-
-
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, on September 24, 1896, the namesake and second cousin three times removed of the author of the National Anthem. Fitzgerald’s given names indicate his parents’ pride in his father’s ancestry.
https://sc.edu/about/offices_and_divisions/university_libraries/browse/irvin_dept_special_collections/collections/matthew_arlyn_bruccoli_collection_of_f_scott_fitzgerald/life_of_fitzgerald/index.php -
Dr. Charles Richard Drew pioneered the idea of a blood bank who was an American medical doctor and surgeon who started the idea of a blood bank and a system for the long-term preservation of blood plasma. https://www.enchantedlearning.com/inventors/1900a.shtml -
Theodor Seuss Geisel (March 2, 1904–Sept. 24, 1991), who used the pseudonym "Dr. Seuss," wrote and illustrated 45 children’s books filled with memorable characters, earnest messages, and even limericks. Many of Dr. Seuss’s books have become classics, such as "The Cat in the Hat," "How the Grinch Stole Christmas!," "Horton Hears a Who," and "Green Eggs and Ham."
https://www.thoughtco.com/dr-seuss-1779838 -
During 1911-1913 he attended the Newman School, a Catholic prep school in New Jersey, where he met Father Sigourney Fay, who encouraged his ambitions for personal distinction and achievement. As a member of the Princeton Class of 1917, Fitzgerald neglected his studies for his literary apprenticeship.
https://sc.edu/about/offices_and_divisions/university_libraries/browse/irvin_dept_special_collections/collections/matthew_arlyn_bruccoli_collection_of_f_scott_fitzgerald/life_of_fitzgerald/index.php -
In 1912, Nabisco had an idea for a new cookie, though it wasn't exactly its own—two chocolate disks with a creme filling in between had been done already by the Sunshine Biscuits company in 1908, which called the cookie Hydrox.
https://www.thoughtco.com/history-of-the-oreo-cookie-1779206 -
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”.
https://sc.edu/about/offices_and_divisions/university_libraries/browse/irvin_dept_special_collections/collections/matthew_arlyn_bruccoli_collection_of_f_scott_fitzgerald/life_of_fitzgerald/index.php -
In June 1918 Fitzgerald was assigned to Camp Sheridan, near Montgomery, Alabama. There he fell in love with a celebrated belle, eighteen-year-old Zelda Sayre, the youngest daughter of an Alabama Supreme Court judge.
https://sc.edu/about/offices_and_divisions/university_libraries/browse/irvin_dept_special_collections/collections/matthew_arlyn_bruccoli_collection_of_f_scott_fitzgerald/life_of_fitzgerald/index.php -
The Palmer Raids were a series of police raids targeting suspected radical leftist immigrants—particularly Italians and Eastern Europeans—during the Red Scare of late 1919 and early 1920. The arrests, which were directed by Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, resulted in thousands of people being detained and hundreds being deported from the United States.
https://www.thoughtco.com/palmer-raids-4584803 -
The attempt to decrease the "evils" of alcohol actually created more - and new - types of crime. Temperance movements had swept through portions of the United States throughout the 19th century, but it was World War I that provided the first opportunity for the anti-alcohol movement to enact a national ban on alcohol. This effectively shut down the country's breweries and distilleries temporarily.
https://www.historicpatterson.org/Exhibits/ExhProhibition.php -
The Roaring Twenties were years of rapid economic growth, rising prosperity for many people, and far-reaching social changes for the nation. The period is sometimes called the Jazz Age, because of the new style of music and the pleasure-seeking people who made it popular.
https://whrhs.libguides.com/c.php?g=589810&p=4077372#:~:text=The%20Roaring%20Twenties%20were%20years,people%20who%20made%20it%20popular. -
The prohibition of alcohol in the United States lasted for 13 years: from January 16, 1920, through December 5, 1933. It is one of the most famous—or infamous—times in American history. While the intention was to reduce the consumption of alcohol by eliminating businesses that manufactured, distributed and sold it, the plan backfired.
https://www.thoughtco.com/united-states-prohibition-of-alcohol-760167 -
Richard G. Drew (1899-1980) invented masking tape and clear adhesive tape (also called cellophane tape or Scotch tape). Drew was an engineer for the 3M company (the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing). Drew’s first tape invention was a masking tape made for painters in 1923 (this tape was designed to help painters paint a straight border between two colors).
https://www.enchantedlearning.com/inventors/1900a.shtml -
The Fitzgeralds spent the winter of 1924-1925 in Rome, where he revised The Great Gatsby; they were en route to Paris when the novel was published in April. The Great Gatsby marked a striking advance in Fitzgerald’s technique, utilizing a complex structure and a controlled narrative point of view.
https://sc.edu/about/offices_and_divisions/university_libraries/browse/irvin_dept_special_collections/collections/matthew_arlyn_bruccoli_collection_of_f_scott_fitzgerald/life_of_fitzgerald/index.php -
While in France, Fitzgerald completes his masterpiece, The Great Gatsby. After the success of this book, he writes several brilliant short stories, but eight years will pass before his next novel is published.
https://www.britannica.com/summary/F-Scott-Fitzgerald-Timeline -
The automatic commercial bread slicer was invented in 1927 by Otto Frederick Rohwedder from Iowa, USA (Rohwedder had worked on his machine since 1912). His machine both sliced and wrapped a loaf of bread. In 1928, the bread slicer was improved by Gustav Papendick, a baker from St. Louis, Missouri.
https://www.enchantedlearning.com/inventors/1900a.shtml -
In the 1920s, many people felt they could make a fortune from the stock market. Disregarding the volatility of the stock market, they invested their entire life savings. Others bought stocks on credit (margin). When the stock market took a dive on Black Tuesday, October 29, 1929, the country was unprepared. The economic devastation caused by the Stock Market Crash of 1929 was a key factor in the start of the Great Depression.
https://www.thoughtco.com/the-stock-market-crash-of-1929-1779244 -
The German American Bund was a Nazi organization in the United States in the late 1930s that recruited members and openly supported Hitler's policies. Though the organization was never massive, it was shocking to mainstream Americans and drew considerable attention from the authorities.
https://www.thoughtco.com/german-american-bund-4684500 -
After The Great Gatsby is published, Fitzgerald’s drinking becomes excessive, and Zelda suffers a mental breakdown in 1930. She spends the next year in European clinics. After she is released in 1931, they move back to the United States. She has a second breakdown in 1932 from which she never fully recovers. She publishes her first and only novel, Save Me the Waltz, which is based on the Fitzgeralds’ troubled marriage.
https://www.britannica.com/summary/F-Scott-Fitzgerald-Timeline -
Fitzgerald’s last completed novel, Tender Is the Night, is published. It is one of his most moving books but is commercially unsuccessful.
https://www.britannica.com/summary/F-Scott-Fitzgerald-Timeline -
By the time of the repeal of the 18th Amendment in 1933, it was obvious that the measure was a failure. Instead of promoting the nation's health and hygiene, the opposite was true as the illegal manufacture of alcohol filled part of the void, and those illegal products were often dangerous or much higher in alcohol content than the beer, wines, and spirits they replaced.
https://www.historicpatterson.org/Exhibits/ExhProhibition.php -
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
https://sc.edu/about/offices_and_divisions/university_libraries/browse/irvin_dept_special_collections/collections/matthew_arlyn_bruccoli_collection_of_f_scott_fitzgerald/life_of_fitzgerald/index.php -
U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had a lot to think about in 1939. The world had been suffering from the Great Depression for a decade and the Second World War had just erupted in Europe. On top of that, the U.S. economy continued to look bleak.
https://www.thoughtco.com/how-fdr-changed-thanksgiving-1779285 -
From May 26 to June 4, 1940, the British sent 222 Royal Navy ships and about 800 civilian boats to evacuate the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) and other Allied troops from the seaport of Dunkirk in France during World War II. After eight months of inaction during the "Phoney War," British, French, and Belgian troops were quickly overwhelmed by Nazi Germany’s blitzkrieg tactics when the attack began on May 10, 1940.
https://www.thoughtco.com/dunkirk-evacuation-british-army-1779311 -
Fitzgerald dies of a heart attack in Hollywood on December 21, 1940. The Last Tycoon is published in the year after his death.
https://www.britannica.com/summary/F-Scott-Fitzgerald-Timeline -
The Nuremberg Trials were a series of trials that occurred in post-World War II Germany to provide a platform for justice against accused Nazi war criminals. The first attempt to punish the perpetrators was conducted by the International Military Tribunal (IMT) in the German city of Nuremberg, beginning on November 20, 1945.
https://www.thoughtco.com/the-nuremberg-trials-1779316