LOS
ANGELES, August 1, 1926 - (Sunday) -
 The
temperature reached a moderate 80 degrees, the overnight
low was 62, the wind blew at speeds up to 9 miles an hour,
and the skies were clear.
The
Los Angeles Times newspaper from August 1, 1926 reported
that Los Angeles was to be
hosting 9000 delegates from
all over the US for various conventions that were to
be held in the City during August and September. Also making
the news that day was that the Southern California chapter
of the National Aeronautic Association met at the Ambassador
Hotel to plan flights and make the skies safer for air
travel. Willem Van Hollander performed at the Hollywood
Bowl the night before. The Times also reported that the
LA Public Library downtown was just completed, and that
plans were under way for a new City Hall once a lawsuit
against the State was won which would allow an increase
to the building height. Power use had doubled in Los
Angeles
in the past 5 years. The City’s population stood at around
1.3 million people. There was a housing shortage, despite
an increase in building permits over 1925. A Los Angeles
department store advertised a woman’s dress for $1.50
and shoes for $3.50. In a classified ad for a car, someone
was asking $450 for a hardly used `26 Ford. A real estate
speculator hawked income producing citrus estates, the
Million Dollar Theater downtown was showing "The Son
of
the Sheik" starring Rudolph Valentino, and the starlet
of the day was Gilda Gray. Prohibition, a national law
that banned beer, wine and liquor was 6 years old, and
the LA Times on Sunday August 1, 1926 ran a story screaming
that contraband liquor was flooding California.
Of
interest to perhaps more people in 1926 was that President
Calvin Coolidge, despite some foreshadowing of the Great
Depression that was to come in 1929, announced that "business
looks cheerful", inflation was at 0%, and unemployment
was at 1.8%. Although telephones had been in the White
House for many years, the instrument would not actually
be on the President`s desk until the Stock Market crash
of 1929. Still, according to Herbert Hoover, Secretary
of Commerce in 1926, Americans were enjoying the highest
standard of living in the Nation’s history. The first
movie with sound had just been demonstrated, and many top
movie
stars, Greta Garbo among them, had to learn English with
the advent of the "talkies." Scotch tape, zippers, pop-up
electric toasters, TWA, a coin bearing the image of a
living president made their first appearances. A new machine
called
"television" had just been demonstrated in London. Americans
on August 1, 1926 were celebrating Babe Ruth`s 33rd homer
of the year.
The
biggest international news appearing in newspapers in 1926
was that Mussolini had abolished
political parties
in Italy, Trotsky admitted defeat and bowed to the Stalin
group as leaders of the USSR, and Joseph Goebbels had
been appointed to the head of the Berlin Nazi Party. In
Hungary,
the nation`s only munitions works exploded, killing 24,
and injuring 300.
Also
in Hungary that year, the Treaty of Trianon was 6 years
old, and Admiral Miklós Horthy was
Regent. Trianon
had stripped Hungary 2/3 of her territory, the economy
was in a shambles, and many Hungarians were suddenly
living under foreign domination.
Besides
all this, although the local or international press apparently
did not notice,
on August 1, 1926, The
First Hungarian Reformed Church of Los Angeles was officially
established.
Since
1926, the population of Los Angeles County has grown to
more than 10 million, the original
LA Public Library
downtown has recently undergone a significant addition,
and LA City Hall was in fact built and has just been
seismically retrofitted. Television sets can now be found
in more than
98% of homes in the US. The world witnessed years of
tyranny and foreign domination in Hungary, the Hungarian
Revolution
in 1956, then finally the 1989 downfall of communism.
But now as in 1926, freedom and world peace again appear
to
be threatened by political fanatics, but this time not
in Europe but in the Middle East.
Unlike
1926, where even the President did not have a telephone
on his desk, almost
every house today has at least one
telephone. Technological advances and computers have
profoundly changed the way we live. Cell phones, pagers,
personal
computers, laptops, voice-mail, call-waiting and more,
have become standard items in many of today`s households.
For
more events throughout the life of the First Hungarian
Reformed Church of Los Angeles, please continue reading.
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