1931: Information and Much More from Answers.com
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1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940
Former German chancellor Hermann Müller dies at Berlin March 20 at age 54 as Adolf Hitler's National Socialist (Nazi) Party gains strength across the country (see 1930). Hitler recalls his former army commander Ernst Röhm from Bolivia, where he has worked as a military instructor, and puts him in charge late in the year of the 70,000-man Stürm Abteilung, which will have 170,000 members within a year (see 1932).
Spain's Alfonso XIII leaves the country April 14 after a 45-year reign (see 1930). A small military revolt at Jaca has led to the resignation February 14 of his prime minister Dámaso Berenguer after only 1 year in office. Berenguer was minister of war under Admiral Juan Bautista Aznar-Cabañas, and forces favoring a republic have won big in the April municipal elections. Catalan leader Francesc Macià, 71, proclaims a Catalan Republic and begins a campaign for Catalonian home rule (see 1932). Revolutionary committee leader Niceto Alcalá Zamora is freed from imprisonment to become prime minister of Spain, Berenguer is imprisoned (he will remain in prison until 1939), but Alcalá Zamora resigns October 14 when the Cortes offends his Roman Catholic sensibilities by including strongly anticlerical provisions in the constitution that it is writing. He is succeeded by Manuel Azaña y Díaz, who pushes through a draconian Law for the Defense of the Republic. The king is declared guilty of high treason November 12 and forbidden to return, the royal property is confiscated, Berenguer Dámaso is imprisoned, a new constitution is adopted December 9, and Alcalá Zamora is elected president December 11 of a Second Republic that will continue until 1939. Manuel Azaña y Díaz is named minister of war and begins a drastic reduction in the nation's armed forces (see 1933).
France elects statesman Paul Doumer, 74, president in June to succeed Gaston Doumergue (but see 1932). Former French Army marshal J. J. C. Joffre has died at Paris January 3 at age 78 and been buried with full military honors (he is credited with having won the first Battle of the Marne in 1914).
Britain's Labour government resigns August 24 in a disagreement over remedies for the nation's financial crisis, but Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald heads a new coalition cabinet that will retain power until mid-1935.
Prime Minister MacDonald convenes a second session of the Round Table Conference on Indian affairs at Westminister in September (see 1930). Mohandas K. Gandhi is released from prison and attends, at his insistence, as the sole representative of the Congress, but the talks fail to resolve differences between Hindus and Muslims or between the various princes, and the second conference ends as did the one last year with nothing to show for its efforts (see 1932).
Chinese rebels under Gen. Chen Jitang split with Gen. Chiang Kai-shek and take control of Guangzhou (Canton) April 30.
British authorities in China arrest the 41-year-old Vietnamese communist leader Ho Chi Minh (originally Nguyen That Than) June 17 (see 1945).
British forces in Burma use machine guns to suppress the rebellion that began last year. Some 10,000 peasants are killed, the revolt collapses, Saya San finds refuge on the Shan Plateau to the east, but he is captured at Hokho August 2 and returned to Tharrawaddy to face trial. Sentenced to death by a special tribunal, he is hanged at the Tharrawaddy jail November 16, but the widespread support that he obtained bears witness to the unpopularity of British rule.
Japanese militarists use the Mukden Incident September 18 as an excuse to occupy Manchuria. British statesman Robert Cecil, 1st Viscount Cecil of Chelwood, has assured the League of Nations September 10 that "there has scarcely ever been a period in the world's history when war seemed less likely than it does at the present," but militarist Shumei Okawa, 45, cites an alleged railway explosion as provocation, Imperial Army forces seize Jilin Province September 21, and within 5 months will have taken Harbin and the three eastern provinces. The League appoints the former British governor of Bengal Victor A. G. R. Bulwer-Lytton, 55, 2nd earl of Lytton, to head an investigation team, which will blame the Chinese for their anti-Japanese propaganda and the Japanese for their aggression (the action is in large measure a reprisal for China's boycott of Japan's cotton textiles). War Minister Kazunari Mubake, 63, has incurred the wrath of war-minded leaders by trying to carry out the 1922 Washington Conference disarmament pact and been forced to resign. Prime Minister Wakatsuki Reijiro's cabinet falls in December and Constitutional Party leader Tsuyoshi Inukai, 76, becomes prime minister (but see 1932).
Chiang Kai-shek comes under pressure from communist forces led by Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung), now 37. Preoccupation with the communists and with floods on the Yangzi (Yangtze) River prevent him from mounting any military effort against the Japanese (see 1934).
Guatemalan voters elect former minister of war Gen. Jorge Ubico (Castañeda), 52, president, and he uses assassination, execution, exile, and imprisonment to thwart opposition, beginning a dictatorship that will continue until 1944 (see human rights, 1933).
El Salvador has a military coup in December that ends direct control of the presidency by coffee barons. President Arturo Araujo has been freely elected on a platform to reform the nation's feudal system, but he has upset the oligarchical plantocracy and the army that have so long dominated El Salvador. His vice president Gen. Maximiliano Hernández Martinez takes office as president, and military governments will rule the Central American country through 1979 (see 1932).
Argentine general Agustín Pedro Justo, 55, wins election to the presidency on a reactionary coalition ticket (see 1930). He has served as minister of war, agriculture, and public works, outgoing president José Félix Uriburu has rigged the election to ensure continued oligarchical control and the succession by a fellow officer (who has more support than Uriburu among other members of the military), and beginning next year Justo will inaugurate a police state whose policies will nevertheless be less extreme than those of former president Uriburu.
The U.S. Navy issues a contract March 28 to Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corp. for an experimental plane that employs the first retractable landing gear, devised by cofounder Leroy Grumman (see transportation, 1930). The company moves to Valley Stream, N.Y., sets up a production line for the new FF-1, and will move next year to Farmingdale, N.Y. It will relocate to Bethpage, Long Island, in 1937 and put up a large new factory to accommodate expanding operations as it gears up to build a new 330-mile-per-hour F4F Wildcat fighter plane.
Seversky Aircraft is founded by Russian-born U.S. aeronautical engineer Alexander Procofieff de Seversky, 37, who lost a leg in the Great War. His company will manufacture pursuit planes (see Republic, 1939).
Speaker of the House Nicholas Longworth (R. Ohio) dies at Washington, D.C., April 9 at age 61. His widow, Alice (née Roosevelt), remains a leading figure in the city's social life.
Pacifist social worker Jane Addams receives the Nobel Peace Prize, becoming the second woman peace Nobelist and the first since 1905. Now 71, she was vilified a dozen years ago for her opposition to the war, but the Nobel committee now calls her "the foremost woman of her nation."
Scottsboro, Ala., makes headlines as a shouting mob surrounds the county courthouse, where nine black youths are being tried on charges of having raped two white women aboard a freight car March 25 after the blacks allegedly threw some white hoboes off the train. A white mob pulled the blacks from the train when it arrived at Paint Rock, Ala. The defendants Harwood Patterson, Olen Montgomery, Clarence Norris, Ozie Powell, Willie Robertson, Charlie Weems, Eugene Williams, Andy Wright, and 13-year-old Roy Wright have been transferred to Scottsboro to prevent their being represented by counsel; they are defended only by a reluctant lawyer who has been assigned to the case by the presiding judge and given no preparation. The jury discounts medical testimony, and the 3-day trial ends April 9 with eight of the defendants sentenced to death and the ninth to life imprisonment. The physician has testified that he examined Victoria Price, 21, and Ruby Bates, 17, of Huntsville shortly after the alleged rape and that while he found dried semen he found no live spermatozoa, no blood, and no evidence of violence. Shocked by the speedy trials and the severe penalties for such young offenders, left-wing organizations make the case a cause célèbre nationwide and in Europe. The NAACP and the Communist Party's 6-year-old International Labor Defense raise money for an appeal, and the executions are stayed June 22 pending appeal to the Alabama Supreme Court (see 1932).
Reformer Ida Bell Wells(-Barnett) dies at Chicago March 25 at age 68.
Texas-born Atlanta reformer Jessie Daniel Ames, 47, founds the Southern Commission on the Study of Lynching to combat the idea that lynching is necessary to protect the chastity of white women like herself. Her commission releases a study showing that only 16.7 percent of lynch victims between 1889 and 1929 were ever accused of attempted rape and only 6.7 percent of actual rape (see 1937).
Spanish women gain the right to vote on the same basis as men under terms of the new constitution. Drafted in large measure by Manuel Azaña y Díaz, the constitution also allows the redistribution of land, restricts the rights of the clergy, and establishes secular education.
The outbreak of war in Manchuria September 18 ends efforts to gain civil rights for Japanese women.
The first German rocket is launched outside Berlin May 1 by Hermann Oberth, who has received a Romanian patent for a liquid-propellant rocket (see 1929; Goddard, 1926; Dornberger, Braun, 1932).
President Hoover says in March that "prosperity is just around the corner," but financial panic and economic depression engulf most of the world. Vienna's Kreditanstalt comes under pressure in the spring, but the government refuses to abandon the gold standard lest a drop in the value of the schilling magnify the burden of Austria's foreign-currency-dominated debt and raise the specter of hyperinflation. It appeals for help to neighboring countries and to the new Bank for International Settlements, but when little help is forthcoming the government supports the Kreditanstalt with a large infusion of freshly-printed domestic currency; a flight of capital quickly depletes Austria's gold and foreign exchange reserves. The Kreditanstalt goes bankrupt May 11, possibly as a result of French opposition to an Austro-Hungarian credit union, and the panic spreads to Germany, where the Darmstadter und National Bank closes. Between 30 and 40 percent of the German workforce is jobless. The Danatbank goes into bankruptcy July 13, precipitating a general closing of German banks that continues until August 5.
The Bank of England advances money to Austria, but Britain's own financial position is shaky.
Harlan County, Ky., coal miners and deputized guards have a gunfight May 4 at Evarts following 4 years of strikes and labor-management battles. The Harlan County Coal Operators Association began spending heavily in 1927 to terrorize miners and their families with strong-arm tactics in a move to combat efforts by the United Mine Workers to organize. The conflict has come to a head, three guards and one miner are left dead in the wake of the gunfight, and untold numbers of others are carried dead or dying into the hills.
Three San Jose, Calif., canneries cut wages, and workers organized by Communist Party members walk out in the summer. Among the organizers is Dorothy Ray Healey, 16, who has dropped out of high school to work in the Santa Clara valley.
Canada raises tariffs June 18, estimating that the new customs duties will cut off two-thirds of goods imported from the United States.
President Hoover announces on June 20 a 1-year moratorium on payments of war debts and reparations (see 1932).
Britain receives a French-American loan August 1, but London and Glasgow have riots September 10 to protest government economy measures, naval units mutiny September 15 to protest pay cuts, the pound sterling is devalued September 20 from $4.86 to $3.49, and Britain is forced to abandon the gold standard once again September 21.
Detroit lays off another 100,000 workers as motorcar sales collapse, reducing employment in auto plants to 250,000, down from 475,000 in 1929. Two out of three Detroit workers (and eight out of 10 Detroit blacks) are totally or partially unemployed; the situation will improve somewhat, but unemployment will remain high in Detroit until 1942 (see 1933).
The "Swope Plan" for economic recovery, outlined by General Electric president Gerard Swope, 58, says, in effect, leave the problem to business and let trade associations develop national economic plans to revive the economy.
U.S. unemployment tops 8 million. Men and women in New York's Harlem compete with dogs and cats for the contents of garbage cans. Hunger marchers petition the White House December 7 for a guarantee of employment at a minimum wage but are turned away. President Hoover was U.S. food administrator from 1917 to 1918, but he opposes suggestions that the federal government distribute food to the needy, insisting that charitable organizations will provide what is needed, and while American Red Cross dietitians offer advice on how to eat economically, the Red Cross refuses to use its funds to help the unemployed (see Lewis, 1932).
U.S. women take in boarders, do sewing, laundry, and dressmaking, provide $1 manicures, and set up parlor grocery stores to supplement their husbands' incomes as economic recession deepens.
First National Bank chairman George F. Baker dies at New York May 2 at age 91, leaving $60 million to his son George F., Jr.; former J. P. Morgan & Co. partner Dwight W. Morrow dies at Englewood, N.J., October 5 at age 58.
U.S. bank failures total 2,294, up from 1,352 last year.
Labor leader Arthur J. Cook dies at London November 2 at age 47, having failed in his efforts to obtain higher wages and shorter hours for British coal miners.
President Hoover calls for increased taxation in his annual message to Congress December 8, saying that more revenue is needed to make up for a $900 million deficit. He recommends an emergency Reconstruction Finance Corp. (RFC) and a public works administration; Federal Reserve Board governor Eugene Meyer has been a leading advocate of the RFC, which is to be patterned after the War Finance Corp. that Meyer headed in 1918 and then again after the war (see 1932).
Australia's gold mining industry begins to revive following the discovery of Western Australia's biggest gold nugget at Larkinville (the Golden Eagle weighs 1,135 ounces).
Japan abandons the gold standard December 11 as her new prime minister Tsuyoshi Inukai tries to reflate the economy.
Wall Street's Dow Jones Industrial Average closes at 57.46 December 10, rebounds to 79.63 the next day, but closes December 31 at 77.90, down a record 52 percent from 164.50 at the end of 1930.
The Highland Park shopping mall opens in suburban Dallas as retailers follow the lead of Kansas City's Jesse Clyde Nichols and move away from downtown congestion (see 1925). In addition to retail stores, Highland Park has a bank, pharmacy, beauty salon, barbershop, theater, and offices, but by 1946 there will still be only eight shopping malls in the entire United States (see Northgate, 1950).
Stanley Home Products is founded at Westfield, Mass., by Canadian-born Fuller Brush sales director Frank Stanley Beveridge, 52, who has bought an old tobacco shed, hires men to go out with his line of brushes, cleaning aids, polishes, waxes, pots, pans, and the like, going door to door. First year sales total $72,000, and when he finds that one salesman is breaking sales records by demonstrating his products in the living rooms of women who have volunteered as "hostesses" and invited their friends and neighbors to "Stanley parties," Beveridge will see that the method is far more efficient than making cold calls. He will adopt the idea for his entire sales force, rewarding hostesses with coffee pots, toasters, or free Stanley products and move entirely away from door-to-door selling in 1940; sales by 1950 will reach nearly $58.5 million as women discover that they can earn "pin money" and even support their families by working for Stanley (see food and drink [Tupperware parties], 1951).
Fatalities among U.S. coal miners fall to 6.5 per million tons produced as a result of strict laws and state mine inspections. Some 13,000 men, women, and children died in coal-mining accidents in 1900, employment in the mines has declined since its peak of 180,000 in 1914, and surface mines are replacing underground mines (see 1950).
The U.S. Department of the Interior awards its $49 million contract to build Hoover Dam on the Colorado River to the Six Companies organized in August by six U.S. engineering firms (see 1930). Veteran San Francisco engineer Warren A. Bechtel, now 59, heads the group, with Canandaigua, N.Y.-born engineer Henry J. Kaiser, 49, as vice president. Having built miles of highway from California up the West Coast into British Columbia and in Cuba, to say nothing of many cement plants, Kaiser helps to coordinate the capabilities of the firms to work on the largest public works project thus far in U.S. history. Canadian-born U.S. Reclamation Service engineer Francis T. (Trenholme) Crowe, 48, is general superintendent and improvises labor-saving methods. The International Workers of the World (IWW) takes Crowe's entire workforce of miners, riggers, jackhammer operators, truck drivers, flagmen, and the like out on strike August 7 to protest lack of safety measures and harsh working conditions (dozens of men have died of carbon monoxide poisoning, heat exhaustion, and other work-related causes), but Frank Crowe rejects all the workers' demands, the strike collapses after 6 days, and the men continue to work 7 days per week, three shifts per day; Crowe tightens security at the project (see 1932).
Incandescent-bulb inventor Thomas Alva Edison dies at West Orange, N.J., October 18 at age 84 after a career in which he has pioneered in the creation of professional research laboratories and received a record 1,093 U.S. patents (he leaves an estate valued at $12 million). Electric lights are turned off for 1 minute throughout the United States to honor the great inventor, who is alleged to have said, "Genius is 1 percent imagination and 99 percent perspiration."
The steamships Maui, Malolo, and Mariposa go into service for the Matson-Oceanic Line's Hawaiian cruise business. Marine architect William Francis Gibbs designed the Malolo 4 years ago with numerous watertight compartments, she suffered a gash in her hull when she was rammed on her trial run, and her survival made the Gibbs design standard (seeMonterey, Lurline, Matsonia, 1932).
The 22,424-ton S.S. Monarch of Bermuda goes into service for Furness, Withy & Co. Her cruise trade will end in 1939 but will resume from 1945 to 1947 (seeQueen of Bermuda, 1933).
Steam turbine inventor Sir Charles A. Parsons dies at Kingston, Jamaica, February 11 at age 76.
A French excursion steamer overturns June 14 in a gale off St. Nazaire, killing about 450 passengers and crewmen.
Swissair has its beginnings in a company started with private capital; it will continue to control at least 75 percent of the national airline.
Imperial Airways opens weekly service February 28 between London and M'wanza Tanganyika (see 1929); an Imperial Airways plane leaves London April 1 with mail for Australia, it transfers the mail to an Australian plane at Koepang in the Dutch East Indies, and the mail arrives at Sydney April 20 (see BOAC, 1939).
The first airline flight attendant begins work in mid-May. Boeing Air Transport agent Steve Stimpson at San Francisco has suggested that commercial aircraft carry "young women as couriers" and the company has hired Ellen Church, asking the registered nurse and student pilot to hire seven other registered nurses—all aged 25, all single, all with pleasant personalities, none taller than five feet four or heavier than 115 pounds. The "air hostesses" serve cold meals and beverages, pass out candy and chewing gum, and comfort airsick passengers; women cabin attendants (they are soon called "stewardesses") will help allay public fears of flying.
New York's Floyd Bennett Field opens May 23 at the south end of Brooklyn's Jamaica Bay. The first city-owned airport, it takes its name from the late aviation pioneer, who died in 1928 at age 37 (see 1926; La Guardia, 1939).
Wiley Post circles the earth in the Winnie Mae (see 1930). Flying with Harold Gatty as navigator, Post leaves New York's Roosevelt Field June 23, crosses the Atlantic to the British Isles, proceeds across Europe and the USSR, and returns to the United States in 8 days, 15 hours, and 51 minutes, a feat that he will repeat in 1933 in 7 days, 18 hours, and 49 minutes, flying solo to become the first pilot to circle the earth alone (see 1935; Hughes, 1938).
United Airlines is founded July 1 at Chicago as a holding company for Boeing Air Transport, Varney Air Lines, Pacific Air Transport, and National Air Transport, all of which have contracts (and government subsidies) to carry mail (see United Aircraft, 1929). United can fly coast to coast in just 28 hours, and by June 1933 it will be flying twin-engine Boeing 247s cross country in 19½ hours, more than 8 hours faster than TWA's Ford Trimotor (see 1934).
"Air hostesses" begin flying on 14-passenger TWA DC-2s December 6 (see Douglas, 1924). Built at TWA's suggestion and originally designated the DC-1 (Douglas Commercial 1), the twin-engined, aluminum-skinned plane has been improved and renamed; its top speed is 150 miles per hour and it can fly coast to coast in 18 hours, with stops at Chicago, Kansas City, and Albuquerque. TWA orders 25 (see DC-3, 1936).
Omaha's Union Station opens January 15. Designed by Los Angeles architect Gilbert S. Underwood for the Union Pacific Railroad, the magnificent new art deco structure will continue until 1971 to provide passenger service for seven railroads (the Burlington facility opens September 4).
A Trans-African railroad opens July 1 to connect Banguella in Angola with Katanga in the Belgian Congo.
New York's George Washington Bridge opens to traffic October 24, spanning the Hudson River between Manhattan and New Jersey. Designed by Swiss-born engineer Othmar H. (Herman) Ammann, 52, with assistance from David B. Steinman, built by the Port of New York Authority, and completed below budget 8 months ahead of schedule, the 3,502-foot (1,067-meter) structure is the world's largest suspension bridge thus far; its 90,000 tons of deadweight are suspended from four cables, each three feet in diameter, made by John A. Roebling's Sons of Trenton, N.J. (see Brooklyn Bridge, 1883). Each cable contains 26,474 steel wires, and although each wire is drawn to just 0.196 inches in diameter it is strong enough to hold at least 240,000 pounds per square inch, more than one and a half times the strength of the cable wires that support the Brooklyn Bridge.
The Bayonne (Kill Van Kull) Bridge opens to link Staten Island and New Jersey; designed by Othmar H. Ammann with architect Cass Gilbert and built by the Port of New York Authority, the 1,675-foot (504-meter) span is the world's longest steel arch bridge thus far. Financial pressures prevent implementation of a plan to sheath the steel arch abutments in granite.
The four-cylinder Ford Model A has a 103.5-inch wheelbase, develops 40 horsepower at 2,200 rpm, and sells at between $430 and $595 (see V-8, 1932).
The four-cylinder Plymouth has a 110-inch wheelbase, develops 56 horsepower at 2,800 rpm, and sells at between $535 and $645.
The six-cylinder Chevrolet has a 109-inch wheelbase, develops 50 horsepower at 2,600 rpm, and sells at $475 to $635 and up.
Tire maker and aviation enthusiast André Michelin dies at his Paris home April 14 at age 78.
Four German automakers merge June 29 to create Auto-Union AG. Auto-Union will use the Audi name for a new front-wheel-drive car it introduces next year using components from the other three makers.
Austrian automotive designer Ferdinand Porsche, 55, leaves the Austro-Daimler Co. for which he has worked since 1923 and opens his own firm at Stuttgart to design sports and racing cars (see Volkswagen, 1938).
Rolls-Royce acquires Bentley Motors from W. O. Bentley in November to save Bentley from bankruptcy (see 1919). Rolls will market a Rolls-Royce under the Bentley name using a different front grill; Bentley himself will design cars for Aston Martin and Lagonda.
E. I. du Pont introduces a synthetic rubber under the brand name Neoprene (see Semon, 1926). Iowa-born chemist Wallace H. (Hume) Carothers, 35, left Harvard 3 years ago to head DuPont's research division and has expanded its knowledge of polymers, making it the first to investigate the acetylene family of chemicals. But Neoprene costs $1.05 per pound at a time when natural rubber from East Asian plantations fetches as little as 5¢ per pound (see polyurethane, 1936).
Industrialist-inventor Edward Goodrich Acheson dies of pneumonia at New York July 6 at age 75, having obtained 69 patents in the fields of abrasives, graphite products, reduction of oxides, and refractories. (He has also helped to start at least five corporations based on his electrothermal processes.)
Indiana-born Columbia University physicist Harold C. (Clayton) Urey, 38, and two colleagues pioneer production of atomic energy. They discover heavy water (deuterium oxide), whose molecules consist of an atom of oxygen and two atoms of deuterium (heavy hydrogen, a rare isotope of hydrogen), a discovery that will lead to the separation of other isotopes, including the separation of the fissionable uranium 235 isotope from the more common U238 (see Cockroft, Chadwick, 1932; Lewis, 1933).
"The Nature of the Chemical Bond" by Linus C. Pauling expands on his previous work (see 1928; 1939).
The electron microscope is invented by German electrical engineer Ernst Ruska, 26, who will win a Nobel Prize in physics for his achievement.
Nobel chemist Otto Wallach dies at Göttingen February 26 at age 83; Nobel physicist Albert A. Michelson at Pasadena, Calif., May 9 at age 78.
Penicillin relieves two cases of gonococcal ophthalmitis in children at England's Royal Infirmary in Sheffield (see 1929); the children have contracted gonorrhea from their mothers at birth (see Argyrol, 1901). Physicians at the Royal Infirmary also use penicillin to treat a colliery manager suffering from a severe pneumococcal infection of the eye, but no further efforts will be made until the end of the decade to pursue the antibiotic's chemotherapeutic potentials (see Florey, Chain, 1939).
Chicago medical researcher Florence Seibert, 34, and her colleagues isolate the active tuberculin protein after 8 years of effort. She has invented a special filtration trap that makes multiple distillations unnecessary, and the protein derivative that she obtains is far purer than the tuberculin bacillus isolated by German physician Robert Koch in 1882.
An anti-mumps vaccine developed by Tennessee-born pathologist E. W. (Ernest William) Goodpasture, 44, will lead to mass-produced vaccines against influenza, smallpox, typhus, and yellow fever. Goodpasture has cultured a sterile virus inside the fertile egg of a chicken (see 1933; Francis, 1934).
The U.S. Supreme Court upholds a company that has been sued by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for false advertising (Federal Trade Commission v. Raladam) (see commerce [Clayton Act], 1914). The company has advertised its thyroid-extract product Marmola as "a scientific remedy for obesity," and while the Court agrees unanimously with the American Medical Association that the ads are dangerously misleading it rules April 17 that such advertising is not unfair to competition and the FTC was not created to protect consumers from deception (see Whealer-Lea Act, 1938; communications [Valentine case], 1942).
Bacteriologist Baron Shibasaburo Kitasato dies at Nakanocho, Gumma, June 13 at age 74; physiologist-pathologist Oskar Minkowski at Fürstenberg an der Havel July 18 at age 73; surgeon Daniel Hale Williams at his Idlewild, Mich., summer home August 4 at age 73.
Alka-Seltzer is introduced December 3 by the 47-year-old Miles Medical Co. of Elkhart, Ind., which will change its name in 1935 to Miles Laboratories. Founder Franklin Miles died 2 years ago after being told about the antacid and analgesic tablet, made from sodium bicarbonate, monocalcium phosphate, acetyl-salicylic acid (aspirin), and citric acid; it fizzes when dropped in water and gains quick acceptance for headaches, hangovers, and upset stomachs even though its aspirin content may cause dyspepsia.
Jehovah's Witnesses adopt that name under the leadership of Joseph Franklin "Judge" Rutherford, 62, who has headed the International Bible Students' Association since the death of Charles Taze Russell in 1916 (see 1884). Rutherford proselytizes with the slogan "Millions now living will never die."
The Black Muslims have their beginnings at Detroit, where local Baptist teacher Elijah Poole, 34, becomes an assistant to Wali Farad, who has founded the Nation of Islam. Poole changes his name to Elijah Muhammad, he will establish Muhammad's Temple of Islam No. 2 at Chicago in 1934, Farad will thereupon mysteriously disappear, Muhammad will assume command of the growing sect as the Messenger of Allah, and by 1962 there will be at least 49 Temples of Islam with an estimated 250,000 followers (see Malcolm X, 1952).
Josef Stalin has Moscow's 48-year-old Church of Christ the Saviour demolished beginning December 5 in an act of vengeance against the Russian Orthodox Church. The great cathedral will not be rebuilt for more than 75 years.
NBC begins experimental television-signal transmissions from atop New York's new Empire State Building (see 1930; 1939).
The March of Time begins 3/6 on CBS radio with announcers Harry Von Zell and Ted Husing, who will soon be joined by resonant-voiced actor (Cornelius) Westbrook Van Voorhis, 27, in a show produced by Time magazine (to 1945). Masterminded by Boston-born Time, Inc. vice-president Roy E. (Edward) Larsen, 31, the series is also produced on film by Chelsea, Mass.-born film maker Louis de Rochemont, 32, who uses staged scenes in theatrical presentation to supplement news footage and departs from the newsreels of the day by focusing on labor unrest, foreign dictators, and other controversial subjects that newsreel producers avoid lest audiences find them unpleasant.
Toronto-born radio salesman Roy H. (Hubert) Thomson, 37, sets up his own commercial transmitter in March at North Bay and boosts his sales by providing better reception. A barber's son who worked his way through business college, Thomson was rejected by the Canadian Army in 1915 because of bad eyesight, has become an agent for De Forest Crosley Radios in northern Ontario, but has had trouble selling radios in an area with no broadcasting facilities and only spotty reception on some nights from high-powered, clear-channel U.S. stations. Discovering that the Abitibi Power and Pulp Co. has a license it is not using, Thomson arranges to rent the license for $1 per year on condition that the paper company can take it back after a year if it chooses, and if it does not so choose the license will belong to Thomson outright. He makes another deal with National Carbon Co. at Toronto, which for $200 plus some promissory notes lets him buy an old, unused transmitter with the loan of a technician to install it. Thomson will follow CFCH North Bay next year with CKGB at Timmins and in 1933 with CJKL at Kirkland Lake (see newspapers, 1934).
The U.S. Supreme Court rules 5 to 4 June 1 that a 1925 Minnesota "gag law" banning publication of a "malicious, scandalous and defamatory newspaper, magazine, or other periodical" is unconstitutional. Near v. Minnesota is the first case in which provisions of a state law are held to restrict personal freedom of speech and press without due process; Justices McReynolds, Sutherland, and Van Devanter concur with Pierce Butler's dissent from Chief Justice Hughes's majority opinion, which cites provisions of the First Amendment and the Fourteenth.
"Starch ratings" begin to measure readership of magazines' advertising and editorial matter. Former Harvard business psychology professor Daniel Starch, 48, has been research director of the American Association of Advertising Agencies since 1924 and has pioneered in measuring advertising research and radio listenership (see Hooper, 1934).
British newspapers, magazines, and advertising agencies set up an Audit Bureau of Circulations like the bureau established 17 years ago in America, but membership will remain small for more than 30 years, and advertising revenues will suffer as a result.
"Dick Tracy" appears for the first time in the Detroit Mirror October 4 and in the New York Daily News October 12. Pawnee, Okla.-born Chicago Daily News advertisement illustrator Chester Gould, 38, has created the first deliberately un-funny comic strip. His jutting-jawed detective is never without his snap-brim hat. Gould has originally called it "Plainclothes Tracy," Chicago Tribune copublisher and New York Daily News founder Joseph Medill Patterson has changed the title ("dick" is slang for detective), and the strip will be popular for more than 45 years, reaching nearly 100 million readers each day in 600 U.S. newspapers and hundreds of foreign papers (see two-way wrist radio, 1946).
"Mickey Mouse" by Walt Disney makes his first appearance as a comic strip figure (see Films, 1928).
"Felix the Cat" makes his first appearance as a comic strip drawn by Australian-born cartoonist Pat Sullivan. The cat has appeared since 1919 in animated cartoons by Otto Messmer, now 38, and will continue in films until 1936.
"Tarzan" makes his bow as a United Features Syndicate comic-strip character in a strip created by Halifax, N.S.-born cartoonist Harold (Rudolf) "Hal" Foster, 39, who departs from the generally accepted caricature style by adopting cinematic techniques.
Nonfiction: 1066 and All That: A Memorable History of England, comprising all the parts you can remember, incuding 103 Good Things, 5 Bad Kings and 2 Genuine Dates by English humorists W. C. (Walter Carruthers) Sellar, 33, and R. J. (Robert Julian) Yeatman, 34, who met as undergraduates at Oxford's Oriel College; Up from the Ape by Wisconsin-born Harvard anthropologist Earnest A. (Albert) Hooton, 43, who has been curator of Harvard's Peabody Museum since 1914; Axel's Castle (critical pieces) by Edmund Wilson; The Epic of America by James Truslow Adams, whose work will be translated into many languages.
Harvard historian Edward Channing dies at Cambridge, Mass., January 7 at age 74 while working on the seventh volume of his monumental History of the United States; librarian Melvil Dewey dies at Lake Placid, Fla., December 26 at age 80.
Fiction: Night Flight (Vol de nuit) by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry; African Confidence (Confidence Africaine) by Roger Martin du Gard; Afternoon Men by English novelist Anthony Powell, 26; Prince Jali by L. H. Myers; The Waves by Virginia Woolf; The New Euridice (La Nouvelle Eurydice) by Belgian-born French novelist Marguerite Yourcenar (Marguerite de Crayencur), 28; Sanctuary by William Faulkner; "Babylon Revisited" (story) by F. Scott Fitzgerald; Tropic of Cancer by New York-born émigré novelist Henry (Valentine) Miller, 39, whose earthy novel will be banned in the United States for decades. Miller quit his job with Western Union in 1924 to pursue a career as writer and went to France in 1930; Guests of the Nation (stories) by Irish writer Frank O'Connor (Michael O'Donovan), 28, who was active in the republican movement; The Dream Life of Balso Snell by New York-born novelist Nathanael West (Nathan Wallenstein Weinstein), 27, who has written the book in Paris, developing a style derived from Dadaism and surrealism in the arts; After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie (stories) by Jean Rhys; The Good Earth by Pearl Buck; Grand Hotel by Austrian-born U.S. novelist Vicki Baum, 43 (see Theater, 1930); All Passion Spent by V. Sackville-West; Hatter's Castle by Scottish physician-novelist A. J. (Archibald Joseph) Cronin, 35, who has given up his lucrative London West End practice for reasons of health; S. S. San Pedro by James Gould Cozzens; Men and Wives by Ivy Compton-Burnett; Without My Cloak by Irish playwright-novelist Kate O'Brien, 34; Encampment (Campamento) by Mexican novelist Gregorio López y Fuentes, 35; Shadows on the Rock by Willa Cather; Plagued by the Nightingale by Minnesota-born novelist Kay Boyle, 29; Back Street by Fannie Hurst; The Five Red Herrings (in America, Suspicious Characters) by Dorothy L. Sayers; Great Southern Mystery (in America, Walking Corpse) by London novelist Margaret Isabel Cole, 38, who (with her husband, G. D. H. Cole) is prominent in the socialist Fabian Society; Captain Nemesis by Van Wyck Mason; The Glass Key by Dashiell Hammett.
Novelist Arnold Bennett dies of typhoid fever at London March 27 at age 63; Kahlil Gibran of a liver ailment at New York April 10 at age 47; libertine novelist-editor-playwright Frank Harris at Nice August 26 at age 75.
Story magazine begins publication at San Francisco. Former newspaperman Whit Burnett, 30, and his wife, Martha Foley, will move their operations to New York in September 1933 and introduce the works of William Saroyan, among others.
Poetry: Strophe by Greek poet George Seferis, 31; The Loosening by English poet Ronald Bottrall, 25; Fatal Interview by Edna St. Vincent Millay, whose collection enjoys sales of 50,000 copies within months; Rhymes of Darby Joan by lexicographer H. W. Fowler, now 73; Reality and Desire (La realidad y el deseo) by Luis Cernuda, whose collection will be expanded and reissued on a frequent basis; Death and Taxes by Dorothy Parker.
Poet Vachel Lindsay commits suicide at Springfield, Ill., December 5 at age 52.
Juvenile: Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome; Snippy and Snappy by Wanda Gág.
Author Annie Fellows Johnston of Little Colonel fame dies at Peewee Valley, Ky., October 5 at age 68.
Painting: Woman with Yellow Hair (Femme aux cheveux jaunes) by Pablo Picasso; The Persistence of Memory by surrealist Salvador Dali, now 27, whose limp watches and clocks draped over barren landscapes gain wide attention and ridicule; The Breakfast Room by Pierre Bonnard; The Trick-Riders by Marc Chagall; Man, Woman, and Child by Joan Miró; Still Life with Studio Window by Max Beckmann; Market Church by Lyonel Feininger, who will return to New York in 1933; The Ghost Vanishes by Paul Klee, who begins teaching at Düsseldorf; The Dance by Henri Matisse, who has been commissioned to paint the murals by Argyrol king Albert Barnes; Tresses (Kami) by Kokei Kobayashi; Route 6, Eastham by Edward Hopper; Salt Shaker and House and Street by Stuart Davis; Cow's Skull, Red, White and Blue by Georgia O'Keeffe; The Guide and Trude by Walt Kuhn, now 53; Zapatistas by José Clemente Orozco; Portrait of Frida and Diego by Mexican painter Frida Kahlo, 21, who married muralist Diego Rivera in 1929.
New York's Whitney Museum of American Art opens at 8-12 West 8th Street in Greenwich Village to display works by young artists. Sculptor (and railroad heiress) Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney's husband, Harry Payne Whitney, died last year; she has offered the Metropolitan Museum of Art $3 million and some 700 works of U.S. art if it will open a gallery for such art, but the Met has declined her offer. Now 56, she displays works by her friends Edward Hopper, Charles Sheeler, and John Sloan but will modestly wait 8 years before displaying any of her own works (see 1966).
The Ringling Museum of Art opens at Sarasota, Fla., where circus owner and art connoisseur John Ringling, now 65, has amassed an outstanding collection of more than 600 works by Frans Hals, Peter Paul Rubens, Diego Velasquez, and other old masters, plus pieces from antiquity.
Sculpture: Object with Red Ball (stabile) by Alexander Calder, who has been inspired by a visit to the Paris studio of painter Piet Mondrian; Mlle. Pognany by Constantin Brancusi; Mother and Child by Henry Moore. Daniel Chester French dies at Stockbridge, Mass., October 7 at age 81.
Rio de Janeiro's Christ the Redeemer is inaugurated October 12 atop 2,308-foot Corcovado (Hunchback Mountain). A belated monument to 100 years of Brazilian independence from Portugal in 1822, the 98-foot-tall concrete work by French sculptor Paul Maximilian Landovski, 56, has outstretched arms that span 92 feet and weighs 700 tons (1,145 including the base). It is owned by the Church but surrounded by a park under federal control.
Photograph: White Angel Breadline by New Jersey-born San Francisco photographer Dorothea Lange, 36, who puts a human face on the despair engendered by the Great Depression; Lange, whose innovative techniques have made her the city's most sought-after portrait photographer, will soon be asked by the Farm Security Administration to record the migration of farm families from the Dust Bowl of the Great Plains, especially Oklahoma (see 1935).
The Photronic Photoelectric Cell invented by Weston Electrical Instrument engineer William Nelson Goodwin Jr. is the first exposure meter for photographers. It contains a dial calculating device for translating brightness values into camera aperture settings, needs no batteries since it changes light energy directly into electrical energy, and will be introduced commercially in February of next year.
Theater: Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Philip Barry 1/13 at New York's Henry Miller Theater, with Zita Johnson, Osgood Perkins, London-born actor Herbert Marshall, 40, 206 perfs.; Green Grow the Lilacs by Oklahoma-born playwright (Rolla) Lynn Riggs, 30, 1/26 at New York's Guild Theater, with Helen Westley, Lee Strasberg, Niagara Falls, N.Y.-born actor (Stanislas Pascal) Franchot Tone, 25, June Walker, 64 perfs.; As Husbands Go by Bloomington, Ill.-born playwright Rachel Crothers, 59, 3/15 at New York's John Golden Theater, with Lily Cahill, Catherine Doucet, St. Paul, Minn.-born actor Roman Bohnen, 36, Dublin-born actress Patricia Collinge, 39, Jay Fassett, 124 perfs.
The Group Theater founded in the spring by former Theatre Guild members has been inspired by the "method acting" theories of Moscow Art Theater director Konstantin Stanislavski, now 68 (see 1898). Actors, directors, and producers who include New York-born actor Luther Adler, 28, his sister Stella, 29, actor Harold Clurman, now 29, Akron, Ohio-born producer Cheryl Crawford, 28, New York-born actor Sanford Meisner, 25, Philadelphia-born actor Clifford Odets, 24, and Austro-Hungarian-born actor Lee (originally Israel) Strasberg, 29, will continue the group until the end of the decade (see Actors Studio, 1945).
Other plays: Autumn Crocus by English playwright C. L. Anthony (Dorothy Gladys Smith), 33, 4/20 at London's Lyric Theatre, with Fay Compton, London-born actress Jessica Tandy, 21, and Francis Lederer; Fanny by Marcel Pagnol; Farce of the Chaste Queen (Farsa y licencia de la rena castize) by Ramón del Valle-Inclán 6/3 at Madrid's Teatro Munoz Seca; A Man's House by John Drinkwater 7/23 at Britain's Malverne Festival; The House of Connelly by Paul Green 10/5 at New York's Martin Beck Theater, with Stella Adler, Franchot Tone, Clifford Odets, Rose McClendon in a Group Theater production directed by Lee Strasberg, 81 perfs.; Cavalcade by Noël Coward 10/13 at London's Drury Lane Theatre, with a large cast that includes John Mills, Anthony Pelissier, Una O'Connor, Binnie Barnes, Mississippi-born actress Moya Nugent, 31, 405 perfs.; The Left Bank by Elmer Rice 10/5 at New York's Little Theater, with Katherine Alexander, Horace Braham Cledge Roberts, 242 perfs.; Mourning Becomes Electra by Eugene O'Neill 10/26 at New York's Guild Theater, with Alla Nazimova and Alice Brady in a play based on the 5th century B.C. Greek tragedies, 150 perfs.; Tales from the Vienna Woods (Geshichten aus ten Wienerwald) by Austrian playwright Odön von Horvath, 30, 11/2 at Berlin's Deutsches Theater (a pure "Aryan," Horvath has engaged in fist fights with Nazi thugs in German beer halls and appeared as a witness in trials of Nazis against Jews); Judith by French existentialist playwright Jean Genet, 20, 11/4 at the Comédie des Champs-Elysées, Paris; Counsellor-at-Law by Elmer Rice 11/6 at New York's Plymouth Theater, with Austrian-born actor Paul Muni (originally Muni Weisenfreund), 37, 292 perfs.; Brief Moment by S. N. Behrman 11/9 at New York's Belasco Theater, with Francine Larrimore, Louis Calhern, Alexander Woolcott, 120 perfs.; The Good Fairy by Ferenc Molnár (translated by Jane Hinton) 11/24 at Henry Miller's Theater, New York, with Helen Hayes, Chicago-born actor Paul McGrath, 26, 151 perfs.; Springtime for Henry by English playwright Benn W. Levy, 31, 12/9 at New York's Bijou Theater, with Leslie Banks, Nigel Bruce, 199 perfs.
Playwright-producer David Belasco dies at New York May 14 at age 77; playwright-novelist Arthur Schnitzler at his native Vienna October 21 at age 69 (his married daughter committed suicide last year and he has been depressed ever since).
Radio: Little Orphan Annie 4/6 on NBC Blue Network stations. Sponsored by Ovaltine and based on the comic strip that began in 1924, the show will continue until 1943 ("Who's that little chatterbox?/ The one with pretty auburn locks?/ Who can it be?/ It's Little Orphan Annie"); Gloom Chasers 5/25 on CBS with Frederick Chase Taylor, 34 (as Col. Lemuel K. Stoopnagle) and Budd Hulick in a show that will be retitled Stoopnagle and Budd (to 1938); The Easy Aces in October with Kansas City-born comedian-columnist Goodman Ace (originally Aiskowitz), 32, and his wife, Jane (née Epstein), who will gain a reputation for witticisms such as "Time wounds all heels." The Easy Aces will continue until 1945, Mr. Ace and Jane until 1955; The Story of Myrt and Marge 11/1 on CBS with Myrtle Vail (Damerel), 43, and Gene Kretzinger as Broadway chorus girls in a show written by vaudeville veteran Damarel (to 1942).
English theatre producer-writer-director Basil Dean, 45, takes over the Ealing Studios founded by Will Barker in 1902 and builds Britain's first sound stage for films. Dean organized Associated Radio Pictures 2 years ago and has raised the capital needed to build the facility. His company will become Associated Talking Pictures in 1933, complete a second sound stage, and rent out the space to other companies. But Ealing will come close to bankruptcy before pictures starring Gracie Fields revive its fortunes. By 1938 it will have turned out about 60 pictures.
Films: René Clair's A Nous la Liberté with Raymond Cordy, Henri Marchand (the story line involves assembly-line workers protesting a production speed-up); Charles Chaplin's City Lights with Chaplin; Fritz Lang's M with Hungarian-born actor Peter Lorre (originally Laszlo Loewenstein), 27. Also: Josef von Sternberg's An American Tragedy with Sylvia Sidney, Phillips Holmes, Los Angeles-born actress Frances (Jean) Dee, 24, and Dishonored with Marlene Dietrich; Jean Renoir's Boudu Saved from Drowning and La Chienne; King Vidor's The Champ with Wallace Beery, Los Angeles-born actor Jackie Cooper (originally John Leslie), 9, screenplay by Frances Marion; Tod Browning's Dracula with Hungarian-born actor Bela Lugosi (originally B. L. Blasco), 45; James Whale's Frankenstein with London-born actor Boris Karloff (originally William Henry Pratt), 43; Frank Borzage's History Is Made at Night with New York-born actress Jean Arthur (originally Gladys Georgianna Greene), 22, French actor Charles Boyer, 32; G. W. Pabst's Kameradschaft; Karl Froelich's Mädchen in Uniform with Hertha Thiele, Dorothea Wieck; René Clair's Le Million with Paris-born actress Annabella (originally Suzanne Georgette Charpentier), 22; Norman Z. McLeod's Monkey Business with the Marx Brothers; Gosho Heinosuke's The Neighbor's Wife and Mine (Madamu to nyobo; the first successful Japanese talking picture, it has been produced by the 29-year-old Shochiku Kinema studio); William Wellman's Public Enemy with New York-born actor James Cagney, 32, Jean Harlow, Mae Clarke (who gets half a grapefruit in her face); Norman Taurog's Skippy with Jackie Cooper; King Vidor's Street Scene with Sylvia Sidney, William Collier Jr.; Archie Mayo's Svengali with John Barrymore; F. W. Murnau's documentary-cum-narrative Tabu with Anna Chevalier (Murnau dies in an auto accident at age 42 just before the premiere); Sergei Eisenstein's Thunder Over Mexico.
U.S. movie theaters show double features to boost business. Many unemployed executives spend their afternoons at the movies. Starting pay for Hollywood actors is $150 per week, a fortune compared to the $35 averaged by Americans fortunate enough to have jobs.
Film pioneer William Fox of Fox Pictures tries to take over M-G-M (year approximate), but (Fox will later say) Louis B. Mayer has made big contributions to the Republican Party and uses his influence with the Hoover administration to have the Justice Department's antitrust division thwart Fox.
Animator Max Fleischer hears South Bronx, N.Y., schoolgirl Mae Questel, 17, doing an imitation of Helen Kane's "boop-oop-a-doop" routine from the 1928 musical Animal Crackers in a vaudeville show and signs her to a contract for the voice of Betty Boop. Her voice will be heard in more than 150 Betty Boop shorts before Fleischer retires the character in 1939, and millions of Americans will be doing their own imitations of "boop-oop-a-doop."
Congress votes March 3 to designate "The Star Spangled Banner" the U.S. national anthem (see 1814).
Kate Smith makes her radio debut May 1 singing "When the Moon Comes over the Mountain" on CBS stations. Virginia-born vocalist Kathryn Elizabeth Smith, 22, has played comic fat girl roles in Broadway shows, she has finally won a singing role at New York's Palace Theater, and thus she begins a radio career that will continue for nearly half a century. She will sing Irving Berlin's "God Bless America" in a 1938 Armistice Day broadcast and will acquire exclusive air rights to the song Berlin wrote originally for his 1918 show Yip-Yip Yaphank but laid aside.
Opera: French-born U.S. soprano Lily (née Alice Josephine) Pons, 32, makes her Metropolitan Opera debut 1/3 singing the title role in the 1835 Donizetti opera Lucia di Lammermoor; Georges Thill makes his Met debut 3/20 singing the role of Roméo; English soprano Joan Cross, 30, makes her Covent Garden debut singing the role of Mimi in the 1896 Puccini opera La Bohème. The Old Vic company moves to the Sadler's Wells Theatre with English soprano Edith (Mary) Coates, 23, as its leading mezzo-soprano.
Soprano Dame Nellie Melba dies at Sydney February 23 at age 69.
The first live radio broadcast from the stage of the Metropolitan Opera airs December 25 with a performance of the 1893 Engelbert Humperdinck opera Hansel und Gretel (see 1940).
Ballet: Façade 4/26 at London's Cambridge Theatre, with Antony Tudor, Alicia Makarova, Guayaquil-born English dancer Frederick (William Mallandine) Ashton, 26, music by William Walton, choreography by Ashton (see 1923); The Lady of Shalott 11/12 at London's Mercury Theatre, with Frederick Ashton, music by Jean Sibelius, choreography by Ashton, who has been choreographing dances since 1926 after studying under Léonide Massine, Marie Rambert, and others.
Ballerina Anna Pavlova dies of pneumonia at The Hague January 23 at age 50.
London's Royal Ballet has its beginnings in the Vic-Wells (later Sadler's Wells) Ballet founded by Irish ballerina Nanette de Valois (Edris Stannus), 33, whose small opera ballet ensemble will grow to become Britain's national ballet company.
Mary Wigman at Dresden sends her pupil and teacher Hanya Holm (Johanna Eckert), 38, to New York to establish a U.S. branch of her ballet school (see 1920). German authorities will shut down Wigman's school in a few years, and Holm will open her own studio in 1936, melding Wigman's disciplines and choreographic ideas with American approaches that will find expression in Broadway musical numbers.
Cleveland's Severance Hall opens February 5 with the world premiere of Evocation by composer Charles Martin Loeffler. Named for Elisabeth Severance, wife of Cleveland Orchestra board president John Severance, the building contains a 2,000-seat concert auditorium and a 400-seat chamber hall.
First performances: Concert Music for String Orchestra and Brass Instruments by Paul Hindemith 4/3 at Boston's Symphony Hall in a concert celebrating the Boston Symphony's 50th anniversary; "Amphion Suite" by Arthur Honegger 6/23 at the Paris Opéra; "Grand Canyon Suite" by Ferde Grofé 11/22 at Chicago's Studebaker Hall in a concert by Paul Whiteman and his Orchestra.
Cantata: Belshazzar's Feast for Baritone, Chorus, and Orchestra by William Walton 10/10 at Leeds.
Composer Carl Nielsen is named director of Denmark's Royal Conservatory but dies at Copenhagen October 3 at age 66; Vincent d'Indy dies at his native Paris December 2 at age 80.
Stage musicals: America's Sweetheart 2/10 at New York's Broadhurst Theater, with music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Lorenz Hart, songs that include "I've Got Five Dollars," 135 perfs.; Billy Rose's Crazy Quilt 5/19 at the 44th Street Theater, with Rose's wife, Fanny Brice, music by Harry Warren, lyrics by Rose and Mort Dixon, songs that include "I Found a Million Dollar Baby—in a Five and Ten Cent Store," 79 perfs.; The Little Show 6/1 at the Music Box Theater, with Beatrice Lillie, Ernest Truex, 41, music and lyrics by Noël Coward, songs that include "Mad Dogs and Englishmen," written by Coward last year while motoring between Hanoi and Saigon, 136 perfs.; The Band Wagon 6/3 at the New Amsterdam Theater, with Fred and Adele Astaire in their last appearance together on the first revolving stage to be used in a musical, Philip Loeb, music by Arthur Schwartz, lyrics by Howard Dietz, songs that include "Dancing in the Dark," "I Love Louisa," 260 perfs.; The Ziegfeld Follies 7/1 at the Ziegfeld Theater, with Helen Morgan, Ruth Etting, Harry Richman, music by Walter Donaldson, Dave Stamper, and others, lyrics by E. Y. Harburg and others, 165 perfs.; Earl Carroll's Vanities 7/27 at the new 3,000-seat Earl Carroll Theater on 7th Avenue at 50th Street, with William Demarest, Lillian Roth, naked chorus girls, music mostly by Burton Lane (originally Morris Hyman Kushner), 19, plus Ravel's "Bolero," lyrics by Harold Adamson, songs that include "Goodnight, Sweetheart" by English songwriters Ray Noble, James Campbell, and Reg Connelly, 278 perfs.; George White's Scandals 9/14 at the Apollo Theater, with Willie Howard, Rudy Vallée, Ray Bolger, Ethel Merman, music and lyrics by Ray Henderson and Lew Brown, songs that include "Life Is just a Bowl of Cherries," 202 perfs.; Everybody's Welcome 10/13 at the Shubert Theater, with Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, Ann Pennington, Harriet Lake (Ann Sothern), songs that include "As Time Goes By" by Montclair, N.J.-born composer Herman Hupfeld, 37 (see film Casablanca, 1942), 139 perfs.; The Cat and the Fiddle 10/15 at the Globe Theater, with Bettina Hall, Georges Metaxa, Eddie Foy Jr., music by Jerome Kern, lyrics by Otto Harbach, songs that include "She Didn't Say 'Yes,"' "The Night Was Made for Love," 395 perfs.; The Laugh Parade 11/2 at the Imperial Theater, with Ed Wynn, music by Harry Warren, lyrics by Mort Dixon and Joe Young, songs that include "You're My Everything," 231 perfs.; Hold My Hand 12/23 at London's Gaiety Theatre, with Stanley Lupino, Jessie Matthews, Sonnie Hale, music by Noel Gay, lyrics by Douglas Furber; Of Thee I Sing 12/26 at New York's Music Box Theater, with Victor Moore as Alexander Throttlebottom, William Gaxton as John P. Wintergreen, music by George Gershwin, lyrics by Ira Gershwin, songs that include "Love Is Sweeping the Country," "Wintergreen for President," "Who Cares?" and the title song, 441 perfs.
Popular songs: "Mood Indigo" by Duke Ellington, lyrics by clarinetist Leon Albany "Barney" Bignard, 25, and Ellington's publisher-agent Irving Mills, 37; "(Potatoes Are Cheaper—Tomatoes are Cheaper) Now's the Time to Fall in Love" by Al Sherman, lyrics by Al Lewis; "Heartaches" by Al Hoffman, lyrics by John Klenner; "Marta (Rambling Rose of the Wildwood)" by Moises Simons, lyrics by L. Wolfe Gilbert; "I Don't Know Why I Love You Like I Do" by Fred E. Ahlert, lyrics by Roy Turk; "Where the Blue of the Night Meets the Gold of the Day" by Ahlert and Turk (crooner Bing Crosby records the song and will make it his theme song); "All of Me" by U.S. songwriters Seymour Simon and Gerald Marks; "I Love a Parade" by Harold Arlen, lyrics by Ted Koehler; "When I Take My Sugar To Tea" by Sammy Fain, lyrics by Irving Kahal; "Sweet and Lovely" by Gus Arnheim, Harry Tobias, and Jules Lemare; "Take Me in Your Arms" by Fred Markush, lyrics by Mitchell Parish; "I Surrender, Dear" by Harry Burris of the Rhythm Boys, lyrics by Gordon Clifford; "Love Letters in the Sand" by J. Fred Coots, lyrics by Nick and Charles Kenny; "Out of Nowhere" by Johnny Green and Edward Heyman; "(I'll Be Glad When You're Dead) You Rascal You" by Sam Theard; "That Silver Haired Daddy of Mine" by Texas-born Oklahoma radio "singing cowboy" Orvon "Gene" Autry, 24, who will sell more than 5 million copies of the song; "Got a Date with an Angel" by English composers Jack Waller and Joseph Tunbridge, lyrics by Clifford Grey and Jimmie Miller; "Sally" by English songwriters Harry Leon (Sugarman), Will E. Haines, and Leo Towers (for the film Sally in Our Alley with Gracie Fields, now 33); "Lady of Spain" by English composer Tolchard Evans, 30, lyrics by Stanley Demerell, 51, and Bob Hargreaves; "Take My Hand, Precious Lord" by gospel music pioneer Thomas A. Dorsey.
Kentucky singer-songwriter Aunt Molly Jackson (Mary Magdelene Garlande), 51, travels to New York and joins a national music tour in support of striking miners; by 1939 she will have a repertoire of more than 200 songs, including "Dreadful Memories," "Coal Miner's Farewell," "Death of Harry Sims," and "I Am a Union Woman."
Music publisher Jerome H. Remick dies at New York July 15 at age 62 and is buried at his native Detroit; jazz cornetist-pianist-composer Bix Beiderbecke dies of lobar pneumonia (and chronic alcoholism) while having delirium tremens at a borrowed apartment in Sunnyside, Queens, N.Y., August 6 at age 28; legendary New Orleans jazz cornetist Buddy Bolden dies November 4 at age 54 in the state hospital at Jackson, La., where he has been confined for cerebral dysfunction since 1906.
A Los Angeles-bound plane carrying Notre Dame football coach Knute Rockne takes off from Kansas City and crashes in a Kansas field March 31, killing Rockne at age 43 (see 1913). He took over as head coach at Notre Dame in 1918; his teams have won 105 games and tied 5 out of 122.
The New York-built yacht Dorade built by the 2-year-old firm Sparkman & Stephens wins the Trans-Atlantic race from Newport to Plymouth, covering the distance in 17 days, 1 hour, 14 minutes and going on to win the Fastnet race. New York-born naval architect Olin J. (James) Stephens, II, now 23, and his brother Roderick Stephens Jr. taught themselves to sail in Barnstable Bay, Mass., as teenagers. Olin has apprenticed under Philip Rhodes, Rod at the Nevins Yard in New York's City Island. Olin got backing from his father in 1929 to start a business with yacht broker Drake Sparkman, and he built the Dorade last year for $28,000. It is 52 feet in length overall, 10 feet three inches in the beam, has a seven-foot seven-inch draft, and carries 1,079 square feet of sail. The Stephens brothers will go on to develop racing and cruising designs that will help to popularize the sport of sailing.
Sidney (Burr Beardsley) Wood, 19, (U.S.) wins in men's singles at Wimbledon, Cilly Aussem, 22, (Ger) in women's singles; H. Ellsworth Vines Jr., 19, in men's singles at Forest Hills, Helen Wills Moody in women's singles.
Brookline, Mass.-born golfer Francis Ouimet, 38, wins the U.S. Open, beating Britain's Harry Vardon and Ted Ray.
World Series organizer Byron Bancroft "Ban" Johnson dies of diabetes at St. Louis March 28 at age 67. The St. Louis Cardinals win the World Series, defeating the Philadelphia Athletics 4 games to 3.
Former world heavyweight champion Marvin Hart dies of an enlarged liver and hypertension at Fern Creek, Ky., near Louisville September 17 at age 55.
The Nevada State Legislature enacts a 6-week residency law in March for divorce-seekers in a move to generate revenue for the Depression-struck state which has almost no tax base since most of its lands are federally owned. Nevada grants 5,260 divorces, up from 2,500 in 1928, and 4,745 of the decrees are handed down at Reno, which becomes the boom-town divorce capital of the world.
The Nevada State Legislature legalizes gambling, which has been illegal since 1910. California entrepreneur Raymond Smith opens Harolds Club in Reno's Virginia Street, naming the gambling casino after one of his sons, and advertises the place with billboards along western highways to begin what will soon be a thriving enterprise (see Harrah's, 1937).
Starr Faithfull makes lurid headlines June 8 when a beachcomber finds her body at Long Beach, N.Y., clad only in a silk dress. The beautiful 25-year-old Manhattan woman has been dead since June 5, suicide notes turn up some weeks later, but the cause of her death will remain a mystery.
Lili de Alvarez appears in center court at Wimbledon June 23 wearing shorts—the first woman in Wimbledon history not to wear the traditional skirt (see Jacobs, 1933).
Turin-born couturiere Nina Ricci (née Marie Nielli), 49, with her 27-year-old son Robert opens a Paris fashion house with one room at 20, Rue des Capucines. Her frocks are often fitted below the waist, and they flatter the figure with shirrings, tucks, and drapings. By 1939 the Maison Ricci will occupy 11 floors in three buildings and have 450 employees in its workshops.
Designer Marcel Rochas moves his 7-year-old Paris fashion house to avenue Matignon. He will introduce his first perfume in 1936 and become as well known for fragrances as for couture.
The aloha shirt introduced by Hawaiian entrepreneur Ellery J. Chun, 22, begins a men's fashion that will find wide acceptance. Missionaries in the last century introduced the plain, solid-color palaka work shirt for men and the long, shapeless muumuu dress for women, making them from native tapa, or bark cloth; patterns were soon added, and small Honolulu tailor shops have been making custom-printed shirts for cruise-ship tourists since the 1920s, but it is Chun who calls them aloha shirts. Newly graduated from Yale with a degree in economics, Chun turns a Honolulu dry-goods shop (King-Smith Clothiers) at 36 North King Street into the first mass-production producer of the shirts, printing them with palm trees, pineapples, and hula dancers. His tailor sews three to four dozen at a time, and by 1933 he will be producing ready-to-wear models made of cloth imported from Japan, Tahiti, and the U.S. mainland.
Clairol hair dye is introduced by New York chemists' broker Lawrence M. Gelb, 33, who has traveled to Europe with his wife, Joan, and discovered a hair dye made by the French company Mury that permeates hair shafts instead of painting them, can be applied at home in minutes, and is being sold under the Clairol name (see Nestle Colorinse, 1929). Having acquired the formula and brand name, Gelb builds a research laboratory and plant at Stamford, Conn., and tries to create a U.S. market for what he calls hair "tints" (see Miss Clairol, 1950).
Lucky Strike cigarettes outsell Camels for the first time as American Tobacco challenges the lead of R. J. Reynolds (see Hill, 1925). The lead will alternate between the two brands for the next 20 years as cigarette advertising helps build U.S. radio and radio commercials encourage cigarette use.
A federal grand jury indicts Chicago mobster Al Capone March 13 on charges of having evaded $32,488.81 in taxes on his 1924 income, it indicts him again June 5 on 22 counts of having evaded $231,000 in income taxes, it indicts him a third time a week later on some 5,000 violations of the Volstead Act since 1922. Capone goes to trial, is found guilty on some of the tax evasion charges October 17, is sentenced October 24 to 11 years' imprisonment plus a $50,000 fine plus $30,000 in court costs. He begins serving time and will be taken in May of next year to Atlanta Penitentiary. Government agent Eliot Ness, 28, is credited with having brought Capone to justice and is promoted to chief investigator of Prohibition forces for Chicago (see Ness, 1935; Capone, 1939).
Prohibition is not working, reports President Hoover's Wickersham Committee, headed by former attorney general George (Woodward) Wickersham, 73. Statistics will show that Americans are drinking less alcohol, and the death rate from cirrhosis of the liver in men dropped in 1929 to 10.7 per 100,000, down from 29.5 in 1911, but crime has increased significantly, and efforts to control illegal sales of beer and whiskey are only marginally effective.
New York underworld boss Joe Masseria is shot dead April 15 by gunmen Joe Adonis, Umberto "Albert" Anastasia (originally Anastasio), 28, Vito Genovese, and Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, 25, at Gerardo Scarpato's Restaurant in Coney Island (one of Anastasia's two brothers, Salvatore, is a priest, and Umberto changed his name "to save the family's honor" when he was arrested for the first time in 1921); Masseria's archrival Salvatore Maranzano is assassinated September 10 at his offices in the New York Central Building in a murder engineered (as was Masseria's) by Italian-born New York mobster Charles "Lucky" Luciano (originally Salvatore Lucania), 34, who has been Masseria's trusted lieutenant and who now restructures the New York Mafia into a federation of five "families"—Bonnano, Genovese, Gotti, Luchesi, and Luciano—all of whom prosper from bootlegging and other operations (see 1936).
Charles A. "Pretty Boy" Floyd robs eight midwestern banks in 2 months (see 1929); the banks have foreclosed on the loans of many farmers, and some regard Floyd as a hero (see 1932).
New Delhi opens in India. The planned capital has been designed by English architects Sir Edwin Landseer Lutyens, 62, and Sir Herbert Baker, 69, who have taken some inspiration from Christopher Wren and Pierre L'Enfant.
Villa Savoie is completed at Poissy-sur-Seine, France, to International Style designs by Le Corbusier.
Philadelphia's Convention Hall is completed at 34th Street and Vintage Avenue with seats for 13,000 and room on stage for another 1,000. Cleveland-born architect Philip (Cortelyou) Johnson, 25, has designed the Renaissance-style hall.
Pittsburgh's 44-story Gulf Building is completed to designs by the New York firm Trowbridge & Livingston.
New York's 102-story Empire State Building opens with formal ceremonies May 1 on Fifth Avenue between 33rd and 34th streets, where the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel of 1897 was torn down beginning in May 1929 to make way for the steel-framed skyscraper, which will remain the world's tallest building until 1973. Former General Motors executive John Jakob Raskob has helped raise the money for the 1,050-foot structure, former governor Alfred E. Smith heads the company that financed its construction, and he joins with President Hoover, Gov. Roosevelt, and Mayor Walker in making appropriate speeches. Shreve, Lamb & Harmon has designed the office tower, which has been built in only 18 months at a cost of $41 million (the budget called for $60 million, but windows, stone and steel spandrels, and other basic components have been fabricated off site and installed on an assembly-line basis to permit the building to rise at a rate of four stories per week). Its steel frame is clad in granite, limestone, aluminum, nickel, and upwards of 10 million bricks, and its three-story art deco lobby is lined with European marble, stainless steel, and glass in geometric patterns. But its initial occupancy rate is only 23 percent. The Empire State Building will be hard pressed for some years to find tenants for its 2,158,000 square feet of rentable space. Admissions to the building's observation deck will pay off 2 percent of its total cost.
Rockefeller Center construction begins on a 12-acre, three-block midtown Manhattan site bounded by Fifth and Sixth avenues between 49th and 52nd streets, where 14 buildings will replace more than 200 smaller structures on a project that will employ more than 75,000 workers. John D. Rockefeller Jr. leased the property in 1928 with the intention of building a new Metropolitan Opera House; the 23-year lease given by Columbia University will be renewed periodically and the university will receive rent on the $125 million office building development until 1985. Architect Raymond M. Hood has laid out the design for the office-building complex, including a street and gardens to separate the structures with light and air (see Radio City, 1932; RCA [GE] Building, 1933).
London's Dorchester Hotel opens in April on the site of the former American Embassy in Park Lane.
New York's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel opens October 1 on a full-block site leased from the New York Central Railroad from 49th to 50th Street between Park and Lexington avenues. Designed by Schultze & Weaver, the 2,000-room hotel has twin 47-story towers and will lose money for 12 years.
The U.S. Public Health Service issues a study early in the year reporting that "the contamination of the atmosphere by smoke from the chimneys of private houses, office buildings, industrial plants, steam engines, tugs and steamships has become a serious matter in several of the larger cities," but while smoke cuts off an estimated one-fifth of the natural light of New York City, the chief concern in most places is that factories are idle and not belching forth the smoke that came with prosperity.
An earthquake in Nicaragua March 31 leaves an estimated 2,400 dead.
Italian dictator Benito Mussolini launches a 3-year program to drain the Pontine Marshes south of Rome, reclaim their nearly 300 square miles (780 square kilometers) of land for 3,000 new farms, and end the threat of malaria they have posed since ancient times.
China's Chang Jiang (Yangtze) River bursts a dam during a typhoon August 3, flooding 40,000 square miles, killing hundreds, and causing widespread famine that will kill an estimated 225,000.
Some 75 percent of Soviet farms remain in private hands despite the Five-Year Plan begun by Josef Stalin in 1928 to encourage collective farms and state farms. Liquidation of kulaks is intensified (see human rights, 1928; food availability, 1932).
Brazil establishes a National Coffee Department. Collapse of the world coffee market has brought economic disaster and has helped precipitate a revolt in the southern provinces. The Coffee Department will supervise the destruction of large quantities of Brazil's chief export item in order to maintain good prices in the world market (see Nescafé, 1938).
The U.S. wheat crop breaks all records, driving down prices. Many Kansas counties declare a moratorium on taxes to help farmers survive, but elsewhere farmers are forced off the land as banks foreclose on mortgages (see Farm Mortgage Financing Act, 1934).
The United States has 7.2 million operating farms, up from some 6.3 million last year, with more than a billion acres of farmland in production and with the world's highest rate of cultivated food crop acreage per capita. By 1935 the number of farms will be down to 6.84 million and by 1969 3.45 million.
Drought begins on the western plains after years of plentiful rainfall and bumper wheat crops have lulled farmers into forgetting that growing conditions are subject to weather cycles in Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, eastern New Mexico, and eastern Colorado, where land has been plowed for wheat since the end of the Great War (see 1919; dust storms, 1932).
Agricultural chemist Stephen M. Babcock dies at Madison, Wis., July 2 at age 87, having seen his test for butterfat content in milk come into almost universal use.
A newly-formed British Advisory Committee on Nutrition addresses the problem of poor nutrition among the poor. It devises new marketing schemes for farmers to put food within reach of more Britons and a Milk in Schools Scheme subsidizes milk so that children may have it at cheap prices (see 1906; 1934).
Swiss chemist Paul Karrer, 42, isolates vitamin A (see 1920; 1937).
Daniel Gerber's Fremont Packing Co. adds salt to its baby foods (see 1929). Infants' taste buds are not sufficiently developed to discern any difference, but sales resistance has come from mothers who taste their babies' food (see 1941; MSG, 1951).
Researchers find that taste perception is largely an inherited trait: about 70 percent of humans can taste the chemical phenylthiocarbamide (or phenylthiourea, PTC), but many more non-Europeans than Europeans have that ability (98 percent of Native Americans have it, only 58 percent of Austrloid peoples).
U.S. mechanical refrigerator production tops 1 million units, up from 5,000 in 1921. By 1937 the industry will be producing refrigerators at the rate of nearly 3 million per year (see 1929).
Frigidaire division of General Motors adopts Freon 12 (dichlorodifluoromethane) refrigerant gas, invented by Thomas Midgley of Ethyl Corp. and C. F. Kettering of GM and produced by a DuPont-GM subsidiary. Most other refrigerator makers follow suit, replacing ammonia and other more dangerous gases.
Birds Eye Frosted Foods go on sale across the United States as General Foods expands distribution, but only a few retail grocers have freezer cases for displaying frozen foods (see 1929; 1940).
General Mills introduces Bisquick, a prepared mix for biscuits that uses sesame seed oil to keep its flour and shortening from turning rancid (the sesame seed oil will later be replaced by soybean and/or cottonseed oils). Bisquick can be used to make pancakes as well as biscuits and will lead to the development of cake and muffin mixes. The product has sales of more than 500,000 cases within 7 months, and within a year has 95 imitators. It competes with Jiffy brand biscuit mix, introduced last year by Chelsea Milling Co., but by 1933 all but six competitors will have been eliminated.
Ballard & Ballard of Louisville, Ky., introduces Ballard Biscuits made from refrigerated dough and packaged under pressure in cylindrical containers. Local baker Lively Willoughby has come up with the idea of saving time for housewives by preparing uncooked biscuits which can be stored in iceboxes for as much as 24 hours and then baked. He has devised a method of wrapping the biscuit dough in tinfoil and enclosing it under pressure in heavy paper tubes with metal lids to produce a product that stays fresh in the icebox for a week.
U.S. sales of glass jars for home canning hit an 11-year high even as sales of store-bought bottled and canned foods decline.
Safeway Stores reach their peak of 3,527 outlets (see 1926). The company will close many of its smaller grocery stores and open huge supermarkets.
Tea magnate Sir Thomas Lipton dies at London October 2 at age 81 (see 1914). His picture will appear beginning in 1934 on the red-and-yellow packages that identify Lipton products.
New York's new Waldorf-Astoria hotel employs the old Waldorf's maître d'hôtel, Oscar Tschirsky, now 65, who receives $30,000 per year at a time when doctors and lawyers are lucky to make $5,000. He has been so heavily promoted as Oscar of the Waldorf that his calling cards are so inscribed.
Adolph Butenandt isolates the male sex hormone androgen (see 1929).
U.S. birth rates and immigration to the United States will decline in this decade for economic reasons.
The U.S. population reaches 124 million. Britain has 46 million, Germany 65, France 42, Italy 41, the Dutch East Indies 61, Japan 65, Soviet Russia 148, India 338, China perhaps 440.
1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940