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The Twenty-first Amendment repealed the Eighteenth, the first time an amendment had been undone; it was ratified by state conventions rather than legislatures, Utah casting the decisive vote on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

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.