March 1933

March 1, 1933 (Wednesday)

• The fictional defense attorney Perry Mason was introduced, along with his secretary Della Street, and detective Paul Drake, in Erle Stanley Gardner's novel, The Case of the Velvet Claws, published by William Morrow and Company.
• The governor of Kentucky declared March 1 to March 4 as "days of Thanksgiving" and legal holidays on which banks could remain closed, and Louisiana and Alabama followed suit, bringing to nine the number of American states that had declared a bank holiday. Banks remained closed in Maryland, Michigan, and Tennessee, while Arkansas, Indiana, and Pennsylvania restricted withdrawals, although the closures were voluntary.
• Born: Alan Ameche, American NFL player, in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
• Died: Uładzimir Žyłka, 32, Belarusian poet, at a concentration camp near Kirov.

  March 2, 1933 (Thursday)

• The film King Kong, starring Fay Wray, premiered at Radio City Music Hall and the RKO Roxy Theatre in New York City. The movie about a gigantic ape was the first feature film to use stop-motion animation. Grossing $100,000 in its first week at the two theaters before going nationwide, the profitable film saved both RKO Pictures and the Roxy from bankruptcy.
• The number of American states closing their banks or restricting withdrawals rose to 17, as Arizona, California, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada and Oregon proclaimed bank holidays, and Illinois and Ohio limited withdrawals.
• Henry T. Rainey, U.S. Representative from Illinois and the former minority leader, was selected as the new Speaker of the House by his fellow Democrats, receiving 166 votes of the 301 cast. Second in the voting was John McDuffie of Alabama, with 112 votes. Rainey succeeded John Nance Garner, who had been elected Vice-President of the United States.
• With two days remaining in his term, U.S. President Herbert Hoover created the America's first national historical park, at Morristown, New Jersey and the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park.
• Born: Robert Abbott, American game designer known as "The Grand Old Man of Card Games", in St. Louis.
• Died:
• *Thomas J. Walsh, 73, U.S. Senator for Montana since 1913. Walsh was on a train that had passed Wilson, North Carolina, en route to Washington for confirmation hearings to become the new United States Attorney General, when he suffered a heart attack. With him was his bride of five days.
• *Francis Alexander Anglin, 77, Chief Justice of Canada two days after his retirement from the bench. He had served on the court for 24 years, as a justice from 1909 to 1924, and as chief justice thereafter.

  March 3, 1933 (Friday)

• At 2:32 a.m. local time, a powerful undersea earthquake rocked the Japanese island of Honshu. Shortly afterward, a tsunami almost high roared ashore, killing more than 3,000 people and destroying 9,000 homes and 8,000 boats. At an 8.9 magnitude, the quake was the largest ever recorded, rivaled only by a January 31, 1906 quake off the coast of Colombia and Ecuador.
• Ernst Thälmann, former Presidential candidate in the 1932 German elections and leader of the German Communist Party, was arrested at his Berlin apartment. Notwithstanding his re-election to Parliament two days later, Thälmann would spend the rest of his life imprisoned, and would be executed at the Buchenwald concentration camp on August 18, 1944.
• Nohra concentration camp, the first of Nazi Germany's "early camps", was opened in by the Interior Ministry of Germany's Thuringia, governed by the Nazi Party, and was used to confine arrested members of the German Communist Party. At its height, it would house 220 prisoners before being discontinued in July or earlier when its inmates were transferred to a regular prison at Ichtershausen. with around 100 prisoners arriving directly from regional court prisons, the barracks of the police in Weimar or via the regional court prison in Weimar.
• Japanese troops, invading China, captured the city of Chengde, capital of the Jehol Province.
• The impeachment trial of federal judge Harold Louderback began in the U.S. Senate. Louderback would later be acquitted of all charges.
• On the eve of President Roosevelt's inauguration, more states closed their banks as Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Washington, and Wisconsin, joined in declaring bank holidays, bringing to 25 the number of states under restriction.

  March 4, 1933 (Saturday)

• Franklin Delano Roosevelt was sworn in as the 32nd President of the United States, succeeding Herbert Hoover, and John Nance Garner was sworn in as the Vice President of the United States, succeeding Charles Curtis. In his inaugural address, Roosevelt proclaimed, "This great nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear, is fear itself – nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes efforts to convert retreat into advance." The members of the new presidential cabinet were confirmed by the U.S. Senate in only 35 minutes in an extraordinary session and then sworn in, including the first woman to serve at the Cabinet level, Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins. Thus began the first 100 days of Franklin D. Roosevelt's presidency.
• The Nationalrat, lower house of the Parliament of Austria, was suspended after Speaker Karl Renner and the only two officers authorized to succeed him resigned their positions in order to be able to cast votes on the question of measures to halt a railroad workers' strike. With the speaker's chair empty, a vote could not be called and the Nationalrat could not be adjourned. Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss used the opportunity to suspend the Parliament entirely and to rule by decree.
• As the banking crisis continued, 37 of the 48 U.S. states closed their banks or limited withdrawals, while all 12 Federal Reserve Banks halted operations.
• Died: Solomon kaDinuzulu, 41, King of the Zulu Nation since 1913 and great-grandfather of the present king, Misuzulu Zulu.

  March 5, 1933 (Sunday)

• In the last multiparty election in Germany until the end of the Second World War, the National Socialist Party, led by Adolf Hitler, gained 43.9% of the votes and 288 of the 647 seats available, while the Social Democrats, led by Otto Wels, received 120. The outlawed Communist Party, led by Ernst Thälmann, was third with 81 seats, but none of the winning KPD candidates was allowed to take office.
• In parliamentary elections in Greece, the People's Party, led by Panagis Tsaldaris won 118 of the 248 seats available, defeating the Liberal Party of Eleftherios Venizelos.
• In his first full day in office, President Roosevelt called the U.S. Congress into a special session in order to pass emergency legislation to deal with the nation's economic crisis.

  March 6, 1933 (Monday)

• General Nikolaos Plastiras, opposed to Panagis Tsaldaris' taking office as Prime Minister of Greece, led a military coup and set up a dictatorship. Plastiras resigned the next day and was arrested, being replaced by General Alexandros Othonaios.
• President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 2039, declaring a nationwide "bank holiday", temporarily closing every bank in the United States and freezing all financial transactions. The 'holiday' ended on March 13 for the 12 federal reserve banks, and by March 15 for all banks, which then had to apply for a license. Two thousand banks did not reopen after the holiday. On the same day, President Roosevelt placed an embargo on the export of gold and suspended the payment of gold to satisfy government obligations. Finally, he declared a state of national emergency. Along with three other presidential proclamations of an emergency, the 1933 proclamation would not be rescinded until the enactment of the "National Emergencies Act", which would become effective on September 14, 1978, forty-five and a half years after FDR's decree.
• Eleanor Roosevelt, the First Lady of the United States, began holding weekly press conferences for female reporters.
• Herman Klink, a 40-year-old former woodworker, carried out a mass shooting in Cleveland, Ohio, killing or mortally wounding 5 people and injuring 6. Klink was shot and killed by police.
• Born: Ted Abernathy, American baseball relief pitcher for seven major league teams between 1955 and 1972; in Stanley, North Carolina
• Died: Anton Cermak, 59, Mayor of Chicago, 19 days after being shot during an assassination attempt on President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt. Cermak's physician, Dr. Karl A. Meyer, said later that Cermak's primary cause of death was ulcerative colitis: "The mayor would have recovered from the bullet wound had it not been for the complication of colitis. The autopsy disclosed the wound had healed... the other complications were not directly due to the bullet wound."

  March 7, 1933 (Tuesday)

• Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss suspended parliamentary procedure and began to rule as a dictator.
• Born: Jackie Blanchflower, Northern Irish footballer for Manchester United F.C., most notable for the callous treatment received from the club due to his injuries in a 1958 plane crash that killed eight members of the team; in Belfast.

  March 8, 1933 (Wednesday)

• The newly appointed U.S. enforcement director for Prohibition announced that federal agents would no longer raid places where liquor was served, concentrating instead on manufacturers and transporters, and leaving it up to the individual states to handle a "speakeasy".
• The Committees of Unwealthy Peasants, who had led the enforcement of collective farming in the USSR, were abolished. Having overseen the confiscation of grain from local farmers for government use, the committee members were left to starve along with their fellow villagers.