Mirabilis Member Years

1920

Republican Warren Harding of Ohio elected President of the United States promising “A return to normalcy.”

George Herman Ruth was sold to the New York Yankees, where he compiled a record setting and legendary professional baseball career and public reputation, unequaled by any other player of his time or since.

The 19^th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States gave women the right to vote, overturning centuries of precedent that the husband represented the entire household in political matters.

The 18^th Amendment to the Constitution prohibited the manufacture and sale of alcoholic drinks, triggering huge non-compliance, reinvigoration of organized crime.

1921

On Armistace Day the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier was dedicated by President Harding at Arlington Cemetery with the burial of a World War I soldier.

Nicola Sacco and Bartolemeo Vanzetti, American anarchists, were convicted of murder after a sensational trial. Executed in 1927 after appeals were exhausted, world-wide protests of their case continued, making this event the most debated and protested court case in American history.

1922

Secretary of the Interior, Albert Fall, leased naval oil reserves to private companies at low rates at Teapot Dome, Wyoming for bribes, triggering a scandal that implicated President Harding. He died before the political blowback could cause him harm.

The Lincoln Memorial dedicated in Washington D. C.

1923

Republican Calvin Coolidge became President of the United States upon the death of Harding.

The first state law prohibiting the teaching of Evolution in government schools passed in Oklahoma.

1924

Republican Calvin Coolidge of Massachusetts elected President of the United States.

J. Edgar Hoover appointed first director of the FBI, a post he held until he died at the age of 77 in 1972.

1925

The American Civil Liberties Union sponsored Tennessee biology teacher John T. Scopes to defy state law prohibiting the teaching of Darwinian theories of the origin of man. The sensational trial was held in Dayton, Tennessee, and the historicity of the biblical account of creation was held in derision throughout by the Northern Press. The attorney for Scopes, William Jennings Bryan, won the case, but lost the war for the American mind.

1926

John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and a coalition of preservation organizations began the historic restoration of Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia.

1927

American aviator Charles A. Lindbergh became the first person to successfully fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, in his plane The Spirit of St. Louis. “Lucky Lindy” became the most famous man in the world as a result.

1928

Republican Herbert Hoover of California elected President of the United States.

1929

Banking and Wall Street financial collapse triggered the “Great Depression.” President Hoover was blamed.