for real but this warning was not broadcast until 40 minutes after the play had begun. Terrified Americans packed the roads, hid in cellars, loaded guns, and wrapped their heads in wet towels to protect themselves against Martian poison gas. The event proved both the power of mass media and the American capacity for hysteria.
26/5/1938, The Dies Committee was established by the US House of Representatives. Named after its Chairman, Martin Dies, its remit was to investigate ‘Un-American’ activities by Nazis and Communists within the USA. See 3/1/1945.
14/1/1938, Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the first full length colour and sound animated cartoon, went on general release across the USA.
21/12/1937. Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the first full length colour and sound animated cartoon was premiered in Los Angeles, USA.
1/6/1937, Morgan Freeman, US actor, was born.
6/1/1937, In the USA, President Roosevelt forbade shipments of arms to either side in Spain.
1936, In the US, the Rural Electrification Administration (REA) was established. Riral telephone lines were also developed by the REA from 1949.
30/12/1936, Striking workers in the USA closed 7 General Motors plants.
29/2/1936. President Roosevelt signed a second neutrality bill, banning loans to countries at war.
4/1/1936, The first pop music chart was compiled, based on record sales published in New York in The Billboard.
10/9/1035, Huey Pierce Long, Louisiana politician, was shot dead in Baton Rouge. He had opposed ‘lying newspapers’ and got the Louisiana legislature to impose a tax on any newspaper with a circulation of over 20,000.
31/8/1935, In the USA, President Roosevelt banned arms sales to warring countries.
14/8/1935. President Roosevelt signed the Social Security Bill, introducing welfare for the old, sick, and unemployed.
10/6/1935, Alcoholics Anonymous was founded in the United States by Bill Wilson and Dr Robert Smith.
21/5/1935, Death of Jane Addams (born 6/9/1860). She founded Hull House, a mission to help poor immigrants in the US. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931 for her efforts to promote pacifism after World War One.
6/3/1935, Oliver Wendell Jr, US Supreme Court Justice, died in Washington DC.
8/1/1935. Elvis Presley was born in Tupelo, Mississippi, the surviving brother of twins.
8/9/1934, The luxury liner Morro Castle caught fire off New Jersey, killing 134.
20/8/1934. The USA joined the International Labour Organisation.
7/8/1934, A US Appeal Court upheld a judge’s ruling to allow James Joyce’s work, Ulysses, to be sold in the USA.
22/7/1934, Bank robber John Dillinger was killed in an FBI ambush in Chicago.
9/6/1934. Donald Duck was created, in Walt Disney’s cartoon The Little Wise Hen. Walt Disney was born in Chicago on 5/12/1901.
23/5/1934. Bank robbers Bonnie Parker (23) and Clyde Barrow (25) were shot dead in an ambush by Texas rangers near Gibland, Alabama. Clyde met Bonnie in the café where she worked. She chose a life of excitement, drama, and danger, when she married the convict Clyde. She drove his getaway car as he robbed banks. A total of 12 people had died in their raids across the south western USA over the past 4 years. In 1930 Clyde was arrested but he escaped with Bonnie’s help and returned to bank robbery. After the death of the pair, people paid to see their bodies in the State morgue.
17/5/1934, Cass Gilbert, the US architect who designed many of New York’s skyscrapers, including the Woolworth Building, died.
26/4/1934, US railway companies averted a strike by reaching a settlement to gradually roll back the 10% pay cut imposed on the workers two years earlier.
18/4/1934. The first launderette opened in Fort Worth, Texas, by J F Cantrell. It was called a washeteria.
25/3/1934, The threatened US car workers' strike was averted when the Roosevelt administration created a National Automotive Labor Board to help resolve disputes
24/3/1934. The USA promised it would grant independence to the Philippines.
5/2/1934, Rioting broke out in the streets of New York over the cab driver strike as 