The 1930s Lifestyles and Social Trends: Chronology

1930:      Responding to the Depression, the eveningwear collections of French fashion designers include simple, low-cost cotton fabrics for the first time.

1930:      Ford sells 1.15 million of its popular Model A cars.

1930:     May The first airline stewardesses take to the skies with United Airlines. Job applicants had to be single women over the age of twenty-one, under five feet four inches tall, and weighing no more than 115 pounds.

1931:      Lutheran churches across the country merge to form the American Lutheran Church. Congregationalists merge to form the General Council of Congregational and Christian Churches.

1931:      The International Bible Students Association becomes the Jehovah's Witnesses.

1931:      Nevada legalizes gambling and allows divorce for couples who have been resident in the state for only six weeks.

1931:      Jane Addams wins the Nobel Peace Prize for her work with immigrants and the homeless.

1931:      Schick Dry Shaver Inc. puts the world's first electric shaver on the market at $25 apiece.

1932:      Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Russell Johnson introduce modern architecture to America in an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

1932:     March 31 Ford introduces its new V8 engine in the same year as its workforce reaches a low of 46,282. In 1929, the company had employed more than 170,000 workers.

1932:     May 1 The Catholic Worker magazine goes on sale for one cent a copy. By 1935 its circulation reaches 150,000 copies.

1933:     May 27 The Century of Progress World's Fair opens on Chicago's South Side.

1933:     June 6 In Camden, New Jersey, Richard M. Hollingshead Jr. opens the first drive-in movie theater.

1933:     November 30 First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt sets up the White House Conference on the Emergency Needs of Women.

1934:      In Germany, Adolf Hitler announces his intention to make his country as motorized as the United States.

1934:      With the end of Prohibition (a ban on the sale and distribution of alcoholic beverages), sales of Coca Cola fall steadily.

1934:     May 28 The Dionne quintuplets are born. Theirs is the first recorded birth of live quintuplets in the world.

1935:      One in every four American households receives some form of government assistance.

1935:     April Forty thousand visitors attend an exhibition in New York's Rockefeller Center of architect Frank Lloyd Wright's plan for urban architecture, Broadacre City.

1935:     June 10 Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) holds its first meeting in a New York hotel. The name of one of its founders, Bill Wilson, is not discovered until his death in 1971.

1935:     November 22 The first trans-Pacific air and mail service begins, flying from Alameda, California, to the Philippines. The China Clipper flying boat makes the first scheduled trip.

1936:      Frank Lloyd Wright's Johnson Wax Building is designed in the style of "Streamline Moderne."

1936:      The San Francisco Bay Bridge is completed.

1936:      Six hundred thousand acres of land become part of state parks.

1936:      Run-proof mascara is invented.

1937:      Designer Muriel King introduces her work to the nation when she dresses Katharine Hepburn and Ginger Rogers in the movie Stage Door.

1937:      Wallace Carothers of Du Pont invents nylon.

1937:     March 26 William H. Hastie becomes the first African American federal judge.

1937:     July 2 Famed aviator Amelia Earhart disappears on a solo flight from New Guinea to Howland Island.

1937:     August 2 The sale and possession of marijuana is outlawed by the Marijuana Traffic Act.

1938:      Chemical giant Du Pont reveals its new synthetic fabrics, including rayon, a synthetic silk, and nylon.

1938:     July 3 President Franklin D. Roosevelt lights the eternal light to dedicate the Gettysburg Memorial.

1938:     July 30 Adolf Hitler's Nazi government awards Henry Ford the Grand Cross of the Supreme Order of the German Eagle, the highest award available for foreigners.

1938:     September 21 Some 63,000 people are made homeless and 680 are killed when a hurricane comes ashore across Long Island and southern New England.

1939:      President Roosevelt moves Thanksgiving from the last Thursday in November to the fourth Thursday. The idea is to make the Christmas shopping period longer.

1939:     February The Golden Gate World's Fair opens on a man-made island off San Francisco at a cost of more than $40 million dollars.