-
Frances Perkins Became First Female Cabinet Member
she became the first woman to hold a Cabinet position in a U.S. president's administration. She would go on to serve the longest term of any secretary of labor to date. -
Sacco & Vanzetti
Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were Italian immigrant anarchists who were controversially accused of murdering Alessandro Berardelli and Frederick Parmenter, a guard and a paymaster, during the April 15, 1920, armed robbery of the Slater and Morrill Shoe Company in Braintree, Massachusetts, United States. Seven years later, they were executed in the electric chair at Charlestown State Prison. -
The Harlem Renaissance
The Harlem Renaissance was an intellectual and cultural revival of African-American music, dance, art, fashion, literature, theater, politics and scholarship centered in Harlem, Manhattan, New York City, spanning the 1920s and 1930s. -
Scopes Trial
The Scopes trial, formally The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes, and commonly referred to as the Scopes Monkey Trial, was an American legal case from July 10 to July 21, 1925, in which a high school teacher, John T. Scopes, was accused of violating Tennessee's Butler Act, which had made it illegal for teachers to teach human evolution in any state-funded school. -
Benito Mussolini became the leader of Italy
Benito Mussolini was an Italian political leader who became the fascist dictator of Italy from 1925 to 1945. Originally a revolutionary socialist and a newspaper journalist and editor, he forged Italy's violent paramilitary fascist movement in 1919 and declared himself prime minister in 1922. -
Stock Market Crash (Black Tuesday)
Black Tuesday hit Wall Street as investors traded some 16 million shares on the New York Stock Exchange in a single day. Billions of dollars were lost, wiping out thousands of investors. Shown: the interior of the New York Stock Exchange on Black Friday, October 25, 1929. -
Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act
The Tariff Act of 1930, commonly known as the Hawley–Smoot Tariff or Smoot–Hawley Tariff, was a law that implemented protectionist trade policies in the United States. -
Dust Bowl
The Dust Bowl was a period of severe dust storms that greatly damaged the ecology and agriculture of the American and Canadian prairies during the 1930s. The phenomenon was caused by a combination of both natural factors and manmade factors -
Boulder Dam (Hoover Dam) Built
Hoover Dam, formerly called Boulder Dam, dam in Black Canyon on the Colorado River, at the Arizona-Nevada border, U.S. Constructed between 1930 and 1936, it is the highest concrete arch dam in the United States. -
Bonus Army Gassed
One veteran was shot to death, and several veterans and policemen were wounded. Congress then appropriated $100,000 to send the protestors home, and they dispersed. -
Reconstruction Finance Corporation
The Reconstruction Finance Corporation was a government corporation administered by the United States Federal Government between 1932 and 1957 that provided financial support to state and local governments and made loans to banks, railroads, mortgage associations, and other businesses. -
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) Elected
In the 1932 presidential election, Roosevelt defeated Republican incumbent president Herbert Hoover in a landslide. -
The Hundred Days Began
On July 25, 1933, Roosevelt gave a radio address in which he coined the term "first 100 days." Looking back, he began, "we all wanted the opportunity of a little quiet thought to examine and assimilate in a mental picture the crowding events of the hundred days. -
Glass-Steagall Act
The 21st Century Glass-Steagall Act separates traditional banks that offer savings and checking accounts and are insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation from riskier financial services, such as investment banking, insurance, swaps dealing, and hedge fund and private equity activities. -
First Fireside Chat
This week marks the 88th anniversary of FDR's first “Fireside Chat.” Though not identified as such on March 12, 1933, the President's address to the nation marked a key moment in his new Administration. He would speak directly to the American people over the airwaves about the banking crisis. -
The New Deal Began
On March 9, 1933, Roosevelt sent to Congress the Emergency Banking Act, drafted in large part by Hoover's top advisors. The act was passed and signed into law the same day. It provided for a system of reopening sound banks under Treasury supervision, with federal loans available if needed. -
FDIC was Created
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is a United States government corporation supplying deposit insurance to depositors in American commercial banks and savings banks. The FDIC was created by the Banking Act of 1933, enacted during the Great Depression to restore trust in the American banking system. -
The AAA was Created
The Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) was a federal law passed in 1933 as part of U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. The law offered farmers subsidies in exchange for limiting their production of certain crops. The subsidies were meant to limit overproduction so that crop prices could increase. -
FDR began his Good Neighbor Policy
In his inaugural address on March 4, 1933, Roosevelt stated: “In the field of world policy I would dedicate this nation to the policy of the good neighbor—the neighbor who resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others.” -
Wagner Act
It gave employees the right, under Section 7, to form and join unions, and it obligated employers to bargain collectively with unions selected by a majority of the employees in an appropriate bargaining unit. -
Congress of Industrial Organization Created
The Congress of Industrial Organizations was a federation of unions that organized workers in industrial unions in the United States and Canada from 1935 to 1955. -
The SSA was Created
The United States Social Security Administration is an independent agency of the U.S. federal government that administers Social Security, a social insurance program consisting of retirement, disability and survivor benefits. -
The WPA was Created
Works Progress Administration. On April 8, 1935, Congress approved the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1935, the work relief bill that funded the Works Progress Administration (WPA). -
Mary Bethune Made Head of the Division of Negro Affairs and the National Youth Administration
In 1936, in an effort to better address the needs of black youth, President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Mary McLeod Bethune as Director of the NYA's Division of Negro Affairs. -
NLRB v. Jones and Laughlin Steel Corporation
The court ruled in favor of the NLRB with claims that Commerce Clause allowed the government to regulate interstate commerce. -
Court-Packing Plan
The bill came to be known as Roosevelt's "court-packing plan", a phrase coined by Edward Rumely. In November 1936, Roosevelt won a sweeping re-election victory. In the months following, he proposed to reorganize the federal judiciary by adding a new justice each time a justice reached age 70 and failed to retire. -
Japan invaded China
The Second Sino-Japanese War or War of Resistance was a military conflict primarily between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan. The war made up the Chinese theater of the wider Pacific Theater of the Second World War. -
Grapes of Wrath Published
The Grapes of Wrath has captured the American imagination, pulling back the curtain on a way of life that most of us could scarcely imagine, and showing us the powerful ways that literature can touch society. -
Cash and Carry
In 1939, after Germany invaded Poland, Roosevelt bypassed these restrictions by persuading Congress to permit the government to sell military supplies to France and Britain on a cash-and-carry basis—in other words, they could pay cash for American-made supplies and then transport them on their own ships. -
Lend Lease Act
Passed on March 11, 1941, this act set up a system that would allow the United States to lend or lease war supplies to any nation deemed "vital to the defense of the United States." -
Battle of Midway
The Battle of Midway was a major naval battle in the Pacific Theater of World War II that took place from 4–7 June 1942, six months after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and one month after the Battle of the Coral Sea. -
Doolittle Raids
The Doolittle Raid, also known as the Tokyo Raid, was an air raid on 18 April 1942 by the United States on the Japanese capital Tokyo and other places on Honshu during World War II. It was the first American air operation to strike the Japanese archipelago. -
WAAC formed
The Women's Army Corps was the women's branch of the United States Army. It was created as an auxiliary unit, the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps on 15 May 1942 and converted to an active duty status in the Army of the United States as the WAC on 1 July 1943. Its first director was Colonel Oveta Culp Hobby. -
Double V
In 1942 the Pittsburgh Courier, an African American newspaper, launched the Double Victory Campaign, which stood for “Victory Abroad and Victory at Home.” Victory Abroad championed military success against fascism overseas, and Victory at Home demanded equality for African Americans in the United States. -
Development of Rosie the Riveter
J. Howard Miller from Westinghouse created the “We Can Do It” war campaign and in 1942 created the iconic image of Rosie the Riveter. -
Japanese put in internment camps in the U.S.
In February 1942, just two months later, President Roosevelt, as commander-in-chief, issued Executive Order 9066 that resulted in the internment of Japanese Americans. -
Navajo Code Talkers used
The Marine Corps' Navajo Code Talker Program was established in September 1942 as the result of a recommendation made the previous February by Mr. Philip Johnston to Major General Clayton B. -
Operation Torch
Operation Torch was an Allied invasion of French North Africa during the Second World War. Torch was a compromise operation that met the British objective of securing victory in North Africa while allowing American armed forces the opportunity to engage in the fight against Nazi Germany on a limited scale. -
Smith-Connally Anti-Strike Act
The Act allowed the federal government to seize and operate industries threatened by or under strikes that would interfere with war production, and prohibited unions from making contributions in federal elections. -
Casablanca Conference
The Casablanca Conference or Anfa Conference was held in Casablanca, French Morocco, from January 14 to 24, 1943, to plan the Allied European strategy for the next phase of World War II. The main discusssions were between US President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. -
D-Day
The Normandy landings were the landing operations and associated airborne operations on Tuesday, 6 June 1944 of the Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during World War II. Codenamed Operation Neptune and often referred to as D-Day, it was the largest seaborne invasion in history. -
MacArthur “returned” to the Philippines
On October 20, 1944, a few hours after his troops landed, MacArthur waded ashore onto the Philippine island of Leyte. That day, he made a radio broadcast in which he declared, “People of the Philippines, I have returned!” In January 1945, his forces invaded the main Philippine island of Luzon. -
Nuremberg Trials
The Nuremberg trials were held by the Allies against representatives of the defeated Nazi Germany, for plotting and carrying out invasions of other countries, and other crimes, in World War II. -
FDR died
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, commonly known as FDR, was an American statesman and political leader who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945 -
Nazis developed the Final Solution
The Final Solution or the Final Solution to the Jewish Question was a Nazi plan for the genocide of individuals they defined as Jews during World War II. The "Final Solution to the Jewish question" was the official code name for the murder of all Jews within reach, which was not restricted to the European continent. -
Yalta Conference
The Yalta Conference, also known as the Crimea Conference, held 4–11 February 1945, was the World War II meeting of the heads of government of the United States, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union to discuss the postwar reorganization of Germany and Europe. -
Battle of Iwo Jima
The Battle of Iwo Jima was a major battle in which the United States Marine Corps and United States Navy landed on and eventually captured the island of Iwo Jima from the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II.