1921 1922 1923 1924 1925 1926 1927 1928 1929 1930
New treaties, new violence, political and economic convulsions, and the emergence of new nations and regimes follow in the wake of the Great War—an independent Egyptian monarchy, an Italian Fascist Party dictatorship, and an independent Irish Free State.
The Washington Conference ends February 6 after nearly 3 months with a naval armaments treaty that provides for a 10-year period during which no new ships of more than 10,000 tons with guns larger than eight inches in width are to be built by Britain, France, Italy, Japan, or the United States. Britain and the United States are then to be permitted totals of 525,000 tons each, Japan 315,000 tons, France and Italy 175,000 tons each. Ships now under construction are to be scrapped (but aircraft carriers are exempted, and older ships will be refitted with better anti-aircraft protection). The treaty restricts submarine warfare and use of poison gas. U.S. Navy fleet commander Adm. Henry D. Wiley, now 62, is critical of the concessions made by Washington (see 1930).
Ernst Heinkel Flugzerugfwerke is founded at Warnemünde by aircraft designer Heinkel, now 34, who has been chief designer for the Albatros Aircraft Co. at Berlin that produced fighter planes during the Great War (see 1921; catapult, 1925).
Hipólito Irigoyen ends his 6-year term as president of Argentina and is succeeded by his handpicked successor Marcelo (Torcuato) de Alvear, 53, who cofounded the Radical Civic Union in 1890 and has been serving as ambassador to France (see 1928).
The Permanent Court of International Justice opens February 15 at The Hague.
The last monarch of the Austro-Hungarian Empire Karl I of Austria (Karl IV of Hungary) dies of tuberculosis at Quinta do Monto, Madeira, April 1 at age 34; former German general Erich von Falkenhayn near Potsdam April 8 at age 60; reactionary politician Wolfgang von Kapp at Leipzig June 12 at age 63 while awaiting trial for his 1920 coup attempt.
Germany's No More War (Nie Wieder Krieg) organization is founded by pacifists who include Hamburg-born Carl von Ossietzky, 32, who joined the German Peace Society in 1912, served as a conscript through the Great War, and since 1920 has been secretary of the Peace Society at Berlin (see 1927).
Germany's Weimar Republic recognizes Russia's new regime in the Treaty of Rapallo signed April 16 and resumes normal relations with the Lenin government (see 1926). Diplomat Georgy Vasilyevich Chicherin, now 49, has negotiated the treaty with German foreign minister Walter Rathenau. Germany cedes Upper Silesia to Poland May 15. Nationalist reactionaries murder Rathenau while he is en route to work at his native Berlin June 24 at age 55 (see Erzberger, 1921; Hitler, 1923).
The Irish Republican Army (IRA) is formally constituted in March "to safeguard the honor and independence of the Irish Republic." Responsible Irish political leaders will disavow the IRA, but the militant arm of the Sinn Fein political party that has stood for a free, undivided Ireland since the Easter Rising of 1916 will continue to employ terrorist tactics in a civil war within the Irish Free State (Eire) and in Ulster. President de Valera has resigned January 9 and organizes a Republican Society, rejecting the dominion status granted last year by London. He begins an insurrection against his erstwhile colleagues Arthur Griffith and Michael Collins, who have formed a new government, and the terrorism used earlier against the British is now used also against Irishmen as well.
Sinn Fein terrorists murder British field marshal Sir Henry Hughes Wilson, 58; the president of the Dail Eireann, Arthur Griffith, dies suddenly August 12; Prime Minister and urban guerrilla terrorist Michael Collins is mortally wounded August 22 at age 31 in an IRA ambush between Bandon and Macroom. William T. Cosgrove is elected September 9 to succeed Griffith, the Dail adopts a constitution for the Irish Free State October 24, the IRA leader Erskine Childers of 1903 Riddle of the Sands fame is court-martialed and executed by a British firing squad November 24, the Irish Free State is officially proclaimed December 6, the parliament of Northern Ireland votes December 7 to remain outside the Free State, and the last British troops leave the Free State December 17 (see 1949).
Turkish general Enver Pasha is killed in action August 4 at age 40 while fighting the Bolshevik Red Army near Baldzhuan in Turkestan (later Tajikistan). He had joined the insurgent Basmache at Bukhara in their revolt against the new Soviet regime.
Moscow incorporates Azerbaijan into the new Soviet Union as part of the Transcaucasian Federative Soviet Socialist Republic (see 1920). Large parts of the country were given to Armenia last year, and Armenian settlers received an autonomous district in the mountainous part of Karabakh province, but the Bolsheviks will improve the Azerbaijani infrastructure through most of the 1920s, building bridges, roads, and such (see 1936).
A Greek military revolt forces Constantine I to abdicate under pressure for a second time September 27 (see 1920). His 32-year-old son succeeds to the throne, will reign briefly as George II, regain the throne in 1935, and then reign until 1947.
Britain's Lloyd George cabinet resigns October 19 after Conservatives meet at the Carlton Club and vote to quit the coalition government. Canadian-born Scotsman Andrew Bonar Law, 64, heads a new Conservative government.
An Italian Fascist Party dictatorship begins in late November as Victor Emmanuel III summons Benito Mussolini to form a ministry and grants him dictatorial powers so that he may restore order and bring about reforms. Now 39, the journalist-politician has campaigned in his Popolo d'Italia against communism, organized his Fascio di Combattimento in Milan into a political party, won support from business interests fearful of communism, received backing at Naples from the secret criminal organization Camorra, and with help from former general Emilio De Bono has led his black-shirted Fascisti from Naples in a "March on Rome" October 28, but Mussolini's dictatorial powers are to expire at the end of next year. Former minister for foreign affairs Carlo, Conte Sforza, 49, has been appointed ambassador to France in February but refuses to serve under Mussolini, resigns, and will exile himself until 1943 (see 1923).
The kingdom of Egypt is proclaimed March 15 (see 1918); the sultan Ahmed Fuad succeeded his brother Hussein Kamil in 1917 and now assumes the title of king, 2 weeks after the termination by Britain of her protectorate over Egypt. The Sudan remains under joint Anglo-Egyptian sovereignty, and Fuad I begins a reign that will continue until 1936.
The League of Nations gives France a mandate over Syria July 28 (Paris has claimed sovereignty under terms of the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916). Alawite Territory (Latakia) has been incorporated into Syria July 1, French forces enter Damascus, and they expel the Arab leader Feisal (see Druse uprising, 1925).
The League of Nations gives approval July 24 to a British mandate over Palestine and includes the pro-Zionist Balfour Declaration of 1917, which has been endorsed by the leading Allied powers.
The Royal Air Force (RAF) in Iraq bombards Sulaymaniyeh in mid-May, the Kurdish town's 7,000 residents evacuate, and by October the RAF has flown missions that totaled more than 4,000 hours, dropping 97 tons of bombs and firing 183,861 rounds, killing nearly 9,000 Iraqis while sustaining nine deaths, seven wounded, and 11 aircraft destroyed behind enemy lines in an operation that has cost more than the entire British-funded Arab uprising against the Ottoman Turks from 1917 to 1918 but far less than it would have cost with infantry and artillery alone (see 1921). The Anglo-Iraq Treaty signed October 10 by British high commissioner Sir Percy Cox provides for a 20-year alliance, Iraq will ratify the accord in 1924, and the term will later be reduced from 20 years to 4. The British recall a Kurdish sheik from exile and reappoint him as governor of Suleyymaniyeh, but he announces November 18 that he is "king of Kurdistan"; armed confrontations will continue until the early 1930s between British occupation forces and Arab and Kurdish nationalists.
Former Ottoman army officer Ahmed Cemal is assassinated by an Armenian nationalist at Tiflis (later Tblisi), Georgia, July 21 at age 50. The Ottoman sultanate at Constantinople ends November 1 as Turkey's Grand National Assembly votes to abolish it (see 1921). Mustafa Kemal's forces have taken Smyrna from the Greeks in September (but have seen the city largely destroyed by fire), and Kemal has accepted neutralization of the Dardanelles in exchange for the return of Adrianople and Eastern Thrace. The sultan Mehmet VI flees aboard a British warship to Malta, and his cousin Abdul Mejid is proclaimed caliph (see 1923).
The Indian National Congress elects independence leader Chittaranjan Das president for its session at Gaya (see 1920). Das received a 6-month prison sentence last year for his role in leading a boycott against a visit by Britain's Prince of Wales and has been released after serving his time (see 1925).
Former Japanese prime minister Shigenobu Okuma dies at Tokyo January 10 at age 83; former Japanese general Aritomo Yamagata at Tokyo February 1 at age 83. Japan agrees February 4 to return Shandong (Shantung) Province to China, whose rival warlords engage in civil war.
The Dutch integrate their colonial East Indies into the Kingdom of the Netherlands (see 1894; 1945).
Mohandas K. Gandhi asks peasant farmers at Bardoli in India's Gujarat state to withhold land taxes but hears in February that some 60,000 "satyagrahis" have been imprisoned by the British for their activities in the campaign that Gandhi started in August 1920. When he learns that a mob of "satyagrahis" have massacred 22 Indian police in their station house at Chauri Chaura in the United Provinces, setting fire to the building and then blocking their escape, Gandhi announces that he has committed a "Himalayan blunder" by starting the satyagraha without proper soul-cleansing; he calls a halt to the campaign of non-cooperation, but he is found guilty of "promoting disaffection" and given a 6-year prison sentence (see 1930).
Japanese untouchables (burakumin) create an Organization of Levelers (Suiheisha) to withhold taxes, boycott schools, and stage protests against the discrimination to which they have been subject before and since the Emancipation Act of 1871. The Suiheisha will be disbanded in 1941 (see 1946).
The U.S. Supreme Court rules unanimously February 27 that the Nineteenth Amendment granting suffrage to women is not unconstitutional, as some opponents have charged (see 1920). The Cable Act signed into law by President Harding September 22 grants independent citizenship to married women (a U.S. citizen who marries a foreigner does not lose her citizenship unless she chooses to renounce it).
Women in the Canadian province of Prince Edward Island gain the right to vote in provincial elections (see 1919; Quebec, 1940).
Ida Wells Bennett travels to Arkansas to investigate reports of black prisoners being tortured with electric prongs. Whites from neighboring states came to Helena and broke up a meeting of black sharecroppers attempting to form a union, the black men were tried and convicted, 67 were given long prison terms, 12 sentenced to death. No one but a family member is permitted to go inside the prison to see the convicts, but Bennnet has been writing about the case in the Chicago Defender and gets in touch with family members of the prisoners; posing as a cousin of one man to get inside, she gathers details of what happened. The U.S. Supreme Court will rule within a year that the men did not get a fair trial and all will subsequently be set free.
Sen. Thomas E. Watson (D. Ga.) dies at Washington, D.C., September 26 at age 66, having fulminated to the end against blacks, Catholics, Jews, foreigners, socialists, and internationalists.
Chinese communist Xiang Jianyu establishes a Women's Department in the Party and serves as its first director (see 1916). Now 27, she participated in the 4th of May Movement in 1919, worked in a French textile mill the following year, studied the writings of Karl Marx, was married last year, and wrote a thesis on the emancipation and transformation of women (see politics, 1927).
Polar explorer Sir Ernest H. Shackleton dies of a massive heart attack on South Georgia Island January 5 at age 47 while on a fourth Antarctic expedition. Unable to adjust to civilian life at home, he had hoped to sail around Antarctica.
The Amoskeag textile mill at Manchester, N.H., announces February 2 that it is cutting wages 20 percent and increasing weekly hours from 48 to 52. Hadley, Mass.-born financier Frederic C. (Christopher) Dumaine, 55, has headed the 91-year-old mill since 1905, and it now has 650,000 cotton spindles, 78,000 worsted spindles, and 24,000 looms; he claims that demand for gingham has shrunk and that Southern mills are better equipped and more efficient. Amoskeag's 14,000 workers begin a 9-month strike that ends only when earlier wage rates are restored and working hours cut back a little.
U.S. coal miners strike for nearly 6 months to protest wage cuts. The massive walkout by the United Mine Workers (AFL) cripples industry and begins a period of chronic depression in the coal mining industry, whose operators will employ cutthroat competition to remain viable.
A 13 percent wage cut announced by the Railroad Labor Board May 28 affects 400,000 U.S. railway workers; they strike from July 1 through the summer.
Coal miners at Herrin, Illinois, riot from June 22 to 23 to protest the use of strike breakers, 26 men are killed, but both coal and railroad workers return to their jobs, defeated, in September.
Moscow signs commercial treaties and trade agreements with Italy and Sweden.
A modified Franco-German reparations agreement permits Germany to pay with raw materials such as coal, but Britain places the burden of war debts on the United States. The Balfour note states that Britain would expect to recover from her European debtors only the amount which the United States expects from Britain. The Reparations Commission adopts a Belgian proposal August 31 permitting Germany to pay reparations in installments on Treasury bills.
Germany's stock market collapses in August; the mark falls in value from 162 to the dollar, down to more than 7,000 to the dollar (see 1923).
The Fordney-McCumber Tariff Act passed by Congress September 19 returns tariffs to the levels of the 1909 Payne-Aldrich Act. The new law gives the president power to raise or lower duties by 50 percent in order to equalize production costs, but presidents will use that authority in 32 of 37 cases to further increase duties in response to appeals for protection by U.S. business and labor (see Smoot-Hawley Act, 1930).
The Federal Reserve Board created in 1913 sets up a bank-wire system to eliminate physical transfer of securities from one city to another and thus avoid theft, loss, or destruction of negotiable Treasury certificates. A Federal Reserve Bank taking in a certificate for delivery to another Federal Reserve Bank retires the certificate and instructs its sister bank by teletype to issue a new one.
A U.S. business revival led by the automobile industry begins 7 years of prosperity.
Wall Street's Dow Jones Industrial Average closes December 30 at 98.73, up from 81.70 at the end of 1921.
R. H. Macy Co. sells shares to the public for the first time after 64 years of private ownership (see 1912).
Marks & Spencer opens its first department store under that name at Darlington (see 1894). "Marks & Sparks" will grow to become Britain's leading retail enterprise.
Kansas City's Country Club Plaza Shopping Center is the world's first large decentralized shopping center (see Lake Forest, 1916). Developer Jesse Clyde Nichols, 42, wrote a Harvard graduate thesis on the economics of land development, visited English "garden city" developments, collected architectural ideas in Spain, and now pursues construction of the 6,000-acre Country Club district that will occupy 10 percent of Kansas City, Missouri, before the city expands through annexation. Stores in his shopping mall conform in their architecture to small-town shopping districts, facing the street with parking lots in the rear (see Dallas, 1931).
National Cash Register founder John H. Patterson dies en route to Atlantic City May 7 at age 77; merchant John Wanamaker dies at his native Philadelphia December 12 at age 84 (he is credited with having said, "I know that half my advertising budget is wasted, but I have never been able to discover which half").
The Teapot Dome scandal that will help tarnish the Harding administration begins April 29 as the U.S. Senate adopts a resolution introduced by Sen. Robert M. La Follette (R. Wis.) asking Sen. Thomas J. Walsh, 63 (D. Wis.) to undertake a subcommittee investigation of charges that Secretary of the Interior Albert B. (Bacon) Fall, 61, has granted exclusive rights April 7 to naval oil reserves in Wyoming to Harry F. Sinclair of Mammoth Oil Co. (see 1914). Navy Secretary Edwin Denby has transferred control of naval oil reserves to the Department of the Interior, Fall has granted exclusive rights to 32,000 acres of federal land (the Elk Hills and Buena Vista Hills reserves) in Kern County near Taft, California, to Edward L. Doheny of Pan American Petroleum (see 1893; 1923).
An oil well near the shores of Lake Maracaibo, Venezuela, gushes for 9 days in December before it is capped (see 1914). Oil was discovered in the area 4 years ago (see Curaçao refinery, 1918), President Gómez has bargained with British, Dutch, and U.S. companies to get the best possible terms for his country and eliminate Venezuela's foreign debt, and a company controlled by Royal Dutch-Shell has brought in the discovery well. Gulf Oil and Standard Oil of Indiana hold adjacent leases. Venezuela will in some years be the largest foreign supplier of petroleum to the United States, which at this point remains a net exporter.
Journalist and globe circler "Nellie Bly" (Elizabeth Cochrane Seamon) dies of pneumonia at New York January 27 at age 54.
Philadelphia-born naval architect William Francis Gibbs, 35, and his brother Frederick win a contract to convert the former S.S. Vaterland into the 950-foot luxury liner S.S. Leviathan (see 1920). The vessel was used as a troop transport in the Great War, William travels to Hamburg to obtain the blueprints from her builders Blohm and Voss, the Germans demand $1 million, William has studied science and marine engineering at Harvard, he replies that he will make his own set of working plans from the ship itself, Gibbs Brothers Inc. will employ 100 to 150 draftsmen on the ship's reconfiguration, and the liner produced at Newport News, Virginia, will set a new standard of luxury for the transatlantic route (see 1923).
Australian aviator Sir Keith Macpherson Smith and his brother Ross begin preparations for a round-the-world flight in a Vickers pusher-amphibian plane (see 1919). Ross is killed at Brooklands, Surrey, April 13 at age 29 along with a mechanic while testing the aircraft; Keith gives up the project and goes into business at Sydney.
Quincy, Ill.-born engineer William Bushnell Stout, 42, builds the first all-metal U.S. airplane for the navy (see 1925).
Dutch aircraft designer A. H. G. Fokker emigrates to the United States and establishes the Fokker Aircraft Corp. of America at Hasbrouck Heights, N.J. (see 1912; 1916). Now 32, he also maintains a large aircraft plant in the Netherlands (see Juan Trippe, 1927).
Alameda, Calif.-born Army Air Corps Lieutenant James H. (Harold) Doolittle, 25, makes the first coast-to-coast flight in a single day in September, flying a DH4b 2,163 miles from Pablo Beach, Florida, to San Diego in 21 hours, 28 minutes' flying time.
Test pilot Lieut. Harold R. Harris, 25, U.S. Army, takes off in a Loening PW-2A from McCook Field October 20, experiences terrible vibration, cannot regain control, and bails out with a silk parachute over Dayton, Ohio, making the first emergency jump from an airplane without injury. Survivors of parachute jumps will form an informal "Caterpillar Club."
Automobile inventor George B. Selden dies at Rochester, N.Y., January 17 at age 75, never having sold a car.
Britain's Austin Co. introduces the Baby Austin (see 1905). Herbert Austin converted his plant to munitions work in 1914 and employed 22,000 workers. His son was killed in action early in 1915 while serving with the Royal Artillery in France; he himself was elected to the House of Commons in 1919 and will serve until 1924. His new car will gain worldwide popularity, rivaling the Ford, and Austins will continue to be produced until 1957 (see British Motors, 1952).
Jaguar Cars Ltd. has its beginnings at Blackpool, Lancashire, where local motorcycle enthusiast William Lyons, 20, goes into partnership with his 30-year-old neighbor William Walmsley to start the Swallow Sidecar Co. in Walmsley's garage with backing from their parents. The two-toned sidecar gains quick success, and the partners will soon start producing smartly styled saloon (sedan) coaches for other automakers (see 1936).
Henry Ford makes more than $264,000 per day; the Associated Press declares him a billionaire (Ford Motor Company has a 55 percent share of the U.S. auto market). Ford pays $12 million to acquire the 5-year-old Lincoln Motor Co. started by Cadillac founder Henry M. Leland, now 80. Ford puts his son Edsel, 28, in charge of Lincoln, and the young man hires coach builders to improve the design of the cars and make them more competitive with Cadillac (see Lincoln-Mercury, 1939).
Durant Motors, Inc., introduces the Star, a $348 motorcar built to compete with Ford's Model T, but Ford reduces the price of its Model T to stifle Durant's threat of competition (see 1921).
General Motors gives control of its Chevrolet division to Danish-born engineer William Knudsen, 43, who has left Ford. Using mass assembly methods and Du Pont paints in a variety of colors, Knudsen will soon overtake Ford's black Model T (see Model A, 1927).
The Model A Duesenberg introduced by Duesenberg Automobile and Motor Co. of Indianapolis is the first U.S. production motorcar with hydraulic brakes, the first with an overhead camshaft, and the first U.S. straight eight (see 1919). Ninety-two of the luxury cars are sold, a number that will rise to 140 next year.
Minnesota bus pioneer Carl Wickman sells his interests in Mesabi Transportation Co. for something over $60,000 and begins to buy out small bus lines between Duluth and Minneapolis (see 1914; 1926).
Dow Chemical chemists find a way to make phenol production more efficient (see Dow, 1897). The Hale-Britton process developed by William J. Hale (son-in-law of founder Herbert H. Dow) and Edgar C. Britton, 31, will permit cheap production of orthophenylphenol and paraphenylphenol that Dow will market as insecticides, germicides, and fungicides (see 1924).
Industrial chemist Ernest Solvay dies at Brussels May 26 at age 84, having gained a fortune from his ammonia-soda process for producing the soda ash (sodium carbonate) used in the glass and soap industries.
An enzyme discovered in saliva, tears, and other animal secretions by Scottish bacteriologist Alexander Fleming, 41, breaks down bacterial cell walls. Fleming calls his lysozyme "the dissolving enzyme" (see medicine [penicillin], 1928).
Ohio-born Washington University physicist Arthur Holly Compton, 29, explains what will be called the "Compton effect" and prove to be basic to quantum mechanics (see Planck, 1900): X-rays are composed of discrete pulses (quanta) of electronic energy (he calls them photons), which not only have energy and momentum just as material particles do but also have wavelengths, frequencies, and other wave characteristics, their energy being directly proportional to their frequencies and inversely proportional to their wavelengths; when elastically scattered by electrons, the wavelengths of X-rays and other energetic electromagnetic radiations are increased. Individual photons collide with single electrons, the collisions result in a partial transfer of their energy and momentum to the electrons, which recoil, and the collisions also produce new photons containing less energy and momentum (see Debye, 1923).
English archaeologist Charles Leonard Woolley, 42, discovers Ur on the Euphrates River in Iraq, finds Sumerian temple ruins dating to 2600 B.C., and gives historical reality to the ancient Mesopotamian civilization of Sumer of which there has been only legendary knowledge.
English Egyptologist Howard Carter, 49, and his patron George Edward Stanhope Molyneux, 56, earl of Carnarvon, discover the tomb of Egypt's King Tut November 26 at Luxor in the Valley of the Kings (their work has been sponsored in part by the 34-year-old National Geographic Society). Of the 27 pharaohs' tombs near Thebes, only the one of minor 18th Dynasty king Tutankhamen (1335 B.C. to 1323 B.C.) has not been looted.
Insulin gives diabetics a new lease on life (see Sharpey-Schafer, 1916). University of Toronto medical researchers Frederick G. (Grant) Banting, 30, and Charles H. (Herbert) Best, 22, isolated the hormone (they called it "isletin") from canine pancreatic juices last year while their mentor John J. R. McLeod was on holiday in his native Scotland. He suggested on his return that they use Sharpey-Schafer's term insuline, turned over purification of it to a trained biochemist, and he organized an entire laboratory to help Banting and Best pursue their research, providing them with 10 dogs for their experiments. They use the hormone January 1 at the Hospital for Sick Children to save the life of patient Leonard Thompson, 14, whose weight has fallen to 65 pounds. He is close to death, but after injecting themselves with the hormone to make sure it is safe they inject young Leonard. After some initial problems related to impurities, his blood sugar level drops, his energy level rises, and he begins to regain weight (he will survive until 1935, when he will succumb to pneumonia after a motorcycle accident). The university will license Eli Lilly & Co. to make the first commercial insulin, and although diabetes remains incurable physicians now have a treatment for it other than diet restrictions (see 1924; 1937).
The U.S. death rate from diphtheria falls to 14.6 per 100,000, down from 43.3 in 1900; from influenza and pneumonia to 88.3, down from 181.5 (and much higher in the 1918-1919 epidemic); from infant diarrhea and enteritis to 32.5, down from 108.8; from tuberculosis to 97, down from 201.9; from typhoid and paratyphoid fever to 7.5, down from 35.9; but from cancer the death rate is 86.8 per 100,000, up from 63 in 1900; from heart disease 154.7, up from 123.1; and from diabetes mellitus 91.7, up from 18.4.
French bacteriologists Albert Calmette and Camille Guérin use attenuated tubercle bacilli to vaccinate newborn infants at the Charité Hospital Paris (see 1908). Now 59 and 49, respectively, they came to the conclusion last year that they had produced a bacillus that was harmless to humans but retained its power to stimulate antibody formation. Their BCG (bacillus Calmette-Guérin) vaccine will be adopted in France, the Scandinavian countries, and elsewhere, but British and U.S. health authorities will question its safety and efficacy (see Lübeck disaster, 1930).
Rangoon-born physician Gordon (Stifler) Seagrave, 24, opens a jungle hospital at Namkhan, Burma, that he will continue until his death in 1965.
Psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach of inkblot personality test fame dies at Herisau, Switzerland, April 2 at age 37; patent medicine magnate Charles H. Fletcher of Fletcher's Castoria fame at Orange, N.J., April 9 at age 84, having made a fortune from the formula that he purchased from a physician and promoted as a remedy for children; Nobel pathologist-parasitologist Alphonse Laveran dies at his native Paris May 18 at age 76; biochemist Jokichi Takamine at New York July 22 at age 67; Johns Hopkins surgeon William S. Halsted at Baltimore September 7 at age 69.
Listerine fights halitosis, say advertisements for the 38-year-old Lambert Pharmaceutical Co. of St. Louis, which has been making the antiseptic solution since 1879 and marketed it as an over-the-counter oral hygiene product since 1914. Advertising man Milton Fuessle has suggested the new appeal, a clipping from the British medical journal Lancet reveals that the medical term for bad breath is halitosis, and founder's son Gerard B. (Barnes) Lambert, 34, seizes upon the word as the basis for advertising. Lambert will take Fuessle to New York, open an advertising agency under the name Lambert and Feasley (he says Fuessle is too hard to pronounce), and huckster Listerine with human-interest-story advertisements, claiming that the product kills millions of germs on contact (although the bacteria in any human mouth number in the billions).
Pope Benedict XV dies of pneumonia at Rome January 22 at age 67 after a 7½-year reign in which he has codified Church law, persuaded Swiss officials to admit soldiers suffering from tuberculosis, instituted a missing persons bureau to reestablish contacts between soldiers and their families, and given away so much in alms that the Vatican has to borrow the wherewithal to bury him. Having tried to maintain neutrality during the Great War despite pro-Austrian sentiment in the College of Cardinals, Benedict XV has attempted in vain to mediate conflict, and he was excluded from the peace talks at Versailles in 1919. Benedict is succeeded by Milan's Achille Archbishop Ratti, 64, who will reign until 1939 as Pius XI. The century-old Society for the Propagation of the Faith moves its headquarters from France to Rome and is reorganized by the new pontiff, who makes it the chief fund-raising and distribution agency for all Roman Catholic missions.
The Society for the Advancement of Judaism is founded by Lithuanian-born New York rabbi-theologian Mordecai Menahem Kaplan, 41, who teaches at the Jewish Theological Seminary and whose group will advance the "Reconstructionist" idea that Judaism is an "evolving religious civilization" whose theological elements are no more important than its cultural aspects. Rabbi Kaplan introduces the bas (bat) mitzvah ceremony, and his daughter Judith becomes the first bas mitzvah. Used primarily in Conservative congregations, the rite will also be used to some extent in Orthodox synagogues and Reform temples, signifying an increase in young women's education and their broader role outside the home.
Onetime Pentacostal Church leader William J. Seymour dies of a heart attack at Los Angeles September 18 at age 52; liberal Protestant theologian Lyman Abbott at New York October 22 at age 86.
New York station WEAF (later WNBC) airs the first paid radio commercials in August, setting a pattern of private control of U.S. public airwaves: "What have you done with my child?" radio pioneer Lee De Forest will ask. "You have sent him out on the street in rags of ragtime to collect money from all and sundry. You have made of him a laughingstock of intelligence, surely a stench in the nostrils of the gods of the ionosphere" (see 1906). But revenues from sales of radio sets do not provide a large enough revenue stream to support broadcast stations, the 10-minute commercial for which a real estate developer has paid $100 produces $127,000 in sales within a few months, and while taxes and fees will support broadcasting in Britain and Europe it will be advertising that supports it in America (see NBC, 1926).
Raytheon Corp. has its beginnings in the American Appliance Co. founded by Everett, Mass.-born MIT professor Vannevar Bush, 32, and his Medford, Mass.-born college roommate Laurence K. Marshall, 33, who team up with inventor Charles G. Smith and obtain financial backers to produce a home refrigerator that Smith has invented based on artificial coolants. The project never gets out of the laboratory, but Bush suggests that the company produce an earlier Smith invention—a gaseous rectifier called an S-tube that permits radios for the first time to be plugged into wall sockets instead of depending on costly, short-lived A and B batteries for power. The tube will be introduced under the Raytheon name in 1925 and produce more than $1 million in sales by the end of 1926 (see technology [Bush's analog computer], 1930).
Radio broadcasting begins on a daily basis in Uruguay and other Latin American countries.
Radio Paris (initially called Radiola) begins regular broadcasts November 6. France's first private radio transmitter, it will change its name in 1924, by which time it will have been joined by Radio Toulouse and Radio Lyons (see 1939).
The BBC (British Broadcasting Corp.) transmits its first broadcast November 14. Financed in part by royalties on radio sales and in part by a 10-shilling Post Office license fee that anyone owning a receiver must pay, it begins with a staff of four, and Scottish-born engineer John C. W. (Charles Walsham) Reith, 33, becomes general manager in December; a six-foot-six misanthrope who will run BBC for the next 16 years, Reith will make the BBC one of Britain's most revered institutions as more and more Britons take to "listening in" (see 1936).
AT&T advises the U.S. Independent Telephone Association that the Bell System will take over no more independents without giving advance notice to the ITA and buy no company unless it fits logically into nearby Bell facilities and is in the public interest.
Telephone inventor Alexander Graham Bell dies at his summer home near Baddeck, Nova Scotia, August 2 at age 75.
The first U.S. neon lighting sign is installed on a Packard motorcar dealership at Los Angeles (see 1910).
The Reader's Digest begins publication at New York with a February issue that appears January 20. Canadian-born social worker Lila Bell Acheson, 32, was married in October of last year to former St. Paul, Minnesota, book salesman De Witt Wallace, also 32, and has helped him condense articles "of lasting interest" that they found at the New York Public Library and have collected in a pocket-size magazine which they edit in a basement apartment under a speakeasy at 1 Minetta Street, corner of Sixth Avenue. The Digest contains no advertising, its cover will carry its table of contents until 1998, bar girls hired from the speakeasy help the Wallaces wrap and address the first 1,500 copies that arrive from the printer, and circulation will grow to more than 200,000 by 1929 as the Digest plants some of its articles in other magazines and then condenses them. The magazine will accept no advertising until 1955 and by the 1970s will be publishing 29 million copies per month in 13 languages. Although its readership will be overwhelmingly female, the Digest will not be averse to publishing off-color stories; for years to come it will show a marked bias in favor of Europe's rising totalitarian governments and against both Jews and Roman Catholics (see 1933).
The Harvard Business Review begins publication with articles by Business School professors and other experts. It will continue into the 21st century, gaining great prestige.
True Confessions magazine begins publication to compete with Bernarr MacFadden's 3-year-old True Story. Its publisher is Wilford H. Fawcett, whose 3-year-old Captain Billy's Whiz Bang will reach a circulation of 425,000 per month next year.
Better Homes and Gardens magazine (initially Fruit Garden & Home) begins publication at Des Moines, Iowa, in September under the direction of Edwin Thomas Meredith, now 46, who started Successful Farming in 1902 and served as President Wilson's secretary of agriculture. His readers are people who have moved from farms into cities and towns.
Krocodil begins publication at Moscow. The illustrated supplement to the newspaper Worker (Rabochy) will develop into a political humor magazine.
The Bengali-language daily Ananda Bazar Patrika begins publication at Calcutta and will grow to rival the English-language Indian Express, with a circulation that far exceeds those of the Times of India, the Statesman, or the Hindu (few other Indian-language papers will have circulations of more than a few thousand).
Houston Chronicle editor-publisher Marcellus E. Foster blasts the Ku Klux Klan in fiery editorials while the Houston Post equivocates (see 1908). Chronicle advertising and circulation department heads plead with Foster to soften his stance, and he replies that before he will comply with their wishes he will "dismantle the presses and throw the pieces into the Buffalo Bayou" (see 1926).
German-born Hearst circulation director Moses L. (Louis) Annenberg, 44, and two colleagues pay $500,000 to acquire the Daily Racing Form, a tip-sheet established a few years ago by Chicago newspaperman Frank Buenell. Annenberg was brought to America with his seven siblings in 1885 at age 8, started his career as a Western Union messenger, will buy the competing Morning Telegraph, quit Hearst in 1926, go into partnership with Chicago gambler Monte Tennes to control bookie joints with leased wires to racetracks, and force his Racing Form partners to sell their interests to him for more than $2 million (see 1936).
The 3-year-old comic strip "Barney Google" gains popularity beginning July 17 when cartoonist Billy DeBeck has his diminutive hero knocked down while standing on the sidewalk outside the Pastime Jockey Club. A fight has started inside the club, and a man has come crashing through the window. The man is so grateful for having his fall broken that he gives Barney a racehorse named Spark Plug, and the horse will become a permanent part of the strip.
California publisher C. K. (Charles Kenny) McClatchy founds the Fresno Bee and starts buying radio stations (see 1857). Now 54, McClatchy became a full partner with his late father in the Sacramento Bee at age 21 and has fought the power of the Southern Pacific Railroad. His brother Valentine will sell his interest to C. K. in 1923, C. K. will buy the Sacramento Star and merge it with the Sacramento Bee in 1925, and by the time he dies in 1936 his paper will have a circulation of 50,000 as compared with 10,000 for its rival Sacramento Union.
Charles Atlas wins the "World's Most Perfectly Developed Man" contest sponsored by Physical Culture magazine publisher Bernarr MacFadden. Brooklyn-born Angelo Siciliano, 28, is a former 97-pound weakling who has built himself up with exercises he claims to have developed after watching a lion at the zoo. He will win MacFadden's contest again next year, will open a Manhattan gymnasium in 1926, and by 1927 his Charles Atlas, Ltd., will be taking in $1,000 per day from students who subscribe to his mail-order physical culture course (see Roman, 1929).
Bayonne Times publisher Samuel I. Newhouse persuades his employer Hyman Lazarus to join him in buying a 51 percent interest in the Staten Island Advance for $98,000 (see 1911). Lazarus will sell his stake to Newhouse and two associates in 1924. Newhouse will acquire a 60 percent interest in the Advance that year; he will buy out his associates in 1928 for $198,000; and by 1955 the Newhouse chain will include the Long Island Press, Newark Star-Ledger, Syracuse Post-Standard, Herald-Journal, and Herald-American, St. Louis Globe-Democrat, Portland Oregonian, and Portland (Oregon) Journal.
British press lord Alfred C. W. Harmsworth, Viscount Northcliffe, dies at London August 14 at age 57, having ruined his health through megalomania; his younger brother Harold, Viscount Rothermere, survives. New York-born journalist John Jacob Astor, 36, 1st Baron Astor, acquires a 90-percent interest in the Times of London from the Harmsworth estate and enters Parliament as a Unionist; he will control the Times until 1966.
Compton's Encyclopedia appears for the first time. Published at Chicago by Frank E. (Elbert) Compton, 48, and initially called Compton's Pictured Encyclopedia (the word Pictured will be dropped in 1968), the eight-volume home and school reference work is the first encylopedia to use photographs and drawings on the same page as the text they illustrate. Compton purchased publication rights to the Student's Cyclopedia 10 years ago, and Encylopaedia Britannica Inc., will acquire his products in 1961. Compton's will run to 24 volumes by 1974, and by the 1990s it will have some 5,200 articles in 25 volumes plus a one-volume Fact-Index containing 63,500 short entries and annual Compton's Yearbooks (see 1992).
Nonfiction: Decline of the West (Der Untergang des Abendlandes. Umrisse einer Morphologic der Weltgeschichte) by German philosopher Oswald Spengler, 42, who predicts the eclipse of Western civilization; The Meaning of Relativity by Albert Einstein; The Principle of Relativity by Alfred North Whitehead; Invertebrate Spain (España invertebrada) by José Ortega y Gasset; Public Opinion by Walter Lippmann; Etiquette in Society, in Business, in Politics, and at Home—The Blue Book of Social Usage by New York writer Emily (Price) Post, 48, a daughter of architect Bruce Price, who has found the manners of Americans far inferior to those of their social counterparts in Europe; My Discovery of England by Stephen Leacock includes "Have the English Any Sense of Humour" and "We Have with Us Tonight"; More Trivia by Pearsall Smith.
Psychologist-anthropologist W. H. R. Rivers dies at Cambridge June 4 at age 58; historian and syndicalist theoretician Georges Sorel at Boulogne-sur-Seine September 4 at age 74, having developed a theory about the positive role of myth and violence in history.
Fiction: Ulysses by James Joyce, whose book was serialized in the Little Review beginning in 1918 but challenged in a New York court following seizure of the serialized form. All reputable publishers have refused the stream-of-consciousness account of a day (June 16) in the lives of Dubliner Leopold Bloom and his wife Molly (it has been judged obscene in Britain as well as in America), but Baltimore-born bookseller Sylvia (Woodridge) Beach, 35, publishes it under the imprint of her Paris book shop's name Shakespeare & Co. Beach's talent for bringing French, English, and U.S. writers together is making her 3-year-old Faubourg St.-Germain-des-Prés store in the rue Dupuytren an intellectual center, and she has helped Joyce edit the disjointed manuscript that he has continued revising to the last, even adding another one-third when it was in page proofs. Hers is the only shop to carry the 1,000-copy first printing, U.S. postal officials at New York seize and burn 500 copies of a subsequent printing, but by 1933 Beach will have sold some 28,000 copies of 14 further printings. Irish critic A. E. (George William Russell) of the Irish Homestead calls Ulysses "the greatest fiction of the twentieth century," but writer-surgeon-throat specialist Oliver St. John Gogarty, 44, takes exception to being caricatured in the person of "big Buck Mulligan" (see 1933); Siddharta by Hermann Hesse, who visited India in 1911, has undergone psychoanalysis, and has developed a Jungian mixture of depth psychology and Indian mysticism to probe the fantasies of adolescents; The Bridal Canopy (Haknasath Kallah) by Hebrew novelist S. Y. (Samuel Joseph) Agnon, 44, who changed his name from Czaczkes when he moved to Palestine from his native Galicia in 1907; The Extraordinary Aventures of Julio Jurenito and His Disciples (Neobychaynyye khozhedeniya Khulio Khurenito i jego uchenikov) by Russian journalist-novelist Ilya Gregoryevich Ehrenburg, 31; The Thibaults (Les Thibault) by French paleographer-archivist-turned-novelist Roger Martin du Gard, 41, whose eight-part cycle of bourgeois life will continue until 1940; The Dream (Le Songe) by Henri de Montherlant; The Kiss to the Leper (Le Baiser au lépreux) by French novelist François Mauriac, 37; Cities of the Plain (Sodome et Gomorrhe) by Marcel Proust; The Adventures of Telemachus (L'Aventure de Télemaque) by Louis Aragon; Open All Night (Ouvert la nuit) by French diplomat-novelist Paul Morand, 34, who has served since 1912 as an attaché at London, Rome, Madrid, and Bangkok; The Enormous Room by Cambridge, Mass.-born poet E. E. (Edward Estlin) Cummings, 27, who drove an ambulance in France and served afterward in the U.S. Army (he will use only lower case letters in his poetry and sign his name "e. e. cummings"); The Beautiful and the Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald; Tales of the Jazz Age (stories) by Fitzgerald with illustrations by John Held Jr., 32; "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz" (story) by Fitzgerald; Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis, who examines the conformist, complacent American businessman of Zenith, Ohio ("the best ole town in the U.S.A."), for whom "standard advertised wares . . . were his symbols and proofs of excellence; at first the signs, then the substitutes, for joy and passion and wisdom." The book introduces a new pejorative; One of Ours by Willa Cather; Merton of the Movies by Harry Leon Wilson; The Garden Party and Other Stories by Katherine Mansfield; The Cross (Korset) by Sigrid Undset completes her Kristin Lavranstatter trilogy (she will be converted to Roman Catholicism in 1924 and win the 1928 Nobel Prize for literature); Jacob's Room by Virginia Woolf, whose London home is the center of the Bloomsbury Group); The Black Moth by English romance and mystery novelist Georgette Heyer, 19; Jigsaw by London post-debutante (Mary) Barbara (Hamilton) Cartland, 21, whose first novel receives a cool critical reception but goes into six editions, is translated into five languages, and launches her on a long career.
Novelist Giovanni Verga dies in his native Catania January 27 at age 81; Mori Ogai at Tokyo July 9 at age 60; W. H. Hudson at London August 18 at age 81 (a bird sanctuary will be established in his memory in Hyde Park in 1925); Marcel Proust dies of a pulmonary infection at his native Paris November 18 at age 51.
Poetry: The Wasteland by T. S. Eliot indicts the 20th century in a style perfected with the help of Ezra Pound. Eliot has worked at Lloyds Bank, London, since 1917, and his poem has appeared in first (October) issue of Criterion, a literary quarterly he has founded and will edit until he shuts it down in 1939. Published in book form by the 5-year-old Hogarth Press of Virginia Woolf and her husband, Leonard, Eliot's eloquent work links numerous allusions explained in lengthy notes: "April is the cruelest month, breeding/ Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing/ Memory and desire, stirring/ Dull roots with spring rain"; Priapus and the Pool by Conrad Aiken; Anabasis (Anabase) by French poet-diplomat Saint-John Perse (Marie René Auguste Alexis Saint-Léger Léger), 34, whose epic poem about the Greek Xenophon of 401 B.C. has landscapes reflective of the Gobi desert through which the poet traveled while stationed in China (his work is translated by T. S. Eliot); Charmes by Paul Valéry; Around the Cape of Good Hope (Rundt Kap det Gode Haab) by Norwegian poet (Johan) Nordahl (Brun) Grieg, 19; Tristia by Osip Mandelstam, who has developed an elliptical and metaphorical language; Clouds (Moln) by Swedish poet Karin Boye, 22; Mile I (Versty I), Poems to Block (Stikhi k Bloku), The King-Maiden (Tsar' devitsa), and Parting (Razluka) by Marina Tsvetaeva; Trilce by César Vallejo; Harlem Shadows by Claude McKay, whose work helps to launch the New Negro Movement, or Harlem Renaissance.
The Fugitive magazine appears in April. The poetry monthly will continue until December 1925 with contributions by Vanderbilt University poets and writers who include John Crowe Ransom, now 33, John (Orley) Allen Tate, 22, and Robert Penn Warren, now 16.
Juvenile: The Velveteen Rabbit; or, How Toys Become Real by London-born author Margery Bianco (née Williams), 41, illustrations by English artist-writer William (Newzam Prior) Nicholson, 50; The Voyages of Dr. Dolittle by Hugh Lofting; Gerry Goes to School by English author Elinor Mary Brent-Dyer (originally Gladys Eleanor May Dyer), 28, is the first of 98 "Chalet School" girls' stories about a school in the Austrian Tyrol; Just—William (stories) by Lancashire-born schoolteacher-author Richmal Crompton (Lamburn), 31, whose anarchic schoolboy William Brown made his first appearance in a story she had published last year in The Ladies Home Magazine (she will contract poliomyelitis next year, give up teaching, and produce at least one William book per year up to 1942).
The first Newbery Medal is awarded at the annual conference of the American Library Association. R. R. Bowker Publishing Co. president Frederic G. Melcher has established the medal for the author of the most distinguished American children's book of the previous year, naming it for the 18th century English publisher John Newbery, who was among the first to publish books exclusively for youngsters (see Caldecott Award, 1938).
Painting: Twittering Machine by Paul Klee; Before the Bell by Max Beckmann; Ecce Homo (drawing collection) by George Grosz; The Farm by Joan Miró; Still Life with Guitar, Harlequin, and Mother and Child by Pablo Picasso; Nude by Suzanne Valadon; Sunset and Maine Islands by John Marin. Art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel dies at his native Paris February 5 at age 90, having championed the Barbizon school and the impressionists in the 19th century.
The term graphic design is coined by William Addison Dwiggins.
Sculpture: The Avenger by German expressionist sculptor (and playwright) Ernst Barlach, now 52; The Sacrifice (war monument) by Malvina Hoffman.
The Barnes Foundation chartered December 4 manages the art collection of Argyrol co-inventor Albert C. Barnes, now 50, who bought out his partner in 1907 and has made a fortune (see medicine, 1901). Barnes will die in 1951 and his collection, housed in the Merion, Pennsylvania, mansion that he built in 1905, will open to the public in 1961.
Theater: Lawful Larceny by Samuel Shipman 1/2 at New York's Republic Theater, with Alan Dinehart, Lowell Sherman, Gail Kane, 190 perfs.; The Cat and the Canary by John Willard 2/7 at New York's National Theater, with Willard, Brooklyn-born actress Florence Eldridge (née McKechnie), 20, Henry Hull; To the Ladies by Marc Connelly and George S. Kaufman 2/20 at New York's Liberty Theater, 128 perfs.; Back to Methusaleh by George Bernard Shaw 2/27 at New York's Garrick Theater (Parts I and II), with English-born actor Dennis King, 23, Edinburgh-born actor Moffat Johnston, 35, Margaret Wycherley, St. Paul, Minn.-born actor Walter Abel, 23 (Parts III and IV) 3/6, (Part V) 3/13, 72 perfs. total; Loyalties by John Galsworthy 3/8 at St. Martin's Theatre, London with Edmund Gwenn, Eric Maturin, Dorothy Massingham, 407 perfs.; The Hairy Ape by Eugene O'Neill 3/9 at New York's Provincetown Playhouse (and then uptown at the Plymouth Theater) with Louis Wolheim, 127 perfs.; It Is the Law by Elmer Rice 11/29 at New York's Ritz Theater, with Alma Tell, 125 perfs.; Abie's Irish Rose by Georgia-born playwright Anne Nichols, 30, 5/23 at New York's Fulton Theater, with Bernard Gorcey, 34, in a play about a mixed marriage, 2,532 perfs. (a new record); The Machine Wreckers (Die Maschinensturmer) by Ernst Toller 6/30 at Berlin's Grosses Schauspielhaus; So This Is London by New Britain, Conn.-born playwright Arthur (Frederick) Goodrich, 44, 8/30 at New York's Hudson Theater, with Lily Cahill, 343 perfs.; East of Suez by W. Somerset Maugham 9/2 at His Majesty's Theatre, London, with Basil Rathbone, Henry Kendall, Malcolm Keen, Ivor Barnard, 209 perfs.; Why Men Leave Home by Avery Hopwood 9/12 at New York's Morosco Theater, 135 perfs.; The Fool by Channing Pollock 10/23 at New York's Times Square Theater with James Kirkwood, Lowell Sherman, 773 perfs.; Seventh Heaven by Austin Strong 10/30 at New York's Booth Theater, with Alfred Kappeler, Helen Menken, Frank Morgan, Marion Kerby, 704 perfs.; The World We Live In (The Insect Comedy) by Karel and Josef Capek 10/31 at New York's Al Jolson Theater, with Mary Blair as a butterfly, Vinton Freedley as a male cricket, 112 perfs.; Rain by Minnesota-born playwright John Colton, 36, and Clemence Randolph 11/7 at Maxine Elliott's Theater, New York, with Boston- (or Kansas City)-born actress Jeanne Eagels (Aguilar), 30, as Somerset Maugham's Sadie Thompson, 321 perfs.; The '49ers by Marc Connelly and George S. Kaufman 11/13 at New York's Cort Theater, with Howard Lindsay, Roland Young, Ruth Gillmore, 16 perfs.; The Texas Nightingale by Zoë Akins 11/20 at New York's Empire Theater, with Jobyna Howland as soprano Hollyhock Jones who becomes the Wagnerian diva "Brasa Canava," Cyril Keightly, 31 perfs.; The God of Vengeance by Sholom Ash 12/20 at New York's Provincetown Playhouse, with St. Louis-born actor Morris Carnovsky, 25, New York-born actor Sam Jaffe, 31, 133 perfs.
The Last Days of Mankind (Die letzten Tage der Menschheit) by Austrian playwright-poet Karl Kraus, now 45, is published but not performed (the five-act pacifist play contains 209 scenes, some of them one-line blackouts).
Worchester, Mass.-born Life magazine drama critic Robert Charles Benchley, 33, presents The Treasurer's Report at an amateur revue; his comedy monologue launches Benchley on a new career as humorist.
Actor Sidney Ainsworth dies at Madison, Wisconsin, May 21 at age 49; actor-playwright Frank Bacon at Chicago November 19 at age 58 while touring in his 1918 play Lightnin'; playwright George Bronson Howard kills himself by inhaling gas at Los Angeles November 20 at age 38.
Films: Sam Wood's Beyond the Rocks with Rudolph Valentino, Gloria Swanson; Fred Niblo's Blood and Sand with Rudolph Valentino; Fritz Lang's Dr. Mabuse, The Gambler (Dr. Mabuse: Der Spieler) with Rudolf Klein-Rogge; Erich von Stroheim's Foolish Wives with Maud George, Mae Busch (produced by Carl Laemmle of Universal Pictures, it is the first picture to cost $1 million); Frederick W. Murnau's Nosferatu with Max Schreck; Nanook of the North by British explorer-writer-documentary director Robert J. Flaherty, 28, who has obtained about $35,000 in financing from the 199-year-old Paris furrier and fur-trading firm Revillon Frères; D. W. Griffith's Orphans of the Storm with Dorothy and Lillian Gish; Rex Ingram's The Prisoner of Zenda with Lewis Stone, Alice Terry; Allan Dwan's Robin Hood with Douglas Fairbanks.
The February 1 murder of Irish-born Hollywood director William Desmond Taylor (originally William Deane Taylor) at age 49 creates a sensation. Comedienne Mabel Normand admits that she saw him only moments before he was shot with a .38-caliber revolver, and although she is innocent the resultant furor produces a public outcry for censorship of her films (Taylor's murder will go unsolved, although teen-aged actress Mary Miles Minter and her mother, Charlotte Shelby, will be suspected, and another actress, Patricia Palmer, will confess to having shot Taylor just before she dies decades hence). When Normand's chauffeur shoots a rich friend of hers in 1924 the scandal will end her career, already jeopardized by alcohol and cocaine abuse.
A San Francisco jury acquits film comedienne Roscoe C. "Fatty" Arbuckle of murder April 12 after deliberating only 1 minute. Now 35, Arbuckle attended a Labor Day party at the St. Francis Hotel last year; one of the other guests, actress Virginia Rappe, complained afterwards of stomach pains and died a few days later of a ruptured bladder. It is rumored that Arbuckle raped her with a champagne bottle, distributors have withdrawn his pictures, and Paramount has fired him. His arrest has ruined Arbuckle's career and suggested wide use of drugs in the film capital, outraging clergymen and in combination with other news stories prompting formation of a Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association (MPPDA) pledged to "clean up" Hollywood pictures and thereby avoid censorship. The studios pay former postmaster general Will H. Hays, 43, a spectacular $100,000 per year to head the new MPPDA, a position which requires him to make speeches, testify before congressional committees, and review films for content before their release (see 1934; Scarface, 1932).
Grauman's Egyptian Theater opens on Hollywood Boulevard, charging $1.50 per ticket to see the new film Robin Hood. Designed by Meyer & Holler, the theater has a red tile roof because it was originally to be in a Moorish style, but the discovery of Tutankhamen's tomb has aroused interest in things Egyptian (see Grauman's Chinese, 1927).
Hollywood Bowl opens July 11 in Bolton Canyon to provide a summer venue for the 4-year-old Los Angeles Philharmonic. The California amphitheater has simple wooden benches that seat just under 18,000, Rose Bowl architect Myron Hunt will design a balloon-shaped seating area in 1926, and Frank Lloyd Wright's son Lloyd will design two music shells in 1927 and 1928 (see 1936).
Austria's Salzburg Mozart Festival has its first season to begin a lasting August tradition in the city's Festspielhaus (Festival Hall), Mozarteum, Landestheater, Mirabell Castle, and Marionette Theater.
Opera: Russian mezzo soprano Mariya Maxikova (née Petrovna), 20, makes her debut singing the role of Amneris in the 1871 Verdi opera Aida at Moscow's Bolshoi Theater; Australian soprano Florence Austral (Florence Wilson), 28, makes her London debut 5/16 at Covent Garden singing the role of Brünnhilde in the 1870 Wagner opera Die Walküre (she has heretofore sung under her stepfather's name, Fawaz). By the end of the season she has appeared as Brünnhilde in the entire Wagnerian Ring.
First performances: Pastoral Symphony by Ralph Vaughan Williams 1/26 at London.
Broadway musicals: The Ziegfeld Follies 6/5 at the New Amsterdam Theater, with Will Rogers, Ed Gallagher, Al Shean, Mary Eaton, Olsen and Johnson, music by Dave Stamper, Louis A. Hirsch, Victor Herbert, and others, book and lyrics by Ring Lardner, Gene Buck, and others, songs that include "Mister Gallagher and Mister Shean," 541 perfs.; George White's Scandals 8/22 at the Globe Theater, with W. C. Fields, music by George Gershwin, lyrics by E. Ray Goetz, B. G. DeSylva, and W. C. Fields, Paul Whiteman and His Orchestra, songs that include "I'll Build a Stairway to Paradise" with lyrics by B. G. DeSylva and Arthur Francis (Ira Gershwin), 88 perfs.; The Gingham Girl 8/28 at the Earl Carroll Theater, with music by Albert von Tilzer, lyrics by Neville Fleeson, songs that include "As Long as I Have You," 322 perfs.; Better Times 9/2 at the Hippodrome, with music by Raymond Hubbell, book and lyrics by R. H. Burnside, 409 perfs.; The Passing Show (revue) 9/20 at the Winter Garden Theater, with Eugene and Willie Howard, Janet Adair, Fred Allen, music largely by Alfred Goodman, lyrics mainly by Harold Atteridge, songs that include "Carolina in the Morning" by Walter Donaldson, lyrics by Gus Kahn, 95 perfs.; The Music Box Revue 10/23 at New York's Music Box Theater, with Bobby Clark, Charlotte Greenwood, San Francisco-born singer William Gaxton, 28, book, music, and lyrics by Irving Berlin, 330 perfs.; Up She Goes 11/6 at New York's Playhouse Theater, with Gloria Foy, book by Frank Craven, music by Harry Tierney, lyrics by Joseph McCarthy, 256 perfs.; Little Nellie Kelly by George M. Cohan 11/13 at the Liberty Theater, with Elizabeth Hines, Georgia Caine, 276 perfs.
Singer Lillian Russell (Moore) dies at Pittsburgh June 5 at age 60, having suffered a fall on shipboard while returning from a fact-finding trip to Europe for President Harding (her report favored temporary suspension of immigration and restrictions on future immigration).
Popular songs: "Way Down Yonder in New Orleans" by Henry Creamer and Turner Layton; "Chicago" by Fred Fisher; "My Buddy" by Walter Donaldson, lyrics by Gus Kahn; "Blue" by Lou Handman, lyrics by Grant Clarke and Edgar Leslie; "I'll See You in My Dreams" and "On the Alamo" by Isham Jones, lyrics by Gus Kahn; "Trees" by Oscar Rasbach, lyrics by Joyce Kilmer (see poem, 1913); "Goin' Home" by Anton Dvorak, lyrics by William Arms Fisher (see symphony ,1893); Frida's Book (Fridas Bok) by Swedish songwriter-poet Birger Sjöberg, 36, gains wide popularity in his country.
A Western Electric Company research team led by J. P. (Joseph Pease) Maxfield, 34, invents a phonograph record graver that permits recording in acoustically correct studios rather than by singing or playing directly into horns. It chisels vibrations into wax at the rate of 30 to 5,500 wiggles per second (see Victrola, 1906). Electric impulses derived from sound waves as in the telephone vibrate the graver with augmented power to improve the fidelity of phonograph records (see vinylite records, 1946; 1948).
Sharpshooter Annie Oakley smashes 98 out of 100 clay pigeons March 5 at North Carolina's Pinehurst Gun Club, breaking all records. Now 61, she has completely white hair, which apparently developed in 17 hours after she was involved in a train accident 21 years ago, another such accident last year has put her into a brace, and she has melted down her hundreds of gold medals in order to raise money for a children's home in the South.
G. L. Patterson wins in men's singles at Wimbledon, Suzanne Lenglen in women's singles; Bill Tilden wins in U.S. men's singles, Mrs. Mallory in women's singles.
Harrison, N.Y., caddy Gene Sarazen (originally Saracini), 21, wins the U.S. Open to begin a notable career.
New Haven, Conn.-born golfer Glenna Collett, 19, wins the U.S. Women's Amateur championship that she will win again in 1925, from 1928 to 1930, and in 1935.
The U.S. Field Hockey Association is founded to govern standards of play for women in schools, clubs, and colleges. It will sponsor sectional and national tournaments.
Mah-jongg arrives in America, where a nationwide craze begins for the ancient Chinese game. The 144-tile sets will outsell radios within a year.
Former Chicago Cubs player-manager Adrian C. "Pop" Anson dies at Chicago April 14 at age 71.
The New York Giants win the World Series, defeating the New York Yankees 4 games to 0 after one game has ended in a tie.
The Maytag Gyrofoam washing machine introduced by the Newton, Iowa, firm outperforms all other washing machines yet takes up only 425 square inches of floor space (see 1907). Now 65, F. L. Maytag has built his own aluminum foundry to cast the tubs for his new machine.
French couturiers revive full-length skirts.
The Hall-Mills murder case makes world headlines. Children looking for mushrooms in a field across the Raritan River from New Brunswick, N.J., early in the morning of September 16 find the bodies of overweight clergyman Edward H. Hall, 44, and a member of his church choir, Eleanor Mills, 34, wife of a local gardener and mother of two. Both have been shot in the head, they have been dead for 36 hours, and police find notes suggesting that they have been lovers (Hall's widow, Frances, is a Johnson & Johnson heiress and about 20 years his senior) (see 1926).
London housewife Edith Thompson goes on trial at the Old Bailey on charges of having, with her accomplice, Frederick Bywaters, stabbed her husband on his way home from the theater. The trial creates a tabloid sensation, both defendants are found guilty, and they will be executed next year despite repeated petitions for reprieve.
The Lincoln Memorial dedicated May 30 at Washington, D.C., contains a 19-foot seated figure of the 16th president carved out of Georgia marble by sculptor Daniel Chester French, now 72. The $2,940,000 monument beside the Potomac has taken 7 years to build.
German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, 35, presents an innovative plan for an office building that calls for "ribbon windows"—rows of glass evenly divided by vertical concrete slabs. He will employ the design in many European and American buildings.
Tokyo's partially completed Imperial Hotel opens July 1 across from the grounds of the Imperial Palace and becomes a center of the city's social life. Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and built at a cost of more than $4 million, it has a high-domed main dining room (the Peacock Room) that can accommodate 700 guests at a sitting. The handcrafted, copper-roofed building contains 4 million tiles ordered from an old kiln 200 miles south of the city and stone quarried 100 miles to the north, 600 craftsmen have carried out Wright's designs for furniture, lights, murals, and tableware, and it has taken 3 years longer than planned and cost more than ¥9 million ($4.5 million)—far more than was budgeted, and only the intervention of the imperial household has enabled the money to be raised. Not all of its 285 guest rooms, each one individually appointed, are ready for occupancy but work continues under the direction of his assistant, architect Irato Endo (Wright was stripped of his authority following a fire that gutted the old Imperial Hotel April 16 and he leaves Japan in the fall, never to return); Albert Einstein visits in the fall and entertains guests by playing his violin in the Peacock Room. Walls of the hotel are thicker at the base than at the top and move independently of each other (see environment [earthquake], 1923).
Carrier Corp. engineers replace the ammonia gas in their air-conditioner coils with dielene, a coolant that poses no hazards, and introduce a central compressor that makes the cooling units far more compact (see 1915; Rivoli Theater, 1925).
Australia moves to protect her koala bears after fur trappers have killed 8 million in less than 4 years and have nearly wiped the marsupial out of existence.
Horse-drawn fire apparatus makes its final appearance in New York December 22 as equipment from Brooklyn's Engine Company 205 at 160 Pierrepont Street races to put out a fire.
V. I. Lenin permits small private farms to help Russians produce more food (see Stalin, 1928).
Harold M. Ware arrives in Russia with 21 tractors, other farm machinery, seeds, supplies, and food (see 1921). Assigned to lands in the Urals, Ware and his volunteer associates seed most of 4,000 acres in winter wheat; they encourage peasants to give up their holdings and join a collective (see 1925).
Finland's legislature enacts a land reform program that follows a 1918 Smallholdings Law, allowing the expropriation of estates exceeding 200 hectares (495 acres). The laws create more than 90,000 small holdings, and the independent landowners (many of whom have been tenant farmers or landless farm workers) will comprise a majority of the country's Agrarian Party (see politics, 1925).
U.S. farmers remain in deep depression with a few exceptions such as California citrus growers. The Capper Volstead Act passed by Congress February 18 exempts agricultural marketing cooperatives from antitrust law restrictions. The co-ops are subject to supervision by the secretary of agriculture, who is to prevent them from raising prices "unduly."
English-born Canadian veterinarian Francis "Frank" W. Schofield, 33, finds the cause of the hemorrhagic disease that has decimated Alberta cattle herds: the animals ate moldy silage made from sweet clover containing what later will be identified as dicumarol that prevents blood from clotting (see Warfarin, 1947).
California becomes a year-round source of oranges as Valencia orange production catches up with navel orange production (see 1875; 1906; Sunkist, 1919).
The first U.S. soybean refinery begins operations at Decatur, Illinois (see 1906; soybean crop, 1921). Corn processor A. E. Staley removes at least 96 percent of the oil and sells the residue, or cake, to the feed industry for use in commercial feeds, or to farmers to mix with other ingredients as a protein supplement for livestock (see soybean crop, 1923).
A Grain Futures Act passed by Congress September 21 curbs speculation, thought to have contributed to the collapse of grain prices in 1920. The new act supersedes an August 1921 act that has been declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court; it limits price fluctuations within any given period on U.S. grain exchanges.
The American Farm Bureau Federation donates 15 million bushels of corn in January to help Herbert Hoover's European Relief Committee, the American Committee for China Famine Fund, and the Near East Relief Committee. The American Relief Administration feeds some 10.5 million hungry Russians per day in August as famine continues in what will soon be the Soviet Union (see 1921). Before it ends, at least 5 million will have died, but Russia harvests a new crop that eases hunger, and the worst of the famine is over by fall (see 1923).
E. V. McCollum isolates vitamin D and uses it in successful treatment of rickets. The newly found vitamin is found to play some role in raising the amount of calcium and phosphate deposited in bones, but the mechanism remains a mystery (see 1923).
Experimental dogs produce hemoglobin quickly and avoid anemia when fed liver in tests made by University of Rochester pathologist George H. (Hoyt) Whipple, 44, who shows that dietary liver sharply increases red blood cell counts in anemic patients (see Minot and Murphy, 1924).
Europe has its last reported case of botulism traceable to a commercial canner (see United States, 1924).
Pep breakfast food is introduced by the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Co. which changes its name to Kellogg Co. (see 1919; 1928).
Canada Dry Ginger Ale opens its first U.S. bottling plant on New York's 38th Street to avoid the long, costly haul from Canada and the high tariff on imports (see 1907). Shipments from the new plant begin April 28 and a full-page advertisement in the New York Times rotogravure section, prepared by N. W. Ayer & Son of Philadelphia, carries the headline, "Down from Canada Came Tales of a Wonderful Beverage." The ginger ale sells at 35¢ per 12-ounce bottle but meets with immediate success despite its high price.
Chocolate maker George Cadbury dies at his native Birmingham, Warwickshire, October 24 at age 83, having improved working conditions and made substantial contributions to housing and city planning.
"Texas" Guinan begins her career as Prohibition-era New York nightclub hostess. Mary Louise Cecilia Guinan, 38, goes to work as mistress of ceremonies at the Café des Beaux Arts and is soon hired away by Larry Fay of El Fey, from whose club she will move to the Rendezvous, 300 Club, Argonaut, Century, Salon Royal, Club Intime, and to several Texas Guinan Clubs that will serve bootleg Scotch at $25 per fifth, bootleg champagne at $25 per bottle, plain water at $2 per pitcher as she earns $700,000 in a 10-month period. The clubs will charge their "butter-and-egg men" customers cover charges of $5 to $25 each while Texas Guinan ("give the little girl a great big hand") welcomes customers from her seat atop a piano with the cry, "Hello, sucker!" Speakeasies pay off the police or in various other ways evade Prohibition laws.
Embryologist-cytologist Oskar Hertwig dies at Berlin October 25 at age 73, having been the first to recognize that the essential event in fertilization is the fusion of sperm and ovum.
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