1933 — The 21st Amendment to the Constitution, repealing prohibition, is ratified.

Also that year:

• President Roosevelt declares a national bank holiday, suspending the activity of the Federal Reserve System and all banks. He gives the first radio “fireside chat” and restores public confidence in the currency and the banks.
• President Hindenburg appoints Hitler Chancellor of Germany. Nazis burn the Reichstag building and accuse the Communists of setting the fire. The democratic Weimar Republic falls; Hitler’s Nazi Party wins a majority of seats in the Reichstag.
• The German government outlaws freedom of the press, all labor unions and political parties except the Nazis. Hitler’s police, the Gestapo, hunt down, shoot and jail opponents of the government. Germany withdraws from the European Disarmament Conference and from the League of Nations. Hitler begins to rearm Germany.
• The theory that Neanderthal man is in the line of descent of Homo Sapiens — modern man — is rejected following the discovery of the Steinheim skull in western Germany.