Timeline 1901-1950
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1911
1921
1931
1941
Navigator

 
  • Carlisle to Mount Holly trolley running 
1901
  • Century began with beaten but not defeated Boers pursuing guerilla warfare in South Africa 
  • In US, first oil discovery in Texas (Jan. 10) 
  • Queen Victoria died (Jan. 22)
  • Federation of Australia formed (Jan. 26)
  • NY began requiring licence plates on cars (Apr.) 
  • Louis Armstrong born (Aug. 4) 
  • William McKinley shot (Sep. 6); died from wounds (Sep. 14);Vice  President Theodore Roosevelt sworn in. 
  • Thomas Mann published Buddenbrooks 
  • Oil drilling began in Middle East (Persia) 
  • First "getaway car" used, in Paris during a jewel robbery (Oct. 27) 
  • Walt Disney born  (Dec. 5) 
  • Marconi transmitted radio signals from Cornwall to Newfoundland (Dec. 12) 
  • Rhodes Scholarship Program inaugurated (Apr. 4)
  • Debate League formed at Dickinson
  • Dickinson graduated its largest ever class (May)
  • The new post of "Superintendent of Buildings and Grounds” created with Mr. J.A. Standing as the first incumbent. (Oct)
  • Announcement from the faculty that Anthropology would be treated as a division of Sociology (Oct)
  • President Reed resigned the post of State Librarian(Oct)
  • Announced that electric lights would be placed in East College as soon as arrangements could be made (Nov)
  • Prof. M.G. Filler represented the faculty at the 16th Annual Convention of the Association of Colleges and Preparatory Schools (Dec)
1902
  • The Anglo-Boer War ended (May 24) 
  • Volcanic eruption destroyed St. Pierre on Martinique (May 8) 
  • Cuba declared an independent republic (May 20) 
  • The Wizard of Oz opened (June 16) 
  • Triple Alliance renewed again (June 23) 
  • Al-Hoda began publication  in New York, the first Arabic daily newspaper in the U.S (Aug. 25) 
  • Oil struck in Alaska in Cotella (Sep. 17) 
  • Elizabeth Cady Stanton died (Oct. 26) 
  • U.S. took "perpetual" control of the Panama Canal  (Nov. 18) 
  • Beatrix Potter began her "Peter Rabbit" stories 
  • Monet's "Waterloo Bridge" exhibited 
  • Langston Hughes born (Dec. 24) 
  • Former Pennsylvania Governor Daniel H. Hastings, honored Trustee and an active member of its Finance Committee, died of pneumonia (Jan.9)
  • Dick the Dog, the College mascot, was found dead in Dr. Morgan’s front garden on Louther Street (Jan)
  • The senior class, at forty-eight the largest in College history selected red and black as their school colors (Feb)
  • William Jennings Bryan gave a lecture in Carlisle entitled “A Conquering Country.” (Feb)
  • Bishop John Fletcher Hurst, class of ’54, died in Washington (May 4)
  • Ninety-nine new students enrolled; eighty-two freshman, fifteen sophomores, one junior, one senior. And 102 new students entered the Preparatory School (Sept)
  • The new mascot, replacement for Dick (above) mysteriously dissappeared (October)
1903
  • Henry Ford founded his Motor Company (June) 
  • George Orwell (Eric Blair) born (June 25) 
  • First Tour de France cycling race ran (July) 
  • In London,  Russian S.D.P split into "Menshevik" and "Bolshevik" factions (Aug.) 
  • Longest film to date "The Great Train Robbery" opened (Dec. 1) - it ran twelve minutes 
  • Orville and Wilbur Wright flew for the first time, at Kitty Hawk (Dec. 17)  
  • Jack London's Call of the Wild published 
  • First baseball "World Series" played 
  • Enrico Caruso made his American debut at the Met in "Rigoletto" (Nov. 23) 
  • Dickinson ranked 12th (nationally) in football at the end of the 1903 season (January)
  • Denny Hall burned to the ground after only eight years of use (Mar. 3)
  • Dr. Reed celebrated 15 years as president of the College (Apr)
  • 121st Commencement held; exercises included the celebration of the 100 th Anniversary of “Old West.”(Jun.8)
  • Andrew Carnegie donated $50,000 to help rebuild Denny Memorial Hall (October)
  • Construction began on the Conway Preparatory Building
  • The Athletic Fee was raised from $4 to $6
1904
  • Russia and Japan went to war (Feb.) 
  • Puccini's Madame Butterfly opera opened in Milan (Feb. 17) 
  • Glenn Miller born (Mar. 1) 
  • First US arrest for speeding in an automobile in Newport, Rhode Island - 20 mph (Aug. 21) 
  • Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Birth of Capitalism published 
  • New York Subway system began (Oct. 27) 
  • Theodore Roosevelt elected in his own right 
  • Dublin's Abbey Theatre founded (Dec. 27) 
  • A New York City policeman arrested a woman for cigarette smoking in public 
  • Baseball's "World Series" ended in dispute 
  • J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan first performed, in London (Dec. 27) 
 
  • Since March 3, 1904 the College had received donations totalling $120,000 for the rebuilding of Denny Hall (January)
  • The Phi Beta Chapter of the Alpha Chi Rho Fraternity was installed at Dickinson (Jan. 21)
  • George Reed '04 published his Alumni Record of 1905 listing all known alumni, living or dead (Feb.)
  • President Reed was elected president of the State Anti-Saloon League (February)
  • Roy M. Dunkelberger broke his own College record for the half mile, running a 2:03.4 (May)
  • Conway Hall dedicated (June 6) and opened for residence on September 14
  • 122nd Commencement (June 7)
  • College announced that students could have electric lights placed in their rooms for $7.00 per year (Oct)
1905
  • The Trans-Siberian Railway opened (Jan. 1) 
  • "Bloody Sunday" in St. Petersburg (Jan. 22) 
  • Jules Verne died (Jan. 24) 
  • Port Arthur falls; Russo-Japanese War ended after Battle of Tsushima Strait (May 27); revolt in Russia put down; Oct. reforms 
  • International Workers of the World founded in U.S., called "the Wobblies" (June 27) 
  • Albert Einstein formulated his Special Theory of Relativity (June 30) 
  • Sinn Fein became political party (Nov. 28) 
  • Greta Garbo born in Sweden (Sep. 18) 
  • Strauss' Salome opened in Dresden (Dec. 9) 
  • Rev. Shadrach .L. Bowman, class of ’55, died at his cottage in Ocean Grove, N.J. (September)
  • Dr. Fritz S. Darrow, Ph.D. joined the College faculty to teach Latin and Greek (September)
  • The New York Symphony Orchestra played at the Carlisle Opera House (Oct. 5)
  • Dickinson f aculty adopted new eligibility rules for scholar- athletes (November)
  • Mr. Hevemeyer of Brooklyn presented a bronze bust of Moncure D. Conway for display in the Hall named for him (November)
1906
  • Dow Jones closed over 100 points (Jan. 12) 
  • Rolls Royce Company founded (Mar. 15) 
  • Algeciras Conference gave Morocco to France and Spain (Apr.) 
  • San Francisco Earthquake and fire killed 700 people (Apr. 18-19)  
  • Turkey ceded Sinai Peninsula to Egypt (May 3) 
  • S.S. Lusitania launched (June 7),  later broke Atlantic crossing record 
  • Teddy Roosevelt first sitting president to travel outside U.S., to the Panama Canal (Nov.); also became first American to receive the Nobel Peace Prize (Dec. 10) 
  • Upton Sinclair's novel The Jungle appeared and resulting storm helped eventually to bring the U.S. Pure Food and Drug Act into force 
  • SOS adopted as the universal distress signal (Dec. 22)  

  • William Penn Memorial Day celebrated 225 years of the Penn Charter at Commencement (April 25)
  • William L. Haldy, '00, shot himself in the abdomen accidentally , and died two days later (April 26)
  • The Old College Wall demolished (April)
  • First Panhellenic League voted to dissolve
  • Rev. Robert Samuel Maclay, class of ’45, died Aug. 18, 1907, in Los Angeles (Aug.18)
  • Law student Oscar John Groke, Law ’09, was killed by falling down the shaft of the Puritan Mine near Portage, Pennsylvania (September)
  • 102 freshman class largest in history (September)
  • Milton Weatherby, a faculty member of Conway Hall, committed suicide at Pittsburgh by drinking carbolic acid (October)
  • Moncure D. Conway, class of ’49, died alone in his rooms in Paris (Nov.12)

1907
  • Japanese took control of Korea 
  • U.S. banking "Panic of  1907" 
  • Dmitri Mendelejev died in Russia (Feb. 2) 
  • "Typhoid Mary" captured in U.S. (Mar. 20) 
  • "Ziegfeld Follies" appear in New York (July 8) 
  • Mother Teresa born in Albania (Aug. 27) 
  • Ram¢n Magsaysay born in Phillipines (Aug 1) 
  • Britain, Russia & France formed theTriple Entente (Aug. 31) 
  • In US, construction began on Washington National Cathedral (Sep. 29) 
  • Oklahoma became 46th U.S. state (Nov. 16) 
  • Times Square ball first dropped at midnight (Dec) 
  • Immigration to U.S. restricted 
  • First Cubist exhibition in Paris 
  • William James published Pragmatism 
  • Josef Hofmann, world famed pianist, gave a recital at the Carlisle Opera House ( Feb. 20)
  • T.L. Hoover, class of ’00, gave the College his thousand specimen collection of insects (March)
  • Student Assembly formed - its purpose was to organize male students so they could orderly consider the problems affecting them 
  • The largest freshman class in the history of the college, 130 students (September)
  • New athletic field to be named Herman Biddle Memorial Athletic Field, after H. Biddle’03, killed last February in a railroad accident (September)
  • The old Athletic Field sold to the Cumberland Valley Railroad for $5300 (November)
  • The Contemporary Club formed
  • Alfred Joel Feight, class of ’08, commited suicide in Charleston, S.C. (Dec.5)
  • Royal Welsh Ladies’ Choir of Cardiff, Wales, performed in the Carlisle Opera House (Dec. 15)  
1908
  • Baden-Powell founded Boy Scouts (Jan. 24)
  • Bette Davis was born in Massachusetts (Apr. 5)  
  • Oil first struck in  the Middle East at Masjid-i-Suleiman in Persia (May 8) 
  • "Young Turks" took control of Turkey (July) 
  • Fritz Haber synthesized ammonia
  • Lt. Thomas E. Selfridge was world's first military aviation fatality in crash of a biplane piloted by Orville Wright. (Sep. 17)  
  • First "Model T" produced in Detroit (Oct. 1) 
  • Austria occupied Bosnia & Hertzogovina (Oct 6) 
  • Wilbur Wright flew thirty miles 
  • Grahame's Wind in the Willows appeared 
  • Jack Johnson became first black heavyweight champion (Dec. 26) 
  • Skull and Key organized as honorary junior fraternity
  • James Noel Brown, a broker and real estate dealer of N.Y.C. gave a lecture on American Banking in its Relationship to the N. Y. Stock Exchange (Mar.3)
  • Herman Bosler Biddle Memorial Athletic Field was presented and dedicated (Jun.8)
  • 126th Commencement. President Reed completes his 20 th year as president of the college (Jun.9)
  • Rev. John Linn McKim, class of ’30, died at his home in Georgetown, Delaware. Dickinson's oldest alumni, he was believed to have been the oldest ordained clergyman living in the United States (Aug.21) 
1909
  • W. H. Taft inaugurated as 27th U.S. President 
  • Anglo-Persian Oil Company formed
  • Richard Strauss' "Electra" premiered in Dresden (Jan. 25) 
  • Apache chief Geronimo died (Feb. 17) 
  • Robert Peary reached the North Pole (Apr. 6) 
  • Benny Goodman born (May 30) 
  • Louis Bleriot flew the English Channel (July 25)  
  • First "Lincoln-head pennies" minted. (Aug. 2) 
  • Henry Farman completed first 100 mile flight (Aug.27)  
  • Picasso's "Harlequin" exhibited 
  • London hairstylists gave first "permanents" 
  • First "newsreels" shown  
  • Dr. C. W. Prettyman, professor of German, left for a year of study and travel in Europe. When he returned, he published a book on women and higher education in Germany (September)
1910
  • DuBois founded N.A.A.C.P  (Feb. 12) 
  • George V  succeeded to the U.K. throne (May) 
  • Mark Twain died in Connecticutt (Apr. 21)  
  • Union of South Africa established (May 31) 
  • Empire of Japan invaded (June 24) and then annexed Korea (Aug. 22) 
  • Portugal became a Republic (Oct. 5) 
  • Leo Tolstoy died (Nov. 9) 
  • Mexican Revolution began (Nov. 20) 
  • Norman Angell's The Great Illusion published 
  • E.M. Forster published Howard's End 
  • The Tango was very popular in Europe and U.S. 
  • Halley's Comet revisited Earth's skies 
  • Stravinsky's The Fire Bird premiered 
  • Reed resigned as President, after serving the longest term in  Dickinson College history (Feb. 16)  
  • Eugene Allen Noble elected President (June)  
1911
 
  • Ronald Reagan born (Feb. 6)
  • Rutherford outlined his theory of atomic structure (Mar. 7) 
  • G. B. Shaw’s "Pygmalion" premiered (Apr. 11) 
  • Gustav Mahler died (May 18) 
  • Agadir Crisis (July-Nov.) 
  • First transcontinental flight in US (Sep.)
  • Turkish-Italian War began (Sep. 29)
  • Revolution in China; Sun Yat Sen declared China a Republic  (Oct. 10)  
  • Marie Curie won Nobel Prize for her work in Chemistry (Dec. 11) 
  • Amundsen reached South Pole (Dec. 14) 
  • Berlin wrote "Alexander's Ragtime Band"  
  • Edward W. Biddle elected President of the Board of Trustees (May) 
  • Noble inaugurated as new President   
  • Jim Thorpe of the Indian School paraded through Carlisle after his Olympic exploits 
1912
  • R. F. Scott reached the South Pole (Jan. 19); he and his men died on the way back (Mar. 27) 
  • New Chinese leader Sun Yat-sen founded the Koumintang (Chinese National Party); six-year old Emperor Pu Yi forced to abdicate, ending the Qing Dynasty (Feb. 13) 
  • First successful parachute jump (Mar. 1) 
  • SS Titanic struck an iceberg and sank on maiden voyage, 1,513 people lost  (Apr. 15) 
  • Olympic Games held in Stockholm (July 6-22) 
  • Woody (Woodrow Wilson) Guthrie born (July 14) 
  • Japanese Emperor Mutsuhito died (July 30) 
  • Gene Kelly born (Aug. 23) 
  • First Balkan War broke out (Oct. 17) 
  • Turkish-Italian War concluded (Oct. 18)  
  • Jung's Theory of Psychoanalysis published 
  • Five million a day visited movies in the U.S.; 400 movie houses counted in London 
  • Metzger College granted to Dickinson for women's housing 
1913
  • Richard M. Nixon born (Jan. 9) 
  • Woodrow Wilson sworn in as 28th President 
  • NYC's Grand Central Station completed (Feb 2) 
  • 16th Amendment  brought U.S. income tax (Feb 3) 
  • Harriet Tubman died (Mar. 10) 
  • Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring premiered in Paris (May 29)
  • First Balkan War ended (May 30) 
  • Second Balkan War began (June 29); eventual result doubled size of Serbia (Aug. 10)
  • Jesse Owens born in Alabama (Sep. 12) 
  • Benjamin Britten born (Nov. 22) 
  • United States Federal Reserve System was established (Dec. 23) 
  • D.H. Lawrence published his Sons and Lovers 
  • Willa Cather published her O Pioneers! 
  • James Henry Morgan became acting President 
  • College floating debt was $136,000 
1914
  • G.B. Shaw's "Pygmalion" premiered in London at Her Majesty's; star Herbert Tree (Apr. 11) 
  • U.S. Marines occupied Vera Cruz (Apr. 21) 
  • Gustav Mahler died (May 18) 
  • Greyhound Bus Company formed (May 19) 
  • Archduke Franz Ferdinand assassinated in Sarajevo, Bosnia (June 28) 
  • First World War broke out in Europe; Germany invaded France and Russia (July 28) 
  • Panama Canal opened (Aug. 15) 
  • James Joyce published The Dubliners  
  • E.R. Burroughs' Tarzan of the Apes completed 
  • Henry Bacon designed the Lincoln Memorial 
  • Chaplin film "Tillie's Punctured Romance" 
  • Morgan officially chosen as President at the request of the faculty 
1915
  • First U.S. coast to coast  phone call; Bell called Watson, again (Jan. 25) 
  • Griffith's "Birth of  a Nation" released (Feb. 8) 
  • German Zeppelins attacked London (Jan. 19) 
  • Billie Holliday born in Baltimore (Apr. 7) 
  • Anglo-French landings at Gallipoli (Apr. 25)  
  • 2nd Battle of Ypres (Apr. 22-May 5)  
  • The Lusitania was sunk (May 7) 
  • U.S. Marines landed in Haiti (July 28) 
  • Germany took Warsaw (Aug. 5) 
  • W. Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage 
  • Frank Sinatra born in New York (Dec. 12) 
  • Sarah Helen Burns, Dickinson's first trained librarian, was hired 
  • Carlisle Hospital was chartered 
1916
  • First Rosebowl Game since one played in 1902 took place in U.S.  From then on it became an annual event (Jan. 1) 
  • Battles at Verdun (Feb. 21-Dec. 18) on the Somme (July 1-Nov. 18), and at sea near Jutland (May 31-June 1) 
  • Villa raided across U.S. Mexico border (Mar. 9) 
  • Easter Rising in Dublin (Apr. 24-29) 
  • Albert Einstein's Theory of General Relativity presented as an academic paper (May 11) 
  • U.S. National Park Service founded (Aug. 25) 
  • Italy declared war in Germany (Aug. 27) 
  • First use of tanks on Western Front (Sept. 15) 
  • Woodrow Wilson narrowly re-elected President of U.S. (Nov. 7) 
  • James Joyce published his Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man 
  • WWI  began for the United States.  Dickinson Preparatory School closed (April and May) 
1917
  • Buffolo Bill Cody died (Jan. 10) 
  • February Revolution in Russia 
  • U.S. entered the world war (Apr. 6) 
  • John F. Kennedy born (May 29) 
  • John Lee Hooker born Mississippi (Aug. 22) 
  • Italians defeated at Caporetto (Oct. 24-Nov. 12) 
  • The Balfour Declaration backed a Jewish homeland after the war (Nov. 2) 
  • The October Revolution (Nov. 7) began; Russia out of  the war. 
  • Trans-Siberian railroad completed 
  • T.S. Eliot completed "Prufrock and other Observations" 
  • Chaplin now made more than a million a year  
  • News of the first student lost to the war announced in the Dickinsonian; Corporal Kenneth Steck '19 died of pneumonia Apr. 22 in training in Alabama (May 2) 
  • Trickett Hall - built at a cost of $57, 026.88 -  was dedicated (Aug. 16)
  • The arrival of the Student Army Training Corps
1918
  • Wilson's Fourteen Points released (Jan. 8) 
  • Women over thirty won vote in U.K. (Feb. 6) 
  • Racetrack collapse in Hong Kong killed 600 people (Feb. 26) 
  • Ella Fitzgerald was born (Apr. 25) 
  • Nelson Mandela was born (July 18) 
  • Leonard Bernstein born (Aug. 25) 
  • German offensives on Western Front fail (Mar. and Apr.) and Allies advanced; revolution in Germany; Armistice signed (Nov. 11) 
  • Wilfred Owen killed in France (Nov. 4) 
  • Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary all become independent republics 
  • Lytton Strachey completed Eminent Victorians 
  • Knut Rockne became Notre Dame football coach 
  • Conway Hall turned into a freshman dormitory 
  • The Greek Club formed 
1919
  • The Nazi Party founded (Jan. 5) 
  • In the U.S., 18th Amendment (Prohibition) ratified (Jan. 16) 
  • Paris Peace Conference began (Jan. 18) 
  • League of Nations founded (Jan. 25) 
  • Jackie Robinson was born (Jan. 31) 
  • Russian Civil War was well under way
  • American Legion founded in Paris (Mar. 15) 
  • Mussolini founded his Fascist party (Mar. 23) 
  • Emiliano Zapata killed in Mexico (Apr. 10) 
  • First non-stop flight across Atlantic (June 14-15) 
  • Andrew Carnegie died (Aug. 11) 
  • Bauhaus founded in Weimar 
  • Asbury Clarke donates $50,000 - the largest single endowment to date
1920
  • Prohibition became the law as the 18th Amendment went into effect (Jan. 16) 
  • American Civil Liberties Union formed (Jan 20) 
  • Gustav Holst's "The Planets" first performed as a single piece under Albert Coates (Feb. 27)
  • Senate rejected Versailles Treaty (Mar. 19) 
  • 19th Amendment (Votes for Women) ratified in U.S. (Aug. 20) 
  • End of Russian Civil War 
  • Sacco and Vanzetti indicted for murder (Sept. 11) 
  • O'Neill's The Emperor Jones opened (Nov.  3) 
  • KDKA Pittsburgh transmit first regular radio programs in the U.S. (Nov. 2) 
  • League of Nations headquartered in Geneva; first meeting there (Nov. 15) 
  • U.S. population 117,823,165 by new census 
  • Fred V. Holmes won $25 first prize in freshman oratorical contest (May) 
  • Memorial Hall and tablet honoring Dickinsonians killed in World War dedicated (June)
  • Class enrollment reached a record of 468, College debt cleared 
  • 179 students voted in favor of the Honor System, with 77 of those supporting some sort of amendment to the current system; 113 vote against any system whatsoever
  • Harvard Library had over two million books and pamphlets, exceeded only by the Library of Congress and The N.Y. Public Library 
1921
  • Warren G. Harding sworn as 29th U.S.President 
  • Riza Khan Pahlevi seized control of Iran (Feb 20) 
  • Lenin proclaimed New Economic Policy (Mar 17) 
  • Peter Ustinov born (Apr. 16) 
  • Satyajit Ray born in Calcutta (May 2) 
  • Jack Hutchinson became the first U.S. golfer to win "the Open" in Britain. (June 25) 
  • Mongolia won independence from China (July 11) 
  • Enrico Caruso died in Naples (Aug. 2) 
  • US & Germany signed peace treaty  (Aug. 25) 
  • First radio broadcast of  US World Series (Oct. 5) 
  • American "Unknown Soldier" entombed at Arlington (Nov. 11) 
  • The Rudolph Valentino film "The Sheik" was released (Nov. 13) 
  • Ireland partioned (Dec. 6)  
  • Rashid Karami born in Lebanon (Dec. 30) 
  • The Greek Club presented the "Antigone" on weekend of  Commencement  (June) 
  • Student Senate ruled that freshmen students must wear tags with their names and class years (Sep.) 
  • Philadelphia newspapers declared Dickinson victory over Swarthmore in football 27-7 "greatest football upset" (Oct.) 
  • Dickinson-Pennington Campaign closed $225K short of the $1.8 million goal (Nov. 15)
  • System of honors classes set up 
  • All-College Social Committee established 
  • For the first time, prospective students at Cornell University were faced with an application fee of $25 and an application deadline of Aug. 1
1922
  • Irish Free State instituted (Jan. 14) 
  • The Permanent Court of International Justice opened at the Hague (Feb. 15) 
  • Yitzak Rabin born (Mar. 1) 
  • Lincoln Memorial dedicated (May 30) 
  • Alexander Graham Bell died (Aug. 2) 
  • The B.B.C. was founded (Oct. 18) 
  • Mussolini's March on Rome (Oct. 29-31) 
  • Herman Hesse's Siddhartha published 
  • T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland completed 
  • F.W. Murnau's film "Nosferatu" opened 
  • Emily Post published her Etiquette 
  • Tomb of Tutankharmen found in Egypt (Nov. 4) 
  • U.S.S.R. formed with 14 republics (Dec. 20) 
  • First issue of the Dickinson Alumnus appeared (May) 
  • Dramatic Club presented Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest in Bosler Hall (June 4) 
  • Trustees approved a student budget plan which included the collection of a student activities fee (June) 
  • University of Delaware conceived and introduced  "junior year abroad"- at the Sorbonne (July 7) 
  • Dickinson became a member of the American Association of University Women at their annual convention in Portland, Orgeon (July 17) 
  • General Alumni Association reorganized (Nov. 2) 
  • Gettysburg board voted to end co-education by 1926-27 academic year (Dec.) 
  • The control of the Dickinsonian removed from the Belles Lettres and Union Philosophical Society - a new all-College organization established 
  • Student Senate resigned in protest against President Morgan
  • Twenty-four sons and daughters of Dickinsonians enrolled at the College in 1922-23 academic year
  • 1902 Memorial Gate dedicated by that class - at a cost of $2,200 - during Commencement
  • Library circulation during the 1922-23 academic year totalled 7,548 books 
1923
  • Wembley Stadium in London opened with FA Cup Final (May 28) 
  • Pancho Villa assassinated in Mexico (June 20) 
  • President Warren Harding suddenly died in office, in San Francisco,  and  was replaced by Vice President Calvin Coolidge (Aug. 2) 
  • Earthquakes in urban Japan killed 120,000; Great Tokyo Eartthquake (Sep. 1) 
  • Interpol formed in Vienna (Sep. 7) 
  • Oklahoma placed under martial law due to activies of the Klu Klux Klan (Sep. 15) 
  • The Teapot Dome scandal hearings began in the United States (Oct.) 
  • The Turkish Republic proclaimed (Oct. 29) 
  • Colonel Jacob Schick patented his electric shaver (Nov. 6) 
  • Hitler's Munich Putsch failed (Nov. 8) 
  • Cecil B. De Mille's film  "Ten Commandments" released in US  (Nov. 23) 
  • Labour Government in Britain (Dec. 8) 
  • Greek monarchy overthrown by army (Dec 17) 
  • Army plot in Japan foiled (Dec. 27) 
  • Sigmund Freud's The Ego and the Id published 
  • Willi Messerschmitt opened his aircraft factory 
  • P.G. Woodehouse introduced "Jeeves" 
  • Phi Beta Kappa began to elect qualified seniors in mid-year; three selected (Jan.)
  • Women's Basketball Team  played an extensive schedule for the first time - defeated Gettysburg 31-13 (Jan-Feb)
  • Harry Frycklund, class of '26, a twenty year old Carlisle born sophomore, died of pneumonia  (Feb. 26)
  • Dickinson Club of Carlisle founded (May 23); Merkel Landis '96 elected president
  • Inter-Fraternity Alumni Council founded (Nov. 1) 
  • First "Home Coming Celebration" held (Oct. 31-Nov. 1)
  • Commons Club founded 
  • Wheel and Chain founded as honorary for senior women  
  • East College renovated, property bought east of Old South College for a new Gymnasium 
  • Trustees raised "general charge" from $160 to $200 at June meeting.  Metzger up from $475 to $550 
  • New Carlisle Country Club built 
  • 373 of 470 fall students completed term without an "F." 
  • Student body for 1923-24 year numbered 508. From seven states and one territory (Hawaii) - Pennsylvania 417, New Jersey 47, Maryland 22, Delaware 10, Virginia 5, New York 4, West Virginia 1.  Cumberland County provided 102 students 
  • Gettysburg College built new 4,000 seat sports stadium during the summer
1924
  • Simon & Schuster founded (Jan. 2) 
  • George Gershwin, aged 26, completed his "Rhapsody in Blue" (Jan. 7)  
  • Lenin died of a stroke aged 54 (Jan. 21) 
  • The first Winter Olympic Games opened in Chamonix, France (Jan. 25) 
  • Woodrow Wilson died (Feb. 3) 
  • Gas chamber was first used in the US at Carson City, Nevada (Feb. 8) 
  • First radio broadcast was made from White House (Feb. 22)  
  • Kobo Abe born in Japan (Mar. 7) 
  • British Airways founded - began as Imperial Airways (Apr. 1) 
  • Hitler sentenced to five years in prison (Apr. 1) 
  • J.  Edgar Hoover became head of F.B.I  (May 10) 
  • Franz Kafka died (June 3) 
  • U.S. Congress granted Native Americans citizenship (June 15) 
  • Lauren Bacall born in New York (Sep. 16) 
  • Wahhabieten under Ibn Saudi took Mecca (Oct) 
  • Giacomo Puccini died in Brussels (Nov. 29) 
  • The German passenger airship Graf Zeppelin crossed the Atlantic. 
  • E. M. Forster published Passage to India 
  • A co-ed at Metzger Hall awoke to find a male intruder holding her hand.  He fled, never to be found (Jan. 12) Dean Meredith let it be known she slept in Metzger with a revolver under her pillow 
  • Small fire discovered in time in cellar of Conway Hall and extinguished with help of student bucket-brigade and both Carlisle Fire Companies (Jan. 27)
  • Mulford Stough appointed to history department and Horace Rogers '24 to physics (Aug.)
  • Trinity College, North Carolina changed its name to Duke University after receiving $40 million from cigarette magnate James Duke 
  • Franklin & Marshall College began $500,000 building campaign 
1925
  • Norway's capital city of Christiania renamed Oslo (Jan. 1) 
  • Albanian Republic formed (Jan. 25) 
  • The New Yorker magazine began (Feb. 21) 
  • Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby on sale (Apr. 10) 
  • Hindenburg elected German President (Apr. 26) 
  • Erik Satie died (July 1) 
  • Scopes Trial held in Tennessee (July 10-25) 
  • Adolf Hitler published Mein Kampf 
  • Forty-thousand hooded Klu Klux Klan members marched in Washington D.C. (Aug. 8) 
  • B.B. King and Charlie Byrd born (Sep. 16) 
  • Kafka's The Trial published posthumously 
  • John Logie Baird transmitted recognizable television signals 
  • The third (of four) Madison Square Gardens opened in New York (Nov. 24) 
  • Sergei Eisenstein's "Battleship Potemkin" first shown (Dec. 21) 
  • The "Charleston" gained massive popularity 
  • College announced its would no longer award the degree of Master of Arts, usually given to alumni completing graduate programs or the School of Law (Feb. 1)
  • Commencement gifts of Classes of 1901 and 1906 restored colonial stairway at west entrance of Old West and erected southwest corner gate, respectively (May)
  • Phi Beta Kappa celebrated its sesqui-centennial in Williamsburg, Virginia (Nov.)
  • Melville Gambrill (trustee) donated $50,000 to College endowment 
  • On-campus poll showed that students strongly supported Prohibition 
  • General Alumni Association launched fund drive for construction of a new gymnasium 
  • Dickinson, Gettysburg, Franklin and Marshall, Muhlenburg, and Ursinus formed the Eastern Collegiate Athletic Conference 
  • Sarah Lawrence College founded in Bronxville, N.Y.
1926
  • Lufthansa airline founded (Jan. 6) 
  • Abdul-Aziz ibn Sa'ud crowned  king of Hejaz,  renamed it Saudi Arabia (Jan. 8) 
  • Robert Goddard first launched a liquid fueled rocket (Mar. 16) 
  • Puccini's opera "Turandot" debuted (Apr. 25) 
  • General Strike in Britain (May 3-12) 
  • Norma Jean Baker born in Los Angeles (June 1) 
  • Hitler Youth founded (July 4) 
  • Rudolph Valentino died in NY at 31 (Aug. 23) 
  • Hurricane hit Miami, 250 died (Sep. 18) 
  • Harry Houdini died (Oct. 31) 
  • Crown Prince Hirohito succeeded to Japanese imperial throne (Dec. 25) 
  • "Bye-Bye Blackbird" was a hit song and Duke Ellington's first records appeared 
  • A.A. Milne published Winnie the Pooh 
  • T.E. Lawrence's  The Seven Pillars of Wisdom and Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises (Oct. 21) were published 
  • Mrs. Mary Curran Morgan '88, wife of President Morgan, died suddenly of a heart attack on train leaving Carlisle for Harrisburg with her husband (Apr. 22) 
  • South College II razed for building of new gym (Apr.)
  • Faculty salary raised to $3,500-$4,500 (salary required to live in Carlisle).  Morgan considered this his greatest accomplishment (June) 
  • Class of 1907 presented "their gate" on College Street to the College at Commencement (June)
  • Omicron Delta Kappa, Upsilon Circle, established as a general honorary fraternity   
  • West Nottingham Academy in Colora, Maryland erected a memorial gateway to Benjamin Rush, who studied there from 1751-1756 
  • Yale School of Law increased entrance requirements and raised tuition, in order to confine its efforts to training only the "highest type of student" 
1927
  • German economic system collapsed 
  • Abe Saperstein's Harlem Globetrotters played their first game in Hinkley, Illinois (Jan. 7) 
  • Charles Lindbergh flew "Spirit of St. Louis" from New York to Paris (May 20-21) 
  • Sacco and Vanzetti were executed (Aug. 23) 
  • Isadora Duncan killed (Sep. 14) 
  • The Jazz Singer, the first "talkie," starring Al Jolson released (Oct. 6) 
  • Leon Trotsky was expelled from Communist Party (Nov. 12) 
  • Holland Tunnel opened in NYC (Nov. 13) 
  • I. P. Pavlov published Conditioned Reflexes 
  • Virginia Woolf completed To the Lighthouse 
  • Babe Ruth hit a record 60 home runs 
  • "Showboat" opened on Broadway (Dec. 27) 
  • Dickinson basketball team completed seven seasons without a home defeat with win over Gettysburg (Mar.) 
  • William Trickett (of the law school) died (Aug. 1)
  • The two literary societies began fraternity-style "rushing" to recruit members (Oct.)
  • President Morgan suffered a physical breakdown and spent late Jan. and most of Feb. in Carlisle Hospital 
  • Mervin Filler replaced retired Morgan as President 
  • Freshman advisor plan implemented - each faculty member assigned five freshmen. 
  • New electric gongs in Denny, West, Tome and, Bosler signalled start and end of class periods
  • 71% of freshmen (94 men) pledged one of the nine fraternities after fall rush, amid growing dissatisfaction among the societies about the process.
  • Pennsylvania had fifty-four colleges and 59,948 students; Penn led with 13,679, then Pitt, Temple, and State College, which had 3754 students enrolled. Bucknell had 1096, F&M 656, Gettysburg 633, Elizabethtown 150, Swarthmore 541, and Haverford 297.  Dickinson had 557 men and women enrolled.
1928
  • Start of first Five Year Plan in Soviet Union 
  • Gabriel Garcia Marquez born (Mar. 6) 
  • Madame Tussaud's opened in London (Apr. 26) 
  • Amelia Earhart flew Atlantic (June 17) 
  • Pres. Obregon of Mexico assassinated (July 17) 
  • Kellogg-Briand Pact signed (Aug. 27)
  • John Logie Baird demonstrated color television in London (Sep. 3) 
  • Alexander Fleming discovered the penicillin notatum mould (Sep. 15) 
  • "Steamboat Willie" debuted  at Colony Theater, NYC starring Mickey Mouse (Sep. 19) 
  • General Chiang Kai-Shek elected President of China (Oct. 6) 
  • Lamine Diakhat born in Senegal (Oct. 9) 
  • Emperor Hirohito crowned in Japan (Nov. 10) 
  • Ravel's "Bolero" debuted in Paris (Nov. 22) 
  • D.H. Lawrence completed Lady Chatterley's Lover 
  • Al Jolson's song "Sonny Boy" sold 12 million records in four weeks in the U.S. 
  • George Gershwin's An American In Paris debuted in New York (Dec. 13) 
  • Dedication of the Alumni Gymnasium (June 8)
  • Scholarship-Loan Program inaugurated (Fall)
  • Administration offices moved from Denny Hall to the second floor of Old West. 
  • "Lovers' Lane" removed from academic quadrangle 
  • Retired president Morgan spent winter touring Europe 
  • Fire destroyed the Kronenburg Building on S. Hanover Street, resulting in $300, 000 in losses 
  • Football was the only sport at Colgate showing a profit, following the nationwide trend 
1929
  • Himmler became "Reichfuhrer S.S." (Jan. 6) 
  • Martin Luther King Jr.  born (Jan. 15) 
  • Herbert Hoover sworn in as 31st U.S. President 
  • Italy signed Lateran Treaty with Vatican (Feb11) 
  • St. Valentine's Day Massacre in Chicago 
  • First Oscars presented in Hollywood (May 16)  
  • Anne Frank was born (June 12) 
  • Yasser Arafat born (Aug. 4) 
  • Name of "Yugoslavia" adopted (Oct. 3) 
  • U.S. Stock Exchange collapsed (Oct. 29) 
  • Martin Heidegger completed What is Philosophy? 
  • Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front  
  • "Stardust" and "Singing in the Rain" hit songs 
  • Professor J. Fred Mohler died (Jan. 28) 
  • Former president George Edward Reed died (Feb. 7) 
  • Trustees authorized an increase in enrollment to 600 
  • Class of 1910 presented flagpole to College (June) 
  • The highest temperature recorded in Carlisle read at 108 degrees; 1930 was the driest year of the century in Carlisle - less than 25 inches of rain (Aug.) 
  • The Dickinsonian won the award at the convention of the InterCollegiate Newspaper Association of the Middle Atlantic States (Dec. 6) 
  • Trolley service between Carlisle and Mount Holly Springs - the famous "Holly Trolley" - replaced with a bus service (Dec.)
  • Room in Old West converted into a museum for pictures, engravings, and documents relating to the early history of the College, its founders, and faculty
1930
     
  • Pluto sighted at Lowell Observatory (Febuary 18)
  • In U.S. "The Twinkie" went on sale; some of them are still on the shelf in places (Apr. 6) 
  • Hoover signed Smoot-Hawley Tariff  (June 17) 
  • Last Allied occupation troops left the Rhineland (June 30) and the Saar (Dec. 12) 
  • U.S. Congress created the Veterans Administration (July 21) 
  • Sean Connery born in Scotland (Aug. 25) 
  • Ray Charles born (Sep. 23) 
  • Construction of the Empire State Building 
  • Dashiell Hammett published The Maltese Falcon 
  • Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents appeared 
  • All Quiet on the Western Front won the Oscar 
  • Photoflash bulb came into general use 
  • Bobby Jones won golf's "Grand Slam" 
  •  President M. G. Filler died (Mar. 28) 
  • Boyd Lee Spahr '00 elected president of the Board of Trustees (June) 
  • Dickinson 10 Penn State 6 (Oct. 17) 
  • Phi Delta Theta's purpose-built new house formally dedicated (Nov. 6)
  • Morgan returned as acting President
  • Karl T. Waugh elected as 19th President (Nov. 10)
1931
  • Sam Cooke born in Mississippi (Jan. 22) 
  • "Star Spangled Banner"  became official national anthem (Mar. 3) 
  • Empire State Building completed (May 1) 
  • All German banks closed 
  • Royal Navy mutiny at Invergordon over planned pay cuts (Sep.) 
  • Britain left the gold standard (Sep. 21) 
  • Japan seized Manchuria  (Sep. 18) 
  • Al Capone jailed for tax evasion (Oct. 17) 
  • World film production now 1000 films a year; automobile world production 35 million 
  • Pearl Buck's The Good Earth a best seller; City Lights a top film; "Minnie the Moocher" hit song 
  • College required $1 fee per transcript request for the first time (Feb.) 
  • President Waugh inaugurated (June 3) 
  • Harry Price '96 suggested moving John Dickinson's grave from Wilmington to Carlisle (June 4)
  • Kappa Sigma purchased former residence of Mrs. Martha J. Irving on College and Louther (Sep. 1) 
  • President Waugh announced the purchase of  the Mooreland Campus (Oct. 20)
  • Tome basement converted over the summer into a special laboratory, and the existing chemistry laboratory was completely renovated. 
  • Chapel reduced to a mandatory three times a week 
  • Mens Soccer letters awarded for first time; 3-2-2 record 
1932
  • Indian Congress proclaimed as illegal; Gandhi arrested (Jan. 4) 
  • Sydney Harbor Bridge opened (Feb. 10) 
  • The Lindbergh baby was kidnapped (Mar. 1) 
  • John Philip Sousa died (Mar. 6) 
  • Hindenburg named German president (Apr. 10) 
  • Bonus Army Riot began in Washington. (Jul 28) 
  • Los Angeles Olympic Games (Jul. 30 - Aug. 14) 
  • Nazis won 230 of 530 seats in Reichstag (Jul. 31) 
  • BBC began experimental TV broadcasts (Aug 22) 
  • Ray Charles born in Georgia (Sep. 23) 
  • James Chadwick discovered the neutron 
  • Dashiell Hammett published The Thin Man 
  • Aldous Huxley published Brave New World 
  • Endowment reached $1 million for first time (Feb.) 
  • Waugh was pressured to resign and Morgan became president... again  (June 24) 
  • Board of Trustees ordered a provisional 10% cut in faculty salaries, to be paid later if budget was able 
  • Nine portraits of distinguished Dickinsonians presented to the College (Oct. 21)
  • Dickinson celebrated it sesquicentennial (Oct.)
  • 90% of College men participated in intramural sport 
  • Morgan published his The History of Dickinson College 
1933
  • Franklin D. Roosevelt, having defeated incumbent Herbert Hoover in a landslide became 32nd President of the United States 
  • Hitler became German Chancellor (Jan. 30) 
  • The Reichstag Fire (Feb. 27) 
  • Frances Perkins became first woman  in a U.S. Cabinet (Mar. 4) 
  • Dachau concentration camp opened (Mar. 20) 
  • U. S.  went off the gold standard (Apr. ) 
  • James Brown born (May 2) 
  • US minimum wage set at 40 cents (July 12) 
  • School of American Ballet founded (Oct.) 
  • U.S. recognized the Soviet Union (Dec. 16) 
  • Fiorello LaGuardia was elected Mayor of New York (Dec. 31) 
  • Gertrude Stein's Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas published 
  • Captain James J. Patterson, class of 1859, died; before this he had been College's oldest alumnus (Jan. 3) 
  • State Emergency Relief Board began to appropriate $855 per month to aid students at the College; fifty seven students able to earn $15-20 per month (Mar. 1) 
  • Law School celebrated its centennial (Apr. 6-7) 
  • Track team defeated Gettysburg by widest margin in team history (May 5) 
  • "Sub-Freshman Day" initiated  - special Saturday for visit of  prospective students and their families (May 10) 
  • Morgan retired for the final time 
  • Fred Pierce Corson named as 20th President (June 8) 
  • Fifty-nine of entering 170 freshmen were "heirlooms" i.e.  were relatives of Dickinsonians (Sep.) 
  • Trustees added founding date "1783" to the College Seal (Dec.) 
  • Scholarship Loan Fund initiated (Dec.) 
1934
  • Bonnie and Clyde killed in Louisiana (May 23) 
  • Nylon produced for the first time (May 23) 
  • Hitler met Mussolini in Venice (June 14) 
  • S.D. purged in the"Night of the Long Knives" in Germany (June 29-30) 
  • John Dillinger killed by the FBI (July 22) 
  • The U.S.S.R. was admitted to the League of Nations (Sep. 18) 
  • Sophia Loren born in Rome (Sep. 20) 
  • S.S. Queen Mary launched (Sep. 26) 
  • "Pretty Boy" Floyd killed by FBI (Oct. 21) 
  • Kirov assassination began Stalin's purges in the U.S.S.R. (Dec. 1) 
  • Robert Graves published I, Claudius 
  • Ruth Benedict published Patterns of Culture 
  • Klein S. Merriman won Class of 1902 award as outstanding junior (Mar. 5) 
  • Richard W. Beitzel '38, freshman, died of acute nephritis - kidney failure - at Carlisle Hospital after a fraternity "Hell Week" incident (Apr. 11) 
  • Janine Morillot, a French exchange student of the junior class, died following an emergency appendectomy in Miami, Florida.  She was nineteen (Apr. 27) 
  • Baseball team scheduled to play exhibition against Conny Mack's major league Philadelphia Athletics but contest rained out three times (Apr.) 
  • President Corson inaugurated (May 4) 
  • The Alumni Council elected first alumna member - Marjorie McIntire '10 (June 8) 
  • Prof. Vuilleumier named  Dean of the College (June) 
  • College endowment at $1,030,999.27 and the College debt was $138,000 (July 31) 
  • Students beginning the year numbered 573, including 208 new students (Sep. 19) 
  • Women permitted to sit with their class in chapel, rather than as one female group as before (Sep. 19) 
  • Emeritus Prof. Ovando B.  Super '73 died (Oct. 29)
  • Scholarship-Loan Fund came up $6000 short of amount needed to aid all needy students 
  • The last passenger train went down the High Street in Carlisle
1935
  • Bruno Hauptmann went on trial for kidnapping the Lindbergh baby (Jan. 2); found guilty (Feb. 12); executed (Apr. 3, 1936) 
  • Canned beer went on sale in U.S.  - Kreuger's Finest Beer (Jan. 24) 
  • Germany repudiated Versailles Treaty (Mar. 16) 
  • Persia changed its name to Iran (Mar. 21) 
  • W.P.A. approved in Congress (Apr. 8) 
  • Sir Robert Watson Watt built aircraft finding radar (Apr.) 
  • T.E. Lawrence killed on his motorcycle (May 19) 
  • Alcoholics Anonymous founded (June 10) 
  • The U.S. National Youth Administration established (June 26) 
  • First parking meters in the US (July 16) 
  • Huey Long assassinated in Baton Rouge (Sept. 8) 
  • Nurenburg Laws enacted in Germany (Sept.15) 
  • Penguin Books founded (Sep. 21) 
  • Mussolini invaded Abyssinia (Oct. 2) 
  • Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess" opened in Boston then on Broadway (Oct. 5) 
  • The "Long March" of Mao's communists ended in Shaanxi Province (Oct. 19) 
  • Board game "Monopoly" on sale (Nov. 5) 
  • "Mutiny on the Bounty" won Academy Award 
  • T.S. Eliot completed "Murder in the Cathedral" 
  • Belle Lettres Society celebrated its one hundred and fiftieth anniversary (Feb. 22) 
  • College founded the Alumni Annual Fund, a yearly appeal for funds to aid current and future endeavors; received $11,186.92 in first year (Feb.)
  • First College health services established 
  • Lemuel T. Appold '82 died in Baltimore (Aug. 30) 
  • Five properties purchased so as to enable Biddle Field expansion (Oct. 19) 
  • Dickinson withdrew from the E.C.A.C. (Nov. 21)
  • Administration floated the nickname "Colonials" as possible replacement for the new "Red Devils." The students rejected the change wholeheartedly.
1936
  • Rudyard Kipling died (Jan. 18) 
  • George V  died ; Edward VII king (Jan. 20) 
  • Hitler announced the Volkswagen (Feb. 15) 
  • The Spitfire flew for the first time (Mar. 6) 
  • Roy Orbison born (Apr. 23) 
  • The Boulder Dam completed in Nevada and Arizona (May 1); dedicated (Sep. 11) 
  • Maxim Gorki died (June 18)
  • Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind published (June 30) 
  • Spanish Civil War broke out (July 18) 
  • Berlin Olympics opened (Aug. 1) 
  • Rome-Berlin Axis came into being (Nov. 1) 
  • The BBC in London inaugurated television service (Nov. 2) 
  • Eugene O'Neill won the Nobel Prize for Literature (Nov. 12) 
  • Life Magazine began publication (Nov. 23) 
  • Edward VII abdicated and George VI  became king (Dec. 11) 
  • Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People appeared 
  • Prof. Leon Cushing Prince died of a sudden coronary at his Carlisle home, aged 61 (Jan. 31)
  • College celebrated Founders' Day and the fiftieth anniversary of campus Phi Beta Kappa chapter (May 1) 
  • Dr. Zatae Longsdorff Straw '87 awarded honorary doctorate of science at Commencement (June 7) 
  • Songs of Dickinson published (June 7) 
  • Baird Biology Building dedicated (Sep. 16)
  • Whitfield Bell '34 was named to the history faculty to teach the courses Prince had planned 
  • Prof.  Montgomery P. Sellers donated $50,000 to endow a chair in English in honor of his mother 
  • Football team enjoys first unbeaten season in twenty years with a record of  7-0-1 
1937
  • Elvis Presley born (Jan. 8) 
  • U.S. Social Security made its first payouts (Apr.) 
  • F.D.R.  signed the Third Neutrality Act (May 1) 
  • German dirigible Hindenburg crashed in Lakehurst, NJ (May 6) 
  • Golden Gate Bridge opened over entrance to San Francisco Bay (May 27) 
  • Neville Chamberlain became Prime Minister of Britain (May 28) 
  • Stock Market showed U.S. recovery slowing and the economy  going into recession. (May) 
  • Joe Louis became world champion (June 22) 
  • George Gershwin died at age 38 (July 11) 
  • Amelia Earhart lost on a solo Pacific flight (July) 
  • Japan invaded China proper (July 7); the "Rape of Nanjing" followed. 
  • Italy withdrew from League of Nations (Dec. 11) 
  • Disney's "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" released in the U.S. (Dec. 21) 
  • Renoir's "La Grande Illusion" shown in France 
  • John Steinbeck published Of Mice and Men 
  • Picasso's Guernica mural completed in Paris 
  • Prof. Emeritus Bradford O. McIntire died (Mar. 6) 
  • Harold Adams '38 won $500 Edward Hart Fellowship for research in physical chemistry (Mar. 8) 
  • Junior men beat Freshmen 46-29 and Sophomore women beat Senior women  37-20 in Class Night basketball contests (Mar.) 
  • Faculty changed curriculum to provide a broader basis of training for freshmen and sophomores, and more specialized work for juniors and seniors; also,  required all non-freshmen to have an extra-curricular activity. 
  • Chinese Educational Student Exchanges stopped as Japan instituted puppet rule in China 
  • Supreme Court ordered the entry of blacks into the University of Missouri Law School because of lack of area alternatives 
1938
  • German troops entered Austria (Feb. 12) 
  • The March of Dimes was first organized (Jan 3) 
  •  First commercial oil finds in Saudi Arabia (Mar) 
  • China occupied much of China under puppet rule 
  • U.S. House founded the House Un-American Activities Committee (May 26) 
  • Munich Conference  (Sep.) 
  • Germany occupied the Sudetenland (Oct. 10) 
  • War of the Worlds broadcast (Oct. 30) 
  • Kristalnacht in Nazi Germany (Nov. 9) 
  • Kate Smith sang "God Bless America" for the first time on her radio show (Nov. 11) 
  • Tina Turner born (Nov. 26) 
  • U.S. auto accidents killed 32,000 people in 1938 
  • The Cloisters built in New York 
  • Alfred North Whitehead's Modes of Thought and George Santayana's Realm of Truth appeared 
  • Rev. Henry S. Leiper, a leader in the"world movement for peace and Christian unity" discussed "Germany's New Religion - Blood, Soil, and Honor" with the Young People's Fellowship (Mar. 5) 
  • Union Philosophical Society celebrated its one hundred and fiftieth anniversary (Mar. 25)  
  • Enlargement, refacing, and renovation of Bosler Hall was approved (Apr. 29) 
  • Permanent bleachers - 500 seats - added to Biddle Field (Aug.) 
  • Dr. James Henry Morgan '78 died (Oct. 17) 
  • Dramatic Club performed Mark Reed's "Petticoat Fever" (Nov. 16) 
1939
  • W.B. Yeats died (Jan. 28) 
  • Lillian Hellman's "Little Foxes" opened in New York (Feb. 15) 
  • Fascist victory in Spanish Civil War (Mar. 31) 
  • Italy invaded Albania (Apr. 7) 
  • Sutton-Hoo excavations began in England (May) 
  • Glenn Miller recorded "In the Mood" (Aug. 1)
  • The film "Wizard of Oz" opened in NY (Aug 17) 
  • Germany and U.S.S.R. signed Non-Aggression Pact (Aug. 23) 
  • Germany invaded Poland (Sep. 1); France and Britain declared war and the Second World War was under way. 
  • Sigmund Freud died in London (Sep. 23) 
  • John Cleese born (Oct. 27) 
  • Earthquake in Turkey killed 45,000 (Dec. 26) 
  • Copeland's ballet "Billy the Kid" opened in NYC. 
  • C.S. Forester began his "Hornblower" novels. 
  • Polyethylene was invented 
  • Campus poll showed 72% of students supported Republican Wendell Wilkie in 1940 Election (Oct. 7)
  • New women's dormitory, the Senior House, opened on Hanover Street (Oct. 23) 
  • Soccer discontinued as intercollegiate sport and added to the intermural program (Nov.) 
  • Dramatic Club presented the play "You Can't Take It With You" (Dec. 6)
  • Trustees set Mar. 3, 1773 as the College's founding date (Dec.)
  • Rev. Gaither P. Warfield '17 taken as Soviet prisoner during Russian invasion of Poland, spent six weeks in prison camp before being traded to the Nazis, who re-arrested him
  • Ten students in the spring and twenty in the fall earn civilian pilot's licences in classes run by physics Prof. W.A. Parlin and pilot J. Frank Wilson
1940
  • British and French defeat in Europe; British evacuation at Dunkirk (May 27-June 3); Churchill became Prime Minister (May 10); Battle of Britain began (July 10) 
  • Bugs Bunny first appeared (July 27) 
  • Trotsky assassinated in Mexico (Aug. 20) 
  • The Lascaux Cave paintings found in France (Sept. 12) 
  • U.S.  passed the Selective Service Act (Sept. 14) 
  • The Pennsylvania Turnpike opened (Oct. 6) 
  • Pele born in Brazil (Oct. 23) 
  • Koestler published Darkness at Noon 
  • The Grapes of Wrath" (Mar. 15) and  "Fantasia" (Nov. 13) were top films. 
  • "Gone With the Wind" won 8 Oscars (Feb 29) 
  • Carl Sandburg's Lincoln won Pulitzer Prize 
  • Dickinson Religious Association began drive to raise food and money for people in U.K. & France (Mar.) 
  • College announced inauguration of 170th Anniversary Expansion and Endowment Fund, with a goal to raise $2,225,000 (Sep.)
  • Ninety out of 110 freshmen pledged a fraternity
1941
  • James Joyce died in Zurich (Jan. 13) 
  • The National Gallery of Art opened in Washington D.C. (Mar. 17) 
  • Virginia Woolf drowned herself (Mar. 28) 
  • Air attacks on Britain continued, Germany invaded Greece (Apr. 6) and Crete (May 20) and then Russia (June 22) 
  • Citizen Kane premiered in New York (May 1) 
  • Lou Gehrig died (June 2) 
  • U.S. Basketball's NBA founded (Aug. 3) 
  • FDR and Winston Churchill signed the Atlantic Charter (Aug. 14) 
  • Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and invaded British and American possessions in Asia (Dec. 7) 
  • US and UK declared war on Japan. (Dec. 8) 
  • Shostakovich completed his Symphony #7 
  • Brecht completed "Mother Courage" 
  • Physical Education made compulsory (Jan.)
  • Five professors and 102 students registered for Selective Service (Feb.) 
  • Men's basketball team defeated Delaware 80-50, setting a College scoring record (Mar.)
  • President Corson dedicated the Dickinson Service Flag to the 428 Dickinsonians in the War Effort; it flew from front of Old West (Nov.) 
  • Prof. and former Dean Montgomery P. Sellers '93 died after fifty years of service to the College (Dec. 4)
  • News of the first war death of a student who left to enlist came; Cadet Calvert Foote '44 lost in July on Arctic Convoy duty
  • Dr. Wing first offered his course "The History and Interpretation of WWII" 
  • Other new courses reflected war status - Psychology of Propaganda, Mathematics and Meteorology, and Nutrition (for women)
1942
  • Stephen Hawking born (Jan. 8) 
  • The Wannasee Conference held; the "Final Solution" began in earnest  (Jan. 20) 
  • Allies took on name"United Nations"; Japan took the Philippines and Malaya (Jan-Feb); U.S. Naval victory at Midway (June 7); Germans reached Stalingrad (Sep. 5); British victory at El Alamein (Nov. 4); U.S. forces landed in North Africa (Nov. 8) 
  • Bing Crosby recorded "White Christmas" (May) 
  • Casablanca premiered in New York (Nov 26) 
  • Coconut Grove nightclub burned in Boston and killed 487 people (Nov. 28) 
  • Enrico Fermi split the atom in Chicago (Dec. 2) 
  • The Beveridge Report appeared in Britain 
  • C.S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters appeared. 
  • Albert Camus' The Stranger published 
  • Army Air Corps Reserve cancelled deferments and called 31 students to duty; Army Enlisted Reserve Corps called another forty-four (Feb.)
  • 32nd Air Training Detachment began classes (Mar. 1) 
  • Coaches McAndrews and Kennedy instituted a program of intra-murals to keep sports alive at the College; with emergency system for awarding letters (Nov.)
  • Pan-Hel Week cancelled due to shortages but Pan-Hel Council held its annual formal dance, with music by William Quemore's Orchestra (Dec.)
  • First mid-year graduation in College history in the accelerated graduation program which helped make men available for enlistment and war service. 
  • Josephine Meredith '01 became Dickinson's first full professor, of English. 
1943
  • Casablanca Conference (Jan. 14-24); Red Army recaptured Stalingrad (Jan. 31); Allies took Sicily (July 9) & invaded Italy (Sep. 3); "round the clock" bombing of Germany began. 
  • George Washington Carver died (Jan. 5) 
  • The Pentagon completed in Washington (Jan 15) 
  • Race riots began in Detroit, 30 dead (June 20) 
  • Income tax witholding began in the U.S. (July 1) 
  • Mick Jagger born in London (July 26) 
  • Mussolini dismissed; Italy surrendered (Sept 8) 
  • The Jefferson Memorial dedicated (Apr. 15) 
  • Famine in India 
  • "Casablanca" won the Academy Award (Apr.) 
  • Chagall's "The Juggler" exhibited 
  • "Oklahoma" premiered on Broadway (Mar. 31)
  • Government terminated 32nd Air Training Detachment   (Jan. 29)
  • Dickinson Little Theater established (Oct. 25) 
  • The Free Dickinsonian, an unofficial campus newspaper, was published during the Summer Session 
  • Service Flag had 1,114 stars in December. 
  • Student Activities fee set at $11 
  • With more women students, College rented Phi Delta House as a women's dormitory. 
1944
  • Leningrad recaptured (Jan. 27);  Rome liberated (June 4); D-Day landings in France (June 6); assassination attempt on Hitler (July 20); Guam taken (Aug. 10); bombings of Japan began (Nov.); Paris liberated (Sep. 12); Philippines liberated (Oct. 25); Battle of the Bulge began (Dec. 16) 
  • Aaron Copeland's ballet "Applachian Spring" debuted at Library of Congress (Oct. 30) 
  • FDR re-elected for a fourth term as President 
  • The U.S. cost of living rose almost 30% in 1944 
  • Olivier's film "Henry V" released 
  • Tennesee Williams' Glass Menagerie completed 
  • Satre published his No Exit 
  • U.S. Navy housed 400 sailors in Conway Hall (Jan.) 
  • The S.S. Dickinson Victory was launched at Terminal Island, California (Feb. 9) 
  • The "London Steel Yard Carnival" held in Alumni Gymnasium (Mar.)
  • Only 195 undergraduates on campus due to the war 
  • Six members of class of '45 elected to PBK (June) 
  • Students submitted a proposal for campus improvement... #1 suggestion, get rid of Dean Meredith (Fall)
  • Carlisle and environs suffered a Cold and Influenza epidemic; Metzger Infirmary was filled, High School had over 300 absentees, and Boiling Springs sixty flu victims (Dec.)
  • The Dickinsonian reported that "typical Carlisle weather" is simply rain 
  • Special two-month term for demobilized servicemen instituted to provide a period of re-adjustment to college life.  Term began Dec. 3 
1945
  • Russian reached the Oder (Jan. 31) and the British the Rhine (Mar. 23); U.S. Marines took Okinawa (June 21); U.S. and Russian troops link up (Apr. 25); Berlin surrendered to Russians (May 2); Germany surrendered (May 7) 
  • FDR died at Warm Springs, Georgia (Apr. 12); Harry S. Truman became 33rd President 
  • United Nations founded in San Francisco; League of Nations wound itself up and turned over its assets to the U.N. (Apr. 15-June 26) 
  • First A-Bomb exploded in New Mexico (July 16)  
  • Landslide Labour Party victory  in Britain; Attlee replaced Churchill as P.M. (July 26) 
  • US dropped Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima & Nagasaki (Aug. 6 & 9) 
  • Japan surrendered (Aug. 14) 
  • Nobel Prize went to the discoverers of penicillin 
  • Britten's opera "Peter Grimes" opened in London 
  • George Orwell's Animal Farm published, also Carlo Levi's Christ Stopped at Eboli 
  •  Belles Lettres Society reactivated (Mar. 6) 
  • Men's Cooperating Association dissolved; new Student Assembly and Senate established (Mar.) 
  • President William Wilcox Edel appointed (June) 
  • Former President C. W. Prettyman died (Aug. 9)
  • Football, basketball, baseball, track, swimming, tennis, and wrestling programs all reinstituted (Sep.)
  • Gilbert Malcolm named College Vice-President (Dec 14) 
  • Old East opened for women's dorms, female quota increased to 25%
  • Of the 160 new students enrolled in the mid-year intake of  Feb. 150 were World World II veterans
  • Dickinson beat Western Maryland before a crowd of 5000 in the first homecoming football game since 1941 
1946
  • First meeting of the U.N. General Assembly, in London (Jan. 7); New York selected as permanent headquarters 
  • Churchill gave "Iron Curtain" speech (Mar. 5) 
  • Cher born (May 20) 
  • Italy became a republic (June 10) 
  • Gertrude Stein died (July 27) 
  • Atomic Energy Commission founded (Aug. 1) 
  • Bill Clinton born in Hope, Arkansas (Aug. 19) 
  • The Nurenburg Tribunal brought in its first verdicts (Sep.) 
  • Oliver Stone born (Sep. 15) 
  • Wyler's "Best Years of Our Lives" won Oscars 
  • John Hershey's Hiroshima published 
  • Benjamin Spock published Baby & Child Care 
  • Frank Capra's film "It's a Wonderful Life" opened (Dec. 21) 
  • Virginia Rickenbach was Queen of the Mid-Winter Ball (Jan.) 
  • Mary Himes Vale, granddaughter of Charles Francis Himes '55, presented College with its original land deed from the William Penn estate, dated 1799 (May 1)  
  • Prof.  Russell I. Thompson '20 named as Dean of the College, replacing Prof. E.A. Vuilleumier (June) 
  • Board authorized substantial salary raises; from $1200 for instructors to $7000 for full professors (June)
  • Professor Emeritus status made official (Dec.)
  • Gymnasium renovated 
  • Russian introduced to curriculum
  • More than one million veterans had so far enrolled in colleges and universities under the G.I. Bill 
1947
  • The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered (Jan.) 
  • David Bowie born (Jan. 8)  
  • Al Capone died of venereal disease (Jan. 25) 
  • Voice of America began (Feb. 17) 
  • The International Monetary Fund began operation (Mar. 1) 
  • Henry Ford died in Michigan (Apr. 7) 
  • Jackie Robinson became first black in major league baseball  (Apr. 11) 
  • Willa Cather died (Apr. 24) 
  • George Marshall, new U.S. Secretary of State, called for European recovery plan (June 5) 
  • First reported sighting of "flying saucers" at Mount Ranier, Washington (June 25) 
  • Taft-Hartley Act passed over President Truman's veto (June 23) 
  • India and Pakistan became independent (Aug. 15) 
  • British and then the U.N. plan for a partitioned Palestine 
  • USAF formed as seperate service (Sep. 17) 
  • Captain Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in a Bell X-1 (Oct. 14) 
  • Bell Laboratories invented the transistor 
  • The Diary of Anne Frank  published 
  • The Hollywood 10 cited for contempt of Congress for their refusal to answer questions before the HUAC (Nov. 24) 
  • "Streetcar Named Desire" opened in NY (Dec 3) 
  • Basketball team played in Middle Atlantic playoffs, first post-season tournament in team history (Mar.)
  • Samuel Witwer '30 and Robert A. Waidner elected to the Board of Trustees (June)
  • Alexander Panushkin, Soviet Ambassador to the United States, invited group of 64 Dickinson students to his embassy during their tour of Washington (Dec.)
  • 175th anniversary and first ten year development plan for building, included Drayer (women) Morgan (men)  
  • The new South College completed. 
  • Robert Streger named "undergraduate of the year" at the Phi Epsilon Pi national convention 
  • Record number of international students attended 
  • George Pearre, non-graduate member of the class of 1899, left bulk of his $115,000 estate to the College 
1948
  • Walter Huston's Treasure of the Sierra Madre premiered (Jan. 23) 
  • Gandhi assassinated in New Delhi (Jan. 30) 
  • Jan Masaryk killed during communist takeover in Czechoslovakia (Mar. 10) 
  • State of Israel founded. (May 14) 
  • World Health Organization founded (Apr. 7) 
  • Berlin Blockade and resultant American and British Airlift began (June 23) 
  • Idlewild (now Kennedy) Airport opened (July 31) 
  • In the U.S., President Truman signed an executive order banning all discrimination in the military and federal service (July 26) 
  • Babe Ruth died (Aug. 16)
  • T.S. Eliot won Nobel Prize for Literature (Nov. 4) 
  • Prince Charles born (Nov. 14) 
  • Hediki Tojo executed in Japan (Dec. 23) 
  • Mailer's The Naked and the Dead appeared 
  • Olivier's "Hamlet" won the Academy Award 
  • First "Religion-in-Life Week" held (Feb. 13-17) 
  • Middle States Association visited Dickinson, finding much in order but decrying out of date organization and lack of full foreign language offerings. Report was received with some alarm amongst administration. 
  • Weekend late permission hours extended for female students (Apr.) 
  • John Wesley Snyder, U.S. Treasury Secretary, delivered the Commencement address (June) 
  • Charles Colman Sellers joined the Library to become Curator of Dickinsonia (Sep.) 
  • New chapel opened in basement of Old West (Sep.) 
  • Football team won five straight games for the first time since 1917 (Sep. - Oct.) 
  • Bronze tablet honoring Dickinsonians who served and died in World War II unveiled in Memorial Hall in Old West (Nov. 12) 
1949
  • Harry Truman inaugurated as President 
  • RCA introduced the 45 rpm record (Feb. 1)
  • Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman" opened on Broadway with Lee J. Cobb (Feb. 10)
  • Joe Louis retired as boxing's heavyweight champion (Mar. 1) 
  • Rogers and Hammerstein's South Pacific opened on Broadway (Apr. 7) 
  • Ireland became a republic (Apr. 18) 
  • The North Atlantic Treaty was signed in Washington D.C. (Aug. 24) 
  • U.S.S.R. tested its first atomic bomb (Aug. 29)
  • Bruce Springsteen was born in Freehold, New Jersey (Sep. 23) 
  • Peoples' Republic of China established (Oct. 1) 
  • "Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer" first appeared on the best seller list  (Nov. 25) 
  • Veteran's Administration annouced that it would curb G.I. enrollment and tighten education regulations in G.I. Bill schools (Feb.) 
  • Washington D.C. radio personality shared his views with students at the College on his visit to Eastern Europe - his talk "Behind the Iron Curtain" (Feb.) 
  • Lacrosse introduced as a club sport (Spring) 
  • Daniel Richards, Elton Carlson, Elinor Pond, and Jane Lehmer represented Sweden at the Model U.N. General Assembly at City College of New York (Apr. 10-12) 
  • Spahr family gift put the cupola on South College (May) 
  • Russian cut from curriculum  
  • President Edel approved plan for new snack bar in South College 
1950
  • George Orwell died of tuberculosis (Jan. 21) 
  • The U.S. minimum wage was raised to 75¢ an hour (Jan. 24) 
  • President Truman authorized the production of the H-bomb (Jan. 31) 
  • Senator Joseph McCarthy began his campaign against communist "infiltration." (Feb.) 
  • Vaslau Nijinsky died in London (Feb. 8) 
  • Disney's "Cinderella" released (Feb. 15) 
  • The Korean War began (June 25) and two days later the United Nations officially declared war on North Korea.  
  • U.S. recognized South Vietnam (June 27) 
  • China occupied Tibet (Oct.) 
  • Comic strip "Peanuts" appeared (Oct. 2) 
  • Chinese troops entered Korean War (Oct 26) 
  • Charles Cooper became the first black to play NBA basketball (Nov. 1) 
  • George Bernard Shaw died  at 94 (Nov. 2) 
  • The United Nations Building completed in NYC 
  • The color television was introduced in the U.S. 
  • Margaret Mead completed Social Anthropology