100 years ago in USA

Sorry, no references…I received this in email and I have a feeling that it can all be verified but I dont have the time…so this is presented as entertainment rather than fact…

The year is 1905.
One hundred years ago.
What a difference a century makes!
Here are some of the U.S. statistics for the Year 1905:
The average life expectancy in the U.S. was 47 years.
Only 14 percent of the homes in the U.S. had a bathtub.
Only 8 percent of the homes had a telephone.
A three-minute call from Denver to New York City cost eleven dollars.
There were only 8,000 cars in the U.S., and only 144 miles of paved roads.
The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph.
Alabama, Mississippi, Iowa, and Tennessee were each more heavily populated than California.
With a mere 1.4 million people, California was only the 21st most populous state
in the Union.
The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower!
The average wage in the U.S. was 22 cents per 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 $2,500 per year,
a veterinarian between $1,500 and $4,000 per year, and
a mechanical engineer about $5,000 per year.
More than 95 percent of all births in the U.S. took place at home.
Ninety percent of all U.S. doctors had no college education.
Instead, they attended so-called 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 was 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 that prohibited poor people from entering into their country
for any reason.
Five leading causes of death in the U.S. were:

  1. Pneumonia and influenza
  2. Tuberculosis
  3. Diarrhea
  4. Heart disease
  5. Stroke
    The American flag had 45 stars.
    Arizona, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Hawaii, and Alaska hadn’t been admitted to the Union
    yet.
    The population of Las Vegas, Nevada, was only 30!!!
    Crossword puzzles, canned beer, and ice tea hadn’t been invented yet.
    There was no Mother’s Day or Father’s Day.
    Two out of every 10 U.S. adults couldn’t read or write.
    Only 6 percent of all Americans had graduated from high school.
    Marijuana, heroin, and morphine were all available over the counter at the local
    corner drugstores.
    Back then pharmacist said, “Heroin clears the complexion, gives buoyancy to
    the mind, regulates the stomach and bowels, and is, in fact, a perfect guardian
    of health.” (Shocking!)
    Eighteen percent of households in the U.S. had at least one full-time servant or
    domestic help.
    There were about 230 reported murders in the entire U.S.
    Now I forwarded this from someone else without typing it myself, and sent it to
    you in a matter of seconds!
    Try to imagine what it may be like in another 100 years.
    It staggers the mind.

Re: 100 years ago in USA

:rotfl: i think your post will scare half the guppans around.:slight_smile:

Re: 100 years ago in USA

please elaborate bayzaar.

Mama I think in another 100 yrs ppl will be back to fighting with sticks and stones :D

Re: 100 years ago in USA

100 years ago there was no relativity

Re: 100 years ago in USA

100 years ago there was still Khilafat :(

Re: 100 years ago in USA

I’m not surprised. 100 years is a long time and things change a lot.

But some of the facts were really interesting, like:

*The population of Las Vegas, Nevada, was only 30!!! *:eek:

On the other hand: It’s not really surprising either, because it’s in the middle of a desert.

Re: 100 years ago in USA

...and no antibiotics, no AIDS, over-population, nuclear/biological weapons, E-Coli and Mad Cow disease in the beef, no "Bird Flu" in our chickens....

yup, sticks and stones will be back I'm sure.....

Re: 100 years ago in USA

You do not need to go back that long in History, There were no equal rights for black Americans just 40 years ago.....

Re: 100 years ago in USA

Are you for real?!?? :eek: :eek:

Re: 100 years ago in USA

[quote]
On the other hand: It's not really surprising either, because it's in the middle of a desert.
[/quote]

It was that way because Hoover Dam hadn't been built yet to support large scale communities!

Re: 100 years ago in USA

Have it or don’t have it didn’t make any difference!

Turkey was truly the sick man of europe back then!

Re: 100 years ago in USA

True, it was rotten to the core and reduced to being a puppet of the European banks that controlled it through the high-interest loans the Khilafat was dependent on to remain financially liquid but… it was still there.

Re: 100 years ago in USA

No offense intented here…It was just that there were a lot of facts and i started to skip em and it amused me that i was skipping the facts…so basically i was just amused with myslef…hope its elaborate now!!!:slight_smile:

Re: 100 years ago in USA

You know whats kind of scary? The thousands of years it took for "homo sapien" (Man) to acquire fire and crude tool-making. THOUSANDS of years. And if you look at the past 100, my GOODNESS the "progress" is truly astounding.

Re: 100 years ago in USA

Due to Wars and Germany!

Re: 100 years ago in USA

You do not need to go back that long in History, You could invade and destroy a country just because you felt like it.. just 2 years ago.. no wait.. you can still do that.

Sincerely,
Captain Lota

Re: 100 years ago in USA

"Marijuana, heroin, and morphine were all available over the counter at the local
corner drugstores"

Oh boy! either everyone just loved to hallucinate or no one was depressed in those days! Interesting.

Re: 100 years ago in USA

this thread reminds me of a book called Farmer Boy by a lady called Laura Ingalls Wilder
and she described New York about 150 years ago.... a farming community, a main street made up of wooden buildings and carriages as transports etc

she described Christmas, and celebrating the forth of July ....its very interesting to see just how much that place has changed.

She died in the middle of the twentieth century...she was almost (or over) a hundred
and in her time she had travelled through parts of america in a wagon, seen the advent of the railway... the motor car and even space travel

Re: 100 years ago in USA

^^

Reminds me of my grandad telling me how he remembers the mid 20s when his house got an electricity connection. Back then, you paid just a flat monthly fee for electricity and for it they installed a couple of electric lamps in your house.

In his life my Grandad saw the coming of electricity, phones, weapons that could destroy cities, the overthrow of the 300-year old royalty of his nation, man landing on the moon and the collapse of the largest empire in the history of mankind.

I'm sure that if you asked his father at the time of my grandad's birth about how different the world would be by the end of my grandad's life, he would have laughed.

1919-2005.. they may as well be 1000 years apart!


By the way. I guarantee that our world will be completely different by the end of our lives (assuming we all live to the average age of death in our countries).

The information revolution has barely begun. I had met the head of one of Hewlett Packard's research labs and he talked about some of the new technologies that HP and its competitors are racing to bring to the market in the next 15-10 years.

The future is information everywhere. The first technology that is going to change our lives will be display screens like wallpapaer. Cheap, flexible, strong, and ultra high resolution. They only need power to change what is displayed, but without power will maintain their appearance

Don't like the colour of your house? Change it by plugging your house into your computer.
Don't like the colour of your car? No problem, change it.
Why buy a TV when your entire wall will be your screen?
Clothes will be able to be displays, cups will be displays, even cereal boxes will be displays. We will be able to make anything show anything... and the possibilities just start from there.

The future, people, is information saturation.

Re: 100 years ago in USA

u just reminded me of "killing time" by caleb carr maddy