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HISTORY
TIMELINE
Timeline of Roaring Twenties events from 1920 to 1929.
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A DAY IN THE LIFE DURING ... THE ROARING TWENTIES
by Jacquelin Cangro
Meet Harold as he prepares to prepares himself for one of the
biggest crazes of the 1920’s – the dance marathon.
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LIFE IN THE FAST LANE: THE TIN LIZZIE
Mac Carey
The 1920s weren’t called roaring just because of the
music. They were also loud, noisy, and fast because of the
automobile. Life was no longer conducted at the dawdling pace
of a horse and buggy; it roared by at the breakneck pace of
an engine, complete with bleating horns and blazing lights.
Find out how cars became a driving force in modern life.
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AMERICA TUNES IN: THE RISE OF RADIO
(Click the link above to read this article)
James Sutherland
On the chilly night of November 2, 1920, a tired-looking man
reached out to a tall rack of electrical equipment and began
flipping switches and turning dials. He’d been testing
the big radio transmitter all day and was not sure it would
work properly. But now it did. This was a historic moment.
America’s first ever commercial radio station was on
the air. Find out how it happened and why the nation would
never be the same. |
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AT THE MOVIES: WALT DISNEY
William Silvester
As the 1920s ended, the names of Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse
were famous. By the end of the decade, more than a dozen Mickey
Mouse cartoons had been released and theaters across the country
were starting up Mickey Mouse Clubs. Meet the man responsible – Walt
Disney. |
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EVERYONE’S TALKING ABOUT TALKIES
Lauren Tunnell Verdeyen
By the late ’20s, Americans had been watching motion
pictures for over thirty years. In fact, cinema was the country’s
favorite form of entertainment. On any given week, tens of
millions of viewers poured into movie theaters across the United
States. In 1927, cinema changed forever when The Jazz Singer was released – find out how and why.
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AMERICAN EGYPTOMANIA: FANTASY MEETS REALITY
Maria Carlenius
What did a Los Angeles movie theater and the discovery of a
pharaoh’s tomb have in common during the 1920’s?
They both reinforced America’s latest craze – Egyptomania!
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THE TEAPOT DOME SCANDAL
Steve Carper
Headline stories about the oil, greed and possible governmental
collusion. Sound like something you’ve seen in newspapers
in the past few years? Nope – this was the big news
of the early 1920s during the Teapot Dome scandal that cast
a cloud over the Harding administration. |
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AMERICAN JUSTICE ON TRIAL: THE STRANGE CASE OF SACCO AND VANZETTI
Deborah Bryson
During the Roaring Twenties, criminals and lawyers often became
overnight celebrities. In 1920, the arrests of two Italian-American
immigrants captured the interest of the entire world. When
Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were charged with murder,
people around the globe watched to see what would happen. Let’s
look back in time to see when American ideals of democracy
and justice were put on trial.
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PROHIBITION AND THE SPEAKEASY
Lorie Lee Steiner
Before Prohibition, saloons crowded the streets of larger cities
like New York and Chicago, raking in fortunes for their owners
through the legal sale of alcohol.
But when the Volstead Act was passed, ushering in Prohibition,
the drinking establishments were suddenly in deep trouble.
Many saloons closed their doors, but for every one that shut
down, a dozen secret drinking establishments emerged, often
disguised as reputable businesses. Learn about the Prohibition
Era and the rise of the speakeasy.
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THE CHICAGO GANG WARS
Frank Emerson
Prohibition would make rich men out of criminals and make criminals
out of ordinary citizens, and nowhere was this trend more evident
than in Chicago. Read how two rival gangs turned Chicago into
a war zone with their quest to control the flow of now-illegal
alcohol into the cities speakeasies.
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THE DAWN OF THE FLAPPER: A REVOLUTION IN STYLE
Anne Glynis Davies
The Roaring Twenties began with a whimper. London, Paris, and
New York were described by some as stifled with strikes, huge
taxation, war profiteers, and not much else. By 1924 all this
had changed. America, along with Europe, was in full swing – parties,
dancing, and dressing up had become the lifeblood of Twenties
society. Women cut their hair into bobs, wore boyish dresses
that revealed the knee, and set out to shock the world with
their modern, masculine style. Learn how these flappers, as
they became known, embodied the spirit of this modern Jazz
Age and changed women’s dress for good.
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BLOWN AWAY: THE 1926 MIAMI HURRICANE
Tom Broughton
At the time, the U.S. Weather Service described the storm as “possibly
the most destructive hurricane ever to strike the United States.” Was
this Hurricane Andrew? Or Hurricane Katrina? No, it was the
1926 Miami Hurricane – hear from eyewitness accounts
the damage that it caused to the booming city of Miami.
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THE INCREDIBLE BARNSTORMERS
Cara C. Lubit
At the end of the World War I, almost ten thousand airmen finished
their tours of duty. They, along with other new aviators, wanted
to make a living with their flying skills. Find out more about
these pilots who took off across the country and roared into
rural town after town, donning silk scarves, leather helmets,
and goggles and dazzling spectators with aerial stunts.
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HOUDINI’S WAR ON FRAUD
Angel Lyn Nance
By 1920, Harry Houdini had been entertaining crowds for nearly
three decades. Audiences had lauded his daring escapes from
handcuffs, straightjackets, and jail cells across America,
Europe, and even imperial Russia. Discover how the energy and
determination Houdini had used in his many years on stage were
now directed full force on his new campaign: exposing fake
mediums.
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END OF THE RAINBOW: THE 1929 STOCK MARKET CRASH
Deborah Bryson
During the 1920s, average Americans dreamed of getting rich
in the stock market. Schoolchildren, housewives, and office
workers wanted to own shares in their favorite companies. By
August 1929, an index of leading stocks known as the Dow Jones
Industrial Average soared to a record high. It seemed like
the good times would never end – until six days in October
revealed there was no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
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THE LOST GENERATION: AMERICAN WRITERS OF THE 1920S
Abigail Mieko Vargus
“The Lost Generation”: It sounds like a sci-fi
movie, or maybe a fan club for the hit TV series. And it’s
true that these words don’t refer to a generation of
people. They refer to a group of American writers at a specific
time – the 1920s and early 1930s. For those few years,
their ideas and ideals led to some of the most powerful works
in American literature. Learn how these writers got this name
and what differentiates their work from other American writers
of the1920s.
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