Timeline 1920-1921
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1920 Jan 2, Isaac
Asimov, Prolific American writer of over 300 books including Foundation
and I, Robot, was born.
(HN, 1/2/99)
1920 Jan 2, Some 2,700 arrests
were made in raids in 33 American cities as part of a campaign against
political radicals and labor agitators spearheaded by the Department of
Justice under A. Mitchell Palmer. The Palmer Raids were in reaction to
the so-called "Red Scare" that followed the Bolshevik Revolution in
Russia and the founding in 1919 of the Worker‘s Party (later Communist
Party) in the U.S. Mass arrests of political and labor leaders and
agitators began in the fall of 1919 and ended in May of 1920.
(HNQ, 2/22/00)
1920 Jan 3, The Red Sox sold Babe
Ruth to the Yankees for $100,000, twice the amount of any previous
player transaction. The deal also included a $300,000 loan secured by a
mortgage on Fenway Park, a contractual clause that made the Yankees
owners the Red Sox's landlords.
(http://espn.go.com/sportscentury/features/00242487.html)
1920 Jan 3, The last of the U.S.
troops quit France.
(HN, 1/3/99)
1920 Jan 4, William Egan Colby,
CIA director under Nixon, was born.
(MC, 1/4/02)
1920 Jan 4, The Negro National
League, the first black baseball league, was organized by Rube Foster.
(HN, 1/4/99)
1920 Jan 5, GOP women demanded
equal representation at the Republican National Convention in June.
(HN, 1/5/99)
1920 Jan 6, Sun Myung Moon,
evangelist (Unification Church-Moonies), was born.
(MC, 1/6/02)
1920 Jan 10, The League of Nations
was established as the Treaty of Versailles went into effect. The Free
City of Danzig (Gdansk) was constituted by the treaty.
(WUD, 1994, p.367)(AHD, 1971, p.744)(AP, 1/10/98)
1920 Jan 13, A NY Times editorial
excoriated Dr. Robert H. Goddard, and reported that rockets can never
fly. In 1969 the NY Times belatedly apologized.
(WSJ, 8/7/03, p.A1)
1920 Jan 14, Berlin was placed
under martial law as 40,000 radicals rushed the Reichstag; 42 are dead
and 105 are wounded.
(HN, 1/14/99)
1920 Jan 15, John J. "Cardinal"
O'Connor, Phila, Roman Catholic Archbishop of NY, was born.
(MC, 1/15/02)
1920 Jan 15, The Dry Law
(Prohibition) went into effect in the United States. Selling liquor and
beer became illegal under the 18th amendment. [see Jan 16]
(HN, 1/15/99)(SFC, 10/13/99, p.E7)
1920 Jan 15, The United States
approved a $150 million loan to Poland, Austria and Armenia to aid in
their war with the Russian communists.
(HN, 1/15/99)
1920 Jan 16, Prohibition began as
the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution took effect. It was later
repealed by the 21st Amendment. Alcohol was outlawed in the US with the
passage of the 18th amendment. It was made law on Jan 16,1919, but
became effective on this day. At the time US authorities expected few
violations of the new law. Over the next fourteen years, Prohibition
corrupted all levels of society, swamped the judiciary, killed
thousands of people, and gave rise to underworld syndicates that still
exist.
(www.browardpalmbeach.com/1997-12-04/news/the-gallows-and-the-deep/)(AP,
1/16/98)(SFC, 4/7/96, p.B-11)
1920 Jan 16, The League of Nations
held its first meeting in Paris.
(HN, 1/16/99)
1920 Jan 16, Allies lifted the
blockade on trade with Russia.
(HN, 1/16/99)
1920 Jan 19, US Senate voted
against membership in the League of Nations.
(MC, 1/19/02)
1920 Jan 20, Movie director
Federico Fellini was born in Rimini, Italy.
(AP, 1/20/00)
1920 Jan 22, William Warfield,
singer (Show Boat), was born.
(MC, 1/22/02)
1920 Jan 23, The Dutch government
refused demands from the victorious Allies to hand over Kaiser Wilhelm
II, the dethroned German monarch who had fled to the Netherlands.
(AP, 1/23/00)
1920 Jan 24, Amedeo Modigliani
(b.1884), Italian sculptor, painter, died in Paris. His mistress Jeanne
Hebuterne, pregnant with his child, committed suicide 2 days later
rather than live without him. In 2006 Jeffrey Meyers authored
“Modigliani: A Life.”
(www.guggenheimcollection.org/site/artist_bio_110.html)(WSJ, 3/21/06,
p.D8)
1920 Jan 26, Jeanne Hebuterne
(b.1898), the mistress of Amadeo Modigliani, killed herself 2 days
following Modigliani’s death while carrying his child.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_H%C3%A9buterne)
1920 Jan, In Mass., Calvin
Coolidge in his inaugural address as governor stated: "There is a limit
to the taxing power of the state beyond which increased rates produce
decreased revenues."
(WSJ, 6/16/98, p.A17)
1920 Nov, The US Palmer raids led
to the arrest of some 10,000 members of radical clubs. [see Nov. 1919]
(SSFC, 1/11/04, p.M6)
1920 Jan, Albanian leaders met in
Lushnjë and rejected the partitioning of Albania by the Treaty of
Paris. They created a bicameral parliament and warned that Albanians
would take up arms in defense of territory.
(www, Albania, 1998)
1920 Feb 1, 1st commercial armored
car was introduced in St. Paul, Minn.
(MC, 2/1/02)
1920 Feb 1, The Royal North West
Mounted Police was formed as the Royal Northwest Mounted Police merged
with Dominion Police and incorporated as the federal organization
called the Dominion Police. The name Royal Canadian Mounted Police was
adopted.
(AP, 2/1/97)(AP, 5/23/97)(HNQ, 5/5/98)(MC, 2/1/02)
1920 Feb 2, A. Wang, founder of
Wang Labs and Wang Computers, was born.
(MC, 2/2/02)
1920 Feb 3, The Allies demanded
that 890 German military leaders stand trial for war crimes.
(HN, 2/3/99)
1920 Feb 4, The 1st flight from
London to South Africa took off and lasted 1 month.
(MC, 2/4/02)
1920 Feb 7, Oscar Brand, folk
vocalist (Draw Me a Laugh), was born in Winnipeg, Canada.
(MC, 2/7/02)
1920 Feb 7, Adm. Alexander Kolchak
(b.1874), commander of the White Army in Siberia during the civil war
that followed the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, was executed by a firing
squad in Irkutsk about a month after relinquishing command of
anti-Bolshevik forces. He was condemned in Soviet law as a
counterrevolutionary. In 2004 efforts began to exonerate him.
(AP, 12/7/04)(www.firstworldwar.com/bio/kolchak.htm)
1920 Feb 8, Swiss men voted
against women's suffrage.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1920 Feb 10, Alex Comfort, English
physician and author, was born. His books included "Joy of Sex."
(HN, 2/10/01)
1920 Feb 11, Farouk I, last King
of Egypt (1936-52), was born in Cairo.
(MC, 2/11/02)
1920 Feb 12, The last German
forces withdrew from Klaipeda as French and English naval forces
arrived.
(LHC, 2/12/03)
1920 Feb 13, Eileen Farrell, opera
soprano (Interrupted Melody), was born in Willimantic, Conn.
(MC, 2/13/02)
1920 Feb 13, The League of Nations
recognized the perpetual neutrality of Switzerland.
(AP, 2/13/98)
1920 Feb 13-14, Andrew Foster
formed the 1st black baseball league, the Negro National League, at a
meeting at the Colored YMCA, Kansas City, Mo.
(AH, 2/05, p.17)
1920 Feb 14, The League of Women
Voters was founded in Chicago to encourage women's participation in
government; its first president was Maude Wood Park.
(HFA, ‘96, p.22)(AP, 2/14/98)(SFC, 10/13/99, p.E7)
1920 Feb 15, K Reinmuth discovered
asteroid #926 Imhilde.
(440 Int’l., 2/15/99)
1920 Feb 16, Patty Andrews,
vocalist (Andrews Sisters), was born in Minneapolis.
(MC, 2/16/02)
1920 Feb 16, The Allies
accepted Berlin’s offer to try World War I war criminals in Leipzig’s
Supreme Court.
(HN, 2/16/98)
1920 Feb 17, A directorship for
the Klaipeda (Kaliningrad) region was formed.
(LHC, 2/17/03)
1920 Feb 18, Vuillemin and Chalus
completed their first flight over the Sahara Desert.
(HN, 2/18/98)
1920 Feb 20, Robert E. Peary (63),
US pole explorer (North Pole, 6/4/1909), died.
(MC, 2/20/02)
1920 Feb 21, Robert S. Johnson,
was born. He became the American World War II fighter ace who shot down
27 German planes.
(HN, 2/21/99)
1920 Feb 21, A Prussian
Lithuanian National Council urged the Lithuanian government and the
Allies to take measures for uniting the Klaipeda region to Lithuania.
(LHC, 2/21/03)
1920 Feb 22, The American Relief
Administration appealed to the public to pressure Congress to aid
starving European cities.
(HN, 2/22/98)
1920 Feb 22, The 1st artificial
rabbit was used at a dog race track in Emeryville, Calif.
(MC, 2/22/02)
1920 Feb 24, A fledgling German
political party held its first meeting of importance at Hofbrauhaus in
Munich; it became known as the Nazi Party, and its chief spokesman was
Adolf Hitler.
(AP, 2/24/00)
1920 Feb 24, Samuel J. Harris
(b.1896), First Lieutenant, American Brigade, Republic of Lithuania,
died in an army revolt in Kaunas, Lithuania. The insurrection was due
to Communist agitation among the inexperienced peasant boys in the
Lithuanian army. The uprising was quelled immediately, through the
activity of the American and British officers of the military missions
present in Lithuania. Harris was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
(www.arlingtoncemetery.net/sjharris.htm)
1920 Feb 26, Tony Randall [Leonard
Rosenberg], actor (Felix-Odd Couple, Love Sidney), was born in Tulsa,
OK.
(SC, 2/26/02)
1920 Feb 27, The US rejected a
Soviet peace offer as propaganda.
(HN, 2/27/98)
1920 Feb 27, The Boys’ and Girls’
Bureau, formed in 1919 and headed by Theodore N. Vail, president of
AT&T, changed its name to the Junior Achievement Bureau.
(www.ja.org/about/about_history.shtml)
1920 Feb 27, The Lithuanian
government offered the representatives of the National Council of
Prussian Lithuania assent to co-optation in the Lithuanian government.
They co-opted March 20.
(LHC, 2/27/03)
1920 Feb 28, Maurice Ravel's "Le
Tombeau de Couperin," premiered.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1920 Feb, A New York Times
reporter suggested to lawyer Harry Daugherty, campaign manager for
Warren Harding, that Harding would be selected by backroom bosses on
Friday night of convention week at about 2 a.m. Daugherty said make
that 2:11 a.m. He was thus quoted in the NYT.
(WSJ, 8/26/96, p.A12)
1920 Feb, Albanian government
moved to Tirana, which became the capital.
(www, Albania, 1998)
1920 Mar 1, Harry Caray, baseball
announcer (Chicago Cubs), was born.
(SC, 3/1/02)
1920 Mar 1, Howard Nemerov,
writer, 3rd US poet laureate, Pulitzer Prize recipient, was born. [HN
says 1921]
(HN, 3/1/01)(SC, 3/1/02)
1920 Mar 1, Austria became a
kingdom again under Admiral Horthy.
(SC, 3/1/02)
1920 Mar 2, Karel Capek’s
"Loupeznik" premiered in Prague.
(www.enotes.com/peoples-chronology/year-1920/theater-film)
1920 Mar 3, Robert Searle,
cartoonist, was born.
(HN, 3/3/01)
1920 Mar 4, Last day of Julian
civil calendar in Greece.
(SC, 3/4/02)
1920 Mar 7, The Bolsheviks opened
major offensive on the Polish front.
(HN, 3/7/98)
1920 Mar 13, The Kapp Putsch took
place, involving a group of Freikorps troops who gained control of
Berlin and installed Wolfgang Kapp (a right-wing journalist) as
chancellor. The national government fled to Stuttgart and called for a
general strike. The strike crippled Germany's ravaged economy and the
Kapp government collapsed after only four days on March 17.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weimar_Republic)
1920 Mar 14, Hank Ketchum,
cartoonist (Dennis the Menace), was born in Seattle, Wa.
(MC, 3/14/02)(http://www.askart.com/Biography.asp)
1920 Mar 16, Leo McKern, actor
(Blue Lagoon, Help, Mouse that Roared, Rumpole of the Bailey), was born
in Sydney, Australia.
(MC, 3/16/02)
1920 Mar 17, John La Montaine,
composer (Pulitzer 1959), was born in Oak Park, Ill.
(MC, 3/17/02)
1920 Mar 19, The U.S. Senate
rejected for the second time the Treaty of Versailles by a vote of
49-35, falling short of the two-thirds majority needed for approval.
(AP, 3/19/97)(HN, 3/19/98)
1920 Mar 20, Pamela Churchill
Harriman (d.1997) was born. She was later appointed by Pres. Clinton as
ambassador to France. In 1996 Sally Bedell Smith wrote her biography:
"Reflected Glory: The Life of Pamela Churchill Harriman."
(SFC, 10/23/96, p.E6)(SFC, 2/6/97, p.A14)
1920 Mar 20, Britain and its
allies formally occupied Istanbul.
(Econ, 10/21/06, p.95)
1920 Mar 21, Bruno Maderna,
composer, was born.
(MC, 3/21/02)
1920 Mar 23, Britain denounced the
U.S. because of their delay in joining the League of Nations.
(HN, 3/23/98)
1920 Mar 23, The Perserikatan
Communist of India (PKI) political party formed.
(SS, 3/23/02)
1920 Mar 25, Howard Cosell
(Cohen), was born. He came to be the most liked, and the most disliked,
sports journalist across America.
(MC, 3/25/02)
1920 Mar 25, Greek Independence
Day.
(MC, 3/25/02)
1920 Mar 27, Richard Hayman,
bandleader, conductor, pianist (Theme of 3 Penny Opera), was born.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1920 Mar 28, Dirk Bogarde, actor
(Death in Venice, Servant), was born in London, England.
(MC, 3/28/02)
1920 Mar 28, Thomas Masaryk was
elected president of Czechoslovakia.
(MC, 3/28/02)
1920 Mar 31, British parliament
accepted Irish "Home Rule" law.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1920 Mar, The US federal
government returned the railroads to private hands.
(SFC, 7/8/96, p.D2)
1920 Mar, Faisal I ibn Hussein ibn
Ali became the 1st king Syria.
(www.wordiq.com/definition/Faisal)
1920 Apr 1, Toshiro Mifune,
writer, actor (Shogun), was born in Tsing-tao, China.
(MC, 4/1/02)
1920 Apr 1, Germany's Workers
Party changed its name to Nationalist Socialist German Worker's Party
(Nazis). The National Socialist (Nazi) party was born in Munich in the
1920s.
(HN, 4/1/98)(HNQ, 1/26/00)
1920 Apr 2, Jack Webb, actor (Joe
Friday-Dragnet), was born in Santa Monica, Calif.
(MC, 4/2/02)
1920 Apr 3, F. Scott Fitzgerald
and Zelda Sayre were married at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York
City.
(HN, 4/3/02)
1920 Apr 4, Arabs attacked Jews in
Jerusalem.
(MC, 4/4/02)
1920 Apr 5, Arthur Hailey
(d.2004), author, was born in Luton, England. His later novels included
“Hotel” and ”Airport.”
(HN, 4/5/01)(SFC, 11/26/04, p.B3)
1920 Apr 5, Japanese forces landed
in Vladivostok.
(HN, 5/5/97)
1920 Apr 7, Ravi Shankar, sitar
player, was born in Benares, India.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1920 Apr 8, Carmen McRae, jazz
vocalist and pianist, was born.
(HN, 4/8/01)
1920 Apr 8, Charles Tomlinson
Griffes (35), US composer (White Peacock), died.
(MC, 4/8/02)
1920 Apr 9, Isaias Hellman
(b.1842), Jewish immigrant and California entrepreneur, died. In 2008
Frances Dinkelspiel authored “Towers of Gold: How One Jewish Immigrant
Named Isaias Hellman Created California.”
(SSFC, 11/30/08, Books
p.1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaias_W._Hellman)
1920 Apr 14, John Paul Stevens, US
Supreme Court Justice, was born.
(MC, 4/14/02)
1920 Apr 15, A paymaster and his
guard at a shoe factory in Braintree, Massachusetts, were killed in a
robbery. Italian immigrants Sacco and Vanzetti were accused of the
crime.
(HN, 8/23/98)(WSJ, 8/18/07, p.P8)
1920 Apr 15, Richard von
Weizsacker, baron, president (Germany, 1984-94), was born.
(MC, 4/15/02)
1920 Apr 20, John Paul Stevens,
103rd Supreme Court Justice (1975-), was born in Illinois.
(MC, 4/20/02)
1920 Apr 20, Tornadoes struck
northern Alabama and Mississippi. The final Alabama death toll reached
92 people. As many as 219 people were reportedly killed.
(www.srh.noaa.gov/bmx/significant_events/climate/top10.php)(SFC,
4/20/09, p.D8)
1920 Apr 20, Balfour Declaration
was recognized. This made Palestine a British Mandate.
(MC, 4/20/02)
1920 Apr 20, The VII Olympiad
opened in Belgium. The Olympic oath and flag showing 5 interlocking
rings as a symbol of the 5 continents made their first appearance at
the Antwerp Olympics. Germany, Austria, Bulgaria, Turkey and Hungary
were not invited and the new Soviet Union decided not to attend.
(WSJ, 4/12/08,
p.R2)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1920_Summer_Olympics)
1920 Apr 21, Bruno Maderna,
conductor, composer, Hyperion), was born in Venice, Italy.
(MC, 4/21/02)
1920 Apr 23, The Turkish Grand
National Assembly held its first meeting in Ankara.
(HN, 4/23/99)
1920 Apr 24, British Mandate over
Palestine went into effect and lasted for 28 years. The British
organized a police force with some 3,000 British, Arab and Jewish
officers.
(MC, 4/24/02)(WSJ, 2/2/04, p.A12)
1920 Apr 26, Srinivasa Ramanujan
(b.1887), Indian mathematician, died in India. In 1913 English
mathematician G.H. Hardy recognized his brilliant work, and asked
Ramanujan to study under him at Cambridge. In 2007 British playwright
Simon McBurney created “A Disappearing Number,” for his theater group
“Complicite,” based on Ramanujan’s 5 years a Cambridge.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan)(Econ, 9/1/07, p.76)
1920 Apr 27, Pogrom leader
Petljoera (Petlyura) declared Ukraine Independence.
(MC, 4/27/02)
1920 Apr 28, Azerbaijan joined the
USSR.
(HN, 4/28/98)
1920 May 1, Belgian-Luxembourg
toll tunnel opened.
(MC, 5/1/02)
1920 May 2, 1st game of National
Negro Baseball League was played in Indianapolis.
(MC, 5/2/02)
1920 May 3, John Lewis, jazz
pianist, was born.
(HN, 5/3/01)
1920 May 3, "Sugar" Ray Robinson,
American middleweight boxer, was born. He won the world title for
a record five times.
(HN, 5/3/99)
1920 May 5, US Pres. Wilson made
the Communist Labor Party illegal.
(MC, 5/5/02)
1920 May 5, Anarchists Nicola
Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were arrested for murder.
(HN, 5/5/98)
1920 May 8, Sloan Wilson, American
author, was born in Norwalk, Conn. He wrote "The man in the Gray
Flannel Suit" and "A Summer Place."
(HN, 5/8/99)(MC, 5/8/02)
1920 May 10, Richard Adams,
English novelist (Watership Down), was born.
(HN, 5/10/02)
1920 May 16, Joan of Arc was
canonized by Pope Benedict XV.
(AP, 5/16/97)(HN, 5/16/98)
1920 May 18, Pope John Paul II
(d.2005) was born as Karol Jozef Wojtyla, in Wadowice, Poland. In 1978
he became the 264th Roman Catholic pope. He was the first non-Italian
Roman Catholic pope since the Renaissance and wrote the international
bestseller "Crossing the Threshold."
(SFC, 5/19/97, p.A13)(HN, 5/18/99)(SSFC, 4/3/05,
p.A12)
1920 May 18, In the 46th
Preakness: Clarence Kummer aboard Man o' War won in 1:51.6.
(SC, 5/18/02)
1920 May 22, Thomas Gold,
astronomer, was born.
(HN, 5/22/01)
1920 May 23, Helen O'Connell, big
band vocalist, was born.
(HN, 5/23/01)
1920 May 26, Peggy Lee (d.2002),
jazz singer, was born in Jamestown, ND, as Norma Dolores Egstrom.
(HN, 5/26/01)(SFC, 1/23/02, p.A2)
1920 May 31, Edward Bennett
Williams, Washington lawyer, was born.
(HN, 5/31/98)
1920 Jun 4, The Treaty of
Trianon, signed at Versailles, was forced upon Hungary by the
victorious Allies after WWII and resulted in Hungary giving up nearly
three-fourths of its territory to Romania, Czechoslovakia and the
Kingdom of Serbs, Croat and Slovenes. Hungary lost more than half its
population, including some 3 million Hungarians. Hungary ceded the
hills of Transylvania to Romania.
(HNQ, 7/5/98)(WSJ, 1/2/97,
p.1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Trianon)
1920 Jun 5, Cornelius Ryan, US
historian, writer (The Longest Day), was born.
(MC, 6/5/02)
1920 Jun 10, The Republican
convention in Chicago endorsed woman suffrage.
(HN, 6/10/98)
1920 Jun 11, Robert Hutton, actor
(Torture Garden, Rocket), was born in Kingston, NY.
(SC, 6/11/02)
1920 Jun 11, Hazel Scott, singer,
pianist (Hazel Scott), was born in Trinidad.
(SC, 6/11/02)
1920 Jun 11, The US Republican
Senate bosses gathered in rooms 408 & 410 of the Blackstone Hotel
in Chicago and selected Sen. Warren Harding to break a deadlock.
Harding, disregarding his mistress of four years, Nan Britton, declared
himself to be of good character. The Republicans nominated Warren G.
Harding at the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago. Britton later wrote a book,
"The President’s Daughter," about their relations and claimed that she
bore his daughter. Harding had another mistress named Carrie Phillips.
In 1999 Martin Blinder published his novel "Fluke" based on Harding's
political career and presidency.
(WSJ, 8/26/96, p.A12)(Hem, 8/96, p.84)(SFC, 2/5/98,
p.A8)(SFEC, 5/2/99, BR p.8)
1920 Jun 12, Republicans in
Chicago nominated Warren G. Harding for president and Calvin Coolidge,
governor of Massachusetts, for vice president.
(HN, 6/12/98)(WSJ, 6/16/98, p.A17)
1920 Jun 13, The U.S. Post Office
Department ruled that children may not be sent by parcel post.
(HN, 6/13/98)
1920 Jun 15, Three African
Americans were lynched in Duluth, Minnesota, by a white mob of 5,000.
(HN, 6/15/98)
1920 Jun 16, John Howard Griffin,
writer, was born. He posed as an African-American in the south in the
early 1960s and his experiences resulted in the book "Black Like Me."
(HN, 6/16/99)
1920 Jun 20, Race riots in
Chicago, Illinois left two dead and many wounded.
(HN, 6/20/98)
1920 Jun 25, The Greeks took 8,000
Turkish prisoners in Smyrna.
(HN, 6/25/98)
1920 Jun 27, I.A.L. Diamond,
screenwriter, was born.
(HN, 6/27/01)
1920 Jun 28, The Democrats opened
their convention, the first in the West, in San Francisco. James Cox of
Ohio was elected presidential candidate on the 44th ballot on July 6.
(WSJ, 1/29/98, p.A19)(SFEC, 4/25/99, Z1 p.4)(AH,
10/04, p.56)
1920 Jun 28, Clarissa Eden was
born to Major Jack Spencer-Churchill and Lady Gwendoline Bertie. In
1952 she married Anthony Eden (1897-1977) who later became Britain’s PM
(1955-1957). Her father was the younger brother of Winston Churchill.
In 2008 Cate Haste edited “Clarissa Eden, A Memoir: From Churchill to
Eden.”
(Econ, 1/19/08,
p.91)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarissa_Eden,_Countess_of_Avon)
1920 Jul 4, Leona Helmsley, (wife
of Harry), real estate billionaire, tax cheat, was born.
(MC, 7/4/02)
1920 Jul 6, The Democrats ended
their convention in San Francisco with the selection James Cox of Ohio
and running mate Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Cox and FDR were committed
internationalists and lost the elections due to the isolationism of the
times.
(SFEC, 4/25/99, Z1 p.4)(AH, 10/04, p.56)
1920 Jul 7, A device known as the
radio compass was used for the first time on a U.S. Navy airplane.
(MC, 7/7/02)
1920 Jul 8, The Galician Soviet
Socialist Republic (Galician SSR) was formed and lasted to September
21, 1920, during the Polish-Soviet War within the area of the
South-Western front of the Red Army.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galician_Soviet_Socialist_Republic)
1920 Jul 10, David Brinkley
(d.2003), broadcaster, was born in Wilmington, NC.
(HN, 7/10/01)(MC, 7/10/02)
1920 Jul 11, Yul Brynner, actor
(The King and I, The Ten Commandments) , was born.
(PGA, 12/9/98)
1920 Jul 16, Gen. Amos Fries was
appointed 1st US army chemical warfare chief.
(MC, 7/16/02)
1920 Jul 20, Elliot L. Richardson,
US Attorney General (1973), Sec of Defense (1973), was born.
(MC, 7/20/02)
1920 Jul 21, Isaac Stern,
violinist, was born in Kreminiecz, Russia.
(HN, 7/21/98)
1920 Jul 23, King Faisal’s Arab
Army was defeated at Maysaloun and Syria fell effectively under French.
(AP, 7/23/97)
1920 Jul 24, Bella Abzug, the
first Jewish woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, was
born.
(HN, 7/24/98)
1920 Jul 27, A radio compass was
used for 1st time for aircraft navigation.
(MC, 7/27/02)
1920 Jul 28, Revolutionary and
bandit Pancho Villa surrendered to the Mexican government.
(HN, 7/28/98)
1920 Aug 2, Marcus Garvey
presented his "Back To Africa" program in NYC.
(MC, 8/2/02)
1920 Aug 3, P.D. James (Phyllis
Dorothy James), British mystery writer, was born.
(HN, 8/3/00)
1920 Aug 3, Maria Karnilova,
actress (Olga-Ivan the Terrible), was born in Hartford, Ct.
(SC, 8/3/02)
1920 Aug 10, Allies recognized
Poland, Czechoslovakia and Romania.
(MC, 8/10/02)
1920 Aug 10, The Ottoman sultanate
at Constantinople signed the Treaty of Sevres with the Allies and
associated powers. It promised a homeland for the Kurds, but the
nationalist government in Ankara did not sign the treaty. It set the
borders of Turkey recognized Armenia as an independent state.
(SFC, 2/17/99, p.A10)(EWH, 4th ed,
p.1086)(www.lib.byu.edu/~rdh/wwi/versa/sevres1.html)
1920 Aug 10, Turkish government
renounced its claim to Israel and recognized the British mandate.
(MC, 8/10/02)
1920 Aug 13, George Shearing,
blind pianist, composer (Lullaby of Byrdland), was born in
London.
(MC, 8/13/02)
1920 Aug 14, Nehemiah Persoff,
actor (Al Capone, Yentl), was born in Jerusalem, Palestine.
(MC, 8/14/02)
1920 Aug 16, Charles Bukowski,
poet and novelist, was born.
(HN, 8/16/00)
1920 Aug 17, Georgia Gibbs, singer
(Ballin the Jack, Kiss of Fire), was born in Worcester, Mass.
(SC, 8/17/02)
1920 Aug 17, Ray Chapman died
after he was hit in the head by Yanks' pitcher Carl Mays.
(SC, 8/17/02)
1920 Aug
18, Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify the 19th Amendment to the
Constitution, which guaranteed the right of all American women to vote.
This completed the three-quarters necessary to put the amendment into
effect. Aaron Sargent, who wrote the 19th amendment, also built
Grandmere's Inn in Nevada City. Carrie Chapman Catt, founder of the
League of Women Voters, played a crucial role in its passage. She also
held some very racist views: she called the ballots of proletarian
voters "undesirable" and referred to Indians as "savages." [see Aug 26,
1920]
(SFC, 4/14/96, T-3)(SFC, 6/9/96, p.B-11)(AP,
8/18/97)(HN, 8/18/01)
1920 Aug 20, Pioneering American
radio station 8MK in Detroit (later WWJ) began daily broadcasting.
(AP, 8/20/97)
1920 Aug 20, A preliminary meeting
was held in Akron, Ohio, to form the American Pro Football League.
(MC, 8/20/02)
1920 Aug 22, Ray Bradbury, science
fiction writer whose works include "The Martian Chronicles" and
"Fahrenheit 451," was born.
(WSJ, 11/22/95, p.A-3)(HN, 8/22/98)
1920 Aug 22, Denton Cooley, heart
surgeon (1st artificial heart implant), was born in Houston.
(MC, 8/22/02)
1920 Aug 23, M.R. Rinehart and A.
Hopwood's "Bat," premiered in NYC.
(MC, 8/23/02)
1920 Aug
26, US Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby certified ratification of
the Nineteenth Amendment. The amendment had been first introduced in
Congress in 1878, setting in motion supporters who demonstrated,
lobbied, marched and spoke out for woman suffrage. They were often met
with venomous opposition. Early on, the two main factions of the
movement disagreed about how to achieve their goal, but they ultimately
united in 1890 to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association
and worked together to get the amendment passed. By August 18, 1920,
three-fourths of the United States had agreed to the bill.
(AP, 8/26/97)(HNPD, 8/26/99)
1920 Aug 29, Charlie "Bird"
Parker, self-taught jazz saxophonist, pioneer of the new "cool"
movement, was born.
(HN, 8/29/98)
1920 Aug, Hugo Gernsback changed
the title of his magazine Modern Electrics to Science and Invention and
began to include 2 fiction pieces in every issue.
(ON, 11/05, p.11)
1920 Aug, Max Reinhardt conducted
the world premier of Hugo von Hofmannstahl’s version of "Everyman" in
front of the Salzburg Cathedral.
(WSJ, 8/10/95, p.A-9)
1920 Sep 2, W. Somerset Maugham's
"East of Suez," premiered in London.
(MC, 9/2/01)
1920 Sep 4, Craig Claiborne, food
critic, food columnist (NY Times Cookbook) and cookbook author, was
born.
(HN, 9/4/00)(MC, 9/4/01)
1920 Sep 4, Maggie Higgins, the
first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize (1951) for international
reporting, for her work in Korean war zones, was born.
(HN, 9/4/98)
1920 Sep 8, New York-to-San
Francisco air mail service was inaugurated. US postal planes began
flying across the country, but these flights took place only in
daylight because pilots relied on visual landmarks to navigate.
(www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/Government_Role/1918-1924/POL3.htm)(AP,
9/8/00)
1920 Sep 16, A bomb exploded in
front of the Morgan building at 23 Wall St. in NYC at noon on a busy
Thursday. 33 people were killed and over 200 wounded. A 16-foot stretch
of the Tennessee-marble façade with pockmarks of the blast was
retained as a memorial. Ron Chernow described the incident in his book
"The House of Morgan." No one was charged but Prof. Paul Avrich, in his
book "Sacco and Vanzetti: The Anarchist Background," later held that
Mario Buda, an Italian immigrant, was the culprit.
(WSJ, 12/10/98, p.B1)(SFC, 9/22/01, p.A3)(SSFC,
4/16/06, p.E4)(WSJ, 8/18/07, p.P8)
1920 Sep 17, The American
Professional Football Association -- a precursor of the NFL -- was
formed in Canton, Ohio. 12 teams paid $100 each to join American Prof
Football Assn. Jim Thorpe was the first president. The name was changed
to the National Football League (NFL) in 1922. The NFL merged with the
AFL in 1970.
(AP, 9/17/97)(SFC, 7/11/98, p.B3)(HNQ, 11/19/00)(MC,
9/17/01)
1920 Sep 21, Jay Ward, cartoonist
(Rocky & his Friends, Bullwinkle), was born.
(MC, 9/21/01)
1920 Sep 22, Chicago grand jury
convened to investigate charges that 8 White Sox players conspired to
fix the 1919 World Series.
(MC, 9/22/01)
1920 Sep 23, Mickey Rooney, actor,
was born Joe Yule, Jr. in Brooklyn, NY.
(SSFC, 3/11/01, DB p.61)
1920 Sep 27, Eight Chicago White
Sox players were charged with fixing the 1919 World Series. [see Sep 28]
(HN, 9/27/98)
1920 Sep 28, 8 White Sox players
were indicted for throwing the 1919 World Series (Black Sox scandal).
[see Sep 27]
(MC, 9/28/01)
1920 Sep, Albania forced Italy to
withdraw its troops and abandon claims on Albanian territory.
(www, Albania, 1998)
1920 Oct 1, Walter Matthau
(d.2000), actor, was born as Walter Matuchanskayasky in NYC to
Russian-Jewish immigrants.
(SFC, 7/3/00, p.C2)
1920 Oct 2, Max Bruch, composer
(Scottish Fantasy), died at 82.
(MC, 10/2/01)
1920 Oct 8, Frank [Patrick]
Herbert, US, sci-fi author (Dune), was born.
(MC, 10/8/01)
1920 Oct 12, Construction began on
Holland Tunnel connecting NJ and NYC.
(MC, 10/12/01)
1920 Oct 12, Man O'War ran his
last race and won.
(MC, 10/12/01)
1920 Oct 13, Laraine Day (d.2007),
film actress, was born in Roosevelt, Utah. Her work included over 4
dozen films from the late 1930s to 1960.
(SFC, 11/13/07, p.D9)
1920 Oct 14, In the Dorpart Treaty
the Soviet Bolsheviks reaffirmed Finnish independence, gave Finland the
ice-free port of Pechenga towards the Arctic Ocean and put the Finnish
border 18 miles west of Leningrad. The treaty, signed by Stalin, was
precipitated by Gustaf Mannerheim’s victory over much larger Bolshevik
and Finnish Red Guard forces in 1918.
(DrEE, 10/26/96, p.4)
1920 Oct 15, Mario Puzo, novelist
and screenwriter, was born. His work included "The Godfather." [see Oct
15, 1921]
(HN, 10/15/00)
1920 Oct 17, Montgomery Clift,
actor (From Here to Eternity), was born in Omaha, Neb.
(MC, 10/17/01)
1920 Oct 20, Max Bruch (82),
German composer (Kol Nidre), died.
(MC, 10/20/01)
1920 Oct 22, Timothy Leary,
American psychologist who experimented with psychedelic drugs, was born.
(HN, 10/22/98)
1920 Oct 23, Chicago grand jury
indicted Abe Attell, Hal Chase, and Bill Burns as go-betweens in Black
Sox World Series scandal.
(MC, 10/23/01)
1920 Oct 25, Alexander
(27), king of Greece (1917-20), died following a pet monkey bite.
(www.infoplease.com/ce6/people/A0803222.html)
1920 Oct 27, League of Nations
moved headquarters in Geneva.
(MC, 10/27/01)
1920 Oct 31, Dick Francis, jockey
and detective writer (Whip Hand, High Stakes), was born in Wales.
(MC, 10/31/01)
1920 Nov 1, Eugene O'Neill's
"Emperor Jones," premiered in NYC.
(MC, 11/1/01)
1920 Nov 2, Warren G. Harding was
elected 29th president. He defeated James Cox, governor of Ohio, and
his VP running mate Franklin Delano Roosevelt (38).
(SFC, 10/13/99, p.E7)(AH, 10/04, p.50)
1920 Nov 2, Of the 68 women
who signed the 1848 Declaration of Sentiments at Seneca Falls, NY, only
one, Charlotte Woodward Pierce (1830-1921), lived to finally see women
vote.
(www.nps.gov/wori/biographies/woodward.htm)
1920 Nov 2, The first radio
broadcast in the United States was made from Pittsburgh. Westinghouse
built a radio station on its factory roof. KDKA in Pittsburgh broadcast
returns from the Harding-Cox presidential election. [see Nov 6]
(CFA, ‘96, p.58)(WSJ, 1/12/98, p.A19)(HN,
11/2/98)(AP, 11/2/99)
1920 Nov 2, In Ocoee, Fla., on
election day gunfire erupted after 2 black men tried to vote. By the
next day a number of residents, black and white, lay dead.
(WSJ, 10/30/98, p.A1)
1920 Nov 3, Oodgeroo Noonuccal
[Kath Walker], Australian Aboriginal poet, was born.
(HN, 11/3/00)
1920 Nov 3, "Emperor Jones" opened
at Provincetown Theater.
(MC, 11/3/01)
1920 Nov 10, George Bernard Shaw's
"Heartbreak House," premiered in NYC.
(MC, 11/10/01)
1920 Nov 12, Baseball got its
first "czar" as Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis was elected commissioner
of the American and National Leagues. Landis became the first
commissioner of baseball, a position he held until his death in 1944.
Replacing the powerless three-man National Baseball Commission, Landis
was given almost dictatorial powers and charged by the owners with
cleaning up the game, which had been rocked by scandal when eight
Chicago White Sox players were accused of throwing the 1919 World
Series. The players' 1921 conspiracy trial ended with acquittal for
lack of hard evidence, but Landis needed to reassure fans of baseball's
integrity. The eight White Sox, including "Shoeless" Joe Jackson and
Oscar "Happy" Felsh, were barred from baseball for life.
(AP, 11/12/97)(HNPD, 11/12/98)
1920 Nov 15, Forty-one nations
opened the first League of Nations session in Geneva.
(HN, 11/15/98)
1920 Nov 16, Metered mail was born
in Stamford, Connecticut, with the first Pitney Bowes postage meter.
(HN, 11/16/98)
1920 Nov 20, The Nobel Peace Prize
was awarded to US president W. Wilson.
(MC, 11/20/01)
1920 Nov 21, Stan "The Man"
Musial, Hall of Fame baseball player for the St. Louis Cardinals, was
born.
(HN, 11/21/98)
1920 Nov 21, Mussolini's squad
began terror and 11 died in Bologna, Italy.
(MC, 11/21/01)
1920 Nov 25, radio station WTAW of
College Station, Texas, broadcast the first play-by-play description of
a football game, between the University of Texas and Texas A&M.
(AP, 11/25/00)
1920 Nov 25, The 1st Thanksgiving
Parade was held in Philadelphia.
(MC, 11/25/01)
1920 Nov 26, Cyril Cusack, Irish
actor, was born.
(HN, 11/26/00)
1920 Nov 28, The film "The Mark of
Zorro" with Douglas Fairbanks opened in NYC at the Capitol Theater. It
was based on “The Curse of Capistrano, a story by Johnston McCulley, a
NY journalist and pulp magazine writer.
(www.silentsaregolden.com/markofzorroreview.html)(SSFC, 5/8/05, p.B4)
1920 Nov, California voters passed
an anti-Japanese Alien Land law that barred Japanese immigrants from
purchasing land in the name of their American-born children. A federal
court deemed it constitutional in 1921.
(SFEC, 12/26/99, p.W7)
1920 Nov, White Russian Major
Gen’l. Paul Petroff entrusted 20 boxes of gold coins and 2 boxes of
gold bullion to Colonel R. Isome of the Japanese forces that occupied
part of Siberia in order to cross Manchuria and not loose the money to
bandits. He was fleeing to the anti-Bolshevik stronghold at
Vladivostok. The money was never returned. The events were later
documented by his son Serge Petroff in the 1997 book "Let the War Rage."
(SFC,10/17/97, p.D2)
1920 Nov, Chechens joined with
other Caucasian peoples to form the Republic of the Mountain Peoples.
Chechens had rebelled during the civil war that followed the Russian
Revolution of 1917, clashing with local Cossacks and the anti-Communist
White forces as well as with the Communists' Red Army. With the
establishment of Soviet authority in the region.
(www.chechnyawar.com/history)
1920 Dec 6, Dave Brubeck, jazz
pianist and composer, was born.
(HN, 12/6/00)
1920 Dec 6, In Boston, Mass., a
dog with spectacles was shown at the annual fair of the Animal Rescue
League.
(http://tinyurl.com/5hbur6)
1920 Dec 8, President Wilson
declined to send a representative to the League of Nations in Geneva.
(HN, 12/8/98)
1920 Dec 13, George P. Schultz, US
Secretary of State (1982-89), was born.
(MC, 12/13/01)
1920 Dec 13, League of nations
established the Int’l. Court of Justice in The Hague.
(MC, 12/13/01)
1920 Dec 14, George Gipp (b.1895)
died in Indiana from pneumonia and a strep infection during his senior
year at Notre Dame. He was buried in northern Michigan. Gipp was the
school's first All-American and set a school career rushing record that
stood for more than 50 years. Ronald Reagan portrayed Gipp in the 1940
movie "Knute Rockne, All American," in which he made famous the phrase
"win one for the Gipper."
(AP,
11/10/07)(www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=1595)
1920 Dec 14, The League of Nations
created a credit system to aid Europe; U.S. export trade was
threatened.
(HN, 12/14/98)
1920 Dec 15, China won a place on
the League Council; Austria was admitted.
(HN, 12/15/98)
1920 Dec 16, In China an 8.6
earthquake killed some 100,000 people in the northwestern province of
Gansu. The quake in mid-western China caused massive landslides and the
deaths of over 200,000 people. [see Dec 16, 1932; Dec 26, 1932]
(SFC, 1/800, p.A8)(MC, 12/16/01)
1920 Dec 18, Rita Streich, German
singer, was born.
(MC, 12/18/01)
1920 Dec 20, The opera "Die Tote
Stadt" by Erich Korngold (1897-1957) premiered in Germany. It was first
recorded in a 1975 production by Charles Allan Gerhardt (d.1999 at 72).
(www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2002/Nov02/Korngold_Die_Tote_Stadt.htm)(SFC,
3/2/99, p.A20)
1920 Dec 23, Ireland was divided
into 2 parts, each with its own parliament.
(MC, 12/23/01)
1920 Dec 24, Enrico Caruso gave
his last public performance, singing in Jacques Halevy’s "La Juive" at
the Metropolitan Opera in New York.
(AP, 12/24/97)
1920 Dec 28, U.S. resumed the
deportation of Communists.
(HN, 12/28/98)
1920 Dec 29, Syd Dernley, hangman,
was born.
(MC, 12/29/01)
1920 Dec 30, Ho Chi Minh helped
found the Communist Party of France on December 30, 1920, while a
student there. Known then as Nguyen Ai Quoc, Ho went on to Moscow in
1923 for training in revolutionary strategy by the Communist
International. After several years in the Soviet Union and China, Ho
returned to Vietnam to lead his nation’s revolutionary movement.
(HNQ, 4/13/99)
1920 Dec, Albania was admitted to
the League of Nations as sovereign and independent state.
(www, Albania, 1998)
1920 Pete Seeger, folksinger, was
born. His songs included "The Bells of Rhymney" and "Turn! Turn! Turn!"
(SFC, 1/14/98, p.D3)
1920 Isaac Stern (d.2001),
Russian-Jewish immigrant to the US and legendary violinist, was born in
the Ukraine. His family arrived in San Francisco a year later. In 1960
he saved Carnegie Hall from the wrecking ball.
(SSFC, 9/23/01, p.A24)(SFC, 9/24/01, p.G1)
1920 Otto Dix painted "Souvenir of
the Hall of Mirrors in Brussels."
(WSJ, 2/3/00, p.A24)
1920 Matisse painted his
"Marguerite Sleeping."
(SFC, 5/19/96, BR, p.8)
1920 Man Ray (aka Manuel
Radnitsky, 1890-1976) made his "Obstruction," a hanging mobile
contrived with wooden clothes hangers.
(WSJ, 12/2/96, p.A16)
1920 Stanley Spencer painted
"Christ Carrying the Cross."
(SFC, 6/5/98, p.C1)
1920 The National Women’s Party
commissioned the Portrait Monument, a sculpture in honor of the
suffragists Susan B. Anthony, Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton
by Adelaide Johnson. It was presented to Congress in 1921. In 1997 the
National Political Congress of Black Women removed their support for
exhibiting the piece beneath the Capital dome because it did not
include Sojourner Truth, a black suffragist.
(SFC, 3/8/96, p.A4)
1920 Isaac Babel (d.1940) wrote a
wartime diary as he rode horseback with Budyonny’s First Cavalry Army
as the Cossacks participated in the Bolshevik invasion of Poland. An
essay on the diary was written by Cynthia Ozick in her 1996 book: "Fame
& Folly."
(WSJ, 5/22/96, p.A-18)
1920 F. Scott Fitzgerald (23)
authored his 1st novel “This Side of Paradise.”
(WSJ, 7/29/06, p.P12)(www.bartleby.com/115/)
1920 Sigmund Freud authored
"Beyond the Pleasure Principle."
(WSJ, 5/5/06, p.A16)
1920 William Dean Howells
published his last novel "Vacation at the Kelwyn’s." In it he satirized
the romances of the 1860s and 1870s.
(SFEM, 6/28/98, p.37)
1920 Ernst Juenger (Jünger)
(d.1998) published his first book "In Storms of Steel." The book
glorified the horrors of WW I and put him in the rank of militant
nationalists whose writings helped pave the way for the Third Reich. In
2003 Michael Hoffman made a translation, Storm of Steel, to English.
(SFC, 2/18/98, p.A18)(WSJ, 10/7/06, p.P12)
1920 Sinclair Lewis (1865-1951)
authored "Main Street."
(WSJ, 1/18/02, p.W8)
1920 "The Story of Dr. Doolittle"
by Hugh Lofting was published.
(SFEC, 2/27/00, BR p.12)
1920 Arthur Pigou (1877-1959),
English economist, authored “The Economics of Welfare.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Cecil_Pigou)
1920 Eugene O’Neill wrote his
first full-length play "Beyond the Horizon."
(WSJ, 1/21/98, p.A20)
1920 Ring Lardner and George S.
Kaufman wrote the musical comedy "June Moon."
(WSJ, 1/21/98, p.A20)
1920 The 1897 play, "Reigen," by
Arthur Schnitzler had its premiere In Vienna. The name meant round
dance and represented a circle of sexual encounters and was promptly
closed down by police. A 1998 adaptation by David Hare featured Nicole
Kidman and Ian Glen in "The Blue Room."
(WSJ, 12/16/98, p.A21)
1920 George and Ira Gershwin began
collaborating and wrote their first song "Waiting for the Sun to Come
Out."
(SFC, 12/4/96, p.E1)(SFEC, 8/16/98, DB p.38)
1920 The ballet "Pulcinella" by
Igor Stravinsky had its premiere.
(WSJ, 4/17/01, p.A18)
1920 The art-deco GM Building on
West Grand Boulevard in Detroit was completed. In 1996 GM purchased the
downtown Renaissance Center for $72 mil and planned to vacate its old
headquarters.
(WSJ, 5/17/96,p.B-2)
1920 Sara (b.1883) and Gerald
Murphy rented a floor of the Hotel du Cap on the French Riviera for the
summer while their villa was being built, and invited their friends,
Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Picasso, Marlene Dietrich, and the Windsors...
Hemingway’s book, "A Moveable Feast," was a memoir on the Murphys.
Fitzgerald’s characters of Dick and Nicole Diver in "Tender Is the
Night" was based on the Murphys. In 1982 Calvin Tompkins published
"Living Well is the Best Revenge." In 1983 Sara Murphy Donnelly (d.1998
at 81) authored "Sara and Gerald: Villa America and After." In 1998
Amanda Vaill published "Everybody Was So Young: Gerald and Sara
Murphy—A Lost Generation Love Story."
(CNT, Nov.,1994, p.219)(SFEC, 8/9/98, BR 9 p.9)(SFC,
12/25/98, p.B6)
1920 The Catholic Church
recognized Joan of Arc as a saint.
(WSJ, 1/23/96, p.A-12)
1920 NYC extended its subway from
Manhattan to Coney Island.
(SFEC, 7/26/98, Z1 p.8)
1920 The Steel Pier in Atlantic
City, New Jersey, opened and was called "The World's Playground."
(SSFC, 10/5/03, p.D12)
1920 Eastman Chemical Co. was
founded in Kingsport, Tenn., as a unit of Eastman Kodak Co. It was spun
off in 1994. In 1998 the company agreed to pay an $11 million fine for
price-fixing on sorbates, a chemical used to keep food and beverages
fresh.
(SFC, 10/2/98, p.B6)
1920 General Steamship Corp. was
founded with operations on the US West Coast.
(SFC, 9/30/04, p.B7)
1920 The Central Bureau for
Astronomical Telegrams was established by the Int’l. Astronomical
Union. It was the official arbiter for comet nomenclature.
(WSJ, 4/22/97, p.A1)
1920 Emile Coue (1857-1926),
French pharmacist, devised the mantra "Every day, in every way, I’m
getting better and better" to promote his theory of self-improvement
through auto-suggestion. [2nd source says 1910]
(NH, 7/98, p.20)(SFEC, 6/20/99, Z1 p.8)
1920 Henry Burt created the "Good
Humor Bar," a chocolate covered ice cream bar on a stick, in
Youngstown, Ohio. Good Humor trucks cruised America's streets until
1976 and the company merged with Breyer's Ice Cream in 1993.
(SFEC,10/19/97, Z1 p.2)(WSJ, 7/16/99, p.W12)
1920 The Baby Ruth candy bar made
its debut. It was named after Pres. Grover Cleveland's daughter.
(SFC, 10/13/99, p.E7)
1920 Raymond "Chappie" Chapman, a
shortstop for the Cleveland Indians baseball team, was killed by a
pitched ball during a game against the NY Yankees.
(SFC, 6/2/96, p.T-12)
1920 Lefty Grove, a Hall of Fame
pitcher, was traded for a new outfield fence.
(SFC, 1/17/98, p.C5)
1920 Bill Doak, a pitcher for the
St. Louis Cardinals, asked the Rawlings sporting goods company to
design a glove with a piece of leather sewn between the thumb and
forefinger.
(WSJ, 4/1/02, p.A1)
1920 Louis Chevrolet won the
Indianapolis 500 auto race.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)(SFEC, 1/9/00, Z1 p.2)
1920 Golfers began wearing
metal-spiked golf shoes as standard wear about this time.
(Hem, 4/96, p.83)
1920 Suzanne Lenglen of France,
wearing a shockingly short skirt, won 2 gold medals in tennis at the
Olympic games in Antwerp, Belgium.
(NG, 8/04, Geographica)
1920 Oscar Swahn (72) of Sweden
won a silver medal for shooting in the Antwerp Olympics.
(WSJ, 3/31/08, p.A1)
1920 Knut Hamsun (1859-1952),
Norwegian writer, won the Nobel Prize in literature for his work "The
Growth of the Soil."
(Econ, 11/7/09, p.79)
1920 Leon Bourgeois (b.1851),
French premier (1895-96) won the Nobel Peace Prize.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1920 The US Congress repealed 60
wartime measures despite the objections of Pres. Wilson. Republican
presidential nominee Harding pledged that he would abjure executive
autocracy.
(AH, 6/07, p.44)
1920 In the US the Mineral Leasing
Act was established.
(WSJ, 7/31/96, p.A15)
1920 The Dept. of labor
established a Women’s Bureau.
(SFEC, 11/24/96, Z1 p.3)
1920 The US Postal Service
introduced the postage meter.
(WSJ, 9/21/98, p.B1)
1920 Oregon re-instated the death
penalty.
(SFC, 9/6.96, p.A11)
1920 Julius Hammer, father of
Armand Hammer, was sent to Sing Sing prison for killing a woman during
a botched abortion. It was later asserted that the crime was actually
committed by Armand.
(SFC, 1/17/97, p.D7)
1920 Italian-born anarchists
Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were arrested for the murders of
two men during a robbery. They were executed in 1927. [see 8/23/27]
(Sacco and Vanzetti were vindicated in 1977 by Massachusetts Gov.
Michael S. Dukakis.)
(HFA, ‘96, p.36)(TMC, 1994, p.1927)(AP, 8/23/97)
1920 Robert Stroud (1890-1963),
imprisoned for murder at Leavenworth, Kansas, rescued 3 young
sparrows in his prison yard following a storm and began studying birds.
He later wrote “Stroud’s Dictionary of Diseases of Birds.” Stroud was
later transferred to Alcatraz and then to Missouri, where he died.
(SSFC, 1/15/09, DB
p.54)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birdman_of_Alcatraz)
1920 Cecelia Cudahy Casserly of
Hillsborough, Ca., was appointed Director of Women’s Relations for the
Army by Sec. of War Newton Baker.
(Ind, 4/7/01, 5A)
1920 Michigan set up the first
four-way traffic signal.
(WSJ, 5/8/97, p.A16)
1920 The Cowtown Coliseum in Fort
Worth, Texas, hosted the world's 1st indoor rodeo.
(SSFC, 8/3/03, p.C4)
1920 A Packard Twin-Six Town Car
by Fleetwood was commissioned by the Atwater Kent family.
(SFC, 7/21/96, p.D4)
1920 William Durant, a salesman
who founded GM, lost control of GM for the 2nd time. He then started
Durant Motors, but with no success. Pierre S. duPont became the
president of GM.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)
1920 Arthur Perdue began a
backyard egg business in Maryland. His son Frank (1920-2005) later
turned it into one of the nation's largest poultry processors.
(AP, 4/1/05)(SFC, 4/2/05, p.B5)
1920 Charles Ponzi (37), an
immigrant from Italy, began selling notes in Boston with 50% interest
payments payable in 45 days. In 1921 he pleaded guilty to mail fraud.
He was released from prison in 1924 and went to Florida for the land
boom offering investors profits of 200%. He again spent time in jail
and was eventually deported and died broke. In 2005 Michael Zuckoff
authored “Ponzi’s Scheme.”
(WSJ, 3/4/05, p.W6)
1920 Harry Winston opened his
diamond firm, Premier Diamond Company, at 537 Fifth Avenue in New York.
(SFEM, 1/26/97, p.48)
1920 Westinghouse, General
Electric and AT&T formed the RCA Corp. RCA was founded in 1919 with
patents from GE and American Marconi.
(SFC, 7/1/97, p.A14)(WSJ, 11/4/99, p.B6)
1920 The Mayo Clinic published
research on how to grade the severity of tumors and helped to lay the
foundation for modern cancer research.
(SFC, 7/5/96, PM, p.5)
1920 Rural Canadian physician Dr.
Frederick G. Banting first conceived the idea of extracting insulin
from the pancreas. It took him and 3 others 8 months to develop the
process.
(HNPD, 1/23/99)(SFC, 7/1/00, p.B5)
1920 The chemical compound
cyclonite, actually cyclotrimethylenetrinitramine, was identified in
Germany. It is more powerful than TNT and the British renamed it RDX
for Research Department Explosive. It is the primary ingredient in
plastic explosives such as C-3, C-4 and Semtex which also contains
PETN, or pentaerythritol tetranitrate.
(SFC, 8/31/96, p.A5)
1920 Leon Theremin invented the
theremin musical instrument. He was a Russian inventor who invented the
instrument made of vacuum tubes and oscillators in the 1920s in New
York. He was later abducted by operators of Stalin and taken back to
Moscow where he is forced to work on devices for the Soviet Ministry of
Internal Affairs. It was an early electronic instrument with an eerie,
sliding tone. The 1994 film "Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey," featured
the instrument. Clara Rockmore (d.1998 at 88), born Clara Reisenberg in
Vilnius, became a theremin virtuoso, and was the focus of the 1998
video documentary: "Clara Rockmore, The Greatest Theremin Virtuoso."
(WSJ, 9/19/95, p.A20)(SFC, 5/12/98, p.A21)
1920 The Dalton Plan, a secondary
education technique based on individual learning, was developed in
Massachusetts. The plan grew out of the reaction of some progressive
educators to the fact that students learned at different speeds. The
Dalton Plan divided each subject in the curriculum into monthly
assignments and the students had to finish one assignment before
starting another. They were given freedom in planning their work
schedules and were encouraged to work in groups. Its popularity in the
United States waned, but it gained influence in England and France.
(HNQ, 9/8/00)
1920 David Mackenzie, dean of
Detroit Junior College, was elected the first president of the American
Association of Junior Colleges.
(WSUAN, Winter 1997, p.7)
1920 S. Ansky (b.1863),
Russian-Jewish journalist and playwright, died. In 2003 Joachim
Neugroschel edited and translated "The Enemy at His Pleasure: A Journey
Through the Jewish Pale of Settlement During World War I."
(SSFC, 4/20/03, p.M4)
1920 John Francis Dodge
(1864-1920) and his brother Horace Elgin (1868-1920) died. They had
started with a bicycle company and evolved into a significant car
company.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)
1920 Reginald Farrer (b.1880),
Edwardian rare-plant collector, died in Burma. In 2004 Nicola Shulman
authored the biography “Rock Gardening.”
(WSJ, 10/29/04, p.W10)
1920 John Wesley Hyatt (b.1837),
considered the founder of the American plastics industry, died.
(ON, 11/03, p.5)
1920 Australia-based Qantas
Airlines was founded as Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial
Services Ltd. Regular passenger service began in 1922.
(AP, 7/25/08)(http://airlines.ws/qantas.htm)
1920 The Republic of Armenia in
order to stave off attacks by Turkey, turned the government over to the
Communists and the Soviet Republic of Armenia came into being.
(Compuserve Online Enc. / Armenia)
1920 In Belgium Godiva Chocolates,
founded by Joseph Draps, began as a family business.
(SFEC, 9/15/96, p.T9)
1920 A midshipman in the Royal
Navy helped evacuate Gen'l. Denikin’s White Army at the Black Sea port
of Novorossik. The midshipman was the father of Neal Ascherson, author
of "Black Sea," a broad historical work on the confrontation between
civilization and barbarism over a 2,000 year period around the Black
Sea.
(WSJ, 12/27/95, p. A-8)
1920 In Burma students rebelled
against British rule.
(WSJ, 12/6/96, p.A1)
1920 Solomon Frank Samuels (S.F.
Samuels) founded the Reliable Toy Co. in Toronto.
(SFC, 2/7/07, p.G7)
1920 Chad was separated from
Ubangi-Shari to form a 4th colony of French Equatorial Africa.
(www.discoverfrance.net)
1920 In China Chao Shao-An,
artist, became a student of Gao Qifeng. He mastered the technique of
brush and ink on absorbent paper. His work included "Katydid and Weed"
(1959); "Penglai Banana" (1964); "Vegetables" and "Autumn Colors"
(1985); and "Cicada and Bamboo" (1971). He donated 80 works to the
Asian Art Museum in SF in the 1990s.
(SFC, 4/22/97, p.D1,2)
1920 Apr 12, In Colombia the firm
Nacional de Chocolates was founded. In the 1970s three of the largest
holding companies in the country bought stock from each other in order
to protect themselves from hostile takeovers. The newly formed
Antioquean Syndicate was composed of: Suramericana de Seguros, Nacional
de Chocolates, and Cementos Argos.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compan%C3%ADa_Nacional_de_Chocolates)(WSJ,
1/16/97, p.A12)
1920 England passed a Firearms
Bill to regulate private use.
(WSJ, 8/6/02, p.D6)
1920 France, following populations
losses in World War I, devised the Medal of the French Family with a
special gold medal award to women who had 8 or more children.
(Econ, 4/19/08, p.62)
1920 The Brudorhof Church was
founded in Germany. It was an offshoot of the Anabaptists and distantly
related to the Amish. The church was expelled from Germany by the Nazis
just before WW II and the group settled in the US Northeast. The church
has about 2,100 members in the US and about 500 in England.
(WSJ, 7/5/96, p.B1)
1920 Another Government of Ireland
Act was passed by the British government. This act had a proviso that
the reunification of Ireland was an ultimate goal.
(WSJ,3/13/95, p.A-15)
1920 Kenya became a colony under
the British crown.
(SFC, 9/4/97, p.A10)(WSJ, 1/30/08, p.A18)
1920 During the Russian Civil War,
Mongolia was invaded by a White Russian force of 5,000 men. Freiherr
Roman Nikolai Maximilian von Ungern-Sternberg hoped to use Mongolia as
a base to restore the Romanov regime. During his 130-day rule he
ordered that Commissars, Communists, and Jews, together with their
families, be exterminated. In 2009 James Palmer authored “The Bloody
White Baron: The Extraordinary Story of the Russian Nobleman Who Became
the Last Khan of Mongolia.”
(www.gobiexpeditions.com)(Econ, 2/14/09, p.96)
1920 Russia became the first
country to allow abortion.
(Econ, 5/19/07, p.66)
1920 The French carved Lebanon out
of Syria to create a predominantly Christian country. A constitution
was drawn up that required the president to be a Maronite Christian,
the prime minister a Sunni Muslim, and the speaker of parliament a
Shiite.
(SFC, 9/28/98, p.A10)
1920 A treaty between Norway and
Russia allowed Russia to pursue mining in the Svalbard islands at
Spitsbergen.
(WSJ, 9/19/97, p.A1)(Econ, 10/11/08, p.70)
1920s The original Carter Family,
A.P. Carter, Sarah Carter and sister-in-law Mother Maybelle Carter,
began recording sessions that marked the beginning of the US country
music industry.
(SFC, 7/31/99, p.A17)
1920s Rudolf von Laban invented a
notation system, Labanotation, for choreographers.
(SFC, 5/3/03, p.A21)
1920s Fatty Arbuckle arrived in
Lone Pine, Ca., to star in the film "The Roundup."
(SFEC, 8/17/97, p.T3)
1920s Artist Stephan Haweis
(d.1966) drifted to Dominica. He made his home on Mount Joy near
Soufriere. He painted in a Gauguin-like style and inspired other
Dominican artists in his wake.
(SFEC, 2/15/98, p.T7)
1920s Music played on the khaen, a
giant mouth organ containing 16 reed pipes was recorded. It is part of
the assembled music of the CD series "The Secret Museum of Mankind -
Ethnic Music Classics: 1925-1948," by Pat Conte on the Yazoo label.
(NH, 6/97, p.66)
1920s The Ludwig Black Beauty
drums were produced.
(Hem., 8/96, p.96)
1920s SF founded the company town
of Moccasin at Moccasin Creek when it bought land for a reservoir,
powerhouse and tunnel to take the Tuolemne River water from Hetch
Hetchy to SF.
(SFEC, 9/14/97, Z1 p.4)
1920s Gertrude Lintz raised a baby
gorilla in New York in the 1920s. This was depicted in the 1997 drama
film "Buddy." Her autobiography was titled: "Animals Are My Hobby."
[second source says 1930s]
(SFC, 6/6/97, p.D3)(SFEC, 6/8/97, DB p.53)
1920s The Newton Boys were 4
brothers from rural Texas who became bank robbers in the early 1920s.
They held up over 80 banks. The 1998 film "The Newton Boys" was based
on their true story.
(SFEC, 3/22/98, DB p.10)(SFC, 3/23/98, p.E2)(WSJ,
3/31/98, p.A20)
1920s In the late 1920s the Cosa
Nostra was formed with 24 crime families coast to coast. Each family
had an identical paramilitary structure with a national commission that
set rules and policies. This structure was not publicly revealed until
the public testimony of Joe Valachi in 1964.
(SFEC, 4/20/97, Par p.4)
1920s John Roebling bought most of
what is now Archibald Biological Station on the Lake Wales Ridge along
Rt. 27 in Florida. He planned to build a wilderness estate with family
funds accrued from cable construction (that included the building of
the Brooklyn Bridge). [see Archibald 1941]
(PacDisc, Spring ‘96, p.6)
1920s Elections in Plentywood,
Montana, put Communists in control of local government.
(WSJ, 10/16/98, p.W9)
1920s Ford dealers under the
direction of Henry Ford promoted and broadcast fiddle contests across
the South and Midwest aimed at showcasing traditional American music.
(WSJ, 6/25/98, p.A20)
1920s Retail tycoon Marshall Field
built the Merchandise Mart as a city within a city. The 25 floors of
retail space was connected by underground railroad to other important
places of commerce.
(WSJ, 1/26/98, p.A1)
1920s Pacific Mail Steamship Co.
added San Francisco to New York routes.
(WSJ, 5/28/96, p.R46)
1920s The tractor made its debut
on the American rural landscape and marked the beginning of the end for
the need for horses as farm animals.
(SFEC, 8/3/97, p.T5)
1920s The garbage disposal, aka
grinder, macerator or electric pig, was invented.
(WSJ, 10/1/97, p.A1)
1920s A handful of companies
manufactured chewing gum made from chicle, a form of sapodilla tree sap
that had been chewed in Belize, Guatemala and Mexico for centuries.
(SFC, 1/13/98, p.A19)
1920s Harvey Fletcher built the
Western electric Model 2A hearing aid at the Research Division of Bell.
(SFC, 7/26/00, p.D3)
1920s Serge Voronoff, a
Russian-French surgeon, transplanted the testicles of monkeys into
ageing male celebrities in what came to be known as the Monkey Gland
Affair.
(WSJ, 9/5/01, p.A26)
1920s An injectable cure was found
for yaws.
(SFC, 10/27/98, p.A4)
1920s An oyster blight devastated
the oysters in the SF Bay.
(Hem., 1/97, p.92)
1920s In Egypt the statue of
Ramses II was found in Memphis, the ancient capital of Egypt, 15 miles
from Cairo.
(WSJ, 8/21/97, p.A12)
1920s England’s King Edward VIII
met Wallis Simpson at the Hotel del Coronado in San Diego.
(Hem., 8/96, p.21)
1920s Rene Lacoste (1904-1996),
French tennis star, transformed his nickname "the crocodile" onto polo
shirts around the world.
(SFC, 10/14/96, p.A23)
1920s In Argentina Serge
Nekrassoff made pewter and copper pieces with or without enamel
decoration. He moved to New York in 1925 and opened a workshop in
Darien, Conn., in 1931. He moved to Florida with his son in 1952 and
opened a shop called Serge S. Nekrassoff & Son where they made
enameled giftware from aluminum, copper or pewter until 1979.
(SFC,12/10/97, Z1 p.9)
1920s In India British architect
Edward Luyten built New Delhi in the late 20s.
(Hem., 2/97, p.57)
1920s In Mexico the "Cristero
Wars" left several thousand Catholic lay people and priests killed for
opposing landowning and political restrictions placed against the
church.
(WSJ, 11/22/96, p.A12)
1920s In Russia Dziga Vertov
created a cinematic mosaic of Moscow in his film "The Man With a Movie
Camera."
(SFEC, 2/2/97, DB. p.8)
1920s In Turkey in the late 20s
Constantinople was renamed Istanbul.
(Sky, 4/97, p.58)
1920s A census in Turkey in the
early 1920s counted the Alevi as about 35% of the 13 million
population. Alevi claimed to be a purely Anatolian faith based on
Shaman and Zoroastrian beliefs going back 6,000 years with Christian,
Jewish and Islamic influences. By this time the Shiite Islamic
influence was the strongest.
(Econ, 3/19/05, Survey p.11)
1920-1921 Arthur Meighen, Unionist Party, served as
the 9th Prime Minister of Canada.
(CFA, ‘96, p.81)
1920-1921 The Indus Valley, or Harrapan, civilization
was discovered when engraved seals were discovered near present-day
Sahiwal in Pakistani Punjab at a place called Harappa.
(EAWC,
p.2)(http://inic.utexas.edu/asnic/subject/peoplesandlanguages.html)
1920-1924 Helen Keller appeared onstage in a
vaudeville act that was followed by a question-and-answer period.
(SFEC, 8/16/98, BR p.3)
1920-1924 In Mexico Alvaro Obregon (1880-1928),
general and statesman, served as president. Obregon was killed by an
assassin, who pretended to do his portrait.
(WUD, 1994, p.994)
1920-1925 Izzy Einstein and Moe Smith served as
Prohibition agents in New York City for five years, often resorting to
zany measures to put the pinch on speak-easy owners. From 1920 to 1932,
the manufacture and sale of liquor was illegal in the United States,
but the clandestine traffic of liquor was plentiful. The job of
enforcing the law fell on 1,550 "Feds." Izzy and Moe, with their
imagination and good humor, managed to take the credit for 20 percent
of all Prohibition cases that came to trial in New York City. While
their ruses and disguises earned them much success and notoriety, they
also led to them being fired in 1925.
(HNPD, 6/27/99)
1920-1925 In Paris, The Swedish Ballet, founded by
Rolf de Mare, brought together painters, filmmakers, actors, dancers
and composers in Paris. Designs by Ferdnand Leger, Francis Picabia,
Pierre Bonnard and Giorgio de Chirico, music by Eric Satie, Darius
Milhaud, Arthur Honegger and Cole Porter, and film by Rene Clair marked
the performances. The choreography was by Jean Borlin.
(SFC, 6/20/96, p.D1)(SFEM, 6/9/96, p.24-26)
c1920-1929 Henry C. Wallace, served under Presidents
Harding and Coolidge as Secretary of Agriculture.
(HN, 11/2/98)(HNQ, 8/28/99)
1920-1933 Joseph Roth, Austrian novelist, spent this
period in Berlin. In 2002 his writings from this time were translated
by Michael Hofmann and published as "What I Saw: Reports From Berlin
1920-1933." His later novel "The Radetzky March covered the waning days
of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
(SSFC, 12/29/02, p.M3)
1920-1935 In the US thousands of mustangs were sent
to slaughter to provide cheap meat in what came to be called the “Great
Removal.” In 2008 Deanne Stillman authored “Mustang: The Saga of the
Wild Horse in the American West.”
(Econ, 6/28/08, p.90)
1920-1944 Montagu Norman served as governor of the
Bank of England.
(Econ, 2/26/05, p.12)
1920-1950 Fore people of Papua New Guinea were
devastated by an epidemic of kuru, a brain-destroying disease caused by
abnormal proteins called prions.
(SFC, 4/11/03, p.A6)
1920-1955 Charlie Parker, aka "Bird," jazz
saxophonist and composer.
(WUD, 1994, p.1049)
1920-1940 Kaunas was the capital of Lithuania.
(DrEE, 11/23/96, p.4)
1920-1946 Syria was a French-mandated territory.
(SFC, 7/18/98, p.A11)
1920-1990s In NYC 5 mob organizations dominated the
Mafia. The Lucchese Cosa Nostra was founded by Gaetano Lucchese. In
1998 Ernest Volkman published "Gangbusters: The Destruction of
America’s Last Great Mafia Dynasty."
(SFEC, 8/9/98, BR 9 p.4)
1920-1994 Amy Clampitt, American poet. Her collected
works from 5 books were published in 1997 as: "The Collected Poems of
Amy Clampitt."
(WSJ, 11/7/97, p.A17)
1920s-1950s Louis Armstong recorded with Decca. The
album "Highlights From Louis Armstong’s Decca Years" resulted.
(SFC, 7/4/97, p.D9)
World War timeline 1921:
http://history.acusd.edu/gen/WW2Timeline/start.html
1921 Jan 1, The Cal Bears beat
Ohio State 28-0.
(SFEC, 12/26/99, p.W7)
1921 Jan 2, Religious services
were first broadcast on radio when KDKA aired the regular Sunday
service of Pittsburgh's Calvary Episcopal Church.
(AP, 1/2/00)
1921 Jan 3, John Russell actor:
Forever Amber, Rio Bravo, Pale Rider, was born.
(440 Int'l. 1/3/99)
1921 Jan 3, Italy halted the issue
of passports to those emigrating to the U.S.
(HN, 1/3/99)
1921 Jan 4, Congress overrode
President Wilson’s veto, reactivating the War Finance Corps to aid
struggling farmers.
(HN, 1/4/99)
1921 Jan 5, Friedrich Durrenmatt
(d.1990), Swiss author and playwright, was born.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_D%C3%BCrrenmatt)
1921 Jan 5, Wagner’s "Die
Walkyrie" opened in Paris. This was the first German opera performed in
Paris since the beginning of WWI.
(HN, 1/5/99)
1921 Jan 6, The U.S. Navy ordered
the sale of 125 flying boats to encourage commercial aviation.
(HN, 1/6/99)
1921 Jan 21, Barney Clark, the 1st
person to receive a permanent artificial heart, was born.
(MC, 1/21/02)
1921 Jan 21, J.D. Rockefeller
pledged $1 million for the relief of Europe's destitute.
(HN, 1/21/99)
1921 Jan 23, Marija
Alseika-Gimbutas, archeologist and pre-historian, was born in Vilnius.
She died in LA, Ca., on Feb 2, 1994.
(LHC, 1/23/03)
1921 Jan 25, Karel Capek's "
R.U.R.: Rossum's Universal Robots" (1920), premiered in Prague. The
play introduced the term robot (robota for forced labor).
(www.czech-language.cz/translations/rur-introen.html)(www.kirjasto.sci.fi/capek.htm)
1921 Jan 26, Akio Morita (d.1999),
CEO of Sony Corp., was born in Kasugaya, Japan.
(MC, 1/26/02)
1921 Jan 28, Albert Einstein
startled Berlin by suggesting the possibility of measuring the universe.
(HN, 1/28/99)
1921 Jan 29, A hurricane hit
Washington and Oregon.
(MC, 1/29/02)
1921 Jan 31, Carol Channing,
actress (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Hello Dolly), was born.
(MC, 1/31/02)
1921 Jan 31, Mario Lanza (d.1959),
actor, singer (Great Caruso, Toast of New Orleans), was born in
Philadelphia.
(MC, 1/31/02)
1921 Feb 2, Airmail service opened
between New York and San Francisco. [see Sep 8, 1920]
(HN, 2/2/99)
1921 Feb 4, Betty Friedan, writer,
feminist, was born. She founded the National Organization of Women in
1966.
(HN, 2/4/01)
1921 Feb 5, John M. Pritchard,
conductor, was born in London, England.
(MC, 2/5/02)
1921 Feb 5, Yankees purchased 20
acres in Bronx for Yankee Stadium.
(MC, 2/5/02)
1921 Feb 6, The film "The Kid,"
starring Charlie Chaplin & Jackie Coogan, was released.
(MC, 2/6/02)
1921 Feb 8, Pjotr A. Kropotkin
(78), Russian anarchist and son of Prince Alexei Petrovich Kropotkin,
died. Books by Peter Kropotkin included “Mutual Aid: A Factor of
Evolution” (1902)
(www.en.wikipedia.org)
1921 Feb 9, James Huneker
(b.1857), American musical writer and critic, died.
(WSJ, 2/11/06,
p.P10)(www.britannica.com/ebi/article-9326842)
1921 Feb 12, Winston Churchill of
London was appointed colonial secretary.
(HN, 2/12/97)
1921 Feb 12, In Delhi, India, the
Duke of Connaught laid the foundation stone of the Parliament building,
designed by Herbert Baker.
(www.indfy.com/places-to-see-in-delhi/central-delhi/parliament-house.html)
1921 Feb 12, Soviet troops invaded
neighboring Georgia.
(MC, 2/12/02)
1921 Feb 14, In the "Gasoline
Alley" cartoon by Frank O. King, Skeezix was left as a newborn on
Walt’s doorstep.
(WSJ, 6/20/01, p.A1)
1921 Feb 14, The Literary Review
faced obscenity charges in NY for publishing "Ulysses" by James Joyce.
(MC, 2/14/02)
1921 Feb 18, British troops
occupied Dublin.
(MC, 2/18/02)
1921 Feb 19, Claude Rene Georges
Pascal, composer, was born.
(MC, 2/19/02)
1921 Feb 19, The U.S. Red Cross
reported that approximately 20,000 children died yearly in auto
accidents.
(HN, 2/19/98)
1921 Feb 20, Riza Khan Pahlevi
seized control of Iran. Pahlevi marched into Tehran with 2,500 soldiers
and took over the government. Britain helped topple the Qajar dynasty
and replaced it with Reza Shah Pahlavi, a former military officer. Five
years later he was crowned Shah and placed the crown upon his head with
his own hands, as did Napoleon.
(NG, Sept. 1939, p.330)(WSJ, 4/2/07, p.A6)
1921 Feb 22, An air mail plane
left San Francisco at 4:30 a.m., landing at New York (Hazelhurst Field,
L. I., N. Y.) at 4:50 p.m. on February 23.
(www.airmailpioneers.org/history/Sagahistory.htm)
1921 Feb 22, Jean-Bedel Bokassa,
dictator Central African Republic, was born.
(MC, 2/22/02)
1921 Feb 23, The 1st
transcontinental airmail plane set a record of 33 hours and 20 minutes
from San Francisco to New York.
(HN, 2/23/98)(MC, 2/23/02)
1921 Feb 24, Herbert Hoover became
Secretary of Commerce.
(HN, 2/24/98)
1921 Feb 26, Betty Hutton, actress
(Greatest Show on Earth), was born in Battle Creek, MI.
(SC, 2/26/02)
1921 Mar 1, Richard Wilbur, 2nd US
Poet Laureate, Pulitzer Prize winning poet and translator, was born.
(HN, 3/1/01)(SC, 3/1/02)
1921 Mar 1, The Allies rejected a
$7.5 billion reparations offer in London. German delegations decided to
quit all talks.
(HN, 3/1/98)
1921 Mar 1, Rwanda was ceded to
England.
(SC, 3/1/02)
1921 Mar 1, Sailors revolted in
Kronstadt, Russia.
(SC, 3/1/02)
1921 Mar 3, Allen Ginsberg, beat
generation poet (1969 Arts and Letters Award), was born.
(SC, 3/3/02)
1921 Mar 3, In India the Central
Legislative Assembly opened. The Committee on Public Accounts was first
set up in the wake of the Montague-Chelmsford Reforms. The Finance
Member of the Executive Council used to be the Chairman of the
Committee. The Secretariat assistance to the Committee was rendered by
the then Finance Department (later the Ministry of Finance). This
position continued right up to 1949.
(http://tinyurl.com/2tnbet)(www.parliamentofindia.nic.in/ls/intro/p14.htm)
1921 Mar 4, Warren G. Harding was
sworn in as America’s 29th President. By the time Pres. Woodrow Wilson
left office, the top tax rate was 77%.
(HN, 3/4/98)(WSJ, 9/25/02, p.D8)
1921 Mar 4, Hot Springs National
Park was created in Arkansas.
(SC, 3/4/02)
1921 Mar 6, Julius Rudel,
conductor (NYC Opera), was born in Vienna, Austria.
(MC, 3/6/02)
1921 Mar 6, The National
Association of Moving Picture Industry announced their intention to
censor U.S. movies.
(HN, 3/6/98)
1921 Mar 6, Police in Sunbury,
Penn., issued an edict requiring Women to wear skirts at least 4 inches
below the knee.
(MC, 3/6/02)
1921 Mar 7, Red Army under Trotsky
attacked the sailors of Kronstadt.
(MC, 3/7/02)
1921 Mar 8, Spanish Premier
Eduardo Dato was assassinated while leaving Parliament in Madrid.
(HN, 3/8/98)
1921 Mar 8, French troops occupied
Dusseldorf.
(HN, 3/8/98)
1921 Mar 13, Mongolia (formerly
Outer Mongolia) declared independence from China.
(HN, 3/13/98)(MC, 3/13/02)
1921 Mar 16, Britain signed a
bilateral trade agreement with Russia.
(HN, 3/16/98)
1921 Mar 17, Dr Marie Stopes
opened Britain's 1st birth control clinic in London.
(MC, 3/17/02)
1921 Mar 18, Steamer "Hong Koh"
ran aground off Swatow China killing 1,000.
(MC, 3/18/02)
1921 Mar 21, Arthur Grumiaux,
Belgian violinist, was born.
(MC, 3/21/02)
1921 Mar 21, Herbert Hoover, U.S.
Secretary of Commerce opposed all trade with Russia.
(HN, 3/21/98)
1921 Mar 21, "Big Jim" Colisimo,
US gangster, was murdered by Al Capone.
(MC, 3/21/02)
1921 Mar 21, Lenin’s New Economic
Policy (NEP) was promulgated by decree.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Economic_Policy)
1921 Mar 23, Arthur G. Hamilton
set a new parachute record, safely jumping 24,400 feet.
(HN, 3/23/98)
1921 Mar 25, Simone Signoret,
(Casque d'Or, Room at the Top), was born in Wiesbaden, Germany.
(MC, 3/25/02)
1921 Mar 30, Countess of
Sutherland, English great land owner, multi-millionaire, was born.
(MC, 3/30/02)
1921 Mar 31, Great Britain
declared a state of emergency because of the thousands of coal miners
on strike.
(HN, 3/31/98)
1921 Mar, Ceremonies at the Tomb
of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery have been an important
part of America's Memorial Day observance since March 1921, when
Congress provided for the burial of an unidentified American soldier
from World War I in that place of honor. Soldiers from World War II,
Korean and Vietnam wars are also interred at the Tomb of the Unknowns.
(HNPD, 5/31/99)
1921 Mar, Communist rebellions
were put down in Saxony and Hamburg.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weimar_Republic)
1921 Apr 2, Einstein (1879-1955)
made his first visit to the US on a fundraising tour with Zionist
leader Chaim Weizman. Prof. Albert Einstein lectured in NYC on his new
theory of relativity. In 2007 Jurgen Neffe authored “Einstein: A
Biography;” and Jozsef Illy edited “Albert Meets America.”
(SSFC, 5/13/07,
p.M6)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein)
1921 Apr 5, Alphons Diepenbrock
(b.1862), Dutch composer, died in Amsterdam. His work included
“Wandering Through the Woods” (1910).
(SFC, 9/1/04, p.B7)
1921 Apr 8, Betty Bloomer Ford,
first lady to President Gerald Ford, was born.
(HN, 4/8/99)
1921 Apr 9, Russo-Polish conflict
ended with the signing of the Riga Treaty.
(HN, 4/9/98)
1921 Apr 10, Chuck Connors, actor
(Rifleman, Branded, Cowboy in Africa), was born in Brooklyn, NY. He
later auditioned for the Chicago Cubs with Fidel Castro and played for
them for a while.
(MC, 4/10/02)
1921 Apr 11, Iowa became the first
state to impose a cigarette tax.
(AP, 4/11/97)
1921 Apr 15, Georgi Timofeyevich
Beregovoi, USSR cosmonaut (Soyuz 3), was born.
(MC, 4/15/02)
1921 Apr 15, The Black Friday
Labour Party strike of mine workers failed.
(MC, 4/15/02)
1921 Apr 16, Peter Ustinov
(d.2004), actor (Death on Nile, Logan's Run, Billy Budd), was born in
London.
(AP, 3/29/04)
1921 Apr 18, Junior Achievement,
created to encourage business skills in young people, was incorporated.
(AP, 4/18/97)
1921 Apr 26, The first weather
news was aired by station WEW in St. Louis, Mo.
(440 Int’l. Internet, 4/26/97, p.1)
1921 Apr 30, Pope Benedict XV
issued his encyclical "On Dante."
(MC, 4/30/02)
1921 Apr, The German bill for
reparations was tallied. An int’l. reparations commission determined
that damages caused by Germany amounted to $33 billion or 133 billion
gold marks.
(www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1369.html)
1921 May 2, Satyajit Ray, Indian
film director (Aparajito, The World of Apu), was born.
(HN, 5/2/02)
1921 May 3, West Virginia imposed
the first state sales tax.
(AP, 5/3/97)
1921 May 8, Sweden abolished
capital punishment.
(MC, 5/8/02)
1921 May 9, The play "Sei
Personaggi in Cerca d'Autore" (Six Characters in Search of an Author)
by Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936) premiered in Rome.
(http://tinyurl.com/qs2xg8)
1921 May 10, Nancy Walker, Bounty
ads, actress (Rhoda, McMillan & Wife), was born in Philadelphia.
(MC, 5/10/02)
1921 May 11, Tel Aviv became the
1st all Jewish municipality.
(MC, 5/11/02)
1921 May 12, Farley Mowat,
Canadian nature writer (Never Cry Wolf), was born.
(HN, 5/12/01)
1921 May 15, The Italian Communist
Party won 15 parliament seats out of 535.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_general_election,_1921)
1921 May 17, Pres. Harding opened
the 1st Valencia Orange Show via telephone.
(MC, 5/17/02)
1921 May 17, Toronto's Dr. Banting
(1891-1941) and graduate student Charles Best (1899-1978) began
research at the Univ. of Toronto that led to their discovery of
insulin. [see Jul 27] In 1982 Michael Bliss authored “The Discovery of
Insulin.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Banting)(WSJ, 10/4/08, p.W8)
1921 May 19, Congress passed the
Emergency Quota Act, which established national quotas for immigrants
entering the United States.
(AP, 5/19/97)
1921 May 19, Edward W. White
(1845-1921), Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court (1910-1921), died.
He served 26 years with the last 10 as Chief Justice.
(www.oyez.org/oyez/resource/legal_entity/55/)
1921 May 21, Andrei Sakharov,
Russian physicist, was born. He is known as "the father of the Soviet
H-bomb" and was the first recipient of the 1975 Nobel Peace Prize.
(HN, 5/21/99)
1921 May 23, James [Benjamin]
Blish, US-UK sci-fi author (Hugo, Black Easter, Star Trek
Reader), was born.
(MC, 5/23/02)
1921 May 23, The German Supreme
Court began a series of 9 trials for German WWI war criminals. Several
cases ended in an acquittal of the accused, but most were followed by
imprisonment or incarceration in a fortress.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1921_in_Germany)
1921 May 25, Hal David, lyricist
(Promises Promises-Grammy 1969), was born.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1921 May 27, Caryl Chessman,
kidnapper who got death penalty in 1960, was born.
(MC, 5/27/02)
1921 May 27, Afghanistan achieved
sovereignty after 84 years of British control.
(MC, 5/27/02)
1921 May 29, James Clifton, actor
(Live & Let Die), was born in Spokane, WA.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1921 May 29, Clifton James, actor
(Buster & Billie, David & Lisa), was born in NYC.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1921 May 30, U.S. Navy transferred
Teapot Dome oil reserves to the Department of Interior.
(HN, 5/30/98)
1921 May 30, Salzburg, Austria,
voted to join Germany.
(MC, 5/30/02)
1921 May 31, American Lithuanians
gave Pres. Harding a million signatures requesting de jure recognition
of Lithuania.
(LC, 1998, p.16)
1921 May 31, A major race riot
broke out in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Greenwood, the black section of town, was
burned. In 1997 Jewell Parker Rhodes wrote the novel "Magic City" based
on this event. As many as 10,000 white men and boys attacked the black
community and 35 blocks of the black business district were burned with
participation by police officers and a local unit of the National
Guard. Some 200-300 people were believed to have been killed. In 2000
the Tulsa Race Riot Commission recommended that reparations be paid to
survivors of the riots. In 2001 a final state commission recommended
that reparations be paid to survivors and their descendants.
(NPR, 5/31/96)(SFEC, 6/29/97, BR p.3)(SFC, 8/10/99,
p.A2)(SFC, 2/5/00, p.A3)(SFC, 3/1/01, p.A4)
1921 Jun 1, A race riot erupted in
Tulsa, Oklahoma, killing 85 people (21 whites & 60 blacks killed).
[see May 31, 1921]
(HN, 6/1/98)(MC, 6/1/02)
1921 Jun 8, Suharto (d.2008),
later dictator of Indonesia, was born.
(WP, 6/29/96, p.A20)(AP, 1/27/08)
1921 Jun 10, Philip Mountbatten,
Duke of Edinburgh, Prince, Consort of Elizabeth II, was born in Greece.
(MC, 6/10/02)
1921 Jun 12, President Harding
urged every young man to attend military training camp.
(HN, 6/12/98)
1921 Jun 19, Howell Heflin,
senator from Alabama, was born.
(HN, 6/19/98)
1921 Jun 19, Turks and Christians
of Palestine signed a friendship treaty against Jews.
(MC, 6/19/02)
1921 Jun 21, U.S. Army Air Service
pilots bombed the captured German battleship Ostfriesland to
demonstrate the effectiveness of aerial bombing on warships. At the
time, the ship was one of the world’s largest war vessels. Brigadier
General William "Billy" Mitchell, assistant chief of the Army Air
Service, arranged the demonstration to prove that air power should
become the country’s first line of defense.
(HNPD, 6/22/98)
1921 Jun 22, Joseph Papp, theater
director and producer, founder of the New York Public Theatre and
Shakespeare-in-the-Park, was born.
(HN, 6/22/01)
1921 Jun 25, Samuel Gompers was
elected head of the AFL for the 40th time.
(HN, 6/25/98)
1921 Jun 28, A coal strike in
Great Britain was settled after three months.
(HN, 6/28/98)
1921 Jun 28, P.V. Narasimha Rao
(d.2004), later India’s Prime Minister (1991-1996), was born to an
upper-caste farming family in Andhra Pradesh state.
(SFC, 12/24/04, p.B4)
1921 Jun 30, President Harding
nominated former President Taft chief justice of the United States, to
succeed the late Edward Douglass White. Republican William Howard Taft
(72), 27th president of the United States (1909-1913), served as Chief
Justice of the Supreme Court from 1921 until illness forced him to
resign in 1930.
(WSJ, 3/11/98, p.A20)(AP, 6/30/08)
1921 Jul 2, J. Andrew White
announced the Dempsey-Carpentier fight in Jersey City and was thereby
credited with being the first professional radio announcer. Dempsey
defeated Georges Carpentier of France in the 1st million dollar gate
($1.7m) boxing match.
(SFC, 7/20/96, p.E4)(SFC, 10/14/99, p.C5)(SC, 7/2/02)
1921 Jul 3, Francois-Arnold
Reichenbach, documentary filmmaker, was born.
(HN, 7/3/01)
1921 Jul 6, Nancy Reagan, wife of
President Ronald Reagan, was born.
(HN, 7/6/98)
1921 Jul 8, Great Britain and
Ireland agreed to end hostilities after centuries of strife. In
December British and Irish representatives signed a treaty in London
providing for creation of an Irish Free State a year later on the same
date. Southern Ireland was granted independence and 6 counties in
Northern Ireland remained part of the UK.
(SFC, 10/14/99, p.C5)(AP, 12/6/06)
1921 Jul 10, Greek forces launched
a frontal attack with five divisions on Sakarya, Turkey.
(www.allaboutturkey.com/ata_life.htm)
1921 Jul 11, Mongolia gained
independence from China (National Day). The holiday of Naadam, which
originated in the time of Ghenghis Khan, was later fixed to July 11-13
to the anniversary of the Revolution.
(SSFC, 3/27/05, p.F5)
1921 Jul 13, Ernest Gold,
composer, was born.
(MC, 7/13/02)
1921 Jul 13, Charles Scribner Jr.,
music publisher (Scribner), was born.
(MC, 7/13/02)
1921 Jul 14, Italian anarchists
Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were convicted for the May 5, 1920
killing of a paymaster and guard at a shoe factory in South Braintree,
Massachusetts. Many claimed there was unsubstantial evidence and that
the two were tried for their radical views rather than any crime. A
defense committee secured a stay of their death sentences and the cause
of Sacco and Vanzetti grew around the world. In 1927 a commission
appointed by the governor of Massachusetts examined the conduct and
evidence of the trial and sustained the verdict. Sacco and Vanzetti
were put to death in the electric chair on August 23, 1927.
(HNQ, 4/26/00)
1921 Jul 18, John Glenn, Jr.,
first man to orbit the Earth, was born in Cambridge, OH.
(HN, 7/18/98)(MC, 7/18/02)
1921 Jul
18, The prosecution gave its opening remarks in the trial of the
Chicago Black Sox, accused of throwing the 1919 World Series.
(www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/blacksox/chronology.html)
1921 Jul 21, Billy Taylor, jazz
pianist, was born.
(HN, 7/21/02)
1921 Jul 21, Gen. Billy Mitchell
flew off with a payload of makeshift aerial bombs and sank the former
German battle ship Ostfriesland off Hampton Roads, Virginia; the 1st
time a battleship was ever sunk by an airplane.
(MC, 7/21/02)
1921 Jul 27, Canadians Sir
Frederick Banting and Charles Best isolated insulin at the University
of Toronto.
(HN, 7/27/01)
1921 Jul 29, Adolf Hitler became
the president of the Nationalist Socialist German Workers’ Party
(Nazis).
(HN, 7/29/98)
1921 Jul 31, Whitney Young, Jr.,
civil rights leader and executive director of the National Urban
League, was born.
(HN, 7/31/98)
1921 Jul, Juan Miro (1893-1983),
Spanish artist, began working on his painting titled “The Farm.” He
completed it 9 months later. Ernest Hemingway, one of his sparring
partners in Paris, purchased the painting in 1925. In 1987 the
Hemingway family donated the painting to the National Gallery of Art.
(WSJ, 12/13/08, p.W8)
1921 Aug 1, Sid Hatfield, police
chief of Matewan, WV, was murdered on the steps of the McDowell County
courthouse by alleged company goons. Hatfield had been a long-time
supporter of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA). This soon led
to the Battle of Blair Mountain, a labor uprising also know as the Red
Neck War.
(http://pubs.socialistreviewindex.org.uk/isj66/newsinger.htm)
1921 Aug 2, A jury in Chicago
acquitted several former members of the Chicago White Sox baseball team
and two others of conspiring to defraud the public in the notorious
"Black Sox" scandal.
(AP, 8/2/01)
1921 Aug 2, Opera singer Enrico
Caruso (b.1873) died in Naples, Italy. The body of the great tenor
Enrico Caruso was entombed for 6 years in a transparent coffin.
(SFC, 5/25/96, p.B4)(AP, 8/2/00)(MC, 8//02)
1921 Aug 3, Hayden Carruth,
novelist (Crow & Heart), was born in Waterbury, Ct.
(SC, 8/3/02)
1921 Aug 3, Marilyn Maxwell,
actress (East of Sumatra), was born.
(SC, 8/3/02)
1921 Aug 3, Baseball commissioner
Kenesaw Mountain Landis refused to reinstate the former Chicago White
Sox players implicated in the "Black Sox" scandal, despite their
acquittals on a technicality in a jury trial.
(AP, 8/3/01)(SC, 8/3/02)
1921 Aug 3, The 1st aerial crop
dusting was in Troy, Ohio, to kill caterpillars.
(SC, 8/3/02)
1921 Aug 5, The first radio
broadcast of a baseball game took place in Pittsburgh.
(WSJ, 10/15/98, p.B8)
1921 Aug 10, Franklin D. Roosevelt
(39) was stricken with polio at his summer home on the Canadian island
of Campobello, New Brunswick. Mrs. Roosevelt acted as her partially
paralyzed husband’s eyes and ears by traveling, observing and reporting
her observations to him. As First Lady, an author and newspaper
columnist and, later, a delegate to the United Nations, Eleanor
Roosevelt labored tirelessly for the poor and disadvantaged. In the
words of historian John Kenneth Galbraith, she showed "more than any
other person of her time, that an American could truly be a world
citizen."
(HNPD, 10//99)(SSFC, 8/1/04, p.D11)
1921 Aug 11, Alex Haley,
genealogist and author of "Roots," was born.
(HN, 8/10/98)
1921 Aug 12, Marjorie Reynolds,
actress (Peggy-Life of Riley), was born in Buhl, Idaho.
(SC, 8/12/02)
1921 Aug 17, Maureen O'Hara,
actress (Miracle on 34th St), was born in Dublin, Ireland.
(SC, 8/17/02)
1921 Aug 19, Gene Roddenberry,
television writer and producer, best known for the series "Star Trek,"
was born in El Paso, Texas.
(HN, 8/19/98)(MC, 8/19/02)
1921 Aug 20, Jacqueline Susann,
author (Valley of the Dolls), was born in Phila., Pa.
(MC, 8/20/02)
1921 Aug 21, Nancy Kulp, actress
(Jane-Beverly Hillbillies), was born in Harrisburg, Pa.
(SC, 8/21/02)
1921 Aug 22, J. Edgar Hoover
became asst. director of FBI.
(MC, 8/22/02)
1921 Aug 23, In the great battle
of Sakarya, which continued without interruption from the 23rd of
August to the 13th of September, Turkey defeated the Greek Army.
(www.allaboutturkey.com/ata_life.htm)
1921 Aug 25, Brian Moore, Irish
novelist, was born. His work included "The Lonely Passion of Judith
Hearne."
(HN, 8/25/00)
1921 Aug 25, The United States,
which never ratified the Versailles Treaty ending World War I, finally
signed a peace treaty with Germany.
(AP, 8/25/97)(HN, 8/25/98)
1921 Aug 26, Ben Bradlee, editor,
journalist, executive (Washington Post), was born in Boston.
(MC, 8/26/02)
1921 Aug 27, J.E. Clair of Acme
Packing Co. of Green Bay was granted an NFL franchise.
(MC, 8/27/02)
1921 Sep 3, Ernest Hemingway
married Hadley Richardson, a wealthy debutante 8 years his senior, in
Horton Bay, Mich.
(ON, 7/05,
p.9)(www.boynecountry.com/media_kit/mediamain.html)
1921 Sep
5, Roy Gardner (1886-1940), train and mail robber, made his escape from
McNeil Island in Washington state during an inmate baseball game. He
was probably the first and only man to escape from the Island, which
led the US Government to build another "escape proof" federal prison on
Alcatraz Island.
(www.cybersleuths.com/billkelly/bkbonuschap1.htm)
1921 Sep 5, Actress Virginia Rappe
died in suite rooms (1219-1221) rented by film comedian Roscoe "Fatty"
Arbuckle at the St. Francis Hotel in SF. Arbuckle was charged with her
murder. In 1922 he was acquitted of a reduced charge of manslaughter,
but his career was over. In 2004 Jerry Stahl authored the imaginary
memoir “I, Fatty.” Evidence suggested that Rappe had died due to a
botched abortion.
(SFC, 8/4/04, p.E4)(AH, 2/05, p.46)
1921 Sep 8, Margaret Gorman of
Washington, D.C., was crowned the first Miss America in Atlantic City,
N.J.
(AP, 9/8/97)(HN, 9/8/98)
1921 Sep 13, Ludwig-Alexander von
Battenberg [Mountbatten], WW I admiral, died at 67.
(MC, 9/13/01)
1921 Sep 14, Constance Baker
Motley, first African-American women to be appointed a federal judge,
was born.
(HN, 9/14/98)
1921 Sep 18, John Glenn,
astronaut, was born. [see Jul 18]
(MC, 9/18/01)
1921 Sep 21, Pope Benedictus XV
donated 1 million lire to feed Russians.
(MC, 9/21/01)
1921 Sep 21, In Oppau, Germany, an
explosion at the Bradishe Aniline chemical works, a nitrate
manufacturing plant, destroyed the plant and a nearby village with 561
deaths and over 1500 persons injured.
(HSAB, 1994, p.46)(MC, 9/21/01)
1921 Sep 27, Engelbert
Humperdinck, German opera composer (Hansel & Gretel), died.
(MC, 9/27/01)
1921 Sep, Germany made an initial
reparations payment of $250 million. However, an economic crisis which
had gripped the country, caused runaway inflation and an end to
additional installments.
(www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1369.html)
1921 Oct 4, League of Nations
refused to assist starving Russians.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1921 Oct 5, The World Series was
broadcast on radio for the first time. By series' end, the NY Giants
had beaten the NY Yankees five games to three in the best-of-nine
contest.
(AP, 10/5/06)
1921 Oct 12, The cruise ship City
of Honolulu caught fire sailing from Honolulu to Long Beach. All on
board were rescued.
(SFC, 9/21/99, p.E4)
1921 Oct 13, The Daily Colonist in
Victoria BC mentioned the term "cold turkey" in reference to quitting
an addiction. This was the first know use of the term in print.
(SFEC, 1/25/98, Z1 p.8)
1921 Oct 13, In the Treaty of Kars
Turkey formally recognized the Armenian Soviet Republic.
(EWH, 4th ed, p.1086)
1921 Oct 13, Yves Montand, French
actor and singer (Z, Napoleon, Grand Prix), was born.
(MC, 10/13/01)
1921 Oct 15, Mario Puzo, novelist
(Godfather, Cotton Club, Earthquake), was born in NYC. [see Oct 15,
1920]
(MC, 10/15/01)
1921 Oct 18, Russian Soviets
granted Crimean independence.
(HN, 10/18/98)
1921 Oct 21, Malcolm Arnold,
composer (Bridge over River Kwai), was born in Northampton, England.
(MC, 10/21/01)
1921 Oct 23, Green Bay Packers
played their 1st NFL game. They won 7-6 over Minneapolis.
(MC, 10/23/01)
1921 Oct 23, Leos Janacek
(1854-1928) completed his opera "Katya Kabanov," and it premiered in
Brno. It was inspired by Alexander Ostrovsky’s mid 19th century play
"The Storm."
(WSJ, 1/3/96, p.A7)(WSJ, 1/16/98, p.A12)(MC,
10/23/01)
1921 Oct 25, Bat Masterson
(b.1853) died in NYC.
(MesWP)
1921 Oct 29, Bill Maudlin,
American political cartoonist whose GI "Willie" and "Joe" characters
appeared in Stars and Stripes newspapers, was born in New Mexico. He
won Pulitzer Prizes in 1945 and 1959.
(HN, 10/29/98)(MC, 10/29/01)
1921 Oct, Benton MacKaye published
his paper “An Appalachian Trail: A Project in regional Planning” in the
Journal of the American Institute of Architects.” The project with
major changes to the original plan was completed in 1937.
(ON, 5/06, p.9)
1921 Nov 2, Fernando Correia de
Oliveira, composer, was born.
(MC, 11/2/01)
1921 Nov 2, Eugene O'Neill's "Anna
Christie," premiered in NYC.
(MC, 11/2/01)
1921 Nov 2, Margaret Sanger and
Mary Ware Dennett formed the American Birth Control League.
(HN, 11/2/98)
1921 Nov 3, Charles Bronson
(d.2003), [Buchinsky], actor (Death Wish, Dirty Dozen), was born in
Pennsylvania.
(SFC, 9/1/03, p.A2)
1921 Nov 3, Milk drivers on strike
dumped thousands of gallons of milk on New York City streets.
(HN, 11/3/98)
1921 Nov 4, Takasji Hara, premier
of Japan, was murdered.
(MC, 11/4/01)
1921 Nov 5, Gyorgy Cziffra,
Hungarian-French pianist, was born.
(MC, 11/5/01)
1921 Nov 6, James Jones, American
novelist, was born. His work included "From Here to Eternity."
(HN, 11/6/00)
1921 Nov 7, Benito Mussolini
declared himself to be leader of the National Fascist Party.
(HN, 11/7/98)
1921 Nov 9, In Italy Mussolini
formed the Partito Nazionalista Fascista.
(MC, 11/9/01)
1921 Nov 11, President Harding
dedicated the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National
Cemetery. The unknown soldier was buried in Virginia’s Arlington
National Cemetery on Armistice Day. He had been taken from an American
cemetery in France.
(SFC, 5/27/96, p.B8)(AP, 11/11/97)(HN, 11/11/98)
1921 Nov 12, Representatives of
nine nations gathered for the start of the Washington Conference for
Limitation of Armaments.
(AP, 11/12/97)
1921 Nov 13, "Sheik," starring
Rudolph Valentino, was released.
(MC, 11/13/01)
1921 Nov 14, The Cherokee Indians
asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review their claim to 1 million acres
of land in Texas.
(HN, 11/14/98)
1921 Nov 18, New York City
considered varying work hours to avoid long traffic jams.
(HN, 11/18/98)
1921 Nov 18, The trial of film
actor Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle opened in San Francisco. [see Sep 5]
(AH, 2/05, p.46)
1921 Nov 19, Roy Campanella,
baseball star, was born.
(HN, 11/19/98)
1921 Nov 21, Geza Anda,
Hungarian-Swiss pianist, was born.
(MC, 11/21/01)
1921 Nov 21, The 1st mid-air
refueling was done by hand over Long Beach on a Curtiss JN-4.
(SSFC, 12/14/03, p.D2)
1921 Nov 22, Rodney Dangerfield,
[John Cohen], comedian (Caddyshack), was born in Babylon, NY.
(MC, 11/22/01)
1921 Nov 23, President Harding
signed the Willis Campell Act, better known as the anti-beer bill. It
forbade doctors to prescribe beer or liquor for medicinal purposes.
(HN, 11/23/98)
1921 Nov 24, John V. Lindsay,
(Mayor-R/D-NY, 1965-73), was born.
(MC, 11/24/01)
1921 Nov 25, Hirohito became
regent of Japan.
(HN, 11/25/98)
1921 Nov 27, Alexander Dubcek
(d.1992), headed Czech Communist Party (1968-69), was born.
(MC, 11/27/01)
1921 Nov, Yugoslav troops invaded
Albania; The League of Nations commission forced Yugoslav withdrawal
and reaffirmed Albania's 1913 borders.
(www, Albania, 1998)
1921 Dec 1, The US Navy flew the
first nonrigid dirigible to use helium; the C-7 traveled from Hampton
Roads, Va., to Washington.
(AP, 12/1/06)
1921 Dec 5, The British Empire
reached an accord with Sinn Fein; Ireland was to become a free state.
(HN, 12/5/98)
1921 Dec 6, James Showan, a
wealthy NY shipbuilder, was arrested after his palatial yacht was
seized off the California coast with more than 100 cases of whiskey.
(SFC, 10/14/99, p.C5)
1921 Dec 6, British and Irish
representatives signed a treaty in London providing for creation of an
Irish Free State a year later on the same date. The partition created
Northern Ireland. [see Jul 8] Ireland’s 26 southern counties became
independent from Britain forming the Irish Free State.
(HN, 12/6/00)(AP, 12/6/06)
1921 Dec 8, Eamon de Valera
publicly repudiated the Anglo-Irish Treaty.
(MC, 12/8/01)
1921 Dec 21, Supreme Court ruled
labor injunctions and picketing unconstitutional.
(MC, 12/21/01)
1921 Dec 21, Miss Henrietta S.
Leavitt (b.1868), American astronomer at Harvard, died. During her
lifetime, she discovered over 1,200 variable stars, half the number of
all such objects known at the time of her death. In 2005 George Johnson
authored “Miss Leavitt’s Stars: The Untold Story of the Woman Who
Discovered How to Measure the Universe.”
(www.womanastronomer.com/hleavitt.htm)
1921 Dec 23, President Harding
freed Socialist Eugene Debs and 23 other political prisoners. Debs, a
socialist, had run a campaign for the presidency from jail and got
920,000 votes.
(HN, 12/23/98)(SFEC, 3/19/00, Z1 p.2)
1921 Dec 26, Steve Allen comedian,
author, musician, composer, TV host, was born: The Tonight Show, The
Steve Allen Show; films: The Benny Goodman Story, cameo with wife Jayne
Meadows: Casino.
(440.com)
1921 Dec 29, Sears, Roebuck
President, Julius Rosenwald, pledged $20 million of his personal
fortune to help Sears through hard times.
(HN, 12/29/98)
1921 Dec, In Albania the Popular
Party, led by Xhafer Ypi, formed a government with Ahmet Zogu as
minister of internal affairs.
(www, Albania, 1998)
1921 Pierre Bonnard painted "The
Open Window." He is known for his intimate interiors and vivid outdoor
scenes.
(WSJ, 9/1/00, p.W2)
1921 Arthur Dove painted
"Thunderstorm."
(WSJ, 3/6/98, p.A13)
1921 Paul Klee painted "View of
Room With the Dark Door" and "Dream City."
(WSJ, 9/13/96, p.A8)
1921 Frank Knight authored “Risk,
Uncertainty and Profit.” The term “Knightian uncertainty” reflected his
note that most business decisions involve a step into an unknown that
is to some degree unmeasurable.
(Econ, 11/24/07, p.80)
1921 Ferdnand Leger painted "Woman
With a Cat."
(SFC, 11/26/96, p.D5)
1921 Sir Alfred Munnings painted a
portrait of Edward, Prince of Wales, astride his mare Forest Witch. It
sold for $2.3 million in 1998.
(SFC, 2/24/98, p.A2)
1921 Florine Stettheimer painted
her work "Spring Sale at Bendel’s." It was later acquired by the NYC
Whitney Museum.
(www.newcriterion.com/archive/14/sept95/naves.htm)
1921 Ezra Pound edited “The Waste
Land” by T.S. Eliot.
(Econ, 12/4/04, p.85)
1921 W.B. Yeats published his
"Michael Robertes and the Dancer," it contains his well known 1919 poem
"The Second Coming."
(SFEC, 10/31/99, BR p.7)
1921 Mary Clarissa Miller, pen
name Agatha Christie, published her 1st novel.
(SFC, 10/14/99, p.C5)
1921 Sheila Kaye-Smith wrote her
novel "Joanna Godden."
(SFEC, 11/17/96, DB p.40)
1921 Edith Wharton won the
Pulitzer Prize for her novel "Age of Innocence."
(SSFC, 1/14/01, BR p.8)
1921 Yevgeny Zamyatin (d.1937),
Russian author, completed his novel “We.” It offended communist censors
and did not appear in print in Russia until 1988. Editions outside
Russia became available in 1924. In 2006 Natasha Randall made a new
English translation.
(WSJ, 7/26/06, p.D11)
1921 The African Theatre, the
first black company in the US, opened with "Richard III" in New York.
(SFEC, 2/9/97, p.C15)
1921 H. Leivick wrote his Yiddish
play "The Golem." It was translated to English in 1966.
(WSJ, 4/17/02, p.D7)
1921 Eugene O’Neill wrote his
expressionist drama "The Hairy Ape," about a boiler stoker on a
transatlantic liner.
(WSJ, 4/4/97, p.A7)(WM, www,1999)
1921 Paul Robeson went on stage
for the first time on an invitation by Eugene O’Neill to star in "All
God’s Chillun Got Wings."
(WSJ, 4/9/98, p.A21)
1921 Sabato "Simon" Rodia, Italian
immigrant and cement finisher, began a project in Los Angeles that
later became known as the Watts Towers. He worked on the towers for 33
and then deeded the property to a neighbor.
(WSJ, 10/16/01, p.A24)
1921 The Motion Picture and
Television Fund Country House in Woodland Hills, Ca., was founded by
Mary Pickford, D.W. Griffith, Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks as
a retirement home for film stars.
(SFEC, 10/5/97, Par p.4)
1921 Ted Snyder wrote the hit song
"Sheik of Araby."
(WSJ, 6/3/03, p.D5)
1921 The John Burroughs
Association was founded to perpetuate the memory of this American
naturalist. It maintains his home, Slabsides, as a sanctuary in West
Park, New York.
(Nat. Hist., 4/96, p.80)
1921 The PEN organization of
authors, editors and translators was founded to promote free expression.
(SFEC, 4/10/00, p.B6)
1921 See’s Candies opened in Los
Angeles.
(SFC, 10/8/97, Z1 p.8)
1921 The Phillips Collection in
Washington DC was established and called itself America’s first museum
of modern art. Duncan Phillips and his wife Marjorie were among the
first private collectors of modern art.
(SFC, 6/4/96, p.E5)(WSJ, 11/17/99, p.A20)
1921 The Power family in
Vacaville, Ca. opened a roadside produce stand on I-80 that grew into
the Nut Tree Restaurant. A family feud put the restaurant and adjoining
160 acre site up for sale in 1996. In 2006 it re-opened as Nut Tree
Family Park.
(SFC, 6/4/96, p.C3)(SSFC, 10/29/06, p.G8)
1921 Lloyd Olds, a Detroit
referee, came up with vertically striped black and white shirts for
sports officials.
(SFC, 12/28/96, p.C4)
1921 Anatole France (d.1924),
French satiric master, won the Nobel Prize in Literature. His books
included “Thais” (1890), “Penguin Island” (1908) and “Revolt of the
Angels” (1914).
(WSJ, 2/20/96,
p.A-14)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatole_France)
1921 Frederick Soddy (b.1877)
received the Nobel prize for chemistry.
(HN, 9/2/98)
1921 Carlos Chagas (1879-1934), a
Brazilian doctor, won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his 1909
discovery of how a single cell parasite carried by insects transmitted
a disease (Chagas disease) to sleeping victims.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Chagas)(Econ,
4/11/09, p.36)
1921 Pres. Warren Harding went on
a Maryland camping trip with Henry Ford, Thomas Edison and Harvey
Firestone.
(SFC, 3/22/97, p.E8)
1921 The Emergency Quota Act based
on national origins was passed in the US to help stem immigration.
(WSJ, 7/26/96, p.A9)(WSJ, 3/29/04, p.A8)
1921 US law required that the name
of exporting countries be marked in English on all imported wares.
Prior to this Japanese porcelain was marked “Nippon.”
(SFC, 7/20/05, p.G4)
1901 The US Army did not bother
with laundry facilities until this time. The enlisted man was left to
take care of his laundry as best as possible. Mobile field laundries
were built during WW I. In 1998 a $400,000, 14-ton, mobile washing
machine called LADS was unveiled.
(USAT, 5/4/98, p.3A)
1921 State statute 6604 was passed
in Idaho that stated "any unmarried person who shall have sex with an
unmarried person of the opposite sex shall be found guilty of
fornication."
(WSJ, 7/8/96, p.A1)
1921 The Martin Act was adopted in
NY state under Gov. Al Smith in response to numerous security fraud
scandals. It was named after legislator Francis J. Martin, who later
became a state court judge. It provided a model for the 1934 federal
statute that created the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
(WSJ, 10/2/02, p.C1)
1921 North Dakota Republican Gov.
Lynn Frazier was recalled in the midst of an agricultural recession.
Frazier was elected to the US Senate in 1922 and served for 18 years.
(SSFC, 6/28/03, p.A1)
1920 Harvard University, under
president A. Lawrence Lowell (1909-1933), conducted a clandestine court
and “tried” 30 male students and staff members for the “crime of
homosexuality.” As a result 2 men committed suicide and the lives of
most of the others were shattered. In 2005 William Wright authored
“Harvard’s Secret Court: The Savage 1920 Purge of Campus Homosexuals.”
(SSFC, 11/13/05, p.M5)
1921 The editors of the Little
Review were convicted for obscenity for publishing an excerpt from
"Ulysses" by James Joyce.
(WSJ, 4/29/98, p.A20)
1921 In California the Daly City
Fire Dept. volunteers began publishing “The Alarm,” a department
newsletter.
(DCFD, Centennial, 2007)
1921 The city of Berkeley Ca.,
installed radios in police cars.
(SFC, 4/29/08, p.A1)
1921 Col. J.G. Boswell, a cotton
farmer from Georgia whose business was ruined by the boll weevil,
arrived in California and began to acquire land in the central valley.
The Boswell family took advantage of federal programs to stop droughts
and floods and helped get the Army Corps of Engineers to build Pine
Flat Dam, which drained Lake Tulare. In 1952 his nephew J.G. Boswell II
(1923-2009) took control of the company. In 2003 Mark Arax and Rick
Wartzman authored "The King of California: J.G. Boswell and the Making
of a Secret American Empire."
(Econ, 10/18/03, p.82)(SFC, 11/11/03, p.D1)(SFC,
4/8/09, p.B6)
1921 Adman Frederick Barnard
dreamed up the slogan "One picture is worth a thousand words," and
falsely called it to an old Chinese proverb.
(SFC, 12/31/00, WB p.2)
1921 Hendrik Baekeland
consolidated competitors Condensite and Redmanol with his own Bakelite
company to form Bakelite Corporation with himself as president.
(ON, 9/05, p.12)
1921 Frankart Inc. began business
in NYC and continued to the 1940s. The company made mass-produced
lamps, ashtrays, bookends and vases.
(SFC, 1/14/09, p.G2)
1921 The Eureka Art Glass Co.,
later renamed Blenko glass Co., opened in Milton, West Virginia under
William Blenko.
(SFC, 10/22/08, p.G3)
1921 DuPont reorganized along
product lines. The multidivisional format soon became a standard in
America.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R46)
1921 Ford’s car production
comprised nearly 56% of the total output.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)
1921 The International Harvester S
was the first truck called a pickup.
(SFEC, 1/5/97, Z1 p.2)
1921 The Hearst Corp. acquired the
Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper.
(SFC, 8/7/99, p.A9)
1921 Armand Hammer traveled to
Moscow to acquire a monopoly concession on asbestos mining. The
concession was later alleged to be a cover for Hammer to deal with
Soviet agents.
(SFC, 1/17/97, p.D7)
1921 Coco Chanel started selling
Chanel # 5. It was discovered by accident by an assistant of perfume
chemist Ernest Beaux. The assistant forgot to dilute a fatty aldehyde
which turned out to enhance and fix the scent.
(SFC, 12/28/96, p.C4)(SFEM, 3/9/96, p.34)
c1921 Earle Dickson, a cotton
buyer for the Johnson gauze bandage company, devised a ready made
sterile bandage strip for his accident prone bride. In 1999 Johnson
& Johnson estimated that 100 billion Band-Aids had been used since.
(SFEC, 5/23/99, p.B7)
1921 The Seiberling Latex Products
Co. was founded by Frank Augustus Seiberling (1859-1954). He had
earlier started the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. In Akron, Ohio.
(SFC, 5/26/99, Z1 p.6)
1921 The "Texas Pig Stand," the
1st drive-in car-service restaurant, was opened on the Dallas-Ft. worth
Highway by G. Kirby and R.W. Jackson.
(SFC, 8/12/00, p.B3)
1921 Drano came on the market. It
was produced by a Cincinnati chemical company.
(SFC, 12/28/96, p.C4)
1921 The Electrolux vacuum cleaner
was introduced by a Swedish lamp salesman.
(SFC, 12/28/96, p.C4)
1921 White Castle, the world’s
first hamburger chain, originated in Wichita, Kansas. It used small
beef patties that cooked quickly and sold for a nickel apiece.
(SFEC, 11/17/96, Par p.19)(AH, 6/07, p.11)
1921 Walter P. Chrysler, president
of the General Motor’s Buick Motor Co., became chairman of Maxmell
Motor Corp.
(NYT, 10/8/04, p.D9)
1921 The Minneapolis-based
Washburn Crosby (later General Mills), purveyors of Gold Medal Flour,
invented Betty Crocker to serve as a public image food expert. In 2005
Susan Marks authored “Finding Betty Crocker.”
(WSJ, 12/30/03, p.A1)(WSJ, 3/25/05, p.W10)
1921 The polygraph (lie detector),
used to measure physiologic phenomena, was invented.
(Econ, 7/10/04, p.71)
1921 Wyandotte Toys of Wyandotte,
Mich., was founded and initially concentrated on toy pistols.
(SFC, 2/15/03, p.E7)
1921 In Colorado a major flood on
the Arkansas River caused Pueblo to divert the original river channel
away from downtown. The channel became the setting for a 1998
riverfront project.
(WSJ, 3/25/98, p.B10)
1921 Army City, established in
Kansas in 1917, burned to the ground.
(Econ, 10/4/03, p.75)
1921 Alexander Pell (formerly
known as Sergei Degaev), the 1st math prof. at the Univ. of South
Dakota, died. In 1883 Sergei Degaev (26) had shot and killed Lt. Col.
Georgii Sudeikin, security chief of Czar Alexander III. The 2 men had
conspired to undermine both the government and the Revolutionary
People’s Will. Degaev fled Russia to the US where he earned a Ph.D. in
mathematics at Johns Hopkins. In 2003 Richard Pipes authored "The
Degaev Affair."
(WSJ, 4/17/03, p.D8)
1921 Frederick E. Walrath
(b.1871), master studio potter, died. Most of his work was done during
the years he spent teaching at the Mechanics Institute of Technology
(later named the Rochester Institute of Technology) in Rochester, NY,
(1908-1918).
(SFC, 11/15/06, p.G7)
1921 Afghanistan signed a Treaty
of Friendship with the Soviet Union.
(WSJ, 9/20/01, p.A12)
1921 George Leigh Mallory (36)
took part in the 1st expedition of mountain climbers to explore Mt.
Everest on the border of Nepal and Tibet.
(ON, 3/05, p.6)
1921 Vilhjalmur Stefansson
organized an expedition to the Arctic Wrangel Island and became trapped
there with 3 companions and an Eskimo seamstress named Ada Blackjack.
In 2003 Jennifer Niver authored "Ada Blackjack: A True Story of
Survival in the Arctic."
(SSFC, 12/7/03, p.M4)
1921 The borders of Armenia were
gerrymandered when the Caucasus territories were made part of the
Soviet Union. This made the area of Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous
enclave of mostly Armenians surrounded by Azerbaijan dependent on
Moscow. The site of Ani, former capital of Armenia, was ceded to Turkey.
(SFC, 2/4/98, p.C2)(WSJ, 3/18/98, p.A18)(Econ,
6/17/06, p.59)
1921 Opals were discovered at Big
Flat, Australia, near Coober Pedy. Today 70% of the local people
(3,500) live underground in former mines and specially dug caves since
it gets so hot in the summer (130 degrees). Coober Pedy is derived from
the aboriginal term "kupa piti," which means white man’s hole.
(WSJ, 6/12/95, p.A-12)
1921 In Austria economist Ludwig
von Mises wrote a full-scale refutation of socialist economics and
predicted the precise nature of its failure.
(WSJ, 1/30/97, p.A16)
1921 The British contrived the
election of Haj Amin al-Husseini (1895-1974) as the Mufti of Jerusalem.
In 2008 David G. Dalin and John F. Rothman authored “Icon of Evil:
Hitler’s Mufti and the Rise of Radical Islam.”
(WSJ, 6/26/08, p.A13)
1921 In Canada the lions in the
Royal Arms of Canada were designed by a committee of Parliament and
proclaimed by King George V.
(G&M, 7/31/97, p.A6)
1921 The Red Army forced the
Chechen government into exile and took nominal control. Armed
resistance continued. The "Mountain Peoples' Government" was forced to
emigrate as Soviet power became established in the Caucasus.
(SSFC, 11/10/02,
p.A11)(www.ciaonet.org/olj/crs/crs_1998sp/crs98sp_las01.html)
1921 In China Lu Xun authored his
allegorical novella “The Story of Ah Q.” It contained damning
insights into the “feudal” thinking of the time.
(Econ, 10/27/07, p.54)
1921 Mao Tse-tung, a young
librarian, formed the Chinese Communist Party. Their 1st meeting was
held in Shanghai.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R14)(Econ, 3/12/05, p.46)
1921 The Tartu Peace Treaty
between Estonia and the Soviet Union recognized a free and independent
Estonian Republic in perpetuity with fixed borders recognized in the
treaty.
(BN, V.15, No.55, p.4)
1921 In France the Colombe d’Or
(Golden Dove) north of Nice began life as a restaurant called "A
Robinson" under Paul and Baptistine Roux. The restaurant changed its
name and was converted to a hotel in 1931 with the sign "lodgings for
men, horses, and painters."
(SFEC, 3/29/98, p.T10)
1921 France, following populations
losses in World War I, created the “carte famille nombreuse,” a
discount card for families with 3 or more children.
(Econ, 4/19/08, p.62)
1921 Mohandas Gandhi began
peaceful the noncooperation movement against British rule. The
Non-cooperation Movement of 1920-'22 sought to induce the British
government to grant self-government to India. The movement grew from
the Amritsar massacre of April 1919, when the British killed some 400
Indians. The movement marked the transition of Indian nationalism from
a middle class to a mass movement.
(SFEC, 8/3/97, p.A15)(HNQ, 11/24/98)
1921 At the Cairo Conference,
convened by Winston Churchill, Britain and France carved up Arabia and
created Jordan under Emir Abdullah; his brother Faisal (Feisal) became
King of Iraq. France was given influence over Syria and Jewish
immigration was allowed into Palestine. Faisal I died one year
after independence and his son, Ghazi I succeeded him. In 2004
Christopher Catherwood authored “Churchill’s Folly,” and account of the
founding of Iraq.
(HNQ, 6/20/99)(SSFC, 10/14/01, p.D3)(WSJ, 7/22/04,
p.D10)
1921 Winston Churchill, T.E.
Lawrence and archeologist Gertrude Bell promoted "the sherifian
solution," under which the Hashemite family-- Hussein, the sherif of
Mecca, and his sons, would rule over the region under Britain's eye.
(Econ, 7/19/03, p.69)
1921 The British M16 intelligence
agency was formed.
(SFC, 9/21/00, p.A12)
1921 The British made southern
Ireland a dominion of Gt. Britain.
(Compuserve, Online Encyclopedia)
1921 In Ireland Michael Collins
and statesman Arthur Griffith set up the Irish Free State (the Republic
of Ireland). Several northern counties went over to Britain.
(SFEC, 12/22/96, Z1 p.6)
c1921 In Ireland, Michael Collins,
founder of the Irish Volunteers (precursor to the IRA), lost a
political fight to Eamon de Valera, who went on to run the country for
50 years.
(SFC, 9/22/96, Par p.31)
1921 In Israel there was an Arab
uprising in Jerusalem.
(SFC, 10/18/96, C8)
1921 Guccio Gucci (1881-1953) and
his wife, Aida, opened their 1st store in Florence following a number
of years in London. Their son, Aldo, later built the Gucci brand into a
global snob-appeal powerhouse. In 2000 Sara Gay Forden authored "The
House of Gucci."
(WSJ, 9/1/00, p.W1)(WSJ, 11/5/03, p.A1)
1921 The League of Nations granted
the Aland Island group to the new Finnish Republic. Aland was populated
by native Swedes. Under the accord Aland was given veto power in
international treaties signed by Finland.
(WSJ, 12/5/97, p.A1)
1921 In Mexico Fidel Velasquez
Sanchez (1900-1997) formed the Union of Milk Workers.
(SFEC, 6/22/97, p.D8)
1921 Urga was renamed Ulan Bator
(Red Hero) after Mongolian freedom fighters and D. Sukhbaatar sided
with Russian communists and defeated the Chinese warlords. The Mad
Baron, Ungern-Sternberg, was executed.
(SFEM, 10/12/97, p.28)
1921 In Mongolia Damdiny
Sukhbaatar, supported by the Bolshevik administration in Moscow,
organized a force that, with the help of Red Army troops, defeated the
White Russians and drove off the Chinese.
(www.gobiexpeditions.com)
1921 In Poland the Solec Hospital
in central Warsaw was built.
(WSJ, 1/15/97, p.A1)
1921 At Melrose Abbey in the
Scottish Borders a casket was found with an embalmed heart that was
thought to belong to King Robert I of Scotland. It was reburied and not
found again until 1996.
(SFC, 9/3/96, p.A8)
1921 The Soviet Union and Iran
signed agreements concerning the Caspian Sea.
(SFC, 8/11/98, p.A8)
1921 In Russia a mineral
exploration mission discovered coal deposits Vorkuta, 1,200 miles
northeast of Moscow. The 1st coal mine there opened in 1931 using
prisoner labor. Use of prisoners for mining ended in 1962.
(ST, 7/29/04, p.A3)
1921 A Soviet famine began with a
drought that caused massive crop failures, including total crop failure
on about 20% of Soviet farmland. a Soviet estimate put the death toll
at 5.1 million.
(www.overpopulation.com/faq/Health/hunger/famine/soviet_famine.html)
1921 In Turkey Kemal Ataturk, a
Muslim general, called for sustained military action to "chase the
enemy out of our land." He referred to British, French and Italian
forces that had helped defeat the Ottoman Empire and were stationed in
Istanbul.
(SSFC, 10/14/01, p.A3)
1921-1922 Poet Robert Frost was poet-in-residence at
the Univ. of Michigan.
(MT, Win. ‘96, p.4)
1921-1923 William G. Harding was the 29h President of
the US. He died of pneumonia on Aug 2, 1923, and was succeeded by his
Vice-President, Calvin Coolidge. The Teapot Dome oil leasing scandal,
the Veteran’s Bureau skimming scandal, Justice Dept. bootlegging,
influence peddling and pardon-fixing scandals plagued his
administration.
(A&IP, ESM, p.96b, photo)(SFC, 8/1/98, p.A15)
1921-1924 The number of Americans in Paris swelled
from 6,000 to 30,000.
(SFEC, 8/9/98, BR 9 p.9)
1921-1926 W.L. Mackenzie King, Liberal Party, served
as the 10th Prime Minister of Canada.
(CFA, ‘96, p.81)
1921-1927 General Leonard Wood (b.1860) served a
governor-general of the Philippines.
(www.wood.army.mil/MGLeonardwood.htm)
1921-1929 In South Africa the nomadic Nama people
were forced from their lands near the mouth of the Orange River
following the British discovery of diamonds in the area. In 1998
community elders initiated a bid to reclaim their land and asked for
ownership of the mining operations and compensation of $350 million for
the removed diamonds and environmental damage. A 2003 ruling
established that community members were entitled to both land and
monetary restitution.
(SSFC, 11/27/05, p.A22)
1921-1932 The 52-mil Going-to-the-Sun Road in Glacier
National Park was constructed over Logan Pass.
(WSJ, 6/23/97, p.A1)
1921-1944 The Soviets allowed Tuva to call itself
independent. Tuvan stamps are issued by Moscow in odds shapes and they
became collector's items.
(WSJ, 4/1/06, p.A5)
1921-1958 In Iraq the period of the Hashemite
monarchy.
(SFC, 5/27/97, p.A22)
1921-1986 Joseph Beuys, German artist, recorded his
own blackboard scrawls as drawings and made performance art of his
freewheeling lectures. Andy Warhol made some prints of Beuys. "Beuys
saw himself as an avatar of the realization that art is a mindful
attitude toward the ordinary…" He was the most influential European
artist of his generation.
(SFC,12/18/97, p.E3)(WSJ, 8/27/98, p.A12)(SFC,
1/4/00, p.B7)(SFC, 2/15/00, p.B1)
1921-1998 George Wright, theater organist, was born
in Orland. He recorded over 60 albums and performed Wurlitzer theater
pipe organs at the Fox Theater on Market St. in SF and the Paramount
theater in New York. He received the first lifetime achievement award
from the American Theater Organ Society in 1995.
(SFC, 6/1/98, p.A17)
Go to 1922-1923