Events, Verisoph

5 December 1933 Prohibition repealed, enforcement bureau dissolved 0 cit. Ratification of the Twenty-First Amendment ended national Prohibition and, with it, the rationale for the Bureau of Prohibition, which was dissolved the following year. Its residual alcohol-tax functions passed to a Treasury unit that evolved into the Alcohol Tax Unit, the direct institutional ancestor of the later Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. economy / politics ●●

27 February 1933 Reichstag Fire and the emergency decree 1 cit. The Reichstag building burns and the Dutch communist Marinus van der Lubbe is arrested at the scene. The Nazis blame a communist plot and the next day issue the Reichstag Fire Decree suspending civil liberties, opening a wave of arrests. Historians still debate whether van der Lubbe acted alone or the fire served Nazi aims, but its use to crush opposition is clear. politics ●●●

23 March 1933 Enabling Act passed in Germany 1 cit. With communist deputies barred and SA men filling the hall, the Reichstag passes the Enabling Act, letting the cabinet make laws without parliament. The act gives Hitler dictatorial powers under a veneer of legality and marks the legal end of the Weimar Republic. politics ●●●●

1933 Zemurray seizes control of United Fruit 0 cit. After selling his Cuyamel company to United Fruit, Sam Zemurray watches his stock lose value as the firm stumbles in the Depression. He storms a board meeting, reportedly declaring the directors were ruining the business, and takes over as the company's driving force. Under him United Fruit deepened its political meddling in Central America. economy ●●

1933 American oil wins the Saudi concession 0 cit. Standard Oil of California secured the concession to explore Saudi Arabia's oil, and struck commercial quantities in 1938. The venture grew into the Arabian American Oil Company, or Aramco, jointly owned by American firms. For its early decades Aramco set output and prices and kept most of the profit, with the Saudi state receiving royalties on terms the company controlled. diplomacy / economy ●●

1933 The 1933 identity cards fix ethnicity in law 1 cit. The Belgian administration carried out a census and issued identity cards that stamped every Rwandan as Hutu, Tutsi, or Twa, often using crude measures like cattle counts and physical features. What had been a shifting social category became a fixed, inherited, state-recorded race that a person could not escape. These cards followed families for generations and were later used at roadblocks in 1994 to sort who would live and who would die. Scholars widely name this colonial race classification as the documented engine of later ethnic violence. politics / society ●●●

c. 1933 The documented driver was colonial policy, not any secret lodge unproven 2 cit. Fringe conspiracy writing sometimes blames Masonic or secret-society plots for Rwanda's ethnic engineering. There is no credible evidence for any such claim, and serious historians do not entertain it. The documented driver is plain and well-recorded: Belgian colonial administration and Church thinking turned a fluid social order into a racial hierarchy through census, identity cards, and Hamitic race theory. Naming a hidden lodge only distracts from the real, traceable chain of colonial policy. politics / society ●

1933 The International Relief Association is founded at Einstein's suggestion 0 cit. American activists set up the International Relief Association to help Germans suffering under Adolf Hitler's new regime, at the urging of Albert Einstein, who had just fled Germany himself. This body was the direct ancestor of the International Rescue Committee. Its first work was aiding anti-Nazi refugees, trade unionists and Jews. politics / society ●●●

1933 The Nazis weaponize the Jewish finance lie legendary 1 cit. Nazi propaganda made the myth of Jewish financial and world control a core message, casting Jews as the hidden power behind both banking and communism to justify persecution. This lie helped pave the road to the Holocaust, in which six million Jews were murdered. The trope of international Jewish finance is not a harmless exaggeration; it was central to the deadliest genocide of the modern era and is false in every part. politics / war ●●●

1933 The Estado Novo and the drive to hold the colonies 0 cit. Antonio de Oliveira Salazar builds an authoritarian regime, the Estado Novo, and binds its legitimacy to keeping the African empire. As other powers began to let their colonies go, Portugal recast Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea as overseas provinces and refused to give them up. politics ●●

29 May 1933 Standard Oil of California wins the Saudi concession 0 cit. The new kingdom of Saudi Arabia grants an American company the right to explore its eastern desert for oil, a venture that became Aramco. The deal tied the United States to Saudi oil and marked American entry into a region Britain had dominated. diplomacy / economy ●●●

August 1933 Leaving Moscow as Padmore breaks with the Comintern 0 cit. The Comintern dissolved the ITUC-NW and Padmore resigned from the Communist Party in protest, later attacked in the Soviet press. Kenyatta left the Soviet Union and returned to London in August 1933. Biographers read his Moscow period as more tactical than doctrinaire, and he never joined the Communist Party; how deep his communism ever ran is still debated. politics ●●

c. 1933 MI5 Keeps a File on Kenyatta 0 cit. British intelligence treated Kenyatta as a subversive to be watched, not an asset to be groomed. The Security Service (MI5) opened and kept a file on him, now in the KV 2 series at the National Archives, tracking his contacts with the Communist Party, the League Against Imperialism, and his 1932-33 study in Moscow. The surveillance, and the later rigged Kapenguria trial, are the documented evidence that the colonial establishment feared him rather than cultivated him, a point that cuts against the theory that the British quietly built his career from the start. politics / society ●●

c. 1933 MI5 opens a file on Jomo Kenyatta 0 cit. MI5 began tracking the Kenyan nationalist Jomo Kenyatta in the 1930s, when he lived in Britain and visited Moscow. His personal file in the released KV series runs across decades of surveillance. The future first president of Kenya was watched as a suspected subversive long before Britain negotiated the handover of power to him. politics / society ●●●

1933 Arrested by the Nazis and deported from Germany 0 cit. After Hitler took power in 1933, Padmore was arrested in Hamburg, held in prison, and then deported. The Nazi crackdown shut down his base of operations in Germany. He made his way to Britain, where he would spend most of the rest of his life. politics / society ●●

c. 1933 The Comintern winds down its anti-colonial work 0 cit. As Moscow shifted toward a popular front against fascism, it sought alliances with Britain and France and softened its attacks on their empires. The International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers was scaled back and effectively dissolved. Historian Leslie James argues that Padmore saw anti-colonial work being sacrificed to Soviet foreign policy, which drove his break. diplomacy / politics ●●●

20 February 1933 German industrialists back Hitler at a private meeting 1 cit. Three weeks after Hitler became chancellor, some two dozen leading German industrialists met privately with him and Hermann Goering. Hitler promised to crush the labor movement and rebuild the military, and the businessmen pledged large sums for the coming election. The meeting, arranged with Hjalmar Schacht, tied big German business to the new regime. economy / politics ●●●●

1933 German business pays into the Adolf Hitler Endowment 1 cit. After Hitler took power, major companies paid regular contributions into a fund known as the Adolf Hitler Endowment of German Industry. It channeled business money to the Nazi leadership on an ongoing basis. The arrangement bound German industry to the regime and bought a measure of quiet cooperation. economy / politics ●●

c. 1933 IBM's German subsidiary supplies punch-card machines 1 cit. IBM's German subsidiary Dehomag leased and serviced Hollerith punch-card tabulating machines used in German censuses and record-keeping. In his book IBM and the Holocaust, Edwin Black argues this data technology helped the regime identify and track victims. Black's charge of knowing complicity is his interpretation; the machines and the business relationship are documented. economy / technology ●●●

c. 1933 Luhya families are displaced and given token compensation 4 cit. Luhya families whose land fell inside the mining area were moved aside so prospecting and mining could go ahead. Compensation was small and set by the administration, not by the people who lost the use of their land. The reserve had been redrawn around European interests, and its residents had little say in the outcome. economy / society ●●●

December 1933 A US court clears Ulysses of obscenity 0 cit. In United States v. One Book Called Ulysses, a federal judge ruled James Joyce's novel not obscene, judging a work as a whole and by its literary intent rather than by isolated passages. It began the retreat of the Hicklin test in America. ●●

c. 1933 Kalecki sketches a demand-led theory of output 1 cit. Michal Kalecki developed an independent demand-led macroeconomics in the early 1930s, before The General Theory appeared in English. His work is a useful warning against treating Keynesian economics as one man inventing the whole field from nothing; similar problems were pushing several economists toward aggregate-demand explanations. economy / science ●●●

6 June 1934 Founding of the SEC 0 cit. The Securities Exchange Act creates the Securities and Exchange Commission to police stock markets after the 1929 crash, with Joseph P. Kennedy as its first chairman. Mandatory disclosure and fraud enforcement become the rules of American finance. economy ●●●

October 1934 to 1935 The Long March 0 cit. Chinese communist forces retreat some 9,000 kilometers from Jiangxi to Shaanxi under Nationalist attack. The march secures Mao Zedong's leadership and becomes the founding legend of Chinese communism. politics / war ●●●

July 1934 to 1968 Hays Code enforced in Hollywood 0 cit. Hollywood's Motion Picture Production Code, written in 1930, gained real enforcement in July 1934 through the Production Code Administration. For decades it set moral limits on what American films could show. culture / society ●●●

19 June 1934 Communications Act of 1934 creates the FCC 0 cit. The Communications Act merged oversight of radio, telephone and telegraph under a new Federal Communications Commission. The FCC became the main federal regulator of American media. politics / technology ●●●●

c. 1934 to c. 1975 Sweden runs decades-long sterilization program 1 cit. Sweden forcibly or coercively sterilized around 60,000 people, mostly women, under eugenic and social policy. The program showed that eugenics took hold in democracies, not only under the Nazis. politics / society ●

November 1934 Marriner Eccles becomes head of the Federal Reserve 0 cit. Marriner Eccles, a Utah banker who backed government spending to fight the Depression, took charge of the Federal Reserve. Under the Banking Act of 1935 he reshaped the Fed into a stronger, more centralized institution. economy / politics ●●●

c. 1934 Schacht creates the Mefo bills to fund rearmament 0 cit. Schacht devised the Mefo bills, credit notes drawn on a dummy company and guaranteed by the Reichsbank, to hide the scale of German rearmament. The scheme let the state pay for weapons off the books until the bills came due. economy / war ●●●●

August 1934 Schacht becomes Minister of Economics and launches the New Plan 0 cit. Schacht took over the Economics Ministry and imposed the New Plan, using trade deals and exchange controls to steer resources toward rearmament. His management kept Germany's war buildup financed despite scarce foreign currency. economy / politics ●●●

c. 1934 L. Ron Hubbard builds a career as a pulp fiction writer 0 cit. Through the 1930s Hubbard wrote prolifically for pulp magazines, turning out adventure, western and science fiction stories. The output made him a fast and confident writer well before he devised Dianetics. culture ●●

1934 Canon began as Kwanon, named for a Buddhist deity 0 cit. The Japanese camera maker's first camera in 1934 was called Kwanon, after Kannon, also known as Guanyin, the Buddhist deity of mercy. The name was soon anglicized to Canon. economy / religion / technology ●●●

c. 1934 Cult of personality around a leader 0 cit. Dictators such as Stalin built cults that portrayed the leader as wise, heroic, and almost superhuman. The personality cult became a common tool of personalist dictatorship. culture / politics ●●●

1934 Curtis publishes Civitas Dei ai_extracted 1 cit. Lionel Curtis's three-volume work argued that all history leads to a federation of the English-speaking peoples. Quigley treats it as central Milner Group propaganda for an Oceanic bloc. ●●

1934 British Council founded 0 cit. The British government founded the British Council to promote British culture, the English language, and educational exchange abroad. It was created partly in response to Fascist Italy's and Nazi Germany's own cultural propaganda efforts in the Mediterranean and Middle East. The Council went on to run scholarship and exchange programs that remain a central tool of British soft power. culture / diplomacy ●●●

1934 Central Selling Organisation established 0 cit. De Beers formally organized its marketing arm as the Central Selling Organisation, a single channel through which the great majority of the world's rough diamonds were sold to a limited list of approved dealers. The CSO let De Beers stockpile diamonds and restrict supply to keep prices high, a cartel arrangement that lasted for most of the twentieth century. economy ●●●

c. February 1934 Frank Hamer forms the posse that ends Bonnie and Clyde 0 cit. Former Texas Ranger Frank Hamer, hired by the Texas prison system after Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow's gang broke inmates out of a state facility, spent months tracking the pair across several states. Hamer assembled a small posse of Texas and Louisiana officers rather than acting alone, contrary to the lone-Ranger image later popularized in film. society ●●

23 May 1934 Ambush of Bonnie and Clyde 0 cit. Hamer's posse ambushed Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow on a rural road near Gibsland, Louisiana, killing both in a hail of gunfire without warning. The 1967 film "Bonnie and Clyde" and subsequent popular retellings dramatized and altered details of the ambush; Hamer's family later sued over the film's depiction of him. The episode became probably the single most famous case associated with a Texas Ranger in twentieth-century popular culture, even though it occurred after Hamer had left the Rangers. society ●●●

18 June 1934 Indian Reorganization Act 0 cit. Also known as the Wheeler-Howard Act, this law ended further allotment of tribal land, extended the trust period on existing allotments, and encouraged tribes to adopt formal constitutions and elected governments. It reversed decades of allotment policy but was imposed somewhat uniformly across tribes with very different governance traditions, and some tribes rejected it. It marked the first major reversal of federal assimilation policy since the 1880s. politics ●●

c. 1 January 1934 Nazi Eugenics Officials Praise the California Model 2 cit. Nazi officials and eugenicists publicly credited American sterilization laws as their inspiration. Dr. Falk Ruttke, a Nazi legal official, and Dr. Fritz Lenz both praised California's program, and a German eugenics researcher wrote to Human Betterment Foundation co-founder Paul Popenoe that his organization's work "had been studied with great interest by the National Socialist Government." Historian Stefan Kuhl documented extensive correspondence and personal exchanges between American and German eugenicists in this period. diplomacy / politics / science ●●

c. 10 July 1934 Stalin's secret police: OGPU and the NKVD 0 cit. The Cheka was reorganised through the GPU and OGPU in the 1920s, then folded into the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) in 1934. Under Stalin the NKVD ran the Gulag labour camp system and carried out the mass arrests and executions of the Great Terror of 1937 to 1938. This period fixed the security service's reputation as a tool of state repression on a vast scale. The date shown marks the NKVD's consolidation, though the terror and camp system spanned many years. politics / society ●●

1934 Popper argues that science must be falsifiable 0 cit. Karl Popper argued that a theory is scientific only if it makes predictions that could in principle be proven wrong. This drew a line between science and claims that explain everything and risk nothing. Later philosophers, including Kuhn, argued that real science rarely works as cleanly as Popper's rule suggests. culture / science ●●

8 November 1934 Swiss banking secrecy is written into law 0 cit. The Swiss Banking Act made it a criminal offense for a bank to reveal client information, hardening a tradition of secrecy into national law. Over the following decades this helped make Switzerland a hub for hidden wealth and a template for offshore finance. Bank secrecy gave corporations and wealthy individuals a legal way to place money beyond the reach of their home governments. economy / politics ●●

1934 After the Crash, the SEC makes audits the law 0 cit. In response to the 1929 crash and the fraud exposed in the Depression, Congress created the Securities and Exchange Commission and required public companies to file audited financial statements. Independent audit stopped being a courtesy to investors and became a legal duty, which vastly expanded the accounting profession and its power. economy / politics ●●●

1934 Kuznets invents a measure for the whole economy 0 cit. The economist Simon Kuznets built the first national income accounts for the United States, giving government a single figure for the nation's output during the Depression. The work grew into Gross Domestic Product. Kuznets himself warned that the measure left out much of what matters and that the welfare of a nation can scarcely be inferred from it, a caution often forgotten. economy / politics / science ●●●

1934 Independent schools and churches break from the missions 0 cit. In the wake of the circumcision crisis, Kikuyu founded their own bodies, the Kikuyu Independent Schools Association and the Kikuyu Karing'a Educational Association, along with independent churches such as the African Independent Pentecostal Church. These ran schools and worship free of missionary control and kept Kikuyu customs. The movement built an African-led alternative to mission education and helped shape later nationalist leadership. politics / religion / society ●●●

1934 Special Districts and the Neglect of the North 0 cit. The Special Districts Administration Ordinance of 1934 gave officials in the north sweeping powers of collective punishment, letting them seize the stock and restrict the movement of whole communities for the acts of a few. Combined with the closed-district system, it locked the region into policing and underdevelopment. The frontier's peoples entered independence far behind the rest of Kenya, and the unresolved anger helped drive the Shifta secession war of the 1960s, covered elsewhere. politics / war ●●

1934 The Special Districts Ordinance hardens the pass system 0 cit. The Special Districts (Administration) Ordinance formalised the closed-district regime: entering or leaving the north required a permit, and district officers held sweeping powers of collective punishment, stock seizure, and detention. The north was governed as a quarantined zone rather than a citizenry. This framework of passes and non-development shaped the region until independence and beyond. politics / society ●●●

1934 The Kikuyu Independent Schools Association is founded 0 cit. Out of the exodus grew the Kikuyu Independent Schools Association, which built and ran schools free of missionary control so Kikuyu children could gain a modern education without renouncing their customs. The independent schools spread quickly and became nurseries of literacy, self-reliance, and later nationalist leadership. They proved the community could educate itself outside the mission system. culture / politics / society ●●

c. 1934 Karing'a schools and the demand for an unmissioned education 0 cit. A more militant wing formed the Karing'a schools, the name meaning pure or truly Kikuyu, insisting on education wholly under African control and rooted in Kikuyu tradition. Where some independent schools kept ties to sympathetic churches, the Karing'a movement rejected missionary oversight outright. It expressed the sharpest version of the demand for cultural self-rule that the crisis had unleashed. culture / society ●●

December 1934 The Walwal incident on the Somali border 0 cit. A clash between Ethiopian and Italian colonial troops at the Walwal wells, deep inside Ethiopian territory, left dozens dead and gave Mussolini the pretext he wanted. Italy demanded an apology and reparations for an incident on Ethiopia's own land. Ethiopia took the dispute to the League of Nations, which dithered while Italy prepared to invade. diplomacy / war ●

February 1934 Breaks with Moscow and is expelled from the Comintern 0 cit. Padmore resigned his posts and was expelled from the communist movement in early 1934. He concluded that the liberation of colonized Africans, not the Moscow party line, had to come first. Historians including Leslie James and Hakim Adi note that the exact terms of the split are debated, but agree it turned him decisively toward independent Pan-Africanism. diplomacy / politics ●●●

1934 George Padmore breaks with Moscow 0 cit. George Padmore left the Communist movement after Moscow dissolved the Negro workers' organization he led, a step he saw as selling out Black liberation to court the imperial powers. He turned to Pan-Africanism and later mentored figures who would lead African states to independence. His break, set out in his book Pan-Africanism or Communism?, became a landmark case of a colonial radical abandoning Moscow. politics ●●

1934 The Kenya Land Commission Report ai_extracted 1 cit. The Kenya Land Commission, which took evidence in 1932, reported in 1934 and confirmed existing European title to the White Highlands. It offered the Kikuyu only small amounts of lower-quality land as compensation and effectively extinguished African claims to lands occupied by whites, deepening the land grievance that fed the rebellion. ●●

8 November 1934 Switzerland makes banking secrecy a crime 0 cit. The Swiss Federal Banking Act of 1934 made it a criminal offence for a bank to reveal a client's identity. The law turned discretion into a legal wall and cemented Switzerland's role as the world's private vault. A popular story that the law was written to shield Jewish savings from the Nazis has been challenged by historians, who trace it to an earlier French tax scandal. economy / politics ●●●

8 November 1934 The Federal Banking Act codifies banking secrecy 0 cit. Switzerland's banking law made the disclosure of a client's account a criminal offence, giving banking secrecy the force of the penal code. Combined with a neutral, stable state, this drew foreign wealth into Swiss banks and helped build the country's reputation as the world's safe. A popular story holds that the law was written to shield Jewish money from the Nazis, but historians attribute it mainly to a bank-spying scandal and to domestic economic interests. economy ●●●

1934 Schacht engineers Nazi rearmament finance 0 cit. As Reichsbank president and economics minister, Hjalmar Schacht designed the financial machinery that funded German rearmament, including off-the-books credit instruments known as Mefo bills that hid the true scale of military spending. His skill kept the regime solvent while it rebuilt its forces. He was later tried at Nuremberg and acquitted. economy / politics / war ●●●

c. 1934 Standard Oil fuel additives reach German aviation 1 cit. Through joint ventures tied to the tetraethyl lead process, know-how for high-octane aviation fuel additives passed into German hands in the 1930s. The additive was important for military aircraft engines. The arrangement is documented in corporate records and later investigations, and is a business-history fact rather than a claim of intent. economy / technology ●●

1934 Special Districts Ordinance entrenches separate rule in the north 3 cit. The Special Districts (Administration) Ordinance gave officials in the northern districts sweeping powers to restrict movement, seize livestock and detain people with little check. It formalised the closed-district system, treating the north as a security zone rather than a place to be developed. The framework shaped how the state dealt with Somalis for decades. politics / society ●●●

1934 The Talai clan is deported from the tea highlands 5 cit. Under the Laibons Removal Ordinance of 1934, the colonial government deported the Talai, the Kipsigis ruling clan whose orkoiik led resistance, away from the highlands to Gwassi in South Nyanza. The removal broke community leadership and cleared people from land wanted for settlement and tea. The Talai remained in detention and exile for decades. politics / society ●●●

1934 The El Molo population falls to a few dozen 5 cit. A 1934 count recorded only about 84 El Molo, a low point for one of Africa's smallest peoples. Long isolation and marriage within a tiny group are linked by researchers to health problems and disease vulnerability. A narrow, fish-heavy diet in a harsh setting compounded the strain. science / society ●●

1934 Moi enters Africa Inland Mission schooling at Kabartonjo 2 cit. In 1934 Moi was among the Sacho herdboys recommended for the Africa Inland Mission school at Kabartonjo. The mission-school route was his first major colonial tie: literacy, Christianity, discipline, and connection to the small educated African class that colonial officials could later recognize. religion / society ●●●

8 December 1935 Hoare-Laval Pact 0 cit. Secret Anglo-French plan to end the Abyssinian crisis by giving much of Ethiopia to Fascist Italy. Its leak caused public outrage, the fall of both ministers, and lasting damage to the League of Nations. diplomacy / politics ●●

16 September 1935 Founding of Morgan Stanley 0 cit. When the Glass-Steagall Act forces J.P. Morgan to choose between commercial and investment banking, partners Henry Morgan and Harold Stanley spin off a new securities firm. Morgan Stanley becomes one of Wall Street's leading investment banks. economy ●●●

1 April 1935 Founding of the Reserve Bank of India 0 cit. The Reserve Bank of India begins operations in Calcutta as the central bank of British India, later moving to Bombay. Nationalized in 1949, it manages the currency and banking system of what becomes the world's most populous country. economy / politics ●●●●

14 August 1935 Social Security Act 0 cit. Franklin Roosevelt signs the act creating old-age insurance funded by payroll taxes, plus unemployment insurance and aid to dependent children. Social Security becomes the largest program of the federal government and the anchor of the American welfare state. economy / society ●●●●

15 September 1935 Nuremberg Laws enacted 0 cit. The Reichstag, convened at the Nuremberg party rally, strips Jews of German citizenship and bans marriage between Jews and other Germans. Nazi racial ideology becomes the law of the state. politics / society ●●●●

1935 Dion Fortune's The Mystical Qabalah 0 cit. Dion Fortune's The Mystical Qabalah presented the Tree of Life as a practical map for spiritual development to a general readership. It became a standard modern handbook of the Hermetic tradition. culture / religion ●●●

March 1935 Triumph of the Will 1 cit. Leni Riefenstahl's film Triumph of the Will, released in 1935, staged the 1934 Nazi Party rally as monumental spectacle. It is studied as a landmark and a warning about the persuasive power of film propaganda. culture / politics ●●●

2 August 1935 The Government of India Act of 1935 0 cit. The act granted provincial self-government and expanded the Indian electorate while keeping ultimate power in British hands. It was the last major constitutional reform before independence. politics ●●●

15 September 1935 Nuremberg Laws codify Nazi racial hierarchy 1 cit. The Nazi regime stripped Jews of citizenship and banned marriage between Jews and other Germans, giving racial hygiene the force of law. The laws laid legal groundwork for persecution that led to the Holocaust. politics / society ●●●

16 September 1935 Morgan Stanley splits from J.P. Morgan 0 cit. The Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 forced banks to separate commercial and investment banking. J.P. Morgan stayed in commercial banking while partners founded the investment bank Morgan Stanley in September 1935. economy / politics ●●●●

1935 The Great Seal's reverse is added to the dollar bill 0 cit. Under President Franklin Roosevelt, both sides of the Great Seal were placed on the back of the one-dollar bill, giving the pyramid and eye their mass circulation. The choice was made by officials including Agriculture Secretary Henry Wallace, and the seal itself dates to 1782. culture / economy ●●

1935 MYTH: the dollar-bill pyramid is a Masonic or Illuminati sign contested 0 cit. The pyramid and eye on the dollar come from the 1782 Great Seal, whose designers were mostly not Masons, and the eye entered Masonic use only later. The claim that the bill carries a hidden Masonic or Illuminati message is a 20th-century conspiracy theory with no documentary support. culture / society ●●●

c. 1935 Jack Parsons and Ed Forman join Frank Malina's rocket group at Caltech 0 cit. Self-taught chemist Jack Parsons and his friend Ed Forman teamed up with graduate student Frank Malina under Theodore von Karman at Caltech's Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory. Their amateur experiments formed the nucleus of what became the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. science ●●●

1935 to 1976 Sweden's state sterilization program 0 cit. Sweden sterilized around 63,000 people, most of them women, under laws in force from 1935 to 1976, with many procedures coerced. The program showed that eugenic sterilization extended well beyond Nazi Germany into liberal welfare states. politics / society ●●●

1935 The Frankfurt School flees the Nazis to America contested 0 cit. After Hitler takes power, the Institute relocates and its members find refuge in the United States, several affiliating with Columbia University. Critical theory takes root in American academic life, the fact that later conspiracy theories would seize on and distort. culture / politics ●●●

1935 Lothian meets Hitler ai_extracted 2 cit. Lord Lothian held a long conversation with Hitler in which Hitler reportedly proposed an England-Germany-US alliance giving Germany a free hand on the Continent. Quigley treats Lothian and The Times as advancing Anglo-German fellowship. ●●

1935 Howard C. Hill publishes The Life and Work of the Citizen ai_extracted 1 cit. In 1935 Howard C. Hill, head of the social science department at the University of Chicago's experimental school, published a civics textbook titled The Life and Work of the Citizen. ●●

1935 University of Chicago textbook decorated with fascist symbols ai_extracted 1 cit. Gatto reports that in 1935 Howard C. Hill, head of social science at the University of Chicago's experimental high school, published a textbook, The Life and Work of the Citizen, decorated throughout with fasces. ●●

c. 1935 The Nazis appropriate Norse runes and symbols 2 cit. Nazi Germany adopts Norse and Germanic runes, such as the SS sig-runes and the sun-wheel, as symbols of a mythic Aryan past, and the Ahnenerbe institute mined the myths for propaganda. The theft still shadows Norse symbols, which modern white-nationalist groups continue to misuse. The symbols are ancient; this political use is a documented distortion. politics / religion ●●●

1 July 1935 Bureau renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation 0 cit. The agency is officially renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Under Hoover, the FBI expands its jurisdiction over kidnapping, bank robbery, and organized crime, and cultivates a heavily promoted public image through radio, film, and press relationships Hoover personally managed. politics ●●

1 March 1935 Hitler publicly reveals the Luftwaffe 0 cit. Adolf Hitler publicly announced the existence of the Luftwaffe as an independent air force, openly violating the disarmament terms of the Treaty of Versailles. Germany had secretly been training pilots and developing aircraft designs for years beforehand. The Luftwaffe was rapidly built into one of the most powerful air forces in the world and became central to Nazi Germany's blitzkrieg strategy. politics / war ●●

1935 Eye and pyramid added to the dollar bill 1 cit. At the suggestion of Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace, President Franklin D. Roosevelt approved placing both sides of the Great Seal, including the eye-and-pyramid reverse, on the redesigned one-dollar bill. Wallace was drawn to esoteric and mystical ideas, and Roosevelt was himself a Freemason, which has fed speculation about hidden Masonic intent; but the documented record shows the design was an adaptation of the 1782 seal, not a new Masonic emblem. economy / society ●●

1935 Eye of Providence placed on the one-dollar bill 0 cit. At the urging of Vice President Henry Wallace, Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau approves putting both sides of the Great Seal, including the pyramid and Eye of Providence, on the redesigned one-dollar bill. The choice reflected Wallace's interest in the Seal's symbolism, not an Illuminati or Masonic directive; claims that the dollar bill proves ongoing Illuminati control of US government are widely circulated but are not supported by documentary evidence and are treated here as contested. economy / politics ●●

1935 Ludendorff Publishes Der Totale Krieg 0 cit. Former World War I commander Erich Ludendorff published Der Totale Krieg (The Total War), arguing that modern war required mobilizing an entire nation's economy, population, and politics under military direction, with civilian leadership subordinated to the demands of war. The book argued explicitly against the idea of civilian control over military strategy, inverting the standard civil-military relationship. It became an influential statement of militarist ideology in the interwar period. politics / war ●●

c. September 1935 Fischer's race theories cited in drafting the Nuremberg Laws 2 cit. Nazi legal drafters and race theorists cite Eugen Fischer's earlier work, including his 1908 study of the Rehoboth Basters, as scientific grounding for the Nuremberg Laws banning marriage and sexual relations between Jews and non-Jewish Germans. Historians treat this as a documented, direct intellectual line from German colonial race science in South-West Africa to Nazi racial law. politics / science ●●

3 October 1935 Second Italo-Ethiopian War Begins 0 cit. Italian forces under Marshal Pietro Badoglio invaded Ethiopia in a war of colonial conquest condemned by the League of Nations but met with only token sanctions. The campaign employed systematic aerial bombing of civilian targets alongside conventional military operations. It ended with the Italian occupation of Addis Ababa in May 1936 and the proclamation of Italian East Africa. diplomacy / war ●●

c. December 1935 Italy Uses Mustard Gas in Ethiopia 1 cit. Italian forces repeatedly used mustard gas, sprayed from aircraft, against Ethiopian troops and civilian populations in violation of the 1925 Geneva Protocol, which Italy had signed. Mussolini personally authorized the gas attacks, and Badoglio expanded their use through the following months. Historians estimate the gas killed thousands of Ethiopians and contaminated water sources and grazing land used by civilians long after the war. technology / war ●●●

August 1935 Texas Rangers absorbed into the Department of Public Safety 0 cit. The Texas Legislature created the Texas Department of Public Safety and folded the Rangers into it as one of its divisions, ending the Rangers' history as a separate, loosely regulated state force. The reorganization was driven partly by scandals during Governor Miriam "Ma" Ferguson's administration, when Ranger commissions had been handed out as political patronage, and it imposed civil-service standards, training, and a modern chain of command that the force had previously lacked. politics ●●●

c. 1935 Herders frozen as timeless 'tribesmen' 0 cit. Colonial administrators and popular writing cast the Maasai and other herders as noble, unchanging primitives, a living picture of Africa before modernity, even as grazing curbs and quarantines wrecked their economies. The romantic image justified leaving the pastoralists outside development while their real conditions worsened. Historians argue this 'timeless tribesman' myth masked an active process of marginalisation. culture / society ●

c. 1935 Studying Anthropology under Malinowski at the LSE 0 cit. From the mid-1930s Kenyatta studied social anthropology at the London School of Economics under Bronislaw Malinowski, a founder of the discipline. He turned the tools of European scholarship back on his own people, framing Kikuyu society as a coherent, functioning order rather than the 'primitive' subject colonial writing described. The seminars produced the thesis that became his book on Kikuyu life. culture / science ●●

c. 1935 Independent African churches break from the missions 0 cit. Alongside the schools, Kikuyu founded independent churches such as the African Independent Pentecostal Church and the African Orthodox Church, worshipping as Christians while keeping their own customs and clergy. They gained African ordinations from outside the established missions and grew into lasting institutions. The split gave the community a Christianity it governed itself, born directly from the oath crisis. religion / society ●●

3 October 1935 Fascist Italy invades Ethiopia 1 cit. Mussolini's forces crossed from Eritrea into Ethiopia without a declaration of war, seeking to avenge Adwa and build an Italian empire in East Africa. The League of Nations declared Italy the aggressor and voted economic sanctions, but left out oil and did not close the Suez Canal, so the measures failed to stop the war. The invasion became a test case for whether the League could deter aggression, and it failed that test. diplomacy / war ●●●

c. 1935 The Pan-African circle: James, Makonnen, Nkrumah, Abrahams, Du Bois 0 cit. Through the later 1930s Kenyatta moved in a tight Pan-African network with C.L.R. James, the Guyanese organiser Ras Makonnen, the young Kwame Nkrumah, the writer Peter Abrahams, and the elder statesman W.E.B. Du Bois. Many worked through Padmore's International African Service Bureau. These friendships, more than Moscow, shaped the politics he carried home. politics / society ●●

1935 Protesting Italy's invasion of Ethiopia 0 cit. Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia in 1935 galvanised Black activists in Britain, and Kenyatta joined the campaigns defending the one African state that had kept its independence. The cause bound the London Pan-Africanists together and sharpened their anti-colonial edge. It was a formative moment for the movement that met again in 1945. politics / war ●

c. 1935 Enrolling at the LSE under Bronislaw Malinowski 0 cit. Kenyatta entered the London School of Economics to study social anthropology under Bronislaw Malinowski, a founder of the field. Malinowski's seminar taught that a culture had to be understood on its own terms. For Kenyatta it offered a scholarly language in which to defend Kikuyu life against colonial contempt. culture / science ●●●

1935 A bit part in Sanders of the River 0 cit. Short of money, Kenyatta took a small part as an extra in the 1935 film Sanders of the River, whose leads were played by the American singer Paul Robeson and Nina Mae McKinney. The film was a celebration of benign British rule in Africa that Robeson later disowned. For Kenyatta it was one of many odd jobs that kept him afloat in London. culture / economy ●

c. 1935 The negritude movement takes shape in Paris 0 cit. Black students from the French colonies, among them Aime Cesaire of Martinique, Leopold Sedar Senghor of Senegal, and Leon Damas of Guiana, launched the journal L'Etudiant noir. Cesaire is credited with coining the term negritude, which affirmed Black identity and African cultural values against French assimilation. The movement gave Pan-Africanism a strong literary and cultural voice in the French-speaking world. culture / politics / society ●●

1935 Makhan Singh builds militant trade unionism 0 cit. The Sikh activist Makhan Singh reorganised the Labour Trade Union of Kenya into the Labour Trade Union of East Africa, pushing a militant, multiracial model of organised labour. He argued that workers should combine across race against colonial employers. He is widely regarded as a father of the Kenyan trade union movement. economy / politics ●●