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January 1921

Month in 1921 From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

January 1921
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The following events occurred in January 1921:

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January 25, 1921: "Robots" introduced in fiction by Karel Čapek
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January 21, 1921: American hit film The Kid, with Charlie Chaplin and Jackie Coogan, premieres
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January 20, 1921: All 56 crew of British sub HMS K5 killed in sinking
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January 1, 1921 (Saturday)

  • E. W. Scripps and William Emerson Ritter founded Science Service, later renamed Society for Science & the Public in the United States, with the goal of keeping the public informed of scientific developments.[1]
  • The Allied forces announced that the Turkish government at Constantinople would be permitted to use 400,000 Turkish Pounds worth of gold from the Imperial Ottoman Bank for funds for the new government's treasury.[2]
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The new Ambassador Hotel
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January 2, 1921 (Sunday)

  • The Spanish liner Santa Isabel (Iquique) sank after running aground during a storm the night before, and striking rocks off the coast of Villa Garcia, killing 244 of the people on board.[10] Most of the passengers and crew were below deck because of the rough weather.[11]
  • The British government issued an order to residents of Ireland requiring all households to post a list on their doors of the people residing in the dwelling, on penalty of criminal proceedings.[12]
  • Gabriele D'Annunzio ended his attempt to take over Fiume and abandoned the Italian Regency of Carnaro proclaimed by him in 1919.[12]
  • Cruzeiro Esporte Clube, one of Brazil's most successful soccer football teams, was founded in Belo Horizonte.
  • Pittsburgh's KDKA (AM) radio station made the first live broadcast of a church service, and the first remote broadcast (using a telephone line to transmit the signal to the broadcasting transmitter), as it aired the Sunday services from Calvary Episcopal Church. The National Religious Broadcasters association would celebrate the anniversary half a century later by making "the first international religious broadcast to be transmitted live by satellite" on January 27, 1971.[13]
  • Word arrived that the U.S. Navy balloon A-5598, which had been missing since the day after its departure from Rockaway, New York on December 13, had been located after its crash landing 20 miles (32 km) north of Moose Factory, Ontario. The three aeronauts, U.S. Navy Lieutenants Louis A. Kloor Jr. (mission commander); Stephen A. Farrell (pilot) and Walter Hinton (ground observer), had been missing and were found alive. The trio of aeronauts recovered at Moose Factory, and arrived at the nearest town on a railway line, Mattice on January 11.[14][12] The group, stranded in the wilderness, narrowly avoiding coming down in the James Bay, had wandered for four days before they located a Cree Indian fur trader who initially mistook them for Canadian revenue agents, and then guided the Americans to safety.[15] The group returned to a heroes' welcome in New York City on January 14.[16]
  • Died:
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January 3, 1921 (Monday)

  • At 12:30 in the afternoon Milwaukee's radio station 9XM delivered the first weather forecast to be read on commercial radio, followed by the message in Morse code.[19] Radio weather forecasts had previously been heard in the UK and US.
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The Capitol before the fire
  • A fire destroyed the West Virginia State Capitol Building in Charleston. The blaze started about 5:00 in the afternoon in a small room containing paper records of the state Public Service Commission and quickly spread, leaving only the outer shell of the building. An electrician and a fireman were killed in the collapse of a section of the roof.[20] As a result, a 1921 session of the West Virginia Legislature created a seven-member "Capitol Building Commission", which would ultimately complete construction of the present Capitol building in 1932.[citation needed]
  • Germany filed its reply to France's disarmament ultimatum over the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. The letter from German Chancellor Constantin Fehrenbach recited that Germany had done its best to adhere to the terms of the agreement, turning over 50,000 cannons, 60,000 machine guns, 5,000,000 rifles and 20,000 grenade launchers, but the fulfillment of the terms of the treaty to the letter had proven impossible.[12]
  • Amelia Earhart had her first flying lesson, given at Kinner Field, in what is now South Gate, California. Her teacher was Neta Snook, a pioneer female aviator who used a surplus Curtiss JN-4 "Canuck" for training.[21]
  • Born: Jean-Louis Koszul, French mathematician and algebraic topology theorist for whom the Koszul complex is named; in Strasbourg, France (d. 2018)[22]

January 4, 1921 (Tuesday)

  • The U.S. House of Representatives voted 250 to 66 to override the veto made by U.S. President Wilson of the resolution to reviving the War Finance Corporation. The day before, the U.S. Senate had voted 53 to 5 to override.[12]
  • Britain extended martial law to four additional counties in Ireland— County Clare, County Waterford, County Wexford and County Kilkenny.[12]
  • The Mayor of Davenport, Iowa, C. L. Bargwald, elected as a candidate of the Socialist Party of America along with a majority of the city aldermen, announced that he was leaving the Socialist Party and called the leftist aldermen "disciples of Lenin, with whom no one could compromise."[23] Over the previous six months, the mayor said, the Socialist majority had blocked any conservative proposal made by him and "forced a program of radical legislation on the city." Mayor Bargwald, who professed to be a follower of Leon Trotsky rather than Vladimir Lenin, said of the SPA "I'm through with them. The principles of Trotsky have no place in America."
  • Born: Pedro Richter Prada, Peruvian General, served as Peru's Interior Minister from 1971 to 1975, then as Prime Minister of Peru and Defense Minister from 1979 to 1980, later charged in absentia in Italy for the murder of 25 Italian citizens; in Ayacucho, Peru (d. 2017)[citation needed]
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January 5, 1921 (Wednesday)

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Times Square in 1921
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January 6, 1921 (Thursday)

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January 7, 1921 (Friday)

Central Lithuania
  • The Republic of Central Lithuania, a puppet state financed by Poland around the rebellion of Lucjan Żeligowski, was established with a capital in Vilnius under Żeligowski's rule. Poland annexed the area a little less than 18 months later, on March 24, 1922. On October 12, 1920, Żeligowski announced the creation of a provisional government. Soon the courts and the police were formed by his decree of January 7, 1921, and the civil rights of Central Lithuania were granted to all people who lived in the area on January 1, 1919.[citation needed]
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Speaker Smith
  • The British Columbia House of Assembly elected Mary Ellen Smith of Vancouver as Speaker of the Assembly, the first woman legislative leader in North America and in the British Empire.[12]
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January 8, 1921 (Saturday)

  • Walker D. Hines, the American arbitrator who had been selected by the Allies to make rulings concerning the disbursement of German munitions, assigned 13½ percent of Germany's Rhine river fleet of barges and tugs to France.[12]
  • U.S. Navy Lieutenant Warren H. Langdon was shot by a Japanese sentry in Vladivostok, part of the area of Russia occupied by American and Japanese troops during the Bolshevik Revolution.[12]
  • Died: Béatrice La Palme, 42, Canadian singer and musician (b. 1878)[29]
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January 9, 1921 (Sunday)

January 10, 1921 (Monday)

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January 11, 1921 (Tuesday)

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January 12, 1921 (Wednesday)

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Premier Georges Leygues
  • France's Premier Georges Leygues and his government lost a vote of no confidence held in the National Assembly, by a margin of 463 to 125 expressing their dissatisfaction with his failure to enforce reparations from Germany.[39]
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Gervase Elwes

January 13, 1921 (Thursday)

January 14, 1921 (Friday)

  • In a bout for the world lightweight boxing championship, held before 12,000 spectators at Madison Square Garden in New York, defending champion Benny Leonard retained his title even after almost being counted out in the first round.[43] Felled by challenger Ritchie Mitchell in the first round. Leonard came within one second of being counted out as referee Johnny Houkup reached nine, before getting back up and knocking Mitchell down for the count of nine, getting back up, then twice more before the end of the round. Mitchell was knocked down again by Leonard for the count of nine in the sixth round, and again got back up. After knocking down Mitchell twice more, Leonard was given the win as the referee ended the fight.
  • Born: Murray Bookchin, American environmentalist and pioneer in the ecology movement; in New York City, United States (d. 2006)[44]

January 15, 1921 (Saturday)

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U.S. Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover
  • The first live radio broadcast of a public address from a remote location took place as incoming U.S. Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover gave a speech about humanitarian aid to Europe. The speech was made at the Duquesne Club in Pittsburgh and relayed by telephone line to radio station KDKA, ten miles away. According to KDKA's owner, the broadcast would be strong enough to be picked up by amateur radio operators up to 1,000 miles (1,600 km) away on wavelength of 330 meters (equivalent to the 910 kHz frequency on AM radio).[47]

January 16, 1921 (Sunday)

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Premier Aristide Briand
  • Aristide Briand formed a new government of France, presenting the President with a list of cabinet ministers with himself as the Prime Minister as an alternative to reappointing Raymond Poincare.[48]
  • With the departure of Gabriele d'Annunzio, General Caviglia of the Italian Army ended the blockade of Fiume.[49]

January 17, 1921 (Monday)

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P. T. Selbit demonstrating sawing a woman in half trick in 1937
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Austin Rice

January 18, 1921 (Tuesday)

January 19, 1921 (Wednesday)

  • A treaty to merge the nations of El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Costa Rica into a single republic, the United Provinces of Central America (Provincias Unidas de Centroamérica) was signed in San José, Costa Rica. The attempt to recreate the Federal Republic of Central America, that had existed from 1823 to 1841 before breaking into five nations, did not include Nicaragua and would not go further than the selection of a provisional council of delegates from each state, and none of the signatories ever ratified the treaty.[52]
  • The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly rejected the Reapportionment Bill that called for the number of U.S. representatives to be increased from 435 to 483. With the number of representatives remaining at 435, each Congressional district would now represent an average of 242,267 people rather than the 1912 number of one for every 218,979.[52]
  • Born: Patricia Highsmith, American novelist of psychological thrillers, known for the Tom Ripley series; as Mary Patricia Plangman, in Fort Worth, Texas, United States (d. 1995)[62]

January 20, 1921 (Thursday)

January 21, 1921 (Friday)

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Amadeo Bordiga

January 22, 1921 (Saturday)

  • The Soviet government announced, in Pravda, an immediate one-third reduction in the daily ration of bread for cities, in the middle of winter during an ongoing famine prompted by a drought and poor grain harvest in 1920. "Severe though it was," a historian[who?] would note later, "the reduction apparently was unavoidable. Heavy snows and shortages of fuel had held up food trains from Siberia and the northern Caucasus, where surpluses had been gathered to feed the hungry towns of the center and north."[79] The unpopular decision led to protests in cities throughout the Soviet Union, the most prominent of which would be the Kronstadt rebellion in March.[citation needed]
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Frank A. Vanderlip
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Prince Gustaf
  • Sweden's Crown Prince Gustaf who would later reign from 1950 to 1973 as King Gustaf VI Adolf, saved the life of a British sailor in Stockholm's harbor. The man, not otherwise identified, had fallen into deep waters from a vessel that was in port, and Prince Gustaf saw the man in danger of drowning.[81]

January 23, 1921 (Sunday)

January 24, 1921 (Monday)

  • An assault by land and air from British forces on Somaliland against the "Mad Mullah," Mohammed Abdullah Hassan, captured or killed most of the leaders. The Mullah himself was thought to have escaped, but had actually died a month earlier.[52]
  • The U.S. Department of State deported Ludwig C.A.K. Martens, who had purported to represent the Soviet Union as an unrecognized Ambassador.[52]
  • A lynch mob in Warrenton, North Carolina broke into the Warren County Jail and forcibly removed and murdered two of the 13 African-Americans arrested in a race riot the day before, which had injured five white and three black people.[85] The two men identified by the mob leaders as the instigators of the riot, Alfred Williams and Plummer Bullock, were taken into a forest one mile outside of town and "riddled with bullets."
  • Born: Beatrice Mintz, American embryologist and genetic engineer; in New York City, United States (d. 2022)[citation needed]

January 25, 1921 (Tuesday)

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Dr. Sedgwick
  • Karel Čapek's popular science-fiction play R.U.R. premiered in Prague in Czechoslovakia[86] and introduced a new word, robot, to the languages of the world. "R.U.R." was "Rossumovi Univerzální Roboti", the name of the company, described in the opening exposition as having been created by Dr. Rossum to build artificial servants. Rendered in English as "Rossum's Universal Robots," R.U.R. was translated by Paul Selver for performance in the United States by New York's Theatre Guild at the Garrick Theatre. The Guild noted that "Rossum's Universal Robots" was "best translated as 'Knowall's Universal Hands'."[87] A literary critic[who?] would note later, "Before R.U.R., artificially created anthropoids, like Frankenstein's monster or modern versions of the Jewish legend of the golem, might have acted destructively on a small scale; but Čapek seems to have been the first to see robots as an extension of the Industrial Revolution, and hence to grant them a reach capable of global transformation. Though his robots are closer to what we now might call androids, only a pedant would refuse Čapek honors as the father of the robot apocalypse.[88]
  • The U.S. freighter SS Hewitt, at sea since its departure from Port Arthur, Texas on January 20, was last seen about 250 nautical miles (460 km; 290 mi) off of the coast of Florida after making its last regular radio call. All 42 of its crew were lost.[89]
  • Born: Josef Holeček, Czechoslovakian Olympic canoe rower, gold medalist at the 1948 and the 1952 Olympics; in Říčany (now in the Czech Republic) (d. 2005)[citation needed]
  • Died: William T. Sedgwick, 65, American epidemiologist and reformer of public health services in the United States (b. 1855)[citation needed]

January 26, 1921 (Wednesday)

  • Women won the right to vote in Sweden with an amendment to the law passed by its parliament, the Riksdag.[90] Women would first be able to exercise their new right on September 10 in the parliamentary elections.
  • The five Allied nations of the Supreme War Council, victors in World War One, gave diplomatic recognition to the Republic of Estonia and to the Republic of Latvia.[91] The U.S. would follow in 1922, along with other nations.
  • The collision of two trains killed 17 people near the Welsh village of Abermule.[92] On the Cambrian Railway, the northeast-bound express train from Aberystwyth to Shrewsbury was on the same single line track as the southwest-bound local train from Welshpool to Aberystwyth when the two struck each other at 12:30 in the afternoon.[93][94]
  • Convicted murderer Henry Lowery, an African-American, was kidnapped from a train taking him to the Texas State Penitentiary, then tortured and burned to death in a lynching so gruesome that the Governor of Arkansas called it "the most disreputable act ever committed in Arkansas."[95] A mob of 25 men in "six high-powered automobiles," waited for the train to stop at the train station in Sardis, Mississippi, overpowered two sheriff's deputies transporting Lowery, then drove him to Nodena, Arkansas. According to reports, Lowrey was chained to a log and covered with brush, and "It was forty minutes before the last death agony died away and the negro's charred body lay still in death." Lowrey's captors repeatedly turned him over and added oil to the pyre "to hasten the burning."[96]
  • In a National Hockey League game in Montreal, the original Ottawa Senators left their match with the Montreal Canadiens with a little more than five minutes to play, as a protest against the officiating of referee Cooper Smeaton.[97] As the Ottawa players departed, Smeaton allowed the game continue for a little longer with only the six Canadiens facing a goal with no goaltender or defenders, and allowed Newsy Lalonde and Amos Arbour to make two additional scores before sounding the gong to end the action.[98] The Senators, who would go on to win the Stanley Cup at season's end, were fined $500.
  • Born:

January 27, 1921 (Thursday)

January 28, 1921 (Friday)

  • The Supreme War Council of the European Allied victors in World War One met at Paris and adjusted the total reparations that Germany would have to pay under the Treaty of Versailles, in addition to a 42-year tax of German exports at the rate of 12½% ad valorem, and providing a variable amount of annuities owed, with a range of two billion to six billion Deutschmarks in gold between 1921 and May 1, 1963.[99] Under the plan, Germany would pay two billion per year for the first five years, four billion annually from 1926 to 1930, and six billion per year from 1931 to 1963, a total of 222 billion gold marks (equivalent at the time to $55,500,000,000 in U.S. dollars).[100]
  • Dr. Robert W. Wood of Johns Hopkins University gave the first demonstration of his invention of a lamp that used filters to eliminate visible light while projecting ultraviolet UV-A light. More commonly referred to as "black light", the lamp revealed chemicals not readily detectable in ordinary light. As a result, Dr. Wood referred to his creation as the "chemical eye."[101]
  • R-34, the first aircraft to cross the Atlantic Ocean, was destroyed by heavy winds after its arrival at the Royal Naval Air Station at Howden in East Yorkshire. The British dirigible was one of the United Kingdom's most expensive aircraft, valued at £250,000[102] equivalent to 12.3 million pounds sterling (or $15.8 million U.S. dollars) today.[103]

January 29, 1921 (Saturday)

  • The U.S. state of Washington was struck by the Great Olympic Blowdown, the most powerful storm in the state's history up to that time. The high winds swept from the Pacific Ocean across the Olympic Peninsula and caused damage as far east as Walla Walla. Although only two people were killed, the winds of up to 113 miles per hour (182 km/h) knocked down millions of trees, including over 40% of those growing on the southwest side of the Olympic Mountains. Hundreds of farm animals were killed by the flying debris, and the small community of La Push, Washington had 16 homes destroyed.[104]
  • The Allied Council relinquished some of its financial claims against the former Austro-Hungarian Empire.[52]
  • The New York Yankees baseball team announced that it would construct its own stadium in the Bronx, no longer sharing Manhattan's Polo Grounds with the New York Giants baseball team. The plan was to build Yankee Stadium on the site of the Hebrew Orphan Asylum, bounded by Broadway, Hamilton Place, 138th Street and 136th Street, with construction to begin in June (though the plan was later changed, and the stadium built on the site of a lumberyard purchased from William Waldorf Astor).[105]
  • The Supreme Court of France reversed the convictions of six French soldiers who had been wrongfully convicted of desertion and executed in 1914, and awarded a lifetime pension of 2,000 French francs per year to their widows, as well as 1,000 francs to their minor children. Their commanding officer, a French Army lieutenant, later admitted that he had given the men the order to retreat and had denied it during their trial.[106]
  • Born: Mustafa Ben Halim, Egyptian-born Libyan politician, Prime Minister of Libya serving King Idris from 1954 to 1957; in Alexandria, Sultanate of Egypt (present-day Egypt) (d. 2021)[citation needed]
  • Died: Alfred Tredway White, 74, American philanthropist and housing reformer who built quality low-income apartment buildings to replace tenements in Brooklyn during the late 19th century; drowned after falling through thin ice while skating (b. 1846)[107]

January 30, 1921 (Sunday)

  • Twelve guests— six men and six women— died in a fire at the Colonial Hotel in Hoboken, New Jersey, United States; three others were seriously injured. The fire was caused by another guest who left a lit cigar smoldering in his room when he went out.[108][109] The cigar set fire to drapery, and the flames then spread to other rooms.
  • Died: John Francis Murphy, 67, American landscape painter; died of pneumonia (b. 1853)[citation needed]

January 31, 1921 (Monday)

  • The commercial sailing cargo schooner Carroll A. Deering was found after it had run aground off of the coast of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina in choppy waters, but none of its crew of 10 people were ever seen again.[110] The last communication from the Deering had been on January 28 when it attempted to hail a light ship, and was spotted on January 29 moving toward the Diamond Shoals. The only living thing on board was the ship's mascot, a parrot.[111] When the U.S. Coast Guard was finally able to board the ship on February 4, investigators found that both of the ship's lifeboats had been taken down and evidence that the evacuation had happened quickly. The fate of the Carroll A. Deering has remained a mystery for almost a century.[112]
  • With less than five weeks left in his term, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson announced that he would not commute the prison sentence of Socialist Party leader Eugene V. Debs, despite the recommendations of Wilson's anti-Communist Attorney General, A. Mitchell Palmer to release Debs on February 12 for Lincoln's birthday.[113] Debs had slightly less than five years remaining of a 10-year prison sentence for espionage and was incarcerated at the U.S. Penitentiary in Atlanta.
  • Born:
  • Died: Frederic Hale Parkhurst, 56, Governor of Maine, of pneumonia, 26 days after his inauguration.[114] Parkhurst became ill after winning the general election in September. The president pro tempore of the Maine Senate, Percival P. Baxter, served the remaining 3 years and 11 months of Parkhurst's term.

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