1925: F.Scott Fitzgerald's “The Great Gatsby”; popular song: “Show me the way to go home”;
1926: Houdini dies;
1927: Holland Tunnel opens linking NY & New Jersey; Great Moffat Tunnel through Rocky Mtns opened; Harlem Globetrotter's basketball team founded; great flood disaster in Lower Mississippi Valley; slow foxtrot becomes fashionable;
1928: Lawrence's “Lady Chatterley's Lover”; 1st Mickey Mouse films; Brazil's economy collapses due to over-production of coffee; Garconne-style female fashion;
1929: Cascade Tunnel opens; Empire State Building construction starts; Wall St crash; St Valentine's Day Massacre - six notorious Chicago gangsters machine-gunned to death by a rival gang;
1930: Argentinian & Brazilian revolutions; Congress creates Veterans Administration; Federal Bureau Narcotics organised; Jehovah's Witnesses formed; Clark Gable begins Hollywood career;
1931: building of Rockefeller Centre begins (-1947); Empire State completed; George Washington Bridge NY completed; “Minnie the Moocher”; “Star spangled banner”;
1932: Golden Gate Bridge construction starts; Johnny Weissmuller in his 1st Tarzan film; Shirley Temple's 1st film; song - “Night and Day”;
1933: 1st US aircraft carrier launched; F.D.Roosevelt inaugurated as 32nd President of US; US goes off the gold standard; US recognises USSR & resumes trade; 21st amendment repeals prohibition; film “Little Women”;
1934: songs - “Blue Moon”
1935: Wealth Tax Act passed; jazz becomes swing; songs - “It aint necessarily so”; “Begin the Beguine”; rumba dance fashionable; Alcoholics Anonymous organised in NY;
1936: - song “Pennies from heaven”; Hoover Dam completed;
1937: Steinbeck's “Of mice & men”; films: “Snow White”; “Life of Emile Zola”; Carl Orff's “Carmina burana”; songs: “The lady is a tramp”; Golden Gate Bridge opens;
1938: US recession; song: “A Tisket, A Tasket”; 40hr work week; Lambeth Walk a fashionable dance; 32,000 people die in motor vehicle accidents in US;
1939: Roosevelt asks Congress for $552m for defense & demands assurances from Hitler/Mussolini that they wont attack 31 named states; films “ Gone with the wind”, “The wizard of Oz”; songs: “Beer Barrel Polka”, “Over the rainbow”; WWII breaks the US recession of 1938 by creating demand for supplies to Europe;
1940: US mobilises military; Grahame Greene “The power & the glory”; Hemingway “For whom the bell tolls”; Koestler “Darkness at noon”; film: “Fantasia”; songs: “You are my sunshine”, “Blueberry hill”, “When you wish upon a star”
1941: US enter WWII after Pearl Harbour; films: “Citizen Kane”, Marx Brothers, “Suspicion”; songs: “Chatanooga Choo-Choo”; Rainbow Bridge over Niagara Falls opens; Joe DiMaggio hits safely in 56 consecutive baseball games; restrictions of work for 16-18yr olds;
1942: US govt transfer 100,000 Niseis (Jap-Americans) from west coast to inland camps; FBI capture 8 Ger. saboteurs who landed in Florida & NY; films: “Bambi”, “Holiday Inn”; songs: “Paper Doll”; 487 die in Coconut Grove Nightclub fire as doors opened inwards; sugar & petrol rationing;
1943: 1300-mile long oil pipeline from Texas to Penn.; Uranium pile built; new cyclotron completed; Roosevelt freezes wages, salaries & prices to forestall inflation; polio epidemic kills 1200, cripples thousands more; rationing - shoes, then meat, cheese, fats, canned foods; US War Labor Board orders coal mines be taken over by govt when 0.5m miners strike; Pay-as-you-go tax system instituted; Zoot suit popular among hepcats; Lindy hop yields to jitterbugging; films: “Jane Eyre”; plays: “Oklahoma!”; songs: “Oh what a beautiful morning”
1944: Roosevelt re-elected; cost of living rises almost 30%; songs: “Don't fence me in”; 165 killed & 175 injured in a circus fire;
1945: Franklin D Roosevelt dies & succeeded by vice-President Harry Truman; bebop becomes fashionable; Empire State Building hit by B52 bomber at floors 78-79;
1946: Juan Peron elected President of Argentina; Warren's “All the King's Men”; “Annie get your gun”; US Navy tests atomic bomb at Bikini;
1947: “New Look” dominates fashion; Blizzard in NY almost 28inches; 1m war veterans enroll in colleges under US “G.I. bill of rights”; Al Capone dies;
1948: songs: “All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth”; films: “Hamlet”, “Macbeth”, “Oliver Twist”; Cole Porter's “Kiss Me Kate”;
1949: 11 US communists found guilty of conspiracy to overthrow govt; Arthur Miller's “Death of a salesman”; samba becomes fashionable; songs: “Diamonds are a girl's best friend”, “Rudolph, the red-nosed reindeer”;