THE THIRTIES
A Chronology of Events
Editor: Piero Scaruffi

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    1930:
  • Frank Whittle patents the first jet engine
  • the first world cup of soccer is played
  • Polystyrene is invented
  • Ninth planet discovered (Pluto)
  • Ellen Church, a nurse, becomes the first airplane stewardess (for Boeing)
    1931:
  • Japan invades Manchuria
  • Kurt Godel publishes its incompleteness theorem
    1932:
  • The first synthetic rubber is invented ("neoprene")
    1933:
  • FM radio broadcasting is born (Edwin Armstrong)
  • Unemployment in the US peaks at 25%
  • Hitler wins the elections and seizes power
    1934:
  • Philo Farnsworth invents the television
  • Stalin's great purges: thousands disappear or are deported in Siberia
  • Invention of the radar
    1935:
  • The miner Aleksej Stakanov becomes a Soviet hero for his amazing productivity
  • Wallace Carothers invents nylon, the first totaly synthetic fibre
  • George and Ladislo Biro` invent the ballpoint pen
  • Plastics proliferates
  • Carl Magee invents the parking meter
    1936:
  • Heinrich Focke flies the first helicopter
  • The economic ideas of John Maynard Keynes are applied in the U.S.
  • Civil war erupts in Spain
  • Mussolini invades Ethiopia, a member of the League of Nations
    1937:
  • The first nylon stockings appear
  • Turing publishes his article on the Turing machine
  • Stalin's Red Terror
  • Rape of Nanking by the Japanese (42.000 Chinese dead)
  • A zeppelin explodes in New Jersey and ends the zeppelin industry
    1938:
  • Oil struck in Kuwait, but all Arab countries supply only 5% of the world's oil
  • Thousands of Jewish shops are attacked by nazist mobs in Berlin ("Kristallnacht")
  • Hitler annexes Austria
    1939:
  • First commercial helicopter
  • The pesticide DDT is introduced
  • First flight by a jet airplane (Germany)
  • First antibiotic
  • Television debuts at a fair
  • Francisco Franco wins the civil war in Spain after 600.000 people died
  • Hitler invades Czekoslovakia
  • Non-aggression pact between Hitler and Stalin
  • Hitler invades Poland
  • Stalin invades Finland
  • Mussolini invades Albania

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