22 Things You Didn’t Know About Prohibition

1Cow shoes

Cow shoes

During Prohibition, moonshiners would wear "cow shoes." The fancy footwear left hoofprints instead of human shoe prints, helping distillers and smugglers evade police.


2Wine bricks

Wine bricks

During prohibition, grape farmers would make semi-solid grape concentrates called wine bricks, which were then sold with the warning "After dissolving the brick in a gallon of water, do not place the liquid in a jug away in the cupboard for twenty days, because then it would turn into wine."


3Medicinal liquor

Medicinal liquor

During the US prohibition era, medicinal liquor was fraudulently exploited in many scams. One doctor was cited for writing 475 prescriptions for whiskey in one day. Charles R. Walgreen, the founder of Walgreen's pharmacies expanded from 20 stores to a staggering 525 during the 1920s.


4Cocktails

Cocktails

During Prohibition, cocktails became popular as juices were added to bootleg liquor to disguise the taste of ingredients like a dead rat and wood tar.


5Kansas City

Kansas City

Kansas City blatantly ignored Prohibition. You could buy booze a few blocks down from the police station. They got away with it scot-free for all 13 years (1920 to 1933).


6Pabst Brewing Company

Pabst Brewing Company

During Prohibition, Pabst Brewing Company stopped making beer and switched to cheese production, selling more than 8 million pounds of Pabst-ett Cheese. When Prohibition ended, the company went back to selling beer, and the cheese line was sold to Kraft.


7George Cassiday

George Cassiday

During prohibition, Congress had their own bootlegger (George Cassiday) so senators and congressmen could still drink alcohol.


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8Darts

Darts

In 1920, during US Prohibition, a Johns Hopkins psychologist conducted a study to see whether or not people are better at playing Darts while drunk. The government allowed him to purchase 34 gallons of whiskey, as scientific research was a valid exception to Prohibition.


9Theodore Geisel

Theodore Geisel

During Prohibition, Theodore Geisel took up the pseudonym Dr. Seuss after being banned from his college humor magazine for drinking gin on campus.


10Blind pig

Blind pig

A "blind pig" was a lower-class establishment that sold alcohol during Prohibition (in contrast to a higher-class "speakeasy"). The owner would charge customers to see an attraction (such as an animal) and then serve a "complimentary" alcoholic beverage, thus circumventing the law.

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