June 1933


The following events occurred in June 1933:

June 1, 1933 (Thursday)

  • Germany's Law for the Encouragement of Marriage took effect, providing for the Ehestandsdarlehen to all German Aryan newlyweds, with 1000 Reichsmarks to be loaned, interest free, to couples on condition that the wife quit employment or remain unemployed. After encouraging women to vacate jobs in favor of men, the law was amended to encourage the growth of the Aryan population, with the debt to be reduced 25% each time a child was born. In the first four years of the program, 700,000 couples took out the loans.
  • The Soviet Communist Party began a purge of party members whom General Secretary Joseph Stalin described as "double-dealers masked as Bolsheviks". Commissions in ten cities, including Moscow and Leningrad, screened one million members, and expelled one out of every six.
  • J. P. Morgan Jr. was testifying before the Senate Banking Committee when a man placed a circus midget, Lya Graf, onto his lap. The U.S. Senate warned that any newspapers that printed the photo risked being excluded from future Senate hearings.
  • The Soviet Navy activated its new Northern Naval Flotilla as part of its continued growth, the second new fleet created in 15 months. On April 21, 1932, it had created the Naval Forces of the Far East.
  • Born: Charles Wilson, U.S. Representative from Texas 1973–1996, whose role in obtaining funding for Afghan resistance to the Soviet invasion was dramatized in the film Charlie Wilson's War; in Trinity, Texas

June 2, 1933 (Friday)

  • Bernhard Rust, Minister of Science, Art, and Education for Prussia, ordered that Jews be banned from youth, welfare and gymnastic organizations and that they be denied access to athletic facilities. At the start of 1933, there had been 40,000 German Jews in sports clubs, including 250 Jewish sports organizations. By 1935, there were none.
  • Seven people were killed and another 50 injured in an explosion at the Richfield Oil Company refinery in Long Beach, California.

June 3, 1933 (Saturday)

June 4, 1933 (Sunday)

  • Radio Luxembourg began broadcasting as an English-language station aimed at listeners in England, where the British Broadcasting Corporation had a monopoly on domestic radio. Within a year, 90 British companies were running commercials on Radio Luxembourg, since the BBC did not permit advertising. In 1931, Radio Normandy had pioneered the concept of broadcasting commercial radio from the European continent to Britain.
  • An express train carrying holiday travelers from Paris to the Brittany coast derailed near Nantes, killing 14 people. The train struck debris that had spilled onto the track from the wreck of a freight train on adjoining track.

June 5, 1933 (Monday)

  • The U.S. Congress passed the Gold Clause Resolution nullifying the right of creditors to demand payment in gold.

June 6, 1933 (Tuesday)

June 7, 1933 (Wednesday)

June 8, 1933 (Thursday)

June 9, 1933 (Friday)

June 10, 1933 (Saturday)

June 11, 1933 (Sunday)

June 12, 1933 (Monday)

  • The World Economic Conference of 1933 began in London, with representatives from 64 nations, to discuss the reduction of trade barriers, settlement of war debts, stabilizing exchange rates and coordinating monetary policies. The conference would last until July 27, without accomplishing its goals.
  • Born: Eddie Adams, American photographer and Pulitzer Prize winner; in Kensington, Pennsylvania

June 13, 1933 (Tuesday)

  • The Home Owners' Loan Corporation was established by law to provide lower interest loans to prevent foreclosures, and the first to be made at a fixed rate. At the time of its creation, 41 percent of home mortgages in the United States had been in default. The HOLC accepted applications until 1936, and effectively refinanced 992,531 homes. After the last of the 15-year loans was collected back, the HOLC ceased operations in 1951.

June 14, 1933 (Wednesday)

  • Jimmie Mattern, seeking to become the first person to fly a plane solo around the world, set off from Khabarovsk in Siberian Russia, headed toward U.S. territory for the first time since his departure from New York. Mattern never arrived in Nome, Alaska. Unbeknownst to most of the world, his airplane, the Century of Progress, had engine failure 14 hours after takeoff, but he had crashed on land, near the Anadyr River, which he would reach after three days. Mattern would find an island in the middle of the river, reasoning that he would be able to signal boats more easily. He would finally be found after two weeks, on June 28, by Eskimos in two rowboats.
  • The United States agreed to accept partial payment of $75,950,000 owed by Great Britain for loans from World War One, taking ten million dollars. An earlier request to pay 10% had been refused by President Roosevelt.
  • Born:
  • *Vladislav Rastorotsky, Soviet gymnastics coach; in Liski, Russian SFSR
  • *Jerzy Kosinski, Polish-born American novelist ; in Łódź

June 15, 1933 (Thursday)

  • The Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 passed both houses of Congress and was signed into law the next day. The law severely restricted private banks from making risky investments with their depositors' capital.

June 16, 1933 (Friday)

June 17, 1933 (Saturday)

  • Baldur von Schirach was named "Youth Leader of the German Reich" as the Hitler Youth proceeded to absorb all other youth organizations in Germany.
  • In a gunbattle at the Union Station in Kansas City, Missouri, gangster Pretty Boy Floyd and two of his men, Adam Richetti and Vern Miller, attempted to rescue bank robber Frank Nash, who was being transported by a team of federal agents and local policemen to the federal penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas. During the fight, Floyd and his men fired sub-machine guns, killing FBI agent Raymond Caffrey; Police Chief Ott Reed of McAlester, Oklahoma; Kansas City police detectives William Grooms and Frank Hermanson; and, inadvertently, Frank Nash himself.
  • Born: Maurice Stokes, American NBA player whose career was halted by a head injury; in Pittsburgh

June 18, 1933 (Sunday)

  • Yang Quan, the Secretary-General of the China League for Civil Rights and a frequent critic of China's Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, was assassinated, apparently by Kuomintang agents, in the French Concession in Shanghai.

June 19, 1933 (Monday)

  • U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace announced a farm subsidy program to pay farmers to plow under as much as ten million acres of cotton and not to grow it, in order to reduce production and boost the price.
  • The Austrian Nazi party was outlawed, by decree of Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss, after the party was linked to bombings over the previous two weeks. The decree came after 16 auxiliary police in Krems were injured, earlier in the day, by grenades thrown at them by party members. Germany responded by banning its citizens from visiting Austria.
  • The Museum of [Science and Industry (Chicago)] opened, originally as part of the 1933 World's Fair.
  • The Convention on European Broadcasting was signed at Lucerne, Switzerland, by representatives of 21 European nations, with an agreement assigning specific radio frequencies for the various nations.
  • Prince Alfonso of the Asturias, former Crown Prince of Spain, and the son of Spain's former King Alfonso XIII, married Sra. Edelmira Sampedro in Lausanne, Switzerland.
  • Born: Viktor Patsayev, Soviet cosmonaut who died during the ill-fated Soyuz 11 mission; in Aktyubinsk, Kazakh SSR
  • Died: Bolivar E. Kemp, 61, U.S. Representative from Louisiana since 1925, died of a heart attack. The Governor's choice of Kemp's widow as the "unopposed" Democratic Party nominee in a special election would lead to rioting.

June 20, 1933 (Tuesday)

  • In the Soviet Union, work on the Belomor Canal, linking the White Sea to the Baltic Sea, was completed.
  • In the United States, the Illinois Waterway opened, a canal system of locks that linked the Great lakes to the Gulf of Mexico.
  • Police in Rome announced the arrest of two Sicilian bandits who had been planning to overthrow the government of the tiny republic of San Marino. Antonio Canepa of Palermo had plotted to seize the Republic's police station, military barracks and radio station, then to take control of the treasury to finance a resistance against the Fascist regime in Italy. After he and his co-conspirators were arrested, Catapa was placed in a mental hospital for one year.
  • The government of Siam was overthrown in a bloodless coup staged by Colonel Phraya Phahonphonphayauhasena, who took over after conflicts with the first Prime Minister, Phraya Manopakorn Nititada. As premier, Colonel Phahonphonphayauhasena took on the shorter name of Phot Phahonyothin.
  • The Procuracy of the Soviet Union was created to control the national judicial system.
  • Actress Barbara Hutton married Prince Alexis Mdivani of the former royal family of Georgia.
  • Born: Danny Aiello, American film actor, in New York City
  • Died:
  • *Clara Zetkin, 75, German Communist feminist
  • *Rose Pastor Stokes, 53, American Communist feminist
  • *Hilarius Gilges, 24, African-German entertainer, after being arrested by the Gestapo;

June 21, 1933 (Wednesday)

  • Joseph Gallo Sr. killed his wife Susie Gallo, and then himself, after being despondent from the financial troubles from his winemaking business. The couple's sons, Ernest Gallo and Julio Gallo inherited 2/3rds of the family assets, and when prohibition was repealed in December, began building the E & J Gallo Winery into what would become a multibillion-dollar company that became the largest manufacturer of California wines. The other 1/3rd went to Joseph Gallo Jr., who would create the Joseph Gallo Farms, one of the largest dairy farming operations and cheese producers in America.
  • Born:
  • *Bernie Kopell, American television actor and comedian known for The Love Boat; in Brooklyn
  • *Max Kozloff, American art critic and photographer; in Chicago
  • *Gerald William Barrax, African-American poet; in Attalla, Alabama
  • Died: George Masa, 52, Japanese-born American photographer

June 22, 1933 (Thursday)

  • In a ruling that would cost him his judicial career, Alabama circuit judge James E. Horton set aside the April 9 jury verdict against Haywood Patterson, the first of the Scottsboro Boys to be retried on charges of rape in 1931. Judge Horton wrote, after reviewing the proof presented at the trial, that "the evidence greatly preponderates in favor of the defendant", set aside the verdict and the death sentence, and ordered a retrial. In making the unpopular decision, Horton would lose his bid for re-election in 1934, and retire to farming. All of the Scottsboro Boys would later be exonerated and released from prison.
  • Germany outlawed the Social Democratic Party of Germany, which had won the second largest number of seats in the German Reichstag in the March 5 election. The party would be revived in 1946, winning control of the West German Bundestag in 1969, and merging with the Communist Party in East Germany to form the SED.
  • At Watchung, New Jersey, an alert garage employee discovered a 20-pound dynamite bomb that had been attached to the ignition of a car used by Congressman Charles A. Eaton of New Jersey, foiling an assassination attempt.
  • Born: Dianne Feinstein, U.S. Senator for California since 1992, Mayor of San Francisco 1978–88; in San Francisco as Dianne Emiel Goldman

June 23, 1933 (Friday)

June 24, 1933 (Saturday)

  • The official Nazi newspaper, Völkischer Beobachter, had as its front-page headline "FOREIGN AIRCRAFT OVER BERLIN!", with the false story that a formation of unidentified bombers had dropped leaflets over the German capital, then turned back "toward the East", with the suggestion that the Soviet Union had penetrated German airspace because of a lack of sufficient air defense. The effect was to justify building a powerful German air force armada and airfields.
  • Born: Sam Jones, American basketball player, who was part of ten championship winning teams for the Boston Celtics; in Wilmington, North Carolina.

June 25, 1933 (Sunday)

June 26, 1933 (Monday)

June 27, 1933 (Tuesday)

  • The German National People's Party, which had helped the Nazi Party form a coalition government three months earlier, after the Nazis had failed to secure a majority in the March elections, was outlawed by the Nazi government.
  • Germany's program to create a network of superhighways was begun with a decree establishing the Unternehmen Reichsautobahnen company, under the administration of the national railroad.
  • Sir John Gilmour, the British Home Secretary, delivered the last official statement concerning the Union Jack, flag of the United Kingdom. Responding to a question of whether private citizens were barred from displaying the flag, Gilmour stated, "The Union Flag is the national flag and may properly be flown by any British subject on land".
  • Born: Gary Crosby, American singer and son of Bing Crosby

June 28, 1933 (Wednesday)

  • Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle signed a movie deal with Warner Brothers in the first step of his comeback, with a deal to make a full-length feature film. Arbuckle had made four short comedy films for Warner, including the recently released How've You Bean?, but no major films for more than a decade. He died of a heart attack in his hotel room the next day.
  • Louise Arner Boyd set off on an expedition to Greenland, leading scientists on the Veslekari expedition that sailed from Aalesund, Norway.

June 29, 1933 (Thursday)

  • In New York, Primo Carnera of Italy became the new heavyweight boxing champion of the world, knocking out champ Jack Sharkey in the 6th round. Carnera was disliked by many American sportswriters "because so many of his early fights were faked, his American managers were mobsters", according to one author, and there was uncertainty about whether his win over Sharkey was legitimate; Carnera would hold his title for less than a year, losing on June 14, 1934 to boxer Max Baer.
  • Gustav Bauer, formerly Chancellor of Germany, was arrested in Berlin on charges of corruption.
  • Jorge Prado y Ugarteche was sworn in as the new Prime Minister of Peru.
  • Died: Fatty Arbuckle, 46, American film actor and comedian

June 30, 1933 (Friday)

  • The Screen Actors Guild was incorporated as the labor union for actors in film, and later in television. On March 30, 2012, the SAG would merge with the labor union for TV and radio actors, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, to create the union SAG-AFTRA.
  • Films, plays, music, art, radio and the press were placed under the direction of the German Propaganda Ministry, controlled by Joseph Goebbels, by decree of Chancellor Hitler.