1934

Events from the year **1934 in the United States**.

* Speaker of the House of Representatives: Henry Thomas Rainey (D-IL) (until August 19)
* Senate Majority Leader: Joseph Taylor Robinson (D-AR)
* Congress: 73rd

Governors
* Governor of Alabama: Benjamin M. Miller (Democratic)
* Governor of Arizona: Benjamin Baker Moeur (Democratic)
* Governor of Arkansas: Junius Marion Futrell (Democratic)
* Governor of California: James Rolph Jr. (Republican) (until June 2), Frank Merriam (Republican) (starting June 2)
* Governor of Colorado: Edwin C. Johnson (Democratic)
* Governor of Connecticut: Wilbur Lucius Cross (Democratic)
* Governor of Delaware: C. Douglass Buck (Republican)
* Governor of Florida: David Sholtz (Democratic)
* Governor of Georgia: Eugene Talmadge (Democratic)
* Governor of Idaho: C. Ben Ross (Democratic)
* Governor of Illinois: Henry Horner (Democratic)
* Governor of Indiana: Paul V. McNutt (Democratic)
* Governor of Iowa: Clyde L. Herring (Democratic)
* Governor of Kansas: Alfred M. Landon (Republican)
* Governor of Kentucky: Ruby Laffoon (Democratic)
* Governor of Louisiana: Oscar K. Allen (Democratic)
* Governor of Maine: Louis J. Brann (Democratic)
* Governor of Maryland: Albert C. Ritchie (Democratic)
* Governor of Massachusetts: Joseph B. Ely (Democratic)
* Governor of Michigan: William Comstock (Democratic)
* Governor of Minnesota: Floyd B. Olson (Farmer-Labor)
* Governor of Mississippi: Martin Sennett Conner (Democratic)
* Governor of Missouri: Guy Brasfield Park (Democratic)
* Governor of Montana: Frank Henry Cooney (Democratic)
* Governor of Nebraska: Charles W. Bryan (Democratic)
* Governor of Nevada: Fred B. Balzar (Republican) (until March 21), Morley Griswold (Republican) (starting March 21)
* Governor of New Hampshire: John Gilbert Winant (Republican)
* Governor of New Jersey: A. Harry Moore (Democratic)
* Governor of New Mexico: Andrew W. Hockenhull (Democratic)
* Governor of New York: Herbert H. Lehman (Democratic)
* Governor of North Carolina: John C. B. Ehringhaus (Democratic)
* Governor of North Dakota: William Langer (Republican) (until June 21), Ole H. Olson (Republican) (starting June 21)
* Governor of Ohio: George White (Democratic)
* Governor of Oklahoma: William H. Murray (Democratic)
* Governor of Oregon: Julius L. Meier (Independent)
* Governor of Pennsylvania: Gifford Pinchot (Republican)
* Governor of Rhode Island: Theodore Francis Green (Democratic)
* Governor of South Carolina: Ibra Charles Blackwood (Democratic)
* Governor of South Dakota: Tom Berry (Democratic)
* Governor of Tennessee: Harry Hill McAlister (Democratic)
* Governor of Texas: Miriam A. Ferguson (Democratic)
* Governor of Utah: Henry H. Blood (Democratic)
* Governor of Vermont: Stanley C. Wilson (Republican)
* Governor of Virginia: John Garland Pollard (Democratic) (until January 17), George C. Peery (Democratic) (starting January 17)
* Governor of Washington: Clarence D. Martin (Democratic)
* Governor of West Virginia: Herman G. Kump (Democratic)
* Governor of Wisconsin: Albert G. Schmedeman (Democratic)
* Governor of Wyoming: Leslie A. Miller (Democratic)

Lieutenant Governors
* Lieutenant Governor of Alabama: Hugh D. Merrill (Democratic)
* Lieutenant Governor of Arkansas: William Lee Cazort (Democratic)
* Lieutenant Governor of California: Frank Merriam (Republican) (until June 2), vacant (starting June 2)
* Lieutenant Governor of Colorado: Raymond Herbert Talbot (Democratic)
* Lieutenant Governor of Connecticut: Roy C. Wilcox (Republican)
* Lieutenant Governor of Delaware: Roy F. Corley (Republican)
* Lieutenant Governor of Idaho: George E. Hill (Democratic)
* Lieutenant Governor of Illinois: Thomas Donovan (Democratic)
* Lieutenant Governor of Indiana: M. Clifford Townsend (Democratic)
* Lieutenant Governor of Iowa: Nelson G. Kraschel (Democratic)
* Lieutenant Governor of Kansas: Charles W. Thompson (Republican)
* Lieutenant Governor of Kentucky: Happy Chandler (Democratic)
* Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana: John B. Fournet (Democratic)
* Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts: Gaspar G. Bacon (Republican)
* Lieutenant Governor of Michigan: Allen E. Stebbins (Democratic)
* Lieutenant Governor of Minnesota: Konrad K. Solberg (Farmer Labor)
* Lieutenant Governor of Mississippi: Dennis Murphree (Democratic)
* Lieutenant Governor of Missouri: Frank Gaines Harris (Democratic)
* Lieutenant Governor of Montana:
	+ until month and day unknown: Tom Kane (political party unknown)
	+ month and day unknown: Ernest T. Eaton (political party unknown)
	+ starting month and day unknown: Elmer Holt (political party unknown)
* Lieutenant Governor of Nebraska: Walter H. Jurgensen (Democratic)
* Lieutenant Governor of Nevada: Morley Griswold (Republican) (until March 21), vacant (starting March 21)
* Lieutenant Governor of New Mexico: vacant
* Lieutenant Governor of New York: M. William Bray (Democratic)
* Lieutenant Governor of North Carolina: Richard T. Fountain (Democratic)
* Lieutenant Governor of North Dakota: Ole H. Olson (Republican) (until June 21), vacant (starting June 21)
* Lieutenant Governor of Ohio: Charles W. Sawyer (Democratic)
* Lieutenant Governor of Oklahoma: Robert Burns (Democratic)
* Lieutenant Governor of Pennsylvania: Edward C. Shannon (Republican)
* Lieutenant Governor of Rhode Island: Robert E. Quinn (Democratic)
* Lieutenant Governor of South Carolina: E. B. Jackson (Democratic)
* Lieutenant Governor of South Dakota: Hans Ustrud (Democratic)
* Lieutenant Governor of Tennessee: Albert F. Officer (Democratic)
* Lieutenant Governor of Texas: Edgar E. Witt (Democratic)
* Lieutenant Governor of Vermont: Charles M. Smith (Republican)
* Lieutenant Governor of Virginia: James H. Price (Democratic)
* Lieutenant Governor of Washington: Victor A. Meyers (Democratic)
* Lieutenant Governor of Wisconsin: Thomas J. O'Malley (Democratic)

## Events

### January

* January 26 – The Apollo Theater opens in Harlem, New York City.
* January 27 – Albert Einstein visits the White House.
* January 30 – Gold Reserve Act: All gold held in the Federal Reserve to be surrendered to the Department of the Treasury; immediately following, President Roosevelt raises the statutory gold price from $20.67 per ounce to $35.

### February

* February 22 – Frank Capra's *It Happened One Night*, starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert, is released. It becomes a smash hit and the first of Capra's great screen classics. It becomes the first film to win all 5 of the major Academy Awards – Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Screenplay, Best Director, and Best Picture. Gable and Colbert receive their only Oscars for this film.

### March

* March 3 – John Dillinger escapes from jail in Crown Point, Indiana, using a wooden pistol.
* March 12 – The 6.5 Mw Hansel Valley earthquake affects a sparsely populated area of northern Utah with a maximum Mercalli intensity of VIII (*Severe*), causing light damage and two deaths.
* March 13 – John Dillinger and his gang rob the First National Bank in Mason City, Iowa.
* March 16 – The 6th Academy Awards, hosted by Will Rogers, are presented at Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, with Frank Lloyd's *Cavalcade* winning the Academy Award for Best Picture. It also receives the most awards with three, including Best Director for Lloyd, and is among three films (the others being Frank Borzage's *A Farewell to Arms* and Frank Capra's *Lady for a Day*) to each receive the most nominations with four. It is the final awards season until 2021 to accommodate two calendar years.
* March 24 – The Tydings–McDuffie Act comes into effect, establishing the Philippine Commonwealth which allows greater self-government of the Philippines, and scheduling full independence from the U.S. for 1944. Sugar imports are reduced and immigration is limited to 50 Filipino people per year.

### April

* April 1 – Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker kill 2 young highway patrolmen near Grapevine, Texas.
* April 12
	+ U.S. publication of the novel *Tender Is the Night* by F. Scott Fitzgerald
	+ The world's highest ever recorded surface wind speed of 230 miles per hour (370 km/h) was recorded on the summit of Mount Washington, New Hampshire.
* April 22 – John Dillinger and two others shoot their way out of an FBI ambush in northern Wisconsin.

### May

* May 5 – The first Three Stooges short, *Woman Haters*, is released.
* May 9 – 1934 West Coast waterfront strike: A general strike is engaged in San Francisco.
* May 11 – Dust Bowl: A strong 2-day dust storm removes massive amounts of Great Plains topsoil in one of the worst dust storms of the Dust Bowl.
* May 15
	+ The United States Department of Justice offers a $25,000 reward for John Dillinger.
	+ Nantucket Lightship LV-117 sinks after colliding with RMS Olympic.
* May 16 – Teamsters in Minneapolis begin a strike that lasts until a settlement proposal is accepted on August 21.
* May 23
	+ A team of police officers, led by Texas Ranger Frank Hamer, ambush bank robbers Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow near their hide-out in Black Lake, Louisiana, killing them both.
	+ The "Battle of Toledo" begins during the Auto-Lite strike in Toledo, Ohio, continuing until May 27.
* May 30 – Everglades National Park is established.

### June

* June 4 – USS *Ranger* is commissioned.
* June 6 – New Deal: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Securities Exchange Act into law, establishing the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
* June 15 – Great Smoky Mountains National Park is established.
* June 18 – Pub.L. 73–394 expands the crime of making false statements to remove the requirement of an intent to defraud and expands the coverage to "any matter within the jurisdiction" of the federal government.
* June 19 – National Archives established.

### July

* July 1
	+ The world-famous Brookfield Zoo opens in Brookfield, Illinois.
	+ The Hays Office censorship code for motion pictures goes into full effect.
* July 5 – 1934 West Coast waterfront strike: Police in San Francisco open fire on a crowd of striking longshoremen, killing two.
* July 15 – The American film industry begins to rigorously enforce the Motion Picture Production Code.
* July 17 – The North Dakota Supreme Court declares Lieutenant Governor Ole H. Olson the legitimate governor and tells William Langer to resign. Langer proceeds to declare North Dakota independent. He revokes the declaration after the Supreme Court justices meet him.
* July 22 – Outside Chicago's Biograph Theatre, "Public Enemy No. 1" John Dillinger is mortally wounded by FBI agents.

### August

* August 15 – The United States occupation of Haiti ends as the last Marines depart.
* August 19 – The first All-American Soap Box Derby is held in Dayton, Ohio.
* August 25 – Anti-union vigilantes seize the town of McGuffey, Ohio, during the Hardin County onion pickers strike.

### September

* September 8 – Off the New Jersey coast, a fire aboard the passenger liner *Morro Castle* kills 134 people.
* September 29 – Folk song collector John Lomax makes the first recordings of "Rock Island Line" at prison farms in Arkansas.

### October

* October 9 – The St. Louis Cardinals defeat the Detroit Tigers, 4 games to 3, to win their third World Series Title.
* October 17 – Harry Pierpont is executed in the electric chair in Columbus, Ohio, for killing Sheriff Jess Sarber while breaking John Dillinger out of jail in Lima, Ohio.
* October 22 – "Pretty Boy" Floyd is shot and killed by FBI agents near East Liverpool, Ohio.

### November

* November 5 – Kelayres massacre: An election-eve rally by Democrats in the coal-mining village of Kelayres, Pennsylvania is fired on as it passes the home of a leading local Republican family, resulting in 5 deaths.
* November 11 – National Union for Social Justice founded.
* November 20 – Business Plot: An alleged coup to overthrow President Franklin D. Roosevelt is investigated by the McCormack–Dickstein Committee and is reported by the *Philadelphia Record*.
* November 21 – Cole Porter's musical *Anything Goes*, starring Ethel Merman, premieres in New York City.
* November 26 – Universal Pictures releases the first film version of Fannie Hurst's novel, *Imitation of Life*, starring Claudette Colbert and Louise Beavers. It gives Beavers, usually featured in small roles as a maid, her best screen role, and features the largest supporting role played by a black person in a Hollywood film up until then. Its storyline is extremely daring for a 1934 film part of it revolves around a young mulatto girl rejecting her mother and trying to "pass for white". It is the first Hollywood film to seriously deal with this subject. The 1936 film version of *Show Boat*, also from Universal, will deal with a similar storyline.
* November 27 – A running gun battle between FBI agents and bank robber Baby Face Nelson results in the death of one FBI agent and the mortal wounding of special agent Samuel P. Cowley, who was still able to mortally wound Nelson.

### December

* December 26 – An American Airlines aircraft crashes in the Adirondack Mountains.
* December 29 – Japan renounces the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 and the London Naval Treaty of 1930.

## Sport

* April 10 - Chicago Black Hawks win their First Stanley Cup by defeating the Detroit Red Wings 3 games to 1. The deciding game was played at Chicago Stadium.

## Memoriam

* February 3 – Gilbert Hitchcock, congressman (aged 74; Washington, DC, USA)
* February 14 – Melvin Alvah Traylor, lawyer and banker (aged 55; Chicago, IL, USA)
* February 25
	+ Elizabeth Gertrude Britton, botanist (aged 76; Bronx, NY, USA)
	+ John McGraw, baseball manager (aged 60; New Rochelle, NY, USA)
* March 21 – Lilyan Tashman, vaudeville, Broadway and film actress (aged 37; New York City, NY, USA)
* April 16 – John J. Blaine, 24th Governor of Wisconsin (aged 58; Boscobel, WI, USA)
* April 27 – Joe Vila, sportswriter (aged 67; Brooklyn, NY, USA)
* May 17 – Cass Gilbert, architect (aged 74; Brockenhurst, England, UK)
* May 23
	+ Clyde Barrow, outlaw (shot) (aged 25; Bienville Parish, LA, USA)
	+ Bonnie Parker, outlaw (shot) (aged 23; Bienville Parish, LA, USA)
* May 24 – Brand Whitlock, journalist and politician (aged 65; Cannes, France)
* May 31 – Lew Cody, film actor (aged 50; Beverly Hills, CA, USA)
* June 8
	+ Dorothy Dell, film actress (automobile accident) (aged 19; Altadena, CA, USA)
	+ Jesse Root Grant, politician (aged 76; Los Altos, CA, USA)
* June 15 – George W. Fuller, sanitation engineer (aged 65; New York City, NY, USA)
* June 20 – Andrew Jackson Zilker, philanthropist (aged 76; Austin, TX, USA)
* June 21 – Thorne Smith, humorist and fantasy author (heart attack) (aged 42; Sarasota, FL, USA)
* June 24 – Charles S. Thomas, U.S. Senator from Colorado from 1913 to 1921 (aged 84; Denver, CO, USA)
* July 15 – Louis F. Gottschalk, composer (aged 69; Los Angeles, CA, USA)
* July 18 – Sy Sanborn, sportswriter (aged 67; Canandaigua, NY, USA)
* July 21 – Julian Hawthorne, journalist and novelist (aged 88; San Francisco, CA, USA)
* July 22 – John Dillinger, criminal (shot) (aged 31; Chicago, IL, USA)
* July 26 – Winsor McCay, comic creator and animator (aged 68; Brooklyn, NY, USA)
* August 8 – Wilbert Robinson, baseball manager (aged 70; Atlanta, GA, USA)
* August 10 – George W. Hill, film director (aged 39; Venice, CA, USA)
* August 13 – Mary Hunter Austin, travel writer (aged 65; Santa Fe, NM, USA)
* August 14 – Raymond Hood, architect (aged 53; Stamford, CT, USA)
* September 2
	+ Russ Columbo, singer and actor (shot) (aged 26; Los Angeles, CA, USA)
	+ Alcide Nunez, jazz clarinetist (aged 50; New Orleans, LA, USA)
* October 6 – James Taliaferro, U.S. Senator from Florida from 1899 to 1911 (aged 87; Jacksonville, FL, USA)
* October 20 – Josephine White Bates, Canadian-born American author (aged 72; Yorktown, NY, USA)
* October 22 – Pretty Boy Floyd, bank robber (shot) (aged 30; East Liverpool, OH, USA)
* November 10 – Ion Farris, politician, Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives (aged 56; Neptune Beach, FL, USA)
* November 22 – Harry Steppe, vaudeville performer (aged 46; New York City, NY, USA)
* November 27 – Baby Face Nelson, gangster (shot) (aged 25; Wilmette, IL, USA)
* December 10 – Theobald Smith, bacteriologist (aged 75; New York City, NY, USA)
* December 26 – Wallace Thurman, African American novelist (TB) (aged 32; New York City, NY, USA)
* December 28 – Lowell Sherman, film actor and director (aged 46; Los Angeles, CA, USA)
* December 29 – Elnora Monroe Babcock, suffragist (aged 82; Dunkirk, NY, USA)
* December 31 – Cornelia Clapp, marine biologist (aged 85; Mount Dora, FL, USA)