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| The 1930s |
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| 1930: Back on the chain gang An escapee from a Georgia chain gang becomes a Jersey celebrity in a year of murder and suicide and drugs at Trenton prison. 1931: War Memorial Trenton's tribute to its war dead becomes a center for culture and art. 1932: The Lindbergh case The famed aviator's baby son is snatched from the nursery of his rural Hopewell home and found dead two months later. It's the crime of the century, and leads to the execution of Bruno Hauptmann. 1933: Einstein in Princeton From his new home on Mercer Street, the genius who fled Nazi Germany contemplates the forces that will later give America the atomic bomb. 1934: The chief goes to jail Protection racketeers are having a field day because so many Trenton pols, including the top policeman, are taking bribes to look the other way. 1935: Gallup takes America's pulse Princeton's own George Gallup founds a polling service that grows into the biggest in the U.S., revolutionizing the way we think about politicians and how politicians think of us. 1936: State House under siege An army of jobless men and women take over the Capitol to demand extended unemployment benefits during the worst of the Great Depression. 1937: Mary Roebling When her husband banker dies, Mary Roebling takes over Trenton Trust and, for the next 50 years, finances the city's business advances. 1938: Space invaders Orson Welles, Howard Koch and the rest of the Mercury Theater radio players trick America into thinking Martians have landed in West Windsor. 1939: Shotgun killer on Duck Island A madman kills a pair of lovers stealing kisses in a parked car -- part of a series of slayings that would cost six lives. Did cops get the right man? |