186 Fun Facts About 1920s

On what date did the United States officially go 'dry' under the Eighteenth Amendment?

The Eighteenth Amendment was ratified on January 16, 1919 and took effect one year later, on January 17, 1920; Connecticut and Rhode Island were the only states that never ratified it.

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.

By 1925, roughly how many speakeasies were estimated to be operating in New York City alone?

Estimates for New York City by 1925 ranged from 30,000 to 100,000 speakeasies; police commissioner Grover Whalen put the figure at 32,000 in 1929.

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

Capone was convicted of tax evasion in October 1931 and sentenced to eleven years; he served part of it at the new federal penitentiary on Alcatraz from 1934.

How many men were killed in the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre of 1929?

Seven men were lined up against a garage wall at 2122 North Clark Street and shot on February 14, 1929; two gunmen wore police uniforms, and target Bugs Moran had not yet arrived.

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

Tennessee's House approved ratification 50–46 on August 18, 1920 after 24-year-old Harry Burn switched his vote at his mother's urging; the amendment was certified on August 26, now Women's Equality Day.

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

Harding's 'return to normalcy' line came from a May 1920 Boston speech; he then ran a front-porch campaign from Marion, Ohio, where some 600,000 visitors came to hear him.

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

The family homestead had neither electricity nor a telephone; his father was a notary public and justice of the peace, and the new president went back to bed afterward.

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, Tennessee's boosters recruited substitute teacher John Scopes to test the Butler Act for the publicity; the jury took nine minutes to convict him, and the $100 fine was later overturned on a technicality.

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

Darrow famously called Bryan himself to the stand as an expert on the Bible; Bryan died a few days after the trial ended.

How long was Charles Lindbergh alone in the air on his May 1927 flight from New York to Paris?

He was chasing the $25,000 Orteig Prize; two French aviators, Nungesser and Coli, had vanished trying the same route in the other direction two weeks earlier.

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

Time magazine put Lindbergh on its January 2, 1928 cover as the first 'Man of the Year'; at 25 he remained the youngest honoree until 16-year-old Greta Thunberg in 2019.

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

Earhart rode as a passenger on the Friendship in June 1928 while Wilmer Stultz flew and Lou Gordon served as mechanic; heiress Amy Phipps Guest financed the flight, and Earhart's own solo crossing came in 1932.

When Carnarvon asked 'Can you see anything?' at Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922, what did Howard Carter reply?

Carter's published account gives 'Yes, wonderful things!' as his reply on November 26, 1922; his diary entry that day recorded only the plainer 'Yes, it is wonderful.'

Banting and Best first extracted insulin at the university of which Canadian city, which then got the patent for one dollar?

Toronto's Frederick Banting split his 1923 Nobel money with Charles Best, furious that the prize committee had left Best out in favour of John Macleod.

How old was Leonard Thompson, the diabetic given the first insulin injection in 1922?

The first dose was so impure it caused a severe allergic reaction; James Collip spent twelve days purifying it before a second, successful shot.

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

Alexander Fleming did not even coin the word 'penicillin' until March 1929, to avoid repeating 'mould broth filtrate'; a purified drug took until 1940.

The Jazz Singer, the 1927 film that ended the era of the silents, used which sound-on-disc system?

Vitaphone's discs carried Al Jolson's ad-lib 'Wait a minute, wait a minute. You ain't heard nothin' yet!', later voted one of the AFI's top 100 movie quotes.

How many home runs did Babe Ruth hit in 1927 to set a single-season record that stood for 34 years?

Ruth's 60th came on September 30 off Tom Zachary, for a Yankees lineup nicknamed 'Murderers' Row'; Roger Maris finally passed it in 1961.

In which year did Ford stop building the Model T and introduce the Model A?

The last Model T left the line in May 1927 after nearly two decades of production, and the Model A went on sale that December with a laminated safety-glass windshield as standard.

October 29, 1929, when 16 million shares changed hands and $14 billion evaporated, is remembered as what?

Black Tuesday, October 29, 1929, followed Black Thursday's panic five days earlier; the Dow kept sliding until July 1932, by which time it had lost about 89 percent of its 1929 peak.

At what rate did Germany's new Rentenmark replace the paper mark at the end of 1923?

The Rentenmark, introduced on November 15, 1923, was set at one to one trillion paper marks; the Dawes Plan of 1924 then restructured Germany's reparations.

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 the new-money side of the bay; the Buchanans live across the water in old-money East Egg. Nick, a Yale man and war veteran, has come east to sell bonds.

'The Charleston' craze came from a 1923 James P. Johnson tune in which Broadway show?

'The Charleston' was introduced in Runnin' Wild, the 1923 Broadway revue by Flournoy Miller and Aubrey Lyles; Johnson said he had seen the steps danced by South Carolina dockworkers in New York years earlier.

Which actress starred in 'The Flapper' (1920), the first American film about flapper life?

Olive Thomas played the title role in The Flapper, written by Frances Marion and released in May 1920; Thomas died in Paris that September after swallowing mercury bichloride.

Which 1925 anthology edited by Alain Locke is considered the cornerstone of the Harlem Renaissance?

The New Negro featured Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes and Claude McKay alongside lesser-known poets such as Anne Spencer.

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

'Heebie Jeebies', cut by the Hot Five for Okeh in February 1926, made scat famous; legend says Armstrong improvised syllables after dropping the lyric sheet, though he was not the first to record scat.

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.

Bessie Smith, the 'Empress of the Blues', began her recording career in 1923 with which label?

She had busked on Chattanooga street corners as a child after her parents died, and toured with Ma Rainey before going solo.

Steamboat Willie, Mickey Mouse's official debut, premiered on November 18, 1928 at which New York venue?

Steamboat Willie opened at Universal's Colony Theater on Broadway, where Disney was paid $500 a week for the two-week run; the cartoon entered the US public domain on January 1, 2024.

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 hosted the event from January 25 to February 5, 1924 as an 'International Winter Sports Week' tied to the Paris Summer Games; the IOC only later designated it the first Winter Olympics.

How old was Norway's Sonja Henie when she finished last at the 1924 Winter Games?

Henie was eleven, having been born in April 1912, and placed eighth and last in the 1924 ladies' figure skating; she then won gold at the next three Winter Games, 1928, 1932 and 1936.

The name 'Art Deco' derives from a 1925 international exhibition of decorative arts held in which city?

The 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris gave the style its name, though the term 'Art Deco' only caught on after a 1966 retrospective; New York's Chrysler Building became its most famous monument.

Sacco and Vanzetti were convicted of a 1920 payroll robbery-murder in which Massachusetts town?

The robbery at the Slater & Morrill shoe factory in South Braintree on April 15, 1920 killed paymaster Frederick Parmenter and guard Alessandro Berardelli; the two anarchists were tried in Dedham and executed in August 1927.

Which Pittsburgh radio station read the 1920 presidential election returns over the air?

KDKA, licensed to Westinghouse, broadcast the Harding–Cox returns from a shack on the roof of its East Pittsburgh plant on November 2, 1920, a date often taken as the start of commercial radio.

In which year did the Irish Free State gain independence from the United Kingdom?

The Irish Free State came into being on 6 December 1922, a year after the Anglo-Irish Treaty was signed; 1922 was also the year Mussolini became prime minister of Italy.

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

The Kellogg–Briand Pact, signed in Paris on August 27, 1928 by fifteen nations, was named for US Secretary of State Frank Kellogg and French foreign minister Aristide Briand; Kellogg won the 1929 Nobel Peace Prize for it.

Who demonstrated the first working mechanical television system in 1925?

John Logie Baird's spinning-disc system lost out to electronic television, but he got there first, and in 1928 demonstrated colour too.

Which 1924 Buster Keaton film has a projectionist walk into the movie he is screening?

In Sherlock Jr. (1924) Keaton's projectionist dozes off and strides into the film he is showing, a sequence built with surveyor's instruments for exact camera placement; the whole picture runs about 45 minutes.

Louis Armstrong left his native New Orleans in 1922 to join King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band in which Midwestern city?

Armstrong reached Chicago in 1922 to play second cornet at the Lincoln Gardens on the South Side, and got his first apartment with a private bath.

How many Ford Model As had been built when production ended in March 1932?

Ford built about 4.9 million Model As between late 1927 and March 1932, when the flathead V8 replaced it; hot-rodders nicknamed the car the 'A-bone'.

What did the French call the 1920s?

Les années folles, 'the crazy years', is the French name for the 1920s boom in Paris; it stands between la belle époque before 1914 and les trente glorieuses after 1945.

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

Moga, short for 'modan gāru' (modern girl), was the Japanese flapper of the 1920s, paired with the 'mobo' modern boy; France had the garçonne and Argentina the joven moderna.

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

The Great Miami hurricane struck on September 18, 1926 with winds above 140 mph, killing more than 370 people and ending a land boom that had already begun to deflate the year before.

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 was created by the Labor Appropriation Act of May 28, 1924, two days after the Johnson–Reed quota act; its first recruits were largely former mounted inspectors and Texas Rangers.

The 1924 quota law set each nationality's share at 2 percent of its population in which census?

Using the 1890 census, taken before the great wave from Southern and Eastern Europe, cut those nationalities' quotas sharply; the 1921 Emergency Quota Act had used 3 percent of the 1910 census.

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

Uruguay beat Switzerland 3–0 in the 1924 final, and FIFA recognised the 1924 and 1928 Olympic tournaments as world championships, which is why Uruguay's shirt carries four stars.

Which city was the only rival bidder to Amsterdam for the 1928 Olympics?

Los Angeles was the only other candidate when the IOC chose Amsterdam in 1921; the Californian city then staged the 1932 Games, while Amsterdam 1928 was the first to light an Olympic flame.

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

Weissmuller won bronze with the US water polo team in Paris 1924 on top of three swimming golds; he went on to play Tarzan in twelve films between 1932 and 1948.

How many official world records did 'Flying Finn' Paavo Nurmi set?

Nurmi set 22 official world records between 1500 metres and 20 kilometres and went unbeaten in 121 races at 800 metres and above; he also won nine Olympic golds.

By roughly how much did Gertrude Ederle beat the men's English Channel record in 1926?

Ederle crossed from Cap Gris-Nez to Kingsdown on August 6, 1926 in about 14 and a half hours, nearly two hours inside the men's record of 16 hours 33 minutes set by Enrique Tirabocchi in 1923.

At what age did amateur golf great Bobby Jones retire from competition after his 1930 Grand Slam?

Jones was 28, born in March 1902, when he retired in November 1930 after winning all four major championships that year; he practised law and co-founded Augusta National and the Masters.

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

Dempsey's fourth-round knockout of Carpentier at Boyle's Thirty Acres in Jersey City on July 2, 1921 drew $1,789,238, boxing's first million-dollar gate; his 1927 rematch with Gene Tunney drew the first two-million-dollar gate.

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

The Long Count Fight at Chicago's Soldier Field on September 22, 1927 got its name when Dempsey's delay in going to a neutral corner gave the floored Tunney some 14 seconds to recover; Tunney won on points.

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?

Pyle and Grange launched the first American Football League (AFL) in 1926 after the Bears refused Pyle's demands; Grange's New York Yankees were its flagship, and the league folded after one season.

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

Tilden beat Gerald Patterson in the 1920 Wimbledon challenge round to become the first American man to win the title; he was ranked world No. 1 amateur for six straight years, 1920–25.

How many singles titles did Suzanne Lenglen win at the All England Club?

Lenglen won six Wimbledon singles titles: five in a row from 1919 to 1923, then a sixth in 1925 after illness kept her out in 1924.

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

Upset beat Man o' War by half a length in the 1919 Sanford Memorial Stakes at Saratoga, the champion's only loss in 21 starts; the word 'upset' for a shock result predates the race, despite the legend.

Josephine Baker's famous 1927 Folies Bergère costume consisted mainly of what?

Baker's skirt of artificial bananas, worn for her danse sauvage at the Folies Bergère in 1926–27, became her signature; she also starred in the 1927 film Siren of the Tropics.

Which fragrance chemist compounded Chanel No. 5, launched in 1921?

Ernest Beaux, a former perfumer to the Russian court, presented Chanel with numbered samples in 1920; she chose the fifth, and No. 5 went on sale on May 5, 1921.

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

G. W. Pabst cast Brooks as Lulu in Pandora's Box (1929) after failing to get Marlene Dietrich, and directed her again that year in Diary of a Lost Girl.

How many fan letters did Clara Bow receive in a single month at her 1929 peak?

Bow received more than 45,000 fan letters in January 1929 alone; the 'It Girl' was the top box-office draw of 1928 and 1929.

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.

What is the final intertitle of Metropolis?

Its design drew on Bauhaus, Cubist and Futurist ideas.

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

Florence Stoker, Bram Stoker's widow, sued Prana Film for copyright infringement, and a German court ordered every print of Nosferatu destroyed in 1925; copies already abroad survived, and Prana went bankrupt.

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

The Odessa Steps sequence, with its tumbling pram and tsarist troops firing on civilians, was Eisenstein's invention; no massacre occurred on the steps in 1905, but the scene has been copied from The Untouchables to Brazil.

How long did the first Academy Awards ceremony last in May 1929?

The first ceremony on May 16, 1929 took just 15 minutes, since the winners had been announced three months earlier; tickets cost $5 and 270 guests attended.

Which hotel hosted the first Academy Awards dinner in 1929?

The dinner was held in the Blossom Room of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel on May 16, 1929 for 270 guests; Wings took the top award and Janet Gaynor the first Best Actress.

Emil Jannings won the first Best Actor Oscar for The Last Command and which other film?

Jannings was cited for both The Way of All Flesh (1927) and The Last Command (1928) under first-year rules that credited an actor's whole year of work; The Way of All Flesh is now a lost film.

Wings, the first Best Picture winner, was shot at which Texas air base?

Wings was shot at Kelly Field in San Antonio, Texas, with the Army lending planes and pilots; director William Wellman had flown with the Lafayette Flying Corps in the war.

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?

Gropius founded the Bauhaus in Weimar in April 1919 by merging the city's art academy and arts-and-crafts school; it moved to Dessau in 1925 and Berlin in 1932 before closing 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.

How many lines long is T. S. Eliot's 1922 poem The Waste Land?

The Waste Land runs 434 lines in five sections, cut down from a far longer draft by Ezra Pound; it first appeared in Eliot's own magazine, The Criterion, in October 1922.

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.

In which German newspaper was All Quiet on the Western Front first serialised in 1928?

Remarque's novel ran in the liberal Berlin daily Vossische Zeitung from November 1928 before Propyläen published it in January 1929; it sold 2.5 million copies in 22 languages within 18 months.

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'; Ferde Grofé orchestrated the piece for the jazz band in about five weeks, and the composer played the piano part himself.

Which composer's opening clarinet glissando has been likened to Beethoven's Fifth in recognisability?

George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue (1924) opens with a clarinet glissando that began as a rehearsal joke by clarinettist Ross Gorman; Gershwin liked it and kept it in.

Show Boat, produced by Ziegfeld in 1927, is set aboard a boat named what?

The show boat is the Cotton Blossom, a Mississippi floating theatre run by Cap'n Andy Hawks in Edna Ferber's 1926 novel and the Kern–Hammerstein musical; its songs include 'Ol' Man River'.

Which Iowa city was cornetist Bix Beiderbecke a native of?

His tone was likened to 'shooting bullets at a bell'.

Which pianist claimed to have invented jazz in 1902?

Jelly Roll Morton styled himself 'Originator of Jazz' on his business cards and told Alan Lomax he had invented it in 1902; his 'King Porter Stomp' became a swing-era standard.

Ma Rainey and her husband toured with which minstrel troupe before forming their own act?

Ma and Pa Rainey toured with the Rabbit Foot Minstrels, a Mississippi-based tent show, before billing themselves as 'Rainey and Rainey, Assassinators of the Blues'; she cut about 100 sides for Paramount between 1923 and 1928.

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

Johnson & Johnson later gave free Band-Aids to the Boy Scouts to boost sales.

Which Missouri bakery first sold machine-sliced bread on July 7, 1928?

The Chillicothe Baking Company of Chillicothe, Missouri sold the first loaves of 'Kleen Maid Sliced Bread' on July 7, 1928 using Otto Rohwedder's machine; Wonder Bread took slicing national in 1930.

Kool-Aid was created in 1927 in which Nebraska town?

Edwin Perkins of Hastings, Nebraska dried his liquid Fruit Smack concentrate into a powder in 1927 to cut shipping costs and bottle breakage; the packets sold for ten cents, cut to a nickel in the Depression.

What inspired the balloons on the Wonder Bread logo, launched in 1921?

Executive Elmer Cline named the brand after his sense of 'wonder'.

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 Goldman Sachs and Postum bought his company for $22 million in 1929.

Philo Farnsworth, pioneer of electronic television, was born in a log cabin in which state?

Farnsworth was born in a log cabin in Beaver, Utah in 1906; he sketched the idea of scanning an image line by line at 14 and transmitted his first electronic image in San Francisco in 1927.

On what date was US Route 66 established?

Route 66 was designated on November 11, 1926 when the numbered federal highway system was approved, though signs went up in 1927; it ran 2,448 miles from Chicago to Santa Monica.

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

It is named for chief engineer Clifford Holland, who died in 1924 before it opened.

For how long was the Chrysler Building the world's tallest after completion in 1930?

The Chrysler Building was the world's tallest for 11 months, from its completion in May 1930 until the Empire State Building opened on May 1, 1931; it was the first building to top 1,000 feet.

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?

She had plotted her husband's murder with corset salesman Judd Gray.

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 invited Mussolini to form a government; the Blackshirts' march on Rome became a victory parade.

In which Munich beer hall did Hitler launch his failed 1923 putsch?

Hitler fired a shot into the ceiling of the Bürgerbräukeller on the night of 8 November 1923 and declared a national revolution; the march the next day was stopped at the Feldherrnhalle, where sixteen Nazis and four police died.

How many locked-out coal miners did the 1926 British general strike aim to support?

The TUC called the strike on 3 May 1926 in support of 1.2 million coal miners locked out for refusing wage cuts and longer hours; some 1.7 million workers came out before the TUC called it off after nine days.

Which company built the original Wembley Stadium for the 1924 British Empire Exhibition?

Sir Robert McAlpine built the Empire Stadium in 300 working days for £750,000, finishing days before the 1923 FA Cup final; King George V had cut the first turf in January 1922.

How many people were estimated to have crammed into Wembley for the 1923 'White Horse' FA Cup final?

Estimates put the crowd at up to 300,000 against an official attendance of 126,047; PC George Scorey on the white horse Billie helped clear the pitch, and Bolton beat West Ham 2–0.

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

William Mulholland, builder of the Los Angeles 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?

No US flight school would train an African-American woman.

Which airship designed by Umberto Nobile flew across the polar ice cap from Europe to America in 1926?

The Norge, built by Nobile and flown with Amundsen and Lincoln Ellsworth, crossed from Spitsbergen over the North Pole to Teller, Alaska on May 11–14, 1926; Nobile's later airship Italia crashed in 1928.

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

The Algonquin's 'Vicious Circle', as the members dubbed themselves, met for lunch every day from 1919 until about 1929.

Whose refusal to plug Eugene O'Neill triggered the practical-joke lunch that began the Round Table?

Press agent John Peter Toohey organised the 1919 lunch.

Which Miss America precursor was held on the Atlantic City Boardwalk in September 1920?

The Fall Frolic of September 1920 was staged to keep tourists in Atlantic City after Labor Day, with some 350 rolling wicker chairs pushed along the Boardwalk; the first Miss America contest followed in 1921.

On 18 February 1923, the first recorded dance marathon lasted seven hours in which English town?

The Sunderland marathon of 18 February 1923 ran seven hours; within weeks Alma Cummings danced 27 hours with six partners in New York, and the American craze for multi-week marathons followed.

How long did Alvin 'Shipwreck' Kelly sit atop an Atlantic City flagpole in 1930?

Kelly spent 49 days and an hour on a pole on Atlantic City's Steel Pier in the summer of 1930, his personal best; Bill Penfield of Iowa then went 51 days before a thunderstorm forced him down.

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

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

Which milliner invented the cloche hat in 1908, before its 1920s heyday?

Caroline Reboux, the Paris milliner who later dressed Marlene Dietrich and Wallis Simpson, shaped the first cloche in 1908 by cutting and folding felt on the client's head; the name is French for 'bell'.

Which Paris hairdresser introduced the shingle cut and claimed Joan of Arc inspired his 1909 bob?

Antoni Cierplikowski, who worked in Paris as 'Antoine', is credited with the 1920s shingle and cut the first bob for actress Eve Lavallière in 1909; he said Joan of Arc's crop had inspired him.

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.

Who proposed an expanding universe in 1927, two years before Hubble's observational confirmation?

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'.

When did Robert Goddard launch the world's first liquid-fuelled rocket?

Goddard's first liquid-fuelled rocket flew for 2.5 seconds from his aunt Effie's farm in Auburn, Massachusetts on 16 March 1926, reaching 41 feet; he launched 34 rockets by 1941, topping 2.6 km.

Which German physicist introduced the uncertainty principle in 1927?

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

Under what name were Q-tips first sold after Leo Gerstenzang invented them in 1923?

Gerstenzang first sold the swabs as 'Baby Gays' in 1923, after watching his wife wrap cotton around toothpicks; the name became Q-tips Baby Gays in 1926, the Q standing for 'quality'.

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

DeWitt and Lila Wallace mailed the first 5,000 copies of Reader's Digest in February 1922 from a basement office under a Greenwich Village speakeasy on Minetta Lane; the company later moved to Pleasantville, New York.

What did Briton Hadden and Henry Luce first plan to call their 1923 news weekly?

Hadden and Luce drafted their prospectus under the name Facts before settling on Time, launched March 3, 1923 with the slogan 'Take Time—It's Brief'; Hadden died in 1929 aged 31.

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, a Belgian refugee detective, arrived only after six publishers had rejected Christie's manuscript.

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 Florida town, her childhood home, did Zora Neale Hurston use as a setting for many stories?

Hurston grew up in Eatonville, one of the first all-Black incorporated towns in the US, and set Their Eyes Were Watching God and many stories there; she studied anthropology at Barnard under Franz Boas.

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

Paul Whiteman's dance orchestra was the best-selling band of the decade, 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 Ziegfeld Follies star famously performed the Black Bottom in George White's 1926 revue?

Ann Pennington, a Ziegfeld Follies star with famously dimpled knees, introduced the Black Bottom in George White's Scandals of 1926, and the dance briefly displaced the Charleston.

In which year was the Lindy Hop born in Harlem?

The Lindy Hop got its name in June 1928, when dancer 'Shorty' George Snowden, asked at a Manhattan dance marathon what he was doing, named the step for Lindbergh's 'hop' across the Atlantic; it grew out of the breakaway.

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

The Savoy opened on March 12, 1926 at 596 Lenox Avenue, filling a block between 140th and 141st Streets; billed as the 'World's Finest Ballroom', it ran until 1958 and was the home of the Lindy Hop.

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.

After her governorship, Nellie Tayloe Ross became the first woman to head which federal body?

Franklin Roosevelt named Ross director of the US Mint in 1933, the first woman in the post, and she served until 1953; she had been elected governor of Wyoming in November 1924 to succeed her late husband.

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

'Ma' came from the initials of Miriam Amanda Ferguson, with her husband James, the impeached former governor, dubbed 'Pa'; she took office in Texas on January 20, 1925.

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

Anti-Catholic sentiment cost him dearly in the Solid South.

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

Charles Curtis, an enrolled member of the Kaw Nation who grew up partly on the reservation in Kansas, was Senate Majority Leader before becoming Hoover's vice president in 1929.

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.

Who drove a Duesenberg to victory in the 1921 French Grand Prix?

Jimmy Murphy won the 1921 French Grand Prix at Le Mans on July 25, 1921 in a Duesenberg despite ribs broken in practice, the first Grand Prix win for an American car and driver; he won Indianapolis in 1922.

In which year was the 24 Hours of Le Mans first run?

The first 24 Hours of Le Mans was held on 26–27 May 1923 and won by André Lagache and René Léonard in a Chenard & Walcker; the winner is the car covering the greatest distance in 24 hours.

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

Ettore Bugatti dismissed Bentleys as 'the world's fastest lorries' for their size and weight; the Cricklewood firm won Le Mans in 1924 and then every year from 1927 to 1930, the last with the 6½-litre Speed Six.

Malcolm Campbell named his record cars Blue Bird after a play by which author?

Campbell saw Maurice Maeterlinck's play The Blue Bird in London in 1912 and painted his racing car blue the next day; every later Bluebird car and boat, including son Donald's, carried the name.

Which Briton was the first to travel over 200 mph in a land vehicle?

Henry Segrave drove the 1,000-hp Sunbeam to 203.79 mph at Daytona Beach on 29 March 1927; he was knighted in 1929 and died on Windermere in June 1930 minutes after setting a water speed record.

What was the regular-season record of the 1927 'Murderers' Row' New York Yankees?

The 1927 Yankees went 110–44 with one tie, finishing 19 games ahead of Philadelphia, then swept Pittsburgh in the World Series; Lou Gehrig was voted American League MVP.

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 which body in 1920, the first lasting Black professional baseball circuit?

Foster, owner-manager of the Chicago American Giants, organised the Negro National League at a Kansas City YMCA in February 1920; it ran until 1931, and he is called the 'father of Black baseball'.

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 New York Herald Tribune report on Notre Dame's win over Army on October 18, 1924 opened 'Outlined against a blue-gray October sky, the Four Horsemen rode again'; the nickname stuck to the backfield for life.

Where was the first official Ryder Cup played in 1927?

The first official Ryder Cup was played at Worcester Country Club, Massachusetts on 3–4 June 1927, with Walter Hagen's US team winning 9½–2½; the home side won each of the first five matches.

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

The 'Match of the Century' at the Carlton Club in Cannes on 16 February 1926 was their only meeting; Lenglen won 6–3, 8–6, and Wills went on to take eight Wimbledon singles titles.

Which Swiss resort hosted the 1928 Winter Olympics, the first held apart from a Summer Games?

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?

Co-pilot Charles Ulm joined him on the three-leg journey.

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

Hinkler flew an Avro Avian from Croydon to Darwin, Australia in 15½ days, 7–22 February 1928, the first solo England–Australia flight; the press called him the 'Australian Lone Eagle' after Lindbergh.

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 1924 Swedish film brought Greta Garbo to Louis B. Mayer's attention?

Mauritz Stiller's The Saga of Gösta Berling (1924), adapted from Selma Lagerlöf's novel, caught Mayer's eye when he saw it in Berlin; he signed both Stiller and the teenage Garbo for MGM in 1925.

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's 1927 Napoléon is the only film to use which triple-screen process for its finale?

Gance's Polyvision ran three projectors side by side for the finale, the army's march into Italy, sometimes as one wide panorama and sometimes as a triptych; no other film used the process.

Which stage actress played Joan in her only major film role in Dreyer's 1928 Passion of Joan of Arc?

Renée Falconetti, a Paris stage comedienne, gave her only major screen performance as Joan; Dreyer banned makeup, shot her in unrelenting close-up and had her kneel on stone floors for realism.

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

Salvador Dalí and Buñuel built the 16-minute 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 Paris 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, earning the press tag 'The Baroness with a Brush'; her 1929 self-portrait in a green Bugatti, painted for the cover of Die Dame, is her best-known image.

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 wrote it in the weeks after his wife left him, and Stephen Fry filmed it as Bright Young Things 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'.

Little Orphan Annie's comic strip debuted in 1924 in which newspaper?

Harold Gray's strip first ran in the New York Daily News on August 5, 1924, syndicated by the Chicago Tribune–New York News Syndicate; the title came from James Whitcomb Riley's 1885 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.

Popeye debuted in January 1929 in which long-running King Features strip?

E. C. Segar's Thimble Theatre had run since December 1919 when Popeye walked on as a one-off sailor on January 17, 1929; he took over the strip, which eventually took his name.

Which Austrian author's 1923 novel about a roe deer later became a Disney film?

Felix Salten's Bambi: A Life in the Woods was serialised in 1922 and published in 1923; Whittaker Chambers translated it in 1928, and Salten sold the film rights for $1,000 to Sidney Franklin, who passed them to Disney.

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.

The deadliest tornado in US history tore through Missouri, Illinois and Indiana in which year?

The Tri-State tornado of March 18, 1925 killed 695 people and injured more than 2,000, and is the second-deadliest tornado ever recorded worldwide.

Which Illinois town lost 234 residents to the Tri-State tornado, the most of any community?

Murphysboro lost 234 people, the highest toll any single community has suffered from a US tornado; the storm crossed Illinois at an average forward speed of about 62 mph and levelled Gorham and De Soto along the way.

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 an estimated 75,000 copies in its first month and opened the market that labels soon called 'race records'.

Leonard Woolley's 1920s excavations uncovered the Royal Cemetery of which Mesopotamian city?

Woolley's joint British Museum–University of Pennsylvania dig at Ur ran from 1922 to 1934 and found the Royal Cemetery in 1926–28, including the tomb of Queen Puabi with its gold headdress.

On what date in 1922 did Howard Carter's team uncover the first step of Tutankhamun's tomb?

The first step was uncovered on 4 November 1922 under the remains of workmen's huts near the tomb of Ramesses VI; Carter cabled Carnarvon in England and waited three weeks to breach the sealed doorway on 26 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, with Babe Ruth hitting the park's first home run; the stadium had been built in 284 working days on a former lumberyard in the Bronx.

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

Kahanamoku, the Hawaiian surfing legend, had won the event in 1912 and 1920; Weissmuller went on to play Tarzan in twelve films.

On which date in 1923 was the Republic of Turkey proclaimed, now celebrated as Republic Day?

The Grand National Assembly proclaimed the republic on 29 October 1923 and elected Mustafa Kemal its first president the same night; the Treaty of Lausanne, signed on 24 July, had recognised the Ankara government three months earlier.

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.