1921 1922 1923 1924 1925 1926 1927 1928 1929 1930
The German-Soviet Treaty of Berlin signed in April counterbalances last year's Treaty of Locarno, whose provisions have appeared to link Germany too closely with the Western powers (see Treaty of Rapallo, 1922). German foreign minister Ulrich, graf on Brockdorff-Rantzau, has negotiated the treaty with Soviet minister Georgy V. Chicherin.
The Kyrgyz Soviet Socialist Republic (later Kyrgyzstan) established northeast of Afghanistan is an autonomous entity whose capital city Bishkek is renamed Frunze after the late military leader Mikhail V. Frunze, who was born in the place but died last year at Moscow (the new name will be used until 1991; see 1862). Occupying about 76,600 square miles (198,500 square kilometers) in mountainous Central Asia, the former oblast (province) has a population made up largely of nomadic Sunni Muslim cattle, horse, and sheep raisers. Their leaders have resisted Soviet control, but the country was included in Turkestan 5 years ago and will become a constituent republic of the USSR in 1936.
Josef Stalin establishes himself as virtual dictator of the Soviet Union, beginning a 27-year rule that will de-emphasize world revolution but bring new repression to Soviet citizens and terror to Russia's neighbors (see 1924). Former Menshevik leader Nikolai S. Chkheidze commits suicide in exile at Leuville-sur-Orge June 13 at age 61. The Politburo expels Leon Trotsky and Grigori Zinoviev in October.
Finland's Social Democratic Party leader Väinö Tanner, 45, forms a minority government that grants a general amnesty to political prisoners held since the 1918 civil war. Tanner will be prime minister until next year.
Ireland's Fianna Fail Party is founded by nationalists who include Robert Briscoe, 31.
Italy's Benito Mussolini assumes total power October 7, making the Fascist Party the party of the state and brooking no opposition. Former Chamber of Deputies member Alcide De Gasperi, 45, is arrested but finds refuge in the Vatican, where he will remain until 1943.
Serbia's prime minister Nikola Pasic dies at Belgrade December 10 at age 80, having served five times as prime minister of Serbia and three times since 1918 as prime minister of the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes.
Abdul-Aziz ibn Saud proclaims himself king of Hejaz January 8 (see 1924); now 43, he has obtained a fatwa from the Islamic religious authorities (the ulama) empowering him to crush the Ikhwan who helped him gain power, renames the country Saudi Arabia, and will impose the austere Wahabi rules of Islam on it (see 1927).
The French fleet bombards Damascus May 8 in an effort to suppress the great Druse (Druze) insurrection that began last year. Paris proclaims Lebanon a republic May 23, fighting continues, but the rebellion will have largely died out by the middle of next year.
The former (and final) Ottoman sultan Mehmed VI dies at San Remo, Italy, May 16 at age 65.
Morocco's Rif president Abd el-Krim surrenders to the French May 27 after a Spanish force has landed at Alhucemas near Ajdir and a 160,000-man French army has attacked from the south under the command of Marshal Philippe Pétain (see 1924). The technological superiority of the colonial powers has made it clear to Abd el-Krim that he cannot win, and the French exile him to the island of Réunion in the Indian Ocean, where he will be held until 1947.
Diplomat Gertrude Lothian Bell dies of a sleeping-pill overdose at Baghdad July 12 at age 57, having felt redundant. British Army officer John B. (Bagot) Glubb, 29, resigns to become an administrative inspector for the Iraqi government, a position he will retain until 1930 (see 1939).
Hungarian feminist-pacifist Rosika Schwimmer, 49, files final papers for U.S. citizenship but refuses to swear that she will bear arms for the country in the event of war. A district court denies her application, a ruling that will be reversed on appeal (see Supreme Court decision, 1929).
U.S. troops land in Nicaragua beginning May 2 to preserve order and protect U.S. interests in the face of a revolt against the new president Emiliano Chamorro, who resigns under pressure in the fall.
Brazilians elect former São Paulo mayor Washington (Pereira de Sousa) Luís, 57, November 15; he will serve until 1930, inaugurating a huge highway construction program despite crushing foreign loans.
Canada's Liberal Party loses at the polls, Prime Minister Mackenzie King is unseated, a Conservative government takes office, Arthur Meighen begins a brief second term as prime minister, but his party is defeated in the House of Commons at Ottawa, and King begins a second term that will continue until 1930.
Former U.S. Army colonel William "Billy" Mitchell begins a nationwide lecture tour in early February to urge modernization of the nation's air defenses and improved safety for military and naval pilots, warning that Hawaii is vulnerable to air attack from Japan (see 1925; Pearl Harbor, 1941).
Former Hawaii governor Sanford B. Dole dies at Honolulu June 9 at age 82; five-time Socialist Party candidate for president Eugene V. Debs at a sanitarium outside Chicago October 20 at age 70; former House speaker Joseph G. Cannon (R. Ill.) at Danville, Ill., November 12 at age 90.
Chinese warlord Zhang Zuolin (Chang Tso-lin) defeats his rival Feng Yü-hsiang in April (see 1924). Former warlord Duan Qirui (Tuan Ch'i-jui) is no longer necessary to mediate their differences and goes into retirement at Shanghai. Chiang Kai-shek succeeds the late Sun Yat-sen as leader of China's revolutionary party and begins unification under the Guomindang (Kuomintang), which holds power only in the south (see 1925). Chiang takes Wuchang in October and establishes that city as his seat of power (see 1927).
Annam in Southeast Asia hails the accession of Prince Nguyen Vinh Thuy as 13th emperor in his dynasty; the 12-year-old is given the name Bao Dai ("Keeper of Greatness"), but Annam remains part of French Indochina (see 1945).
Japan's prime minister Takaaki Kato dies at Tokyo January 28 at age 66 after a brief ministry in which he has reduced the power of the military even while modernizing it and introducing military training in middle and higher schools. His administration has also put through an antisubversive law providing for prison terms of up to 10 years for membership in any group proposing abolition of private property or advocating change in the "national polity." The influence of Japan's army and navy will increase enormously in the next 15 years (see Mukden, 1931). The mentally deranged Taisho emperor Yoshihito dies at Hayama December 25 at age 47 after a 14-year reign. His 25-year-old son has been acting as regent during Yoshihito's 5-year mental illness and will reign until 1989 as the Showa emperor Hirohito.
British authorities in India grant women the right to vote, but only in provincial elections.
The rocket launched March 16 by physicist Robert H. Goddard is the first liquid-fuel rocket (see 1921; Oberth, 1923). Goddard sends his device on a 2½-second flight from a field on his Aunt Effie's farm near Auburn, Massachusetts. It travels 184 feet to one side at a speed of only 60 miles per hour and reaches a height of only 41 feet, but it demonstrates the practicality of rockets and convinces Goddard that rockets will one day land men on the moon. He writes in his diary, "It looked almost magical as it rose, without any appreciably greater noise or flame." Goddard continues his research and beginning in 1930 will get financial support from copper heir Harry Guggenheim, but although the U.S. government shows no interest in his work the German government will buy copies of Goddard's patent papers (see 1932).
Chicago-born explorer Lincoln (originally William Linn) Ellsworth, 46, makes the first aerial transit of the North Pole March 12, flying in the dirigible Norge accompanied by Roald Amundsen and Italian aeronautical engineer Umberto Nobile, 41. A mining engineer and scientist, Ellsworth persuaded his millionaire father last year to help finance an effort to fly over the pole, but although the two planes that took off from Spitzbergen reached 87° 44' North before being forced down by engine trouble, one plane was badly damaged in the landing, and it took 3 weeks to get the other one off the ice pack.
Winchester, Va.-born U.S. Navy explorer Richard Evelyn Byrd, 36, and Warrensburg, N.Y.,-born pilot Floyd Bennett, 35, take off May 9 from Spitsbergen in a trimotor Fokker monoplane, fly 700 miles to within 150 miles of the North Pole (they will claim to have circled it 13 times), and return in 15½ hours. Each is awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor; navigator Byrd is awarded the Distinguished Service Medal, and he is promoted to commander (see 1928). Explorer Umberto Nobile flies over the North Pole in a dirigible May 12.
Explorer Luigi Robecchi-Bricchetti dies at his native Pavia May 31 at age 71.
France stabilizes the franc at 20 percent of its prewar value, thus virtually wiping out the savings of millions of Frenchmen. The devaluation will have the effect of making the French Europe's greatest gold hoarders (see 1928).
A merger of German industrial giants creates the mammoth United Steel Works (Vereinigte Sthalwrerke) cartel, rivaled only by the great Krupp works at Essen. Major mining enterprises join with the Rhine-Elbe Union steel company that Albert Voegler, 49, has built up with help from the late Hugo Stinnes, Nazi-supporting industrialist Emil Kirdorf, now 79, and Nazi-supporting steelmaker Fritz Thyssen, 53.
Mesabi iron range discoverer Leonidas Merritt dies at Duluth, Minn., May 9 at age 82.
A British General Strike cripples the nation from May 3 to May 12 as members of the Trade Union Congress rally to the slogan, "Not a penny off the pay; not a minute on the day." The strike begins with a lockout May 1 by private coal mine operators whose workers refuse to accept a pay cut averaging 13 percent and refuse to work an extra hour each day (they average the equivalent of only $14.60 per week). Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill's return to the gold standard last year has squeezed export industries such as coal (which must compete with German and Polish producers and with oil) and forced mine operators to cut wages and increase hours over the opposition of labor leaders who include former coal miner Arthur J. (James) Cook, 42. Railwaymen, printing trade workers, building trade workers, truckdrivers, dock workers, iron and steel workers, chemical industry employees, and some power company workers walk out in sympathy with the miners in accordance with a strategy devised by Transport Workers chief Ernest Bevin, 42. The Royal Navy trains its guns on British strikers who try to prevent ships from off-loading food and other relief materials in support of the great strike; economist John Maynard Keynes has called Churchill's action "featherbrained" and "silly," but while 3 million workers respond to Ernest Bevin's strike call, volunteers who include most of the students of Oxford and Cambridge maintain essential services. The sympathy strike is called off May 12, but although Arthur Cook urges coal miners to return to work, they refuse; Cook then directs their strike, and they continue to resist any wage cut or lengthening of hours until November 19, when they capitulate unconditionally. The mine workers accept the terms of the mine operators plus drastic layoffs and will not strike again until 1972. Former Electrical Trades Union assistant secretary Walter (McLennan) Citrine, 39, becomes general secretary of the Trades Union Congress and will head it until 1946.
The U.S. Railway Labor Act (Watson-Parker Act) signed into law by President Coolidge May 20 sets up a five-man board of mediation appointed by the president to settle railway labor disputes (see 1934).
American International Group (AIG) has its U.S. beginnings in the American International Underwriters, founded at New York by California-born entrepreneur Cornelius Vander Starr, 34, who 7 years ago founded American Asiatic Underwriters at Shanghai to sell burial-plot life insurance. By 1929 he will have life insurance offices all across China as well as in Hanoi, Hong Kong, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, the Philippines, and Saigon, and AIG will grow to become the world's largest insurance company.
Industrialist Zhang Jian (Chang Chen) dies at Nant'ung in his native Kiangsu Province August 24 at age 73, having built an empire of cotton mills, flour mills, shipping lines, and other enterprises.
Ford Motor Company announces a 5-day workweek September 25. Henry Ford writes in the October issue of Ford News, "Just as the 8-hour day opened our way to prosperity in America, so the 5-day workweek will open our way to still greater prosperity . . . It is high time to rid ourselves of the notion that leisure for workmen is either lost time or a class privilege . . . People who have more leisure must have more clothes. They eat a greater variety of food. They require more transportation in vehicles."
Wall Street's Dow Jones Industrial Average closes at 166.10 September 7 and closes December 31 at 157.20, up from 156.66 at the end of 1925.
Montgomery Ward opens its first retail stores after 54 years as a mail-order house. It will continue opening stores until 1937, but will open no more thereafter until 1959, by which time Sears, Roebuck will have established a large chain of stores.
Fayetteville, Ark.-born Ethyl Gasoline Corp. chemist Graham Edgar, 38, devises an octane scale for rating gasoline (see Dow, 1924). The U.S. Public Health Service allows leaded gasoline to remain on the market, and it will continue to be sold for more than half a century despite growing evidence that lead emissions create human health hazards; most countries will outlaw use of lead in gasoline, and improved processes will enable oil companies to make lead-free gasoline with octane ratings as high as 94.
Drillers strike oil October 28 on the 8,000-acre Ira G. Yates ranch in Pecos County, Texas. They tap what will for decades be the largest U.S. petroleum reserve, and their 992-foot-deep well is soon producing 450 barrels per day.
Lufthansa has its beginnings in the Deutsche Luft Hansa Aktiegesellschaft created January 6 by a merger between Deutsche Aero Lloyd (DAL) and Junkers Luftverkehr that gives it a fleet of 162 aircraft comprised of 18 different types. Scheduled flights begin April 6 in planes bearing a flying crane logo designed in 1919 for a predecessor to DAL. The new German national airline acquires the 5-year-old German-Russian Dereluft airline and will be influential in the next few years in establishing Spain's Iberia, Brazil's Syndicato Condor, and China's Eurasia airlines. Lufthansa (it will adopt that name in 1933) gives Berlin's Tempelhof Airport new importance (see 1919); by 1936 Tempelhof will be Europe's busiest air-travel center.
The six-seat Stinson SM-1 Detroiter that takes off January 25 is the first airplane with a heated, soundproof cabin, an electric starter, and wheel brakes (see 1925). Inherently stable in flight, it enables Stinson Aircraft Co. founder Edward Stinson to raise $150,000, incorporate May 4, and give up his work as a stunt pilot (which has been paying him $100,000 per year). By year's end the company has sold 10 SM-1 Detroiters and begun developing three- and four-seat high-wing cabin monoplanes for business and personal flights (see 1929).
The first contract airmail flight takes off February 15 from Dearborn, Mich. (see Kelly Act, 1925). The all-metal Ford Pullman monoplane lands at Cleveland. Aviation pioneer William Bushnell Stout starts the first passenger airline, linking Detroit with Grand Rapids, Mich. (see 1925); he will sell it to United Aircraft and Transport in 1929. Scheduled airline service begins April 6: a Varney Air Lines two-seat Laird Swallow biplane piloted by Leon D. Cuddeback, 28, flies 244 miles on a contract mail route from Pasco, Wash., to Boise, Idaho, and proceeds to Elko, Nev., with 200 pounds of mail.
Detroit-born pilot Charles A. (Augustus) Lindbergh, 24, takes off from St. Louis April 15 on the first regularly scheduled mail flight between that city and Chicago. Lindbergh is chief pilot for Robertson Aircraft, whose owners Frank and William Robertson have three DH-4 biplanes (see 1927; American Airways, 1930).
The Air Commerce Act of 1926 passed by Congress May 20 establishes federal regulations with regard to air carriers, requiring that aircraft be inspected for airworthiness and bear identification markings on their exteriors; pilots must be tested for their aeronautical knowledge and pass physical fitness tests; Congress requires the federal government to build new airports, develop and maintain airways and navigational aids, and institute rules (Civil Air Regulations) governing altitude separation of planes (see Kelly Act, 1925). The Department of Commerce's Aeronautical Division is given responsibility and oversight duties for implementing the new law that encourages the growth of commercial aviation (see Airmail Act, 1930).
Trans World Airlines has its beginnings in the Western Air Express Co. (see 1930).
Northwest Airlines has its beginnings in the Northwest Airways Co. that begins service between Chicago and St. Paul (see 1934).
Lockheed Aircraft Corp. revives at Hollywood, Calif., as Alan H. Loughhead reunites after a 10-year hiatus with John K. Northrop (see 1916). The two obtain financing from local brick-and-tile manufacturer Fred S. Keeler, who puts up $25,000 for a 51 percent stock interest, they adopt the name Lockheed to profit from association with the now-successful automobile brake business of Alan's brother Malcolm, and they produce the high-speed Vega monoplane, basing it on their innovative single-bodied fuselage construction. Powered by a 424-horsepower Pratt & Whitney Wasp engine (see 1925) and able to carry six people, the Vega has a cruising speed of 185 miles per hour and a range of 1,000 miles, publisher William Randolph Hearst's son George buys the first one for $12,500, Lockheed moves to larger quarters at Burbank, and the Vega will be wildly successful, attracting some high-profile aviators (see 1929; Northrop, 1928).
The Benjamin Franklin Bridge opens to traffic July 1, spanning the Delaware River between Philadelphia and Camden, N.J., after 4½ years of construction. Designed by Kraków-born engineer Ralph Modjeski, now 65, and initially called the Delaware River Port Authority Bridge (it will be renamed in 1956), it has cost $45.2 million, its main span is 1,750-foot (533-meter) in length, and it is the world's longest suspension bridge thus far.
Engineer Washington A. Roebling of 1883 Brooklyn Bridge fame dies at Trenton, N.J., July 21 at age 89 after 38 years in retirement.
The Florida Keys link of the Florida East Coast Railway completed in 1912 is destroyed September 19 by a hurricane that further deflates the boom in Florida real estate (see real estate, 1925; 1935).
The Chief departs from Chicago's Dearborn Station November 14 to begin daily Santa Fe service between Chicago and Los Angeles with seven cars including four sleeping cars, a diner, a club car, and an observation lounge car. The 63-hour run will be reduced to 58 hours in 1929 and 56 hours in 1930 (see 1911; Super Chief, 1936).
Some 55 million passengers use New York's 16-year-old Pennsylvania Station, 44 million use the 13-year-old Grand Central Terminal, 27 million the Flatbush Avenue Station. Rail travel has enabled many New Yorkers to move from heavily congested parts of the city to various communities in Long Island, Westchester, and Connecticut. Roughly 80 percent of commuters on the Long Island Rail Road live in areas within 25 miles of Manhattan.
Greyhound Corp. is incorporated to compete with intercity passenger rail service (see 1922). Eastern Wisconsin Co. head Edwin Carl Ekstrom, 37, and his brother Robert have been operating Safety Motor Coach Lines between Grand Rapids, Mich., and Muskegon. They buy 52 buses from Frank Fageol, who has built them and who gives Carl a greyhound that its recipient promptly names "Bus"; the dog becomes the symbol of Safety Motor Coach Lines.
The Delta Queen launched at Cincinnati is a paddle-wheel passenger steamer designed for service between the Queen City and New Orleans. Fare for the 7-day trip on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers is $35.
Chrysler introduces the Imperial, a luxury model that will compete with Cadillac, Lincoln, Packard, and Pierce-Arrow.
The Pontiac motorcar introduced by General Motors is a renamed Oakland (see 1924).
The Model T Ford sells for $350 new with a self-starter but is losing ground to GM's Chevrolet (see 1922; Model A, 1927).
E. L. Cord's Auburn Automobile Co. acquires Duesenberg Automobile and Motor Co. (see 1924; Model L-29, 1929).
The Society of Automotive Engineers establishes S.A.E. viscosity numbers to standardize engine lubricating oils, assigning heavy oil the number 50, light oil the number 10 (see 1911).
Prestone is introduced by Union Carbide and Carbon (see commerce, 1917); the first ethylene glycol antifreeze for motor-vehicle radiators, it retails at $5 per gallon.
The Triplex Safety Glass Co. of North America is founded by U.S. entrepreneur Amory L. Haskell, who has obtained U.S. rights to the 1910 patent of Edouard Bénédictus. Haskell begins production on one floor of the Lipton Tea factory at Hoboken, N.J., and receives assistance from Henry Ford to build his own factory, but the initial price of safety glass is $8.80 per square foot and it costs a Cadillac owner $200 to replace all the glass in his car with safety glass (see 1927; Sloan, 1929).
Safety-glass windshields are installed as standard equipment on high-priced Stutz motorcar models.
Route 66 has its beginnings in a plan to link Chicago and Los Angeles with a 2,448-mile continuous highway that will be called the "Main Street of America," although it will not be "continuously paved" until 1937, after a major effort by otherwise unemployed youths working on road gangs under a federally-financed program. Tulsa, Okla., entrepreneur Cyrus Avery and Springfield, Mo., promoter John Woodruff have championed the idea of a route that would link predominantly rural communities with a national thoroughfare to facilitate shipping of farm produce to market. The 18-foot-wide road will take truckers and motorists west via St. Louis, Joplin, Oklahoma City, Amarillo, Gallup, Flagstaff, Winona, Kingman, Barstow, and San Bernardino; it will be lined with motor courts, Burma-Shave signs, two-pump service stations, and curio shops, trucks will use it to carry California farm products east.
Waltham, Mass., inventor Francis W. (Wright) Davis, 38, patents a power-steering unit and installs it in a 1921 Pierce-Arrow Runabout. Formerly chief engineer of Pierce-Arrow's trucking division, Davis and his master craftsman George Jessup will demonstrate the power-steering unit to Detroit automakers beginning next year, but commercial production of cars with power steering will not begin until 1951.
U.S. auto production reaches 4 million, up nearly eightfold from 1914 (see 1927).
The Mercedes-Benz supercharged SS sportscar is introduced by the new German motorcar giant Daimler-Benz created by a merger of Daimler Motoren-Gesellschaft with Firma Benz & Cie. (see 1886; Jellinek, 1901; diesel, 1936). Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and his friends drive Benz motorcars, but Germany's upper classes tend to prefer Maybach and Auto Union products such as the Audi and Horch.
Harvey Firestone leases a million acres for 99 years and opens Liberia to rubber cultivation (see 1924). He has promoted rubber-tree plantations in the Philippines and in South America since 1900, become Ford Motor Company's major tire supplier, and will plant 6,000 acres to rubber trees in the next decade.
An improved waterproof cellophane developed by E. I. du Pont chemists William Hale Church and Karl Edwin Prindle will revolutionize packaging (see Brandenberger, 1912). DuPont has been making cellophane at Buffalo, N.Y., since acquiring U.S. rights early in 1924, selling it initially for $2.65/lb. (see tobacco, 1930).
Sintered carbide is introduced by Fried. Krupp of Essen, whose nonferrous metal alloy on a tungsten carbide base enables machine tools to cut steel at 150 meters per minute instead of eight meters.
Automatic rifle inventor John M. Browning dies near Liège, Belgium, November 26 at age 71.
Alabama-born B. F. Goodrich chemist Waldo (Lonsbury) Semon, 27, pioneers synthetic rubber, using catalysts in an effort to extract the chlorine from the polymer polyvinyl chloride invented in 1872 by the late Eugen Baumann (see Nieuwland, 1925). He polymerizes PVC into a white powder, plasticizes the PVC powder with agents such as tricresylphosphate, and produces a workable synthetic that can be rolled and treated like rubber. The vinyl product is odorless, weatherproof, age- and acid-resistant, when rolled into a ball it bounces down a hallway, and it will be introduced commercially in 1933 under the name Koroseal (see Neoprene, 1931; butadiene, 1939).
English physicist Paul A. M. (Adrien Maurice) Dirac, 24, advances a formal theory that will hereafter govern the study of submicroscopic phenomena. A cofounder of the modern theory of quantum mechanics, Dirac will extend his theory in the next 4 years to embrace ideas of relativity (see 1927; Einstein, 1916; 1929; Heisenberg, 1927).
Rome-born University of Florence mathematics teacher Enrico Fermi, 24, publishes a paper on the behavior of a perfect, hypothetical gas. Fermi and Paul Dirac describe the statistical properties of atomic particles that obey the Pauli exclusion principle (as distinct from particles that obey Bose-Einstein statistics) and will become known as fermions; they include protons, electrons, and neutrons (see Chadwick, 1932; Fermi, 1934).
A wave model of the atom constructed by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger, 39, makes a major contribution to modern quantum theory (see Planck, 1900). Schrödinger has seized upon a radical theory advanced by the French physicist Louis-Victor de Broglie that the electron, like light, should exhibit a dual nature, behaving both as particle and as wave, and in the Schrödinger model electrons wash around the nucleus (see Bohr, 1913; Einstein, 1929).
Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics by Budapest-born mathematics prodigy John (Janos) von Neumann, 22, is published in German (a lecturer at the University of Berlin, von Neumann published an elaborate theory of numbers as sets 3 years ago; he will move to America in 1930).
Helium liquefier Heike Kamerlingh Onnes dies at Leyden in the Netherlands February 21 at age 72. His former student Willem Hendrik Keesom has succeeded him as director of the Kamerlingh Onnes Laboratory at the University of Leyden and this year manages to solidify helium, a feat that defied the best efforts of Kamerlingh Onnes.
English-born astronomer Cecilia Payne, 26, of the Harvard College Observatory determines that helium is more abundant in the stars than on earth.
The Theory of the Gene by Columbia University zoologist Thomas Hunt Morgan proves a theory of hereditary transmission that will be the basis for all future genetic research (see 1909; Sturtevant, 1913). Now 60, Morgan has conducted experiments with fruit flies (Drosophila) to pinpoint the location of genes in the chromosomes of the cell nucleus (see Watson, Crick, 1953; Lewis, 1978).
New York-born University of Texas, Austin, biologist Hermann J. (Joseph) Muller, 35, finds that X-rays can produce mutations. His work will speed up the process of mutation for gene studies and makes him a leading advocate for limiting exposure to X-rays and for sperm banks to conserve healthy genes.
Canton, Mass.-born Cornell University biochemist James B. (Batcheller) Sumner, 38, crystallizes the enzyme urease and proves that enzymes are proteins.
Genetics pioneer William Bateson dies at London February 8 at age 64; American Museum of Natural History naturalist-explorer Carl E. Akeley dies at Albert National Park in the Belgian Congo November 17 at age 62, having developed the taxidermic method of mounting animals in their natural surroundings for museum displays.
Ergotism from infected rye breaks out in the Soviet Union; in some areas half the population is affected (see 1862; 1951; LSD, 1943).
Nobel cytologist Camillo Golgi dies at Pavia January 21 at age 82; popular psychologist Emile Coué at Nancy, France, July 2 at age 69; psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin at Munich October 7 at age 70.
The grotto of Lourdes that has been drawing hopeful patients since 1858 attracts new attention after French housewife Augustine Augault is relieved overnight of a fibroid tumor of the uterus that has swelled her weight from 77 pounds to 102. The tumor has been diagnosed as such by physicians, but after Mme. Augault is carried on a stretcher at the procession of the Blessed Sacrament at Lourdes it is found to have disappeared by 30 physicians, Catholic and non-Catholic—a "miracle" that will help lead to the canonization of Sister Bernadette in 1933 (see 1866).
California newspapers report May 18 that evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson has disappeared while swimming and is presumed to have drowned (see 1923). She returned April 24 from a long vacation with her daughter Roberta through Europe and the Holy Land, some 15,000 of her followers kneel in prayer for her soul at her Bible School auditorium, hundreds more pray on the sidewalks and lawns around her Temple, pleading with her to return from the dead, but she has actually been having a tryst at Carmel with former Los Angeles Times radio station manager Kenneth Gladstone Ormiston, a married man and agnostic who in 1923 built radio station Kalling Four-Square Gospel (KFSG) atop her temple. McPherson returns to Los Angeles June 27, receives a wild reception from city officials and thousands of cheering well-wishers, and announces the next day that she was kidnapped (Ormiston discreetly moves to Chicago). A grand jury meets July 8 to decide whether anyone should be indicted for kidnapping, but McPherson appears outside the courthouse wearing a simple white crepe dress with a long blue cape, she produces seven other women of similar build, hair style, and facial features wearing outfits identical to hers, and the grand jury decides July 20 that anyone claiming to have seen her at Carmel might have been mistaken. It finds insufficient evidence to warrant an indictment.
The International Eucharistic Congress convenes at Chicago under the auspices of New York-born Chicago archbishop George Cardinal Mundelein, 54, who has made English the language of instruction in all parochial schools. The event attracts Roman Catholics from all over the world.
Father Coughlin makes his first radio broadcast October 17 over Detroit's station WJR to begin a career of nearly 20 years. Detroit priest Charles Edward Coughlin, 34, will broadcast sermons marked by racial bigotry and right-wing sentiments (see commerce, 1934).
Catholic bishops in Italy ban scantily-clad women from church and criticize women's participation in sport as "incompatible" with a woman's dignity.
Saudi Arabia's Wahhabist Saud government introduces religious police (muttawa) to arrest women who fail to cover themselves completely in black abaya robes; the muttawa enforce prayer five times per day.
England's 34-year-old Reading University receives a royal charter and gains independence from Oxford.
Soviet women 19 years old have a literacy rate of 88.2 percent, men 24 to 25 a rate of 95.7 percent, up from an overall rate of only 78 percent in 1897, following a campaign by the Bolshevik government to teach children to read and write.
The College Entrance Examination Board created in 1900 administers its first Scholastic Aptitude Test (S.A.T.). Harvard chemistry professor James Bryant Conant and former assistant dean Henry Chauncey pick up on Thomas Jefferson's 1782 phrase about a "natural aristocracy" and strive to limit college admissions to a "meritocracy" based on scholastic ability and potential rather than on family wealth and position. Carl Campbell Brigham's 1923 book A Study of American Intelligence concluded that members of the so-called "Nordic" race had higher intellects than Jews, Catholics, Greeks, Hungarians, Italians, Russians, or—most especially—blacks, and although he will later recant this view he has been the chief developer of the tests. The College Board Scholastic Aptitude Tests will be graded on a scale of 200 to 800, and colleges will use S.A.T. scores as a supplement to secondary-school records and other relevant information in judging qualifications of applicants, but although the tests will measure only a narrow range of talents, the scores will never be more than approximate, and they will have a standard error of measurement in the area of 32 points. An S.A.T. score will prove to be something far less than an infallible indicator of a student's grades in his or her freshman year at college, colleges will continue to give preferences to the children of alumni (and to good athletes), but a poor S.A.T. score will often bar an able student from admission to his or her college of choice (see Kaplan, 1947).
Former Harvard University president Charles William Eliot dies at Northeast Harbor, Me., August 22 at age 92.
The first contract airmail flight takes off February 15 from Dearborn, Mich. The all-metal Ford Pullman monoplane lands at Cleveland.
Publisher E. W. Scripps dies of apoplexy aboard his yacht Ohio in Monrovia Bay off the Liberian coast March 12 at age 71, having drunk whiskey, smoked cigars, and played poker almost to the end. He leaves an empire that includes 25 newspapers, the United Press that he helped found in 1907, and the Newspaper Enterprise Association (a syndication service).
Houston Chronicle founder Marcellus E. Foster retires from the 25-year-old paper and sells his remaining interest June 26 to Jesse Jones (see 1908). Now 55, Foster will join the outspoken Scripps-Howard Houston Press next year and remain there until early 1937 while Jones uses the Chronicle to help him in his efforts to guide the city's development.
Smith-Corona Co. is created by a merger of the L. C. Smith and Corona typewriter companies (see Smith, 1908; word processors, 1981).
General Telephone & Electric Corp. (GTE) has its beginnings in the Associated Telephone Utilities Corp. founded by southern Wisconsin inventor Sigurd L. Odegard, who obtains backing from Chicago utilities magnate Marshall E. Sampsell and acquires a Long Beach, Calif., telephone company.
Deutsche Welle GmbH (later Deutschlandsender) begins broadcasting from Berlin January 7 on longwave 182 kHz, reaching all of Germany (see 1923).
English physicist Edward Victor Appleton, 33, discovers a layer of the ionosphere that proves a reliable reflector of the shorter shortwave radio waves, thus making possible more dependable long-distance radio communication. The layer will be called the Appleton, or F, layer and will spur development of the radio.
Electrical engineer Arthur E. Kennelly tells an audience, "Through radio I look forward to a united states of the world. Radio is standardizing the peoples of the Earth, English will become the universal language because it is predominantly the language of ether. The most important aspect of radio is its sociological influence."
The first Philco radios are introduced by the 34-year-old Philadelphia Storage Battery Co., whose management will change its name to Philco in 1940. Having built an efficient distribution system for its batteries, the company sells 96,000 radio receivers within a year and escapes bankruptcy. It has been producing a "Socket Power" rectifier that permits radios to be plugged into mains instead of having to use batteries, but the advent of alternating current has made the rectifier obsolete and forced the company to find another product; it enjoys phenomenal success despite its high price and competition from hundreds of other makes. By 1929 the Philco radio will be selling for $49.50 plus tubes—the equivalent of a week's salary for most people; the company will borrow $7 million to retool its Philadelphia plant for mass production, and slash prices to make itself the second-leading radio maker in America (see 1930).
Scottish inventor John L. Baird, 28, gives the first successful demonstration of television, but his mechanical system is based on the Nipkow rotating disk of 1883 and has serious limitations (see 1927). Says U.S radio pioneer Lee De Forest, "While theoretically and technically television may be possible, commercially and financially I consider it an impossibility" (see 1927; BBC, 1932).
The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is founded November 11 by Radio Corp. of America (RCA) at the initiative of David Sarnoff (see 1922). RCA has bought the New York radio station WEAF and the Washington, D.C., station WCAP from AT&T October 29, merged them with its own WJZ at New York, and makes WEAF the flagship of a 19-station Red Network that soon has 31 affiliates (see 1927).
Amazing Stories magazine is founded by Luxembourg-born New York inventor and science-fiction enthusiast Hugo Gernsback, 42, who came to America at age 20 to promote an improved dry cell battery he had invented.
The Los Angeles Central Library is completed to designs by the late New York architect Bertram Goodhue in a mixture of Spanish colonial and Beaux Arts styles.
Nonfiction: Disarmament and The League of Nations by Canadian-born London University professor Philip John Noel-Baker, 36, who served with an ambulance unit during the Great War (his Quaker faith prevented him from enlisting in the military) and was a member of the British delegation to the Versailles Peace Conference 7 years ago; History of England by Cambridge University historian G. M. (George Macaulay) Trevelyan, 50; The Acquisitive Society and Religion and the Rise of Capitalism by Calcutta-born English economic historian R. H. (Richard Henry) Tawney, 44, of the Workers' Educational Association, who was badly wounded 10 years ago in the Battle of the Somme; Dictionary of Modern English Usage by English lexicographer H. W. (Henry Watson) Fowler, 68; Religion in the Making by Alfred North Whitehead; Man and the State by philosopher William Ernest Hocking; The Story of Philosophy by New York educator-author Will (William James) Durant, 40; The Copeland Reader is an anthology of works selected by Maine-born Harvard teacher Charles Townsend Copeland, 66, who last year was appointed Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory; Microbe Hunters by Zeeland, Mich.-born bacteriologist-turned-author Paul (Henry) de Kruif, 36, who helped Sinclair Lewis with his 1925 novel Arrowsmith, receives 25 percent of the royalties, and now gives a popular account of the discoveries by Louis Pasteur, Robert Koch, Paul Ehrlich, and others. The book will have sales of more than 1 million copies and be translated into 18 languages; Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T. E. Lawrence (see Lowell Thomas, 1924). His 280,000-word account of desert fighting appears in a costly limited edition (a 130,000-word version will appear next year under the more appropriate title Revolt in the Desert, and the full book will be issued for general circulation after Lawrence's death in a motorcycle accident in 1935); "Hatrack" by New York Herald Tribune rewrite man Herbert Asbury, 34, appears in the April issue of H. L. Mencken's American Mercury, Boston's puritanical, 48-year-old Watch and Ward Society finds the article about a prostitute who works at a cemetery in Asbury's native Farmington, Mo., objectionable and has the magazine banned, Mencken gets himself arrested on the Boston Common for selling allegedly obscene and sacriligious material, the post office bans his magazine from the mails, and the resulting publicity not only boosts sales but makes Asbury a celebrity; Short Circuits by humorist Stephen Leacock includes "An Elegy Near a City Freight Yard."
Writer-traveler Charles M. Doughty dies at Sissinghurst, Kent, January 20 at age 82; Swedish feminist writer Ellen Key at Strand April 25 at age 76.
Fiction: The Sun Also Rises by Illinois-born novelist Ernest (Miller) Hemingway, 27, who quotes Gertrude Stein in an epigraph that says, "You are all a lost generation," a line that Stein heard her garageman use in scolding a young mechanic who did not make proper repairs on her Model T Ford (Hemingway mixes fictional characters with the real-life exploits of Spanish matador Cayetano Ordóñez); The Cabala by Wisconsin-born novelist Thornton (Niven) Wilder, 29; Soldier's Pay by Mississippi novelist William (Cuthbert) Faulkner, 28, who spelled his name Falkner until 2 years ago, when a printer added the "u" on a volume of poetry that he published; The Counterfeiters (Les Faux Monnayeurs) by André Gide; A Man Could Stand Up by Ford Madox Ford, whose title refers to the end of trench warfare in 1918; Debits and Credits (stories) by Rudyard Kipling includes "The Garden" and "The Wish House" (Kipling's son was killed in 1915. His preoccupation with imperialism and anti-German sentiment have put him out of touch with his contemporaries, but he remains a master story teller); The Plumed Serpent by D. H. Lawrence; Jesting Pilate by Aldous Huxley; The Castle (Das Schloss) by the late Franz Kafka; The Izu Dancer (Izu no odoriko) by Japanese novelist Yasunari Kawabata, 27, whose work is published in the journal Artistic Age (Bungei jidai) that he has founded; The Bullfighters (Les Bestiares) by Henri de Montherlant; Blindness by English novelist Henry Green (Henry Vincent Yorke), 21; The Return of Don Quixote by G. K. Chesterton; Under the Sun of Satan (Sous le soleil de Satan) by French novelist Georges Bernanos, 38; Night Walker by Louis Aragon; The Kidnapper (Le Voleur d'enfants) by Jules Supervielle; Avarice House (Mont-Cinere) by Paris-born novelist Julian (Hartridge) Green, 26, who served in the French Army during the Great War, entered the University of Virginia at age 19, taught there for a year, but returned to France 4 years ago; Before the Bombardment by English novelist-poet Osbert Sitwell, 34; Craven House by English actor-turned-novelist Patrick Hamilton, 22; Payment Deferred by Cairo-born English novelist C. S. (Cecil Scott) Forester, 27; Adam's Breed by English poet-novelist (Marguerite) Radclyffe Hall, 40; Lolly Willowes; or, The Loving Huntsman by English novelist Sylvia Townsend Warner, 32; The Last of Cheri by Colette; Show Boat by Edna Ferber; My Mortal Enemy (stories) by Willa Cather; The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie; Clouds of Witness by Dorothy L. Sayers; Stamboul Train by English novelist Graham Greene, 21.
Misogynist novelist Ronald Firbank dies at Rome May 21 at age 40.
Poetry: White Buildings by Ohio-born poet Hart Crane, 27 (son of Life Savers creator Clarence Crane); A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle by Scottish poet Hugh MacDiarmid (Christopher Murray Grieve), 34; Chorus of the Newly Dead by Edwin Muir; The Land by English poet-novelist V. (Vita Victoria Mary) Sackville-West, 34; Capital of Sorrow (Capitale de la douleur) by French poet Paul Eluard (Eugène Grindel), 30; The Close Couplet by New York-born poet Laura Riding (originally Reichenthal), 25; TheWeary Blues by Missouri-born poet Langston Hughes, 24, whose work has been published through the efforts of Vachel Lindsay; Streets in the Moon by Archibald MacLeish; Two Gentlemen in Bonds by John Crowe Ransom; Enough Rope by New York poet-author Dorothy Parker (née Rothschild), 33, who has gained a certain renown for her 1920 advertising line "Brevity is the soul of lingerie" and will be better known for "Men seldom make passes/ At girls who wear glasses," for putting down an actress with the line, "She ran the whole gamut of emotions from A to B," and for the verse, "Guns aren't lawful; Nooses give;/ Gas smells awful;/ You might as well live."
Rainer Maria Rilke dies of blood poisoning at Sierre, Switzerland, December 29 at age 51 after being pricked by a thorn.
Juvenile: Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne, who delights readers with Pooh-bear, Tigger, Piglet, Ee-ore, Kanga and baby Roo, Owl, and other companions of Christopher Robin; Fairy Gold by Compton Mackenzie; The Little Engine that Could by "Watty Piper" (pen name used by New York publisher Platt & Munk; based on a 1910 story by Mabel C. Bragg, 60; Frances M. Ford, 68, claims prior authorship), illustrations by George and Doris Haumon; Smoky the Cowhorse by Montana-born cowboy novelist William Roderick "Will" James, 34.
The New York Herald-Tribune appoints Irita Bradford (Mrs. Carl) Van Doren, 35, head of its Book Review section following the death of Book Review editor Stuart Sherman. Her stewardship over the next 37 years will have a powerful influence on what Americans read.
Painting: Lover's Bouquet by Marc Chagall; The Palm by Pierre Bonnard; Several Circles by Wassily Kandinsky; Still Life with Musical Instruments by Max Beckmann; The Red House by Edvard Munch; Terrace in Richmond by Oskar Kokoschka; Barfüsserkirche II by Lyonel Feininger; The Last Jockey by Brussels advertising agency artist and surrealist René Magritte, 27; Around the Fish by Paul Klee; Les Acrobates by Francis Picabia, who has given up Dadaism, embraced surrealism, but now uses a figurative style; Blue Iris by Georgia O'Keeffe; Eggplant and Tomatoes by Pennsylvania-born painter Charles Demuth, 42, whose four visits to Europe before the Great War exposed him to the cubists and work by Marcel Duchamp; Interior by Charles Sheeler. Mary Cassatt dies at her country house outside Paris June 14 at age 81 (she has been blind for years); Thomas Moran at Santa Barbara, Calif., August 26 at age 89 (a 12,800-foot peak in the Grand Tetons south of Yellowstone Park has been named in his honor; see environment, 1929); Claude Monet dies at Giverny December 5 at age 86.
Sculpture: Draped Reclining Figure by English sculptor Henry (Spencer) Moore, 28.
New York's Collector of Customs classifies Constantin Brancusi's 1919 Bird in Space "a manufacture of metal" subject to 40 percent duty, photographer Edward Steichen, who has imported the Bird claims it is a work of art and thus exempt from duty under existing laws, and a judge rules that while the Bird may not imitate nature it is a work of art according to the "so-called new school of art" that espouses abstraction.
Photograph: Working Students by August Sander.
Theater: The Great God Brown by Eugene O'Neill 1/23 at New York's Greenwich Village Theater, with William Harrigan, Indiana-born actor Robert Keith, 27, 171 perfs.; The Paper Mill (Papiermühle) by Georg Kaiser 1/26 at Dresden's Alberttheater; The Shanghai Gesture by John Colton 2/1 at New York's Martin Beck Theater, with Cyril Keightley, Florence Reed, 206 perfs.; The Great Gatsby by Owen Davis (who has adapted last year's Scott Fitzgerald novel) 2/2 at New York's Ambassador Theater, with Florence Eldridge as Daisy Buchanan, James Rennie as Jay Gatsby, Catherine Willard as Jordan Baker, 112 perfs.; Love 'em and Leave 'em by George Abbott and Charlotte, N.C.-born playwright John V. A. Weaver, 32, 2/3 at New York's Sam H. Harris Theater, with Donald Meek, 152 perfs.; The Plough and the Stars by Sean O'Casey 2/8 at Dublin's Abbey Theatre, 133 perfs.; Love in a Mist by Amelie Rives and Gilbert Emery 4/12 at New York's Gaiety Theater, with Salisbury, N.C.-born actor Sidney Blackmer, 30, Madge Kennedy, 118 perfs.; Twice Oliver (Zweimal Oliver) by Georg Kaiser 4/15 at Dresden's Schauspielhaus; Sex by Jane Mast (Mae West) 4/26 at Daley's 63rd Street Theater, New York, with Brooklyn-born entertainer Mae West, 30 (who will be brought to trial and convicted of indecency next year), 375 perfs.; The Queen Was in the Parlour by Noël Coward 8/24 at Martin's Theatre, London, with Herbert Marshall, Lady Tree, Francis Lister, Madge Titheradge, 137 perfs.; Broadway by Philip Dunning and George Abbott 9/16 at New York's Broadhurst Theater, with Millard Mitchell, Philadelphia-born actress Clare Woodbury, 46, Lee Tracy, 332 perfs.; Yellow by Margaret Vernon 9/21 at New York's National Theater, with Hale Hamilton, Milwaukee-born actor Spencer Tracy, 26, Chester Morris, Frank Kingdon, Harry Bannister, 135 perfs.; Man Equals Man (Mann ist Mann) by Bertolt Brecht 9/25 at Darmstadt's Landestheater and at Dusseldorf; "And So to Bed" by English playwright J. B. (James Bernard) Fagan 9/26 at the Queen's Theatre, London, with Edmund Gwenn in a play about the 17th-century diarist Samuel Pepys, 334 perfs.; The White Guard (Dni Turbrukykh) by Mikhail Bulgakov 10/5 at the Moscow Art Theater; An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser 10/11 at New York's Longacre Theater, with Miriam Hopkins, House Jameson, Grace Griswold, 216 perfs.; Juarez and Maximilian by Franz Werfel 10/11 at New York's Guild Theater, with Bucharest-born actor Edward G. Robinson (originally Emanuel Goldenburg), 32, Alfred Lunt, Oregon-born actor Earle Larimore, 27, New York-born actor Harold Clurman, 25, Sam Jaffe, Morris Carnovsky, Akron, Ohio-born actress Cheryl Crawford, 24, Clare Eames, 48 perfs.; The Blue Boll (Die blaue Boll) by Ernst Barlach 10/13 at Stuttgart; White Wings by Philip Barry 10/15 at New York's Booth Theater, with J. M. Kerrigan, Winifred Lenihan, 31 perfs.; Caponsacchi by Arthur Goodrich, now 48, 10/26 at Hampden's Theater, New York, with Moffat Johnston, Goodrich's brother-in-law Walter Hampden as the canon Giuseppe Gaposacchi, from Robert Browning's dramatic monologues The Ring and the Book of 1868 and 1869, 269 perfs.; The Play's the Thing by Ferenc Molnár 11/3 at Henry Miller's Theater, New York, with Holbrook Blinn, Reginald Owen, Catherine Dale Owen, 326 perfs.; Dorothea Augermann by Gerhart Hauptmann 11/20 at Vienna's Theater in der Josefstadt, Munich's Kammerspiele, and 15 other German theaters; "This Was a Man" by Noël Coward 11/23 at New York's Klaw Theater, with Francine Larrimore, Harry Challoner, A. C. Matthews, Violet Campbell, Nigel Bruce, 31 perfs.; The Constant Wife by W. Somerset Maugham 11/29 at New York's Maxine Elliott Theater, with Ethel Barrymore, Veree Teasdale, C. Aubrey Smith, Frank Conroy, Cora Witherspoon, 295 perfs.; The Silver Cord by Sidney Howard 12/20 at New York's John Golden Theater, with comedienne Laura Hope Crews, London-born actress Margalo Gilmore, 25, and Earle Larimore in a play about mother-son love, 112 perfs.; Wooden Kimono by John Floyd 12/27 at New York's Martin Beck Theater, with Dudley Clements, Leonore Harris, Waterbury, Conn.-born ingénue Jean Dixon, 30; Chicago by Maurine Watkins 12/30 at New York's Music Box Theater, with Cambridge, Mass.-born actor Charles Bickford, 35, Indiana-born actress Dorothy Stickney (originally Dorothy Hugo), 30, Francine Larrimore, directed by George Abbott, 172 perfs.; In Abraham's Bosom by North Carolina-born playwright Paul (Eliot) Green, 32, 12/30 at New York's Provincetown Playhouse, with Waco, Texas-born actor Jules Bledsoe, 29, as a man trying to establish a school for his fellow blacks, 123 perfs. (many after it moves uptown).
George Burns and Gracie Allen form a new vaudeville comedy team. San Francisco-born Gracie (Grace Ethel Cecile Rosalie Allen), 19, has married New York-born George (Nathan Birnbaum), 29, at Cleveland January 7 and will play his stooge for 30 years (see radio, 1932).
English actress Eva Le Gallienne, 27, founds the Civic Repertory Theater of New York.
Actor-director-producer Henry Miller dies at New York April 9 at age 66; actor-manager Sir Squire Bancroft at his native London April 19 at age 84; playwright Rida Johnson Young at Southfield Point, Conn., May 8 at age 51; playwright Israel Zangwill at Midhurst, West Sussex, August 1 at age 62.
Harry Houdini makes headlines August 6 by remaining underwater for 91 minutes in an airtight case containing only enough air to sustain a man for 5 or 6 minutes. The 52-year-old escape artist has practiced breath control and has remained absolutely still in order to minimize his oxygen consumption, but the Great Houdini suffers a subsequent stomach injury and dies of peritonitis at Detroit October 31. His body is buried at Machpetah Cemetery in Queens, N.Y.; markswoman Annie Oakley (Phoebe Mozee) dies at Greenville, Ohio, November 2 at age 66; circus owner Charles Ringling at Sarasota, Fla., December 3 at age 63. His older brothers Albert, Otto, and Alfred have predeceased him, and his brother John, now 60, takes over management of the now vast enterprise (see 1936).
Films: Alan Crosland's Don Juan with John Barrymore opens August 6 at New York's Manhattan Opera House and is accompanied by sound electrically recorded on disks in the Warner Brothers Vitaphone process developed by Western Electric engineers. It is the first motion picture with sound (see communications [De Forest], 1923). Film czar Will H. Hays of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) appears on screen to predict that Vitaphone will revolutionize the industry, the film gets an enthusiastic response in October when shown at Grauman's Egyptian Theater in Hollywood, but few exhibitors are willing to install the costly equipment needed for the sound-on-disk system. Fox Pictures head William Fox opts instead for a sound-on-film system that uses an optical sound-track and is called Movietone. Better established film studios (the Big Five) try to buy Vitaphone, which Western Electric has licensed to Warner Brothers (whose biggest star has been the dog Rin Tin Tin); Warner Brothers outfits its own theaters for sound; Fox Pictures buys New York's Roxy Theater as a showcase for its Movietone system (see 1927).
Other films: Sam Taylor's For Heaven's Sake with Harold Lloyd; Fritz Lang's Metropolis with Brigitte Helm, 18, as an oppressed working girl transformed into an evil, robotic doppelgänger in the year 2006, Alfred Abel, Rudolf Klein-Rogge. Also: Buster Keaton's The Battling Butler with Keaton; Herbert Brenon's Beau Geste with Ronald Colman; King Vidor's A Bohème with Lillian Gish, John Gilbert, Lille-born actress Renée Adorée, 27; Herbert Brenon's Dancing Mothers with Clara Bow, Alice Joyce; Lewis Seiler's The Great K&A Train Robbery with Texas-born cowboy star Tom (Thomas Edwin) Mix, 46; Harry Edwards's His First Flame with Council Bluffs, Iowa-born vaudeville veteran Harry Langdon, 42; Vsevlod Pudovkin's Mother with Vera Baranovskaia; Sergei Eisenstein's Oktober; James Cruze's Old Ironsides with Massachusetts-born actor Charles Farrell, 25, Esther Ralston, Wallace Beery; Hal Roach's Putting Pants on Philip with English-born comic Stan (Arthur Stanley Jefferson) Laurel, 36, and Georgia-born comic Oliver Hardy, 34; Victor Seastrom's The Scarlet Letter with Lillian Gish as Hester Prynne, Lars Hanson, Henry B. Walthall, screenplay by Frances Marion based on the 1850 Nathaniel Hawthorne novel; G. W. Pabst's Secrets of a Soul (Geheiminnisse einer Seele); George Fitzmaurice's Son of the Sheik with Rudolph Valentino, Vilma Banky (as the exotic Yasmin); William Beaudine's Sparrows with Mary Pickford; Frank Capra's The Strong Man with Harry Langdon; John Ford's Three Bad Men with former stuntman George O'Brien, 26; Harry Edwards's Tramp Tramp Tramp with Harry Langdon, San Antonio, Texas-born ingénue Joan Crawford (originally Lucille Le Sueur), 17; Raoul Walsh's What Price Glory? with English-born actor Victor McLaglen, 42, Edmund Lowe, 34, Mexican-born actress Dolores Del Rio (originally Dolores Asunsolo), 18.
Rudolph Valentino dies of peritonitis in New York August 23 at age 31 after surgery for an inflamed appendix and two perforated gastric ulcers. Press agents hired by Joseph Schenck of United Artists have the matinee idol's body placed in an ornate coffin at Frank E. Campbell's Broadway funeral parlor; 100,000 mourners line up for 11 blocks to view the remains.
Opera: Judith (drama with music) 2/13 at Monte Carlo, with music by Arthur Honegger; Missouri-born soprano Marian Talley, 19, makes her Metropolitan Opera debut 2/17 singing in the 1851 Verdi opera Rigoletto; Lauritz Melchior makes his Metropolitan Opera debut singing the title role in the 1845 Wagner opera Tannhaüser and will be Met regular until 1950; Turandot 4/25 at Milan's Teatro alla Scala, with music by the late Giacomo Puccini; Italian bass Ezio (originally Fortunio) Pinza, 34, makes his Metropolitan Opera debut 11/1 as Pontifex Maximus in the 1807 Spontini opera La Vestale.
Ballet: Martha Graham makes her first solo appearance 4/18 at New York's 48th Street Theater. Now 31, Graham studied at Los Angeles with Ruth St. Denis, now 49, and Ted Shawn, now 35; she performed as lead dancer in the ballet Xochitl in 1920, joined the Greenwich Village Follies in 1923, will form her own dance troupe, and will improvise a highly individual choreography. Graham will continue dancing until 1970; The Miraculous Mandarin 11/27 at Cologne, with music by Béla Bartók.
First performances: Symphony No. 7 in C major by Jean Sibelius 4/3 at Philadelphia's Orchestra Hall; Symphony No. 1 by Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich, 19, 5/12 at Moscow (the student's diploma piece); Ballet Mécanique by New Jersey-born composer George Antheil, 26, 6/19 at Paris (dedicated to modern technology, the work is scored for instruments that include 16 player pianos and an airplane engine); Portsmouth Point Overture by William Walton 6/22 at Zürich's Tonhalle; Concerto for Harpsichord, Flute, Oboe, Clarinet, Violin, and Cello by Manuel de Falla 11/5 at Barcelona with harpsichordist Wanda Landowska, now 47.
Broadway musicals: The Girl Friend 3/17 at the Vanderbilt Theater, with music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Lorenz Hart, songs that include "The Blue Room," "The Simple Life," "Why Do I," 301 perfs.; The Garrick Gaieties 5/10 at the Garrick Theater, with Sterling Holloway, Romney Brent, music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Lorenz Hart, songs that include "Mountain Greenery," 174 perfs.; George White's Scandals 6/14 at the Apollo Theater, with Ann Pennington introducing the Black Bottom dance step that will rival the Charleston, costumes by Erté, songs that include "The Birth of the Blues" by Ray Henderson, lyrics by B. G. DeSylva and Lew Brown, 424 perfs.; Ziegfeld's Revue "No Foolin'" 6/24 at the Globe Theater, with Claire Luce, Moran and Mack, James Barton, New Orleans-born ingénue Peggy Fears, 23, music by Rudolf Friml, lyrics by Gene Buck, Irving Caesar, and James Hanley, 108 perfs.; Countess Maritza 9/18 at the Shubert Theater, with Yvonne D'Arle, Florence Edney, book and lyrics by Harry B. Smith, music by Emmerich Kálmán, 318 perfs.; Honeymoon Lane 9/20 at the Knickerbocker Theater, with Eddie Dowling, Pauline Mason, Kate Smith, music by James F. Hanley, lyrics by Dowling, songs that include "The Little White House (At the End of Honeymoon Lane)," 317 perfs.; Criss Cross 10/12 at the Globe Theater, with Fred Stone, music by Jerome Kern, book and lyrics by Anne Caldwell and Otto Harbach, 206 perfs.; Oh, Kay 11/8 at the Imperial Theater, with Gertrude Lawrence, music by George Gershwin, songs that include "Do, Do, Do" and "Someone to Watch over Me" with lyrics by Ira Gershwin, "Heaven on Earth" and the title song with lyrics by Ira Gershwin and Howard Dietz, 256 perfs.; Gay Paree (revue) 11/9 at the Winter Garden Theater, with Jack Haley, Charles "Chic" Sale, music and lyrics by Alberta Nichols and Mann Holiner, book by Harold Atteridge, 175 perfs.; Twinkle, Twinkle 11/16 at the Liberty Theater, with comedian Joe E. Brown, Ona Munson, now 20, music by Harry Archer, 167 perfs.; The Desert Song 11/30 at the Casino Theater, with Vivienne Segal, Robert Halliday, music by Sigmund Romberg, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II and Otto Harbach, songs that include "Blue Heaven" and "One Alone," 471 perfs.; Peggy-Ann 12/27 at the Vanderbilt Theater, with Helen Ford, music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Lorenz Hart, songs that include "Where's that Rainbow?" 333 perfs.; Betsy 12/28 at the New Amsterdam Theater, with Al Shean, Belle Baker, music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Lorenz Hart, songs that include "Blue Skies" by Irving Berlin (who eloped in January with New York society girl Ellin Mackay, 22, daughter of Postal Telegraph president Clarence Mackay), 39 perfs.
Playwright-lyricist George V. Hobart dies at Cumberland, Md., January 31 at age 59.
Josephine Baker opens her own Paris nightclub at age 20, having risen to fame in La Revue Nigre and starred at the Folies Bergère in a G-string ornamented with bananas. The U.S. émigrée darling of European café society will begin a professional singing career in 1930, be naturalized as a French citizen in 1937, and continue performing until shortly before her death in 1974.
Egyptian singer (Ibrahim) Umm Kulthum (originally Ibrahim Oum Koulsoum or Ibrahim Um Kalthum), 22, gives her first successful Cairo concert, launching a career that will make her known as the "mother of Middle Eastern music." She began by performing with her father at weddings and other special events in villages and towns of the eastern delta, has been influenced by the poet Ahmad Rami, and will sing more than 250 of his songs (see 1934).
Popular songs: "Muskrat Ramble" by New Orleans jazz cornetist Edward "Kid" Ory (lyrics will be added in 1937); Jelly Roll Morton and his Red Hot Peppers record "Fat Meat and Greens," "King Porter Stomp," "Sweetheart of Mine," "Midnight Mama," and a piano roll of "Dead Man Blues"; "Baby Face" by Benny Davis and Harry Akst; "What Can I Say After I've Said I'm Sorry?" by Walter Donaldson and bandleader Abe Lyman; "Charmaine" by Hungarian-born U.S. composer Erno Rapee, 35, lyrics by Lew Pollack; "'Gimme' a Little Kiss, Will 'Ya' Huh?" by Roy Turk, Jack Smith, and Maceo Pinkard; "Bye Bye Blackbird" by Ray Henderson, lyrics by Mort Dixon; "If I Could Be with You One Hour Tonight" by Henry Creamer and Jimmy Johnson; "In a Little Spanish Town" by Mabel Wayne, lyrics by Sam M. Lewis and Joe Young; "When the Red, Red Robin Comes Bob, Bob, Bobbin' Along" by U.S. composer-lyricist Harry MacGregor Woods, 30; "If You See My Savior, Tell Him That You Saw Me" by gospel pioneer Thomas A. Dorsey. Bessie Smith records "Baby Doll."
Jean Borotra wins in men's singles at Wimbledon, Kitty McKane Godfree in women's singles; René LaCoste wins in men's singles at Forest Hills, Mrs. Mallory in women's singles.
Atlanta-born golfer Robert Tyre "Bobby" Jones, 24, loses the U.S. Golf Association Amateur championship to George Von Elm but wins the U.S. Open.
Miniature golf is invented by Tennessee entrepreneur Frieda Carter, part owner of the Fairyland Inn resort, who will patent her "Tom Thumb Golf" in 1929. By 1930 there will be 25,000 to 50,000 miniature golf courses.
Gertrude (Caroline) Ederle, 19, becomes the first woman to swim the English Channel. The New York Olympic champion failed in a Channel attempt last year but arrives at Dover August 6 after 14½ hours in the water, has been forced by heavy seas to swim 35 miles to cover the 21 miles from Cape Gris-Nez near Calais, still beats the world record by nearly 2 hours, and suffers a hearing loss that will prove permanent (see Chadwick, 1951).
German swimmer Horst Vierkotter breaks Gertrude Ederle's Channel record in September by swimming the Channel in 12 hours, 34 minutes, but no woman will beat Ederle's record for 24 years.
Gene Tunney wins the world heavyweight boxing championship held by Jack Dempsey since 1919 (Dempsey has married actress Estelle Taylor and given up Jack Kearns to be his own manager). New York prizefighter James Joseph Tunney, 28, gains a 10-round decision September 23 at Philadelphia, will beat Dempsey again next year, and will retire undefeated in 1928 (see 1927).
English cricket ace Sir John Berry Hobbs, 44, scores 16 centuries in first-class cricket.
Cushioned cork-center baseballs are introduced.
The St. Louis Cardinals win the World Series, defeating the New York Yankees 4 games to 3.
The Army-Navy football game November 27 is the first official event at Chicago's Soldier Field. More than 100,000 people pack the 45,000-seat stadium to see a game that ends in a 21-21 tie. Soldier field will expand to have 63,000 seats.
Society decorator Elsie De Wolfe is married March 10 to British diplomat Sir Charles Mendl, whose wealth enables her to throw lavish parties at their homes in New York, Beverly Hills, and Versailles that the new Lady Mendl—now 60 and blue-haired—has decorated with delicate 18th-century furniture and her usual glazed cotton chintz fabrics.
Italian hairdresser Antonio Buzzacchino invents a new permanent waving method that will make the "permanent" widely fashionable (see 1906).
La robe "Ford" introduced by Coco Chanel is a supple black jersey dress that parodies a maid's uniform.
Playwright George Bernard Shaw endorses the new fashion for shorter, lighter dresses, saying they are for "real human beings" rather than "upholstered Victorian angels," but traditionalists deplore the rising hemlines, claiming that they bring a decline in morals, and physicians warn that the boyish new "flapper" look causes women to weaken their health by excessive dieting. British doctor J. S. Russell tells the Institute of Hygiene that women are turning to alcohol and drugs in a desperate effort to cope with their hectic lives.
Slide fasteners get the name "zippers" after a promotional luncheon at which English novelist Gilbert Frankau, 42, has said, "Zip! It's open! Zip! It's closed!" (see Sundback, 1913). Rome-born Paris couturière Elsa Schiaparelli, 46, showed her first collection 2 years ago, having worked at New York as a scriptwriter and translator from 1919 to 1922. She opens her own establishment on the rue de la Paix; her workrooms will employ 2,000 people by 1930; her company will be earning about 120 million francs per year; she will use brightly colored zippers in her 1930 sportswear line, and when the general patents expire in 1931, the zipper will come into wide use not only in men's trousers (see 1936), jeans, windbreakers, and sweaters but also in women's dresses and other apparel (see YKK, 1933).
The first blue jeans with slide fasteners are introduced by H. D. Lee Co., which has opened plants at Kansas City, South Bend, Trenton, and Minneapolis to produce one-piece Union-Alls and Lee Riders (see 1911). Lee also introduces U-shaped saddle crotches plus rise and seat proportions graduated with individual waists and inseams (see 1936).
The first electric steam irons go on sale at New York department stores, but although their moisture helps prevent scorching they find few buyers at $10 when regular electric irons cost only $6.
Q-Tips are introduced by Polish-born U.S. entrepreneur Leo Gerstenzang, who 3 years ago watched his wife give their infant daughter a bath, saw how she twirled a ball of cotton on the end of a toothpick to use as a swab, and created a ready-made swab that his Leo Gerstenzang Infant Novelty Co. sold initially under the brand name Baby Gays.
"Blow some my way," says a woman to a man lighting a cigarette in billboards posted by Liggett & Meyers for its 13-year-old Chesterfield brand. The advertisements break a taboo by suggesting that women enjoy cigarette smoke (see Lucky Strike, 1928).
Gunmen spray Chicago bootlegger Al Capone's Hawthorne Hotel headquarters with machine-gun fire in broad daylight September 20, firing from eight touring cars that parade single file through the streets of the suburban area, but no one is killed and the cars disappear into the traffic.
Illegal liquor traffic is estimated to be a $3.6 billion business and has spawned a gigantic underworld of criminal activity since 1919. Widespread defiance of the Prohibition laws is encouraging citizens to flout other laws, and the "Noble Experiment" is clearly a failure, but Ohio-born Anti-Saloon League of America general superintendent Francis Scott McBride, 54, leads temperance forces in opposing efforts to end Prohibition (see Capone, 1927; Wickersham, 1931).
The Hall-Mills murder of 1922 makes new headlines. New Jersey police arrest Frances Stevens Hall September 29 and charge her with having murdered her husband and his mistress, the case goes to trial in October, a jury turns in a not-guilty verdict December 3, and the case remains a mystery.
The U.S. Supreme Court upholds municipal zoning ordinances authorized by state governments. Justice Sutherland delivers the majority opinion November 22 , saying that "states are the legal repository of police power" (Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty Company; see 1916). Justices Butler, McReynolds, and Van Devanter dissent, but the Department of Commerce publishes a "Standard State Zoning Enabling Act" to serve as a model for state legislatures (see 1961).
A Limited Dividend Housing Companies Law passed by the New York State legislature permits condemnation of land for housing sites, abatement of local taxes, and other measures to encourage housing construction. Limits on rents and profits are required, and income limitations are set for tenants.
Otis Elevator faces a challenge from the Westinghouse Co., which acquires the patents and engineering skills of several sizeable companies that include Otis's chief competitors. Westinghouse elevators will vie with those of Otis in America's proliferating skyscrapers.
A Paris house for Dada writer Tristan Tzara is completed to designs by Adolf Loos, who has lived in France since 1922.
A Barcelona trolley-bus strikes Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí while he is en route to church and he dies of his injuries June 10 at age 77, leaving his magnificent (Expiatory Temple of the Holy Family (Templo de la Expiatorio de la Sagrada Familia) cathedral incomplete. Others will execute his plans for the main façade, the crossing, and a chapel of the Assumption.
Florida's Boca Raton Club has its beginnings in the Ritz-Carlton Cloister opened February 6 on a 16,000-acre reserve acquired by architect Addison Mizner with backing from investors who include T. Coleman du Pont, Harold S. Vanderbilt, and songwriter Irving Berlin (see 1925). Located 26 miles south of Palm Beach, the community heretofore has been no more than a settlement of subsistence farmers living in wooden shacks, but Mizner has created a lavish 100-room resort hotel, built at a cost of $1.25 million, with a golf course, an artificial lake, islands, and electric-powered gondolas. The hurricane that strikes September 19 nearly destroys it along with many other Florida resort developments (see 1927).
The Paris hotel Lancaster opens at 7, rue de Beri off the Champs d'Elysées. Formerly a private residence (hôtel particulier) and then an exclusive apartment house, the building was acquired last year by Emile Wolf of Montreux, who rebuilt it, adding floors and a rear wing, filling the rooms with good French antiques, paintings, and lamps. The Lancaster and its elegant dining room will soon attract a clientele that includes royalty, aristocrats, and the Hollywood film crowd.
Zürich-born German entrepreneur Andreas Stihl, 30, begins production of an electric chain saw in an old factory building at Cannstatt, near Stuttgart, and next year will introduce the "Cutoff Chain Saw for Electric Power"—a 150-pound machine that requires two men to handle. Having started a company for steam boiler prefiring systems, Stihl will build the world's first gasoline-powered chain saw in 1929, begin exporting his saws to the United States in 1930, and develop the first one-man chainsaw in 1950 (see Cox, 1946).
The U.S. Forest Service identifies 55 million acres of U.S. wilderness area. The largest area found in the survey covers 7 million acres (see 1961).
California's St. Francis Dam and regulating reservoir are completed 300 miles north of Los Angeles to give the city an alternative to the Owens River Aqueduct that opened late in 1913 and remains subject to sabotage by farmers and ranchers (see 1924). The largest solid concrete dam built to date, it has been designed by Bureau of Water Works and Supply chief engineer William Mulholland, who has had it built in secret with two powerhouses to generate electricity, but many geologic principles that will later guide construction of dams remain unknown, and rural residents soon complain that the new dam is altering the water table of downstream farms (see 1928).
Rainstorms drench Kansas and Nebraska for 2 weeks in August; rain continues to pour down in September; rivers in Kansas, Minnesota, and Illinois rise to alarming heights; October brings high waters on the Missouri and Ohio rivers; the Mississippi reaches a record high at Vicksburg; and flood waters cover 1 million square miles by November despite assertions by the Army Corps of Engineers that the levee system begun in 1879 is now complete. The floods recede in November, but the rivers rise again in December throughout much of Arkansas, Kentucky, and Tennessee (see 1927).
Clarence Birdseye develops a belt freezer for his General Seafoods Co., a small freezing plant on Fort Wharf at Gloucester, Mass. (see 1926). Postum Cereal boss Marjorie Merriweather Post puts in at Gloucester to have her yacht provisioned, her chef obtains a frozen goose from General Seafoods, she eats goose and seeks out Birdseye, who is selling quantities of frozen fish (and reviving the Massachusetts fishing industry) but is on the verge of bankruptcy. His freezing process impresses Post, but her stockbroker husband, E. F. Hutton, and board of directors oppose paying $2 million to buy Birdseye's patents and business (see food, 1929).
Agronomist Trofim Denisovich Lysenko, 28, gains notice for the first time in the Soviet Union. Elaborating on the ideas of horticulturist Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin, 70, that fly in the face of Mendelian genetics, Lysenko puts ideology ahead of science and will have enormous influence on Soviet farm policies (see 1935).
"Plant wizard" Luther Burbank dies at Santa Rosa, Calif., April 11 at age 77. He has manipulated hereditary traits by hybridizations made with little regard to the actual useful characteristics of the crossed parents.
Pioneer Hi-Bred International has its beginnings in a hybrid seed company founded at Des Moines by Iowa farmer-editor Henry A. (Agard) Wallace, 37, who initiated an Iowa Corn Yield Contest some years ago and won it himself in 1924 with a misshapen red-kerneled hybrid that he named Copper Cross (see Shull, 1921). Wallace's father, Henry C., died 2 years ago and Henry A. has gone into partnership with his brother James and corn breeder Raymond Baker. His idea, he will write in 1932, is to "improve corn by controlling its pollination. The best hybrids of the future will be so much better than the best hybrids of today that there will be no comparison." Wallace's company, started with $4,900 raised by selling 49 shares at $100 per share, will grow to have laboratories, greenhouses, fields, processing plants, and research stations operating in 90 countries and will sell 645 million pounds of seed corn per year.
Harvard physician Edwin J. (Joseph) Cohn, 33, develops an oral liver extract to treat pernicious anemia (see 1930; Minot and Murphy, 1924; Castle, 1929; blood plasma, 1940).
The B vitamin proves to be more than one vitamin (see McCollum, 1916). Joseph Goldberger shows that rats can be cured of pellagra on a diet from which the heat-labile part of vitamin B has been removed; biochemists D. I. Smith and E. G. Hendrick show that vitamin B is at least two vitamins and name the heat-resistant one vitamin G, or B2 (see 1915; McCollum, 1916; Warburg, 1932).
Two British biochemists show that sunlight converts the sterol ergesterol into vitamin D in animals (see Steenbock, 1923; 1927). The findings of explain why children who do not get enough sunlight are vulnerable to rickets (see 1930).
The Toastmaster Model 1-A-1 patented in July by Charles Strite and introduced by Waters Genter Co. of Minneapolis is the first automatic pop-up toaster intended for home use and the first that can brown both sides of a slice of bread simultaneously (see Strite, 1921). The scaled-down, nickel-plated, dual-lever appliance promises in its advertising to produce "perfect toast every time," and its $12.50 price does not discourage buyers even though it is five times more costly than some "flip-open door" models. It can toast only one slice of bread at a time, and although Strite also designs a two-slice model it is considered too expensive to produce. McGraw Electric Co. founder Max McGraw, now 43, buys Waters Genter Co. as a personal investment. Sales of the appliance will exceed 500,000 units by 1930, but it will take some years before engineers can totally eliminate problems of burning, crispness control, and shock hazard (see 1930; sliced bread, 1928; Universal, 1929).
Hormel Flavor-Sealed Ham is the first U.S. canned ham. George A. Hormel & Co., which has been slaughtering upwards of a million hogs per year since 1924, produces its canned ham by a process patented by German inventor Paul Jorn, and enjoys immediate success (see Spam, 1937).
Machine-made ice production in the United States reaches 56 million tons, up from 1.5 million in 1894 (see 1889). Much of it is used to chill illegal beer, highballs, and cocktails.
Independent Grocers' Alliance Distributing Co. (IGA) is launched at Poughkeepsie, N.Y., where 60 eastern and midwestern retail grocers meet in the fall to organize a defense against inroads on their sales by such corporate chain-store giants as A&P and First National. IGA will develop its own brands of coffee and other products as it grows to include more than 3,600 stores in 46 states.
Ideal Marriage, Its Physiology and Technique by Dutch gynecologist Th. H. Van de Velde, 53, says that "a fundamental principle of the Roman Catholic sexual code, which corresponds with precepts in Protestant and Jewish doctrine, is the rejection of all actions to prevent conception," but he notes that the "methods of contraception known and practiced today often contravene the demands of Ideal Marriage by diminishing stimulation, disturbing and dislocating normal relations, offending taste." Van de Velde assumes that families will limit their numbers under the guidance of physicians.
Dictator Benito Mussolini pushes through repressive laws against birth control in Fascist Italy, departing from his 1913 neo-Malthusian position.
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