For many Americans, the era known as the Roaring Twenties was a 10-year-long party, as Americans discovered jazz, flappers, flagpole sitting and talking movies. But it was also an era of lawlessness as crime bosses fulfilled the country's thirst for alcoholic beverages that had been made illegal by the Eighteenth Amendment to the US Constitution. For many Americans, it all came crashing down on October 24, 1929, the day the stock market started its long descent, ushering in a new era of economic depression and eventually war.