{"id":3694,"date":"2015-02-06T11:15:22","date_gmt":"2015-02-06T09:15:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/joke-archives.com\/?p=3694"},"modified":"2015-02-06T11:15:22","modified_gmt":"2015-02-06T09:15:22","slug":"what-a-difference-a-century-makes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.joke-archives.com\/?p=3694","title":{"rendered":"What a Difference a Century Makes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the summer of 1900&#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The average life expectancy in the United States was 47.<\/li>\n<li>Only 14% of the homes in the United States had a bathtub.<\/li>\n<li>Only 8% of the homes had a telephone.<\/li>\n<li>A three-minute call from Denver to New York City cost $11.<\/li>\n<li>There were only 8,000 cars in the US and only 144 miles of paved roads.<\/li>\n<li>The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph.<\/li>\n<li>Alabama, Mississippi, Iowa, and Tennessee were each more heavily populated than California.<\/li>\n<li>With a mere 1.4 million residents, California was only the 21st most populated state in the Union.<\/li>\n<li>The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower.<\/li>\n<li>The average wage in the US was 22 cents an hour.<\/li>\n<li>The average US worker made between $200 and $400 per year.<\/li>\n<li>A competent accountant could expect to earn $2,000 per year, a dentist $2,500 per year, a veterinarian between $1,500 and $4,000 per year, and a mechanical engineer about $5,000 per year.<\/li>\n<li>More than 95% of all births in the United States took place at home.<\/li>\n<li>90% of all US physicians had no college education. Instead, they attended medical schools, many of which were condemned in the press and by the government as &#8220;substandard.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>Sugar cost four cents a pound. Eggs were 14 cents a dozen. Coffee cost 15 cents a pound.<\/li>\n<li>Most women only washed their hair once a month and used borax or egg yolks for shampoo.<\/li>\n<li>The five leading causes of death in the US were:\n<ol>\n<li>Pneumonia and influenza;<\/li>\n<li>TB;<\/li>\n<li>Diarrhea;<\/li>\n<li>Heart disease;<\/li>\n<li>Stroke.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<li>The American flag had 45 stars. Arizona, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Hawaii and Alaska hadn&#8217;t been admitted to the Union yet.<\/li>\n<li>The population of Las Vegas, Nevada was 30. The remote desert community was inhabited by only a handful of ranchers and their families.<\/li>\n<li>Plutonium, insulin, and antibiotics hadn&#8217;t been discovered yet. Scotch tape, crossword puzzles, canned beer, and iced tea hadn&#8217;t been invented.<\/li>\n<li>There was no Mother&#8217;s Day or Father&#8217;s Day.<\/li>\n<li>One in 10 US adults couldn&#8217;t read or write.<\/li>\n<li>Only 6% of all Americans had graduated from high school.<\/li>\n<li>Some medical authorities warned that professional seamstresses were apt to become sexually aroused by the steady rhythm, hour after hour, of the sewing machine&#8217;s foot pedals. They recommended slipping bromide, which was thought to diminish sexual desire, into the women&#8217;s drinking water.<\/li>\n<li>Marijuana, heroin, and morphine were all available over the counter at corner drugstores. According to one pharmacist, &#8220;Heroin clears the complexion, gives buoyancy to the mind, regulates the stomach and the bowels, and is, in fact, a perfect guardian of health.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>18% of households in the United States had at least one full-time servant or domestic.<\/li>\n<li>There were about 230 reported murders in the US annually.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the summer of 1900&#8230; The average life expectancy in the United States was 47. Only 14% of the homes in the United States had a bathtub. Only 8% of the homes had a telephone. A three-minute call from Denver to New York City cost $11. There were only 8,000 cars in the US and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wpmdr_menu":1,"wpmdr_menu_extended":{"individualPostRemove":1,"individualPostRemoveDate":1,"individualPostRemoveAuthor":1,"individualPostYoastRemovePublished":1,"individualPostYoastRemoveModified":1},"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[1202],"class_list":["post-3694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-funlists","tag-progress"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joke-archives.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joke-archives.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joke-archives.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joke-archives.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joke-archives.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3694"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.joke-archives.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3694\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joke-archives.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joke-archives.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joke-archives.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}