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Sacco and Vanzetti were arrested for the South Braintree shoe factory robbery and murder on May 5, 1920, after they tried to pick up a car that was potentially linked to the crime. Both were armed when arrested, had radical political views (anarchism), and were unable to provide a verifiable alibi for the day of the crime, which contributed to their conviction despite weak evidence and widespread claims of a biased trial due to their immigrant status and political beliefs -
This was just the sort of thing Westinghouse had in mind, and it asked Conrad to help set up a regularly transmitting station in Pittsburgh. On November 2, 1920, station KDKA made the nation's first commercial broadcast (a term coined by Conrad himself). -
It centered on Interior Secretary Albert B. Fall, who had leased Navy petroleum reserves at Teapot Dome in Wyoming, as well as two locations in California, to private oil companies at low rates without competitive bidding. The leases were the subject of an investigation by Senator Thomas J. Walsh. -
The first Miss America pageant was held in September 1921 in Atlantic City, New Jersey, as a strategy to attract tourists after Labor Day. The event, initially called the Inter-City Beauty Contest, was won by 16-year-old Margaret Gorman, representing Washington, D.C. The pageant featured a "bathing beauty review" and also included contests for men -
The first Winter Olympics were held in Chamonix, France, from January 25 to February 5, 1924. The event, initially known as the "International Winter Sports Week," featured 16 events across nine disciplines, including ski jumping, ice hockey, and figure skating. Norway topped the medal table with 17 medals, and the success of the event led the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to retroactively designate it the first Olympic Winter Games -
The Scopes Trial was a 1925 court case in Dayton, Tennessee, where high school teacher John T. Scopes was accused of violating the Butler Act, which prohibited the teaching of human evolution in public schools. The trial, which ran from July 10 to July 21, 1925, gained national attention as it pitted famed lawyer Clarence Darrow against Christian fundamentalist and former presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan. Scopes was found guilty and fined $100, -
Charles Lindbergh completed the first solo, nonstop flight across the Atlantic on May 20–21, 1927, flying his Spirit of St. Louis from New York to Paris in 33.5 hours. He landed at Le Bourget Airport to a huge crowd, becoming a global hero and triggering a "Lindbergh Boom" that boosted interest and investment in aviation -
The Jazz Singer debuted on October 6, 1927, as the first feature-length "talkie" with synchronized dialogue, marking a pivotal moment that ended the era of silent films. While it only featured limited sound sequences, its massive success, driven by Warner Bros.' Vitaphone sound-on-disc technology, propelled the industry's rapid conversion to sound films, or "talkies" -
The St. Valentine's Day Massacre occurred on February 14, 1929, in Chicago, when seven members of the rival North Side Gang were lined up and shot to death by assailants disguised as police officers. Widely believed to be ordered by Al Capone to eliminate North Side leader Bugs Moran, the cold-blooded attack involved Thompson submachine guns and was a violent escalation in the ongoing Prohibition-era gang wars -
Black Tuesday was October 29, 1929, a day of extreme panic selling when the stock market crashed. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 12% as over 16 million shares were traded, marking the worst single-day loss in U.S. stock market history and the beginning of the Great Depression. This event ended the "Roaring Twenties" and ushered in a decade of global economic hardship