1934 History, Trivia and Fun facts

Quick Facts from 1934:

• World Changing Event: The first magnetic tape recorders were available, initially for radio broadcasting.
• Influential Songs include: The Good Ship Lollipop by Shirley Temple and You’re The Top by Cole Porter
• The Movies to Watch include It Happened One Night, Bright Eyes, The Thin Man, The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Black Cat, Babes in Toyland, Cleopatra and Treasure Island
• The Most Famous Person in America was probably Will Rogers
• MPAA Certificate Number 1 was for The World Moves On in 1934. 2010’s Hot Tub Time Machine was Certificate Number 45912.
• Notable books include: Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
• Price of a baseball (Wilson) in 1934: 33 cents
• George Nissen and Larry Griswold created the home-use trampoline.
• The Funny Duo were: Laurel and Hardy
• The first Three Stooges short, Woman Haters, was released.
• The Conversation: “Why is the US Government confiscating our gold?”

The Flash Gordon comic strip was first published.

In July of 1934, Babe Ruth paid a fan $20 for the return of the baseball he hit for his 700th career home run.

The FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corp) was established.

Parker Brothers released the board game, Sorry.

Pennsylvania opened its first liquor stores.

MPAA Certificate Number 1 was issued to The World Moves On, in 1934.

DC Comics was founded in 1934. Archie Comics and Timely (Marvel) Comics were both founded in 1939.

Jagermeister was introduced in Germany in 1934.

The Strange:
The (not) word “Dord” appeared in Webster’s dictionary as a term for density in chemistry. Originally it was meant for density to be added as a definition for the abbreviation “D or d” but the mistake wasn’t found for another 5 years, and removed in 1947.

A trained crow named Jimmy the Raven appeared in over 1,000 feature films between 1934 and 1954.

London gynecologist Robert Kenneth Wilson took his famous photograph of the Loch Ness Monster.

Nikola Tesla (1856 – 1943) announced that he was working on a ‘Directed Energy Weapon’ that would be able to destroy an army 200 miles away. The super-weapon was never built, and no one knows how it was supposed to work; after his death, the FBI seized all his possessions and declared his papers Top Secret.

From 1925 to 1934 the Eiffel Tower served as a giant, lighted billboard for Citroen.

Created in 1908, the FBI had neither the authority to carry firearms or make an official arrest until 1934.

With the 1934 lease agreement, the United States continues to pay $4,085 per month rent to Cuba for the Guantanamo naval station. Castro has only cashed one check, by accident, in the past 52 years.

Gangster John Dillinger escaped from jail with a wooden pistol. After whittling it in his cell, in March 1934 he used the fake weapon to intimidate 33 people before getting a real machine gun. “Ha, ha, ha! And I did all this with a wooden gun!” he bragged while leaving.

On January 29, 1934, the Los Angeles Times published a front-page article about a geophysical mining engineer’s search for a lost civilization of Lizard People and their buried treasure beneath the streets of Los Angeles.

Pop Culture News:
President FDR enacted a Federal law requiring that all gold be turned over to the federal government at the price of $20.67/oz. After the government acquired most of the gold, they changed the market price to $35/oz.

Future US President Gerald Ford (R) threatened to not play for the Michigan football team because the school would not let his teammate Willis Ward, who was black, play against Georgia Tech, which refused to share the field with a black player. Ward talked Ford out of it and Michigan won.

Donald Duck first appeared in the Silly Symphonies cartoon The Wise Little Hen on June 9, 1934, although there was a mention of him in a 1931 Disney book. He was the first of many clothed cartoon characters who didn’t wear pants.

The Apollo Theater held its first ‘Amateur Night’.

It Happened One Night (1934) won all of the Big Five Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Writing (Original or Adapted).

The $500, $1000, $10,000 & $100,000 Bills were printed by the US Mint until 1934, and are still legal tender.

Alfred Hitchcock remade his own 1934 movie, The Man Who Knew Too Much as The Man Who Knew Too Much in 1956.

The largest pearl ever found the ‘Pearl of Lao Tzu’ was found, weighing 31,893.5 carats (just over 14 lbs)

The (2nd) highest wind gust ever recorded was a 231 mph gust at the summit of Mt. Washington, NH in 1934.

In 1934, when Disney began working on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, some of the early dwarf names included Jumpy, Deafy, Puffy, Burpy, Stuffy, Lazy, and Wheezy.

A sad realization came to six-year-old Shirley Temple when a Los Angeles department store Santa Clause asked her for her autograph…