230 Fun Facts About 1920s

National Prohibition began in January 1920, but which of these did the Eighteenth Amendment leave legal?

Drinking liquor was never outlawed: the amendment banned making, selling, transporting and importing it, so bottles bought before January 1920 could still be drunk at home.

What was the popular name of the 1919 law that defined 'intoxicating liquors' and set penalties for making them?

The Volstead Act, named for Minnesota congressman Andrew Volstead, became law in October 1919 when Congress overrode Woodrow Wilson's veto; it defined 'intoxicating' as anything over 0.5 percent alcohol.

Which spirit, easily faked at home in a bathtub, became the staple of speakeasy cocktails during Prohibition?

Gin was the easiest spirit to counterfeit: bootleggers mixed cheap grain alcohol with water and juniper flavouring, and cocktails caught on partly to mask the taste.

Al Capone was finally sent to prison in 1931 for what crime?

Tax evasion stuck because a 1927 Supreme Court ruling had made even illegal income taxable, so prosecutors only had to prove what Capone earned, not how; he got eleven years.

Two gunmen in the 1929 Saint Valentine's Day Massacre were disguised as what?

Police officers' uniforms were the disguise: seven of Bugs Moran's men were lined up against a garage wall and shot, while Moran himself was running late and escaped.

Which state's narrow vote in August 1920 provided the 36th ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment?

Tennessee's House had twice tied 48–48 on shelving the amendment before 24-year-old Harry Burn changed sides, having received a letter from his mother that morning urging him to back ratification.

Warren G. Harding's winning 1920 campaign slogan promised a 'return to' what?

Normalcy was not Harding's own coinage: dictionaries date the word to the 1850s. He used it in a Boston speech in May 1920 and won that November in a landslide.

Who swore in Harding's successor by kerosene lamp in a Vermont farmhouse in 1923?

The new president's father, John Coolidge, was a notary public, so he administered the oath to his son in a farmhouse with no electricity or telephone; Calvin Coolidge then went back to bed.

Coolidge's dry, taciturn manner earned him what nickname?

'Silent Cal' was also the only US president born on the Fourth of July, and he bowed out of the 1928 race with the terse line 'I do not choose to run.'

In which small town, chosen deliberately to attract publicity, was the 1925 Scopes 'monkey trial' staged?

Dayton's businessmen staged the case as a publicity stunt and recruited John Scopes, a football coach and science teacher who had only filled in for the biology teacher; the jury took nine minutes to convict him.

Which three-time presidential candidate argued for the prosecution at the Scopes trial?

William Jennings Bryan, though arguing for the prosecution, let the defence call him to the stand as an expert on the Bible; he died in his sleep five days after the trial ended.

What was the name of the plane Charles Lindbergh flew alone from New York to Paris in May 1927?

Spirit of St. Louis had its main fuel tank in front of the cockpit, leaving no windscreen, so Lindbergh could see ahead only through a periscope or by turning to look out of a side window.

Which magazine named Lindbergh its first-ever 'Man of the Year' for 1927?

Time is said to have created the title to make amends: its editors had not put Lindbergh on the cover after his flight in May 1927, so they named him Man of the Year that winter.

In what role did Amelia Earhart become the first woman to cross the Atlantic by air in 1928?

As a passenger, Earhart never touched the controls: Wilmer Stultz did all the flying, and she said afterwards that she had been 'just baggage, like a sack of potatoes'.

When Lord Carnarvon asked if he could see anything inside Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922, what did Howard Carter famously reply?

'Wonderful things' is the polished reply from Carter's book; the notes he wrote at the time record a plainer 'Yes, it is wonderful'.

Banting and Best first extracted insulin in 1921 at the university of which Canadian city?

Toronto's Frederick Banting shared his 1923 Nobel Prize money with Charles Best, who had been left off the award, and the team sold the insulin patent to the university for one dollar.

Banting and Best's first insulin experiments in 1921 used pancreases taken from which animals?

Dogs supplied the first extract, but the dose injected into the first patient, teenager Leonard Thompson, in January 1922 was so impure that it caused an allergic reaction and had to be refined.

Who discovered penicillin in 1928 in his laboratory at St Mary's Hospital, London?

Alexander Fleming called his find 'mould juice' for months and only named it penicillin in March 1929; it took Howard Florey and Ernst Chain to turn it into a usable drug.

Which 1927 film, with sound on Vitaphone discs, is credited with ending the silent era?

The Jazz Singer is mostly a silent film with title cards: only its songs and a few scenes of largely ad-libbed talk were recorded, yet that was enough to start the rush to sound.

Babe Ruth hit 60 home runs in 1927 for a Yankees lineup known by what nickname?

Murderers' Row was borrowed from a row of cells in New York's Tombs prison, and the name was first pinned on a Yankees batting order in 1918, two years before Ruth joined the team.

Which car did Ford launch in December 1927 to replace the Model T?

The Model A went back to the start of the alphabet instead of moving on to U: Ford revived the name of a car it had built in 1903 and 1904, ending the Model T's 18-year run.

October 29, 1929, when some 16 million shares changed hands in a panic, is remembered as what?

Black Tuesday came five days after Black Thursday's first panic, and it was no one-day event: share prices kept sliding until July 1932.

How many old paper marks did one new Rentenmark replace when Germany ended its hyperinflation in 1923?

One trillion paper marks were swapped for a single Rentenmark from November 1923; the new notes were backed by mortgages on German farmland and business property, and by 1924 the currency had stabilised.

Roughly how many copies had The Great Gatsby sold by October 1925, six months after publication?

The Great Gatsby sold fewer than 20,000 copies by October 1925; Scribner's second printing of 3,000 had not sold out when Fitzgerald died in 1940 believing his work forgotten.

In The Great Gatsby, Nick Carraway rents a bungalow in which fictional Long Island village, next to Gatsby's mansion?

West Egg is, in Nick's words, 'the less fashionable of the two', the new-money shore where Gatsby bought his mansion so that Daisy, with the green light on her dock in East Egg, would be just across the bay.

Which dance craze took off after a 1923 James P. Johnson tune in the Broadway revue Runnin' Wild?

The Charleston took its beat from a rhythm that Johnson said he first heard from South Carolina dockworkers; Runnin' Wild opened on Broadway in October 1923 and the tune became one of the hits of the decade.

Which 1925 comic novel by Anita Loos follows the gold-digging flapper Lorelei Lee?

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes began, by Loos's own account, as a joke about her friend H. L. Mencken's weakness for a young blonde actress, and it became an international bestseller.

Which 1925 anthology, edited by Alain Locke, gathered the leading writers of the Harlem Renaissance?

The New Negro grew out of a March 1925 issue of Survey Graphic magazine on Harlem that Locke guest-edited; that December he expanded it into a book.

Louis Armstrong helped popularize scat singing with which 1926 Hot Five recording?

'Heebie Jeebies', recorded by the Hot Five in 1926, made scat famous; legend says Armstrong improvised the syllables after dropping his lyric sheet, though others had scatted on record years earlier.

Duke Ellington's orchestra became famous through its residency at which Harlem nightclub from 1927?

The Cotton Club booking had been turned down first by King Oliver; Ellington had to expand from six to eleven players just to audition.

Which singer, billed as the 'Empress of the Blues', began recording for Columbia in 1923?

Bessie Smith's first Columbia release, 'Downhearted Blues', was such a hit that she soon ranked among the highest-paid Black performers of her time.

Which cartoon, premiered in New York on November 18, 1928, was Mickey Mouse's first release with synchronised sound?

Steamboat Willie was the third Mickey Mouse cartoon made but the first to reach cinemas: Plane Crazy had only been test-screened as a silent that May.

What name did Walt Disney originally intend for Mickey Mouse before his wife Lillian objected?

Mortimer Mouse was dropped at Lillian's urging; Mickey himself was a replacement for Oswald the Lucky Rabbit after producer Charles Mintz poached most of Disney's staff in 1928.

The real bear behind Winnie-the-Pooh's name was named by a Canadian soldier after which city?

Lieutenant Harry Colebourn, a veterinarian from Winnipeg, bought the cub in Ontario in 1914 and named her Winnie after his home city; he left her at London Zoo, where Christopher Robin Milne later visited her.

The first Winter Olympics, held in 1924, took place in which French town?

Chamonix staged the event from January 25, 1924 as an 'International Winter Sports Week' tied to the Paris Summer Games; the IOC only later designated it the first Winter Olympics.

Which Paris landmark was turned into a giant illuminated advertisement for Citroën cars in 1925?

The Eiffel Tower was lit up with André Citroën's name in 1925, the year a Paris decorative-arts exposition gave Art Deco its name; the signs stayed for years as the world's tallest advertisement.

Which two anarchists were executed in Massachusetts in 1927?

Sacco and Vanzetti went to the electric chair despite protests around the world; fifty years later, Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis proclaimed that they had been unfairly tried.

Pittsburgh's KDKA launched in 1920 by broadcasting what?

An election result was the plan from the start: Westinghouse made radio sets and wanted to sell more, so it went on air on election day, and listeners heard Harding beat Cox before the newspapers could print it.

Which signer of Ireland's 1921 treaty was killed in an ambush in 1922?

Michael Collins is said to have remarked that in signing the treaty he had signed his own death warrant; he was shot in County Cork in August 1922, during the civil war that followed.

Which 1928 agreement renounced war as an instrument of national policy?

The Kellogg–Briand Pact was signed by fifteen nations in August 1928, but there was no way to enforce it and it did little to prevent World War II.

Who gave the world's first public demonstration of true television, in London in January 1926?

John Logie Baird's spinning-disc system soon lost out to electronic television, but he got there first, and went on to demonstrate colour television as well.

In which 1924 Buster Keaton film does a dozing projectionist stride into the picture he is screening?

Sherlock Jr. nearly killed its star: the torrent from a railway water tower threw Keaton onto the track, and only an X-ray years later showed that he had fractured his neck.

Louis Armstrong left which city, his birthplace, in 1922 to join King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band in Chicago?

New Orleans was where Joe 'King' Oliver had mentored the young Armstrong; when Oliver sent for him in 1922, he went north to play second cornet in his teacher's band.

Which scandal over Navy oil reserves in Wyoming sent a member of Harding's cabinet to prison?

Teapot Dome made Interior Secretary Albert Fall the first cabinet member to go to prison, for taking bribes, yet the oilman accused of paying him, Edward Doheny, was acquitted.

What did the French call the 1920s?

Les années folles, 'the crazy years', filled the cabarets and big brasseries of Montparnasse with artists and writers from across the world, until the Depression that began in 1929 ended the party.

What was the Japanese term for the 1920s 'modern girl' equivalent of the flapper?

Moga, short for 'modan gāru', appeared as Japan's cities westernised after World War I: young women in Western fashions who chose their own suitors, like the heroine of Tanizaki's novel Naomi.

Which 1926 hurricane is credited with finishing off Florida's land boom?

The Great Miami hurricane's eye brought a brief lull, and people who thought the storm was over crowded into the streets just before its worst half struck; the Red Cross counted 372 dead.

The 1921 Tulsa massacre destroyed the Greenwood District, known colloquially as what?

Greenwood's prosperous business district was nicknamed 'Black Wall Street'; over May 31–June 1, 1921 a white mob burned more than 35 square blocks and as many as 6,000 Black residents were interned.

Which federal service did Congress establish in May 1924 alongside the new immigration quotas?

The Border Patrol's forerunners, mounted guards riding out of El Paso, had mostly pursued Chinese migrants evading the exclusion laws, and in the 1920s much of the new force's work was stopping liquor smugglers.

The 1924 immigration quotas were tied to the 1890 census, a choice that cut which country's allowance by about nine-tenths?

Italy's quota fell from 42,057 to 3,854 because the 1890 census predated the great wave of arrivals from southern and eastern Europe; the 1921 law had counted the 1910 census instead.

Which team's 1924 Olympic football gold was recognised by FIFA as a world championship?

Uruguay's 1924 and 1928 Olympic titles were recognised by FIFA as world championships, which is why the national team's crest carries four stars although it has won two World Cups.

Which city lost out to Amsterdam for the 1928 Olympics, then hosted the next Games in 1932?

Los Angeles was the only other candidate for 1928 and was given 1932 instead, but the Depression kept many teams away: only 37 nations came, against 46 in Amsterdam.

Besides swimming golds, which team medal did Johnny Weissmuller win in Paris in 1924?

Water polo bronze came with the US team in Paris, on top of his three swimming golds there; Weissmuller went on to play Tarzan in twelve films between 1932 and 1948.

Which 'Flying Finn' won five gold medals at the 1924 Olympics?

Paavo Nurmi won the 1,500 and 5,000 metres finals within an hour of each other, yet Finnish officials kept him out of the 10,000 metres; weeks later he set a world record at that distance.

Gertrude Ederle became the first woman to swim which stretch of water in 1926, faster than any man?

The English Channel had only ever been swum by men, and Ederle beat the fastest of them by more than an hour; New York gave her a ticker-tape parade, and she later taught deaf children to swim.

Jack Dempsey's 1921 fight with Georges Carpentier produced boxing's first what?

The million-dollar gate owed much to promoter Tex Rickard, who played up the contrast between a decorated French war hero and a champion who had stood trial for draft evasion; receipts reached $1,789,238.

Gene Tunney's 1927 title defence against Jack Dempsey is remembered by what name?

The Long Count Fight got its name in the seventh round, when Dempsey floored Tunney but was slow to go to a neutral corner; the delayed count gave Tunney extra seconds to recover, and he won the decision.

Which university did 'Galloping Ghost' Red Grange play for before joining the Chicago Bears?

Grange starred for the University of Illinois, scoring four touchdowns in the first twelve minutes against Michigan on October 18, 1924, the day Memorial Stadium was dedicated; he joined the Bears in November 1925.

Which rival organisation did Red Grange and agent C. C. Pyle found in 1926?

The AFL, the first American Football League, was Pyle's challenge to the six-year-old NFL, with Grange's New York Yankees as its showpiece; it struggled to draw crowds and folded after a single season.

In 1920 'Big Bill' Tilden became the first American man to win which title?

Wimbledon fell to Tilden when he beat Gerald Patterson for the title, and he won it again in 1921; then, though ranked world No. 1, he stayed away from the tournament until 1927.

Which of the French 'Four Musketeers' who won the Davis Cup in the late 1920s was nicknamed 'the Crocodile'?

René Lacoste wore the crocodile on his blazer and later made it the logo of the tennis shirts he sold; he and his fellow Musketeers held the Davis Cup from 1927 to 1932.

Man o' War's only defeat came at Saratoga to a colt with what apt name?

Upset beat Man o' War in the 1919 Sanford Memorial Stakes at Saratoga, the champion's only loss in 21 races; the word 'upset' was already in use for a shock result before the race, despite the legend.

Josephine Baker's famous Folies Bergère costume consisted mainly of what?

Baker's skirt of artificial bananas became her trademark on the Paris stage; during World War II the dancer worked as a spy for the Resistance.

Which director made Louise Brooks a star with the German silent film Pandora's Box in 1929?

G. W. Pabst wanted Brooks from the start: Marlene Dietrich, his second choice, was in his office waiting to sign for the part when word came that Brooks was free.

Which 1921 Rudolph Valentino film popularised the Argentine tango with US audiences?

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921) made Valentino a star with its smouldering tango scene; he had worked as a taxi dancer in New York and died in 1926 at 31.

Which snowbound pioneers' story inspired the shoe-eating scene in Chaplin's The Gold Rush?

Chaplin drew on the Donner Party, the 1846–47 emigrants trapped in the Sierra Nevada who ate moccasins and finally their dead, for the boiled-boot scene; the boot was made of liquorice.

Which studio produced Fritz Lang's Metropolis at Babelsberg?

UFA, Germany's biggest studio, financed Metropolis at Babelsberg; shooting took about 17 months and the budget of over five million Reichsmarks nearly bankrupted the company.

Which message closes Metropolis as its final intertitle?

'Head and hands need the heart as mediator' is the film's stated moral, but Fritz Lang later disowned it, calling the idea that the heart could mediate between hand and brain a fairy tale.

Who sued over Nosferatu's unauthorised adaptation, leading a court to order all copies destroyed?

Bram Stoker's widow, Florence, sued over the copyright and a court ordered every copy of Nosferatu destroyed; several prints survived all the same, while the studio, Prana Film, went bankrupt and never made another picture.

Which sequence in Battleship Potemkin became a much-recreated icon of montage editing?

The Odessa Steps massacre is largely Eisenstein's invention: troops did fire on rioters elsewhere in the city in 1905, but not on the steps as the film shows; the scene has been copied from The Untouchables to Brazil.

Which hotel hosted the first Academy Awards dinner in 1929?

The Hollywood Roosevelt had opened two years earlier, financed by a group that included MGM chief Louis B. Mayer, whose brainchild the Academy was; the awards dinner was held in its Blossom Room.

Which German star of The Last Command won the first Best Actor Oscar, only for talkies to end his Hollywood career?

Emil Jannings had a thick German accent that sound films exposed, so he went home, where he later starred in Nazi propaganda films and was named an 'Artist of the State' by Goebbels.

Which German shepherd, rescued from a World War I battlefield, became one of Warner Bros.' biggest stars of the 1920s?

Rin Tin Tin's films earned so much that Warner Bros. insiders called him 'the mortgage lifter', and writing stories for the dog helped launch the career of future studio boss Darryl F. Zanuck.

Which future star's small role in Wings helped launch his Hollywood career?

Clara Bow, Paramount's biggest star, was the film's headline draw.

In which city was the Bauhaus founded by Walter Gropius in 1919?

Weimar lost the Bauhaus in 1925, when pressure from conservative politicians drove the school to Dessau, a city that offered it a new home; the Nazis closed it for good in 1933.

Whose Surrealist Manifesto of October 1924 claimed the term for his group?

André Breton's Manifeste du surréalisme, published in October 1924, defined the movement as 'pure psychic automatism'; Apollinaire had coined the word in 1917, and Yvan Goll issued a rival manifesto the same month.

Who published Ulysses in Paris on 2 February 1922, Joyce's fortieth birthday?

Sylvia Beach, owner of the Paris bookshop Shakespeare and Company, published Ulysses in an edition of 1,000 copies on 2 February 1922 after serialisation in The Little Review had been halted for obscenity.

Which poet dedicated The Waste Land (1922) to Ezra Pound?

T. S. Eliot called Pound 'il miglior fabbro', the better craftsman, in that dedication, and with reason: Pound's editing had cut away a large part of the draft.

Under what title was Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises published in London in 1927?

Jonathan Cape issued the novel in London in 1927 as Fiesta; it follows expatriates from Paris to Pamplona's Festival of San Fermín and is a roman à clef about Hemingway's 1925 trip.

Which German anti-war novel was serialised in 1928?

All Quiet on the Western Front was an immediate bestseller in Germany and abroad, but in 1933 the Nazis threw Remarque's books onto their bonfires.

Under what concert title did Rhapsody in Blue premiere at Aeolian Hall in February 1924?

The concert at Aeolian Hall on February 12, 1924 was billed as 'An Experiment in Modern Music'; the piece was written in about five weeks, Ferde Grofé orchestrated it for the band, and the composer played the piano part himself.

Which composer's 1924 concert piece opens with a famous wailing clarinet glissando?

George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue opens with a clarinet glissando that is said to have begun as a rehearsal joke by clarinettist Ross Gorman; Gershwin liked it and kept it in.

Which 1927 musical produced by Florenz Ziegfeld introduced the song 'Ol' Man River'?

Show Boat's 'Ol' Man River' was written with Paul Robeson in mind, but it was Jules Bledsoe who sang it on opening night in December 1927.

Which jazz cornetist from Davenport, Iowa, died at 28 in 1931?

Bix Beiderbecke was prized for a pure, bell-like tone on the cornet, but severe alcoholism wrecked his health and led to his early death.

Which pianist claimed to have invented jazz in 1902?

Jelly Roll Morton's boast was dubious, but he had a real first to his name: his 'Jelly Roll Blues' of 1915 was one of the earliest jazz compositions ever published.

Which singer, the 'Mother of the Blues', toured with the Rabbit Foot Minstrels before her first records in 1923?

Ma Rainey and her husband went on to bill themselves as 'Rainey and Rainey, Assassinators of the Blues'; she was already a veteran of the Southern stage when she first recorded.

Earle Dickson invented the Band-Aid in 1920 for whom?

His accident-prone wife, Josephine, kept cutting and burning herself in the kitchen, so the Johnson & Johnson cotton buyer stuck squares of gauze along a strip of tape that she could apply on her own.

In 1928 a bakery in Chillicothe, Missouri became the first to sell which now-everyday product?

Sliced bread nearly never happened: a 1917 fire destroyed Otto Rohwedder's prototype and blueprints, and it took him another decade to build the slicing machine a Chillicothe baker finally tried.

Which powdered drink mix did Edwin Perkins create in Hastings, Nebraska in 1927?

Kool-Aid began as a bottled concentrate called Fruit Smack; Perkins worked out how to remove the liquid so that he could sell the powder in envelopes and stop shipping heavy, breakable bottles.

What sight gave executive Elmer Cline the sense of 'wonder' that named Wonder Bread in 1921?

A hot-air balloon race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway filled Elmer Cline with awe, and the coloured balloons on the wrapper still recall it.

Whose fish-freezing methods did Clarence Birdseye observe in Labrador before founding a frozen food company?

In Labrador Birdseye saw the Inuit freeze fish almost instantly in the Arctic air so the flesh kept its texture; he copied the quick-freeze idea and sold his company to Postum in 1929.

For whom did teenage Philo Farnsworth sketch his television idea in 1922?

His chemistry teacher, Justin Tolman, redrew the blackboard sketch years later, which helped Farnsworth beat RCA in a patent fight; legend has the idea coming to him from the back-and-forth rows of a farm field.

Which highway, designated in 1926, ran from the Midwest to Southern California?

Route 66 owes its number to a quarrel: Oklahoma's Cyrus Avery wanted 60 for his road to California, Kentucky demanded that number for a road of its own, and the unassigned 66 was the compromise.

The Holland Tunnel, opened in 1927, was the world's first underwater road tunnel to have what?

Mechanical ventilation was essential because car exhaust is laden with carbon monoxide; 84 fans in four towers can replace all the air in the tunnel every 90 seconds.

Charles Ponzi's scheme claimed to profit from arbitrage in what?

Ponzi claimed to buy international postal reply coupons cheaply abroad and redeem them for US stamps at a profit, promising 50 percent in 45 days; when it collapsed in August 1920 investors had lost about $20 million.

Which lawyer's marathon summation saved Leopold and Loeb from execution in 1924?

Clarence Darrow had the teenage pair plead guilty and then argued at length against hanging, citing their youth and mental state; Judge John Caverly sentenced them to life plus 99 years.

Ruth Snyder's 1928 execution at Sing Sing became notorious for what?

A secretly taken photograph of Snyder in the electric chair, shot by Tom Howard with a miniature camera strapped to his ankle, ran in a New York tabloid the next day.

Which organisation did Marcus Garvey found in Jamaica in 1914 before moving to Harlem?

Garvey founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in Kingston in 1914 and moved to Harlem in 1916; by the early 1920s it claimed millions of members and ran the Black Star Line shipping company.

Which king refused to declare a state of siege and instead appointed Mussolini prime minister in 1922?

Victor Emmanuel III refused to sign Facta's martial-law decree on 28 October 1922 and two days later appointed Mussolini prime minister; the Blackshirts' march on Rome became a victory parade.

Hitler's failed 1923 Munich coup is known by what name?

The Beer Hall Putsch began when Hitler fired a shot into the ceiling of Munich's Bürgerbräukeller; convicted of treason, he served only nine months and used them to dictate the first volume of Mein Kampf.

Britain's 1926 general strike was called to support locked-out workers in which industry?

Coal mining's owners had locked out 1.2 million miners who refused wage cuts and longer hours; the TUC called the general strike off within two weeks, but the miners held out for months.

Which British climber vanished near the summit of Everest in 1924 with his partner Andrew Irvine?

George Mallory was last seen about 800 feet below the summit; his body was not found until 1999, and whether he and Irvine reached the top is still argued over.

Wembley's first FA Cup final in 1923, when crowds spilled onto the pitch, is remembered as what?

The White Horse Final took its name from Billie, the police horse ridden by PC George Scorey, who helped clear the pitch so the match could start; up to 300,000 people had squeezed in.

Whose career ended with the 1928 St. Francis Dam collapse in California?

William Mulholland, builder of the city's great aqueduct, took full blame for the St. Francis Dam failure of March 12, 1928, which killed at least 431 people, and retired within the year.

From which New York airfield did Lindbergh take off in May 1927?

Lindbergh took off from Roosevelt Field on Long Island at 7:52 a.m. on May 20, 1927, barely clearing telephone wires at the end of the muddy runway; he landed at Le Bourget after about 3,600 miles.

Where did Bessie Coleman have to go to earn her 1921 pilot's licence?

France was her only route: no American flight school would take a Black woman, so she learned French, sailed in 1920 and earned an international pilot's licence in June 1921.

Which Nobile-designed airship carried Roald Amundsen across the Arctic from Spitsbergen to Alaska in 1926?

The Norge flew from Spitsbergen over the North Pole to Alaska in May 1926; two years later Amundsen vanished while flying to rescue Nobile after his next airship, the Italia, crashed.

Which Manhattan hotel gave the Round Table of wits its name?

The Algonquin's manager Frank Case moved the daily lunchers from a long table in the Pergola Room to a round one in the Rose Room; they first called themselves 'The Board'.

Which Round Table wit wrote the couplet 'Men seldom make passes / At girls who wear glasses'?

Dorothy Parker published it as 'News Item' in her 1926 collection Enough Rope; six years earlier Vanity Fair had fired her because her theatre reviews kept offending producers.

Which pageant grew out of a 1921 Atlantic City beauty contest won by 16-year-old Margaret Gorman?

Miss America began as a ploy to keep summer visitors in Atlantic City after Labor Day; Gorman won a Golden Mermaid trophy and $100, and a newspaperman coined the title.

Which endurance craze is the setting of Horace McCoy's novel They Shoot Horses, Don't They?

Dance marathons took off in 1923 when Alma Cummings danced for 27 hours and wore out six partners in New York; McCoy knew the contests of the Depression years as a bouncer on the Santa Monica pier, where they were held.

Alvin 'Shipwreck' Kelly became famous in the 1920s for which stunt?

Flagpole sitting made Kelly a star: he once spent 49 days on a pole above Atlantic City, and in 1927 he even sat on a pole fixed to a biplane as it flew.

Which 1928 George Olsen recording celebrated the collegiate fur-coat fad?

Open-topped cars with poor heaters helped drive the fur fashion.

Which close-fitting felt hat, pulled low over the forehead, defined women's fashion in the 1920s?

The cloche sat so snugly that it reshaped hairstyles: the short, slicked-down Eton crop became popular because it showed off the hat's shape.

Which hairstyle did the Polish-born hairdresser Antoine launch in Paris in 1909?

The bob, first cut for the actress Ève Lavallière, stayed daring until the First World War, when women doing men's jobs found short hair practical; flappers then made it their trademark.

What killed Harry Houdini on 31 October 1926?

Houdini died in Detroit on October 31, 1926 of peritonitis from a ruptured appendix, days after a McGill student punched him in the stomach in Montreal; he was 52.

Which priest proposed an expanding universe in 1927, two years before Hubble's observations supported it?

Georges Lemaître published his expanding-universe solution in 1927 in an obscure Belgian journal, deriving what became the Hubble law two years before Hubble's 1929 paper; in 1931 he proposed the 'primeval atom'.

Who launched the world's first liquid-fuelled rocket from his aunt's farm in 1926?

Robert Goddard's rocket rose 41 feet in 2.5 seconds at Auburn, Massachusetts; The New York Times, which mocked him in 1920 for thinking rockets could work in a vacuum, printed a correction as Apollo 11 flew to the Moon.

Which German physicist introduced the uncertainty principle in 1927?

Werner Heisenberg set out the uncertainty principle in 1927 while working under Niels Bohr in Copenhagen, arguing position and momentum cannot both be known exactly; Earle Kennard and Hermann Weyl soon gave it a formal inequality.

Which bathroom staple did Leo Gerstenzang first sell in the 1920s under the name 'Baby Gays'?

Q-tips began after Gerstenzang watched his wife wrap cotton around toothpicks to clean their baby's ears; the Q, added to the name later, stands for 'quality'.

Reader's Digest was launched in 1922 from a basement beneath what kind of establishment?

A Greenwich Village speakeasy sat above the basement where DeWitt and Lila Wallace launched Reader's Digest in February 1922; wounded in the war, he had spent four months in an army hospital reading magazines.

What replaced the live zoo animals in Macy's Thanksgiving parade in 1927?

Giant balloons, led by Felix the Cat, took over from the bears, elephants and camels borrowed from the Central Park Zoo; the parade itself had begun in 1924 as a Christmas parade, ending with Santa's arrival.

Who founded The New Yorker in February 1925 with his wife Jane Grant?

Harold Ross, a former Stars and Stripes editor, launched The New Yorker on February 21, 1925 with Jane Grant and money from Raoul Fleischmann; he edited it until his death in 1951.

Which of Agatha Christie's detectives debuted in her very first novel, 1920's The Mysterious Affair at Styles?

Hercule Poirot was born of a dare: Christie's sister Madge bet she couldn't write a detective story, and the Belgian refugees she met in wartime Torquay gave her the detective.

Which Christie novel, first serialised under another title, was voted best crime novel ever in 2013?

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926) had run in the London Evening News as 'Who Killed Ackroyd?'; in 2013 the Crime Writers' Association voted it the best crime novel ever, largely for its narrator twist.

What was the title of Langston Hughes's first poetry collection, published in 1926?

The Weary Blues, published by Knopf in 1926 after Vachel Lindsay championed Hughes, took its title from a poem that won first prize in Opportunity magazine's 1925 contest.

Which Harlem Renaissance writer set many of her stories in Eatonville, Florida?

Zora Neale Hurston grew up in Eatonville, one of the first all-Black incorporated towns in the US; she was buried in an unmarked grave, which the writer Alice Walker later tracked down and marked.

Which bandleader was hailed by the press as the 'King of Jazz' in the 1920s?

Paul Whiteman led one of the decade's most popular dance orchestras, and the 'King of Jazz' tag became the title of his 1930 Technicolor film; he commissioned Rhapsody in Blue for his 1924 Aeolian Hall concert.

Which dance did Ann Pennington make a national craze in George White's Scandals of 1926?

The Black Bottom began among Black dancers in the South and was on the New York stage in the 1924 revue Dinah, two years before Pennington and Tom Patricola danced it for George White on Broadway.

Which swing dance emerged in Harlem in 1928?

The Lindy Hop is traced to a 1928 Harlem contest where 'Shorty' George Snowden flung his partner Mattie Purnell out and improvised a breakaway; the name is said to salute Lindbergh's Atlantic 'hop'.

On which Harlem thoroughfare did the Savoy Ballroom open in 1926?

Lenox Avenue's Savoy filled the block between 140th and 141st Streets from 1926 to 1958; unlike many Harlem nightspots of the day it was integrated, with Black and white dancers sharing one floor.

Alice Paul co-wrote which proposed constitutional measure with Crystal Eastman after 1920?

Paul and Crystal Eastman drafted the Equal Rights Amendment, introduced in Congress in December 1923 as the 'Lucretia Mott Amendment'; Paul led the National Woman's Party for decades and lived to see Congress pass the ERA in 1972.

Nellie Tayloe Ross, elected in Wyoming in 1924, became the first woman in America to hold which office?

State governor: Ross won a special election after her husband died in office and was sworn in 15 days before Miriam Ferguson of Texas; Franklin Roosevelt later made her the first woman to run the US Mint.

How did Texas governor Miriam Ferguson get her nickname 'Ma'?

From her initials M. A.: Miriam Amanda Ferguson ran in 1924 because her impeached husband James, 'Pa', was barred from office, and she promised Texans 'two governors for the price of one'.

Al Smith, the 1928 Democratic nominee, was the first major-party candidate of which faith?

Catholic Al Smith met a wave of religious prejudice that helped Herbert Hoover break into the Democrats' Solid South; no Catholic won the presidency until John F. Kennedy in 1960.

Which vice president elected in 1928 was the first Native American to hold the office?

Charles Curtis, a Kaw Nation citizen who spent part of his boyhood on the reservation, led the Senate before 1929; in 1898 he had sponsored the Curtis Act, which extended land allotment to the Five Tribes.

Which banker served as Treasury Secretary through the boom years from 1921 to 1932?

Andrew Mellon, the Pittsburgh banker behind Alcoa and Gulf Oil, served under Harding, Coolidge and Hoover and cut the top income-tax rate from 73 to 25 percent; Hoover moved him to the London embassy in 1932.

Jimmy Murphy won the 1921 French Grand Prix in which make, the first American car to win a Grand Prix?

Duesenberg's win at Le Mans stood alone for decades: no American car took another Grand Prix until Dan Gurney's Eagle in 1967, and Murphy drove the same car to victory at Indianapolis in 1922.

Simon & Schuster launched in 1924 with a book of which newly popular newspaper puzzle?

Crosswords had run in the New York World since 1913; when Richard Simon's aunt asked for a book of them and none existed, he and Max Schuster started a company to publish one.

How did Bugatti's founder reputedly describe the Bentleys that won Le Mans four years running from 1927?

Ettore Bugatti is said to have dismissed the big, heavy Bentleys as 'the world's fastest lorries'; the Cricklewood firm won Le Mans in 1924 and then every year from 1927 to 1930.

What name, taken from a Maeterlinck play, did Malcolm Campbell give his land speed record cars?

Blue Bird came from Maurice Maeterlinck's play The Blue Bird, which Campbell saw in London; he painted his racing car blue to match, and his son Donald kept the name for his own record-breakers.

On which Florida beach did Henry Segrave become the first to top 200 mph on land in 1927?

Daytona Beach saw Segrave's twin-engined Sunbeam average 203.79 mph on 29 March 1927; three years later he set the water speed record on Windermere and died of injuries from a crash there.

Which team had eight players banned over the fixed 1919 World Series?

Chicago White Sox players took gamblers' money to lose to Cincinnati; a jury acquitted the seven who stood trial in 1921, but baseball's new commissioner, Judge Landis, banned all eight the very next day.

Whom did Lou Gehrig replace at first base on June 2, 1925, starting his consecutive-games streak?

Gehrig took over first base from Wally Pipp on June 2, 1925, the day after pinch-hitting for Pee-Wee Wanninger, and did not miss a game until May 2, 1939; Pipp was sold to Cincinnati that winter.

Rube Foster founded the Negro National League in 1920 in which city, now home to the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum?

Kansas City's Paseo YMCA hosted the founding meeting on February 13, 1920, after Foster had spent years persuading rival Black club owners to organise; his own American Giants won the first three pennants.

Under what name was the NFL founded in 1920?

The league formed in a Canton, Ohio Hupmobile showroom on September 17, 1920 as the American Professional Football Association, with Jim Thorpe as president; it adopted the National Football League name in June 1922.

Which sportswriter coined the biblical nickname for Notre Dame's 1924 backfield?

Grantland Rice's report on Notre Dame's win over Army opened 'Outlined against a blue-gray October sky'; a student publicist then posed the four backs on horses, and the photo made the name stick.

Which contest between American and British professional golfers was first officially played in 1927?

The Ryder Cup is named for Samuel Ryder, an English seed merchant who made his fortune selling penny packets and put up the gold trophy; the US team took the first one 9½–2½ at Worcester, Massachusetts.

Helen Wills's February 1926 clash with Suzanne Lenglen was billed as what?

The Match of the Century in Cannes on 16 February 1926 was their only singles meeting: Lenglen won 6–3, 8–6 and turned professional later that year, while Wills went on to 19 major singles titles.

Which Swiss resort hosted the 1928 Winter Olympics?

St. Moritz hosted the 1928 Games from 11 to 19 February while the Summer Games went to Amsterdam; the opening ceremony was held in a blizzard, and a thaw later forced the 10,000 m speed skating to be abandoned.

Charles Kingsford Smith's 1928 first transpacific flight went from California to Brisbane via which stops?

Hawaii and Fiji broke the crossing into three legs; the 34½-hour hop to Suva was the longest, and the Southern Cross came down in a city park as the first aircraft ever to land in Fiji.

Bert Hinkler completed the first solo flight from England to which country in February 1928?

Australia was home for the Bundaberg-born Hinkler: he flew his Avro Avian from England to Darwin in under 15½ days in February 1928, almost halving the old 28-day record.

What did the Hollywood Sign originally spell out when erected in 1923?

The sign read HOLLYWOODLAND, advertising Harry Chandler's hillside housing development, and was lit by some 4,000 bulbs; the Chamber of Commerce removed 'LAND' when it restored the sign in 1949.

For which studio did Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks create Oswald the Lucky Rabbit in 1927?

After Universal took Oswald in 1928, Disney created Mickey Mouse.

Buster Keaton's The General was inspired by which real Civil War episode?

The General retells the Great Locomotive Chase of April 1862, when Union raiders stole the locomotive General in Georgia; the $750,000 film's poor returns cost Keaton his independent studio.

Harold Lloyd performed Safety Last!'s clock-dangling stunt despite having lost what?

A prop bomb that turned out to be real exploded in Lloyd's hand in August 1919, taking his right thumb and forefinger; he wore a prosthetic glove for the rest of his career, including the 1923 clock climb.

Which Swedish actress did Louis B. Mayer sign for MGM in 1925 after seeing her in The Saga of Gösta Berling?

Greta Garbo arrived with her mentor, the film's director Mauritz Stiller; MGM replaced him on her second Hollywood picture and he went home to Sweden, while she became one of the studio's greatest stars.

Mary Pickford co-founded United Artists in 1919 with Chaplin, Griffith and whom?

Douglas Fairbanks, whom Pickford married in 1920, joined her, Chaplin and D. W. Griffith in founding United Artists in February 1919 so the stars could control their own work; their home, Pickfair, became Hollywood's social capital.

Lon Chaney's makeup artistry earned him what nickname?

Chaney's self-devised makeup for The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) and The Phantom of the Opera (1925) earned him the title 'The Man of a Thousand Faces'; both his parents were deaf, and he grew up fluent in sign language.

Abel Gance devised which triple-screen process for the finale of his 1927 epic Napoléon?

Polyvision ran three projectors side by side for the finale; after the London screening the film was cut drastically and only the centre panel survived for its US release.

Renée Falconetti's only major film role, in Carl Dreyer's 1928 silent classic, was as which historical figure?

Joan of Arc's trial fills the film: Dreyer built his script from the real court transcripts, banned make-up and shot Falconetti, a stage star, largely in close-up.

Luis Buñuel co-wrote the 1929 surrealist short Un Chien Andalou with which painter?

Salvador Dalí and Buñuel built the film from two dreams, Buñuel's of a cloud slicing the moon like a razor through an eye and Dalí's of ants crawling from a hand; it premiered in June 1929.

Which Art Deco painter became known as 'The Baroness with a Brush' after marrying Baron Kuffner?

Tamara de Lempicka married Baron Raoul Kuffner in 1934; her 1929 self-portrait at the wheel of a green Bugatti was a cover for Die Dame, though the car she really drove was a small yellow Renault.

Which Evelyn Waugh novel satirised London's Bright Young Things?

Vile Bodies (1930) follows Adam Fenwick-Symes through the parties of the Bright Young Things; Waugh's marriage collapsed halfway through the writing, which is why the comedy darkens, and Stephen Fry filmed it in 2003.

P. G. Wodehouse's Jeeves is technically what kind of servant?

Jeeves is Bertie Wooster's valet, a 'gentleman's personal gentleman', not a butler, though he fills in as one when needed; he first appeared in the 1915 story 'Extricating Young Gussie'.

Which comic-strip heroine, created by Harold Gray, debuted in the New York Daily News in 1924?

Little Orphan Annie was pitched as a boy, 'Little Orphan Otto', until editor Joseph Patterson had the hero changed; the name echoes James Whitcomb Riley's poem 'Little Orphant Annie'.

Which sci-fi hero's strip, created by Philip Nowlan, first appeared in newspapers on January 7, 1929?

Buck Rogers, drawn by Dick Calkins from Philip Nowlan's novella Armageddon 2419 A.D., began on January 7, 1929, the same day as the first Tarzan strip; Flash Gordon followed as its most famous imitator in 1934.

Which character walked into E. C. Segar's strip Thimble Theatre in January 1929 and soon took it over?

Popeye turned up ten years into the strip's run, hired as a sailor for one voyage, and proved so popular that by 1931 it was billed as 'Thimble Theatre Starring Popeye'; Olive Oyl had been in it since 1919.

Which Disney classic is based on a 1923 novel by the Austrian writer Felix Salten that the Nazis banned in 1936?

Bambi began as Salten's Bambi: A Life in the Woods, which many read as a parable of the persecution of Europe's Jews; its first English translation, in 1928, was by Whittaker Chambers.

Which mobster set up the Mafia's Commission in 1931 after the Castellammarese War?

Lucky Luciano had both Joe Masseria and Salvatore Maranzano killed in 1931 and replaced the 'boss of bosses' with a Commission of family heads; Thomas Dewey convicted him of compulsory prostitution in 1936.

In which event did American Charles Jewtraw win the first gold medal of the 1924 Winter Games?

Jewtraw's win on day two made him the first Winter Olympic champion ever; the 1924 games were only retroactively declared the first Winter Olympics in 1926.

What name is given to the March 1925 tornado, the deadliest in US history?

The Tri-State Tornado killed 695 people from Missouri to Indiana and struck without warning: the Weather Bureau then kept the word 'tornado' out of its forecasts for fear of causing panic.

Which Prohibition agent led the squad nicknamed 'The Untouchables' that raided Al Capone's breweries?

Eliot Ness's agents turned down bribes from Capone's organisation, so a newspaperman dubbed them 'untouchables' and the label stuck.

Whose 'Crazy Blues' of 1920 was the first blues record by a Black singer?

Mamie Smith's 'Crazy Blues', cut for Okeh on August 10, 1920, sold so fast that record companies rushed to sign Black singers for a new market they called 'race records'.

Leonard Woolley's 1920s excavations uncovered the Royal Cemetery of which Mesopotamian city, reputed home of Abraham?

Ur's dig gave Agatha Christie a husband and a plot: visiting in 1930 she met Woolley's assistant Max Mallowan, and she is thought to have modelled the victim in Murder in Mesopotamia on Woolley's wife.

In which burial ground did Howard Carter's team uncover Tutankhamun's tomb in November 1922?

The Valley of the Kings had yielded Carter so little that Lord Carnarvon was ready to give up; he agreed to pay for one last season, and the first step of the tomb turned up within days, on 4 November.

Against which team did the Yankees play their first game at the original Yankee Stadium in 1923?

The Yankees beat the Boston Red Sox 4–1 on April 18, 1923, and Babe Ruth hit the new park's first home run against his former team; the stadium stood on a former lumberyard in the Bronx.

Whom did Johnny Weissmuller beat for 100 m freestyle gold at the 1924 Paris Olympics?

Duke Kahanamoku had won the event in 1912 and 1920, and his brother Sam took the bronze behind him; a year later he rescued eight men from a fishing boat that capsized off Newport Beach.

Who became the first president of the Republic of Turkey when it was proclaimed on 29 October 1923?

Kemal Atatürk, then known as Mustafa Kemal, had made Ankara the capital two weeks earlier; the assembly went on to abolish the caliphate the following year.

The prosperous second half of the 1920s was known by what name in Germany?

Germans called 1924–29 the Goldene Zwanziger, the Golden Twenties: the stable years between the Rentenmark and Dawes Plan and the Wall Street crash of October 1929, when Berlin's cabaret and cinema boomed.

In 1920s slang, calling a new record 'the bee's knees' or 'the cat's pajamas' meant it was what?

Excellent things earned a whole zoo of nonsense praise in the 1920s, from the cat's whiskers and the cat's meow to the gnat's elbow and the monkey's eyebrows.

A 1920s American who was 'zozzled', 'spifflicated', 'ossified' or 'fried to the hat' was in what state?

Drunk had dozens of nicknames once drinking went underground, and slang lists of the day add blotto, corked, plastered, tanked and embalmed.

A 1920s host who promised guests plenty of 'giggle water', also called 'giggle juice', was offering what?

Alcohol picked up playful nicknames once selling it became a crime, and the same slang lists turn plain tea into 'noodle juice'.

Which part of a woman's body did 1920s slang call her 'gams', a word first recorded in 1781?

Legs were 'gams' long before flappers bared them: the word is probably a cousin of 'gamb', the heraldic term for an animal's leg on a coat of arms.

What was a 1920s partygoer wearing when she stepped out in her 'glad rags', a phrase first recorded in 1902?

Her best clothes were her 'glad rags', the outfit saved for parties and nights on the town; the joke lay in calling finery rags.

First recorded in 1924 and of unknown origin, the slang word 'jalopy' described what kind of vehicle?

A worn-out car became a 'jalopy' for reasons nobody has pinned down; one guess points to Jalapa in Mexico, where used American cars were supposedly sent.

In the 1920s American slang used 'moll', an old pet form of Mary, for the girlfriend of what kind of man?

A gangster's girlfriend was his moll in Prohibition-era America, but thieves' slang had used the word for women in general long before.

A crook said to be 'on the lam', a phrase on record in pickpocket slang by 1928, was doing what?

Running from the law is the sense, and 'lam' may descend from an old verb meaning to beat, the same idea as telling someone to 'beat it'.

The 1927 Broadway phrase 'carrying a torch', which gave the torch song its name, described suffering from what?

Unrequited love is what a torch-carrier endures, and 'My Melancholy Baby', as sung by Tommy Lyman, is said to have been the first number called a torch song.

The slang word 'ritzy', first recorded in 1920 for anything classy, comes from a Swiss family name famous for what?

Luxury hotels made the name: Swiss hotelier César Ritz, who died in 1918, lent it to the Ritz hotels of London and New York.

Dictionaries date to 1926 which slang name for an older man who showers a young girlfriend with gifts?

Sugar daddy is often said to have begun as Alma Spreckels's pet name for her husband, a sugar heir, but etymologists find no evidence from the period.

A 1920s American known around town as 'the big cheese', a phrase recorded from 1914, was what?

An important person was the big cheese, perhaps because giant wheels of cheese were paraded as publicity stunts; President Taft was invited to cut one at a 1911 dairy show.

The Prohibition word 'hooch' is short for Hoochinoo, liquor made by a Native people of which US state?

Alaska's Hoochinoo people distilled a spirit that miners prized during the 1898 Klondike gold rush, and their shortened name stuck to any rough liquor.

Which word for someone who drank illegally won a $200 national contest in 1924, beating more than 25,000 entries?

Scofflaw was sent in separately by two contestants, Henry Irving Dale and Kate L. Butler, who split the prize; it now covers anyone who flouts a rule.

A 1920s ladies' man was a 'sheik' after Rudolph Valentino's hit film; what was his stylish girlfriend called?

A sheba owed her name to the biblical queen, fresh in mind from the 1921 film The Queen of Sheba, famous for the daring costumes of its star Betty Blythe.

Cartoonist Billy DeBeck, creator of Barney Google, is said to have coined which 1920s cry meaning 'nonsense'?

Horsefeathers was in print by 1921 and travelled far enough for the Marx Brothers to borrow it as the title of a 1932 film.

A 'blind pig' or 'blind tiger', names coined in the 1800s but busiest during Prohibition, was what kind of place?

An illegal bar earned the name from an old dodge: the owner charged customers to view a curiosity such as an animal, then served a 'complimentary' drink.

Which 1920s insult for a puritanical killjoy is also an old nickname for the people of Nova Scotia?

Bluenose had named Nova Scotians since the late 1700s, and in 1921 it was given to a Lunenburg racing schooner later pictured on the Canadian dime.

In 1920s sports slang, a second-rate 'palooka' competed in which sport, later the subject of a hit comic strip?

Boxing gave slang the palooka, a word credited to Variety writer Jack Conway; Ham Fisher's strip Joe Palooka carried it far beyond the ring from 1930.

A 1920s American leaving 'to see a man about a dog', an excuse first staged in 1866, usually meant to do what?

Buy whiskey was the usual meaning in dry America, though the excuse probably began at the racetrack as cover for placing a bet; its first known use is in the play Flying Scud.

The 1920 census, never used to reapportion House seats, was the first to show most Americans living where?

In urban areas, by a whisker: places of 2,500 people or more now held over half the population, and House seats stayed on the 1910 count until 1933.

Which novelist's 1922 story collection helped popularise 'the Jazz Age' as a nickname for 1920s America?

F. Scott Fitzgerald called the book Tales of the Jazz Age, and one of the stories inside it is 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button'.

Which architect's daughter became America's authority on good manners with her 1922 bestseller Etiquette?

Emily Post had already published five novels when she wrote it; the full title promised etiquette in society, in business, in politics and at home.

Which nurse, who opened America's first birth control clinic, founded the American Birth Control League in 1921?

Margaret Sanger saw the league's successor renamed Planned Parenthood in 1942, a name she objected to because she considered it too euphemistic.

The Ku Klux Klan that peaked in the 1920s was relaunched in 1915 with a cross burning on which Georgia landmark?

Stone Mountain hosted William Simmons's ceremony a few months after the film The Birth of a Nation, widely seen as its inspiration, reached cinemas.

Which writer coined 'Lost Generation', a phrase Ernest Hemingway said she picked up from a French garage owner?

Gertrude Stein heard the owner shout it at a mechanic who was slow to fix her car, then told Hemingway it fitted all the young people who had served in the war.

Which Baltimore journalist, who claimed the phrase as his own invention, first put 'Bible Belt' into print in 1924?

H. L. Mencken was just as inventive a year later: his satirical reports from the Scopes case gave that courtroom drama its nickname, the 'Monkey Trial'.

Sinclair Lewis's 1922 satire of a conformist Midwestern real-estate broker put which surname in the dictionary?

Babbitt now means anyone who conforms unthinkingly to middle-class standards, and the uproar over the novel helped win Lewis the 1930 Nobel Prize.

Georgia's Rebecca Felton, sworn in for a single day in 1922 at age 87, became the first woman in which body?

The US Senate seated her for just 24 hours; a former slave owner, she was also the last person ever to serve there who had owned slaves.

'Middletown', the 1929 study of everyday life by Robert and Helen Lynd, hid the identity of which real Indiana city?

Muncie was disguised as 'Middletown' to stand for the typical small American city, but its residents soon guessed that they were the subject.

Lincoln Logs, the notched building toy patented in 1920, were invented by the son of which American architect?

Frank Lloyd Wright's son John based the toy on the interlocking beams beneath his father's Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, a foundation designed to ride out earthquakes.

Which doll, created by writer and illustrator Johnny Gruelle, gained a brother named Andy in a 1920 book of stories?

Raggedy Ann got her name from two James Whitcomb Riley poems, 'The Raggedy Man' and 'Little Orphant Annie', which Gruelle combined when he trademarked her in 1915.

Italian immigrant Antonio Pasin began selling which children's toy in 1923 under the name 'Liberty Coaster'?

A wooden wagon came first, built to haul his own tools; Pasin switched to stamped steel in 1927, and the line was later renamed Radio Flyer in tribute to Marconi and Lindbergh.

Which silent cartoon star of the 1920s earned producer Pat Sullivan an estimated $100,000 a year from toy licensing?

Felix the Cat was popular enough for the 1922 New York Yankees to adopt him as a mascot, and aviator Ruth Elder carried a Felix doll on her attempt to fly the Atlantic.

Which electric toy train maker, America's market leader by the 1920s, took founder Joshua Cowen's middle name?

Lionel overtook its rival Ives with brightly painted metal trains, and Cowen persuaded department stores to run them in Christmas displays, tying toy trains to the holiday.

Pedro Flores, whose Santa Barbara factory started America's yo-yo craze in 1928, was an immigrant from where?

The Philippines probably supplied the name as well, from the Ilocano word yóyo, and Flores's looped string let the toy spin in place, or 'sleep', at the end of its drop.

Beatrice Alexander, who founded the Madame Alexander toy company in 1923, grew up around which family business?

A doll hospital run by her stepfather mended porcelain dolls for wealthy clients; when wartime cut off German imports, she and her sisters sewed cloth dolls to sell there.

The pogo stick, patented in Germany in 1920 as a 'spring end hopping stilt', is thought to be named after what?

Its inventors' surnames, Pohlig and Gottschall, are thought to supply the 'po' and the 'go'; a later American maker told a rival tale about a Burmese girl called Pogo.

Frank Hornby, who launched his clockwork trains in 1920, was already famous for inventing which construction toy?

Meccano, first sold as 'Mechanics Made Easy', was devised by Hornby while he worked as a bookkeeper for a meat importer; he had no engineering training.

The 'Tom Thumb' design patented in 1927 by Garnet Carter of Lookout Mountain fuelled an American craze for what?

Miniature golf spread so fast that by the late 1920s New York City alone had more than 150 rooftop courses; the Depression then wiped out nearly all of them.

Which sweet did accountant Walter Diemer invent in 1928, colouring it pink because no other dye was on hand?

Bubble gum grew out of Diemer's hobby of testing gum recipes: one batch turned out less sticky than usual, and he found it stretched easily into bubbles.

The Caesar salad was first served in 1924 to Americans dodging Prohibition at a restaurant in which Mexican city?

Tijuana restaurateur Caesar Cardini is credited with creating it on July 4, when his kitchen was overwhelmed and running short of ingredients.

In 1926 Vogue called which Coco Chanel design her 'Ford', predicting it would become a uniform for women of taste?

The little black dress was meant to be simple, affordable and widely available, a bold idea when black was the colour of mourning and of maids' uniforms.

Which card game took its modern form after yachtsman Harold Vanderbilt set out its rules in 1925?

Contract bridge spread so quickly that within a few years plain 'bridge' meant nothing else; Vanderbilt went on to defend yachting's America's Cup in 1930.

Which publisher was launched in 1924 with the first book of crossword puzzles, suggested by a co-founder's aunt?

Simon & Schuster sold the book with a pencil attached; it was an instant hit and helped turn the crossword into the craze of 1924.

The loose, baggy trousers fashionable from the mid-1920s were named after undergraduates at which university?

Oxford students are often said to have adopted them to hide banned plus fours underneath, though the early pairs were hardly roomy enough for the trick.

Which publicist, a nephew of Sigmund Freud, paid women to smoke 'Torches of Freedom' in a 1929 Easter parade?

Edward Bernays staged the march for the American Tobacco Company, whose president had hired him to break the taboo against women smoking in public.

B. F. Goodrich coined the name 'zipper' in 1923 for which product fitted with Gideon Sundbäck's new fastener?

Rubber boots, or galoshes, that closed with a single zip of the hand gave the fastener its name; clothing makers only took it up in 1925, starting with leather jackets.

General Electric's 1927 'Monitor Top', nicknamed after an ironclad's gun turret, was which household appliance?

A refrigerator with its compressor in a round housing on top of the cabinet, it was the first model to see widespread use, and over a million were built.

In 1920s show-business slang, which performers were 'hoofers', a word built on an old phrase for travelling on foot?

Dancers took the name from 'hoof it', a phrase for walking that goes back to the 1640s; the dancing sense is on record by 1920.