World Happenings: 1930
Jan. 20-Edwin E. "Buzz" Armstrong is born.Jan. 28-Prohibition turns 10. The Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. reports that death from alcoholism among policyholders was six times the rate of 10 years earlier.
Feb. 26-New York City installs red traffic lights.
March 12-Mahatma Gandhi and his followers begin a "march to the sea" where they will make salt in defiance of British rule and a British law establishing a government monopoly for the production of salt.
June 6-Frozen food (processed by Clarence Birdseye) hits the commercial market.
July-Grant Wood's sister and his dentist serve as models for "American Gothic," a satiric depiction of puritanical life in the Midwest.
Aug. 5-Neil Armstrong is born.
World Happenings: 1931
March 3-President Hoover signs a bill making Francis Scott Key's "Star Spangled Banner"-sung to an old English drinking tune-the National Anthem.May 1-The Empire State Building, the world's tallest at 1,245 feet, is dedicated.
Aug. 3-More than 200,000 die in massive floods along the Yangtze River in China.
Aug. 23-Ford Motor Co. orders employees to grow vegetables or lose their jobs.
Oct. 18-The inventor of the electric light, phonograph, motion picture and hundreds of other inventions, Thomas Alva Edison, dies at 84.
Oct. 24-Al Capone is sentenced to 11 years in prison for tax evasion.
World Happenings: 1932
Jan. 31-Japanese occupation troops spread out in Shanghai and wage fierce battles in Manchuria.April 17-Haile Selassie abolishes slavery in Ethiopia.
July 28-President Hoover orders federal troops to evict veterans-who had camped in Washington since May-seeking a bonus for service in the Great War.
July 31-In German elections, Hitler's National Socialist Party becomes the biggest party in the Reichstag, doubling its members.
Aug. 17-For the first time in U.S. history, emigration (103,295) exceeded immigration (35,576).
Oct. 2-The Yankees, with Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, sweep the Cubs in four games in the World Series.
Nov. 8-Franklin Roosevelt carries all but six states in his landslide presidential victory.
World Happenings: 1933
Jan. 10-Communist and anarchist rebels help spread revolution through the southern cities of Spain as rioting, bombings and gunfighting continue throughout the country.Jan. 20-The House passes a repeal of the dry law; the amendment goes to the states for ratification.
Feb. 15-Five shots are fired at President-elect Roosevelt after a speech in Missouri.
March 20-Nazis open the first concentration camp, near Dachau, for thousands of political opponents.
March 23-Hitler and his cabinet are given the power to make laws.
June 16-Roosevelt signs into law the National Recovery Act, under which the federal government will work with industry and labor to set minimum wages, shorten working hours, regulate production and provide funds for public works projects.
July 26-Nazis pass law to "purify" the German race through sterilization of men and women with deformities or various physical and mental ailments.
Dec. 5-After 14 years, Prohibition ends.
Dec. 30-A scientist reports that senators' brains average two ounces heavier than representatives' brains.
World Happenings: 1934
Jan. 31-Roosevelt devalues the dollar to 60 cents to protect the nation's foreign trade from the effects of other countries' depreciated currencies.March 31-John Dillinger shoots his way out of police capture for the third time.
May 23-Fifty bullets from a posse of Texas Rangers waiting in ambush riddle the car of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow as it travels at 85 mph on a road outside Shreveport, LA.
July 9-American Airlines opens sleeper plane service between Chicago and New York.
July 22-John Dillinger is gunned down as he leaves a Chicago movie theater.
Nov. 6-Governor Huey Long asks Louisiana to secede from the nation.
World Happenings: 1935
Jan. 16-Federal agents trail Kate "Ma" Barker, 55, the long-sought leader of the Karpis gang, to her Florida hideout and kill her after a six-hour gun battle.Feb. 22-Plane flights are banned over the White House for disturbing Roosevelt's sleep.
March 17-The German Reich arrests 700 pastors.
April 11-Increasingly severe dust storms hang over about half of the United States, destroying crops, forcing families to flee their homes, making breathing dangerous and closing businesses.
July 25-Governor Huey Long condemns the New Deal, calling it "a combination of Stalinism and Hitlerism, with a dash of Italian Fascism," and threatens to leave the Democratic Party.
Aug. 13-About 18,000 musicians get work in the federal arts relief program.
Aug. 14-Lawmakers, following the lead of many other industrialized nations, sign into law the Social Security Act.
Sept. 10-Huey Long is assassinated outside the Louisiana House chambers.
