1933: Although it will be another eight months before Prohibition is officially repealed, this is a red-letter day for beer drinkers. Suds containing up to 3.2 percent alcohol by weight are legally obtainable again, without having to get the glad eye from some guy behind a peep hole and telling him, "Louie sent me."

President Franklin D. Roosevelt's signature repealed the Volstead Act, legalizing 3.2 percent beer. It also paved the way for the December ratification of the 21st Amendment, which repealed the 18th Amendment and deep-sixed Prohibition altogether.

The Volstead Act, which is how the National Prohibition Act was widely known, was pushed hard by religious and temperance groups and passed Congress in 1919 over the veto of President Woodrow Wilson.

The prohibition movement had been active in the United States for 80 years before its adherents finally succeeded in ramming through an outright national ban on alcohol. The original movement lost some steam during the Civil War (soldiers drink; deal with it) but was revived with a vengeance by the Prohibition Party and Woman's Christian Temperance Union.

Conservative Protestant groups formed the backbone of the prohibition movement, although dissenters popped up within that branch of Christianity. Scandinavian Lutherans, for example, favored proscribing alcohol, while their German brethren opposed any ban. The Baptists? They loved the idea, Northern and Southern alike.

In any case, Prohibition was another instance of a motivated minority forcing its self-righteous views on the amorphous mass that is the unthinking, perhaps nonthinking, American public. Passage of a prohibition act, however, did nothing to slake the drinking man's thirst for alcohol.

So the practical effect of Prohibition was to serve as a boon to organized crime during the Roaring '20s, with bootlegging and illegal speakeasies flourishing all over the country. Al Capone began his criminal career as a bootlegger, before diversifying his portfolio.

Bootleggers smuggled legit booze, but could also get pretty creative in concocting home-brewed liquor. The quality of this stuff, known generically as bathtub gin (gin being the most popular distilled beverage of the day), varied widely. The worst of it could be lethal.

With the stock market crash in 1929 and the coming of the Great Depression, opposition to Prohibition intensified. Plenty of people needed a drink now. The so-called Noble Experiment had run its course, and FDR was more than happy to heap dirt into its grave.

Except for the bluenoses and the crooks, Prohibition's repeal was greeted enthusiastically by most Americans.

Source: Various