1932 in the United States

1932 in the United States
Years:	1929 1930 1931 – 1932 – 1933 1934 1935
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48 stars (1912–59)
Timeline of United States history History of the United States (1918–45)

Events from the year 1932 in the United States.

Incumbents

Federal Government

• President: Herbert Hoover (R-California)
• Vice President: Charles Curtis (R-Kansas)
• Chief Justice: Charles Evans Hughes (New York)
• Speaker of the House of Representatives: John Nance Garner (D-Texas)
• Senate Majority Leader: James Eli Watson (R-Indiana)
• Congress: 72nd

Events

January–March

• January 1 – The United States Post Office Department issues a set of 12 stamps commemorating the 200th anniversary of George Washington's birth.
• January 12 – Hattie W. Caraway becomes the first woman elected to the United States Senate.
• February 2 – The Reconstruction Finance Corporation begins operations in Washington, D.C.
• February 4 – The 1932 Winter Olympics open in Lake Placid, New York.
• February 15 – Clara, Lu & Em, generally regarded as the first daytime network soap opera, debuts in its morning time slot over the Blue Network of NBC Radio, having originally been a late evening program.
• March 1 – Charles Lindbergh, Jr., the infant son of Anne Morrow Lindbergh and Charles Lindbergh, is kidnapped from the family home near Hopewell, New Jersey.
• March 7 – Four people are killed when police fire upon 3,000 unemployed autoworkers marching outside the Ford River Rouge Plant in Dearborn, Michigan.^[1]

April–June

• April 6 – U.S. president Herbert Hoover supports armament limitations.
• May 12 – Ten weeks after his abduction, the infant son of Charles Lindbergh is found dead just a few miles from the Lindberghs' home.
• May 20–21 – Amelia Earhart flies from the USA to Derry, Northern Ireland in 14 hours 54 minutes.
• May 29 – The first of approximately 15,000 World War I veterans arrive in Washington, D.C. demanding the immediate payment of their military bonus, becoming known as the Bonus Army.
• June 6 – The Revenue Act of 1932 is enacted, creating the first gas tax in the United States at 1 cent per US gallon (0.26 ¢/L) sold.
• June 29 – The comedy serial Vic and Sade debuts on NBC Radio.

July–September

• July 8 – The Dow Jones Industrial Average reaches its lowest level of the Great Depression, bottoming out at 41.22.
• July 28 – U.S. President Herbert Hoover orders the U.S. Army to forcibly evict the Bonus Army of World War I veterans gathered in Washington, D.C.. Troops disperse the last of the Bonus Army the next day.
• July 30
  • The 1932 Summer Olympics open in Los Angeles.
  • Walt Disney's Flowers and Trees, the first animated cartoon to be presented in full Technicolor, premieres in Los Angeles, California. It releases in theaters, along with Eugene O'Neill's experimental play Strange Interlude (starring Norma Shearer and Clark Gable), and will go on to win the first Academy Award for Best Animated Short.
• August – A farmers' revolt begins in the Midwestern United States.
• August 7 – Raymond Edward Welch becomes the first one-legged man to scale 6,288 feet (1,917 m) New Hampshire.
• August 10 – A 5.1 kg chondrite-type meteorite breaks into at least 7 fragments and strikes earth near the town of Archie in Cass County, Missouri.
• August 31 – A total solar eclipse is visible from northern Canada through northeastern Vermont, New Hampshire, southwestern Maine, and the Capes of Massachusetts.

October–December

• October 15 – The Michigan Marching Band (then called the Varsity band) debuts Script Ohio at the Michigan versus Ohio State game in Columbus.
• October 23 – Fred Allen's radio comedy show debuts on CBS.
• November 1 – The San Francisco Opera House opens.
• November 7 – Buck Rogers in the 25th Century airs on American radio for the first time.
• November 8 – U.S. presidential election, 1932: Democratic Governor of New York Franklin D. Roosevelt defeats Republican President Herbert Hoover in a landslide victory.
• November 16 – New York City's Palace Theatre fully converts to a cinema, which is considered the final death knell of vaudeville as a popular entertainment in the United States.
• November 24 – In Washington, D.C., the FBI Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory (better known as the FBI Crime Lab) officially opens.
• December 27 – Radio City Music Hall opens in New York City.

Undated

• Unemployment in the USA – c. 33% – 14 million.
• The Republican Citizens Committee Against National Prohibition is established for the repeal of prohibition in the U.S.
• Maxwell House Haggadah first distributed.

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 1 – Tzaims Luksus, artist and fashion designer
• January 16 – Dian Fossey, primatologist (killed 1985 in Rwanda)
• January 19 – Harry Lonsdale, chemist, businessman and politician (died 2014)
• February 7 – Gay Talese, literary journalist
• February 8 – John Williams, film music composer
• February 22 – Ted Kennedy, U.S. Senator from Massachusetts from 1962 (died 2009)
• February 24 – Zell Miller, U.S. Senator from Georgia from 2000 to 2005
• February 25 – Faron Young, country singer (died 1996)
• February 26 – Johnny Cash, country singer (died 2003)
• February 27 – Elizabeth Taylor, English-born film actress (died 2011)
• March 18 – John Updike, novelist and poet (died 2009)
• March 31 – Thomas Beers, co-founder of the needle-pointing business Sudberry House
• April 1
  • Gordon Jump, television actor (died 2003)
  • Debbie Reynolds, actress, singer and dancer
• April 2 – Edward Egan, cardinal (died 2015)
• April 4
  • Richard Lugar, U.S. Senator from Indiana from 1977 to 2013
  • Anthony Perkins, film actor (died 1992)
• April 9 – Carl Perkins, rock singer (died 1998)
• April 11 – Joel Grey, born Joel Katz, musical actor
• April 12 – Tiny Tim, born Herbert Khaury, singer (died 1996)
• May 7 – Pete Domenici, U.S. Senator from New Mexico from 1973 to 2009
• May 11 – John Vasconcellos, lawyer and politician (died 2014)
• May 22 – Robert Spitzer, psychiatrist (died 2015)
• May 25
  • Roger Bowen, comedic actor and novelist (died 1996)
  • John Gregory Dunne, novelist (d. 2003)
  • K. C. Jones, basketball player and coach
• May 29 – Paul R. Ehrlich, biologist
• June 10 – Bennett Johnston, U.S. Senator from Louisiana from 1972 to 1997
• June 15 – Mario Cuomo, Governor of New York from 1983 to 1994 (died 2015)
• June 18 – Dudley R. Herschbach, chemist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1986
• June 28 – Pat Morita, screen actor (died 2005)
• July 8 – John Pascal, writer (died 1981)
• July 9 – Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense
• July 12 – Otis Davis, runner
• July 17 – Karla Kuskin, children's writer and illustrator (died 2009)
• July 29 – Nancy Landon Kassebaum, U.S. Senator from Kansas from 1978 to 1997
• August 1 – Meir Kahane, American-born Israeli rabbi and ultra-nationalist writer and political figure (died 1990)
• August 8 – John Culver, U.S. Senator from Iowa from 1975 to 1981
• August 15 – Robert L. Forward, science fiction author and physicist (died 2002)
• September 5 – Carol Lawrence, actress, singer and dancer
• September 6 – Marguerite Pearson, baseball player (died 2005)
• September 7 – John Paul Getty Jr., philanthropist (died 2003 in the United Kingdom)
• September 8 – Patsy Cline, country singer (died 1963)
• September 11 – Bob Packwood, U.S. Senator from Oregon from 1969 to 1995
• October 1 – Caroline Harrison, wife of Benjamin Harrison, First Lady of the United States, (died 1892)
• October 12 – Jake Garn, U.S. Senator from Utah from 1974 to 1993
• October 13 – John G. Thompson, mathematician
• October 27 – Sylvia Plath, poet (suicide 1963 in the United Kingdom)
• November 10 – Roy Scheider, film actor and amateur boxer (died 2008)
• November 13 – Willie Edwards, murder victim (killed 1957)
• November 22 – Robert Vaughn, actor (died 2016)
• November 28 – Midge Costanza, social and political activist (died 2010)
• December 5
  • Sheldon Lee Glashow, physicist
  • Little Richard (Penniman), rock singer and evangelist
• December 7 – Paul Caponigro, photographer

Deaths

• January 26 – William Wrigley, Jr., chewing gum manufacturer (born 1861)
• February 8 – Mad Dog Coll, hitman (shot) (born 1908 in Ireland)
• March 1 – Frank Teschemacher, jazz woodwind player (automobile accident) (born 1906)
• March 6 – John Philip Sousa, composer and conductor, "the march king" ("The Stars and Stripes Forever") (born 1854)
• March 14 – George Eastman, photographic inventor (Eastman Kodak) (suicide) (born 1854)
• March 18 – Chauncey Olcott, musical theater actor (born 1858)
• March 31 – Eben Byers, steel tycoon and socialite (radiation poisoning) (born 1880)
• April 2 – Bill Pickett, African American cowboy of slave ancestry (born 1870)
• April 27 – Hart Crane, poet (presumed suicide at sea) (born 1899)
• May 3 – Charles Fort, researcher of the unusual (born 1874)
• May 30 – John Hubbard, admiral (born 1849)
• June 21 – Marshall Taylor, African American racing cyclist (born 1878)
• June 27 – Francis P. Duffy, Roman Catholic priest (born 1871 in Canada)
• July 7 – Henry Eyster Jacobs, Lutheran theologian (born 1844)
• July 22 – Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr., Broadway theatrical impresario (born 1867)
• August 2 – Dan Brouthers, baseball player (born 1858)
• September 5 – Paul Bern, screenwriter (suicide) (born 1889)
• September 25 – Joel R. P. Pringle, admiral (born 1873)
• September 27 – John Sharp Williams, U.S. Senator from Mississippi from 1911 to 1923 (born 1854)
• October 17 – Lucy Bacon, painter (born 1857)
• October 26 – Molly Brown, Denver socialite, survivor of the sinking of the RMS Titanic (born 1867)
• November 4 – Belle Bennett, actress (cancer) (born 1891)
• November 15 or 17 – Charles W. Chesnutt, African American author, essayist and political activist (born 1858)
• November 22 – William Walker Atkinson, writer and occultist (born 1862)
• November 23 – Henry S. Whitehead, writer of horror fiction and fantasy (born 1882)
• December 28 – Malcolm Whitman, tennis player (born 1877)
• Joseph Myers (born 1897)

See also

• List of American films of 1932

References

External links

• Media related to 1932 in the United States at Wikimedia Commons