A Look Back To 100 Years
The average life expectancy in the United States was forty-seven.
Only 14 percent of the homes in the United States 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 US 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 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.
A competent accountant could expect to earn $2000 per year, a dentist $2500 per year, a veterinarian between $1500 and $4000 per year, and a mechanical engineer about $5000 per year.
More than 95 percent of all births in the United States 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, either as travelers or immigrants.
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.
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.
The population of Las Vegas, Nevada was thirty. The remote desert community was inhabited by only a handful of ranchers and their families.
Plutonium, insulin, and antibiotics hadn't been discovered yet.
Scotch tape, crossword puzzles, canned beer, and iced tea hadn't been invented.
There was 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.
Some medical authorities warned that professional seamstresses were apt to become sexually aroused by the steady rhythm, hour after hour, 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.
Punch card data processing had recently been developed, and early predecessors of the modern computer were used for the first time by the government to help compile the 1900 census.
Eighteen percent of households in the United States had at least one full-time servant or domestic.
There were about 230 reported murders in the U.S. annually.
***
Lovemaking Tips for Seniors
Put bifocals on ... double check that you're with the right partner.
Set alarm on your clock for 2 minutes... in case you doze off in the middle.
Set the mood with lighting ... turn em' ALL OFF!
Make sure you put 911 on your speed dial before you begin.
Write partner's name on your hand in case you can't remember what to scream out at the end.
Keep extra poly grip close by so your teeth don't end up under the bed Have heating pads, Tylenol, splints and crutches ready in case you actually complete the act.
***
ONLY IN AMERICA
1. Only in America..can a pizza get to you faster than an ambulance.
2. Only in America ... are there handicap parking spaces in a skating rink.
3. Only in America....do drugstores make the sick walk all the way to the back for their prescriptions and the healthy buy their cigarettes in the front.
4. Only in America ...do people order double cheeseburgers, large fries and a Diet coke.
5. Only in America do banks leave open the safe door and chain the pens to the counter.
6. Only in America do we leave cars worth thousands of $ in the driveway & put all of our junk in the garage.
7. Only in America do we use answering machines to screen all of our calls, but then we have call waiting so won't miss the call from the person we didn't want to talk to in the first place.
8. Only in America do we buy hot dogs in packages of 10 and buns in packages of 8.
9. Only in America ...do we use the word "politics" to describe our government officials so accurately, "poli" meaning "many" and "tics" meaning "blood sucking creatures".
10. Only in America do they have drive up ATM's with the Braille lettering.
11. Only in America can a homeless combat veteran live in a cardboard box and a draft dodger live in the white house.
