Father's Day was first celebrated in the year 1910, but did not become an official national holiday until 1972. Imagine if you will living in that simpler time (1910). Wonderous inventions like Vitamin B, teeth braces and neon signs made their debut, but sliced bread, bikinis, bras and ballpoint pens had not yet been invented.

Henry Ford sold (a record) 10,000 cars that year. Americans were harmonizing to "Let Me Call You Sweetheart" and "Down by the Old Mill Stream," while 70% of the bread consumed in the U.S. was still baked at home. Connie Mack's Philadelphia Athletics won the World Series and the world's first police woman was appointed in Los Angeles.

Nobel Peace Prize winner Mother Teresa was born; so were the celebrated outlaws Bonny and Clyde. Samuel L. Clemens, born in 1835 as Halley's Comet streaked by earth, correctly predicted that he would die when the comet next returned in 1910.

This is the year the Girl Guides, Campfire Girls, Boy Scouts and National 4-H Clubs were founded. Beatrix Potter and Rudyard Kipling were writing popular children's books and two popular fictional characters, Tom Swift and Hopalong Cassidy, also arrived on the scene.

Boy inventor Tom Swift was the brain child of Edward Stratemeyer, writer, editor and publisher. Many of Tom Swift's ingenious fictional inventions anticipated future technology, and also helped produce a generation of boys interested in the sciences, in a time when the average U.S. worker earned less than $15 per week, working from 54 to 60 hours. Many workers organized to demand better wages, fewer hours and safer working conditions.

In 1910, U.S. population reached 92 million, with 13.5 million of us foreign-born. Over half of Americans lived in cities and towns of 2,500 residents or more, up from 21% in 1860. Eight out of every 10 U.S. black citizens still lived in the 11 states of the old Confederacy, but the migration north was well underway.

In 1910, banks begin issuing personal loans, and during the next 10 years, banks in 37 states would take the plunge into personal credit as America starts down the slippery slope of personal debt. Thankfully, credit cards won't be invented for another 4 decades.

But as steel begins to replace wood in U.S. automobile bodies, the last transcontinental railroad line is finally completed, joining a vast nation coast to coast, and the grandiose Pennsylvania Station opens in New York City, graced with beautiful Tennessee Pink marble.

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