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Watch the first animated video with sound.

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How did the women's movement change after the passing of the 19th Amendment?

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We need the Equal Rights Amendment to clarify the law for the lower courts, whose decisions still reflect confusion and inconsistency about how to courts deal with sex discrimination claims. If the ERA were in the U.S.

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What was the lingo of the '20s?

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As with any era, the 1920's had time period specific slang. Here is a sampling. It sure is the berries! Have a swell time, but make sure you don't upchuck!

Bee's Knees - An extraordinary person, thing, idea

Berries - is attractive or pleasing; similar to bee's knees, As in "It's the berries."

Big Cheese - The most important or influential person. Same as big shot

Bluenose - An excessively puritanical person, a prude

Bump Off - To murder

Carry a Torch - To have a crush on someone

Cat's Meow - Something splendid or stylish; similar to bee's knees; The best or greatest

Cat's Pajamas - Same as cat's meow

Cheaters - Eyeglasses

Crush - An infatuation

Dogs - feet

Drugstore Cowboy - a guy that hangs around on a street corner trying to pick up girls

Dumb Dora - a stupid female

Fall Guy - victim of a frame

Flat Tire - A dull insipid, disappointing date. Same as pill, pickle, drag, rag, oilcan

Frame - To give false evidence, to set up someone

Gams - A woman's legs

Giggle Water - An intoxicating beverage; alcohol

Gin Mill - An establishment where hard liquor is sold; bar

Hard Boiled - a tough, strong guy

Heebie-Jeebies - The jitters

Hooch - Bootleg liquor

Hoofer - Dancer

Hotsy-Totsy - Pleasing

Jalopy - Old car

Joint - A club, usually selling alcohol

Keen - Attractive or appealing

Kisser - Mouth

Lounge Lizard - a guy that is sexually active

Moll - A gangster's girl

Neck - Kissing with passion

Pinch - To arrest

Pushover - A person easily convinced or seduced

Ritzy - Elegant (from the hotel)

Scram - Ask someone to leave immediately

Sheba - A woman with sex appeal (from the movie Queen of Sheba)

Sheik - A man with sex appeal (from the Valentino movies)

Speakeasy - An illicit bar selling bootleg liquor

Spiffy - An elegant appearance

Struggle Buggy - the backseat of a car. A parent's worst nightmare

Stuck On - Having a crush on

Swanky - Ritzy

Swell - Wonderful. Also: a rich man

Take for a Ride -To drive off with someone in order to bump them off

Torpedo - A hired gun

Upchuck - To vomit when one has drunk too much

Whoopee - To have a good time

Home | English Class Main | Gatsby Main | Gatsby Treasure Hunt

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As with any era, the 1920's had time period specific slang. Here is a sampling. It sure is the berries! Have a swell time, but make sure you don't upchuck! Bee's Knees - An extraordinary person, thing, idea Berries - is attractive or pleasing; similar to bee's knees, As in "It's the berries."

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How did Margaret Sanger affect the culture of the '20s?

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Synopsis

Margaret Sanger was born on September 14, 1879, in Corning, New York. In 1910 she moved to Greenwich Village and started a publication promoting a woman's right to birth control (a term that she coined). Obscenity laws forced her to flee the country until 1915. In 1916 she opened the first birth control clinic in the U.S. Sanger fought for women's rights her entire life. She died in 1966.

Early Life

Activist, social reformer. Born Margaret Higgins on September 14, 1879, in Corning, New York. She was one of 11 children born into a Roman Catholic working-class Irish American family. Her mother, Anne, had several miscarriages, and Margaret believed that all of these pregnancies took a toll on her mother's health and contributed to her early death at the age of 40 (some reports say 50). The family lived in poverty as her father, Michael, an Irish stonemason, preferred to drink and talk politics than earn a steady wage.

Seeking a better life, Sanger attended Claverack College and Hudson River Institute in 1896. She went on to study nursing at White Plains Hospital four years later. In 1902, she married William Sanger, an architect. The couple eventually had three children together.

In 1910, the Sangers moved to New York City, settling in the Manhattan neighborhood of Greenwich Village. The area was a bohemian enclave known for its radical politics at the time, and the couple became immersed in that world. They socialized with the likes of writer Upton Sinclair and anarchist Emma Goldman. Sanger joined the Women's Committee of the New York Socialist Party and the Liberal Club. A supporter of the Industrial Workers of the World union, she participated in a number of strikes.

Sex Education Pioneer

Sanger started her campaign to educate women about sex in 1912 by writing a newspaper column called "What Every Girl Should Know." She also worked as a nurse on the Lower East Side, at the time a predominantly poor immigrant neighborhood. Through her work, Sanger treated a number of women who had undergone back-alley abortions or tried to self-terminate their pregnancies. Sanger objected to the unnecessary suffering endured by these women, and she fought to make birth control information and contraceptives available. She also began dreaming of a "magic pill" to be used to control pregnancy. "No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother," Sanger said.

In 1914, Sanger started a feminist publication called The Woman Rebel, which promoted a woman's right to have birth control. The monthly magazine landed her in trouble, as it was illegal to send out information on contraception through the mail. The Comstock Act of 1873 prohibited the trade in and circulation of "obscene and immoral materials." Championed by Anthony Comstock, the act included publications, devices, and medications related to contraception and abortion in its definition of obscene materials. It also made mailing and importing anything related to these topics a crime.

Rather than face a possible five-year jail sentence, Sanger fled to England. While there, she worked in the women's movement and researched other forms of birth control, including diaphragms, which she later smuggled back into the United States. She had separated from her husband by this time, and the two later divorced. Embracing the idea of free love, Sanger had affairs with psychologist Havelock Ellis and writer H. G. Wells.

Contraception Advocacy

Sanger returned to the United States in October 1915, after charges against her had been dropped. She began touring to promote birth control, a term that she coined. In 1916, she opened the first birth control clinic in the United States. Sanger and her staff, including her sister Ethel, were arrested during a raid of the Brooklyn clinic nine days after it opened. They were charged with providing information on contraception and fitting women for diaphragms. Sanger and her sister spent 30 days in jail for breaking the Comstock law. Later appealing her conviction, she scored a victory for the birth control movement. The court wouldn't overturn the earlier verdict, but it made an exception in the existing law to allow doctors to prescribe contraception to their female patients for medical reasons. Around this time, Sanger also published her first issue of The Birth Control Review.

In 1921, Sanger established the American Birth Control League, a precursor to today's Planned Parenthood Federation of America. She served as its president until 1928. In 1923, while with the league, she opened the first legal birth control clinic in the United States. The clinic was named the Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau. Also around this time, Sanger married for her second husband, oil businessman J. Noah H. Slee. He provided much of the funding for her efforts for social reform.

Wanting to advance her cause through legal channels, Sanger started the National Committee on Federal Legislation for Birth Control in 1929. The committee sought to make it legal for doctors to freely distribute birth control. One legal hurdle was overcome in 1936, when the U.S. Court of Appeals allowed for birth control devices and related materials to be imported into the country.

Legacy

For all of her advocacy work, Sanger was not without controversy. She has been criticized for her association with eugenics, a branch of science that seeks to improve the human species through selective mating. As grandson Alexander Sanger, chair of the International Planned Parenthood Council, explained, "She believed that women wanted their children to be free of poverty and disease, that women were natural eugenicists, and that birth control, which could limit the number of children and improve their quality of life, was the panacea to accomplish this." Still Sanger held some views that were common at the time, but now seem abhorrent, including support of sterilization for the mentally ill and mentally impaired. Despite her controversial comments, Sanger focused her work on one basic principle: "Every child should be a wanted child."

Sanger stepped out of the spotlight for a time, choosing to live in Tucson, Arizona. Her retirement did not last long, however. She worked on the birth control issue in other countries in Europe and Asia, and she established the International Planned Parenthood Federation in 1952. Still seeking a "magic pill," Sanger recruited Gregory Pincus, a human reproduction expert, to work on the problem in the early 1950s. She found the necessary financial support for the project from Katharine McCormick, the International Harvester heiress. This research project would yield the first oral contraceptive, Enovid, which was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1960.

Sanger lived to see another important reproductive rights milestone in 1965, when the Supreme Court made birth control legal for married couples in its decision on Griswold v. Connecticut. She died a year later on September 6, 1966, in a nursing home in Tucson, Arizona. Across the nation, there are numerous women's health clinics that carry the Sanger name-in remembrance of her efforts to advance women's rights and the birth control movement.

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Margaret Sanger was born on September 14, 1879, in Corning, New York. In 1910 she moved to Greenwich Village and started a publication promoting a woman's right to birth control (a term that she coined). Obscenity laws forced her to flee the country until 1915.

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How was literature a response to the 'roaring' new culture?

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The Great Gatsby, third novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, published in 1925 by Charles Scribner's Sons. Set in Jazz Age New York, the novel tells the tragic story of Jay Gatsby, a self-made millionaire, and his pursuit of Daisy Buchanan, a wealthy young woman whom he loved in his youth. Unsuccessful upon publication, the book is now considered a classic of American fiction and has often been called the Great American Novel.

Plot summary

The book is narrated by Nick Carraway, a Yale University graduate from the Midwest who moves to New York after World War I to pursue a career in bonds. He recounts the events of the summer he spent in the East two years later, reconstructing his story through a series of flashbacks not always told in chronological order.

In the spring of 1922, Nick takes a house in the fictional village of West Egg on Long Island, where he finds himself living among the colossal mansions of the newly rich. Across the water in the more refined village of East Egg live his cousin Daisy and her brutish, absurdly wealthy husband Tom Buchanan. Early in the summer Nick goes over to their house for dinner, where he also meets Jordan Baker, a friend of Daisy's and a well-known golf champion, who tells him that Tom has a mistress in New York City. In a private conversation, Daisy confesses to Nick that she has been unhappy. Returning to his house in West Egg, he catches sight of his neighbour, Jay Gatsby, standing alone in the dark and stretching his arms out to a green light burning across the bay at the end of Tom and Daisy's dock.

Early in July Tom introduces Nick to his mistress, Myrtle Wilson, who lives with her spiritless husband George Wilson in what Nick calls "a valley of ashes": an industrial wasteland presided over by the bespectacled eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg, which stare down from an advertising billboard. Meeting her at the garage where George works as a repairman, the three of them go to Tom and Myrtle's apartment in Manhattan. They are joined by Myrtle's sister and some other friends who live nearby, and the evening ends in heavy drunkenness and Tom punching Myrtle in the nose when she brings up Daisy. Nick wakes up in a train station the morning afterward.

As the summer progresses, Nick grows accustomed to the noises and lights of dazzling parties held at his neighbour's house, where the famous and newly rich turn up on Saturday nights to enjoy Gatsby's well-stocked bar and full jazz orchestra. Nick attends one of these parties when personally invited by Gatsby and runs into Jordan, with whom he spends most of the evening. He is struck by the apparent absence of the host and the impression that all of his guests seem to have dark theories about Gatsby's past. However, Nick meets him at last in a rather quiet encounter later in the evening when the man sitting beside him identifies himself as Gatsby. Gatsby disappears and later asks to speak to Jordan privately. Jordan returns amazed by what he has told her, but she is unable to tell Nick what it is.

Nick begins seeing Jordan Baker as the summer continues, and he also becomes better acquainted with Gatsby. One afternoon in late July when they are driving into Manhattan for lunch, Gatsby tries to dispel the rumours circulating around himself, and he tells Nick that he is the son of very wealthy people who are all dead and that he is an Oxford man and a war hero. Nick is skeptical about this. At lunch he meets Gatsby's business partner Meyer Wolfsheim, the man who fixed the World Series in 1919 (based on a real person and a real event from Fitzgerald's day). Later at tea, Jordan Baker tells Nick the surprising thing that Gatsby had told her in confidence at his party: Gatsby had known Nick's cousin Daisy almost five years earlier in Louisville and they had been in love, but then he went away to fight in the war and she married Tom Buchanan. Gatsby bought his house on West Egg so he could be across the water from her.

At Gatsby's request, Nick agrees to invite Daisy to his house where Gatsby can meet her. A few days later he has them both over for tea, and Daisy is astonished to see Gatsby after nearly five years. The meeting is at first uncomfortable, and Nick steps outside for half an hour to give the two of them privacy. When he returns, they seem fully reconciled, Gatsby glowing with happiness and Daisy in tears. Afterward they go next door to Gatsby's enormous house, and Gatsby shows off its impressive rooms to Daisy.

As the days pass, Tom becomes aware of Daisy's association with Gatsby. Disliking it, he shows up at one of Gatsby's parties with his wife. It becomes clear that Daisy does not like the party and is appalled by the impropriety of the new-money crowd at West Egg. Tom suspects that Gatsby is a bootlegger, and he says so. Voicing his dismay to Nick after the party is over, Gatsby explains that he wants Daisy to tell Tom she never loved him and then marry him as though the years had never passed.

Gatsby's wild parties cease thereafter, and Daisy goes over to Gatsby's house in the afternoons. On a boiling hot day near the end of the summer, Nick arrives for lunch at the Buchanans' house; Gatsby and Jordan have also been invited. In the dining room, Daisy pays Gatsby a compliment that makes clear her love for him, and, when Tom notices this, he insists they drive into town. Daisy and Gatsby leave in Tom's blue coupe, while Tom drives Jordan and Nick in Gatsby's garish yellow car. On the way, Tom stops for gas at George Wilson's garage in the valley of ashes, and Wilson tells Tom that he is planning to move west with Myrtle as soon as he can raise the money. This news shakes Tom considerably, and he speeds on toward Manhattan, catching up with Daisy and Gatsby. The whole party ends up in a parlour at the Plaza Hotel, hot and in bad temper. As they are about to drink mint juleps to cool off, Tom confronts Gatsby directly on the subject of his relationship with Daisy. Daisy tries to calm them down, but Gatsby insists that Daisy and he have always been in love and that she has never loved Tom. As the fight escalates and Daisy threatens to leave her husband, Tom reveals what he learned from an investigation into Gatsby's affairs-that he had earned his money by selling illegal alcohol at drugstores in Chicago with Wolfsheim after Prohibition laws went into effect. Gatsby tries to deny it, but Daisy has lost her resolve, and his cause seems hopeless. As they leave the Plaza, Nick realizes that it is his 30th birthday.

Gatsby and Daisy leave together in Gatsby's car, with Daisy driving. On the road they hit and kill Myrtle, who, after having a vehement argument with her husband, had run into the street toward Gatsby's passing car thinking it was Tom. Terrified, Daisy continues driving, but the car is seen by witnesses. Coming behind them, Tom stops his car when he sees a commotion on the road. He is stunned and devastated when he finds the body of his mistress dead on a table in Wilson's garage. Wilson accusingly tells him it was a yellow car that hit her, but Tom insists it was not his and drives on to East Egg in tears. Back at the Buchanans' house in East Egg, Nick finds Gatsby hiding in the garden and learns that it was Daisy who was driving, though Gatsby insists that he will say it was him if his car is found. He says he will wait outside Daisy's house in case Tom abuses Daisy.

The next morning Nick goes over to Gatsby's house, where he has returned, dejected. Nick advises him to go away, afraid that his car will be traced. He refuses, and that night he tells Nick the truth about his past: he had come from a poor farming family and had met Daisy in Louisville while serving in the army, but he was too poor to marry her at the time. He earned his incredible wealth only after the war (by bootlegging, as Tom discovered).

Reluctantly, Nick leaves for work, while Gatsby continues to wait for a call from Daisy. That afternoon, George Wilson arrives in East Egg, where Tom tells him that it was Gatsby who killed his wife. Wilson makes his way to Gatsby's house, where he finds Gatsby in his pool. Wilson shoots Gatsby and then himself. Afterward the Buchanans leave Long Island. They give no forwarding address. Nick arranges Gatsby's funeral, although only two people attend, one of whom is Gatsby's father. Nick moves back to the Midwest, disgusted with life in the East.

Context and reception

Set in what was called the Jazz Age (a term popularized by Fitzgerald), or the Roaring Twenties, The Great Gatsby vividly captures its historical moment: the economic boom of postwar America, the new jazz music, the free-flowing illegal liquor. As Fitzgerald later remarked in an essay about the era, it was "a whole race going hedonistic, deciding on pleasure." The brazenly lavish culture of West Egg is a reflection of the new prosperity that was possible during Prohibition, when illegal schemes involving the black-market selling of liquor abounded. Such criminal enterprises are the source of Gatsby's income and finance his incredible parties, which are probably based on parties Fitzgerald himself attended when he lived on Long Island in the early 1920s. Even the racial anxieties of the period are evident in the novel; Tom's diatribe on The Rise of the Colored Empires-a reference to a real book published in 1920 by the American political scientist Lothrop Stoddard-points to the burgeoning eugenics movement in the United States during the early 20th century.

Fitzgerald finished The Great Gatsby in early 1925 while he was living in France, and Scribner's published it in April of the same year. Fitzgerald struggled considerably in choosing a title, toying with Trimalchio and Under the Red, White and Blue, among others; he was never satisfied with the title The Great Gatsby, under which it was ultimately published. The illustration for the dust jacket was commissioned by Fitzgerald's editor Maxwell Perkins seven months before he was in possession of the finished manuscript. It was designed by Francis Cugat, a Spanish-born artist who did Hollywood movie posters, and depicts the eyes of a woman hanging over the carnival lights of Coney Island. The design was well-loved by Fitzgerald, and he claimed in a letter to Perkins that he had written it into the book, though whether this refers to the eyes of Doctor Eckleburg or something else is uncertain. Cugat's painting is now one of the most well-known and celebrated examples of jacket art in American literature.

While Fitzgerald considered The Great Gatsby to be his greatest achievement at the time it was published, the book was neither a critical nor commercial success upon publication. Reviews were mixed, and the 20,000 copies of its first printing sold slowly. It was printed one more time during Fitzgerald's life, and there were still copies unsold from this second printing when he died in 1940. The novel was rediscovered a few years later and enjoyed an exponential growth in popularity in the 1950s, soon becoming a standard text of high-school curricula. It remains one of Scribner's best sellers, and it is now considered a masterpiece of American fiction. There have been several film adaptations of the novel, most notably a production directed by Jack Clayton in 1974, starring Robert Redford as Gatsby, and one in 2013 directed by Baz Luhrmann, starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

Analysis

Above all, The Great Gatsby has been read as a pessimistic examination of the American Dream. At its centre is a remarkable rags-to-riches story, of a boy from a poor farming background who has built himself up to fabulous wealth. Jay Gatsby is someone who once had nothing but who now entertains rich and celebrated people in his enormous house on Long Island. However, even though Gatsby's wealth may be commensurate to the likes of Tom Buchanan's, he is ultimately unable to break into the "distinguished secret society" of those who were born wealthy. His attempt to win Daisy Buchanan, a woman from a well-established family of the American elite, ends in disaster and his death. This tension between "new money" and "old money" is represented in the book by the contrast between West Egg and East Egg. West Egg is portrayed as a tawdry, brash society that "chafed under the old euphemisms," full of people who have made their money in an age of unprecedented materialism. East Egg, in contrast, is a refined society populated by America's "staid nobility," those who have inherited their wealth and who frown on the rawness of West Egg. In the end, it is East Egg that might be said to triumph: while Gatsby is shot and his garish parties are dispersed, Tom and Daisy are unharmed by the terrible events of the summer.

The Great Gatsby is memorable for the rich symbolism that underpins its story. Throughout the novel, the green light at the end of Daisy's dock is a recurrent image that beckons to Gatsby's sense of ambition. It is a symbol of "the orgastic future" he believes in so intensely, toward which his arms are outstretched when Nick first sees him. It is this "extraordinary gift for hope" that Nick admires so much in Gatsby, his "heightened sensitivity to the promises of life." Once Daisy is within Gatsby's reach, however, the "colossal significance" of the green light disappears. In essence, the green light is an unattainable promise, one that Nick understands in universal terms at the end of the novel: a future we never grasp but for which we are always reaching. Nick compares it to the hope the early settlers had in the promise of the New World. Gatsby's dream fails, then, when he fixates his hope on a real object, Daisy. His once indefinite ambition is thereafter limited to the real world and becomes prey to all of its corruption.

The valley of ashes-an industrial wasteland located between West Egg and Manhattan-serves as a counterpoint to the brilliant future promised by the green light. As a dumping ground for the refuse of nearby factories, it stands as the consequence of America's postwar economic boom, the ugly truth behind the consumer culture that props up newly rich people like Gatsby. In this valley live men like George Wilson who are "already crumbling." They are the underclasses that live without hope, all the while bolstering the greed of a thriving economy. Notably, Gatsby does not in the end escape the ash of this economy that built him: it is George Wilson who comes to kill him, described as an "ashen" figure the moment before he shoots Gatsby. Over the valley of ashes hover the bespectacled eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg, which appear on the advertising billboard of an oculist. These eyes almost become a moral conscience in the morally vacuous world of The Great Gatsby; to George Wilson they are the eyes of God. They are said to "brood" and "[keep] their vigil" over the valley, and they witness some of the most corrupt moments of the novel: Tom and Myrtle's affair, Myrtle's death, and the valley itself, full of America's industrial waste and the toiling poor. However, in the end they are another product of the materialistic culture of the age, set up by Doctor Eckleburg to "fatten his practice." Behind them is just one more person trying to get rich. Their function as a divine being who watches and judges is thus ultimately null, and the novel is left without a moral anchor.
Julia Martinez

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The Great Gatsby I Summary, Context, Reception, & Analysis

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The Great Gatsby is F. Scott Fitzgerald's third novel. Set in Jazz Age New York, it tells the tragic story of Jay Gatsby, a self-made millionaire, and his pursuit of Daisy Buchanan, a wealthy young woman whom he loved in his youth. Unsuccessful upon publication, the book is now considered a classic of American fiction.

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Who were the sports heroes of the '20s?

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The Roaring Twenties are famous for many things, one of the most often forgotten is 1920s sports.

"I have only one superstition, touch all the bases when I hit a home-run."

It was a new era of heroes and goats.

From the Black Sox scandal of 1919, the historic home runs records of Babe Ruth, player Red Grange and coach Knute Rockne's domination in football, Jack Dempsey's vicious knock-outs, and Man o'Wars brilliant races, the sports of the 1920s have become legendary to fans around the world. This was "The Golden Age" of sports in America.

Newspapers turned sports into an American pastime and gave relief to an American public searching for some relief after the atrocities of World War 1.

Sportswriters became the character delivering the news to a public that couldn't get enough.

Baseball "America's Pastime"

Babe Ruth owned 1920s sports. He was the hard drinking, hard swinging hero of the Yankees' "Murderer's Row".Along with Lou Gehrig, Ruth put together one of the most impressive baseball careers of all time.

And he did it in an era before television, steroids, free agency and million dollar contracts. This quote from W.O. McGeehan,

"Babe Ruth with his bat pounded baseball back into popularity [after the Black Sox scandal]. He swings with utmost sincerity. When he hits the ball it goes into wide-open spaces. When he misses, he misses with vehement sincerity."
"The Babe" embodied the spirit of 1920s sports, and The Roaring Twenties. In his day, he was revered as a hero in the streets of New York and played the perfect spoil tot he straight-laced nature of his New York Yankee teammate, Lou Gehrig.

1920s Sports':Football

Halfback Red Grange and Notre Dame coach Knute Rockney, led football bravely into a new era. College football was wildly popular, thanks in large part to many young men and women entering Universities in post-war America.

College football made money, profiting 21 million dollars for the Universities every year. Grange played for the University of Illinois and was known as "The Galloping Ghost" because of his uncanny ability not to be tackled. His elusiveness, size and power won him the honor of the "Greatest College Football Player of All Time" 80 years after he graduated from college.

Here's how Red Grange's running style was described:
A streak of fire, a breath of flame Eluding all who reach and clutch; A gray ghost thrown into the game That rival hands may never touch; A rubber bounding, blasting soul Whose destination is the goal.

1920s Sports':Boxing

The 1920s was owned by boxer Jack Dempsey. He, like Ruth, embodied the spirit of the Roaring Twenties with his bare-knuckled upbringing in Colorado and the way he would soak his face in brine to make his skin leathery and chew pine gum to strengthen his jaw.

Dempsey headlined the first million dollar gate at any sporting event in 1921, when he defended his World Title against George Carpentier. Dempsey was known for the amount of power in his menacing right hand, strengthened by the years he spent as a miner in Colorado.

1920s Sports':Horse Racing

Man o'War was the unquestioned king of the horses, winning races by an absurd margin of 100 lengths. In his career "Big Red" as he was known, won 20 of 21 races he started, losing only to a horse appropriately named "Upset".

He never won the Triple Crown because his owner felt he was too young to run a Mile and a quarter track. He spent 22 years at stud and sired his own Triple Crown winner, War Admiral.

Man o'War is widely regarded as the greatest racehorse in history.

1920s Sports':Tennis

Before John McEnroe graced the sport of tennis with his dramatic antics on the court, there was "Big" Bill Tilden of the 1920s. Known for his flair, his antics, the dramatic way he played the game. Bill Tilden was an actor on the court as much as he was a player.

He was so self-absorbed he even bankrolled plays, with him playing the lead character, of course. His matches were often dramatic because he played poorly to make them seem more exciting than they needed to be. He would often leave his sweater on for a few games, then take it off to make his fabulous comeback. Tilden was one of the forgotten characters of 1920s sports.

Helen Wills was one of the first female 1920s sports stars. She won her first title in 1923, when she was 17 years old.

She was the spoil to Tilden's expressive and dramatic nature, Wills was known as "Little Miss Poker Face" because of the business-like way she played the sport.

1920s Sports':Swimming

The 1920s was known for it's strange stunts like flagpole sitting, and barnstorming. When American, Gertrude Ederle swam across the English Channel in 1926, she not only became the first woman to do it, but her time of 14 hours and 31 minutes was nearly 2 hours faster than any man had ever completed the feat.

At the time, Ederle's feat was known as "the greatest sports story in the world."

1920s Sports': Golf

efore Tiger Woods, Arnold Palmer, and Jack Nicholas created their legends, there was Bobby Jones.

In the span of 8 years, Jones won 13 national championships, both in Europe and the United States. He was the original hot headed golfer, known to either play brilliantly, or to implode on the course. When playing poorly he even, at times, picked up his ball and quit.

Despite his temper Bobby Jones became an idol for the American public which loves his sense of style, his fearlessness in playing golf shots impossible to anyone less talented.

In the Golden Era, 1920s sports were still in their infancy. While still big businesses, sports had a sense of innocence that was starting to show its cracks, case in point, the Black Sox scandal of 1919. However the legends of 1920s sports remain legends today because of the way they played their respective games.

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1920s Sports: A Golden Age of Competition

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The Roaring Twenties are famous for many things, one of the most often forgotten is 1920s sports. "I have only one superstition, touch all the bases when I hit a home-run." It was a new era of heroes and goats.

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Watch the first video with sound. What messages did it send?

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Are the NFL protests of today more like those of James Weldon Johnson (NAACP) or Marcus Garvey (UNIA)?

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We have planking and the mannequin challenge. What did the 1920's have?

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Flagpole Sitting

Planking. Tebow-ing. Leisure-diving. Who knew it all started with flagpole-sitting? That's right-folks just crawled up flagpoles. And sat. For as long as possible.

What was there to do for fun in the 20s?

For Shipwreck Kelly, the answer was easy: He'd sit on top of a pole. First, he was dared to do so, and Kelly sat on the pole for more than 13 hours. Then he decided to take his show on the road, sitting on top of flagpoles for money.

Kelly, who famously called himself the 'Luckiest Fool on Earth,' had unofficially started a new craze, as he continued to better his time while others attempted the feat, too. He finally worked up to sitting on the pole for 22 days and six hours outside New York's Madison Square Garden.

Then he went to Baltimore and sat for 45 days on a 60-foot pole. But then came the Depression, followed by various wars, and slowly the pole-sitting fad faded.

Or so we thought. Throughout history, other pole-sitters have emerged, even as recently as the early 1980s.

Run It Up the Flagpole

That's when H. David Werder, miffed at the thought of paying too much for gasoline (99 cents), climbed atop the flagpole at an appliance center and waited for 439 days, 11 hours and six minutes in protest.

In 2008, Werder ran for Congress as "The Flagpole Sitter." He was not victorious.

The lesson here: If several people do it, maybe we'll all eventually give it a try. Just don't try to make a living that way.

Shipwreck Kelly had attempted the feat in front of thousands of people. But the last crowd he drew was his most somber, as he was hit by a car while simply walking down the street in New York City. He was unemployed and had little money.

Colleagues said he was working on his life story, which he carried in his hands the day he was killed.

Police found it still clutched in his hands. The title? "The Luckiest Fool on Earth."
By Ryan Clark, contributor for Ripleys.com

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Remember the Flagpole Sitting Trend of the 1920s?

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Planking. Tebow-ing. Leisure-diving. Who knew it all started with flagpole-sitting? That's right-folks just crawled up flagpoles. And sat. For as long as possible. For Shipwreck Kelly, the answer was easy: He'd sit on top of a pole. First, he was dared to do so, and Kelly sat on the pole for more than 13 hours.

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What was the dab or floss of the 1920's?

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Can you survive the 1920's?

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Since Adobe no longer supports Flash Player, certain features have been removed from our website. Downloads are still available for all images found online and the content shall remain available despite the absence of the Media Player. More information. We are currently redesigning the Online collections pages.