| From the Armistice to the Great Depression |
| 1918 | November 11 | An armistice ends World War I. American casualties number 115,000 dead, 206,000 wounded and 4,500 taken prisoner. |
| December 4 | President Wilson sails for France (first foreign visit by a President while in office). |
| December 13 | American troops cross the Rhine to begin the occupation of Germany. |
| 1919 | January 6 | Former President Theodore Roosevelt, a leading contender for the 1920 Republican presidential nomination, dies at Sagamore Hill, Oyster Bay, New York. |
| February 6 | The Seattle General Strike begins. 50,000 workers walk off their job in sympathy with 25,000 shipyard workers already on strike. |
| February 11 | The Seattle Central Labor Council declares an end to the General Strike. |
| February 25 | Oregon becomes the first state to tax gasoline. |
| February 26 | Grand Canyon and Acadia National Parks are established by Act of Congress. |
| March 16 | John Barrymore makes his Shakespearean debut as Richard III at New York's Plymouth Theater. |
| March 24 | USS Idaho BB-42 commissioned at New York Shipbuilding Co. Camden, New Jersey. |
| May 27 | Albert Read and Walter Hinton complete the first transatlantic airplane flight from Naval Air Station Rockaway, New York to Lisbon via Newfoundland and the Azores in a Curtiss NC-4 flying boat. |
| June 2 | Bombs explode in eight cities including Washington where the home of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer is destroyed. Anarchists are blamed. |
| June 7 | New York becomes the first state to require automobile drivers to pass a written licensing examination. |
| June 11 | Sir Barton wins the Belmont Stakes thus becoming the first horse to win racing's Triple Crown (having previously won the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness Stakes). |
| July 9 | President Wilson returns from the Paris Peace Conference. 500,000 New Yorkers greet the President who delivers a report on the Versailles Treaty at Carnegie Hall. |
| July 27 | A stone throwing melee between Whites and Blacks on a Chicago beach escalates after a Black child drowns. 23 Blacks and 15 Whites die in the rioting that follows. |
| September 14 | Massachusetts Governor Calvin Coolidge fires striking Boston policemen. Coolidge tells labor leader Samuel Gompers, "There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, anytime." |
| September 16 | The American Legion is chartered by Act of Congress. |
| September 25 | Woodrow Wilson suffers a debilitating stroke while campaigning for ratification of the Versailles Treaty in Pueblo, Colorado. |
| September 30 | Rioting Whites kill at least 20 and as many as 200 Blacks in Elaine, Arkansas after a White sheriff's deputy is killed in the midst of an organizing campaign by Black sharecroppers. Federal troops are called in to restore order. |
| November 19 | The United States Senate rejects the Treaty of Versailles. |
| | Zion National Park is established by Act of Congress. |
| December 10 | President Thomas Woodrow Wilson is awarded the Noble Peace Prize, "for his work in establishing the League of Nations ..." |
| December 21 | Federal agents acting on orders from Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer seize 249 resident aliens suspected of subversive activities including Communist Emma Goldman. The suspects are placed aboard the SS Buford and deported to Russia. |
| Notable Books | Ten Days That Shook the World - John Reed |
| | The Education of Henry Adams - Henry Adams |
| | Winesburg, Ohio - Sherwood Anderson |
| Notable Recordings | How Ya Gonna Keep 'Em Down on the Farm (after they've seen Paree) - Arthur Fields |
| 1920 | January 2 | Federal agents launch the "Palmer Raids". 4000 suspected radicals in 33 cities are arrested on order of the Attorney General. |
| January 16 | The 18th Amendment to the United States Constitution takes effect. Henceforth, "the manufacture, sale or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or exportation from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited." |
| January 17 | The Volstead Act regulating the enforcement of Prohibition takes effect. |
| April 1 | American troops are withdrawn from Siberia. U.S. participation in the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War ends. |
| May 27 | Republican presidential candidate Warren G. Harding set the tone for American postwar policy declaring, "America's present need is not heroics but healing; not nostrums but normalcy; not revolution but restoration; not surgery but serenity; not the dramatic but the dispassionate; not experiment but equipoise; not submergence in internationality but sustainment in triumphant nationality." |
| June | Man O' War wins the Belmont Stakes by 20 lengths. |
| June 3 | USS Tennessee BB-43, commissioned at New York Navy Yard, Brooklyn, New York. |
| April 1 | The Census Bureau reports the population of the United States numbers 105,273,049. |
| July 3 | Bill Tilden becomes the first American to win a Wimbeldon tennis championship. |
| August 17 | Cleveland Indians outfielder Ray Chapman dies of skull fractures suffered when struck by a submarine pitch delivered by New York Yankees pitcher Carl Mays. Chapman is the only player ever fatally injured in major league baseball history. |
| August 26 | The 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution takes effect. "The right of citizens of The United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex." |
| September 16 | An explosion kills 30 and injures 300 people in the Wall Street financial district of New York. |
| September 28 | The "Black Sox" scandal becomes public. Eight members of the Chicago White Sox are indicted for conspiring with professional gamblers to fix the outcome of the 1919 World Series. |
| November 1 | The Emperor Jones by Eugene O’Neill premiers on Broadway. November 2 |
| | Republican Warren G. Harding is elected President with a record 63% of the popular vote defeating Democrat James M. Cox. Franklin D. Roosevelt is the losing candidate for Vice President. |
| | America's first scheduled commercial radio program, election results, is broadcast by station KDKA Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. |
| November 12 | Judge Keneshaw Mountain Landis is elected the first Commissioner of Baseball. |
| Notable Books | Mainstreet - Sinclair Lewis |
| | The Age of Innocence - Edith Wharton |
| | This Side of Paradise - F. Scott Fitzgerald |
| Notable Films | Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - John Barrymore |
| | The Mark of Zorro - Douglas Fairbanks, Noah Berry |
| Notable Recordings | |
| Swanee - Al Jolson | Whispering - Paul Whiteman |
| 1921 | April 11 | Iowa becomes the first state to tax cigarettes. |
| May 3 | West Virginia becomes the first state to impose a tax on retail sales. |
| May 19 | The Emergency Quota Act limits immigration to 375,000 persons per year. Immigration from any individual nation is not to exceed 3% of the number of residents of that nationality recorded in the 1910 census. |
| May 31 | A reported assault by a Black man on a White woman in a Tulsa, Oklahoma elevator touches off a two day riot that results in 300 deaths and the destruction of 35 blocks in the mostly Black Greenwood section of the city. |
| June 30 | David Sarnoff founds Radio Corporation of America. |
| July 2 | Jack Dempsey knocks out Frenchman Georges Carpentier in the 4th round of a world's heavyweight boxing championship match before 90,000 at Boyle's Thirty Acres in Jersey City. The Radio broadcast of the fight is the first of a sporting event in the United States. |
| | President Harding declares the state of war with Germany and Austria-Hungary ended. |
| July 7 | USS Maryland BB-46, launched at Newport News Shipbuilding, Virginia. |
| July 11 | Former President William Howard Taft is sworn in as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. |
| July 14 | Italian immigrant anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Venzetti are convicted of murdering F. Parmenter, the paymaster of a Braintree, Massachusetts shoe factory. |
| July 21 | U.S. Army airplanes under command of General William Mitchell sink the German battleship Ostfriesland 60 miles off Hampton Roads. |
| August 10 | USS California BB-44, launched at Mare Island Navy Yard; Vallejo, California. |
| October 18 | The United States Senate ratifies a peace treaty with Germany. |
| November 2 | Margaret Sanger and Mary Denett found the American Birth Control League. |
| November 11 | The Unknown Soldier of World War I is laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetary. The memorial bearing the words, "Here rests an American Soldier known but to God" is not completed until 1929. |
| | The Washington Armaments Limitation Conference begins. |
| November 14 | The United States Senate ratifies treaties ending the states of war with Austria and Hungary. |
| Notable Books | Three Soldiers - John Dos Passos |
| | Flappers and Philosophers - F. Scott Fitzgerald |
| Notable Films | The Sheik - Rudolph Valentino, Adolph Menjou |
| | Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse - Rudolph Valentino, Alan Hale, Wallace Beery |
| Notable Recordings | |
| Ain't We Got Fun | |
| 1922 | February 6 | The Washington Naval Conference ends with agreement between the United States, Great Britain, Japan, France and Italy to maintain fleet tonnage at a ratio of 5 US - 5 GB - 3 Jp - 1.67 Fr - 1.67 It. |
| February 7 | The first issue of The Reader's Digest is published. |
| May 23 | Abie's Irish Rose by Anne Nichols premiers at New York's Fulton Theater. |
| May 22 | The United States Supreme Court exempts organized baseball from anti-trust laws. |
| May 30 | The Lincoln Memorial is dedicated by former President and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, William Howard Taft, in the presence of Lincoln's son Robert Todd Lincoln and President Harding. The memorial is designed by Henry Bacon but is best know for its seated stature of Lincoln by Daniel Chester French. |
| August 4 | Alexander Graham Bell is buried in Canada. The American Telephone and Telegraph Company shutdowns all phone services in the United States for the day. |
| October 17 | The first carrier takeoff by an American aviator: an airplane piloted by Lt. V. C. Griffin departs from the deck of CV-1 USS Langley, a converted coal ship, anchored in the York River, Virginia. |
| Notable Books | Babbitt - Sinclair Lewis |
| | Maria Conception - Katherine Anne Porter |
| | The Beautiful and the Damned - F. Scott Fitzgerald |
| Notable Films | Robin Hood - Douglas Fairbanks, Wallace Beery |
| | Nanook of the North - Robert J. Flaherty - director |
| Notable Recordings | Tiger Rag - The New Orleans Rhythm Kings |
| | Pulitzer Prize for Drama |
| | Anna Christie - Eugene O'Neill |
| 1923 | March 3 | The premier issue of Henry Luce's Time magazine is published. |
| April 18 | Opening day for New York's Yankee Stadium - 74,217 crowd the "the house that Ruth built". The Babe's three run homer leads the Yanks to a 4 to 1 victory over the Boston Red Sox. |
| August 2 | President Harding dies in San Francisco after taking ill on a vacation trip to Alaska. |
| August 3 | Calvin Coolidge is sworn in as President by his father, Justice of the Peace John Coolidge, at his home in Plymouth, Vermont. |
| August 23 | Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Venzetti are executed. |
| August 30 | USS Colorado commissioned at New York Shipbuilding Company; Camden, New Jersey. |
| September 15 | Governor John Walton places Oklahoma under martial law to curb Ku Klux Klan terrorism. |
| October 25 | A Senate investigating committee issues a report accusing the Secretary of the Interior, Albert B. Fall, of accepting bribes to lease the Naval Petroleum Reserves at Teapot Dome, Wyoming and Elk Hills, California to private concerns. |
| December 1 | USS West Virginia commissioned at Newport News Shipbuilding, Virginia. |
| December 10 | Robert A. Millikan of the California Institute of Technology is awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics, "for his work on the elementary charge of electricity and on the photo-electric effect..." |
| Notable Books | Spring and All - William Carlos Williams |
| | A Lost Lady - Willa Cather |
| Notable Films | The Ten Commandments - Cecil B. DeMille - director |
| | The Hunchback of Notre Dame - Lon Chaney |
| 1924 | | A new Immigration Act reduces national quotas to 2% of residents of a particular national origin as recorded in the 1890 census.. |
| January 7 | George Gershwin completes composition of Rhapsody in Blue. |
| February 3 | Former President Woodrow Wilson dies in Washington, DC. |
| February 8 | The first execution with lethal gas is carried out at the Nevada State Prison. |
| February 22 | Calvin Coolidge delivers the first Presidential address broadcast from the White House. |
| March 18 | Congress overrides President Coolidge's veto of the World War I Veterans Bonus Bill. The Act provides for a payment of $1.25 for each day of overseas service and $1 for each day of stateside service payable in 20 years. |
| March 19 | U.S. Marines are sent to Honduras to restore order. |
| May 10 | J. Edgar Hoover is appointed Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. |
| June 2 | Congress passes the Indian Citizenship Act making all Indians born within the borders of the United States citizens. |
| June 26 | U.S. Marines end an 8 year occupation of the Dominican Republic. |
| August 5 | Little Orphan Annie debuts in the comic strip section of the New York Daily News. |
| September 2 | Rose Marie, an operetta, by Rudolph Friml opens on Broadway. |
| September 20 | Your Broadway and Mine a column by Walter Winchell appears for the first time in the New York Evening Graphic. |
| September 28 | Two U.S. Army Douglas World Cruisers land in Seattle completing a five month round the world flight. |
| October 18 | Notre Dame defeats Army 13 to 7 in a football game made famous by New York Herald Tribune reporter Grantland Rice who wrote, "Outlined against a blue, gray October sky the Four Horsemen rode again. In dramatic lore they are known as famine, pestilence, destruction and death. These are only aliases. Their real names are Stuhldreher, Miller, Crowley and Layden." |
| November 4 | President Coolidge is re-elected defeating the Democrat John W. Davis and Progressive Party candidate Robert M. LaFollette. |
| | Nellie Taylor Ross of Wyoming and Miriam Fergusson of Texas become the first women to be elected governors of American states. |
| December 1 | Lady Be Good by George & Ira Gershwin and starring Fred & Adele Astaire premiers on Broadway. |
| Notable Books | Desire Under the Elms - Eugene O'Neill |
| | Old New York - Edith Wharton |
| Notable Films | The Thief of Baghdad - Douglas Fairbanks, Raoul Walsh - director |
| | The Age of Innocence |
| | Greed - Zasu Pitts, Erich von Stroheim - director |
| Notable Recordings | California Here I Come - Al Jolson |
| | Rhapsody in Blue - George Gershwin |
| | I'm Looking Over a Four Leaf Clover - Jean Goldkette & His Orchestra |
| 1925 | January 8 | Igor Stravinsky makes his American debut conducting the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. |
| January 20 | John T. Scopes, a Dayton, Tennessee high school teacher, is indicted for violating that state's Butler Act. The Act prohibits the teaching of "any theory that denies the story of the divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible" in public schools. |
| February 21 | The New Yorker is published for the first time. |
| July | United States Marines are withdrawn from the Dominican Republic. |
| July 21 | John Scopes is found guilty of teaching evolution theory and fined $100. The conviction is overturned on a technicality before the Butler Act can be challenged in the Supreme Court. |
| September 3 | The naval airship USS Shenandoah is destoyed in thunderstorm over Ohio killing 14 of 43 persons on board. General Billy Mitchell releases a report attributing this latest of a series of air disasters to, "...incompetency, criminal negligence and almost treasonous neglect of our national defence by the War and Navy departments." |
| October 28 | General Mitchell is placed under arrest pending a court martial for insubordination resulting from his statements regarding the Shenandoah disaster. |
| December 10 | Vice President Charles G. Dawes is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, "for his work in reforming reparations payments..." |
| Notable Books | The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald |
| | In Our Time - Ernest Hemingway |
| | An American Tragedy - Theodore Dreiser |
| | So Big - Edna Ferber |
| | Manhattan Transfer - John Dos Passos |
| Notable Films | The Gold Rush - Charlie Chaplin |
| | The Phantom of the Opera - Lon Chaney |
| | Dark Angel - Ronald Coleman |
| | The Merry Widow - John Gilbert, Erich von Stroheim -director |
| Notable Recordings | If You Knew Susie - Eddie Cantor |
| 1926 | February 1 | Airpower advocate Billy Mitchell resigns his commission rather than accept the sentence of his court martial. |
| March 16 | Robert H. Goddard of Clark College, Worcester, Massachusetts, launches the first liquid fueled rocket. |
| May 3 | U.S. Marines are sent to restore order in Nicaragua. |
| May 5 | Sinclair Lewis refuses to accept Pultizer Prize for Arrowsmith. |
| May 9 | Floyd Bennett and Richard E. Byrd claim to make the first airplane flight to the North Pole. Byrd's claim is later disputed by Bernt Balchen who alledges that Bennett had privately admitted that he and Byrd never reached the Pole. |
| May 12 | A dirigible belonging to the Amundsen - Ellsworth - Nobile Expedition lands in Teller, Alaska after flying over the North Pole en route from Spitzbergen. |
| May 20 | Congress approves the Air Commerce Act regulating civil aviation. |
| July | Bill Tilden leads the United States to its seventh consecutive Davis Cup victory. The United States defeats France 4 to 1 at Philadelphia. |
| August 6 | 19 year old American Gertrude Ederle swims across the English Channel in 14 ˝ hours. Ederle is the first woman to swim the Channel and bests the mens record by 2 hours. |
| September 23 | A record crowd of 120,757 watches as Gene Tunney wins the heavyweight boxing championship by a decision of the judges in a 10 round fight at Philadelphia. |
| Notable Books | The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway |
| | The Weary Blues - Langston Hughes |
| | The Bridge - Crane Hart |
| Notable Films | The Scarlet Letter - Lillian Gish |
| | What Price Glory? - Victor Mclaglen, Dolores del Rio, Edmund Lowe, Raoul Walsh - director |
| Notable Recordings | Jelly Roll Blues - Jelly Roll Morton |
| | Some of These Days - Sophie Tucker |
| | The Black Bottom - Annette Hanshaw |
| 1927 | January 6 | 600 U.S. Marines are sent to Nicaragua to protect United States interests. |
| January 7 | Transatlantic telephone service is established between New York and London. 31 calls are placed the first day. |
| February 3 | President Coolidge signs legislation creating the Federal Radio Commission. |
| March 5 | 1200 U.S. Marines are sent to join an international peacekeeping force in Shanghai. |
| April 7 | The first long distance television transmission, an image of Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover, is sent from Washington to New York. |
| May 20 | Charles A. Lindbergh, the "Lone Eagle", departs Roosevelt Field, New York in the Spirit of Saint Louis bound for Paris at 7:52 a.m. |
| May 21 | Lindbergh lands at Le Bourget Field (Paris) at 5:21 pm completing the first non-stop flight from New York to Paris (3610 miles) in 33 hours 31 minutes. |
| May 26 | The last of fifteen million Model-Ts produced over a twenty year span rolls off the assembly line at Ford Motor Company's Highland Park, Michigan plant. |
| July 7 | Ty Cobb of the Detroit Tigers makes his 4,000th major league base hit. |
| August 2 | President Coolidge announces, "I choose not to run for President in 1928". |
| September 6 | Philo T. Farnsworth makes the first transmission of an image by purely electronic means. |
| September 22 | A crowd of 102,000 gathers in Chicago's Soldier Field to watch the rematch of the Tunney - Dempsey heavyweight boxing championship fight. Gene Tunney wins again but the result is clouded by the referee's long count following Tunney's fall in the 7th round. |
| September 30 | Babe Ruth hits his 60th Home Run of the baseball season to establish a regular season record that stands for the next 34 years. |
| October 6 | The Jazz Singer, the first talking motion picture, premiers with Al Jolson in the leading role. |
| November 13 | The Holland Tunnel under the Hudson River between Manhattan and Jersey City opens to traffic after 7 years under construction. |
| December 2 | The Model-A goes on sale at Ford dealers. |
| December 10 | Arthur Holly Compton of the University of Chicago is awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics, "for the discovery of the effect bearing his name..." |
| December 14 | USS Lexington CV-2, first purpose built American aircraft carrier, launched at Fore River Shipbuilding Company; Quincy, Massachusetts. |
| December 27 | Jerome Kern's Showboat starring Paul Robeson premiers on Broadway. |
| Notable Books | Elmer Gantry - Sinclair Lewis |
| Notable Films | The Jazz Singer - Al Jolson |
| | The General - Buster Keaton |
| | King of Kings - Cecil B. DeMille, director |
| Notable Recordings | My Blue Heaven - Gene Austin |
| | Some of These Days - Sophie Tucker |
| | Ol' Man River - Paul Robeson |
| | On the Sunny Side of the Street, Button Up Your Overcoat - Fred Waring |
| | Stardust - Hoagie Carmichael |
| | Beale Street Blues - Jelly Roll Morton |
| 1928 | January 12 | Vladimir Horowitz makes his solo debut with the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall. |
| March 13 | St. Francis Dam bursts killing 400 people in California's San Fernando Valley. |
| March 31 | President Coolidge presents the Medal of Honor to Charles Lindbergh. |
| May 10 | Station WGY - Schenectady, New York begins regularly scheduled television transmissions. |
| June 29 | New York Governor Alfred E. Smith is nominated for President by the Democratic National Convention. Smith is the first Roman Catholic to be nominated for President by a major American political party. |
| July 10 | George Eastman gives first demonstration of color motion pictures. |
| August 27 | The Kellogg-Briand Pact to outlaw war signed in Paris by 62 nations. |
| September 15 | Bryce Canyon National Park is established by Act of Congress. |
| November 6 | Republican Herbert Hoover is elected President defeating the Democratic candidate, Alfred E. Smith. The Democratic Party's grip on the "Solid South" is broken. Hoover carries five states of the old Confederacy. |
| November 18 | Mickey Mouse debuts in Walt Disney's Steamboat Willie. |
| December 13 | George Gershwin's An American in Paris premiers at Carnegie Hall. |
| December 30 | Contralto Marian Anderson debuts at Carnegie Hall. |
| Notable Books | The Bridge of San Luis Rey - Thornton Wilder |
| Notable Films | Wings - Clara Bow, Charles Rodgers, William Wellman - director |
| | The Last Command - Emil Jannings, William Powell, Josef von Sternberg - director |
| | The Wedding March - Fay Wray, Zasu Pitts, Erich von Stroheim - director |
| Notable Recordings | St. James Infirmary - Louis Armstrong |
| | I Want to be Loved by You - Helen Kane |
| | Pulitzer Prize for Drama |
| | Strange Interlude - Eugene O'Neill |
| 1929 | January 2 | A convention on the preservation of Niagara Falls signed by the United States and Canada is ratified by the Senate. |
| February 26 | Grand Teton National Park is established by Act of Congress. |
| May 15 | President Hoover declares the Kellogg - Briand Treaty effective. |
| August 19 | The Amos & Andy Show starring Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll premiers on radio. |
| August | The airship LZ-127 Graf Zeppelin arrives in Lakehurst, New Jersey on the first leg on a round the world flight. |
| October 24 | Investors loose $4 Billion as a record 12,894,650 shares are traded on the New York Stock Exchange. |
| October 29 | "Black Tuesday", Investors loose $14 Billion on 16,410,030 shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange. |
| November 1 | Former Secretary of the Interior Albert B. Fall is convicted of a bribery charge arising from his role in the Teapot Dome scandal, fined $100,000 and sentenced to a year in prison. |
| November 15 | The Ambassador Bridge linking Detroit to Windsor, Canada opens. It is the longest suspension bridge in the world at the time and privately financed. |
| November 27 | 50 Million Frenchmen (music by Cole Porter, directed by Monty Wooley, sets by Norman Bel Geddes) premiers at the Lyric Theater on Broadway, New York. |
| November 29 | Bernt Balchen and a three man crew including Admiral Richard E. Byrd complete the first airplane flight to the South Pole. |
| December 10 | Frank B. Kellogg, former Secretary of State, is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, "for his work in fostering the Kellogg-Briand Pact outlawing war..." |
| Notable Books | A Farewell to Arms - Ernest Hemingway |
| | Flowering Judas - Katherine Anne Porter |
| | The Sound and the Fury and Sartoris - William Faulkner |
| Notable Films | The Bridge of San Luis Rey - Duncan Renaldo |
| Notable Recordings | I'll Get By (as long as I have you) - Bing Crosby |
| | Happy Days Are Here Again - Leo Reisman |
| | Singin in the Rain - Gus Arnheim |
| | You Do Something to Me - Cole Porter |
| | Ten Cents a Dance - Ruth Etting |
| 1930 | February 24 | Former New York Governor, Secretary of State and 1916 Republican Presidential nominee Charles Evans Hughes sworn in as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. |
| March 8 | Former President and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court William Howard Taft dies in Washington. |
| April 1 | The Census Bureau reports the population of the United States numbers 122,288,177. |
| May 14 | Carlsbad Caverns National Park is established by Act of Congress. |
| May 27 | The Chrysler Building opens in New York. Architect William Van Alen's 77 story (319m) Art-deco masterpiece holds the title of World's Tallest Building for less than a year. |
| May | Airship LZ-127 Graf Zeppelin arrives in the United States on a European-Pan American flight. |
| June | Gallant Fox wins the Belmont Stakes to complete a sweep of horse racing's Triple Crown |
| June 17 | President Hoover signs the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act raising barriers to foreign trade. |
| August 9 | Max Fleischer's cartoon character Betty Boop premiers in Dizzy Dishes. |
| September 7 | Chic Young's comic strip, Blondie, premiers. |
| September 29 | Lowell Thomas makes his debut as a newscaster for CBS. |
| September 30 | Death Valley Days premiers on NBC radio. |
| October | Bobby Jones wins his 4th U.S. Open to complete the Grand Slam of golf having previously won the year's U.S. Amateur Championship (his 5th), British Open (his 3rd) and British Amateur contest. Jones retires from competitive golf at age 28. |
| October 14 | Ginger Rodgers debuts singing Embraceable You in Gershwin's Girl Crazy. |
| October 20 | The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes premiers on NBC radio. |
| November 1 | President Hoover opens the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel beneath the St. Clair River. |
| December 10 | Sinclair Lewis is awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, "for his vigorous and graphic art of description..." |
| Notable Books | The Maltese Falcon - Dashiell Hammett |
| | Cimarron - Edna Ferber |
| Notable Films | All Quiet on the Western Front - Lewis Milestone - director |
| | Disraeli - George Arliss |
| Notable Recordings | Georgia on My Mind - Hoagie Carmicheal |
| 1931 | March 3 | The Star Spangled Banner by Francis Scott Key is made the national anthem of the United States by Act of Congress. |
| March 19 | The State of Nevada legalizes casino gambling. |
| March 31 | University of Notre Dame football coach Knute Rockne is killed in a Kansas airplane crash. Rockne compiled a 105 win, 12 loss, 5 tie record in 12 seasons. |
| April 30 | The George Washington Bridge opens linking New York City with New Jersey. |
| May 1 | President Hoover turns on the lights of the Empire State Building. The New York skyscraper holds the title of world's tallest building for the next 44 years. The 102 story (448m) structure was completed in 14 months by 3,400 workers at a cost of $40,948,900. |
| June 26 | Kraft Music Hall premiers on NBC radio. |
| October 4 | Dick Tracy, a comic strip by Chester Gould, debuts in the Detroit Daily Mirror. |
| October 5 | Clyde Pangborn and Hugh Herndon land in Wenatchee, Washington completing a 41 hour non-stop flight from Japan. |
| October 18 | Thomas Alva Edison dies in West Orange, New Jersey at age 84. |
| December 10 | Jane Addams of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom and Nicholas Murray Butler of Columbia University share the Nobel Peace Prize for promoting the Kellogg- Briand Pact. |
| Notable Books | The Good Earth - Pearl S. Buck |
| Notable Films | The Front Page - Adolphe Menjou, Pat O'Brien, Lewis Milestone - director |
| | Cimarron - Irene Dunne |
| | City Lights - Charlie Chaplin |
| | Trader Horn - Duncan Renaldo |
| Notable Recordings | Minnie the Moocher - Cab Calloway |
| | You Rascal You - Henry Allen & the Luis Russell Band |
| 1932 | February 4 | New York Governor Franklin Roosevelt presides over the opening of the 3rd Winter Olympiad at Lake Placid. |
| February 22 | George Burns and Gracie Allen's radio program premiers. |
| March 1 | The 22 month old son of Charles and Anne Lindbergh is kidnapped and murdered. |
| March 29 | Jack Benny makes his radio debut. |
| April 7 | New York Governor Franklin Roosevelt begins his campaign for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination citing the need to work for the improvement of, "the forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid." |
| May 4 | Al Capone enters Atlanta Federal Penitentiary to begin serving an 11 year sentence for income tax evasion. |
| May 20 | American aviatrix Amelia Earhart completes the first solo transatlantic flight by a woman, flying from Harbour Grace, Newfoundland to Derry, Northern Ireland. |
| May 30 | The Bonus Expeditionary Force, 20,000 unemployed World War I veterans demanding early payment of bonuses due in 1945, converge on Washington. |
| June 18 | The U.S. Senate defeats a bill requiring early payment of veterans bonuses on a 62 to 18 vote. |
| July 2 | Franklin D. Roosevelt accepts the Democratic Party's nomination for the Presidency and declare, "I pledge to you, I pledge myself, to a New Deal for the American people." |
| July 29 | Troops under the command of General Douglas MacArthur and Majors Eisenhower and Patton destroy encampments of unemployed veterans in Washington. |
| July 30 | Vice President Charles Curtis presides over the opening ceremonies of the 10th Summer Olympic Games at the Los Angeles Coliseum. American Mildred "Babe" |
| | Didrikson wins 3 gold medals and sets 3 world records in track and field events. |
| September 1 | New York City mayor James J. Walker tenders his resignation to Governor Roosevelt in advance of the release of the Seabury Commission's report on corruption in the city administration. |
| October 13 | The cornerstone of the United States Supreme Court Building is placed. Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes proclaims, "The Republic endures and this is the symbol of its faith." |
| November 7 | Buck Rodgers in the 25th Century premiers on CBS radio. |
| November 8 | Franklin Delano Roosevelt is elected President defeating the incumbent, Herbert Hoover, with 27,476,673 popular and 523 electoral votes to Hoover's 15,761,841 popular and 59 electoral votes. |
| December 10 | Irving Langmuir of the General Electric Company is awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry, "for his discovery and investigations in surface chemistry..." |
| Notable Books | Tobacco Road - Erskine Caldwell |
| Notable Films | Grand Hotel - Greta Garbo, John Barrymore, Joan Crawford |
| | Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - Frederic March, Miriam Hopkins |
| | The Champ - Wallace Beery, Jackie Cooper, King Vidor - director |
| | Trouble in Paradise - Miriam Hopkins, Herbert Marshall, Ernst Lubitsch - director |
| Notable Recordings | It Don't Mean a Thing (If it ain't got swing) - Duke Ellington & His Orchestra |
| | Pulitzer Prize for Drama |
| | Of Thee I Sing - George S. Kaufman, Morrie Ryskind, Ira Gershwin |
