1932 in the United States

1932 in the United States
Years:	1929 1930 1931 – 1932 – 1933 1934 1935
Flag
48 stars (1912–59)
Timeline of United States history History of the United States (1918–45)

Events from the year 1932 in the United States.

Incumbents

Federal Government

• President: Herbert Hoover (R-California)
• Vice President: Charles Curtis (R-Kansas)
• Chief Justice: Charles Evans Hughes (originally now residing in from of the U.S. state of New York)
• Speaker of the House of Representatives: John Nance Garner (D-Texas)
• Senate Majority Leader: James Eli Watson (R-Indiana)
• Congress: 72nd

Governors and Lieutenant Governors
Governors 2 Lieutenant Governors 2

Events

January–March

• January 1 – The United States Post Office Department issues a set of 12 stamps commemorating the 200th anniversary of George Washington's birth.
• January 12 – Hattie W. Caraway becomes the first woman elected to the United States Senate.
• February 2 – The Reconstruction Finance Corporation begins operations in Washington, D.C.
• February 4 – The 1932 Winter Olympics open in Lake Placid, New York.
• February 15 – Clara, Lu & Em, generally regarded as the first daytime network soap opera, debuts in its morning time slot over the Blue Network of NBC Radio, having originally been a late evening program.
• March 1 – Charles Lindbergh, Jr., the infant son of Anne Morrow Lindbergh and Charles Lindbergh, is kidnapped from the family home near Hopewell, New Jersey.
• March 7 – Four people are killed when police fire upon 3,000 unemployed autoworkers marching outside the Ford River Rouge Plant in Dearborn, Michigan.

April–June

• April 6 – U.S. president Herbert Hoover supports armament limitations.
• May 12 – Ten weeks after his abduction, the infant son of Charles Lindbergh is found dead just a few miles from the Lindberghs' home.
• May 20–21 – Amelia Earhart flies from the USA to Derry, Northern Ireland in 14 hours 54 minutes.
• May 29 – The first of approximately 15,000 World War I veterans arrive in Washington, D.C. demanding the immediate payment of their military bonus, becoming known as the Bonus Army.
• June 6 – The Revenue Act of 1932 is enacted, creating the first gas tax in the United States at 1 cent per US gallon (0.26 ¢/L) sold.
• June 29 – The comedy serial Vic and Sade debuts on NBC Radio.

July–September

• July 8 – The Dow Jones Industrial Average reaches its lowest level of the Great Depression, bottoming out at 41.22.
• July 28 – U.S. President Herbert Hoover orders the U.S. Army to forcibly evict the Bonus Army of World War I veterans gathered in Washington, D.C.. Troops disperse the last of the Bonus Army the next day.
• July 30
  • The 1932 Summer Olympics open in Los Angeles.
  • Walt Disney's Flowers and Trees, the first animated cartoon to be presented in full Technicolor, premieres in Los Angeles, California. It releases in theaters, along with Eugene O'Neill's experimental play Strange Interlude (starring Norma Shearer and Clark Gable), and will go on to win the first Academy Award for Best Animated Short.
• August – A farmers' revolt begins in the Midwestern United States.
• August 7 – Raymond Edward Welch becomes the first one-legged man to scale 6,288 feet (1,917 m) New Hampshire.
• August 10 – A 5.1 kg chondrite-type meteorite breaks into at least 7 fragments and strikes earth near the town of Archie in Cass County, Missouri.
• August 31 – A total solar eclipse is visible from northern Canada through northeastern Vermont, New Hampshire, southwestern Maine, and the Capes of Massachusetts.

October–December

• October 15 – The Michigan Marching Band (then called the Varsity band) debuts Script Ohio at the Michigan versus Ohio State game in Columbus.
• October 23 – Fred Allen's radio comedy show debuts on CBS.
• November 1 – The San Francisco Opera House opens.
• November 7 – Buck Rogers in the 25th Century airs on American radio for the first time.
• November 8 – U.S. presidential election, 1932: Democratic Governor of New York Franklin D. Roosevelt defeats Republican President Herbert Hoover in a landslide victory.
• November 16 – New York City's Palace Theatre fully converts to a cinema, which is considered the final death knell of vaudeville as a popular entertainment in the United States.
• November 24 – In Washington, D.C., the FBI Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory (better known as the FBI Crime Lab) officially opens.
• December 27 – Radio City Music Hall opens in New York City.

Undated

• Unemployment in the USA – c. 33% – 14 million.
• The Republican Citizens Committee Against National Prohibition is established for the repeal of prohibition in the U.S.

Ongoing

• Lochner era (c. 1897–c. 1937)
• U.S. occupation of Haiti (1915–1934)
• Prohibition (1919–1933)
• Great Depression (1929–1933)
• Dust Bowl (1930–1936)

Births

• January 19 – Harry Lonsdale, chemist, businessman, and politician (d. 2014)
• February 24 – Zell Miller, United States Senator from Georgia from 2000 till 2005.
• March 31 – Thomas Beers, co-founder of the needle-pointing business Sudberry House
• April 4 – Richard Lugar, United States Senator from Indiana from 1977 till 2013.
• May 7 – Pete Domenici, United States Senator from New Mexico from 1973 till 2009.
• May 11 – John Vasconcellos, lawyer and politician (d. 2014)
• June 10 – Bennett Johnston, United States Senator from Louisiana from 1972 till 1997.
• June 15 – Mario Cuomo, Governor of New York from 1983 till 1994 (died 2015).
• July 29 – Nancy Landon Kassebaum, United States Senator from Kansas from 1978 till 1997.
• August 1 – Meir Kahane, American-born Israeli rabbi and ultra-nationalist writer and political figure (died 1990)
• August 8 – John Culver, United States Senator from Iowa from 1975 till 1981.
• September 11 – Bob Packwood, United States Senator from Oregon from 1969 till 1995.
• October 12 – Jake Garn, United States Senator from Utah from 1974 till 1993.
• November 10 – Roy Scheider, actor and amateur boxer (died 2008).
• November 13 – Willie Edwards, murder victim (died 1957)

Deaths

• January 26 – William Wrigley, Jr., chewing gum manufacturer (born 1861)
• February 8 – Mad Dog Coll, hitman (shot) (born 1908 in Ireland)
• March 1 – Frank Teschemacher, jazz woodwind player (automobile accident) (born 1906)
• March 6 – John Philip Sousa, composer and conductor, "the march king" ("The Stars and Stripes Forever") (born 1854)
• March 14 – George Eastman, photographic inventor (Eastman Kodak) (suicide) (born 1854)
• March 18 – Chauncey Olcott, musical theater actor (born 1858)
• March 31 – Eben Byers, steel tycoon and socialite (radiation poisoning) (born 1880)
• April 2 – Bill Pickett, African American cowboy of slave ancestry (born 1870)
• April 27 – Hart Crane, poet (presumed suicide at sea) (born 1899)
• May 3 – Charles Fort, researcher of the unusual (born 1874)
• May 30 – John Hubbard, admiral (born 1849)
• June 21 – Marshall Taylor, African American racing cyclist (born 1878)
• June 27 – Francis P. Duffy, Roman Catholic priest (born 1871 in Canada)
• July 7 – Henry Eyster Jacobs, Lutheran theologian (born 1844)
• August 2 – Dan Brouthers, baseball player (born 1858)
• September 5 – Paul Bern, screenwriter (suicide) (born 1889)
• September 25 – Joel R. P. Pringle, admiral (born 1873)
• September 27 – John Sharp Williams, U.S. Senator from Mississippi from 1911 to 1923 (born 1854)
• October 17 – Lucy Bacon, painter (born 1857)
• October 26 – Molly Brown, Denver socialite, survivor of the sinking of the RMS Titanic (born 1867)
• November 4 – Belle Bennett, actress (cancer) (born 1891)
• November 15 or 17 – Charles W. Chesnutt, African American author, essayist and political activist (born 1858)
• November 22 – William Walker Atkinson, writer and occultist (born 1862)
• November 23 – Henry S. Whitehead, writer of horror fiction and fantasy (born 1882)
• December 28 – Malcolm Whitman, tennis player (born 1877)
• Joseph Myers (born 1897)

External links

• Media related to at Wikimedia Commons