Prohibition in the United States
A ban on alcohol gives America speakeasies and Al Capone
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From 1920 to 1933 the United States banned making and selling alcohol. Instead of sobriety the country got speakeasies and organised crime: Chicago gangster Al Capone grew rich on bootlegging and was finally jailed not for murder but for tax evasion.
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Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1914–1918 World War I — 6 years earlier
- 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — 2 years earlier
- 1920 League of Nations founded — same year
- 1939–1945 World War II — 19 years later
- 1943 Tehran Conference — 23 years later
Europe
- 1905 Einstein's miracle year and relativity — 15 years earlier
- 1914 Assassination of Franz Ferdinand — 6 years earlier
- 1919 Treaty of Versailles — 1 year earlier
- 1928 Discovery of penicillin — 8 years later
- 1933 Hitler comes to power — 13 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1917 October Revolution — 3 years earlier
- 1917–1922 Russian Civil War — 3 years earlier
- 1929–1933 Collectivization in the Soviet Union — 9 years later
- 1936–1938 Great Purge — 16 years later
- 1941–1944 Siege of Leningrad — 21 years later
Middle East
- 1908 Oil struck at Masjed Soleyman — 12 years earlier
- 1915–1917 Armenian genocide — 5 years earlier
- 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — 4 years earlier
- 1917 Balfour Declaration — 3 years earlier
- 1919–1922 Greco-Turkish War — 1 year earlier
Africa
- 1898 Battle of Omdurman — 22 years earlier
- 1899–1902 Second Boer War — 21 years earlier
- 1904–1908 The Herero and Nama genocide — 16 years earlier
- 1922 Discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb — 2 years later
- 1935–1937 Italy invades Ethiopia — 15 years later
Asia
- 1910 Japan annexes Korea — 10 years earlier
- 1911–1912 Xinhai Revolution — 9 years earlier
- 1919 Amritsar massacre — 1 year earlier
- 1923 Great Kantō earthquake — 3 years later
- 1945 Atomic bombing of Hiroshima — 25 years later
Oceania
- 1911 Amundsen reaches the South Pole — 9 years earlier
- 1912 The death of Scott's polar party — 8 years earlier
- 1936 Death of the last thylacine — 16 years later
- 1941 Attack on Pearl Harbor — 21 years later
- 1942 The Battle of Midway — 22 years later
Alive at the time
- Thomas Edison (aged 73)
- Nikola Tesla (aged 64)
- Marie Curie (aged 53)
- Mahatma Gandhi (aged 51)
- Vladimir Lenin (aged 50)
- Ernest Rutherford (aged 49)
- Winston Churchill (aged 46)
- Joseph Stalin (aged 42)
- Albert Einstein (aged 41)
- Pablo Picasso (aged 39)