Year 1929 Fun Facts, Trivia, and History Events

This quick read presents a collection of fun facts, trivia, and history events from the year 1929. Discover the year’s top news stories, most influential people, sports facts, historic firsts, entertainment news, and much more.

Take a journey through history in just minutes.

1. On March 4, Herbert Hoover (R-California) was inaugurated as the 31st president of the United States, and Charles Curtis (R-Kansas) was sworn in as the nation’s 31st vice president.
2. On March 4, James Eli Watson (R-Indiana) became the Senate majority leader and filled the seat vacated by Charles Curtis, who became the U.S. vice president.
3. In 1929, listening to the radio was probably the most popular form of entertainment, and about 40 percent of American households owned a radio receiver by the end of the decade. With the addition of sound and color, movies also became an increasingly popular form of entertainment. Comedies, gangster movies, horror films, westerns, melodramas, and musicals all helped people to momentarily forget their troubles.
4. In 1929, an estimated 5.4 million cars and trucks were manufactured in the United States—"a production level that the auto industry would not achieve again until 1949.”
5. Consumer products launched in 1929 included 7 Up, Magic Chef appliances, Pine-Sol household cleaner, Slim Jims (snack food), and Twizzlers (candy).
6. January 2: The United States and Canada agreed to work together to protect the world-famous Niagara Falls from erosion and to generate more hydroelectric power.
7. January 7: Tarzan, one of the first adventure comic strips, appeared in newspapers for the first time.
8. January 17: Popeye made his first appearance in Elzie Segar's nine-year-old comic strip, Thimble Theatre.
9. January 18: Walter Winchell, a columnist with the New York Daily Mirror who liked to combine political commentary with celebrity gossip, debuted as a radio news commentator.
10. January 29: With the mission to train guide dogs to help the blind, Dorothy Harrison Eustis and Morris Frank founded The Seeing Eye, a guide dog school located in Morristown, New Jersey.
11. February 5: Jimmy Hatlo's comic strip, They'll Do It Every Time, premiered in the San Francisco Call-Bulletin. The comic strip ran until February 3, 2008, and its title became a popular catchphrase throughout America.
12. February 20: The Boston Red Sox announced that because Fenway Park was located too close to a church, they would play Sunday MLB games at Braves Field instead.
13. February 26: Congress established the 310,000-acre Grand Teton National Park in northwestern Wyoming.
14. March 23: President Hoover had a telephone installed at his desk.
15. April 1: Toymaker Louis Marx introduced his version of the yo-yo, a toy “consisting of an axle connected to two disks and a string looped around the axle, similar to a spool.”
16. April 16: The New York Yankees became the first MLB team to feature numbers on the backs of uniforms.
17. May 15: A devastating fire partially destroyed the main building of the world-renowned Cleveland Clinic.
18. May 16: At the first Academy Awards ceremony, which honored the best films of 1927 and 1928, Wings won an Oscar for Best Picture, Emil Jannings (The Last Command) won an Oscar for Best Actor, and Janet Gaynor (7th Heaven) won an Oscar for Best Actress. Lewis Milestone (Two Arabian Knights) won an Oscar for Best Director of a Comedy Picture, and Frank Borzage (7th Heaven) won an Oscar for Best Director of a Dramatic Picture. (Just so you know, the first Academy Awards were held during a banquet at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel.)
19. May 19: At the beginning of the sixth inning, a cloudburst caused a stampede at Yankee Stadium. SWNewsMedia.com reports that “Thousands of fans rushed for shelter under the grandstand in a panic, crushing a 60-year-old man and a 17-year-old girl to death during their flight. Sixty-two people were injured, 18 of whom required overnight hospital care.”
20. May 20: The Wickersham Commission began its investigation of alcohol prohibition in the United States.
21. May 28: On with the Show!, a musical film released by Warner Bros., was the first all-color and all-talking feature-length film.
22. June 16: Sixty-two-year-old Otto Funk ended his marathon walk from New York City to San Francisco. Funk covered 4,165 miles in 183 days.
23. June 27: In television history, H. E. Ives and his colleagues at Bell Telephone Laboratories in New York presented the first public demonstration of color TV. The first images included a bouquet of roses and an American flag, which were transmitted between New York and Washington.
24. July 3: British scientist E.A. Murphy, who worked at the Dunlop Latex Development Laboratories in Birmingham, England, invented foam rubber.
25. July 15: The first airport hotel, the Oakland Airport Inn, opened in Oakland, California. It had 37 rooms, a restaurant, a barbershop, and an airline ticket office.
26. August 4: The world-famous Jones Beach, the home to 6.5 miles of white sand on the south shore of Long Island, opened to visitors.
27. August 11: The first Bud Billiken Parade and Picnic, the oldest and largest African American parade in the U.S., was held in Chicago.
28. September 3: The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) peaked at 381.17, a milestone that it would not reach again until November 1954.
29. October 11: After opening store #1252 in Milford, Delaware, J. C. Penney had department stores in all 48 states. (Remember, Alaska and Hawaii did not become U.S. states until 1959.)
30. October 24: On Black Thursday, the beginning of the stock market crash, the DJIA was down 12.8%.
31. October 25: Former Interior Secretary Albert B. Fall was convicted of bribery for his role in the Teapot Dome scandal and became the first presidential cabinet member to go to prison for wrongful actions in office.
32. October 28: On Black Monday, the DJIA plummeted 38.33 points (13%) to 260.64.
33. October 29: Black Tuesday hit Wall Street. According to History.com, “investors traded some 16 million shares on the New York Stock Exchange in a single day. Billions of dollars were lost, wiping out thousands of investors. In the aftermath of Black Tuesday, America and the rest of the industrialized world spiraled downward into the Great Depression (1929-39), the deepest and longest-lasting economic downturn in the history of the Western industrialized world up to that time.”
34. November 1929: Hoover.Archives.org states, “After the stock market crash, President Hoover sought to prevent panic from spreading throughout the economy. In November, he summoned business leaders to the White House and secured promises from them to maintain wages. According to Hoover’s economic theory, financial losses should affect profits, not employment, thus maintaining consumer spending and shortening the downturn. Hoover [also] received commitments from private industry to spend $1.8 billion for new construction and repairs to be started in 1930, to stimulate employment.”
35. November 1929 and thereafter: History.com tells us that “The average American family lived by the Depression-era motto, ‘Use it up, wear it out, make do, or do without.’ Many tried to keep up appearances and carry on with life as close to normal as possible while they adapted to new economic circumstances. Households embraced a new level of frugality in daily life.”
36. November 7: The Museum of Modern Art opened in New York City.
37. November 15: The Ambassador Bridge, which connects Detroit, Michigan, to Windsor, Ontario, opened to traffic.
38. November 28: Admiral Richard E. Byrd, “along with pilot Bernt Balchen, co-pilot/radioman Harold June, and photographer Ashley McKinley, made their historic first flight over the South Pole in 18 hours, 41 minutes. Several other exploratory flights were later made.”
39. December 1: Edwin S. Lowe invented the game of bingo.
40. December 21: The first “employer-sponsored hospitalization plan was created by teachers in Dallas, Texas.” Because the plan only covered members' expenses at a single hospital, it is also thought to be “the forerunner of today's health maintenance organizations (HMOs).”
41. In 1929, William Paley changed the name of the United Independent Broadcasters (UIB) broadcasting network to the Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc. (CBS).
42. In New York City, the original Waldorf-Astoria Hotel closed and was soon demolished—to make way for the construction of the Empire State Building.
43. Over 800,000 refrigerators were sold in the U.S.
44. Sheffield Farms of New York began to use “wax paper cartons instead of glass bottles for milk delivery.”
45. The ruby red grapefruit was created.
46. The famous Parisian restaurant, La Tour d'Argent (the Silver Tower), served its 100,000th signature dish.
47. Here are some sports facts from 1929: The Green Bay Packers were the NFL champs, the Philadelphia Athletics won the World Series, and the Boston Bruins clinched the Stanley Cup.
48. 10-quart pressure cooker: $20.00
49. 1929 Chevrolet Roadster: $525.00
50. 1929 Chrysler DeSoto Six: $845.00
51. 1929 Pontiac Big Six: $745.00
52. Brooms: 55 cents apiece
53. Daily newspaper: Two cents
54. Dry cleaning (a man’s suit): $1.00
55. Football helmet: $3.50 to $7.50 apiece
56. Football shoes: $6.50 a pair
57. Gas range: $49.50 to $67.50 each
58. Ivory soap: 25 cents for six “guest size” bars
59. Lawn mower: $8.25 to $21.50 each
60. Man’s Stetson hat: $8.50 to $10.00
61. Mason jars: 85 cents for the pint size and $1.15 for the quart size
62. Pencil sharpener: $0.69 to $0.85 each
63. Permanent wave: $8.00
64. Refrigerator: $32.50 to $85.00 apiece
65. Wool blanket: $6.98 to $8.98 each

References:

1. https://www.infoplease.com/year/1929
2. https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/stock-market-crash-of-1929
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1929_in_the_United_States
4. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/crash-headlines/
5. https://www.merriam-webster.com/time-traveler/1929
6. https://www.onthisday.com/events/date/1929?p=2
7. https://www.mclib.info/Research/Local-History-Genealogy/Historic-Prices
8. https://www.history.com/articles/great-depression-history
9. https://popculturemadness.com/1929-history-fun-facts-and-trivia/
10. https://www.foodreference.com/html/html/food-history-1925.html

© 2026 Gregory DeVictor