As the Great Depression continued worldwide, Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany. Nazis declared a national boycott of Jewish-owned businesses and opened their first concentration camp, Dachau. In the U.S., after President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt narrowly escaped assassination, he inaugurated his New Deal programs, ended Prohibition and began speaking directly to Americans with radio fireside chats. A “monster” appeared in Scotland’s Loch Ness, King Kong loomed large on movie screens and the first drive-in theater opened in New Jersey.
Jan
05
On January 5, 1933, construction begins on the Golden Gate Bridge, as workers began excavating 3.25 million cubic feet of dirt for the structure’s huge anchorages.
Fishermen on Baker Beach enjoy the view of the Golden Gate Bridge under construction, San Francisco, California, 1930s. (Photo by Underwood Archives/Getty Images)
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Jan
30
Jan
30
Feb
15
Mar
04
On March 4, 1933, at the height of the Great Depression, Franklin Delano Roosevelt is inaugurated as the 32nd president of the United States. In his famous inaugural address, delivered outside the east wing of the U.S. Capitol, Roosevelt outlined his “New Deal”—an expansion of the federal government as an instrument of employment opportunity and welfare—and told Americans that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
379933 22: Franklin D. Roosevelt takes the Oath of Office as President of the United States in January 20, 1933 in Washington D.C. (Photo by National Archive/Getty Images)
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Mar
12
On March 12, 1933, eight days after his inauguration, President Franklin D. Roosevelt gives his first national radio address—or “fireside chat”—broadcast directly from the White House.
Franklin Roosevelt, president of the United States from 1933-1945, entered the presidency during the Great Depression and presided over the nation's economic recovery, which was accomplished through a program of legislative reform known as the New Deal. Part of Roosevelt's mission was to regain the people's trust in the nation's banks, and here he is shown preparing for his first "fireside chat" in which he explained the measures he was taking to reform the nation's banking system. (Photo by © CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)
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Mar
18
On this day in 1933, American automaker Studebaker, then heavily in debt, goes into receivership. The company’s president, Albert Erskine, resigned and later that year died by suicide. Studebaker eventually rebounded from its financial troubles, only to shut down the assembly line and transition out of the automobile business in 1966.
Mar
22
On March 22, 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Beer and Wine Revenue Act. This law levies a federal tax on all alcoholic beverages to raise revenue for the federal government and gives individual states the option to further regulate the sale and distribution of beer and wine.
Apr
04
On April 4, 1933, a dirigible crashes in New Jersey, killing 73 people in one of the first air disasters in history. The Akron was the largest airship built in the United States when it took its first flight in August 1931. In its short life of less than two years, it was involved in two fatal accidents.
Apr
05
On April 5, 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order creating an agency called "Emergency Conservation Work." This would later be subsumed by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), an innovative federally funded organization that put tens of thousands of Americans to work during the Great Depression on projects with environmental benefits.
Apr
20
On April 20, 1933, the United States went off the gold standard, a monetary system in which currency is backed by gold, when Congress enacted a joint resolution nullifying the right of creditors to demand payment in gold. The United States had been on a gold standard since 1879, except for an embargo on gold exports during World War I, but bank failures during the Great Depression of the 1930s frightened the public into hoarding gold, making the policy untenable.
This Day in History – June 5, 1968, Senator Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in the Ambassador Hotel by 24-year old Palestinian Sirhan Sirhan. He was shot in the head and died early the next morning.
May
02
The modern legend of the Loch Ness Monster is born when a sighting makes local news on May 2, 1933. The newspaper Inverness Courier relates an account of a local couple who claim to have seen “an enormous animal rolling and plunging on the surface.” The story of the “monster” (a moniker chosen by the Courier editor) becomes a media phenomenon, with London newspapers sending correspondents to Scotland and a circus offering a 20,000 pound sterling reward for capture of the beast.
A possible sighting of the Loch Ness Monster. References to a monster in Loch Ness date back 565 AD, since when more than 1,000 people claim to have seen 'Nessie', making the area a popular tourist attraction.
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May
03
James Joseph Brown, Jr., the revolutionary musical figure who come to be known as “Soul Brother #1,”The Godfather of Soul,” “Mr. Dynamite,” “Sex Machine” and “The Minister of the New New Super Heavy Funk,” is born on May 3, 1933. The story Brown himself would often tell is that he appeared stillborn when he first came into the world, but that an aunt attending his birth managed to breathe life into him.
James Brown performing in 1968.
Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Jun
06
Jul
06
On July 6, 1933, Major League Baseball’s first All-Star Game took place at Chicago’s Comiskey Park. The brainchild of a determined sports editor, the event was designed to bolster the sport and improve its reputation during the darkest years of the Great Depression. Originally billed as a one-time “Game of the Century,” it has now become a permanent and much-loved fixture of the baseball season.
Jul
12
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Sep
22
On September 22, 1933, the notorious Barker gang robs a Federal Reserve mail truck in Chicago, Illinois, and kills Officer Miles Cunningham. Netting only a bunch of worthless checks, the Barkers soon returned to a crime with which they had more success—kidnapping. A few months later, the Barkers kidnapped wealthy banker Edward Bremer, demanding $200,000 in ransom.
Sep
23
On September 23, 1933, a party of American geologists lands at the Persian Gulf port of Jubail in Saudi Arabia and begins its journey into the desert. That July, with the discovery of a massive oil field at Ghawar, Saudi King Abdel Aziz had granted the Standard Oil Company of California a concession to “explore and search for and drill and extract and manufacture and transport” petroleum and “kindred bituminous matter” in the country’s vast Eastern Province; in turn, Standard Oil immediately dispatched the team of scientists to locate the most profitable spot for the company to begin its drilling.
Oct
18
On October 18, 1933, the American philosopher-inventor R. Buckminster Fuller applies for a patent for his Dymaxion Car. The Dymaxion—the word itself was another Fuller invention, a combination of “dynamic,” “maximum,” and “ion”—looked and drove like no vehicle anyone had ever seen.
Nov
26
A mob of people in San Jose, California, storm the jail where Thomas Thurmond and John Holmes are being held as suspects in the kidnapping and murder of Brooke Hart, the 22-year-old son of a local storeowner. The mob of angry citizens proceeded to lynch the accused men and then pose them for pictures.
Dec
05
The 21st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is ratified, repealing the 18th Amendment and bringing an end to the era of national prohibition of alcohol in America. At 5:32 p.m. EST, Utah became the 36th state to ratify the amendment, achieving the requisite three-fourths majority of states’ approval. Pennsylvania and Ohio had ratified it earlier in the day.
Dec
06
On December 6, 1933, a federal judge rules that Ulysses by James Joyce is not obscene. The book had been banned immediately in both the United States and England when it came out in 1922. Three years earlier, its serialization in an American review had been cut short by the U.S. Post Office for the same reason. Fortunately, one of Joyce’s supporters, Sylvia Beach, owner of the Paris-based bookstore Shakespeare and Co., published the novel herself in 1922.
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