I actually was working to put things into perspective when my wife and I were watching some Christmas specials using Chromecast.

It came to me that when my wife and I were born (mid 1950s), TV was in its infancy - meaning those holiday shows (some really goofy - the Andy Williams' specials!) were among the very first. And yet when we were young we assumed that they always were - and now, we feel as if they have been around forever.

Age - scale of time - the rapid speed of change (yet our inability to perceive that speed, due to our own limits of time) - it is all so awesome to sit and ponder.

(yes, feeling a bit philosophical today - and your post was quite a trigger for more thought!)

They called it 'the consumption'.

In 1934 Robert Heinlein was medically released from the Navy for TB.

leaving my dad as an only child orphan.

One might add that about one child in every 10 did not live to see their first birthday; and the risk that a mother would die in childbirth had JUST gone down below 1 in 200 (which in practice means considerably higher over the total number of childbirths that most women had).

In the UK at any rate, the school leaving age was 12.

And there was a great big horrendous war going on 'to end wars', which of course it didn't.

Only care about men's life span - woman's were shorter because so many died in childbirth. A lot of this was caused because of the plague of the 1918 flu pandemic.

women washed their hair once a month - how often did men wash their hair if at all? In winter, because of lack of heat, people did not bathe or wash their hair at all. So how much has heating changed?

the reason that so few people graduated from high school or could not read is that most women were not educated as a rule.

also want to mention that 230 murders in the US were "reported" I don't think they counted lynchings even though they were reported and who knows how many murders just were not reported. Even today, we don't know how many murders are not reported either because they looked like a normal death or because no one who knew wanted it reported, some are just classified as runaways or missing..

I know this was just a fun thing about how much has changed, but there is an under current here about things that have not changed or some things that have we have not expected.

Even in 1915 the US was still largely rural with many areas thinly populated and isolated. Boondocks were the county seats. If someone was offed on a farmstead in the back of beyond - with the exception the victim and maybe family who knew and who cared.

Then there were the immigrant enclaves in the major cities. What happened there, stayed there.

Lest we forget.

-- Mal

My home is an apt. in a residential/commercial bldg. built in 1915

The Pure Food and Drug Act was passed in 1906. Those drugs were specifically banned by the Act. Morphine was available only for controlled medical applications.

Cocaine, heroin, cannabis, and other such drugs continued to be legally available without prescription as long as they were labeled correctly.

What Bismarck said about making sausages and laws.

The increase in automobile ownership after Henry Ford started to sell automobiles that the middle class could afford resulted in an increased demand for filling stations. The world's first purpose built gas station was constructed in St. Louis, Missouri in 1905 at 420 S. Theresa Avenue. The second gas station was constructed in 1907 by Standard Oil of California (now Chevron) in Seattle, Washington at what is now Pier 32. Reighard's Gas Station in Altoona, Pennsylvania claims that it dates from 1909 and is the oldest existing gas station in the United States

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filling_station

Selling butter and eggs from their farm. Comparatively, those eggs were as valuable as coffee!

Some are true, some are false and some are misleading.