When Doris Taylor became paralysed, her mother was advised to put her in a Home for Incurables. Instead, Doris helped elect a reforming South Australian premier and founded a national institution.
Thousands of banks failed in the Great Depression.
Bettmann via Getty Images
Crises fueled by bank runs, starting with the Great Depression, have had something in common: Unexpected changes spur bank failures, followed by general panic and then large-scale economic distress.
Relaxing some banking rules could affect the stability of the UK’s financial sector, largely based in the City of London.
Dmitry Naumov / Shutterstock
Shannon Bow O'Brien, The University of Texas at Austin College of Liberal Arts
Thousands of volunteers joined the military during World War I. But when the war ended and the Great Depression began, the volunteers wanted a bonus to be paid in 1932, not in 1945 as planned.
Left to right: Ben Bernanke, Douglas Diamond and Philip Dybvig.
The Nobel Foundation
Until Diamond and Dybvig published key papers in the early 1980s, it wasn’t well understood that perfectly healthy banks could be brought down by panicking depositors.
Tilly Devine, State Reformatory, NSW, 1925.
Public domain/Wikimedia commons
Sydney’s Domain, Melbourne’s Dudley Flats and the banks of the River Torrens in Adelaide were just a few places where communities of people experiencing homelessness sprung up in the early 1930s.
President Calvin Coolidge stands with members of a nonprofit group called the Daughters of 1812.
Library of Congress/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images
US President Calvin Coolidge hasn’t gone down in history for his triumphs or failures as president during the 1920s – but his dry sense of humor carries on.
Schoolchildren queuing for free soup and a slice of bread during the Depression, Belmore North Public School, 2 August 1934.
State Library of New South Wales
A bipartisan group of senators proposed the gas tax should be indexed to inflation to help pay for new infrastructure spending, an approach Biden calls ‘regressive.’
It even inspired the global TV hit, La Casa de Papel
Netflix
What might the past offer us at this moment, and how will future generations reflect on this year? How will this present become the future’s past?
Armed demonstrators attend a rally in front of the Michigan Capitol in Lansing to protest the governor’s stay-at-home order on May 14, 2020.
Scott Olson/Getty Images
Everyone’s saying it: ‘Democracy is fragile’ in the United States. But a political science scholar says that has always been the case.
Trump supporters clash with police and security forces as people try to storm the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 61.
Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images
The US faces many of the same problems Germans faced after World War II: how to reject, punish and delegitimize the enemies of democracy. There are lessons in how Germany handled that challenge.
A colorful vintage cartoon greeting card depicts a caricature of a soldier receiving a message from the ‘Pigeon Express’.
Donaldson Collection/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Marches, demonstrations, civic unrest, attacks by law enforcement and the military on protesting civilians: The parallels between the summer of 1932 and what is happening currently are striking.
A law to fast-track development consents is being fast-tracked itself. Before it’s too late, politicians should insist on greater protection against long-term environmental damage.