1921: In late January or early February, T. S. Eliot begins work on his opus "The Waste Land." Eliot works on the poem throughout the year and sees it published in 1922.

Today: "The Waste Land" is among Eliot's crowning achievements and one of the greatest literary works to come out of the 1920s. Students of American literature study this poem as a matter of course in their high school, undergraduate, and graduate studies.

1921: President Warren G. Harding is inaugurated after winning the first election in which women had the right to vote. The Nineteenth Amendment, granting women over the age of twenty-one the right to vote, was ratified in August, 1920. This enabled millions of women to cast their ballots for the first time in American history.

Today: Voter turnout among women is low. Although more women vote than men (by a narrow margin), the percentage...