The Modern Short Story

Timeline

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  The first jazz recording is released by Victor.
  
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  The United States declares war on Germany, entering World War I.
  
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  United States men between the ages of 21 and 30 are required to register for possible military service.
  
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  The Eighteenth Amendment passed by U. S. Congress prohibits the manufacture, sale or transportation of alcoholic beverages.
  
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  The tank is developed and introduced in World War I.
  
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  Bobbed hair is popular in the United States.
  

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  The O. Henry Awards are created to honor short stories.
  
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  The American Civil Liberties Union is founded.
  

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  Airmail service begins between Washington, D.C. and New York for 24 cents.
  
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  Czar Nicholas II and family are executed by order of Lenin.
  
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  The Sedition Act of 1918 criminalizes saying, writing, printing, or publishing anything disloyal or profane about the American military action in World War I.
  
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  Ernest Hemingway is wounded while working as an ambulance driver in WWI.
  
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  World War I ends in November leaving more than 10 million dead.
  
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  Spanish Influenza kills 22 million people worldwide.
  
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  The Negro World begins publishing in Harlem.
  
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  Women’s Suffrage is granted in Britain.
  

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  The American Telephone and Telegraph Company introduces dial telephones.
  
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  The New York Daily News begins publication in New York.
  
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  The first commercial flight travels between Paris and London.
  
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  In Italy, Benito Mussolini founds a new party and publishes a Fascist manifesto.
  
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  Lady Astor becomes the first woman elected to the British Parliament.
  
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  Race riots take place in Chicago (US) and Liverpool (UK)
  
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  Babe Ruth joins the Yankees.
  

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  The U.S. Congress ratifies the Nineteenth Amendment, giving women the right to vote.
  
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  The first commercial radio broadcast airs.
  
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  Eight Chicago White Sox players are accused of fixing the 1919 World Series.
  
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  U.S. census report shows urban population exceeding rural population.
  
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  The League of Nations is established.
  
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  Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti are arrested.
  
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  Prohibition goes into effect in the United States
  
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  Eugene O'Neill wins the Pulitzer Prize for drama.
  

• 
  The first American Museum of Modern Art opens in Washington D.C. .
  
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  Franklin Delano Roosevelt contracts polio.
  
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  The Ku Klux Klan reemerges as a power in the South
  
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  Police in a Pennsylvania town require women to wear skirts at least four inches below the knee.
  
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  The Irish Free State is proclaimed.
  
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  Margaret Sanger successfully opens an abortion clinic
  
• 
  Albert Einstein wins the Nobel Prize.
  

• 
  The Communist Party is formed in China.
  

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  Mahatma Gandhi is imprisoned for advocating civil disobedience to resist British colonial presence in India.
  
• 
  Kemal Atatürk founds modern Turkey.
  
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  King Tut's tomb is discovered.
  
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  Benito Mussolini forms Fascist government in Italy.
  
• 
  Reader’s Digest is first published
  

• 
  The Nazi Party convenes for the first time in Munich.
  
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  Faced with severe economic problems, bread riots break out in Dresden, Germany.
  
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  Louis Armstrong records his first album.
  
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  Dance marathons become popular in the United States.
  
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  Hitler is jailed after a failed coup.
  
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  French and Belgian forces occupy Ruhr.
  
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  Talking movies are invented.
  
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  Teapot Dome scandal hearings begin in Washington D.C.
  
• 
  Time magazine is founded.
  

• 
  Calvin Coolidge is elected President of the U.S.
  
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  Gorge Jean Nathan and H.L. Mencken found the American Mercury magazine.
  
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  The first Winter Olympics are held in Chamonix, France.
  
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  Greek King George II is disposed and Greece becomes a Republic.
  
• 
  Miriam Ferguson of Texas becomes the first woman elected Governor in the United States.
  

• 
  The New Yorker begins publication.
  
• 
  Tennessee passes a bill to ban the teaching of evolution in schools. Later this year, John Scopes is indicted for teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution and fined $100.
  
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  A show in Paris calls attention to Art Deco, a trend toward simplified lines and solid forms in the visual arts.
  
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  Women in the United States wear the dropped-waist “flapper dress.”
  

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  The first transatlantic radiotelephone conversation between New York and London takes place.
  
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  A Scottish inventor introduces the first television.
  
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  Fritz Lang’s film Metropolis is shown in Berlin.
  
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  The magazine Amazing Stories begins publishing science fiction stories.
  
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  Marianne Moore becomes editor of Dial.
  

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  The U.S. Supreme Court strikes down a Texas law excluding Blacks from voting in Democratic Primaries.
  
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  Sacco and Vanzetti are put to death despite massive protests by Edna St. Vincent Millay, Dorothy Parker, Albert Einstein, Jane Addams and H.G. Wells.
  
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  Babe Ruth hits 60 home runs for the New York Yankees
  
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  Lindbergh flies solo across the Atlantic in The Spirit of St. Louis.
  
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  The German economic system crashes on a day known as “Black Friday”
  

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  In Schenectady, New York, the first American home acquires a TV set.
  
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  The first television listings appear in the New York Times.
  
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  Bubble gum is invented.
  
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  Penicillin is discovered.
  
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  Amelia Earhart flies across the Atlantic in the Friendship.
  

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  Construction of the Empire State Building begins.
  
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  The New York City Board of Education announces that the word Negro should be spelled with a capital N.
  
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  September 3: The bull market peaks in the U.S
  
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  October 29: "Black Tuesday," the stock market crashes.
  
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  Unemployment rises from 700,000 to 3.1 million in the U.S.
  

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  Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) opens in New York City with works by Cezanne, Gauguin, Seurat, and Van Gogh.
  

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  Emigration from the United States exceeds immigration for the first time in American history.
  
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  Gandhi's Salt March.
  
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  Pluto is discovered.
  
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  Stalin begins collectivizing agriculture in the U.S.S.R.
  

• 
  1931
  
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  Nevada legalizes gambling and implements a six-week residency period for divorces.
  
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  Jane Addams is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
  
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  “The Star Spangled Banner'' becomes the American national anthem by order of Congress.
  
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  The New England Telephone and Telegraph Company lays off all its married women workers.
  
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  The Empire State Building is opened to the public.
  
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  Al Capone is imprisoned for income tax evasion.
  

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  Edwin Herbert Land invents Polaroid film.
  
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  Air conditioning is invented.
  
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  Amelia Earhart is the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic.
  
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  Lindbergh's baby is kidnapped.
  
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  Scientists split the atom.
  

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  Franklin Delano Roosevelt launches the New Deal.
  
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  The Chicago World’s Fair, themed "A Century of Progress" opens.
  
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  Adolf Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany.
  
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  Nazis establish the first concentration camp.
  
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  Prohibition ends in the U.S.
  

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  The FCC is created to moderate U.S. telephone, telegraph, and radio communications.
  
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  Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow are killed by police.
  
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  The first cheeseburger is served.
  
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  The Dust Bowl drought begins in Oklahoma.
  
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  Mao Zedong begins the Long March.
  
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  Parker Brothers begins to sell the game Monopoly.
  

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  The WPA (Works Progress Administration) is created to alleviate economic hardship in the United States.
  
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  The nation’s first public-housing project opens in New York’s Lower East Side.
  
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  Alcoholics Anonymous is founded.
  
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  Germany Issues the anti-Jewish Nuremberg Laws.
  

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  The WPA employs 3,500 artists, 6,500 writers, and 15,000 musicians.
  
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  The Hoover Dam is completed.
  
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  King Edward VIII abdicates the British throne.
  
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  Nazi Olympics take place in Berlin.
  
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  The Spanish Civil War begins.
  
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  Charlie Chaplin directs and stars in the movie Modern Times.
  
• 
  Chiang Kai-shek declares war on Japan.
  

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  The Golden Gate Bridge near San Francisco is completed.
  
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  Among the Americans to join forces against Franco in Spain are John Dos Passos, Ernest Hemingway and George Orwell.
  
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  Pablo Picasso paints Guernica for the Spanish Pavilion of the 1937 World's Fair.
  
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  The Hindenberg disaster.
  
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  Japan invades China.
  

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  The first live and unscheduled news event, a fire at a barracks in New York, is televised by NBC's mobile television news van.
  
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  On his Mercury Theater radio show, Orson Wells broadcasts The War of the Worlds, causing panic among listeners.
  
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  Hitler annexes Austria.
  

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  The first major league baseball game, featuring the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Cincinnati Reds, is televised.
  
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  The first commercial flight crosses the Atlantic.
  
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  The German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact is signed.
  
• 
  World War II begins.
  
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  Germany invades Poland, annexes Bohemia. Britain and France declare war.
  
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  Japan occupies Haiti.
  
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  USSR invades Poland and Finland.
  
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  New York World's Fair.
  
• 
  Judy Garland stars in The Wizard of Oz.
  

• 
  Battle of Britain.
  
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  Nylons are first marketed in the United States.
  
• 
  Leon Trotsky is assassinated.