1925: Information and Much More from Answers.com
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Former German chancellor Gustav Stresemann initiates a move toward rapprochement with a note written February 9 and makes arrangements to meet with French and British foreign ministers at the Swiss city of Locarno. The first president of the German Reich Friedrich Ebert dies at Berlin February 28 at age 53 after 6 years of fighting left- and right-wing extremists, the 77-year-old war hero Paul von Hindenburg wins election to replace Ebert despite vigorous opposition from Gustav Stresemann; his margin of victory is only 904,000 votes.
An arms traffic convention signed June 17 governs international trade in arms and munitions. The Geneva Protocol signed that day pledges signatory nations to renounce first use of biological and chemical agents in warfare but does not bar them from stockpiling such weapons or selling them to others (see chlorine, 1915; mustard gas, 1917). Japan refuses to sign (see Unit 731, 1936; Biological Weapons Convention, 1972; Chemical Weapons Convention, 1993). Britain's Conservative government rejects a Geneva protocol for the peaceful settlements of international disputes. Czechoslovakia's Eduard Benes and Greece's Nicolaos Sokrates Polites have drafted the protocol, but it has met with opposition from the Dominion governments such as that of Canada's Raoul Dandurand, who has said, "We live in a fireproof house, far from inflammable materials."
Aircraft designer Ernst Heinkel designs the first airplane catapult (see 1921). He has been working in secret for the Japanese Imperial Navy, his device is mounted on the battleship Nagato, and the Japanese use it to launch his He-26, built with an engine purchased from the British-owned firm Napier-Lion (see transportation, 1939).
The first part of Mein Kampf (My Struggle) by Adolf Hitler appears in the fall as the German political agitator recruits more followers, having been released from prison early in the year (see beer hall putsch, 1923). Hitler has dictated the book while under confinement to his Alexandria-born aide (Walter Richard) Rudolf Hess, 31, who was seriously injured at Verdun in August 1917. Hitler has met Rhenish-born National Socialist Party propaganda editor Joseph (Paul) Goebbels, 27, during the summer, Goebbels (who has a doctorate in literature from Heidelberg) has allegedly advised him, "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it," and Hitler will complete his book in 1927, saying, "The great masses of the people . . . will more easily fall victims to a great lie than to a small one" (see 1926; Hitler, 1927).
The Locarno Conference of October 5 to 16 results in the Locarno Treaty signed December 1 to guarantee Franco-German and Belgo-German frontiers by mutual agreement, by arbitration treaties between World War antagonists, and by mutual assistance treaties that give Europe some sense of security. Political theorist and legal expert Hugo Preuss has died at his native Berlin October 9 at age 64 while Gustav Stresemann, Aristide Briand, and British foreign secretary (Joseph) Austen Chamberlain, 62, were negotiating the treaty. Stresemann has broadcast an address November 3, telling his fellow Germans, "Locarno may be interpreted as signifying that the states of Europe at last realize that they cannot go on making war upon each other without being involved in common ruin." Chamberlain receives the Nobel peace prize; Briand and Stresemann will share the prize next year.
Former French Army commander Gen. Charles Lanrezac dies at Neuilly-sur-Seine January 18 at age 72. A new government takes office at Paris April 17 with former premier Paul Painlévy as premier once again (see 1917). He lost last year's presidential election to Gaston Domergue but has been appointed to his old position and heads the cabinet until November 22. France recognizes that Germany has not bound herself against aggression to the south and east, her alliances are faltering, and her leaders worry about German aggression (see Maginot Line, 1929).
The Soviet news agency announces January 23 that former Russian general (and governor of Turkestan) Alexei N. Kuropatkin has died at age 76 in the Pakov district town of Shemshurini; Josef Stalin dismisses Leon Trotsky from his position as people's commissar for war in January and replaces him with Mikhail V. Frunze, who dies at Moscow October 31 at age 40, having introduced compulsory military service and standardized military drills, formations, and uniforms; Soviet authorities catch spy Sidney Reilly, who has claimed that he once persuaded the British mission to Moscow to finance a scheme to destroy the Bolsheviks by parading Lenin and Trotsky without their trousers through the streets of Moscow (see 1918). Executed November 25 at age 51, Reilly had become a legend.
Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan become Soviet Socialist republics.
Finland's president Kaarlo Stahlberg decides not to run for reelection and is succeeded by the Agrarian Party candidate Lauri Kristian Relander (see 1919; 1926).
Former British foreign secretary and viceroy of India George N. Curzon, Marquis Curzon of Keddleston, dies at London March 20 at age 66; former British Expeditionary Force commander Sir John French, earl of Ypres, at Deal, Kent, May 22 at age 72.
Norway annexes the fisheries-rich island of Spitsbergen August 14 under the terms of a 1920 treaty.
A new Federal Corrupt Practices Act passed by Congress February 28 makes it "unlawful for any national bank, or any corporation . . . to make a contribution or expenditure in connection with any election to any political office" (see 1910) act, but the new law permits an individual donor to give up to $5,000 to a political campaign committee and places no limit on the number of committees that may receive such contributions (see Hatch Act, 1939).
Civil War general and Indian fighter Nelson A. Miles dies at Washington, D.C., May 15 at age 85; Sen. Robert M. "Fighting Bob" La Follette (R. Wis.) at Washington, D.C., June 18 at age 70.
A U.S. Navy seaplane goes down on a nonstop flight from San Francisco to Hawaii September 1 and its pilot is lost. The 2-year-old U.S. Navy rigid airship Shenandoah is lost in a storm over southeastern Ohio September 4 while on a goodwill mission, killing its captain and 14 crew members. Col. William "Billy" Mitchell issues a 6,000-word statement from Texas denouncing U.S. military leaders for "criminal negligence" in paying so little attention to the safety of airmen and failing to see the potential of air power (see 1921). Charged with insubordination, he goes on trial before a court martial at Washington, D.C., October 28; the hearing continues for 7 weeks; Mitchell stands by his statement; and the board finds him guilty, suspending him from rank and command, and sentencing him to forfeiture of pay and allowances for 5 years. President Coolidge approves the verdict but allows Mitchell full subsistence and half pay. Mitchell refuses to be "an object of government charity," and he resigns from the army effective February 1 of next year (see 1926).
Former British colonial administrator Alfred Milner, 1st Viscount Milner of St. James's and Cape Town, dies at Sturry Court outside Canterbury May 13 at age 71; former British colonial administrator Sir George Goldie at London August 20 at age 79, having destroyed his papers and pronounced a curse on any of his children who presumed to write about him after his death. Goldie's work to develop northern Nigeria was in some ways equal to that of the late Cecil Rhodes elsewhere in Africa, but he did not share Rhodes's flamboyance.
Britain declares Cyprus a crown colony (see 1914; 1960).
Former Spanish prime minister Antonio Maura dies at Torrelodones December 13 at age 72.
Syria is created January 1 by a union of Damascus and Aleppo with French general Maurice Sarrail, 69, as high commissioner (see 1922). A People's Party organized February 9 demands unity of Syrian states and independence. A great insurrection of the Druse (Druze) against French rule in Lebanon begins July 18 following the arrest and detention of Druse notables who had been invited by Gen. Sarrail to a conference at Damascus. The French show favoritism toward Christians, say the Druse leaders; their secretive, monotheistic religious sect has survived since the early 11th century despite the fact that it permits no conversion and no intermarriage. Druse members speak a form of Farsi, and their forces soon control the countryside, spreading into Syria. Damascus rises October 14 at the sight of rebel corpses, the French withdraw from the city, French cannon bombard Damascus October 18 and 19, tank and air attacks follow. Henri de Jouvenal is appointed high commissioner November 6, but the unrest continues (see 1926).
Persia's majlis gives Reza Khan Pahlevi dictatorial powers in February, and it declares Ahmad Shah deposed October 31 while he is away in Paris, ending the Kajar dynasty that has ruled since 1795 (see 1924); Reza Khan has ruled the country as prime minister since October 1923, the assembly proclaims him shah December 13, and Reza Shah Pahlevi begins a reign that will continue until he abdicates in 1941.
Japan adopts universal male suffrage after a 10-year campaign by former minister of justice Yukio Ozaki, now 66, who continues to fight for democratic principles and has the support of Prime Minister Kato.
China's republican leader Sun Yat-Sen dies of cancer at Beijing (Peking) March 12 at age 57. Sun's Guomindang (Kuomintang) army controls Guangzhou (Canton) and surrounding areas. Students at Shanghai demonstrate against "unequal treaties" May 30 until British forces open fire to disperse the demonstrators. Guangzhou has similar demonstrations June 23, and China boycotts British goods and shipping. The Guomindang appoints Gen. Chiang Kai-shek, 39, commander in chief in September (he has been training at Moscow), Chiang makes a Soviet general his unofficial chief of staff, and by year's end he has defeated Sun's opponent Chen Jiong-ming (Chen Chiung-ming), 50, bringing Gwangdong and Gwangxi provinces under Guomindang control (see 1924; 1926). Japan has recognized the USSR January 20 and agreed to return the northern part of Sakhalin Island. U.S. forces have landed at Shanghai January 15 to protect American nationals in the violence occasioned by factional disputes; they remain until March 12.
British police at Shanghai fire on labor demonstrators May 30 after a series of strikes and the largest anti-foreign demonstration yet seen in China. Workers at a Japanese-owned cotton mill have on May 15 sent a delegation of eight people to negotiate with management; a melee has ensued in which one worker was killed and the other seven wounded, and the foreign-controlled Shanghai Municipal Council arrests several of the workers for disturbing the peace but takes no action against the Japanese who opened fire on them. Students join with the workers in protesting the patent injustice, the police open fire, 13 demonstrators are killed, many more are wounded, and the incident plays into the hands of Chinese communists, who use it to fan anti-imperialist sentiment and increase their membership to more than 20,000. Merchants and workers throughout the country organize strikes and boycotts aimed at British and Japanese factories and goods; they will continue for 7 months until the British dismiss the police officials responsible and indemnify the families of the dead and wounded.
New Zealand's prime minister William F. Massey dies at Wellington May 10 after a 13-year ministry in which he has supported agrarian interests, resisted left-wing movements, and tried in recent years to maintain order at a time of rural and urban unrest produced by rising prices.
French authorities in Vietnam seize nationalist Phan Boi Chau in June and take him to Hanoi, but hundreds of Vietnamese protest, the French pardon him, and although they offer him a civil service position he refuses (see 1912). Vietnam's puppet emperor Khai Dinh dies at Hue November 6 at age 40 after a 9-year reign in which he has become the first reigning Vietnamese monarch to visit Europe; he has advocated an autonomous association with France, but nationalists have called him a traitor to his people. Khai Din will be succeeded in January of next year by his 12-year-old French-educated son Nguyen Vinh Thuy, who will reign under French control until 1945, taking the name Bao Dai (meaning Keeper of Greatness).
Indian independence leader Chittaranjan Das dies at Darjeeling June 16 at age 55, having championed national education, supported women's rights, and intercaste marriage; autonomy proponent Sir Surendranath Banerjea dies at Barrackpore, outside Calcutta, August 6 at age 74 after completing his autobiography, which is published under the title A Nation in the Making.
Siam's king Vajiravudh (Rama VI) dies without an heir at Bangkok November 26 at age 45 following abdominal surgery for an abscess. His wife has been devoted to radio (which is blamed for her being childless), he has divorced her in October and remarried in hopes of siring a son, but his second wife has just given birth to a daughter, and he is succeeded after a 15-year reign by the 32nd and last son of the late king Chulalongkorn (Rama V). Phra Pokklao (Prajadhipok), 31, has studied at Eton College and the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, England; he assumes the throne as Rama VII, but although convinced of the need to move his country toward democratic political reforms he will be restrained by older members of the royal family in a reign that will continue until 1935 (see 1932).
The Ku Klux Klan that was founded in 1915 stages a parade August 18 at Washington, D.C., with 40,000 marchers in white robes and hoods but without masks walking down Pennsylvania Avenue in a great show of strength. Reports of immorality and violence on the part of Klansmen have begun to shrink the Klan's numbers, however, and by 1930 its membership will have declined from more than 4 million to about 30,000.
Explorer Delia Akeley crosses Kenya's Somali desert, battling tsetse flies and other insect pests to reach Nairobi, where she dispatches specimens of wildlife to her sponsors at the Brooklyn Museum (see 1924). She visits with Pygmies in the Ituri Forest, reaches Wamba in the Belgian Congo May 4 with photographs that she has taken of African women and children, arrives at the mouth of the Congo River on the Atlantic in September after an 11-month journey, and returns to New York with more than 30 specimens of game animals for the museum plus a wealth of adventure stories.
Col. Percy Fawcett sends a message to his wife May 29 that he is setting out on an expedition into a heretofore unexplored South American wilderness area on the border between Bolivia and Brazil (see 1906). Now 57, he disappears and will not be heard of again.
"The chief business of the American people is business," says President Coolidge January 17 in an address to the Society of American Newspaper Editors.
President Coolidge tells Congress that he opposes cancellation of French and British war debts. The foreign press has called Uncle Sam "Uncle Shylock" for refusing even to scale down the debts, but Coolidge says privately, "They hired the money, didn't they?"
Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill returns to the gold standard at the prewar gold-and-dollar value of the pound—123.27 grains of gold, 11/12 fine, or 4.87 dollars to the pound. Parliament and the people respond with enthusiasm, but the move prices British coal, steel, machinery, textiles, ships, cargo rates, and other goods and services 10 percent above world prices, and the result is unemployment and wage cuts (see strike, 1926).
Parliament passes an Unemployment Insurance Act July 30.
Speculator Jesse L. Livermore makes $10 million in wheat futures (see 1908). He has made "bear raids" on the market, and when "Black Friday" hits the Chicago trading pits the plunge in prices redounds to Livermore's profit (see 1929).
The Autobiography of Mother Jones by union organizer Mary Harris Jones states, "I am always in favor of obeying the law, but if the high-class burglar breaks the law and defies it, then I say we must have a law that will defend the nation and our people." Now 95, "Mother" Jones has grown up in the U.S. labor movement and been imprisoned on occasion for violent activities in behalf of West Virginia and Colorado coal miners. Her slogan has been, "Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living," and to illustrate the abuses of child labor she tells of meeting a boy of 10 and asking him why he was not in school. "I ain't lost no leg," says the boy, and Jones tells her readers that "lads went to school when they were incapacitated by accidents" in the mines and mills.
Copper baron and former U.S. senator William Andrews Clark dies of pneumonia at his 962 Fifth Avenue New York residence March 2 at age 86, having bought his way into the Senate with money gained in mining ventures, banking, railroads, sugar, and other enterprises.
The United States agrees November 14 to a sharp reduction in foreign war debts as a severe economic recession engulfs Europe.
Wall Street's Dow Jones Industrial Average closes December 31 at its high of 156.66, up from 120.51 at the end of 1924.
General Electric and other incandescent-bulb manufacturers begin "frosting" their bulbs on the inside with hydrofluoric acid to conceal the bulbs' filaments and provide a diffused light that consumers generally prefer to glaring brightness (see Langmuir, 1912; Coolidge, 1913).
The Vickers balanced-vane hydraulic pump perfected by U.S. engineer Harry F. Vickers, 26, will be widely used in the oilfields and in other industries. Vickers founded a manufacturing company under his own name at Los Angeles in 1921 to design and build hydraulic machinery.
The Kelly Air Mail Act passed by Congress February 2 authorizes the U.S. Post Office Department to sign contracts with private companies for carrying the mail at rates ranging up to $3 per pound—rates that amount to government subsidies for airlines (see 1921; scheduled service, 1926).
Engineer William Bushnell Stout sells his aircraft company to Ford Motor Company, and Henry Ford inaugurates commercial air service between Detroit and Chicago April 13 (see 1922). The Ford Tri-Motor plane is the first all-metal American passenger plane, and Ford's Stout Air Line is the first to carry mail, but Ford's refusal to open his Detroit airport on Sundays hampers operations (see 1926).
Detroit investors pony up $25,000 for aircraft maker Edward Stinson to establish the Stinson Aircraft Syndicate, move his operations to Detroit, and develop a new monoplane on a site southwest of the city (see 1920; Detroiter, 1926).
Colonial Air Transport starts carrying mail between New York and Boston. The company has been created by a merger of Boston's Colonial Airways with Eastern Air Transport, a line organized by Juan Trippe and John Hambleton with backing from Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney and William H. Vanderbilt (see 1923; Cuba, 1927).
Former Curtiss-Wright engineer Frederick Brant Rentschler comes to Hartford, Conn., in April to meet with the general manager of Niles-Bement-Pond's Pratt & Whitney Tool division (see commerce, 1901). Looking for a facility to design and produce aircraft engines, he and his associates receive a cordial welcome, general manager Clayton Burt agrees to provide startup money and factory space, a contract signed in July permits the group to use the 65-year-old Pratt & Whitney name, and the 425-horsepower Pratt & Whitney Wasp engine is completed Christmas Eve (see Lockheed Vega, 1926).
The light two-seat Moth introduced by Britain's De Havilland Aircraft Co. has a lightweight engine designed by Geoffrey de Havilland's longtime friend Frank Halford, who has modified a heavier, more complicated French engine (see 1920). The Moth will be followed by the Gipsy Moth, Giant Moth, Hawk Moth, Swallow Moth, Tiger Moth, Fox Moth, Leopard Moth, and Hornet Moth that will serve as private planes, trainers, and light airliners, remaining in production for 20 years and making the company a commercial success (see 1920; Mosquito, 1941).
Chrysler Corp. is created by a reorganization of Maxwell Motor (see 1924; 1926).
Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors produce at least 80 percent of U.S. motorcars and will increase their share of the market.
Henry Ford has 10,000 U.S. dealers, up from 3,500 in 1912. Each agency is required to stock at least one each of the 5,000 parts in a Model T (43 percent of the parts retail for 15¢ or less). Most Ford dealers receive their cars knocked down since seven knocked-down cars can be shipped in the railroad boxcar space required for only two assembled cars and a good mechanic can assemble the Model T in half a day. A new Ford roadster sells for $260.
Motorcar pioneer Elwood Haynes dies at Kokomo, Ind., April 13 at age 67.
Huffman Manufacturing Co. is founded at Dayton, Ohio, by Horace Huffman, who has sold his father's Davis Sewing Machine Co. and produces steel rims for bicycle wheels (see 1899; 1936).
New York's mayor John Hylan breaks ground with a silver-plated shovel March 14 at the intersection of St. Nicholas Avenue and West 123rd Street for a municipal subway system that will compete with the BMT and IRT. Addressing a crowd of some 2,000 at Hancock Square in Washington Heights, the mayor tears into the Transit Commission (whose new members have been appointed by Gov. Smith) and the "million dollar traction conspiracy" of the "railroad corporations."
The Crescent Limited leaves Canal Street Station at New Orleans April 26 to begin service between the Crescent City and New York via the Southern Railway, West Point Route, Louisville & Nashville, and Pennsylvania railroads. The all-Pullman luxury train charges a $5 premium over the regular fare.
Chicago's Union Station opens May 15 to serve four large railroads (formal opening is July 23). Under construction since 1913, the huge structure on Canal Street between Adams and Jackson streets occupies 10 city blocks, replacing an earlier Union Station built in 1881 with one having a neoclassical exterior and an ornate Beaux-Arts interior.
The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters is organized August 25 at Harlem by A. (Asa) Philip Randolph, 36, who publishes The Messenger, a New York monthly devoted to black politics and culture. Monthly wages for porters have risen in the past year to $67.50 per month, up from a minimum of $27.50 in 1915; Randolph will work to raise them further.
Synthetic rubber is pioneered by Notre Dame clergyman and chemist Julius A. Nieuwland, now 47, whose 1904 paper led to the development of the poison gas Lewisite (beta-chlorovinyldichlorarsine) in 1918 (see Baekeland, 1909). Nieuwland passes acetylene gas through a solution of ammonium chloride and gas; his casual reference to the resulting product will inspire E. I. du Pont de Nemours chemists to develop a product that DuPont will introduce in 1931 under the name DuPrene (see Semon, 1926).
Glass manufacturer Edward Drummond Libbey dies of pneumonia at his Toledo home November 13 at age 71.
Nobel physicist Robert A. Millikan at the Pasadena Institute of Technology coins the term cosmic rays for radiation discovered more than a decade ago by Austrian-born physicist Victor Francis Hess, now 42, who found from repeated balloon ascents that radiation increased rapidly with altitude and suggested that they came from extraterrestrial sources. Now 57, Millikan confirms Hess's theory and uses it to help found a new branch of physics that will lead to advances in astrophysics, cosmology, and the discovery of fundamental particles (see Dirac, 1928; positron, 1932).
Vienna-born University of Hamburg physics lecturer Wolfgang Pauli, 25, porposes what will be called the "Pauli exclusion principle:" no two fermions may possess the same energy (i.e. occupy the same quantum state) in a given atom. Pauli crystallizes existing knowledge of atomic structure; his work will lead to a recognition of the two-valued variable needed to characterize the state of an electron.
German physicists Hans Geiger and Walter (Wilhelm Georg) Bothe, 34, at the University of Berlin devise a new method for detecting subatomic particles (see Geiger, 1908). Using Geiger counters to gather data on the Compton effect (the dependence of the increase in the wavelength of a beam of X-rays upon the angle through which the beam is scattered as a result of collision with electrons (see 1922; 1923), they measure the energies and directions of single photons and electrons emerging from individual collisions and establish the particle nature of electromagnetic radiation, refuting a statistical interpretation of the Compton effect (see Chadwick, 1932).
French naturalist Théodor André Monod, 23, crosses the Sahara on camelback and discovers Asselar Man—a human skeleton dating to neolithic times.
The National Research Endowment is established "to increase and strengthen American contribution to the mathematical, physical, and biological sciences." Secretary of Commerce Herbert C. Hoover is named chairman.
Physicist Oliver Heaviside dies at Torquay, Devon, February 3 at age 74; mathematician-logician Gottlob Frege at Bad Kleinen July 26 at age 76.
Malignant diphtheria strikes icebound Nome, Alaska, in January. Two people die, local physician Curtis Welch of the U.S. Public Health Service depletes his 7,500-unit supply of 6-year-old antitoxin and uses the radiotelegraph January 21 to send for more, fearing an epidemic that would kill more of the town's 1,429 residents and jeopardize 11,000 lives in the area. The Anchorage Railroad Hospital reports that it has 300,000 units, enough to cure about 100 patients and treat perhaps 300 who have been exposed to the disease, but Alaska's only two planes—open-cockpit models—have been crated for the winter. Territorial governor Scott C. Bone orders the serum sent by rail 298 miles north to Nena. Norwegian-born "musher" Leonhard Seppala sets out from Shaktolik January 27 with a dog team led by his 48-pound Siberian husky Togo, crosses Norton Sound on pack ice heaving in the ground swell of the Bering Sea as a blizzard sweeps in with winds of 80 miles per hour, and covers the first 240 miles before handing the serum off to the next musher; 19 other mushers with fresh teams relay the antitoxin as temperatures drop below -50° F, and veteran musher Gunnar Kasson covers the final 55-mile leg, arriving at Nome February 2 at 5:36 in the morning. The teams have covered 655 miles in 5 days and 7 hours (the previous record was 9 days), and the antitoxin is quickly thawed in time to prevent an epidemic. Kasson's lead dog Balto is honored with a bronze statue installed in New York's Central Park.
Soviet Russia has her last major outbreak of cholera (see 1855).
Clinical thermometer inventor Sir Thomas Clifford Allbutt dies at Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, February 22 at age 88, having made useful studies of arterial and nervous disorders.
The Menninger Clinic opens in a farmhouse at Topeka, Kan., and begins a revolution in the treatment of mental illness. Country doctor Charles F. Menninger, 63, starts a group practice for the mentally ill with his sons Karl (Augustus), 32, and William, 26; operating on C. F.'s premise that no patient is untreatable, they combine a family atmosphere with physical exercise and a team of multidiscipline doctors for each patient—a "total-environment" approach inspired by a visit C. F. made in 1908 to the Mayo Clinic at Rochester, Minn.
The incurable, hereditary blood disorder Cooley's anemia described by Detroit physician Thomas Benton Cooley, 54, impairs the synthesis of hemoglobin, kills its victims at an average age of 20, and has been common for thousands of years in the Mediterranean, the Middle East, the Philippines, and parts of India and China.
The Scopes "Monkey Trial" makes headlines in July as Dayton, Tenn., schoolteacher John T. Scopes, 25, goes on trial for violating a law that took effect March 13 making it illegal to teach evolution in the state's public schools. Lawmakers who supported the measure found it embarrassing but worried about voting against the Bible; state senators approved the bill on the same basis, everybody expected the governor to veto it, but he let it stand. Scopes has taught gym and math, substituted in a high school biology class at one point, and is not sure whether or not he acquainted his students with the 19th-century teachings of Charles Darwin, but the American Civil Liberties Union has advertised in papers across the state offering to defend any public-school teacher willing to defy the law. ACLU lawyers persuade Scope to test the ban on teaching evolution, and city officials embrace the idea in hopes that the publicity will benefit Dayton's economy. Former secretary of state William Jennings Bryan prosecutes the case against Scopes, and Chicago attorneys Clarence Darrow and Dudley Field Malone volunteer to defend him. The temperature in the courtroom at Dayton becomes unbearable, and the trial is moved out of doors. The judge refuses to let the defense bring any scientific experts who will defend the theory of evolution, Darrow places the prosecutor on the witness stand and subjects Bryan to a withering examination of his fundamentalist religious beliefs; he gets Bryan to admit that even he finds it necessary to interpret the Bible in order to make sense of certain passages, that he believes in "a God who can make a whale and can make a man and make both of them do what He pleases," but Bryan prevails: Scopes is found guilty July 21 and fined $100 (the law calls only for a $50 fine, so the case is thrown out and will not be appealed to a higher court). Bryan dies of apoplexy at Dayton July 26 at age 65; the Tennessee law will remain on the books until 1967, and although it will be ignored, its existence will have a chilling effect on textbook publishers. Children in many states will grow up with no knowledge of Darwininan theory, and so-called creationists will insist that it is only a theory.
The John Simon Guggenheim Foundation is established by mining magnate Simon Guggenheim, 57, and his wife in memory of their son John, who died 3 years ago at age 17. Guggenheim Fellowships endowed by the foundation will enable thousands of Americans to pursue studies that will result in works that will win at least seven Nobel Prizes and dozens of Pulitzer Prizes.
Fisk University president Fayette Avery McKenzie resigns in April amidst charges of racism (see 1924), students end their strike, but Fisk will not have a black president until 1947.
Tokyo Shibaura begins broadcasting March 22 as Japan's first radio station. Nippon Hoso Kyokai (NHK) will be founded next year (see television, 1953).
American Telephone & Telegraph Co. (AT&T) establishes Bell Laboratories to consolidate research and development for the Bell System's telephone companies (see technology [transistor], 1947).
Il Corriere della Serra editor Luigi Albertini is ousted at Milan and replaced by his brother Alberto, who will follow Benito Mussolini's Fascist Party line until 1929, when he will be replaced by another pro-Fascist editor.
Freedom of speech and of the press "are protected by the First Amendment from abridgment by Congress [and] are among the fundamental personal rights and 'liberties' protected by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment from impairment by the states," rules the U.S. Supreme Court June 8, but the court upholds the conviction of a man under the New York Criminal Anarchy Act of 1902. Benjamin Gitlow's pamphlet "The Left Wing Manifesto" called for "mass strikes," "expropriation of the bourgeoisie," and the establishment of a "dictatorship of the proletariat." The court rules in Gitlow v. New York that this "is the language of direct incitement." But Justice Holmes observes that "every idea is an incitement," and Justice Brandeis joins in the dissent.
The New Yorker begins publication in February with backing from Fleischmann's Yeast heir Raoul Fleischmann, 39. Edited by journalist Harold Wallace Ross, 33, with help from his wife, New York Times reporter Jane Grant, the 32-page, 15¢ weekly magazine of satire, fiction, social commentary, and criticism has a cover drawing by Rea Irvin of a Regency dandy (who will be named Eustace Tilley) contemplating a butterfly through a magnifying glass. It quickly attracts the talents of cartoonists Peter Arno (Curtis Arnoux Peters), 21, and Helen Hokinson, 26, and advertising writer E. B. (Elwyn Brooks) White, 26, who will write most of the "Talk of the Town" items that begin each issue. In October it begins publishing a "Letter from Paris," signed Genêt but written by journalist Janet Flanner, 33, who will continue writing the "Letters" for nearly 50 years. Ohio-born humorist James (Grover) Thurber, 30, will become a New Yorker regular after receiving rejection slips for his first 20 submissions.
Virginia-born Collier's editor William L. (Ludlow) Chenery, 41, sends three staff writers on a nationwide tour to report on Prohibition. They find a breakdown in law enforcement of all kinds, and Collier's becomes the first major magazine to call for a repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment that has been in effect since January 1920. The magazine loses 3,000 readers but gains 400,000 new ones (see 1919).
The Philadelphia Daily News begins publication March 31 to compete with the 96-year-old Inquirer, the Public Ledger, and the Bulletin.
New York newspaperman Roy Howard moves up to co-directorship of the Scripps-McRae chain, which becomes the Scripps-Howard chain. Howard broke the news of the 1918 World War armistice 4 days early by acting on a tip and will bring new dynamism to the newspapers in the chain.
Nonfiction: Mein Kampf (My Struggle) by Adolf Hitler, whose publisher Max Amann of Franz Eher Verlag was Hitler's company commander during the Great War and has persuaded him to change his title (originally A Four-and-a-Half-Year Struggle Against Lies, Stupidity, and Cowardice); Fire and Blood by Ernst Jünger, whose writings win the admiration of Hitler's followers with their glorification of war and heroism but who rejects overtures to join the Nazis; Barbarie et poésie by Charles Maurras, now 57, whose political influence will decline at the end of next year when the Vatican places his books and his right-wing newspaper L'Action française on its Index for subordinating religion to politics; The Agony of Christianity (La agonia del cristianismo) by Miguel de Unamuno; "A Defence of Common Sense" (essay) by G. E. Moore, who expresses opposition to idealist doctrines (e.g., the unreality of time) and any form of skepticism; A Grammar of Politics by Harold J. Laski; The Bolshevik Myth by anarchist Alexander Berkman; Science and Poetry by I. A. Richards; Science and the Modern World by Alfred North Whitehead, now 64, who last year accepted a professorship of philosophy at Harvard; The Tragedy of Waste by New Hampshire-born New York economist Stuart Chase, 37, who deplores not only the waste of natural resources but of manpower and of the human spirit that is being sacrificed to total mechanization in industry and agriculture; In the American Grain by poet William Carlos Williams; The English Comic Characters by English critic J. B. (John Boynton) Priestley, 31; The Cruise of the "Nona" by Hilaire Belloc; Isles of Fear by Pennsylvania-born journalist Katherine Mayo, 58, exposes the evils of American colonial administration in the Philippines; Master Builders (Der Kampf mit dem Dämon) by Stefan Zweig, who has studied Friedrich Holderlin, Heinrich von Kleist, and Friedrich Nietzche; The Private Life of Helen of Troy by John Erskine, now 45, whose humorous version of the legend is set in the Jazz Age and will be translated into 16 languages.
Scientist-philosopher Rudolf Steiner dies at Dornach, Switzerland, March 30 at age 64.
Fiction: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald exposes the empty lives of U.S. tycoons and flappers. Published April 10, the intricately patterned novel of jazz age morality meets with mixed reviews and will not be recognized as a great masterpiece for more than 25 years; The Professor's House by Willa Cather; The Trial (Der Prozess) by the late Franz Kafka captures the nightmare of injustice that pervades German society under the Weimar Republic. Kafka's novelist friend Max Brod, 41, has edited his incomplete manuscript; Childhood (Detstvo Luvers) by Soviet novelist Boris Pasternak, 35, who has revised the first chapter of a novel whose remaining manuscript pages he has lost; Diavoliada (stories) by Soviet writer Mikhail Afanasievich Bulgakov, 34; Mitya's Love (Mitini lyubov) by Ivan Bunin; Tales from the Don (Donskie rasskazy) (stories) by Soviet author Mikhail (Aleksandrovich) Sholokhov, 20; The Desert of Love (Le Désert de l'amour) by François Mauriac; No More Parades by Ford Madox Ford; The Informer by Liam O'Flaherty; Pastors and Masters by English novelist Ivy Compton-Burnett, 33; Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, now 43, who experiments with stream-of-consciousness technique; Serena Blandish, or The Difficulty of Getting Married by "A Lady of Quality" (English novelist Enid Bagnold, 36); Sorrow in Sunlight by English novelist (Arthur Annesley) Ronald Firbank, 39, whose novel will be titled Prancing Nigger in the United States; Monday Morning by English novelist (Anthony Walker) Patrick Hamilton, 21; Simonetta Perkins (novella) by L. P. Hartley; Pauline by French novelist-poet Pierre Jean Jouve, 38; The Sweet Cheat Gone (Albertine disparue) by the late Marcel Proust; Jew Süss by German novelist-playwright Lion Feuchtwanger, 41; An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser is based on the 1906 Gillett-Brown murder case; Barren Ground by Ellen Glasgow, who gains her first critical success at age 51; Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis, whose protagonist is a young doctor who goes to the West Indies to use bacteriophages against an epidemic of bubonic plague (see medicine [Herelle], 1917); The Venetian Glass Nephew by Elinor Wylie; Manhattan Transfer by John Dos Passos; The Making of Americans by Gertrude Stein; Porgy by Charleston, S.C.,-born author DuBose Heyward, 40; The Rim of the Prairie by Cedar Falls, Iowa-born novelist Bess (Genevra) Streeter Aldrich, 44, whose banker-lawyer husband has just died, leaving her the sole support of their four children; Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by California novelist-scriptwriter Anita Loos, 32, who started writing scenarios for D. W. Griffith at age 15. Her gold-digging Lorelei Lee says things like, "So this gentleman said a girl with brains ought to do something with them besides think"; The House Without a Key by Earl Derr Biggers, now 41, who has moved to Pasadena, Calif. His Charlie Chan mystery novel has been serialized in the Saturday Evening Post and is the first of many to feature the Chinatown detective; The Fellowship of the Frog by Edgar Wallace; The Layton Court Mystery by English mystery novelist Anthony Berkeley (originally Anthony Berkeley Cox), 32.
Novelist George Washington Cable dies at St. Petersburg, Fla., January 31 at age 80; Sir H. Rider Haggard at London May 14 at age 68; novelist-poet Pierre Louys at Paris June 4 at age 54.
Poetry: The Cantos (I) by Ezra Pound; Poems, 1909-1925 by T. S. Eliot includes "The Hollow Men," whose lines have reference to the straw figures hung in London streets each year to celebrate Guy Fawkes Day, commemorating the discovery in 1605 of the Gunpowder Plot; Selected Poems by Siegfried Sassoon; Senlin, a Biography by Conrad Aiken; "A Fool i' the Forest" by English poet Richard Aldington, 33, who deplores the mechanization of modern man; First Poems by Scottish poet Edwin Muir, 38, who works as assistant editor of the New Age at London; "Umbilical Limbo" ("L'Ombilic des limbes") and "Nerve Scales" ("Le Pèse-nerfs") by Marseilles-born Surrealist poet Antonin Artaud, 28; Interior Music (La Musique intérieure) by Charles Maurras; Cuttlefish Bones (Ossi di seppia) by anti-Fascist Italian poet Eugenio Montale, 29; Gravitations by Uruguayan-born French writer Jules Supervielle, 41; Color by Harlem poet Countee Cullen, 22; What's O'Clock by Amy Lowell; Through the Winds (A travers les vents) by New Hampshire-born French-Canadian poet Robert Guy Choquette; The Halt in the Garden by Robert Hillyer.
Poet Amy Lowell dies suddenly at Brookline, Mass., May 12 at age 51.
Juvenile: The Childhood and the Enchanters (L'Enfant et les Sortilèges) by Colette; Faithful Jenny Dove, and Other Tales by Eleanor Farjeon; The School at the Chalet by Elinor Mary Brent-Dyer is about the founding of a school in the Austrian Tyrol by a young Englishwoman; The Royal Road to Romance by Texas-born adventure writer Richard Halliburton, 25, who dropped out of Princeton after his sophomore year, shipped out of New Orleans on a freighter, roamed Europe for a year, returned to finish college, and after graduation joined the crew of another ship. His book will remain a bestseller for 3 years and be translated into 17 languages; Halliburton will follow it with books about his efforts to follow the route of Ulysses, swimming the Hellespont and the Panama Canal, running from Marathon to Athens, visiting the penal colony of Devil's Island, and climbing the Matterhorn, Mount Olympus, and Mount Fuji.
Painting: The Three Dancers and The Statuary by Pablo Picasso, whose neoclassical work depicts his second wife, Olga, posing formally beside a modeling stand on which a bust of an elderly man is resting; The Apprentice by Georges Rouault; Still Life with Vase of Anemones, Lemons and Pineapple and Jetée de Fleurs Dans un Intérieur by Henri Matisse; After the Meal by Pierre Bonnard; The Drinking Green Pig by Marc Chagall; Swinging by Wassily Kandinsky; Disquieting Muses and The Greek Philoophers by Giorgio de Chirico; Café by George Grosz, who has allied himself with the Neue Sachlichkeit movement, whose views reflect the current cynicism and resignation in Germany; Tower by Lyonel Feininger. George Bellows dies of a ruptured appendix at New York January 8 at age 42; John Singer Sargent in England April 15 at age 69; Roger de La Fresnaye of tuberculosis at Grasse November 27 at age 40.
Woodcut series: Proletariat by Käthe Kollwitz.
Sculptor Gutzon Borglum visits South Dakota at the invitation of the state's tourism director, who suggests that a large statue in the Black Hills of Lewis and Clark, Chief Red Cloud, or something of the like would attract tourists and give a boost to the local economy. Now 58, Borglum has quit his Stone Mountain project in Georgia (see 1915) and brings a party of Rapid City businessmen out to Mount Rushmore October 1, showing them plans for a monument that will include huge heads of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, and his own late friend Theodore Roosevelt. The site occupies land held sacred by the Lakota Sioux, the businessmen are not much impressed, and Borglum is able to raise only $5,000 for work on the monument (see 1941).
The Leica 35-millimeter camera invented by German master mechanic Oskar Bernack, 45, revolutionizes photography. Bernack joined E. Leitz G.m.b.H. of Wetzlar in 1911 and completed a prototype of the miniature instrument 2 years later, but the Great War halted his work. The camera takes a 36-frame film roll and has a lens that can be closed down to take pictures with great depth of field or opened for dim lighting conditions; fast and slow shutter speeds permit action pictures, and interchangeable lenses permit close-ups and telephotography (see "candid camera," 1930; Nikon, 1948).
Photograph: Country Girls by August Sander; The Widow Watson by Oregon-born New York Journal photographer Consuelo Kanaga, 31, shows a tubercular woman and her 12-year-old son living in a damp basement apartment.
Theater: Is Zat So? by New York-born actor-playwright James Gleason, 38, and fellow actor Richard Taber 1/5 at New York's 39th Street Theater, with Gleason, Eleanor Powell, Robert Armstrong in a prizefight comedy, 618 perfs.; Processional by New York-born playwright John Howard Lawson (originally Levy), 29, 1/12 at New York's Garrick Theater, with George Abbott, June Walker, Ben Grauer, Philadelphia-born actor Philip Loeb, 28, 96 perfs.; Gats by Georg Kaiser 4/9 at Vienna's Deutsches Volkstheater; Fallen Angels by Noël Coward 4/21 at London's Globe Theatre, with Tallulah Bankhead, Edna Best, 158 perfs.; Hay Fever by Noël Coward 6/8 at London's Ambassadors Theatre, with veteran character actress Marie Tempest, now 61, Ann Trevor, 337 perfs.; Cradle Snatchers by Norma Mitchell and New York-born playwright Russell Medcraft, 28, 9/7 at New York's Music Box Theater, with Mary Boland, Humphrey Bogart, Raymond Hackett, Edna May Oliver, 332 perfs.; The Jazz Singer by New York-born playwright Samson Raphaelson, 31, 9/14 at New York's Fulton Theater, with Sam Jaffe, George Jessel, 303 perfs.; Veland by Gerhart Hauptmann 9/19 at Hamburg's Deutsches Schauspielhaus; The Butter and Egg Man by George S. Kaufman 9/23 at New York's Longacre Theater, with Robert Middlemaas, John A. Butler, Lucille Webster, Gregory Kelly, Sylvia Fields, 243 perfs.; Craig's Wife by George Kelly 10/12 at New York's Morosco Theater, with Chrystal Herne, Josephine Hull, 360 perfs.; The Enemy by Channing Pollock 10/20 at New York's Times Square Theater, with Walter Abel, Fay Bainter, Hamilton, Ont.-born Jane Seymour, 27, John Wray, 203 perfs.; Lucky Sam McGarver by Sidney Howard 10/21 at New York's Playhouse Theater, with John Cromwell, Clare Eames, 29 perfs.; Young Woodley by London-born playwright John (William) Van Druten, 24, 11/2 at New York's Belasco Theater, with Glenn Hunter, Grant Stewart, Boonton, N.J.-born actress Helen Gahagan, 24, 260 perfs.; Naughty Cinderella by Avery Hopwood (who has adapted a French play) 11/9 at New York's Lyceum Theater, with Irene Bordoni, Orlando Daly, Nat Pendleton, 121 perfs.; In a Garden by Philip Barry 11/16 at New York's Plymouth Theater, with Laurette Taylor, Brooklyn-born actor Louis Calhern (originally Carl Henry Vogt), 30, 73 perfs.; Twelve Miles Out by William Anthony McGuire 11/16 at New York's Playhouse Theater, with Minnesota-born actor Warren William (originally Warren William Kretch), 29, 188 perfs.; Easy Virtue by Noël Coward 12/7 at New York's Empire Theater, with Jane Cowl, now 35, and Joyce Carey (née Lawrence [Lilian Braithwaite's daughter]), 26, 147 perfs.; One of the Family by Kenneth Webb 12/21 at New York's 49th Street Theater, with Grant Mitchell, Louise Closser Hale, Chicago-born actress Beulah Bondi, 37, New London, Conn.-born actress Mary Philips, 24, Kay Johnson, 238 perfs.
Actor Everett Butterfield dies at New York March 6 at age 39 (approximate); actress Clara Morris at New Canaan, Conn., November 20 at age 77.
Films: King Vidor's The Big Parade with John Gilbert, French-born actress Renée Adorée (Jeanne de la Fonte), 27; Harold Lloyd's The Freshman with Lloyd; Charles Chaplin's The Gold Rush with Chaplin, Mack Swain; Sergei Eisenstein's (The Armored Cruiser) Potemkin, which opens in December with groundbreaking cinematography and montage sequences. Also: Fred Niblo's Ben Hur with Ramon Novarro, Francis X. Bushman, May McAvoy; George Fitzmaurice's The Dark Angel with Hungarian-born actress Vilma Banky (originally Vilma Lonchit), 26, Ronald Colman; Fred Niblo's Don Q and Son of Zorro, both with Douglas Fairbanks; Clarence Brown's The Eagle with Rudolph Valentino, Vilma Banky, Louise Dresser; Sam Taylor and Fred Newmeyer's Go West with Buster Keaton; Bohemian-born German director G. W. (Georg Wilhelm) Pabst's The Joyless Street (Die freudlose Gasse); Herbert Brenon's A Kiss for Cinderella with Betty Bronson, Esther Ralston; Harry Hoyt's The Lost World with Wallace Beery, Lewis Stone; Erich von Stroheim's The Merry Widow with Mae Murray, John Gilbert; Clarence Badger's Paths to Paradise with Raymond Griffith, Betty Compson; D. W. Griffith's Poppy with W. C. Fields; Josef von Sternberg's Salvation Hunters with vagrants from the Long Beach waterfront; Buster Keaton's Seven Chances with Keaton; Clarence Brown's Smouldering Fires with Pauline Frederick, Malcom McGregor, Laura La Plante; Rupert Julian's Three Faces East with Julian, Jetta Goudal; E. A. Dupont's Variety with Emil Jannings; Malcolm St. Clair's Woman of the World with Polish-born actress Pola Negri (Appolonia Chalupek), 26, Charles Emmet Mack; Robert Flaherty's documentary Moana, set in the Samoas.
Air conditioning is installed in the Rivoli movie theater that opened on Broadway at New York in 1917. Other theaters will follow the Rivoli's lead, putting up signs promising "20 degrees cooler inside"; cool air will revolutionize the movie-theater industry, making it a 12-month business as it ushers in a new era of comfortable summertime moviegoing even in the South (see real estate, 1922; architecture [House of Representatives], 1928).
J. R. Bray office boy Shamus Culhane, 17, at New York animates his first scene—a monkey with a hot towel—while covering for a drunken animator and begins a notable career (see Bray, 1910). Culhane has obtained his office-boy job because Walter Lantz, head of animation at J. R. Bray, is his best friend's older brother.
Gossip columnist Louella Parsons contracts tuberculosis, is told that she has only 6 months to live, retires to California, recovers her health, and becomes the Hearst syndicate's Hollywood columnist (see 1918; Sheila Graham, 1933; Hedda Hopper, 1936).
English pianist Ethel Liginska makes her conducting debut 1/9 with the New York Symphony Orchestra; now 38, she goes on later in the year to lead an orchestra at the Hollywood Bowl.
Polish-born French harpsichordist Wanda Landowska, 46, opens a school of early-music interpretation at Paris. She is well known for her rendition of Bach's "Well-Tempered Clavier."
Opera: Wozzeck 1/14 at Berlin's State Opera is the first full-length atonal opera. Austrian composer Alban Berg, 40, has based his music on the George Buchner tragedy of 1836; L'Enfant et les Sortilèges 3/21 at Monte Carlo, with music by Maurice Ravel.
Composer Enrico Bossi dies at sea aboard the S.S. De Grasse February 20 at age 63; tenor Jean de Reszke at Nice April 3 at age 75.
Ballet: Les Matelots (The Sailors) 6/17 at the Théâtre Gaiété-Lyrique, Paris, with music by Georges Auric, choreography by Leonide Massine, libretto by Boris Kochno.
First performances: Symphony for Organ and Orchestra by Brooklyn, N.Y.-born composer Aaron Copland, 24, 1/11 at New York, with Nadia Boulanger (Copland has been composing music since age 8 and studied under Boulanger at Paris); Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D minor (Concerto Accademico) by Ralph Vaughan Williams 11/6 at London's Aeolian Hall.
Composer Erik Satie dies at Paris July 1 at age 59.
Stage musicals: Big Boy 1/7 at New York's Winter Garden Theater, with Al Jolson, Mary Philips, music by Modesto, Calif.-born composer Joseph Meyer, 30, songs that include "It All Depends on You" by Ray Henderson, lyrics by B. G. DeSylva and Lew Brown (Russian-born writer Lewis Bronstein, 31), "If You Knew Susie Like I Know Susie" (lyrics by B. G. DeSylva), 188 perfs.; No, No Nanette 3/11 at London's Phoenix Theatre, with Liverpool-born comedienne-singer Binnie Hale (originally Beatrice Mary Hale-Munro), 25, music by Vincent Youmans, book by Otto Harbach and Frank Mandel based on Mandel and Emily Nyitray's 1919 comedy My Lady Friends, lyrics by Irving Caesar and Harbach, songs that include "Tea for Two," "I Want to Be Happy"; On with the Dance (revue) 4/30 at the London Pavilion, with Mexican-born British actor (William) Nigel (Emle) Bruce, 30, dancer-comedienne Hermione Baddeley (originally Clinton-Baddeley), 18, music by Noël Coward and Philip Braham, book and lyrics by Coward, 229 perfs.; The Garrick Gaieties 6/8 at New York's Garrick Theater, with Sterling Holloway, Mexican-born actor Romney Brent (originally Romulo Larraide), 23, Austin, Texas-born actor House (Baker) Jameson, 22, Sanford Meisner, music by local composer Richard Rodgers, 23, lyrics by Lorenz (Milton) Hart, 27, songs that include "Sentimental Me," 14 perfs. (plus 43 beginning 5/10/26); Artists and Models 6/24 at the Winter Garden Theater, with McKeesport, Pa.-born actress Aline MacMahon, 26, music by J. Fred Coots, Alfred Goodman, Maurice Rubens, lyrics by Clifford Grey, 411 perfs.; Gay Paree (revue) 8/18 at the Shubert Theater, with Texas Guinan, Boston-born comedian Jack Haley, 27, comedian Charles "Chic" Sale, book by Harold Atteridge for producer Rufus LeMaire, music by Alfred Goodman, Maurie Rubens, and J. Fred Coots, lyrics by Clifford Grey, 190 perfs.; Dearest Enemy 9/18 at the Knickerbocker Theater, with Helen Ford, music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Lorenz Hart, book by Herbert Fields based on the Revolutionary War legend about Mrs. Robert Murray delaying General Howe, songs that include "Here in My Arms," "Where the Hudson River Flows," 286 perfs.; The Vagabond King 9/21 at New York's Casino Theater, with Dennis King, music by Rudolf Friml, lyrics by Bryan Hooker, songs that include "Only a Rose," 511 perfs.; Sunny 9/22 at the New Amsterdam Theater, with Marilyn Miller (who receives 10 percent of the gross), Jack Donahue, Clifton Webb, music by Jerome Kern, lyrics by Otto Harbach and Oscar Hammerstein II, songs that include "Who," 517 perfs.; La Revue Nigre 10/7 at the Paris Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, with Josephine Baker, now 19, and a jazz band led by Alexandria, Va.-born conductor Claude (Driskett) Hopkins, 22, and featuring New Orleans-born soprano saxophonist Sidney Bechet, 28; The Charlot Revue 11/10 at New York's Selwyn Theater, with Beatrice Lillie, Gertrude Lawrence, Jack Buchanan, London-born ingénue Anna Neagle (originally Marjorie Robertson), 21, songs that include "Poor Little Rich Girl" by Noël Coward, "A Cup of Coffee, a Sandwich, and You" by Joseph Meyer, lyrics by Billy Rose and Al Dubin, 34, 138 perfs.; The Cocoanuts 12/8 at New York's Lyric Theater, with the Four Marx Brothers, Margaret Dumont, book by George S. Kaufman, music and lyrics by Irving Berlin, 218 perfs. Vaudeville monologist Art Fisher has given the New York-born Marx Brothers their nicknames and has helped develop their characters: Groucho (Julius Henry), 30, is a moustached wit, Harpo (Arthur), 32, an idiotic kleptomaniacal mute harpist, Chico (Leonard), 34, a pianist and confidence man who serves as Harpo's interpreter, Zeppo (Herbert) is straight man; Tip-Toes 12/28 at New York's Liberty Theater, with Queenie Smith, Philadelphia-born soprano Jeanette MacDonald, 24, Robert Halliday, music by George Gershwin, lyrics by Ira Gershwin, book by Guy Bolton and Fred Thompson, songs that include "Sweet and Low-Down," 194 perfs.
"The Charleston" is introduced to Paris by "Bricktop," a redheaded American who arrived penniless from her native Harlem last year and has become hostess at a Place Pigalle nightclub. Now 30, Ada Beatrice Queen Victoria Louisa Virginia Smith du Conge begins a half century as a nightclub hostess.
Popular songs: "Yes, Sir, That's My Baby!" by Walter Donaldson and Gus Kahn; "I Love My Baby (My Baby Loves Me)" by Brooklyn-born composer Harry Warren (originally Salvadore Anthony Guaragna), 31, lyrics by Austrian-born songwriter Bud Green, 28; "Sleepy Time Gal" by Ange Lorenzo and Richard A. Whiting, lyrics by Joseph R. Alden and Raymond B. Egan; "Sweet Georgia Brown" by Ben Bernie, Maceo Pinkard, and Kenneth Casey; "Alabamy Bound" by Ray Henderson, lyrics by B. G. DeSylva, Bud Green; Jelly Roll Morton and his Red Hot Peppers record Maceo Pinkard's "Sweet Man;" "Dinah" by Harry Akst, 31, lyrics by Sam M. Lewis and Joe Young; "Sometimes I'm Happy" by Vincent Youmans and Irving Caesar; "Always" and "Remember" by Irving Berlin; "Five Feet Two, Eyes of Blue" and "I'm Sitting On Top of the World" by Ray Henderson, lyrics by Sam M. Lewis and Joe Young; "Don't Bring Lulu" by Henderson, lyrics by Billy Rose and Lew Brown; "My Yiddishe Momme" by Jack Yellen and Lew Pollack, lyrics by Yellen (for Sophie Tucker); "I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night" by Earl Robinson, lyrics by Alfred Hayes (see commerce, 1915); "Valentine" by French composer Henri Christine, 58, lyrics by Albert Willemetz; "Jealousy" ("Jalousie, a 'Tango Tzigane' [Gypsy Tango]") by Danish violinist-composer Jacob Gade, 46; "Show Me the Way to Go Home" by London songwriters Reg Connelly, 27, and Irving King (Jimmy Campbell), 22. Bessie Smith records "Cake-Walking Babies (From Home)," "J. C. Holmes Blues," and W. C. Handy's 1914 hit "St. Louis Blues."
The Arthur Murray Correspondence School of Dancing moves to New York, where local baker's son Arthur Murray (Teichmann), 30, marries his partner Kathryn (née Kohnfelder) and will soon set up a midtown Manhattan studio to teach ballroom dancing. Born in East Harlem, Murray learned to dance from a girlfriend and from lessons at the Educational Alliance, took further lessons at a school started by Vernon and Irene Castle, joined the school's faculty, taught dancing at an Asheville, N.C., resort hotel, and started his correspondence school at Atlanta 4 years ago after studying at Georgia Tech. His enterprise will grow in the next 40 years to have more than 350 franchised dance studios, including nearly 50 in foreign countries.
Grand Ole Opry has its beginnings in the WSM Barn Dance that goes on the air November 28 over Nashville, Tenn., radio station WSM, owned by National Life and Accident Insurance Co. ("We Shield Millions"). The insurance company chairman's son has taken a cue from Chicago's Sears, Roebuck-owned radio station WLS ("World's Largest Store") in naming the new station, its transmission tower is the tallest free-standing tower in America. The country music show has been originated by 29-year-old program director and former newspaperman George D. (Dewey) Hay, it features contest fiddler Uncle Jimmy Thompson, and by the time the Saturday-night show adopts the name Grand Ole Opry late in 1927 with sponsors that include Martha White Flour, it will be featuring banjo-playing singer "Uncle" Dave Macon, now 55, as "the Dixie Dewdrop"; Macon will be supported or followed by such country-music stars as the Fruit Jar Drinkers, the Gully Jumpers, guitar virtuoso Sam McGee, Dr. Humphrey Bates and the Possum Hunters, fiddler Sid Harkreader, the Dixie Clodhoppers, Fiddling Arthur Smith, and Roy Acuff, now 22, who will run for governor of Tennessee in 1948.
The Wood Memorial introduced at New York in April is a test for 3-year-old thoroughbreds prior to the Kentucky Derby in May.
(Jean) René LaCoste, 19, (Fr) wins in men's singles at Wimbledon, Suzanne Lenglen in women's singles; Bill Tilden wins in men's singles at Forest Hills, Helen Wills in women's singles.
Former Columbia baseball star Henry Louis "Lou" Gehrig, 22, joins the New York Yankees as a first baseman and begins a 14-year career of 2,130 consecutive games in which he will have a batting average of .340 (see 1939).
Connie Mack pays a record $100,600 to acquire "Lefty" Grove for the Philadelphia Athletics. Maryland-born pitcher Robert Moses Grove, 25, has played for the minor-league Baltimore Orioles and now begins a 17-year major-league career in which he will strike out 2,266 batters and record a lifetime earned run average of 3.06.
The Pittsburgh Pirates win the World Series, defeating the Washington Senators 4 games to 3. Former New York Giants (and, later, Cincinnati Reds) pitcher Christy Mathewson has died of tuberculosis at a Saranac Lake, N.Y., sanatorium October 7 at age 45 in the midst of the Series (he was gassed during World War II and his career ended in 1920).
Football authority Walter C. Camp dies at New York March 14 at age 65.
The New York Giants professional football team is founded by Timothy J. Mara.
New York's Madison Square Garden comes down after a 35-year career in which it has housed prizefights, 6-day bicycle races, rodeos (beginning in 1923), horse shows, and last year's Democratic National Convention. A new Garden opens November 28 on Eighth Avenue between 49th and 50th streets; designed by Tex Rickard's architect Thomas W. Lamb and built at a cost of $5.6 million, it will be used until February 1968 for circuses, hockey games, horse shows, basketball games, ice shows, political rallies, and track meets, but it is designed principally for boxing and wrestling matches and has poor sightlines for other events.
Contract bridge begins to replace auction bridge (see 1904). Railroad heir and yachtsman Harold S. Vanderbilt, 41, invents the variation while on a Caribbean cruise; it will eclipse auction bridge and whist beginning in 1930 when Romanian-born U.S. expert Ely (originally Illya) Culbertson, now 34, defeats Lieut. Col. W. T. M. Butler in a challenge match at London's Almack's Club that will bring the game wide publicity (see Goren, 1936).
Floyd Collins makes headlines in late January after being trapped inside a Kentucky cave he had been exploring with companions. Search parties try to reach him before it is too late but Collins is found dead February 16 under a boulder that has pinned him fast for 18 days.
The Simmons Beautyrest mattress is introduced by Zalmon Simmons Jr., whose father started the Simmons Co. at Kenosha, Wis., in 1870. The company acquired two mattress-making concerns 6 years ago and Simmons has perfected another inventor's innerspring mattress whose coils are contained in individual cloth pockets, permitting stress on one group of coils to be distributed throughout the mattress.
Scotch Tape gets its name (by some accounts) from a Detroit auto-plant car painter (see 1923). Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Co. (3M) eliminated the adhesive from the center of Richard G. Drew's paper masking tape to save money. The gummed tape does not always stick, or it leaves a blotchy stripe when removed, and an angry painter allegedly tells Drew to "take this tape back to those Scotch bosses of yours and have them put adhesive all over the tape"; Drew assures the man that 3M can solve his problem, persuades his management to support further research, experiments with the vegetable oils used in 3M's Wetordry sandpaper, comes up with a "flypaper" tape that sticks readily and comes off easily but bleaches the paint, perseveres with help from assistants, adds glycerine to cabinet makers' glue, and creates an adhesive backing for a tape that adheres easily and pulls off without leaving a gummy residue, but 3M Non-Drying Tape lacks the stretchiness needed for pressing around curved surfaces and has other drawbacks (see everyday life, 1930).
Lever Brothers introduces Lux toilet soap under the name Lux Toilet Form. The white milled soap will challenge Palmolive and Procter & Gamble's Cashmere Bouquet (see 1905; Lux Flakes, 1906; Rinso, 1918; Unilever, 1929).
English soap magnate William H. Lever, 1st Viscount Leverhulme, dies at Hampstead May 7 at age 73 (see Unilever, 1929).
Burma-Shave signs appear for the first time on U.S. roadsides, mostly along two-lane roads in rural areas where the speed limit is 35 miles per hour. Miniature red-and-white billboards for the brushless shaving cream, created initially by Alan G. Odell, son of the Burma-Vita Co. founder, will be posted in 45 states between now and 1964, with some 7,000 sets of them in the early 1950s carrying verses such as, "Keep well/ To the right/ Of the oncoming car/ Get your close shaves/ From the half-pound jar/ Burma-Shave" and "Within this vale/ Of toil/ And sin/ Your head grows bald/ But not your chin/ Burma-Shave."
The metal Brannock Device invented by Syracuse, N.Y., shoe-store owner's son Charles F. Brannock, 22, enables a retail clerk to measure feet more accurately (see standardized lasts, 1880). The manufacturer of the sophisticated size stick will tell clerks that the device "precalculates" weight bearing so they can measure the foot while the customer is seated, but foot stretch, or spread, varies widely among individuals and cannot be "precalculated."
The Paris Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs displays a two-story apartment designed by Swiss-born architect Charles Edouard Jeanneret, 38, who calls himself Le Corbusier and calls his apartment Le Pavillon de I'Esprit; its spacious rooms are furnished with a minimum of furniture which includes bentwood café chairs introduced by Gebrüder Thonet of Vienna in 1876 but never used as modern furniture until now. Le Corbusier also employs as decorative objects bistro wine glasses, laboratory flasks, seashells, industrial equipment, and ethnic rugs and hangings. The term "Art Deco" will be derived half a century hence from the Paris Exposition, but not from the pioneering ideas of Le Corbusier ("Art Deco" has already peaked in Europe).
The Paris Exposition offers choice space to the United States, but when Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover makes inquiries of leaders in the art, educational, and business worlds, he is advised that there is no modern design in America. The exposition features lead-based art nouveau glassware by René Lalique, who has gained renown for his Coty perfume bottles (see 1918), achieving relief decoration on his surfaces either by blowing glass into molds or pressing it.
Paris couturier Marcel Rochas, 22, opens in the Faubourg St.-Honoré, where he will attract a substantial following (see 1931).
Paris couturière Jeanne Lanvin capitalizes on the U.S. demand for French perfumes by introducing her fragrance My Sin (Mon Péché), which has failed in Paris but will be a big success in America (see 1889; Arpége, 1927).
Shalimar perfume by Guerlain creates a sensation at the Paris Exposition Internationale (see Mitsouko, 1919). Jacques Guerlain, a great-grandson of the company's founder, has poured some drops of vanilla into his mixture and bottled it in containers that help give it wide sales.
Fendi opens in Rome's Via del Plebiscito, where Edoardo Fendi and his bride Adèle (née Casagrande) start a small workshop to make leather bags and fur coats (see 1918).
U.S. cigarette production reaches 82.2 billion, up from 66.7 billion in 1923 as tobacco companies try to lure women to smoke (see 1926).
American Tobacco Co. promotes Lucky Strike cigarettes; George Washington Hill, 41, has succeeded his father, Percival, as head of the company (see 1918; 1928). Philip Morris repositions its Marlboro cigarette, giving it an ivory tip, a price double that of other cigarettes, and a promotional campaign aimed at affluent women (see 1902; 1955). P. Lorillard introduces Old Gold cigarettes. The firm is well known for its Murad cigarettes and their slogan, "Be nonchalant—light a Murad"; Old Golds will gain popularity with the slogan, "Not a cough in a carload" (see 1911).
"Pretty Boy" Floyd begins a 9-year career in which he will rob more than 30 midwestern banks and kill 10 people. Charles Arthur Floyd, 18, robs a local post office of $350 in pennies at St. Louis.
Al Capone takes over as boss of Chicago bootlegging from racketeer Johnny Torrio, who retires after sustaining gunshot wounds (see 1924). A lieutenant of Torrio's since their Brooklyn days, the scar-faced Capone soon controls not only bootlegging but also gambling, prostitution, and the Chicago dance-hall business, while his agents on the Canadian border and in the Caribbean help him grow rich by smuggling huge quantities of whiskey and rum into the United States (see 1927).
Izzy and Moe lose their jobs as Prohibition agents after making 4,392 arrests in just over 5 years with a 95 percent record of convictions. Isadore Einstein and Moe Smith are both in their mid-forties, weigh more than 225 pounds each although neither is taller than five feet seven; they have antagonized their superiors by getting too much personal publicity for their ingenious and successful, if undignified, stratagems for apprehending violators of the Prohibition law.
Potsdam's Einstein Tower is completed to designs by architect Eric Mendelsohn. A shortage of concrete has forced him to use cement-covered brick rather than poured cement, and his bizarre structure creates a sensation.
An electrical fire in April destroys Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin house in Wisconsin; it causes more than $200,000 in damage, and the place is insured for only $30,000, but Wright will rebuild it as he did after the 1914 fire. Now nearly 58, Wright has been estranged from his second wife and is having an extra-marital affair with Montenegrin dancer Olga Hinzenberg, whom he calls Olgavanna.
William Randolph Hearst opens his San Simeon castle La Cuesta Encantada overlooking the Pacific on 240,000 acres of ranch land plus another 90,000 for his bison, giraffes, zebras, camels, and ostriches. His architect and interior designer is San Francisco-born Julia Morgan, 53, who went to Paris in 1896 and 6 years later became the first woman certified in architecture by the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Encouraged by Hearst's mother to open her own architectural office, Morgan gained recognition by designing a new Fairmont Hotel to replace the one destroyed in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and met Hearst while completing his mother's estate at Pleasanton, east of Berkeley, in 1915. Standing only five feet tall and weighing scarcely 100 pounds, Morgan has pioneered in bringing outside light into dark interior spaces. Hearst commissioned her in 1919 to design San Simeon, a project that will occupy her for another 14 years. He has spent an estimated $50 million to build the Hispano-Moorish Casa Grande and its adjoining buildings for himself and his mistress, Marion Davies (the place requires a staff of 50).
Chicago's Tribune Tower opens in May on Michigan Avenue at Tribune Place for "The World's Greatest Newspaper." New York architects John Mead Howells and Raymond M. Hood have designed a 36-story Gothic skyscraper 58 feet taller than the 32-story Wrigley building completed last year.
Washington's Mayflower Hotel opens February 18 with 1,000 rooms. The inaugural ball for President Coolidge is held at the Mayflower in March.
Paris's Bristol Hotel opens.
Boston's Parker House opens on Tremont Street to replace the hotel that opened in 1855.
Chicago's Palmer House opens at State and Monroe Streets to replace the hotel that was built in 1875.
Memphis's Peabody Hotel opens with 617 rooms to replace the Peabody that had been the city's social center for 56 years.
The Mizner Development Corp. founded south of Palm Beach, Florida, early in the year by architect Addison Mizner buys up large stretches of beachfront property (see 1924). Mizner, who has obtained financial backing from investors who include primarily T. Coleman du Pont and Wall Street speculator Jesse Livermore, envisions a resort city with country clubs, hotels, polo fields, and yacht basins, and in 6 months he has sold $30 million worth of lots (see Boca Raton Club, 1926).
A new Breakers hotel opens at Palm Beach, Florida, replacing the 22-year-old structure with a $6 million hotel containing 600 guest rooms and suites, two conference wings, two 18-hole golf courses, 12 tennis courts, indoor and outdoor swimming pools and a private beach, a fountain modeled after one in the Boboli Gardens of Florence, a lobby inspired by Genoa's Palazzo Larega, and a general design inspired by Rome's Villa Medici.
The Miami Biltmore at Coral Gables, Florida, is completed by John McEntee Bowman of 1914 New York Biltmore fame and Coral Gables developer George E. (Edgar) Merrick, whose late father, Solomon Greasley Merrick, was a Congregationalist minister who moved to Florida from Cape Cod in 1898, acquired 160 acres of land near the Everglades, and built a homestead he called Coral Gables. The younger Merrick acquired an adjacent tract in 1922, called it Coral Gables, and set out to build the first Miami subdivision as a resort for respectable older people who could not afford Carl Fisher's Miami Beach (see 1913). The new $7 million Miami Biltmore has a 250-foot outdoor swimming pool and a 300-foot replica of Spain's Tower of Giralda at Seville.
The bubble of inflated Florida land values breaks as investors discover the lots they have bought are in many cases underwater. Tbe hordes of Florida real estate promoters turn out to include a man named Charpon, who is actually Charles Ponzi of 1920 "Ponzi scheme" notoriety (see 1926).
The world's first motel (motor hotel) opens December 12 at San Luis Obispo, California, charging $2.50 per night ($1.25 by some accounts) for a two-room bungalow with kitchen and private adjoining garage (the units face a central courtyard that has a swimming pool and picnic tables for social gatherings). Los Angeles architect Arthur Heineman has designed the $80,000 Motel Inn for James Vail and coins the term motel for what he calls the Milestone. It has accommodations for 160 guests and is located on one of the busiest U.S. highways; others will soon follow Vail's lead, and U.S. highways will be lined in many places with motor inns, motor courts, cottages, and the like (Motel is initially a trademarked name), many with lumpy mattresses, broken ice machines, paper-thin walls, and forgotten wake-up calls, all with neon signs indicating "Vacancy" or "No Vacancy" (see 1939).
An earthquake in China's Yunan province March 16 leaves an estimated 5,000 dead.
The worst tornado in U.S. history cuts 295 miles through southeast Missouri, southern Illinois, and southwest Indiana March 18 and continues for 3½ hours, hitting speeds as high as 73 miles per hour, killing a record 695 people, injuring 2,027, destroying 15,000 homes, and wreaking property damage in the millions of dollars.
The J. G. Boswell Co. incorporated in October will become one of the world's largest and most lucrative agribusiness entities. Georgia-born entrepreneur Col. James Griffin Boswell, now 43, retired from military service after hurting his back in a freak accident in the Philippines, left Georgia after boll weevils destroyed his cotton crop, and learned from a Los Angeles hotel manager that the 760-square-mile Tulare Lake in California's San Joaquin Valley almost disappeared in a drought in 1898 but has artesian wells in its bed that would make it ideal for cotton growing; J. G. persuaded his brother William Whittier Boswell to join him, and he goes into competition with E. Clarence Salyer, 30, with whom the Boswells will feud for decades in a struggle over water for irrigation. By 1940 the Boswells will have nine cotton gins and a large cotton-oil mill.
Harold Ware returns to Russia with 26 volunteers and $150,000 worth of U.S. farm equipment, seeds, and supplies (see 1921; 1922). Ware demonstrates mechanized farming on 15,000 acres of land in the northern Caucasus, and he is selected by Moscow to oversee a program of organizing huge mechanized state farms for the improvement of agricultural efficiency throughout Russia, a post he will hold until 1932 (see Stalin, 1928).
Benito Mussolini announces a "wheat battle" to make the country independent in food; by the early 1930s, her wheat crop will be 60 percent larger than in 1922, and Italy will be Europe's third largest wheat producer (Russia being first, France second).
Yeast magnate Julius Fleischmann falls dead of heart attack at age 52 February 5 while playing in the fourth chukker of a match at Miami's Nautilus Polo Field.
U.S. refrigerator sales reach 75,000, up from 10,000 in 1920, as prices come down and consumer incomes rise (see 1929; GE, 1927).
Star Can Co. of San Francisco introduces the first new can opener since one patented by William Lyman in 1870. It has a serrated rotation wheel and will be the basis of the electric can opener.
Le Creuset enameled cast iron cookware is introduced by a factory at Fresnoy-le-Grand in northern France using sand molds for hand-cast molten iron pots and pans that are polished and sanded by hand before being sprayed with two separate coats of enamel and fired after each process at a temperature of 800° C.
Minnesota Valley Canning Co. begins canning a new, European pea variety and adopts as its advertising symbol a giant wearing a bearskin and carrying a club (see 1907; Jolly Green Giant, 1935).
White Castle System builds a brick hamburger stand at St. Louis, covers it with white enamel, and gives it a white porcelain-enamel interior to suggest absolute cleanliness (see 1921). White enamel will hereafter be the mark of all White Castle outlets as Billy Ingram and Walter Anderson expand.
Restaurateur Samuel S. Childs dies at New York March 17 at age 61.
Vienna has 1,250 coffeehouses, down from 15,000 in 1842. A good coffeehouse offers at least 28 kinds of coffee.
Birth control wins the endorsements of the New York Obstetrical Society, New York Academy of Medicine, and American Medical Association after persuasion by New York obstetrician Robert L. Dickinson, who obtains a $10,000 Rockefeller Foundation grant for research in contraception.
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