Tuesday, October 2, 1934

Mother stayed in bed sick today.

Josephine Baker (June 3, 1906 – April 12, 1975)

Born Freda Josephine McDonald in St. Louis, Missouri, she became a citizen of France in 1937. Fluent in both English and French, Baker became an international musical and political icon. She was given such nicknames as the "Bronze Venus", the "Black Pearl", and the "Créole Goddess". She married her second husband, Willie Baker, in 1921 but that marriage also was short lived. She retained that last name simply because her career began taking off during that time and that is the last name with which she became best known.

Baker was the first African American female to star in a major motion picture, Zouzou, to integrate an American concert hall, and to become a world-famous entertainer. She is also noted for her contributions to the Civil Rights Movement in the United States (she was offered the unofficial leadership of the movement by Coretta Scott King in 1968 following Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination, but turned it down), for assisting the French Resistance during World War II, and for being the first American-born woman to receive the French military honor, the Croix de guerre.

Josephine Baker died of a cerebral hemorrhage. Her funeral was held at L'Eglise de la Madeleine. The first American-born oman to receive full French military honors at her funeral, Baker locked up the streets of Paris one last time. She was interred at the Cimetière de Monaco in Monte Carlo.

Monday, October 1, 1934

Walked to school and home with the girls. Read a magazine after I finished my night work.

Claire Trevor (March 8, 1910 – April 8, 2000)
October 1934

An Academy Award-winning actress, Trevor was nicknamed the "Queen of Film Noir" because of her many appearances in "bad girl" roles in film noir and other black-and-white thrillers. She appeared in over 60 films. She won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Key Largo and was nominated for her roles in The High and the Mighty and Dead End.

Claire Trevor died of respiratory failure at the age of 90 in Newport Beach, California. For her contribution to the motion picture industry, she has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6933 Hollywood Blvd.

Saturday, July 21, 1934

Mother is sick. Rita Mae and Henry and Daddy and Mr. Lakes and I went to Clay Center. Stopped by Aunt Nellie's for a while.

Oreo Cookies - Happy 100th Birthday!

Oreo is a trademark for a popular sandwich cookie by the Nabisco division of Kraft Foods. Since its 1912 introduction, Oreo has become the best selling cookie in the United States, through the 20th century and into the 21st.

Wednesday, July 18, 1933

Went over to get some water at Erickson's. Then we went down to Martin Johnson's. Toasted marshmallows.

Mary Louise Brooks - AKA Louise Brooks
(November 14, 1906 – August 8, 1985)

Born in Wichita, Kansas, Brooks was an American dancer, model, showgirl and silent film actress, noted for popularizing the bobbed haircut. Brooks is best known as the lead in three feature films made in Europe, including two G. W. Pabst films: Pandora's Box (1929), Diary of a Lost Girl (1929), and Prix de Beauté (Miss Europe) (1930). She starred in 17 silent films and, late in life, authored a memoir, Lulu in Hollywood. A notorious spendthrift, she eked out a post-retirement living as a courtesan with a few select wealthy men as clients.


Brooks was found dead of a heart attack after suffering from arthritis and emphysema for many years. She was buried in Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in Rochester, New York.

Monday, July 16, 1934

Mother, Daddy, Henry and I went down to Joe's. Ate a fried chicken dinner at Ollie's. Rita Mae came back with us.

St. Louis Kid starring James Cagney (right)
Production begins on July 16, 1934

Cagney plays Eddie Kennedy, the pugnacious truck driver who always finds himself in jail and uses a new method of punching guys--using his head (literally)!

Kenndy (Cagney) gets embroiled in a "milk war" between a trucking company and striking dairymen - a topical subject of the time. The trucking company is determined to maintain its milk shipments even though the dairymen are on strike. When a dairy worker is murdered, Cagney is accused of the crime and must find the real killer to clear himself. He also must rescue his kidnapped girlfriend (Patricia Ellis).

Saturday, July 14, 1934

I didn't do much today. This evening Mart's had fish here. Joe and Minnie came in.

July 14, 1934 - Dog Bite Victims Receive Pasteur Treatment

Scranton, PA: One of thirteen other dog bite victims, most of them children, receiving an inoculation of the anti-rabies serum, which is being furnished by the city health department. These thirteen victims were all bitten by dog from St.Ann Street in West Scranton.

Friday, July 13, 1934

Rained. We went over to the ice cream social at Marie's. It hailed. I went home with Gladys.

William Clark (August 1, 1770 – September 1, 1838)

An American explorer, soldier, Indian agent, and territorial governor,
Clark was a native of Virginia. He grew up in prestatehood Kentucky before later settling in what became the state of Missouri. He was also a planter and slaveholder.

Aong with Meriwether Lewis, Clark led the Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1803 to 1806 across the Louisiana Purchase to the Pacific Ocean, and claimed the Pacific Northwest for the United States. Before the expedition, he served in a militia and the United States Army. Afterward, he served in a militia and as governor of the Missouri Territory. From 1822 until his death in 1838, he served as Superintendent of Indian Affairs.

Clark is buried in St. Louis, in the Bellefontaine Cemetery, where a 35-foot (11 m) gray granite obelisk was erected to mark his grave. The cemetery has been designated a National Historic Landmark.

Thursday, July 12, 1934

Rita Mae came down today. Then Rita Mae and Ruby and I went down to Joe's.

Fort Osage, Missouri

During the Lewis and Clark Expedition, William Clark identified a spot
on the Missouri River which he felt would make an ideal location for a
fort. After the Expedition he returned to this spot in 1808 and constructed
what would later become Fort Osage. The fort served as a strategic trading post and military outpost and garrison until it was abandoned in the mid-1820s.

Located in Sibley, Missouri, the fort today is operated by Jackson County
Parks and Recreation with a professional staff. The Fort Osage
Education Center opened in 2007 and features state-of-the-art exhibits,
classrooms, auditorium, special exhibit spaces and a gift shop.

Wednesday, July 11, 1934

Daddy went fishing. Went down to Joe's. Ruby came back with me and spent the night. Rita Mae was up and bit and Gladys's were here.

Nikola Tesla (10 July 1856 – 7 January 1943)

Nikola Tesla, father of modern methods of generation and distribution of electrical energy, announced a new invention, or inventions, which he said, he considered the most important of the 700 made by him so far.


He has perfected a method and apparatus, Dr. Tesla said, which will send concentrated beams of particles through the free air, of such tremendous energy that they will bring down a fleet of 10,000 enemy airplanes at a distance of 250 miles from a defending nation's border and will cause armies of millions to drop dead in their tracks.

This "death-beam," Dr. Tesla said, will operate silently but effectively at distances "as far as a telescope could see an object on the ground and as far as the curvature of the earth would permit it." It will be invisible and will leave no marks behind it beyond its evidence of destruction.

An army of 1,000,000 dead, annihilated in an instant, he said, would not reveal even under the most powerful microscope just what catastrophe had caused its destruction.

But while it will make every nation safe against any attack by a would-be invader, Dr. Tesla added, the death-beam by its nature could not be employed similarly as a weapon for offense. For this death-beam, he explained, could be generated only from large, stationary and immovable power plants, stationed in the manner of oldtime forts at various strategic distances from each country's border. An exception, however, he added, must be made in the case of battleships, which, he said, would be able to equip themselves with smaller plants for generating the death-beam, with enough power to destroy any airplane approaching for attack from the air.

The production of the death-beam, Dr. Tesla said, involves four new inventions, which have not been announced by him. The scientific details of these inventions are to be given out by him before the proper scientific bodies in the near future.

Tuesday, July 10, 1934

Stayed at Henry's all day. Went up to Emmett and Melvin's for supper. Had fish. Sure were good. Went back to Henry's.

The French opened a new railway line which connected Brazzaville, 
 in the French Congo, to the Atlantic coast at Pointe Noire

Monday, July 9, 1934

Daddy and Melvin went fishing. Mother and I went up to see Gladys in p.m. and ate supper there. Stopped at Emmett's and Ruby was there.

Charles Marion Russell (March 19, 1864 – October 24, 1926)
AKA C. M. Russell, Charlie Russell, and "Kid" Russell

Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Russell was an artist of the Old American West. Russell created more than 2,000 paintings of cowboys, Indians, and landscapes set in the Western United States and in Alberta, Canada, in addition to bronze sculptures. Known as 'the cowboy artist', Russell was also a storyteller and author. The C. M. Russell Museum Complex located in Great Falls, Montana houses more than 2,000 Russell artworks, personal objects, and artifacts.


Russell's mural titled Lewis and Clark Meeting the Flathead Indians hangs in the state capitol building in Helena, Montana. Russell's 1918 painting Piegans sold for $5.6 million dollars at a 2005 auction.

Saturday, July 7, 1934

Rita Mae stayed here while her folks went to Palmer. I mopped the kitchen and dining room. Emmet and Melvin came down.

John Dillinger

On July 7, 1934, Dillinger meets with Billie Frechette's attorney at Schiller Street and Sacramento Boulevard, Chicago, to discuss Billie's appeal. Polly Hamilton (Dillinger's new squeeze) is nearby, but the attorney declines an offer to be introduced.

Friday, July 6, 1934

Mother and I went up to Aunt Millie's in the afternoon. Daddy and Newt went fishing. Had fish and fried chicken for supper.

July 6, 1934 newspaper advertisement
for Coca-Cola's Handy Home Carton.

Thursday, July 5, 1934

Went over to Annie's (Ruth's step-grandmother). Down to Joe's for dinner. We went to Mart's for supper. It rained on the way back.

"Bloody Thursday" - San Francisco, CA - July 5, 1934

During the 1934 strike by maritime workers and longshoremen, conflict erupted when the Industrial Association (consisting of employers and business interests) started moving goods from the piers to warehouses -- in an effort to break the strike.

Bloody Thursday refers to July 5, 1934 -- and to the violence that ensued between strikers and their supporters, and the police trying to contain the strike.

As goods began moving, police tried to clear the transportation track of strikers. When the strikers wouldn't budge, police began clubbing them and strikers retaliated by throwing rocks and bricks.

Wednesday, July 4, 1934

I went down to Rita Mae's. She came up here. Had fish for dinner. Went up to Parallel for an ice cream social.

Marie Curie (November 7, 1867 - July 4, 1934)

Throughout her life, Mme. Curie actively promoted the use of radium to alleviate suffering. The importance of Mme. Curie's work is reflected in the numerous awards bestowed on her. She received many honorary science, medicine and law degrees and honorary memberships of learned societies throughout the world. Together with her husband, Pierre, she was awarded half of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1903, for their study into the spontaneous radiation discovered by Becquerel, who was awarded the other half of the Prize. In 1911 she received a second Nobel Prize, this time in Chemistry, in recognition of her work in radioactivity. She also received, jointly with her husband, the Davy Medal of the Royal Society in 1903 and, in 1921, President Harding of the United States, on behalf of the women of America, presented her with one gram of radium in recognition of her service to science.

July 3, 1934

Ruby was up here for dinner. We went to Emmets and Melvin's for lunch. Marie and Sue were there too.

Clay Center, Kansas cousins

(L-R) Ruby, Rita Mae, Ruth and Gladys

Monday, July 2, 1934

Daddy went to Clay. Rita Mae was up here. Daddy and Wayne went fishing. Rita Mae and I worked puzzles.

American tennis player Sarah Palfrey at Wimbledon, London on July 2, 1934

She teamed with with Helen Jacobs to win the 1932, 1934, and 1935 U.S. women's doubles championships, but didn't win the women's doubles
championship at Wimbledon until 1938 and 1939. She won the U.S. singles
championship in 1941 and 1945.

Sunday, July 1, 1934

Didn't go to church or Sunday school. Gladys, Nellie, Wayne and Clarence were here for dinner. Went down to Mart's in evening.

The Chesterfield Nightclub
314 E Ninth Street, Kansas City, MO

KC in the 30's: Rowdy Music Memories of America's Wildest City
Capitol Records release produced by Dave E. Dexter, Jr.

The Chesterfield Club featured a "businessman's lunch" served by waitresses who wore nothing but shoes and see-through cellophane aprons. Some of the girls had an affinity for poker and incorporated club, heart, diamond and spade designs into their "uniforms." The club was cited in 1933 for "allowing an indecent act to be exhibited," and it was shut down by a court order in April 1939 for encouraging "lewd and lascivious shows by female entertainers. Two months later, a fire destroyed the place.

Saturday, June 30, 1934

Slept later this a.m. In evening Newt and I went down to Mart's. Rita Mae gave me some fireworks. Daddy and Wayne went fishing.

Great Blood Purge in Germany - June 30, 1934

To preempt a plot against the National Socialist regime, Chancellor Adolf Hitler summarily executed 77 people, many of whom had been significant leaders of the party. This drastic move was directed against the more radical, social revolutionary wing of the National Socialist party who advocated the incorporation of the Storm Troops (party forces) into the Wehrmacht and called for radical property redistribution. Leading victims included General Kurt von Schleicher, Ernst Roehm (pictured above), Gregor Strasser, and Erich Klausener.



Friday, June 29, 1934

Drove down to Mart's in afternoon. Then they came up here after supper. I sure didn't feel good.

Lobby Card for The Thin Man

June 29, 1934: The Thin Man, starring William Powell and Myrna Loy, launches a series of six films MGM will make featuring Dashiell Hammett's characters.