Belgian engineer, Étienne Lenoir, is generally credited with having invented the first commercially viable internal combustion engine.

Ferdinando Nicola Sacco (b. April 22, 1891) and Bartolomeo Vanzetti (b. June 11, 1888) were convicted of murder and executed on August 23, 1927.

The New Deal was a widespread series of government programs undertaken by Roosevelt when he became President to boost the American economy during the depths of the Great Recession.  In general, the programs sought to expand government’s role in the economy, making the answer about lowering taxes the only answer choice that does not fit in as a New Deal program.

Although many of the New Deal actions were later pushed through the fireside chats for public appeal, the original intent of the broadcast was to disseminate the panic related to the closing of the banks as the unemployment skyrocketed, and the markets crashed dramatically.  This was later dubbed the Emergency Banking act.

The Stock Market Crash of 1929, which began the 10-year Great Depression, is also known as Black Tuesday, as it happened on a Tuesday.

The Federal income tax is progressive for both individuals and corporations. This, essentially, means that the higher your personal income the greater percentage of that income is subject to taxation. The history of personal income tax in the United States is, perhaps, surprisingly recent. The first income tax was levied on wealthy individuals during the Civil War, but was repealed following the war’s end. Not until 1895 did the Federal government institute its first peacetime income tax. Shortly thereafter Congress passed the Sixteenth Amendment that enabled the government to levy taxes on all personal income. From that moment until now there has been a gradual trend of taxation increases and increases on the proportion of income that the wealthy are required to pay. This reflects the trends of much greater government spending and much greater social awareness in the twentieth and twenty-first Centuries.

The Underwood Tariff Act, also known as the Revenue Act of 1913, was signed into practice by President Wilson. It lowered the existing tariff rate from forty-percent to twenty-five percent, in an effort to encourage foreign trade. It also established a graduated income tax following the passage of the Sixteenth Amendment (which had established the constitutional right of the Federal government to levy income taxes).

The Taft-Hartley Act was passed to restrict the ability of American labor unions to organize for better wages and treatment. It was supported by the majority of Republicans in Congress and managed to pass despite President Truman’s veto attempt. Many historians believe that the Taft-Hartley Act was passed in response to the unprecedented level of strikes that the post-war United States witnessed in 1946. During, the war the vast majority of unions had agreed to refrain from strikes over wages and benefits to assist the war effort; however, with the war ended and wages falling across the country, strikes consistently broke out in almost all major American industries. 

The managers of The Triangle Waist Company routinely locked exit doors and doors leading to the stairwells in order to prevent thieving.  When a fire broke out at the factory, the mostly female garment workers were unable to evacuate.  146 workers died in the fire.

JFK launched an ambitious attempt to re-energize the economy and provide for greater social equality. Much of this New Frontier legislation met with opposition in Congress, as Republicans and Southern Democrats blocked a great deal of laws from passing; however, the Trade Expansion Act did pass Congress. It gave the executive branch the ability to lower existing tariffs by as much as fifty percent. The intention was to stimulate the economy.