March 22, 1933

1933Abolhassan Banisadr, Iranian economist and politician, 1st President of Iran (died 2021)^[†]

Abolhassan Banisadr was an Iranian politician, writer, and political dissident. He was the first president of Iran after the 1979 Iranian Revolution abolished the monarchy, serving from February 1980 until his impeachment by parliament in June 1981. Prior to his presidency, he was the Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Interim Government.

1933Cullen–Harrison Act: President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs an amendment to the Volstead Act, legalizing the manufacture and sale of "3.2 beer" (3.2% alcohol by weight, approximately 4% alcohol by volume) and light wines.^[†]

The Cullen–Harrison Act, named for its sponsors, Senator Pat Harrison and Representative Thomas H. Cullen, enacted by the United States Congress on March 21, 1933, and signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt the following day, legalized the sale in the United States of beer with an alcohol content of 3.2% and wine of similarly low alcohol content, thought to be too low to be intoxicating, effective April 7, 1933. Upon signing the legislation, Roosevelt made his famous remark, "I think this would be a good time for a beer."

1933Nazi Germany opens its first concentration camp, Dachau.^[†]

Nazi Germany, officially the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a totalitarian dictatorship. The Third Reich, meaning "Third Realm" or "Third Empire", referred to the Nazi claim that Nazi Germany was the successor to the earlier Holy Roman Empire (800–1806) and German Empire (1871–1918). The Third Reich, which the Nazis referred to as the Thousand-Year Reich, ended in May 1945, after 12 years, when the Allies defeated Germany and entered the capital, Berlin, ending World War II in Europe.