Why Did Drinking From this Bottle Make People Blind?

today's video is kindly supported by rise of kingdoms hey 42 here on the evening of january the 16th 1920 the streets of new york witnessed a funeral unlike any other crowds of people descended upon restaurants hotels cafes and bars to pay their respects and share their sorrows rooms across the city were decorated with black tablecloths and painted walls orchestras played funeral marches set to jazz time and weeping mourners raised their glasses one last time to toast the departed the following morning the new york times published a eulogy with the resonating headline john barleycorn died peacefully at the tall of 12. the fact that his death provoked such a grand response was rather odd given that he never actually existed in the flesh rise of kingdoms is a multi-civilization mobile strategy game that combines real-time strategy gameplay after launching almost three years ago now it has over 60 million players worldwide within rise of kingdoms you have the option to choose between any of 12 civilizations that have actually appeared throughout history like a traditional strategy game you're able to collect resources in order to build your own city upgrade your buildings train your soldiers cultivate your commanders and research technology to improve your combat power and you are able to choose the viking civilization now with their legendary leaders ragnar lothbrok and bjorn ironside you will lead the viking warriors all the way from the loire river in a bid to conquer the world one of the best things about the game is the scale of the map with over 1.44 million digital square meters it will take some exploring and i love that the game has real mornings and evenings as well as real terrain rise of kingdoms is free to download and free to play click on the link in the description box below to download the game now use code rok vikings in game best of all you also have the chance to win an iphone 12 pro max iphone 12 pro or iphone 12 and a lot of in-game resources all you need to do is click on the second link in the description you see john barleycorn was more of a symbol his character taken from a pagan folk song was meant to be the personification of whiskey and beer and his demise had been a long time coming exactly a year before this fictitious funeral took place the 18th amendment was ratified prohibiting the manufacture sale or transportation of intoxicating glickers anywhere within the united states and although president woodrow wilson tried to veto it congress succeeded in pushing through the volstead act named after andrew volstead a minnesota politician who champions the new legislation in between grooming his formidable mustache my god that's a mustache if ever i saw one anyway this change was met with funerals of a very different kind across america's bible belt one particularly raucous celebration took place in virginia and was hosted by billy sunday a professional baseball player turned evangelical preacher billy had never been a fan of the so-called john barleycorn to put it mildly in fact he saw the volstead act as a victory over satan himself to really drive his point home he hired someone to dress up as satan follow a group of pallbearers carrying a coffin to the church and sit down to watch the proceedings with a face like a smacked ass and to show his guests exactly what they wouldn't be missing in the future billy even hired people to pretend to be completely pissed and harass guests with inarticulate insults it's fair to say he really got into the spirit of things but questionable hosting skills aside billy was far from alone in his enthusiasm for the long dry spell in fact the groundwork for national abstinence was laid down more than a century before his booze-free bash in the early 1800s heavy drinking was the norm with the average american man drinking up to 12 gallons of alcohol a year that's around 20 shots each week considering the average annual consumption of the modern american is just 2.3 gallons that's pretty impressive and so many towns and cities resembled a perpetual freshers week many were disgusted by what they saw and so a fierce sentiment against alcohol began to emerge across the nation political figureheads started to point the finger at alcohol for all of society's ills gout liver problems madness violence promiscuity and pretty much anything else considered a sin people began to abstain from alcohol voluntarily and persuaded others to do the same resulting in a widespread temperance movement the movement was especially popular amongst women who orchestrated sit-ins and protests in saloons and distilleries some temperance groups managed to stop alcohol sales altogether in parts of the midwest and west and even industrialist businessmen like henry ford got on board in the hope it would make his factories safer and his workers more productive as the temperance movement gained momentum the anti-saloon league emerged led by a man named wayne wheeler wayne had always disliked alcohol ever since a drunk farmhand accidentally stabbed his foot with a pitchfork when he was a child from that point on he made it his life's mission to put a stop to drunken antics once and for all and became the most successful political lobbyist in america it was said that he could hand-pick senators and make or break presidents he even schmoozed with the kkk who were in favor of the movement and stirred tensions between rural white americans and increasing number of immigrants bringing in whiskey beer and wine he claims that these drinks were weakening the nation's moral fiber and that prohibition was synonymous with patriotism i always force it with eagles and guns but perhaps i'm mistaken the issue divided north america religiously socially and politically those who supported prohibition became known as the dries and were mainly made up of protestant republicans who lived in rural areas whereas the wets tended to be democrats city dwellers and catholic immigrants on november the 11th 1918 the armistice ending world war one was signed and an intoxicating mixture of victory and anti-immigrant sentiment permeated the air the dries rode that momentum and a few weeks later the 18th amendment became law and the penalties for breaking that law were substantial you could be fined up to ten thousand dollars a ridiculously large sum back then and sentenced to a full year in prison because of this the police didn't anticipate too much trouble in enforcing it but boy were they wrong like any law there were loopholes and the wets managed to exploit these leap holes with admiral creativity the law forbade the transport and purchase of alcohol but it was still permitted for medicinal purposes so it'll come as no surprise that 1920s saw a sudden surge in alcohol prescriptions eight million gallons of the stuff to be precise which is enough to fill 64 million pint glasses back then alcohol was used to cure anything from cholera to cancer so if you suddenly felt like you had a disease or infection that only alcohol could cure you could just pop right along to your local doctor get a prescription and order your beverage of choice at the pharmacy alcohol also began to take on some inconspicuous disguises you might find it inside a watermelon or an egg underneath a nun's habit or tucked inside a pram which to be fair you can still see on certain streets in britain today there is even a fake book not so subtly titled spring poems the four swallows which contained four glass vials get it one of the most popular methods was to hollow cane which you can still buy today if you want to be more of a gentlemanly alcoholic californian wineries sold dried raisin cakes which were labeled with a very helpful warning to consumers that if you fermented them they just so happen to turn into delicious wine oh my what a coincidence but the reward for the most elaborate masquerade goes to those who dressed up as priests transformed their homes into churches and had their mates around for a casual congregation all in an effort to get hold of some sacramental wine if you didn't fancy faking cholera carving out an egg or staging a full sermon with all the trimmings in your kitchen another option was to hunt down and gain entry to a speakeasy if you had the right password that is speakeasies were private unlicensed bar rooms and prohibitions worst kept secret there were literally thousands of them ranging from basement dives to high-end ballrooms and they were hugely popular for the first time in america's history men and women were able to drink together in public and the nations shimmied into the jazz field liquor infused party known as the roaring twenties it wasn't illegal to drink in speakeasies remember the law forbade the manufacture distribution and sale of alcohol but not the consumption of it the owners of said establishments however were very much breaking the law and premises were raided on a daily basis in the early days the tactics used to avoid igniting the cells were rudimentary at best owners would fight back at the police with anything they had to hand cooking equipment cutlery crockery one officer was even knocked out cold with a rolling pin thankfully others were happy to look the other way in return for a drink on the house but as prohibition continued speakeasies became a lucrative business and with a little more cash to spend owners began to create bond villain-worthy contraptions at the 21 club in new york for instance they installed a camouflage door a false wall to hide a secret wine cellar and even a button behind the bar that if pushed would drop all the bottles down to the cellar to crash open and drain out how were the owners getting hold of alcohol in the first place if the wineries and breweries were no longer in business well although the government had put a stop to the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages they couldn't do anything about the production of industrial alcohol unless they also happened to ban essentials like paint cleaning products and gasoline but they never expected those products to be an issue since 1906 industrial alcohol was denatured with unpleasant chemicals to prevent people from drinking it and thus circumvent the higher tax levied on regular consumer alcohol imagine drinking lighter fluid and you'll appreciate why up to now it had proved incredibly effective but desperate times call for desperate measures literally and so moonshiners grabs their lab coats flasks and bunsen burners redistilled industrial alcohol and created something that was more or less drinkable and if you feel like having a go yourself here's how to make a prohibition classic bathtub gin and when i say have a go what i actually mean is never try this at home and please don't sue me first take the cheapest alcohol you can find and pour it into a huge jar if you can get your hands on some denatured alcohol great but be warned that it might cause a mild case of death now for some flavor for a no-nonsense gin a handful of juniper berries will do but if you're feeling a little fancy add a sprinkling of orange or lemon peel next fill it with water your jar should be too large to fill from a sink so for a truly authentic experience fill it from the bathtub cover the jar store it in a cool dark place for a few days pasta gin for a strainer and finally add the strongest mixer available to disguise the unbearable flavor this kind of drink was often made at home late at night hence the term moonshine but it also took on a much larger scale bigger stills could produce 5 gallons of alcohol in only 8 minutes with commercial albeit underground stills pumping out 50 to 100 gallons a day the bootleggers would sell it on to speakeasies for a tidy profit and the result of all this madness a rapid surge in organized crime as gangsters fought to control the lucrative moonshine trade of all the bootleggers who made it big during the prohibition the most infamous by far was al capone who supplied huge quantities of alcohol and ran gambling prostitution and other rackets in chicago throughout the twenties he used bribery and intimidation to control city officials put gunmen on the roofs of polling stations to make sure his favorite politicians were elected and orchestrated the saint valentine's day massacre where he ordered the murder of seven of his rivals so to say that the plans to create a more pious nation had backfired would be an understatement in addition to organized crime people were accepting bribes left right and center and the number of drinking establishments had more than doubled since prohibition began the government had greatly underestimated people's sheer determination to get utterly trollied they needed a better plan and fast before the country further descended into anarchy but nobody could have foreseen the lengths they would go to in order to achieve it on christmas eve 1926 a man stumbled into a new york hospital emergency room flushed and trembling with fear santa claus he told the nurses was just behind him equipped with a baseball bat before anyone realized how sick he was he died followed by another 64 deaths by the end of christmas day doctors found that all 65 deaths had been caused by highly toxic additives in industrial alcohol additives that had been authorized by the federal government in a drastic attempt to limit the supply of alcohol at its source the government had underhandedly authorized poisonous methanol also known as wood alcohol to be added to any products that contained industrial alcohol methanol is extremely dangerous because when your body digests it it breaks down into some uniquely poisonous compounds which cause dementia and ultimately death this resulted in an ongoing showdown between the federal chemists who were trying to make industrial alcohol deadlier to drink and the bootleggers chemists who had found that they could evaporate most of the poison by boiling it and for a while it seemed as though the bootleggers were winning the government attempted formula after formula but the rogue chemists continued to renature it by 1926 750 new york citizens had died from government authorized poisons and many had suffered from irreversible injuries such as paralysis and blindness yes people were literally becoming blind drunk then on the 1st of january 1927 congress announced new legislation requiring double the amount of methanol to be added to industrial alcohol products which proved impossible to completely filter out the result was catastrophic one government report claimed that a 480 000 gallons of liquor confiscated in new york in 1927 nearly all contained poison the bootleggers as expected had continued to sell the treated alcohol and it's estimated that more than 10 000 people across the states died as a result and whilst we're pretty sure today that the government did take these steps to prevent people from breaking the law it raises some awkward questions about the human sacrifices they were willing to make for those gains did they authorize the addition of poisons knowing that people would sell and drink the alcohol anyway the facts suggest that at least some of them did the assistant secretary of the treasury seymour lowman openly told citizens that drinkers were dying off fast from poison hooch but if it meant a sober america it was a job well done as far as some were concerned and wayne wheeler remember him leader of the anti-saloon league evil mastermind unfortunate incident with a pitchfork yeah now you got it well he justified it by claiming that anyone who drank industrial alcohol was committing suicide and that rooting out a bad habit costs lives whether the government deliberately intended to poison american citizens or not they had already lost their trust partly due to their own hypocrisies throughout prohibition president warren harding who had campaigned as a dry was known for throwing huge gatsby-esque parties that were famous throughout washington and even in the capitol building there was a secret bar hidden within a curtain which was supplied by yep you guessed it confiscated alcohol prohibition officially ended with the ratification of the 21st amendment in 1933 but by that point it was really just a formality whilst organized crime had flourished tax revenues had depleted and as the 30s ushered in the great depression the government realized that they needed the tax money from alcohol sales more than they wanted sobriety but many of prohibitions legacies live on today classic cocktails such as the old fashioned the bee's knees and sidecar all made their debut during prohibition in an attempt to disguise the foul-tasting glicker and you can still find modern speakeasies around the world which attempt to recreate that alluring feeling of going underground and crossing the line of the law these days police are less likely to turn up but just in case they do it's always worth taking a rolling pin for good measure thanks for watching thanks again to rise of kingdoms for supporting this video are you ready to build your kingdom using 12 historically accurate civilizations then go ahead and click the link in the description and use code rok vikings to play today and don't forget to click the second link in the description to enter the contest to win an iphone 12 pro max iphone 12 pro or iphone 12 and lots of in-game resources check it out

Channel: Thoughty2

Views: 379,066

Rating: 4.9224052 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: Ni8G_JUdzMc

Length: 22min 4sec (1324 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 04 2021