| World Chronology: 1927 |
1921 1922 1923 1924 1925 1926 1927 1928 1929 1930
Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek takes Hangzhou in February with combined units of the Guomindang (Kuomintang, or KMT) and the communist Gongchandang (Gungchantang) (see 1926). Shanghai and Ghangzhou (Canton) fall a few weeks later, and Nanjing (Nanking) is looted and burned March 24, effectively ending the warlord era of Chinese history. Chiang negotiates with bankers and industrialists at Shanghai, where he once ran a brokerage business; promised $3 to $10 million if he will break with Moscow. He reverses his earlier political philosophy, overthrowing the leftist government at Hangzhou. Communist military leader Ye Ting, 30, plays a key role in the Nanchang Uprising August 1, but Chiang establishes a rightist National Revolutionary Government at Nanjing with communists and left-wing elements excluded, and launches a "White Terror" campaign to crush an "autumn harvest uprising" led by communist Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung), 34, in September. Revolutionist Xiang Jianyu defies the White Terror, remaining in Hunan to organize labor unions and run an underground newspaper (but see 1928). Chiang marries the Christianized Wellesley graduate Mei-ling Soong, 26, December 1, brushing aside questions as to the legality of his divorce from the mother of his son, and allies himself with one of China's richest, most powerful families (Mei-ling's U.S.-educated merchant-Methodist missionary father, Charles Jones Soong, has died earlier in the year); her brother T. V. (Tse-ven) Soong, 33, is the Nationalist government's finance minister, having studied at Harvard and Columbia. Chiang expels Russians from Shanghai December 15 following an attempted coup by Ye Ting at Guangzhou December 11, and Comintern agent Mikhail Borodin leaves China (see Beijing, 1928).
The first large-scale Vietnamese revolutionary nationalist organization is founded under the name Viet Nam Quoc Dan Dan (VNQDD). Modeled on China's Guomindang (Kuomintang), it seeks to establish a republican, democratic government free from foreign domination, but the French will bar it from participating in the electoral process, thus winning it the allegiance of young intellectuals and many military officers (see 1930).
Cambodia's king Sisovat (Si Suvata) dies at age 86 (approximate) after a 23-year reign and is succeeded by his son Monivong.
Australia's federal parliament moves May 9 from Melbourne to the city of Canberra, designed by Illinois-born architect Walter Burley Griffin, now 50, and under construction since 1913 (with a long interruption occasioned by the Great War). Located in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) about 150 miles southwest of Sydney, the new capital lies on a plain at the foot of 6,200-foot spurs of the Australian Alps.
London breaks relations with Moscow May 24 following accusations of Bolshevik espionage and subversion throughout the British Empire. The Russians respond June 9 by executing 20 alleged British spies. Josef Stalin expels Leon Trotsky from the Central Committee of the Communist Party in November (see 1926; 1929).
Former German general Max Hoffmann dies at Bad Reichenhall July 8 at age 58, having written several books about the Great War.
The German government lets agitator Adolf Hitler resume speaking in public (seeMein Kampf, 1925); Hitler's pamphlet "The Road to Resurgence" blames Marxism and "the international Jew" for Germany's ills, saying, "The economies of the world's great powers are backed up by their political power. And the decisive factor in economic conflict in the world never rested in the skill and know-how of the various competitors, but rather in the might of the sword they could wield to tip the scales for their businesses and hence their lives" (Hitler has written the pamphlet at the suggestion of the 80-year-old right-wing industrialist Emil Kirdorf). German pacifist Carl von Ossietzky becomes editor of the liberal political weekly Weltbühne (see 1922); now 37, he runs a series of articles exposing secret preparations for rearmament by leaders of the army (Reichswehr). Accused of treason, Ossietzky will be sentenced in November 1931 to 18 months' imprisonment but will receive amnesty in December 1932 (see 1933).
The Future Direction of German Foreign Policy (Der Zukunftsweg einer deutschen Aussenpolitik) by Nazi ideologist Alfred Rosenberg, now 34, urges the conquest of Poland and Russia. Rosenberg edits the party newspaper Völkischer Beobachter.
Romania's Ferdinand I of Hohenzellern dies of cancer at Bucharest July 20 at age 61 after a 13-year reign. He is succeeded by his 5-year-old nephew Mihai, who will reign until 1930 as Michael I under the regency of his uncle Prince Nicholas; his uncle Carol renounced his right of succession in December 1925 but now proclaims himself king (see 1930).
Saudi Arabian independence gains British recognition May 20 in the Treaty of Jedda (see 1926; 1932).
Syria's 2-year Druse insurrection ends in June after a major French military campaign. The Druse leaders flee to Transjordan.
British general Reginald E. H. Dyer of 1919 Amritsar Massacre infamy dies at Long Ashton, near Bristol, July 23 at age 62; Governor General of the Philippines Leonard Wood returns to Boston for medical treatment and dies there August 7 following surgery at age 66; Egyptian nationalist Sa'd Zaghlul dies at Cairo August 23 at age 70; former African explorer-botanist-colonial administrator Sir Harry Hamilton Johnston dies at Woodsetts House, near Worksop, Nottinghamshire, August 31 at age 69.
Cuban president Gerardo Machado y Morales seizes control of all political parties to stifle dissent (see 1924). Critics accuse him of having enriched himself at public expense, but he will be reelected next year despite vehement opposition from students and professional men (see 1933).
"I do not choose to run in nineteen twenty-eight," says President Coolidge in a written statement issued to the press in South Dakota August 2. He takes himself out of contention without further comment.
Sacco and Vanzetti die in the electric chair at Dedham Prison August 23 despite worldwide efforts to have Massachusetts authorities drop charges against the two for lack of evidence (see 1920). A note passed to Nicola Sacco in 1925 from convicted murderer Celestino F. Madeiros said, "I hereby confess to being in the South Braintree shoe company crime and Sacco and Vanzetti was not in said crime" but the district attorney refused to investigate. The defense has filed eight motions for a new trial since 1921, but the state's Supreme judicial Court has upheld Justice Webster Thayer in early April, ruling on law, not on evidence. "I know the sentence will be between two classes, the oppressed class and the rich class," Sacco has said. Bartolomeo Vanzetti has appealed to Gov. Alvan T. Fuller for a pardon, and a Dartmouth professor has filed an affidavit alleging that Judge Thayer said to him, "Did you see what I did with those anarchistic bastards the other day?" Gov. Fuller (a millionaire Cadillac dealer) has appointed a review committee at the request of 61 law professors, the committee comprised of Harvard's president A. Lawrence Lowell, MIT's president Samuel W. Stratton, and former probate judge Robert A. Grant has upheld the jury verdict July 27, public demonstrations in behalf of Sacco and Vanzetti have had no effect, but efforts to gain retroactive pardons will continue until 1977, when a new governor will grant the posthumous pardons.
The Norden bombsight invented by Dutch-born U.S. engineer Carl L. (Lucas) Norden, 47, and his associate Theodore H. Barth will remain a closely guarded military secret until it is patented in 1947 (by which time it will be obsolete). Norden invented flying robot bombs during the Great War, but they were considered too inhumane to be used. As perfected in 1931 by Norden and Frederick I. Entwhistle of the U.S. Navy, the 90-pound Mark XV bombsight will have 2,000 parts.
U.S. Secretary of Commerce Herbert C. Hoover supervises flood relief efforts in the lower Mississippi Valley beginning in April (see environment, 1926), but he exacerbates racial conflicts in the Delta by manipulating black leaders for his own political purposes while allowing plantation owners to use forced black labor on levee work and permitting New Orleans officials to sacrifice two neighboring parishes in order to protect city property (flood victims in those parishes are denied fair recompense, embittering black farmers and sharecroppers).
Former Mississippi governor Theodore G. Bilbo wins election to a second term, having failed in a bid 4 years ago and edited a political weekly since then to promote his increasingly racist views (see 1915). His second administration will be marked by corruption and scandal (see 1934).
Explorer Sven Anders Hedin initiates a 6-year Sino-Swedish expedition into Manchuria and western China (see 1905). Now 62, he leads the group, whose members will locate 327 archaeological sites between Manchuria and Sinkiang, revealing evidence of a Stone Age culture.
Germany's economic system collapses May 13 in what will be remembered as "Black Friday."
The Trade Disputes Act passed by Parliament June 23 prohibits sympathy strikes in Britain.
Radical Viennese workers march on the Palace of Justice July 15 and set it afire, enraged because the killers of workers shot down in Burgenland have been acquitted.
Canada's first Old Age Pensions Act is signed into law in September. Labour Party MPs James S. Woodsworth, 53, and Abraham A. Heaps, 42, have offered to support the prime minister Mackenzie King's minority government provided that he create old age pensions (see 1952; U.S. Social Security Act, 1935).
Average annual income of U.S. wage-earners is about $1,000. Middle-class families with incomes of $3,000 or more generally have domestic help.
Police at Columbine, Colo., use machine guns to fire on striking mine workers November 21, killing five, wounding 20.
Wall Street's Dow Jones Industrial Average closes December 31 at a new high of 202.40, up from 157.20 at the end of 1926.
J. C. Penney opens his 500th store and goes public (see 1908). By the time the stock is listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 1929 the company will have 1,495 stores (see 1971).
Sears, Roebuck distributes 15 million of its general catalogs, 23 million semiannual and other catalogs. Virtually every rural American home has a Sears or Montgomery Ward mail-order catalog (see 1907).
The first 7-Eleven convenience store opens at Dallas, where the newly founded Southland Corp. will grow in 70 years to have some 16,500 stores worldwide, 54 percent of them operated by franchisees, selling gasoline, food, beer, soft drinks, candy, and the like.
Shell Oil founder Marcus Samuel, Viscount Bearsted, dies at his London home January 17 at age 79. His son George was killed at the front in 1917 and his 43-year-old surviving son, Capt. Walter Horace Samuel, who won a military cross as an artillery commander, is chairman of Shell Transport & Trading Co.
Schlumberger, Ltd. has its beginnings September 5 in the first measurement of an oil well using an electrical-resistance log.
Petroleum prospectors in northern Iraq strike oil October 14 near Kirkuk. Baba Gurgur No. 1 gushes oil 140 feet in the air at a rate of 80,000 barrels per day, it takes the drillers 10 days to bring the well under control and prevent the oil from reaching the Eternal Fire (Baba Gurgur) a mile and a half away (it has been burning for thousands of years at a place where natural gas seeps out of the earth). The well has been financed by Iraq Petroleum Co., Ltd., a new cartel created by French, British, U.S., and Iraqi interests with help from Calouste Gulbenkian, who receives a 5 percent interest in the oil field (see 1914).
Phillips Petroleum adopts the brand name "Phillips 66," using the number of the U.S. highway near the company's first refinery (see 1917); by the end of the 1920s it will be an integrated operation with refineries, pipelines, filling stations, and subordinate ventures in petrochemicals, carbon black, and liquefied natural gas, and in 1930 it will buy Independent Oil & Gas, headed by younger brother Waite Phillips, now 34 (see 1954; North Sea, 1969).
Wilson Dam is completed on the Tennessee River, whose power it harnesses to generate 630,000 kilowatts. Built by the Army Corps of Engineers in 9 years at a cost of nearly $47 million, its construction has employed more than 4,000 men at one time. It rises 137 feet in height, is 4,500 feet length (making it the world's longest hydroelectric dam), and has a lock lift that rises a record 94 feet to facilitate navigation of the river at Muscle Shoals, Ala., where it drops 140 feet in 30 miles. The dam has been the most ambitious federal project yet undertaken in America, has required the excavation of 1.5 million cubic yards of earth and rock, has consumed 1.3 million cubic yards of cement, and in 1933 will provide Muscle Shoals with electricity, making that town a major producer of aluminum, nitrate explosives, and fertilizer (see TVA, 1933).
Some 60 percent of U.S. homes have electricity; demand is growing for electric irons, refrigerators, and other such labor-saving appliances.
Britain's Imperial Airways begins air service between Cairo and Basra on the Persian Gulf in January flying de Havilland Hercules airliners (see 1924). It uses three-engined de Havilland Argosy planes for London-Paris "Silver Wing" service beginning May 1, with meals served en route (see 1929).
Charles A. Lindbergh lands his single-engine monoplane Spirit of St. Louis at Le Bourget Airfield, Paris, May 21 at 10:24 in the evening after completing the first non-stop solo transatlantic flight (see 1926; Alcock, Whitten-Brown, 1919). Backed by St. Louis businessmen, Lindbergh paid $10,580 for the plane, designed by Donald Albert Hall, 29, and built by Kansas-born San Diego aircraft designer T. (Tubal) Claude Ryan, 29, with a 220-horsepower, nine-cylinder, air-cooled Wright Aeronautical Whirlwind engine designed by Lenox, Mass.-born aeronautical engineer Charles L. (Lanier) Lawrance, 44. Lindbergh has spent 8 weeks at the Ryan factory supervising every detail of construction and made his first test flight April 28. A crude periscope enables him to see what lies ahead since his forward vision is blocked by the gasoline tank and engine, he has declined a radio in order to save weight for 90 more gallons of gasoline, he took off in the rain from Roosevelt Field, Long Island, at 7:55 in the morning of May 20 with his 2,100-pound plane so heavily laden with 2,800 pounds (451 gallons) of gasoline that he cleared some telephone wires by scarcely 20 feet, has navigated by dead reckoning to cover 3,614 miles (1,000 miles of it through snow and sleet) in 33 hours, 29 minutes, drops a flag over the Place de la Concorde (where it is picked up by New York restaurateur Raymond Orteig, who has been told where it would drop and has been waiting for it), is greeted by 150,000 well-wishers, becomes a world hero, and wins the $25,000 prize offered by Orteig in 1919. Hailed as "The Lone Eagle," Lindbergh rejects motion picture, vaudeville, and commercial offers totaling some $5 million (he visits Mexico City in December, is entertained by U.S. Ambassador Dwight Morrow, meets Morrow's 21-year-old daughter Anne, and will marry her in 1929).
French flying ace Charles Nugesser, 35, vanishes in May while trying to fly the Atlantic. He shot down 45 enemy planes during the war.
Ohio-born pilot Clarence D. (Duncan) Chamberlin, 34, takes off from Roosevelt Field, New York, June 4 in a plane designed by Mario Bellanca, now 41, whose new Bellanca Aircraft Co. will continue until 1954, specializing in private planes for executives (see 1917). Chamberlin flies 3,911 miles nonstop in 42½ hours to Eisleben, Saxony (Germany), carrying junk dealer Charles A. Levine, who has financed the flight.
U.S. Army lieutenants Lester J. Maitland and Albert F. Hegenberger make the first successful flight from San Francisco to Honolulu June 28.
Commander Richard E. Byrd, U.S. Navy, makes the first radio-equipped transatlantic flight June 29 in a trimotored Fokker monoplane piloted by Lieut. Bernt Balchen and Bert Acosta with radioman George O. Noville completing the crew (see exploration, 1926; 1928).
Juan Trippe founds Pan American Airways and obtains exclusive rights from Cuban president Gerardo Machado y Morales to land at Havana (see 1925); Pan Am begins mail service October 28, taking off from a dirt runway at Key West, Fla., for the 90-mile flight and landing 70 minutes later at Havana in the first scheduled international flight by any U.S. airline. Pan Am has 24 employees and just two small wood-and-fabric Fokker F-7 trimotor monoplanes (see 1929).
U.S. commercial planes fly nearly 6 million miles and carry 37,000 passengers (see 1929).
The United States has 1,036 airports by year's end, up from 20 in 1912.
The 14-mile-long sea-level Chesapeake & Delaware Ship Canal opens in May to link the bay with the river. Owned and operated by the Corps of Engineers, it replaces a much narrower, 14-lock canal that opened in 1829, reducing by nearly 300 miles the sea route between Baltimore and Philadelphia; it will be enlarged in the 1960s to make it 450 feet wide and 35 feet deep.
The S.S. Ile de France arrives at New York on her maiden voyage in late June. The 43,000 ton French Line "Boulevard of the Atlantic" has a dining salon that seats 700. She sets a transatlantic speed record on her return voyage, averaging 23.1 knots per hour, and passengers gather August 28 to witness the plane-launching catapult on her afterdeck hurl a mail plane aloft while she is still 400 miles northeast of Sandy Hook. The new luxury liner has remarkable stability at sea (her motion is sometimes imperceptible) and will make 347 transatlantic crossings.
U.S. railroads begin to introduce centralized traffic control (CTC) that permits automatic control of two-way traffic on single tracks and makes single-track operations nearly as efficient as double-track.
Toronto's Union Station opens August 6 with ceremonies attended by Britain's crown prince Edward, Prince of Wales, who cuts a ribbon with a gold scissors (his brother, Prince George, is also on hand, as is Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, Canada's prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, and other political figures. The Canadian Pacific and Grand Trunk railroads negotiated with the city for control of the location after the fire that demolished 14 acres of downtown Toronto in 1904, construction began in 1913, the Grand Trunk collapsed in 1919, the station was completed in 1921, but legal wrangling has delayed its opening. Designed in Beaux-Arts style, Canada's largest and most opulent station features a great hall with a vaulted ceiling of Gustavino tiles, four-story barrel-vaulted windows, walls of Zumbro marble from Missouri, floors of Tennessee marble laid out in a herring-bone pattern. Passenger trains begin using the station August 11 (a ticket to Alberta sells for $71.20).
Tokyo's Chikatetsu subway opens between Asakusa and Ueno. The city's system will grow to have 12 lines with trains operating 19 to 20 hours per day on 282 kilometers of track.
Ford Motor Company introduces the Model A to succeed the Model T that has been the U.S. standard for nearly 20 years. U.S. auto production falls to 3,093,428, down nearly 900,000 from 1926 on account of Ford's stoppage for retooling to produce a car that will compete with Chevrolet. Henry Ford and his son Edsel, now 34, drive the 15 millionth Ford out of the Ford plant, and although Ford has resisted advertising the Model T he spends more in 2 weeks on ads for the Model A than he spent in the entire history of Ford Motor Company up to now. The new model will soon overtake Chevrolet in sales.
Massachusetts enacts the first compulsory state automobile insurance law.
E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Pittsburgh Plate Glass (PPG) create Duplate Corp. to make safety glass using DuPont pyrolin and Pittsburgh plate (see 1883; Triplex, 1926). PPG will buy out DuPont's interest in Duplate in 1930 (see 1929). Henry Ford orders safety glass windshields for Model A Fords and Lincolns. Triplex Safety Glass contracts to supply half of Ford's needs and licenses Ford to produce the rest himself.
More than 20 million cars are on the U.S. road by year's end, up from 13,824 in 1900.
The Volvo introduced by Göteborg industrialist Assar Gabrielsson and engineer Gustaf Larsson is the first Swedish motorcar. Gabrielsson and Larsson have built a factory to challenge the dominance of imported cars in the Swedish market, but their four-cylinder engine touring car has a top speed of only 37 miles per hour.
The Peace Bridge opens across the Niagara River June 1 to link Buffalo, N.Y., with Fort Erie, Ontario. Named to mark 100 years of peace between Canada and the United States, the 5,800-foot (1,770-meter) highway bridge has five arched spans, it is the only vehicular bridge on the Great Lakes between Niagara Falls and Minnesota, it makes Fort Erie Canada's chief port of entry from the United States, and it will grow to carry 4,000 trucks per day (see Ambassador Bridge, 1929).
The Holland Tunnel opens November 12 to connect Canal Street, Manhattan, with Jersey City, giving motor vehicles a road link under the Hudson River, the first alternative to New York-New Jersey ferry boats. Regular paid vehicular traffic begins just after midnight with a toll of 50¢. Clifton Milburn Holland, the tunnel's chief engineer, died in the fall of 1924—just 2 days before diggers from east and west met below the Hudson; 13 men lost their lives in the 7-year effort to build the tunnel, whose design and ventilating system are credited to Norwegian-born engineer Ole Singstad, 45 (see Lincoln Tunnel, 1937).
Explosives inventor Hudson Maxim dies at Lake Hopatcong, N.J., May 6 at age 74.
"The Theoretical Prediction of the Physical Properties of Many Electron Atoms and Ions, Mole Refraction, Diamagnetic Susceptibility, and Extension in Space" by Nebraska-born California Institute of Technology chemistry doctoral candidate Linus (Carl) Pauling, 25, is published in January. Pauling has applied quantum mechanics to the problem of how atoms and molecules enter into chemical combination with each other (see Planck, 1900), but his paper draws fire in March from British Nobel solid-state physicist Sir William H. Bragg, now 64, who believes that Pauling has used some of his (Bragg's) ideas without giving proper credit. Pauling insists that he has based his ideas on a paper by Gregor Wentzel, who had found poor agreement between the calculated and experimental values, whereas he (Pauling) had found that Wentzel's calculations were incomplete, and when carried out properly that they led to good agreement with experimental values (see 1928).
Physicist Paul Dirac propounds a quantum theory of the electromagnetic field that treats the field as a "gas" of photons (the quanta of light) (see 1926). The first quantum field theory, Dirac's concept provides an accurate description of the absorption and emission of radiation by electrons in atoms (see 1928).
An uncertainty principle announced by German physicist Werner Heisenberg, 26, melds physics and philosophy. Heisenberg has been working with Max Born, 45, at Göttingen University; he states that certain pairs of variables describing motion-velocity and position, or energy and time cannot be measured simultaneously with absolute accuracy because the measuring process itself interferes with the quantity to be measured, so while quantum mechanics provides valuable information it is useful only within limits of tolerance since no events can be described with zero tolerance (see Dirac and Shrödinger, 1926).
Canadian-born University of California, Berkeley, physical chemist William F. (Francis) Giauque, 32, proposes a new way to achieve extremely low temperatures in already cold materials, using an adiabatic demagnetization process that (unbeknownst to Giauque) was proposed last year by Peter Debye. Giauque's research will confirm the third law of thermodynamics (see 1906) and by 1933 he will have devised a working apparatus capable of obtaining temperatures within one-tenth of a degree of absolute zero (-273.15° C.).
Fossil remains of Pithecanthropus pekinsis (Peking man) believed to be from 200,000 to 300,000 B.C. are found at Choukoutien, near Beijing (Peking), by Canadian anatomist Davidson Black, 42, and French Jesuit priest-palentologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, 46 (see 1890; 1959; Dart, 1924; Pei, 1929). Later researchers using more modern techniques will date the fossils to 400,000 B.C. or earlier.
A stone spearhead found embedded between the ribs of an Ice Age bison skeleton near Folsom, N. Mex., is the first of many such finds that will indicate the presence of glacial man in 8,000 B.C.
Peruvian aerial survey pilot Toribio Mexta Xesspe sees long lines in the shape of birds, animals, and reptiles while flying over the barren plains of southern Peru. Visible only from the air, the mysterious drawings, enormous in size, were made by the pre-Inca Nazca civilization that flourished for a millennium before being absorbed by the Inca in about 700 A.D.
A paper on cyclical internal mechanisms by Johns Hopkins psychobiologist Curt (Paul) Richter, 33, introduces the term biological clock. Richter will demonstrate that learned behavior has a strong influence on human biology.
Introduction to the History of Science (first of three volumes) by Belgian-born Harvard lecturer George (Alfred Leon) Sarton, 43, pioneers a new academic discipline by starting a chronicle of scientific thought from Homer through the 14th century. Sarton will learn Arabic by traveling through Syria, Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco, where he will study original manuscripts in 1931 and 1932 to complete his second volume; The Logic of Modern Physics by Harvard physicist Percy W. (Williams) Bridgman, 45, discusses the "operational" approach to scientific meaning; Man a Machine by English biochemist Joseph Needham, 26, is a reflection on philosophical problems in science.
Organic chemist Carl Graebe of 1868 synthetic dye fame dies at his native at Frankfurt-am-Main January 19 at age 85, having contributed the chemical terms ortho, meta, and para to indicate points of groups attached to the benzene ring; botanist and chemist Friedrich Reinitzer dies at Prague February 16 at age 69, having discovered liquid crystals; hormone co-discoverer Ernest H. Starling dies on a Caribbean cruise ship outside Kingston, Jamaica, May 2 at age 61; Nobel biochemist Albrecht Kossel at Heidelberg July 5 at age 73, having discovered the nucleic acids of the DNA molecule, the genetic substance of the cell; Nobel chemist Svante A. Arrhenius dies at Stockholm October 2 at age 68.
The Iron Lung invented by Haverford, Pa.-born Harvard professor Philip Drinker, 32, has an airtight chamber that employs alternating pulsations of high and low pressure to force air in and out of a patient's lungs. Drinker uses two discarded household vacuum cleaners and other cast-off machinery to create the Drinker Respirator that will be manufactured in Boston and used for the first time in mid-October of next year to treat a small girl at Boston Children's Hospital who is suffering from respiratory failure due to infantile paralysis (poliomyelitis).
Franklin D. Roosevelt founds the Warm Springs Foundation treatment center for fellow victims of poliomyelitis (see 1921). He first visited the springs in western Georgia in 1924 and has used two-thirds of his fortune to purchase and renovate the decrepit 900-acre center, the National Foundation March of Dimes will operate it in years to come (see 1938), and the state of Georgia will purchase it in 1973.
Portuguese surgeon Antonio Caetano de Abreu Freire Egas Moniz, 53, invents cerebral angiography—a way to visualize the blood vessels of the brain (see lobotomy, 1935).
Electrocardiograph inventor and Nobel physicist Willem Einthoven dies at Leyden September 21 at age 67.
Bob Jones College is founded at College Point, Fla., by evangelist Bob Jones, whose son and namesake, now 15, will receive his bachelor's degree at the fundamentalist Christian school in 1930, teach some classes there, move it to Cleveland, Tenn., and move it again in 1947 to Greenville, S.C., where it will become Bob Jones University.
Scripps College for Women opens in October at Claremont, Calif., as one of several associated, but autonomous, colleges built around the nucleus of Pomona College. Publisher-philanthropist Ellen B. Scripps, now 89, has contributed more than $1.5 million to the new college and will add substantially to that figure in her will. She helped her brother James start the Detroit Evening News in 1873, helped her much younger half brother, the late E. W. Scripps, with six of his nine papers, and now owns shares in 16 papers nationwide.
Transatlantic telephone service begins January 7 between London and New York: 3 minutes of conversation cost $75, or £15, at a time when the average worker earns $25 (or £5) per week.
Britain's Post Office installs bright red telephone kiosks that supplement some boxes used since 1920. The Fine Arts Commission has selected a design by architect Giles Gilbert Scott, now 47, and the cast-iron boxes are deployed mostly in London (see 1936). They will also be used in Japan.
Leominister, Mass.-born Bell Telephone Laboratories research engineer Harold S. (Stephen) Black, 29, revolutionizes transatlantic and transcontinental telecommunications with a negative feedback amplifier that reduces distortion in a signal by feeding part of it back to the amplifier and comparing it to the original signal. While on a Hudson River ferry commuting from Summit, N.J., to his Western Electric Co. West Street Labs office in downtown New York, Black has a sudden inspiration, sketches his idea on his copy of the New York Times, signs and dates it for a patent application, and will see his idea adapted to many uses.
Telephone pioneer Charles J. Glidden dies at Boston September 11 at age 70.
The Radio Act signed into law by President Coolidge February 24 defines the airwaves as a public resource that can be licensed for use but not owned; it establishes a five-person Federal Radio Commission (FRC) to grant (and revoke) licenses, assign frequencies, and determine station power and locations, giving the FRC powers it may exercise "as public convenience, interest, or necessity requires" (see Federal Communication Commission, 1934). David Sarnoff's year-old National Broadcasting Co. has so many radio stations that it splits up into a Blue Network and a Red Network (see American Broadcasting, 1943; CBS, 1928; NBC, RCA-Victor, 1929).
Television gets its first U.S. demonstration April 7 in the auditorium of New York's Bell Telephone Laboratories, where AT&T president Walter S. Gifford lets a large group of viewers see Commerce Secretary Herbert C. Hoover in his office at Washington while hearing his voice over telephone wires (see BBC, 1936). Development of television is thwarted by the fact that it takes a frequency band of 4 million cycles, versus only 400 for an ordinary radio band, to transmit the 250,000 elements needed for a clear picture.
Utah-born engineer Philo T. (Taylor) Farnsworth, 22, at San Francisco pioneers electronic television September 7 with an image transmitted by means of an image dissector tube that he has invented to scan a picture and send it through the air (see Baird, 1926). Working as an Iowa farm boy at age 14, Farnsworth invented the first unique motorcar ignition key (the key to one Model A Ford up to then had started another); more to the point, he read a popularized account of work done by Soviet engineer Boris Rosing to transmit moving pictures by electricity, looked at the edge of a hayfield, and was struck with the idea that magnetic fields could direct a beam of electrons across an image, one line at a time, and the resulting signals, fired at an electron-sensitive screen, would mesh so fast that the human eye would perceive a continuous picture. Farnsworth will have a working model of his "image dissector" camera by next year, David Sarnoff at New York will send Russian-born physicist Vladimir Kosma Zworykin, now 38, to visit with Farnsworth in his tiny room at San Francisco, Zworykin will send back a 700-page telegram, Radio Corp. of America engineers will have the advantages of a well-equipped laboratory, RCA lawyers will try to preempt Farnsworth's breakthrough with patent applications, and although Farnsworth will win a patent-infringement suit, and Philco Corp. will assume his development costs in the early 1930s, he will be unable to match the infrastructure and resources of RCA, which will put its efforts behind Zworykin's iconoscope TV scanner, and his six basic patents will expire before he can capitalize on them.
The futura typeface created by German designer Paul Renner, 48, is a sans-serif face that will come into wide use.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette begins publication as such August 2 at 3¢ per copy (see 1786).
Publisher Roy Howard acquires the New York Telegram evening paper for the Scripps-Howard newspaper chain (see 1925; 1931).
The Free Library of Philadelphia building is completed in French Renaissance style on Vine Street between 19th and 20th Streets.
The Dictionary of American Biography is published in its initial volumes by the American Council of Learned Societies as a counterpart to the British Dictionary of National Biography edited by Sir Leslie Stephen and Sir Sidney Lee. An editorial committee headed by J. Franklin Jameson of the Carnegie Institution has obtained a pledge of $500,000 from New York Times publisher Adolph S. Ochs to defray the cost of the project, the committee opened offices in February of last year at Washington D.C., and its editors include former Carnegie Institution president Robert J. Woodward, Harvard historian Frederick J. Turner, and Columbia historian John Erskine.
Nonfiction: Main Currents in American Thought: An Interpretation of Literature From the Beginningto 1920 by Aurora, Ill.-born Emporia, Kansas-raised University of Washington professor Vernon (Louis) Parrington, 56, who sees the development of American thought as based on a concept of democratic idealism; Being and Time (Sein und Zeit) by German philosopher Martin Heidegger, 37, shows the influence of Søren Kierkegaard (see 1843) but is deliberately obscure; Why I Am Not a Christian by philosopher-mathematician Bertrand Russell; Chassidischen Bücher by Martin Buber is a study of the pietistic Hasidic movement; The President's Daughter by Marion, Ohio-born author Elizabeth Ann "Nan" Britton, 31 (approximate), who claims she was impregnated by the late president Warren Harding when she was campaign worker and had sex with the senator when she was 22 and he 51, that her daughter was born in 1919, and that she wrote the book to earn money for little Elizabeth Ann Christian's support and to champion the rights of illegitimate children (few people give her story much credence); The Story of a Wonder Man (autobiography) by Ring Lardner; Gangs of New York: An Informal History of the Underworld by Herbert Asbury.
Historian Brooks Adams dies at Boston February 13 at age 78; critic-scholar George Brandes at his native Copenhagen February 19 at age 85; historian J. B. Bury at Rome June 1 at age 65.
Fiction: Der Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse; Flight Without End (Die Flucht ohne Ende) by Austrian novelist Joseph Roth, 33, who shows the collapsed Austro-Hungarian Empire as seen through the eyes of a returned officer; Amerika by the late Franz Kafka; The Past Recaptured (Le temps retrouvé) by the late Marcel Proust; The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder; Jalna by Canadian novelist Mazo de la Roche (originally Roche), 42, is the first of more than a dozen in a series of "Whiteoak Chronicles" based on a family living on a lakefront Ontario estate. By the time she dies in 1961 the books will have sold more than 11 million copies in 193 English and 92 foreign editions; Mr. Weston's Good Wine by English novelist T. F. (Theodore Francis) Powys, 52, brother of J. C. Powys; Celibate Loves (stories) by George Moore; To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf; The Left Bank (stories) by Welsh-Creole author Jean Rhys (Gwen Williams), 33; Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather is based on French clergyman Jean Baptiste Lamy, who built the first cathedral in the Southwest at Santa Fe; Giants in the Earth (I de Dage and Riketgrundlaegges) by Norwegian-born novelist Ole Edvart Rölvaag, 52, who came to America in 1896, worked on an uncle's farm in South Dakota, received his degree at St. Olaf College, and has written his books about immigrant life in Norwegian; Elmer Gantry by Sinclair Lewis; The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (Der Schatz der Sierra Madre) by Polish-born German novelist B. Traven (Beric Traven Torsvan, or Ret Marut, originally Albert Otto Max Feige), 37; Dusty Answer by English novelist Rosamond (Nina) Lehmann, 26; The Lovely Ship by Storm Jameson (her first real success); The Unpleasantnessat the Bellona Club by Dorothy L. Sayers; The Secret of Father Brown by G. K. Chesterton; The "Canary" MurderCase by Virginia-born critic-novelist S. S. Van Dine (Willard Huntington Wright), 39, whose detective Philo Vance will win a wide following.
Mystery writer-playwright Gaston Leroux dies of uremia at Nice the night of April 15 at age 58; humorist Jerome K. Jerome at Northampton, Northamptonshire, June 14 at age 68; Mary Webb at St. Leonards, Sussex, October 8 at age 46, having been confined to a wheelchair by paralysis since age 5.
Poetry: "American Names" by Pennsylvania-born poet Stephen Vincent Benét, 29; The Women at Point Sur by Robinson Jeffers; Tristram and "Launcelot" by Edwin Arlington Robinson is a verse novel; Fine Clothes to the Jew by Langston Hughes; Leitenant Schmidt by Boris Pasternak is a verse epic; Pomes Penyeach by James Joyce, whose work is published by Paris bookseller Sylvia Beach; Journey of the Magi by T. S. Eliot; The Heart's Journey by Siegfried Sassoon.
Juvenile: archy and mehitabel by Illinois-born New York Herald-Tribune humorist Donald Robert Perry "Don" Marquis, 44, whose cockroach archy is the reincarnation of a poet and whose alley cat mehitabel has rowdy misadventures; The Midnight Folk by John Masefield.
Painting: Seated Woman by Pablo Picasso; Glass and Fruit by Georges Braque; Figure with Ornamental Background by Henri Matisse; Man with Newspaper by René Magritte; Self-Portrait by Max Beckmann, who portrays himself in a dinner jacket with right hand on hip and cigarette in left hand; The Great Forest by Max Ernst; Horses Galloping on the Seashore by Giorgio de Chirico; Manhattan Bridge, Lighthouse at Two Lights, and Lighthouse Hill by Edward Hopper, who has received $1,500 (his highest price yet) for his painting Two on the Aisle and, with his wife, Jo, used the money to buy their first car and visit Cape Elizabeth, Me., where he has painted the Two Lights Lighthouse; Radiator Building—Night, New York and Calla Lily—White With Black by Georgia O'Keeffe, now 39, who married photographer Alfred Steiglitz of the 291 Gallery 3 years ago but has been spending more and more time in the Southwest; Lonesome Road by Thomas Hart Benton; Rock (watercolor) by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, now 59, who has been living from hand to mouth in the south of France.
An exhibition of 70 works by Kasimir Malevich that opens at Berlin May 7 includes 30 abstract paintings made between 1915 and 1917. Juan Gris dies at Boulogne-sur-Seine outside Paris May 11 at age 40; railroad heir-bibliophile-art collector Henry E. Huntington at Philadelphia May 23 at age 77, leaving to the public his $30 million collection of books and manuscripts (mostly British and American), his art collection, and his mansion at San Mateo, Calif., along with an endowment of $8 million. It will open as the Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery, with the library dedicated to serving post-graduate scholars.
The 79-year-old Associated Press launches a photo service, but the pictures in the World Wide Photos collection must be distributed by rail or, in some rare cases, airplane.
Photographs: Chambered Nautilus by Edward Weston; Parmellian Prints of the High Sierra by San Francisco-born music student-turned-photographer Ansel Adams, 25, is a portfolio of work that imitates impressionist painting with soft, misty effects (often obtained in the darkroom) that suppress detail. Adams will soon follow the lead of Paul Strand in favor of "straight" photography.
Photographer Eugène Atget dies at Paris August 4 at age 70. New York photographer Berenice Abbott obtains help from local art dealer Julien Levy to save all of Atget's prints and negatives, which will wind up in the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).
Theater: Saturday's Children by Maxwell Anderson 1/26 at New York's Booth Theater, with Wollaston, Mass.-born actress Ruth Gordon (Jones), 30, New York-born actor Roger Pryor, 25, Humphrey Bogart, Beulah Bondi, 310 perfs.; The Marquise by Noël Coward 2/16 at London's Criterion Theatre, with Marie Tempest, 129 perfs.; Crime by Samuel Shipman and John B. Hymer 2/22 at New York's Eltinge Theater, with Chester Morris, Kay Johnson, Bronx-born ingénue Sylvia Sidney (originally Sophia Koslow), 16, 186 perfs.; The Mystery Ship by Edgar M. Schoenberg and Milton Silver 3/14 at New York's Garrick Theater, with veteran New York-born actor Wallace Erskine, 64, 240 perfs.; The Butterfly's Evil Spell (El maleficio de la mariposa) by Spanish poet-playwright Federico García Lorca, 27, 3/22 at Madrid's Teatro Esclava; The Second Man by Worcester, Mass.-born playwright S. N. (Samuel Nathan) Behrman, 34, 4/11 at New York's Guild Theater, with Alfred Lunt, English-born actress Lynn (née Lillie Louise) Fontanne (Lunt), 39, Margalo Gilmore, Earle Larimore, 178 perfs.; On Approval by Frederick Lonsdale 4/19 at London's Fortune Theatre, 469 perfs; Baby Cyclone by George M. Cohan 9/12 at Henry Miller's Theater, New York, with Grant Mitchell, Spencer Tracy, Georgia Caine, 184 perfs.; The Trial of Mary Dugan by Bayard Veiller 9/12 at New York's National Theater, with Ann Harding, Cyril Keightley, 437 perfs.; Four Walls by Connecticut-born playwright Dana Burnet, 39, and George Abbott 9/19 at New York's John Golden Theater, with Austro-Hungarian-born actor Lee Strasberg, 25, 144 perfs.; The 19th Hole by Frank Craven 10/1 at George M. Cohan's Theater, New York, with Craven, Marion Abbott, 119 perfs.; The Ivory Door by A. A. Milne 10/18 at New York's Charles Hopkins Theater, with Henry Hull, Donald Meek, Louis Closser Hale, Helen Chandler, 310 perfs.; Barrabas by Nordahl Grieg 10/26 at Oslo's National Theater; Porgy by DuBose Heyward, now 42, and his wife, Dorothy, 10/27 at New York's Guild Theater, with Frank Wilson, Evelyn Ellis, Rose MacClendon, 367 perfs. (see Fiction, 1925; Gershwin opera, 1935); The Oil Islands (Die Petroleuminseln) by Lion Feuchtwanger 10/31 at Hamburg's Deutsches Schauspielhaus; Coquette by George Abbott and Ann Preston 11/8 at Maxine Elliott's Theater, New York, with Helen Hayes, Covington, Ky.-born actress Una Merkel, 23, Charles Waldron, 366 perfs.; The Road to Rome by New Rochelle, N.Y.-born playwright Robert E. (Emmet) Sherwood, 31, 11/31 at The Playhouse, New York, with Jane Cowl, Joyce Carey, 440 perfs.; Paris Bound by Philip Barry 12/27 at New York's Music Box Theater, with Hope Williams, 234 perfs.; The Royal Family by George S. Kaufman and New York-born playwright Moss Hart, 23, 12/28 at New York's Selwyn Theater, with Otto Kruger, Catharine Calhoun Doucet, Orlando Daly, Roger Pryor, Joseph King, Sylvia Field, in a play based on the Barrymores, 345 perfs.
The Théâtre Alfred Jarry is founded at Paris by playwrights and actors who include poet-actor Antonin Artaud, Robert Aron, and Roger Vitrac, who will gain fame for their "Theater of Cruelty" ("théâtre de la cruauté"). Artaud maintains that theater's function is to liberate the instinctual energy of man, who has been turned by civilization into a sick and repressed creature, he has proposed removing the barrier of the stage that separates audiences from performers, and before the group disbands in 1929 it will present four programs—mythic spectacles that include groans, screams, verbal incantations, pulsating lighting effects, and oversized stage puppets and props.
Actor-writer-producer Arnold Daly dies at New York January 13 at age 52; playwright Roi Cooper Megrue at his native New York February 27 at age 42; actor John Drew at San Francisco July 9 at age 73 after a successful road tour with the 1898 Pinero play Trelawny of the "Wells"; actress-producer Amelia Bingham dies at New York September 1 at age 58.
A Los Angeles jury awards Charles Chaplin's estranged wife, Lila (née Grey), $4,000 per month for child maintenance January 13. She testified that she had not seen Chaplin since November.
New York's Roxy movie theater opens March 11 on Times Square at the northeast corner of Seventh Avenue and 50th Street. Chicago architect Walter Ahlschlager has designed the 4,000-seat house for William Fox, Irwin Chanin, and other investors, who provide showman S. L. "Roxy" Rothafel with an orchestra pit that can accommodate 110 musicians, private projection rooms, a broadcasting studio, club rooms, rehearsal rooms, a music library, and a lavish apartment for Roxy's personal use.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is founded May 11 by Louis B. Mayer of M-G-M (see 1924). Created for the express purpose of giving out annual awards, the Academy is headed by Douglas Fairbanks (see "Oscars," 1928).
Grauman's Chinese Theater opens May 18 at Los Angeles with the premiere of Cecil B. DeMille's The King of Kings; it does not begin until nearly 11 o'clock and goes on until 2 in the morning (see Grauman's Egyptian, 1922). Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford have helped to finance the $2 million theater, which features an outdoor courtyard.
The Cinematograph Films Act passed by Parliament requires that a certain minimum proportion of films exhibited in British theaters be of domestic origin. The measure is designed to protect Britain's film industry from domination by Hollywood, whose executives have capitalized on the lack of a language barrier to exploit the British market, and although most of the films made to fulfill the quota are low-budget "quickies" of little merit, Britain will develop a viable industry capable to beating Hollywood at its own game (see Ealing Studios, 1902; Gainsborough Pictures, 1928).
Films: Alan Crosland's The Jazz Singer is the first full-length talking picture to achieve success (see 1926). Wahoo, Neb.-born executive producer Darryl (Francis) Zanuck, 25, has given Al Jolson his film debut. The film opens at Warner's Theater in New York October 6, its cast includes St. Paul, Minn.-born vaudeville veteran William Demarest, 35; it contains only brief sequences of dialogue and singing (Jolson dances as he sings "Toot-toot-tootsie"), but Jolson says, "Wait a minute, wait a minute. You ain't heard nothin' yet," the sound-on-disk Warner Brothers Vitaphone system employs disks synchronized with the film, and it introduces a new era of "the talkies" that saves the studio from bankruptcy and will end the careers of some movie stars. Radio Corporation of America (RCA) is developing its own Photophone sound-on-film system for the major studios, and it will become the industry standard (see 1929).
Other films (all silent): Buster Keaton's The General with Keaton; Ted Wilde and J. A. Howe's The Kid Brother with Harold Lloyd; G. W. Pabst's The Love of Jeanne Ney (Die Liebe der Jeanne Ney); Abel Gance's Napoléon with Albert Dieudonné; Ernst Lubitsch's The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg with Ramon Novarro, Norma Shearer; F. W. Murnau's Sunrise with Philadelphia-born actress Janet Gaynor (originally Laura Gainer), 20, George O'Brien; Erich von Stroheim's The Wedding March with Vienna-born director-actor von Stroheim (originally Erich Oswald Hans Carl Maria von Nordenwall), now 41, Canadian-born actress Fay Wray, 20, ZaSu Pitts. Also: Alan Crosland's The Beloved Rogue with John Barrymore, Conrad Veidt, sets by William Cameron Menzies; Walter Ruttman and Karl Freund's Berlin: The Symphony of a Great City; Fred Niblo's Camille with Norma Talmadge, Gilbert Roland; Paul Leni's The Cat and the Canary with Creighton Hale, Salem, Mass.-born actress Laura La Plante (originally La Plant), 23; Ernest Schoedsack and Merian C. Cooper's Chang, shot on location in Siam; René Clair's Le Chapeau de Paille d'Italie with Albert Prejean, Olga Tschechova; Harry Langdon's The Chaser and Three's a Crowd with Langdon; James W. Horne's College with Buster Keaton; Sam Wood's The Fair Co-Ed with Marion Davies; San Francisco-born director Dorothy Arzner's Fashions for Women with Esther Ralston, Raymond Hatton; Clarence Brown's Flesh and the Devil with John Gilbert, Greta Garbo, Lars Hanson; Frank Borzage's Seventh Heaven with Janet Gaynor, Charles Farrell; Sergei Eisenstein's The Ten Days That Shook the World; Victor Fleming's The Way of All Flesh with Emil Jannings; William K. Howard's White Gold with Jetta Goudal, George Bancroft; William A. Wellman's Wings with New York-born actress Clara (Gordon) Bow, 22 (who has been discovered by producer Benjamin P. [Percival] Schulberg, 36), Kansas-born actor Charles "Buddy" Rogers, 23, Charlottesville, Va.-born actor Richard Arlen (Cornelius R. Van Mattimore), 28, Helena, Mont.-born actor Gary (originally Frank James) Cooper, 26 (who has also been discovered by Schulberg).
Theater owner Marcus Loew dies of a heart attack at his native New York September 5 at age 57; Warner Brothers partner Sam L. Warner of pneumonia at Los Angeles October 5 at age 40.
Opera: The King's Henchman 2/17 at New York's Metropolitan Opera House, with music by New York-born composer (Joseph) Deems Taylor, 41, libretto by Edna St. Vincent Millay, who contributes proceeds of her pamphlet "Justice Denied in Massachusetts" to the defense of Sacco and Vanzetti, makes a personal appeal to the governor that he spare the men, and is arrested in the deathwatch outside the Boston Court House the night of their execution; Mahagonny 7/17 at Germany's Baden Baden festival, with music by German composer Kurt Weill, 27, libretto by playwright Bertolt Brecht, now 29: the one-act singspiel (song-play) will be expanded into The Rise and Fall of the Town of Mahagonny, which will open 3/9/30 at Leipzig; Le Pauvre Matelot 12/16 at the Opéra-Comique, Paris, with music by Darius Milhaud.
Dancer Isadora Duncan is strangled to death at Nice September 14 at age 49 when her long scarf is entangled in a rear wheel of the sports car being demonstrated to her by an automobile salesman with whom she has become enamored (see 1921).
First performances: Concerto No. 4 in G minor for Piano and Orchestra by Sergei Rachmaninoff 3/18 at Philadelphia's Academy of Music, with Leopold Stokowski conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra; Arcana by Paris-born U.S. composer Edgard Varèse, 34, 4/8 at Philadelphia's Academy of Music; Symphony in E minor by Roger Sessions 4/22 at Boston's Symphony Hall.
Stage musicals: Rio Rita 2/2 at New York's new Ziegfeld Theater on Sixth Avenue at 54th Street, with book by Guy Bolton and Fred Thompson, music and lyrics by Harry Tierney and Joseph McCarthy, songs that include the title song, 494 perfs. Now 58, Florenz Ziegfeld has hired Follies set designer Joseph Urban, a Viennese sculptor-painter-architect, to design the modern theater that will stand for 40 years; Rufus LeMaire's Affairs 3/28 at New York's new 1,800-seat Majestic Theater, designed by Herbert J. Krapp and put up at 245 West 44th Street by the Chanin brothers. Stars include Charlotte Greenwood, Ted Lewis, and Peggy Fears, music by Martin Broones, book and lyrics by Ballard MacDonald, 56 perfs.; Hit the Deck 4/25 at New York's Belasco Theater, with music by Vincent Youmans, lyrics by Leo Robin and Clifford Grey, songs that include "Join the Navy," "Hallelujah," 352 perfs.; One Dam Thing After Another 5/19 at the London Pavilion, with Jessie Matthews, book by Ronald Jeans, music and lyrics by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart; The Ziegfeld Follies 8/16 at the Ziegfeld Theater, with Eddie Cantor, Nebraska-born torch singer Ruth Etting, 28, Al Jolson, Claire Luce, costumes by Erté, book by Harold Atteridge and Cantor, music and lyrics entirely by Irving Berlin, songs that include "Shakin' the Blues Away," 167 perfs.; Good News 9/6 at the 46th Street Theater, with music by Ray Henderson, lyrics by B. G. DeSylva and Lew Brown, songs that include "The Best Things in Life Are Free," "Lucky in Love," "Flaming Youth," 551 perfs.; My Maryland 9/12 at the Jolson Theater, with book and lyrics by Dorothy Donnelly based on the 1899 Clyde Fitch play Barbara Frietchie, music by Sigmund Romberg, 312 perfs.; The Five O'Clock Girl 10/10 at the 44th Street Theater, with Mary Eaton, Mary Philips, book by Guy Bolton and Fred Thompson, music by Harry Ruby, lyrics by Bert Kalmar, songs that include "Thinking of You," 280 perfs.; A Connecticut Yankee 11/3 at the Vanderbilt Theater, with William Gaxton, Constance Carpenter, dance routines by Los Angeles-born choreographer Busby Berkeley (originally William Berkeley Enos), 31, music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Lorenz Hart, songs that include "My Heart Stood Still," "Thou Swell," 418 perfs.; Funny Face 11/22 at the Alvin Theater, with Fred and Adele Astaire, Victor Moore, 50, William Kent, book by Guy Bolton, Fred Thompson, and Paul Gerard Smith, music by George Gershwin, lyrics by Ira Gershwin, songs that include "My One and Only," "The Babbitt and the Bromide," "S'Wonderful," and the title song, 244 perfs.; Take the Air 11/22 at the Waldorf Theater, with music by Dave Stamper, book and lyrics by Anne Caldwell and Gene Buck, 206 perfs.; Delmar's Revels 11/28 at the Shubert Theater, with Frank Fay, New York-born comedian Bert Lahr (originally Irving Lahrheim), 32, Brooklyn-born ingénue Patsy (née Sarah Veronica Rose) Kelly, 17, music by Jimmy McHugh, lyrics by Dorothy Fields (daughter of vaudeville comedian Lew Fields of Weber & Fields), 112 perfs.; Show Boat 12/27 at the Ziegfeld Theater, with bass Paul Robeson singing "Ol Man River," Helen Morgan as Julie LaVerne in the first stage musical to deal with subjects such as miscegenation, the first to depict blacks as real people, book by Edna Ferber, music by Jerome Kern, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, songs that include also "Bill," "Can't Help Lovin' that Man," "Only Make Believe," "Life on the Wicked Stage," "Why Do I Love You," 527 perfs.
Musical star Florence Mills dies of appendicitis-related peritonitis at New York November 1 at age 29.
The Varsity Drag is introduced to U.S. dance floors.
Radio: The A&P Gypsies in January on NBC's Blue Network. The violinists will give way to Harry Horlick's Orchestra (it will continue for 10 years).
Popular songs: "Black and Tan Fantasy" by Washington, D.C.-born composer Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington, 28, (who begins a 5-year engagement December 14 at New York's Cotton Club) lyrics by Ellington's plunger-muted trumpet player "Bubber" Miller; "Me and My Shadow" by Al Jolson and pianist Dave Dreyer, 33, lyrics by Billy Rose; "Chloe" by Neil Moret, lyrics by Gus Kahn; "Diane" by Irving Rapee, lyrics by Lew Pollak to exploit the film Seventh Heaven; "Girl of My Dreams" by Sunny Clapp; "Ain't She Sweet" by Milton Ager, lyrics by Jack Yellen; "I'm Looking Over a Four Leaf Clover" by Harry Woods, lyrics by Mort Dixon; "Let a Smile Be Your Umbrella" by composer Sammy Fain, 25, lyrics by Irving Kahal, Francis Wheeler; "My Blue Heaven" by Walter Donaldson, lyrics by George Whiting, 43; "'S Wonderful" and "Strike Up the Band" by George Gershwin, lyrics by Ira Gershwin; "Mississippi Mud" by Harry Barris of the Rhythm Boys (Barris, Al Rinker, and "crooner" Harry Lillis "Bing" Crosby, 26), who sing with Paul Whiteman and his Orchestra, lyrics by James Cavanaugh (helped by the newly-developed microphone, Crosby will learn phraseology from trumpeter Louis Armstrong and develop a unique sound that endear him to millions); "The Song Is Ended But the Melody Lingers On" by Irving Berlin; Bessie Smith records "After You've Gone," "Backwater Blues," and Irving Berlin's 1911 hit "Alexander's Ragtime Band." "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands" is published for the first time in the Journal of AmericanFolklore.
The Carter Family begins a country-music recording career after responding to an advertisement placed by a Victor Talking Machine Co. talent scout. Virginia-born folk singer Alvin Pleasant "A. P." Carter, 36; his wife, Sara (née Dougherty), 29; and his sister-in-law Maybelle Carter (née Addington), 18, will be joined by two of Sara's children and three of Maybelle's in the next 14 years as they record more than 300 Appalachian folk and country songs, including "Wabash Cannonball," "It Takes a Worried Man to Sing a Worried Song," and "Wildwood Flower."
The first all-electric "jukeboxes" are introduced by the Automatic Musical Instrument Co. of Grand Rapids, Mich., and Seeburg Co. of Chicago. Mass production will begin in 1934, and by 1939 there will be 350,000 jukeboxes in U.S. bars, restaurants, and other establishments.
Capehart Automatic Phonograph Co. is founded by Indianapolis entrepreneur Homer (Earl) Capehart, 30, who has acquired the patent rights of a Cleveland inventor to manufacture a coin-operated phonograph with an automatic device that not only selects a record and places it on the turntable but then also turns the record over and plays its flip side. Capehart will acquire rights to a device invented by Columbia Phonograph engineer Ralph Erbe and in 1929 will introduce an improved record changer, shifting from jukeboxes to home consoles for the luxury market.
The first Golden Gloves boxing tournament for amateur fighters opens March 11 at New York's Knights of Columbus center and at Brooklyn's Knights of St. Anthony's center, the finals are held March 28 at Tex Rickard's new Madison Square Garden, witnessed by a record crowd of 21,954, with an estimated 10,000 turned away for lack of space (see AAU, 1888). Proposed by New York-born Daily News sportswriter Paul Gallico, 29, in a February 14 back-page headline and feature story, the event will continue for more than 50 years, attracting thousands of contenders who will include Emile Griffith, Gus Lesnevich, Floyd Patterson, Ray Robinson, and José Torres.
Henri Cochet, 25, (Fr) wins in men's singles at Wimbledon, Helen Wills in women's singles; René LaCoste wins in men's singles at Forest Hills, Wills in women's singles. LaCoste beats Bill Tilden at Philadelphia's Germantown Cricket Club to end domination of Davis Cup play by English-speaking countries.
Toronto fresh-water swimmer George Young, 17, becomes the first person to swim the 22-mile Catalina Channel.
Golfer Tommy Armour wins the U.S. Open at age 30. The Scotsman goes on to win the Canadian Open.
The first Ryder Cup golf match ends in victory for a team of U.S. professionals who defeat a British team at Worcester, Mass., to gain possession of the £750 silver cup put up by English seed magnate Samuel Ryder, 54. A British team won an unofficial match held last year at Wentworth, Surrey, the U.S. team is headed by Walter Hagen and includes Tommy Armour, British teams will win in 1929 and 1933, but U.S. teams will dominate the biennial matches.
Gene Tunney retains his world heavyweight boxing crown by surviving Jack Dempsey's seventh-round knockout punch at Chicago's Soldier Field September 22. A new rule requires that a fighter go to a neutral corner after he has knocked down his opponent, but Dempsey ignores the referee's order and stands over the fallen Tunney. Paul Gallico of the Daily News will write that Tunney "was out. No question about it. His mind was gone," but 15 seconds elapse before the referee reaches the count of nine, Tunney rises from the "long count," and he goes on to win the decision.
Babe Ruth hits his 60th home run of the season September 30 off a pitch by Washington's Tom Zachary to set a record that will stand for 30 years. The New York Yankees have their best season yet and win the World Series, defeating the Pittsburgh Pirates 4 games to 0.
Australian schoolteacher's son William J. (Joseph) O'Reilly, 21, begins a 19-year first-class cricket career in which he will take 774 wickets, including 144 in Test Matches against South Africa, England, and New Zealand.
University of Michigan end Benjamin C. "Bennie" Oosterban ends his third year as football's most brilliant pass receiver. Grantland Rice names him to the All-America Team for the third time and Oosterban will graduate next year with nine varsity letters after a career that included one season in which he not only led the Big Ten Conference in football scoring but also starred in basketball, baseball, and discus throwing.
University of Minnesota sophomore Bronislaw "Bronko" Nagurski begins a 3-year career in which he will make otherwise mediocre Minnesota teams difficult to beat. Grantland Rice will name him to the All-America team only in his senior year.
World chess champion José Raoul Capablanca loses the world title he has held since 1921. Moscow-born French master Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Alekhine, 34, defeats him in a match that ends September 16 at Buenos Aires, will hold the title until 1935, regain it in 1937, and retain it until his death in 1946.
Girl Scouts founder Juliette Gordon Low dies at her native Savannah January 18 at age 66, having seen her organization grow to have troops in every state with an enrollment of more than 140,000 girls.
Frances Heenan "Peaches" Browning, 16, sues millionaire New York real estate operator Edward W. "Daddy" Browning, 52, for divorce in a White Plains, N.Y., courthouse after less than a year of marriage. The January trial produces testimony that titillates newspaper readers.
Couturière Jeanne Lanvin introduces a new perfume under the name Arpége (see 1925).
Boyish fashions for women dominate Paris fashion shows in May, reducing bustlines and emphasizing slim hips with oversized belts. By next year the typical woman's dress will be made from just seven yards, down from 19 before the war.
Florentine leather worker Salvatore Ferragamo founds a company that will gain worldwide fame for its shoes and accessories.
The Cyclone roller coaster opens June 26 at Coney Island, N.Y., with a 100-second ride that takes screaming passengers up and down nine hills (one of them 85 feet high) and over connecting tilted curves at 60 miles per hour for the price of a 25¢ ticket.
Miele vacuum cleaners are introduced by the 28-year-old German company (see washing machines, 1901; electric dishwashers, 1929).
Oxydol is introduced by Procter & Gamble, whose laundry soap is advertised as a "washday miracle."
Super Suds is introduced by Colgate and Co., whose laundry and dishwashing soap product is composed of quick-melting hollow beads rather than flakes or powder (see Rinso, 1918; Tide, 1946).
Formica is introduced by a U.S. company started in 1914 by Herbert Faber and Daniel O'Connor to manufacture insulation for the electrical industry. Instead of using mica they have developed a less expensive material that employs layers of paper in a resin with a decorative paper layer on one side, mashing the laminate on a flatbed press that will be used for countertops.
The aerosol spray can has its beginnings in a spray can patented November 23 by Norwegian inventor Erik Rotheim, whose device uses a valve and propellant system to dispense liquids (see 1945).
Brown & Williamson Tobacco is acquired by British-American Tobacco, which will increase production and distribution of Sir Walter Raleigh and Kool cigarettes.
The Snyder-Gray murder trial makes world headlines. Queens Village, Long Island, housewife Ruth Snyder and her corset-salesman lover Henry Judd Gray kill New York magazine art editor Albert Snyder with a sashweight March 20 in a suburban sex triangle. A jury convicts the pair, and they will die in the electric chair at Sing Sing early next year.
The U.S. Supreme Court rules May 16 in United States v. Sullivan that illegal income is taxable. No one can use the Fifth Amendment as an excuse not to file a tax return because his income derives from illicit activities, says Justice Holmes; the decision gives the federal government a powerful new weapon against the underworld.
Alleged murderess Lizzie Borden dies at her native Fall River, Mass., June 1 at age 66.
Bootlegger Frankie Yale (Frank Uele) dies in a hail of machine-gun bullets on a street in his native Brooklyn July 1 at age 42 as another car pulls up alongside. Allegedly killed on orders from Al Capone on suspicion of having hijacked a truckload of liquor, Yale is buried in a $12,000 casket after a funeral procession that includes 28 trucks decorated with flowers.
Al Capone has an income for the year of $105 million, the highest gross income ever received by a private U.S. citizen (see 1925; 1926). Most of the Chicago gangster's money derives from bootleg liquor operations; he takes in $35 million more than Henry Ford will make in his best year (see 1929; tax evasion, 1931).
A housing estate designed by J. J. P. Oud is completed at Hoek van Holland. The rows of two-story buildings have curved shop windows at their ends.
The 47-story American Insurance Union Citadel at Columbus, Ohio, is completed at the corner of Broad and Front streets.
New York's Graybar building opens on Lexington Avenue adjoining Grand Central Terminal. Named for the 2-year-old Graybar Electric Co. (whose employees will buy it in 1929), the 30-story building has upwards of 1 million square feet of rentable floor space—more than any other office building in the world.
Mar-a-Lago is completed at Palm Beach, Fla., for Postum Cereal head Marjorie Merriweather Post and her husband, E. F. Hutton. Shaped like a crescent with a 75-foot tower and surrounded by 17 acres with guest houses, staff quarters, cutting gardens, and a nine-hole golf course, the 115-room mansion has taken 4 years to complete, three ships from Genoa have brought the Dorian stone for its outer walls, the ancient red roofing tiles have come from Cuba along with black and white marble inlay for the floors, Post has picked up 38,000 antique Spanish tiles for indoor wall decoration and has helped Palm Beach survive an economic depression by hiring all available local craftsmen to work on the $7 million project.
Contractor Kate Gleason, now 62, builds a concrete community at Sausalito, Calif., based on principles of Indian adobe construction (see 1921). Suburbs all over America have begun to follow her example.
Boston's Ritz Hotel opens May 18 at the corner of Arlington and Newberry streets, opposite the Public Garden, with a dining room that will be famous for its scrod breakfast.
Boston's Statler Hotel opens with 1,150 rooms on 14 floors.
Washington's Hay-Adams Hotel opens on Lafayette Square. Armenian-born architect Mihrail Mesrobian, 38, has designed the hotel to replace the Romanesque Hay-Adams houses built in the 1880s by the late Henry Hobson Richardson for author Henry Adams and former secretary of state John Hay.
Chicago's Stevens Hotel opens on Michigan Avenue. The 3,000-room Stevens is the largest hotel in the world (see Hilton, 1945).
Yosemite Park's Ahwanee Hotel opens July 14 with 103 rooms, but most visitors continue to stay at the Curry Village that opened in 1899.
Self-made Midwestern utilities magnate Clarence Geist pays $71,500 in November to acquire the Ritz-Carlton Cloister that opened early last year at Boca Raton, Fla. He will pour $8 million into the place, turning it into the exclusive Boca Raton Club whose members pay only $100 per year in dues but thousands in initiation fees. Plutocrats, entertainment stars, and politicians will arrive at Boca in private railway cars and yachts to enjoy the lavishly appointed club's world-class golf course, swimming pool, and other facilities, but crooked land deals have ended the Florida land boom and architect Addison Mizner is bankrupt.
Los Angeles's Mayflower Hotel opens December 26 across from the Biltmore Hotel on Grand Avenue.
Honolulu's Royal Hawaiian Hotel opens at Waikiki Beach. Alexander & Baldwin has financed the new hotel.
An earthquake at Tango in Japan's Tottori prefecture March 7 leaves 3,020 dead; a quake near Xining, China, May 22 kills an estimated 200,000.
Mississippi River levees give way from Cairo, Ill., to Greenville, Miss., after weeks of incessant rain (see 1926), Pittsburgh is flooded in early January, much of downtown Cincinnati is soon under water, and April flood waters inundate 4 million acres from Iowa to the Gulf of Mexico, killing at least 246 and possibly as many as 1,000, leaving nearly 1 million homeless (blacks and poor whites are especially hard hit), and causing $246 million to $1 billion in property losses. The National Guard is mobilized to work on the levees, and 154 work camps are set up to house the men who fill sandbags, but workers are swept away along with houses, barns, trees, and livestock as the levees crumble. The Mississippi is 125 miles wide at some points, the Red Cross spends twice as much as the federal government to pay for the damage (between them they cover less than 10 percent of the costs), and the disaster drives home the need for a federal effort to deal with a situation that the states cannot address on their own (see Flood Control Act, 1928).
The new Wilson Dam on the Tennessee River controls flooding on that waterway. The first federally-funded multipurpose project, it was initially authorized in 1916 for national defense and has been under construction since 1918 (see TVA, 1933).
A Vermont flood sweeps more than 100 people to their deaths in early November after 11 inches of rainfall in 2 days. The Winooski, Lamoille, and White rivers rise to destroy most of Vermont's covered bridges, the flood waters wash away houses and mills, and they cover 7,000 acres with rock gravel.
Canada's Garibaldi Provincial Park is established in southern British Columbia. Encompassing 760 square miles in the Coast Mountains east of the Cheakamus River 40 miles north of Vancouver, it features the glacier-capped, 8,787-foot Mount Garibaldi.
The mechanical cotton picker perfected by Texas inventor John D. (Daniel) Rust, 35, and his 27-year-old brother Mack will have a profound social impact on the South when marketing of the machine begins in 1949 (see Campbell, 1889). The Rust cotton picker inserts a long spinning spindle with teeth into the cotton boll, winds up the cotton, picks it out, and is kept wet to facilitate removal of the cotton from the teeth; it picks a bale of cotton in one day and will spur migration of blacks to northern cities as it reduces the need for field hands.
A survey of two Mississippi cotton-growing areas reveals that 94 percent of the farmers have their own milk cows.
Harry Steenbock patents his 1923 discovery of vitamin D irradiation and assigns the patent to the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, rejecting all commercial offers (see 1926; Borden's vitamin D fortified milk, 1933; but see also1946).
The U.S. Department of Agriculture establishes a separate Food and Drug Administration (initially the Food, Drug, and Insecticide Administration) to enforce laws that have been enacted since 1907 (see medicine [Sherley Amendment], 1912; Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, 1938).
Your Money's Worth by economist Stuart Chase and Peoria, Ill.-born engineer F. J. (Frederick John) Schlink, 35, states: "We are all Alices in a Wonderland of conflicting claims, bright promises, fancy packages, soaring words, and almost impenetrable ignorance." Schlink has spent several years with the National Bureau of Standards, whose analysts test products before the federal government will buy them; he wonders why private citizens do not have the advantage of such testing (see Consumers' Research, 1929).
England has an epidemic of ergot poisoning from contaminated flour.
Wonder Bread is introduced in a balloon-decorated wrapper by Continental Baking Co. (see 1924). The puffy new white bread stays fresh 2 days longer than ordinary bakery loaves because of additives and superior packaging (see sliced bread, 1930).
Hostess Cakes are introduced by Continental Baking (see Twinkies, 1930).
Lender's Bagel Bakery is founded at West Haven, Conn. to produce the hard glazed rolls that have been known since 1919 as beigels (see 1610; bagel, 1932). Polish baker Harry Lender has recently arrived from Lodz and starts the first such bakery outside of New York City to produce bagels for sale through Jewish delicatessens and bakeries in New Haven.
Gerber Baby Foods has its beginnings at Fremont, Mich., where physicians tell local food processor Daniel F. Gerber, 28, to feed his sick daughter Sally strained peas. Gerber finds that strained baby foods are commercially available but are expensive, sold only in a few parts of the country, and available only at pharmacies, where they may be purchased only with a doctor's prescription. Gerber's father runs the Fremont Canning Co. (see 1928).
General Electric introduces a refrigerator with a "monitor top" containing an hermetically sealed compressor. The noisy, 14-cubic-foot refrigerator sells for $525, few can afford it, but it will make GE the industry leader by 1930 (see 1929).
Saccharin codiscoverer and former Johns Hopkins president Ira Remsen dies at Carmel, Calif., March 4 at age 81.
American Sugar Refining's share of the U.S. sugar market falls to 25 percent, down from nearly 100 percent in 1899, but its 16-year-old Domino brand remains the top-selling table sugar. National Sugar Refining controls 22 percent of the market with its 14-year-old Jack Frost brand, and while 13 other U.S. companies refine imported raw sugar, none has more than a 7 percent share.
Pez peppermint breath mints (for smokers) are introduced at Vienna, taking their name from the German word Pfefferminz. A plastic dispenser will be introduced in 1948, U.S. manufacture will begin in 1952, and Pez will be repositioned as a children's candy in a variety of fruit flavors—grape, lemon, orange, and strawberry—with heads of cartoon characters on the dispensers.
Kool-Aid is introduced by Hastings, Neb., inventor-entrepreneur Edwin E. Perkins, 38, who has built a business selling his Nix-O-Tine tobacco-quitting kit, Onor-Maid flavorings, spices, and the like by direct mail and through door-to-door salesmen. His Fruit Smack soft-drink concentrate comes in six flavors (including cherry and grape) and enables a family to make a pitcherful for pennies, it has been his bestseller, but it comes in heavy bottles that often break, so he has engaged a chemist to reduce the concentrate to a dry powder and renamed it. Within 2 years Perkins will have his entire family weighing out crystals, pouring them into envelopes, pounding the envelopes flat with wooden mallets, and packing them into boxes. He will move the business to Chicago in 1930, and by 1936 will be racking up net sales of $1.5 million.
Borden introduces homogenized milk; other U.S. milk is still sold with cream at the top that must be mixed before the milk is poured.
Marriott's Hot Shoppes have their beginning in a Washington, D.C., root-beer stand that opens at the corner of 14th Street and Park Road Northwest. Using his savings of $1,000 plus $1,500 in borrowed capital, Utah-born entrepreneur J. (John) Willard Marriott, 27, has obtained an exclusive franchise to sell A&W Root Beer in Washington, Baltimore, and Richmond, using syrup obtained from two Westerners named Allen and Wright; his business falls off in the fall, he hires a barbecue cook, his 19-year-old bride, Alice (née Sheets), speaks some Spanish and borrows recipes from the chef of the nearby Mexican Embassy. She makes sauce for hot tamales and chili con carne in the couple's apartment, and the nine-seat root-beer stand will grow into the Marriott Corp., a worldwide empire of Hot Shoppes, Big Boy Coffee Shops, Roy Rogers Family Restaurants, Farrell's Ice Cream Parlours, Palm restaurants, and numerous business, hospital, and other institutional food service operations plus hotels (see architecture [hotels], 1957).
Birth control pioneer Margaret Sanger organizes the first World Population Conference (see 1921).
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