1930: Information and Much More from Answers.com
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Spanish dictator Miguel Primo de Rivera resigns January 28 for reasons of health and dies at Paris March 16 at age 59, having ruled the country since September 1923. Alfonso XIII appoints Cuba-born military leader Dámaso Berenguer (y Fusté), 56, prime minister, but students denounce the monarchy, agitate for a republic, and are joined by lawyer-novelist Manuel Azaña y Díaz, now 50, who begins to organize a liberal republican party (Acción Republicana). Revolutionary committee leader Niceto Alcalá Zamora, 53, blames Alfonso for the dictatorship, joins with the socialists and Catalan left and with Azaña y Díaz in the Pact of San Sebastián signed in August, but is arrested and thrown into prison (see 1931). Former army commander-in-chief Valeriano Weyler y Nicolau, marqués de Tenerife, dies at Madrid October 20 at age 92.
German chancellor Hermann Müller resigns under pressure March 27 after his Social Democratic Party (SPD) has tried to increase workers' unemployment benefits. Former German naval secretary Admiral Alfred P. F. von Tirpitz has died at Ebenhausen, near Munich, March 6 at age 80 (he was a right-wing member of the Reichstag from 1924 to 1928). With unemployment reaching its highest level since the early 1920s, voters respond to demagogues of the right and left who promise solutions to the nation's economic woes. The last Allied troops leave the Rhineland June 30—5 years before the date set by the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. The National Socialist (Nazi) Party wins 6,409,000 votes in the mid-September Reichstag elections, up from 800,000 in 1928, and is second only to the Socialist Party, which wins 8,400,000 (see 1928). Adolf Hitler makes it plain that he favors a dictatorship that would eliminate many of the country's political parties, and his thuggish "storm troopers" engage in fist fights with leftists in the streets of Berlin and other cities. The Nazis gain 107 seats, up from 12 in the old Reichstag, but Hitler is barred from taking his seat because he is an Austrian citizen. Nazi deputies show up in uniform October 13, violating the rules and creating an uproar (see 1931). The last Allied troops leave the Saar December 12 (see 1935).
Polar explorer-statesman (and Nobel Peace Prize winner) Fridtjof Nansen dies at his home outside Oslo May 13 at age 68.
Italy's Benito Mussolini comes out May 24 in favor of revising the Versailles Treaty.
Romanians remove their boy king Michael after a 3-year reign and replace him with his 37-year-old father, who electrifies the country by arriving from Paris by airplane and will reign until 1940 as Carol II. The new king's 26-year-old mistress Magda Lupescu joins him at Bucharest in June (her father, a Moldavian junk dealer, Latinized his name from Wolff) and will exercise great influence on his regime. Romanians hate her because she is vulgar, ruthless, egocentric, and Jewish (anti-Semitism is endemic); Carol's mother, Queen Marie, refuses to meet with her, referring to her as that "lady of light repute."
Turkey's president Mustafa Kemal renames Constantinople and Angora, which become Istanbul and Ankara, respectively (see 1924; 1935).
Turkish and Russian forces launch an offensive against Kurdish rebels August 12.
A London Naval Conference convened January 21 ends 3 months later with a treaty signed by Britain, the United States, France, Italy, and Japan, who agree to limit submarine tonnage and gun-caliber and to scrap certain warships (see 1922). Japanese militarist factions attack the treaty, a right-wing militant youth shoots Prime Minister Yuko Hamaguchi, 60, at the Tokyo Railway Station November 14, and Hamaguchi will die of his wounds in late August of next year. He has supported acceptance of the London Naval Conference program (see 1931).
French authorities in Vietnam crush the Yen Bai uprising that breaks out February 9 at a small town along the Chinese border, where the military garrison mutinies. The French have been alerted to the possibility of a revolt and come down so hard on the rebels that the 3-year-old Viet Nam Quoc Dan Dang (VNQDD) party is destroyed. Many of its members join the new Indochinese Communist Party.
A civil disobedience campaign against British rule in India begins March 12 (see 1922). The All-India Trade Congress has empowered Mohandas K. Gandhi to begin the demonstrations (poet Rabindranath Tagore has called Gandhi Mahatma, meaning great-souled, or sage, and that honorific has been commonly used for the past decade). Ashramites have left the Sarbamanti ashram outside Ahmedabad and march 240 miles to the beach at Dandi, on the Gujurat Coast of the Arabian Sea, where Gandhi breaks the law as a gesture of defiance against the British monopoly by picking up a handful of salt crystallized by the evaporation of seawater. It is illegal to manufacture or sell salt except under license from the raj, and Gandhi exhorts his fellow Indians to follow his example. British forces are unable to deal with a protest on such a large scale. The British release agitator Gandhi from prison April 5 and allow him to recuperate just outside Bombay. Britain's prime minister Ramsay MacDonald convenes a Round Table Conference on Indian affairs at Westminister in November, but neither Gandhi nor any other member of the Congress is able to attend and little or nothing is accomplished (see 1931),
Burmese nationalists rise against British rule under the leadership of former Buddhist monk, physician, and astrologer Saya San, 54, whose Galon Army proclaims him king at Insein, near Rangoon, October 28. Economic depression has produced a drop in the price of rice, leaving peasants in southern Burma virtually penniless yet burdened by heavy taxes. Indian moneylenders throw them off their lands, and the rebellion erupts in violence beginning in late December in the Tharrawaddy district; it soon spreads to other districts in the Irrawaddy delta, but the rebels are armed only with spears and swords (see 1931).
Chinese communists join forces in July to attack Hankou (Hankow); Nationalist troops launch an encirclement campaign November 5 in parts of Hunan, Hubei, and Jianxi provinces.
Canadian voters oust Mackenzie King's Liberal government as Conservative Party leader Richard B. (Bedford) Bennett, 60, promises vigorous measures to combat the Great Depression (see 1935).
Dominican army chief Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina, 38, stages a coup April 11 following the resignation of the ailing president Horacio Vázquez, now 69. Trained in the constabulary guard created by the U.S. Marines during their 8-year occupation of his country, Trujillo wins election to the presidency in May with help from thugs who beat up, jail, or kill supporters of his opponent. A hurricane September 30 wreaks havoc on Santo Domingo, killing 2,000 people and giving Trujillo an excuse to place the country under martial law; supported by U.S. interests, he begins a 31-year dictatorship that will see modernization and an impressive increase in the literacy rate, but he will use blackmail and bribery to retain power, intimidating his foes, eliminating opposition political parties, abolishing independent trade unions, censoring the press, and engaging in summary executions, even massacres (see 1937).
Peru's president Augusto Leguía y Salcedo resigns August 25 and flees the country after 11 years of dictatorial rule. Col. Luis Sanchez Cerro has led a military revolt and will be elected president next year (see 1933).
Argentina has a military coup September 5 (see 1928). Retired general José Francisco Uriburu, 62, ousts the feeble president Hipólito Irigoyen, now 78; makes himself president; denounces Irigoyen's pro-labor legislation in December; demands that a selected elite replace the democratic government that has ruled since 1916; and will soon take the unprecedented action of removing the national legislature. An ardent admirer of Prussian militarism and of Benito Mussolini's corporate state, Uriburu returns the big landowners and business interests to power after 14 years that have seen social reform but also, in more recent years, corruption and stagnation. Right-wing elements will rule the country until 1943 (see 1931).
Brazil has a coup d'état October 24 as collapsing coffee prices shatter the nation's economy. President Washington Luís has engineered the election of São Paulo politician Julio Prestes as his hand-picked successor, but the governor of Rio Grande do Sul has other ideas: Getulio (Dornelles) Vargas, now 47, organizes the coup, accepts the presidency October 26, forces President Luís to resign 4 days later, abolishes all state and city assemblies, dissolves the congress November 1, and issues a decree November 11 organizing a provisional government. Luís leaves for exile in Europe (see Vargas, 1937).
Chief Justice (and former president) William Howard Taft resigns from the Supreme Court for reasons of health in early February and dies at Washington, D.C., March 8 at age 72. He is succeeded by Charles Evans Hughes, now 67, who will head the court until his retirement in 1941.
Former British prime minister Arthur J. Balfour, 1st earl of Balfour, dies at Woking, Surrey, March 19 at age 81 (see Balfour Declaration, 1917); statesman Frederick E. Smith, 1st earl of Birkenhead, dies at London September 30 at age 58. The Passfield Paper on Palestine presented October 20 suggests a halt in Jewish immigration to Palestine so long as unemployment persists among the Arabs. Sidney James Webb, 71, first baron Passfield, is the British secretary for colonies (see White Paper, 1939).
The Ethiopian empress Zanditu dies April 2 after a troubled reign of 14 years. Ras Tafari, 39, took the name Haile Selassie when he was proclaimed king (negus) in June 1928 and is crowned king of kings at Addis Ababa November 2; he will reign until 1974 as Haile Selassie I (see 1935).
A U.S.-League of Nations commission reports March 8 that Liberia still has slavery.
South Africa's white women receive the vote May 19, but blacks of both sexes remain disenfranchised.
Los Angeles County begins deporting Mexican immigrants and people of Mexican descent to prevent the "Chicanos" from taking "white" jobs. Many are U.S. citizens, but the "repatriations" will continue for the next 5 years until between 300,000 and 500,000 have been deported.
The W. K. Kellogg Foundation is established at Battle Creek, Mich., by breakfast-food pioneer William Keith Kellogg, now 70, who retired last year from the presidency of the W. K. Kellogg Co. (see 1951; food, 1906).
The Bank for International Settlements is established at Basel, Switzerland, to manage German reparation payments for the Great War and facilitate cooperation among central banks of various countries.
Congress votes a $230 million Public Buildings Act March 31 and a $300 million appropriation for state road-building projects April 4 to create jobs.
The Diamond Corp. is established at Johannesburg by South African industrialist Sir Ernest Oppenheimer through a merger of his 10-year-old Consolidated Diamond Mines of South Africa and De Beers.
Some 35,000 Japanese textile workers strike the Kanebo factory in April; most are women. Tokyo Muslin has a strike of 1,500 women workers in June to protest layoffs and factory closings as economic depression deepens throughout most of the world; the women remain in their dormitory and refuse to leave.
France enacts a workmen's insurance law April 30.
Labor leader Leonora M. K. "Mother Lake" Barry dies at Minooka, Ill., July 15 at age 80; Mary Harris "Mother" Jones at Silver Spring, Md., November 30 at age 100.
Wall Street prices break again in May and June after an early spring rally that has seen leading stocks regain between one-third and one-half of last year's losses. As more investors come to realize the economic realities of the business depression (which has not been caused by last year's market crash), stock prices begin a long decline that will carry them to new depths (see 1932).
The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Bill signed into law by President Hoover June 17 raises tariffs to their highest levels in history—higher even than under the Payne-Aldrich Act of 1909 or the Fordney-McCumber Act of 1922—and embraces a Most Favored Nations policy first introduced in 1923. The protective tariff replaces average import duties from 26 percent to a prohibitive 50 percent, although certain nations are granted large tariff concessions under an arrangement that will continue for more than 45 years. Congress has approved the measure in a special session called by Hoover despite a petition signed by 1,028 economists. Other countries raise tariffs in response to the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act and a general world economic depression sets in as world trade declines, production drops, and unemployment increases (see 1931).
U.S. unemployment passes 4 million and national income falls from $81 billion to less than $68 billion. Only 3.4 million workers belong to labor unions, down from 5 million in 1920, and union membership is concentrated in just a few industries such as construction, railroads, and local truck delivery. Automobile and steel workers remain unorganized.
Lyons, N.Y.-born United States Steel Co. chief financial officer Myron C. (Charles) Taylor, 56, institutes a work-sharing program to keep every worker employed, even if only for 2 or 3 days per week, and although production plummets to only 17 percent of capacity he keeps the mills running and extends credit to workers (see 1937).
President Hoover says that 4½ million Americans are unemployed. He appoints a Committee for Unemployment Relief in October and requests $100 million to $150 million in appropriations for new public works construction December 2 in his message to Congress. Congress passes a $116 million public works bill December 20.
Economist Arthur T. Hadley dies at Kobe, Japan, March 6 at age 73 while on a world tour; industrialist-philanthropist Henry Phipps dies at Great Neck, L.I., September 22 at age 90; copper magnate-philanthropist Daniel Guggenheim at his Port Washington, L.I., home September 28 at age 74; financier-sportsman Harry Payne Whitney of pneumonia at his 871 Fifth Avenue home October 26 at age 58, survived by his wife, Gertrude (née Vanderbilt), and three children (his brother Payne died 3 years ago); real estate investor (and former E. I. du Pont de Nemours chief) T. Coleman du Pont dies of cancer of the larynx at his Wilmington, Del., home November 11 at age 66.
Russian-born U.S. economist Simon (Smith) Kuznets, 29, begins economic studies that will culminate in the formulation of a Gross National Product (GNP) index of national wealth. Kuznets begins teaching economic statistics at the University of Pennsylvania; his studies will embrace national earnings, income levels, and productivity.
General strikes and riots paralyze Madrid November 15 as economies collapse throughout much of Europe.
More than 1,300 U.S. banks close during the year. New York's Bank of the United States has grown since its founding in 1913 to become the nation's largest, with 62 branches (up from five in 1925) and 440,000 depositors, but it closes December 11 (some members of the New York Clearing House will be accused of anti-Semitism for having let the bank fail, but even those who make the charges will admit that the bank was guilty of dubious practices; founder's son Bernard Marcus and his partner Saul Singer will be convicted and sent to prison in March of next year).
Secretary of the Treasury Andrew W. Mellon views the Great Depression as a natural phenomenon. "I see nothing in the present situation that is either menacing or warrants pessimism," he has said early in the year, and his tax policies have helped millionaires like himself and their companies, increasing maldistribution of wealth and excessive saving at the expense of ordinary taxpayers; now 75, Mellon favors deflation, opposes public-works projects.
Congress approves a measure December 20 authorizing $116 million to be spent on projects to relieve unemployment, which has reached an estimated 7 million. New York's Chelsea Bank & Trust Co. closes December 23; 20 small banks in six Southern and Midwestern states shut down December 26.
Wall Street's Dow Jones Industrial Average closes December 31 at 164.50, down from 248.48 at the end of 1929.
New York's F. A. O. Schwarz moves uptown from 31st Street and opens a large new toy store in the new Squibb Building at the southeast corner of Fifth Avenue and 58th Street (see 1870).
The No. 1 Mary Sudik well in the Oklahoma City Field comes in March 26 with a column of oil, gas, and rock that defies efforts to control it (see 1928). It spouts up to 3,000 barrels of oil per hour and coats the city hall and cars parked near the state capitol building; armed guards keep crowds away and turn back traffic, air traffic controllers order planes flying in and out of the city's airports to maintain high altitudes, citizens are ordered to turn off pilot lights on their stoves, and the gusher continues until April 6, when specially-built equipment finally turns it off; 211,589 barrels of oil are recovered from creeks, ditches, and gulleys. The local Osage tribe takes in royalties amounting to $45 million for the year (in a single day one Osage woman reportedly spends $12,000 for a fur coat, $3,000 for a diamond ring, $5,000 for a car, $7,000 for furniture, $600 to have it all shipped to California, and $12,800 for Florida real estate).
Enron Corp. has its beginnings in Houston Natural Gas Co., a firm that will grow by the end of the century to have more than 22,000 employees engaged in oil and gas exploration, natural gas and electric power transmission, electric utilities, and other activities.
Construction of Hoover Dam in the Colorado River's Black Canyon begins in 100° heat September 17 with a ceremony in which the secretary of the interior drives a spike (see 1929). It is the largest project of its kind ever undertaken, and many engineers express doubts that it can be built (see 1931).
More than 80 percent of U.S. factories are powered by electricity, up from 50 percent in 1920, when steam engines remained a major source of energy.
U.S. gasoline consumption rises to nearly 16 billion gallons, up from 2.5 billion in 1919.
World oil prices collapse after wildcatter Columbus M. Joiner, 71, brings in a gusher October 3 on a farm in Rusk County, Texas, to open what will prove to be a huge new field. Gambler H. L. Hunt suspects that Joiner has merely tapped the edge of a great sea of oil (see 1920); having won his first oil well in a poker game, he has paid $30,000 to buy 5,000 acres of unproven fields in East Texas. Now 41, Hunt pays Joiner $40,000 cash, $45,000 in short-term notes, and a guarantee of $1.2 million from future profits, the field will produce at least 3.6 billion barrels of oil, Hunt will be worth $100 million by 1935, making him the richest man in America (see 1936).
Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corp. opens for business January 2 (see 1929). Leroy Grumman has mortgaged his house and invested $16,875, and Leon Swirlbul has put in $8,125. They are the company's largest stockholders, and their first contract is to repair an amphibian Loening Air Yacht, a plane for sportsman-pilots that is no longer being serviced by Loening (see politics, 1931).
Amelia Earhart flies her Lockheed Vega at 171 miles per hour January 15, setting a new women's speed record.
British aviatrix Amy Johnson, 27, arrives in Australia May 24 after making the first solo flight by a woman from London. She has piloted her de Havilland Tiger Moth through a thick fog over the English Channel and been forced twice by violent storms to land—once in a Near Eastern desert, once between Java and Surabaya. Johnson has had to lay over in Rangoon and Bangkok for repairs. She follows the 19½-day flight to Australia with a record 6-day solo flight from England to India.
The Airmail Act (McNary-Watres Act) approved by Congress April 29 as an amendment to the 1925 Contract Air Mail Act (Kelly Act) gives the postmaster general almost dictatorial powers over America's fledgling airlines (see 1934).
Transcontinental and Western Air (TWA) is created July 16 by a forced merger of three domestic airlines (Western Air Express, Transcontinental Air Transport, and Pittsburgh Aviation Industries) and receives a government mail contract. The company uses Ford Trimotor planes to cut flying time between New York and San Francisco to 28 hours (see 1926; Hughes, 1939).
American Airlines has its beginnings in American Airways, founded by Auburn motorcar boss Errett L. Cord, who merges Robertson Aircraft with other small firms (see Lindbergh, 1926). Needing 20 single-engine, 12-seat planes for a Midwest shuttle service, Cord starts a company to produce the planes; he puts his brother-in-law Donald Smith in charge; and Smith hires Gerard Vultee from Lockheed, setting him up in a small hangar at Grand Central Airport, Los Angeles (see 1934; Vultee, 1928).
Three transcontinental air routes are in operation by year's end, but passenger flights are irregular.
Pan Am begins flying to South America (see 1929; 1935).
Aviation pioneer Glenn H. Curtiss dies at Buffalo, N.Y., July 23 at age 52; Chance Vought of septicemia at Southampton, N.Y., July 25 at age 40. His Chance Vought division of United Aircraft has grown to 700 men, up from just 12 in 1917.
Australian pilot Charles Kingsford Smith, now 33, lands with his three-man crew at Harbor Grace, Newfoundland, July 25 after a transatlantic flight from Portmarnock, Ireland.
Texas-born pilot Wiley Post, 31, wins the first Bendix Trophy Air Race, flying the Lockheed Vega Winnie Mae owned by his Oklahoma oilman employer Floyd C. Hall. Bendix has offered a prize for the winner of the Los Angeles-to-Chicago race that will become a transcontinental race next year (see Bendix, 1929; Post, 1931).
The British dirigible R-101 burns October 5 northwest of Paris at Beauvais on her maiden voyage to Australia. The disaster takes 54 lives.
Braniff Airways is incorporated at Oklahoma City November 3 by Salina, Kansas-born businessman Thomas E. (Elmer) Braniff, 46; its initial capitalization of $10,000 will be increased next year to $100,000 (see 1934).
Aristotle Socrates Onassis, 29, buys six freighters for $20,000 each as the worldwide economic depression reduces demand for cargo vessels. Built at a cost of $2 million each, the ships are the nucleus of a large fleet for the shrewd Greek tobacco and shipping millionaire, who will buy his first tanker in 1935.
Atlanta's Union Station opens April 18 at Pryor and Wall streets.
An electric passenger train travels on Delaware and Lackawanna tracks between Hoboken and Montclair, N.J., in a test run by Thomas Edison, now 84.
Gyroscope inventor Elmer A. Sperry dies at Brooklyn, N.Y., June 16 at age 69.
General Motors acquires two locomotive manufacturing companies that will give GM a virtual monopoly in the market (see 1961).
The first South American subway line opens October 18 at Buenos Aires; 3,000 men have built the Lacroze line of the Ferrocarril Terminal Central de Buenos Aires in 21 months (see Mexico City, 1970).
The Longview Bridge (later called the Lewis and Clark Bridge) opens March 29 to span the Columbia River in Washington State with nearly a mile of cantilevered steel. Cincinnati-born engineer Joseph B. (Baermann) Strauss, 59, has designed the structure with steel piers (see Golden Gate Bridge, 1937).
The Mid-Hudson Bridge opens August 25 at Poughkeepsie, N.Y., to span the Hudson. Ralph Modjeski, now 69, has designed the suspension bridge, having gained a reputation with the McKinley Bridge at St. Louis, the Broadway Bridge at Portland, Ore., and others, including some at Chicago (see 1926; 1935).
The Detroit-Windsor Tunnel opens to traffic under the Detroit River November 3 to supplement the Ambassador Bridge that opened late last year; it has been built of prefabricated tubes floated over a trench and sunk like sections of pipeline.
The United States has 694,000 miles of paved road, up from 387,000 in 1921, plus 2.31 million miles of dirt road (see 1940).
U.S. motorcar sales drop off sharply, but the country has an average of one passenger car for every 5.5 persons, up from one for every 13 in 1920. Ford sells 1 million Model A cars, down from 2 million last year. Chevrolet sales drop only 5 percent.
Japan has 50,000 motorcars as compared with 23 million in the United States, 18,000 in China, 125,000 in India, 4,822 in Syria.
A 16-cylinder Cadillac is introduced by General Motors, whose founder is sold out by his bankers as Wall Street prices collapse again. W. C. Durant liquidated his fortune in common stocks early last year but plunged back into the market when prices plummeted; his Durant Motors will be liquidated in 1933, and Durant will be personally bankrupt by 1936.
A "differential analyzer" devised by Vannevar Bush and some MIT colleagues is the first analog computer (see Babbage, 1833; 1842; communications [Bush], 1922). It weighs 100 tons, can solve differential equations with as many as 18 variables, and will find widespread use in research and industry, gaining prominence for Bush and for MIT (see Mark I, 1944).
Plexiglass is invented by McGill University research student William Chalmers, whose thermoplastic polymer of methyl methacrylate is light weight and can be bent when heated into any shape desired. It will be marketed in Britain as Perspex.
Union Carbide Corp. introduces Vinylite, a trademarked industrial copolymer that combines vinyl chloride and vinyl acetate (see Semon, 1926). It will become the standard material for phonograph records (see music, 1946).
Dow Chemical Co. produces more than a million pounds of magnesium (see Ethyl, 1924). The price of magnesium has fallen to 48¢/lb., down from $5 in 1917 when it was widely used in flares to illuminate battlefields. Chemist-industrialist Herbert H. Dow dies at Rochester, Minn., October 15 at age 64.
Illinois-born astronomer Clyde W. (William) Tombaugh, 24, at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Ariz., discovers Pluto February 18 and gives the ninth planet its name. Indiana-born astronomer Vesto (Melvin) Slipher, 54, has organized and directed the search for the planet, whose existence was predicted by William H. Pickering, now 72, and the late Percival Lowell.
Harvard astronomer Annie Jump Cannon completes cataloging and classifying some 400,000 astronomical objects. Now 66, the "Census Taker of the Sky" started her work in 1897.
Chicago's Adler Planetarium opens with a projector manufactured by Carl Zeiss of Jena. First planetarium in the Western Hemisphere, it has been built with a gift from local merchant Max Adler.
The Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University is established with an initial $5 million endowment from department store magnate Louis Bamberger, 75, and his sister Mrs. Felix Fuld. Abraham Flexner of 1910 Flexner Report fame has urged them to charter a new type of institution dedicated to "the usefulness of useless knowledge"; it will attract such minds as Albert Einstein, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Wolfgang Pauli, and John von Neumann.
Nuclear physicist Wolfgang Pauli sends a letter to fellow scientists attending a conference at Tübingen suggesting the existence of a new neutral particle that would explain the apparent energy nonconservation in the decay of radioactive materials (see 1925). Other physicists will elaborate Pauli's theory in the next few years and conclude that the new particle Pauli has suggested must be extremely light and interact very weakly (see cyclotron, 1932; neutrino, 1956).
An amateur French antiques collector visits Constantinople and buys the palimpsest discovered in 1906 containing a treatise by the mathematician Archimedes (year approximate). The palimpsest will remain in the family's Paris home until 1991.
Tuberculosis immunization efforts suffer a setback when 249 infants at Lübeck, Germany, receive the BCG vaccine introduced 8 years ago (see 1922); 73 of the vaccinated babies have died by fall, criminal proceedings are instituted against the people responsible for administering the vaccine, but it will be determined that the vaccine was contaminated and that BCG itself was not to blame. Further trials will show that the vaccine is safe and effective.
Tincture of merthiolate gains widespread popularity for painting cuts and scratches. Introduced by Eli Lilly, it had no commercial success until given a little alcohol to make it sting and some vegetable dye to make it show on the skin.
Tums antacid tablets are introduced by the St. Louis firm Lewis Howe Co. Local pharmacist James Howe formulated the mint-flavored product in his basement laboratory 2 years ago, using calcium carbonate from crushed limestone to relieve his wife's indigestion; he kept a supply in an old Mason jar, the couple took it along on an ocean voyage, and when other passengers had upset stomachs Howe let some of them have his tablets, which will later be used also as a source of dietary calcium.
The U.S. Veterans Administration created by Congress through the efforts of the 11-year-old American Legion will administer hospitals and other facilities.
Rastafarians in Jamaica, British West Indies, hail the new Ethiopian emperor, Haile Selassie, as the living God, the fulfillment of a prophesy by Marcus M. Garvey, who is said to have declared, "Look to Africa, where a black king shall be crowned, for the day of deliverance is near" (see politics [Garvey], 1924). Members of the new sect will withdraw from Jamaican society, call white religion a rejection of black culture, insist that blacks must leave "Babylon" (the Western world) and return to Africa, and contribute to Jamaican culture (notably to the island's reggae music), but Rasta extremists will traffic in ganja (marijuana) and engage in acts of violence.
Intellectual Growth in Young Children by English Freudian education specialist Susan Brierley Isaacs (née Fairhurst), 45, challenges some of the ideas set forth by Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget, now 34, in his 1926 book The Child's Conception of the World. Isaacs ran an experimental progressive school at Cambridge from 1924 to 1927, letting children learn for themselves rather than instructing them, and allowing them to give vent to emotional expression rather than imposing strict discipline. She will head the department of child development at London's Institute of Education from 1933 to 1943.
Some 4.3 percent of Americans are illiterate, down from 20 percent in 1870. The figure will fall to 2.4 percent in the next 30 years but nearly 5 million Americans will remain illiterate.
Fun With Dick and Jane is published by the Chicago firm Scott, Foresman & Co., whose series of reading primers will be used in U.S. schools for decades to help first-and second-graders learn to read.
Britain raises the age for leaving school. The House of Commons votes November 11 to require that students remain until age 15 and provides maintenance grants for parents who are hard pressed to let their children attend school for an extra year.
President Hoover gives a speech November 19 calling for a mobilization of the best thought in the nation to prepare a program that will prepare American youth for "a complexity of life for which there is no precedent."
The Daily Worker begins publication at London January 1. The Communist Party organ will continue until 1941 and become the Morning Star in 1966.
The Moscow News begins publication with Anna Louise Strong as editor-publisher. The English-language paper is for foreigners.
The Times of London publishes its first crossword puzzle February 1 (seeSunday Express, 1924).
The afternoon paper Paris-Soir begins publication under the direction of textile mogul Jean Prouvost, now 45, whose publishing ventures will rival his textile enterprises (seeParis-Match, 1938).
William Randolph Hearst owns 33 U.S. newspapers, whose circulation totals 11 million.
"Mickey Mouse" debuts January 12 in the New York Mirror with drawings by Ub Iwerks, copy by Walt Disney (see film, 1928). Iwerks tells Disney's older brother Roy January 21 that he wants to leave the company, Roy buys his 20 percent share of the company for $2,920, but Iwerks will return within a few years.
"Joe Palooka" debuts April 19 in 20 U.S. newspapers. Wilkes-Barre, Pa.-born cartoonist Hammond Edward "Ham" Fisher, 28, met a boxer while working as a teenaged journalist, began developing the cartoon character based on the boxer's grammar and gentle personality, worked until last year as an advertising salesman for the New York Daily News, and has helped secure 40 newspaper clients for the McNaught Syndicate's troubled comic strip "Dixie Dugan." His new strip is an instant success, Fisher will use the virtuous "Palooka" to represent traditional virtues, and more than 500 newspapers will carry it by the late 1930s (see 1940).
"Blondie" debuts September 8. Chicago cartoonist Murat Bernard "Chic" Young, 29, has been drawing "Dumb Dora." His jazz-age flapper heroine is married to playboy Dagwood Bumstead, their antics will make "Blondie" the most widely syndicated of all cartoon strips, more than 1,600 U.S. newspapers plus some foreign papers will carry the strip, and the huge sandwiches created by Bumstead on evening forays to the refrigerator will become widely known as "dagwoods."
Fortune magazine begins publication at New York in February with writers who include Archibald MacLeish. The new Henry Luce business monthly has 182 pages in its first issue and sells at newsstands for $1 ($10 per year by subscription) (seeTime, 1923; LIFE, 1936; commerce [Fortune "500"], 1954).
Former Ladies' Home Journal editor Edward W. Bok dies at Lake Wales, Fla., January 9 at age 66 and is buried at the base of the "Singing Tower" carillon that he built there last year; New Republic magazine editor Herbert D. Croly dies at Santa Barbara, Calif., May 17 at age 61. His opposition to the vindictive terms of the Versailles Peace Treaty 11 years ago cut the readership of his magazine in half and he has lost interest in public affairs.
Philadelphia Storage Battery Co. (later Philco) becomes the world's largest manufacturer of radio sets, having paid off its loan and grossed $34 million at a time when nearly 10 percent of Americans are unemployed (see 1926). The company purchases Transitone Co., which has pioneered development of automobile radios (see 1932).
The first practical radio for automobiles is introduced in June by the 2-year-old Chicago firm Galvin Manufacturing Co., which will become Motorola Inc. in 1947. Patented August 7, it has been invented by Hannibal, Mo.-born high-school dropout William P. (Powell) Lear, 28, who has lacked the funds to produce the radio himself, but has persuaded Paul Galvin to manufacture the receiver that can play in a moving car without interference from the car's electrical system. Its tuner is mounted on the steering column, it is twice the size of a tackle box, its bulky speaker is stuffed under the floorboards, and its audio qualities leave much to be desired, but car owners buy the new radios from automotive parts distributors and tire dealers.
U.S. radio set sales increase to 13.5 million, up from 75,000 in 1921. U.S. advertisers spend $60 million on radio commercials (see 1922; FCC, 1934).
Lowell Thomas begins a nightly radio network news program September 29 (see Nonfiction, 1924). Now 38, Thomas said in 1922, "The radio craze . . . will die out in time," but his program will run on both NBC and CBS for a year, NBC will carry it from 1931 to 1946, CBS from 1946 until May 14, 1976.
Nonfiction: The Revolt of the Masses (La rebelion de las masas) by José Ortega y Gasset; "A Room of One's Own" (essay) by Virginia Woolf champions the cause of independence for women: "Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of a man at twice its natural size"; Liberty in the Modern State by Harold J. Laski; The Skeptical Biologist by Joseph Needham; Social Organization of Manua and Growing Up in New Guinea by Margaret Mead; The Human Mind by Menninger Clinic psychiatrist Karl Menninger explains that psychiatry is a legitimate and relatively uncomplicated source of help for mentally disturbed persons, it popularizes a previously arcane subject, and although written for medical students finds a wide market (see 1925); Seductio Ad Absurdum: The Principles and Practices of Seduction—A Beginner's Guide by St. Louis-born author Emily Hahn, 25; The Greek Way by former Bryn Mawr Preparatory School headmistress Edith Hamilton, 63; Spinoza's Critique of Religion (Die religionskritik Spinozas als grundlage seiner Bibelwissenschaft) by Berlin philosopher Leo Strauss, 32; The Practice of Philosophy by Radcliffe philosophy professor Susanne (Katherina) Langer (née Knauth), 34; Bring 'Em Back Alive by Texas-born zoo and circus supplier Frank Buck, 46, who has been making expeditions since 1911 to capture wild birds and animals.
Fiction: As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner; Flowering Judas (stories) by Texas-born author Katherine Anne Porter, 40; Brief Candles by Aldous Huxley; Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh; Thy Servant a Dog (stories) by Rudyard Kipling; The Apes of God by Wyndham Lewis; The Kaiser's Coolies (Des Kaisers Kulis) and Twelve Men and a Captain (Zwölf Mann und ein Kapitän) by Berlin-born novelist Theodor Plievier, 38, who participated as a communist in the German Navy mutiny of 1918; East Wind, West Wind by West Virginia-born novelist Pearl Comfort Sydenstricker Buck, 38, who was raised in China by her Presbyterian missionary parents and wrote the book aboard ship en route to America; Mitsou by Colette; Dance Night by Dawn Powell; Cimarron by Edna Ferber, who writes, "If American politics are too dirty for women to take part in, there's something wrong with American politics"; Laughing Boy by New York-born novelist Oliver (Hazard Perry) La Farge, 28, who writes about the Navajo; Destry Rides Again by Seattle-born pulp fiction writer Max Brand (Frederick Schiller Faust), 38, who averages roughly two books per month; "When the Atoms Failed" (story) by New Jersey-born science fiction pioneer John W. (Wood) Campbell (Jr.), 20, who gives one of the first depictions of computers; Enter the Saint by Leslie Charteris, who will emigrate to America in 1932 and work as a Hollywood screenwriter; It Walks by Night by Uniontown, Pa.-born English detective novelist John Dickson Carr, 25, who will sometimes write as Carter Dickson or Carr Dickson; The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett; Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie, whose detective Jane Marple will appear in 14 other mystery novels; Seeds of Murder by Boston-born novelist (Francis) Van Wyck Mason, 28, who introduces the army intelligence officer Hugh North; While the Patient Slept by Lincoln, Neb.-born mystery novelist Mignon G. (Good) Eberhart, 31.
Novelist D. H. Lawrence dies of tuberculosis at Vence, France, March 2 at age 44. His ashes are buried in the mountains outside Taos, N.M.; A. Conan Doyle dies at Crowborough, Sussex, July 7 at age 71.
Poetry: "Ash Wednesday" by T. S. Eliot is a religious poem of self-abnegation (the first three parts are published in French, U.S., and English magazines. Eliot's poem Marina appears in book form as one of his "Ariel Poems"; 20 Poems by Stephen Spender; "A Dream in the Luxembourg" by Richard Aldington; The Cantos (III) by Ezra Pound; The Bridge by Hart Crane, who has taken the 47-year-old Brooklyn Bridge as a symbol of man's creative power. The book's many poems explore the essence of the American destiny, but its mixed reception contributes to the poet's growing insecurity; John Deth by Conrad Aiken; The Gates of the Compass: A Poem in Four Parts, Together with Twenty-Two Shorter Pieces by Robert Hillyer; Chelsea Rooming House by Milwaukee-born poet-critic Horace Gregory, 32, who expresses scorn for middle-class mores; Intellectual Things by Worcester, Mass.-born poet Stanley (Jasspon) Kunitz, 25; The New Found Land by Archibald MacLeish; Les Poésies de Gérard d'Houville by French poet Marie Louise Antoinette de Heredia, 55, who has written under a nom de plume; Metropolitan Museum by Robert Guy Choquette; "Spring Comes to Murray Hill" by New York poet Ogden Nash, 28, appears in the New Yorker magazine May 3. Nash will soon join the magazine's staff and be celebrated for such verses as "Candy is dandy/ But liquor is quicker," which will often be misattributed to Dorothy Parker; Laments for the Living by Dorothy Parker.
Poet Laureate Robert Seymour Bridges dies at Boar's Hill, Oxford, April 21 at age 85.
Juvenile: The Cat Who Went to Heaven by Buffalo, N.Y.-born author Elizabeth (Jane) Coatsworth, 38, is based on a Japanese folk story; The Secret of the Old Clock by Carolyn Keene (Iowa-born author Mildred Wirt Benson [née Augustine], 25) features the adventures of 16-year-old amateur detective Nancy Drew, who motors about in a blue roadster. The first woman to receive a master's degree from the University of Iowa, Benson has written the book on an old Underwood typewriter, received about $125, will write 22 more of the first 30 Nancy Drew mysteries, and will never receive any royalties from the Stratemeyer Syndicate (see 1899), whose founder, Edward Stratemeyer, has died at Newark, N.J., May 10 at age 67 after developing the Nancy Drew character. His daughter Harriet Stratemeyer Adams, 37, takes over the business of producing Bobbsey Twins books under the name Laura Lee Hope, Tom Swift books under the name Victor Appleton, Hardy Boys books under the name Franklin W. Dixon, and Rover Boys books as well. Insisting on moral stories with no epithets stronger than "gosh," Adams will update the Nancy Drew mysteries beginning in 1959 (changing their heroine's age to 18 so that she may drive legally in every state, eliminating ethnic slurs) and will still be writing when she dies in March 1982 at age 89.
Painting: American Gothic by Grant Wood portrays his sister and his dentist as rural farm folk and helps launch the American native regionalist style; Early Sunday Morning by Edward Hopper; American Landscape by Charles Sheeler, whose almost photographic picture of Ford Motor Company's Rouge plant is an industrial scene with only the sky and a dead canal to suggest nature; Out Back of Marie's II by Georgia O'Keeffe; Hogs Killing Rattlesnake by John Steuart Curry; Self-Portrait by New York painter Lee Krasner (Lena Krassner), 22; God Created Man in His Own Image and Into the World Came a Soul Called Ida by Illinois-born painter Ivan (Le Lorraine) Albright, 33, whose ultra-realistic work portrays an aging prostitute looking into a mirror; Fall of Cuernevaca and Cortez and his Mercenaries by Diego Rivera for Mexico City's Palacio de Cortez; Cold Buffet by George Grosz; Self-Portrait with Saxophone by Max Beckmann; Crucifixion and Seated Bather by Pablo Picasso; Spectre du Soir by Salvador Dalí.
Sculpture: Tiare by Henri Matisse.
Kansas City's Nelson Gallery is founded with a $13 million trust fund set up by the late Kansas City Star editor-publisher Col. William Rockhill Nelson, who died in 1915 at age 74 (see 1880). The art gallery will be housed in the Nelson mansion surrounded by 20 acres of lawn and be noted for its Oriental collection, but the benefactor's will stipulates that no work may be purchased until the artist has been dead for at least 30 years.
A London Graphic writer coins the phrase "candid camera" to describe the intimate and often irreverent Leica portraits of statesmen by Berlin-born photographer Erich Solomon, 44, who in 1932 will take a rare (and illegal) picture of the U.S. Supreme Court in session (see Leica, 1925).
Flashbulbs patented September 23 by German inventor Johannes Ostermeier have aluminum foil in place of magnesium (see magnesium flares, 1898). A small filament in the Vacublitz "flash lamp" heats up when connected to a source of electricity, the heat ignites foil inside the bulb, and the foil flashes to produce a fireless, smokeless, odorless, noiseless (but blinding) light. Similar bulbs have been introduced 7 weeks earlier by General Electric.
Theater: Waterloo Bridge by Robert Sherwood 1/6 at New York's Fulton Theater, with Glenn Hunter, Cora Witherspoon, 64 perfs.; Children of Darkness by New York playwright Edwin Justus Mayer, 33, 1/7 at New York's Biltmore Theater, with Basil Sydney, Charles Dalton, J. Kerby Hawkes, Eugene Powers, Mary Ellis, Walter Kingsford, 79 perfs.; Tonight We Improvise (Questa sera Si recite a soggetto) by Luigi Pirandello 1/25 at Königsberg's Neues Schauspielhaus, 4/14 at Turin's Teatro di Turino; The Bathhouse (Banya) by Vladimir Mayakovski 1/30 at Leningrad's People's House, 3/16 at Moscow's Meyerhold Theater; As You Desire Me (Come tu mi vuoi) by Pirandello 2/18 at Milan's Teatro de Filodrammatici; The Green Pastures by Marc Connelly 2/21 at New York's Mansfield Theater, with Charles H. Moore, Wesley Hill, New York-born ingénue Juanita Hall, 28, Josephine Byrd in an adaptation of a 1928 collection of tales by Roark Bradford, now 34, depicting heaven, the angels, and the Lord as envisioned by a black country preacher for a Louisiana congregation, 640 perfs.; Hotel Universe by Philip Barry 4/14 at New York's Martin Beck Theater, with Ruth Ford, Glenn Anders, Earle Larimore, Morris Carnovsky, 81 perfs.; Moscow Is Burning (Moskva golid) by Vladimir Mayakovski 4/21 at Moscow's Circus I (Gostsirk I); The Barretts of Wimpole Street by Java-born English playwright Rudolph Besier, 52, at England's Malvern Festival (the play will open next year at New York's Empire Theater with Katharine Cornell and have 370 performances); Private Lives by Noël Coward 9/24 at London's Phoenix Theatre, with Coward, Gertrude Lawrence, Laurence (Kerr) Olivier, 23, Coward's song "Someday I'll Find You," 101 perfs.; Once in a Lifetime by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart 9/24 at New York's Music Box Theater, with Kaufman, Spring Byington, 401 perfs.; The Greeks Had a Word for It by Zoë Akins 9/25 at New York's Sam H. Harris Theater, with Dorothy Hall, Verree Teasdale, and Muriel Kirkland as three ex-Follies girls on the make, Ernest Glendenning, 253 perfs.; Mississippi by Georg Kaiser 10/19 at Frankfurt am Main's Schauspielhaus; The Sailors of Cattaro (Die Matrosen von Cattaro) by German playwright Friedrich Wolf, 42, 11/8 at Berlin's Lobe Theater; Grand Hotel by W. A. Drake 11/13 at New York's National Theater, with Henry Hull, Sam Jaffe, Russian-born actress Eugenie Leontovich, 30, as the dancer Grusinskaya in an adaptation of the Vicki Baum novel, 459 perfs.; Tonight or Never by Lili Halvany 11/18 at New York's Belasco Theater, with Helen Gahagan, Macon, Ga.-born actor Melvyn Douglas, 29, 232 perfs.; Alison's House by novelist-playwright Susan Glaspell 12/1 at New York's Civic Repertory Theater, 41 perfs.; The Measures Taken (Die Massnahme) by Bertolt Brecht 12/10 at Berlin's Grosses Gaspielhaus (a short play in eight scenes); The Shoemaker's Prodigal Wife (La Zapatera prodigiosa) by Federico García Lorca 12/24 at Madrid's Teatro Español.
Theater owner Abraham Lincoln Erlanger dies of cancer at New York March 7 at age 69; showman Edward F. Albee of heart failure at the Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach, Fla., March 11 at age 72; playwright-poet Vladimir Mayakovski by his own hand at Moscow April 14 at age 36; actor Charles S. Gilpin at Eldridge Park, N.J., near Trenton May 6 at age 50; actress Clare Eames at London November 8 at age 34.
Los Angeles hails the opening of the Greek Theater in Griffith Park September 25.
Radio: The Lone Ranger 1/20 on Detroit's WXYZ begins with the overture from the 1829 Rossini opera Guillaume Tell and an announcer saying, "A fiery horse with the speed of light, a cloud of dust and a hearty 'Hi-yo Silver'—the Lone Ranger rides again." The serial has been developed from Curly Edwards and the Cowboys by James E. Jewell, 23, who will soon give his masked hero an Indian friend—Tonto—who will call the Lone Ranger "Kemo Sabe" (trusting brave) as the program takes listeners "back to those thrilling days of yesteryear"; Death Valley Days 7/30 on NBC Blue Network stations. New York advertising writer Ruth Cornwall Woodman has researched background for the show by visiting Panamint City and introduces "The Old Ranger" to give the story authenticity (to 1945); The First Nighter Program 12/4 on NBC (the show emanates not from Broadway but rather from NBC studios in Chicago's new Merchandise Mart).
The Pantages Theater opens June 30 at 6233 Hollywood Boulevard for the premiere of Henry Beaumont's Floradora Girl, with Marion Davies (part has been filmed in Technicolor). Designed in art deco style by architect B. Marcus Priteca and built at a cost of $1.25 million, the Pantages has the world's most elaborate sound equipment, seats about 2,700, offers a short stage play and orchestra selections as well as films that include a Walt Disney cartoon and Metronome News, will be taken over in 1949 by Howard Hughes, serve as the site of the Academy Awards from 1949 to 1959, and become a legitimate theater in 1977.
U.S. moviegoing increases as all studios rush to make "talkies" and a new Vitascope widens theater screens.
Films: Luis Buñuel's L'Age d'Or with Gaston Modot, Max Ernst; Lewis Milestone's All Quiet on the Western Front with Minneapolis-born actor Lew Ayres, 21; Aleksandr Dovzhenko's Earth with Semyon Svashenko, Stepan Shkurat. Also: D. W. Griffith's Abraham Lincoln with Walter Huston, Una Merkel; Clarence Brown's Anna Christie with Greta Garbo ("Garbo Talks," advertisements cry), screenplay by Frances Marion based on the Eugene O'Neill play; George Hill's The Big House with Chester Morris, Robert Montgomery, Wallace Beery, screenplay by Frances Marion; Raoul Walsh's The Big Trail with Iowa-born actor John Wayne (originally Marion Michael Morrison), 23, who hates horses but will star in dozens of Westerns; Howard Hawks's The Dawn Patrol with Richard Barthelmess, Douglas Fairbanks Jr.; Robert Z. Leonard's The Divorcée with Norma Shearer, Chester Morris; Howard Hughes's Hell's Angels with Ben Lyon, now 29, Kansas City-born actress Jean Harlow (originally Harlean Carpentier), 19; Henry King's Lightnin' with Will Rogers, Louise Dresser, Los Angeles-born actor Joel McCrea, 24; Mervyn LeRoy's Little Caesar with Edward G. Robinson; George Hill's Min and Bill with Marie Dressler, Wallace Beery, screenpay by Frances Marion; Josef von Sternberg's Morocco with Marlene Dietrich, Gary Cooper, Adolphe Menjou; Alfred Hitchcock's Murder with Herbert Marshall, 40, Norah Baring; Robert Milton's Outward Bound with London-born actor Leslie Howard (originally Leslie Stainer), 37; Richard Wallace's The Right to Love with Ruth Chatterton is the first picture made with a new process that eliminates popping, cracking, grating, and other surface noises; George Cukor and Cyril Gardner's The Royal Family of Broadway with Racine, Wis.-born actor Frederic March (originally Frederic McIntyre Bickel), 33, Ina Claire; John Cromwell's Tom Sawyer with Jackie Coogan, Mitzi Green; G. W. Pabst's Westfront 1918.
Mabel Normand dies of tuberculosis at a Monrovia, Calif. sanitarium February 23 at age 36 (scandals in 1922 and 1924 ended her career); Lon Chaney dies of throat cancer at Los Angeles August 26 at age 47 (he is remembered as "the man with a thousand faces" because of his ingenious make-up devices); actor Milton Sills dies of a heart attack September 10 at age 48 while playing tennis at his Santa Barbara home.
Hollywood musical: John Murray Anderson's King of Jazz with Paul Whiteman and His Orchestra, the Rhythm Boys (Bing Crosby, Al Rinker, Harry Barris), opening sequence by New Rochelle, N.Y.-born Universal Studios animator Walter Lantz, 30, songs that include "It Happened in Monterey" by Mabel Wayne, lyrics by William Rose, and "Rhapsody in Blue" by George Gershwin. The film is in early two-tone Technicolor.
The cartoon Sinkin' in the Bathtub released in April is the first Looney Toons animated film. Animators Hugh Harmon and Rudolf Ising parted with Walt Disney last summer, created a pilot film featuring synchronized speech, called it Bosko the Talk-Ink Kid, and have gone into partnership with Philadelphia-born title designer Leon Schlesinger, 46, to create the 8-minute musical adventure starring Bosko and his girlfriend Honey. Jack Warner has advised Schlesinger to get involved in animation and Schlesinger has persuaded Warner Brothers to send the short subject out to exhibitors in competition with Disney's Merrie Melodies cartoons (see 1933).
Texas-born animator Frederick Bean "Tex" Avery, 23, goes to work for Universal Studios' Walter Lantz Cartoons, with whom he will remain until 1935, turning out fast-paced, wackily surrealistic, and gag-loaded short subjects before moving to Warner Brothers.
Stage musicals: Strike Up the Band 1/14 at New York's Times Square Theater, with Boston-born comedian Robert Edwin "Bobby" Clark, 42, Red Nichols's Band (which includes Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, Jimmy Dorsey, and Jack Teagarden), music by George Gershwin, lyrics by Ira Gershwin, book by George S. Kaufman, songs that include "I've Got a Crush on You," and the title song, 191 perfs.; Nine-Fifteen Revue 2/11 at New York's George M. Cohan Theater, with Ruth Etting, music by Buffalo, N.Y.-born cantor's son Harold Arlen (originally Hyman Arluck), 24, lyrics by Ted Koehler, songs that include "Get Happy," 7 perfs.; Lew Leslie's International Revue 2/15 at New York's Majestic Theater, with Gertrude Lawrence, Harry Richman, Esther Muir, ballet star Anton Dolin, music by Jimmy McHugh, lyrics by Dorothy Fields, songs that include "Exactly Like You," "On the Sunny Side of the Street," 96 perfs. (the show cost $200,000 to mount but is so long that the second act does not begin until 11 o'clock); Simple Simon 2/18 at the Ziegfeld Theater, with Ed Wynn, Ruth Etting, music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Lorenz Hart, songs that include "Ten Cents a Dance," "I Still Believe in You," 135 perfs.; The Love Race 6/25 at London's Gaiety Theatre, with music by Jack Clarke, 237 perfs.; Fine and Dandy 9/23 at New York's Erlanger Theater, with Joe Cook, Eleanor Powell, Dave Chasen, music by Kay Swift, lyrics by Paul James (Swift's husband, James Paul Warburg), book by Donald Ogden Stewart, songs that include "Can This Be Love?" and the title song, 255 perfs.; Girl Crazy 10/14 at the Alvin Theater, with Astoria-N.Y.-born singer Ethel Merman (originally Zimmerman), 21, Missouri-born singer-dancer Ginger Rogers (originally Virginia Katherine McMath), 19, music by George Gershwin, lyrics by Walter Donaldson and Ira Gershwin, a pit orchstra whose members include Benny Goodman and Jack Teagarden, songs that include "I Got Rhythm," "Embraceable You," "Little White Lies," "But Not for Me," "Bidin' My Time," 272 perfs.; Three's a Crowd 10/15 at the Selwyn Theater, with Libby Holman, Fred Allen, Clifton Webb, dancer Tamara Geva, songs that include "Body and Soul" by New York-born composer Johnny Green, 22 (who has dropped out of Harvard after studying economics), lyrics by Robert Sour, 25, Edward Heyman, 23, and Frank Eyton plus "Something to Remember You By" and "The Moment I Saw You" by Arthur Schwartz, lyrics by Howard Dietz, 272 perfs.; The Garrick Gaieties 10/16 at the Guild Theater, with Sterling Holloway, Waterbury, Conn.-born ingénue Rosalind Russell, 23, Philadelphia-born ingénue Imogene Coca, 21, Philip Loeb, songs that include "I'm Only Human After All" by Russian-born composer Vernon Duke (Vladimir Dukelsky), 27, lyrics by E. Y. Harburg and Ira Gershwin, "Out of Breath and Scared to Death of You" by Johnny Mercer and Everett Miller, 158 perfs.; Lew Leslie's Blackbirds of 1930 10/22 at the Royale Theater, with Chester, Pa.-born actress-jazz singer Ethel Waters (née Howard), 34, Cecil Mack's Choir, songs that include "Memories of You" by Eubie Blake, lyrics by Andy Razaf, 57 perfs.; Sweet and Low 11/17 at the 46th Street Theater, with George Jessel, Fanny Brice, songs that include "Outside Looking In" by Harry Archer and Edward Ellison, "Cheerful Little Earful" by Harry Warren, Ira Gershwin, and Billy Rose, 184 perfs.; Smiles 11/18 at the Ziegfeld Theater, with Marilyn Miller, English-born, Cleveland-raised comedian Bob Hope (originally Leslie Townes Hope), 27, New Rochelle-born comedian Eddie Foy Jr., 25, Fred and Adele Astaire, songs that include "Time on My Hands" by Vincent Youmans, lyrics by Harold Adamson and Polish-born writer Mack Gordon, 26, "You're Driving Me Crazy" by Walter Donaldson, 63 perfs.; Ever Green 12/3 at London's Adelphi Theatre, with comedienne Jessie Matthews, now 23, her husband Sonnie Hale, book by Benn W. Levy, music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Lorenz Hart, songs that include "Dancing on the Ceiling," 254 perfs.; The New Yorkers 12/8 at B.S. Moss's Broadway Theater, with Hope Williams, dancer Ann Pennington, comedian Jimmy Durante, dancer Lew Clayton, singer Eddie Jackson, music and lyrics by Cole Porter, book from a story by songwriter E. Ray Goetz and New Yorker magazine cartoonist Peter Arno, music and lyrics by Cole Porter, songs that include "Take Me Back to Manhattan," "I Happen to Like New York," "Love for Sale," 168 perfs.
Opera: The Nose 1/13 at Leningrad, with music by Dmitri Shostakovich (who includes an orchestral sneeze and other novel effects), libretto from a story by Nikolai Gogol; Von heute auf morgen (From Today until Tomorrow) 2/1 at Frankfurt's Municipal Theater, with music by Arnold Schoenberg; Neuesvom Tage (The News of the Day) 6/8 at Kroll's Theater, Berlin, with music by Paul Hindemith. Swedish tenor Jussi (originally Johan Monatan) Björling, 19, makes his operatic debut 7/21 at Stockholm's Royal Theater singing the role of the Lamplighter in the 1893 Puccini opera Manon Lescaut.
Soprano Emmy Destinn dies at Budejovice, Czechoslovakia, January 28 at age 52; soprano Dame Emma Albani at London April 3 at age 82.
Ballet: The Golden Age (Zolotoy Vyek) 10/26 at Leningrad, with music by Dmitri Shostakovich.
First performances: Suite for Orchestra by Walter Piston 3/28 at Boston's Symphony Hall; Symphony No. 2 (Romantic) by Howard Hanson 11/28 at Boston's Symphony Hall; Piano Concertino by English composer Elizabeth Maconchy, 23, is played at Prague. Her suite The Land is played at the Proms in London.
The BBC forms its own symphony orchestra under conductor Adrian Boult, 41 (see Royal Philharmonic, 1932).
Nazi thug Horst Wessel dies of blood poisoning in a Berlin hospital February 23 at age 22. Painter Sol Epstein, tailor Peter Stoll, and barber Hans Ziegler will be convicted of having shot Wessel the night of January 14 in a street brawl over a "Lucie of Anderplatz," the Nazis will make a martyr of Wessel, and his "Horst-Wessel-Lied," set to music plagiarized from a Hamburg waterfront ballad will be the Nazi anthem, containing such lines as "When Jewish blood drips off your trusted pen-knife/ We march ahead with twice as steady step."
Popular songs: "Georgia on My Mind" by Hoagy Carmichael, lyrics by Stuart Gorrell; "When It's Sleepy Time Down South" by Leon Rene, Otis Rene, and Clarence Muse; "My Baby Just Cares for Me" by Gus Kahn and Walter Donaldson; "Dream a Little Dream of Me" by F. Andrée and W. Schwandt, lyrics by Gus Kahn; "Three Little Words" by Harry Ruby, lyrics by Bert Kalmar (for the film Amos 'n'Andy); "Walkin' My Baby Back Home" by Roy Turk, Fred E. Ahlert, Harry Richman; "Little White Lies" by Walter Donaldson; "Sing You Sinners" by W. Franke Harling, lyrics by Sam Coslow; "Them There Eyes" by Maceo Pinkard, William Tracey, and Doris Tauber; "I'm Confessing that I Love You" by Doc Dougherty and Ellis Reynolds; "You Brought a New Kind of Love to Me" by Sammy Fain, lyrics by Irving Kahal and Pierre Norman (for the film The Big Pond with Maurice Chevalier); "Beyond the Blue Horizon" by Richard A. Whiting and W. Franke Harling, lyrics by Leo Robin (for the film Monte Carlo).
Mexico City-born composer-vocalist Agustín Lara, 33, makes his radio debut September 18 with the "Hour Intime de Agustín Lara," launching a career in which he will write 7,000 songs and an operetta.
Composer Henry Creamer dies at New York October 14 at age 51.
Gallant Fox wins racing's Triple Crown by taking the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness, and the Belmont Stakes.
The Irish Sweepstakes (Irish Hospitals' Sweepstakes) authorized by the government at Dublin benefits the nation's hospitals. A private trust operates the lottery worldwide, ticket stubs are returned to Ireland, where they are drawn from a barrel and matched with the names of horses running in a major British or Irish race, with the largest prizes going to ticket holders whose horses have come in first, second, or third, but many tickets are counterfeited, and their sale is illegal in the United States (they will nevertheless be smuggled in and more revenue will come from illegal sales in America than from legal sales anywhere else) (see 1987).
Bobby Jones wins golf's "Grand Slam," taking the British and U.S. Open and Amateur tournaments in a feat that no other golfer will match in this century.
Binghamton, N.Y.-born world heavyweight champion Jack Sharkey (originally Josef Paul Cukoshay), 27, fouls German contender Max Schmeling, 24, in the fourth round of a title bout at New York June 12. Schmeling wins the title but will lose it back to Sharkey in 1932.
Bill Tilden, now 37, wins in men's singles at Wimbledon, Helen Wills Moody in women's singles; John H. Doeg, 21, wins in men's singles at Forest Hills, Betty Nuthall, 19, (Br) in women's singles (the first non-American U.S. champion).
The Philadelphia Athletics win the World Series, defeating the St. Louis Cardinals 4 games to 2.
Uruguay wins the first World Cup football (soccer) competition, organized by the Federation Internationale des Associations Football headed by Jules Rimet, 57, of France. (The Coupe du Monde is officially the Jules Rimet Trophy.) Playing against Argentina at Montevideo's new Centenario Stadium, the home team wins 4 to 2, disappointing tens of thousands of Argentinians who have crossed the river to see the game but elating Uruguayans. The sport that has become the working man's passion in Britain and the rest of Europe gains popularity in Latin America as football fever spreads throughout the southern hemisphere.
Sir Thomas Lipton loses his final bid to gain the America's Cup as the U.S. defender Enterprise defeats his Shamrock V 4 to 0.
Schick Dry Shaver, Inc. is founded by Col. Jacob Schick, who will begin production next year at Stamford, Conn., and sell 3,000 of his electric shavers at $25 each (see 1923). Sales will reach 10,381 in 1932, and nearly 1.85 million of his shavers will have been sold by the end of 1937.
Scotch Tape is introduced September 8 by Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing Co. (3M), which ships a roll of the new cellophane tape to Shellmar Products Corp. of Chicago (see 1925). Food producers have begun using cellophane to wrap bread, candy, and other products, and the original purpose of Richard G. Drew's cellophane-based tape is to seal food packages; heat-sealing will soon make that use obsolete, but Scotch brand cellophane tape will find myriad other uses, 3M employee John A. Borden will invent a tape dispenser with a built-in cutting edge in 1932, and the company will make Scotch the brand name for a full line of adhesive tapes.
U.S. tobacco companies produce 123 billion cigarettes, up from fewer than 9 billion in 1910. Hollywood helps make smoking seem sophisticated as film directors have actors light up to fill awkward interludes with "business."
American Tobacco Co. runs an advertisement for its Lucky Strike cigarettes headlined, "20,679 Physicians say Luckies are less irritating."
R. J. Reynolds contracts with E. I. du Pont de Nemours in the fall for cellophane to make its Camel cigarette packs waterproof and gain an advantage over Luckies.
A riot in the Ohio State Penitentiary at Columbus April 21 ends with 317 dead from burns and smoke inhalation after fires have been set in an escape plot; rescuers have tried in vain to reach the victims in their cells while troops subdued 2,000 men in the yard. The prison has held 4,300 prisoners in a facility designed to accommodate 1,500.
Judge Crater disappears August 6. Appointed to administer the affairs of the bankrupt Libby Hotel on New York's Lower East Side, which was appraised at $1.2 million, Tammany lawyer Joseph Force Crater, then 40, arranged for its sale in June of last year for only $75,000 to American Bond and Mortgage Co., which sold it to the city in August for $2.85 million to be used as the site of a proposed Chrystie-Forsyth housing project. Gov. Roosevelt appointed Crater in April to fill an unexpired term on the New York Supreme Court; the judge has interrupted his summer vacation to return to the city, withdrawn all the cash in his bank account (just over $5,000), sold $16,000 worth of stock, dined with friends, stepped into a taxi outside the restaurant, and will not be heard of again (the case will be officially closed in July 1937).
Cleveland's 52-story Terminal Tower building opens January 26. The north wing of the $110 million building, put up by the Van Sweringen brothers, is a hotel that was built several years ago.
Atlanta's $1 million City Hall is completed in March to designs by architect Ten Eyck Brown.
The Chicago Board of Trade building is completed to designs by Holabird and Roche at 141 West Jackson Boulevard; it towers 45 stories above the city and will be the city's tallest structure for 40 years.
Chicago's Merchandise Mart is completed for Marshall Field and Co., whose management will sell it to financier Joseph P. Kennedy in 1945. The world's largest commercial building, the $32 million Mart has 4.2 million square feet of floor space and rises 18 stories with a 25-story tower.
Chicago's Palmolive building is completed to designs by Holabird and Roche. A Lindbergh Beacon flashing 500 miles out over Lake Michigan tops the $6 million, 37-story structure.
Air conditioning is installed in the White House at Washington, D.C., and in the Supreme Court quarters of the Capitol Building, whose House and Senate chambers were air conditioned in 1928 and 1929, respectively (see window units, 1946).
The 77-story Chrysler Building opens May 27 at the northeast corner of New York's Lexington Avenue and 42nd Street and will be the tallest building in the world until the spring of next year. Designed by William Van Alen for automaker Walter Chrysler, the 1,048-foot art deco tower of steel and concrete is the first structure to rise higher than the Eiffel Tower erected at Paris in 1889. It has eight stainless steel American eagles that extend like gargoyles from its 61st-floor level, and the 185-foot spire that caps it is of highly polished nickel chrome stainless steel produced by Nirosta Metalldach of Netphen, Germany, and brought by ship to America. (Architect Van Alen has had to sue Chrysler for his fee and put a mechanic's lien on the building.)
Westin Hotels has its beginnings in a chain of 17 Pacific Northwest hotels founded August 27 under the name Western Hotels. The chain will expand to California in the 1940s and grow to become a global business offering franchises, management, marketing, reservations, and technical services with more than 85 properties in 23 countries.
New York's 44-story Hotel Pierre opens in October on Fifth Avenue at 61st Street, replacing the mansion of Commodore Elbridge T. Gerry. Walter P. Chrysler, E. F. Hutton, and Otto Kahn have financed the structure, designed by Schultze & Weaver for Corsican-born restaurateur Charles Pierre (originally C. P. Casalasco), who has had a restaurant at 230 Park Avenue. The hotel boasts a splendid ballroom and banquet halls, contains more than 700 rooms, and will become recognized as the city's most luxurious hotel (in later years most of its rooms and suites will be leased on a year-round basis).
Congress establishes Carlsbad Caverns National Park on 46,753 acres of underground chambers in southern New Mexico.
Dutch elm disease kills trees in Cleveland and Cincinnati in its first attacks on the American elm ulmus americanus. A fungus first observed in Holland in 1919, the blight has been introduced in elm burl logs shipped from Europe to be made into veneer for furniture. Within 40 years, it will have killed some 13 million trees and be destroying 400,000 elms each year in 30 states and Canada, wilting or shriveling leaves in June or July, yellowing them prematurely, killing young trees sometimes in 1 year and older ones in 3 or 4 as fungus spores are spread by underground root grafts and by two kinds of bark beetles. The loss of America's foremost shade tree will have a marked effect on the environment of many American cities and towns.
An earthquake in Persia May 6 leaves an estimated 2,500 dead; a quake in Italy July 23 kills about 1,430.
The Star of Alaska makes her final trip north from San Francisco to the Alaskan salmon canneries, ending the era of the great Star square-riggers (see California Packing, 1916).
Twenty-five percent of Americans live on or from the farm, many of them on subsistence farms that operate outside the money economy. The total number of U.S. farms is roughly 6.3 million (see 1931).
The U.S. wheat crop comes in at 857 million bushels, despite crop failures due to drought in some areas; the world harvest is 3.8 billion bushels, not counting the Soviet Union, whose crop is sold in great quantities on world markets. Western Australia's wheat crop sets a record that will not be topped for 30 years.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture establishes a Grain Stabilization Corp. to buy up surpluses that are depressing farm prices, but the $500 million appropriated to fund its activities is not nearly sufficient (see Commodity Credit Corp., 1933). Prices of agricultural commodities, especially wheat, are weak all summer and fall as farmers continue to increase their planted acreage. The Grain Stabilization Corp. does not begin buying on the Chicago Board of Trade until November 15.
Major U.S. crops produce barely $8 per acre and the average annual farm income is $400 per family. Tenant farmers work four out of 10 U.S. farms as compared with nine out of 10 British farms, one-third of farms in western Europe, 78 percent of Australian farms, and 40 percent of Argentine farms.
Fifty-five percent of agricultural workers on Soviet farms are employed on collective farms (see Stalin's Five-Year Plan, 1928).
The mortgage debt of U.S. farms is $9.2 billion, up from $3.2 billion in 1910. Farmers have borrowed heavily to buy the machines they need to remain competitive.
California authorities arrest more than 100 farm workers in the Imperial Valley April 14 for trying to unionize (eight will be convicted on charges of "criminal syndicalism").
Twenty percent of the North American workforce is employed in agriculture as compared with 7 percent in Britain, 25 percent in France, 40 percent in Japan.
Farmers in the Corn Belt begin to drop their resistance to hybrid corn as test plantings demonstrate how dramatically the new corn can increase yields (see 1921; Bantam, 1933).
Colorado-Utah rancher James Monaghan, 38, opens northwest Colorado cattle ranges to sheep grazing. He started working as a cowhand in summer roundups at age 16 and now heads the Rio Branco Wool Growers' Association.
Delmarva (Delaware-Maryland-Virginia) Peninsula poultry farmers begin raising the broiler chicken, developed by the Department of Agriculture at Beltsville, Md., and USDA stations in other southern locations. Epidemics of coccidiosis, Marek's disease, Newcastle disease, and other poultry ills will restrict the size of flocks until after the mid-1950s, keeping poultry a seasonal food and limiting consumption of chicken, which will remain costlier than red meat for the next 30 years, but the battery-raised chicken will eventually replace the spring chicken (see Merck coccidiostats, 1956).
Unprecedented drought parches the U.S. South and Midwest. Arkansas is the worst hit, but the lack of rain reduces the Mississippi to a comparative trickle and much of the Ohio River Valley is also deeply affected. President Hoover summons a conference of governors, freight rates are reduced for the counties that have suffered most, but Hoover wants to minimize the role of the federal government and instead encourages efforts by the Red Cross to feed the needy. Private resources are soon overwhelmed, Hoover asks for a congressional appropriation for the Red Cross but specifies that none of the money may be used to feed the needy lest it appear that Congress has funded a dole. The money is used to feed rabbits (critics call them "Hoover's hogs") while people starve. Refusing to admit failure, Hoover argues that the Red Cross handouts do not represent charity. Congress votes a $45 million Drought Relief Act December 20.
The International Apple Shippers Association offers its fruit on credit to jobless men, who will peddle apples on street-corners and help the association dispose of its vast surplus. Some 6,000 men are selling apples on New York sidewalks by November, and more thousands are selling apples in other cities, but by the spring of next year the apple sellers will be called a nuisance and City Hall will order them off the streets of New York.
New York has 82 breadlines by year's end, Philadelphia 80. Small towns in Arkansas and Oklahoma have food riots, with hungry crowds shouting, "We want food," "We will not let our children starve."
Vitamin D is isolated in its crystalline form calciferol and is soon being used to fortify butter, margarine, and other foods (see Steenbock, 1927; Borden's milk, 1933).
Edwin J. Cohn at Harvard Medical School develops a concentrate 100 times as potent as liver for treating pernicious anemia (see 1926; 1929; 1948).
Nobel laureate vitamin pioneer Christiaan Eijkmann dies at Utrecht November 5 at age 72.
The McNary-Mapes Amendment to the 1906 Food and Drug Act adopted July 8 authorizes Food & Drug Administration Standards for canned goods other than meat and poultry products. The National Canners Association has urged the move as a safety measure and to eliminate competition from shoddy goods. Pure-food reformer Harvey W. Wiley has died at Washington, D.C., June 30 at age 85.
The Sunbeam Mixmaster introduced in May comes in ivory with Jadeite green glassware and can be ordered with a large aluminum bowl as well (see Sunbeam, 1910). Designed and patented by Swedish-born Chicago inventor Ivar Jepson, 27, the sleek electric appliance has two detachable beaters whose blades interlock. The motor that drives them is encased in a perpendicular, pivoting arm that extends out over the mixing bowl. Quieter and more stable than earlier machines, the Mixmaster takes America by storm with advertising that promises to spare homemakers the work of beating, blending, chopping, creaming, grinding, mashing, mixing, stirring, and whipping—"the only low-priced food mixer that does all these things." Within 6 years Sunbeam will be selling 300,000 Mixmasters per year, and by 1940 Jepson will have Mixmasters that cannot only grind coffee, make juice, peel fruit, shell peas, and press pasta but also open cans, sharpen knives, and polish silverware (see Waring Blendor, 1936).
The Toastmaster 1-A-2 automatic toaster introduced by McGraw Electric Co. of Elgin, Ill., has one lever and simplifies the toasting process but still toasts only one slice of bread at a time (see 1929; first automatic pop-up toaster, 1926). Sliced bread has increased consumption of toast at breakfast, and a new Toastmaster 1-B-2 can handle two slices, but the slightly less expensive single-slicer will remain in production into the 1950s.
Sliced bread is introduced under the Wonder Bread label by Continental Baking Co. (see 1927; Rohwedder, 1928).
Hostess Twinkies are introduced by Continental Baking Co. Bakery manager James A. Dewar, 33, at Chicago where the company has been turning out little sponge cakes for shoppers to use as the basis of strawberry shortcakes; when the strawberry season ends he hits on the idea of filling the cakes with sugary cream to keep his cake line in production year round. A St. Louis sign advertising "Twinkle Toes Shoes" inspires him to call the cakes Twinkies.
Jiffy brand biscuit mix is introduced by Chelsea Milling Co. of Chelsea, Mich. (see Bisquick, 1931).
Campbell Soup president John T. Dorrance dies of heart disease at his Pomona Farm in Cinnaminson, N.J., September 21 at age 56, leaving his wife and five children $128 million.
Hawaiian pineapple canners pack 4.5 million cases, up 40 percent over last year. Next year they will pack 4.8 million cases, but most of the canned fruit will go unsold and James D. Dole's Hawaiian Pineapple Co. will lose $3,875,000.
Mott's Apple Sauce is introduced by Duffy-Mott Co., which heretofore has produced almost nothing besides cider and vinegar.
Snickers candy bars are introduced by Mars, Inc., which obtains national distribution (see 1923). Frank Mars suspended his business at Minneapolis a few years ago and Schuler Candy Co. of Winona produced Milky Way until last year, when Mars was able to buy back the rights from Schuler for $8,000 and resume production, this time at Chicago. The new peanut-butter nougat and peanut bars, covered in milk chocolate, will grow to become the nation's largest-selling brand (see 1932).
The first true supermarket opens August 4 at Jamaica, Long Island, with advertising that says, "King Kullen, the world's greatest price wrecker—how does he do it?" Former Kroger Grocery and Baking Co. store manager Michael S. Cullen, 46, has written Kroger president William H. Albers suggesting a plan for "monstrous stores . . . away from the high-rent districts" that will attract customers with aggressive price cutting. "I could afford to sell a can of milk at cost if I could sell a can of peas and make two cents," Cullen has written, but another Kroger executive has intercepted his letter. His King Kullen Market in an abandoned garage meets with instant success (see 1923; Big Bear, 1932).
Jack & Charlie's "21" Club opens in January at 21 West 52nd Street, New York. Restaurateur John Karl "Jack" Kriendler, 31, and his accountant cousin Charles "Charlie" Berns, 28, have been operating speakeasy saloons and have in effect been subsidized by the Rockefellers, who have purchased their lease at 42 West 49th Street in order to clear the block for construction of Rockefeller Center. Kriendler and Berns store their illicit liquor behind secret walls and devise an arrangement that permits the bartender to push a button at the first sign of a raid by federal Prohibition enforcement agents, tilting the shelves of the bar to send all bottles down a chute to smash in the cellar and thus destroy evidence the agents need for a conviction. They will prosper at the new location and acquire the building at 19 West 52nd Street in 1935 as they attract patrons with a club-like atmosphere.
Benito Mussolini's Italy makes abortion a crime "against the integrity and health of the race," but illegal abortions continue at a rate of more than half a million per year.
A human egg cell is seen for the first time through a microscope (see spermatozoa, 1677). Scientists find that human ovaries generally release maternal eggs 12 to 16 days before menstruation, but about one woman in four will be wildly erratic in her menstrual cycle, and all women will prove to be erratic for a few months after the birth of a child.
Ascheim-Zondek pregnancy tests come into wider use (see 1929): urine or blood from a woman suspected of being pregnant is injected into a female rabbit, which is sacrificed a few days later; if the woman was pregnant, hormones in her urine or blood give the rabbit's ovaries an appearance of pregnancy. Devised by Bernhard Zondek with help from his colleague Louis Ascheim, the tests will eventually be superseded by immunological or immuno-assay methods.
A U.S. court decision extending trademark protection to contraceptive devices encourages production of better quality condoms. Economic depression makes large families increasingly burdensome to breadwinners.
Anglican bishops meeting at the Lambeth Conference accord express at least lukewarm acceptance to contraception (see 1908). Since cervical caps and diaphragms are too costly or difficult for most women to use, contraceptive failure rate is distressingly high; most couples continue to rely on sponges, douches, and coitus interruptus to avoid pregnancy. The birthrate in the U.K. will fall to 15.8 per thousand in the next 2 years, down from 34.1 in 1870-1872 and 24.5 in 1910-1912, but the reasons for the drop will be largely economic.
The encyclical Casti connubii issued December 31 by Pope Pius XI prohibits taking an infant's life to save the mother's (although many cesareans are performed to remove an impacted fetus). It also says, "Any use whatsoever of matrimony exercised in such a way that the [sex] act is deliberately frustrated in its natural power to generate life is an offense against the law of God and of nature, and those who indulge in such are branded with the guilt of a grave sin." The statement of opposition to "artificial fertility regulation" is, in part, a response to the Anglicans' Lambeth Conference position. But the "rhythm" system of birth control favored by the Church is an inadequate form of contraception (critics call it "Vatican roulette") and increasing numbers of Roman Catholics are employing artificial methods of birth control, including abortion.
The world's population approaches 2 billion, up from 1.65 billion in 1900, with much of it in the grip of economic depression (see 1940).
Emigration from the United States exceeds immigration for the first time in history, with thousands of Chicanos being deported to Mexico and thousands of other Americans relocating to the Soviet Union in the belief that capitalism cannot relieve the continuing economic recession.
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