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Signs of the Times: World Events during Bridge Construction
1933 | 1934 | 1935 | 1936 | 1937
1933
Politics/World Affairs
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt inaugurated as 32nd U.S. President
- Unemployment in the U.S. peaks at 25%
- New Deal launched in the midst of Great Depression, with FDR’s famously declaring: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
- Nazi leader Adolf Hitler appointed Chancellor of Germany
- Alcohol legalized, with the 21st Amendment repealing Prohibition
- Tennessee Valley Authority was established
- Mohandas Gandhi began three-week hunger strike
- Nazi leader Adolf Hitler appointed Chancellor of Germany
Arts/Entertainment
- The original film King Kong premiered
- Screen Actors Guild established
- Walt Disney won an Academy Award for his cartoon, The Three Little Pigs
Sports
- First Major League Baseball game played
Pop Culture/Inventions
- Newsweek magazine published for the first time
- Ritz crackers introduced
- First singing telegram introduced
- First drive-in theater opened
- FM radio broadcasting is born (Edwin Armstrong)
1934
Politics/World Affairs
- First general strike in American history took place in San Francisco, in support of 12,000 striking members of International Longshoremen Association
- Securities and Exchange Commission established
- Two-day dust storm blasted Great Plains, one of the worst of the Dust Bowl
- Long March of the Chinese Communists began
- Stalin's great purges: thousands disappear or are deported in Siberia
Arts/Entertainment
- Apollo Theater opened in Harlem
- Flash Gordon comic strip first published
- Animated short featuring the debut of Donald Duck released
- F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night published
Sports
- U.S. Masters golf tournament held for first time.
Pop Culture/Inventions
- Alcatraz established as a federal penitentiary
- John Dillinger, as well as Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, killed by authorities
- Nylon invented by DuPont
- Philo Farnsworth invents the television
- Invention of radar
1935
Politics/World Affairs
- Works Progress Administration (WPA) established
- Social Security Act signed into law
- Wagner Act guaranteed worker’s right to collective bargaining
- American Federation of Labor refused to recognize industrial unions. John L. Lewis, president of United Mine Workers, left AFL to form Committee for Industrial Organization
- Huey Long, Louisiana’s dictatorial, popular governor, assassinated.
- Persia renamed Iran
Arts/Entertainment
- Porky Pig first appeared in Looney Tunes
- George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess first performed in New York
- Disney released first official Mickey Mouse film in color, The Band Concert
- The Marx Brothers starred in A Night at the Opera
- Swing Era began with a legendary Benny Goodman performance
- William Randolph Hearst earned the highest salary with Mae West earning the second highest.
Sports
- Babe Ruth appeared in his last game
- First nighttime Major League Baseball game played
Pop Culture/Inventions
- First canned beer sold
- Alcoholics Anonymous founded
- Hoover Dam dedicated
- Monopoly board game made its debut
- Amelia Earhart became first person to fly solo from Hawaii to California
- Ballpoint pen invented
- Parking meter invented
1936
Politics/World Affairs
- San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge opened
- FDR re-elected to second term in a landslide
- Sit down strike at GM’s Flint MI plant spread across country
- Rome-Berlin Axis formed
- Civil war erupts in Spain
- Mussolini invades Ethiopia
Arts/Entertainment
- Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf made debut in Moscow
- Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind first published
Sports
- Summer Olympics in Berlin featured world’s first live television coverage of any sporting event
- Jesse Owens won 100-meter dash at Berlin Olympics
- Joe DiMaggio played in his first World Series, as his Yankees defeated the (New York) Giants
Pop Culture/Inventions
- First Volkswagen produced
- San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge opened
- First edition of Life magazine published
- General Mills introduced fictional “Betty Crocker”
- Heinrich Focke flies the first helicopter
1937
Politics/World Affairs
- Golden Gate Bridge opened
- Abraham Lincoln Brigade, composed of 3,000 Americans volunteered to fight in Spanish Civil War
- Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) established in U.S.
- Senate voted down FDR’s proposal to expand Supreme Court
- “Rape of Nanking” committed during Sino-Japanese War
- Neville Chamberlain became Prime Minister of United Kingdom
- U.S. Government estimated half million workers took part in sit-down strikes from Sept 1936 to May 1937
- General Motors capitulated to worker’s demands and recognized the United Auto Workers after a 44 day strike with violent clashes
- Chrysler plants shut down by strikes until union recognized
- Memorial Day Massacre - Chicago Police Department shot and killed ten unarmed Republic Steel workers during the "Little Steel Strike” which arose after U.S. Steel signed a union contract but smaller steel manufacturers ('Little Steel'), including Republic Steel, refused
Arts/Entertainment
- Disney’s first full-length feature, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, premiered
- John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men published
- Bing Crosby scored his first hit record
- Picasso completed his painting Guernica
- Frank Capra’s Lost Horizon released
Sports
- First Cotton Bowl played
- Washington Redskins won the National Football League title, in their first year in Washington after moving from Boston
Pop Culture/Inventions
- Amelia Earhart disappeared after taking off from New Guinea
- Howard Hughes set transcontinental flight record
- NBC began regular experimental television broadcasts
- Spinach growers erected a statue to Popeye
- Airship Hindenburg exploded above New Jersey
- Abraham Lincoln’s head dedicated at Mount Rushmore
- First prototype of jet engine built
- First science fiction convention held
- First nylon stockings appear
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