1930 in the United States

1930 in the United States
Years:	1927 1928 1929 – 1930 – 1931 1932 1933
Flag
48 stars (1912–59)
Timeline of United States history History of the United States (1918–45)

Events from the year 1930 in the United States.

Incumbents

Federal Government

• President: Herbert Hoover (R-California)
• Vice President: Charles Curtis (R-Kansas)
• Chief Justice: William Howard Taft (Ohio) (until February 3), Charles Evans Hughes (New York) (starting February 13)
• Speaker of the House of Representatives: Nicholas Longworth (R-Ohio)
• Senate Majority Leader: James Eli Watson (R-Indiana)
• Congress: 71st

Events

January–March

• January 6
  • The first diesel engine automobile trip is completed (Indianapolis, Indiana, to New York City).
  • The first literary character licensing agreement is signed by A. A. Milne, granting Stephen Slesinger U.S. and Canadian merchandising rights to the Winnie-the-Pooh works.
• January 13 – The Mickey Mouse comic strip makes its first appearance.
• February 18
  • Elm Farm Ollie becomes the first cow to fly in an airplane, and also the first cow to be milked in an airplane.
  • While studying photographs taken in January, Clyde Tombaugh confirms the existence of Pluto, a heavenly body considered a planet until 2006, when the term "planet" was officially defined. Pluto is now considered a dwarf planet.
• March 6 – The first frozen foods of Clarence Birdseye go on sale in Springfield, Massachusetts.
• March 31 – The Motion Pictures Production Code is instituted, imposing strict guidelines on the treatment of sex, crime, religion and violence in motion pictures for the next 40 years.

April–June

May 20: Chrysler Building completed

• April 6 – Jimmy Dewar invents Hostess Twinkies.^[1]
• April 21 – A fire in the Ohio Penitentiary near Columbus kills 320 people.
• April 22 – The United Kingdom, Japan and the United States sign the London Naval Treaty regulating submarine warfare and limiting shipbuilding.
• April 28 – The first night game in organized baseball history takes place in Independence, Kansas.
• May 10 – The National Pan-Hellenic Council is founded in Washington, D.C..
• May 15 – Aboard a Boeing tri-motor, Ellen Church becomes the first airline stewardess (the flight was from Oakland, California, to Chicago, Illinois).
• May 20 – The Chrysler Building is completed, becoming the world's first man-made structure taller than 1,000 feet (305 m).
• May 30 – Sergei Eisenstein arrives in Hollywood to work for Paramount Pictures; they part ways by October.
• June 9 – Chicago Tribune journalist Jake Lingle is shot in Chicago, Illinois. Newspapers promise $55,000 reward for information. Lingle is later found to have had contacts with organized crime.
• June 14 – An act of Congress establishes the Federal Bureau of Narcotics as a replacement for the Narcotics Division of the Prohibition Unit.
• June 17 – U.S. President Herbert Hoover signs the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act into law.

July–September

• July 4 – Nation of Islam founded by Wallace Fard Muhammad in Detroit.
• July 26 – Charles Creighton and James Hargis leave New York City for Los Angeles on a roundtrip journey, driving 11,555 km using only a reverse gear; the trip lasts the next 42 days.
• July 30 – New York City station W2XBS is put in charge of NBC broadcast engineers.
• July 31 – The radio drama The Shadow airs for the first time.
• August 6 – Judge Joseph Force Crater steps into a taxi in New York City and disappears.
• August 9 – Betty Boop premieres in the animated film Dizzy Dishes.
• September 8 – 3M introduces Scotch Tape.

October–December

• December 2 – Great Depression: U.S. President Herbert Hoover goes before Congress and asks for a US$150 million public works program to help generate jobs and stimulate the economy.
• December 7 – W1XAV in Boston, Massachusetts, broadcasts video from the CBS radio orchestra program, The Fox Trappers. The broadcast also includes the first television commercial in the United States, an advertisement for I.J. Fox Furriers, who sponsored the radio show.

Undated

• A Jake paralysis outbreak occurs in United States.
• W9XAP in Chicago, Illinois, broadcasts the U.S. senatorial election returns, which is the first time a senatorial race, with non-stop vote tallies, is ever televised.
• 1930–1931 – Crazy Horse’s lifelong friend, He Dog, is interviewed by journalist Eleanor Hinman and Nebraska writer Mari Sandoz.
• A record drought in the eastern part of the nation^[2] sees Upper Tract, West Virginia record only 9.50 inches (241.3 mm) of precipitation for the year – the record lowest for a calendar year in the US east of the Mississippi.^[3] Averaged over the contiguous US the twelve months from July 1930 to June 1931 remains the driest such period on record.^[4]

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 20 - Buzz Aldrin, astronaut, Lunar Module Pilot on Apollo 11 and the second person to walk on the Moon
• January 23 - Benjamin Tatar, actor (d. 2012)
• January 30
  • Gene Hackman, actor and novelist
  • Samuel Byck, attempted to hijack an airplane to assassinate President Richard Nixon (died 1974)
• February 5 – Noah Weinberg American-born Israeli rabbi, founder of Aish HaTorah (d. 2009 in Israel)
• February 10 – Robert Wagner, actor
• February 15 – Sara Jane Moore, attempted assassin of President Gerald Ford
• February 17 – Roger Craig, baseball player, coach and manager
• February 22
  • James McGarrell, figurative painter
  • Marni Nixon, vocalist (d. 2016)
• February 24
  • Joan Diener, musical theater actress and singer (d. 2006)
  • Barbara Jo Lawrence, actress and model (d. 2013)
  • Anita Steckel, feminist artist (d. 2012)
• March 9 – Ornette Coleman, jazz saxophonist (d. 2015)
• March 17 – James Irwin, astronaut (d. 1991)
• March 18 – Adam Maida, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Detroit from 1990 to 2009
• March 20 – Willie Thrower, football player (d. 2002)
• March 22
  • Pat Robertson, televangelist
  • Stephen Sondheim, composer and lyricist
• April 3 – Lawton Chiles, U.S. Senator from Florida from 1971 to 1989 (d. 1998)
• April 11 – Nicholas F. Brady, U.S. Senator from New Jersey in 1982 and Secretary of the Treasury from 1988 to 1993
• April 21 – Donald J. Tyson, businessman (d. 2011)
• May 11 – William Honan, journalist and author (d. 2014)
• May 12 – Tom Umphlett, baseball player and manager (d. 2012)
• May 13 – Mike Gravel, U.S. Senator from Alaska from 1969 to 1981
• May 30 – Clint Eastwood, actor, filmmaker, musician, and political figure
• June 2
  • Pete Conrad, astronaut (d. 1999)
  • Bob Lillis, baseball player, coach, and manager
• July 30 – Gus Triandos, baseball player (Baltimore Orioles) (d. 2013)
• August 5 – Neil Armstrong, astronaut, mission commander on Apollo 11 and the first person to walk on the Moon (d. 2012)
• August 8 – Joan Mondale, wife of Walter Mondale, Second Lady of the United States (died 2014)
• September 7 – Sonny Rollins, jazz saxophonist
• September 16 – Anne Francis, actress (d. 2011)
• September 23 – Ray Charles, soul musician (d. 2004)
• September 25 – Shel Silverstein, American poet, singer-songwriter, cartoonist, screenwriter, and author of children's books (d. 1999)
• October 10 – Adlai Stevenson III, U.S. Senator from Illinois from 1970 to 1981
• October 24 – Big Bopper, disc jockey, singer and songwriter (d. 1959)
• November 7 – Rudy Boschwitz, U.S. Senator from Minnesota from 1978 to 1991
• November 13 – Fred R. Harris, U.S. Senator from Oklahoma from 1964 to 1973
• November 16 – Paul Foytack, baseball player
• November 23 – Bill Brock, U.S. Senator from Tennessee from 1971 to 1977
• December 31 – Odetta (Holmes) African American singer and civil rights activist (d. 2008)

Deaths

• January 24 – Rebecca Latimer Felton, U.S. Senator from Georgia in 1922 (b. 1835)
• February 14 – Fred Dubois, U.S. Senator from Idaho from 1891 to 1897 and from 1901 to 1907 (b. 1851)
• March 8 – William Howard Taft, 27th President of the United States from 1909 to 1913 and tenth Chief Justice of the United States from 1921 to 1930 (b. 1857)
• July 2 – Anders Randolf, silent film actor (b. 1870 in Denmark)
• December 9 – Rube Foster, Negro league baseball player (b. 1879)

References

See also

• List of American films of 1930

External links

• Media related to 1930 in the United States at Wikimedia Commons