Rum-running, or bootlegging, is the illegal business of smuggling alcoholic beverages where such transportation is forbidden by law. The term rum-running is more commonly applied to smuggling over water; bootlegging is applied to smuggling over land.

Smuggling usually takes place to circumvent taxation or prohibition laws within a particular jurisdiction. (Full article...)

Roustam Tariko (Russian: Рустам Тарико; born March 17, 1962) is the founder of Russian Standard Vodka. He also founded Russian Standard Bank, a credit card operation and a term life insurer in Russia. In 2009, Tariko's net worth was estimated at $1.1 billion. (Full article...)

• ... that Thomas Dickson Archibald, when speaking against increasing fines for violating liquor licenses, said "we need only go a step further and make the violation a hanging matter"?
• ... that to comply with a law that restricted liquor sales near churches, the Peninsula New York placed its cocktail lounge up a flight of stairs and down a long hallway?

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The Whiskey Rebellion (also known as the Whiskey Insurrection) was a violent tax protest in the United States beginning in 1791 and ending in 1794 during the presidency of George Washington. The so-called "whiskey tax" was the first tax imposed on a domestic product by the newly formed federal government. Beer was difficult to transport and spoiled more easily than rum and whiskey. Rum distillation in the United States had been disrupted during the American Revolutionary War, and whiskey distribution and consumption increased afterwards (aggregate production had not surpassed rum by 1791). The "whiskey tax" became law in 1791, and was intended to generate revenue to pay the war debt incurred during the Revolutionary War. The tax applied to all distilled spirits, but consumption of American whiskey was rapidly expanding in the late 18th century, so the excise became widely known as a "whiskey tax". Farmers of the western frontier were accustomed to distilling their surplus rye, barley, wheat, corn, or fermented grain mixtures to make whiskey. These farmers resisted the tax. In these regions, whiskey often served as a medium of exchange. Many of the resisters were war veterans who believed that they were fighting for the principles of the American Revolution, in particular against taxation without local representation, while the federal government maintained that the taxes were the legal expression of Congressional taxation powers.

Throughout Western Pennsylvania counties, protesters used violence and intimidation to prevent federal officials from collecting the tax. Resistance came to a climax in July 1794, when a US marshal arrived in western Pennsylvania to serve writs to distillers who had not paid the excise. The alarm was raised, and more than 500 armed men attacked the fortified home of tax inspector John Neville. Washington responded by sending peace commissioners to western Pennsylvania to negotiate with the rebels, while at the same time calling on governors to send a militia force to enforce the tax. Washington himself rode at the head of an army to suppress the insurgency, with 13,000 militiamen provided by the governors of Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. The rebels all went home before the arrival of the army, and there was no confrontation. About 20 men were arrested, but all were later acquitted or pardoned. Most distillers in nearby Kentucky were found to be all but impossible to tax—in the next six years, over 175 distillers from Kentucky were convicted of violating the tax law. Numerous examples of resistance are recorded in court documents and newspaper accounts. (Full article...)