Since I keep getting comments implying I don't know the difference between England and Scotland I'm pinning a post about this. The ancestor I refer to in this video was indeed an English immigrant who came over from Glasgow Scotland. He was born in raised in Tipton in the English West Midlands. He went to work in Glasgow in 1846 where he lived until 1866. From there he went to America. He was indeed English not Scottish.
Interesting fact about alcohol / Beer as the heart of America. The 1st settlers to land in Virginia only landed there because they ran out of beer. They then proceeded to brew beer from acorns. The 1st settlers was actually headed to Florida to meet up with Spaniards with the hopes to find gold. If those Virginia settlers hadnt ran out of beer perhaps America would of never formed. Basically Thanks to Beer America was born.
Another detail on Capone's arrest: the feds and IRS had raided Capone's business office and took nearly countless documents to look for evidence to use against him. This would be the first high-profile case (perhaps the first case ever) that handwriting analysis, particularly signature analysis, was used.
Funny story about my Great Grandma "Granny." My Dad and his brothers called her Granny for good reason, she looked, sounded, and acted like Granny from the Beverly Hillbillies. Sleep in till 7 AM, half the day has been wasted! However, there was one thing that she was not like Granny. NO ALCHOHOL! When she was 90 years old, she went on a plane for the first time to visit a relative in Florida. When the pilot learned that a 90 year old woman was having her first plane ride, he went back to welcome her aboard. He then made his mistake. He offered her a drink. Granny went into him and lectured him about the evils of drink, and he quickly wished he had stayed in the cockpit.
That's awesome. Also, anyone who is lucky enough to have a living great-grandmother calls her Granny. Mine lived until I was 22 (she was 97), and I loved listening to her stories. However, unlike yours, mine loved to drink until about the last year of her life. She would go to the bar with my aunt, who took care of her, every Sunday, and even though she was wheelchair bound, she would still get on the dance floor, dance as much as she could, and flirt like crazy. I miss her every day.
@@TheNeonParadox I called mine Nanny and my great grandfather Granddad, they lived to be 87 and 92(?) respectively, and granddad was a WWII and Vietnam vet. RIP nanny and granddad kindest souls
@ARedJay C are you serious lol 😂?! Granted I never really watched that show, but I figured the Joker being Joker didn't bother with things like that besides causing chaos and mayhem. Still though it's freakin hilarious that even the Joker fears the IRS 😂.
@@felixjohnson2734 IF you are with your legal guardians (therefore proving that you have their consent), it drops to 14. Otherwise legal drinking age is 16 for beer, wines and sparkling wine and 18 for hard liquor.
A few things I wish oversimplified touched on was how unsafe drinking water was at the time. Honestly, of the two, Alcohol was the healthier and comparably safer option. And that Saloons were more then a place you could go to get drunk. Many served as post offices, barbers, dentists, eateries, and translators for newly arrived immigrants. German culture in America thrives during that time because of saloons. Does this excuse the rampant alcoholism? Hell no. Just thought that it was interesting.
This was true for most of human history, actually. It's why wine was a big deal through antiquity and the Middle ages, and where the stereotype of the drunken sailor comes from. They were at sea for months at a time and water even in sealed barrels will only keep for a few weeks. After that, booze is all that's left. Actually, our ability to metabolize alcohol is a huge evolutionary advantage. Because of this, our primal ancestors could eat rotting fruit that most other animals couldn't. It was a food source that, while not ideal, did the job, and we didn't have to compete for it.
Another important aspect that often drinks had a lower alcohol content than they'd have nowadays. Although methods to increase the alcohol content were becoming more prevalent.
@@robert-janthuis9927 which is actually kind of ironic because until the late middle ages or the Renaissance, wine typically had to be watered down because its alcohol content was so high.
One the funniest things to me regarding dry counties is that a county near me, Moore County in Tennessee, houses the Jack Daniel Distillery. Major distillery and you can't even buy it in the county it's made in.
Well technically they do sell souvenir Jack Daniels bottles at the distillery. It just so happens that those "souvenir" bottles includes complimentary Jack Daniels whiskey inside. (Hello from Knoxville, fellow Tennesseans)
I had a history professor that really tried to defend prohibition. They put up this chart about how drinking went significantly down in the US during prohibition. Statistics bother me. So I asked “how were these numbers gathered.” Apparently by public questionnaire. “Ok, so who is going to admit to someone that they break the law. That’s like asking someone off the street if they do heroin. If the same standards were used I’m sure that they would say that the war on drugs has been a great success since people say they don’t use drugs.” That professor did not like me very much.
"Dr. Spanky you were on the verge of discovering time travel but what did you discover instead? The sweet sweet taste of whiskey" *pauses video* Ok this is 100% true
History is very touchy when it comes to teaching it. I think that, more than any other school subject, it all hinges on who your teacher is. A math or science teacher can really just teach from a textbook and you can still understand it. Teaching history requires more than just the ability to relay facts, it requires the ability to tell a story. More than any other subject, a history teacher needs to be passionate about what they teach in order for their students to like it. I used to be the same, I despised history for most of my life. But then I had a really good 7th Grade History teacher, and I learned just how much I actually adore it. Now most of my entertainment these days comes from videos like this one. I even almost ended up going for a history degree before life decided it had other plans for me. Either way, my ultimate point is that History is hard to teach. *Very* hard. The teacher needs to know the subject well, but also be genuinely passionate and be a good storyteller. And frankly, not every teacher is able to be like that.
Stumbled across your channel the other week, and i absolutely love it. Your informative bits, you add into these reaction videos are really whats sets your channel apart. I think its only a matter of time before the youtube algorithm picks your channel up and you explode! Keep up the great videos man!
@@VloggingThroughHistory I know, it's the internet, BUT I'm 50 yo and couldn't help but love OverSimplified's videos. These additions of yours really enhance the experience and even make me more of a fan of OverSimplified's work since the facts seem to be reasonably validated. While I know this could be gamed, and that 'History is written by the winners' has .such Truth in it, I still very much appreciate your efforts. Just came from the American Civil War vid.
Through history in europe, since the fall of Rome, people drank alcohol because it was a way of purifying the water. Most fresh water sources were polluted by bacteria (cholora etc) which were distroyed by heating the water. But heating water is expensive, so you make a product like weak beer which not only is safe to drink but can be stored. With the industrial revolution came improved public health (mostly), which included improved water quality - the fountains described are a reflection of this, thus the drinking of alcohol for public health in cities no longer became a necessity in most situations.
And there's also the fact that the strength of alcohol in the last 200 years has skyrocketed compared to human history because of distilleries. So people would drink 'beer' in medieval times but it was a lot closer to water anyway
That's why I heard that european people handle alcohol better than chinese people. Instead of using alcohol to purify water, for centuries Chinese people used tea and thus avoided a natural selection for alcohol unlike europeans.
One thing that truly bothers me is how many people seem to forget that the things we take as basic human things, like clean drinking water, was hardly a guarantee. I appreciate the time you have taken in each video I have watched of yours to mention that it was a different time.
shamsudeen m a I can't recall off the top of my head but I think it's 1/3 of the worlds population has drinking water that's considered unsafe for human consumption.
@@operator8014 so the 1/3 statistic was from a monitoring program from the span of 2000-2017. There was a newer statistic that states that in 2020 74% of the global population used safely managed drinking water services. Meaning that it’s safe for consumption, readily available, and within close proximity of the population. Do with that what you will. Either way whether 1/3 or 1/4 while it’s a major difference it still means a lot of people don’t have quick access to safe drinking water.
I remember reading that coffee helped spark the first industrial revolution. Apparently everyone was just drunk beforehand, and coffee was a new way to consume water while being able to remove bacteria/viruses etc.
Well, coffee definitely had an impact in Europe. When the Ottomans discovered coffee plants in Yemen, they came with the idea of drinking it and to create purpose-built public places for its consumption, which were the first coffee shops. They were not only a great source of revenue for the Sultan, but also a place to hang out with people and discuss ideas. At some point, Western Europeans (maybe some battles like Lepanto played a role on it) liked the idea and introduced coffee consumption in Europe... And the rest is history.
@@nicholasc3694 It is quite ironic, I'm glad daviess county ky isnt dry. Glad I can drink Kentucky tavern that my aunt probably bottled at work. My old middle school is right next to glenmore distillery where Kentucky tavern and other bourbons are bottled.
5:48 Although that is true, here's a little fun fact many of you might have not known, about 60 percent of women at that time opposed the women fighting for the right to vote. They did that because the right to vote would naturally come with many big responsibilities they couldn't fulfill while also being the main parenting figure to their child/children. Just a little something I thought would be interesting to say
I agree with you that not all women supported the right to vote (or the later equal rights amendment - I even wrote a brief paper on that in my Constitutional Law course while studying to be a paralegal). I haven't heard the 60% figure before, though. Do you have a source for that? I'd love to learn more!
"and you doctor spanky, you were on the cusp of discovering time travel, bug what did you discover instead?' 'alchohol" "this is completely accurate" Me: wtf someone almost discovered time travel?!?!
I think you'd really love the channel 'History Buffs'. He talks about the accuracy of historical movies, and I'd love to see you react to some of his videos!
He doesn't tend to be very good on the actual history, though, he tends to just go with pop-history or the kind of shocking did-you-know narratives that aren't given much credence by historians. His Agora video is somehow worse history than the movie itself and his views on Alexander are kind of, um, _insteresting_ as well. Not to mention the long stupid rant after Dances With Wolves where he shows a picture of a CS gas grenade and claims it's a concussion grenade.
@@CruelestChris it really wasn’t a long stupid rant, he was relating the death of the west and the decline of Native American society to the expansion of the pipeline. Which is illegally being built on *their* land
@@SeanMacadelic No, the particular part I'm talking about is when he starts talking about "concussion grenades" while showing an image of a casing that clearly shows "CS" (tear gas) and then a diagram of a tear gas grenade from the manufacturer's website that shows it's not what he says it is. "Concussion" is a type of _lethal_ grenade also known as an "offensive" hand grenade, where the primary mechanism of wounding is blast rather than fragmentation (such that a soldier can throw it and not immediately have to take cover as with a "defensive" frag grenade). Even if you assume he was educated in grenade nomenclature at the school of Call of Duty, that would make it a stun grenade, which the grenades he shows aren't either. He fixates on it being an "instantaneous blast" grenade without noticing this "blast" is only from a tiny detonator with no explosive payload (ie it's what's called a bursting-type chemical grenade, a type designed to deploy its contents instantly with a small explosive charge rather than over time as in a burning-type), and fails to notice that the filler is the entire body of the grenade and is listed as OC (pepper spray), CN (mace) or CS (tear gas). The right answer isn't just within reach, it is _in his hand!_ Also I don't think the courts have ever ruled that the pipeline's construction is anything but legal: the case that's dealing with whether Trump had a right to issue the permit for construction is still ongoing.
He has some interesting vids, and I usually watch everything of him. But I have my questionmarks about some of his findings. Full of praise about Waterloo, whilst that movie ignores a significant number of non-Brit coalition members (only half of Wellington's army was British IIRC). Midway also looks like a Pearl Harbor ep II to me (Zero's strafing the streets of Honolulu between three tops?) instead of a realistic war movie. TL&DR he makes entertaining vids, but I would take it all with a grain of salt.
Fun fact: the jury declaring someone not guilty even if they believe they're guilty (or vice versa) actually has a name! It's called Jury Nullification, and as far as I know you're probably not supposed to know it's an option
Don't ask, don't tell situation. Jurors can't be punished for making a "wrong" decision and after all, they are considered the finders and triers of facts.
I’m from Ohio, born and raised. I am a history buff and i law student. Learning about that case about your great great grandmother would’ve been amazing 🙏🏾💯
I found ur channel two days ago and im addicted. I love that you add to your reactions with real information and actually try to educate people. I’ve learned so much in the last few days 😂
It's funny how when we learn about the roaring 20s in elementary school, we learn about how people partied and listened to jazz music, but while that was all happening, bootleggers were smuggling alcohol and mobsters were shooting each other in the streets.
You learned about the roaring 20s? I'm entering high school and all school has taught us history wise is the discovery of America and the American revolution about 8 times over
@Conner Wine true, I'm talking about how my schools wouldn't even talk about the parties or jazz from the 20s, or any kid friendly history, only the american revolution
I was raised in Topeka, KS & I never knew Carrie Nation smashed a saloon here in town. The main local historical event I learned about was Brown vs Board. Makes me wonder what else happened in Topeka that I never knew about! Lol
as it should be known, historians who are flexible enough to cover most historical topics and still be comprehensible and well informed to them makes a real great historian. glad youre on youtube, its a great binge when im playing solo videogames or just bored, keep it up man, its incredible how you are able to keep the content super transformative and be able to still say things that bring the light to an otherwise dimmer topic. (high five)
40:00 I remember reading that Capone would walk around with a Tommy Gun because the technology was so new there were not any laws prohibiting it for a time. Not sure if that is true.
Well, the National Firearms Act, which cracked down on (without prohibiting, that came decades later) machine guns, was passed partially in response to the gang violence of Prohibition, so there may be something to this.
My great grandfather had worked for Al Capone in his early days. Mostly just bootlegging moonshine. When he saw the rivalries taking lives of people transporting, he got out.
During this video i realised 2 things 1: theres a batman picture hanging on the wall of the courtroom 2: its 1500 prohibition agents not 15000... How the hell did they expected to enforce this ?
I think they expected that local and state police would help shoulder the burden, but most state governments couldn't have cared less about spending money on enforcing Prohibition.
@@DavidSSabb for a variety of reasons it has to be said. Some thought "Prohibition? What a load of hogwash!" Others went "We have more important things to do! Like dealing with ACTUAL crime!" and again others "Why should we deal with that? That's Federal stuff. Not our problem."
I very much enjoyed this; my dad was a bootlegger and a rum runner during Prohibition, and he and my mother ran a Speakeasy. She was a singer and a flapper. Most of my family continued brewing misc alcohols even after Prohibition ended, though I think mostly for private use.
@@racool911 I'm fairly sure it's something Redditors use, usually in response to a political point, mostly when it's right-winger, when they agree. Not sure why, but everyone seems to be using it.
@@somethingoriginal72 Hilariously I've seen it used on every platform besides Reddit. At first I thought it was biased but misspelled but now I'm not so sure. And I first saw it on political posts too, but now I see it everywhere
Part of the reason that doctors were giving alcohol prescriptions was to treat people suffering from alcohol withdrawal. Withdrawal (also called DT's) was awful and widespread. Many docs gave out "bitters" which were vitamin tonics fortified with a bit of alcohol to stave off the tremors.
There's a famous photo of a fully loaded "lumber truck" seemingly carrying 2x4s, but the whole cargo is just one hollow box with a hidden door (which the cops found in the photo) to smuggle alcohol.
We had a prohibition era in Norwegian history as well. It lasted from about 1915 until 1927. There were a lot of smugglers who operated and smuggled liquor into the country, many were arrested jailed for smuggling. Doctors wrote prescriptions to patients for alcohol. The prohibitions even went so far that Portugal and Spain threatened Norway with stopping their import of fish from Norway unless Norway started buying Portuguese and Spanish wine. This led to them putting high import tolls on norwegian fish. Of course moonshine became very prevalent as if it was not already. It ended in the government monopolizing the sale of liquor which still is present today. There are no liquor stores whatsoever in Norway today. Everything that is more than 4,7 percent or something has to be sold on Vinmonopolet. In grocery stores and supermarket you only get a maximum of 4,7 alochol cider, beer and wine.
18:06 Something very similar happened where I live in Australia. When we joined the war, my suburb, previously known as Germantown due to most of its original population being German, had its name changed to Grovedale, as it’s still called now. There’s a Cemetery exclusively for descendants of the original immigrants
Also it was safer on ocean voyages. Standing water in a ship is bound and grow microbes after weeks in sun and heat. Forms of low alcohol content beverages helped to keep travelers hydrated. That’s part of the reason pirates are perceives as drunkards - because they were drinking for survival oftentimes
I had seen the original video before and really enjoy your additions to it. For about 15 years I lived in Westerville, Ohio which was the home of the WCTU, and was still dry until well into the 21st century. It was funny how there were bars and drive through liquor stores in Columbus right up to the border of Westerville, then once you got across the line it was all churches and houses. It was a HUGE deal when the first few areas of Westerville voted to sell alcohol. Now there is a brewery in uptown Westerville called Temperance Brewing which I think absolutely hilarious - and their beer is pretty good :)
3:40 Not to mention the dubiousness of many sources of water back then, that we kind of take for granted nowadays. Alcohol kills bacteria, so people were less likely to get sick from drinking alcohol than they were from drinking water.
Something I find ironic with the prohibition Era is how easily any citizen could simply buy a Thompson given they had the money, but one drink was waay illegal
I love the way you legitimize the information coming across in the cartoon. If only we would have this way back when during our very boring Social Studies classes. I am Canadian and our experience with Prohibition is very similar to yours in the States. Our illegal alcohol came flooding across the border so very few towns and cities were actually dry, only on paper were Canadians denied legal alcohol, but illegal alcohol was the very same as it has always been. Growing up on a farm during the 70s and 80s, hardly a barn or bunk house was found without the remains of our grandfather’s still. Even some of our older Scott’s neighbors had whiskey brewed in the 20s and 30s stored in oak barrels to toast in the New Year or to Wet the Baby’s Head( toast to a new child in the community )! This was really interesting and thank you for informing us on these topics that my sons really did not learn one thing about.
one more thing about the prevalence of drinking alcohol was, not only was it one of the few options available pre 1900, it was also often times actually safer than water as the water wasn’t purified like it is today
47:48 “People celebrated like they had just won a world war.” Anyone else notice that the couple kissing in the lower right-hand corner is a reference to the kissing sailor photo from the end of WWII?
I love the context you provide with your comments that can easily be overlooked by a lot of viewers such as not having many drinking options where most today wouldn't even think about that even being a possibility and that nuance was not provided in the original video. Good job!
When I see either a historian's or a history teacher's reaction to the video is 4X longer than the original video, I get excited. History nerds gonna history nerd. lol Edit: I remember the freedom fries thing in D.C., but I had no idea anything else actually came of that. Did they literally change the names of streets and buildings in Ohio? lol. I feel like I can guess the same people who supported those name changes probably oppose more recent name changes. Funny how that works.
I lived in a town in Eastern CT that was a dry town until the late 1990s. I remember the adults in my neighborhood taking turns getting orders for whoever's turn it was to drive to the next town to get booze.
Carrie Nation is a riot 😂 She also hated corsets because she thought they were harmful (they actually are perfectly safe if sized appropriately) Her first husband actually died (likely r/t alcoholism) 2 years after they married and they had separated after a year. After that she was a teacher for a while and obtained a history degree. She lived such a crazy life I encourage anyone to look up her and her shenanigans.
12:55 Here where I live, Meth was a real problem, so they stopped selling Pseudoephedrins over the counter, and you required a prescription from the docs, word of mouth was that the public clinics were the busiest they had been and booked out for 2 weeks.
Hey man I’m a new subscriber and I just want to say that your videos are quickly becoming my favorites on RUclips I love your takes on history and your small interesting inputs about things most people don’t know. Please keep your videos coming because they are amazing
Centuries ago while I was in college. I ended up getting a internship at the Daniel Boone national forest in Kentucky. Wasn't expecting a dry County. Closest place to get it was in Tennessee. So I go down there....lol. The Tennessee side of the border was all about liquor stores. The advertising on the Kentucky side was all about "play lotto here".
I went to The Mob Museum in Las Vegas in 2019 and they had the St Valentines Day Massacre wall transported there and rebuilt behind glass. Totally worth the price of admission.
Talking about local enforcement, my family had some bootleggers during this time in NY and they'd run it down from Canada. The local police would always notify them before checking their property for alcohol. My great grandfather even talked about watching them move kegs to a different house and later that night the police would search the first house while blatantly ignoring the obvious keg tracks in the snow. leading to a different house.
It's interesting to learn about the prohibition in America. Here in Sweden we also had a big issue with alcohol. It led to a rationing of it in the first half of the 20th century. This rationing was extremely unfair and arbitrary. If you were wealthy you got a lot more than if you were poor and women hardly got any alcohol at all. The paperwork was incredibly complicated and there were loopholes in this system as well. Eventually the system died out and the state monopoly that we have today here was born. Now, you can only buy alcohol in special stores that are owned by the state. The opening hours are limited (completely closed on Sundays for example), the age limit is 20 and they check your ID very thoroughly. It's an interesting system that most people here are okay with.
I heard a family story that a great uncle of mine was involved in the St Valentine's Day Massacre, as he was a taxi/limo driver and he brought Capone's men to the sight of the Massacre
Here in New Jersey we have a few dry counties, mostly the shore counties. It’s a weird political situation, because the wet counties that border them don’t want to lose the tax revenue that their liquor stores bring in, and liquor store owners have actually paid for people in dry counties to defend the policy out of fear of losing business.
There's an anime called 91 days that was about mob families, prohibition and revenge. I don't think it's based off a real person, but it is interesting to watch
Another key reason alcohol was so widely consumed back in the day was because it was one of the safest drinking options available. In the days before public sanitation and modern water purification techniques, even drinking water left you vulnerable to diseases like cholera. Alcohol, for all its problems as a mind-altering substance, is a powerful disinfectant, which made it much more sanitary and safer in pre-industrial times.
Mainly over the fact when I was in school one of my most hated classes was AP US history over the fact the amount of work I had to do but the more I watch videos like these they spark my interest in the fullest and I love that
Interesting seeing history repeat itself in how fanatical and widespread these movements get. It leaves no room for alternate opinions and everyone just ends up agreeing with the movement out of fear.
As someone that is employed at a liquor store during the pandemic...those alcohol consumption stats are no longer accurate. Alcohol sales, at least here in Minnesota, doubled overnight in March, 2020, continued to increase, then plateaued around May 2021, but an average day in 2021 is still higher than our best sales day prior to the pandemic.
William McCoy is my favorite rum runner especially because he was the inspiration for the phrase the real McCoy. He inspired it by being the most prolific rum runner on top of being one of the first and being one of the few who didn't dilute his alcohol with water to sell larger amounts. He also had the nickname the king of rum row.
Alcohol was not only a popular drink because there were few options, but especially because it was the safer option. This goes back to the European middle ages, when even children drank beer on a daily basis. Alcohol is a disinfectant and thus drinking beer was healthy as water often tended to be polluted.
It wasn't just the accessibility, beer helped preserve the grains longer and made it easier to preserve nutrients that you couldn't do in normal baking and other forms. It also helped because the quality of water was nowhere near as good as it is today. I wish they had brought up that prohibition was not purely about alcohol but also is the reason that Marijuana became illegal and still is in many states today.
Some more info about George Remus. When he left for prison, he gave power of attorney to his wife, Imogene. She now controlled his entire operation and all his assets. While in prison he told another inmate that his wife had his power of attorney. The ‘inmate’ was an undercover prohibition agent. He resigned his job and started an affair with Imogene. Together, they sold his assets and hid as much as possible. They then tried unsuccessfully to have him deported. They then hired a hit man to kill him. The entire time she was suing him for divorce. After Remus left prison, he had his driver run her car off the road. As she fled on foot, he chased and shot her to death. After his wife’s death was confirmed, they took Remus to Eden Park to look for the gun, with no success. Later that day, the prosecutor’s office sent a psychologist to Remus’ cell. He happily explained how his wife and her lover “broke up my home, robbed me of my fortune and double-crossed the federal government” and assured the doctor he wasn’t insane - but then added, “No man could be perfectly sane and commit the crime that I’ve done.” He acted as his own lawyer at his murder trial. He pled innocent by reason of insanity. Prosecutors brought in three psychological experts to examine Remus and refute the claim, but a steady stream of defense witnesses attested that while “he was exceptionally intelligent and sane and bright and shrewd” most of the time, when it came to Imogene and Dodge-the agent she had the affair with- “he was crazy as a bedbug.” Furthermore, to the dismay of prosecutors, Remus and his attorney were able to discuss what Imogene had done, offering an explanation for why he’d gone mad. After 19 minutes of deliberation, the jury found him not guilty on ground of insanity with one juror later saying: “We felt that Remus had been greatly wronged, that he had suffered almost beyond human endurance.” He went to the state hospital for the criminally insane. After appealing that he was no longer insane, he was able to leave after only two months in the hospital. Remus tried to re-enter bootlegging but found that violent gangsters had taken it over. He opened a real estate office, lived quietly, and spent much time trying to reclaim his property. He never recovered most of his assets. He died at home of natural causes in 1952 at age 77. (Though it has never been confirmed, legend has it F. Scott Fitzgerald based the central figure of “The Great Gatsby” on Remus.)
My great grandfather was a bootlegger. And the entirety of my dad's family is proud of it. I think that he did it for a steady supply of money, which is a major plus. But the federal government had no way of enforcing the law of prohibition. I personally believe that the federal government was screwed by this. They did a lot too late.
I remember a history teacher I had telling the story of how his granddad got caught bootlegging, but it just so happened he was supplying the speakeasy the cop went to. After that he always got help from the cop.
County I live in in Tn, was a mostly dry county until early 2010s. Beer was the only alcohol sold here. What's funny is almost all surrounding counties was 'wet' counties but there was a fairly large still presence in some of the deeper woods. Lots of moonshine and a few wine makers making some money in the area. One of my childhood friends grwing up, his father had a fairly large shine still for awhile
17:55 - Is it true that the reason that French Fries are called French Fries, despite being Belgian.. is that American Soldiers ate them during the first world war whilst fighting in Belgium and because in that part of the country they spoke French, they assumed that they were still in France? I've heard that touted many times but I'm not sure if its a myth or not
There was no war while Trump was president. In fact he made the decision to leave Afghanistan in an ORDERLY MANNER removing people and supplies before abandoning the country.
I looked a little into the George Remus history and a couple of things should be noted. One, when he was in prison, another inmate was an undercover prohibition agent Franklin Dodge, who learned that George's wife had control over his money, so he quit his job and then went out to specifically seduce her. In addition to spending his money and filing for divorce, his wife (Imogene Holmes) and Franklin Dodge tried to have Remus deported, and even hired a hitman to murder him.
I am from Kentucky and there are many dry counties here. My county is dry with the exception of our largest town which gives a few liquor licenses to a few stores and restaurants. There is also an old saying here that Christian County is wet and Bourbon County is dry.
There was a similar law in effect in Finland from 1919 to 1932. It mostly only encouraged smuggling and consumption of rectified spirits and homebrewing, so eventually it was abolished in favor of a state alcohol monopoly (which still is the only legal source of hard liquor within Finland's borders).
Since I keep getting comments implying I don't know the difference between England and Scotland I'm pinning a post about this. The ancestor I refer to in this video was indeed an English immigrant who came over from Glasgow Scotland. He was born in raised in Tipton in the English West Midlands. He went to work in Glasgow in 1846 where he lived until 1866. From there he went to America. He was indeed English not Scottish.
Great info. Found your channel and Ican’t stop watching. Keep up the good work!
Interesting fact about alcohol / Beer as the heart of America.
The 1st settlers to land in Virginia only landed there because they ran out of beer. They then proceeded to brew beer from acorns.
The 1st settlers was actually headed to Florida to meet up with Spaniards with the hopes to find gold.
If those Virginia settlers hadnt ran out of beer perhaps America would of never formed.
Basically Thanks to Beer America was born.
I remember the term Freedom Fries 🍟
@@austinjeffris38 yep
Another detail on Capone's arrest: the feds and IRS had raided Capone's business office and took nearly countless documents to look for evidence to use against him. This would be the first high-profile case (perhaps the first case ever) that handwriting analysis, particularly signature analysis, was used.
Funny story about my Great Grandma "Granny." My Dad and his brothers called her Granny for good reason, she looked, sounded, and acted like Granny from the Beverly Hillbillies. Sleep in till 7 AM, half the day has been wasted! However, there was one thing that she was not like Granny. NO ALCHOHOL! When she was 90 years old, she went on a plane for the first time to visit a relative in Florida. When the pilot learned that a 90 year old woman was having her first plane ride, he went back to welcome her aboard. He then made his mistake. He offered her a drink. Granny went into him and lectured him about the evils of drink, and he quickly wished he had stayed in the cockpit.
That's awesome. Also, anyone who is lucky enough to have a living great-grandmother calls her Granny. Mine lived until I was 22 (she was 97), and I loved listening to her stories. However, unlike yours, mine loved to drink until about the last year of her life. She would go to the bar with my aunt, who took care of her, every Sunday, and even though she was wheelchair bound, she would still get on the dance floor, dance as much as she could, and flirt like crazy. I miss her every day.
@@TheNeonParadox I called mine Nanny and my great grandfather Granddad, they lived to be 87 and 92(?) respectively, and granddad was a WWII and Vietnam vet. RIP nanny and granddad kindest souls
My family called our great grandmother gg. She lived until she was 93. Her sister was 103.
remember: the fbi couldn't get capone, the IRS did. never mess with the IRS
(Note if your going to be a gang leader and a mass murder pay your taxes)
Lol that's why the Joker paid his taxes in the Batman the Animated Series
@@aredjayc2858 lol
Which means te the U.S. government wanted it's cut of the action.
@ARedJay C are you serious lol 😂?! Granted I never really watched that show, but I figured the Joker being Joker didn't bother with things like that besides causing chaos and mayhem.
Still though it's freakin hilarious that even the Joker fears the IRS 😂.
"Beer as a family Drink, you could even give to your children"
Me, a german: * laughs in legally drinking beer at age 14*
Actually you can legally drinking beer at the age of 16 in germany. But the farther you go out on the land the less the people care about it lol
@@felixjohnson2734 IF you are with your legal guardians (therefore proving that you have their consent), it drops to 14. Otherwise legal drinking age is 16 for beer, wines and sparkling wine and 18 for hard liquor.
14? ROOKIE NUMBEER i drank alcohol at 9-12, People didn't care bout it. Epic Serb
Yeah i know but my parents did not allow me do buy beer or wine
@@felixjohnson2734 but that doesn't mean, it's nit technically legal
A few things I wish oversimplified touched on was how unsafe drinking water was at the time. Honestly, of the two, Alcohol was the healthier and comparably safer option. And that Saloons were more then a place you could go to get drunk. Many served as post offices, barbers, dentists, eateries, and translators for newly arrived immigrants. German culture in America thrives during that time because of saloons. Does this excuse the rampant alcoholism? Hell no. Just thought that it was interesting.
This was true for most of human history, actually. It's why wine was a big deal through antiquity and the Middle ages, and where the stereotype of the drunken sailor comes from. They were at sea for months at a time and water even in sealed barrels will only keep for a few weeks. After that, booze is all that's left.
Actually, our ability to metabolize alcohol is a huge evolutionary advantage. Because of this, our primal ancestors could eat rotting fruit that most other animals couldn't. It was a food source that, while not ideal, did the job, and we didn't have to compete for it.
Hence the name, Over Simplified
Another important aspect that often drinks had a lower alcohol content than they'd have nowadays. Although methods to increase the alcohol content were becoming more prevalent.
@@robert-janthuis9927 which is actually kind of ironic because until the late middle ages or the Renaissance, wine typically had to be watered down because its alcohol content was so high.
@@David-ee9nc Yeah, but it would've taken all but 2 seconds to say that in a twenty minute video.
One the funniest things to me regarding dry counties is that a county near me, Moore County in Tennessee, houses the Jack Daniel Distillery. Major distillery and you can't even buy it in the county it's made in.
No but you can pay 12 dollars to sample it during the factory tours now
I live not to far from Moore County and that shit cracks me up
Well technically they do sell souvenir Jack Daniels bottles at the distillery. It just so happens that those "souvenir" bottles includes complimentary Jack Daniels whiskey inside. (Hello from Knoxville, fellow Tennesseans)
Jack Daniels, that's the one. i knew one of them was in a dry County, but couldn't remember which one
@@Kolopiomo
I used to live right outside Nashville.
I wish that Wheeler had lived long enough to see the end of Prohibition simply because I would love to know what his reaction would have been.
He probably drowned his sorrows LMAO
"Send in the lions!"
.......
"Where are the lions?"
"They're passed out drunk from celebrating, sir."
"FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-"
@@frostyguy1989 “OoOOooh NOooOoo”
“9/11 was 20 years ago.”
Me, who was a junior in high school on 9/11: Well, I feel old.
I hear ya. I was on my honeymoon on the first anniversary of 9/11.
I was in my second year of college, so I hear ya.
I wasn't even born yet
I wasn’t even born yet, and I’ve graduated a year ago
I was just two months old when it happened
I had a history professor that really tried to defend prohibition. They put up this chart about how drinking went significantly down in the US during prohibition. Statistics bother me. So I asked “how were these numbers gathered.” Apparently by public questionnaire. “Ok, so who is going to admit to someone that they break the law. That’s like asking someone off the street if they do heroin. If the same standards were used I’m sure that they would say that the war on drugs has been a great success since people say they don’t use drugs.”
That professor did not like me very much.
"Dr. Spanky you were on the verge of discovering time travel but what did you discover instead?
The sweet sweet taste of whiskey"
*pauses video* Ok this is 100% true
LOL. I THOUGHT THE SAME. 😂
It’s a true story 😳
I just rewatched and just noticed where he paused it and its hilarious
@@DebsStuffs me too lol
If you told me, word for word that this actually happened, I’d believe you.
It's great that you are growing so quickly!I like how you aren't biased towards just American history.
Very cool
@@egg5796 egg
@@egg5796 egg
@@egg5796 egg
@@egg5796 egg
Man i hated history class in school. Literally just fell asleep. Now im overly obsessed with it. So fascinating.
Megamind was right. "PRESENTATION!"
History is very touchy when it comes to teaching it. I think that, more than any other school subject, it all hinges on who your teacher is. A math or science teacher can really just teach from a textbook and you can still understand it. Teaching history requires more than just the ability to relay facts, it requires the ability to tell a story. More than any other subject, a history teacher needs to be passionate about what they teach in order for their students to like it.
I used to be the same, I despised history for most of my life. But then I had a really good 7th Grade History teacher, and I learned just how much I actually adore it. Now most of my entertainment these days comes from videos like this one. I even almost ended up going for a history degree before life decided it had other plans for me.
Either way, my ultimate point is that History is hard to teach. *Very* hard. The teacher needs to know the subject well, but also be genuinely passionate and be a good storyteller. And frankly, not every teacher is able to be like that.
Stumbled across your channel the other week, and i absolutely love it. Your informative bits, you add into these reaction videos are really whats sets your channel apart. I think its only a matter of time before the youtube algorithm picks your channel up and you explode! Keep up the great videos man!
You're very kind, sir! Thank you.
You weren't wrong... 100k subs
@@VloggingThroughHistory I know, it's the internet, BUT I'm 50 yo and couldn't help but love OverSimplified's videos. These additions of yours really enhance the experience and even make me more of a fan of OverSimplified's work since the facts seem to be reasonably validated. While I know this could be gamed, and that 'History is written by the winners' has .such Truth in it, I still very much appreciate your efforts.
Just came from the American Civil War vid.
Carrie A Nation is buried in our local cemetery and I live really close to it
Awesome. Where is she buried?
@@VloggingThroughHistory Belton mo cemetery
Go visit the old bag
@@VloggingThroughHistory one of us
The bar having a sign saying "All Nations Welcome Except Carrie" is a sign that humor hasn't changed in the course of human history, 😂😂
Through history in europe, since the fall of Rome, people drank alcohol because it was a way of purifying the water. Most fresh water sources were polluted by bacteria (cholora etc) which were distroyed by heating the water. But heating water is expensive, so you make a product like weak beer which not only is safe to drink but can be stored. With the industrial revolution came improved public health (mostly), which included improved water quality - the fountains described are a reflection of this, thus the drinking of alcohol for public health in cities no longer became a necessity in most situations.
And there's also the fact that the strength of alcohol in the last 200 years has skyrocketed compared to human history because of distilleries. So people would drink 'beer' in medieval times but it was a lot closer to water anyway
That's why I heard that european people handle alcohol better than chinese people. Instead of using alcohol to purify water, for centuries Chinese people used tea and thus avoided a natural selection for alcohol unlike europeans.
Thats a myth, the alcohol levels in the beer they wouldve drank were not high enough to stop life from growing in it.
One thing that truly bothers me is how many people seem to forget that the things we take as basic human things, like clean drinking water, was hardly a guarantee.
I appreciate the time you have taken in each video I have watched of yours to mention that it was a different time.
Still to today, a billion people or so don't have access to drinkable water
shamsudeen m a I can't recall off the top of my head but I think it's 1/3 of the worlds population has drinking water that's considered unsafe for human consumption.
@@sirshotty7689That sounds a bit high, but my cynical side says it's probably right.
@@operator8014 so the 1/3 statistic was from a monitoring program from the span of 2000-2017. There was a newer statistic that states that in 2020 74% of the global population used safely managed drinking water services. Meaning that it’s safe for consumption, readily available, and within close proximity of the population. Do with that what you will. Either way whether 1/3 or 1/4 while it’s a major difference it still means a lot of people don’t have quick access to safe drinking water.
I remember reading that coffee helped spark the first industrial revolution. Apparently everyone was just drunk beforehand, and coffee was a new way to consume water while being able to remove bacteria/viruses etc.
@@smortboi1320 that’s wild I now have a whole new fascination with just sitting in a Starbucks on the internet now lol
Where there's a market there's a way ya know?
Coffee is the fuel of modern society
Well, coffee definitely had an impact in Europe. When the Ottomans discovered coffee plants in Yemen, they came with the idea of drinking it and to create purpose-built public places for its consumption, which were the first coffee shops. They were not only a great source of revenue for the Sultan, but also a place to hang out with people and discuss ideas. At some point, Western Europeans (maybe some battles like Lepanto played a role on it) liked the idea and introduced coffee consumption in Europe... And the rest is history.
I'm sure someone has mentioned this, Jack Daniels is distilled in a dry Kentucky county.. talk about irony
Tennessee*
@@nicholasc3694 It is quite ironic, I'm glad daviess county ky isnt dry. Glad I can drink Kentucky tavern that my aunt probably bottled at work. My old middle school is right next to glenmore distillery where Kentucky tavern and other bourbons are bottled.
5:48 Although that is true, here's a little fun fact many of you might have not known, about 60 percent of women at that time opposed the women fighting for the right to vote. They did that because the right to vote would naturally come with many big responsibilities they couldn't fulfill while also being the main parenting figure to their child/children. Just a little something I thought would be interesting to say
I agree with you that not all women supported the right to vote (or the later equal rights amendment - I even wrote a brief paper on that in my Constitutional Law course while studying to be a paralegal). I haven't heard the 60% figure before, though. Do you have a source for that? I'd love to learn more!
"and you doctor spanky, you were on the cusp of discovering time travel, bug what did you discover instead?' 'alchohol"
"this is completely accurate"
Me: wtf someone almost discovered time travel?!?!
Good. I am not the only guy that loves history that is from Ohio.
I am actually from kirtland Ohio
Pickaway 🤟
did you know that in 1895 there were only 2 cars in Ohio and they crashed into eachother
“Pilsner, traditional Czech beer”
Wow, even the bottle, even being cartoonish, is right.
Úspěchy máme i v zahraničí :)
Pilsner, the traditional Czech beer made by the Germans.
@@dannymunch4633 Created, not made. And a German, not Germans.
Wait… I thought Pilsner is German?? It doesn’t even sound czech.
@@linajurgensen4698 Pilsner Urquell in German, Plzeňský Prazdroj in Czech. It’s from Plzeň, CZ.
I think you'd really love the channel 'History Buffs'. He talks about the accuracy of historical movies, and I'd love to see you react to some of his videos!
I do love that channel!
He doesn't tend to be very good on the actual history, though, he tends to just go with pop-history or the kind of shocking did-you-know narratives that aren't given much credence by historians. His Agora video is somehow worse history than the movie itself and his views on Alexander are kind of, um, _insteresting_ as well. Not to mention the long stupid rant after Dances With Wolves where he shows a picture of a CS gas grenade and claims it's a concussion grenade.
@@CruelestChris it really wasn’t a long stupid rant, he was relating the death of the west and the decline of Native American society to the expansion of the pipeline. Which is illegally being built on *their* land
@@SeanMacadelic
No, the particular part I'm talking about is when he starts talking about "concussion grenades" while showing an image of a casing that clearly shows "CS" (tear gas) and then a diagram of a tear gas grenade from the manufacturer's website that shows it's not what he says it is. "Concussion" is a type of _lethal_ grenade also known as an "offensive" hand grenade, where the primary mechanism of wounding is blast rather than fragmentation (such that a soldier can throw it and not immediately have to take cover as with a "defensive" frag grenade). Even if you assume he was educated in grenade nomenclature at the school of Call of Duty, that would make it a stun grenade, which the grenades he shows aren't either.
He fixates on it being an "instantaneous blast" grenade without noticing this "blast" is only from a tiny detonator with no explosive payload (ie it's what's called a bursting-type chemical grenade, a type designed to deploy its contents instantly with a small explosive charge rather than over time as in a burning-type), and fails to notice that the filler is the entire body of the grenade and is listed as OC (pepper spray), CN (mace) or CS (tear gas). The right answer isn't just within reach, it is _in his hand!_
Also I don't think the courts have ever ruled that the pipeline's construction is anything but legal: the case that's dealing with whether Trump had a right to issue the permit for construction is still ongoing.
He has some interesting vids, and I usually watch everything of him. But I have my questionmarks about some of his findings. Full of praise about Waterloo, whilst that movie ignores a significant number of non-Brit coalition members (only half of Wellington's army was British IIRC). Midway also looks like a Pearl Harbor ep II to me (Zero's strafing the streets of Honolulu between three tops?) instead of a realistic war movie.
TL&DR he makes entertaining vids, but I would take it all with a grain of salt.
Fun fact: the jury declaring someone not guilty even if they believe they're guilty (or vice versa) actually has a name! It's called Jury Nullification, and as far as I know you're probably not supposed to know it's an option
Don't ask, don't tell situation. Jurors can't be punished for making a "wrong" decision and after all, they are considered the finders and triers of facts.
"you wouldn't download a car"... trust me, if I could download a car, I would have. And not once.
*Laughs in 3d Printer*
I’m from Ohio, born and raised. I am a history buff and i law student. Learning about that case about your great great grandmother would’ve been amazing 🙏🏾💯
PLEASE TELL ME YOU'RE JOKING PLSSSSSS
You do a great job man; this is my third video of yours and you have phenomenal input making great original content even better. Well done!
I appreciate that! Welcome to the channel.
I found ur channel two days ago and im addicted. I love that you add to your reactions with real information and actually try to educate people. I’ve learned so much in the last few days 😂
Thank you and welcome!
It's funny how when we learn about the roaring 20s in elementary school, we learn about how people partied and listened to jazz music, but while that was all happening, bootleggers were smuggling alcohol and mobsters were shooting each other in the streets.
You learned about the roaring 20s? I'm entering high school and all school has taught us history wise is the discovery of America and the American revolution about 8 times over
@Conner Wine true, I'm talking about how my schools wouldn't even talk about the parties or jazz from the 20s, or any kid friendly history, only the american revolution
@Conner Wine The Revolution was *not* kid friendly if you really go deep into it.
@@PokeMario-pk4ot yo, take this class called APUSH junior year, it's not too difficult and it really dives deep into US history. I'm taking it rn.
@@PokeMario-pk4ot I think its mostly taught in 9th grade
Thank you for being the one to point out NASCAR came from rum runners! I was disappointed that OverSimplified didn’t make a reference to it
I was raised in Topeka, KS & I never knew Carrie Nation smashed a saloon here in town. The main local historical event I learned about was Brown vs Board. Makes me wonder what else happened in Topeka that I never knew about! Lol
Is the saloon still there?
@@Jasper-Holland no idea! I would have to look into it to see where exactly it was located
My great grandad was actually a moonshiner during this point. He was friends with the chief so hed warn him and theyd hide it all
as it should be known, historians who are flexible enough to cover most historical topics and still be comprehensible and well informed to them makes a real great historian. glad youre on youtube, its a great binge when im playing solo videogames or just bored, keep it up man, its incredible how you are able to keep the content super transformative and be able to still say things that bring the light to an otherwise dimmer topic. (high five)
40:00 I remember reading that Capone would walk around with a Tommy Gun because the technology was so new there were not any laws prohibiting it for a time. Not sure if that is true.
Well, the National Firearms Act, which cracked down on (without prohibiting, that came decades later) machine guns, was passed partially in response to the gang violence of Prohibition, so there may be something to this.
My great grandfather had worked for Al Capone in his early days. Mostly just bootlegging moonshine. When he saw the rivalries taking lives of people transporting, he got out.
During this video i realised 2 things
1: theres a batman picture hanging on the wall of the courtroom
2: its 1500 prohibition agents not 15000...
How the hell did they expected to enforce this ?
Yeah, he didn't say 15,000
I think they expected that local and state police would help shoulder the burden, but most state governments couldn't have cared less about spending money on enforcing Prohibition.
@@DavidSSabb for a variety of reasons it has to be said.
Some thought "Prohibition? What a load of hogwash!"
Others went "We have more important things to do! Like dealing with ACTUAL crime!"
and again others "Why should we deal with that? That's Federal stuff. Not our problem."
They literally thought they lived in a Saturday morning cartoon. Except Clutch Cargo wouldn't arrive for another 30 or so years.
I very much enjoyed this; my dad was a bootlegger and a rum runner during Prohibition, and he and my mother ran a Speakeasy. She was a singer and a flapper.
Most of my family continued brewing misc alcohols even after Prohibition ended, though I think mostly for private use.
Your videos remind me fondly of my high school history teachers, it really makes me happy, thank you!
12:30 meanwhile Jesus: turns water into wine, after people had already drunk a ton, so they could get even more smashed.
Based dude
@@Psycorde I wish I knew wtf "based" means. I've seen it used so much for the past year and I still haven't come close to figuring it out
@@racool911 I'm fairly sure it's something Redditors use, usually in response to a political point, mostly when it's right-winger, when they agree. Not sure why, but everyone seems to be using it.
@@somethingoriginal72 Hilariously I've seen it used on every platform besides Reddit. At first I thought it was biased but misspelled but now I'm not so sure. And I first saw it on political posts too, but now I see it everywhere
@@racool911 I think it was originally used as a Reddit political term, but now people use it to mean pretty much everything.
Part of the reason that doctors were giving alcohol prescriptions was to treat people suffering from alcohol withdrawal. Withdrawal (also called DT's) was awful and widespread. Many docs gave out "bitters" which were vitamin tonics fortified with a bit of alcohol to stave off the tremors.
So funny how he guesses something about to be said in the video. Its like he's playing chess and he's 5 moves ahead.
46:27 Are we just going to ignore that Waldo from "Where's Waldo" in the background?
Well spotted 😂
I like that you talked about the rise of Nascar from moonshiners
Yeah as a big nascar fan myself I was pleasantly surprised when he mentioned nascar
There's a famous photo of a fully loaded "lumber truck" seemingly carrying 2x4s, but the whole cargo is just one hollow box with a hidden door (which the cops found in the photo) to smuggle alcohol.
omg why is the photo funny
We had a prohibition era in Norwegian history as well. It lasted from about 1915 until 1927. There were a lot of smugglers who operated and smuggled liquor into the country, many were arrested jailed for smuggling. Doctors wrote prescriptions to patients for alcohol. The prohibitions even went so far that Portugal and Spain threatened Norway with stopping their import of fish from Norway unless Norway started buying Portuguese and Spanish wine. This led to them putting high import tolls on norwegian fish. Of course moonshine became very prevalent as if it was not already. It ended in the government monopolizing the sale of liquor which still is present today. There are no liquor stores whatsoever in Norway today. Everything that is more than 4,7 percent or something has to be sold on Vinmonopolet. In grocery stores and supermarket you only get a maximum of 4,7 alochol cider, beer and wine.
My family comes from bootleggers and early exploration. It’s cool to have a strong connection to this great nation.
18:06 Something very similar happened where I live in Australia. When we joined the war, my suburb, previously known as Germantown due to most of its original population being German, had its name changed to Grovedale, as it’s still called now. There’s a Cemetery exclusively for descendants of the original immigrants
For several hundred years, it was often safer to drink alcohol than water
Also it was safer on ocean voyages. Standing water in a ship is bound and grow microbes after weeks in sun and heat. Forms of low alcohol content beverages helped to keep travelers hydrated. That’s part of the reason pirates are perceives as drunkards - because they were drinking for survival oftentimes
I had seen the original video before and really enjoy your additions to it. For about 15 years I lived in Westerville, Ohio which was the home of the WCTU, and was still dry until well into the 21st century. It was funny how there were bars and drive through liquor stores in Columbus right up to the border of Westerville, then once you got across the line it was all churches and houses. It was a HUGE deal when the first few areas of Westerville voted to sell alcohol. Now there is a brewery in uptown Westerville called Temperance Brewing which I think absolutely hilarious - and their beer is pretty good :)
I still use the term "Freedom" Fries to this day and NOBODY knows what the hell I'm talking about!!!
3:40 Not to mention the dubiousness of many sources of water back then, that we kind of take for granted nowadays. Alcohol kills bacteria, so people were less likely to get sick from drinking alcohol than they were from drinking water.
I love your content because it builds on the original video and it’s interesting to learn more
Something I find ironic with the prohibition Era is how easily any citizen could simply buy a Thompson given they had the money, but one drink was waay illegal
3:00 a true connoisseur, mentioning Pepsi before Coke
I never thought that I would enjoy watching a historian watch videos about history. Yet here I am on my 20th video.
I love the way you legitimize the information coming across in the cartoon. If only we would have this way back when during our very boring Social Studies classes. I am Canadian and our experience with Prohibition is very
similar to yours in the States. Our illegal alcohol came flooding across the border so very few towns and cities were actually dry, only on paper were Canadians denied legal alcohol, but illegal alcohol was the very same as it has always been. Growing up on a farm during the 70s and 80s, hardly a barn or bunk house was found without the remains of our grandfather’s still. Even some of our older Scott’s neighbors had whiskey brewed in the 20s and 30s stored in oak barrels to toast in the New Year or to Wet the Baby’s Head( toast to a new child in the community )! This was really interesting and thank you for informing us on these topics that my sons really did not learn one thing about.
This teaches me more than history class does! Cheers Bro 😄
one more thing about the prevalence of drinking alcohol was, not only was it one of the few options available pre 1900, it was also often times actually safer than water as the water wasn’t purified like it is today
the tactics and consequences of prohibition keep reminding me of current events
47:48 “People celebrated like they had just won a world war.”
Anyone else notice that the couple kissing in the lower right-hand corner is a reference to the kissing sailor photo from the end of WWII?
I love the context you provide with your comments that can easily be overlooked by a lot of viewers such as not having many drinking options where most today wouldn't even think about that even being a possibility and that nuance was not provided in the original video. Good job!
In Denmark we had simular alcohol issues, but instead of making it illegal the politicians raised tax on alcohol by 1200%
To be fair, we did that too.
When I see either a historian's or a history teacher's reaction to the video is 4X longer than the original video, I get excited. History nerds gonna history nerd. lol
Edit: I remember the freedom fries thing in D.C., but I had no idea anything else actually came of that. Did they literally change the names of streets and buildings in Ohio? lol. I feel like I can guess the same people who supported those name changes probably oppose more recent name changes. Funny how that works.
When I see a guy's username is Alexander's horse, I know he's a history nerd like me.
@@VloggingThroughHistory So few people get my username, even channels related to history. 😊
I lived in a town in Eastern CT that was a dry town until the late 1990s. I remember the adults in my neighborhood taking turns getting orders for whoever's turn it was to drive to the next town to get booze.
Carrie Nation is a riot 😂 She also hated corsets because she thought they were harmful (they actually are perfectly safe if sized appropriately) Her first husband actually died (likely r/t alcoholism) 2 years after they married and they had separated after a year. After that she was a teacher for a while and obtained a history degree. She lived such a crazy life I encourage anyone to look up her and her shenanigans.
Love this channel. Quite the lucky recommendation for a history major like me lol
12:55
Here where I live, Meth was a real problem, so they stopped selling Pseudoephedrins over the counter, and you required a prescription from the docs, word of mouth was that the public clinics were the busiest they had been and booked out for 2 weeks.
Hey man I’m a new subscriber and I just want to say that your videos are quickly becoming my favorites on RUclips I love your takes on history and your small interesting inputs about things most people don’t know. Please keep your videos coming because they are amazing
YY
Centuries ago while I was in college. I ended up getting a internship at the Daniel Boone national forest in Kentucky. Wasn't expecting a dry County. Closest place to get it was in Tennessee. So I go down there....lol. The Tennessee side of the border was all about liquor stores. The advertising on the Kentucky side was all about "play lotto here".
I went to The Mob Museum in Las Vegas in 2019 and they had the St Valentines Day Massacre wall transported there and rebuilt behind glass. Totally worth the price of admission.
Talking about local enforcement, my family had some bootleggers during this time in NY and they'd run it down from Canada. The local police would always notify them before checking their property for alcohol. My great grandfather even talked about watching them move kegs to a different house and later that night the police would search the first house while blatantly ignoring the obvious keg tracks in the snow. leading to a different house.
It's interesting to learn about the prohibition in America. Here in Sweden we also had a big issue with alcohol. It led to a rationing of it in the first half of the 20th century. This rationing was extremely unfair and arbitrary. If you were wealthy you got a lot more than if you were poor and women hardly got any alcohol at all. The paperwork was incredibly complicated and there were loopholes in this system as well. Eventually the system died out and the state monopoly that we have today here was born. Now, you can only buy alcohol in special stores that are owned by the state. The opening hours are limited (completely closed on Sundays for example), the age limit is 20 and they check your ID very thoroughly. It's an interesting system that most people here are okay with.
I heard a family story that a great uncle of mine was involved in the St Valentine's Day Massacre, as he was a taxi/limo driver and he brought Capone's men to the sight of the Massacre
Very interesting.
Here in New Jersey we have a few dry counties, mostly the shore counties. It’s a weird political situation, because the wet counties that border them don’t want to lose the tax revenue that their liquor stores bring in, and liquor store owners have actually paid for people in dry counties to defend the policy out of fear of losing business.
There's an anime called 91 days that was about mob families, prohibition and revenge. I don't think it's based off a real person, but it is interesting to watch
It's sad that the US saloon culture died due to Prohibition.
If I could say anything about Wayne Wheeler, and this is pure honesty, it's that he contradicted himself time and time again.
One of the best history-reaction channels. Greetings from Peru.
Thank you Alejandro! Greetings to you as well.
@@VloggingThroughHistory you are such a historian that you know everything about your great grandmothers. 🤣😂
12:15 “all nations welcome except Carrie” that’s hilarious hahahaha
Another key reason alcohol was so widely consumed back in the day was because it was one of the safest drinking options available. In the days before public sanitation and modern water purification techniques, even drinking water left you vulnerable to diseases like cholera. Alcohol, for all its problems as a mind-altering substance, is a powerful disinfectant, which made it much more sanitary and safer in pre-industrial times.
Mainly over the fact when I was in school one of my most hated classes was AP US history over the fact the amount of work I had to do but the more I watch videos like these they spark my interest in the fullest and I love that
have the class rn and for me its not the work that detracts me from it but the amount of historical knowledge demanded
its hard to pay attention
Interesting seeing history repeat itself in how fanatical and widespread these movements get. It leaves no room for alternate opinions and everyone just ends up agreeing with the movement out of fear.
As someone that is employed at a liquor store during the pandemic...those alcohol consumption stats are no longer accurate. Alcohol sales, at least here in Minnesota, doubled overnight in March, 2020, continued to increase, then plateaued around May 2021, but an average day in 2021 is still higher than our best sales day prior to the pandemic.
William McCoy is my favorite rum runner especially because he was the inspiration for the phrase the real McCoy. He inspired it by being the most prolific rum runner on top of being one of the first and being one of the few who didn't dilute his alcohol with water to sell larger amounts. He also had the nickname the king of rum row.
Alcohol was not only a popular drink because there were few options, but especially because it was the safer option. This goes back to the European middle ages, when even children drank beer on a daily basis.
Alcohol is a disinfectant and thus drinking beer was healthy as water often tended to be polluted.
It goes back much further than the middle ages. Even in Old Kingdom Egypt, people drank beer instead of water.
A bucket of Brandy use to be added to water barrels to disinfect water on sailing ships.
The irony. I got an ad for White Claw
It wasn't just the accessibility, beer helped preserve the grains longer and made it easier to preserve nutrients that you couldn't do in normal baking and other forms. It also helped because the quality of water was nowhere near as good as it is today.
I wish they had brought up that prohibition was not purely about alcohol but also is the reason that Marijuana became illegal and still is in many states today.
Some more info about George Remus.
When he left for prison, he gave power of attorney to his wife, Imogene. She now controlled his entire operation and all his assets. While in prison he told another inmate that his wife had his power of attorney.
The ‘inmate’ was an undercover prohibition agent. He resigned his job and started an affair with Imogene. Together, they sold his assets and hid as much as possible. They then tried unsuccessfully to have him deported. They then hired a hit man to kill him. The entire time she was suing him for divorce.
After Remus left prison, he had his driver run her car off the road. As she fled on foot, he chased and shot her to death. After his wife’s death was confirmed, they took Remus to Eden Park to look for the gun, with no success. Later that day, the prosecutor’s office sent a psychologist to Remus’ cell. He happily explained how his wife and her lover “broke up my home, robbed me of my fortune and double-crossed the federal government” and assured the doctor he wasn’t insane - but then added, “No man could be perfectly sane and commit the crime that I’ve done.”
He acted as his own lawyer at his murder trial. He pled innocent by reason of insanity. Prosecutors brought in three psychological experts to examine Remus and refute the claim, but a steady stream of defense witnesses attested that while “he was exceptionally intelligent and sane and bright and shrewd” most of the time, when it came to Imogene and Dodge-the agent she had the affair with- “he was crazy as a bedbug.” Furthermore, to the dismay of prosecutors, Remus and his attorney were able to discuss what Imogene had done, offering an explanation for why he’d gone mad.
After 19 minutes of deliberation, the jury found him not guilty on ground of insanity with one juror later saying: “We felt that Remus had been greatly wronged, that he had suffered almost beyond human endurance.”
He went to the state hospital for the criminally insane. After appealing that he was no longer insane, he was able to leave after only two months in the hospital.
Remus tried to re-enter bootlegging but found that violent gangsters had taken it over. He opened a real estate office, lived quietly, and spent much time trying to reclaim his property. He never recovered most of his assets. He died at home of natural causes in 1952 at age 77.
(Though it has never been confirmed, legend has it F. Scott Fitzgerald based the central figure of “The Great Gatsby” on Remus.)
My great grandfather was a bootlegger. And the entirety of my dad's family is proud of it. I think that he did it for a steady supply of money, which is a major plus.
But the federal government had no way of enforcing the law of prohibition. I personally believe that the federal government was screwed by this. They did a lot too late.
I remember a history teacher I had telling the story of how his granddad got caught bootlegging, but it just so happened he was supplying the speakeasy the cop went to. After that he always got help from the cop.
County I live in in Tn, was a mostly dry county until early 2010s. Beer was the only alcohol sold here. What's funny is almost all surrounding counties was 'wet' counties but there was a fairly large still presence in some of the deeper woods. Lots of moonshine and a few wine makers making some money in the area. One of my childhood friends grwing up, his father had a fairly large shine still for awhile
Why did all these people think drinking was a religious issue if Jesus gave out wine multiple times in the bible?
Because religious people are hypocrites.
17:55 - Is it true that the reason that French Fries are called French Fries, despite being Belgian.. is that American Soldiers ate them during the first world war whilst fighting in Belgium and because in that part of the country they spoke French, they assumed that they were still in France? I've heard that touted many times but I'm not sure if its a myth or not
Belgian people also talk dutch so maybe there was a chance they would be called dutch fries
17:57 - there’s still a restaurant in my town that serves Freedom Fries rather than French Fries 🇺🇸
There was no war while Trump was president. In fact he made the decision to leave Afghanistan in an ORDERLY MANNER removing people and supplies before abandoning the country.
I looked a little into the George Remus history and a couple of things should be noted. One, when he was in prison, another inmate was an undercover prohibition agent Franklin Dodge, who learned that George's wife had control over his money, so he quit his job and then went out to specifically seduce her. In addition to spending his money and filing for divorce, his wife (Imogene Holmes) and Franklin Dodge tried to have Remus deported, and even hired a hitman to murder him.
That's fascinating
I am from Kentucky and there are many dry counties here. My county is dry with the exception of our largest town which gives a few liquor licenses to a few stores and restaurants. There is also an old saying here that Christian County is wet and Bourbon County is dry.
9:18
There's a Temperanceville here on the Eastern Shore of Virginia.
There was a similar law in effect in Finland from 1919 to 1932.
It mostly only encouraged smuggling and consumption of rectified spirits and homebrewing, so eventually it was abolished in favor of a state alcohol monopoly (which still is the only legal source of hard liquor within Finland's borders).