Alcohol became legal in my town just earlier this year. Before that, everyone had to drive to the next town over to buy booze/visit bars.

Here in South Carolina, most counties forbid selling alcohol on Sundays. It's repealed only if 1) a county votes to repeal the blue law, or 2) the county makes over a certain amount (I think $100,000) in hospitality tax per year.

The blue laws also forbid non-grocery stores from opening before 1:30 PM on Sunday. That used to cause a problem with a certain mall, part of which lay in one county and the other part in another county; some stores could open early while others had to wait. Thankfully, both counties are now without the blue law.

Amazing about all the alcohol restrictions. The fanbrat I heard from definitely thought that all alcohol was illegal all the time in the United States (I don't think it was ever entirely illegal--it was allowed for religious purposes and in medicine, and Listerine became a favorite beverage during Prohibition because of its 40% alcohol content).

Here in California, at least in this area, alcoholic beverages can be purchased pretty much anytime, anywhere (last Christmas, my sister decided she wanted tequila for the dish she was cooking, but almost every place in town closes by noon on Christmas; she still managed to find it, though, because I knew of a liquor store run by a Hindu guy; when she went there, it was packed). Beer, wine, and hard liquor are readily available in any supermarket or liquor store, beer is to be had at any convenience store, cheap alcoholic beverages are available at discount stores like Big Lots, and every pizza parlor and Mexican restaurant serves beer (the Mexican restaurants also serve margaritas). In my town, 80% of the restaurants are Mexican restaurants or pizza places. Of course, there are also bars, where you can get any alcoholic beverage you want (plus, at a number of them, if you make eye contact with certain people and follow them behind the building, you can buy all sorts of stuff that no one knows anything about if they're smart).

For the longest time, I thought that the legal age for drinking in the US was a holdover of the prudishness of the 19th century. But no! It's from the '80s!

What the fuck, United States?

I'm well aware that this is only peripherally aware to the subject we're discussing, but everything I have to say is important.

Is voting age a state-by-state thing? Where I'm standing it's 18, not 21 (although the drinking age is still 21).

I got confused when Badger said the drinking and voting ages both had been raised to 21, yes.

On the single item of voting age, I think Badger is mistaken: the voting age was lowered to eighteen by a Constitutional amendment which would not be easy to overturn.

Each state theoretically can make its own drinking-age laws, but -- largely at the behest of the neo-prohibitionist group Mothers Against Drunk Drivers -- the Federal government has by fiat demanded that all be maintained at twenty-one, the logic apparently being that if young people are engaging in an unhealthy or hazardous action, the remedy is to pass a law making the action a rite of passage, and inextricably intertwining the action with the concept of "maturity". Any state that lowers its legal drinking age automatically loses a portion of its Federal highway-maintenance funds.

A woman in the 1860s surprising her husband on their wedding night with her new lingerie.
Including a detailed description of her frilly, lacy bra. :|

ETA: Seconding the rage at fanbrats believing homosexuality was accepted by everyone as a wonderful and loving thing during the 1960s or earlier. Ugh.

I read a Titanic story once that was set in the 1930's. It was AU, but that wasn't the problem. The problem was that in one scene, Cal learns that his birth mother was killed by his father for helping the servants escape (this would have taken place somewhere between 1906 and 1915).

Yes, helping the servants escape. Not firing them, not driving them to quit, helping them escape. Apparently the author missed the bit in history class where slavery was abolished during the early 1860's.