Decade - 1930s

The 1920s and 1930s were marked by a variety of political, societal and cultural changes.

Politics and Business

• Prohibition began and ended in the United States. The Eighteenth Amendment, forbidding the "manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors for beverage purposes," was passed by Congress and ratified on 16 January 1919. The ensuing Volstead Act, which made provisions for the enforcement of the Eighteenth Amendment, was passed on 28 October 1919.

  Prohibition failed to enforce sobriety, and the federal and state governments lost billions in tax revenue. In 1933, the 21st Amendment to the Constitution was passed, and on 5 December 1933 Utah became the 36th state to ratify the amendment, achieving the required three-quarters majority of states' approval. This ended national Prohibition; however, some individual states continued to uphold their own temperance laws. (source: today.wmit.net - January 16)

• Italy invaded Abyssinia (Ethiopia) violently. In 1934, Abyssinia was still one of the few independent states in a European-dominated Africa. In 1928, Italy signed a treaty of friendship with Abyssinian leader Haile Selassie, but Italy was already secretly planning to invade the African nation. In December 1934, a dispute at the Wal Wal oasis along the border between Abyssinia and Italian Somaliland gave Italian dictator Benito Mussolini an excuse to respond with aggression. Italian troops stationed in Somaliland and Eritrea were instructed to attack Abyssinia. Overwhelmed by the use of tanks and mustard gas, the Abyssinians stood little chance. The capital, Addis Ababa, fell in May 1936 and Haile Selassie was removed from the throne and replaced by the king of Italy, Victor Emmanuel. In February 1937, Italian forces began pillaging Addis Ababa, capital of Ethiopia. 3,000 innocent Ethiopian men, women and children were shot or beaten to death over a period of three days. (source: today.wmit.net - February 19)

• The stock market on Wall Street plunged dramatically, sparking off the Great Depression. On 24 October 1929, people began dumping their stocks quickly. Following the weekend, a new wave of selling began. 29 October 1929, also known as Black Tuesday, saw the stock marketon Wall Street collapse as prices plunged and wiped out all the financial gains of the previous year. By mid-November, 30 billion dollars had disappeared, which was the same amount of money spent during World War I. The Depression lasted from 1929 to 1941, when the USA entered WWII.

• Amidst the Great Depression, US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was inaugurated. Having already served one term as governor of New York, he was reelected governor just after the October 1929 stock market crash was developing into a major depression. Roosevelt mobilised the state government to provide relief and spur economic recovery. His aggressive approach to the economic crisis resulted in his gaining the Democratic presidential nomination in 1932. By the time he took office on 4 March 1933, most banks were closed, farms were suffering, 13 million workers were unemployed, and industrial production stood at just over half its 1929 level. In the subsequent years, many of Roosevelt's reforms (under his "New Deal" policy) helped aid the American economy into recovery. Such reforms included the Agricultural Adjustment Act, National Industrial Recovery Act, and creation of the Public Works Administration and Tennessee Valley Authority. As WWII approached, Roosevelt was also aware of the growing threat from the Germans and Japanese, and provided strong leadership through the crises that followed, including the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the US entry into the war. (source: today.wmit.net - March 4)

• The Australian Federal Parliament moved from Melbourne to Parliament House in Canberra. From 1901 to 1927, Parliament met in Parliament House, Melbourne, which it borrowed from the parliament of the state of Victoria. Construction of Parliament House, which was only ever intended to be temporary, began in August 1923 and the building was ready for occupancy in May 1927. On 9 May 1927, Parliament moved to the new national capital at Canberra, where it met in what is now called Old Parliament House.

Culture and Literature

• In November 1922, a team of British archaeologists, led by Howard Carter, discovered the entrance to the tomb of King Tutankhamen. In February of the following year, door of the burial chamber behind the ante-chamber was opened. The actual sarcophagus of Tutankhamen was discovered on 3 January 1924 when Carter discovered a stone sarcophagus containing three coffins, fitted within each other. Inside the final coffin, which was made out of solid gold, was the mummified body of King Tutankhamen.

• Spinach growers in Crystal City, Texas, erected a statue of Popeye in gratitude to him for saving their dying industry. Popeye the Sailor Man is a famous comic strip character, created by Elzie Crisler Segar and first appearing in the King Features comic strip Thimble Theatre on 17 January 1929. Prior to the emergence of Popeye, spinach farmers in Crystal City, Texas, USA, were facing a decline in demand for their product. Popeye is naturally tough, but an adaptation of his character into animated cartoons saw him popping open a can of spinach and swallowing the contents whenever he needed a burst of super-human strength. On 26 March 1937, the farmers were so grateful to Popeye for reviving their dying industry that they erected a statue of him in the town. (today.wmit.net - March 26)
• The Coniston Massacre, the last known massacre of Australian Aborigines, occurred over a period of several months. Occurring at Coniston cattle station, Northern Territory, Australia, it was a revenge killing for the death of dingo hunter Frederick Brooks, who was believed to have been killed by Aborigines in August 1928. Constable William Murray, officer in charge at Barrow Creek, took matters into his own hand, killing dozens of Aborigines between August and October 1928.

• Creator of Winnie-the-Pooh, A.A. Milne, began to write the Winnie-the-Pooh stories after his son Christopher Robin was born in 1920. The characters were inspired by his son's stuffed animals.

Technology

• Scottish Inventor John Logie Baird gave the first demonstration of television. Baird experimented with the transmission of both static and moving pictures using ventriloquists' dummies. The first moving image was transmitted on 30 October 1925. Baird's first public demonstration of successful transmission, on 27 January 1926, showed two dummies' heads moving.
• In Australia, the Sydney Harbour Bridge, the largest steel arch bridge in the world (though not the longest) was built. Construction of the bridge began in 1924, and took 1400 men eight years to build at a cost of £4.2 million and sixteen lives. The arch of the Sydney Harbour Bridge was built in two halves cantilevering from each shore and tying each half back by steel cables that were anchored into U-shaped tunnels excavated into the sandstone rock. Construction of the two halves of the arch began late in 1928, and the two halves were properly joined around 10pm on 19 August 1930. The official opening of the bridge occurred on 19 March 1932. (today.wmit.net - March 19)

• Also in Australia, the Aerial Medical Service, later the Flying Doctor Service, was established at Cloncurry, Queensland. John Flynn, a Presbyterian minister, served on the Australian Inland Mission, the 'bush department' of the Presbyterian Church, at a time when only two doctors served an area of 300,000 sq kms in Western Australia and 1,500,000 sq kms in the Northern Territory. Realising the need for better medical care for the people of the outback, he envisaged that new technology such as radio and the aeroplane could assist in providing a more effective medical service. Thanks to his efforts, on 15 May 1928, the Aerial Medical Service was established at Cloncurry, in western Queensland. In order to facilitate communication for such a service, Flynn collaborated with Alfred Traeger who developed the pedal radio, a lighter, more compact radio for communication, the size and cost of which made it more readily available to residents of the outback. The pedal radio eliminated the need for electricity, which was available in very few areas of the outback in the 1920s. Initially conceived as a one-year experiment, Flynn's vision has continued successfully through the years, providing a valuable medical service to people in remote areas. (today.wmit.net - May 15)
• In 1927, Charles Lindbergh became the first person to fly solo and non-stop across the Atlantic Ocean. He departed from Roosevelt Airfield, Long Island, New York City on 20 May 1927 on his way to Paris in his single-engine airplane, The Spirit of St Louis. Whilst only 500 people saw him off at Long Island, 100,000 awaited his arrival in France. The journey took him 33.5 hours and won him the Orteig Prize of $25,000.

• Australian Aviator Charles Kingsford Smith became the first to cross the Pacific from the United States to Australia. On 31 May 1928, he and his crew left the United States to make the first Trans-Pacific flight to Australia in the Southern Cross, a Fokker FVII-3M monoplane. The flight was in three stages, from Oakland, California to Hawaii, then to Suva, Fiji, and on to Brisbane, where he landed on 9 June 1928.

• American aviatrix Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic. Her first trip across the Atlantic in a Fokker F7 Friendship occurred on 17 June 1928 and took 20 hours and 40 minutes. Earhart continued to set milestones as a pioneer of flying. She flew solo across the Atlantic in 1932. On 11 January 1935 Earhart became the first person to fly solo from Honolulu to California.

• The first American airship, the USS Shenandoah, made its maiden flight. It was the first rigid airship to be designed and built by the United States Navy, and was the first of four such airships. It was 207m long, had a range of over 8,000km, and the speed capability of just over 100kph. The 'Shenandoah' made its maiden voyage on 4 September 1923. It was considered safer than other airships of the time, as it was the first rigid airship to use helium rather than hydrogen. However, on 2 September 1925, 'Shenandoah' launched from Lakehurst on a flight to the Midwest for training and to test a new mooring mast at Dearborn, Michigan. There were 39 sailors on board. The next day, the 'Shenandoah' was torn apart in a violent storm over Sharon, Ohio, killing fourteen of the men on board. (today.wmit.net - April 9)