100 Fun Facts About Great Depression

The Wall Street crash that is usually taken as the start of the Great Depression happened in which year?

The Dow lost almost half its value in two months, sliding from 381 to 198.

By what name is 29 October 1929, the worst day of the crash, remembered?

A record 16.4 million shares changed hands; Black Thursday and Black Monday had come the week before.

At the depth of the Depression in 1933, roughly what share of the US workforce was unemployed?

Even in 1940, with war orders arriving, the rate was still around 15 percent.

The Dow Jones peaked at 381.17 in September 1929; where did it bottom out in July 1932?

That was an 89 percent loss from the September 1929 peak.

How many years did it take the Dow Jones to climb back to its September 1929 peak?

The milestone finally came on 23 November 1954, in a very different America.

Which economist declared days before the crash that stocks had reached 'a permanently high plateau'?

Fisher, one of America's most respected economists, lost a fortune and much of his reputation.

On Black Thursday, Richard Whitney tried to calm the market by loudly bidding for which company's shares?

He bid $205 for 25,000 shares; the rally lasted a day, and Whitney later went to Sing Sing for embezzlement.

How many of America's roughly 25,000 banks had failed by 1933?

Around $7 billion in deposits was frozen in failed banks by April 1933; there was no deposit insurance yet.

Between 1929 and 1932, worldwide GDP fell by roughly what percentage?

The United States did much worse, with a 30 percent contraction, and world trade fell by more than half.

The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 raised duties on roughly how many imported goods?

Economists petitioned Hoover in their hundreds to veto it, and Henry Ford called it 'an economic stupidity'.

How many American economists signed the 1930 petition begging Hoover to veto the Smoot-Hawley tariff?

US exports fell from about $5.2 billion in 1929 to $1.7 billion in 1933 as trading partners retaliated.

Which country retaliated first against Smoot-Hawley, with duties on about 30% of US exports?

Cuba, Mexico, France, Italy and Australia followed, and world trade shrank to a third of its 1929 level by 1933.

Which country stopped exchanging its currency for gold in September 1931?

Countries that left gold early, like Britain, recovered sooner; the US did not follow until 1933.

Unemployment in which European country reached nearly 30%, helping the Nazi Party to power in 1933?

Germany had been living on American loans, which dried up after 1929.

What were the shanty towns of the homeless that sprang up across America nicknamed?

Democratic publicist Charles Michelson coined the jab; St. Louis had the largest, with four separate sectors.

In Depression-era slang, what was a 'Hoover flag'?

Newspapers were Hoover blankets, cardboard soles were Hoover leather, and a car pulled by horses was a Hoover wagon.

In Canada, a horse-drawn car stripped of its engine was named after which prime minister?

Bennett buggies were common on the Prairies, where farmers who bought cars in the 1920s could no longer afford fuel.

The 'Bonus Army' that camped in Washington in 1932 was made up of veterans of which war?

They wanted early payment of bonus certificates not due until 1945; Congress finally paid out in 1936, over Roosevelt's veto.

Which general led the troops that cleared the Bonus Army's camp from Washington in July 1932?

His aide that day was Major Dwight Eisenhower, and Major George Patton led the cavalry.

The Bonus Army's main shantytown stood on which marshy patch of Washington, D.C.?

Camp Marks was built from junk-pile lumber, packing boxes and scrap tin, and was burned after the eviction.

Who defeated Herbert Hoover in the 1932 presidential election?

He carried 42 of the 48 states with 57 percent of the popular vote.

How many electoral votes did Hoover manage in his 1932 landslide defeat?

He took just six states; the result ended seven decades of Republican dominance dating back to 1860.

Which song became Roosevelt's 1932 campaign anthem and one of the most famous in US political history?

Roosevelt also broke precedent by flying to Chicago to accept the nomination in person.

Where did Roosevelt first use the phrase 'New Deal'?

The three Rs of the programme were relief, recovery and reform.

Two days after taking office in March 1933, Roosevelt closed the financial system for four days by declaring what?

When banks reopened on 13 March, depositors queued to put their cash back; half of it was redeposited within two weeks.

What were Roosevelt's evening radio talks to the nation nicknamed?

CBS executive Harry Butcher coined the term; Roosevelt gave about 30 of them between 1933 and 1944.

What was the subject of Roosevelt's very first fireside chat?

The talk went out on 12 March 1933, the night before the banks reopened; wartime chats drew more than half the country.

Roughly how many young men served in the Civilian Conservation Corps between 1933 and 1942?

They were paid $30 a month, of which $25 had to be sent home to their families.

The CCC earned the nickname 'Roosevelt's Tree Army' for planting roughly how many trees?

An April 1936 Gallup poll found 82 percent of Americans approved of the camps.

Who headed the Works Progress Administration, created in 1935?

The WPA built LaGuardia Airport and Oregon's Timberline Lodge and paid writers, actors and painters.

Roughly how many people did the WPA employ between 1935 and 1943?

Its Federal Project Number One paid writers, actors, musicians and painters, an unprecedented use of relief money.

The Tennessee Valley Authority was created mainly to bring what to a poor region of the South?

Its dams also controlled floods and drew industry into the Tennessee River basin.

The FDIC, created in 1933, initially insured bank deposits up to what amount?

It came out of the same Banking Act of 1933 as the Glass-Steagall provisions.

The 1933 Glass-Steagall provisions walled off deposit-taking banks from which industry?

The wall stood until President Clinton signed its repeal in 1999.

Which New Deal agency's Blue Eagle codes were struck down unanimously by the Supreme Court in 1935?

The Schechter 'sick chicken' case killed the NRA and set up Roosevelt's clash with the Court.

Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law in which year?

It created old-age pensions and unemployment insurance, and Aid to Dependent Children for single mothers.

Frances Perkins, who chaired the committee that designed Social Security, was the first woman to do what?

She was Secretary of Labor for all twelve of Roosevelt's years, the longest tenure in the job.

Roosevelt's 1937 proposal to add up to six new justices was mocked with what nickname?

It would have added a justice for every sitting member over 70; even his own party balked and it died in the Senate.

Justice Owen Roberts's sudden 1937 shift to upholding New Deal laws was nicknamed what?

His vote in West Coast Hotel v. Parrish took the wind out of Roosevelt's court plan, though historians dispute the cause.

The great dust storm of 14 April 1935 that blackened the Plains is remembered by what name?

Dust from the Plains reached Chicago, dropping 12 million pounds on the city, and blew on to New York and Washington.

Who coined the term 'Dust Bowl'?

Edward Stanley wrote it into a rewrite of reporter Robert Geiger's story the day after Black Sunday.

Roughly how many people left the Plains states during the 1930s?

Many were called Okies whether or not they came from Oklahoma.

The Dust Bowl was centred on the panhandles of Oklahoma and which other state?

Adjacent parts of New Mexico, Colorado and Kansas were also stripped of topsoil.

Which folk singer's Dust Bowl Ballads earned him the nickname 'the Dust Bowl Troubadour'?

His guitar carried the slogan 'This machine kills fascists'.

In The Grapes of Wrath, the Joad family leaves Oklahoma for California along which highway?

Steinbeck's 1939 novel won the Pulitzer and was cited when he won the Nobel Prize in 1962.

The title The Grapes of Wrath comes from which patriotic song?

Julia Ward Howe's line about trampling out the vintage suited Steinbeck's theme of anger ripening in the fields.

Who played Tom Joad in John Ford's 1940 film of The Grapes of Wrath?

The film follows the book closely for an hour, then softens the ending considerably.

Who took the 1936 photograph known as 'Migrant Mother'?

Its subject, Florence Owens Thompson, was 32 and had seven children; the picture was taken at a pea-pickers' camp in Nipomo, California.

Which crooner, along with Rudy Vallee, made 'Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?' a 1932 hit?

Yip Harburg and Jay Gorney wrote it for the revue Americana; it was one of very few pop songs to face the collapse head-on.

Senator Huey Long promised every family a $5,000 grant under what programme?

The Kingfish's clubs claimed 7.5 million members by 1935, the year he was shot dead in the state capitol.

Huey Long's nickname 'The Kingfish' was borrowed from a character on which radio show?

He was shot on 8 September 1935 by Carl Weiss, whose body was hit at least 60 times by Long's bodyguards.

Which skyscraper, opened in May 1931, did not turn a profit until the early 1950s?

It stayed the world's tallest building until the World Trade Center's north tower topped out in 1970.

Which board game did Parker Brothers begin selling in November 1935, after buying it from Charles Darrow?

It descends from Lizzie Magie's 1904 Landlord's Game, which was meant to teach the evils of monopolies.

The dam built on the Colorado River between 1931 and 1936 was officially known by what name until 1947?

Congress unanimously restored the name Hoover Dam in 1947; 112 deaths were linked to its construction.

Bonnie and Clyde were ambushed and killed in May 1934 in which state?

Retired Texas Ranger Frank Hamer led the posse on Highway 154 in Bienville Parish.

The 1936 Jarrow March saw about 200 unemployed men walk from north-east England to where?

They covered some 291 miles after Palmer's shipyard closed; Parliament accepted their petition and never debated it.

Which Labour MP for Jarrow marched with her constituents and declared the town had been 'murdered'?

'Red Ellen' later became Britain's Minister of Education after the war.

US unemployment jumped from 14.3% to 19% in a downturn starting mid-1937; what did it follow?

Roosevelt answered with a $5 billion spending programme in spring 1938 and the recovery resumed.

Before politics, Herbert Hoover made his fortune in which profession?

He ran a food relief operation that fed nine million Belgians in World War I, which makes his Depression reputation all the more ironic.

What event is generally said to have finally ended the Great Depression?

War production soaked up the last of the unemployed; the US did not regain its 1929 output for more than a decade.

Roosevelt's Executive Order 6102 of April 1933 banned Americans from hoarding what?

Issued under the 1917 Trading with the Enemy Act, the order threatened violators with up to ten years in prison or a $10,000 fine.

The 1934 Gold Reserve Act lifted the official price of gold from $20.67 to what per ounce?

Foreign holders rushed to sell gold to the Treasury at the new price, and US reserves swelled through the rest of the decade.

To lift prices, the 1933 Agricultural Adjustment Act paid farmers to do what?

Culling piglets while families went hungry shocked the public; oranges were even soaked in kerosene to keep them off the market.

Farm subsidies under the first AAA were funded by a tax struck down in 1936; who paid it?

Justice Owen Roberts held the scheme invaded powers reserved to the states; a rewritten second AAA followed in 1938.

The 'Send-a-Dime' chain-letter craze of 1935 began in which American city?

Recipients mailed a dime to the top name, added their own to the bottom and posted five copies; the local post office was soon swamped with 100,000 letters a day.

Who directed the Federal Theatre Project, the WPA's 1935–39 stage programme?

A Vassar theatre professor, she had studied state-funded theatre abroad; the project launched Orson Welles and Arthur Miller.

The Federal Writers' Project's best-known output was a series of guides to what?

The project also recorded more than 2,300 first-person accounts from formerly enslaved people, now held by the Library of Congress.

Ferdinand Pecora, whose 1933 hearings exposed Wall Street abuses, held what role?

He was the fourth lawyer to hold the job, and his 1939 memoir of the investigation was titled Wall Street Under Oath.

Which Hoover-era agency, set up early in 1932, lent to struggling banks and railroads?

Its first president, former Vice President Charles Dawes, resigned within months to tend to his own failing Chicago bank.

Creditanstalt, whose May 1931 collapse spread the crisis across Europe, was based where?

The Rothschild-led bank held 27% of the country's banking assets, equal to 16% of GDP, far too big for any rival to absorb.

'Radio priest' Father Charles Coughlin broadcast from his shrine in which Detroit suburb?

An early Roosevelt booster, he turned on the New Deal as too friendly to bankers and founded the National Union for Social Justice in 1934.

Dr Francis Townsend's 1933 pension plan promised every American over 60 how much a month?

Recipients had to quit work and spend it all within the month; by 1936 Townsend Clubs claimed about two million members.

Upton Sinclair ran for governor in 1934 under the banner EPIC; what did the P stand for?

Studio bosses, alarmed by his plan to hand idle film lots to jobless movie workers, docked employee pay to fund opponent Frank Merriam.

In his 1936 landslide, Roosevelt lost only two states: Vermont and which other?

Alf Landon collected just eight electoral votes, while Roosevelt's 60.8% of the popular vote was the largest share since 1820.

Which magazine's poll of ten million readers wrongly forecast a Landon win in 1936?

It had called the previous five elections correctly; after missing the margin by 39 points it folded within 18 months.

The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 set the federal minimum wage at what hourly rate?

The NRA had tried a minimum wage in 1933, but the Supreme Court wiped it out two years later.

The short-lived Civil Works Administration created four million jobs in which winter?

It spent $200 million a month and was shut on 31 March 1934; social workers resented losing control of relief to engineers.

Ida May Fuller, the first monthly Social Security recipient, had paid how much in tax?

She lived to 100 and collected $22,888.92 in benefits, roughly nine hundred times what she had paid in.

Which German leader's austerity in 1930–32 earned him the nickname 'Hunger Chancellor'?

Opposed by most of the Reichstag, he governed through presidential emergency decrees issued by Hindenburg under Article 48.

The December 1930 run said to have begun US banking's collapse hit which New York borough?

Despite its grand name, Bank of United States was a private New York bank; up to 25,000 people crowded its Southern Boulevard branch.

Which Swedish 'Match King' was found dead in his Paris flat in March 1932?

He controlled up to three-quarters of world match production; a biographer later described the empire as a Ponzi scheme.

Who was fatally wounded in the February 1933 Miami attempt on President-elect Roosevelt?

Gunman Giuseppe Zangara, who blamed Hoover and then Roosevelt for his joblessness, went to the electric chair 33 days after the shooting.

Adopted in 1933, the 20th Amendment moved presidential inaugurations from March 4 to when?

The 'lame duck' amendment also moved Congress's start to 3 January; Roosevelt's March 1933 swearing-in was the last under the old calendar.

The Cullen–Harrison Act of March 1933 legalised beer up to what strength by weight?

Signing it, Roosevelt remarked 'I think this would be a good time for a beer'; sales began on 7 April, now celebrated as National Beer Day.

Roosevelt's original 'Brain Trust' of Moley, Tugwell and Berle taught at which university?

New York Times reporter James Kieran coined the label in 1932, and the three men never actually met as a group.

Why was 'Migrant Mother' Florence Owens Thompson stranded at a pea-pickers' camp in 1936?

Aged 32 with seven children, she later said she never got a penny from the picture and wished it had never been taken.

Which Australian racehorse won the 1930 Melbourne Cup days after an attempt on its life?

He went on to win the 1932 Agua Caliente Handicap in Mexico, then died suddenly weeks later amid rumours of poisoning.

The September 1931 Invergordon Mutiny saw Royal Navy sailors refuse orders over what?

The sailors learned of the cuts from newspapers, some of which wrongly implied a 25% reduction; HMS Hood was among the ten warships in port.

The Stavisky affair behind the February 1934 Paris riots involved fake bonds from where?

Stavisky was found shot dead in a Chamonix chalet that January, officially a suicide that much of the press refused to believe.

Milo Reno's Farmers' Holiday Association of 1932 urged Midwestern farmers to do what?

Pickets blockaded roads into Sioux City and dumped produce by the roadside under the slogan 'Stay at Home—Buy Nothing—Sell Nothing'.

Canada's 1935 On-to-Ottawa Trek of relief-camp strikers was broken up by police where?

The men had ridden boxcars east from Vancouver; only eight delegates were allowed on to meet the prime minister before the July 1 riot.

The 1936–37 sit-down strike that forced GM to recognise the UAW happened in which city?

Strikers repelled a police assault on Fisher Body 2 with hinges and bolts, a skirmish they mocked as the 'Battle of the Running Bulls'.

Seabiscuit's celebrated 1938 match race at Pimlico was against which Triple Crown winner?

An estimated 40 million people listened on radio as the underdog won by four lengths and was voted Horse of the Year.

The 'Century of Progress' world's fair of 1933–34 was staged in which American city?

Fan dancer Sally Rand was a star attraction, and the Graf Zeppelin circled Lake Michigan for two hours before landing nearby in October 1933.

Prohibition ended on 5 December 1933 when which state became the 36th to ratify repeal?

The 21st is the only amendment ratified by state conventions rather than legislatures; certification came just 17 minutes after the vote.

Which future ambassador and political patriarch was the first chairman of the SEC in 1934?

Roosevelt had put a renowned stock-market operator in charge of policing the markets; Kennedy served just over a year.

Keynes's General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money was published in which year?

He priced the book at a sensational five shillings to spread his ideas widely, and drafted it in pencil from an armchair.

Alfred Butts devised Scrabble in the early 1930s after losing his job in which profession?

He first called it Lexiko, then Criss Cross Words; every maker he approached turned it down before James Brunot bought the rights.

Alf Landon, Roosevelt's Republican challenger in 1936, was governor of which state?

He beat Senator William Borah for the nomination at the Cleveland convention and took just 36.6% of the popular vote.

How long did Congress take to pass Roosevelt's Emergency Banking Act on 9 March 1933?

The House voted 435–0 and the Senate 96–0 on a draft largely prepared by Hoover's Treasury staff, reopening sound banks within days.