1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940
"The United States cannot admit the legality nor does it intend to recognize" the legitimacy of any arrangement with Japan which impairs Chinese sovereignty and threatens the Open Door Policy, Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson announces January 7, but the Stimson Doctrine has no practical effect (see 1931). China's boycott of Japanese goods continues, and Japan retaliates January 28. Troops landed from warships attack Zabei (Chapei), the Chinese district of Shanghai, and planes bomb the district, killing thousands in the first terror bombing of civilians. Japanese publicists suggest that any U.S. attempt to interfere with Japan's "destiny" in Asia would be cause for war.
Manchuria proclaims independence March 9 (see 1931), but a Japanese-controlled puppet government controls the country, which calls itself Manzhouguo (Manchukuo). China's final emperor Pu Yi is called out of private life and appointed provincial dictator (see 1912); now 25, he will be Manzhouguo's first emperor and serve from 1934 to 1945 as the emperor Kang Te.
The assassination of Japan's prime minister Tsuyoshi Inukai at Tokyo May 15 effectively ends party government. Dead at age 77, Inukai has been killed during an attempted coup d'état by reactionary naval officers. The former governor general of Chōsen (Korea), Viscount Makoto Saito, now 73, succeeds Inukai (see Okada, 1934).
Siam's absolute government ends June 24 as European-educated radicals capture the king Phra Pokklao (Prajadhipok, or Rama VII) in a bloodless coup (the Promoters Revolution) and hold him captive briefly until he agrees to a constitution and the establishment of a senate. Instigators of the coup include Major Luang Phibunsongkhram (originally Plaek Khittasangkha), 34, and Pridi Phanomyong, 32 (see 1935).
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is founded September 23 with Abdul-Aziz ibn-Saud ruling from his capital at Riyadh (see 1927). The kingdom's chief source of income is the head tax levied on visitors to Mecca, but pilgrimages to the holy city have been declining since the 1920s (see energy, 1933).
Britain's Prime Minister MacDonald convenes a third Round Table Conference on Indian affairs at Westminster in November (see 1931). He has announced a unilateral British effort to resolve various conflicts among different Indian factions in August. The Congress has taken exception to many of the proposals, notably an offer of separate-electorate seats for the "depressed classes," meaning the lowest caste, or "untouchables." Mohandas K. Gandhi consults with Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, 41, a leader of the caste, and begins a "fast unto death" to protest what he calls a plot to wean more than 50 million "children of God," or Harijans, away from higher-caste Hindus; he urges a new boycott of British goods, and after 6 days of fasting obtains a pact that improves the status of the "untouchables." The British withdraw their offer, and the third Round Table Conference ends with wide-ranging agreements (see Government of India Act, 1935).
The British Union of Fascists is founded by former Labour Party M.P. Sir Oswald Mosley, 36, who last year quit the Party in protest against its defeatist attitude toward unemployment and started a new party based on principles more socialistic than fascistic. Mosley will become a supporter of Italy's Benito Mussolini and Germany's Adolf Hitler and will demand expulsion of Britain's Jews (see 1940; religion, 1936).
Eamon de Valera wins election as president of Ireland in March and suspends Irish land annuity payments.
France's president Paul Doumer is assassinated by a mad Russian émigré May 6 and is succeeded by Sen. Albert Lebrun, 61. Former minister of war André Maginot has died at Paris January 7 at age 54, former premier Aristide Briand at Paris March 7 at age 69. May elections give leftist parties a majority, and Edouard Heriot begins a second ministry, but he resigns in December over refusal by the Chamber of Deputies to support his government's proposal to pay installments on France's war debt to the United States.
Adolf Hitler becomes a German citizen and his National Socialist (Nazi) Party wins 36.8 percent of the vote in what will prove to be Germany's last truly democratic national election for more than 13 years (see 1931). Berlin piano maker's wife Helena Bechstein encouraged the rabble rouser in the 1920s, taught him manners, and introduced him to people who could help him socially, politically, and financially. Manufacturer Gertrud von Seidlitz gave him money and got more for him from her friends in Finland. President Hindenburg asks Franz von Papen, 52, to form a government May 31; von Papen does so but excludes Nazis. Voters in the general election July 31 make the National Socialist (Nazi) Party the biggest in the Reichstag but with no overall majority. Adolf Hitler visits President Hindenburg August 13 and demands that he be made chancellor, Hindenburg refuses (the Nazis, he says, are intolerant, lack discipline, and are prone to violence). Hitler announces August 13 that he will not serve as vice-chancellor under von Papen, wartime flying ace and Nazi leader Hermann (Wilhelm) Goering, 39, is elected president of the Reichstag August 30, and von Papen resigns as chancellor November 17. The Nationalist Socialist Party is bankrupt by December, but von Papen sees that the Nazis are gaining popularity with their vague promises to restore order, eliminate Germany's "internal enemies," and bring economic recovery; he proposes that Hitler be made chancellor and that he himself be vice-chancellor (see 1933).
A statute of Catalonian autonomy is promulgated at Barcelona September 9 with Francesc Macià as head of state (see 1931; 1933).
A Swedish socialist government comes to power September 24 with Per Albin Hansson, 47, as prime minister. He will continue as prime minister until his death in 1946, and the Social Democratic Party will retain power until 1976.
Hungary's reactionary defense minister Gyula Gömbös, 45, becomes prime minister October 1 as right-wing radicals sweep away moderate opposition. The anti-Semitic Gömbös begins a 4-year dictatorship in which he will try to ally Hungary with Germany and Italy but will be blocked by the opposition from achieving his objectives.
Britain's 12-year mandate over Iraq ends in October and the Middle Eastern monarchy enters the League of Nations as an independent state, but Britain retains military bases and exerts a strong political influence (see 1933).
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. resigns from the Supreme Court January 12 at age 90 after nearly 30 years on the Court. President Hoover nominates New York jurist Benjamin N. (Nathan) Cardozo, now 61, to succeed Holmes (who was also 61 when he was appointed), and Cardozo wins unanimous confirmation from the Senate, becoming the second Jewish associate justice.
New York City's playboy mayor James John "Jimmy" Walker, now 51, resigns September 1 during an investigation of corruption by a state legislative commission headed by Judge Samuel Seabury, 59.
"I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people," says New York's governor Franklin D. Roosevelt as he accepts the Democratic Party nomination for president at Chicago. The first nominee of either party to accept at a convention, he has broken all precedent by flying to Chicago with his wife, Eleanor, and in his acceptance speech he speaks out in defense of the "common man," taking a cue from 1928 presidential candidate Al Smith, who has had more support at the convention than anyone but FDR in a bitterly contested floor fight. Roosevelt has created a "Brain Trust" headed by Ohio-born Columbia University professor Raymond (Charles) Moley, 45, who has suggested the term New Deal (Moley writes many of the governor's campaign speeches, having recruited fellow Columbia professors Adolph A. Berle, 38, and Rexford Guy Tugwell, 41, to join the Brain Trust, which advises the nominee on national issues and includes also Roosevelt's close associate Louis Howe, who has come up with the term Brain Trust). Members soon include also New York labor organizer Rose Schneiderman, now 48; Philadelphia-born foreign correspondent William C. (Christian) Bullitt, 41, who had a hand in preparing the peace treaties at Versailles in 1919; and Richmond, Va.-born Federal Farm Bureau economist Mordecai (Joseph Brill) Ezekiel, 33, a vice president of the American Statistical Society.
Gov. Roosevelt wins election by a landslide, gaining 472 electoral votes and 57 percent of the popular vote versus 59 electoral votes and 40 percent of the popular vote for President Hoover, who carries only six states (Pennsylvania, Delaware, Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont). More than 1 million voters cast their ballots for Socialist and even Communist Party presidential candidates as economic depression worsens.
Georgia politician Eugene Talmadge, 48, wins election as governor of his state on a populist platform of white supremacy and will join other Southerners in opposing the policies of Franklin D. Roosevelt. He has founded a weekly newspaper earlier in the year and will win a second term in 1940 (see 1946).
Sen. Hattie Ophelia Caraway (née Wyatt), 53, of Arkansas is elected in her own right with help from Sen. Huey Pierce Long, 39, who entered the Senate in January while still governor of Louisiana. The Senate seated Caraway as a female member January 12 to succeed her late husband, Thaddeus Horatius, who died in November of last year. Although Caraway was ignored by most of the Democratic Party, Sen. Long has sent in a caravan of sound trucks plus two truckloads of political fliers and joined her in barnstorming the state to defeat six male opponents in the primary. The first woman to win a full term in the Senate, Caraway will serve until 1945.
Latin America has its first communist revolt beginning January 22 as Indian peons in El Salvador's western highlands kill nearly 100 people, mostly coffee plantation overseers and soldiers (see El Salvador, 1931). The peons have worked 10-hour days at 12¢ per day; the charismatic communist leader Agustín Farabundo Martí has encouraged them to express their rage; and they have armed themselves with clubs, machetes, slingshots, and a few rifles. The nearby volcano Izalco erupts the night of January 22 as if to echo their anger, but President Maximiliano Hernández Martinez shows no mercy. A believer in theosophy and the occult, he claims to be in direct telepathic communication with President Hoover; he suppresses the rebellion and authorizes the execution of at least 10,000 suspected participants. Groups of 50 men are tied together by their thumbs and shot in front of a church wall, others are forced to dig mass graves and then machine-gunned, anyone dressed in traditional Native American garb is killed, and within a few weeks as many as 30,000 are dead in what critics will call "the matanza" ("the slaughter"), which eliminates not only any immediate threat from left-wing elements but also most of what has remained of indigenous culture (see 1944).
Former Peruvian president Augusto Leguía y Salcedo dies at Lima February 7 at age 68; former Argentine president José Félix Uriburu at Paris April 29 at age 63.
Bolivian forces take the offensive against Paraguay in June as the Chaco War escalates into full-scale hostilities (see 1928). The Bolivians seize Paraguayan positions in the northern Chaco; they go on to take Fortin Boquerón in the central Chaco; Asunción orders mobilization in August and sends Gen. José Estigarribia to retake Fortin Boquerón, which falls at the end of September (see 1933).
Josef Stalin cracks down in the Ukraine and Caucasus on kulaks who resist collectivization (see 1928). He sends in troops to requisition all foodstuffs and prevents trains carrying food from reaching the areas.
Brazil, Uruguay, Siam (Thailand), and the Maldives give women the right to vote on the same basis as men. Puerto Rican women gain voting rights for the first time.
The U.S. Supreme Court reverses last year's Scottsboro convictions, ruling 7 to 2 November 7 in some landmark decisions that defendants in capital cases in state courts must have adequate legal representation (Patterson v. Alabama, Powell v. Alabama, Weems v. Alabama). The trials of the Scottsboro youths violated the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Court rules (see 1933; Betts v. Brady, 1942).
Sears, Roebuck chairman-philanthropist Julius Rosenwald dies at Chicago January 6 at age 69 (see Rosenwald Fund, 1917);
Child welfare worker Julia C. Lathrop dies at her native Rockford, Ill., April 15 at age 73.
The German Army places engineer Capt. Walter R. (Robert) Dornberger, 36, in charge of the Reichswehr's research station at the Kummersdorf Proving Grounds just south of Berlin, with instructions to perfect the rocket engine as a potential weapon (see Oberth, 1931). Berlin Institute of Technology graduate Wernher (Magnus Maximilian) von Braun, 20, has assisted Hermann Oberth in his liquid-fueled rocket motor tests during his spare time. Dornberger arranges a research grant for Braun from the Ordnance Department, and when Braun receives his Ph.D. from the University of Berlin in 1934 his dissertation will (for security reasons) be entitled simply "About Combustion Tests," but it will contain data on theoretical investigation and actual experiments with 300- to 660-pound-thrust rocket engines. By December 1934 Braun's group will have launched two rockets that rose nearly two and a half kilometers (one and a half miles) into the atmosphere, but rocket tests will have been forbidden by decree, and further research will be possible only through the army (see Tsiolkovsky, 1935; politics [first guided missile], 1942).
Congress authorizes a Reconstruction Finance Corp. January 22 to help finance industry and agriculture in accordance with President Hoover's request of last year. The RFC uses taxpayers' money to help corporations recover and create new jobs.
President Hoover persuades his secretary of the treasury Andrew W. Mellon to step down February 12 and accept appointment as ambassador to the Court of St. James. Now 76, Mellon has held the office since the late Warren Harding took office in March 1921 and embraced a "trickle-down" theory that spending by big business benefits all citizens; Hoover replaces him with Newport, R.I.-born millionaire Ogden L. (Livingston) Mills, now 47, who has been Mellon's under secretary and will follow the failed policies of his predecessor.
Parliament raises Britain's protective tariff February 29 with a new "Corn Law," abandoning free trade for the first time since 1849.
The suicide of Swedish "match king" Ivar Kreuger, 51, at Paris March 12 reveals a gigantic stock swindle that rocks the financial world and bankrupts the Boston banking house Lee, Higginson & Co.
Dearborn, Mich., police fire into a crowd of 3,000 men, women, and children demonstrating outside the Ford Motor Company plant March 7. Four are killed, 100 wounded, and the wounded are handcuffed to their hospital beds on charges of rioting (see United Auto Workers, 1935).
The Norris-La Guardia Anti-Injunction Act passed by Congress March 23 prohibits the use of injunctions in labor disputes except under defined conditions and outlaws "yellow-dog contracts" that make workers promise not to join any labor union. Sponsored by George W. (William) Norris (R. Neb.), now 70, and Fiorello H. (Henry) La Guardia (R. N.Y.), 39, the bill has been pushed by seamen's union chief Andrew Furuseth, now 78, and helps establish labor's right to strike, picket, and conduct boycotts.
"Bonus Marchers" descend on Washington beginning in May as some 25,000 poverty-stricken Great War veterans demonstrate to obtain "bonuses" authorized by the Adjustment Compensation Act of 1924 but not due until 1945. Some 300 veterans began May 11 by blocking the tracks outside Portland, Ore., and hijacking a train. Veteran William Walter took charge at Walla Walla, Wash., and imposed some military discipline as the "marchers" picked up support on their way across the country. Hoping to get roughly $500 each, the veterans—some with wives and children—camp out in the city's parks, dumps, empty stores, and warehouses. Baltimore Sun reporter Drew Pearson, 34, sees "no hope on their faces," and Washington's sympathetic chief of police Pelham Glasford issues rations and army pup tents. Former U.S. Marine Corps commandant Gen. Smedley Darlington Butler, now 50, encourages the bonus marchers, denouncing efforts by the U.S. Government to intervene in foreign affairs for the benefit of American financial interests (Butler resigned his position last year after writing a book in which he claimed that his service on three continents was for the benefit of New York banks and Standard Oil Company; see politics, 1934), but communists who try to infiltrate the ranks of the demonstrators are beaten up. Abilene, Kansas-born Major Dwight D. (David) Eisenhower, 41, tells Chief of Staff Gen. Douglas MacArthur, 52, that it would be demeaning for the army to be involved in a riot, but tanks roll down Pennsylvania Avenue, and cavalrymen and infantry armed with machine guns and bayonetted rifles use tear gas grenades to disperse the demonstrators from their main camp on Anacostia Flats and elsewhere, burning their shacks and ousting 15,000 men, women, and children. MacArthur has not consulted with Police Chief Glasford and has ignored orders from President Hoover to stop at the Anacostia Bridge. Major George S. (Smith) Patton, Jr., 45, and other officers participate in the July 28 violence, which produces 100 casualties, and although President Hoover summons MacArthur and the secretary of war to his office, he maintains that the Bonus Marchers were "communists and persons with criminal records" rather than veterans.
A tariff war between Britain and Ireland begins in July (see 1922). The loss of her chief export market brings a collapse of Ireland's cattle industry and worsens her economic depression (see 1935).
Wall Street's Dow Jones Industrial Average plummets to 41.22 by July 7, down from its high of 381.17 September 3, 1929. It rallies somewhat before falling 5.79 points (8.40 percent) August 12, its fourth worst plunge yet, but remains above its July 7 low. Stock prices have lost 85 to 90 percent of their pre-Crash values and will never again fall so low, but they will not reach their 1929 heights until 1954 (not until the 1990s when adjusted for inflation).
An Emergency Relief and Reconstruction Act signed into law by President Hoover July 21 gives the RFC power to lend $1.8 billion to the states for relief and self-liquidating public works projects. Many states have been unable to raise money for relief purposes.
The U.S. controller of the currency announces August 26 that foreclosures on first mortgages will be temporarily suspended to provide some relief for beleagured homeowners.
Some 1,616 U.S. banks fail, nearly 20,000 business firms go bankrupt, there are 21,000 suicides, and expenditures for food and tobacco fall $10 billion below 1929 levels.
The average U.S. weekly wage falls to $17, down from $28 in 1929. "Breadlines" form in many cities.
David Dubinsky (originally Dobnievski) becomes president of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU). Now 40, the Polish-born organizer launches a membership drive that will triple the union's rolls in 3 years.
The American Federation of Labor (AFL) reverses its long-standing position against unemployment insurance and urges that work be spread through a 30-hour week with some "economic planning" by the federal government.
U.S. industrial production drops to one-third its 1929 total, and the U.S. Gross National Product (GNP) sinks to $41 billion, just over half its 1929 level.
Financier Paul M. Warburg dies of pneumonia at his New York home January 24 at age 63; Brookings Institution founder Robert S. Brookings at Washington, D.C., November 15 at age 82.
Prominent U.S. intellectuals endorse communism, saying that only the Communist Party has proposed a real solution to the nation's problems. Endorsers include Sherwood Anderson, Erskine Caldwell, John Dos Passos, Theodore Dreiser, Waldo Frank, Granville Hicks, Sidney Hook, Matthew Josephson, and Lincoln Steffens.
Britain imposes a 10 percent tariff on most imported goods in September; Liberal Party leader (and confirmed free trader) Herbert L. Samuel, now 61, resigns his position as home secretary in Prime Minister MacDonald's cabinet in protest. Britain agrees at the Imperial Economic Conference at Ottawa to exempt Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and other Commonwealth nations, which in turn will provide markets for Britain's otherwise uncompetitive textiles, steel, motorcars, and telecommunications equipment, discouraging innovation in many industries.
Germany has 5.6 million unemployed, Britain 2.8 million, but German national income rises to 57.5 billion marks, up from 45.7 billion in 1914.
Belgium, France, and four other debtor nations default on their payments to the United States December 15. Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson proposed in July that the 1-year moratorium on all foreign debts be extended for a second year, but President Hoover refused.
U.S. unemployment reaches between 15 and 17 million by year's end, 34 million Americans have no income of any kind, and Americans who do work average little more than $16 per week.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average struggles back from its low to close December 31 at 59.93, down from 77.90 at the end of 1931.
Harry Winston, Inc. is founded by New York-born diamond dealer Winston, 36, who quit school at age 15 to go into business with his father, who died 3 years ago; they opened a small store on St. Nicholas Avenue in 1914. The son served an apprenticeship at the New York Diamond Exchange, started Premier Diamond Co. with $2,000 in capital, obtained bank financing (he engaged a distinguished-looking older man to front for him after being mistaken by the bank for a messenger boy), and has developed a reputation for recognizing the potential value of estate jewelry; he will borrow money to buy collections that he will refurbish and resell (see 1960; Hope Diamond, 1958).
Standard Oil of California (SoCal) prospectors in Bahrain strike oil in early June with their first well in the British Persian Gulf protectorate (see politics, 1861). Production will reach 20,000 barrels per day by 1936, and SoCal will take in the Texas Company as an equal partner to avail itself of Texaco's marketing facilities in the Far East (see 1903; 1933).
Construction of the Hoover Dam proceeds on the Colorado River (see 1931); Frank Crowe completes Boulder City to house workers and their families (the gated town has one- to three-room wood-frame cottages that cost about $500 each to build and rent for $15 per month, and it has schools, community houses, and some other amenities, but no gambling or liquor is allowed and blacks are excluded); a diversion tunnel opened November 13 fully 11 months ahead of schedule redirects the flow of water so that steam shovels can excavate the river bottom (see 1933).
U.S. electricity rates peak at 36¢ per kilowatt hour (kwh), the amount of electricity consumed by a 100-watt bulb in 10 hours. Operating companies are subject to state regulation, but holding companies are not, and while they now begin to lower rates there is still widespread corruption in the industry (see 1935; TVA, 1933).
Chicago utilities magnate Samuel Insull runs into financial difficulties, and three of his largest companies go into receivership (see 1912). He has overextended himself to pay $65 million for Cyrus Eaton's shares in Commonwealth Edison and People's Gas Light and Coke, but while Eaton has made a profit of $15 million and seen his own net worth rise to $100 million, the collapse in Wall Street prices reduced Insull's net worth to less than $5 million. Now 73 and almost destitute, he is removed from his executive positions and indicted on charges related to his activities as president of Chicago Edison, Commonwealth Edison, Peoples Gas Light and Coke, and other companies. Many blamed him for the 1929 stock market crash, and he flees to Paris to escape prosecution. He will avoid arrest for 2 years and win acquittal after trials in 1934 and 1935 on charges of fraud, violation of federal bankruptcy laws, and embezzlement.
U.S. motorcar sales fall to just over 1 million, down from more than 5 million in 1929.
Sales of Ford passenger cars to farmers fall to 55,000, down from 650,000 in 1929. Ford halts production of its Model A, introduced in 1927, as it tools up to introduce the first low-priced V-8. Ford loses millions of dollars and lays off workers to reduce payroll costs from $145 million (1929) to $32 million (1933).
Soviet Russia's Gorky Automobile Factory (GAZ) is completed at Nizhny Novgorod, 260 miles east of Moscow, where it will produce the Volga sedan and other motorcars. Ford Motor Company engineers have helped build the plant.
Fiat introduces the Tipo 508, or Balilla, at the Milan auto show. The three-speed sedan has a 995 cubic-centimeter engine that gets 30 to 34 miles per gallon (100 kilometers per eight liters); its top speed is 55 miles per hour. About 113,000 will be produced, and it will be the Italian counterpart of Henry Ford's Model T (see "Topolino," 1936).
Motorcar pioneer Henry M. Leland dies at Detroit March 26 at age 89; automaker Alexander Winton at Cleveland June 21 at age 72. He stopped making motorcars in 1924 to concentrate on producing diesel engines.
Some 25 percent of U.S. auto glass is safety glass. Many states enact legislation requiring it in windshields (see Sloan, 1929).
General Motors forms a subsidiary to acquire electric streetcar companies, convert them to GM motorbus operation, and resell them to local entrepreneurs who will agree to buy only GM buses as replacement vehicles (see New York, 1936; conspiracy conviction, 1949).
Sydney's Harbour Bridge opens March 18, connecting the city with its suburban areas in New South Wales. Designed by London civil engineer Ralph Freeman, 51, it has a main arch span of 1,650 feet and is the world's longest arch bridge.
London's Lambeth Bridge of 1862 is replaced by a new bridge across the Thames.
Washington's Arlington Bridge across the Potomac is completed to designs by McKim, Mead, and White of New York.
Cologne's mayor Konrad Adenauer, 56, dedicates the first segment of the Autobahn's Cologne-Bonn highway August 6 (see 1921). Construction began in 1929, Adolf Hitler's National Socialist Party has condemned it as elitist, but Hitler will change his mind next year (see 1933).
Bridgestone Tire Co. is founded by 43-year-old Japanese entrepreneur Shojiro Ishibashi (the name means "stone bridge"), who began by making rubber work shoes (see Firestone acquisition, 1988).
Italian tire and electric wire maker Giovanni Battista Pirelli dies at Milan October 20 at age 81. His son Piero, 51, succeeds as chairman.
Oklahoma City News editor Carl C. Magee, 60, files the first patent application for a parking meter in December. No mechanic, he engages university engineers to develop his idea and will receive his patent in 1936 (see 1935).
Europe's Simplon-Orient Express becomes the Arlberg-Orient Express as it inaugurates a new route closer to the original route of 1883. The six-mile Arlberg Tunnel avoids the long detour into Italy, taking the luxury train from Switzerland eastward to Austria and thence to Istanbul (see 1919; 1952).
New York's Independent subway system opens September 10, extending service into areas not served by the BMT or IRT (see 1933).
The fourth Welland Sea Canal opens with 27 locks, bypassing Niagara Falls to connect Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. Originally built in 1829, the 28-mile waterway can now accommodate a vessel up to 600 feet in length with a 22-foot draft.
The Grace Line passenger ship Santa Rosa goes into service with a midships dining room whose roof opens in fair weather (see 1918). Designed by William F. Gibbs and built at Kearny, N.J., she has a large swimming pool and gym, and her first-class cabins are all outside twins with private baths. She will soon be joined by the Santa Paula, Santa Lucia, and Santa Elena, and along with the Santa Paula will be replaced in 1958 by larger vessels of the same names.
Shipowner Robert Dollar dies of bronchial pneumonia at San Rafael, Calif., May 16 at age 88, having been helped by his three sons to build a fleet of about 40 vessels, including 18 passenger ships.
The Matson-Oceanic Line passenger ship Monterey arrives at San Francisco via the Panama Canal May 29, having left New York May 12 on her maiden voyage. She begins scheduled service June 3 to Honolulu and the Antipodes and is soon joined by a new Lurline and Matsonia.
Pilot and aircraft manufacturer Edward Stinson dies in an air crash January 26 at age 38 while on a sales trip for Stinson Aircraft Corp. (see 1929). He has had 16,000 hours of flight time (more than any other aviator to date), and the company he started 12 years ago is prospering with new models powered by Wright or Lycoming radial engines. The Reliant model introduced next year will be the company's most famous, and by 1941 Stinson will have delivered 1,327 of them.
Amelia Earhart (Putnam) lands in Northern Ireland May 21 after making the first solo transatlantic flight by a woman (see 1928) (Earhart married New York publisher George Putnam in February of last year). Lockheed Aircraft gave her a single-wing Vega powered by a Pratt & Whitney Wasp engine in 1929, it is the same model flown by Beryl Markham and Amy Johnson, and she has left Harbor Grace, Newfoundland, the previous evening. She ran into a violent electrical storm over the ocean, her altimeter failed, iced up wings sent her plane into a 3,000-foot tailspin, her exhaust manifold caught fire, and she opted to land in a pasture outside Londonderry rather than continue on to Paris; the crossing has taken her 14 hours, 56 minutes.
Kansas-born aircraft designer Lloyd C. (Carl) Stearman, 33, becomes president of a revived Lockheed Co. after it is acquired in bankruptcy for $40,000 (see 1929). Stearman worked in partnership with Clyde Cessna and Walter H. Beech in 1924 to produce the Travel Air, a pioneer civilian production plane, and after being nearly wiped out in 1929 merged his company at Wichita with United Aircraft, which produces his training planes (see politics [Lockheed], 1938).
Beech Aircraft is founded at Wichita, Kan., by Pulaski, Tenn.-born entrepreneur Walter H. (Herschel) Beech, 41, and his wife, Olive Ann, 28, who will head the light-plane manufacturing company after her husband's death in 1950.
Aviation pioneer Alberto Santos-Dumont commits suicide on his estate at Guarujá, São Paulo, July 23 at age 59. He quit aviation in 1910, having come down with multiple sclerosis and returned to his native Brazil in 1928; his physical and mental condition has declined ever since, and he has become depressed at the prospect of aircraft being used for military purposes.
The Russian national airline Aeroflot is created through a reorganization of Dobroflot (see 1923). Within 3 years it will have a network of routes extending across the country to the Black Sea, the Caucusus, and central Asia as it grows to become the world's largest airline, making parts of the Soviet Union accessible within hours where it once took days and even weeks to reach them overland (see 1956).
EgyptAir has its beginnings in the government-owned Misr Air (Misr is Arabic for Egypt); based at Cairo; it will resist privatization into the next century as it becomes an international carrier employing 22,000 people who will include about 600 pilots.
Air India has its beginnings in Tata Airlines. Tata Sons Ltd. director Jehangir Ratanji Dadabhoy Tata, 28, spent much of his childhood in France (his mother is French), met Louis Blériot, learned to fly, and pilots the inaugural flight between Karachi and Bombay (Mumbai) (see 1946).
Splitting the atom for the first time in history presents the possibility of a vast new energy source (see Thomson, 1897; Urey, 1930). English physicist John D. (Douglas) Cockcroft, 35, and his associate Ernest Walton employ a voltage multiplier they developed in the 1920s to accelerate charged subatomic particles to extremely high velocities. They use this "atomic gun" to bombard lithium with protons, and the alpha particles (helium nuclei) they produce show that the protons have reacted with the lithium nuclei to produce helium (see Joliot-Curie, 1934).
Cambridge University physicist James Chadwick, 41, discovers the neutron—a particle similar in mass to the proton but without an electric charge (see electron, 1897). Chadwick has worked with Ernest Rutherford at the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge since 1923, bombarding various elements with alpha particles to study their transmutation. He has noticed that bombarding beryllium releases a heretofore unknown kind of radiation that ejects protons from the nuclei of various substances (see Bothe, 1930). Since it is neutral, the neutron easily penetrates atoms and permits efficient splitting of atomic nuclei for developing atomic reactors (see 1934).
Canton, S.D.-born University of California, Berkeley, physicist Ernest O. (Orlando) Lawrence, 31, and his colleagues build the world's first practical cyclotron—a device with a constant magnetic field that can be changed from one side to the other and thereby force subatomic particles into accelerating spiral paths until they reach velocities that approach the speed of light. New York-born Wall Street financial wizard and science enthusiast Alfred Lee Loomis, 43, has built a laboratory at his Tuxedo Park, N.Y., country house and will help finance Lawrence's work (see Veksler, 1944).
New York-born California Institute of Technology physicist Carl D. (David) Anderson, 26, announces that he and his colleague Seth Neddermeyer have found what he calls a positron—a subatomic particle equal in mass to the electron but positively charged (see cosmic rays, 1925; Dirac, 1928). They have found definite evidence of its existence in a cloud chamber, says Anderson, who has studied under Robert A. Millikan, and his announcement startles those who have believed the atomic structure to consist simply of the proton, neutron, and electron. Some doubt his claim, but British physicist Patrick M. S. Blackett and Italian physicist Giuseppe Occhialini will verify it next year, and by next year Anderson will have produced the positron artificially by gamma-ray bombardment as he and others begin to extend Paul Dirac's theories to produce a more comprehensive theory of quantum electrodynamics (QED).
The Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics by John von Neumann provides a precise formulation and proof of the "ergodic hypothesis" of statistical mathematics (see 1926). Now 28, von Neumann published a definition of ordinal numbers 8 years ago, has seen it universally adopted, and will become a professor next year at Princeton's Institute of Advanced Study.
A University of Cincinnati team headed by Minneapolis-born archaeologist Carl W. (William) Blegen, 45, resumes excavations at the site of ancient Troy begun by the late Heinrich Schliemann (see 1890).
Nobel physical chemist Wilhelm Ostwald dies outside Leipzig April 4 at age 78.
Swiss-born U.S. physicist Auguste Piccard, 48, develops an enclosed gondola for an ascension balloon that carries men to an altitude of 55,500 feet for scientific observations (see 1934).
Oklahoma-born radio engineer Karl Guthe Janksy, 26, pioneers radio astronomy by detecting radio waves that he determines to have emanated from beyond the solar system.
New York cardiologist Albert S. (Salisbury) Hyman, 39, pioneers the pacemaker, using a transthoracic needle to administer an electrical impulse to the hearts of small laboratory animals (and one large dog) whose hearts have stopped. By March 1 he has used the device 43 times and succeeded 14 times (see 1958).
New York-born Mount Sinai Hospital gastroenterologist Burrill B. (Bernard) Crohn, 48, reports more than a dozen cases of an inflammatory bowel disease that will be variously identified as Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis, and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). Marked by chronic diarrhea and often associated with auto-immune disorders, it typically appears by age 30, can be extremely painful and debilitating, has numerous complications, defies treatment by diet or medication, and in extreme cases requires surgery.
Berlin gastroenterologist Rudolf Schindler, 44, invents the gastroscope for examining stomach interiors (see Bernheim, 1911). He will relocate next year to Los Angeles, but exploratory surgery rather than endoscopy will remain the primary option for decades to come (see CAT scan, 1974; MRI, 1982).
The Benzedrine Inhaler introduced by Smith Kline & French is a nasal decongestant whose active ingredient is an amphetamine. It will be used in treating hyperkinetic children, prescribed for obesity, and abused as "speed."
Surgeon-bacteriologist Sir William Watson Cheyne dies at Fetlar, Shetland Islands, April 19 at age 79; bacteriologist Sir Ronald Ross at Putney Heath, London, September 16 at age 75, having seen malaria conquered in at least some parts of the world.
Social reformer Annie Wood Besant dies at Adyar, India, September 20 at age 85, having headed the Theosophical Society since 1907.
Oxford University's All Souls College elects the first Jewish fellow in its 500-year history: Latvian-born philosopher Isaiah Berlin, 23. Created after 1415 to commemorate the victors of the Battle of Agincourt, All Souls (The College of All Souls of the Faithful Departed of Oxford) is a society of graduates, distinguished for achievement or promise; it has no undergraduates.
The Experiment in International Living is founded at Putney, Vt., by educator Donald B. Watt, 39.
Bennington College opens at North Bennington, Vt., in September with a student enrollment of 86 freshmen and a faculty of 19 headed by Robert Devore Leigh, 42. Local philanthropist Elizabeth Jennings (Mrs. George S.) Franklin, 45, and her mother have donated 140 acres of their farmstead as a site for the college (its tenant house, large barn, and two chicken houses have been remodeled to house the school). As each new class is added in the next 3 years, more student houses will be built, and by the time the first class graduates in 1936 enrollment will be 250 with a faculty of 42.
The Highlander Folk School is founded at Monteagle, Tenn., northwest of Chattanooga by educator Myles Horton, 27, and his wife, Zilphia (née Johnson), 22. As a freshman at the University of Tennessee, Horton led a student revolt against hazing of freshmen by fraternities; he later organized interracial meetings. Horton studied under Reinhold Niebuhr at the Union Theological Seminary, will teach thousands of blacks to read and write, and will play an active role in the civil rights movement. His racially integrated school for working-class students will come under attack for alleged communist ties, it will be firebombed, the state will shut it down, and Horton will move it in 1960 to Knoxville (see music, 1962).
French educator and 1927 Nobel Peace Prize co-winner Ferdinand-Edouard Buisson dies at Thieuloy-Saint-Antoine February 16 at age 90.
The Times New Roman typeface developed for the Times of London by London typographer Stanley A. (Arthur) Morison, 43, will come into wide use worldwide.
Manchester Guardian editor Charles P. Scott dies at Manchester January 1 at age 84, having retired in 1929 after editing the paper for 57 years; publisher-philanthropist Ellen B. Scripps dies at La Jolla, Calif., August 3 at age 95.
The first-class U.S. postal rate goes to 3¢ in July. It was 3¢ from 1917 to 1928 but then returned to 2¢ (see 1885; 1958).
The Family Circle begins weekly publication at Newark, N.J., early in September with 24 pages. Founded and edited by Harry Evans, 36, with the purpose of publishing "nothing that a woman could object to," it is the first magazine to be distributed exclusively through grocery stores. Charles E. Merrill of Merrill, Lynch, has financed the magazine, which is given away free to shoppers at two eastern chains and will have a circulation of 1.44 million by 1939 (see 1946; Woman's Day, 1937).
The Jerusalem Post has its beginnings in the English-language Palestine Post that begins daily publication December 1 under the direction of Ukrainian-born U.S. journalist Gershon Agron (originally Agronsky), 38. It will change its name in 1950.
Ring recording heads patented by Iowa-born Radio Corporation of America (RCA) engineer Harry F. Olson, 31, use a field coil instead of a permanent magnet and employ the first cardiod ribbon microphone.
Philco radio receiver sales fall to 600,000, down from about 900,000 last year, and dollar volume falls to $17 million (see 1930). Philadelphia Storage Battery Co. has hired Norman Bel Geddes to design good-looking cabinets, and it remains the industry leader, but some Philco models sell for as much as $150, and with unemployment at an all-time high of 25 percent the market for such radios has plummeted (see car radio antenna, 1934).
Radio pioneer Reginald A. Fessenden dies at Hamilton, Bermuda, July 22 at age 65, having received several hundred patents related to broadcasting and reception. He has doubted the value of corporate and government research laboratories, insisting that successful inventions came from individual minds.
BBC takes over the responsibility of developing television from the Baird Co. and adopts John Logie Baird's 30-line system (see 1926; 1927). Higher-resolution systems are available, but Baird's system is better understood, no suitable wide-band transmitters are easily to be had, and BBC can use the 30-line system with its existing audio transmitters for the low-bandwith video (see 1935).
Nonfiction: Moral Man and Immoral Society by Missouri-born theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, 40, who says that Christianity's "gospel of love" cannot deal with real and active problems such as political coercion, that ambition and love of self taint mankind's greatest achievements and that the true character of people and nations makes it essential that they embrace doctrines of sin and repentence; Toward the Understanding of Karl Marx: A Revolutionary Interpretation by New York University philosopher, socialist, and self-described "secular humanist" Sidney Hook, 30; Farewell to Reform: Being a History of the Rise, Life, and Decay of the Progressive Mind in America by New Haven, Conn.-born New York Times Book Review editor John (Rensselaer) Chamberlain, 28; The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers by Carl L. Becker; New Bearings in English Poetry by Cambridge University literary critic F. R. (Frank Raymond) Leavis, 37, who attacks late Victorian poetry and champions the work of T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and the late Gerard Manley Hopkins; The Roman Way by Edith Hamilton; Liberalism in the South by Virginia author Virginius Dabney, 31; Death in the Afternoon by Ernest Hemingway indulges the novelist's obsession with bullfighting; Afternoons in Utopia: Tales of the New Times by Stephen Leacock; Life Begins at Forty by Michigan-born Columbia University psychologist and journalism professor Walter B. (Boughton) Pitkin, 54; Fun in Bed: The Convalescent's Handbook by New York-born author Frank Scully, 40 (editor).
Biographer Lytton Strachey dies of stomach cancer at Ham Spray House, near Hungerford, Berkshire, January 21 at age 51; historian Frederick Jackson Turner at Pasadena, Calif., March 14 at age 70.
Fiction: Laughter in the Dark by Russian novelist Vladimir Nabokov, 33; Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, who projects a world in the "Year of Our Ford" when people will go not to the movies but rather to the "feelies," where men will be attended by "pneumatic" girls (a word borrowed from T. S. Eliot's poem "Whispers of Immortality") and the state will control human reproduction; Radetzky March (Radetzkymarsch) by Joseph Roth; Journey to the End of the Night (Voyage au bout de la nuit) by French physician-novelist Louis Ferdinand Céline (Henri-Louis Destouches), 38; Little Man, What Now? (Kleiner Mann—was nun?) by German novelist Hans Fallada (Rudolf Ditzen), 30; The Memorial by Christopher Isherwood; Snooty Baronet by Wyndham Lewis; Midsummer Night's Madness and Other Stories by Irish writer Sean O'Faolain (originally John Francis Whelan), 32, who changed his name after the British repression of the 1916 Easter Rebellion, studied Gaelic, and has been teaching in America and Britain; Black Mischief by Evelyn Waugh; Poor Toni by Scottish novelist-poet-critic Edwin Muir, 45; Limits and Renewals (stories) by Rudyard Kipling; The Killing Bottle (stories) by L. P. Hartley; Light in August by William Faulkner; Tobacco Road by Georgia-born novelist Erskine Caldwell, 28, who depicts the depravity of poor whites in Georgia's sharecropper society; Save Me the Waltz by Alabama-born writer Zelda Fitzgerald (née Sayre), 32, who married novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1920 and has written many of the stories published under his name; The Wise and Foolish Virgins by English novelist Marguerite Steen, 38; Slow Dawning by Australian novelist Eleanor Dark (née O'Reilly), 31, who completed it in 1923; The Case of the Velvet Claws by English-born U.S. lawyer-novelist Erle Stanley Gardner, 43, who started writing occasional detective stories in 1921, has been averaging more than a million words of pulp magazine writing each year since 1928, and will follow his Perry Mason mystery novel with dozens in the same vein; Have His Carcase by Dorothy L. Sayers; Death Under Sail by English physicist-novelist C. P. (Charles Percy) Snow, 27; The Crime of Inspector Maigret by Franco-Belgian novelist Georges Simenon, 29, who got his first job as a reporter at age 16 and by age 28 had had nearly 200 of his pulp novels published under at least 17 noms de plume. In the next half century he will grind out 192 more under his own name, sometimes dashing off one per week.
Poetry: "Anna Livia Plurabelle" by James Joyce, whose daughter Lucia is troubled by mental illness that will be diagnosed as schizophrenia; Poems by Stephen Spender; Poem of Frozen Time (Poemat o czasie zastyglym) by Lithuanian-born Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz, 21, who has become a socialist and a leader of the Catastrophist group of poets who predict an impending worldwide disaster; The Dream Keeper and Scottsboro Limited by Langston Hughes, who will be called the "Poet Laureate of Harlem."
Poet Dino Campana dies March 1 at age 46 in the mental institution at Florence, Italy, to which he has been confined since January 1918; Hart Crane jumps or falls from a ship bound for the United States from Mexico and drowns April 27 at age 32.
Juvenile: Little House in the Big Woods by Mansfield, Mo., author Laura Ingalls Wilder, 65, who moved to the Ozarks in 1894, wrote columns for the weekly Missouri Ruralist, and begins a series of eight volumes, written with help from her daughter Rose Wilder Lane, that will appear in the next 11 years to recount her girlhood in the Midwest of the late 19th century. Her parents settled in a shanty at De Smet, South Dakota, in 1880; she was married at age 18 to Almanzo J. Wilder, helped him run a farm near her parents' house, suffered through crop-destroying hailstorms and droughts, nearly died when both came down with diphtheria, and helped nurse her husband after he was partially paralyzed by a stroke; L'Histoire de Babar (The Story of Babar, the Little Elephant) by French artist-writer Jean de Brunhoff, 33, whose book will sell 50,000 copies in French before being translated into English. De Brunhoff will die of tuberculosis in 1937, but his book and its sequel Travels of Babar will be followed by further Babar adventures produced by his son.
Kenneth Grahame of 1908 Wind in the Willows fame dies at Pangbourne, Berkshire, July 6 at age 73. His book was dramatized 2 years ago by A. A. Milne, whose Toad of Toad Hall will entertain generations of children each Christmas.
Painting: Girl Before a Mirror, Bather with Beach Ball, Nude on a Black Armchair, Still Life with Tulips, and The Dream by Pablo Picasso; Christ Mocked by Soldiers by Georges Rouault; SacréCoeur by Maurice Utrillo; The Bathroom by Pierre Bonnard; Professor Sauerbruch by Max Liebermann, now 85; Bauhaus Staircase by German painter Oskar Schlemmer, 44; George [Gershwin] in an Imaginary Concert Hall by David Alfaro Siqueiros, who has met the composer on the latter's 4-week visit to Mexico and includes members of Gershwin's family, including his late father, in front-row audience seats; Popocatépetl, Spiritual Morning—Mexico by Marsden Hartley; Sacco and Vanzetti by Lithuanian-born New York painter Ben (Benjamin) Shahn, 33, who produces 23 gouaches inspired by the execution in 1927; The Bowery by New York painter Reginald Marsh, 34; Daughters of the American Revolution by Grant Wood; Butterfly Chaser and The Arts of Life in America (murals) by Thomas Hart Benton. Painter Alfred H. Maurer dies at his native New York August 4 at age 64.
Sculpture: Head of a Woman by Pablo Picasso.
Motorized and hand-cranked "stabiles" by Alexander Calder create a stir at Paris (see 1931). Calder follows his stabiles with hanging "mobiles" that move with air currents (Marcel Duchamp has suggested the name).
Flushing, Queens, sculptor Joseph Cornell, 28, exhibits his first boxes containing found objects.
Photography pioneer George Eastman takes his own life at Rochester, N.Y., March 14 at age 77 after learning that he has cancer. Including bequests, his philanthropies total more than $75 million.
Connecticut-born Harvard College dropout Edwin H. (Herbert) Land, 23, opens the Land Wheelwright Laboratories at Boston with backing from Harvard physics instructor George W. Wheelwright III, 29. Land has invented Polaroid film, the world's first synthetic light-polarizing film; Wheelwright is the dilettante son of a Ware, Mass., paper manufacturer; the company licenses its film to Eastman Kodak for polarizing filters and beginning in 1935 will market educational kits to demonstrate light polarization (see sunglasses, 1936; camera, 1947).
Turkish-born portrait photographer Yousuf Karsh, 23, opens a studio at Ottawa; calling himself Karsh of Ottawa, he will use an 8-by-10-inch view camera and a battery of artificial lights to capture the images of political leaders, celebrities, and business leaders worldwide.
Theater: The Animal Kingdom by Philip Barry 1/12 at New York's Broadhurst Theater with Brooklyn-born actor William (Dennis) Gargan, 26, Leslie Howard, Ilka Chase, 183 perfs.; Whistling in the Dark by Laurence Gross and Edward Childs Carpenter 1/19 at New York's Ethel Barrymore Theater (to Waldorf Theater 11/3), with Edward Arnold, Ernest Truex, New York-born Anthony Ross, 22, 265 perfs.; The Atlantic (Atlanter havet) by Nordahl Grieg 1/23 at Oslo's National Theater; There's Always Juliet by John Van Druten, 2/15 at New York's Empire Theater, with English-born actress Edna Best (originally Edna Hove), 32, Herbert Marshall, 108 perfs.; Too True to Be Good by George Bernard Shaw 4/4 at New York's Guild Theater, with Beatrice Lillie, Hope Williams, Leo G. Carroll, London-born actor Claude Rains, 32, 57 perfs.; Another Language by Rose Franken 4/25 at New York's Booth Theater, with Margaret Hamilton, Margaret Wycherly, Dorothy Stickney, Patricia Collinge, Joplin, Mo.-born John Beal, 22, 344 perfs.; The Ermine (L'ermine) by French playwright Jean (-Marie-Lucien-Pierre) Anouilh, 21, 4/26 at the Théâtre de l'oeuvre, Paris; Bridal Wise by Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich 5/30 at New York's Cort Theater, with James Rennie, Madge Kennedy, 128 perfs.; When Ladies Meet by Rachel Crothers 10/6 at New York's Royale Theater, with Spring Byington, Walter Abel, 173 perfs.; Service by C. L. Anthony (Dorothy Smith) 10/12 at Wyndham's Theatre, London, with Leslie Banks, Jack Hawkins, Peggy Simpson, Ann Todd, 199 perfs.; Criminal at Large by the late London-born novelist-playwright Edgar Wallace (who has died at Hollywood, Calif., February 10 at age 56) 10/10 at New York's Belasco Theater, with William Harrigan, 161 perfs.; Dinner at Eight by George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber 10/22 at New York's Music Box Theater, with English actress (Laura) Constance Collier, 50, 232 perfs.; Dangerous Corner by J. B. Priestley 10/27 at New York's Empire Theater, with Cecil Holm, Jean Dixon, Mary Servoss, 51, 206 perfs.; For Services Rendered by W. Somerset Maugham 11/1 at London's Globe Theatre with Ralph (David) Richardson, 29, Flora Robson, 29, Cedric Hardwicke; Biography by S. N. Behrman 12/12 at New York's Guild Theater, with Earle Larimore, Ina Claire, Jay Fassett, 283 perfs.
"Manifesto of the Theater of Cruelty" ("Manifeste du théâtre de la cruatuté") by Antonin Artaud is published at Paris (see 1927).
Washington's Folger Library opens. The great Shakespearean collection has been funded by the late Standard Oil Co. chairman Henry Clay Folger, who retired in 1928 to devote all his attention to his Shakespeare library and died without issue at Brooklyn, N.Y., in June 1930 at age 73.
Minnie Maddern Fiske dies of heart failure at Hollis, N.Y., February 15 at age 66; Lady Gregory at her Coole Park estate in County Galway May 22 at age 80; New York theatrical booking agent William Morris sits down to a game of pinochle with three vaudevillians at the Friars' Club in West 48th Street, begins playing at 12:15 in the morning of November 2, and drops dead of a heart attack 15 minutes later at age 59; playwright Eugène Brieux dies at Nice December 6 at age 74.
Radio: Burns and Allen 2/15 on CBS with comedians George Burns and Gracie Allen, who will move to television in 1950; One Man's Family 4/29 on West Coast NBC stations with J. Anthony Smythe as retired San Francisco stockbroker Henry Barbour, Minetta Ellen as his wife, Fanny (to 5/8/1959). California writer Carlton E. Morse, 30, has created the show, which will go national next year and continue for decades; The Jack Benny Show 5/2 on NBC with Milwaukee-born violinist-comedian Benny (originally Benjamin Kubelsky), 38, who has toured in vaudeville (originally as Ben K. Benny), appeared last year in Earl Carroll's Vanities, and begins a show that will continue for 23 years with the help of Benny's wife, Mary Livingston, Don Wilson, Dennis Day, Eddie "Rochester" Anderson, and scriptwriters who will work endless variations on the themes of Benny's stinginess, his Maxwell car, his violin playing, and his age. Perpetually 39, Benny will later move to CBS, go on television in 1955, and continue for another 10 years; Today's Children 5/15 on NBC's Blue Network is a 15-minute "soap opera" created by former schoolteacher Irna Phillips, 31, in a revamping of the soap opera Painted Dreams that she wrote for Chicago's WGN beginning in 1930. Phillips played the role of Mother Moynihan on Painted Dreams and plays the role of Mother Moran; Vic and Sade 6/29 on NBC with Art van Harvey as Vic, Bernardine Flynn as Sade in a series created and written by Paul Rhymer, 25 (to 9/29/1944); Just Plain Bill 9/19 on CBS is a 15-minute soap opera that began last year as an evening show. Featuring a small-town barber who married above himself and is now a widower, it has been created by Chicago advertising executives Anne Ashenhurst (née Schumacher), 28, and E. Frank Hummert, 48, who recognize that stay-at-home housewives are the nation's chief purchasers (to 10/55); The Fred Allen Show 10/23 on CBS with former vaudeville juggler Allen (originally John Florence Sullivan), 38. His cast of comedians will include his wife, Portland Hoffa. He will have a half-hour show beginning 6/28/1942 and will continue until 6/29/1949, when guests will include Jack Benny; Buck Rogers in the Twenty-Fifth Century 11/7 on CBS (to 3/1947); Walter Winchell's Journal 12/4 on NBC's Blue Network with Harlem-born New York Daily Mirror columnist Walter Winchell (originally Winschel), 35: "Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. North and South America and all the ships at sea, let's go to press!"
Films: Edmund Goulding's Grand Hotel with Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, John and Lionel Barrymore, Lewis Stone, Wallace Beery, Jean Hersholt; Mervyn LeRoy's I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang with Paul Muni; Merian C. Cooper and Ernest Schoedsack's King Kong with Fay Wray, Carlsbad, N.M.-born actor Bruce Cabot (originally Jacques Etienne de Bujac), 27; Ernst Lubitsch's Trouble in Paradise with Georgia-born actress (Ellen) Miriam Hopkins, 29, Oklahoma City-born actress Kay Francis (originally Katherine Edwina Gibbs), 27, Herbert Marshall. Also: George Cukor's A Bill of Divorcement with John Barrymore, Hartford, Conn.-born actress Katharine (Houghton) Hepburn, 26 (Bryn Mawr '28); Josef von Sternberg's Blonde Venus with Marlene Dietrich (who sells her virtue for 85¢—the price of a meal for herself and her child), Herbert Marshall, English-born actor Cary Grant (originally Archibald Alexander Leach), 28; Monta Bell's Downstairs with John Gilbert, Paul Lukas, Virginia Bruce (Mrs. John Gilbert), Hedda Hopper, Reginald Owen; Clarence Brown's Emma with Marie Dressler, Jean Hersholt, screenplay by Frances Marion; Marc Allegret's Fanny with Raimu, Pierre Fresnay, Charpin; Norman Z. McLeod's Horse Feathers with the Marx Brothers; Basil Dean's Looking on the Bright Side with Gracie Fields; Edward Cline's Million Dollar Legs with W. C. Fields, Sedalia, Mo.-born comedian Jack Oakie (originally Lewis Delaney Offield), 28; Elliott Nugent's The Mouthpiece with James Flood, Warren William; Karl Freund's The Mummy with Boris Karloff, Zita Johann; James Whale's The Old Dark House with Boris Karloff, Melvyn Douglas, Charles Laughton, Santa Monica-born actress Gloria Stuart (originally Gloria von Dietrich Stuart Finch), 22; Tay Garnett's One-Way Passage with Kay Francis, William Powell; Polish-born director Richard Boleslawski (originally Rysard Shrzednicki)'s Rasputin and the Empress with John, Ethel, and Lionel Barrymore, Ralph Morgan, Diana Wynyard; Jack Conway's Red-Headed Woman with Jean Harlow as a gold-digging secretary who sleeps her way up the social ladder, gets found out, and lands in Paris with a new sugar daddy and a stud chauffeur (uncensored script by Anita Loos), Chester Morris; Howard Hawks's Scarface with Paul Muni, New York-born actress Ann Dvorak (originally Anna McKim), 22. The film is far more violent than anything yet seen; Hawks has reportedly told his people, "Screw the Hays Office. Start the picture and make it as realistic, as exciting, as grisly as possible," but its ending has been rewritten and reshot twice to satisfy demands by the 10-year-old Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association (see Production Code, 1934).
The world's first drive-in movie theater opens on the north side of Admiral Wilson Blvd., at Camden, N.J., where chemical-plant manager Richard M. Hollingshead, Jr., 32, has invested $25,000 to create what Variety will call an "ozone." He will patent the idea next year but will receive royalties from only a few of the thousands of exhibitors who follow his lead (see 1946).
Hollywood musicals: Frank Tuttle's The Big Broadcast with Kate Smith, George Burns and Gracie Allen, the Mills Brothers, the Boswell Sisters, Cab Calloway, and Bing Crosby, who begins regular radio broadcasts; Rouben Mamoulian's Love Me Tonight with Maurice Chevalier, Jeanette MacDonald, music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Lorenz Hart, songs that include "Lover," "Mimi," "Isn't It Romantic?"
Stage musicals: Face the Music 2/17 at New York's New Amsterdam Theater, with Mary Boland, now 52, music and lyrics by Irving Berlin, songs that include "Let's Have Another Cup of Coffee," 165 perfs.; Words and Music 9/16 at London's Adelphi Theatre, with Joyce Barbour, Ivy St. Helier, John Mills, music and lyrics by Noël Coward, songs that include "Mad Dogs and Englishmen," "Mad about the Boy," "Journey's End," "Let's Say Goodbye," 164 perfs.; Earl Carroll's Vanities 9/27 at New York's Broadway Theater, with New York-born comedian Milton Berle (originally Berlinger), 24, Philadelphia-born Ziegfeld Follies veteran Helen Broderick, now 41, music by Harold Arlen and Richard Myers, lyrics by Ted Koehler and Edward Heyman, songs that include "I Gotta Right to Sing the Blues," 87 perfs.; Americana 10/5 at the Shubert Theater, with music by Jay Gorney, Harold Arlen, Richard Myers, Herman Hupfeld, lyrics by E. Y. Harburg, songs that include "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime" (music by Gorney), 77 perfs.; Music in the Air 11/8 at the Alvin Theater, with Al Shean, Vienna-born actor Walter Slezak, 30, music by Jerome Kern, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II for a show produced by Peggy Fears, songs that include "I've Told Every Little Star," 334 perfs.; Take a Chance 11/26 at the Apollo Theater, with Jack Haley, Ethel Merman, Brooklyn-born comedian Sid Silvers, 33, Charleston, W. Va.-born ingénue Jean Carson, 7, music by Nacio Herb Brown, Vincent Youmans, and Richard Whiting, lyrics by B. G. DeSylva, songs that include "You're an Old Smoothie," 243 perfs.; Gay Divorce 11/29 at the Ethel Barrymore Theater, with Fred Astaire, Claire Luce, Grace Moore, book by Dwight Taylor based on an unpublished play by the late J. Hartley Manners, scenic design by Jo Mielziner, music and lyrics by Cole Porter, songs that include "Night and Day," 248 perfs.; Walk a Little Faster 12/7 at New York's St. James Theater, with Beatrice Lillie, Bobby Clark, music by Vernon Duke, lyrics by E. Y. Harburg, songs that include "April in Paris," "That's Life," 119 perfs.
Bandmaster-composer John Philip Sousa dies at Reading, Pa., March 6 at age 77; Broadway singer-songwriter Chauncey Olcott at Monte Carlo March 18 at age 66 (approximate); showman Florenz Ziegfeld of a heart attack at Hollywood July 22 at age 63. He lost his fortune in the 1929 Wall Street crash, has never recovered, and leaves his widow, Billie Burke, now 46, with a mountain of debts (see Stage musicals, 1934).
New York's Radio City Music Hall opens December 27 at 160 Sixth Avenue in Rockefeller Center with 6,200 seats (the number will later be reduced to 5,874). Designed in art deco style by interior Minnesota-born industrial designer Donald Deskey, 38, and initially called the International Music Hall, the theater's grand foyer is covered from floor to ceiling in mirrors and draperies, is a city-block long (60 feet long, 60 feet wide), boasts a grand staircase, has a 24-carat gold leaf ceiling, and is lighted by two 29-foot-long chandeliers. A 100-piece orchestra and the mighty Wurlitzer organ accompany vaudeville acts on the 144-foot-wide stage, which has a turntable 43 feet in diameter and three cross sections which can be raised or lowered independently with an innovative hydraulic system (which naval architects will use as the model for systems on aircraft carriers). The organ built by Rudolf Wurlitzer is the largest and most versatile ever made, with steel and wood pipes ranging in size from 32 feet high to half the size of a pencil, and experts say it would take 3,000 musicians to duplicate all the instrumental sounds and tones generated from its console keyboards. Showman S. L. "Roxy" Rothafel has hired the acts, which include Martha Graham's ballet troupe, but much of the capacity crowd that attends the opening night of world's largest indoor theater leaves long before the show ends at 2 o'clock in the morning, by which time Rothafel has collapsed backstage and been taken to the hospital. John D. Rockefeller Jr. will begin showing films early next year to supplement the stage shows (two per day), but at $2.75 per ticket the Music Hall fails to attract crowds (see 1933).
Opera: Cleveland-born soprano Rose (Elizabeth) Bampton, 23, makes her Metropolitan Opera debut 11/20 singing the role of Laura in the 1876 Ponchielli opera La Giocanda; Italian tenor Tito (originally Raffaele Attilio Amadeo) Schipa, 44, makes his Metropolitan Opera debut 11/23 as Nemorino in the 1832 Donizetti opera L'Elisir d'Amore.
Pianist-composer Eugene d'Albert dies at Riga, Latvia, March 3 at age 67.
Philadelphia Orchestra conductor Leopold Stowkowski records his first stereophonic disk at the city's Bell Laboratories March 12, using vinyl instead of shellac to extend the dynamic range to 60 decibels and the response to 10,000 hertz for greater fidelity in a performance of the late Aleksandr Scriabin's Poem of Fire. Stowkowski and two Bell Labs scientists used improved electrical recording equipment in December of last year to record and transmit both monaural and binaural sound at the Academy of Music. They will not file for a patent until 1936, but London-born engineer Alan (Dower) Blumlein of Electric Musical Instruments (EMI), now 28, filed a British patent application December 14 of last year for a revolutionary binaural recording system (see 1933).
Ballet: Cotillon 4/12 at Monte Carlo's Théâtre de Monte Carlo, with the new Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo organized by George Balanchine, music by the late Emmanuel Chabrier, libretto by Boris Kochno; Jeux d'Enfants (Children's Games) 4/14 at Monte Carlo, with Irina Baronova, Tamara Tommanova, David Lichine, music by the late Georges Bizet, choreography by Leonide Massine, libretto by Boris Kochno, scenery and costumes by Joan Miró.
The London Philharmonic Orchestra founded with help from conductor Sir Thomas Beecham gives its first concert October 7 at Covent Garden. Now 53, the Lancashire-born Beecham is a grandson of a digestive-pill maker and inherited a great fortune; he conducted his first symphony concert at London in 1905, formed the New Symphony Orchstra in 1906, introduced Russian ballet to London in 1911, inherited his father's baronetcy in 1916, and will continue as a conductor of the Philharmonic until 1946.
First performances: Four Orchestral Songs by Arnold Schoenberg 2/21 at Frankfurt-am-Main; Suite for Flute and Piano by Walter Piston 4/30 at Trask's Yaddo outside Saratoga Springs, N.Y.; From the Gayety and Sadness of the American Scene by Oklahoma-born composer Leroy Ellsworth "Roy" Harris, 34, 12/29 at Los Angeles.
Popular songs: "Say It Isn't So" and "How Deep Is the Ocean" by Irving Berlin; "I Don't Stand a Ghost of a Chance with You" by Victor Young, lyrics by Bing Crosby and Ned Washington; "I'm Getting Sentimental Over You" by George Bassman, lyrics by Ned Washington; "(I'd Love to Spend) One Hour with You" by Richard Whiting, lyrics by Leo Robin; "Don't Blame Me" by Jimmy McHugh, lyrics by Dorothy Fields; "It Don't Mean a Thing if It Ain't Got that Swing" by Duke Ellington, lyrics by Irving Mills; "Willow Weep for Me" by Omaha-born composer-lyricist Ann Ronell, 23 (Radcliffe '31). Originally Anna Rosenblatt, Ronell has changed her name on the advice of George Gershwin; "Maria Elena" by Mexican songwriter Lorenzo Barcelata, 34.
The Andrews Sisters from Minneapolis form a trio that will gain wild popularity in the next dozen years: LaVerne is 17, Maxene (originally Maxine) 15, and Patty (Patricia) 12.
Ellsworth Vines wins in men's singles at Wimbledon, Helen Wills Moody in women's singles. Vines wins in men's singles at Forest Hills, Helen Hull Jacobs, 23, in women's singles.
Jack Sharkey regains the world heavyweight boxing title June 21 by a 15-round decision over Max Schmeling at the new Garden Bowl in Long Island City, New York. "We wuz robbed!" cries Schmeling's manager Joe Jacobs.
The Olympic Games at Los Angeles attract 2,403 contestants from 39 countries. Texas athlete Mildred Ella "Babe" Didrikson, 18, wins the javelin throw (143 feet four inches), the shot put, the long jump, and sets a new record of 11.7 seconds for the 80-meter hurdles (the 121 female competitors are permitted to enter only three events); Denver-born sprinter Eddie Tolan, 22, wins the 200-meter dash in a record 21.2 seconds and beats Atlanta-born sprinter Ralph Metcalfe, 22, in a photo finish to win the 100-meter in 10.3 seconds, becoming the first black athlete to win two gold medals; swimmer Buster Crabbe wins the 400-meter freestyle and is signed to a movie contract; Sonja Henie has won her second gold medal in figure skating at the winter Olympics in Lake Placid.
Pitcher J. H. "Dizzy" Dean plays his first full season with the St. Louis Cardinals to begin a brief but dazzling career with the Gas House Gang. Dean, 22, will lead the National League in strikeouts for the next 3 years.
Ducky Medwick joins the Cardinals to begin an 8-year career with the team. Joseph Michael Medwick, 20, will be traded to the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1940, to the New York Giants, to the Boston Braves, then back to the Dodgers before retiring in 1948 with a lifetime batting average of .348.
The New York Yankees win the World Series, defeating the Chicago Cubs 4 to 0. With the third game tied 4 to 4 October 1 and two strikes against him, Babe Ruth leers at his hecklers, points to the flagpole at the right of the scoreboard in center field, and hits the next pitch out of Wrigley Field.
The Washington Redskins professional football team has its beginnings in the Boston Braves team organized by George P. Marshall.
Paris couturière Nina Ricci, 39, opens her own establishment after 17 years of designing clothes for the haute monde. Specializing in fashions for the mature, elegant French woman, she will also design ball gowns and entire trousseaus for younger patrons and create perfumes (notably "L'Eau du Temps") that will be sold in 140 countries.
Elsa Schiaparelli introduces the padded shoulder (see "zipper," 1926). By 1935 she will be a leader in haute couture.
Tabu perfume is introduced by Dana.
Revlon is founded March 1 by New York cosmetics salesman Charles Revson, 26, with his brother Joseph, 28, and chemist Charles Lachman, 35. His employer Elka Cosmetics has rejected his ultimatum that he be made national distributor, so young Revson rents a loft in the garment district, borrows $300 at 2 percent interest per month, and with Lachman's help develops a superior opaque nail enamel which he promotes with exotic names such as Tropic Sky rather than with the descriptive identifications dark red, medium red, pink, etc., that have been traditional. Focusing on beauty salons, Revlon uses intimidation to obtain distribution. Volume for the first 10 months is only $4,055.09, but Revson will start selling through drugstores in 1937, employing salesmen who "accidentally" destroy displays set up by the competition; by 1941 Revlon will have a virtual monopoly on beauty salon sales.
Johnson Glo-Coat floor wax is introduced by the 46-year-old S. C. Johnson Co. of Racine, Wis.
Hartz Mountain Industries is founded by German-born entrepreneur Max Stern, 33, who arrived at New York 6 years ago with 5,000 singing canaries. His company will grow to supply millions of canaries, parakeets, hamsters, tropical fish, and goldfish, becoming the world's largest manufacturer of pet foods and pet supplies.
Chewing-gum pioneer and Chicago Cubs owner William Wrigley Jr. dies at Phoenix, Ariz., January 26 at age 70; safety razor pioneer King Camp Gillette at Los Angeles July 9 at age 77 after 3 decades in which beards have become increasingly unfashionable.
Benson & Hedges introduces Parliament cigarettes, a premium-priced brand with a filter-tip "mouthpiece" that comes in a box.
Zippo Manufacturing of Bradford, Pa., introduces the Zippo cigarette lighter designed by Blaisdell Oil Co. owner George (Grant) Blaisdell, 37.
The kidnapping of Charles A. Lindbergh Jr. March 1 makes world headlines. The aviation pioneer pays a $50,000 ransom for his child's safe return, but the decomposed body of the 20-month old infant is found 2 months later on Lindbergh's New Jersey estate while 5,000 federal agents comb the country (see 1934).
Indiana-born Phoenix medical clinic secretary Winnie Ruth Judd (née McKinnell), 26, arrives by train at Los Angeles, October 18 accompanied by two trunks and several valises. A baggage handler notices what appears to be blood dripping from one trunk and notifies police. Detectives open the trunks; inside one they find the body of Agnes Anne LeRoi, 32, and in the other the remains of Hedvig Samuelson, 24, whose body has been cut into three pieces (a fourth body section is then found in one of Judd's valises). Police arrest Judd October 22, she maintains that she shot her two friends in self defense, but a Phoenix jury will find her guilty of murder next year. Sentenced to be hanged, she will be declared insane and sentenced to a mental institution for life, but she will escape seven times, be at large for 7 years from 1962 to 1969, and be paroled in 1971.
Brooklyn-born bank robber William Francis "Willie the Actor" Sutton Jr., 31, escapes from prison. He embarked on his criminal career 5 years ago and quickly acquired the nickname "the actor," a reference to his many costumes and disguises (see 1948).
Charles A. "Pretty Boy" Floyd robs the Coolson Bank at his native Sallisaw, Okla., of $2,400 November 1, killing a bounty hunter in a felony that costs him much of his public support (see 1931; 1934).
An exhibition of the new International Style architecture opens in February at New York's Museum of Modern Art (architects Philip Johnson and Henry Russell Hitchcock have coined the term International Style for the show); it features designs by Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, J. J. P. Oud, and other Europeans but includes also designs by Frank Lloyd Wright, whose new book The Disappearing City envisions a utopia in which every citizen will own an acre of country land. At the urging of his third wife, Olgevanna, Wright establishes the Taliesin Fellowship, charging apprentices $650 per annum (tuition will rise to $1,000 beginning next year) to work on his Taliesin complex and study under the master.
Philadelphia's Savings Fund Society building at 12 South 12th Street is the first major International Style skyscraper to be built in America. Designed by Swiss-born architect William Lescaze, 36, the 36-story structure has 32 office floors which are visually separate from a vertical circulation spine, floor and spine floating on a curved-corner base.
Nebraska's State Capitol building is completed at Lincoln to designs by the late Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue.
A Home Loan Act passed by Congress July 22 establishes 12 federal home loan banks that will lend money to mortgage loan institutions. The measure is designed to rescue the banks that are being forced to close. The controller of the currency orders a moratorium on first-mortgage foreclosures August 26 (see 1933).
Construction contractor Mohammed Bin-Awad bin Laden gains prominence in Saudi Arabia, whose new king Abdul Aziz has reportedly taken a liking to him after he suggested ways to facilitate moving about his property in the royal wheelchair. Bin Laden was an itinerant bricklayer in 1925 when he walked out of southern Yemen's Hadramawi mountains to begin a 1,000-mile trek northward to the Hejaz region of what has become Saudi Arabia; royal patronage will make him a billionaire.
Town and regional planning pioneer Patrick Geddes is knighted and dies at Montpelier, France, April 17 at age 77.
A dike closed May 28 after 9 years of work reclaims the Zuider Zee (Ijsselmeer) to create new Dutch farmland.
"Every European nation has a definite land policy and has had one for generations," Franklin Roosevelt tells the Democratic convention. "We have none. Having none, we face a future of soil erosion and timber famine" (see Civilian Conservation Corps, 1933; Soil Erosion Service, 1933).
Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park, created by the United States and Canada, embraces 22-year-old Glacier National Park.
Horticulturist-garden expert Gertrude Jekyll dies at her home in Godalming, Surrey, December 8 at age 89.
An earthquake in China's Gansu province December 25 leaves an estimated 70,000 dead.
Florida's Gulf Coast has its worst red tide since 1916. Millions of fish are killed (see 1946).
Veterinarian B. L. F. Bang dies at Copenhagen June 22 at age 84, having discovered the bacillus (Brucella abortus) that causes contagious abortion in cattle (and undulant fever in humans).
Britain imposes tariffs and quantitative restrictions on many farm imports while subsidizing British farmers to help them survive the Great Depression. Parliament introduces imperial preferences to favor imports from colonial and Commonwealth countries, with special preference given to dairy products, meat, and wheat from Australia, Canada, and New Zealand at the expense of Denmark and Argentina. Canadian wheat receives preferential treatment, but only on condition that it be offered at no more than 6¢ per bushel above grain from other sources, and only if it originates in Canadian ports.
U.S. farm prices fall to 40 percent of 1929 levels as the Great Depression makes it harder for consumers to afford food. Wheat drops to below 25¢ a bushel, oats 10¢, and the total net income of Minnesota farmers is only 6 percent of what it averaged between 1929 and 1931. Canadian farmers have few grain crops other than wheat and take an even harder hit than their U.S. counterparts. Sugar falls to 3¢/lb, cotton and wool 5¢/lb.; the low price of cotton makes it impossible for tenant farmers in the South to obtain credit, and sheep ranchers in the western states go bankrupt.
Iowa Farmers' Union militants start a 30-day strike August 9 to protest low farm prices. "Stay at home! Sell nothing!" say union members, who smash the windshields and headlights of farm trucks they catch going to market and block highways with chains and logs to enforce their strike.
Dust storms begin on the drought-stricken southern plains of Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas as drought persists (see 1931). Some 14 such storms are recorded, and farmers watch in dismay as high winds blow away dried-up topsoil that has taken 1,000 years per inch to build up (see 1933).
Famine in the Ukraine and in the Caucasus begins taking a heavy toll. Not caused by nature, it is a deliberate, man-made famine created by dictator Josef Stalin, partly to raise capital for Soviet industrialization by selling grain abroad but also to force independent farmers into collectives, where they will work like serfs. Stalin has his troops seize livestock, seeds, and food stocks and keeps relief trains carrying food from entering the affected areas in order to force compliance of farmers with his collectivization efforts. Protesters are shot down with machine guns; in the next few years some 7 million people—one quarter of the population in the affected areas—will die of hunger and related causes.
United Mine Workers boss John L. Lewis is quoted in the New York Times January 25 as saying, "The only thing that apparently inspires the Red Cross to extend assistance is a conflagration, flood, pestilence, and war. It doesn't make any difference to them how many people die of starvation, how many children suffer from malnutrition, or how many women are weakened" (see 1931).
More Americans are hungry or ill-fed than ever before in the nation's history. The usual weekly relief check for a family of five in New York City is $6 in May, and the average weekly grant in Philadelphia that month is reduced to $4.39 (Philadelphia's relief funds will soon give out completely, leaving 57,000 families with no means of support). Nearly a million Americans go back to the land.
Congress votes March 7 to authorize giving needy Americans 40 million bushels of wheat held by the Federal Farm Bureau, which has bought the wheat in order to maintain prices. Distribution is to be handled by the Red Cross, which agrees reluctantly to take on the job, and another 45 million bushels of wheat are added July 5, plus 250 million pounds of cotton. By February of next year the Red Cross will have distributed more than 8.5 million barrels of flour to 5,140,855 families in almost every county in America.
Workers on the Hoover Dam project in Nevada eat better than most Americans, getting all the food they want for $1.15 per day.
Nobel laureate Otto H. Warburg, 49, and his colleagues at Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Biology find a yellow coenzyme that catalyzes the transfer of hydrogen atoms (see vitamin B2—riboflavin, 1935).
Entiat, Wash.-born University of Pittsburgh biochemist Charles Glen King, 36, isolates vitamin C (ascorbic acid) (see 1933; Szent-Györgyi, 1928).
100,000,000 Guinea Pigs by Consumer's Research engineer Arthur Kallet, 29, and mechanical engineer-physicist F. J. Schlink of Consumer's Research relates horror stories dramatizing the dangers in some foods, drugs, and cosmetics sold despite the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 and its amendments (see Schlink, 1929). The book becomes a bestseller, and Kallet breaks with Schlink to start Consumers Union, a rival organization, at Mount Vernon, N.Y. (the House Un-American Affairs Committee will soon cite him as a communist).
The word bagel is used for the first time by some accounts—a variation on the Yiddish word beygl that has been spelled beigel since 1919 (see Lender's, 1927). The hard glazed roll will grow to outsell doughnuts in the United States.
Frito corn chips are introduced by San Antonio, Texas, ice cream salesman C. Elmer Doolin, who has gone into a local café for a sandwich, been served a side dish of tortilla chips created by the café's Mexican owner, borrowed $100 from his mother, Daisy Dean, to buy the recipe, and gone into business with her and his brother Earl, using a converted potato ricer to cut tortilla dough into strips and selling the chips out of his Model T Ford. Earl develops a machine to force out the dough under pressure, and the Doolins will license local companies to make Fritos using machinery purchased at cost with Doolin-trained personnel, taking a royalty on each package sold (see Frito-Lay, 1961).
Skippy Peanut Butter is introduced by Rosefield Packing Co. of Alamada, Calif., whose Joseph L. Rosefield has canceled his exclusive licensing agreement with the makers of Peter Pan Peanut Butter following a dispute (see 1928). He markets his own brand, possibly named after the comic strip, and beginning in 1934 will introduce the first smooth-based peanut butter containing chunks of roasted peanuts. Rosefield will patent a new type of cold-processed hydrogenated peanut oil in 1950, and by 1954 Rosefield Packing will have nearly 25 percent of the U.S. peanut butter market.
Mars, Inc. introduces 3 Musketeers, charging a nickel for three candy bars in one (see 1930). Included are a fluffy vanilla nougat, a fluffy chocolate nougat, and a fluffy strawberry nougat, each covered in milk chocolate (the product will later be changed to make it one chocolate-covered chocolate nougat). Frank Mars squabbles with his only son, Forrest E., 28, who has a degree in industrial engineering from Yale and thinks he knows more than his father about how to run the company; Frank grants Forrest foreign rights to manufacture Milky Way, and the son goes to England, where he will manufacture Milky Way in a factory at Slough, outside London, and market it as the Mars Bar and Snickers under the name Marathon (see 1934; M&Ms, 1941).
Big Bear Super Market opens at Elizabeth, N.J., and is the first large cut-rate self-service grocery store (see King Kullen, 1930). Local entrepreneurs Robert M. Otis and Roy O. Dawson have put up a total of $1,000 to take over an empty car factory on the outskirts of town; their Big Bear the Price Crusher store has 50,000 square feet of pine tables displaying meats, fruit, vegetables, packaged foods, radios, automobile accessories, and paints, and after 1 year they have made a profit of $166,000 selling Quaker Oats oatmeal at 3¢ per box, pork chops at 10¢/lb. Traditional grocers persuade local newspapers to refuse Big Bear advertising and push through a state law against selling at or below cost, but Big Bear is quickly imitated by Great Tiger, Bull Market, Great Leopard, and others as the supermarket revolution gathers force.
1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940
