The following events occurred in March 1933:
March 1, 1933 (Wednesday) The fictional defense attorney Perry Mason was introduced, along with his secretary Della Street, and detective Paul Drake, in Erle Stanley Gardner's novel, The Case of the Velvet Claws, published by William Morrow and Company. The Governor of Kentucky declared March 1 to March 4 as "days of Thanksgiving" and legal holidays on which banks could remain closed, and Louisiana and Alabama followed suit, bringing to nine the number of American states that had declared a bank holiday. Banks remained closed in Maryland, Michigan, and Tennessee, while Arkansas, Indiana, and Pennsylvania restricted withdrawals, although the closures were voluntary. Born: Alan Ameche, American NFL player, in Kenosha, Wisconsin (d. 1988). Died: Uładzimir Žyłka, 32, Belarusian poet, at a concentration camp near Kirov.
March 2, 1933 (Thursday) The film King Kong, starring Fay Wray, premiered at Radio City Music Hall and the RKO Roxy Theatre in New York City. The movie about a gigantic ape was the first feature film to use stop-motion animation. Grossing $100,000 in its first week at the two theaters before going nationwide, the profitable film saved both RKO Pictures and the Roxy from bankruptcy. The number of American states closing their banks or restricting withdrawals rose to 17, as Arizona, California, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada and Oregon proclaimed bank holidays, and Illinois and Ohio limited withdrawals. Henry T. Rainey, U.S. Representative from Illinois and the former minority leader, was selected as the new Speaker of the House by his fellow Democrats, receiving 166 votes of the 301 cast. Second in the voting was John McDuffie of Alabama, with 112 votes. Rainey succeeded John Nance Garner, who had been elected Vice-President of the United States. With two days remaining in his term, U.S. President Herbert Hoover created the America's first national historical park, at Morristown, New Jersey and the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. Born: Robert Abbott, American game designer known as "The Grand Old Man of Card Games", in St. Louis. (d. 2018) Died: Thomas J. Walsh, 73, U.S. Senator for Montana since 1913. Walsh was on a train that had passed Wilson, North Carolina, en route to Washington for confirmation hearings to become the new United States Attorney General, when he suffered a heart attack. With him was his bride of five days. Francis Alexander Anglin, 77, Chief Justice of Canada two days after his retirement from the bench. He had served on the Court for 24 years, as a justice from 1909 to 1924, and as Chief Justice thereafter.
March 3, 1933 (Friday) At 2:32 a.m. local time, a powerful undersea earthquake rocked the Japanese island of Honshu. Shortly afterward, a tsunami almost high roared ashore, killing more than 3,000 people and destroying 9,000 homes and 8,000 boats. At an 8.9 magnitude, the quake was the largest ever recorded, rivaled only by a January 31, 1906 quake off the coast of Colombia and Ecuador. Ernst Thälmann, former Presidential candidate in the 1932 German elections and leader of the German Communist Party, was arrested at his Berlin apartment. Notwithstanding his re-election to Parliament two days later, Thälmann would spend the rest of his life imprisoned, and would be executed at the Buchenwald concentration camp on August 18, 1944. Nohra concentration camp, the first of Nazi Germany's "early camps", was opened in by the Interior Ministry of Germany's Thuringia#Free State of Thuringia, governed by the Nazi Party, and was used to confine arrested members of the German Communist Party. At its height, it would house 220 prisoners before being discontinued in July or earlier when its inmates were transferred to a regular prison at Ichtershausen. with around 100 prisoners arriving directly from regional court prisons, the barracks of the police in Weimar or via the regional court prison in Weimar. Japanese troops, invading China, captured the city of Chengde, capital of the Jehol Province. The impeachment trial of federal judge Harold Louderback began in the U.S. Senate. Louderback would later be acquitted of all charges. On the eve of President Roosevelt's inauguration, more states closed their banks as Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Washington, and Wisconsin, joined in declaring bank holidays, bringing to 25 the number of states under restriction.