The silliest law in History was brought in ninety two years ago when America introduced the Volstead Act banning alcohol. In a country dragged down by Amendments to its Constitution, the 18th arguably brought more misery than anything else. Did it lessen alcohol consumption? No. Was it followed even by a minority of Americans? No. Did it add enormously to the boot-legging empire of gangsters like Al Capone? You betchya.
On a positive note however, it did give us Kevin Costner's The Untouchables which provided the best line in Prohibition Era gangster flicks. Having thrown a baddie off a skyscraper so that he crashes through the roof of a parked Chrysler on the tarmac far below, Costner (Eliot Ness) is asked 'Where's Nitti?' the man in question having been Frank 'the Enforcer' Nitti, long time pal of Capone. He replies, 'In the car.' Genius!
To get back to Volstead, though; what will they do next? Ban smoking in public places? Get, as I'm sure Eliot Ness used to say, real.
In other news ...
And talking of baddies, Ivan IV (who made Al Capone look like a choirboy) was crowned Tsar in Russia in 1547. He was responsible for the deaths of thousands of his own people, including his own son and was in many ways the creator of a vicious secret police who have continued right the way down to the KGB. To be fair to the man, we know from the exhumation of his body carried out in the 1960s that he suffered from a bone deformity which probably left him in agony most days.
Even so, Ivan, there was no need to be quite so tetchy.
Metternich, reading, as is his rather annoying habit, over my shoulder has fastened on the word 'vole'. His reading skills are at best rudimentary, although not at all bad for a cat, but I need to explain to him that there is no danger of voles being banned, so that he releases the grip he has on my left ear lobe in order that I can get on with my day relatively unmaimed.
