1931 Archives | HISTORY

President Herbert Hoover signs a congressional act making “The Star-Spangled Banner” the official national anthem of the United States.

In an attempt to lift the state out of the hard times of the Great Depression, the Nevada state legislature votes to legalize gambling.

The witty and caustic Dorothy Parker resigns her job as drama critic for The New Yorker. However, she continued to write book reviews until 1933, which were published in 1971 as A Month of Saturdays.

On May 1, 1931, President Herbert Hoover officially dedicates New York City’s Empire State Building, pressing a button from the White House that turns on the building’s lights. Hoover’s gesture, of course, was symbolic; while the president remained in Washington, D.C., someone else flicked the switches in New York.

On July 14, 1931, Governor Warren Green of South Dakota makes an urgent plea to President Herbert Hoover for assistance for his state's farmers, whose lives and livelihoods were being threatened by a catastrophic insect invasion. "Grasshoppers have utterly destroyed all crops in 11,000 square miles of South Dakota," the governor wrote in his emergency declaration. "Unless Federal aid is given, there will be intense suffering."

On August 25, 1931, after months of torrential flooding, levees around the city of Gaoyou, China, break and the Yangtze River overflows, killing between 10,000 and 15,000 in a single night. The disastrous breach was part of a catastrophic flood that killed an estimated 3.7 million people directly and indirectly over the next several months, and left some 40 million without homes. This was perhaps the worst natural disaster of the 20th century.

On October 17, 1931, gangster Al Capone is convicted of tax evasion, signaling the downfall of one of the most notorious criminals of the 1920s and 1930s. He was later sentenced to 11 years in federal prison and fined $50,000.

Thomas Alva Edison, one of the most prolific inventors in history, dies in West Orange, New Jersey, at the age of 84.

On October 24, 1931, eight months ahead of schedule, New York governor Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicates the George Washington Bridge over the Hudson River. The 4,760-foot–long suspension bridge, the longest in the world at the time, connected Fort Lee, New Jersey with Washington Heights in New York City. “This will be a highly successful enterprise,” FDR told the assembled crowd at the ceremony. “The great prosperity of the Holland Tunnel and the financial success of other bridges recently opened in this region have proven that not even the hardest times can lessen the tremendous volume of trade and traffic in the greatest of port districts.”