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Sacco and Vanzetti are arrested
On May 5, 1920, police arrested two men, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, on a streetcar in Brockton. When arrested, Sacco carried a loaded .32 Colt automatic pistol; Vanzetti, a loaded .38 Harrington and Richardson revolver. Sacco also possessed a notice in Italian of an upcoming anarchist rally at which Vanzetti was scheduled to speak. -
KDKA goes on air
On November 2, 1920, station KDKA made the nation's first commercial broadcast (a term coined by Conrad himself). They chose that date because it was election day, and the power of radio was proven when people could hear the results of the Harding-Cox presidential race before they read about it in the newspaper. -
1st Miss American Pageant
The 1921 Atlantic City Pageant was designed to encourage visitors to stay in the resort past Labor Day, the traditional end of the season. The first pageant was held September 7-8, 1921, and eight finalists from cities in the Northeast competed for the title, which would later be known as Miss America. -
The Teapot Dome Scandal
On April 7, 1922, President Warren G. Harding’s secretary of interior, Albert Fall, leased the oil reserves at Teapot Dome in Wyoming to Harry Sinclair’s Mammoth Oil Company. The deal was done in secret, and Fall was later convicted of taking a $100,000 bribe—the only cabinet officer ever to be found guilty of a crime. The scandal trashed Harding’s reputation. -
1st Winter Olympics Held
In 1921, the International Olympic Committee gave its patronage to a Winter Sports Week to take place in 1924 in Chamonix, France. This event was a great success, attracting 10,004 paying spectators, and was retrospectively named the First Olympic Winter Games. -
The Great Gatsby is Published
F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby was published in 1925. The novel is set during the Jazz Age on Long Island, near New York City, and depicts first-person narrator Nick Carraway's interactions with mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby, as well as Gatsby's obsession with reuniting with his former lover, Daisy Buchanan. -
Scopes Monkey Trial
On July 10, 1925, in Dayton, Tennessee, the Scopes Monkey Trial begins with John Thomas Scopes, a young high school science teacher, accused of teaching evolution in violation of a Tennessee state law. -
Charles Lindberg's Solo Flight
On May 21, 1927, Charles A. Lindbergh completed the first solo, nonstop transatlantic flight in history, flying his Spirit of St. Louis from Long Island, New York, to Paris, France. Lindbergh contacted Ryan Airlines in San Diego to build an airplane for the flight. To honor his supporters, he named it the Spirit of St. Louis. When he successfully reached Paris, Lindbergh became a world hero who would remain in the public eye for decades. -
The Jazz Singer Debuts
On December 30, 1927, The Jazz Singer, the first commercially successful full-length feature film with sound, debuts at the Blue Mouse Theater at 1421 5th Avenue in Seattle. The movie uses Warner Brothers' Vitaphone sound-on-disc technology to reproduce the musical score and sporadic episodes of synchronized speech -
St. Valentine's Day Massacre
February 14, 1929, when seven men were gunned down inside a Clark Street garage, the mastermind behind the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre has remained a mystery, though suspicions usually point to Al Capone. -
Black Tuesday
On October 29, 1929, the United States stock market crashed in an event known as Black Tuesday. This began a chain of events that led to the Great Depression, a 10-year economic slump that affected all industrialized countries in the world.