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March 1921

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March 1921
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The following events occurred in March 1921:

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March 4, 1921: Warren G. Harding inaugurated as 26th President of the United States
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March 12–30, 1921: Britain's Cairo Conference determines future of Middle East
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Voters in Upper Silesia cede territory to Germany (orange), Poland (green) and Czechoslovakia (purple) [1]
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March 1, 1921 (Tuesday)

  • The Kronstadt rebellion began at the naval fortress at Kronstadt, located on the island of Kotlin in the Soviet Union outside of St. Petersburg.[2]
  • The results of the first census of the Japanese Empire showed 56,961,140 people in Japan, and 77,005,112 overall (which included Korea, Formosa and Sakhalin).[3]
  • At the London Reparations Conference, Dr. Simons made a counteroffer on behalf of Germany to pay reparations of 30 billion gold marks (equivalent to $7.5 billion U.S. dollars), based on 20 billion already paid against a revised debt of 50 billion. The Allied Premiers, who had demanded an additional 226 billion gold marks ($56.5 billion), rejected the proposal.[4]
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Jules Rimet
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March 2, 1921 (Wednesday)

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March 3, 1921 (Thursday)

  • Almost 900 people died in the sinking of the Singapore ship SS Hong Moh as it approached Swatow after departing Hong Kong with 1,135 passengers and a crew of 48. At 7:20 in the evening, it struck the White Rocks. Rescue did not take place until March 5, after the ship had broken in two, and only 268 people survived.[11]
  • Congress passed a joint resolution declaring that the wartime emergency declared during World War I was over and repealed most of the emergency legislation passed in the U.S. during World War I, including the Sedition Act of 1918. President Wilson, on his last full day in office, signed the repeal of almost all of the "war laws" except for the creation of the War Finance Corporation and the sale of Liberty Bonds, and a prohibition against trading with the enemy nations.[12]
  • The Allied Prime Ministers delivered an ultimatum to Germany to accept, by March 7, the Allied reparations demand of 226 billion marks over 42 years, or face Allied occupation of western German cities.[13][14]
  • On the last full day of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson's term of office, the House of Representatives failed to get the two-thirds majority necessary to override the veto of the Fordney Emergency Tariff Bill, falling 11 votes short of the required number (201 in favor but 132 against).[15]
  • Poland and Romania signed their Convention on Defensive Alliance, pledging for five years to come to each other's defense in the event of an invasion.[citation needed]
  • The Danish Institute of Theoretical Physics (now the Niels Bohr Institute) opened at the University of Copenhagen under the direction of physicist Niels Bohr.[16]
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Prince Hirohito abroad
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March 4, 1921 (Friday)

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Woodrow Wilson and Warren G. Harding on the way to Harding's inauguration
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March 5, 1921 (Saturday)

March 6, 1921 (Sunday)

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Rudolph Valentino on the cover of Photoplay
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March 7, 1921 (Monday)

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March 8, 1921 (Tuesday)

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Spanish Prime Minister Eduardo Dato
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American actor Alan Hale Jr.
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March 9, 1921 (Wednesday)

  • The two college basketball teams with the best win–loss record that played against each other during the 1920–1921 season, the 18 and 1 University of Pennsylvania Quakers and the 12 and 2 Penn State Nittany Lions faced each other at Weightman Hall on the Penn campus in Philadelphia.[32] The game went into overtime after the teams were tied, 17 to 17, at the end of regulation. In extra time, the Lions' Horace "Pip" Koehler was fouled as he shot a successful field goal and, under the rules of the day, the designated free throw shooter, Wilson, was allowed two free throws even if the goal counted. Though Penn's Bill Grave made one long shot seconds later to close the gap to 21 to 19, the Penn State defense was able to prevent any more scoring to win the game.[33][34] Nevertheless, the Helms Foundation would retroactively name Pennsylvania, which would win its last three games for a 21 and 2 record and had defeated most of its opponents by double digits, the best team of the season.[35]

March 10, 1921 (Thursday)

  • Pittsburgh's KDKA-AM made the first live broadcast of a theatrical performance as it transmitted the sounds of an opera from the Davis Theater.
  • Australia's Department of Health began operations, with Walter Massy-Greene as the first Health Minister.
  • U.S. railroads announced that they would reduce wages to most employees by an average of 25 percent in order to save an estimated $600,000,000 per year.
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Princess Helen and Prince Carol
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March 11, 1921 (Friday)

Le Ernest Renan

March 12, 1921 (Saturday)

March 13, 1921 (Sunday)

March 14, 1921 (Monday)

  • The play A Bill of Divorcement, written by Clemence Dane as a West End theatre production, premiered in at St Martin's Theatre in London for the first of 402 performances.[42][43] Lady Dane's futuristic social commentary, set 12 years in the future in a time when women would be allowed to file divorce proceedings, included in the program "The action passes on Christmas Day, 1933. The audience is asked to imagine that the recommendations of the Majority Report of the Royal Commission on Divorce v. Matrimonial Causes have become the law of the land."[44]
  • Died: Patrick Moran (33), Thomas Whelan (22), Frank Flood (19), Patrick Doyle (29), Thomas Bryan (24) and Bernard Ryan (20), all members of the Irish Republican Army, executed in prison in Dublin after being convicted of treason against the crown in a court martial. A crowd of 20,000 people gathered outside the prison walls to pray for the men.[45]

March 15, 1921 (Tuesday)

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Talaat Pasha
  • Former Ottoman Grand Vizier Talaat Pasha, the leader of the Young Turks party and identified as a war criminal by the Allied Commission, was assassinated in Berlin by an Armenian student in reprisal for the 1916 genocide. Talaat, one of the three leaders of the Young Turk Movement, had been walking with his wife when the assassin, who had been following the couple, tapped him on the shoulder, claimed to be a friend, and then shot both of them with a revolver. Shot through the head, Talaat died instantly. The assassin, Soghomon Tehlirian, was seized by witnesses until police could arrive.[46][47]

March 16, 1921 (Wednesday)

  • The Treaty of Moscow was signed between the Grand National Assembly of Turkey and the Soviet Union.[48]
  • The 10th Congress of the Russian Communist Party adjourned with the adoption of numerous closing resolutions. Grigory Zinoviev, a protege of Vladimir Lenin, was made a full member of the party's Politburo and became the chief rival to Joseph Stalin for control of the Party after Lenin's death.[citation needed]
  • The Bolshevik government in the Armenian SSR was overthrown in Yerevan.[47]
  • The Allied Reparations Commission demanded that Germany pay one billion gold marks by March 23, and 12 billion marks by May 1, as its first installment of reparation payments.[49] Germany responded on March 23 that it could not afford to pay the installment even if it felt it was owed.[47]
  • The Anglo-Soviet Trade Agreement was signed as the United Kingdom became the first western nation to decide to begin commercial relations with the Bolshevik government.[50]
  • The Soviet Union recognized the government of the Republic of Turkey and recognized Istanbul as the capital.[47]
  • The U.S. government issued an order forbidding U.S. armed forces personnel from wearing their military uniforms while participating in the St. Patrick's Day scheduled the next day in Boston. The troops were celebrating Evacuation Day at the same time that American supporters of Irish independence were celebrating St. Patrick.[51]
  • Baseball team owner Charles Comiskey sent formal notices of unconditional release to the eight former Chicago White Sox players charged in the "Black Sox Scandal." Comiskey had indefinitely suspended the eight men on September 26. By 1921, only two of the players were still under contract with the White Sox for 1921— Shoeless Joe Jackson and Buck Weaver.[52]

March 17, 1921 (Thursday)

  • The Kronstadt rebellion was suppressed by the Soviet government as the 60,000 troops of the Seventh Red Army retook control of the fortress at 2:00 in the afternoon. The surviving members of the remaining garrison of about 10,000 Soviet Navy sailors and 5,000 soldiers either surrendered or fled towards the border with Finland. Roughly 800 soldiers arrived in Helsinki by the end of the day. Before evacuating to safety, the Kronstadt Revolutionary Committee destroyed the Soviet Navy warships Petropavlovsk and Sebastopol.[53]
  • Bonar Law resigned as Leader of the Opposition in the British House of Commons.[47]
  • Organized crime mob enforcer Albert Anastasia was convicted of the murder of a longshoreman, George Turino, and sentenced to be executed at the Sing Sing State Prison in Ossining, New York. Due to a legal technicality, however, the conviction would be reversed and Anastasia won the right to a new trial in 1922. Before he could be tried again, four of the original prosecution witnesses would disappear, and Anastasia would be released from prison.[54]
  • Radio station 9JR began broadcasting in the railroad junction town of Tuscola, Illinois, initially with the concept of broadcasting current grain price information to subscribing customers.[citation needed]
  • Negotiators for the Bolshevik Soviet government and the Menshevik Georgian government negotiated a ceasefire effectively clearing the way for the Soviet Army to take over the rest of Georgia while allowing the government leaders to safely evacuate to France. Georgia's Defense Minister Grigol Lordkipanidze and Soviet Communist representative Avel Enukidze concluded the agreement in Kutaisi.[citation needed]
  • The parliament of Poland adopted a new Constitution, to take effect on June 1 and to formally declare Poland to be a republic governed by a president.[citation needed]
  • Died: Frank W. Gunsaulus, 65, American Congregationalist minister and educator who founded the Armour Institute in 1893 by persuading meatpacking magnate Philip Danforth Armour, Sr. to donate the money. Armour Institute would merge with Lewis Institute in 1940 to create the Illinois Institute of Technology (b. 1856)[citation needed]

March 18, 1921 (Friday)

March 19, 1921 (Saturday)

  • The Crossbarry ambush, the largest battle of the Irish War of Independence by number of participants, took place near Crossbarry, County Cork as Tom Barry and 103 IRA volunteers fought their way out of being surrounded by a force of 1,200 British troops.[57]
  • In Chicago, a dust explosion at the world's largest grain elevator killed at least four Armour Company employees, shattered windows within a five-mile (eight-kilometer) radius from the intersection of 122nd Street and Torrence Avenue, and caused damage estimated at $10,000,000 (equivalent to $142,000,000 in 2020) including the destruction of 7.5 million bushels (roughly 190,000 metric tons) of corn.[58] The grain elevator itself, owned by the Northwestern Terminal Company, was destroyed within seconds.
  • Born: Tommy Cooper, Welsh comedian and magician who died on live television during a performance; in Caerphilly, Glamorgan, Wales (d. 1984)[59]

March 20, 1921 (Sunday)

  • A plebiscite was held in Upper Silesia on whether to join Poland or remain part of Germany.[60] From the German point of view, the outcome of the vote was considered critical because the loss of the territory would make it more difficult to meet the Allied Reparations Commission terms and lead to the collapse of the nation's industrial economy.[61] The New York Times noted at the time that the fate "of the whole of Upper Silesia is not actually decided by the plebiscite. That is the task of the Supreme Council, which in making a decision has to have regard not only to the voice of the population, but also the geographical and economic conditions of administration. The plebiscite results present them with a puzzle requiring all their wit and ingenuity to solve."[62] Based on the results of individual towns and villages, the Council provided for most of Silesia to remain part of Germany, though the eastern section went to Poland and a southwestern section (including Hultschin/Hlučín) already ceded to Czechoslovakia.

March 21, 1921 (Monday)

  • The Soviet Union implemented its New Economic Policy (Novaya Ekonomicheskaya Politika or NEP) by decree of Vladimir Lenin and the All-Russian Communist Party. The system was described as a free-market economy under the control of the state. The NEP included a new tax on food production, the prodovolstvenniy nalog, abbreviated to prodnalog.[63] Western observers expressed doubt about Lenin's sincerity.[64] After Lenin's death, Joseph Stalin would abandon the NEP in favor of a transition to collectivization of agriculture and a shift to industrialization.
  • At Batumi, the Constituent Assembly of Georgia held its last session and voted to abandon the country to the Bolshevik invaders.
  • The Mandate for Palestine was amended by Britain to provide for a Palestinian kingdom of Transjordan on the opposite side of the Jordan River from the Zionist state proposed in 1918.[citation needed]
  • Austen Chamberlain was elected to succeed Bonar Law as Leader of the Opposition in the British House of Commons.[47]
  • The Headford Ambush took place as the Irish Republican Army stopped and attacked a train carrying a regiment of 30 of the British Army's Royal Fusiliers, killing nine of them.[65] The Headford Junction was located in County Kerry near Killarney.
  • Born: Vasily Stalin, Soviet general and the son of Joseph Stalin, whose titles were stripped from him after Stalin's death in 1953; in Moscow, Russian SFSR (present-day Russia) (d. 1962)[66]

March 22, 1921 (Tuesday)

March 23, 1921 (Wednesday)

March 24, 1921 (Thursday)

  • In an event "said to be unprecedented in Federal prison annals," convicted Socialist politician Eugene V. Debs was released temporarily from the federal prison in Atlanta to travel, unguarded, to Washington DC, so that he could present his case for a presidential pardon to U.S. Attorney General Harry Daugherty. The furlough from prison, granted by the federal prison warden with the permission of President Harding and Daugherty, allowed Debs to travel "on his own personal recognizance and on his word that he would come direct to Washington and return to prison immediately after the conference."[71] After arriving by train at 10:00 in the morning, dressed in a regular suit, Debs conferred privately with the Attorney General for a little more than three hours, then left "at 3:30 o'clock with the understanding that he would return at once to Atlanta." Debs reported back to the Atlanta federal prison the next afternoon, where he still had seven years remaining on a ten-year sentence. In December, Harding granted Debs a presidential pardon.
  • The Tribunals of Inquiry (Evidence) Act 1921 was given royal assent and took effect immediately, providing for special tribunals to be set up by the British Secretary of State for criminal investigations.[citation needed]
  • Thirty-one people were killed and 100 injured when a nitroglycerin bomb exploded in Milan at the Kursaal Diana, where a crowd of theatre goers was watching a performance of the operetta Die blaue Mazur by Franz Lehár.[72]
  • Rioting by German Communists in Eisleben and in Hettstadt killed 30 people near Hamburg.[73] The Communist uprising was halted entirely by March 26.[47]
  • Born:
  • Died: James Gibbons, 86, American Catholic prelate, served as the Archbishop of Baltimore, the second American to ever be selected as Roman Catholic Cardinal (b. 1834)[74]

March 25, 1921 (Friday)

  • The U.S. Navy tugboat USS Conestoga departed for sea for the last time, leaving the Mare Island Naval Base north of San Francisco with a crew of 56 on a voyage to San Diego. The wreckage of the ship would be discovered 88 years later 20 miles (32 km) west of California[75] and the U.S. Navy would confirm that USS Conestoga had been found on March 25, 2016, the 95th anniversary of its disappearance.[76]
  • U.S. Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes replied to a March 22 request by the Soviet Union for a trade agreement, stating that the U.S. would not resume relations until "a regime of productive order" was established in Moscow. Secretary Hughes commented that the U.S. government "views with deep sympathy and grave concern the plight of the people of Russia" but added that "It is manifest to this Government that in existing circumstances there is no assurance for the development of trade." Hughes added that "if fundamental changes are contemplated, involving due regard for the protection of persons and property and the establishment of conditions essential to the maintenance of commerce, this Government will be glad to have convincing evidence of the consummation of such changes, and until this evidence is supplied this Government is unable to perceive that there is any proper basis for considering trade relations."[77]

March 26, 1921 (Saturday)

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Former Emperor Karl I, King Karoly IV

March 27, 1921 (Sunday)

March 28, 1921 (Monday)

March 29, 1921 (Tuesday)

  • Charles IV, the last monarch of Austria-Hungary, returned to Budapest from his exile in Switzerland in an effort to regain his throne as King of Hungary, and conferred with the regent, Admiral Nicholas Horthy.[47]
  • Britain's leftist Independent Labour Party voted, 521 to 97, to reject the 21 points demanded by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union for membership in Comintern.[47]
  • The Republic of China signed a contract with the Federal Telegraph Company of the U.S. to build the most powerful radio station in the world.[47]
  • Born: R. E. Martadinata, Indonesian Navy admiral and diplomat, co-founder of the Indonesian Navy; as Eddy Martadinata, in Bandung, West Java, Dutch East Indies (present-day Indonesia) (d. 1966, killed in helicopter crash)[citation needed]
  • Died: John Burroughs, 83, American naturalist and author (b. 1837)[78]

March 30, 1921 (Wednesday)

March 31, 1921 (Thursday)

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