99 Fun Facts About 1930s

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

The Dirty Thirties: farmers had ploughed up the Plains' deep-rooted grasses to grow wheat, so when drought came the wind lifted the bare topsoil into 'black blizzards' across some 100 million acres.

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

Franklin D. Roosevelt began by shutting every bank for a few days, then used his first radio 'fireside chat' to urge Americans to bring their savings back; by the end of the month most banks had reopened.

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The Twenty-first Amendment repealed the Eighteenth, the first time an amendment had been undone; it was ratified by state conventions rather than legislatures, Utah casting the decisive vote on 5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 fairy-tale heroine starred in Walt Disney's first full-length animated feature in 1937?

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was mocked in the film trade as 'Disney's Folly' while it was being made, then became an immediate box-office sensation when it opened.

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

Superman and Batman: Superman's success in the ten-cent anthology Action Comics #1 led his publisher's editors to ask for more costumed heroes, and Bob Kane answered with Batman the following year.

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 distant world did Clyde Tombaugh discover at Lowell Observatory in 1930?

Pluto was named at the suggestion of Venetia Burney, an 11-year-old Oxford schoolgirl who proposed the Roman god of the underworld; hailed as the ninth planet, it was reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2006.

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

The Empire State Building went up in a record one year and 45 days; on opening day President Hoover pressed a button in Washington to switch on its lights for the first time.

Which radio drama of October 30, 1938, did some listeners mistake for a genuine news broadcast?

The War of the Worlds was staged by Orson Welles as news bulletins about Martians landing in New Jersey; newspapers reported nationwide panic, but far fewer listeners were fooled than the headlines claimed.

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

Jesse Owens won the 100 metres, 200 metres, long jump and sprint relay at Games Hitler meant as a showcase for Aryan supremacy; back home, the president never invited him to the White House.

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

Italy won as hosts in 1934 and kept the trophy in France in 1938, both times under coach Vittorio Pozzo; with the 1942 and 1946 tournaments lost to war, they stayed world champions for 16 years.

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

The Grapes of Wrath follows the Joad family from Oklahoma to California; the year it topped the bestseller lists it was banned and burned in several places, among them Kern County, where the Joads' journey ends.

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

Gone with the Wind began as a cure for boredom: laid up with an injured ankle in 1926, Margaret Mitchell started writing it at home. It sold a million copies in six months and was the only novel she published in her lifetime.

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

The Good Earth drew on Pearl Buck's own life: the daughter of American missionaries, she grew up in China and lived there until 1934, and the novel helped win her 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 became America's most popular music in the later 1930s?

Swing broke through on 21 August 1935 at the Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles: after an indifferent first set, Benny Goodman's band switched to its hot Fletcher Henderson arrangements and the dancers cheered.

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

Anything Goes was rescued at the last minute: weeks before opening, its producer demanded a new script, and the director Howard Lindsay rewrote the Wodehouse and Bolton original with Russel Crouse.

Which singer became a radio star in the early 1930s with the intimate style known as 'crooning'?

Bing Crosby sang softly and close to the microphone, an intimate style that only the new, more sensitive equipment made possible; his own show on CBS radio then made him a national star.

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

Robert Johnson left just 29 songs and died in 1938; a 1961 album, King of the Delta Blues Singers, finally carried them to a wide audience and to British players such as Eric Clapton.

Whose quick-frozen foods first went on sale in 1930 in grocery stores around Springfield, Massachusetts?

Clarence Birdseye, a fur trader in Labrador, had seen fish freeze almost at once in the Arctic cold and still taste fresh when thawed; he copied the effect by pressing packaged food between chilled metal plates.

The chocolate chip cookie was created in the 1930s at which Massachusetts inn, whose name Nestlé put on its chocolate chips?

The Toll House Inn in Whitman was run by Ruth Wakefield, who in 1938 took an ice pick to a Nestlé semi-sweet chocolate bar and baked the pea-sized bits into her cookies.

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

Kodachrome began with two schoolboys who felt cheated by a poor 'colour' film in 1917: Leopold Mannes and Leopold Godowsky Jr. grew up to be working musicians and kept experimenting in their spare time.

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

Hosiery: DuPont aimed nylon at the silk-stocking market, and the first 4,000 pairs put on sale in Wilmington in October 1939 were gone within three hours; wartime then claimed the fibre for parachutes.

Which dressmaking technique, pioneered by Madeleine Vionnet, gave 1930s evening gowns their clinging drape?

The bias cut means cutting cloth diagonally across the weave so that it stretches and clings; Vionnet's gowns in the style were worn by film stars such as Marlene Dietrich.

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

Neville Chamberlain waved the signed declaration at Heston aerodrome on 30 September 1938; within months Hitler had occupied Prague, and less than a year after Munich it was Chamberlain who declared war.

What was the Anschluss of 1938?

Germany's annexation of Austria came a day before Austria's chancellor was to hold his own referendum on independence; German troops crossed on 12 March 1938, and a plebiscite staged a month later recorded 99.7 per cent approval.

The 1938 shooting of German diplomat Ernst vom Rath in Paris became the Nazis' pretext for which wave of violence?

Kristallnacht followed two days later: Herschel Grynszpan, 17, shot vom Rath after his family was deported from Germany to the Polish border, and the regime used the killing to incite attacks on synagogues and Jewish shops.

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

Francisco Franco was not the rising's expected chief: General Sanjurjo, tipped to command it, died in a plane crash days into the war, and within months Franco was named the Nationalists' supreme commander. He ruled until 1975.

Which Picasso painting, made for the 1937 Paris World's Fair, answered the bombing of a Basque town?

Guernica takes its name from the town that German and Italian aircraft bombed for the Nationalists on 26 April 1937; Picasso kept it out of Spain until democracy was restored, and it finally arrived in 1981.

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, China's last emperor, had lost that throne as a six-year-old; after Japan's defeat he was captured by Soviet troops and held as a war criminal until 1959, when he was freed to live as an ordinary citizen.

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.

Which Communist leader rose to power on China's Long March?

Mao Zedong came out of the year-long retreat as the Communists' dominant figure; only a small fraction of the marchers who broke out of Jiangxi in October 1934 reached Shaanxi.

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 aiming at America's president-elect?

Anton Cermak of Chicago was hit when Giuseppe Zangara opened fire on the president-elect's car in Miami's Bayfront Park; the mayor died within three weeks, and Zangara went to the electric chair two weeks after that.

Which Louisiana politician and presidential hopeful was assassinated in 1935?

Huey Long, the 'Kingfish', was shot in the Louisiana State Capitol that he himself had pushed to build; his bodyguards killed the accused gunman, Dr Carl Weiss, on the spot, and Long died two days later.

Whose crime spree did retired Texas Ranger Frank Hamer end with an ambush on a Louisiana road in 1934?

Bonnie and Clyde were hunted for three months by Hamer, whom Texas prison officials hired after the gang shot its way through a jail break; his posse was waiting by the roadside when their car came past.

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 his crib in 1932; the outcry led Congress to make carrying a kidnap victim across state lines a federal crime, under what became known as the Lindbergh Law.

Which board game did Parker Brothers begin selling in 1935?

Monopoly was sold to Parker Brothers by Charles Darrow as his own idea, but it grew out of The Landlord's Game, devised three decades earlier by Lizzie Magie, who reportedly got $500 for it and no royalties.

Which landmark US law, signed on August 14, 1935, created old-age insurance?

The Social Security Act paid its first monthly cheque in 1940 to Ida May Fuller of Vermont, who had paid in $24.75 and went on to collect $22,888.92 before dying at 100.

Which New Deal programme housed jobless young men in rural work camps for $30 a month?

The Civilian Conservation Corps had its recruits send most of their pay home; in nine years they planted some three billion trees and built trails in hundreds of parks.

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

A solid inner core: Lehmann found earthquake waves arriving where a wholly liquid core should have left a shadow, and reasoned that something solid at the centre was bouncing them back.

Nuclear fission was discovered in 1938 by Otto Hahn, Fritz Strassmann and which physicist?

Lise Meitner, who had fled Nazi Germany that summer, worked out with her nephew Otto Frisch what Hahn's results meant: the uranium nucleus had split. Hahn alone received the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

The 1935 Labor Day hurricane, among the most intense ever to strike the United States, hit where?

The Florida Keys took the full force on 2 September 1935: more than 400 people died, over half of them First World War veterans on a road-building project, and the train sent to rescue them was overturned by the surge.

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 set the world record for steam on Stoke Bank on 3 July 1938, peaking at 126 mph on the test car's chart; the dash overheated its middle bearing, as the crew found by the time they reached Peterborough.

Which First World War flying epic of 1930 was produced and directed by Howard Hughes?

Hell's Angels began as a silent film; when talkies arrived, Hughes remade it with sound and replaced his Norwegian leading lady, whose accent no longer suited the part, with the unknown Jean Harlow.

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

Canada's Mackenzie King met Hitler in Berlin on 29 June 1937 and came away impressed, writing in his diary that Hitler truly loved his fellow men; Hitler assured him Germany had no wish for war.

Which snack cake, invented in 1930 by baker James Dewar, was originally filled with banana cream rather than vanilla?

Twinkies switched to vanilla cream only when bananas were rationed during World War II, and the change proved so popular that it stuck.

Which candy bar, launched by Mars in 1930, was named after the Mars family's favorite horse?

Snickers went by a different name in Britain and Ireland, where the same bar was marketed as Marathon.

Which country asked foreign governments in 1935 to stop calling it Persia and use its native name?

Iran was what its own people had always called the country, and Reza Shah asked foreign delegates to adopt the name at the Nowruz new year gathering of 1935.

Gangster Al Capone was sentenced to eleven years in federal prison in 1931 after being convicted of which crime?

Tax evasion was the charge prosecutors could make stick, filing 22 counts against a man whose luxurious lifestyle was plain to see.

Which patriotic song did Congress make the official United States national anthem in March 1931?

The Star-Spangled Banner had no legal standing until then: in 1929 a Ripley's Believe It or Not! cartoon had pointed out that America had no national anthem.

Which Scottish lake's monster first made headlines worldwide in 1933 after the Inverness Courier reported a sighting?

Loch Ness drew even more attention after George Spicer said an extraordinary long-necked animal had crossed the road in front of his car that July.

Which South American city gained its mountaintop statue of Christ the Redeemer in 1931 after nine years of construction?

Rio de Janeiro's Art Deco landmark is reinforced concrete clad in soapstone, and its face was sculpted by the Romanian artist Gheorghe Leonida.

Which MGM actress won a special juvenile Academy Award after playing Dorothy in 1939's The Wizard of Oz?

Judy Garland landed the part after Shirley Temple, then the most prominent child actor in Hollywood, and Deanna Durbin were reportedly considered for it.

Which Olympic tradition, often assumed to be ancient, was actually introduced for the 1936 Berlin Games?

The torch relay had no ancient precedent: organiser Carl Diem devised it, and the first flame for it was lit at Olympia in Greece on July 20, 1936.

Richard Hollingshead opened the world's first of which kind of business in New Jersey in June 1933?

Drive-in theater tests began in his own driveway in 1932, and he was granted a patent for the idea three weeks before opening night.

Which American landmark, opened in May 1937, did the US Navy want painted in black and yellow stripes?

Golden Gate Bridge planners chose International Orange instead, and at its opening the span was both the longest and the tallest suspension bridge in the world.

Which US president's name was mockingly given to the shanty towns of the homeless during the Great Depression?

Herbert Hoover was widely blamed for the slump, so old newspapers used as bedding became Hoover blankets and an empty pocket turned inside out was a Hoover flag.

Which island off California became a federal prison in the mid-1930s, run by operators who believed it escape-proof?

Alcatraz had been used by the US Army for over 80 years before the Bureau of Prisons took it over, hoping an escape-proof jail would help break a crime wave.

Which Depression-era bank robber was shot dead by lawmen as he left a Clark Gable crime drama one July night?

John Dillinger was betrayed by Ana Sage, who agreed to wear an orange dress so police could pick her out, though legend remembers her as the Woman in Red.

Which Yankees slugger made a famous pointing gesture before homering at Wrigley Field in the 1932 World Series?

Babe Ruth's intent remains unknown: film confirms the gesture, but not whether he was promising a home run or merely gesturing at the heckling Cubs dugout.

Which undersized racehorse beat Triple Crown winner War Admiral by four lengths in a 1938 two-horse special at Pimlico?

Seabiscuit had won only a quarter of his first 40 races, yet became an unlikely champion and a symbol of hope to many Americans during the Great Depression.

Which heavyweight champion beat Max Schmeling in barely two minutes in their politically charged 1938 rematch?

Joe Louis had been knocked out in round 12 by the same opponent two years earlier, the first loss of his professional career.

Which South American country hosted and won the first FIFA World Cup in 1930, marking a century of its constitution?

Uruguay staged every match in its capital, Montevideo, and came from 2–1 down at half-time to beat Argentina 4–2 in the final.

Which Art Deco Manhattan skyscraper, completed in 1930, held the world height record for just eleven months?

The Chrysler Building owed its record to a spire secretly constructed inside its frame, then raised and riveted into place within 90 minutes to outdo a rival tower.

Which 1930 US law, named for its two Republican sponsors, raised tariffs on more than 20,000 imported goods?

The Smoot–Hawley Act was signed against the advice of many senior economists, and it deepened the Depression when trading partners retaliated with tariffs of their own.

Which actress starred as Ann Darrow, the woman carried off by a giant ape in the 1933 film King Kong?

Fay Wray was also shooting The Most Dangerous Game at the time, filmed at night on the same jungle sets that King Kong used during the day.

Which actress became the first African American to win an Oscar, for playing Mammy in a 1939 Civil War epic?

Hattie McDaniel collected her award at a ceremony where she had to sit at a segregated table at the side of the room.

Which actor played the creature in Universal's 1931 film Frankenstein, wearing makeup created by Jack Pierce?

Boris Karloff joined a production that Bela Lugosi had left: fresh from Dracula, Lugosi had hoped to play Henry Frankenstein rather than the monster.

Which actress made nine RKO musicals with Fred Astaire in the 1930s, including The Gay Divorcee and Top Hat?

Ginger Rogers later turned her focus to drama and comedy, and won the Academy Award for Best Actress for Kitty Foyle in 1940.

Which 1937 children's novel was written by an Oxford professor of Anglo-Saxon and vetted for print by a ten-year-old?

The Hobbit reached print after publisher Stanley Unwin asked his son Rayner to review the manuscript, and it went on to be nominated for the Carnegie Medal.

Which 1939 Agatha Christie novel, set on an isolated island off Devon, became the world's best-selling mystery?

And Then There Were None had sold more than 100 million copies by 2007, which also makes it one of the best-selling books of any kind.

Which 1932 Aldous Huxley novel imagines a future London whose citizens are engineered in artificial wombs into castes?

Brave New World takes its title from Miranda's speech in Shakespeare's The Tempest, where the phrase is meant ironically.

Which jazz singer recorded Strange Fruit in 1939, a protest song against lynching drawn from an Abel Meeropol poem?

Billie Holiday was not the first to sing it: Meeropol, his wife and the singer Laura Duncan had performed it at New York venues including Madison Square Garden.

Which 1930 Grant Wood painting used the artist's sister and his family dentist as its two models?

American Gothic began with a real house in Eldon, Iowa, which Wood pictured alongside the kind of people he fancied should live in it.

Which photographer took Migrant Mother in 1936 after passing a pea-pickers' camp sign in Nipomo, California?

Dorothea Lange later had the mother's thumb retouched out of the foreground, having decided it was a glaring defect in the picture.

Which subatomic particle did James Chadwick discover in 1932, winning the Nobel Prize in Physics three years later?

The neutron, a nuclear particle with no electric charge, was something Chadwick and Ernest Rutherford had been hypothesising for years before the evidence arrived.

Which material did DuPont chemist Roy Plunkett discover by accident in 1938 while trying to make a new refrigerant?

Teflon first appeared as a waxy, oddly slippery coating inside a gas bottle, and an early use was sealing uranium pipes for the Manhattan Project.

Which everyday writing tool did Hungarian-born journalist László Bíró patent in Paris in 1938?

The ballpoint pen grew out of a newsroom observation: Bíró noticed that the ink used in newspaper printing dried quickly and left the paper smudge-free.

Which technology did Robert Watson-Watt help pioneer in 1935 after being asked about reports of a Nazi death ray?

Radar passed its first test that February, when signals from a short-wave broadcast transmitter were bounced off a Handley Page Heyford aircraft.

Which fish, thought extinct for some 66 million years, was found alive off the coast of South Africa in 1938?

The coelacanth turned out to have living relatives too: a second species was discovered in the seas of eastern Indonesia in the late 1990s.

The last known member of which carnivorous marsupial species died at Hobart Zoo in September 1936?

The Tasmanian tiger, or thylacine, had been the subject of a protection campaign since 1901, yet no protections came into force until the year the last one died.

Which drink first went on commercial sale in cans in 1935, starting in the city of Richmond, Virginia?

Beer in cans crossed the Atlantic within the year, when the Felinfoel Brewery in Wales became the first brewery outside the US to can it commercially.

Which supermarket convenience did Sylvan Goldman, owner of Oklahoma's Humpty Dumpty chain, introduce in June 1937?

The shopping cart began with a wooden folding chair: Goldman put a basket on the seat and wheels on the legs, and called the result a folding basket carrier.

Which office process did Chester Carlson first achieve in October 1938 in a rented room in Astoria, Queens?

Photocopying by his method made dry copies, unlike the wet ones of the Photostat process, which is why it was later named xerography, meaning dry writing.

Which African nation, led by Emperor Haile Selassie, was invaded by Mussolini's forces in October 1935?

Ethiopia's fall discredited the League of Nations, whose inability to prevent the invasion was laid bare on the eve of the Second World War.

Which Berlin landmark was set ablaze in February 1933, four weeks after Adolf Hitler was sworn in as chancellor?

The Reichstag blaze was blamed on Communist agitators, and the Nazis used it as a pretext for an emergency decree that suspended civil liberties.

Which hero of the Old West first appeared in 1933 in a radio show on Detroit station WXYZ?

The Lone Ranger proved such a hit that it spawned books, films and a television show, in which the Mohawk actor Jay Silverheels was cast as Tonto.

Which men's golf major, co-founded by amateur champion Bobby Jones, held its first edition in the mid-1930s?

The Masters began life as the Augusta National Invitation Tournament, and its green jacket was not awarded to the champion until 1949.

Which labor secretary, appointed in 1933, was the first woman ever to serve in a US presidential cabinet?

Frances Perkins held the post until 1945, longer than anyone else, and counted witnessing the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire as a pivotal event in her life.

Which Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert comedy was first to sweep all of the Big Five Academy Awards?

It Happened One Night won every award it was nominated for, a top-five sweep that went unmatched until One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in 1975.

Which New Zealand city was razed by a 1931 earthquake and rebuilt in the Art Deco style of the day?

Napier was shaken for two and a half minutes by a quake so violent that coastal land around the city was lifted by about two metres.

Which tennis player in 1938 became the first, male or female, to win all four Grand Slam tournaments in one year?

Don Budge never lost a set at Wimbledon that summer, where he also won the doubles and the mixed doubles.

Which aviator earned the nickname Wrong Way in 1938 after flying from Brooklyn to Ireland instead of California?

Douglas Corrigan blamed heavy cloud and a misread compass, but he had been denied permission for the crossing and never publicly admitted doing it on purpose.

Which contralto sang on the Lincoln Memorial steps on Easter Sunday 1939 after being refused Constitution Hall?

Marian Anderson drew an integrated crowd of more than 75,000 people that day, along with a radio audience in the millions.

Which South Dakota monument did sculptor Gutzon Borglum oversee from 1927 until his death in March 1941?

Mount Rushmore's four presidential faces were all completed during the 1930s, and Borglum's son Lincoln took over the project when his father died.