50 Fun Facts About 1930s

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

Drought plus decades of farming without crop rotation stripped an estimated 100 million acres.

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

The programme was a radical break from the laissez-faire economics that preceded it.

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

It is the only amendment ever passed to repeal another one.

Which 1937 animated film became the highest-grossing movie of the decade in gross rentals?

Gone with the Wind, released two years later, beat it on distributor rentals and still leads when adjusted for inflation.

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

Both arrived as pulp magazines were at the height of their popularity.

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

Thirty-six people died and the public never trusted hydrogen airships again.

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

The search that followed found nothing.

Which planet was discovered by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930?

It held the title of ninth planet until 2006.

Which New York skyscraper opened on May 1, 1931, and stayed the world's tallest for 35 years?

The Golden Gate Bridge followed in San Francisco in May 1937.

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

Orson Welles' adaptation of H. G. Wells was staged as a series of news bulletins.

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

A year earlier he set five world records and tied a sixth in under an hour at the Big Ten Championships.

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

The 1938 tournament in France was the last World Cup until 1950.

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

Steinbeck's book won the Pulitzer Prize; The Yearling had topped the list the year before.

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

The 1939 film version remains the highest-grossing movie ever when adjusted for inflation.

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

Hervey Allen's Anthony Adverse then held the top spot for the next two years.

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

City Lights, released in 1931, was still essentially silent four years into the talkie era.

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

It gradually pushed out the 'sweet' jazz that had dominated the early part of the decade.

Cole Porter's 'Night and Day' was the biggest song of 1932. Which of his songs was the biggest hit of 1935?

Blue Moon by Rodgers and Hart topped 1934, and A Foggy Day was the song of 1937.

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

His 'I'm an Old Cowhand' was the most popular song of 1936.

Which two Delta blues musicians did the most to expand the genre in the 1930s?

Django Reinhardt and Stéphane Grappelli were meanwhile inventing Gypsy jazz in Paris.

Whose frozen foods first went on sale on March 8, 1930, in Springfield, Massachusetts?

That same year Frank Whittle patented the turbojet engine.

Who developed the chocolate chip cookie in 1938?

Scotch Tape had reached the market five years earlier.

Which colour film, the first from Eastman Kodak, was invented in 1935?

The BBC began the world's first regular high-definition TV service the following year.

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

Rayon was already spreading through everyday dressmaking.

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

Schiaparelli meanwhile teamed up with Salvador Dalí for a lobster dress and a shoe-shaped hat.

Which British monarch abdicated in 1936, handing the crown to George VI?

He had reigned just 325 days after his father's death.

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

He was ousted in favour of Churchill in May 1940 after the German invasion of Norway.

What was the Anschluss of 1938?

The Sudetenland followed after Munich, and what was left of Czechoslovakia was occupied in 1939.

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

Some 267 synagogues were destroyed and up to 30,000 Jews were sent to concentration camps.

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

Germany and Italy backed his side; the Soviet Union backed the Republicans.

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

The German and Soviet pavilions at the fair were built facing each other.

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

Paraguay won; the disputed Gran Chaco territory was divided by agreement in 1938.

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

He was the last emperor of China's Qing dynasty.

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

The Gandhi–Irwin Pact of March 1931 ended the campaign in return for talks.

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

It ended two years later with the collapse of Mao's Chinese Soviet Republic.

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

Their work fed the later British effort at Bletchley Park.

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

Giuseppe Zangara fired five shots; Cermak died several weeks later.

Which Louisiana politician and presidential hopeful was assassinated in 1935?

His killer was Carl Weiss.

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

The couple are believed to have killed at least nine police officers.

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

H. L. Mencken called it 'the biggest story since the Resurrection'.

Which board game did Parker Brothers begin selling on November 5, 1935?

Its properties were named after streets in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

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

Labor Secretary Frances Perkins led the committee that designed it.

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

Hoover Dam, built between 1931 and 1936, was another of the great public works of the decade.

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

She reached it by explaining oddities in seismic waves from earthquakes.

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

The same year Marguerite Perey discovered the element francium.

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

It obliterated the town of Islamorada and killed around 408 people.

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

The last original Beetle was built in Mexico in 2003.

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

The class had been introduced by the London and North Eastern Railway just three years earlier.

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

It took four years to make and was produced independently, outside the studio system.

Which country's premier Mackenzie King was the only North American leader to meet Hitler?

Newfoundland, then a separate dominion, had voluntarily returned to British rule in 1934.