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After building a gasoline engine in 1893, Henry Ford built a "horseless carriage" in 1896. He called it a Quadricycle, due to it having four wheels.
https://www.enchantedlearning.com/inventors/1900a.shtml -
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, on September 24, 1896. His father, Edward, was from Maryland. Fitzgerald’s mother, Mary (Mollie) McQuillan, was the daughter of an Irish immigrant who became wealthy as a wholesale grocer in St. Paul. Both were Catholics.
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The Wright Brothers constructed and successfully flew their first airplane on December 17, 1903, in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. It flew for about 12 seconds and traveled 120 feet.
https://www.enchantedlearning.com/inventors/1900a.shtml -
Garrett Augustus Morgan invented the gas mask in 1914. It was originally used to rescue miners who were trapped underground before being produced for the military.
https://www.enchantedlearning.com/inventors/1900a.shtml -
Fitzgerald joined the army in 1917 and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the infantry. Convinced that he would die in the war, he rapidly wrote a novel, “The Romantic Egotist”
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On January 16, 1919, the 18th Amendment was ratified, which prohibited the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors. In reality, this just increased the demand and illegal production.
https://www.legendsofamerica.com/ah-prohibitionspeakeasy/ -
Fitzgerald quit his job in July 1919 and returned to St. Paul to rewrite his novel as This Side of Paradise. It was accepted by editor Maxwell Perkins of Scribners in September. -
The 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution granted American women the right to vote, a right known as women's suffrage, and was ratified on August 18, 1920, ending almost a century of protest.
https://www.history.com/topics/womens-history/19th-amendment-1 -
In the fall-winter of 1919 Fitzgerald commenced his career as a writer of stories for mass-circulation magazines. The Saturday Evening Post became Fitzgerald’s best story market, and he was regarded as a “Post writer.”
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The publication of This Side of Paradise on March 26, 1920 made the 24-year-old Fitzgerald famous almost overnight, and a week later he married Zelda Sayre in New York. They embarked on an extravagant life as young celebrities.
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Bohr won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1922 for his theories and understanding of the structure of atoms. After escaping Sweden on a fishing boat, he helped in the creation of the atomic bomb.
https://www.thoughtco.com/most-influential-scientists-in-20th-century-1779904 -
The book was first published on April 10, 1925, and didn't find much success when it was first released. Completely opposed, it is now considered an American classic.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Great-Gatsby -
In 1928 Zelda Fitzgerald commenced ballet training, intending to become a professional dancer. The Fitzgeralds returned to France in the spring of 1929, where Zelda’s intense ballet work damaged her health and contributed to the couple’s estrangement.
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Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (Born January 15, 1929) is considered the leader of the Civil Rights movement in America. He delivered over 2,500 speeches addressing racial injustice, and focused on nonviolent protests.
https://www.thoughtco.com/martin-luther-king-jr-1779880 -
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, or FDR, was elected to be President in 1932, for the first time out of four terms. He suffered from the polio epidemic and was paralyzed from the waist down.
https://www.thoughtco.com/franklin-d-roosevelt-1779848 -
In 1932, while a patient at Johns Hopkins, Zelda Fitzgerald rapidly wrote Save Me the Waltz. Her autobiographical novel generated considerable bitterness between the Fitzgeralds, for he regarded it as pre-empting the material that he was using in his novel-in-progress.
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The 1936-1937 period is known as “the crack-up” from the title of an essay Fitzgerald wrote in 1936. Ill, drunk, in debt, and unable to write commercial stories, he lived in hotels in the region near Asheville, North Carolina, where in 1936 Zelda Fitzgerald entered Highland Hospital.
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F. Scott Fitzgerald died believing himself a failure. The obituaries were condescending, and he seemed destined for literary obscurity. He died on December 21, 1940.
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Albert Einstein was a brilliant scientist, known for his sense of humor and easily approachable personality. He's most well known now for his Theory of Relativity and help in the creation of the atomic bomb, (dropped in 1945.)
https://www.thoughtco.com/most-influential-scientists-in-20th-century-1779904 -
World War II lasted for six years, between 1939 to 1945. Over six million Jews, and five million others, were murdered in the Holocaust.
https://www.thoughtco.com/history-of-the-nazi-party-1779888 -
In 1946, Dr. Percy LeBaron Spencer was working with magnetrons at the Raytheon corporation when he realized the candy bar in his pocket had melted. With this discovery, he realized that microwaves could cook food faster than conventional ovens.
https://www.enchantedlearning.com/inventors/1900a.shtml -
The Cold War started on March 12, 1947, and despite being labeled a war, did not include any physical fighting. Instead, it was mostly focused on both sides antagonizing each other.
https://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/cold-war-history -
Max Planck accidentally revolutionized physics, his research being considered the pivotal point of modern physics. He discovered quantum theory and died on October 4, 1947.
https://www.thoughtco.com/most-influential-scientists-in-20th-century-1779904 -
Babe Ruth is widely regarded as the greatest baseball player of all time. He hit 714 home runs in all his time playing baseball, and many of his records in both batting and pitching stood for decades. He died on August 16th, 1948.
https://www.thoughtco.com/babe-ruth-1779893 -
Polio rampaged throughout the United States throughout the 20th century. In the 1950s, its severity increased, until the vaccine was created by Jonas Salk.
https://www.thoughtco.com/most-influential-scientists-in-20th-century-1779904