Thursday, May 31, 1934

Walked to and home from school with the kids. Aunt Kate's were by.

Guantanamo Bay, Cuba
AKA "Gitmo"

 On May 31, 1934, the U.S. Congress ratified the U.S.-Cuban Treaty which abrogated the Platt Amendment, a legal document which had been a source of friction between the two countries. U.S. Ambassador to Havana Sumner Welles conducted the negotiations with the government of Carlos Mendieta, reaching an agreement on May 29th. The U.S. government insisted that the Platt Amendment be incorporated in the Cuban constitution in 1901, although the measure undermined Cuban sovereignty. Under this amendment, the Cuban government was not permitted to enter into a treaty with a foreign power which impaired the country's sovereignty, Cubans could not contract excessive foreign debts, the U.S. had the right to intervene to maintain Cuban independence, and Cuban territory had to be leased to the U.S. for naval bases.

Wednesday, May 30, 1934

NOTE: Ruth didn't write in her diary today.

Indianapolis 500 - May 30, 1934

The 22nd International 500-Mile Sweepstakes Race was held at the Indianapolis
Motor Speedway on May 30, 1934. The winner was the number seven car driven by
Bill Cummings, an Indianapolis native, at an average speed of 104.863 miles per hour.
Cummings led for 57 laps total, including the last 26. Of the 33 cars that began the race,
 only 12 were running at the finish, although there were no crashes resulting in serious
 injuries. One serious incident involved George Bailey, whose car went over the outside
wall, but resulted in only a broken wrist to the driver. The finish was the closest in the
 history of the race to that point, with second-place finisher Mauri Rose within 100
yards of Cummings at the finish (officially 27.25 seconds behind). Rose would also file
 a protest that Cummings had illegally gained ground during a "slow-down" period
following a crash

Tuesday, May 29, 1934

Mother went to the doctor today.

Vincent Leonard Price, Jr. (May 27, 1911 – October 25, 1993)

Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Price was an American actor, well known for his distinctive
voice and serio-comic performances in a series of horror films made in the latter part of his career.
He attended St. Louis Country Day School and was further educated at Yale in art history
and fine art. He was a member of the Courtauld Institute, London. He became interested in the
theatre during the 1930s, appearing professionally on stage for the first time in 1935.

He made his film debut in 1938 with Service de Luxe and established himself in the film Laura
1944), opposite Gene Tierney and directed by Otto Preminger. He also played Joseph Smith,
 Jr. in the movie Brigham Young (1940) and William Gibbs McAdoo in Wilson (1944) as well as a
pretentious priest in The Keys of the Kingdom (1944).

Price's first venture into the horror genre was in the 1939 Boris Karloff film Tower of London.
The following year he portrayed the title character in the film The Invisible Man Returns
(a role he reprised in a vocal cameo at the end of the 1948 horror-comedy spoof Abbott and Costello 
Meet Frankenstein). Numerous other horror films, too many to mention here, followed.

A patron of the arts, Price donated some 90 pieces from his own collection to East Los Angeles
College in Monterey Park, California, thus establishing the first "teaching art collection" owned
by a community college in the U.S. The collection contains over 9,000 pieces and has been
valued in excess of $5 million.

Price, a lifelong smoker, died of lung cancer at UCLA Medical Center. He was cremated and
his ashes were scattered off Point Dume in Malibu, California.



Monday, May 28, 1934

I stayed home from school today.

Dionne Quintuplets - Corbeil, Ontario, Canada

In the early morning of May 28, 1934 the names Annette, Cecile, Yvonne, Marie
 and Emilie became known to Canada and the world as the Dionne Quintuplets.

Born almost two months premature, with a combined total weight of less than
14 pounds, each child could be held in the palm of one's hand. The identical
quntuplets were taken from their poor, French-speaking parents at about nine
months were made wards of the province to protect their health and to keep
their father from using them to make money.

Ironically, it was the government that made the most money off the quints.
They lived their next nine years at the Allan Roy Dafoe Hospital, which was
built across the road from the family's farm house and became known as Quintland.
This quickly became a travel destination even more popular than Niagara Falls for the
 inquisitive tourists of the day. It is estimated that between 1934 and 1943 three million
 people visited Quintland, and earned the government and nearby businesses a
half-billion dollars off the tourists.




 

Sunday, May 27, 1934

We didn't go to Sunday school or church. Aunt Kate's were over.

Century of Progress - Chicago World's Fair

On May 27, 1934, a renovated and improved Century of Progress Exposition,
representing an investment of $43,000,000, threw open its gates to the people of the
world at 9 o'clock this morning with high hopes that 30,000,000 visitors would pass through
 the turnstiles before Oct. 31, the closing date. Opening day attendance was tallied at 148,664,
exceeding the opening-day record of 1933 by 30,000. President Roosevelt, in a sound picture
address, said the nation's troubles were over for the most part.  

Saturday, May 26, 1934

Mother got up for a while today. I straightened up the house.

Pioneer Zephyr

On May 26, 1934, the diesel-powered railroad train set a speed record for
for travel between Denver, Colorado, and Chicago, Illinois, when it made a 1,015-mile
(1,633 km) non-stop "Dawn-to-Dusk" dash in 13 hours 5 minutes at an average speed of
77 mph (124 km/h). For one section of the run it reached a speed of 112.5 mph (181 km/h),
just short of the then US land speed record of 115 mph (185 km/h). The historic dash i
inspired a 1934 film and the train's nickname, "Silver Streak".

Thursday, May 25, 1934

Mother is still sick.

Gustav Theodore Holst (born Gustavus Theodore von Holst, 21 September 1874 – 25 May 1934)

An English composer, Holst is most famous for his orchestral suite The Planets. All told,
Holst composed almost 200 works, including operas, ballets, choral hymns and songs.
He was the brother of Hollywood actor Ernest Cossart and father of the composer and
conductor Imogen Holst, who wrote a biography of him in 1938.