May 27, 1933: World's Fair opens in ChicagoMay 18, 1933: TVA Bill signed by FDRMay 10, 1933: Patriotic German students destroy "un-German books"
May 1, 1933 (Monday)
In the United States, tornadoes killed 71 people, including 55 in the city of Minden, Louisiana.[1]
May 2, 1933 (Tuesday)
The legend of the Loch Ness Monster was born when the Inverness Courier, a newspaper in the nearby Scottish city, published a story entitled "Strange Spectacle on Loch Ness".[2] As the Courier began reporting more sightings, other newspapers picked up the story, with international reporters coming to the Loch by October.[3]
Nellie Tayloe Ross, who had been the first woman to be elected Governor of an American state (Wyoming), became the first woman to be named director of the United States Mint. She served until 1953.[6]
Steven Weinberg, American theoretical physicist, Nobel Prize laureate in 1979, in New York City. (d. 2021)
May 4, 1933 (Thursday)
Chinese author Ding Ling was kidnapped from her home in Shanghai by agents of the Nationalist Chinese government. Over the next three years, the leftist author was moved to various locations in Nanjing. In 1936 she escaped and joined with the Communist Red Army. Ironically, she would be jailed by the Communist Chinese government for her "right wing" views. In 1979 she would come back into favor with the Communist government, and would continue to be published until her death in 1986.[7]
Baseball pitcher Si Johnson of the Cincinnati Reds fell one hit short of a perfect game, a runner reaching base in the second inning, with no errors and no runs allowed in the 4–0 win over the Braves. Since the runner was tagged out while stealing, Johnson accomplished "27 up and 27 down". On May 18, Johnson would fall another hit short of a perfect game.[8]
May 5, 1933 (Friday)
Bell Laboratories announced Karl Jansky's discovery of radio waves which appeared to be emanating from the center of the Milky Way galaxy. The news was reported on page one of the New York Times: "New Radio Waves Traced to Centre of the Milky Way".,[9] introducing the world to the new science of radio astronomy.
Died: Li Ching-Yuen, allegedly 256 years old, Chinese celebrity reported by the press to have been born in 1677.[10]
May 6, 1933 (Saturday)
The Kentucky Derby horse race was won by jockey Donald Meade, riding Brokers Tip, finishing ahead of Herb Fisher on Head Play. Meade and Fisher literally fought each other on the way to the finish line, as photographs showed Meade grabbing Fisher's shoulder, and Fisher pulling on the saddle of Meade's horse, and both continued to fight after the race. Brokers Tip's victory was upheld, though both jockeys were suspended for unsportsmanlike conduct.[11]
In a prelude to mass book burnings in Germany, a gang of morally outraged students destroyed the work of Magnus Hirschfeld, burning the contents of the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (Institute of Sex Research) in Berlin. Hirschfeld was out of the country at the time and would never return to Germany. He died in 1935 at age 67.[12]
U.S. President Roosevelt gave his second nationally broadcast radio speech. In a press release, CBS radio executive Harry C. Butcher coined the term "fireside chat" for the President's addresses.[14]
After the number of inmates at prison camps, penal colonies and gulags in the Soviet Union escalated, Joseph Stalin signed a secret instruction to halt "unwarranted mass arrests in the countryside". The problem, the memo said, was that "Everyone who feels like it, including people who, strictly speaking, have no right to do so, is out arresting people."[15] Over the next two months, almost half of the prisoners (360,000) were released.[16]
The Nazi Party presented its plan for a German national church, based in Wittenberg, that would be limited to "Aryan Christians" and would recognize the sovereignty of the Nazi state.[18]
In the first official declaration of war by one nation against another since 1918, Paraguay's legislature voted to attack neighboring Bolivia. At Asunción, Paraguay's President Eusebio Ayala signed the measure. Bolivia and Paraguay had been fighting since June 15, 1932, when Bolivia attacked the Paraguayan town of Pitiantuia, in a dispute over the 100,000 square mile territory of the Gran Chaco.[22] The Chaco War, in progress since 1932, would last until 1935, leaving over 100,000 people (at least 57,000 Bolivians and 43,000 Paraguayans) dead and a costly Paraguayan victory.[23]
Died: Sam Marx, 73, unsuccessful tailor and door-to-door salesman, father of the five Marx Brothers
May 11, 1933 (Thursday)
As troops from Japan continued marching through China toward Beijing (called Pei-p'ing at that time), a Japanese bomber flew over the city and dropped handbills with the warning "Cease opposing the Japanese and Manchukuans. Break away from Marshal Chiang Kai-shek or tragedy ... will occur in Peiping and Tientsin." Chinese troops, defending a pass in the Great Wall, had been annihilated earlier in the week.[24]
Tornadoes struck the American states Tennessee and Kentucky, leaving 54 people dead in the seventh major storm series in two months.[25]
Saud bin Abdul Aziz was proclaimed Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia in an elaborate Bay'ah ceremony. King Saud would succeed to the throne in 1953 upon the death of his father, Ibn Saud, before the royal family withdrew the Bay'ah in 1964.[26]
The Agricultural Adjustment Act was signed into law by U.S. President Roosevelt, giving the federal government the power to raise farm prices and to provide relief on farm mortgage foreclosures. Also known as the "Wagner Act", the bill provided $500 million for farm relief.[27] Signed on the same day was the Federal Emergency Relief Act, which would eventually spend four billion dollars to create job programs for unemployed American workers.[28]
Plans to name the massive dam over the Colorado River after the unpopular recent American President Herbert Hoover, were cancelled by U.S. Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes, after which the construction project was referred to as Boulder Dam.[29] A 1947 act of Congress would change the name of the completed structure back to Hoover Dam.[30]
The American Rocket Society (then called the American Interplanetary Society) made its first successful launch of a liquid-propellant rocket, firing from the area of Great Kills, Staten Island in New York City. Rocket 2 reached an altitude of 250 feet (76 meters) propelled by gasoline, but its liquid oxygen fuel failed to ignite.[31]
Chancellor Hitler informed the chief representative of German Kaiser Wilhelm II that the monarchy would not be restored in the foreseeable future. Friedrich von Berg's meeting with Hitler had been arranged by President Hindenburg. Hitler told von Berg that restoration of the House of Hohenzollern would not happen during Hitler's lifetime, if at all. Hitler would outlive Kaiser Wilhelm by slightly less than four years.[33]
An 11-year-old boy set fire to paper inside a garage, causing a blaze that destroyed 239 buildings in the American city of Auburn, Maine, which left 1,500 people homeless. Renaude Code confessed to setting the blaze on May 20.[34]
President Roosevelt outlined his "Program for World Security", asking 54 nations to enter into "a solemn and definite pact of non-aggression" and to abandon offensive weapons of war and to unite for peace and economic recovery.[36]
Nobel Prize-winning physicist Max Planck, President of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society, met with Adolf Hitler in an unsuccessful attempt to keep Planck's Jewish colleagues from being dismissed from their jobs. Planck later stated that Hitler informed him: "Jews are all Communists and they are the enemy I am fighting against. A Jew is a Jew. All Jews hang together like burrs."[37]
John Grier Hibben, 62, former President of Princeton University and philosopher.
May 17, 1933 (Wednesday)
Germany's Chancellor Hitler endorsed U.S. President Roosevelt's world disarmament proposal, and demanded a revision of the 1919 Versailles Treaty.[38]
The United States News published its first issue as a newspaper weekly, after a 1926 attempt as the United States Daily. On January 16, 1948, it would merge with the magazine World Report (launched in 1946) as the weekly newsmagazine U.S. News & World Report.[39]
The prime-time American radio series One Man's Family premiered nationwide on the NBC Red Network, after nine months on the network's West Coast affiliates. The popular drama would remain a half-hour program for 17 years, then a 15-minute show after June 5, 1950, then an afternoon show after July 1, 1955, finally ending on April 24, 1959.[40]
Article 25 of the Republic of Spain's Constitution, the "Law of Religious Confessions and Congregations", went into effect, placing control of the Roman Catholic Church in Spain in the hands of the government, nationalizing church property, and banning church schools.[41]
Vidkun Quisling and Johan Bernhard Hjort formed The Nasjonal Samling (the National-Socialist Party) of Norway, based on Germany's National Socialist (Nazi Party). Quisling, whose name would become a synonym for a traitor, would pave the way for Germany's occupation of Norway during World War II.
In one of the most comprehensive New Deal programs, President Roosevelt signed into law the Norris-Hill bill, creating the Tennessee Valley Authority.[42] A day earlier, the U.S. House of Representatives had voted 259–112 to approve the version passed by the Senate.[43] The TVA brought cheap electrical power to the rural southern United States and controlled flooding by building dams along the Tennessee River.[44]
The bombing of a crowded railway station at Tientsin killed more than 100 people in the Chinese city.[45]
The last gold American coins minted, the twenty-dollar 1933 Double Eagle series, were delivered to the U.S. Mint to be melted. Most of the coins were never put into circulation but were melted down, but at least 20 were stolen and remained in existence. One of the coins would sell at a 2002 auction for $7,590,020.[46]
Austrian fascist KruckenkreuzGerman Nazi flag with swastika
Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss established the Vaterlandische Front (Fatherland Front), unifying right-wing political parties into a single fascist organization. Adapting a symbol to rival the German Nazi Party and its Austrian branch, the VF used as its symbol "a straightened-up version of the swastika called the 'Kruckenkreuz'".[47]
Following its May 11 warning to the citizens of Beijing, Japan sent eleven bombers over China's capital. Again, no bombs were dropped, only leaflets, reminding the populace that Japan could, and would, destroy Beijing if the government continued to oppose Japanese occupation of northeast China.[48]
May 21, 1933 (Sunday)
George Wilson Becton, the controversial 43-year-old African-American evangelist, was murdered by two white gunmen as he and aides left a Philadelphia church after he preached a sermon there.[49]
A repeat of the 1932 occupation of Washington, D.C., by the Bonus Army, was peacefully averted. Most of the group of 2,800 World War I veterans, who had been seeking early redemption of bonuses due them in 1945, accepted jobs with the Civilian Conservation Corps as the deadline for the offer expired. The marchers' encampment at Fort Hunt, Virginia became a CCC forestry camp on May 22, and the government paid for transportation home for those persons who chose not to stay.[50]
Tsengeltiin Jigjidjav, formerly the Prime Minister of Mongolia (1930–32) and the nation's Minister of Trade, was shot to death at his home. He was posthumously accused by the Communist Party of being a counterrevolutionary.[51]
John Dillinger was paroled from the Indiana State Prison after serving 8+1⁄2 years of a 20-year sentence for armed robbery of a store. After two months he began robbing banks across the Midwest United States.[52]
J. P. Morgan, Jr. testified before a U.S. Senate subcommittee that he and the other partners in J.P. Morgan & Co. had paid no income taxes in 1931 or 1932. The multi-millionaires had broken no laws, deducting capital losses from their substantial annual incomes earned, but public outrage led to revisions of the taxation law.[53]
The U.S. Senate impeachment trial of District Judge Harold Louderback concluded with his acquittal on all five counts. On Count V, the Senate voted 45–34 to convict him, nine votes short of the 2/3rds majority needed for his removal from office.[54]
The Standard Oil Company of California (now Chevron Corporation) signed an agreement with Saudi Arabia, to develop that nation's oil reserves for sixty years. Oil would be discovered in 1938, the first oil would be exported in 1939, and Saudi Arabia would become the world's largest oil producer.[57]
Young Corbett III lost the world welterweight boxing title to Jimmy McLarnin after a three-month reign. The Los Angeles bout ended in the first round after McLarnin knocked Corbett down three times in less than three minutes.[58]
Speaking against repeal of the gold standard in a debate in the U.S. House of Representatives, Congressman Louis T. McFadden (R-Pa.) delivered a speech "alleging a Jewish conspiracy in terms that went far beyond the conventional anti-Semitism of the day". "The Gentiles have slips of paper while the Jews have the gold", said McFadden, adding, "This country has fallen into the hands of the international money changers." McFadden would lead the crusade against American Jews until his death three years later.[59]
Harvey Bailey, "The Dean of American Bank Robbers", led a prison break from the Kansas State Penitentiary at Lansing. He would be recaptured and sentenced to life in federal prison, but would be released in 1964 and live until 1979.[60]
The Tanggu Truce was signed by the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan. Threatened with destruction, China surrendered its territory in Manchuria to the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo, agreed to allow Japanese troops to permanently occupy its territory north of the Great Wall of China, and pulled its troops away from a "demilitarized zone" extending 100 kilometers south of the Wall.[61]
References
^"71 Are Killed by Tornadoes", Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 2, 1933, p. 1
^Benjamin Radford and Joe Nickell, "Lake Monster Mysteries: Investigating the World's Most Elusive Creatures" (University Press of Kentucky, 2006), p. 36
^Henry H. Bauer, The Enigma of Loch Ness: Making Sense of a Mystery (University of Illinois Press, 1986), p. 36
^"Hitler 'Brown Shirts' Seize Control of German Unions", Milwaukee Journal, May 2, 1933, p. 1
^Thomas E. Hachey and Lawrence J. McCaffrey, The Irish Experience Since 1800: A Concise History (M.E. Sharpe, 2010), p. 167
^Yi-Tsi Mei Feuerwerker, Ding Ling's Fiction: Ideology and Narrative in Modern Chinese Literature (Harvard University Press, 1982), pp. 9-16
^Greg Rhodes, Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame Highlights: Memorable Moments in Team History As Heard on the Reds Radio Network (Clerisy Press, 2007), p. 104
^"Li Ching-Yung Dead; Gave His Age as 197 – Inquiry Put Age at 256", New York Times, May 6, 1933
^"Duking It Out At The Derby", by William F. Reed, Sports Illustrated, April 5, 1933, pp. 14–17; "Dirty Derby" in The New Encyclopedia of American Scandal, by George C. Kohn (Infobase Publishing, 2001), p. 108
^Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy, Sex the Measure of All Things: A Life of Alfred C. Kinsey (Indiana University Press, 1998), p. 54
^Russell D. Buhite and David W. Levy, eds., FDR's Fireside Chats (University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), p. xv; "Fireside chats", Encyclopedia of Political Communication SAGE, 2008), pp. 243–4
^Galina Mikhaĭlovna Ivanova and Carol Flath, Labor Camp Socialism: The Gulag in the Soviet Totalitarian System (M.E. Sharpe, 2000), pp. 24–5
^Oleg V. Khlevniuk, The History Of The Gulag: From Collectivization To The Great Terror (Yale University Press, 2004), p. 63
^ ab"Gandhi Breaks His 21-Day Fast; Near Exhaustion". Chicago Daily Tribune. May 29, 1933. p. 1.
^"Nazis Outline Church Plan", Milwaukee Journal, May 9, 1933, p. 2
^William Lyon Phelps, Selected Readings From Much Loved Books (Kessinger Publishing, 2005, reprinted from What I Like, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1933), p. 331
^John O'Brian, Ruthless Hedonism: The American Reception of Matisse (University of Chicago Press, 1999), p. 233
^Roderick Stackelberg, The Routledge Companion to Nazi Germany (Routledge, 2007), p. 287
^"War Declared by Paraguay in Chaco Area", Milwaukee Journal, May 10, 1933, p. 1
^Bruce W. Farcau, The Chaco War: Bolivia and Paraguay, 1932–1935 (Greenwood Publishing, 1996)
^"JAPAN ALL READY TO BOMB PEIPING", Spokane Daily Chronicle, May 11, 1933, p. 1
^"Tornadoes Kill More than 250", Spokane Daily Chronicle, May 11, 1933, p. 1
^Elie Podeh, The Politics of National Celebrations in the Arab Middle East (Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 265–6
^"Roosevelt Signs Farm Bill; Asks Foreclosure Delay", Milwaukee Journal, May 12, 1933, p. 1
^Frances Perkins, The Roosevelt I Knew (Penguin, 2011, reprinted from The Viking Press, 1946)
^"Hoover's Name Taken Off Big Colorado Dam", Milwaukee Journal, May 13, 1933, p. 1
^"Law Makes It Hoover Dam", Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 1, 1947, p. 1
^John Catchpole, Project Mercury: NASA's First Manned Space Programme (Springer, 2001), pp. 23–4
^"Neutrality of States", in Encyclopedia of the United Nations and International Agreements (Taylor & Francis, 2003), p. 1547
^LaMar Cecil, Wilhelm II: Emperor and Exile, 1900–1941 (UNC Press Books, 1996), p. 340
^"Fire Destroys 231 Buildings At Auburn, Me.", Ottawa Citizen, May 16, 1933, p. 1; "Started Fire", Milwaukee Journal, May 21, 1933, p. 2
^"Chicago Gang Terrorist Is Found Slain in Auto", Milwaukee Journal, May 15, 1933, p. 1
^"Keep Armies At Home, Roosevelt Demands", Milwaukee Journal, May 16, 1933, p. 1
^Kristie MacRakis, Surviving the Swastika: Scientific Research in Nazi Germany (Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 57
^"Hitler Pledges Aid to Peace; Demands Treaty Revision", Milwaukee Journal, May 17, 1933, p. 1; William L. Shirer, Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany (Simon and Schuster, 1960, 1990), p. 209
^Jim Cox, The A to Z of American Radio Soap Operas (Scarecrow Press, 2009), p. 162
^Andrés Vázquez de Prada, The Founder of Opus Dei: The Life of Josemaría Escrivá (Scepter Publishers, 2001), p. 304
^"Muscle Shoals Bill Approved By President", St. Petersburg Times, May 19, 1933, p. 1
^"Roosevelt Gets Shoals Measure", St. Petersburg Times, May 18, 1933, p. 2
^Michael Beschloss, Our Documents: 100 Milestone Documents From The National Archives (Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 157–8
^"Blast Shatters 100 in China", Milwaukee Journal, May 19, 1933, p. 1
^David Tripp, Illegal Tender: Gold, Greed, And The Mystery Of The Lost 1933 Double Eagle (Simon and Schuster, 2004), p. 63
^Michael Burleigh, Sacred Causes: The Clash of Religion and Politics, from the Great War to the War on Terror (HarperCollins, 2008), p. 145
^"ELEVEN BOMBERS THREATEN DEATH TO CHINESE CITY", Spokane Daily Chronicle, May 20, 1933, p. 1
^"Gangsters Kill Negro Evangelist", Reading (PA) Eagle, May 26, 1933, p. 13; Cary D. Wintz and Paul Finkelman, Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance (Vol. 1) (Taylor & Francis, 2004), pp. 110–1
^"'Take Job in the Forest or Go Home' Is Alternative Given to Bonus Boys", "Middlesboro (KY) Daily News", May 17, 1933, p. 1; "Bonus Marchers Weaken; Accept Jobs in Ax Corps", Milwaukee Journal, May 20, 1933, p. 1
^Alan J. K. Sanders, Historical Dictionary of Mongolia (Scarecrow Press, 2010), p. 368
^G. Russell Girardin, et al., Dillinger: The Untold Story (Indiana University Press, 2005), p. 21
^"Morgan Firm Fails to Pay Income Taxes", St. Petersburg Times, May 24, 1933, p. 1; "That Capital Gains Tax", by Henry Hazlitt, Newsweek Magazine, April 4, 1955, reprinted in Business Tides (Mises Institute, 2011), p. 380
^"Senate Acquits Louderback On All Impeachment Charges", Berkeley (CA) Daily Gazette, May 24, 1933, p. 1
^Mitchell Bard, The Arab Lobby: The Invisible Alliance That Undermines America's Interests in the Middle East (HarperCollins, 2010), p. 70
^"McLarnin Wins World Title From Corbett by Sensational Knockout in First Round", Vancouver Sun, May 30, 1933, p.1
^Philip Jenkins, Hoods and Shirts: The Extreme Right in Pennsylvania, 1925–1950 (University of North Carolina Press, 1997), p. 119
^Bryan Burrough, Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933–34 (Penguin, 2009)
^Michael Brecher and Jonathan Wilkenfeld, A Study of Crisis (University of Michigan Press, 1997), p. 156; James L. McClain, Japan, a Modern History (W. W. Norton & Company, 2002), pp. 421–2; "Japan and China Sign Agreement", Montreal Gazette, June 1, 1933, p. 1
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