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January 1920. The 18th Amendment goes into effect outlawing the consumption of alcohol
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in the United States, right? Well, not exactly. Hi, I'm Justin Dodd, and this is Mental Floss on YouTube. From the couch
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Prohibition actually just banned the production and sale of alcohol, not its consumption
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which led some Americans to stockpile booze between the amendment's ratification in 1919
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and its enforcement in 1920. Ken Burns' Prohibition documentary tells the story of New York's
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Yale Club, which reportedly amassed enough alcohol in that one-year grace period to comfortably see
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itself through the 13 years national prohibition remained in effect. And that is just the first
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misconception about the 1920s that I'm excited to share with you today. That's right, misconceptions
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are back and they are wronger than ever. Okay, I mean, they're probably just equally wrong. I mean
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semantically, you can't be more wrong. You know, you get it. Let's do this. Real quick, just wanted to address a few things we are thrilled to be relaunching
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One of our favorite series, Misconceptions. Although, obviously, this isn't exactly how we planned to do it
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With everyone here working from home, we're doing our best to keep the videos coming without putting anyone at risk
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That's why, for now, I will be your host, camera person, set decorator, editor, and stage mom for this series
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I hope you'll enjoy what we're making, and I can honestly say that having an audience to make stuff for
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is one thing that we are very grateful for as we try to figure out this temporary new normal
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Now, let's go back to a time when the frightening spread of infectious disease and rampant economic uncertainty were non-issues
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The 1920s. Car ownership in America skyrocketed in the 1920s, growing from 7.5 million registered vehicles in 1919 to 26 million by 1929
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Almost half the cars purchased between 1920 and 1926 were Model Ts
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Savvy history buffs know that Henry Ford didn't invent the car he just invented the assembly line
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Even savvier enthusiasts know that that is also a misconception. Ford didn invent the assembly line either The division of specialized labor predates Ford by many years and even in the automobile industry Ransom E Olds is generally credited as developing an assembly line process in 1902 when his refinements to the production process enabled Detroit Olds Motorworks to
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increase their annual automobile output by over 400% from the year before. Ford's actual
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contribution was using a moving assembly line to build cars, employing what was basically a series
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of conveyor belts to greatly increase production efficiency. Ford and his team were inspired by
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disassembly lines already in use in the slaughterhouses of the Midwest, wherein animal carcasses
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were put on meat hooks and moved from station to station to cut off different cuts of meat
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Just reverse the order, swap out a side of beef for a chassis, and you've got yourself
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the makings of one of the most successful businesses of the 1900s. You can't talk about the 1920s without talking about flappers, and luckily there are plenty
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of misconceptions about this renegade historical archetype. First of all, women weren't just rebelling in the United States
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Germany's new women gained suffrage after World War I and instigated conversations around sexuality and gender roles
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Japan's modern girls saw a rise in women working outside of the house and living on their own
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And France's new women, sometimes called garçons, fomented similar social change and pushed women's fashion in an androgynous direction
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influencing styles abroad. Flappers were no exception. If you look at photos from the time, you might be struck by the styles of the day
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modest by contemporary standards and at times even a bit boyish. The dresses were shorter than was typical in prior years, but they still usually came down to at least the knee
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If you picture something shorter than that in your mind, it's probably due to conceptions of the style created well after the 20s, in fashion and film
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And according to Beverly Burks, a vintage dealer and exhibition curator, fringe was not the most common thing you saw in the 1920s
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That would be beadwork or embroidery. Fringe became more popular in later years, once it could be mass-produced as a lightweight synthetic
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Which means Baz Luhrmann's Great Gatsby isn't always historically accurate. But Baz Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliet, which is set in California, 100% historically accurate
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In the world of sports 1925 gave us the legend of Wally Pipp the New York Yankee who sat out sick with a headache one day only to be replaced by a promising young player named Lou Gehrig
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Gehrig went on to baseball immortality, and Pipp never reclaimed his starting role
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Even today, when an athlete loses his place on a team due to injury, he is said to have been pipped
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Now, it's worth pointing out here that there was a similar usage of the word Pipp that actually predates Wally entirely
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The Oxford English Dictionary tells us that to pip meant to reject or disqualify by the early 20th century
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as in the horse racing inspired expression, pipped at the post, meaning to fail after coming very close to achieving one's goal
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But whether this is just a coincidence or an instance of one expression leading to the other
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it's clear that many modern sports writers are thinking of the first baseman
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when they describe a modern athlete as being wally pipped after losing his job due to injury
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The only problem? Contemporary accounts of Pip's benching don't mention an injury at all
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He was apparently struggling to hit at the time, and the Yankees were facing a left-handed pitcher
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The New York Sun said, Pip is notoriously weak batting against lefties, and lately, his hitting has been scant against all varieties of slinging
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Which, first of all, harsh. And the story of Pip's headache didn't appear until 1939, and even then, it's hopelessly convoluted
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Some stories included Pip taking a ball to the head, leading to the headaches and double vision
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but accounts of the beaning matchup with an event that took place a month after the supposed headache-induced benching
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In all likelihood, Pip didn't lose his job because of any one event or headache
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He was just the declining player with a once-in-a-generation talent coming up behind him
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Perhaps, in the end, it's the inexorable march of time that truly pips us all
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On the subject of people replacing other people, it's a misconception that Woodrow Wilson was president of the United States in 1920
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Okay, not exactly, but hear me out. In October 1919, Wilson suffered a stroke, leaving him paralyzed on the left side of
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his body and confined to bed. It's difficult to know how severely his abilities were limited in the year and a half that remained
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of his presidency but what clear is that his wife Edith took on a self role as Woodrow steward and acted as the sole conduit between him and his cabinet In her memoir Edith Wilson claims she never made a single decision regarding the disposition of public
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affairs during this period, but some modern-day historians remain unconvinced of her version of
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events. While it is probably going too far to claim, as some sources have, that Edith was America's
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first female president, it seems fair to say that Woodrow was unable to perform many of his
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presidential duties for at least part of 1920. Now, moving from a disputed case of responsibility to a disputed case of responsibility
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It's a misconception that Walt Disney invented Mickey Mouse with 1928's Steamboat Willie
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First of all, Mickey had already appeared in an animated short months before called
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Plain Crazy, though it was screened only for limited audiences. Steamboat Willie's distinction is being the first Mickey cartoon with synchronized sound
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More importantly, Mickey was actually co-created with animator Oob Iwerks, who was the man
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primarily responsible for Mickey's initial design. The collaborators' relationship eventually frayed, and Iwerks left to start his own studio in 1930
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Disney began sharing different versions of Mickey's conception, which all featured him alone as the creative source behind the lovable rodent
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Shady business from Walt, though, I have to admit, I can't imagine anyone poning up $7 a month for Iwerks Plus
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Let's end in 1929 with the infamous stock market crash that supposedly caused the Great Depression
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Of course, the show isn't called Accurate Historical Believe, and it's really a misconception to say that the market crash caused the Depression
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Most modern economists say that the crash was just as much a symptom of a failing economy
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as it was a contributing factor to that failure. Other factors that likely contributed to the Depression included
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tariffs that hindered international trade, Germany, France, and Britain temporarily returning to the gold standard
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and decreased economic activity as a result of the Federal Reserve's interest rate hikes
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My personal Great Depression is caused by chemical imbalance. France, and Germany returning to the gold standard
