• Politics: J. Edgar Hoover was appointed head of the (Federal) Bureau of Investigation. He remained head of the FBI until 1972.
• Influential Songs include Rhapsody in Blue by Paul Whiteman/ George Gershwin, and California Here I Come by Al Jolson.
• The term ‘Bible Belt’ of the east coast, Florida through Virginia and west to Texas and Oklahoma was first used in the Chicago Tribune newspaper in 1924.
• The Big Movies included The Thief of Bagdad, Sherlock Jr, and Greed
• The price of a dozen eggs in 1924: 32 cents
  Price of a movie ticket: 25 cents
• Alvin “Shipwreck” Kelly sat on a flagpole for over 13 hours, creating one of the first Pop Culture Fads – flagpole sitting.
• The Toastmasters (International) Club was founded in Santa Ana, California.
• The World Population was ~ 2,018,000,000
• The Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR) renamed itself International Business Machines (IBM).
• And… 1924, the invention of the Caesar Salad by Caesar Cardini in Tijuana, Mexico.

German shoemaker Adolf Dassler let his brother, Rudolf, join his sports shoemaking company. During WWII, they grew to hate each other and in 1948, Rudolf started his own company across town. Adolf, aka Adi, changed his company’s name to Adidas; Rudolf started Puma.

‘Uncle Sam’ is the nickname of the largest diamond (40.23 carats) in the US. It was discovered in 1924 in the Crater of Diamonds State Park in Arkansas. The park is the only public diamond mine in the world. Over 75,000 diamonds have been found since the park’s opening in 1906.

Ace Hardware stores opened in Illinois.

Max Fleischer, the producer of cartoons such as Betty Boop, the original Superman cartoons, and Popeye, also invented Rotoscope animation and the “Follow the bouncing ball” sing-a-long.

Harry’s New York Bar in Paris, France, has held a straw poll for American tourists during the presidential elections each election, since 1924. The results have only been wrong twice: in 1976, 2004, and 2016.

A variation of 1913’s tasty treat, the Pep-O-Mint Life Saver, new flavors were added – Lime, Lemon, and Orange to the disc-shaped treats. The hole was added in 1927. Pineapple and cherry were added in 1935.

Chicago was the first city in the US to have a recognized Gay Rights organization – the Society for Human Rights, established this year.

American Indians weren’t considered citizens of the US until this year.

A Labrador named Pep was sentenced to Life without Parole for killing the cat of the Pennsylvania Governor and was admitted to Eastern State Penitentiary

Kleenex disposable tissues were introduced. The pop-up box was released in 1928. They started making the handy pocket pack of tissues in 1932.

A series of 70-foot-long concrete arrows bisecting the country longitudinally from SF to NYC, all designed to direct Postal Service aerial traffic.

In 1924, there were periods of radio silence in an attempt to listen to radio signals from Mars.

This year’s introduction of iodized salt to areas in America previously without it resulted in an increase of 15 IQ points in those places.

US President Calvin Coolidge (1924-28) enjoyed “buzzing for his bodyguards and then hiding under his desk as they frantically searched for him”

Jimmy Carter, born in 1924, was the first US President born in a hospital.

Master Lock introduced the laminated padlock in 1924. Company founder Harry Soref supposedly advised fellow Harry (Houdini) to hide lock keys under his tongue when the key couldn’t have been sleight-of-handed between his fingers.

The US won the last Olympic gold medal for rugby in 1924 and is technically still reigning World Champions.

Major D. G. Astley was the only person who won the gold and silver medals in the same Olympic event when he played on GB’s and Sweden’s curling teams in 1924.

US ski jumper Anders Haugen finished 4th at the 1924 Olympics when, 50 years later, a Norwegian historian discovered a scoring error was made and Haugen should have gotten the bronze medal, which was handed to him in Norway in 1974 by the daughter of the original bronze medal winner.

Dr. Benjamin Spock (the famous baby book author) won a gold medal in rowing at the 1924 Olympics.

Monaco has competed in 28 Olympic Games without winning a single medal, more than any other country. They did, however, win a bronze medal in 1924 for architecture, which doesn’t count in the totals.

Until 1994, the Winter and Summer Olympics occurred in the same year.

The Caesar Salad was not named for Julius Caesar but for its inventor, an Italian restaurateur, Cesare Cardini, who created the salad in his restaurant in Tijuana, Mexico.

Count Dracula was first depicted wearing a Bela Lugosi-style cape/tuxedo combo when the book was adapted for the London stage. It was the best way to make it obvious that the Count was charming and sophisticated from a distance.

Miriam A Ferguson was the first female Governor of Texas. She was elected in 1924 and told voters that she would follow her husband’s and Texas’s advice, thus getting “two governors for the price of one. Her campaign slogan was, “Me for Ma, and I Ain’t Got a Durned Thing Against Pa.”

Philip Morris launched the Marlboro brand of cigarettes in 1924 as a woman’s cigarette with the slogan “Mild As May.”

George Mallory was last seen climbing upwards 800 feet from the summit of Mt. Everest in 1924. Seventy-five years later, his body was found, and no one is entirely sure whether or not he reached the summit.

After Lenin’s death in 1924, his brain was sliced into 30,000 pieces so scientists could discover his genius’s secrets.

In 1924, there was no Supreme Court photograph because Justice McReynolds refused to sit next to Justice Brandeis, a Jewish justice. He also refused to attend a trip because, “As you know, I am not always to be found when there is a Hebrew abroad.”

Hitler was arrested for High Treason, of which the punishment was usually execution. The judge granted him clemency, however, believing Hitler had good intentions.

Children playing on the banks of a river in Germany discovered a human skull. More bones were discovered, eventually leading to the arrest of Fritz Haarman, who was butchering humans and selling their flesh as pork.

Between 1924 and 1935, Greece had 23 changes in government and 13 coups.

Richard Leo Simon and Max Lincoln Schuster published ‘The Cross Word Puzzle Book,’ the world’s first collection of crossword puzzles.

Reading So Big by Edna Ferber
Reading A Passage to India by E.M. Forster
Reading Parade’s End by Ford Maddox Ford

Flagpole Sitting: The original 20th-century flagpole sitta was Alvin “Shipwreck” Kelly (NOT the Kentucky footballer), and he sat on his first flagpole for 13 hours and thirteen minutes in Hollywood, California. However, the original Flagpole Sitter may have been St. Simeon Stylites. He spent over three decades sitting on an elevated deck to ‘escape the pressures of daily living.’ The latest records we have seen were for Poland’s Dan Baraniuk, who sat on a pole for 196 days in 2002 and H. David Werder who spent more than 439 days on top of a pole in 1984

Charts based on Billboard music charts.