1928 History, Fun Facts and Trivia

Quick Facts from 1928:

• World Changing Event: The discovery of Penicillin on September 28, 1928, London England by Alexander Fleming.
• Influential Songs include Mack The Knife by Bertolt Brecht and I Wanna Be Loved By You by Helen Kane
• The Movies to Watch include The Passion of Joan of Arc, The Circus, The Crowd and The Cameraman
• The Most Famous Person in America was probably Charles Lindbergh
• Columbia Records founded CBS in 1928, and Columbia itself was bought out by CBS in 1938.
• There are no existing copies of the 1928 film The Patriot, and it is considered “lost”. The film won the Academy Award for Best Writing Achievement and was also nominated for Best Director, Best Actor, and Best Picture.
• Notable books include: House at Pooh Corner by A.A. Milne and Ernest Shepard
• Price of one pound Oreo of cookies in 1928: 35 cents
• The Biggest Movie Star was: Lon Chaney
• The visual inspiration for The Joker (from Batman) came from a 1928 movie called The Man Who Laughs.

Firsts, Inventions, and Wonders:
Sliced bread was invented in 1928 by Otto Rohwedder and was referred to as the ‘best thing since bagged bread’.

Babies have been eating Gerber baby foods since 1928. Dorothy Gerber started making them for her daughter in 1927.

1928’s most comfortable invention was the Lay-Z-Boy recliner.

The 3-M Company began marketing Scotch Tape.

Mickey and Minnie debuted in the Silent cartoon short Plane Crazy, first released on May 15, 1928.

Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups were also originally called “penny cups” since they cost just one cent each when Harry Burnett Reese first started selling them in 1928.

Speedos were invented in 1928 by Alexander MacRae, a Scottish underwear maker in Australia. A similar product was available in 1914 called Fortitude.

Amsterdam invented the Blue P Parking Sign for the 1928 Olympics.

Alexander Fleming discovered that the mold ‘penicillium’ could be made into penicillin and cure many life-threatening diseases. It wasn’t fully utilized until World War II.

Columbia Records founded CBS in 1928, and Columbia itself was bought out by CBS in 1938.

Velveeta Cheese went on sale for the first time.

Chef Boyardee was founded by restaurant owner Hector Boiardi in 1928.

Pop Culture History: 
Ida Rosenthal founded Maidenform, the company that defined bra sizes like A, B, C, D, etc.

The Lights Of New York was the first movie to be filmed entirely with sound.

The Okeechobee Hurricane of 1928 is the second deadliest hurricane in U.S. History. At least 2,500 people drowned.

The 1928 Summer Olympics were the first to feature a scheduled length of 16 days. Previously, the Olympic competition was stretched out over several months.

The Passion of Joan of Arc was panned by the French government that commissioned it and a fire destroyed the negative, the original cut of the movie was thought to be lost forever. That was until a copy was found in a closet in an Oslo mental institution in 1981.

The ‘Banana Massacre’ of 1928: ~1/2000 striking workers were murdered for United Fruit Company (now Chiquita).

Amos & Andy debuted on WMAQ in Chicago.

Thomas Midgley and Charles Kettering invented Freon. Freon is now blamed for the depletion of the earth’s ozone shield, as well as being a handy portable air conditioning coolant.

The fact that shaving doesn’t make hair grow back thicker, darker, or faster was first proven in a clinical study by Mildred Trotter.

Betty Robinson, who won the first Olympic 100m for women in 1928 at just 16, was later involved in a plane crash. A man who discovered her wrongly thought she was dead and drove her to an undertaker. She awoke from her coma 7 months later, before returning to win a relay gold in 1936.

Humorist Will Rogers ran a presidential campaign in 1928 with his only promise being that he would resign the presidency if he won the election.

Although Levi Strauss first made his jeans in 1872, the company finally got around to trademarking the name (Levi’s™) in 1928. He never married, so he never passed his ‘genes’ to children.

Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s musical play, The Threepenny Opera, premiered. It featured the earliest version of Mack The Knife.

Mickey Mouse officially appeared for the first time in Steamboat Willie, and his birthday coincided with Willie’s release date, November 18th. Many consider it the first “talkie cartoon”. Paul Terry released the talkie cartoon Dinner Time on Oct 14, 1928, a month before Walt Disney’s Steamboat Willie, which got all the credit.

Walt Disney himself voiced Mickey Mouse from his premiere in 1928 until 1946 when Walt became too busy to do it.

The lowest toll ever paid for the Panama Canal was 36 cents. It was paid by Richard Halliburton in 1928 so he could swim across the canal.

Joseph Goebbels attributed everything he knew about population control to just two books, entitled Propaganda (1928) and Crystalizing Public Opinion (1923). To this day, the techniques in these books are used extensively by figures in politics, media, and advertising.

Amelia Earhart flew her plane east across the Atlantic Ocean successfully in 1932, the first female having done so. She was also the first female to fly across the Atlantic Ocean as a passenger, in 1928.

The slogan “Make your wet dreams come true” was used by 1928 presidential candidate Al Smith in reference to repealing prohibition.