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Born in 1927? Here's the world you arrived into

In 1927, "My Blue Heaven" topped the charts, The Jazz Singer packed theaters, a stamp cost 2¢, the average home went for about $7,500.

What things cost in 1927

A $0.21 gallon of gas in 1927 has the buying power of roughly $4.05 today. A 2¢ stamp is about 39¢, and a 25¢ movie ticket about $4.80.

The biggest moments of 1927

• Al Jolson's The Jazz Singer premiered in October 1927, and the talking-picture era began.
• Babe Ruth hit 60 home runs for the legendary 1927 New York Yankees "Murderers' Row."
• Ford retired the Model T after 15 million cars and unveiled the brand-new Model A to huge crowds.

• The Holland Tunnel opened in November 1927, letting motorists drive beneath the Hudson River between New York and New Jersey.
• Sculptor Gutzon Borglum began carving Mount Rushmore in October 1927, starting with George Washington's face.
• Commercial transatlantic telephone service opened between New York and London in January — three minutes cost a princely $75.

Toys, TV & trends of 1927

• Edwin Perkins of Hastings, Nebraska, invented Kool-Aid, the powdered drink kids mixed by the pitcher.
• The Cyclone roller coaster opened at Coney Island, thrilling riders for a quarter a trip.
• Young inventor Philo Farnsworth transmitted the first all-electronic television image in September.

• The first Hardy Boys mysteries appeared in 1927, and boys devoured the adventures of Frank and Joe.
• Macy's Thanksgiving parade floated its first giant balloons in 1927, including a huge Felix the Cat.
• Harlem dancers named their gravity-defying new dance the Lindy Hop, honoring the aviator who had just "hopped" the Atlantic.

The music scene

In the summer of 1927, a talent scout named Ralph Peer set up recording gear in Bristol, on the Tennessee–Virginia line, and discovered both Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family — sessions now called the "big bang of country music." That December, Duke Ellington's orchestra opened at Harlem's Cotton Club, where nightly radio hookups would soon carry his sound across the country. Broadway changed forever the same month when Show Boat opened, proving a musical could tell a serious story — and giving the world "Ol' Man River."

At the movies

Beyond the arrival of talking pictures, 1927 reshaped Hollywood's institutions: the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was founded in May, and Grauman's Chinese Theatre opened on Hollywood Boulevard, where stars began pressing hands and feet into wet cement. Fox's Movietone newsreels brought audiences the actual sound of events — including the roar of Lindbergh's takeoff. In studio front offices, executives argued furiously over whether sound was a fad or the future.

Cartoons kids loved

• Oswald the Lucky Rabbit debuted in Disney's Trolley Troubles
• Felix the Cat silent shorts
• Ko-Ko the Clown in the Inkwell Imps series

Oswald the Lucky Rabbit taught Walt Disney a hard lesson: because his distributor owned the character, Disney would lose Oswald in a 1928 contract dispute — and vowed never again to create a character he did not own. Silent cartoons were near their technical peak just as sound threatened to make the whole art form start over.

The world in 1927

• World population: about 2 billion
• U.S. President: Calvin Coolidge
• Charles Lindbergh flew the Spirit of St. Louis solo and nonstop from New York to Paris in 33.5 hours.

• The BBC was reborn on January 1, 1927, as a public corporation operating under a royal charter.
• The Menin Gate memorial to the missing of World War I was unveiled at Ypres, Belgium, in July.
• At the Solvay Conference in Brussels, the founders of quantum physics — Einstein, Curie, Bohr, and more — posed for one of history's most celebrated photographs.

1927 birthday questions

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