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Born in 1924? Here's the world you arrived into

In 1924, "It Ain't Gonna Rain No Mo'" topped the charts, The Sea Hawk packed theaters, a stamp cost 2¢, the average home went for about $7,000.

What things cost in 1924

A $0.21 gallon of gas in 1924 has the buying power of roughly $4.10 today. A 2¢ stamp is about 39¢, and a 20¢ movie ticket about $3.90.

The biggest moments of 1924

• George Gershwin premiered Rhapsody in Blue in February 1924, bringing jazz into the concert hall.
• Macy's employees staged the store's first Thanksgiving Day Parade through the streets of New York.
• The first Winter Olympic Games were held in Chamonix, France, in January and February 1924.

• U.S. Army aviators completed the first flight around the world in September 1924, a 175-day journey in open-cockpit biplanes.
• The Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company adopted a grander new name in February 1924: International Business Machines, or IBM.
• As the story goes, restaurateur Caesar Cardini improvised the Caesar salad on a busy Fourth of July weekend in Tijuana in 1924.

Toys, TV & trends of 1924

• A nationwide crossword puzzle craze erupted when Simon & Schuster published its first puzzle book, pencil attached.
• Little Orphan Annie debuted in the funny pages in August 1924 and quickly won the country's heart.
• Wheaties cereal and Kleenex tissues both appeared on store shelves for the first time.

• Daredevil "Shipwreck" Kelly staged his first famous flagpole sit in 1924, launching one of the decade's oddest fads.
• The chewy Bit-O-Honey candy bar debuted, six taffy segments to a wrapper.
• Local stations' "radio uncles" read bedtime stories over the air, and children mailed them birthday cards by the sackful.

The music scene

Radio flexed new muscles in 1924: both national political conventions were broadcast for the first time, and networks of linked stations let millions hear election night unfold live. On Broadway, Lady, Be Good! opened in December with Fred and Adele Astaire dancing to a fresh score by George and Ira Gershwin — the brothers' first full musical together. Hotel dance orchestras, meanwhile, had become the height of sophistication, their fox-trots piped into homes by late-night remote broadcasts.

At the movies

Hollywood's biggest studio was born in April 1924 when a three-way merger created Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, complete with a roaring lion trademark and the promise of "more stars than there are in heaven." Buster Keaton had perhaps his greatest year, releasing both Sherlock Jr. — in which he climbs right into a movie screen — and The Navigator. Deadpan Keaton did his own dangerous stunts, once breaking his neck on set without realizing it until years later.

Cartoons kids loved

• Walt Disney's Alice Comedies series began
• Felix the Cat silent shorts
• Walter Lantz's Dinky Doodle cartoons

Walt Disney's Alice Comedies were built on a clever trick — filming a real little girl and surrounding her with drawn characters — at a time when most rivals did the reverse by dropping cartoon clowns into the real world. Cartoon series lived or died on their distributors, and studios churned out a short every couple of weeks on shoestring budgets.

The world in 1924

• World population: about 1.9 billion
• U.S. President: Calvin Coolidge
• Calvin Coolidge won the presidency in his own right in November, promising to "Keep Cool with Coolidge."

• Vladimir Lenin died in January 1924, and Petrograd was renamed Leningrad in his honor days later.
• At the Paris Summer Olympics, Finland's "Flying Finn" Paavo Nurmi won five gold medals in six days.
• Britain got its first Labour government in January 1924 under Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald.

1924 birthday questions

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