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The American stock market collapses, signaling the onset of the Great Depression. The Dow Jones Industrial Average peaks in September 1929 at 381.17—a level that it will not reach again until 1954. The Dow will bottom out at a Depression-era low of just 41.22 in 1932.
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New York's Bank of the United States collapses in the largest bank failure to date in American history.[M31] $200 million in deposits disappear, and the bank's customers are left holding the bag.
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Adolf Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany.
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Italy, under the leadership of Prime Minister Benito Mussolini, invades Ethiopia.
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President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the 1937 Neutrality Act, which bans travel on belligerent ships, forbids the arming of American merchant ships trading with belligerents, and issues an arms embargo with warring nations.
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The Japanese defeat Chinese forces in a clash near Peking, taking control of North China.
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President Franklin D. Roosevelt forbids U.S. ships from carrying arms to China or Japan.
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In response to Japanese action in China, President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivers a speech in which he calls for peace-loving nations to act together to "quarantine" aggressors to protect the world from the "disease" of war.
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Japanese warplanes dive-bomb the American gunboat Panay in the Yangtze River in China. Japan apologizes and pays reparations for the lives lost.
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President Franklin D. Roosevelt makes a deal to give Great Britain 50 destroyers in exchange for naval bases in Newfoundland, Bermuda, and sites in the Caribbean and the South Atlantic.
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United States Naval Intelligence cryptographers crack Japan's secret communications code and learn that Japan intends to conquer China.