Archive for '- Great Depression'
Thanksgiving with the Presidents
Today’s guest post comes from Susan Donius, Director of the Office of Presidential Libraries at the National Archives. This post originally appeared on the White House blog. Did you know that before the 1940s, Thanksgiving was not on a fixed date but was whenever the President proclaimed it to be? George Washington issued the first [...]
Posted by Hilary on November 21, 2012, under - Great Depression, - Presidents, Myth or History, Pennsylvania Avenue.
Tags: FDR, great depression, lincoln, Roosevelt, thanksgiving, Thursday, washington
Comments: none
The Greatest Athlete of the First Half of the Century
Jim Thorpe was stripped of his Olympic gold medals in 1913, but it was not because of illegal drugs, cheating, or bribery. It was because of baseball. Thorpe was a Native American from Oklahoma. He went to the Sac and Fox Indian Agency school in Stroud, OK, but dropped out. Later he attended the Carlisle [...]
Posted by Hilary on August 9, 2012, under - Great Depression, News and Events.
Tags: athletes, baseball, gold medals, Jim Thorpe, NFL, Olympics, Pop Warner, Sac and Fox
Comments: 1
Facial Hair Friday: The Enumerated Mustache
Don’t be fooled by the sleepy demeanor of this mustachioed man. It’s 1933, and the world is changing. And the Federal Government would be recording these changes on April 1, 1940. Over 120,000 enumerators would fan out across 48 states and 2 territories, with copies of this Federal Decennial Census Population Schedule. They would use [...]
Posted by Hilary on March 30, 2012, under - Great Depression, Facial Hair Fridays, Genealogy, News and Events.
Tags: 1940 census, Anna May Wong, April 2, census, Depression, Dorothea Lange, federal government, live webcast, mustache
Comments: 1
A Public Enemy’s Life in the Fast Lane
The National Archives is known for maintaining and preserving documents like the Constitution and Declaration of Independence. But among America’s historic documents, there are also records of bank robbers, bootleggers, and gangsters. In this week’s “True Crime at the Archives” spotlight is America’s first public enemy—John Dillinger. A cunning and sophisticated bank robber, Dillinger led [...]
Posted by Gregory Marose on March 14, 2012, under - Great Depression, Unusual documents.
Tags: 1933, 1934, bank robbery, Biograph Theater, car theft, Chicago, Dillinger, FBI, Federal crime, Hoover, Indiana state Prison, John Dillinger
Comments: none
Prohibition and the Rise of the American Gangster
As Prohibition commenced in 1920, progressives and temperance activists envisioned an age of moral and social reform. But over the next decade, the “noble experiment” produced crime, violence, and a flourishing illegal liquor trade. The roots of Prohibition date back to the mid-19th century, when the American Temperance Society and the Women’s Christian Temperance League initiated [...]
Posted by Gregory Marose on January 17, 2012, under - Great Depression, - Presidents.
Tags: 18th Amendment, 21st Amendment, Al Capone, American Temperance Society, bootlegging, December 5 1933, FDR, gangster, National Prohibition Act, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Prohibition, Volstead Act, Women’s Christian Temperance League
Comments: none