January 1929

U.S. Senate ratifies the Kellogg-Briand anti-war pact.

Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. is born.

Members of New York Stock Exchange are asked to authorize 275 additional seats.

U.S. Congressman Oscar W. Underwood dies.

The nation’s first training school for seeing eye dogs, Seeing Eye opens.

Wyatt Earp dies in his sleep at 80.

February 1929

Henry Stimson accepts the position of Hoover’s Secretary of State.

A New York City report says the average girl, working 50 hours per week, earns $33.50.

U.S. Congress authorizes the building of one aircraft carrier and 16 naval cruisers.

Seven Chicago gangsters are killed by a firing squad of rivals by Al Capone’s gang in an incident dubbed the “Valentine’s Day Massacre.”

The U.S. Federal Reserve council favors a curb on stock speculation, but takes no concrete steps to limit it. [I have a feeling this will become ironic with time.]

A $2 billion merger creates the largest American bank, the National Bank of Commerce and Guaranty Trust.

March 1929

Herbert Hoover is sworn in as president.

Massive floods occur in Alabama.

Prisoners riot at Leavenworth to protest overcrowding, graft [need to find out what graft means here?] by the guards, inedible food, and unsanitary conditions.

13 people are killed when a Ford air transport crashes.

Stocks hit downturn in a single 8.2-million-share day, but rally.

Congress adopts an immigration policy that sets ratios for different countries of national origin. [Interesting, I’ll be curious to look into this?]

April 1929

Stocks drop as interest rates climb to 15%.

The U.S. Supreme Court upholds oil mogul Harry Sinclair’s three-month sentence for contempt of Senate when he refuses to answer questions regarding the Teapot Dome scandal; his sentence to begin on May 6.

At the request of President Hoover, Congress meets in a special session to discuss tariffs and farm aid.

Hoover favors an experimental farm board.

Margaret Sanger’s Birth Control Clinical Research Center in New York City is raided by police. [Another interesting tidbit I’ll have to remember to check into.]

As part of the ongoing battle between Governor Huey Long and Standard Oil Company, the Louisiana House of Representatives passes an article of impeachment, threatening to reveal that a prominent newspaper publisher’s brother was in an insane asylum, against the governor.

Textile mill strikes flare across the South.

May 1929

An explosion in a Cleveland hospital leads to the death of 124 people, due to poison gas.

Charles Lindbergh marries Anne Spencer Morrow.

Despite a major stock market plunge in late March, the Hoover Economic Committee delivers a report—started in 1921—that states there seems to be no limit to U.S. consumers to consume. The keynote seems to be “1929 and All’s Well.”

Use of the pocket veto by the president to prevent enactment of legislation is upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Al “Scarface” Capone is arrested in Philadelphia for carrying a concealed weapon. [Ha!]

June 1929

Douglas Fairbanks Jr. marries Joan Crawford.

Florenz Ziegfeld signs deal with Goldwyn to produce movie musicals.

President Hoover signs a farm relief bill, the Agricultural Marketing Act, establishing the Federal Farm Board to stabilize prices and fund farm cooperation.

Hoover declares effective the water rights compact on the Colorado River thus removing the last obstacle to the construction of a dam near Boulder or Black canyons.

Ambassador to the Court of St. James and former Vice President Charles Dawes refuses to wear silk knee breaches to a reception at Buckingham Palace, instead favoring American-made long pants. [You tell ’em Chuck!]

July 1929

The 1924 Immigration Act goes into effect; quotas to be based on 1920 census population.

Women’s Bureau of Labor Dept. demands housewives be included in federal census on employment. [Yes!]

Hoover formally proclaims that the Kellogg-Briand Pact, stating that all nations renounce war as an instrument of national policy, is in effect. [Oh! I thought this had something to do with cereal, but obviously not.]

1,700 inmates riot and torch Albany, New York, prison, four escape.

Speaking at Tammany Hall on Independence Day, Franklin Delano Roosevelt calls for a “declaration of independence” against“centralized industrial control” in the form of corporate mergers.

Tamany Mayor James John Walker beats Republican Congressman Fierello LaGuardia by an 8–3 margin.

August 1929

A Leavenworth prison riot leaves one dead and many injured.

Eliot Ness, at the age of 26, forms the “Untouchables” in order to try to nab Al Capone.

September 1929

The stock market reaches an all-time high of 381.

The construction contract for the Empire State Building is awarded.

October 1929

Waves of selling drives the stock market down.

The President of New York’s National City Bank states, “I know of nothing fundamentally wrong with the stock market or with the underlying business and credit structure.” [More future irony, not knowing what the future holds, this is too easy!]

The trial of 16 men in Gastonia, Georgia, is held on charges of murder of a police officer during a melee between workers and the police. Seven were eventually found guilty and sentenced to 17-20 years.

Stocks crash in massive liquidations, total losses are in the billions.

On what’s to later be known as “Black Thursday,” some 13,000,000 shares are sold in panic.

November 1929

Former Interior Secretary Fall sent to prison and fined for his part in the “Teapot Dome” scandal.

Henry Ford announces he will raise wages in all of his factories in an attempt to bolster the economy.

December 1929

U.S. Secretary of State Stimson writes to both USSR and China in an appeal to stop fighting in the spirit of the Kellogg-Briand Pact they both signed.

Hoover speaks to Congress. He declares that confidence in business has been reestablished and asks them for a 1931 budget of $3.8 million.