1921 1922 1923 1924 1925 1926 1927 1928 1929 1930
French troops occupy Germany's rich Ruhr Basin beginning January 11. The Germans have defaulted on coal deliveries promised at Versailles in 1919, and French officers swagger through the streets of Essen and other cities, lording it over the hard-pressed and embittered populace as German hyperinflation soars out of control.
Former Greek king Constantine I dies of a brain hemorrhage at Palermo January 11 at age 54; former French premier Alexandre Ribot at Paris January 13 at age 80.
Britain's moody, neurotic duke of York is married April 23 at Westminster Abbey to Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, 22, who has overcome her initial reluctance to marry the prince with his speech defect and nervous tics. She is the first commoner to marry a prince of the realm since 1660, and Prince Albert is the first son of a king to be married in Westminster Abbey since 1382.
Secret Intelligence Service director Capt. Sir George Mansfield Smith-Cumming collapses in his London office June 14 and dies at age 64, having headed SIS since 1911. Always a fast driver, he lost his son in a French motorcar accident in 1914, the crash cost him a leg, and he has used his child's scooter to support his wooden leg. Admiral Hugh Sinclair, 51, Royal Navy, succeeds him, having headed Naval Intelligence and tried to strengthen efforts against Bolshevism; he will serve until his death in 1939, but although he will follow his predecessor's custom of signing all papers "C," he is less colorful (see 1938).
Britain's general elections in November give the Labour Party its first great victory (see 1924).
A Bulgarian coup d'état June 9 overthrows Prime Minister Aleksandr Stamboliski, whose dictatorial policies in behalf of the peasants have antagonized the army, the Macedonians, and others (see 1920). Stamboliski is shot dead at his native Slavovitsa June 12 while allegedly trying to escape and is succeeded by University of Sofia economics professor Aleksandr Tsankov, 44, who releases the Macedonian-born former minister of war Andrei Liapchev, 56, from the prison in which he has been confined since last year. Tsankov will be prime minister until 1926, fighting the Peasants' and Communist parties (see 1934).
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) becomes a reality July 6, having been established on paper January 1 through a confederation of Russia, the Ukraine, White Russia, and Transcaucasia.
Benito Mussolini secures his Fascist dictatorship by dissolving Italy's non-Fascist parties July 10 (see 1922); Partito Popolare Italiano leader Luigi Sturzo, now 51, retires to a monastery and will go into exile next year. Mussolini forces a law through the parliament November 14 stating that any party that wins the largest number of votes in an election shall have two-thirds of the seats in the parliament even though it may have gained no more than 25 percent of the popular vote (see 1924).
German political agitator Adolf Hitler stages a "Beer Hall Putsch" at Munich November 8 as the mark falls to below 1 trillion to the dollar. Hitler has been giving speeches blaming Germany's defeat in 1918 on "cowards," Jews, "shirkers," and "November criminals." His National Socialist German Workers' (Nazi) Party remains a splinter organization (see 1920), but Hitler takes over Munich's vast Bürgerbraükeller with help from Gen. Erich Ludendorff, Sturmabteilung founder Ernst Röhm, and Dietrich Eckart. The Nazis seize the city government, police promptly oust them, Chancellor Gustav Stresemann helps to crush the uprising (and foils an attempt by the army to force his resignation). Hitler flees to a friend's lakeside home and is arrested November 9, but all of Bavaria is in revolt and monarchist forces are reported marching on Berlin; President Ebert says that "crazed persons" threaten the nation. He masses troops to protect the city, and Premier Poincaré sends instructions to his ambassador at Berlin that he is to tell the Germans that France will not tolerate the establishment of a dictatorial government; Minister of War Otto (Karl) Gessler, 48, is granted supreme power briefly to restore order in the face of extremists both of the left and the right. National Socialist Party cofounder Dietrich Eckart is locked up briefly with Hitler at Landsberg Prison but dies of a heart attack December 26 at age 55; a court next year will sentence Hitler to a 5-year prison term; he will make Estonian-born editor Alfred Rosenberg, now 30, leader of the party in his absence; and he will serve 9 months in Landsberg before being paroled (Röhm will also serve a brief sentence) (see 1925).
Countess Markievicz canvasses for signatures on a petition calling for the release of Irish Republican prisoners and British detectives arrest her November 20 at Dublin (see 1921). A hunger striker dies that day at Newbridge Prison, and the countess herself is held without charges, refusing food at the North Dublin Union, a detention camp for women that opened in June. Now 55, she is released December 24 and will continue speaking for the Women's Prisoners Defense League, Fianna, labor, and other causes until her death from peritonitis following an appendectomy in July 1927.
Jordan (Transjordania) becomes an autonomous state May 26. Occupying 80 percent of Palestinian territory, the British protectorate is headed by Emir Abdullah ibn Husein, 40, whose father is king of Hejaz and whose Hashemite family is descended from the prophet Mohammed (see 1916). The country is desperately poor, her boundaries are arbitrarily drawn, and British foreign service officer Sir Mark Sykes has designed her flag, which has been produced by his army supply shop at Cairo; Britain will recognize Jordanian independence early in 1928 but retain military control and some financial control.
The Treaty of Lausanne signed July 24 returns eastern Thrace, Imbros, and Tenedos to Turkey, while Greece receives the other Aegean islands, Italy the Dodecanese Islands; Britain retains Cyprus, the Straits are demilitarized, and Turkey pays no reparations. Like the repudiated 1920 Treaty of Sèvres, the new treaty makes no provision for the Kurds. Foreign Secretary George N. Curzon, Marquis Curzon of Keddleston, has headed the British delegation and won great success at a time when his nation's prestige is low, but the murder in August of an Italian general in the boundary delegation so angers dictator Benito Mussolini that he bombards Kérkira on Corfu and holds the city briefly.
Allied forces evacuate Constantinople August 23, the Turks make Angora their capital October 14, and the Turkish Republic is formally proclaimed October 29, with Gen. Mustafa Kemal as president (see 1915; 1922). Izmir-born Gen. Ismet Inönü (originally Paza), 39, served as army chief of staff in the war against the Greeks from 1919 to 1922, defeated the Greeks twice at the village of Inönü, and becomes prime minister. Kemal has destroyed the political power wielded for centuries by Muslim leaders of the old Ottoman Empire, defeated a Greek army bent on occupation, and will make Turkey a modern nation—abolishing the veil for women (they have worn veils since the founding of the now-defunct Ottoman Empire in 1290 and for centuries before that although there was nothing in the Koran that required veils), ordering the Turks to dress in Western clothes, using Roman letters instead of Arabic, and introducing the 1582 Gregorian calendar in place of the lunar calendar (see 1924).
The Spanish garrison at Barcelona mutinies September 12; Gen. Miguel Primo de Rivera, 53, marqués de Estella, issues a manifesto that day suspending the constitution and proclaiming a directorate comprised of army and navy officers. An inquiry into the defeat of Spanish forces at Annoual in 1921 has led to Gen. Primo's seizure of power, and he has the approval of Alfonso XIII for his bloodless coup. He suppresses the report of the commission investigating the loss at Annoual, concludes the war with Morocco, takes Barcelona, proclaims martial law throughout Spain, dissolves the cortes, suspends trial by jury, imposes rigid press censorship, and jails or exiles his liberal opponents (see 1930; Morocco, 1924).
A sharpshooter kills Francisco "Pancho" Villa June 20 at age 45 while the former Mexican guerrilla leader is out driving; President Obregón may have ordered his assassination and is certainly involved in covering it up.
President Harding suffers a stroke or heart attack at Seattle while en route to Alaska and is returned to San Francisco; the public hears only that he has suffered a bout of food poisoning, but the president dies of cardiovascular disease at the Palace Hotel August 23 at age 57. Gossips suggest that his wife may have murdered him after learning of his extra-marital affairs, or that he committed suicide rather than face inquiries about the scandals involving his cabinet members. Harding is succeeded by his laconic vice president Calvin Coolidge, now 51, who is sworn in by his father, a Vermont judge who reads the oath of office from a copy of the World Almanac.
Siamese foreign minister Prince Devawongse Varoprakar dies at his native Bangkok June 28 at age 64, having served since 1885. His policies are credited with having kept his nation independent.
Former Japanese prime minister Gonnohyoe Yamamoto forms a new ministry and works to restore order following the earthquake and fire that destroy Tokyo and Yokohama September 1. Now 70, he will serve only 4 months.
V. I. Lenin establishes the first Soviet forced-labor camp in the Solovetsky Islands northwest of Archangel (see Holmogor concentration camp, 1921). Slave labor in the next 30 years will build nine new Russian cities, 12 railway lines, six heavy industry centers, three large hydroelectric stations, two highways, and three ship canals (see Stalin Ship Canal, 1933).
The House of Commons votes 231 to 27 March 2 to adopt the Matrimonial Causes bill.
The National Woman's Party founded by Alice Paul in 1913 meets at Seneca Falls, N.Y., and endorses an Equal Rights Amendment drafted by Paul, who calls it the Lucretia Mott amendment.
A Columbia, Missouri, mob that includes University of Missouri students lynches a black named James Scott July 28. The state's governor has learned hours earlier that the lynching was going to take place but has not called out the militia to stop it.
The Rocket into Interplanetary Space (Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen) by Austro-Hungarian scientist Hermann (Julius) Oberth, 29, is based on a doctoral thesis Oberth wrote last year when he tried without success to obtain a Ph.D. degree from the University of Heidelberg. While recovering from a wound sustained in the Great War, he performed experiments simulating weightlessness and designed a long-range, liquid-propellant rocket that his commanding officer sent to the War Ministry at Vienna, but although his design was rejected as a fantasy, Oberth has continued his efforts and explains mathematically how rockets could achieve enough speed to escape Earth's gravitational pull (see 1929; Goddard, 1926).
The German mark falls January 2 to 7,260 to the U.S. dollar, and Berlin has food riots when 14 municipal markets close because of a strike against higher prices charged at the stalls and booths in the markets. Kaiser Wilhelm financed Germany's war effort by borrowing and then inflating; the Weimar Republic has inflated the currency further in order to service the enormous war debt imposed by the Versailles Treaty.
The mark soon falls to 17,000 to the dollar, it drops to 160,000 to the dollar by July, and unemployment combines with inflation to create social unrest; 1.5 million are unemployed, 4.5 million employed only part time, yet prices continue to rise, and by July 30 the mark has depreciated to 1 million to the dollar. The mark falls to 13 million to the dollar in September, to 130 million to the dollar by November 1, and to 4.2 billion to the dollar by the end of November. Many Germans have never accepted the legitimacy of the Weimar Republic, and 1,783 printing presses churn out bills. Prices rise so fast in the disastrous hyperinflation that workers are paid daily—and then several times a day. Middle-class savers and pensioners are wiped out, formerly affluent Germans dispose of their possessions in order to eat, German peasants refuse to part with their eggs, milk, butter, or potatoes except in exchange for articles of tangible value, and they fill their houses with pianos, sewing machines, Persian rugs, even Rembrandts (see 1924).
A 1918 law passed by Congress to establish a wage board that set minimum wages for women employees in the District of Columbia was an unjustified infringement on the freedom of contract and is unconstitutional, the Supreme Court rules 5 to 3 April 9 in the case of Adkins v. Children's Hospital, but a dissent by Chief Justice Taft, Justice Holmes, and Justice Edward T. Sanford argues that Congress has the power to correct recognizable evils (see 1937).
United States Steel reduces its 12-hour day to 8 hours August 2 following the lead set by American Rolling Mill in 1916. Big Steel will hire an additional 17,000 workers in the next year, raise wages, and still increase its profits.
A Siberian gold rush begins as Soviet prospector Voldimar P. Bertin encounters independent Yakut prospector Mikhail P. Tarbukin working a rich stake that he has found near Aldan and persuades him June 19 to join forces with the state prospecting party. Tarbukin will receive an Order of Lenin and an Order of the Red Banner, Soviet troops will move into Aldan early in 1925 to restore order after a series of robberies and murders, and the Aldan fields will produce hundreds of tons of gold per year for more than half a century.
Russia recovers rapidly from her 1921-1922 famine and approaches prewar levels of agricultural and industrial production.
U.S. cotton prices fall to 11¢/lb., down from 44¢ last year.
Textile executive J. Spencer Love, 27, of Gastonia, N.C., sells his mill at auction for $200,000, retains his outworn machines, moves them to Burlington, whose Chamber of Commerce has agreed to underwrite a $250,000 stock offering and sell the stock to local investors, produces a coarse cotton dress fabric that promptly goes out of fashion, but will make his company the largest U.S. rayon producer (see everyday life, 1928). Burlington will become the world's largest diversified textile producer.
Federal income taxes paid by thousands of leading Americans appear in newspapers pursuant to terms of a tax disclosure law passed by Congress through efforts by Sen. George W. Norris (R. Neb.). John D. Rockefeller, now 83, reportedly paid only $124,266, but his son John D., Jr. has paid $7.4 million under the relatively low prevailing rates. Henry Ford reportedly paid nearly $2.47 million.
U.S. corporate profits will increase by 62 percent in the next 6 years and dividends to stockholders will increase by 65 percent. Income of U.S. workers will increase by 11 percent.
Wall Street's Dow Jones industrial Average closes December 31 at 95.52, down from 98.73 at the end of 1922.
U.S. Secretary of the Interior Albert B. Fall resigns March 4 under a cloud of suspicion related to the Teapot Dome and Elks Hill oil leases investigation (see 1922); it turns out that Edward L. Doheny loaned Fall $100,000 in cash, and Fall will be convicted of accepting a bribe. Harry F. Sinclair and Doheny lose their leases (see 1924). Secretary of the Navy Edwin Denby resigns from President Coolidge's cabinet and leaves office March 10 as revelations about the Teapot Dome scandal continue to erupt (see 1922). He has signed every lease involved in the affair but will be cleared of all charges. Attorney General Harry M. Daugherty resigns at President Coolidge's demand March 28 in the midst of a Senate investigation into his official acts. Oil magnate Harry F. Sinclair wins the Kentucky Derby with his horse Zev and sails for Russia with an offer to buy the Baku oil fields (see 1901). Laughing off the investigation of his role in the Teapot Dome scandal, Sinclair brings a retinue that occupies two decks of the S.S. Homeric and by some accounts his attempt to buy the Baku fields comes close to succeeding (see 1916; Sinclair, 1936). Sinclair will serve 6½ months in prison for contempt of court and contempt of Congress, but Edward L. Doheny will be acquitted in 1928 of charges that he bribed Secretary Fall.
Congress sets aside a 23 million-acre National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska with provisions that it be tapped only in the most compelling circumstances.
Ethyl Corp. introduces tetraethyl lead as a fuel additive (see Midgley, 1921). The lead compound is mixed three parts to two with ethylene dibromide to eliminate engine "knock" and yet leave no lead deposit in an engine (see Dow, 1924).
Oilman Lyman Stewart dies at Los Angeles September 29 at age 83, having used his wealth to help launch the fundamentalist religious movement in America; General Electric consulting engineer Charles Steinmetz dies at Schenectady, N.Y., October 26 at age 58.
The United State Lines ship S.S. Leviathan leaves New York for Southampton on her maiden voyage July 4 (see 1922). She has a top speed of 27 knots and a service speed of 23 knots, can carry 3,909 passengers but will often sail with as few as 800 because passengers favor British and other European liners that are not subject to the U.S. Prohibition law and reputedly provide better service; her owners call the Leviathan the largest ship afloat (the White Star Line's R.M.S. Majestic is actually larger), and she will be reduced in size from 54,282 gross tons to 48,932 in 1931 in order to save on harbor dues (which are based on size) (see 1938).
Aeroflot has its beginnings July 15 when a six-passenger ANT-2 flight takes off from Moscow for Nizhny Novgorod. The plane takes 3½ hours to cover the 200-mile distance (see 1932).
KLM inaugurates air service between Amsterdam and Brussels (see 1920; 1946).
Sabena (Société Anonyme Belge d'Exploitation de la Navigation Aérienne), founded at Brussels, will be the Belgian national airline.
Pan American World Airways has its beginnings in a New York City service started by local bond salesman Juan (Terry) Trippe, 24, who quits his job and joins his friend John Hambleton in buying nine flying boats the U.S. Navy was about to scrap (see 1925).
German aircraft designer Wilhelm Messerschmitt, 27, establishes a manufacturing firm under his own name while continuing to work as an engineer for Bayerische Flugzeugwerke. Messerschmitt designed his first plane during the war at age 18.
The autogyro invented by Spanish aeronaut Juan de la Cierva, 27, has a large horizontal free-running rotor plus a conventional propeller for forward power but no conventional wings (see Sikorsky helicopter, 1913; 1939).
Canadian National Railways is created October 24 by a takeover of bankrupt roads and a merger of the roads with the government-owned Grand Trunk and Intercolonial roads to form a government-owned rail network larger than any other in the Western Hemisphere. Canadian National has 20,573 miles of track—7,000 miles more than Canadian Pacific, whose Milwaukee-born chairman Thomas G. (George) Shaughnessy, 1st Baron Shaughnessy, dies at Montreal December 10 at age 70.
Elmer Sperry invents a device for detecting and measuring defects in railroad rails (see gyroscope, 1910; 1913). He will perfect the device in 1928, and the first Sperry detector cars will go into service in November of that year.
The BMW R32 motorcycle is introduced by the 6-year-old German airplane engine maker, which will gain a reputation with its high-speed motorcycles before turning to sportscar production under the name Bavarian Motor Works.
The Triumph motorcar is introduced by the British firm that started making motorcycles in 1903. The company will continue making sportscars until 1984 (see Leyland, 1961).
Major U.S. automakers include front-wheel brakes, foot-controlled headlamp dimmer switches, and power-operated windshield wipers in their cars; they also inaugurate annual style changes that make older models stylistically obsolete in a move that will force smaller companies out of the market and prevent new ones from entering. Alfred P. Sloan supports the idea that has been pushed by Hollywood, Calif.-born GM stylist Harley Earl, 30, a six-foot-four 235-pound giant who will have great influence on the design of GM cars. Although 43 U.S. companies will be making automobiles by 1926, only 10 will still be at it by 1935, and no new domestic manufacturer will crack the market successfully after this year (see Kaiser, 1946). Planned obsolescence will be a major part of U.S. automotive marketing as Americans buy new cars to "keep up with the Joneses" even though their old cars still perform perfectly well; foreign makers will retain successful models much longer before replacing or even modifying them.
Walter P. Chrysler becomes president of a reorganized Maxwell Motor Co. and begins to develop a line of innovative new motorcars (see Buick, 1912). Now 48, he quit his position as president of Buick division 3 years ago in a dispute with General Motors president W. C. Durant and has helped reorganize Willys-Overland (see 1924).
U.S. auto production reaches 3,780,358, up from 543,679 in 1914; 51.85 percent are Fords, and production of Model T Fords peaks at 1.8 million units. More than 13 million cars are on U.S. roads and 108 companies are engaged in adding to the total, but 10 automakers account for 90 percent of sales.
The Hertz Drive-Ur-Self System is founded at Chicago by Yellow Cab Co. president John D. Hertz, now 45, who buys a company that started in 1918 with 12 used cars operating out of a lot in South Michigan Avenue. Hertz will be the world's largest auto rental concern.
The automatic traffic light patented November 20 by Kentucky-born Cleveland inventor-industrialist Garrett A. (Augustus) Morgan, 46, will soon replace manually-operated lights at city street crossings (see 1914). The son of onetime slaves, Morgan has educated himself and earlier invented the prototype of the gas mask credited with saving many lives during the Great War; the sight of a collision between an automobile and a horse-drawn carriage has shocked him into trying to find a way to prevent such accidents, and he will sell his traffic-signal technology to General Electric for $40,000. The earliest known electrically interlocked traffic-signal system was installed last year at Houston, but many will regard Morgan as the father of traffic safety technology.
Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing Co. (3M) research assistant Richard G. Drew, 24, visits a St. Paul auto body refinishing shop and finds its employees stymied by the difficulties of creating two-tone paint jobs (see 3M, 1914). Automakers have just introduced two-tone finishes, spraying on quick-drying lacquer with automatic spray guns, but for straight-line demarcation from one color to another (and to protect windows, upholstery, and the like) it is essential that areas not being painted be properly masked. Drew devises a wide paper tape with adhesive on its edges, but while his product provides a superior alternative to pasting newspapers on parts of the car it still leaves something to be desired (see everyday life [Scotch Tape], 1925).
Bottle-blowing machine inventor Michael J. Owens dies at Toledo, Ohio, December 27 at age 64.
Chemist Peter Debye and his colleague Erich Hückel extend the 1887 theory of Svante Arrhenius with a new theory of the thermodynamic properties of electrolytes (see Deybe, 1916). They prove that metallic salts disassociate in solution into ions (charged atoms) and the ionization is complete rather than partial; their Debye-Hückel equation takes into account the interactions between the various ions and shows why the disassociation does not always appear to be complete. Debye also describes what will be called the Compton effect, discovered last year by U.S. physicist Arthur H. Compton and discovered independently this year by Debye (see 1925).
Marshfield, Mo.-born astronomer Edwin (Powell) Hubble, 33, at the 19-year-old Mount Wilson Observatory in California finds in October that the blurry masses in the Milky Way, heretofore considered gaseous bodies, are actually stars—a galaxy in the spiral arm of the Andromeda nebula. The universe is at least 100 times larger than was thought, Hubble concludes (see 1929).
Chemist-physicist Edward W. Morley dies at West Hartford, Conn., February 24 at age 85; Sir James Dewar at London March 27 at age 80, having helped to develop the explosive cordite in addition to inventing the double-walled vacuum flask that bears his name.
Pasteur Institute bacteriologist Gaston Ramon, 37, develops a tetanus toxoid that will lead to wide-scale immunization against the infection.
X-ray (Roentgen-ray) inventor Wilhelm K. Roentgen dies at Munich February 10 at age 77.
U.S. Veterans Bureau director Charles R. Forbes resigns February 15, and Congress launches an investigation into allegations that he has diverted alcohol and drugs from veterans hospitals to bootleggers. His handpicked general counsel Charles F. Cramer commits suicide March 16, and Forbes will be convicted of fraud in one of several Harding administration scandals.
Scottish-born Canadian physiologist John (James Rickard) McLeod, 47, shares the Nobel award with Frederick G. Banting; he interpreted last year's Banting-Best insulin discovery.
Aimee Semple McPherson dedicates Angelus Temple of the Four-Square Gospel at Los Angeles January 1 with a plaque overhead that reads, "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, and today, and forever," and a large rotating illuminated cross visible for 50 miles (see 1918). McPherson uses special effects to produce thunder, lightning, and wind that illustrate her "foursquare gospel" and help fill her 5,300-seat auditorium (see 1926).
Nazi demagogue Julius Streicher, 38, begins publication at Nuremberg of the anti-Semitic weekly paper Der Sturmer. A close friend of Adolf Hitler, Streicher joined Hitler's National Socialist Party 2 years ago and will have tremendous influence on the party's policies, amassing great wealth through crooked business transactions, although his irresponsible behavior and sexual and sadistic excesses will alienate many party officials.
Turkey ceases to be an Islamic empire under its first president Mustafa Kemal, who tells a journalist just hours before being sworn in October 29 that popular Islam has become a morass of superstitions that will destroy those who profess it. "We will save them," he promises, but later generations will press for an end to secularism.
The U.S. Supreme Court strikes down a Nebraska law that has prohibited schools from teaching any language other than English (Meyer v. Nebraska); the law interferes with the rights of personal autonomy, the court rules June 4 (see Brandeis, 1890). Justices Holmes and Sutherland dissent.
Bethune-Cookman College is founded at Daytona, Florida, by a merger of Mary McLeod Bethune's 19-year-old Daytona Normal and Industrial Institute for Negro Girls with the Cookman Institute for Men at Jacksonville. Bethune will head the college until 1942, making its slogan "Enter to Learn, Depart to Serve."
Handbook of Tests for Use in Schools by English educational psychologist Cyril (Lodowic) Burt, 40, emphasizes the importance of understanding the social backgrounds of children being tested. Competent in Greek, Latin, Hebrew, German, French, and Italian, with some knowledge of Russian, Burt has taken lodgings in the slums to gain an understanding of underprivileged children. He concluded in 1912 that there was no difference in terms of intelligence between boys and girls (see Education Act, 1944).
Zenith Radio is founded by Chicago auto-finance entrepreneur Eugene F. McDonald, Jr., 33, who obtains exclusive rights to market products of the Chicago Radio Laboratory founded by former U.S. Navy radio electricians Karl E. Hassel, 27, and R. H. G. Matthews. They constructed a longwave radio receiver for the Chicago Tribune in 1919 and have developed the trademark Z-Nith from the call letters of their amateur radio station 9ZN. The Tribune was able to pick up news dispatches from the Versailles Peace Conference and thus gain a 12- to 24-hour lead over papers using the jammed Atlantic Cable. Major Edwin H. Armstrong has licensed Chicago Radio to produce sets using his patents, McDonald has raised $330,000 to start Zenith, and he also starts the National Association of Broadcasters with himself as president (see Armstrong, 1917; FM, 1940).
London Radio Times begins publication. Circulation will reach 9 million by 1950.
Australia adopts a system under which radio stations can be licensed to broadcast and then sell "listeners in" receiving devices that are set only to their particular stations. Sydney's station 2FC receives the first license July 1; its rival 2SB (later 2BL) is the first to go on the air, starting officially November 23 (see 1924).
Radio Ibérica begins broadcasting from Madrid in September. Spain's first station, it will have counterparts by next year in Barcelona and Seville as well as in Madrid (see 1924).
Germany's first radio station to broadcast to the public on a regular basis airs from Berlin beginning October 23 on 750 kHz at 250 watts. Within a year the country will have nine regional broadcasting companies financed in part by commercials but mostly by a monthly license fee of 2 Reichsmarks levied on every registered listener (see 1926).
Time magazine begins publication March 3 from a 39th Street New York loft office that was earlier the headquarters for Hupfel's Brewery. Based on rewrites of wire service stories with little additional reporting, the 32-page news weekly is put out by China-born missionary's son Henry R. (Robinson) Luce, 24, and his Yale classmate Briton Hadden, who came up with the idea for the magazine while serving in the army, resigned last year from their jobs as reporters for the Baltimore News, wrote the prospectus for their enterprise in a $55-per-month upstairs room at 141 East 17th Street, and have assembled a staff of 33 to help them start a venture that will mushroom into a vast publishing empire. Hadden will die of a streptococcal infection at age 31 in 1929 after having established a distinctive Timestyle by inverting sentences, inventing such words as "socialite," "GOPolitician," "cinemaddict," and "tycoon" (meaning a business magnate), and using the code phrase great and good friend to mean something more than just a good friend (seeFortune, 1930; Newsweek, 1933).
Advertising agency pioneer Francis Wayland Ayer of N. W. Ayer dies at Camden, N.J., March 5 at age 75.
A. C. Nielsen Co. is founded by Chicago-born electrical engineer-market researcher Arthur Charles Nielsen, 26, whose fraternity brothers from the University of Wisconsin School of Engineering have helped him raise $45,000 to start the company, which will develop indexes to provide information on distribution in various industries, including food, drugs, and pharmaceuticals (see television ratings, 1950).
The Gannett Co. is founded by upstate New York publisher Frank E. (Ernest) Gannett, 47, who combines four regional newspapers that include the Rochester Times-Union and Rochester Democrat and Chronicle (seeUSA Today, 1982).
"Skippy" by New York-born artist-cartoonist Percy (Lee) Crosby, 31, in the humor magazine Life features the adventures of a winsome young boy. It will become a daily comic strip in 1925, distributed by William Randolph Hearst's King Features syndicate.
"Moon Mullins" by Illinois-born New York Daily News comic-strip artist Frank (Henry) Willard, 32, makes its debut June 14, featuring the adventures of a roughneck ne'er-do-well, his kid brother Kayo, Uncle Willie, Aunt Mamie, and Lord and Lady Plushbottom.
Newsprint mogul Frank H. Anson of Abitibi Power and Pulp Co. dies at Toronto November 1 at age 83. His paper mills at Iroquois Falls, Ontario, have grown to be the largest on the continent; they produce more than 50 tons of newsprint per day, and by next year will have the capacity to produce 300 tons (see Thomson, 1932).
Nonfiction: I and Thou (Ich und Du) by Austrian philosopher Martin Buber, 45, whose 7-year-old monthly The Jew (Der Jude) has become the central forum for German-reading Jewish intellectuals, advocating Jewish-Arab cooperation to create a binational state in Palestine; Plato and the So-called Pythagoreans (Plato und die sogenannten Pythagoreer) by Prague-born German existentialist philosopher Erich Frank, 40, who believes that philosophy's role is to seek "faith" through understanding rather than through religious spirituality or scientific experiments; History and Class Consciousness (Geschichte und Klassenbewusstsein) by Marxist philosopher György Lukács, now 38, who served as Hungary's commissar for culture and education under Béla Kun's short-lived communist regime 4 years ago and now lives at Vienna; The Theme of Our Time (El Tema de Nuestro Tiempo) by José Ortega y Gasset; The Prophet by Lebanese-born U.S. mystic Kahlil Gibran, 40, whose work about man's relation to his fellowman will sell 5 million copies in the next 50 years; The Language and Thought of the Child (Le langage et la penséchez l'enfant) by Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget, 27, who has studied under Carl Jung and Eugen Bleuler at Zürich; The Dance of Life by English scientist (Henry) Havelock Ellis, 64, who says, "Freud regards dreaming as fiction that helps us to sleep; thinking we may regard as fiction that helps us to live; Man lives by imagination"; Crystallizing Public Opinion by Vienna-born New York public relations pioneer Edward L. Bernays, 31, a nephew of the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud; The Meaning of Meaning by English writer-linguist C. K. (Charles Kay) Ogden, 34, and Cambridge literary scholar I. A. (Ivor Armstrong) Richards, 30 (see communications [Basic English], 1929); My Life and Loves (first volume) by Irish journalist and womanizer Frank Harris, 67.
Author Henry M. Robert of "rules of order" fame dies at Hornell, N.Y., May 11 at age 86; economist-sociologist Vilfredo Pareto at Geneva August 20 at age 75.
Fiction: Confessions of Zeno (La Coscienza di Zeno) by Italo Svevo, now 61, who studied English at Trieste under James Joyce before the Great War, showed Joyce his work, and so impressed him that Joyce sent copies to such prominent writers and critics as T. S. Eliot, Ford Madox Ford, and Gilbert Seldes (the book is published at the author's expense); The Captive (La prisonnière) by the late Marcel Proust; Genitrix by François Mauriac; The Good Soldier Schweik (Osudy dobrého vojáka Svidka za svetové války) by the late Czech novelist Jaroslav Hasek, who has left his bawdy attack on bourgeois values incomplete; The Marsden Case by Ford Madox Ford; Riceyman Steps by Arnold Bennett; Antic Hay by Aldous Huxley; A Lost Lady by Willa Cather; The Dove's Nest and Other Stories by Katherine Mansfield (published posthumously); Lummox by Hamilton, Ohio-born novelist Fannie Hurst, 33; Whose Body? by English novelist Dorothy L. (Leigh) Sayers, 30. One of Oxford's first female graduates, Sayers introduces the amateur detective Lord Peter Wimsey.
Czech novelist Jaroslav Hasek dies at Lipnice nad Sázavou January 3 age 40; novelist-story writer Katherine Mansfield of tuberculosis at the Gurdjieff Institute outside Fontainebleau January 9 at age 34; Pierre Loti at Hendaye, France, June 10 at age 73.
Poetry: "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" by Robert Frost; Harmonium by Connecticut poet-life insurance company lawyer Wallace Stevens, 44; The Harp-Weaver and Other Poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay; Harlem Shadows by Claude McKay; Sonnets to Orpheus by Rainer Maria Rilke; Collected Poems by Vachel Lindsay, who includes "In Praise of Johnny Appleseed"; Spring and All by William Carlos Williams; Come Hither, a "collection of rhymes and poems for the young of all ages" by Walter de la Mare; Body of This Death by Maine-born poet Louise Bogan, 26; "About This" ("Pro eto") by Vladimir Mayakovski; Psyche (Psikheia) and Craft (Remeslo) by Marina Tsvetaeva.
Juvenile: Real Fairies by English writer Enid Blyton, 23; Racundra's First Cruise by Arthur Ransome is about sailing in the Baltic. Ransome has made several trips to Russia as a war correspondent, partly to escape his quarrelsome wife, and after their divorce next year will marry Eugenia Shelepin, secretary to Leon Trotsky; Ransome and Shelepin escape to Estonia and thence to England's Lake District.
Author and kindergarten promoter Kate Douglas Wiggin dies at Harrow, Middlesex, August 24 at age 66.
Painting: The Lovers (neoclassical), Lady with the Veil (neoclassical), Melancholy (expressionist), and Women (surrealist) by Pablo Picasso; Circles in the Circle by Vassily Kandinsky; Ivry Town Hall by Maurice Utrillo; Village in Northern France by Maurice de Vlaminck; On the Banks of the River Marne by Raoul Dufy; Love Idyll by Marc Chagall; The Trapeze by Max Beckmann; The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors (La Marée Mise à Nu Par ses Célibataires, Même) (The Large Glass) by Marcel Duchamp is the world's first Dada-style painting. Duchamp began work on it in 1915 prior to leaving for New York, where he joined with Francis Picabia and Man Ray to start an American Dadaist movement; Apples and Jug by Stuart Davis; A Meeting of Minds by Norman Rockwell (cover illustration, Saturday Evening Post, February 23); Buggy Ride by Rockwell (Post cover September 19).
Murals: Entering the Mine, Miners Being Searched, Freeing of the Peon, The First of May, The Revolution Will Bear Fruit! and others by Diego Rivera at Mexico City; Revolutionary Trinity by Mexican painter José Clemente Orozco, 40; The Workman Sacrificed by Mexican painter David Alfaro Siqueiros, 27.
Theater: Polly Preferred by Guy Bolton 1/11 at New York's Little Theater, with William Harrigan, Genevieve Tobin, Philadelphia-born actor John Wray, 35, 184 perfs.; The Young Idea by Noël Coward 2/1 at London's Savoy Theatre, with Coward, Herbert Marshall, Ann Trevor, 60 perfs.; Icebound by Portland, Me.-born playwright Owen (Gould) Davis, 49, 2/10 at New York's Sam Harris Theater, with Boots Wooster, 171 perfs.; You and I by Rochester, N.Y.-born playwright Philip (James Quinn) Barry, 26, 2/19 at New York's Belmont Theater, with Lucile Watson, 140 perfs. (Yale graduate Barry studied under George Pierce Baker at Harvard); The Incorruptible Man (Der Unbestechliche) by Hugo von Hofmannsthal 3/16 at Vienna's Raimund Theater; The Adding Machine by Elmer Rice 3/19 at New York's Garrick Theater, with Dudley Digges as Mr. Zero, Bucharest-born actor Edward G. Robinson (originally Emmanel Goldenberg), 29, as Shrdlu, Helen Westley, Margaret Wycherly, 72 perfs.; The Shadow of a Gunman by Irish playwright Sean O'Casey (originally Cassidy), 43, 4/9 at Dublin's Abbey Theatre, a play about the Easter Rising of 1916; In Love with Love by Roxbury, Mass.-born playwright Vincent Lawrence, 32, 8/6 at New York's Ritz Theater, with Lynn Fontanne, Berton Churchill, Henry Hull, Ralph Morgan, 128 perfs.; Little Miss Bluebeard by Avery Hopwood 8/28 at New York's Lyceum Theater, with Irene Bordoni, 175 perfs.; The Whole Town's Talking by Anita Loos and John Emerson 8/29 at New York's Bijou Theater, with Grant Mitchell, Louisville, Ky.-born actress Catherine Dale Owen, 20, 173 perfs.; Poppy by playwright-lyricist Dorothy Donnelly 9/3 at New York's Apollo Theater, with former Ziegfeld Follies juggler W. C. Fields, who has been helped by showman Philip Goodman to develop the fraudulent character Eustace McGargle that Fields will portray for 20 years, 346 perfs.; Outward Bound by English playwright Sutton Vane, 34, 9/17 at London's Everyman Theatre, with William Stack, Irish-born actress Gladys Folliott, Frederick Leister, Frederick Cooper; The Lullaby by Edward Knoblauch 9/17 at New York's Knickerbocker Theater, with Frank Morgan, Florence Reed, New York-born ingénue Rose Hobart (originally Rose Kefer), 17, 144 perfs.; Hinkemann (Der deutsche Hinkemann) by Ernst Toller 9/19 at Leipzig's Altes Theater; Tarnish by Naples, N.Y.-born playwright Gilbert Emery, 48, 10/1 at New York's Belmont Theater, with Texas-born actress Ann Harding, 22, 248 perfs.; The Nervous Wreck by Owen Davis (from a story by E. J. Rath) 10/9 at New York's Sam H. Harris Theater, with New York-born actor Edward Arnold (originally Gunther Edward Arnold Schneider), 33, Toledo, Ohio-born actor Otto Kruger, 38, Hobart Cavanaugh, June Walker, 279 perfs.; For All of Us by Albion, N.Y.-born playwright William Hodge, 48, 10/15 at New York's 49th Street Theater, with Marion Abbott, Meriden, Conn.-born actor-writer Philip Dunning, 32, 216 perfs.; White Cargo by English-born playwright Leon Gordon, 29, 11/5 at New York's Greenwich Village Theater, with Richard Stevenson, Annette Margules as Tondeleyo, 678 perfs.; Meet the Wife by Kentucky-born playwright Lynn Starling, 35, 11/26 at New York's Klaw Theater, with Mary Boland, New York-born actor Humphrey Bogart, 24, 232 perfs.; In the Next Room by Eleanor Robson and Harriet Ford 11/27 at New York's Vanderbilt Theater, with an 11-member cast, 159 perfs.; Baal by German playwright Bertolt Brecht, 25, in December at Leipzig's Altes Theater; Saint Joan by George Bernard Shaw 12/28 at New York's Garrick Theater, with Winifred Lenihan, Morris Carnovsky, 214 perfs.
Sarah Bernhardt dies at Paris March 26 at age 79.
Films: Buster Keaton's Our Hospitality with Keaton, Natalie Talmadge. Also: John Griffith Wray's Anna Christie with Blanche Sweet; James Cruze's The Covered Wagon with J. Warren Kerrigan; John Francis Dillon's Flaming Youth with Port Huron, Mich.-born actress Colleen Moore (originally Kathleen Morrison), 21, whose bobbed-hair, short-skirted "flapper" look will be widely imitated, Atlanta-born actor Ben Lyon, 22; Wallace Worsley's The Hunchback of Notre Dame with Lon Chaney; Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments with Theodore Roberts, Estelle Taylor, St. Paul-born actor Richard Dix (originally Ernest Carlton Brown), 30, New York-born actress Nita Naldi (originally Donna Dooley), 25; Sam Taylor and Tim Whelan's Safety Last with Harold Lloyd; Rex Ingram's Where the Pavement Ends with Ramon Novarro, Alice Terry; Fred Newmeyer and Sam Taylor's Why Worry? with Harold Lloyd; Charles Chaplin's A Woman of Paris with Edna Purviance, Adolphe Menjou.
Film star Wallace Reid dies at Hollywood January 18 at age 31, having suffered a painful injury while filming The Valley of the Giants in 1919, been given morphine by a physician, and become an addict. Tabloids cite his addiction as evidence of Hollywood's moral decline.
Paramount Studios names San Bernardino, Calif.-born costume designer Edith Head, 25, chief designer. She will head the entire designing department beginning in 1938, switch to Universal Pictures in 1967, and continue working until well into the 1970s.
Opera: El Retablo de Maese Pedro 3/23 at Seville's Teatro S. Fernando with music by Manuel de Falla, libretto from Don Quixote by Cervantes; Belfagor 4/26 at Milan's Teatro alla Scala, with music by Ottorino Respighi; The Perfect Fool 5/14 at London's Covent Garden, with music by Gustav Holst.
Ballet: Façade 6/12 at London's Aeolian Hall, with Edith Sitwell reading her poetry, music by English composer William Walton, 21 (see 1931); Les Noces (The Wedding) 6/14 at the Théâtre Gaiété-Lyrique, Paris, with Felicia Dubrovska, music and lyrics by Igor Stravinsky, choreography by Bronislava Nijinska; La Création du Monde 10/25 at the Théâtre des Champs Elysées, Paris, with Jean Borlin, 30, music by Darius Milhaud, choreography by Borlin, scenery, costumes, and curtain by Fernand Léger.
First performances: Symphony No. 6 by Jean Sibelius 2/19 at Helsinki; Symphony No. 1 in E minor (Nordic) by Wahoo, Neb.-born composer Howard (Harold) Hanson, 26, 5/30 at Rome; The Black Maskers suite by Brooklyn, N.Y.-born composer Roger (Huntington) Sessions, 26, 6/23 at Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts. Sessions has written the incidental music for a performance of the play by Leonid Andreyev; Dance Suite (Tancsuit) for Orchestra by Béla Bartók 11/19 at Budapest.
Stage musicals: Wildflower at New York's Casino Theater, with Edith Day, Guy Robertson, music by Herbert P. Stothart and Vincent Youmans, book and lyrics by Otto Harbach and New York-born lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II, 27, 477 perfs.; André Charlot's revue Rats 2/21 at London's Vaudeville Theatre, with London-born comedienne Gertrude Lawrence (originally Gertrud Alexandra Dagmar Lawrence Klasen), 24, music by Philip Braham, book and lyrics by Ronald Jeans; The Passing Show (revue) 6/14 at New York's Winter Garden Theater, with New York-born vaudeville entertainer George Albert "Georgie" Jessel, 25, music by Sigmund Romberg and Jean Schwartz, book and lyrics by Harold Atteridge, 118 perfs.; George White's Scandals 6/18 at New York's Globe Theater, with music by George Gershwin, lyrics by E. Ray Goetz, B. G. DeSylva, Portland, Ore.-born songwriter Ballard MacDonald, 40, 168 perfs.; Helen of Troy, N. Y. 6/19 at New York's 5-year-old Selwyn Theater, with Helen Ford, music and lyrics by Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby, book by George S. Kaufman and Marc Connelly for a show mounted by California-born producer Rufus LeMaire, 27, 191 perfs.; Little Jesse James 8/15 at New York's Longacre Theater (to Little Theater, 1/28/1925), with John Boles, Syracuse-born dancer Claire Luce, 19 (who was born on a train passing through Syracuse), Bainbridge, Ga.-born ingénue Miriam Hopkins, 20, music by Iowa-born composer Harry Archer, 37, book and lyrics by Hannibal, Mo.-born writer Harlan Thompson, 33, 385 perfs.; Artists and Models 8/20 at the Shubert Theater, with Frank Fay, seminude showgirls, music by Jean Schwartz, book and lyrics by Harold Atteridge, 312 perfs.; André Charlot's revue London Calling 9/4 at the Duke of York's Theatre, London, with Noël Coward, Gertrude Lawrence, London-born comedienne-dancer Jessie Matthews, 16, music and lyrics mostly by Coward, songs that include "You Were Meant for Me" by Eubie Blake, lyrics by Noble Sissle; The Greenwich Village Follies (revue) 9/20 at the Winter Garden Theater, with Allegheny, Pa.-born dancer Martha Graham, 29, music by Louis A. Hirsch and Con Conrad, lyrics by Irving Caesar and John Murray Anderson, 140 perfs.; The Music Box Revue 9/22 at the Music Box Theater, with Tennessee-born soprano Grace Moore, 21, music and lyrics by Irving Berlin, 273 perfs.; Battling Butler 10/8 at the Selwyn Theater, with St. Paul, Minn.-born actor William Kent, 37, Charles Ruggles, music by Walter Rosemont, book adapted by Ballard MacDonald, 288 perfs.; The Ziegfeld Follies 10/20 at the New Amsterdam Theater, with Fanny Brice, Paul Whiteman and his Orchestra, music by Dave Stamper, Rudolf Friml, Victor Herbert, and others, songs that include "Little Old New York" by Victor Herbert, lyrics by Gene Buck, 233 perfs.; Runnin' Wild (revue) 10/29 at the Colonial Theater, with an all-black cast, title song by A. Harrington Gibbs, lyrics by Joe Grey and Leo Wood, "Charleston" by Cecil Mack (Richard C. McPherson), 40, and Jimmy Johnson, 29, whose song launches a national dance craze, 213 perfs.; Stepping Stones 11/6 at New York's Globe Theater, with Fred Stone, Jack Whiting, music by Jerome Kern, book by Anne Caldwell and R. H. Burnside, lyrics by Caldwell, 281 perfs.; Topics of 1923 (revue) 11/20 at the Broadhurst Theater, with Fay Marbe, Harry McNaughton, music by Jean Schwartz and Alfred Goodman, lyrics by Harold Atteridge, 143 perfs.; Mary Jane McKane 12/25 at the new Imperial Theater at 239 West 45th Street, with New York-born ingénue Kitty Kelly, 21, music by Herbert P. Stothart and Vincent Youmans, book by William Cary Duncan and Oscar Hammerstein II, 151 perfs.; Kid Boots 12/31 at the Earl Carroll Theater, with Eddie Cantor, Mary Eaton, Robert Barrat, book by Chicago-born writer William Anthony McGuire, 42, music by Harry Tierney, lyrics by Joseph McCarthy, songs that include "Polly Put the Kettle On," 479 perfs.; The Song and Dance Man 12/31 at the George M. Cohan Theater, with Cohan, Robert Cummings, music and lyrics by Cohan, songs that include "Born and Bred in Brooklyn," 96 perfs.
Popular songs: "Yes, We Have No Bananas" by Frank Silver and Irving Conn; "Nobody's Sweetheart" by Gus Kahn, Ernie Erdman, Billie Meyers, Elmer Schwebel; "Who's Sorry Now?" by Ted Snyder, lyrics by Bert Kalmar, Harry Ruby; "I Cried for You" by Gus Arnheim and Abe Lyman, lyrics by Arthur Freed; "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out" by Jimmy Cox; "Barney Google" and "You Gotta See Mamma Ev'ry Night, Or You Can't See Mamma At All" by Con Conrad and New York songwriter Billy Rose (originally William Samuel Rosenberg), 23; "Mexicali Rose" by Jack B. Tenny, lyrics by Helen Stone; "It Ain't Gonna Rain No Mo"' by Wendell Woods Hall, 27, who has adapted an old folk song; "Down Hearted Blues" by Memphis-born blues singer Alberta Hunter, 24, lyrics by Lovie Austin (Philadelphia blues singer Bessie Smith, 23, records the song, which has sales of 2 million copies); blues singer Gertrude "Ma" Rainey (née Pridgett), 37, cuts her first recordings, including some songs whose lyrics she has written herself, others with lyrics by the Rev. Thomas A. Dorsey, and begins to gain a following among Northern blacks (she and her husband, Will "Pa" Rainey, have toured the South with minstrel troupes for nearly 20 years); jazz pianist Jelly Roll Morton and his Red Hot Peppers record "Grandpa's Spells," "Kansas City Stomp," "New Orleans Joys," "The Pearls," and "Wolverine Blues."
Dance marathons become a U.S. craze. A Cleveland girl dances for more than 50 hours, wearing out five male partners and losing 24 pounds (from 113 pounds to 89) while her ankles swell to twice their original size. Baltimore police stop a marathon after 53 hours.
William M. Johnston wins in men's singles at Wimbledon, Suzanne Lenglen in women's singles; Bill Tilden wins in U.S. men's singles, Helen (Newington) Wills, 17, in women's singles.
The Wightman Cup donated by Hazel Hotchkiss Wightman for the winner of a U.S.-British women's tennis tournament will do for women's tennis what the Davis Cup is doing for men's.
Former Brooklyn Dodgers, New York Yankees, and New York Giants outfielder William H. "Wee Willie" Keeler dies at his native Brooklyn, N.Y., January 1 at age 50.
New York's Yankee Stadium opens April 18, draws a sell-out crowd of more than 60,000, and turns away thousands for lack of seats. Col. Jacob Ruppert has built the $2.5 million stadium with help from Tillinghast I'Hommedieu Houston (who will soon sell his share in the club to brewer Ruppert), Babe Ruth hits a three-run homer in the third inning of the inaugural game, and the Yankees beat the Boston Red Sox 4 to 1.
The New York Yankees win their first World Series, defeating the New York Giants 4 games to 2.
The Dempsey-Firpo fight at the New York Polo Grounds September 14 sees Argentine fighter Luis Angel Firpo, 29, knock Jack Dempsey out of the ring and into the laps of ringside sportswriters, but Dempsey knocks the "Wild Bull of the Pampas" down nine times, wins in two rounds, and retains his title.
The Schick magazine razor is patented April 24 by Col. Jacob Schick, 45, who during the war invented a machine that enabled a worker to fill 25 gas masks per minute where it had earlier taken 35 minutes to fill one mask. The Schick dry shaver patented November 6 by Schick is the world's first practical electric shaver (see 1930).
Sears, Roebuck introduces the Kenmore brand agitator-type wringer washing machine but does not show it in the company's catalogue. Nearly 99 percent of U.S. urban homes will be wired for electricity by the end of the decade, Sears has recognized the huge market for home appliances, and it will also use the Kenmore name in years to come for dryers, ranges, dishwashers, garbage disposals, trash compactors, countertop appliances and (beginning in 1977) refrigerators.
Sears, Roebuck introduces Craftsman brand tools. The tools are reliable, mechanics find them easy to clean, and sales will increase sixfold within a year.
German clothier Hugo Boss establishes a menswear company at Metzingen that will struggle for years but later will be the country's largest clothing manufacturer and eventually grow to become a multi-billion dollar global enterprise marketing perfume as well as fashion (see 1946).
Maiden Form brassieres are introduced by four-foot-eleven Russian-born entrepreneur Ida Rosenthal (née Kagonovich), 36, who last year went into partnership with English-born vaudeville veteran Enid Bissett to buy a fashionable dress shop in New York's West 57th Street (see 1914). She and Bissett have given away sample brassieres with a little uplift because they did not like the fit of their dresses on flat-chested "flappers." Rosenthal's family changed its name to Cohen when it came to America in 1904, she married William Rosenthal in 1906, and together they invest $4,500 to incorporate the Maiden Form Brassiere Co. He is an amateur sculptor, and as head of production he will design a precursor to cup sizing. By 1938 their firm will have revenues of $4.5 million and by the 1960s the gross will be $40 million.
U.S. fashion designers introduce new styles in November that emphasize corduroy, flannel, and knitted fabrics, with hemlines 10 inches from the floor.
President Coolidge lights the first White House Christmas tree to begin a tradition that continues into the 21st century.
U.S. cigarette production reaches 66.7 billion, up from 52 billion in 1921, as overseas sales increase.
The second International Criminal Police Congress convenes at Vienna and sets up the International Criminal Police Commission (see Interpol, 1914). Essentially a European operation, the Vienna-based ICPC has its own statutes and will operate until 1939 (see 1938; counterfeiting convention, 1929).
German expressionist architect Erich Mendelsohn, 36, and Viennese architect Richard (Joseph) Neutra, 31, win an award for a city-planning project that they have designed for Haifa, Palestine. Neutra emigrates to America, where he will work briefly for Holabird and Roche at Chicago and with Frank Lloyd Wright at Taliesin in Spring Green, Wisconsin.
New York City adopts a new setback law that limits the height and configuration of buildings as luxury apartment houses and hotels going up on Park Avenue (see Grand Central, 1913; zoning laws, 1916; 1961).
Architect William Holabird dies at Evanston, Illinois, July 19 at age 68; engineer Gustave Eiffel of 1889 Eiffel Tower fame at Paris December 28 at age 91.
An earthquake in China March 24 leaves an estimated 5,000 dead; an earthquake in Persia May 25 kills about 2,200.
Japan's Great Kanto earthquake and fire September 1 destroy Tokyo and Yokohama. A huge crowd gathers in a Tokyo military clothing depot, seeking protection from the fires that rage across the Sumida River, but the fire storm generates a violent cyclone that sweeps up the river and carries balls of flame into the depot, trapping the crowds inside, killing 40,000 people by asphyxiation. Six prefectures are affected, 143,000 killed, 752,000 injured; 83,000 houses are completely destroyed, 380,000 damaged, but many buildings, notably Tokyo's 1-year-old Imperial Hotel, survive virtually intact (architect Frank Lloyd Wright will help circulate the notion that his was the only structure to escape damage; hotel service continues, albeit without electricity, water supply, or telephones, and the Imperial will remain standing until it is demolished in 1968). Tokyo will rebuild on the traditional pattern of Edo, with houses numbered according to the years in which they were built.
Forest fires in Ontario blacken a record 2.1 million acres.
Birdseye Seafoods opens on New York's White Street (see 1917). Although Clarence Birdseye did not invent quick freezing, his company is the first of its kind; he has received patents on the process he has developed with Wetmore Hodges, 36, a process unique in that it freezes foods in packages by pressing them between refrigerated metal plates. Birdsye has only $7 to spend on equipment, including an electric fan, ice, and salt; a friend has loaned him the corner of an ice house to carry on his experimentation, but without the means to gain public acceptance he is forced into bankruptcy (see General Seafoods, 1924).
An Agricultural Credits Act helps U.S. agricultural and livestock interests, which remain in deep depression (see 1921; 1922). Passed by Congress through the efforts of Secretary of Agriculture Henry C. Wallace, the new law provides for 12 Federal Credit Banks where farmers can obtain personal and collateralized loans for periods intermediate between the usual short-term commercial loans and the long-term loans secured by their farmland.
U.S. wheat farmers try to persuade each other to plant less, but overproduction continues in the absence of any effective farm organization.
Grasshoppers plague Montana. Forming a cloud 300 miles long, 100 miles wide, and half a mile high, the locusts devour every green blade, leaf, and stalk, leaving holes in the ground where green plants grew.
Soybean cultivation increases in eastern states with encouragement from higher freight rates that make it costly to feed cows with cottonseed from the Cotton Belt or with bran from Minneapolis flour mills (see Staley, 1922; McMillen, 1934).
Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) is created by a merger of Archer Daniels Linseed Co. with Midland Linseed Products Co. The Archer family of Dayton, Ohio, was in the linseed-oil business as early as the 1830s; John W. Daniels began his linseed-oil business with his father-in-law at Piqua, Ohio, in 1879, founded the Daniels Linseed Co. at Minneapolis in 1902, and joined with George A. Archer in 1904. ADM will soon enter grain merchandising and will give up the linseed-oil business in the 1950s to concentrate on grain and milling (see 1930).
Oregon legislators adopt an Alien Land Act patterned on the California laws of 1913 and 1920 and aimed at Asian farmers.
Russian famine relief continues until it becomes clear that the nation is approaching prewar levels of agricultural industrial production, even though these levels are low by Western standards. Herbert Hoover's American Relief Administration leaves Russia in July.
Paris bread prices rise in May to their highest levels since 1870.
British housewives boycott sugar and tea in May, saying they are overpriced.
Irradiating foods with ultraviolet light can make them rich sources of vitamin D, says University of Wisconsin biochemist Harry Steenbock, 37, and he files for a patent on his discovery. Researchers including Alfred Hess at Columbia University have found that ultraviolet light from the sun and from mercury vapor lamps can cure rickets (see McCollum, 1922), Steenbock has followed up on their studies, and he has found that stimulating the provitamins in foods can enable the human liver to convert them into vitamin D (see 1926).
Sanka Coffee is introduced in the United States (see Roselius, 1903).
Synthetic citric acid is produced for the first time by fermentation and becomes an important food and beverage additive (see Scheele, 1784).
Columbus, Ga.-born executive Robert W. (Winship) Woodruff, 33, takes over as president of Coca-Cola Co., which is heavily in debt (see 1919). Woodruff knows nothing about the soft-drink industry but will use advertising to increase net profits by $8 million within 7 years, use innovations such as vending machines to increase distribution, introduce six-packs and a larger-size bottle, promote sales worldwide, and essentially run the company for 50 years (although he will retire in 1955).
U.S. sugar consumption reaches 106.39 pounds per capita, up from 65.2 pounds in 1900. Some sugar goes into illegal "moonshine" whiskey.
A supermarket of sorts opens in San Francisco, where a large steel-frame building opens on the site of a former baseball field and circus ground with 68,000 square feet of selling space and room to park 4,350 automobiles (shoppers are offered free parking for one hour). The Crystal Palace sells food, drugs, cigarettes, cigars, and jewelry and has a barber shop, beauty parlor, and dry cleaner (see Piggly Wiggly, 1916; King Kullen, 1930).
San Francisco-born entrepreneur Frank Epperson, 29, applies in August for a patent on the "Epsicle" he invented at age 11 in 1905 when he mixed a soft-drink powder with seltzer, accidentally left the mixture on a windowsill overnight with the birch stirring stick he has used, woke in the morning to find it frozen around the stick, and began selling his creation to school chums. Epperson has been operating a lemonade stand at an Alameda, Calif., amusement park (see Popsicle, 1924).
The Milky Way candy bar developed in the Midway district between Minneapolis and St. Paul by confectioner Frank C. Mars, 39, is a mixture of milk chocolate, corn syrup, sugar, milk, hydrogenated vegetable oil, cocoa, butter, salt, malt, egg whites, etc., that will gain wide popularity. Mars began making candy with his Minnesota-born second wife, Ethel (née Healey), in their kitchen at Tacoma, Wash., in 1911 but has had little success and moved with Ethel to Minneapolis 3 years ago. Inspired perhaps by his own astronomical name, he names his creation after the distant star galaxy and will see Milky Way sales leap in 1 year from $72,800 to $792,000, but while competitors will wrap their products in foil to keep them fresh, Frank Mars will never use anything more expensive than semitransparent glassine paper (see 1930).
Reese's Peanut Butter Cups are introduced by former York County, Penna., farmer H. B. (Harry) Reese, 44, who took a job operating one of Milton Hershey's dairy farms in 1917 and later, with Hershey's blessing, started a candy company of his own.
Boston's Locke-Obers restaurant responds to Prohibition by selling off the Locke section, with its mahogany bar, and scaling down the menu and operations of what remains.
Delmonico's restaurant at New York serves its last dinner May 21 to a gathering of invited guests and closes after 96 years. It has been the city's foremost eating place, rivaled only by Sherry's, but has been unprofitable since the Volstead Act prohibited sale of wines and liquors.
The restaurant de la Pyramide opened at Vienne by French restaurateur Fernand Point, 26, will become an international gastronomic mecca. It takes its name from a nearby Roman pyramid that marked the turn of a chariot racetrack (see 1955).
The Treaty of Lausanne requires a massive transfer of 190,000 Greeks from Turkey to Greece and of 388,000 Muslims from Greece to Turkey (see Neuilly, 1919).
The American Birth Control League (ABCL) opens the Sanger Research Bureau with a birth control clinic in Margaret Sanger's New York house at 17 West 16th Street, where it will remain for 50 years. Sanger says birth control is essentially education for women; she persuades ABCL president James F. Cooper and his associate Herbert Simonds to start Holland-Rantos, the first U.S. company to manufacture rubber diaphragm contraceptives for women (see Wilde, 1833; Sanger, 1921). While the diaphragm is like the sponge and the cervical cap in that it provides a woman with a means of avoiding pregnancy independent of a man's use of a condom, it must be professionally fitted by a physician and is too expensive for most women (see 1929).
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