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Dr. Hans von Ohain and Sir Frank Whittle are both recognized as being the co-inventors of the jet engine. Each worked separately and knew nothing of the other's work. Hans von Ohain is considered the designer of the first operational turbojet engine. Frank Whittle was the first to register a patent for the turbojet engine in 1930. Frank Whittle's jet first flew in in 1941.
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The Bank of United States, founded by Joseph S. Marcus in 1913 at 77 Delancey Street in New York, was the bank that failed in 1931. The bank run on its Bronx branch is said to have started the collapse of banking during the Great Depression; losing about 200 million dollars of depositors' savings.
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Empire State Building completed and officially opened!
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On this day in 1931, gangster Al Capone is sentenced to 11 years in prison for tax evasion and fined $80,000, signaling the downfall of one of the most notorious criminals of the 1920s and 1930s.
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Dillinger is shot three times and thus proclaimed dead.
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Adolf Hitler elected president of Germany
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The Hoover dam's construction was finally completed on this day.
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The photocopier, copy machine, was invented by Chester Carlson. Carlson was an engineer who couldn't get a job in his field during the Great Depression, so he took work in the patent department of batter-manufacturer P.R. Mallory.
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Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938:Maximum Struggle for a Minimum Wage
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On August 2, 1939, just before the beginning of World War II, Albert Einstein wrote to then President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Einstein and several other scientists told Roosevelt of efforts in Nazi Germany to purify uranium-235, which could be used to build an atomic bomb. It was shortly thereafter that the United States Government began the serious undertaking known then only as "The Manhattan Project."
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On August 23, 1939, representatives from Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union met and signed the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, which guaranteed that the two countries would not attack each other. By signing this pact, Germany had protected itself from having to fight a two-front war in the soon-to-begin World War II; the Soviet Union was awarded land, including parts of Poland and the Baltic States. The pact was broken when Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union less than two years later, on Jun
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On Sept. 1, 1939, Nazi Germany invaded Poland, the act that started World War II. The day before, Nazi operatives had posed as Polish military officers to stage an attack on the radio station in the Silesian city of Gleiwitz. Germany used the event as the pretext for its invasion of Poland.
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On this day in 1939, in response to Hitler's invasion of Poland, Britain and France, both allies of the overrun nation declare war on Germany.
