in a 1925 reorganisation of the bureau.

"King of the Bootleggers" George Remus was acquitted in 1927 after shooting whom in a public park?

He had his driver run her taxi off the road on the way to their divorce hearing; the jury took nineteen minutes to find him insane.

George Remus based his bootlegging empire in Cincinnati because what share of US bonded whiskey lay within 300 miles?

He simply bought the distilleries, then 'stole' the whiskey from himself en route to his pharmacies; a jury took under two hours to convict him.

Which justice wrote the 'right to be let alone' dissent in Olmstead v. United States (1928)?

Roy Olmstead's ring employed some fifty people and its own boats; the 5-4 ruling stood until Katz v. United States in 1967.

Which bootlegger fresh out of Sing Sing took over Harlem's Cotton Club in 1923?

Boxer Jack Johnson had opened it as the Club Deluxe in 1920; under Madden it was whites-only in the audience despite its Black stars.

What was Anheuser-Busch's Prohibition-era 'near beer' called?

Introduced in 1908 as the dry movement grew, it was the most successful of the company's non-alcoholic products.

Which president called Prohibition 'a great social and economic experiment, noble in motive'?

He was never a strong supporter, but accepted the Republican plank; the phrase 'noble experiment' stuck to the whole era.

What are the findings of the 1931 federal commission documenting how widely Prohibition was evaded commonly called?

Released on 7 January 1931, it prompted the president to propose a vague new amendment that satisfied neither wets nor dries.

Pauline Sabin led the fight for repeal as founder of the Women's Organization for National Prohibition what?

A Republican Party official, she broke with Coolidge when he refused to back repeal, and her group undercut the idea that all women were dry.

The Cullen-Harrison Act of March 1933 legalised beer with what maximum alcohol content by weight?

Wine of similar strength was legalised too, nine months before the full repeal; thousands of brewery workers got their jobs back.

National Prohibition ended on 5 December of which year?

Roughly two-fifths of Americans polled in the late 1930s said they wanted it back.

The 21st Amendment is the only one ratified by what method?

Congress chose conventions to bypass rural-dominated state legislatures that dry lobbyists had captured.

Which state cast the decisive 36th ratification vote for the 21st Amendment?

Its 21 delegates voted unanimously, despite the head of the Latter-day Saints church urging otherwise, and the amendment took effect within hours.

Which was the last state to remain entirely dry, only ending statewide prohibition in 1966?

Even then only 19 of its counties voted to go wet that August; dry counties still exist across the South today.

According to the article on Prohibition, which two states refused to ratify the 18th Amendment?

Maryland and New York went further in practice, simply refusing to enforce the federal ban.

HBO's Prohibition drama Boardwalk Empire is set chiefly where?

Steve Buscemi's Nucky Thompson is based on the real political boss Enoch L. Johnson, subject of Nelson Johnson's 2002 book.

F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby is set on Long Island in which year?

Published in 1925, it drew on the riotous North Shore parties Fitzgerald attended and was a commercial disappointment in his lifetime.

Which Nordic country enacted prohibition in 1919 after independence from Russia, keeping it until 1932?

Sweden rejected total prohibition in a 1922 referendum and used the Bratt rationing system instead until 1955.

Iceland legalised wine in 1922 and spirits in 1935. In which year did it finally legalise beer?

Icelanders got round the ban for decades by mixing legal light beer with spirits.

Which Canadian province kept prohibition the longest, from 1901 all the way to 1948?

Canada as a whole was only dry nationally from 1918 to 1920, which is exactly why its distilleries did so well out of America's ban.

The Volstead Act allowed rabbis to approve sales of what for home use on the Sabbath and holidays?

Four rabbinical groups were approved, and the licences became a competitive way to attract members and donations.

What nickname did 1 July 1919 earn when the Wartime Prohibition Act took effect the day before?

The act, meant to save grain for the war, was passed ten days after the armistice and banned drinks over 1.28% alcohol.

How many gallons of wine and cider per year could a household legally make under Section 29 of the Volstead Act?

Home beer was not allowed, and the Act never banned drinking itself, so many stockpiled liquor before January 1920.

Bootlegger George Cassiday, 'the man in the green hat', estimated what share of congressmen and senators drank?

He told his story in five front-page Washington Post articles in October 1930, just before the midterm elections.

Which naval captain founded the Association Against the Prohibition Amendment in 1918?

The AAPA was the largest of nearly forty organisations that fought to end Prohibition.