Oberth and von Braun’s Verein fur Raumschiffahrt (Space Travel Society) had been dissolved a few months earlier, partly due to lack of funding and after countless failures. But in December of the same year, Wernher von Braun managed to launch two rockets for the army, Max and Moritz (named after two cartoon characters: the Katzenjammer Kids).

Rome. Immediately after the first neutron bombardments of uranium, Professor Orso Mario Corbino gave a speech at the Accademia dei Lincei, in the presence of the king and the press. Unwisely, while admitting prudence, he declared the discovery of new transuranic elements. It was then proposed to name them Littorio or Mussolinio, but Corbino retorted that this would be an insult to the Duce, given the short lifespan of these elements. He then settled on Ausonius and Hesperius in honor of Italy. The discovery would soon prove unfounded, but the true elements 93 and 94 would indeed be discovered a few years later, in 1940, at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California: neptunium and plutonium.

Fermi’s group, on Via Panisperna, had the seemingly bizarre idea of immersing small silver cylinders under neutron radiation in the goldfish tank filled with water in the former nuns’ convent, slowing down the neutrons and thus making them more likely to be captured by atomic nuclei. The experiment was successful… and the goldfish likely died of cancer.

Rome, Enrico Fermi’s working group, first splitting of the atom, it is the uranium atom

Hideki Yukawa predicts the existence of mesons and pions

Rome. The High Altitude Unit was established within the Guidonia-Montecelio Experimental Center, near Rome. In April of the same year, before the unit was actually established, Renato Donati set the altitude record with a modified Caproni 113 AQ (High Altitude) biplane, equipped with a 550 hp Alfa Romeo engine, reaching 14,443 meters, over 1,000 meters higher than the record held by the Frenchman Lemonine. However, after completing the feat, Donati collapsed after a forced landing. He had exposed himself to temperatures of -56ºC, entering, after passing through the stratosphere and the tropopause (the uppermost region of the troposphere), a zone that was still completely unknown. Although his equipment may have seemed rudimentary, it had significantly improved compared to previous attempts: it had just been discovered that at altitudes above 12,000 meters, oxygen must be delivered under positive pressure (at these altitudes, the partial pressure of water vapor in the lungs is equal to that of oxygen, and without positive oxygen pressure, the pilot cannot survive). A year later, even the fairer sex decided to try their hand at the competition: pilot Carina Massone Negrone…

Charles William Beebe and Otis Barton reach a depth of 900 meters with their bathysphere, a new world record.

After a Nazi putsch in Vienna, Austria, Mussolini moved large Italian army troops to the Austrian border to prevent a possible German threat. This move intimidated the Germans (the Italian army at the time was more powerful and better armed than the German one).

The Parmigiano Reggiano Consortium is born

Philo Taylor Farnsworth gives the first public demonstration of his electronic television

China, Mao Zedong’s Communists begin the Long March to escape the Kuomintang Nationalists.

The famous bandits Bonnie & Clyde are killed by the police

Himmler takes control of the Gestapo, the German political police

Moscow. 17th Congress of the Communist Party, billed as the “Congress of the Victors,” and later renamed the “Congress of the Shot,” as within a few years, 1,098 of the 1,186 participants would be shot during Stalin’s purges.

Frederic Joliot and Irene Curie discover artificial radioactivity

Kolmogorov: Axiomization of Probability Theory

A Littlewood student, Stanley Skewes, estimated that only when counting the first few numbers no smaller than 10^10^10^34 can one witness the underestimation of the number of primes by Gaussian integral logarithm. This is an incredibly large number, probably the largest number ever considered in a mathematical proof up to that time.

Englishman John Tiltman manages to break the Japanese military code. The Japanese will soon change the code, which will also be solved in September 1934 by Oliver Strachey.

Nobel Prize in Physics to Erwin Schrödinger and Paul Dirac for their contributions to atomic theory

Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard, while crossing a street in London, suddenly realizes the possibility of a nuclear chain reaction.

Dutch physicist Ehrenfest, a close friend of Einstein, suffered from a very severe form of depression, which led him to shoot his youngest son, who had Down syndrome, and then take his own life.

Enrico Fermi bombarded uranium with neutrons to observe the high-energy alpha particles they emitted; in the experiment, he took care to shield the uranium with inert material to absorb the low-energy alpha particles. Had he not done so, he would likely have discovered nuclear fission several years before real history, and moreover in a country, Fascist Italy, closely linked to Nazi Germany.

Flexner, the director of the Princeton Research Institute, hires Albert Einstein for a salary of $15,000 a year.

Goebbels becomes German Minister of Information

The Boeing 247 is Boeing’s first passenger aircraft (twin-engine monoplane)

The U.S. Army inaugurates a bombing range on the salty bottom of Muroc Dry Lake in California; it will become Edwards Air Force Base, named for Glen W. Edwards, who lost his life at Muroc in June 1948 while piloting a YB-49 Flying Wing, an experimental Nothrop jet.

World’s Fair in Chicago: General Italo Balbo participates by flying across the Moon; the logistics are organized by Gene Aldrin, father of Edwin Eugene “Buzz” Aldrin, future member of the Apollo 11 crew and second man on the Moon.

Special Jubilee (anniversary of the death and resurrection of Christ) celebrated by Pius XI

Fritz Zwicky, at Mount Wilson, observing the Coma galaxy cluster, concludes that dark matter must exist to explain the high velocity of the galaxies themselves.

Richard Tolman of CalTech in Pasadena, California, suggests that regions of the universe beyond the reach of our telescopes are contracting rather than expanding, and contain matter at a stage of density and development quite different from that known to us.

Radio astronomy: Karl Jansky of Bell Labs records a mysterious background noise from deep space, which he calls “star noise.” A few years later, in 1937, Grote Reber builds the first radio telescope in Illinois and records a strong radio signature from the constellations Cygnus and Cassiopeia. This is the dawn of radio astronomy. And astronomy also transforms into the study of violent and frightening events, such as quasars and black holes, including the one at the center of our galaxy, in the constellation Cygnus. Then, in 1945, Frances Elisabeth Alexander discovers radio signals from the Sun, and in 1967, Jocelyne Bell-Burnell records periodic radio pulses (nicknamed LGM Little Green Men) emanating from stars later called pulsars.

California-based Standard Oil signs an agreement to develop crude oil fields in the newly formed Saudi Arabia under the Wahhabi family.

Guglielmo Marconi is appointed President of the Institute of the Italian Encyclopaedia. He will also contribute several entries.

Wiley Post completes solo round-the-world flight. American aviator Wiley Post returns to Floyd Bennet Field in New York, completing the world’s first solo round-the-world flight in 7 days, 18 hours, and 49 minutes. Post, recognizable by the eyepatch he wore, departed on July 15th, reaching Berlin non-stop. After a brief stop, he departed for the Soviet Union, where he made several stops before returning to North America. After stops in Alaska and Canada, he finally returned to New York. The aviator had already completed a solo round-the-world flight in 1931. He died in 1935 in a plane crash in Alaska while attempting to fly over the North Pole to the USSR with comedian Will Rogers.

Ettore Majorana wrote a letter to Emilio Segre’, also a member of the Fermi or Ragazzi di Via Panisperna group. In the letter, made public by Segre’ only in 1988, shortly before his death, Majorana spoke sympathetically about the Jewish question in Germany, also stating that it would not exist if Jews knew the art of keeping their mouths shut. The letter was deemed unforgivable by Emilio Segre’, a Jew, but it’s not certain that Ettore, a rebellious spirit and professional challenger, truly meant what he wrote.

Bruno Rossi discovers that cosmic rays, entering the atmosphere, produce extensive showers of particles, sometimes exotic.

Americans Alvarez and Compton demonstrate that cosmic rays are predominantly positive: due to interaction with the Earth’s magnetic field, more of them arrive from the West than from the East.

Wall Street loses 17% in six consecutive weekly sessions (the stock market is also open on Saturdays in 1933)

New York Times: Article headlined “Radio Waves Are Coming from the Center of the Galaxy.” NBC radio broadcasts the whistle coming from the stars and an interview with Jansky, who explains that the signal is coming from the center of the Milky Way, thirty thousand light-years away.

Soviet Union. The People’s Commissar reports to Stalin that the White Sea-Baltic Canal (Belomorkanal or Stalin Canal) is completed. In July of the same year, Stalin takes a pleasant steamboat cruise on the canal with Kirov. Photos of the event exist, showing the two laughing and joking. In reality, Kirov is already sentenced to death, unknowingly. The construction of the canal using the forced labor of gulag prisoners resulted in the deaths of approximately 300,000 people.

In Germany, the Nazi Party proclaims the National Anti-Jewish Boycott Day, during which Jews or people who do business with them are beaten or killed.

Reichstag elections: Nazi violence during the campaign, 43.9% for the Nazis

F.D. Roosevelt is president of the United States: on March 4, 1933, at the height of the Great Depression, Franklin Delano Roosevelt is inaugurated as the 32nd president of the United States. In his inaugural address, Roosevelt outlines the “New Deal,” the expansion of the federal government aimed at encouraging job creation and wealth, and states that the only thing Americans have to fear is fear itself. Although criticized by certain financial circles, his progressive legislation improved the American economy, and in 1936, Roosevelt is re-elected with great success. He wins two more terms, in 1940 and 1944, thus becoming the longest-serving president in US history.

H1N1 virus epidemic, of Russian origin

Tsunami in Kaalualu, Hawaii, with a 300m high wave

Earthquake in Japan: 8.9 on the Richter scale, 2,990 dead

7:00 PM: Miami, Florida: Giuseppe Zangara launches an assassination attempt on Franklin Delano Roosevelt, managing to fire five times, hitting five people and killing the mayor of Chicago; FDR escapes unharmed.

Alexander Dahl, with his hydrogen balloon, was the first to rise high enough above the ground (11,300 m) to photograph the curvature of the Earth. In 1935, it was surpassed by the American manned probe Explorer 2 (22 km) and then by the V2 rockets in 1947 from New Mexico (110 km).

Fritz Haber (the Nobel Prize-winning Haber process for ammonia synthesis, and also the Fritz Haber of World War I gases) receives orders from the Nazi government to fire all his Jewish collaborators as director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry. Haber, in an act of great courage, refuses. In his resignation letter, he says: “For more than forty years, I have chosen my collaborators based on their intelligence and character, not on their grandmothers, and I am not willing to change this method, which has always given me excellent results.”

After 16 years of war and guerrilla warfare, the Red Army finally manages to establish control over its Soviet Central Asia. The death toll is 50,000. The Basmachi are defeated.

Kazakhstan, Soviet Union. In just four years, the population, due to forced collectivization and the resulting famine, dropped from 8 million to 3 million. More than half the population disappeared.

Collectivization of land in the USSR causes 7 million deaths

Soviet Union. Baron Roberto Oros di Bartini, half-Italian but naturalized Russian, and a direct rival of Umberto Nobile, but for “heavier than air,” breaks the speed record, hurtling in his Stal-6 aircraft with retractable landing gear (the first of its kind) at 450 km/h. He will later be arrested during Stalin’s purges, but incredibly, he will continue his engineering projects even under these conditions, and will build bombers that will be used during World War II. He will be released from prison in 1948 and rehabilitated, finally being awarded the Order of Lenin in 1955.

Einstein and his wife left for the United States and Germany, never to return; after a brief return to Europe in Belgium, they returned to the United States to settle in Princeton in the wooden house at 112 Mercer Street.