1921 1922 1923 1924 1925 1926 1927 1928 1929 1930
Josef Stalin expels Leon Trotsky from the Soviet Union in January, 14 months after having him thrown out of the Communist Party on charges of engaging in antiparty activities (see 1924). Stalin removes Trotsky's threat to his dictatorship; Trotsky will settle at Mexico City (see 1940). Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin, 41, is expelled from the Communist Party November 17 after having headed the Third International since 1926. Other members of the rightist opposition are expelled, leaving Stalin to rule as undisputed dictator (see 1934).
Tadzhikistan becomes a Soviet Socialist republic.
Yugoslavia's Aleksandr I proclaims a dictatorship January 5 and dissolves the Croat and other parties January 21 (see 1921). The Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes becomes Yugoslavia officially October 3 in a move to end historic divisions of the realm (see 1934).
Austrian statesman Adolf Braun dies at Berlin May 13 at age 67 (he founded the Social Democratic Party); former German general Otto Liman von Sanders of 1915 Gallipoli fame dies at Munich August 22 at age 74; former German chancellor (and 1926 Nobel Peace Prize winner) Gustav Stresemann suffers two strokes and dies at Berlin October 3 at age 51 as the Deutsche Volkspartei (DVP) that he founded moves closer to the Nazis.
Former French Army marshal Ferdinand Foch dies at Paris March 20 at age 77 as construction begins along the Franco-German and Franco-Italian borders of a heavily fortified line that was first proposed by Gen. Joffre as a barrier against the "beast that sleeps on the other side of the Rhine." Promoted by former minister of war Paul Painlevé, it will be named for the new minister of war André (-Louis-René) Maginot, 52, who will use his political influence next year to win a Senate appropriation of 2.9 billion francs for the carefully planned project, promising that it will create jobs and give France time to mobilize in the event of a German invasion. Former premier Georges Clemenceau dies at Paris November 24 at age 88 as work continues on the fortifications, designed to extend for about 150 miles from Sedan in the west to beyond Wissembourg in the east, with some 50 some heavily armed bunkers, each within cannon range of another, several of them employing former German defense works but most buried at least 100 feet underground beneath hills and ridges, generally following the contours of the natural terrain (see 1934).
Algerian nationalist leader Ahmed Messali Hadj, 31, calls for a revolt against French colonial rule, and although French authorities dissolve his North African Star (Etoile Nord-Africaine) and will imprison him at times, he will continue to agitate for independence (see 1946).
Former British prime minister Archibald P. Primrose, 5th earl of Roseberry, dies at Epsom, Surrey, May 21 at age 82. Britain's Labour Party wins the general election May 30 and Ramsay MacDonald forms a second cabinet June 5 that will hold power for more than 2 years. British voters elect 13 women members of Parliament May 31. Socialist Prime Minister MacDonald appoints Margaret Bondfield minister of labour June 7 as more workers queue up for the dole. Britain resumes diplomatic relations with Moscow October 1.
The Lateran Treaties signed by Benito Mussolini February 11 and ratified by the Italian parliament June 7 restore temporal power to the pope over the 108.7-acre Vatican City in Rome. The Italian government agrees to pay an indemnity of 750 million lire in cash and 1 billion lire in government bonds, and the pope leaves the Vatican July 25 after years of virtual imprisonment. The papacy recognizes the establishment of the kingdom of Italy and announces permanent neutrality in military and diplomatic conflicts worldwide.
Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson, 51, closes the U.S. State Department's code-breaking room, saying, "Gentlemen do not read each other's mail." Wilmington, Ind.-born cryptographer Herbert O. (Osborn) Yardley, now 40, broke the Japanese code in 1921 and won the Distinguished Service Medal for his feat, but Stimson's order shuts down the so-called American Black Chamber that Yardley has headed at Washington, D.C., to intercept and decipher foreign communications (see 1938; CIA, 1947).
The Barakzai dynasty that has ruled Afghanistan since 1826 ends October 17 as King Amanullah, now 37, abdicates and flees west in a Rolls Royce along with 17 of his followers after a 10-year reign in which he has drawn up the country's first written constitution but failed to modernize Afghanistan's tribal society, although he has tried to model a secular government along the lines of Turkey's, abolished slavery, attacked corruption, created a government budget, and reorganized taxes. Mohammad Nadir Khan and his brothers take over the government and Nadir Khan is elected shah by a tribal assembly; he begins a bloody persecution of the opposition and will reign until his assassination in 1933.
Japanese voters go to the polls in the last parliamentary elections that will be held for more than 16 years, dropping their ballots into big red lacquer boxes. Twenty percent of the population is eligible to vote as compared with 1.1 percent in 1890, but suffrage remains limited to men of 25 and older. Japanese militarists will soon take over the government and put an end to free elections.
Former cabinet minister Hakushaku Goto Shimpei dies at Tokyo April 13 at age 71, having modernized the Taiwanese economy and made the island a financially independent Japanese colony.
Mexican strongman Plutarco Elias Calles and his cronies found the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) that will control Mexico for 71 years, using corrupt means to rig elections and keep itself in power (see 1928).
A Mississippi lynch mob of 2,000 burns an accused black rapist alive, a coroner's jury returns a verdict of death "due to unknown causes," and Mississippi governor Theodore G. Bilbo says the state has "neither the time nor the money" to pursue the matter. But total U.S. lynchings for the year number 10, down from 23 in 1926, 97 in 1909.
The U.S. Supreme Court rules 6 to 3 against Rosika Schwimmer's application for citizenship May 27 because she has refused to swear that she will bear arms to defend her adopted country (see politics, 1926). Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes dissents, saying that Mme. Schwimmer "seems to be a woman of superior character and intelligence, obviously more than ordinarily desirable as a citizen of the United States," and adds, "If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other, it is the principle of free thought—not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate."
Germany's Frankfurt city council sets up what it calls officially a "concentration camp for Gypsies" (see 1911). Camp inhabitants are fenced in, but they are free to come and go at will and there is no permanent guard (but see 1938).
The Japanese Diet comes close to passing a women's civil rights bill, but Prime Minister Tomomasa Tanaka declares that it is still too early to extend civil rights to women. The minister of the interior says women should stay at home and wash diapers (see 1930).
Pioneer British suffragist Dame Millicent Garrett Fawcett dies at London August 5 at age 82. She was present in the House of Commons when John Stuart Mill introduced the first woman suffrage bill in 1868.
Ways to Space Flight (Wege zur Raumschiffahri) by Hermann Oberth wins a 10,000-franc prize, permitting the scientist to finance further research on liquid-propellant rocket motors (see 1923; 1931).
U.S. Navy polar explorer-aviator Commander Richard E. Byrd takes off from his Little America base in the Antarctic November 28 with Bernt Balchen for the first flight over the South Pole (see 1928). The two return in 19 hours, having flown 1,560 miles, discovered several new mountain ranges, and obtained geological, meteorological, and radiowave propagation data; Byrd is promoted to rear admiral (see 1933).
New York financier Paul Warburg, now 59, issues a warning in January that sharply criticizes the "present orgies of unrestrained speculation" on Wall Street. Few people listen.
Former U.S. senator Oscar W. Underwood of 1913 tariff-law fame dies at his Virginia home January 25 at age 66.
New York reports February 3 that business girls average $33.50 for a 50-hour week, but wages will soon drop. The Department of Labor's Women's Bureau demands in July that housewives be included in a federal census on employment.
British unemployment tops 12.2 percent, with more miners and workmen idle than in the General Strike of 1926.
Textile factory vigilantes at Gastonia, N.C., murder organizer and songwriter Ella Mae Wiggins, 23, September 14 and suppress a strike.
Textile pioneer J. P. Stevens dies at Plainfield, N.J., October 29 at age 61.
Wall Street's Dow Jones Industrial Average closes at 327.08 May 4. The Curb Exchange trades more shares than the New York Stock Exchange for the first time June 15 as speculators buy on margin. The Dow falls below 300, but rebounds to peak at 381.17 September 3; a seat on the New York Stock Exchange sells for a record high of $625,000.
"Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau," says Yale economist Irving Fisher October 17, but trading is dominated by pools whose managers rig the market; the Dow breaks in October following a drop in U.S. iron and steel production and a rise in British interest rates to 6.5 percent that has pulled European capital out of the U.S. money market. The Dow falls 508 points (22.61 percent) October 19, 38.88 points (12.82 percent) October 28, and a record 16.4 million shares trade October 29, as the Dow plummets another 30.57 points (11.73 percent); liquidation continues despite assurances by leading economists that no business recession is imminent. The Dow drops another 25.55 points (9.92 percent) November 6, but although there are reports of speculators jumping out of windows, no such report will be substantiated. More than 99 percent of Americans own no stock (only 1.3 million people do), but speculators who have bought on 10 percent margin are forced to sell, and $30 billion disappears—a sum almost equal to what the 1914-18 war cost America (Charles E. Merrill of Merrill, Lynch has anticipated the crash and saves his customers $6 million).
Many investors blame the Wall Street crash on speculator Jesse L. Livermore, now 52, who has 30 telephone lines linking him to brokerage houses (see 1925). But Livermore went short the market during the summer, several months too early, and has gone broke (see 1934).
Seventy-one percent of U.S. families have incomes below $2,500, generally considered the minimum necessary for a decent standard of living. The average weekly wage is $28 (see 1932). The Wall Street crash ends a 9-year period that has seen unemployment drop from 12 percent to 3.2 percent; the economy has grown at an annual rate of 3.6 percent, the national debt has shrunk from $24 billion to $16 billion, the federal budget has run a surplus every year, and inflation has dropped below 1 percent, but unchecked speculation has caused the economic bubble to burst.
Edsel Ford announces an increase in the minimum daily wage at Ford Motor Company plants December 2. It rises from $6 to $7, but wages in virtually all industries will soon decline (see 1933).
Wall Street's Dow Jones Industrial Average closes December 31 at 248.49, down from 300 at the end of 1928; much worse is to come.
Federated Department Stores is created by a loose confederation of three stores put together by Columbus, Ohio-born, retail merchant Fred Lazarus Jr. of F. and R. Lazarus. Brooklyn's Abraham & Straus and Boston's Filene's join with Lazarus Brothers in the holding company that will be joined next year by Bloomingdale's (New York) and thereafter by Shillito's (Cincinnati), Rikes (Dayton), the Boston Store (Milwaukee), Goldsmith's (Memphis), Foley's (Houston, 1951), Burdines (Miami, 1956), Sanger-Harris (Dallas), Levy's (Tucson), Bullock's (Los Angeles), I. Magnin (San Francisco), and others to make Federated the largest U.S. department-store colossus.
Continental Oil Co. (Conoco) is created by J. P. Morgan & Co., which has taken over Continental Oil of Maine (originally founded by Utah and Wyoming businessmen in 1872 as an oil marketing firm) and merges it with the Marland Oil Co. that it took over last year (see du Pont, 1981).
The world produces 1,488 million barrels of crude oil, with just over two-thirds of it coming from the United States. Persia produces 42 million barrels, Iraq 1 million.
The British protectorate of Brunei on the north coast of Borneo begins pumping oil; her hitherto impecunious sultan will become one of the world's richest men.
Indiana-born Ohio utilities company lawyer Wendell L. (Lewis) Willkie, 41, moves to New York to become legal counsel to the new Commonwealth & Southern Corp., a giant holding company put together by Bernard C. Cobb (see 1933).
Electric arc lamp creator Charles F. Brush dies at Cleveland June 15 at age 80; chemist Carl von Welsbach of 1885 Welsbach mantle gaslight fame in his Carinthian castle at Treibach, Austria, August 4 at age 70. His mantle will remain in widespread use in kerosene lanterns and other such lamps.
General Motors president Alfred P. Sloan Jr. opposes a suggestion by Lammot du Pont, 49, that Chevrolets be equipped with safety glass (see Duplate, 1927). GM's Cadillacs and La Salles have recently been equipped with Duplate glass, but Sloan points out that Packards have not been equipped with safety glass and their sales have not suffered. "I do not think that from the stockholder's viewpoint the move on Cadillac's part has been justified," writes Sloan, who has rescued GM from the brink of insolvency and is creating the modern corporation, with an independent board of directors and executive and finance committees, decentralizing decision making for divisions that must meet financial benchmarks.
General Motors announces in March that it has bought 80 percent of the stock in Germany's Adam Opel AG for $26 million and holds an option for the remaining shares (GM will exercise the option in 1931; see 1924). GM has agreed to let Opel enjoy autonomy, retaining the brand name Opel, and not to assemble GM cars at Rüsselsheim. U.S. management takes over officially October 18 (see 1935).
GM's Chevrolet Division introduces a six-cylinder model and advertises that the new Chevy costs no more than a four-cylinder car.
The Cord L-29 introduced by E. L. Cord's Auburn Automobile Co. is the first motorcar with front-wheel drive to enjoy wide sales (see 1926). It will remain in production until 1932.
The Model J Duesenberg is a "real Duzy" (see 1926). Designed by Fred and August Duesenberg for E. L. Cord's Duesenberg, Inc., the costly 265-horsepower luxury car can go 112 to 116 miles per hour and will be built until 1936 for affluent Americans and Europeans.
Ford introduces the first station wagon, equipping a Model A with a boxy wooden body that provides extra space for cargo and passengers.
The first mobile home trailer goes on sale at New York showrooms. Aviation pioneer Glenn H. Curtiss has devised it for Hudson Motor Car.
U.S. auto production tops 5 million with minor makes accounting for 25 percent of sales (General Motors alone produces 1,333,154 vehicles). U.S. motorcar ownership reaches 23 million, up from 7 million in 1919, but the production figure of 5 million will not be reached again for 20 years (see 1932).
The Ambassador Bridge opens November 15 to span the Detroit River between Michigan and Ontario (see Peace Bridge, 1927). Built in 2½ years, it has a 1,850-foot center span that makes it the world's longest suspension bridge to date (see Windsor Tunnel, 1930).
The MG sportscar is introduced by Morris Garages (see 1912). Designed and built at Abingdon, England, it has an octagonal emblem that will become symbolic of British sportscars and it will remain in production until 1980.
Scuderia Ferrari is founded at Modena December 1 by former Alfa Romeo racing driver Enzo Ferrari, 31, with a few partners to sell Alfas in three provinces (Scuderia means stable, or racing team).
Automotive pioneer Karl F. Benz dies at Ladenburg, outside Mannheim, April 4 at age 84; carburetor (and Mercedes-Benz) designer Wilhelm Maybach at Stuttgart December 29 at age 83 (motorcars bearing the Maybach name have been produced since 1922 and will remain in production to 1939).
United Aircraft & Transport is created in February by aeronautical engineer and designer Chance Vought, now 38, who merges his 12-year-old Chance Vought aircraft manufacturing firm with Pratt & Whitney Aircraft and Boeing Airplane (see 1931; United Airlines, 1931).
Curtiss-Wright Corp. is created by a merger of American Wright Co. with Curtiss Aircraft (see 1909; 1910).
London's Heathrow Airport has its beginnings in Richard Fairey's Great West Aerodrome, used mainly for experimental flights (see 1946; Croydon, 1920; Gatwick, 1936).
The Graf Zeppelin that was launched last year completes the first round-the-world flight of any kind. The dirigible carries nine commercial passengers 19,000 miles in 21 days, 7 hours.
Indiana-born Binghamton, N.Y., inventor Edwin A. (Albert) Link, 24, files a patent application April 14 for a "pilot maker" and organizes the Link Aeronautical Corp. to market his trainer, a mechanical device that can be used in place of actual flying time to teach rudimentary pilot skills. Some amusement parks acquire the machines for use as coin-operated rides, Link will organize the Link Flying School next year and guarantee students that they will learn to fly solo for only $85, but he will enjoy little success (see politics, 1934).
Vincent Bendix founds Bendix Aviation; he will merge his various aviation, motorcar, and radio equipment-making firms into the new corporation (see 1912; Bendix Trophy, 1930).
Delta Air Lines begins passenger service June 17 under the name Delta Air Service with three six-passenger Travelaire monoplanes powered by 300-horsepower Wright "Whirlwind" engines flying at 90 miles per hour between Dallas and Jackson, Miss., via Shreveport and Monroe, La. Delta was organized late last year under the leadership of former agricultural extension service county agent C. E. (Collett Everman) Woolman, 39, who pioneered in using airplanes to dust cotton crops with arsenate of lead and calcium arsenate in order to protect them from boll weevil damage.
Pan American Airways starts daily flights between Miami and San Juan, Miami and Nassau, and San Juan and Havana (see 1927; 1935). Pan American consultant Charles A. Lindbergh opens a route through Central America to the Panama Canal Zone. Pan Am acquires Cia Mexicana de Aviacion, wins a mail contract to Mexico City, and by year's end has routes totaling 12,000 miles, up from 251 at the end of last year (see 1930).
Lieut. "Jimmy" Doolittle, U.S. Army, takes off from Mitchel Field on Long Island September 24 for a 15-mile "blind" flight using only instruments (see Doolittle, 1922). Retained by copper heir Daniel Guggenheim to develop new aircraft, he carries the world's first altimeter, designed by German-born engineer Paul Kollsman, 29, who has found a way to translate barometric pressure into feet and last year founded the Kollsman Instrument Co. at Brooklyn.
Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corp. is founded December 6 by Huntington, L.I.-born engineer Leroy "Red Mike" Grumman, 34, and New York-born production supervisor Leon "Jake" Swirlbul, 31, who met 5 years ago at New York's Loening Aeronautical Engineering Co. Loening has sold out to Keystone Aircraft, whose management announced last year that it would move operations to Bristol, Pa., and has become part of the new Curtiss-Wright Corp. Loening veteran William T. Schwendler, 24, is chief engineer for the new company, whose founders rent a garage at Baldwin, Long Island (see 1930).
U.S. commercial airlines fly 30 million miles, up from 6 million in 1927, and carry 180,000 passengers, up from 37,000.
The S.S. Bremen goes into service July 10 and sets a new transatlantic speed record for passenger liners. The North German-Lloyd line vessel crosses from Cherbourg to New York in 4 days, 17 hours, 42 minutes, cutting 3 hours off the record set by the S.S. Mauretania in 1910.
Instrument manufacturer Worcester R. Warner of Warner & Swasey Co. dies suddenly at Eisenach, Saxe-Weimar, Germany, June 25 at age 83; inventor Herman Hollerith at Washington, D.C., November 17 at age 69. The Tabulating Machine Co. that he founded in 1896 became IBM 5 years ago.
Albert Einstein announces January 30 that he has found a key to the formulation of a unified gravitational field theory—a group of equations applicable not only to gravitation but also to electromagnetics and subatomic phenomena (see 1916). His six pages of equations, however, are unprovable, incomprehensible, ignore quantum mechanics, and are incorrect. Says U.S. engineer George Francis Gilette, "[By 1940] the relativity theory will be considered a joke" (see 1939).
Astronomer Edwin Hubble measures the red shifts of the Milky Way's nebulae, finds that the nebulae are all speeding away, and will lead others to conclude that the universe, heretofore considered static, is constantly expanding (see 1923). Hubble himself does not accept this new view of cosmology (see 1992). London-born physicist-mathematician James Jeans, 52, has been working as a research associate at California's Mt. Wilson Observatory since 1923 and last year became the first to propose the idea that matter is continuously created throughout the universe.
Rockefeller Institute chemist Phoebus Levene discovers part of the deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) molecule. Now 60, Levene isolated the five-carbon sugar d-ribose from the ribonucleic acid (RNA) molecule 20 years ago and this year discovers 2-deoxyribose, a sugar derived from d-ribose by removing an oxygen atom. He will determine how the nucleic acid components combine to form nucleotides and how nucleotides, in turn, combine in chains, but the significance of his findings will not be discovered until after his death (see Avery, 1944).
Irish crystallographer Kathleen Lonsdale (née Yardley), 26, at University College, London, uses X-ray diffraction analysis of organic crystals to work out the structure of hexamethylbenzene. She will solve the structure of hexachlorobenzene in 1931, using Fourier analysis (see 1945).
Archaeologist Wenzhong Pei, 26, discovers the skull of Peking Man (see 1927). Estimated to be 500,000 years old, it provides the first strong evidence of man's evolution from less-advanced forms of life.
Crude penicillin gets its first clinical application January 9 at St. Mary's Hospital, London (see 1928). Alexander Fleming treats an assistant suffering from an infected antrum by washing out the man's sinus with diluted penicillin broth, successfully destroying most of the staphylococci (see 1928; 1931).
Physician-bacteriologist Fernand-Isidore Widal dies at Paris January 14 at age 66.
Harvard physician Samuel A. (Albert) Levine, 38, notes that 60 out of 145 heart attack patients have been hypertensive—the first link between hypertension (high blood pressure) and fatal heart disease.
Angioplasty for coronary heart disease is pioneered by German medical researcher Werner Forssmann, 23, who shows that a flexible catheter inserted into a vein in the elbow can be safely extended into the heart. Experimenting on himself, he watches the progress of the catheter in a mirror held in front of a fluoroscope screen. Condemned for being so foolhardy, Forssmann gives up cardiology in favor of urology (but see 1941).
Austrian-born U.S. psychiatrist Manfred J. Sakel, 29, uses overdoses of insulin to produce shock and finds it effective in many cases of schizophrenia (see Banting, Best, 1922; Thorazine, 1954).
The first Blue Cross nonprofit tax-exempt health insurance association is organized at Dallas, Texas, where local schoolteachers, whose unpaid bills have been a burden to Baylor University Hospital, make an arrangement with the hospital. Each teacher is guaranteed up to 21 days' free use of a semiprivate room and other hospital services on condition that small monthly fees be paid in advance on a regular basis. The program will quickly spread to all hospitals in the area with a central agency to collect the fees and the Blue Cross trademark of the American Hospital Association (the national association of voluntary hospitals, AHA) will be used by agencies throughout the country that meet AHA standards. By 1935 Blue Cross will have half a million subscribers and a Blue Shield program set up by medical societies and local doctors' guilds will provide surgical insurance (see 1940).
The Seeing Eye is founded at Nashville, Tenn., by local philanthropist and dog fancier Dorothy Wood Eustis (née Harrison), 43, who breeds German shepherds. She saw a 1927 magazine article about a Swiss school that trained dogs for blinded war veterans, was asked by a blind Tennessee man to train a dog for him, and has opened the first Seeing Eye class. Her operation will move to Whippany, N.J., in 1932 and to Morristown, N.J., in 1965, training more than 4,500 Seeing Eye dogs (shepherds, labradors, and golden retrievers) for the sightless.
Apostolic Faith Church founder Charles Fox Parham dies at Baxter Springs, Kansas, January 29 at age 55, having established the Pentacostalist movement; Baptist leader Frederick T. Gates dies at Phoenix, Ariz., February 8 at age 75 after more than 35 years of guiding John D. Rockefeller's philanthropic activities.
A dispute over Jewish use of Jerusalem's Wailing Wall leads in August to the first large-scale Arab attacks on Jews, 133 of whom are killed along with 116 Arabs. The mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini has exploited Arab fears about Zionism (see 1930).
Liberia's Booker T. Washington Institute is founded in June at Kakata with support from the Phelps-Stokes Fund and Firestone Rubber Co. (whose million-acre plantation is nearby). Liberia's president C. D. B. King has visited Tuskegee Institute and hired MIT's first black graduate to design the campus and a course of instruction for the coeducational college. Now 61, Robert R. Taylor has been at Tuskegee since 1902 and will remain there until his death in 1942.
"The so-called method of coeducation is false in theory and harmful to Christian training," proclaims Pope Pius XI December 31 in his encyclical Diviniillius magistri.
Turkish newspapers and magazines verge on bankruptcy as the government forces them to give up Arabic type faces and switch to the Roman alphabet.
The Chinese Communist Party establishes the New China News Agency (Xinhua, or Hsinhua, or NCNA) at Beijing to serve as its press outlet. The NCNA will grow under strict government control to provide domestic and international services for Chinese and non-Chinese media, reflecting official policies and promoting state programs.
Britain's Eastern and Associated Telegraph Companies merge with the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Co. to form Imperial and International Communications (see Eastern, 1872; Marconi, 1907).
BBC begins publishing The Listener January 16 as British radio ownership grows. The weekly competes with the New Statesman, The Spectator, and others for readership.
The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is founded November 11 by David Sarnoff, who has bought station WEAF from AT&T October 29 and makes it the flagship of a 19-station Red Network, which soon has 31 affiliates (see 1922; 1927).
U.S. radio sales total nearly $950 million as Americans pay $118 and up for elaborate Atwater Kent and Stromberg-Carlson console sets with seven tubes and built-in superpower magnetic speakers to hear Amos 'n' Andy, Rudy Vallée, and Graham MacNamee's NBC sports broadcasts.
The Motorola radio invented by Paul Galvin is the first commercially successful radio for automobiles (see 1928), but while it plays in a moving car it is twice the size of a fishing tackle box, its bulky speaker is stuffed under the floorboards, and its audio qualities leave much to be desired (see 1930).
An airmail letter crosses the United States in 31 hours at a cost of 25¢ postage for 3 ounces.
The United States has 20 million telephones, up from 10 million in 1918 and twice as many as all the rest of the world combined. Most are wooden boxes hung on walls with cranks to ring Central, but many tall tube-like phones are in use with hooks to hold their receivers, and French phones are beginning to appear with mouthpiece and receiver in one piece.
Telephone pioneer and gramophone inventor Emile Berliner dies at Washington, D.C., August 3 at age 78.
Radio Corp. of America (RCA) acquires the 28-year-old Victor Talking Machine Co., whose stock has soared 35 percent and is now the world's largest maker of phonographs (gramophones) (see RCA, 1927). Using the trademark dog "Nipper" listing to "His Master's Voice," RCA will distribute Victrola phonograph (gramophone) records under the name RCA-Victor.
The Blattnerphone designed by German film producer Louis (originally Ludwig) Blattner is the world's first tape recorder. Based on patents obtained by German sound engineer Kurt Stille, the device employs large reels of steel tape rather than the wire used in the Poulsen recorder of 1898, it is the first successful magnetic recorder with electronic amplification, and Blattner uses it for adding synchronized sound to the films he makes at the Blattner Color and Sound Studios at Ellstree, England. The BBC will acquire the first commercially produced Blattnerphone in 1931 (see Begun, 1934).
"Popeye" appears for the first time January 17 in the 10-year-old "Thimble Theatre" drawn by New York cartoonist E. C. (Elzie Crisler) Segar, 34, whose one-eyed, spinach-loving sailor with corncob pipe and outsize sense of chivalry has a girlfriend, Olive Oyl. His hamburger-loving pal J. Wellington Wimpy will soon join the strip.
Former Associated Press president Melville E. Stone dies at New York February 15 at age 80.
Bodybuilder Charles Atlas, now 35, advertises his "Dynamic-Tension" method of physical development in new magazine and newspaper advertisements written by New York advertising account executive Charles Roman, 22, who has come up with the term Dynamic-Tension and promotes the former "97-lb. Weakling" and his mail-order lessons with cartoons that show bullies at the beach kicking sand in the eyes of sissies who later demonstrate their "manliness" by punching out the bullies and impressing their lady friends (see 1922). Roman will become sole owner of Charles Atlas Ltd. in 1969, Atlas will live to age 78, the less muscular Roman to age 92.
Business Week magazine begins publication September 7 at New York. The new McGraw-Hill publication will have lost $1.5 million by the end of 1935 but will turn the corner to become the leading magazine of its kind. In many years it will be the leading magazine of any kind in terms of advertising pages.
The first volume of the Italian Encyclopedia of Science, Letters, and Arts (Enciclopedia italiana di scienze, lettre ed arti) is published at Rome after 4 years' work. Philosopher Giovanni Gentile, now 54, has planned the project while serving as a member of the Fascist Grand Council; additional volumes will appear until by 1936 there will be 35 plus a one-volume index, the lavishly illustrated text having been written by leading scholars and political leaders.
The scholarly journal Annales d'histoire économique et social (later Annales: économiques, sociétés, civilisations) is founded by University of Strasbourg historians Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch with a view to surmounting disciplinary and national boundaries and promoting a more human, accessible approach to history.
The New York Public Library acquires the black-history collection of Puerto Rican-born Harlem collector Arthur Alphonzo Schomburg, who will work as curator of the library's 135th Street branch from 1932 until his death in 1938.
Nonfiction: Middletown—A Study in Contemporary American Culture by Indiana-born Columbia University sociologist Robert Staughton Lynd, 37, and his wife, Helen (née Merrell), 32, who break new ground in American sociology by applying to the Midwestern city of Muncie, Ind., methods and approaches used in studying primitive peoples; Basic English by philologist C. K. Ogden, now 40, proposes universal adoption of a basic international vocabulary of 850 English words that he has developed after working with I. A. Richards, now 36, on their 1923 book The Meaning of Meaning. Ogden points out that 30 percent of the world's population has English as its mother tongue or as the government language (he has India in mind) and says his easily-learned Basic English could help promote world peace; Mark Twain's America by Bernard De Voto, who challenges the conventional view by showing that Twain's writings reflected the social and cultural environment of his time; History of Experimental Psychology by Philadelphia-born Harvard psychologist Edwin G. (Garrigues) Boring, 42; The Great Apes: A Study of Anthropoid Life by Robert M. Yerkes and his wife, Ada, who have organized the Yale Laboratories of Primate Biology (it will be called the Yerkes Laboratories beginning in 1942) at Orange Park, Fla.; What Is Metaphysics? by Martin Heidegger, who supports his country's National Socialist Party; The Adventurous Heart (Das abenteuerliche Herz) (essays) by Ernst Jünger, whose ideas have been taken over in part by the Nazis; Goodbye to All That (autobiography) by London-born critic-novelist Robert (von Ranke) Graves, 34, whose grim memoirs of trench warfare (he was severely wounded) earn so much money that he is able to make a permanent home on the island of Majorca; Not Without Laughter by Langston Hughes; A Vaquero of the Brush Country by Texas historian J. (James) Frank Dobie, 40; Is Sex Necessary? by New Yorker magazine writers E. B. White and James Thurber, who write, "Woman, observing that her mate went out of his way to make himself entertaining, rightly surmised that sex had something to do with it. From that she logically concluded that sex was recreational rather than procreational. (The small hardy band of girls who failed to get this point were responsible for the popularity of women's field hockey.)"
Literary historian Vernon Parrington dies suddenly at Winchcombe, Gloucestershire, June 16 at age 57; social scientist Thorstein Veblen in his cabin retreat near Palto Alto, Calif., August 3 at age 72.
Fiction: The Time of Indifference (Gli indifferenti) by Italian novelist Alberto Moravia (Alberto Pincherle), 22, whose portrayal of petty middle-class corruption in Rome is interpreted by many as a criticism of Italian society under Benito Mussolini. The government has persuaded the literary establishment to avoid references to real problems and issues and the Moravia novel creates a sensation; The Holy Terrors (Les Enfants Terribles) by Jean Cocteau; All Quiet on the Western Front (Im Westen nichts Neues) by German novelist Erich Maria Remarque, 30, whose novel sells 2.5 million copies in 25 languages in 18 months; Berlin-Alexanderplatz (Alexanderplatz, Berlin) by Alfred Döblin, now 51; Look Homeward, Angel: The Story of a Buried Life by NYU English instructor Thomas (Clayton) Wolfe, 29 (Scribner's editor Maxwell (Evarts) Perkins, 45, who has also been F. Scott Fitzgerald's mentor, organizes and edits Wolfe's inchoate autobiographical typescript about the Gant [Wolfe] family of Asheville, N.C.); Sartoris by William Faulkner, who depicts the fictional town of Jefferson in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County of Mississippi and begins an account of antebellum society's fall and the rise of the unscrupulous Snopes clan; The Sound and the Fury by Faulkner; A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway; The Last September by Irish-born English novelist Elizabeth Bowen, 30; Living by Henry Green; Wolf Solent by John Cowper Powys, now 57; The Innocent Voyage by English novelist Richard Hughes, 29, whose novel will be retitled A High Wind in Jamaica next year; The Near and the Far by English novelist L. H. (Leo Hamilton) Myers, 48; I Thought of Daisy by New Jersey-born New Republic magazine critic-novelist Edmund Wilson, 34; The Magnificent Obsession by Indiana-born clergyman-novelist Lloyd (Cassel) Douglas, 52; Dodsworth by Sinclair Lewis; Dawn Ginsbergh's Revenge (magazine pieces) by New York humorist S. J. (Sidney Joseph) Perelman, 25; The Bride's House by Dawn Powell; Harriet Hume: A London Fantasy by Rebecca West, whose illegitimate 14-year-old son Anthony was fathered by novelist H. G. Wells; White Man's Saga and Poet's Pub by Welsh-born Scottish novelist Eric Linklater, 30, who served as a private in the Black Watch during the Great War, worked as a journalist for the Times of India, returned to Aberdeen 2 years ago, and came to America last year on a Commonwealth fellowship; The Dark Journey (Léviathan) by Julian Green; Sido by Colette; "The Green Salamander" ("Sanshōuo") by Japanese short-story writer Masuji Ibuse, 31; Whiteoaks by Mazo de la Roche; Relics and Angels by New Orleans-born New York novelist (Joseph) Hamilton Basso, 28, who will move to North Carolina; Hudson River Bracketed by Edith Wharton, now 67; Banjo by Claude McKay; Claudia by Texas-born novelist Rose Franken (née Lewin), 33; Hitty: Her First 100 Years by New York-born novelist Rachel (Lyman) Field, 34; The Black Dudley Murder (in England, Crime at Black Dudley) by London-born mystery novelist Margery Allingham, 25, introduces the gentleman sleuth Albert Campion; The Poisoned Chocolates Case by Anthony Berkeley, who last year (as A. B. Cox) founded London's Detective Club; The Man in the Queue by Inverness-born mystery novelist Josephine Tey (Elizabeth Mackintosh), 33; Red Harvest and The Dain Curse by Maryland-born former Pinkerton detective (Samuel) Dashiell Hammett, 35; The Roman Hat Mystery by New York advertising and publicity writers Frederick Dannay and Manfred (Bennington) Lee, both 29, who write under the name Ellery Queen.
Poetry: Blind Fireworks by Irish poet Louis MacNeice, 22, expresses social protest; Animulae by T. S. Eliot; Poets, Farewell by Edmund Wilson; Gold Coast Customs by Edith Sitwell; Angels and Earthly Creatures by the late Elinor Wylie; Angel Arms by Illinois-born New York avant-garde poet-author Kenneth (Flexner) Fearing, 27; Dark Summer by Louise Bogan includes her long poems "The Flume" and "Summer Wish"; Fire Head by Lola Ridge, who wrote her 218-page poem about the Crucifixion in 2½ months at Yaddo in Saratoga Springs, N.Y.
Juvenile: Emil and the Detectives (Emil und die Detektive) by Dresden-born Berlin journalist-author Erich Kästner, 30; Magic for Marigold by L. M. Montgomery.
Painting: Woman in Armchair by Pablo Picasso; Fool in a Trance by Paul Klee; Love Idyll by Marc Chagall; Black Square by Kazimir Malevich; Composition with Yellow and Blue by Piet Mondrian; Sailing Boats by Lyonel Feininger; Still Life with Fallen Candles by Max Beckmann; The Accommodations of Desires by surrealist Salvador Dalí; Chop Suey by Edward Hopper; Black Flower, Blue Larkspur, Black Hollyhock with Blue Larkspur, and New York Night by Georgia O'Keeffe; Cotton Pickers (Georgia) by Thomas Hart Benton; John B. Turner—Pioneer and Woman with Plants (a portrait of his mother) by Iowa genre painter Grant (Develson) Wood, 37; Upper Deck by Charles Sheeler; Fog Horns, Sun on the Water, Silver Sun, and Alfie's Delight by Arthur Dove. Robert Henri dies at New York July 12 at age 64.
New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) opens November 8 in six rooms on the 12th floor of the Hecksher Building at 730 Fifth Avenue with an exhibition of works by the late French impressionists Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Georges Seurat, and Vincent Van Gogh. Its three founders are rich patrons for whom the collapse of the stock market has meant very little; director of the museum is Detroit-born expert Alfred (Hamilton) Barr Jr., 27, who has been recommended by Harvard fine-arts scholar Paul Sachs, 51, and will be MoMA's guiding spirit for some 38 years; its first president is lumber baron Anson Conger Goodyear, 42, of Buffalo, who served briefly as president of that city's Albright Gallery until he antagonized his fellow trustees by paying $5,000 for a "pink period" Picasso and whose own collection includes works by Maillol, Renoir, Seurat, and Van Gogh (see 1939).
Eastman Kodak introduces 16-millimeter film with motion picture cameras and projectors for home use (see Kodachrome, 1935).
Theater: Street Scene by Elmer Rice 1/10 at New York's Playhouse, with Mary Servoss, Leo Bulgakov, Erin O'Brien Moore, Beulah Bondi, 601 perfs.; Journey's End by London insurance man-playwright R. C. (Robert Cedric) Sherriff, 33, 1/21 at London's Savoy Theatre (later to the Prince of Wales's Theatre), with Melville Cooper, Richard Caldicott, Colin Clive, Maurice Evans, 594 perfs. (Sherriff served as a lieutenant at Vimy Ridge, his play fills audiences with the horror of wartime trench life, and it is staged at Paris, Berlin, and New York); Dynamo by Eugene O'Neill 2/11 at New York's Martin Beck Theater, with Dudley Digges, Glenn Anders, Helen Wylie, French-born actress Claudette Colbert (Lily Claudette Chauchoin), 23, 50 perfs.; My Girl Friday by William A. Grew 2/12 at New York's Republic Theater, with Grew, Andes, N.Y.-born actress Esther Muir, 25, Nat Pendleton, 253 perfs.; The Bedbug (Klop) by Vladimir Mayakofsky 2/13 at Moscow's Meyerbold Theater; Marius by Marcel Pagnol 3/9 at Paris, with Raimu (Jules Muraire), 46, as Cesar, Pierre Fresnay, 32, as Marius; It's a Wise Child by Lawrence E. Johnson 8/6 at New York's Belasco Theater, with Humphrey Bogart, Minnesota-born actor Harlan Briggs, 49, Sidney Toler, 378 perfs; Strictly Dishonorable by Chicago-born playwright Preston Sturges (originally Edmund Preston Biden), 31, 9/18 at New York's Alvin Theater with Ed McNamara, a former police officer who plays the role of a cop, and Muriel Kirkland, who falls ill in December and is replaced by Antoinette Perry's 17-year-old daughter Marguerite, 557 perfs.; The Silver Tassle by Sean O'Casey 10/11 at London's Apollo Theatre, with a large cast that includes Charles Laughton, Barry Fitzgerald, Emlyn Williams, Beatrice Lehmann, Una O'Connor, 66 perfs.; The Clairvoyant (Hellseherei) by Georg Kaiser 10/19 at Düsseldorf's Schauspielhaus; The Unconquerable (Die Unübrwinlichen) by Karl Kraus 10/29 at Berlin, with Peter Lorre, Ernst Ginsberg, Leonhad Steckel, Kurt Gerron (Kraus has satirized Vienna's chief of police and the corrupt Hungarian press lord Imre Békessy; performances are canceled at the request of the Austrian emperor); Berkeley Square by John L. Balderston 11/4 at New York's Lyceum Theater, with Leslie Howard, Margalo Gilmore, 229 perfs.; Amphitryon '38 by French playwright Jean Giraudoux, 47, 11/8 at the Comédie des Champs-Elysées, Paris; It Never Rains by Aurania Rouverol 11/19 at New York's Republic Theater, with Sidney Fox as Dorothy Donovan, 185 perfs.; Good Times (Die gut Zeit by Ernst Barlach 11/29 at Gera; Death Takes a Holiday by Green Bay, Wis.-born playwright Walter Ferris, 47 (who has adapted a work by Alberto Casella) 12/26 at New York's Ethel Barrymore Theater, with Philip Merivale, Wallace Erskine, now 67, Rose Hobart, 180 perfs.
Playwright Henry Arthur Jones dies at London January 7 at age 77; actor Wallace Eddinger at Pittsburgh January 8 at age 47; Orlando Daly at Boston January 17 at age 55; actress Lillie Langtry of heart failure at Monte Carlo February 12 at age 77; Broadway producer H. H. Frazee at New York June 5 at age 48; playwright-actor Dion Boucicault at London June 25 at age 70; actor Cyril Keightley at New York August 14 at age 53; actor-playwright Grant Stewart at Woodstock, N.Y., August 18 at age 63; playwright Jesse Lynch Williams of heart disease at the home of a woman friend in Herkimer County, N.Y., September 14 at age 58; actress Jeanne Eagels of alcohol and a sleeping-pill overdose at New York October 3 at age 35.
Radio: Let's Pretend (initially, The Adventures of Helen and Mary) 9/27 on CBS (to 10/23/1954); The Goldbergs (initially, The Rise of the Goldbergs) 11/20 on NBC's Blue Network, with Gertrude Berg, 30, in the role of Molly Goldberg in a series whose backup cast will include Menasha Skulnik, Everett Sloane, Arnold Stang, and Joan Tetzel (see television, 1949).
Films: G. W. Pabst's Pandora's Box and Diary of a Lost Girl, both with Louise Brooks, 23, who co-stars in Pandora's Box with Prague-born actor Francis (originally Frantisek) Lederer, 29, who is billed as Franz Lederer. Also: Josef von Sternberg's The Blue Angel with German actress Marlene Dietrich (née Maria Magdalena von Losch), 28, Emil Jannings; Alfred E. Green's Disraeli with English stage actor George Arliss, now 61, Palisades, N.J.-born ingénue Joan Bennett, 19; Lionel Barrymore's His Glorious Night with John Gilbert, whose silent-screen lover image loses something when audiences hear his tenor actor's voice; Alan Dwan's The Iron Mask with Douglas Fairbanks; Erich von Stroheim's Queen Kelly with Gloria Swanson (censored in the United States, the picture will be shown briefly in Europe); Dorothy Arzner's The Wild Party with Clara Bow, Fredric March in M-G-M's first sound movie.
Actor Dustin Farnum dies at New York July 3 at age 55.
Warner Brothers acquires the Stanley Co. of America to gain control of some 250 theater outlets and free itself of distribution worries (see 1918; The Jazz Singer, 1927).
Hollywood musicals: Roy Del Ruth's The Desert Song is the first "all-talking and singing operetta"; Henry Beaumont's The Broadway Melody ("100% All Talking + All Singing + All Dancing!") with songs by Irving Thalberg protégés Nacio Herb Brown, 33, and Arthur Freed (originally Grossman), 35, that include "You Were Meant for Me" and "The Wedding of the Painted Doll" (a color sequence helps the film gross $4 million for M-G-M at a time when movie tickets average 35¢); Charles Reisner's The Hollywood Revue of 1929 with Conrad Nagel, Jack Benny, John Gilbert, Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Laurel & Hardy, Marie Dressler, Buster Keaton, John Barrymore, Rudy Vallée, and Marion Davies opens 8/14 at New York's Astor Theater, whose façade is covered for the opening with a huge billboard that comes to life as chorus girls parade on catwalks cantilevered over the street, songs by Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed that include "Singin' in the Rain," some sequences in Technicolor (the musical numbers are recorded first and then synchronized to the action on the screen rather than recorded directly on the sound track as in The Broadway Melody); King Vidor's Hallelujah with an all-black cast (theaters in the South refuse to show the film), Irving Berlin songs that include "Swanee Shuffle"; Ernst Lubitsch's The Love Parade with Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald singing "Dream Lover" and "The March of the Grenadiers" by Victor Schertzinger; Rouben Mamoulian's Applause with Helen Morgan; Roy Del Ruth's The Gold Diggers of Broadway with songs that include "Tip Toe Through the Tulips" and "Painting the Clouds with Sunshine" by Joe Burke, 45, lyrics by Al Dubin, 38; David Butler's Sunny Side Up with Janet Gaynor, Charles Farrell, music by Ray Henderson, lyrics by B. G. DeSylva and Lew Brown, songs that include "I'm a Dreamer" and the title song.
Stage musicals: Follow Thru 1/9 at New York's 46th Street Theater, with Katharine Cornell, Jack Haley, Irene Delroy, Frank Kingdon, book by Laurence Schwab and B. G. DeSylva, music by Ray Henderson, lyrics by B. G. DeSylva and Lew Brown, songs that include "Button up Your Overcoat," 401 perfs.; Lady Fingers 1/31 at New York's Vanderbilt Theater, with Eddie Buzzell, Esther Muir, Ruth Gordon, book by Buzzell (who has adapted the Owen Davis play Easy Come, Easy Go), music by Joseph Meyer, lyrics by Edward Eliscu, 132 perfs.; Mr. Cinders 2/11 at London's Adelphi Theatre, with Bobby Howes, Binnie Hale, now 29, in a reversed gender version of Cinderella, music by Vivian Ellis and Richard Myers, book and lyrics by Clifford Grey and Greatrex Newman, songs that include "Spread a Little Happiness," "I'm a One-Man Girl," "Ev'ry Little Moment," "On the Amazon," 529 perfs.; Spring Is Here 3/11 at New York's Alvin Theater, with Glenn Hunter, music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Lorenz Hart, songs that include "With a Song in My Heart," 104 perfs.; Wake Up and Dream 3/27 at the London Pavilion, with Sonnie Hale, Jessie Matthews, music and lyrics by John Hastings Turner, Cole Porter; The Little Show 4/30 at New York's Music Box Theater, with Fred Allen, Portland Hoffa, Ohio-born torch singer Libby Holman (originally Holtzman), 25, Bettina Hall, Peggy Conklin, Clifton Webb, Romney Brent, music by Arthur Schwartz and others, lyrics by Howard Dietz, songs that include "I Guess I'll Have to Change My Plan," "Moanin' Low" (music by Ralph Rainger), "Caught in the Rain" (music by Henry Sullivan), "Can't We Be Friends" (music by New York-born composer-lyricist Kay Swift, 26), 321 perfs.; Hot Chocolates 6/20 at the Hudson Theater, with Louis Armstrong in an all-black revue, songs that include "Ain't Misbehavin'" by New York-born composer Thomas Wright "Fats" Waller, 25, and Henry Brooks, lyrics by Washington, D.C.-born writer Andy Razaf (originally Paul Andreamenentania Razafinkeriefo), 33, 219 perfs.; Show Girl 7/2 at the Ziegfeld Theater, with Canadian-born dancer-actress Ruby (née Ethel) Keeler, 18, Jimmy Durante, Duke Ellington and his Orchestra, book by William Anthony McGuire, music by George Gershwin that includes the ballet "An American in Paris," lyrics by Ira Gershwin and Gus Kahn, songs that include "Liza" sung by Al Jolson in the audience to his wife, Ruby Keeler onstage, 111 perfs.; Bitter Sweet 7/18 at His Majesty's Theatre, London, with Peggy Wood, book, music, and lyrics by Noël Coward, songs that include "I'll See You Again," "Zigeuner," 697 perfs.; Murray Anderson's Almanac 8/14 at Erlanger's Theater, New York, with Trixie Friganza, comedian Jimmy Savo, book by Noël Coward, Rube Goldberg, Peter Arno, Paul Gerard Smith, and others, music Milton Ager and Henry Sullivan, songs that include "I May Be Wrong, But I Think You're Wonderful" by Sullivan, lyrics by Harry Ruskin, 69 perfs.; Sweet Adeline 9/3 at New York's Hammerstein Theater, with Helen Morgan as Addie Schmidt, music by Jerome Kern, book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, songs that include "Why Was I Born," "Don't Ever Leave Me," "Here Am I," 234 perfs.; George White's Scandals 9/23 at New York's Apollo Theater, with Willie Howard, costumes by Erté, songs by Irving Caesar, George White, and Cliff Friend, 161 perfs.; June Moon 10/9 at the Broadhurst Theater, with Jean Dixon, Philip Loeb, book by George S. Kaufman and Ring Lardner, music and lyrics by Lardner, 273 perfs.; Fifty Million Frenchmen 11/27 at the Lyric Theater, with William Gaxton, music and lyrics by Cole Porter, songs that include "You Do Something to Me," 254 perfs.; Wake Up and Dream 12/30 at the Selwyn Theater, with Jack Buchanan, music and lyrics by Cole Porter, songs that include "I'm a Gigolo," "What Is this Thing Called Love?" 136 perfs.
The onetime Moulin Rouge dancer Louise Weber known as "La Goulue" ("The Glutton") dies destitute in a Paris public hospital January 21 at age 64 (approximate); Edward Gallagher of Gallagher and Shean fame dies May 28 at age 56 in a Queens, N.Y., sanitarium where he has remained since suffering a nervous breakdown 2 years ago; composer Ivan Caryll dies at New York November 29 at age 60.
The Chicago Civic Opera building completed at 20 West Wacker Drive has a 3,800-seat auditorium to challenge the Chicago Auditorium that opened late in 1889. The building also has a penthouse suite for utility magnate Samuel Insull.
Opera: Sir John in Love 3/21 at London's Royal College of Music, with music by Ralph Vaughan Williams that includes "Fantasia on Greensleeves"; The Gambler 4/29 at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie, Brussels, with music by Sergei Prokofiev, libretto from the 1866 Dostoyevski novel; Rosa Ponselle makes her London debut at Covent Garden 5/28 singing the title role in the 1831 Bellini opera Norma. She will continue to sing until her retirement in April 1937; Happy End 8/31 at Berlin's Theater am Schiffbauerdamm, with music by Kurt Weill, book and lyrics by Bertolt Brecht; Deepwater, Mo.-born contralto Gladys Swarthout, 28, makes her Metropolitan Opera debut 11/15 singing the role of La Cieca in the 1876 Ponchielli opera La Giocanda. She will be a Met regular until 1945.
Wagnerian soprano Lilli Lehmann dies at Berlin May 17 at age 80; librettist-playwright-poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal at his Viennese suburban home in Rodaun July 15 at age 55 (his eldest son has recently committed suicide).
Ballet: The Prodigal Son 5/21 at the Sarah Bernhardt Theater, Paris, with the Ballets Russes, music by Sergei Prokofiev, choreography by Boris Kochno.
Impresario Sergei Diaghilev of the Ballets Russes dies at Venice's Lido August 19 at age 57; his body is placed in an enormous catafalque and ferried to the Church of San Giorgio in a huge black gondola encrusted with gilt.
First performances: Symphony No. 3 by Sergei Prokofiev 5/17 at Paris; Amazonas (symphonic poem) by Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos, 42, 5/30 at Paris; Concerto for Viola and Orchestra by William Walton 10/3 at London, with Paul Hindemith as soloist; Concerto for Viola and Orchestra by Darius Milhaud 12/18 at Amsterdam; Symphony for Chamber Orchestra by Anton von Webern 12/18 at New York's Town Hall.
Popular songs: "Stardust" by Bloomington, Ind.-born pianist-composer Howard Hoagland "Hoagy" Carmichael, 29, lyrics by Mitchell Parish; "St. James Infirmary" by Joe Primrose; "Honeysuckle Rose" by "Fats" Waller, lyrics by Andy Razaf; "Am I Blue?" by Harry Akst, lyrics by Grant Clarke (for Ethel Waters to sing in the film On with the Show); "Louise" by Richard Whiting, lyrics by Leo Robin (for Maurice Chevalier to sing in his first American film Innocents of Paris. Now 40, Chevalier was shot in the back early in the Great War, won the Croix de Guerre, was held as a prisoner of war by the Germans until 1916, began a film career in Britain after the war, failed on Broadway, suffered a mental breakdown, but has recovered); "Falling In Love Again" by German songwriter Friedrich Hollaender, 33 (for Marlene Dietrich to sing in the film The Blue Angel); "Mean to Me" by Fred E. Ahlert, lyrics by Roy Turk; "I'm Just a Vagabond Lover" by Rudy Vallée and Leon Zimmerman; "Pagan Love Song" by Nacio Herb Brown, lyrics by Arthur Freed (for the film The Pagan); "Siboney" and "Say Si Si" by Ernesto Lecuona; "Just a Gigolo" by Italian composer Leonello Casucci, English lyrics by Irving Caesar; "Wedding Bells Are Breaking Up That Old Gang of Mine" by Sammy Fain, lyrics by Irving Kahal; "Great Day," "More than You Know" and "Without a Song" by Vincent Youmans, lyrics by Billy Rose and New York-born writer Edward Eliscu, 27 (for the short-lived Broadway musical Great Day that opens in October and closes in November); "Happy Days Are Here Again!" by Milton Ager and Jack Yellen (for the film Chasing Rainbows).
The Orthophonic phonograph developed by Western Electric Company engineer H. C. Harrison is an improved electric gramophone that will replace wind-up mechanical record players.
Alabama-born New York trumpet player Charles Melvin "Cootie" Williams, 21, joins the Duke Ellington band as a replacement for Ellington's plunger-muted trumpet player "Bubber" Miller.
Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians open at New York's Roosevelt Hotel, where the group directed by Canadian-born bandleader Guy Albert Lombardo, 27, will play dance music each winter for decades. A December 31 radio broadcast begins a national New Year's Eve tradition.
English racetrack bookmakers at Newmarket rage at the installation of an electromechanical totalizator that gives odds 40 percent longer than those offered by the bookies. Invented in 1913 by English-born Australian engineer Sir George (Alfred) Julius, now 57, the tote introduces parimutuel betting and will be installed at U.S. tracks beginning in 1931 by British Automatic Totalisator, Ltd.
Long-distance walker Edward P. Weston dies at New York May 12 at age 90.
Jean Cochet wins in men's singles at Wimbledon, Helen Wills in women's singles; Bill Tilden wins in men's singles at Forest Hills, Wills in women's singles.
Australian cricketer Donald G. Bradman, 21, achieves a world record by scoring 452 runs not out in a single afternoon. The wiry, five-foot-seven-inch, self-taught athlete begins a career that will continue until 1948, dominating the sport with a career average of 99.94 runs per innings.
The New York Yankees become the first team to wear numbers on the backs of their uniforms but win only 88 of their 154 games. Connie Mack's Philadelphia Athletics win the World Series, defeating the Chicago Cubs 4 games to 1.
The football used in U.S. intercollegiate championship play is reduced in girth to between 22 and 22½ inches.
Yale sophomore Albert J. "Albie" Booth Jr., 21, comes off the bench in the second quarter of the Army game October 26 with Army leading 13 to 0 and quickly scores 14 points to give Yale the lead. Weighing only 144 pounds and not especially swift of foot, the five-foot-six-inch halfback then scores another touchdown on a 70-foot punt return, Yale wins 21 to 13, and sportswriters hail Booth as "Little Boy Blue."
The 4-year-old New York Giants win the National Football League championship with a 10-to-3 won-lost record, but professional football has few fans.
Soap maker Andrew Jergens dies at his Sarasota, Fla., winter home January 11 at age 75.
Unilever is created March 2 by a merger of the British soap colossus Lever Brothers with Europe's 10-year-old Margarine Union. The first multinational company in the consumer products industry, Unilever is involved in enterprises as far-ranging as coconut growing and whale hunting. It will become a food giant second only to Nestlé in Europe and a household-products rival to Procter & Gamble in the United States.
Europe's first electric dishwashers are introduced by the 30-year-old German company Miele.
Pine-Sol cleaner is introduced by Jackson, Miss., chemist Harry A. Cole, who supplies the natural disinfectant and deodorizer to janitorial services that clean local banks. His fresh-smelling, effective product will not be sold outside Mississippi until 1946, but it will go on to become the world's largest-selling household cleaner.
Robert and Helen Lynd report in their sociological study Middletowne that Muncie, Ind., men are so preoccupied with earning a living and with such practical matters as car repairs that they take little part in household affairs, leaving it to their wives to care for and discipline the children, make social arrangements, and the like.
The first crease-resistant cotton fabric is introduced by Tootal's of St. Helens, England.
Crawfordsville, Ind.-born reporter and department-store advertising artist Eleanor Lambert, 25, arrives at New York with $100 and finds two part-time jobs, one doing consumer research and one designing book jackets. A publisher asks her to write a publicity release, and as the daughter of a Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey circus advance man she sets up her own small 57th Street public-relations business for creative artists. Lambert will make herself the city's (and country's) leading fashion publicist, a role she will continue to play into the 21st century.
Nestle Colorinse is introduced in 10 shades (see permanent wave, 1906); the first home-applied hair coloring, its line includes a blue-grey shade that will be popular among older women (see Clairol, 1931).
California Perfume Co. chief David McConnell, now 72, introduces a new line of products under the name Avon, inspired by the name of the river in Shakespeare's hometown Stratford-upon-Avon (see 1898). The door-to-door cosmetic company will rename itself Avon Products in 1939 and its saleswomen will be called Avon Ladies. It will grow to have 1.5 million Avon Ladies (plus 2,000 Avon Men) and be the world's largest employer of women.
The Japanese Mah-jongg Association is founded as the Chinese game gains popularity.
Bridge World magazine begins publication at New York in October as Ely Culbertson gains backing from contract bridge creator Harold S. Vanderbilt to publicize his bidding system.
Williams Electronics Co. has its beginnings in a pinball machine company founded by California entrepreneur Harry E. Williams, 24, who will invent the "tilt" mechanism that makes the machine go dead temporarily when a player nudges it too hard. Williams will also invent the kickout hole and will make his machines "talk" with bells and gongs.
The yo-yo introduced to California by Filipino immigrant Pedro Flores is based on a weapon used by 16th-century Filipino hunters and known to Filipinos for perhaps 10,000 years (ancient Egyptians and Greeks had similar string-and-spool toys). Flores sells his company for $25,000 to West Virginia-born Chicago entrepreneur Donald F. Duncan, 38, who has seen the toy demonstrated on a visit to Los Angeles or San Francisco, improves it, produces yo-yos at Columbus, Ind., and will use modern marketing methods to promote the yo-yo into a national craze.
The Barcelona chair makes its debut at the German pavilion of the Barcelona International Exposition. Designed by architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich, the chair has a chrome steel X frame with leather-covered foam rubber cushions. Van der Rohe has designed the entire pavilion in modernistic style.
Public-relations pioneer Edward L. Bernays engages 10 carefully selected women, provides them with Lucky Strike cigarettes, gives them detailed instructions on how and when they are to light up, and sends them down New York's Fifth Avenue on Easter Sunday in a "Torches of Freedom" march calculated to counter objections to women smoking in public (see 1928). Newspapers across the country run front-page photographs of the event, making no mention of the fact that Bernays has been employed by the American Tobacco Co. (He has seen reports about the health hazards of cigarettes and has been trying to get his wife to stop smoking.)
Former Kansas and Arizona lawman Wyatt Earp dies at Los Angeles January 13 at age 80. He has lived in recent years on income from mining and real-estate interests.
Gang warfare in Chicago reaches a peak of brutality the morning of February 14 in the "St. Valentine's Day massacre" (see 1927). Seven members of the George "Bugs" Moran gang are rubbed out at 10:30 in a North Clark Street garage and bootleg liquor depot, but Moran escapes as mobsters vie for control of the lucrative illicit liquor trade; police suspect that members of the Al Capone gang who include Chicago-born mobster Anthony Accardo, 22, have done the killing; Capone and one of his confederates have themselves arrested on minor charges to avoid reprisals and are confined until year's end at Philadelphia's Eastern State Penitentiary, where Capone buys uniforms for the inmates' baseball team and is permitted to have his cell furnished with oriental rugs, antique furniture, and a cabinet radio (see 1931).
Chicago has 498 reported murders, New York 401, Detroit 228, Philadelphia 182, Cleveland 134, Birmingham 122, Atlanta and Memphis 115 each, New Orleans 111.
Oklahoma-born convict Charles Arthur "Pretty Boy" Floyd, 25, is paroled after serving a 5-year term for armed robbery. Unwilling to pick cotton and unprepared to make a living any other way, he returns to crime (see 1931).
Colorado State Prison has an escape attempt October 3 in which seven guards are killed, but the five convicts involved commit suicide when their jail break is aborted; Auburn State Prison inmates at Auburn, N.Y., kill the chief keeper December 11 and hold the warden hostage until he is rescued by state troopers.
A diplomatic conference at Geneva adopts a convention that establishes uniform rules with regard to counterfeiting (see Interpol, 1914; 1923). Signed by 12 major powers, the convention targets counterfeiting as a crime separate from forgery and makes it a felony calling for mandatory imprisonment, with lesser penalties for those convicted merely of possessing counterfeiting equipment, passing phoney money, or possessing such money.
Pittsburgh's 37-story Grant Building opens February 1, dwarfing the 22-story Oliver Building of 1910. An airplane beacon at its top spells out the city's name in Morse code.
Atlantic City, N.J., opens an $8 million Convention Hall on the Boardwalk; its arena can seat 41,000.
Prague's Cathedral of St. Vitus is completed after 585 years of construction.
The Tugendhat house at Brno in Czechoslovakia is completed to designs by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, now 43, and his mistress Lilly Reich, 44.
Xanadu is completed 80 miles east of Havana, Cuba, for Irenée du Pont, 52, with high wood-beamed ceilings, seven bedrooms, and a nine-hole golf course on a 450-acre estate near Varadero Beach.
New York architect Thomas Hastings of Carrère and Hastings dies after an appendectomy at Mineola, N.Y., October 22 at age 69.
Wyoming's Grand Teton National Park is established February 26 by an act of Congress signed into law by President Coolidge to protect the snow-capped Teton Range, whose highest glacial peak (Grand Teton) rises to a height of 13,766 feet. Sheep ranchers had opposed setting aside the land, as had residents of Jackson Hole, but many have come to see the wisdom of protecting the 96,000-acre area from commercial development (see Rockefeller, 1949).
Utah's Arches National Park has its beginnings in a national monument established by act of Congress in an area of 115 square miles that include red limestone that has been eroded into shapes that include Landscape Arch, the world's longest (291 feet) natural rock bridge, skyscraper-like Courthouse Towers, Fiery Furnace (which glows at sunset), and other such wonders. The monument will be designated a national park in 1971.
Africa's Serengeti National Park has its beginnings in a 900-square-mile lion sanctuary set aside by the colonial government after complaints by professional hunters that people are going into the bush with Model T Fords to slaughter lions (see 1940).
An earthquake in Persia May 1 leaves an estimated 3,300 dead.
One heath hen is left in America, down from 2,000 in 1916, and the male of the species seen on Martha's Vineyard has no mate. It will be extinct after 1931.
New York's Jones Beach State Park opens August 4. Occupying 1,200 acres of Long Island beachfront, the new park has four miles of clean, white, sandy ocean beaches, a boardwalk with mahogany railings, parking for 12,000 automobiles, a 200-foot-high, 300,000-gallon water tower built to resemble Venice's Campanile de San Marco, two salt-water swimming pools, east and west bath houses that accommodate 10,000 visitors, and various recreational facilities. Attendants are outfitted in nautical uniforms, and the well-policed state park attracts more than 325,000 people in its first month, despite predictions that New Yorkers would not drive 40 miles to a park located on a sandbar.
The Agricultural Marketing Act passed by Congress June 15 encourages farmers' cooperatives and provides for an advisory Federal Farm Board with $500 million in revolving funds to buy up surpluses in order to maintain prices. The funds are inadequate, and since farmers cannot be persuaded to produce less, farm prices continue to drop.
Half of all U.S. farm families produce less than $1,000 worth of food, fiber, or tobacco per year; 750,000 farm families produce less than $400 worth.
Signs of drought begin to appear in the U.S. Southwest and upper Great Plains (see 1930).
Foot-and-mouth disease strikes U.S. cattle and sheep herds. The U.S. Department of Agriculture conducts widescale slaughter of animals and imposes such strict controls that there will no further U.S. outbreaks of the disease in this century.
Cattleman Gharles Goodnight dies at his winter home in Phoenix December 12 at age 93.
Soviet biologist Nikolai Vavilov endorses the government's push toward collectivized farms as a shortcut to scientific agriculture (see 1928; 1930).
Nutrition pioneer Joseph Goldberger dies of cancer at Washington, D.C., January 17 at age 54, having done work that will lead to the virtual elimination of pellagra in America (see niacin, 1936).
A survey in Baltimore shows that 30 percent of children have rickets. A similar study in London's East End shows that 90 percent of children are rachitic (see Steenbock, 1923; 1927).
Cambridge, Mass.-born Harvard hematologist William B. (Bosworth) Castle, 31, finds that pernicious anemia can be prevented only if the gastric juices contain an "intrinsic" factor necessary for the absorption of an "extrinsic" factor in foods (see Minot and Murphy, 1924; Cohn, 1926; vitamin B12, 1948).
Danish biochemist Carl Peter Henrik Dam, 34, finds that he can produce severe internal bleeding in chickens if he puts them on a fat-free diet (see vitamin K, 1935).
Consumers' Research is founded at Washington, N.J., by F. J. Schlink, who sets up a testing organization that will do for consumers what the Bureau of Standards does for government purchasing agents (see 1927). Schlink begins publication of the magazine Consumer Bulletin (see 1932).
Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill abolishes Britain's 325-year-old tea duty April 15, knocking 4p off the price of a pound of tea.
General Mills is created by a merger of the 63-year-old Minneapolis milling firm Washburn, Crosby with 26 other U.S. milling companies. General Mills is the world's largest miller.
Standard Brands is created through a merger engineered by J. P. Morgan Co. that combines Chase and Sanborn, Fleischmann, and Royal Baking Powder, which has recently introduced Royal Gelatin desserts to compete with Jell-O. Royal Baking Powder has acquired Chase and Sanborn in February, Fleischmann has acquired Royal a few months later, and the trucks that have been delivering perishable yeast to grocery stores twice each week now carry coffee as well (the coffee is advertised as "dated" to suggest freshness). About 86 percent of Standard Brands profits come from yeast.
General Foods is created in July by a renaming of the 34-year-old Postum Co., which has acquired Jell-O, Minute Tapioca, Swans Down cake flour (Igleheart Bros.), Hellmann's Mayonnaise, Log Cabin Syrup, Walter Baker Chocolate, Franklin Baker Coconut, Calumet Baking Powder, Maxwell House Coffee (Cheek-Neal), and rights to Sanka Coffee. A Wall Street firm has put up $20 million to finance Postum's $22 million acquisition of Clarence Birdseye's General Seafoods Co. and its quick-freezings patents (see marine resources, 1926), but it soon sells its interest to Postum Co., headed by Marjorie Merriweather Post and her stockbroker husband, E. F. Hutton.
Daniel Gerber begins selling strained baby foods through grocery stores (see 1928). Using leads supplied by mail-order customers, Gerber salesmen drive cars whose horns play "Rock-a-Bye Baby." They sell 590,000 cans in 1 year, and other food processors are inspired to enter the baby food market. Fremont Canning Co. will be renamed Gerber Products Co. in 1943 and will expand its line to include powder, plastic pants, and dishware for babies.
Rocky Road ice cream is introduced by German-born Oakland, Calif., ice cream maker William Dreyer, who arrived in America 22 years ago, went into partnership last year with local candy maker Joseph Edy, took over a small factory at 3315 Grand Avenue, has added walnuts to his chocolate ice cream (the walnuts will later be replaced with almonds), and has used his wife's sewing shears to cut marshmallows into bite-sized pieces. Dreyer and Edy will dissolve their partnership in 1947, Edy will sell the ice cream under his own name east of the Rockies, Dreyer will retire in 1953, and Dreyer's Grand Ice Cream will go on to become the largest-selling ice cream in America.
U.S. electric refrigerator sales top 800,000, up from 75,000 in 1925, as the average price of a refrigerator falls to $292, down from $600 in 1920 (see GE, 1927). The average price will fall to $169 by 1939 and the new refrigerators will use less electricity (see energy [Energy Conservation Act], 1987).
The Universal electric toaster introduced by Landers, Frary & Clark has a door that opens at the touch of a button; inside the door is the slice of bread, and the door pivots to permit toasting the second side of the bread (see Toastmaster, 1926; 1930).
The new cartoon character "Popeye" is a somewhat cowardly sailor who will soon prove to be a fighter whose prodigious strength is derived mainly from spinach, which he swallows by the canful. U.S. spinach consumption will increase by 33 percent in the next few years as children come to rate it third only to turkey and ice cream as their favorite food, and Popeye ("I'm strong to the finich 'cause I eat my spinach") will be credited with the increase (seeNew Yorker cartoon, 1928; agriculture, 1937).
Oscar Mayer trademarks its wieners with a yellow paper ring on every fourth wiener to break the tradition of anonymity in meat sales (see 1883). Oscar G. Mayer, the Harvard-educated founder's son, joined the firm in 1909 and will buy a packing plant at Madison, Wis., as he leads the company toward national distribution.
Former Coca-Cola president Asa G. Candler dies at Atlanta March 12 at age 77. Coca-Cola has gross sales of $39 million and adopts the slogan "The Pause That Refreshes;" Colorado brewer Adolph Coors jumps to his death from the window of a Virginia Beach, Va., hotel room June 5 at age 82, furious at the state and federal Prohibition laws that have stopped him from making beer. His family will revive Coors Beer in 1933, but will remain fiercely opposed to government interference in business.
7-Up has its beginnings in a highly carbonated lemon-lime soft drink introduced in October under the name Lithiated Lemon by Missouri-born St. Louis bottler Charles (Leiper) Grigg, 61, sells 10,500 cases of his seven-ounce bottles (see 1933).
French wines enjoy an exceptional year; the '29 vintage in all parts of the country will be remembered fondly for decades.
New York's Stork Club speakeasy opens at 132 West 58th Street under the management of former Oklahoma bootlegger Sherman Billingsley, 29, who has received backing from three gangsters (Cotton Club owner Owney Madden and Oklahoma gamblers Carl Henninger and John Patton); they have encouraged him to open the place (see 1933).
German chemist Adolf (Frederick Johann) Butenandt, 26, and Illinois-born biochemist Edward Adelbert Doisy, 35, isolate the sex hormone estrone—one of the three principal forms of estrogen (the others are estradiol and estriol; the most plentiful, estradiol, which is also the most powerful, is secreted by the ovaries, the placenta, the testes, and the outer cover of the adrenal glands, which also produces estrogens from steroid chemicals in body fat). Estrogen regulates the menstrual cycle, initiating the release of an egg from the ovaries each month, and it was reported last year by German obstetrician-gynecologist Bernhard Zondek, now 38, that pregnant women excrete large amounts of estrogen in their urine (see pregnancy test, 1930; androgen, 1931; progesterone, 1934).
Robert and Helen Lynd report in their book Middletown that use of contraceptives is almost universal among women in the U.S. professional and business classes but rare among working-class wives.
New York police raid Sanger's Clinic, but Margaret Sanger continues to campaign for birth control (see 1923; Planned Parenthood, 1942).
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