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The stock Market Incident
investors in New York City began to panic. Stocks that they had bought at high prices began to drop. More and more investors sold their stocks at whatever price they could get. Over two days, the value of companies being traded on the stock exchange fell almost 13 percent on Monday and another 12 percent the next day. That day became known as "Black Tuesday." Fortunes were wiped out. The stock market had crashed. Link text -
Star Spangled Banner
the "Star Spangled Banner" becomes the country's official national anthem. -
Prohibition of Alcohol
Liquor was illegal, but people in Nebraska found ways to buy or make their own alcohol. Because of Prohibition, organized crime increased, especially in major cities. Gangsters got richer and more violent as they fought over control of liquor sales and other illegal activities such as prostitution and gambling, which also grew during the 1930s. article -
Nebraska's state capitol
Nebraska's state capitol is finished. Built in five phases over a 10-year period at a cost of about $10 million, the building is considered an architectural masterpiece. The large base layer represents the state's plains, and the 400-foot tower symbolizes the pioneers' dreams. On top of the tower is "the Sower," a statue of a man sowing seeds, clearly showing the state's agricultural roots. Birdie Farr's father helped build Nebraska's new capitol. -
A New Deal
U.S. President Herbert Hoover was slow to give help to farmers. Hoover stubbornly refused to help unemployed workers in urban areas as well. Walter Schmitt (right) recognized that Hoover became the symbol for all that was going wrong. "Everyone tried to blame [President Herbert] Hoover for the Depression Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) was that new voice. He promised a New Deal for the American people. article -
Adolf Hitler becomes chancellor
Adolf Hitler becomes chancellor of Germany. Italian prime minister and dictator Benito Mussolini invades Ethiopia in 1935. Japan invades China in 1937. And Hitler marches into Austria in 1938. Germany, Japan, and Italy withdraw from the League of Nations. -
King Edward VIII
King Edward VIII of England gives up his throne to marry Wallace W. Simpson, "the woman I love." Simpson cannot become England's Queen because she's American and a divorcée. -
Olympics in Berlin
Olympics in Berlin, a black Alabama native educated at Ohio State University, Jesse Owens, wins four gold medals. He breaks Olympic and world records, but German dictator Adolph Hitler refuses to recognize the American's achievements. Hitler had declared that the superior German Aryan race would dominate the games. He was wrong. -
Germany invades Poland
Germany invades Poland. Great Britain declares war on Germany. Soon, all of Europe is fighting. The U.S. enters the war in December, 1941, although FDR is supplying Britain and the allies with guns and material before that date. -
The start of Auschwitz
The Germans opened the Auschwitz concentration camp, where at least 1.1 million people would be killed.
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The Battle of Britain
The Battle of Britain was the intense air battle between the Germans and the British over Great Britain's airspace from July 1940 to May 1941 article -
The Warsaw Ghetto
The Warsaw Ghetto, the largest of the Jewish ghettos opened by the Nazi, was established in Poland, and would eventually house as many as 460,000 Jews there in an area of 1.3 square miles. -
Lascaux Cave
The entrance to Lascaux Cave, containing Stone Age paintings dated to 15,000–17,000 years old, was discovered by three French teenagers. -
Babi Yar Massacre
In the Babi Yar Massacre, Nazis killed over 33,000 Jews from Kiev in a ravine in Ukraine; the killing would continue for months and involve at least 100,000 people. -
Leon Trotsky
Russian Revolution leader Leon Trotsky was assassinated in Mexico City. -
Ho Chi Minh
Chinese leader Ho Chi Minh founded the Communist Viet Minh in Vietnam, an event that was to lead to yet another war for the U.S. years later. -
Operation Barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa, an Axis invasion of the Soviet Union, took place. The plan was to conquer the western Soviet Union and repopulate it with Germans; and in the process, the German armies captured some five million troops and starved or otherwise killed 3.3 million prisoners of war. Despite the horrific bloodshed, the operation failed. -
Siege of Leningrad
The Nazis began a prolonged military blockade known as the Siege of Leningrad, which would not end until 1944. -
Russia's Katyn Forest
The Germans announced that they had discovered 4,400 bodies of Polish officers in a mass grave in Russia's Katyn Forest, the first concrete evidence of the Katyn Massacre of May 1940. -
Diners Club
Diners Club, the first modern credit card was introduced, which would eventually change the financial lives of every American in the years to come. In February, Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-Wisconsin) claimed in a speech in West Virginia that there were over 200 Communists in the U.S. State Department, beginning a witch hunt that would result in the blacklisting of many Americans. -
Dr. Richard Lawler performed the first organ transplant
Dr. Richard Lawler performed the first organ transplant, a kidney in an Illinois woman with polycystic kidney disease; and, on the political front, US. President Harry S. Truman ordered the building of the hydrogen bomb, on June 25th, the Korean War began with the invasion of South Korea. On July 7, the Population Registration Act was enacted in South Africa, requiring that each inhabitant of the country would be classified and registered according to his or her "race." -
A peace treaty and disenfranchised
Truman signed the Treaty of San Francisco, a peace treaty with Japan on September 8, officially ending World War II. In October, Winston Churchill took the reins in Great Britain as prime minister for the first time after the close of World War II. In South Africa, people were forced to carry green identification cards that included their race; and under the Separate Representation of Voters Act people who were classed as "coloureds" were disenfranchised. -
Princess Elizabeth
On February 6, 1952, Britain's Princess Elizabeth took over the responsibility of ruling England at age 25 after the death of her father, King George VI. She would be officially crowned Queen Elizabeth II the next year. -
The Great Smog
From December 5th to the 9th, Londoners suffered through the Great Smog of 1952, a severe air pollution event that caused deaths from breathing issues numbering in the thousands. -
atomic submarine
on January 21, the first atomic submarine was launched in the Thames River in Connecticut, the U.S.S. Nautilus. -
Brown v. Board of Education decision.
In a landmark decision on May 17, and after two rounds of argument, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled segregation was illegal in the Brown v. Board of Education decision. -
the Hungarian Revolution
the world saw the explosion of the Hungarian Revolution on October 23, a revolution against the Soviet-backed Hungarian People's Republic -
the Suez Crisis
the Suez Crisis began when Israeli armed forces invaded Egypt over their nationalization of the critical waterway known as the Suez Canal. -
Soviet satellite Sputnik
The year 1957 is most remembered for the October 4 launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik, which orbited for three weeks and began the space race and the space age.