Great Depression

The **Great Depression** is a period of history, part of modern times, characterized by economic crisis and stagnation. It began in 1929 following the Jazz Age, and lasted until 1939 with the beginning of World War II.

## Timeline

### 1929

**February:** Trotsky exiled--Istanbul, Turkey.

**February 14:** Al Capone's gang carries out the Valentine's Day Massacre.

**August:** Eliot Ness (1903-1957) appointed to head the Treasury Department's Untouchables, a squad of nine assigned to bring down Capone.

**October 24:** Stock market crashes on Black Thursday, kicking off the Great Depression.

Ellery Queen begins solving mysteries in New York City.

Kent Allard aka Lamont Cranston aka The Shadow assembles a team of agents and begins fighting crime in New York City.

### 1930

**January:** Clyde Barrow meets Bonnie Parker and recruits her into a life of crime--West Dallas, Texas.

**January 14:** The French Senate agrees to War Minister Andre Maginot's proposal to spend 3 billion francs on a defensive line along the German border.

**January 31:** Scotch tape introduced.

**February 2:** Captain Geoffrey T. Spaulding, the explorer, leaves New York City for Africa. He returns later that year, having shot an elephant in his pajamas.

**February 18:** Discovery of Pluto.

March 12: Mahatma Gandhi leads the Salt March--Ahmedabad, India.

**March 28:** Constantinople becomes Istanbul.

**March 31:** Hays Code imposes restrictions on Hollywood movies.

**April 6:** Invention of the Twinkie.

**April 25:** Establishment of the Gulag.

**June 17:** Smoot-Hawley Tarriff signed into law by President Herbert Hoover.

Nancy Drew (b. 1914) begins solving crimes in River Heights, Illinois.

Bluesman Robert Johnson sells his soul at the crossroads in Rosedale, Mississippi.

**August 6:** Judge Crater (b. 1889) disappears.

**November 2:** Haile Selassie becomes Emperor of Ethiopia.

December 19: Vyacheslav Molotov (1890-1986) becomes Soviet prime minister.

B.F. Skinner (1904-1990) creates the Skinner Box.

### 1931

Sally Bowles is a cabaret singer at the Kit Kat Club--Berlin.

**February:** The Pabodie Expedition to Antarctica's Mountains of Madness ends in disaster.

Doc Savage (b. 1901) begins fighting evil with his Fabulous Five.

**March 25:** Scottsboro Boys charged with rape--Alabama.

**March 30:** Ma Barker organizes her sons into a criminal gang.

**May 1:** Empire State Building completed--New York City.

Years of drought hit the Midwest, creating the Dust Bowl.

**October 17:** Al Capone convicted of tax evasion.

### 1932

**March 1:** Charles Lindbergh's infant son kidnapped--Hopewell, New Jersey.

Egyptologist Ardath Bey--actually the resurrected priest Imhotep--attempts to mummify Helen Grosvenor, the reincarnation of his lover Princess Ankh-es-en-amon--Cairo.

**July 2:** Franklin Roosevelt, accepting the Democratic nomination for president, promises a New Deal for the American people--Chicago.

**July 28:** President Hoover orders Army troops, led by General Douglas MacArthur and Major George Patton, to oust the Bonus Army--unemployed Great War vets seeking early payment of their bonuses--from their Hooverville in Washington, D.C.

**October 1:** Babe Ruth calls his shot in the third game of the World Series--Wrigley Field, Chicago.

**November 8:** FDR elected president; "Happy Days Are Here Again."

### 1933

Kong, a giant gorilla, is discovered on Skull Island in the Indian Ocean and brought to New York City for exhibition with unfortunate consequences.

**January 30:** Adolf Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany.

**February 27:** The Reichstag building is set on fire, allowing Hitler to suspend basic rights--Berlin.

**March:** Detective Hercule Poirot (b. 1864) solves a murder on the Orient Express.

**March 5:** President Roosevelt declares a bank holiday, lasting until March 13.

**March 12:** The first of Roosevelt's "fireside chats."

**March 20:** Dachau, Germany's first concentration camp, is established.

**April 19:** The United States abandons the gold standard.

**April 26:** The Gestapo is founded.

Lawrence Talbot is infected with lycanthropy--Llanwely, Wales.

President Rufus T. Firefly of Fredonia leads his country to victory in a brief war with Sylvania.

Nick and Nora Charles crack the Thin Man case--New York City.

**May:** Soviet Moscow is visited by Professor Woland (Satan in disguise) and his demonic retinue.

**July 22:** First modern sighting of the Loch Ness Monster.

**October 17:** Albert Einstein comes to the United States, a refugee from Nazi Germany.

**December 5:** Prohibition ends in the United States.

### 1934

**June 8:** Attorney Atticus Finch defends a falsely accused man--Maycomb, Alabama.

**June 22:** John Dillinger is the first criminal to be declared Public Enemy Number One.

**July 22:** Dillinger (b. 1903) reportedly killed by the FBI, betrayed by the Woman in Red at the Biograph Theater--Chicago.

**May 23:** Bonnie Parker (b. 1910) and Clyde Barrow (b. 1909) killed in a shootout with Texas and Louisiana state police--Bienville Parish, Louisiana.

**August:** Alcatraz becomes a federal prison.

**October 16:** The Chinese Communists begin their Long March--Jiangxi, China.

**October 25:** Boo Radley rescues Scout Finch from an attacker--Maycomb, Alabama.

**October 22:** Pretty Boy Floyd killed by FBI agents--East Liverpool, Ohio.

### 1935

**January 1:** Dolores Haze is born.

**January 16:** Ma Barker and one of her sons are killed in an FBI raid, ending her family's crime spree.

Impresario Otis B. Driftwood sails from Italy to New York City for a night at the opera.

A botanist bitten by a wolf in Tibet returns home to become a werewolf--London.

Professor Henry "Indiana" Jones Jr. explores the Temple of Doom--India.

The espionage organization known as The 39 Steps is broken up--Britain.

**March 16:** Adolf Hitler declares that Germany will rearm, in defiance of the Treaty of Versailles.

**April 14:** Black Sunday, the worst dust storms of the Dust Bowl era.

**June 10:** Bill W. and Dr. Bob found Alcoholics Anonymous--Akron, Ohio.

**August 18:** Roosevelt signs the Social Security Act.

**September 8:** Senator Huey Long, known as the Kingfish, assassinated--Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

**October 2:** Italy invades Ethiopia.

**November 5:** Parker Brothers releases the game *Monopoly*.

### 1936

Ark of the Covenant discovered by Indiana Jones in Tanis, Egypt, and later recovered from Nazis on an Aegean island.

Britt Reid (grand-nephew of the Lone Ranger) begins fighting crime as The Green Hornet, assisted by the martial artist Kato.

**March 1:** Hoover Dam completed.

**March 7:** Germany reoccupies the Rhineland.

**July 17:** Spanish Civil War begins--Seville, Spain.

**August 3:** Jesse Owens wins the 100-yard dash at the Berlin Olympics.

**August 19:** Moscow show trials begin.

**September 7:** Last Tasmanian wolf dies in captivity--Hobart, Tasmania.

**October 25:** Germany and Italy form an Axis.

**November 23:** First issue of *Life* magazine.

**November 25:** The Abraham Lincoln Brigade sails from New York City to support the Spanish Republic.

**December 11:** King Edward VIII of England abdicates his throne in order to marry divorcee Wallis Simpson; his brother Bertie becomes King George VI.

### 1937

Lawrence Talbot, the Wolfman, meets Frankenstein's Monster--Visaria.

January-July: U.S. gold reserves transferred to Fort Knox, Kentucky.

**February 5:** President Roosevelt proposes enlarging the Supreme Court in response to anti-New Deal rulings.

**February:** Poirot investigates a death on the Nile.

**April 26:** The bombing of Guernica, Spain, by the German Luftwaffe.

May 6: Oh the humanity! *Hindenburg* destroyed by fire--Lakehurst, New Jersey.

Veterinarian Hugo Z. Hackenbush becomes the medical director of the Standish Sanitarium in Sparkling Springs Lake, California.

May 28: Golden Gate Bridge completed--San Francisco.

**July 2:** Disappearance of Amelia Earhart--near Howland Island, South Pacific.

Sheena becomes Queen of the Jungle

Detective Jack Gittes investigates the machinations of developer Noah Cross--Los Angeles.

**October 1:** Prohibition of cannabis begins in the United States.

December 13: Rape of Nanking

### 1938

Indiana Jones finds the Holy Grail--Canyon of the Crescent Moon, Turkey.

**March 12:** Germany annexes Austria in the Anchluss.

**July 18:** Wrong Way Corrigan set off on a trip from York to California and ends up in Ireland instead.

**August 31:** Captain Georg von Trapp, Maria von Trapp and their family escape to Switzerland from Nazi-occupied Austria after performing at the Salzburg Festival.

**September 30:** Neville Chamberlain strikes a deal with Adolf Hitler in Munich for "peace in our time"--Munich.

**October 1:** German troops invade the Sudetenland.

**October 30:** A second Martian invasion is halted even more quickly by lack of immunity--New Jersey.

**November 1:** Sea Biscuit defeats Triple Crown-winner War Admiral by four lengths--Pimlico, Maryland.

**November 9:** Nazi Brownshirts shatter the windows of Jewish-owned shops in the Kristallnacht riots.

**November 16:** Albert Hoffman first synthesizes LSD--Basel, Switzerland.

**December 23:** The coelocanth, a lobed fish believed to be extinct for 65 million years, is discovered living off the coast of South Africa.

### 1939

Phil Marlowe investigates the affairs of the Sternwood family.

**April 1:** Spanish Civil War won by Francisco Franco, lost by George Orwell.

**March 18:** Walter Mitty starts his secret life.

**June 4:** The *St. Louis*, a ship carrying 907 Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany, is denied permission to land in Florida and is forced to return to Europe, where many of its passengers die in the Holocaust.

**July 4:** Lou Gehrig, diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's Disease, declares himself to be the luckiest man on the face of the Earth--Yankee Stadium, New York City.

**August 2:** Albert Einstein writes to President Roosevelt about the possibility of building an atomic bomb.

**August 23:** The Hitler/Stalin Pact is signed, dividing Poland between Germany and the Soviet Union.