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1st Miss American Pageant
Margaret Gorman, Miss District of Columbia, was declared "The Most Beautiful Bathing Girl in America" in 1921 at the age of 16 and was recognized as the first "Miss America" when she returned to compete the next year. -
Sacco and Vanzetti arrested for armed robbery and murder
The Sacco and Vanzetti case is widely regarded as a miscarriage of justice in American legal history. Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, Italian immigrants and anarchists, were executed for murder by the state of Massachusetts in 1927 on the basis of doubtful ballistics evidence -
KDKA goes on the air from Pittsburgh
The first commercial radio station was KDKA in Pittsburgh, which went on the air in the evening of Nov. 2, 1920, with a broadcast of the returns of the Harding-Cox presidential election. -
Teapot Dome Scandal
Secretary of the Interior Albert Bacon Fall 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 a seminal investigation by Senator Thomas J. Walsh. -
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 published by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Great Gatsby is a 1925 novel written by American author F. Scott Fitzgerald that follows a cast of characters living in the fictional towns of West Egg and East Egg on prosperous Long Island in the summer of 1922. Many literary critics consider The Great Gatsby to be one of the greatest novels ever written -
Charles Lindberg completes solo flight across the Atlantic
Lindbergh was alone, with no navigator or co-pilot. The aircraft was christened The Spirit of St. Louis, and on May 12, 1927, Lindbergh flew it from San Diego to New York, setting a new record for the fastest transcontinental flight. -
The Jazz Singer debuts (1st movie with sound)
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. -
Saint Valentine's Day Massacre
Saint Valentine's Day Massacre, mass murder of a group of unarmed bootlegging gang members in Chicago. The bloody incident dramatized the intense rivalry for control of the illegal liquor traffic during the Prohibition Era in the United States. -
Black Tuesday (Stock Market Crash)
On October 29, 1929, 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.
