1934 in the United States

1934 in the United States
Years 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936
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48 stars (1912–59)
Timeline of United States history
History of the United States (1918–45)

Events from the year 1934 in the United States.

Incumbents

Federal Government

• President: Franklin D. Roosevelt (D-New York)
• Vice President: John Nance Garner (D-Texas)
• Chief Justice: Charles Evans Hughes (New York)
• Speaker of the House of Representatives: Henry Thomas Rainey (D-Illinois) (until August 19)
• Senate Majority Leader: Joseph Taylor Robinson (D-Arkansas)
• Congress: 73rd

Events

January

• January 26 – The Apollo Theater opens in Harlem, New York City.
• January 27 – Albert Einstein visits the White House.

February

• February 22 – Frank Capra's It Happened One Night, starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert, is released. It becomes a smash hit and the first of Capra's great screen classics. It becomes the first film to win all 5 of the major Academy Awards – Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Screenplay, Best Director, and Best Picture. Gable and Colbert receive their only Oscars for this film.

March

• March 3 – John Dillinger escapes from jail in Crown Point, Indiana, using a wooden pistol.
• March 12 – The 6.5 M_w Hansel Valley earthquake affected a sparsely populated area of northern Utah with a maximum Mercalli intensity of VIII (Severe), causing light damage and two deaths.^[1]
• March 13 – John Dillinger and their gang rob the First National Bank in Mason City, Iowa.
• March 24 – The Tydings–McDuffie Act comes into effect, establishing the Philippine Commonwealth which allows greater self-government of the Philippines, and scheduling full independence from the U.S. for 1944. Sugar imports are reduced and immigration is limited to 50 Filipino people per year.

April

• April 1 – Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker kill 2 young highway patrolmen near Grapevine, Texas.
• April 12
  • U.S. publication of the novel Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  • The world's highest ever recorded surface wind speed of 230 miles per hour (370 km/h) was recorded on the summit of Mount Washington (New Hampshire).
• April 22 – John Dillinger and two others shoot their way out of an FBI ambush in northern Wisconsin.

May

Violence in the Minneapolis Teamsters Strike

• May 11 – Dust Bowl: A strong 2-day dust storm removes massive amounts of Great Plains topsoil in one of the worst dust storms of the Dust Bowl.
• May 15 – The United States Department of Justice offers a $25,000 reward for John Dillinger.
• May 16 – Teamsters in Minneapolis begin a strike that lasts until a settlement proposal is accepted on August 21.
• May 23
  • A team of police officers, led by Texas Ranger Frank Hamer, ambush bank robbers Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow near their hide-out in Black Lake, Louisiana, killing them both.
  • The "Battle of Toledo" begins during the Auto-Lite strike in Toledo, Ohio, continuing until May 27.

June

• June 6 – New Deal: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Securities Exchange Act into law, establishing the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
• June 18 – Pub.L. 73–394 expands the crime of making false statements to remove the requirement of an intent to defraud and expands the coverage to "any matter within the jurisdiction" of the federal government.

July

• July 1
  • The world-famous Brookfield Zoo opens in Brookfield, Illinois.
  • The Hays Office censorship code for motion pictures goes into full effect in the United States.
• July 17 – The North Dakota Supreme Court declares Lieutenant Governor Ole H. Olson the legitimate governor and tells William Langer to resign. Langer proceeds to declare North Dakota independent. He revokes the declaration after the Supreme Court justices meet him.
• July 22 – Outside Chicago's Biograph Theatre, "Public Enemy No. 1" John Dillinger is mortally wounded by FBI agents.

August

• August 15 – The United States occupation of Haiti ends as the last Marines depart.
• August 19 – The first All-American Soap Box Derby is held in Dayton, Ohio.
• August 25 – Anti-union vigilantes seize the town of McGuffey, Ohio, during the Hardin County onion pickers strike.

September

• September 8 – Off the New Jersey coast, a fire aboard the passenger liner Morro Castle kills 134 people.
• September 29–October – Folk song collector John Lomax makes the first recordings of "Rock Island Line" at prison farms in Arkansas.

October

• October 22 – "Pretty Boy" Floyd is shot and killed by FBI agents near East Liverpool, Ohio.

November

• November 5 – Kelayres massacre: An election-eve rally by Democrats in the coal-mining village of Kelayres, Pennsylvania is fired on as it passes the home of a leading local Republican family, resulting in 5 deaths.
• November 20–21 – Business Plot: An alleged coup to overthrow President Franklin D. Roosevelt is investigated by the McCormack–Dickstein Committee and is reported by the Philadelphia Record.
• November 21 – Cole Porter's musical Anything Goes, starring Ethel Merman, premieres in New York City.
• November 26 – Universal Pictures releases the first film version of Fannie Hurst's novel, Imitation of Life, starring Claudette Colbert and Louise Beavers. It gives Beavers, usually featured in small roles as a maid, her best screen role, and features the largest supporting role played by a black person in a Hollywood film up until then. Its storyline is extremely daring for a 1934 film – part of it revolves around a young mulatto girl rejecting her mother and trying to "pass for white". It is the first Hollywood film to seriously deal with this subject. The 1936 film version of Show Boat, also from Universal, will deal with a similar storyline.
• November 27 – A running gun battle between FBI agents and bank robber Baby Face Nelson results in the death of one FBI agent and the mortal wounding of special agent Samuel P. Cowley, who was still able to mortally wound Nelson.

December

• December 26 – An American Airlines aircraft crashes in the Adirondack Mountains.
• December 29 – Japan renounces the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 and the London Naval Treaty of 1930.

Undated

• National Archives established.^[2]
• National Union for Social Justice (organization) founded.^[3]

Ongoing

• Lochner era (c. 1897–c. 1937)
• U.S. occupation of Haiti (1915–1934)
• Dust Bowl (1930–1936)
• New Deal (1933–1938)

Births

• February 1 – Bob Shane, folk singer and guitarist (The Kingston Trio)
• February 20 – Bobby Unser, race car driver
• February 21 – Rue McClanahan, television actress (died 2010)
• March 14 – Eugene Cernan, astronaut (died 2017)
• March 22 – Orrin Hatch, President pro tempore of the U.S. Senate, U.S. Senator from Utah from 1977
• March 26 – Alan Arkin, film actor (1975-1979)
• March 31 – Richard Chamberlain, screen actor
• April 1
  • Jim Ed Brown, singer-songwriter and guitarist (died 2015)
  • Rod Kanehl, baseball player and manager (died 2004)
• April 24 – Shirley MacLaine (Beaty), film actress and activist
• May 6 – Richard Shelby, U.S. Senator from Alabama from 1987
• May 9 – Nathan Dean, soldier and politician (died 2013)
• May 11 – Jim Jeffords, U.S. Senator from Vermont from 1989 to 2007 (died 2014)
• May 23 – Robert Moog, pioneer of electronic music (died 2005)
• May 24 – William R. Ratchford, politician (died 2011)
• June 1 – Ken McElroy, criminal (died 1981)
• June 3 – Jim Gentile, baseball player and manager
• June 6 – Roy Innis, activist and politician (d. 2017)
• June 7 – Wynn Stewart, country music singer-songwriter and guitarist (died 1985)
• June 13 – Marianne Means, née Hansen, political journalist
• June 26 – John V. Tunney, U.S. Senator from California from 1971 to 1977
• June 28 – Carl Levin, U.S. Senator from Michigan from 1979 to 2015
• July 1 – Sydney Pollack, film director (died 2008)
• July 10 – Jerry Nelson, puppeteer with The Muppets (Sesame Street, Fraggle Rock) (died 2012)
• July 12 – Van Cliburn, concert pianist (died 2013)
• August 16 – Donnie Dunagan, child actor and U.S. Marine Corps major
• August 19 – David Durenberger, U.S. Senator from Minnesota from 1978 to 1995
• August 29 – David Pryor, U.S. Senator from Arkansas from 1979 to 1997
• October 20 – Charles Liebman, American-born Israeli political scientist and author on Jewish life and Israel (died 2003 in Israel)
• November 9 – Carl Sagan, cosmologist (died 1996)
• November 17 – Jim Inhofe, U.S. Senator from Oklahoma from 1994
• December 1 – Billy Paul, soul singer (died 2016)
• December 30
  • Del Shannon, singer (d. 1990)
  • Russ Tamblyn, dancer, singer and actor
• Willie Hobbs Moore, African American engineer (died 1994)

Deaths

• February 25 – John McGraw, baseball manager (born 1873)
• March 21 – Lilyan Tashman, vaudeville, Broadway and film actress (born 1896)
• April 27 – Joe Vila, sportswriter (born 1866)
• May 17 – Cass Gilbert, architect (born 1859)
• May 23
  • Clyde Barrow, outlaw (shot) (born 1909)
  • Bonnie Parker, outlaw (shot) (born 1910)
• May 24 – Brand Whitlock, journalist and politician (born 1869)
• May 31 – Lew Cody, film actor (born 1884)
• June 8 – Dorothy Dell, film actress (automobile accident) (born 1915)
• June 20 – Andrew Jackson Zilker, philanthropist (born 1858)
• June 21 – Thorne Smith, humorist and fantasy author (heart attack) (born 1892)
• June 24 – Charles S. Thomas, U.S. Senator from Colorado from 1913 to 1921 (born 1849)
• July 15 – Louis F. Gottschalk, composer (born 1869)
• July 18 – Sy Sanborn, sportswriter (born 1866)
• July 21 – Julian Hawthorne, journalist and novelist (born 1846)
• July 22 – John Dillinger, criminal (shot) (born 1903)
• July 26 – Winsor McCay, comic creator and animator (born 1871)
• August 8 – Wilbert Robinson, baseball manager (born 1863)
• August 10 – George W. Hill, film director (born 1895)
• August 13 – Mary Hunter Austin, travel writer (born 1868)
• August 14 – Raymond Hood, architect (born 1881)
• September 2
  • Russ Columbo, singer and actor (shot) (born 1908)
  • Alcide Nunez, jazz clarinetist (born 1884)
• October 6 – James Taliaferro, U.S. Senator from Florida from 1899 to 1911 (born 1847)
• October 22 – Pretty Boy Floyd, bank robber (shot) (born 1904)
• November 10 – Ion Farris, politician, former Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives (born 1878)
• November 22 – Harry Steppe, vaudeville performer (born 1888)
• November 27 – Baby Face Nelson, gangster (shot) (born 1908)
• December 26 – Wallace Thurman, African American novelist (TB) (born 1902)
• December 28 – Lowell Sherman, film actor and director (born 1885)

See also

• List of American films of 1934

References

External links

• Media related to 1934 in the United States at Wikimedia Commons