September 1933

September 1, 1933 (Friday)

• U.S. Interior Secretary Harold L. Ickes issued an order forbidding racial discrimination in hiring on any Public Works Administration funded projects, including any businesses awarded a PWA contract.
• At a Nazi Party rally in Nuremberg, Adolf Hitler announced that the time had come for "a new artistic renaissance of the Aryan human being", rejecting Jewish and Bolshevik forms of painting and sculpture, such as abstract art, cubism, Dadaism and surrealism.
• Author Upton Sinclair declared his candidacy for the Democratic Party nomination for Governor of California in the 1934 elections. Sinclair, a former Socialist, would introduce his platform, the End Poverty in California movement and win the nomination, but lose the general election to Republican Governor Frank Merriam.
• The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, written by Gertrude Stein, was released to bookstores, after parts of it had been serialized in Atlantic Monthly, and became a literary classic.
• The romantic comedy film One Sunday Afternoon starring Gary Cooper and Fay Wray was released.
• Born:
• *Conway Twitty, American country music singer; in Friars Point, Mississippi
• *Ann Richards, Governor of Texas, 1991–95; as Dorothy Ann Willis in Lakeview, Texas
• *Gene Harris, American jazz pianist; in Benton Harbor, Michigan
• *Gwynfor Evans, Welsh politician who was the first MP from the Welsh independence political party Plaid Cymru; in Barry, Vale of Glamorgan
• Died: Jack Donaldson, 47, Australian runner whose marks for fastest times in the 100 yard dash and 130 yards, were not recognized because he competed as a professional

  September 2, 1933 (Saturday)

• The Fascist government of Italy, and the Communist-governed Soviet Union, signed a treaty of "friendship, neutrality and non-aggression".
• With the signing of the Oil Code by American petroleum producers under the NIRA, U.S. Interior Secretary Ickes sent telegrams to the governors of oil-producing states, specifying the monthly production quota from each oil field.
• The Hotspur, a weekly "story paper" and later a comic book for British schoolchildren, published the first of 1,197 issues, lasting until October 17, 1959.
• Born: Mathieu Kérékou, President of Benin from 1972–1991, and 1996–2006; in Kouarfa
• Died: Francesco de Pinedo, 43, Italian aviator, was killed when his plane crashed on takeoff from Floyd Bennett Field in New York City, before hundreds of spectators. De Pinedo was taking off in hopes of flying to Baghdad in record time, and his Bellanca airplane was loaded with 1,027 gallons of gasoline as he raced down the runway. Too heavy, the plane failed to lift off, struck a fence, and burst into flames, burning the flyer beyond recognition.

  September 3, 1933 (Sunday)

• The Irish political party Fine Gael was created by the merger of the parties Cumann na nGaedheal, the National Centre Party, and the National Guard Party, known as the Blueshirts. Blueshirts leader Eoin O'Duffy was the first to preside over the new organization.

  September 4, 1933 (Monday)

• At Camp Columbia, the Cuban Army base at Marianao, near Havana, Sergeant Fulgencio Batista led an uprising of non-commissioned officers against their Army superiors, seized control of the base, then incited a revolt that would topple the national government the next day.
• At the National Air Races in Chicago, aviator Jimmy Wedell became the first person to fly a landplane at an average of more than 300 miles per hour, averaging 304.98 mph in four runs on a three kilometer course. At the time, the record for a seaplane was 407 mph, set by George Stainforth in 1931. The feat was overshadowed by the death of 29 year old Florence Klingensmith, who had become the first woman to compete for the $10,000 Phillips Trophy. Her airplane fell apart as she passed the grandstand, and crashed at more than 200 mph.

  September 5, 1933 (Tuesday)

• The first regularly published list, of the most popular songs of the week, was started in the entertainment industry newspaper Variety.
• As the uprising in Cuba continued, Cuba's President Carlos Manuel de Céspedes y Quesada, in office for only a few weeks after the overthrow of Gerardo Machado, stepped aside in favor of a five-member junta allied with Sergeant Batista. The Pentarquia was led by law professor Guillermo Portela, accompanied by Jose Irizarri, Porfirio Franco, Sergio Carbó, and Ramon Grau. Within a week, Grau would become president, and Batista would be promoted to Army Chief of Staff. Batista would later become dictator of Cuba until being overthrown in an uprising by Fidel Castro.

  September 6, 1933 (Wednesday)

• Twenty-eight years after introducing the successful weekly entertainment magazine Variety, publisher Sime Silverman began publishing Daily Variety, Monday through Friday, in Hollywood. On the day issue #13 came out on September 22, Silverman died of a heart attack.
• Died: Marcel Journet, 65, French opera basso

  September 7, 1933 (Thursday)

• As the uprising in Cuba continued, the United States dispatched 16 destroyers to the island nation, bringing to 30 the number of U.S. Navy ships prepared to bring an invading force.
• Born:
• *Ela Bhatt, Indian lawyer, women's rights advocate and philanthropist, founder of the Self-Employed Women's Association of India, in Ahmedabad
• *Tomoko Ohta, Japanese molecular biologist, in Miyoshi, Aichi
• Died: Edward Grey, 1st Viscount Grey of Fallodon, 71, British Foreign Secretary 1905 to 1916

  September 8, 1933 (Friday)

• King Faisal I of Iraq died of a heart attack in his hotel room in the Swiss city of Bern, where he had come earlier in the week for medical treatment. In 1920, he had been proclaimed King of Syria, but was deposed by France, and on August 23, 1921, he was approved by the United Kingdom as King of Iraq, following a plebiscite of approval. His 23-year-old son, Crown Prince Ghazi, was proclaimed as the new king two hours after the death was announced; King Ghazi would be killed in an auto accident in 1939; Faisal's grandson, Faisal II, would be assassinated in 1958 in a coup that abolished the monarchy.
• Born:
• *Donald Triplett, American banker who was the first person to ever be diagnosed with autism. Triplett was identified as "Donald T." and as "Case 1" by psychiatrist Leo Kanner in Dr. Kanner's 1943 study "Autistic Disturbances of Affective Contact"; in Forest, Mississippi.
• *Michael Frayn, British playwright and novelist, winner of the 2000 Tony Award for Copenhagen; in Mill Hill, Middlesex

  September 9, 1933 (Saturday)

• The Miss America Pageant was revived after an absence of six years, returning to Atlantic City, New Jersey where it had taken place from 1921 to 1927. Winner of the Miss America 1933 title was Miss Connecticut, 15-year-old high-school student Marian Bergeron.
• Professor Albert Einstein arrived in London, after fleeing Belgium, where he had been under police protection following word that Nazi Germany was offering a bounty for his slayer. In October, he would move to the United States, settling in Princeton, New Jersey, where he would work at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.

  September 10, 1933 (Sunday)

• The Reichskonkordat between Nazi Germany and Vatican City was ratified by both nations, with each pledging not to interfere with the other.
• The first Negro league baseball all-star game, dubbed the "East-West All-Star Game" for the Negro National League, was played one month after the white Major League Baseball teams held their first all-star game, and at the same venue, Comiskey Park in Chicago, where 20,000 attended. The West team beat the East, 11-7 with future Baseball Hall of Fame inductees Bill Foster, Mule Suttles, Willie Wells, and Turkey Stearnes, while the East had future Cooperstown inductees Josh Gibson, Satchel Paige, Judy Johnson and Biz Mackey. Cool Papa Bell, Jud Wilson, Oscar Charleston, Andy Cooper, and Manager John Henry Lloyd.
• Dr. Ramón Grau became the fourth President of Cuba in less than a month, after the Revolutionary Council elected him to take over from the junta that had overthrown President de Cespedes. He would serve for a few months, but would serve a four-year term later from 1944 to 1948.
• Born:
• *Yevgeny Khrunov, Soviet cosmonaut launched on Soyuz 4 and returned on Soyuz 5 in 1969; in Prudy, Tula Oblast, RSFSR
• *Harmindar Singh Takhar, Indian-born British mathematician and chemical engineer; in Punjab.

  September 11, 1933 (Monday)

• Austria's Chancellor and dictator, Engelbert Dollfuss, proclaimed the Ständestaat in Vienna, a fascist nation with one political party, his own Fatherland Front.
• The radio soap opera Today's Children began a five-season run, starting on the NBC Blue Network, and finishing the last two seasons on the NBC Red Network.
• Ernest Rutherford, the "father of nuclear physics", said in an address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science that his experiments in the splitting of the atom showed that there was no future for what is now called nuclear energy. "The energy produced by the breaking down of the atom is a very poor kind of thing," he said. "Anyone who expects a source of power from the transformation of those atoms is talking moonshine." Energy from uranium fission would be discovered five years later, after Rutherford's death, and the first uranium reactor would be operating by 1942.
• Hitlerjunge Quex, the first major Nazi German motion picture, premiered in Munich at the Ufa-Phoebas-Palast theater, followed eight days later by its Berlin debut.
• Born: William Luther Pierce, American physics professor at Oregon State University, founder of the neo-Nazi National Alliance, and author of the racist and anti-Semitic novel The Turner Diaries; in Atlanta