Friday / Weekend Open Lines


There have been 27 ratified amendments to the U.S. Constitution over the past 223-plus years, but that total comes with an asterisk. Uniquely, the 21st Amendment repeals the 18th, which began its short career this day in 1919. That amendment launched the Prohibition Era, a well-intentioned act of social hygiene, seeking to ban the availability of alcoholic beverages. The unintended consequences, though, were perhaps worse — vast flouting of the law by the public and a boost to organized crime. Prohibition was repealed in December 1933. In the no-longer-dry U.S., there are over 249 distilleries and 880 breweries, with combined annual sales of about $34.5 billion per year. You can find more facts about America from the U.S. Census Bureau online at <www.census.gov>.

Saturday, January 17th. There’s been a lot of emphasis lately on making houses that are more energy efficient — with better insulation and windows that seal out heat and cold. Many feature the use of solar panels to capture the natural heat of the sun. The first house in America with solar heating and radiation cooling opened this week in 1955 in Tucson, Arizona. A large, slanting slab of steel and glass converted sunlight into heat, which was ducted into the house. In America’s 116 million occupied housing units, gas remains the most common heating fuel, outpacing electricity — 48 percent to 37 percent. Solar energy is the power source for just under 73,000 homes in the U.S., or a bit over a half of 1 percent of the total. You can find more facts about America from the U.S. Census Bureau online at <www.census.gov>.

Sunday, January 18th. In the depths of winter, many Americans find soothing warmth in a cup of hot tea, be it herbal, ginseng, black, green or some exotic specialty blend. Lumped together, this appreciation of the brew underlies January’s National Hot Tea Month. Tea is the only beverage commonly served either hot or iced and in any season. While tea has been consumed for thousands of years, Americans made two important contributions — inventing tea bags and iced tea — both in 1904. Recently, the U.S. has led in the development of ready-to-drink forms of tea in bottles and cans. There are 446 tea and coffee manufacturing establishments in the U.S., employing over 15,000 workers, and doing nearly $12.25 billion of business annually. Profile America is in its18th year as a public service of the U.S. Census Bureau.