Photo of the Day

1933… what a year!

The US unemployment rate peaks at 25.6 percent in May, with more than 15 million job-seekers out of work.

Photographer Dorothea Lange’s photo entitled “White Angel Breadline,” 1933.

The agricultural sector of the US economy is in free-fall.

• Farmers are more deeply in debt than any other economic sector.

• Over-production has driven agricultural commodity prices down to 1890s levels.

  

  Photographer Dorothea Lange’s photo of Dust Bowl refugees, with her hand-written note.

• The Dust Bowl has turned many farm families into migrants, who have abandoned their land in search of temporary farm work in California.

Japan has conquered Manchuria, in China’s northeast, and withdrawn from the League of Nations. Nazi Germany exits the League also.

President-Elect Franklin Roosevelt addresses an outdoor crowd in Miami on Feb. 13, 1933. Soon after this photo was taken, Giuseppe Zangara fired five shots from the crowd, mortally injuring the Mayor of Chicago who was seated in front of FDR.

President-Elect Franklin Roosevelt, age 51, is unharmed in a Miami assassination attempt but the Mayor of Chicago, Anton Cermak, is killed. Roosevelt is inaugurated three weeks later, telling the American people “The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself.”

• Roosevelt begins his First 100 Days, in which a flurry of new federal enactments takes aim at the Great Depression. The period becomes a benchmark against which other presidents will be judged.

CBS announcer Robert Trout introduced FDR’s first fireside chat with these words: “The president wants to come into your home and sit at your fireside for a little fireside chat.” He had been in office for eight days. March 12, 1933.

• Roosevelt begins his radio series of “fireside chats.”

Adolph Hitler, age 44, is appointed Chancellor of Germany.

• Declaring the Third Reich, Hitler begins the remilitarization of Germany, in defiance of the Treaty of Versailles, and makes plans for the repopulation of Eastern Europe with German settlers.

The Riechstag, home of the German parliament, on fire. February 27, 1933.

• Dachau, the first concentration camp, opens for political prisoners.

• Hermann Göring, age 40, establishes the Gestapo secret police.

• Public book burnings are staged throughout Germany. 70,000 people attend a Berlin book burning in May.

Fyodor Shurpin’s painting of Stalin entitled Morning of Our Motherland (c. 1946).

Joseph Stalin, age 55, has been the leader of the Soviet Union for seven years. Severe famine brought on by poor harvests has gripped his nation for two years and it is particularly harsh in Soviet Ukraine, where 4 -7 million people will succumb. Many historians attribute the severity of the Ukrainian famine, called the Holodomor, on Stalin’s policies.

The 20th Amendment to the US Constitution is ratified, changing the date of the presidential inauguration to January 20 instead of March 4, beginning in 1937.

The 21st Amendment to the US Constitution is also ratified, ending Prohibition.

At the time of its opening in 1937, the Golden Gate Bridge was both the longest and the tallest suspension bridge in the world, titles it held until 1964 and 1998, respectively.

Construction of the Golden Gate Bridge begins in San Francisco Bay. It will be completed in 1937.

“Sit in your car and enjoy talkies.”

The first drive-in movie theater opens near Camden, New Jersey.

Mount Rushmore in South Dakota is dedicated.

A nitroglycerin bomb in the luggage compartment of a United Airlines passenger plane explodes while the plane is in flight over Indiana, killing all seven people aboard. The event is the first proven sabotage of a commercial flight. The perpetrator is never found.

The US Department of Justice acquires the Army’s disciplinary barracks on Alcatraz, with the intention of converting the facility into a federal prison.

In the first NFL Championship game, the Chicago Bears defeat the New York Giants, 23-21.

Albert Einstein, age 54, loses his home in Germany to the Nazis and resides briefly in England.

• Einstein meets with Churchill, urging Britain to take in German Jewish scientists; and he writes to leaders of several countries urging them to do the same.

• Einstein emigrates to the US, taking a position at Princeton, which had no ‘Jewish quota.’ Princeton becomes a refuge for many German Jewish scientists.

Frances Perkins, age 53, is named Labor Secretary, becoming the first female cabinet member.

Actress Hedy Lamarr, age 18, achieves international notoriety with her leading role in the erotic Czech film Ecstasy.

Floyd was the FBI’s “Public Enemy No. 1” at the time he was killed in 1934 in an Ohio cornfield.

Gangster Pretty Boy Floyd, age 29, kills an FBI agent, three local policemen and the bank robber he intended to rescue in a Kansas City, Missouri, ambush.

A Detroit radio station begins regular broadcasts of The Lone Ranger radio series.

Newsweek Magazine begins publication.

A telephone operator delivers the first singing telegram, the idea of the public relations director for Western Union, who wanted to change the connotation of the telegram from ‘bad news’ to one of joy.

Eugene Krantz, flight director for many Apollo missions.

Born in 1933 and still with us: Kim Novak; Yoko Ono; Quincy Jones; Carol Burnett; Willie Nelson; and NASA legend Gene Kranz.

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I’ll see you tomorrow.

— Brenda

Banner image: bar patrons celebrate the end of Prohibition.