1932

Events from the year 1932 in the United States.
==Incumbents==
===Federal Government===
* President: Herbert Hoover (R-CA)
* Vice President: Charles Curtis (R-KS)
* Chief Justice: Charles Evans Hughes (NY)
* Speaker of the House of Representatives: John Nance Garner (D-TX)
* Senate Majority Leader: James Eli Watson (R-IN)
* Congress: 72nd
==Events==
===January - March===
* January 1 – The United States Post Office Department issues a set of 12 stamps commemorating the 200th anniversary of George Washington's birth.
* January 7 – The Stimson Doctrine is proclaimed, in response to the Japanese invasion of Manchuria.
* January 12 – Hattie W. Caraway becomes the first woman elected to the United States Senate.
* February 2 – The Reconstruction Finance Corporation begins operations in Washington, D.C.
* February 4 – The 1932 Winter Olympics open in Lake Placid, New York.
* February 15 – Clara, Lu & Em, generally regarded as the first daytime network soap opera, debuts in its morning time slot over the Blue Network of NBC Radio, having originally been a late evening program.
* February 22 (Washington's Birthday) – The Purple Heart is revived by War Department General Order No. 3 as a decoration of the U.S. military awarded in the name of the President to those wounded or killed while serving with the U.S. Armed Forces; retrospective awards are made.
* March 1 – Charles Lindbergh Jr., the infant son of Anne Morrow Lindbergh and Charles Lindbergh, is kidnapped from the family home near Hopewell, New Jersey.
* March 7 – Four people are killed when police fire upon 3,000 unemployed autoworkers marching outside the Ford River Rouge Plant in Dearborn, Michigan.
* March 25 – Tarzan the Ape Man opens, with Olympic gold medal swimmer Johnny Weissmuller in the title role; he will star in a total of twelve Tarzan films.
===April - June===
* April 6 – U.S. president Herbert Hoover supports armament limitations.
* May 2 – Comedian Jack Benny's radio show airs for the first time.
* May 12 – Ten weeks after his abduction, the infant son of Charles Lindbergh is found dead just a few miles from the Lindberghs' home.
* May 20 – Amelia Earhart flies from the U.S. to Derry, Northern Ireland in 14 hours 54 minutes.
* May 29 – The first of approximately 15,000 World War I veterans arrive in Washington, D.C. demanding the immediate payment of their military bonus, becoming known as the Bonus Army.
* June 1 – The Republican Citizens Committee Against National Prohibition is established for the repeal of prohibition in the U.S.
* June 6
** The Revenue Act of 1932 is enacted, creating the first gas tax in the United States at 1 cent per U.S. gallon (0.26 ¢/L) sold.
** The 6.4 Mw Eureka earthquake affects the north coast of California with a maximum Mercalli intensity of VIII (Severe). Three people are injured and one killed.
* June 29 – The comedy serial Vic and Sade debuts on NBC Radio.
===July - September===
* July 8 – The Dow Jones Industrial Average reaches its lowest level of the Great Depression, bottoming out at 41.22.
* July 28 – U.S. President Herbert Hoover orders the U.S. Army to forcibly evict the Bonus Army of World War I veterans gathered in Washington, D.C. Troops disperse the last of the Bonus Army the next day.
* July 30
** The 1932 Summer Olympics open in Los Angeles.
** Walt Disney's Flowers and Trees, the first animated cartoon to be presented in full Technicolor, premieres in Los Angeles, California. It releases in theaters, along with Eugene O'Neill's experimental play Strange Interlude (starring Norma Shearer and Clark Gable), and will go on to win the first Academy Award for Best Animated Short.
* August 1 – A farmers' revolt begins in the Midwestern United States.
* August 7 – Raymond Edward Welch becomes the first one-legged man to scale 6,288 feet (1,917 m) New Hampshire.
* August 10 – A 5.1 kg chondrite-type meteorite breaks into at least 7 fragments and strikes earth near the town of Archie in Cass County, Missouri.
* August 31 – A total solar eclipse is visible from northern Canada through northeastern Vermont, New Hampshire, southwestern Maine, and the Capes of Massachusetts.
===October - December===
* October 1 – The famous Babe Ruth's called shot is made in the fifth inning of game 3 of the 1932 World Series (baseball) during the 1932 New York Yankees season.
* October 2 – The New York Yankees defeat the Chicago Cubs, 4 games to 0, to win their 4th World Series Title in baseball.
* October 13 – Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes lays the cornerstone for a new U.S. Supreme Court building.
* October 15 – The Michigan Marching Band (at this time called the Varsity band) debuts Script Ohio at the Michigan versus Ohio State game in Columbus.
* October 23 – Fred Allen's radio comedy show debuts on CBS.
* November 1 – The San Francisco Opera House opens.
* November 7 – Buck Rogers in the 25th Century airs on American radio for the first time.
* November 8 – U.S. presidential election, 1932: Democratic Governor of New York Franklin D. Roosevelt defeats Republican President Herbert Hoover in a landslide victory.
* November 16 – New York City's Palace Theatre fully converts to a cinema, which is considered the final death knell of vaudeville as a popular entertainment in the United States.
* November 18 – The 5th Academy Awards, hosted by Conrad Nagel, are presented at Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, with Edmund Goulding's Grand Hotel winning the Academy Award for Best Picture. John Ford and Brian Desmond Hurst's Arrowsmith and King Vidor's The Champ both receive the most nominations with four, while the latter film and Frank Borzage's Bad Girl both receive the most awards with two. Borzage also wins Best Director, his second overall.
* November 24 – In Washington, D.C., the FBI Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory (better known as the FBI Crime Lab) officially opens.
* November 30 – Exhibition American Folk Art: The Art of the Common Man in America 1750–1900 opens at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
* December 24 – Moweaqua Coal Mine disaster: a methane gas explosion claims 54 lives in Illinois.
* December 27 – Radio City Music Hall opens in New York City.
==Memoriam==
* January 26
** George Turner, U.S. Senator from Washington from 1897 to 1903 (aged 81; Spokane, WA, USA)
** William Wrigley Jr., chewing gum manufacturer (aged 70; Phoenix, AZ, USA)
* February 8 – Mad Dog Coll, hitman (shot) (aged 23; New York City, NY, USA)
* February 15 – Minnie Maddern Fiske, stage actress (aged 66; New York City, NY, USA)
* March 1 – Frank Teschemacher, jazz woodwind player (automobile accident) (aged 25; Chicago, IL, USA)
* March 6 – John Philip Sousa, composer and conductor, "the march king" ("The Stars and Stripes Forever") (aged 77; Reading, PA, USA)
* March 14 – George Eastman, photographic inventor (Eastman Kodak) (suicide) (aged 77; Rochester, NY, USA)
* March 18 – Chauncey Olcott, musical theater actor (aged 73; Monte Carlo, Monaco)
* March 28 – L. M. Shaw, businessman, lawyer, and politician (aged 83; Washington, DC, USA)
* March 31 – Eben Byers, steel tycoon and socialite (radiation poisoning) (aged 51; Manhattan, NY, USA)
* April 2 – Bill Pickett, African American cowboy of slave ancestry (aged 61; Ponca City, OK, USA)
* April 22 – J. Warren Keifer, Union army officer and politician (aged 96; Springfield, OH, USA)
* April 27 – Hart Crane, poet (aged 32; Gulf of Mexico)
* May 3 – Charles Fort, researcher of the unusual (aged 57; New York City, NY, USA)
* May 4 – August Gillhaus, engineer (aged 64; Brooklyn, NY, USA)
* May 30 – John Hubbard, admiral (aged 83; Washington, DC, USA)
* June 21 – Major Taylor, African American racing cyclist (aged 53; Chicago, IL, USA)
* June 27 – Francis P. Duffy, Roman Catholic priest (aged 61; New York City, NY, USA)
* July 7 – Henry Eyster Jacobs, Lutheran theologian (aged 87; Gettysburg, PA, USA)
* July 11 – George F. Williams, U.S. Representative from Massachusetts (aged 80; Brookline, MA, USA)
* July 22 – Florenz Ziegfeld Jr., Broadway theatrical impresario (aged 65; Hollywood, CA, USA)
* August 2 – Dan Brouthers, baseball player (aged 74; East Orange, NJ, USA)
* August 25 – Edith Rockefeller McCormick, socialite, daughter of Standard Oil co-founder John D. Rockefeller (aged 59; Chicago, IL, USA)
* September 5 – Paul Bern, screenwriter (suicide) (aged 42; Beverly Hills, CA, USA)
* September 22 – Claude C. Hopkins, advertising executive (aged 66; Chicago, IL, USA)
* September 25 – Joel R. P. Pringle, admiral (aged 59; San Francisco County, CA, USA)
* September 27 – John Sharp Williams, U.S. Senator from Mississippi from 1911 to 1923 (aged 78; Yazoo City, MS, USA)
* October 17 – Lucy Bacon, painter (aged 75; San Francisco, CA, USA)
* October 26 – Margaret Brown, Denver socialite, survivor of the sinking of the RMS Titanic (aged 65; New York City, NY, USA)
* November 4 – Belle Bennett, actress (cancer) (aged 41; Los Angeles, CA, USA)
* November 15 – Charles W. Chesnutt, African American author, essayist and political activist (aged 74; Cleveland, OH, USA)
* November 18 – Jay Hunt, American film director (aged 77; Los Angeles, CA, USA)
* November 22 – William Walker Atkinson, writer and occultist (aged 69; Los Angeles, CA, USA)
* November 23 – Henry S. Whitehead, writer of horror fiction and fantasy (aged 50; Dunedin, FL, USA)
* December 28 – Malcolm Whitman, tennis player (aged 55; New York City, NY, USA)
==External links==
* 1932 in the United States
Category:United States History: Volume 16