BOOZE BEATER

A century later, it seems like a crazy dream: First, the U. S. Senate voted to pass a constitutional amendment banning the sale of booze. Then, after a single day of debate, so did the U.S. House of Representatives. Within 13 months, the requisite three-quarters of the states had ratified the amendment. As of January 17, 1920, America had outlawed the nation’s fifth-largest industry and made it a crime to buy an adult beverage—not even a glass of wine with dinner or a cold beer after a hot day’s work. It seems surreal. How could such a thing happen in the land of the free?

“It happened,” wrote historian Daniel Okrent, “because Wayne Wheeler