As we open the Golden Age of the Flying Clippers, we find the world in a deep economic depression. The United States has just been through what will have been, the two worst years of it. Franklin Roosevelt has just been elected president of the United States — and will remain so for an unprecedented 4 terms — and Adolph Hitler has just come to power in Germany. There are only 48 states in the Union. Alaska and Hawaii will not be added for almost 30 years. Prohibition has just been repealed. Thanks to Hollywood, New York's Empire State building will now have King Kong forever associated with it.

If you are "lucky" enough to be an airline pilot you will earn $8000.00 per year. A dentist earns $2391.00; an electrical worker, $1559.00; a public school teacher, $1227.00; a secretary, $1040.00; a steelworker, $422.87; a waitress, $520.00.

A new Pontiac coupe costs $585.00 and is powered with a gallon of gas costing only 18˘. A wool suit is $10.50. Chicken is 22˘ a pound and milk is 10˘ a quart. A six room house with a two car garage in Detroit will cost you $2800.00. If you have the time, a 60-day 11-counrty tour of Europe will cost you $495.00. Round trip airfare from New York to Chicago is $86.31 and from Chicago to Los Angeles is another $207.00.

The Sikorsky S-42 was introduced in August (only 3 months after the DC-2's inaugural).

 Drive-in movie theatre opens in New Jersey

 Half of the homes in the U.S. have radios

 Austrian Chancellor assassinated by Nazis

 Bonnie and Clyde killed in police ambush

 Severe drought turn Great Plains
 into Dust Bowl (to 1936)

 Box Office draws: Will Rogers, Clark Gable,
 Janet Gaynor

First Martin M-130 delivered on September 9th. Pan Am inaugurates trans-Pacific airmail service from November 22 to 29 with the Martin M-130 China Clipper. The 8,210-mile flight was made in 59 hours and 48 minutes of actual flying time. China Clipper over Macau

 Radar device built by Robert Watson Watt

 Eastman-Kodak introduces KODACHROME Film,
 becoming the first commercially successful
 amateur color film

 Edwin Armstrong demonstrates FM radio

 Hoover Dam completed

 First night baseball game played in Cincinnati, Ohio

 FDR signs U.S. Social Security Act

 Persia changes name to Iran

 John Steinbeck: Tortilla Flat

 George Gershwin's musical Porgy and Bess opens

 Box Office draws: Shirley Temple, Clark Gable, Will Rogers

The M-130 Hawaii Clipper initiated the first trans-Pacific passenger service on October 21. The San Francisco-Manila airfare was $799.00 (over $10,000 today) one-way.

 Top U.S. tax rate raised to 79%

 Prince Albert becomes King George VI of Britain

 Spanish Civil War Begins (to March 1939)

 Henry Luce begins publication of LIFE magazine

 Margaret Mitchell's Gone With The Wind is published

 Film:Modern Times starring Charlie Chaplin

 Box Office draws: Shirley Temple, Clark Gable, Will Rogers

 Golden Gate Bridge opens

 Amelia Earhart disappears over South Pacific

 Hindenburg airship disaster at Lakehurst,
 New Jersey

 Chamberlain becomes British Prime Minister

 Film: La Grand Illusion

 Disney's first full-length cartoon: Snow White

 LOOK magazine begins publication

 Box Office draws: Shirley Temple, Clark Gable, Will Rogers

 Hitler annexes Austria
 Hungary annexes southern Slovakia

 Music: Benny Goodman brings new style to jazz music

 Radio drama, War of the Worlds, narrated by Orson
 Wells, causes national panic

 Art: Guernica by Picasso

 Box Office draws: Shirley Temple, Clark Gable, Will Rogers

Boeing delivers the first two B-314's on January 27th First scheduled trans-Atlantic airline passenger service began on June 28th on board the Dixie Clipper. Airfare was $375 (over $4000 today) one-way or $675 ($8000 today) round-trip. Air Mail service across the Atlantic began on May 20th (Yankee Clipper)

 Regular TV broadcasts begin

 New York World's Fair shows television to public

 The Depression is ending worldwide as nations
 prepare for the coming hostilities

 German troops invade Poland on September 1

 Britain and France declare war on Germany —
 World War II begins

 John Steinbeck: The Grapes of Wrath published

 Films: Wizard of Oz, Gone With the Wind,
 The Roaring Twenties

British Purchasing Commission bought 2 of Pan Am's B-314's for the War effort.

 Fantasia introduces stereo sound to the American public

 Winston Churchill becomes prime minister of Britain

 FDR re-elected for an unprecedented third term

 Battle of Britain

 Ernest Hemingway: For Whom the Bell Tolls

 Film: Grapes of Wrath, The Great Dictator

 Bugs Bunny is seen for the first time

 Aerosol spray can is introduced

 Mount Rushmore Memorial completed
 in South Dakota

 Joe DiMaggio hits 56 games in a row

 Japanese bomb the Japanese attack the main
 American naval base in the Pacific at
 Pearl Harbor

 The United States declares war on the Japanese and enters
 WWII; Japanese take Guam, Hong Kong, Wake and
 the Philippines

 Films: Citizen Kane with Orson Wells;
 The Maltese Falcon with Humphrey Bogart;
 Dumbo

 William L. Shirer's Berlin Diary is released

The B314 Berwick flies Winston Churchill from a meeting with Roosevelt. Churchill even tried his hand at piloting the aircraft.

 Magnetic recording tape is invented

 Atomic research: Manhattan Project begins; First self-sustaining
 nuclear chain reaction achieved

 Sugar and gas rationing begins in the U.S. (One pound of sugar
 every two weeks and 25 to 30 gallons of gas per month per
 motorist.)

 Final Solution: At a secret conference in Berlin, top Nazi leaders
 decide on a policy to liquidate all European Jews

 Film: Casablanca with Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart;
 Road to Morocco with Bob Hope, Dorothy Lamour, and
 Bing Crosby; Bambi

Franklin Roosevelt flies to the Conference in Casablanca in January on board the B314 Dixie Clipper. President Roosevelt celebrated his 61st birthday aboard the Dixie Clipper on the return flight from the secret meeting at Casablanca.

 Rodgers and Hammerstein's musical Oklahoma opens

 First jet airplanes operational (Me 262)

 D-Day: American-led Allies storm the beaches
 of Normandy and sweep through Europe,
 liberating Paris.

 W. Sommerset Maugham's The Razor's Edge

 The top U.S. tax rate is now 91%. It will drop no lower than 88%
 until when in 1963, it is lowered to 70%.

 United Nations is established at conference in San Francisco

 VE-Day: Victory in Europe on May 7

 Atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and
 Nagasaki, Japan in an effort to bring an end to the
 Pacific War. Japanese surrender 5 days later.

 George Orwell's Animal Farm is published

 Tennessee Williams' play The Glass Menagerie is performed

 J. Mauchly and J. Eckert build ENIAC (electronic numerical
 integrator and computer), the first fully electronic computer

 Benjamin Spock offers American parents advice in his very
 influential book Baby and Child Care

 Albania, Hungary, Transjordan and Bulgaria become
 independent states

 Nuremberg Tribunal: 13 Nazis are convicted of crimes against
 humanity

 Cold War Declared: Winston Churchill, speaking in Fulton,
 Missouri, warns of communist expansion and the formation of an
 iron curtain dividing Europe

 Film: Frank Capra produces the feel-good movie of
 a generation, It's a Wonderful Life