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Warren G. Harding Becomes President
Warren G. Harding was inaugurated on March 4, 1921. His presidency would be remembered for the corruption of his friends, and especially for the Teapot Dome scandal where two of his friends, the interior secretary and the navy secretary would be convicted and sent to jail. In the summer of 1923, Harding went on vacation to decide how to deal with the corruption that plagued his office, but he died of a heart attack that August leaving his vice president Calvin Coolidge as president. -
The Scopes Trial
In Tennesse on March 25, 1925, John T. Scopes was put on trial for teaching the theories of Charles Darwin in public school. Clarence Darrow argued for the defense while William Jennings Bryan argued for the prosecution. The trial went on for six days, and even though the jury brought back a verdict of "guilty" Darrow make the position of Christianity look weak. The scopes trial marked the beginning of the end of Christian teaching in the public school system. -
Charles Lindbergh Flies Across the Atlantic
On May 21, 1927, Charles Lindbergh completed his non-stop solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean. He flew from New York to Paris in thirty-three hours. To many people, especially after the destruction of World War I, Lindbergh was a symbol of the great things humans could accomplish. -
Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti
Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two Italian immigrants, are executed after being implicated in a robbery and murder. Their execution represented a fear of immigrants during that time and that fear was referred to and remembered as a cultural war. Immigration was restricted with the Emergency Immigration Act passed by Congress in 1921, making it difficult for many immigrants and impossible for others. -
The Stock Market Crashes
On October 29, 1929, also known as Black Tuesday, the stock market crashed, taking a massive amount of money with it. While the stock market crash did not begin the Great Depression, it did expose many of the problems with the American economy that would create the Great Depression. -
Manchurian Incident
Some railroad tracks are blown up in Manchuria that leads to conflict between the Japanese and the Chinese. Japan invades Manchuria and quickly defeats the Chinese there, and the incident would spark a thirteen-year war as Japan began a full-scale invasion of China. The political divide in China made it difficult for them to fight back, but even though they could not push the Japanese back, they did stop them from advancing further into China. -
A New Deal
In a speech, presidential candidate Franklin D. Roosevelt uses the phrase "a new deal" to describe his plan for pulling America out of the depression. Roosevelt would go on to defeat Hoover in a landslide and implement his "new deal." These policies and programs included the Agricultural Adjustment Act, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Civilian Conservation Corps, the National Industrial Recovery Act, and many other programs and policies designed to help Americans in the Great Depression. -
World War II
Germany invades Poland on September 1, 1939, thus ensuring that Great Britain and France declare war on Germany. Hitler's German army takes Poland in three weeks and France in six. It used a tactic called Blitzkrieg or lightning war to avoid the stalemates of World War I. -
Pearl Harbor
Japanese forces launch a surprise attack against the military base in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. 2,400 Americans died in the attack, and within a week, Congress had declared war on Japan. The attack brought the United States fully into the war and united two previously separate wars into a full world war.