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J.Edgar Hoover Becomes Head of the FBI
On May 10, 1924, President Calvin Coolidge appointed Hoover as the fifth Director of the Bureau of Investigation, partly in response to allegations that the prior director, William J. Burns, was involved in the Teapot Dome scandal. -
Mein Kampf is Published
Mein Kampf is a 1925 autobiographical manifesto by Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler. The work describes the process by which Hitler became antisemitic and outlines his political ideology and future plans for Germany. Volume 1 of Mein Kampf was published in 1925 and Volume 2 in 1926. -
Stock Market Crash Begins Great Depression
The crash began on Oct. 24, 1929, known as "Black Thursday," when the market opened 11% lower than the previous day's close. Institutions and financiers stepped in with bids above the market price to stem the panic, and the losses on that day were modest, with stocks bouncing back over the next two days. -
The Dust Bowl Begins
The Dust Bowl, also known as “the Dirty Thirties,” started in 1930 and lasted for about a decade, but its long-term economic impacts on the region lingered much longer. Severe drought hit the Midwest and Southern Great Plains in 1930. -
Franklin Roosevelt is Elected President (1st Time)
In the 1932 presidential election, Roosevelt defeated Republican incumbent Herbert Hoover in a landslide. -
Adolf Hitler Become Chancellor of Germany
Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany in 1933 following a series of electoral victories by the Nazi Party. He ruled absolutely until his death by suicide in April 1945. -
CCC is Created
The Civilian Conservation Corps was a voluntary public work relief program that operated from 1933 to 1942 in the United States for unemployed, unmarried men ages 18–25 and eventually expanded to ages 17–28. Robert Fechner was the first director of this agency, succeeded by James McEntee following Fechner's death. -
WPA is Created
It was established on May 6, 1935, by presidential order, as a key part of the Second New Deal. The WPA's initial appropriation in 1935 was for $4.9 billion (about 6.7 percent of the 1935 GDP). -
J.J. Braddock Wins Heavyweight Boxing Title
Instead, on June 13, 1935, at Madison Square Garden Bowl, Braddock won the Heavyweight Championship of the World as the 10-to-1 underdog in what was called "the greatest fistic upset since the defeat of John L. Sullivan by Jim Corbett". -
Olympic Games in Berlin
The Berlin Games were the 10th occurrence of the modern Olympic Games. The 1936 Olympics were held in a tense, politically charged atmosphere. The Nazi Party had risen to power in 1933, two years after Berlin was awarded the Games, and its racist policies led to international debate about a boycott of the Games. -
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Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht or the Night of Broken Glass, also called the November pogrom, was a pogrom against Jews carried out by the Nazi Party's Sturmabteilung paramilitary forces along with civilians throughout Nazi Germany on 9–10 November 1938. The German authorities looked on without intervening -
Grapes of Wrath is Published
The Grapes of Wrath is an American realist novel written by John Steinbeck and published in 1939. The book won the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and it was cited prominently when Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1962. -
Wizard of Oz Premiers in Movie Theaters
History was made at the Strand Theatre in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, on 12 August 1939 with the premiere of a remarkable movie that is now recognized as one of the greatest films ever made: The Wizard of Oz. -
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Germany Invades Poland
The invasion of Poland, also known as the September campaign, 1939 defensive war and Poland campaign, was an attack on the Republic of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union which marked the beginning of World War II -
The Battle of Britain
The Battle of Britain, also known as the Air Battle for England, was a military campaign of the Second World War, in which the Royal Air Force and the Fleet Air Arm of the Royal Navy defended the United Kingdom against large-scale attacks by Nazi Germany's air force, the Luftwaffe -
The Four Freedoms Speech
The four freedoms he outlined were freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. As America became engaged in World War II, painter Norman Rockwell did a series of paintings illustrating the four freedoms as international war goals that went beyond just defeating the Axis powers. -
The Bombing of Pearl Harbor
This was when Japan had bombed the United States' Navy ships in Pearl Harbor Hawaii and this was when the US got involved in WW2. -
The Battle of Midway
The Battle of Midway was a major naval battle in the Pacific Theater of World War II that took place on 4–7 June 1942, six months after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and one month after the Battle of the Coral Sea -
The Battle of Stalingrad
In the Battle of Stalingrad, Germany and its allies fought the Soviet Union for control of the city of Stalingrad in Southern Russia -
Operation Torch
Operation Torch was an Allied invasion of French North Africa during the Second World War. While the French colonies formally aligned with Germany via Vichy France, the loyalties of the population were mixed. Reports indicated that they might support the Allies -
Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives Program
The Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program under the Civil Affairs and Military Government Sections of the Allied armies was established in 1943 to help protect cultural property in war areas during and after World War II -
The Battle of Kursk
The Battle of Kursk was a Second World War engagement between German and Soviet forces on the Eastern Front near Kursk in the Soviet Union, during July and August 1943 -
D-Day (June 6th, 1944)
The Normandy landings were the landing operations and associated airborne operations on Tuesday, 6 June 1944 of the Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during World War II. Codenamed Operation Neptune and often referred to as D-Day, it was the largest seaborne invasion in history. -
The Battle of the Bulge
The Battle of the Bulge, also known as the Ardennes Counteroffensive, was a major German offensive campaign on the Western Front during World War II which took place from 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945. -
The battle of Iwo Jima
A battle against the U.S. Marines and the Imperial army of Japan in 1945 this lasted about a moth and 7 days (5 weeks) -
The Battle of Okinawa
This was when the US and the Japanese army fought about a 2 month and 3 weeks on the island of Okinawa also known as operation Iceberg. -
The Death of FDR
After being president for his term he died of polio in 1945. -
The Death of Adolf Hitler
On April 30, 1945, holed up in a bunker under his headquarters in Berlin, Adolf Hitler commits suicide by swallowing a cyanide capsule and shooting himself in the head. Soon after, Germany unconditionally surrendered to the Allied forces, ending Hitler's dreams of a “1,000-year” Reich. -
Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima
On August 6, 1945, the American bomber Enola Gay dropped a five-ton bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. A blast equivalent to the power of 15,000 tons of TNT reduced four square miles of the city to ruins and immediately killed 80,000 people. -
Atomic Bombing Nagasaki
The United States detonated two nuclear weapons over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August 1945, respectively. The two bombings killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people, most of whom were civilians, and remain the only use of nuclear weapons in armed conflict.