1920s

The Jazz Age. Flappers with short hair, shorter skirts, turned down stockings exposing a lot of leg, and red painted lips emphasizing the Cupid's bow. New music and new untraditional styles of dancing.

This was all highlighted by the bootlegging and rum running that kept America wet during prohibition. The roaring 20's leading into the depression.

Women win the right to vote with the ratification of the 19th Amendment.

William Faulkner's novel The Sound and the Fury, Ernest Hemingway's novel, A Farewell to Armsand Erich Maria Remarque's anti-war novel, Im Westen nichts Neues ("All Quiet on the Western Front") are published.

The Jazz Singer, Al Jolson
Jazz singer Bessie Smith records her first jazz album.

The Gerber Co. invents canned, strained baby food.

Charles Lindbergh becomes the first man to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean.

Babe Ruth hits 60 home runs, winning the hearts of Americans, and breaking the season record.

Walt Disney makes his first first Mickey Mouse cartoon.

The first color television experiments are performed by Alexander Graham Bell.

More Americans than ever before invest in the stock market, buying on margin, and using credit. All this came to a catastrophic end in 1929 when the stock market starts its steep downward crash on "Black Thursday," with 13 million shares sold. By Nov. 13 prices reach their lowest point for the year--and $30 billion in stock values are wiped out. The crash, combined with other negative factors in the U.S. and world economies, brings to an end the decade of the 1920s and hastens the Great Depression.