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After President Harding unexpectedly died in office, the
Vice-President, Calvin Coolidge becomes the 30th U.S. President. -
Hitler and the Nazi Party attempted to overthrow the Bavarian government. Hitler was sentenced to five years in prison for treason but served less than one year of his sentence. The putsch and his trial catapulted Hitler into a national figure.
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The act limiting the number of immigrants allowed into the United States through a national origins quota, completely excluding Asian immigrants, was enacted on this date.
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This act cut federal tax rates (retroactively for 1923) and established the U.S. Board of Tax Appeals, which was later renamed the United States Tax Court.
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This plan was proposed by the Dawes Committee to resolve the World War I reparations that Germany was forced to pay.
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The American stock market collapses, signaling the onset of the Great Depression. The Dow Jones Industrial Average peaks in September 1929 at 381.17—a level that it will not reach again until 1954. The Dow will bottom out at a Depression-era low of just 41.22 in 1932.
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Herbert Hoover was elected into office as the 31st president of the United States.
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New York's Bank of the United States collapses in the largest bank failure to date in American history. $200 million in deposits disappear, and the bank's customers are left holding the bag.
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Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt defeats incumbent Republican President Herbert Hoover in a landslide to win the presidency.
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Huey Long founds the Share Our Wealth society, advocating outright seizure of the "excess fortunes" of the rich to redistribute to the poor.
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Unemployment averages 20.1% for the year.
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Franklin D. Roosevelt is elected to a second term as president, winning in a landslide over Republican Alf Landon. Roosevelt wins every state but Maine and Vermont.
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The German-American Bund stages a huge rally of fascist sympathizers supporting what they call "True Americanism" in Madison Square Garden in New York. Anti-Semitic Hitler admirer and Bund leader Fritz Kuhn calls Franklin Roosevelt "Frank Rosenfeld," the New Deal the "Jew Deal."
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The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor draws United States into World War II. Mobilization for war finally lifts the American economy permanently out of the Great Depression.
