What are the Adventures of Young Indiana Jones?

In this section you will find overviews and resources for the 22 chapters of The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones, plus the accompanying 94 documentaries. The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones, were created from the Emmy-award winning ABC television series The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles which ran from 1992-1996. The series of 22 feature-length chapters takes a younger Indiana Jones all over the world where he experiences many of the most important events of the early twentieth century. In 2007, the 22 films were released in three DVD sets and included a total of 94 documentaries: Volume One Chapters 1-7 Volume Two Chapters 8-15 Volume Three Chapters 16-22 Documentaries 94 Documentaries Young Indiana Jones serves as a perfect vehicle for revealing early 20th Century history to students. Following Indy as he travels across the globe gets students excited and involved as the stories unfold. If you’re still not convinced consider the 94 documentaries that now accompany the series. Each one ranges from 20-30 minutes in length, perfect for classroom use. Produced by Emmy-Award winning filmmaker, David Schneider, each documentary is skillfully edited to be highly informative while avoiding the boredom that plagues many documentaries. How can I purchase the DVD's? We don't sell the DVD's on our website, in fact we don't sell anything. Our site simply serves as a resource to the educational side of Indiana Jones. If you wish to order the DVD's, visit any online store (or physical store) that sells DVD's. However, we recommend: Amazon.com

Additional Information -Lucasfilm's Media Guide -LA Times article -History of Young Indiana Jones George Lucas and Rick McCallum discuss their vision for The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones. Check out the trailer!

Press Videos

The short clips highlighted below were released with the press kit for the 2007 DVD release. Take a look at them to learn even more about The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones!

Educator Uses for Young Indiana Jones

Each Volume of The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones is packed with resources that are perfect for classroom integration! Below are five reasons why you should consider using the series in your classroom!

Special thanks to George Lucas, Rick McCallum, & David Schneider for the great work they have done in making this series and the documentaries!

Reason 1: The Episodes

Each volume of The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones includes 7-8 feature length Emmy©-award winning movies that take a younger Indiana Jones all over the world to participate in major events of the early 20th Century. Events include: key World War I moments, the Harlem Renaissance, Prohibition, Women's Suffrage, and much more! Each movie is packed with all the action, excitement, and comedy that you would expect from Indiana Jones.

In addition to participating in major world events, Indy also interacts with some of the most well known people of the time period. Examples include: Thomas Edison, T.E. Lawrence, the Red Baron, Pancho Villa, Al Capone, and many more!

Reason 2: The Documentaries

Each episode of The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones comes with accompanying documentaries ranging in lengths of 20-30 minutes, perfect for classroom use. Emmy©-award winning filmmaker David Schneider and his team at JAK Films spent nearly five years creating 94 documentaries to compliment the series. The documentaries are great ways to introduce, summarize, or go more in-depth with topics and people covered in each episode. Learn more and see exclusive documentary previews in our Documentaries section by clicking the appropriate tab above.

Reason 3: The Interactive Timeline

The bonus disc that comes with each volume contains an Interactive Timeline that allows viewers to choose a year between 1899 & 1925. Each selected year shows major events that occured in the world. Many of the events featured in each year are "clickable" and reveal more information about the event or person, plus resources (see Reason 4 for an example).

Reason 4: The Additional Information & Resources

From the Interactive Timeline or Indy's Journal (see Reason 5) one may choose a topic, person, or event and be taken to a resource page where there is a preview of the accompanying documentary. Each resource page features descriptions, pictures and audio, website links, a list of relevant films and book resources, and other relevant documentaries in the series.

Reason 5: Indy's Journal

Indy's Journal is a great resource for educators to review the events of each Chapter and have quick links to the available resources and documentaries. The journal comes with the bonus disc in each volume.

Extra Credit:

Lecture Series with Professor Brands

Another bonus is the three part lecture series with University of Texas history professor and author H.W. Brands. These lectures are a great addition for educators who need a concise overview of the time period and major topics/events featured in a particular volume. Professor Brands lectures could be shown to a class, but are better served as an overview for the educator. The format of these lectures combines Professor Brands recorded lecture with historical images and video.

The Three Parts include:

Volume 1: The Promise of Progress
Volume 2: War and Revolution
Volume 3: New Gods for Old

Interactive Video Games

Each bonus disc comes with an interactive video game that allows the player (as Young Indy) to act out a specific adventure from the series. Indy must first choose what to bring on his adventure and then make important decisions along the way... in the style of The Oregon Trail. As they journey, players also learn about their surroundings, the people they meet, and the important events in which they are participating. These games are rightly suited for elementary to middle school level and include video clips from each corresponding film.

The Three Games include:

Volume 1: Revolution- Indy helps Pancho Villa in Mexico (Spring Break Adventure).

Volume 2: Special Delivery- Indy treks through the Congo to retrieve weapons (Oganga: The Giver and Taker of Life).

Volume 3: Hunting for Treasure- Indy and Remy hunt for the Treasure of the Peacock's Eye.

Volume 1: The Early Years

Chapters 1-5 take a nine year old Indy on a tour of the world with his parents and tutor, Miss Seymour. Join Indy as he explores ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, Africa, China, and Benares, India. Beginning with Chapter 6, sixteen year old Indy heads to New Mexico where he becomes involved in the Mexican Revolution and then travels to England to join the fighting in World War I.

Chapter #	Title	Location & Year	Brief Synopsis
Chapter 1	My First Adventure	Egypt/North Africa 1908	Indy meets T.E. Lawrence and Howard Carter while visiting Egypt. It is here Indy is first introduced to archaeology and Ancient Egyptian culture. Later, Indy is captured by slave traders and must escape capture.	Learn more!
Chapter 2	Passion for Life	British East Africa & Paris 1908	Passion for Life begins in Paris where Indy learns about art from a young Norman Rockwell and up-and-coming Pablo Picasso. Indy then travels to Africa where he goes on safari with Theodore Roosevelt and Frederick Selous.	Learn more!
Chapter 3	The Perils of Cupid	Vienna & Florence 1908	Indy discovers Renaissance art and architecture in Florence and meets famed composer, Giacomo Puccini. On a visit to Austria, Indy finds himself falling in love with Princess Sophie and seeking out advice from the likes of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung.	Learn more!
Chapter 4	Travels with Father	Russia & Greece 1910	After a quick tour of Greece and lessons from Professor Jones in drama, philosophy, and democracy, Indy travels to Russia. There he decides to run away and happens upon a friendship with author Leo Tolstoy.	Learn more!
Chapter 5	Journey of Radiance	Benares & Peking 1910	Indy meets Jiddu Krishnamurti while visiting Benares, India and learns about the religions of the world and their numerous commonalities. Later, while travelling through China Indy falls ill and is treated with traditional Chinese medicine.	Learn more!
Chapter 6	Spring Break Adventure	Princeton & Mexico 1916	Now 16, Indy becomes involved in the theft of a Thomas Edison invention and, with the help of his girlfriend, work to solve the crime. Later, Indy finds himself heading to New Mexico where he is captured by Mexican rebel, Pancho Villa.	Learn more!
Chapter 7	Love's Sweet Song	Dublin & London 1916	Indy travels to Europe to join the Belgian Army in the Great War, but first stops in Ireland where rebellion is brewing. Once he arrives in England, Indy falls in love with a suffragette and joins her cause.	Learn more!

Volume 2: The War Years

Volume two takes Indy through World War I, where he experiences the horrors of war in Verdun, the Somme, Africa, the Middle East, and revolutionary Russia. Indy's war service thrusts him into the trenches, behind enemy lines as a spy, a POW camp, and high into the skies where he battles the infamous Red Baron.

Chapter #	Title	Location & Year	Brief Synopsis
Chapter 8	Trenches of Hell	The Somme & Germany 1916	After joining the Belgian Army, Indy is sent to the Somme where he gets his first taste of combat in the trenches. After being captured, Indy plans an escape with French Officer Charles de Gaulle.	Learn more!
Chapter 9	Demons of Deception	Verdun & Paris 1916	Indy now serves as a runner on the battlefields of Verdun where he comes to grip with the futility of the Great War. On leave, he visits Paris and becomes entangled in an espionage dilemma with Mata Hari.	Learn more!
Chapter 10	Phantom Train of Doom	German East Africa 1916	Indy and Remy are transferred to the African Front. There they are teamed up with Indy's old friend Frederick Selous and his "Old and the Bold" comrades and tasked with destroying the elusive Phantom Train of Doom and capturing German General, Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck.	Learn more!
Chapter 11	Oganga: The Giver and Taker of Life	Belgian Congo 1916-1917	Indy and Remy are ordered to travel across Africa's treacherous terrain to retrieve much needed artillery. Along the way their group falls victim to jungle diseases. Just when it seems all hope is lost they are rescued by humanitarian and doctor Albert Schweitzer who teaches Indy about the "reverence for life."	Learn more!
Chapter 12	Attack of the Hawkmen	France & Austria 1917	Now working with the French Secret Service, Indy is sent to the Lafayette Escadrille to assist in aerial reconaissance where a close encounter places Indy at the dinner table of the Red Baron. Later, Indy goes behind enemy lines to convince plane engineer, Anthony Fokker to defect to the Allies.	Learn more!
Chapter 13	Adventures in the Secret Service	Austria & Petrograd 1917	Danger lurks around every corner as Indy is once again sent behind enemy lines. This time he is tasked with arranging a separate peace with Austria's Emperor Karl I. Indy is then sent into the heart of Russia to gauge its growing revolution led by Bolshevik, Vladimir Lenin.	Learn more!
Chapter 14	Espionage Escapades	Barcelona & Prague 1917	Indy travels to Barcelona where he works with fellow spies to discredit a group of German diplomats while undercover as a dancer with the Ballet Russes.	Learn more!
Chapter 15	Daredevils of the Desert	Palestine 1917	Now in the Middle Eastern Front, Indy leads a dangerous deception regarding the Australian Lighthorse's daring attack on Beersheba.	Learn more!

Volume 3: The Years of Change

Volume three sees Indy through the final months of World War I where he continues his work as a spy. After witnessing the failure of the Versailles Treaty, Indy heads home to America where new adventures await him in scandalous New York City, jazzed Chicago, and hilarious Hollywood.

Chapter #	Title	Location & Year	Brief Synopsis
Chapter 16	Tales of Innocence	Northern Italy & Morocco 1918	The Italian Front brings death and destruction, but also love and friendship for Indiana Jones. Follow Indy as he competes with Ernest Hemingway for the heart of the beautiful Guiletta and then travels to Morocco to investigate a series of gun thefts.	Learn more!
Chapter 17	Masks of Evil	Istanbul & Transylvania 1918	Indy travels to Turkey where he attempts to negotiate peace with Ataturk. He then ventures to Transylvania (the home of Dracula) to investigate the mysterious deaths of numerous allied soldiers.	Learn more!
Chapter 18	Treasure of the Peacock's Eye	London, Alexandria, & South Seas (China) 1918-1919	In this exciting adventure, Indy pursues the Treasure of the Peacock's Eye and travels from the battlefields of Europe to the jungles of South Pacific islands.	Learn more!
Chapter 19	The Winds of Change	Paris 1919	At the Paris Peace Conference, Indy watches as the Allied powers restructure Europe, Africa, the Middle East and plant the seeds for World War II and lasting social unrest across the world. He then returns to the United States to find little has changed at home.	Learn more!
Chapter 20	The Mystery of the Blues	Chicago 1920	Now a student at the University of Chicago, Indy discovers his love of Jazz and befriends Jazz legend Sidney Bechet. He also gets caught up in the racial tension and organized crime that plagued 1920's Chicago.	Learn more!
Chapter 21	The Scandal of 1920	New York City 1920	Indy finds himself in New York City where he's caught in a love triangle. Working as a Broadway stagehand, Indy meets Tin Pan Alley legend, George Gershwin.	Learn more!
Chapter 22	The Hollywood Follies	Hollywood 1920	Indy moves to Hollywood where he takes a job as a stuntman in the budding film industry. He works with legends like Irving Thalberg, Erich von Stroheim and John Ford.	Learn more!

About the Documentaries

Each volume of The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones is packed with documentaries that serve as excellent educational resources. Each documentary ranges from 20-30 minutes in length and are well suited for viewing and discussion in a single class. In all there are 94 documentaries that accompany the three volumes of Young Indy. Below is a list of the Documentary Dimensions. Many of the documentaries fall into multiple categories. Each dimension is sorted by Young Indy Chapter. Exclusive previews are also available for each documentary! Be sure to acknowledge the filmmakers who put these documentaties together by visiting our credits page.

Choose a Documentary Dimension

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Young Indiana Jones Chapters

All Documentaries

By Topic

Biography

Fine Arts

Literature

World War I

Indy Connections

In this section you will find current event articles that relate to the real-life events, topics, and people found in The Adventures of Indiana Jones. Educators can use these current events to connect our past with the present day. To see current articles for a specific Indy Adventure, please click the appropriate link below. For the most recent articles, please scroll down.

Five Innovative Technologies that Bring Energy to the Developing World

5/2/2013

Passion for Life

In the wealthy world, improving the energy system generally means increasing the central supply of reliable, inexpensive and environmentally-friendly power and distributing it through the power grid. Across most of the planet, though, simply providing new energy sources to the millions who are without electricity and depend on burning wood or kerosene for heat and light would open up new opportunities.

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8 Famous People Who Missed the Lusitania

5/2/2013

The WWI Episodes

When the First World War began, in the summer of 1914, the Lusitania was among the most glamorous and celebrated ships in the world—at one time both the largest and fastest afloat. But the British passenger liner would earn a far more tragic place in history on May 7, 1915, when it was torpedoed by a German submarine off the coast of Ireland, with the loss of nearly 1,200 lives.

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Starving Settlers in Jamestown Colony Resorted to Cannibalism

5/1/2013

My First Adventure

The harsh winter of 1609 in Virginia’s Jamestown Colony forced residents to do the unthinkable. A recent excavation at the historic site discovered the carcasses of dogs, cats and horses consumed during the season commonly called the “Starving Time.” But a few other newly discovered bones in particular, though, tell a far more gruesome story: the dismemberment and cannibalization of a 14-year-old English girl.

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How the DC-3 Revolutionized Air Travel

4/1/2013

Raiders of the Lost Ark

On an early evening in late 1938, a gleaming American Airlines DC-3 departed Newark Airport, bound for Glendale, California. The takeoff, wrote a Fortune magazine reporter aboard to record the still-novel experience of cross-country air travel, was effortless. “Halfway along the runway,” he recounted, “she left the ground so smoothly that none of the first fliers in the cabin realized what had happened until they saw the whole field rushing away behind them and the factory lights winking through the Jersey murk ahead.” By the time the flight crossed over Virginia, passengers had already polished off a dinner of soup, lamb chops, vegetables, salad, ice cream and coffee. After a refueling stop in Nashville, the DC-3 continued west. Beyond Dallas, the journalist added, “visibility was limited only by the far horizons of the curving earth.” Despite head winds, the plane arrived on schedule at 8:50 a.m. Total time was 18 hours 40 minutes, including several ground stops.

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Baseball Spoiled by Nature: Top 10 Moments

3/30/2013

Spring Break Adventure

A new Major League Baseball season starts with opening day in April and ends in October or November with the World Series. Between those bookends, the 30 teams each play 162 regular-season games. That's a lot of baseball. That's also a lot of opportunity for Mother Nature to wreak havoc on America's pastime. With a new season upon us, we look back at the top ten moments when the natural world won.

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Ban Everything: Concern Over Future Blue Laws During the Lead Up to Alcohol Prohibition

3/28/2013

The Mystery of the Blues

Anytime the government tries to ban something there are usually loud warnings about slippery slopes and guesses as to what perfectly reasonable American past-time might be banned next. If New York City bans trans fats (as it did in 2007), what’s next? Smoking in its parks? Oversized sodas? Oh, right. It banned those things too, with mixed success. Perhaps the most notorious ban in U.S. history was our national experiment in forced sobriety. The United States ratified the 18th Amendment in January of 1919 which outlawed the sale of alcohol and many people were (understandably) not pleased. The one-year gap between the ratification of the amendment and it becoming the enforced law of the land led many people in 1919 to speculate (and joke) about the repercussions.

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Postwar Dreams of Flying in Style

3/22/2013

Raiders of the Lost Ark

During World War II, many Americans had high hopes for what life would be like in the future. Sometimes this was fueled by advertisers who promised that great things were just around the corner. Sacrifice for your country now they said, and all of your wildest high-tech dreams would come true after the war. As we’ve seen before, this attitude was sometimes tempered by skeptics who warned that while there may indeed be great things ahead, Americans should keep their shirts on.

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8 Mummy Finds Revealing Ancient Disease

3/21/2013

My First Adventure

Whether laid to rest in a simple grave or a grand tomb, the human body rarely survives the sweep of time. But in a few places where people deliberately mummified their dead, or the environmental conditions were right—very dry or wet—flesh and bone are preserved. Today these remains, probed by modern CT scans, MRIs, and DNA tests, are offering intriguing insights into how people lived and died long ago. A 2011 study of 52 mummies in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo showed that almost half had clogged arteries, the kind of condition that can lead to a heart attack or stroke.

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Failure to Hunt Rabbits Part of Neanderthals' Demise?

3/11/2013

My First Adventure

Rabbits are small, fast, and devilishly hard to catch. And that could have had dire consequences for Neanderthals. A new study suggests that an inability to shift from hunting large mammals to wild rabbits and other small game may have contributed to the downfall of European Neanderthals during the Middle Paleolithic period, about 30,000 years ago. "There have been some studies that examined the importance of rabbit meat to hominins"—or early human ancestors—"but we give it a new twist," said study lead author John Fa, a biologist at the United Kingdom's Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust and Imperial College London. "We show in our study that [modern humans] used rabbits extensively, but Neanderthals didn't."

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New Study Examines San Joaquin Valley, Home to America’s Dirtiest Air

3/8/2013

Passion for Life

If you had to guess what part of the the U.S. has the very worst air pollution–where winds and topography conspire with fumes from gasoline-chugging vehicles to create an aerial cesspool–places like Los Angeles, Atlanta and as of late, Salt Lake City, would probably pop to mind. The reality may come as a bit of a surprise. According to the Environmental Protection agency, California’s bucolic San Joaquin Valley is “home of the worst air quality in the country.” Not coincidentally, the San Joaquin Valley is also the most productive agricultural region in the world and the top dairy-producing region in the country. Heavy duty-diesel trucks constantly buzz through the valley, emitting 14 tons of the greenhouse gas ozone daily, and animal feed spews a whopping 25 tons of ozone per day as it ferments, according to a 2010 study. In addition, hot summertime temperatures encourage ground-level ozone to form, according to the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District. Pollution also streams down from the Bay Area, and the Sierra Nevada Mountains to the east help to trap all of these pollutants near the valley floor. Particulate matter that creates the thick greyish-brown smog hanging over the valley is of paramount concern–it’s been linked to heart disease, childhood asthma and other respiratory conditions.

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A History of the Parachute’s Earliest Days

3/7/2013

Attack of the Hawkmen

I recently went skydiving for the first time. It was possibly the most exhilarating thing I’ve ever done in my life. A couple days later, once I had time to process everything, my thoughts turned to that backpack that kept me alive. When was it designed? Who was the inventor that made it possible for me to survive a fall of 10,000 feet? Some quick research told that that I owed my life to a Russian actor named Gleb Kotelnikov, who is credited with inventing the first backpack parachute in 1911. Surprisingly little is written about Kotelnikov –at least in English– but assuming Google translate can be trusted, he was compelled to create the parachute after witnessing the death of pilot Leo Matsievich during an air show in St. Petersburg. From that horrible moment, Kotelnikov, a former theater actor, dedicated the rest of his life to preventing the unnecessary deaths of airplane pilots. By the early 20th century, basic parachutes were already widely used to perform jumps from hot-air balloons, and of course the idea of the parachute famously goes back all the way to Leonardo da Vinci, but these early parachutes were elaborate and cumbersome, and the high speed at which planes traveled required a more efficient design.

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Buried Mars River Channel Reveals Evidence of Relatively Recent Megaflooding

3/7/2013

The Winds of Change

Evidence of a megaflood on Mars—a surprisingly recent one that cut a 600-mile (966-kilometer) river channel into the planet—has been detected by radar from an orbiting satellite. Scientists have known for some time about the existence of the Marte Vallis channel system. But the new radar research has doubled the estimated depth of the massive flow and identified the headwaters and floodplain of the river. Both had been covered by lava from a volcanic eruption no more than 500 million years ago. The megaflood and volcano are considered especially significant because they occurred so recently, in geological terms, suggesting that Mars may well remain a geologically active planet today. (Learn about Martian geology.)

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This 33,000-Year-Old Skull Belonged to One of the World’s First Dogs

3/6/2013

My First Adventure

In 1975, a team of Russian archaeologists announced that they’d made a remarkable find: From a cave in the Altai Mountains of Siberia, they’d unearthed a 33,000-year-old fossil skull that resembled a wolf. In 2011, an anatomical analysis suggested that the fossil was a hybrid of a wolf (with its large teeth) and a dog (with its shortened snout), raising the possibility that it was a partly domesticated wolf—in other words, one of the oldest ancestors of the modern dog ever discovered. At the time, though, DNA analysis was needed to make certain that the fossil came from an ancestor of man’s best friend. A paper published today in the journal PLOS ONE confirms that fact, indicating that the creature was more closely related to modern dogs than wolves, and forcing scientists to reconsider the dog’s evolutionary family tree.

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Return of the Neanderthals

3/6/2013

My First Adventure

For now, the Neanderthal genome is an abstract string of billions of DNA letters stored in computer databases. But it naturally sparks the imagination: Could scientists use that genetic blueprint to create neo-Neanderthals in the flesh? In the not-so-distant future, advances in genetic engineering might enable that feat, experts say. But whether such a resurrection should happen is another story. Since the 1996 birth of Dolly the sheep, the world's first cloned mammal, scientists have greatly expanded and improved on cloning techniques. They have cloned dogs, cats, rats, pigs, and cows, among other species. In 2003, researchers in Spain were the first to bring back an extinct species—the Pyrenean ibex, a wild mountain goat also called a bucardo—though the clone only lived for a few minutes.

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Finders Keepers? Not Always in Treasure Hunting

3/6/2013

My First Adventure

In September 2009, David Booth, a park ranger in Stirling, Scotland, packed up his brand-new metal detector ("I practiced at home picking up nails and bits"), drove to a field, walked seven yards (six meters) from his parked car, and scored big. His first sweep with a metal detector yielded a spectacular find: four gold torques, or neck bands, from the first century B.C.—the most important hoard of Iron Age gold found in Scotland to date. Several days later, Stuart Campbell of the National Museum of Scotland, the man in charge of "treasure trove" finds, as they are known in the United Kingdom, arrived at his Edinburgh office, opened his email to find a message with the subject "gold jewelry" and thought, "Oh, no, not another Victorian watch chain." Then he saw the images.

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Document Deep Dive: A Historic Moment in the Fight for Women’s Voting Rights

3/1/2013

Love's Sweet Song

In the spring of 1913, women in six states had the right to vote in all elections: Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Washington and California. Despite these successes, though, the momentum of the 65-year-old suffrage movement was slowing. It was like a car running on fumes. Alice Paul decided to give it some gas. Having recently returned to the States from England, where she cut her teeth as a suffragist, the 28-year-old New Jersey native pitched an idea to the National American Woman Suffrage Association. She would organize a suffrage parade in Washington, D.C., strategically timed with the influx of crowds arriving for President Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration, to drum up support for the cause. NAWSA appointed Paul the chair of its Congressional committee and approved her plan, but made it clear that she would have to come up with the money for the parade on her own.

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The History of the Flapper, Part 3: The Rectangular Silhouette

2/19/2013

The Scandal of 1920

If a woman in the 1920s had a boyish figure and was naturally skinny, she was all set to slip on a slim sheath, a signature look of the 1920s. But if she was plump and curvaceous, she might choose certain undergarments to help achieve the fashionable unisex flapper shape. The flapper silhouette was distinctive, and if you’re a fan of PBS’s “Downton Abbey,” you’ve seen it in full effect this season: angular (basically rectangular), androgynous, slender and straight. It was influenced by Braque, Picasso, Leger and others artists whose work had hard, geometric forms and visible lines.

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Parched Middle East Faces Severe Water Crisis

2/15/2013

Passion for Life

Climate change, believed to have contributed to the decline of the Ottoman Empire (PDF) when drought forced villagers into a nomadic life in the late 16th century, is once again having an adverse affect on the Middle East. Precipitation has dropped off and temperatures have climbed for the past 40 years, with conditions growing especially severe in the last decade. A 2012 Yale study (PDF) showed that a drought from 2007 to 2010 so seriously stunted agriculture in the Tigris and Euphrates river basins that hundreds of thousands of people fled Iran, eastern Syria and northern Iraq.

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The History of the Flapper, Part 2: Makeup Makes a Bold Entrance

2/7/2013

The Scandal of 1920

In the decades before the Roaring Twenties, nice girls didn’t wear makeup. But that changed when flappers began applying cosmetics that were meant to be noticed, a reaction to the subdued and feminine pre-war Victorian attitudes and styles typified by the classic Gibson girl. Before the 1920s, makeup was a real pain to put on. It’s no wonder women kept it to a minimum. The tubes, brushes and compacts we take for granted today hadn’t yet been invented. Innovations in cosmetics in the ’20s made it much easier for women to experiment with new looks. And with the increasing popularity of movies, women could mimic the stars—like Joan Crawford, Mae Murray and Clara Bow, an American actress who epitomized the flapper’s spitfire attitude and heavily made-up appearance.

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The History of the Flapper, Part 1: A Call for Freedom

2/5/2013

The Scandal of 1920

In the age before the Roaring Twenties, women were still wearing floor-length dresses. Waists were cinched. Arms and legs were covered. Corsets were standard on a daily basis. Hair was long. The Gibson girl was the idealized image of beauty. And the Victorian attitudes toward dress and etiquette created a strict moral climate. Then the 1920s hit and things changed rapidly. The 19th Amendment passed in 1920 giving women the right to vote. Women began attending college. The Equal Rights Amendment was proposed by Alice Paul in 1923. World War I was over and men wanted their jobs back. Women, though, who had joined the workforce while the men were at war, had tasted the possibility of life beyond homemaking and weren’t ready to relinquish their jobs. Prohibition was underway with the passing of the 18th Amendment in 1919 and speakeasies were plentiful if you knew where to look. Motion pictures got sound, color and talking sequences. The Charleston’s popularity contributed to a nationwide dance craze. Every day, more women got behind the wheels of cars. And prosperity abounded.

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