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Born in 1922? Here's the world you arrived into

In 1922, "April Showers" topped the charts, Robin Hood packed theaters, a stamp cost 2¢, the average home went for about $6,500.

What things cost in 1922

A $0.25 gallon of gas in 1922 has the buying power of roughly $5.00 today. A 2¢ stamp is about 40¢, and a 15¢ movie ticket about $3.00.

The biggest moments of 1922

• Howard Carter opened the tomb of King Tutankhamun in November, setting off a worldwide Egyptomania craze.
• The Lincoln Memorial was dedicated in Washington, D.C., on Memorial Day 1922.
• A radio boom swept the country as hundreds of new stations went on the air and families rushed to buy receivers.

• Emily Post published Etiquette in 1922, and her book on good manners became an instant national bestseller.
• 87-year-old Rebecca Felton of Georgia became the first woman to serve in the U.S. Senate, if only for a single day.
• President Harding had a radio installed at the White House — even the presidency was catching radio fever.

Toys, TV & trends of 1922

• The first issue of Reader's Digest appeared in February 1922, sold door to door by its founders.
• The Chinese tile game mahjong became a full-blown parlor craze in American living rooms.
• King Tut fever put Egyptian motifs on everything from jewelry and dresses to furniture and movie palaces.

• The Klondike bar, a square of ice cream dipped in chocolate, first appeared at Isaly's dairy stores.
• Radio "DX-ing" became a nighttime hobby — hobbyists logged the farthest stations they could catch and mailed away for postcards proving it.
• Saying something was "the cat's pajamas" or giving pals the "banana oil!" (nonsense!) marked you as thoroughly up to date.

The music scene

Jazz's center of gravity shifted north in August 1922 when young Louis Armstrong left New Orleans to join King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band in Chicago — the move that would change American music. That same month, New York station WEAF aired the first paid radio commercial, a ten-minute pitch for apartment homes, inventing broadcast advertising on the spot. With record players and radios competing for ears, song hits could now sweep the country faster than ever.

At the movies

Hollywood, stung by scandals, hired Postmaster General Will H. Hays in 1922 to polish the movies' image — the beginning of the famous Hays Office. The year also brought The Toll of the Sea, the first general-release feature in two-color Technicolor, giving audiences their first real taste of color movies. Robert Flaherty's Nanook of the North, meanwhile, essentially invented the documentary feature, filmed over months in the Arctic with the Inuit hunter Allakariallak.

Cartoons kids loved

• Felix the Cat, the silent era's biggest cartoon star
• Aesop's Film Fables shorts
• Koko the Clown in Out of the Inkwell

Silent cartoons of 1922 leaned on rubber-hose animation — characters with bendy, boneless limbs that could stretch into any gag. Felix's knack for turning his tail into a question mark or a cane made him the form's first true personality, proving a drawn character could be as expressive as any live comedian.

The world in 1922

• World population: about 1.9 billion
• U.S. President: Warren G. Harding
• Howard Carter discovered the nearly intact tomb of Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings.

• The Soviet Union was formally established in December 1922, uniting Russia and its neighboring republics.
• The BBC began daily radio broadcasts from London in November 1922.
• In Toronto, 14-year-old Leonard Thompson became the first patient successfully treated with insulin.

1922 birthday questions

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