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The stock market crashes. The "crash" began on October 24 (Black Thursday). By October 29, stock prices dropped and banks were calling in loans. About $30 billion in stock values "disappeared" by mid-November.
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More than 3.2 million people are unemployed, up from 1.5 million before the "crash" of October, 1929. The street corners of New York City are crowded with apple-sellers. Almost six thousand unemployed individuals worked at selling apples for five cents apiece.
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"Food riots" begin to break out in parts of the U.S. In Minneapolis, several hundred men and women smashed the windows of a grocery market and made off with fruit, canned goods, bacon, and ham. Seven people were arrested.
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Hoover ordered Federal troops, for clearing the veterans that resisted being moved from their camps. Violence erupted and two veterans died.
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In an effort to stabilize prices, the slaughter of more than 6 million pigs occurred. Many citizens protested this action since most of the meat went to waste.
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A three-day dust storm blows an estimated 350 million tons of soil off of the terrain of the West and Southwest and deposits it as far east as New York and Boston.
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Work Projects Administration employed more than 8.5 million people in 3000 counties across the nation. They drew a salary of only $41.57 a month, fix or made highways, roads, bridges, and airports. The WPA put thousands of artists, writers, painters, theater directors, and sculptors to work on various projects.
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Photographer Dorothea Lange visits a pea-pickers' camp in California's San Joaquin Valley and takes photographs of harvest workers. "Migrant Mother Series,"
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Ten people are killed and a dozen more are wounded in the "Memorial Day Massacre" at Republic Steel's South Chicago plant
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FDR asks Congress to give 3.75 billion in federal spending to help the sagging economy. Economic people responded favorably over the next few months. Still, unemployment remained high and was predicted to stay that way for some time.
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Franklin Roosevelt is elected to a third term as president, beat Wendell Willkie. FDR's victory is seen as proof of the nation's support of his war policies. In little over a year, following Japan's December 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor, the U.S. would enter the war in the Pacific and in Europe.
The war effort jump-started -
Japanese bombers attacked the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, destroying 19 ships, 188 aircraft and killing over 2,000 Americans. It was this act that drove the United States into World War II.
