April 1925


The following events occurred in April 1925:

April 1, 1925 (Wednesday)

April 2, 1925 (Thursday)

  • France and Turkey agreed on the autonomy of Alexandretta.
  • The Police Forces Amalgamation Act 1925 went into effect in the Republic of Ireland, after having been passed on February 27, 1922, consolidating the Garda Síochána and the Dublin Metropolitan Police into a single national police force.
  • American bank robber Harry Pierpont, who had led a gang in the hold-ups of six banks in Indiana and Michigan since November 26, was arrested in a Detroit apartment, along with his accomplice Ted Skeer and Skeer's girlfriend Louise Brunner. In 1933, Pierpont would escape from prison and joing John Dillinger on a new string of bank robberies, Recaptured several months later, he would be executed on October 17, 1934.
  • A new flag was adopted for the U.S. state of Oklahoma, replacing the red flag that had been in use since 1911. The flag was designed by Louise Fluke, winner of a contest sponsored by the state's Daughters of the American Revolution. The only change to the flag in its first 100 years was the addition, in 1941, of the word "OKLAHOMA" on the banner.
  • Born:
  • *Saqi, Iraqi-born Pakistani film and television actor who appeared in more than 500 films between 1955 and 1986; in Baghdad.
  • *Hard Boiled Haggerty, American professional wrestler, pro football player, and actor
  • Died:
  • *C. E. Humphry, 81, Irish-born British feminist, journalist and columnist who went by the byline "Madge".
  • *Baroness Fanny Moser, 76, eccentric Swiss heiress, profiled as "Emmy von N." in Sigmund Freud's 1895 book ''Studies on Hysteria''

April 3, 1925 (Friday)

April 4, 1925 (Saturday)

April 5, 1925 (Sunday)

April 6, 1925 (Monday)

April 7, 1925 (Tuesday)

April 8, 1925 (Wednesday)

April 9, 1925 (Thursday)

April 10, 1925 (Friday)

April 11, 1925 (Saturday)

April 12, 1925 (Sunday)

  • The Metropolitan Peter of Krutitsy was installed as the new Patriarch of Moscow and leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, on the same day as the funeral for his predecessor, Patriarch Tikhon of Moscow. Tikhon's funeral in Moscow was the last major public Russian Orthodox Church event and the last major religious event in the Soviet Union for over 60 years. Peter, identified in Tikhon's will as one of three potential successors, was selected by the council of 59 bishops because "the first two were already in prison."
  • Following the example set by the United Kingdom on March 3, France agreed that its share of indemnities still owed by China for the Boxer Rebellion should go instead to railway construction in that nation.
  • Club Bolívar, one of the most successful soccer football teams in the South American nation of Bolivia, was founded in La Paz.

April 13, 1925 (Monday)

April 14, 1925 (Tuesday)

April 15, 1925 (Wednesday)

April 16, 1925 (Thursday)

April 17, 1925 (Friday)

April 18, 1925 (Saturday)

  • Rioting broke out in Italian stock exchanges during protests against a new government edict stipulating that 25 percent of the value of all stocks and bonds purchased must be paid for in cash. The law was an attempt to curb speculation to help stabilize the lira.
  • The San Francisco Chinese Hospital, the only hospital in the United States with a specific mission of providing medical care for Chinese immigrants and the only one with a staff fluent in various dialects of the Chinese language, was opened at 835 Jackson Street in the city's Chinatown section with a dedication ceremony attended by Mayor James Rolph of San Francisco and Mayor John L. Davie of Oakland, as well as officials of the Chinese Hospital Association and leading Chinese physicians.
  • The International Amateur Radio Union was founded.
  • Born:
  • *William Crook, American diplomat, U.S. Ambassador To Australia 1968–1969, director of Volunteers in Service to America 1966-1968
  • *Bob Hastings, American radio and TV actor known for McHale's Navy, and as a voice actor for numerous TV shows as "Superboy"; in Brooklyn, New York
  • Died:
  • *Charles Ebbets, 65, majority owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, and Major League Baseball innovator, died from heart disease in his suite at the Waldorf-Astoria, two weeks after becoming ill after returning from the team's spring training camp.
  • *Sir Rickman Godlee, 76, British neurosurgeon, known for performing the first removal of a brain tumor by operating on an exposed brain, improving on the technique used by Scottish surgeon William Macewen in 1879.

April 19, 1925 (Sunday)

April 20, 1925 (Monday)


April 21, 1925 (Tuesday)

  • All 38 crew of the Japanese cargo ship SS Raifuku Maru died when the ship sank in a storm while transporting wheat from the U.S. to Germany. After the ship's telegraphist, Masao Hiwatari, sent a distress singal "Now very danger! Come quick!", two British ocean liners, RMS Homeric and SS King Alexander reached the vessel off the coast of Nova Scotia and Canada, but were unable to get close enough for a rescue because of the heavy seas. Because the ship was listing at a 30-degree angle, none of the crew were able to lower lifeboats or to evacuate. RMS Homeric sent the message "Observed steamer Rafuku Maru sink in Lat 4143N Long 6139W Regret unable to save any lives.
  • In Saudi Arabia, as part of a campaign by the Wahhabi Muslim-led government of the former Kingdom of Nejd to eradicate shrines associated with the Hejaz Muslims, the mausoleums and domes at Al-Baqi Cemetery at Medina were torn down, along with markers of the gravesites of members of the family of the Prophet Muhammad.
  • Italian aviator Francesco de Pinedo and mechanic Ernesto Campanelli departed Rome on an unprecedented airplane trip with a goal of flying from Italy to Australia and then back to Rome by way of Tokyo. Pinedo's SIAI S.16 flying boat Gennariello would arrive in Australia on June 10 by way of what are now Greece, Iraq, Persia, Iran, Pakistan, India, Burma, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia and, after layovers in Australia and Japan, return to Rome by November 7 to complete a journey.
  • King Features President Moses Koenigsberg presented a "Phonofilm", made by the company owned by inventor Lee de Forest, to a gathering of editors and publishers in New York City. Shot the week before, Calvin Coolidge became the first U.S. president to talk on film as he delivered a four-minute address.
  • Born:
  • *Michel Ter-Pogossian, German-born Armenian American medical physicist known for his research into positron emission tomography and the creation of the PET scan; in Berlin
  • *Rita Macedo, Mexican actress and fashion designer, 1972 Ariel Award winner for Best Actress; in Mexico City
  • *Sidney Pollard, Austrian born British economist; as Sigfried Pollak in Vienna
  • *Carl H. Dodd, U.S. Medal of Honor recipient for heroism in the Korean War; in Cotes, Kentucky

April 22, 1925 (Wednesday)

  • The Peace Preservation Law was enacted in Japan to prohibit and to allow the Special Higher Police of the Home Ministry to arrest "anyone who has formed an association with the aim of altering the kokutai" or having "joined such an association with full knowledge of its object". Mere criticism of the government could be considered an attempt to alter the national essence in order to justify a person's arrest, and their incarceration for up to 10 years. Under the law, the "Thought Section" of the Tokubetsu was set up to monitor "dangerous thoughts" or "thought crime" within Japan and its territories. The Tokkō would arrest over 700,000 people until Japan's surrender in 1945 at the end of World War II.
  • The Saltair pavilion, a famous bath house resort in Saltair, Utah at the Great Salt Lake in the United States, was destroyed by fire.
  • Born: George Cole, English actor, in Morden, South London
  • Died:
  • *André Caplet, 46, French composer and conductor, and former director of the Boston Grand Opera died from pleurisy after having been gassed in World War I.
  • *Lucy Cavendish, 83, British philanthropist and champion of girls' and women's education; Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge is named in her honor.
  • *Norman Thorne, 24, English chicken farmer convicted of murdering his fiancée Elsie Cameron, on December 5, 1924, and dismembering her body, was hanged at Wandsworth Prison on what would have been Miss Cameron's 27th birthday.

April 23, 1925 (Thursday)

April 24, 1925 (Friday)

April 25, 1925 (Saturday)

April 26, 1925 (Sunday)

April 27, 1925 (Monday)

April 28, 1925 (Tuesday)

April 29, 1925 (Wednesday)

  • English inventor Grindell Matthews announced he was putting the finishing touches on his "luminaphone", a machine operated by rays of light that worked like a pipe organ.
  • Died:
  • *Ed McKeever, 66, co-owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers baseball team with Charles Ebbets, died 11 days after Ebbets had been stricken with a fatal heart attack. According to reports at the time, McKeever caught influenza while attending Ebbets's funeral.
  • *Ralph D. Paine, 53, American journalist and author, died the day after he had become ill while serving on a federal grand jury in Concord, New Hampshire.

April 30, 1925 (Thursday)