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Yes, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were arrested in May 1920 for the armed robbery and murders of a paymaster and a guard during a shoe factory payroll heist in South Braintree, Massachusetts, in April 1920. They were convicted despite weak evidence, and the case became a symbol of injustice and prejudice due to their status as Italian-born anarchists.
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KDKA went on the air from Pittsburgh on November 2, 1920, becoming the world's first commercially licensed radio station. It broadcast the results of the Harding-Cox presidential election, launching a new era of radio and ushering in the age of commercial broadcast radio.
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The first Miss America pageant was held in Atlantic City, New Jersey, on September 7–8, 1921. Sixteen-year-old Margaret Gorman, representing Washington, D.C., was crowned the winner of this "Inter-City Beauty Contest," which was intended to keep tourists in the city after Labor Day. The pageant's popularity grew, and Gorman became known as the first "Miss America.
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It centered on Interior Secretary Albert B. Fall, who had leased Navy petroleum reserves at Teapot Dome in Wyoming, as well as two locations in California, to private oil companies at low rates without competitive bidding. The leases were the subject of an investigation by Senator Thomas J. Walsh. -
The first Winter Olympics were held in Chamonix, France, from January 25 to February 5, 1924, initially as an "International Winter Sports Week" before being officially designated as the first Olympic Winter Games by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in 1926. The event featured 16 events in six sports—including skiing, ice skating, bobsled, and hockey—and was deemed a great success, leading to the establishment of a regular Winter Games cycle.
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On March 19, 1925, Fitzgerald expressed enthusiasm for the title Under the Red, White, and Blue, but it was too late to change it at that stage. The novel was published as The Great Gatsby on April 10, 1925.
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The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes, commonly known as the Scopes trial or Scopes Monkey Trial, was an American legal case from July 10 to July 21, 1925, in which a high school teacher, John T. Scopes, was accused of violating the Butler Act, a Tennessee state law which outlawed the teaching of human evolution in public schools. -
Yes, Charles Lindbergh completed the first solo, nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean on May 20–21, 1927, flying from New York to Paris in his plane, the Spirit of St. Louis. The historic 3,610-mile journey took 33.5 hours and made Lindbergh an instant international hero, sparking a new era in aviation
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The Jazz Singer, the first feature-length film with synchronized dialogue, premiered in New York City on October 6, 1927, marking the beginning of the "talkie" era and a significant change for the film industry. Starring Al Jolson, this musical drama used Western Electric's Vitaphone sound-on-disc technology to include brief, synchronized dialogue and musical performances, but not for the entire film. -
The St. Valentine's Day Massacre was the 1929 murder of seven members and associates of Chicago's North Side Gang, orchestrated by rival Al Capone's South Side Gang during the Prohibition era. Men disguised as police officers entered a garage used by Bugs Moran's gang, lined the victims against a wall, and killed them with machine guns. -
Black Tuesday on Oct. 29, 1929, saw the DJIA plummet by 12% in one of history's largest one-day stock market losses. The crash marked the end of post-WWI economic growth and the onset of the Great Depression. Causes included excessive debt for stock purchases, protectionist policies, and slowing economic growth.