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Arrested for the armed robbery and murder of two men during a payroll robbery in South Braintree, Massachusetts. They were Italian-born anarchists, and although their involvement in the crime was based on circumstantial evidence and they claimed they were not guilty, they were convicted and executed in 1927. The case gained international notoriety due to widespread belief that they were victims of political and ethnic prejudice, sparking protests and debate over justice and civil rights. -
making it the world's first commercially licensed radio station. It began broadcasting to provide election results for the Harding-Cox presidential race, which demonstrated the power of commercial radio to the public. -
The first Miss America Pageant was held in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in 1921 to extend the tourist season after Labor Day. It began as an Inter-City Beauty Contest with 10 contestants, including 16-year-old Margaret Gorman of Washington, D.C., who won the title of "Most Beautiful Bathing Girl in America" and was awarded a Golden Mermaid trophy. The event was created by local businessmen as a marketing strategy to bring more visitors to the resort town. -
The event featured 258 athletes from 16 nations competing in nine sports, including ice hockey, figure skating, and ski jumping. Norway won the most medals, and the games were deemed a success, leading to the official establishment of the Winter Games. -
Charles Lindbergh completed the first solo, nonstop flight across the Atlantic in 1927 aboard the Spirit of St. Louis, a 33.5-hour journey from New York to Paris that earned him $25,000 in prize money and international fame. His historic flight, made with only rudimentary navigation and no radio, was achieved through meticulous planning and endurance, including using a periscope for forward vision since the main fuel tank blocked his view. -
The Great Gatsby, published in 1925 by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is a novel set in the Roaring Twenties that explores themes of wealth, social class, and the disillusionment with the American Dream. Narrated by Nick Carraway, the story follows the mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby's obsessive pursuit of his former love, Daisy Buchanan, and his ultimately tragic attempt to recapture the past through extravagant displays of wealth. -
The Scopes "Monkey" Trial was a U.S. court case in which high school teacher John Scopes was charged with violating Tennessee's Butler Act, which outlawed teaching human evolution. The trial became a nationwide spectacle pitting science against religion, highlighting the cultural clash between modernists and fundamentalists. It featured famous lawyers William Jennings Bryan for the prosecution and Clarence Darrow for the defense and resulted in a guilty verdict for Scopes, -
The Jazz Singer, is famous for being the first feature-length "talkie" because it included synchronized dialogue sequences alongside its musical score, which was a major innovation that revolutionized the film industry and helped end the era of silent films. While not the first film to feature synchronized sound at all, its commercial success made it the first widely successful feature with synchronized singing and speech, thanks to Warner Bros.' Vitaphone sound-on-disc system -
The St. Valentine's Day Massacre was the murder of seven men associated with the North Side Gang, carried out by assailants disguised as police officers on February 14, 1929, in Chicago. The event is believed to have been orchestrated by rival gangster Al Capone to eliminate his competitor, Bugs Moran, and solidify control over the city's bootlegging operations during Prohibition. The perpetrators machinegunned the victims in a garage, and though the assailants were never definitively identified -
The Teapot Dome scandal was a U.S. political corruption incident in the 1920s where Secretary of the Interior Albert B. Fall secretly leased federal oil reserves in California and Wyoming to private oil companies without competitive bidding. Fall was later convicted of taking over $400,000 in bribes, making him the first U.S. cabinet member to be imprisoned for crimes committed in office. The scandal is considered one of the biggest political scandals in American history. -
when the stock market crashed, causing widespread panic and marking the beginning of the Great Depression. This catastrophic event was triggered by a combination of factors, including excessive stock speculation (often with borrowed money), a shaky economic foundation, consumer debt, and a lack of banking safeguards. The crash resulted in billions of dollars lost, the failure of banks, and severe economic hardship for millions