49 Fun Facts About 1930s

What nickname did the Dust Bowl earn the decade in the United States?

The Dirty Thirties: drought from 1930 and years of ploughing the southern Plains without cover crops let wind strip topsoil from an estimated 100 million acres, with Black Sunday, 14 April 1935, the worst storm.

Which US president, taking office in 1933, launched the New Deal?

Franklin D. Roosevelt, inaugurated on 4 March 1933, pushed 15 major bills through Congress in his first hundred days, a sharp break from Hoover's limited-intervention approach.

Which constitutional amendment, ratified on December 5, 1933, ended Prohibition in the United States?

The Twenty-first Amendment repealed the Eighteenth, the first time an amendment had been undone; it was ratified by state conventions rather than legislatures, Utah casting the decisive vote on 5 December 1933.

Which film was Walt Disney's first full-length animated feature?

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs premiered on 21 December 1937 after being derided in production as 'Disney's Folly'; it earned about $8 million on first release, a record for a sound film at the time.

Which two comic-book superheroes made their debuts at the end of the decade, in 1938 and 1939?

Superman and Batman: Superman debuted in Action Comics #1, cover-dated June 1938, and Batman in Detective Comics #27, cover-dated May 1939, both from the company that became DC Comics.

Which airship exploded over Lakehurst, New Jersey, on May 6, 1937?

The Hindenburg, a German hydrogen-filled zeppelin, burst into flames while mooring at Lakehurst Naval Air Station; 36 people died, and the disaster ended commercial passenger airship travel.

Which aviator disappeared over the Pacific in 1937 during an attempted round-the-world flight?

Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan vanished on 2 July 1937 near Howland Island on the leg from Lae, New Guinea; a two-week US Navy search found no trace of them or their Lockheed Electra.

Which planet was discovered by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930?

Pluto was spotted by Clyde Tombaugh at Lowell Observatory on 18 February 1930 by comparing photographic plates; it counted as the ninth planet until its 2006 reclassification as a dwarf planet.

Which New York skyscraper opened on May 1, 1931, as the world's tallest building?

The Empire State Building rose in just 410 days and at 1,250 feet to the roof took the height record from the Chrysler Building; it held it until the World Trade Center's north tower topped out in 1970.

Which radio drama, broadcast on October 30, 1938, caused panic in parts of the United States?

The War of the Worlds, Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre adaptation of H. G. Wells, was staged as a series of news bulletins about Martians landing at Grovers Mill, New Jersey, and some listeners took it for real.

Which athlete won four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympics?

Jesse Owens won the 100 metres, 200 metres, long jump and 4x100 relay in Berlin; a year earlier at Ann Arbor he had set three world records and tied a fourth in about 45 minutes.

Which country hosted and won the 1934 FIFA World Cup, then won again in 1938?

Italy beat Czechoslovakia 2-1 after extra time in the final in Rome, then beat Hungary 4-2 in Paris four years later under coach Vittorio Pozzo; no World Cup was held again until 1950.

Which novel about Dust Bowl migrants was the best-selling book in the US in 1939?

The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck's story of the Joad family's trek from Oklahoma to California, was published in April 1939, topped the year's list and won the 1940 Pulitzer Prize for the Novel.

Which Margaret Mitchell novel was America's best-selling book two years running, in 1936 and 1937?

Gone with the Wind sold about a million copies in its first six months after publication in June 1936 and won the 1937 Pulitzer Prize; Mitchell never published another novel.

What is Pearl S. Buck's novel about a Chinese farming family, the top US bestseller of 1931 and 1932?

The Good Earth, published in March 1931, follows the farmer Wang Lung and his wife O-Lan; it won the 1932 Pulitzer Prize, and Buck became the first American woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1938.

Which Charlie Chaplin film of 1936 was the last to feature his Tramp character?

Modern Times, released in February 1936, was the Tramp's farewell: he sings a gibberish song, the only time his voice is heard, before walking off down the road with Paulette Goddard.

Which style of jazz began its rise to become America's most popular music from 1933?

Swing, built on big-band arrangements and a driving four-beat pulse, displaced the 'sweet' dance bands; Benny Goodman's August 1935 Palomar Ballroom dates in Los Angeles are often taken as its breakthrough.

Which Cole Porter musical introduced 'You're the Top' and 'I Get a Kick Out of You'?

Anything Goes opened on Broadway with Ethel Merman as Reno Sweeney and ran for 420 performances, introducing 'You're the Top', 'I Get a Kick Out of You' and the title song.

Which singer, with Rudy Vallée, exemplified the intimate 'crooning' style enabled by microphones?

Bing Crosby's relaxed baritone, sung close to the microphone, brought him a CBS radio show in 1931 and a string of hits including 'Where the Blue of the Night' and 1936's 'Pennies from Heaven'.

Which Delta bluesman recorded 'Cross Road Blues' and 'Hellhound on My Trail' in 1936-37?

Robert Johnson cut 29 songs at sessions in San Antonio in November 1936 and Dallas in June 1937, including 'Cross Road Blues' and 'Hellhound on My Trail', before dying in 1938 aged 27.

Whose frozen foods first went on sale in March 1930 in Springfield, Massachusetts?

Clarence Birdseye, who had watched Inuit freeze fish instantly in Labrador, developed quick-freezing between chilled metal plates; General Foods launched his 'Birds Eye Frosted Foods' in Springfield grocery stores in March 1930.

Who developed the chocolate chip cookie in 1938?

Ruth Graves Wakefield ran the Toll House Inn in Whitman, Massachusetts, where she added chopped Nestlé semi-sweet chocolate to a butter cookie; Nestlé later printed her recipe on its packaging.

Which Eastman Kodak colour film, introduced in 1935, was invented by two musicians?

Kodachrome, devised by the musicians Leopold Mannes and Leopold Godowsky Jr. in Kodak's Rochester laboratories, went on sale as 16 mm movie film in 1935 and as 35 mm slide film in 1936.

Nylon, introduced in 1939, transformed which part of the clothing industry first?

Hosiery: DuPont unveiled nylon at the 1939 New York World's Fair, sold the first nylon stockings in Wilmington that October and put them on sale nationwide on 15 May 1940, a date remembered as Nylon Day.

Which French couturière championed the bias cut that defined the decade's slinky satin gowns?

Madeleine Vionnet cut fabric on the diagonal so it clung and draped without corsetry; her Paris house, opened in 1912, closed in 1939 on the eve of war.

Which British prime minister promised 'peace for our time' after the 1938 Munich Agreement?

Neville Chamberlain waved the Anglo-German declaration at Heston aerodrome on 30 September 1938; he resigned in May 1940 after the Norway debate and was succeeded by Churchill.

What was the Anschluss of 1938?

Germany's annexation of Austria: German troops crossed the border on 12 March 1938, Hitler entered Vienna two days later, and a plebiscite in April recorded over 99 per cent approval.

Kristallnacht, in November 1938, was triggered by the assassination of which German diplomat in Paris?

Ernst vom Rath, a junior diplomat at the German embassy, was shot on 7 November 1938 by the 17-year-old Herschel Grynszpan and died two days later; the pogrom that followed destroyed some 267 synagogues.

The Spanish Civil War of 1936-39 ended in victory for the Nationalists led by whom?

Francisco Franco led the Nationalist rising from July 1936 and ruled Spain until his death in 1975; Hitler and Mussolini armed his side, while the Soviet Union backed the Republic.

Picasso's Guernica, shown at the 1937 Paris World's Fair, depicted a bombing by which air force?

The German Luftwaffe's Condor Legion bombed the Basque town of Guernica on 26 April 1937 in support of the Nationalists; Picasso painted the mural for the Spanish Republic's pavilion at the fair.

The Chaco War of 1932-35 was fought between which two South American countries?

Bolivia and Paraguay fought over the Gran Chaco, which Bolivia hoped held oil and a route to the sea; Paraguay won most of it, and the 1938 peace treaty confirmed the division.

Japan installed which former emperor as nominal ruler of the puppet state of Manchukuo?

Puyi, the last Qing emperor, deposed as a child in 1912, was installed as Manchukuo's chief executive in March 1932 and crowned its emperor two years later.

Gandhi's 1930 civil disobedience campaign is remembered for a march protesting a tax on what?

Salt: Gandhi walked 240 miles from Sabarmati to Dandi in March and April 1930 to make salt from seawater in defiance of the British salt laws; the Gandhi-Irwin Pact of March 1931 ended the campaign.

The Chinese Communists' 'Long March' retreat began in which year?

1934: the Communists broke out of the Jiangxi Soviet in October 1934 after Nationalist encirclement campaigns, and Mao's column reached northern Shaanxi in October 1935 after a year-long trek.

Which country's Cipher Bureau first broke the German Enigma cipher, in 1932?

Poland's mathematician Marian Rejewski reconstructed the military Enigma in late 1932; in July 1939 the Poles handed their methods and replica machines to British and French intelligence, seeding Bletchley Park.

Which mayor was fatally wounded in 1933 by a gunman who was actually aiming at President-elect Roosevelt?

Anton Cermak of Chicago was hit when Giuseppe Zangara fired five shots at Roosevelt's car in Miami's Bayfront Park on 15 February 1933; Cermak died on 6 March and Zangara was executed within weeks.

Which Louisiana politician and presidential hopeful was assassinated in 1935?

Huey Long, the 'Kingfish' senator behind the Share Our Wealth movement, was shot in the Louisiana State Capitol on 8 September 1935 and died two days later; his bodyguards killed the gunman, Dr Carl Weiss.

Who led the posse that ambushed and killed Bonnie and Clyde in Louisiana in May 1934?

Frank Hamer, a former Texas Ranger captain hired to hunt the pair, led the six-man posse that fired more than 130 rounds into their Ford V8 near Gibsland; the Barrow gang had killed nine law officers.

Bruno Richard Hauptmann was executed in 1936 for the kidnapping and murder of whose infant son?

Charles Lindbergh's 20-month-old son was taken from the family home near Hopewell, New Jersey, on 1 March 1932; Hauptmann was convicted in 1935 and electrocuted on 3 April 1936.

Which board game did Parker Brothers begin selling in 1935?

Monopoly, bought by Parker Brothers from Charles Darrow in 1935, named its properties after streets in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and drew on Lizzie Magie's earlier Landlord's Game.

On August 14, 1935, Roosevelt signed which landmark law creating old-age insurance?

The Social Security Act set up federal old-age pensions funded by payroll tax and federal-state unemployment insurance; Labor Secretary Frances Perkins chaired the Committee on Economic Security that drafted it.

Which New Deal work-relief programme (1933-42) maintained national parks and built roads?

The Civilian Conservation Corps enrolled about three million unmarried young men between 1933 and 1942, who planted some three billion trees, fought fires and built trails, roads and campgrounds in parks and forests.

Danish seismologist Inge Lehmann concluded in 1936 that the Earth has what?

A solid inner and molten outer core: Lehmann's 1936 paper, titled simply P', explained seismic waves arriving where a single liquid core predicted a shadow zone by proposing a distinct inner core within it.

Nuclear fission was discovered in 1939 by Otto Hahn, Fritz Strassmann and which physicist?

Lise Meitner, exiled in Sweden after fleeing Nazi Germany, interpreted Hahn and Strassmann's barium results with her nephew Otto Frisch and coined the term 'fission'; Hahn alone received the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

The 1935 Labor Day hurricane, the most intense ever to make landfall in the Atlantic basin, struck where?

The Florida Keys took the full force on 2 September 1935, with a central pressure of 892 millibars; the storm obliterated Islamorada and killed around 408 people, including many First World War veterans working on the highway.

Which car, created by Ferdinand Porsche in 1930s Germany, sold more than 21 million units?

The Volkswagen Beetle was designed by Porsche in the mid-1930s as Hitler's 'people's car'; mass production began only after the war, and the last of 21.5 million original Beetles left the Puebla plant in Mexico in July 2003.

Which 1938 steam locomotive, one of Nigel Gresley's A4 Pacifics, became the fastest in the world?

Mallard reached 126 mph on Stoke Bank on 3 July 1938, a record for steam traction; the streamlined A4 class had been introduced by the London and North Eastern Railway only three years earlier.

What was Howard Hughes' 1930 aviation epic, then the most expensive film ever made, called?

Hell's Angels, a First World War flying drama, cost Hughes about $3.8 million, was reshot with sound after starting as a silent, and made a star of Jean Harlow.

Which country's prime minister, Mackenzie King, met Hitler in Berlin in June 1937?

Canada's prime minister Mackenzie King met Hitler in Berlin on 29 June 1937 and wrote in his diary that the Führer seemed 'a simple sort of peasant'; Newfoundland was then a separate dominion run by a British-appointed commission.