The New Year is always a time to look forward and plan for better things, but it is also a good time to look back. After a holiday break, I just resumed writing book three of The War Song Series. The book begins in 1949. Let’s go back seventy years to see what that New Year in history looked like. It even includes one of my favorite all-time board games, which was published that year!

• The average cost of gasoline was 27 cents a gallon.

• The average cost of milk was 84 cents a gallon.

• The average cost of a house was $14,500.

• The average cost of a car was $1,650.

• The average annual income was $3,600.

• Time Magazine’s Man of the Year was Winston Churchill.

• William Faulkner won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

• Hamlet, starring Lawrence Olivier, won the Academy Award for best picture.

• The New York Yankees won the World Series.

• The Philadelphia Eagles were the NFL Champions.

• Notre Dame won the NCAA Football Championship.

• Some of the most popular pop artists were The Andrew Sisters, Buddy Clark, Perry Como, Bing Crosby, Dick Haymes, Peggy Lee, Dinah Shore, and Frank Sinatra.

• Some of the most popular toys were Silly Putty, Candy Land, and Kewpie dolls.

• One of the fist sitcoms, The Goldbergs, premiered on CBS on January 10.

• The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was established on April 4.

• The Berlin Blockade ended on May 12.

• George Orwell’s book, Nineteen Eighty-Four, was published on June 8.

• The minimum waged increased from 40 cents a hour to 75 cents a hour on October 26.