February 1921


The following events happened in February 1921:

February 1, 1921 (Tuesday)

February 2, 1921 (Wednesday)

  • In the Clonfin Ambush, "The first major IRA attack with what we would now recognise as an IED with sufficient explosive power to bring the fight to a quick result" the Irish Republican Army detonated an improvised explosive device to stop two truckloads of the Royal Irish Constabulary auxiliary and then to fire on them. In the fight that followed at Clonfin in County Longford, four of the 19 RIC men were killed and eight wounded, and further ambushes using IEDs followed.
  • The British-registered ship Esperanza de Larrinaga departed from Norfolk, Virginia on a voyage to Reggio Calabria in Italy, but never arrived. On the same day, the Italian steamship Monte San Michele left New York with a cargo of grain to ship to Genoa and was not seen again. The search for both ships, as well as the freighter Ottawa, would be abandoned after more than two months after searchers concluded that the vessels had been lost with all hands.
  • Born: Hyacinthe Thiandoum, Senegalese Roman Catholic Cardinal and the Archbishop of Dakar from 1962 to 2000; in Poponguine, Senegal
  • Died:
  • *Andrea Carlo Ferrari, 70, Italian Roman Catholic Cardinal and the Archbishop of Milan from 1894 until his death; died of throat cancer
  • *Antonio Jacobsen, 70, Danish-born American maritime artist

February 3, 1921 (Thursday)

  • An ambush by the Irish Republican Army killed 17 policemen in Queenstown in County Cork. On the same day at Burgatia, 500 Sinn Feiners fought a pitched battle against the constabulary.
  • Thirty-six unemployed workers and six Chilean Army soldiers were killed in a clash with a larger number of unemployed workmen at the nitrate factory at San Gregorio.
  • U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, at the request of President-Elect Warren G. Harding, called a special session of the U.S. Senate to begin on the morning of the March 4 presidential Inauguration Day to approve Harding's appointments for a new cabinet.
  • Born: George E. Felton, British computer scientist who developed the GEORGE series of operating systems; in Paris, France

February 4, 1921 (Friday)

February 5, 1921 (Saturday)

February 6, 1921 (Sunday)

  • Elections were held for the parliament of the Union of South Africa, strengthening the majority of Prime Minister Jan Smuts and the South African Party, and temporarily ending General J. B. M. Hertzog's agitation for South Africa to secede from the British Empire. After having governed by a coalition with the Unionist Party since the 1920 election, the SAP won a majority on its own with 79 of the 134 seats in the Volksraad, the lower house of the South African Parliament.
  • Nikolaos Kalogeropoulos was appointed as the new Prime Minister of Greece to replace Dimitrios Rallis. King Constantine appointed Kalogeropoulos shortly after midnight after conferring all day on Saturday with leaders of Rallis's party.
  • The British freighter Ottawa made its last communication, in the middle of its voyage from Norfolk, Virginia in the U.S. to Manchester in the UK. The Ottawa was never heard from again and presumed to have been lost with all hands.
  • The palace of Archbishop of Mexico City José Mora y del Río was struck by a bomb.

February 7, 1921 (Monday)

  • The Army Reduction Resolution, calling for the U.S. Army to be reduced to 175,000 soldiers, passed by Congress and then vetoed by U.S. President Wilson, became effective as both Houses of Congress voted overwhelmingly to override the veto. The House voted 271 to 16 to override on February 5, and the Senate followed suit, 67 to 1.
  • Italy's Foreign Minister, Count Carlo Sforza, announced that the Allied Supreme Council was reducing the amount expected from Germany to pay for Allied occupation of the Rhineland by 83% to only 240 million gold marks, a savings equivalent of $300 million per year, to be made up for by the 12% tax on German exports.

February 8, 1921 (Tuesday)

February 9, 1921 (Wednesday)

February 10, 1921 (Thursday)

  • Thirty-two people were killed as a tornado swept through the African American town of Gardner in Washington County, Georgia, and 40 injured. Over 100 people were left homeless by the twister, that swept through the settlement shortly after 12:00 noon. All but two of the persons killed were African American, and the Red Cross provided the relief efforts for the injured and the homeless.
  • Japan's House of Representatives voted 38 in favor and 245 against a proposal by opposition leader Yukio Ozaki to reduce the number of new ships to be built for the Imperial Japanese Navy.

February 11, 1921 (Friday)

February 12, 1921 (Saturday)

February 13, 1921 (Sunday)

February 14, 1921 (Monday)

February 15, 1921 (Tuesday)

  • At Shulaveri, in the Georgian Republic, Bolshevik activist Filipp Makharadze organized the Revolutionary Committee of Georgia and made a formal appeal to the Soviet government for Russian support of the anti-Menshevik insurgents. The Soviets responded, ordering the 11th Army of the Soviet Army forces to begin assistance to the Georgian Bolsheviks. Under the command of General Anatoliy Gekker, [Red Army invasion of Georgia|the 11th Army crossed into Georgia] from Armenia and Azerbaijan and proceeded toward the Georgian capital at Tbilisi.
  • Eight train passengers were killed, and 10 wounded, after being caught in the crossfire of a gun battle between the Irish Republican Army and the British Army's Essex Regiment. The IRA had attempted an ambush on the train as it stopped at Upton, County Cork.
  • The Colombian Air Force became an active service, originally as a branch of the Colombian Army.
  • The New Mexico Mounted Police, the law enforcement officers on horseback who had patrolled New Mexico since before it attained statehood in 1912, was abolished, leaving no statewide law enforcement to supplement local authorities. The gap in law enforcement would be remedied in 1933 with the formation of a new agency, the New Mexico Motor Patrol, now the New Mexico State Police.
  • On the occasion of her 101st birthday, a statue of women's suffragist Susan B. Anthony was unveiled in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda in honor of the granting of the right to vote to women. Soon after the dedication, however, the statue was moved to the basement of the Capitol, where it would remain for 75 years before being returned to the Rotunda in 1997.
  • As a demonstration that an appendectomy could be performed without using a general anesthetic to put the patient to sleep, Dr. Evan O'Neill Kane used a local anesthetic and performed the surgery on himself before observers from the medical community and the press, cutting an incision, removing his own appendix, applying the sutures and stitching his own incision.

February 16, 1921 (Wednesday)

February 17, 1921 (Thursday)

February 18, 1921 (Friday)

February 19, 1921 (Saturday)

February 20, 1921 (Sunday)

February 21, 1921 (Monday)

February 22, 1921 (Tuesday)

February 23, 1921 (Wednesday)

  • The moderately conservative public official Oscar von Sydow became the new Prime Minister of Sweden, succeeding Baron Louis De Geer.
  • The U.S. Post Office set a new record for air mail delivery, conveying mail posted the day before at San Francisco to delivery in New York City, in 33 hours and 20 minutes, becoming the first person to fly through the night rather than waiting for daylight. Pilot Jack Knight departed the morning before at 4:30 Pacific time from San Francisco and landed at Cheyenne, Wyoming in daylight, then took off at dusk and flew all night in darkness to Chicago, away, before another pilot, Ernest M. Allison, continued on the rest of the way to a landing at 4:50 in the afternoon Eastern time at an airfield at Roosevelt Field on Long Island across from New York City. The Post Office said in a press release that the night time flight was "the momentous step in civil aviation" and pledged to inaugurate regular nighttime flights. The demonstration flight showed that air mail delivery could be feasible, since previous flights had been limited to daylight hours with long layovers through the night. On July 1, 1924, the Post Office would make any-hour flying a regular policy, cutting the time for a transcontinental trip from 72 hours to 33 hours. The actual time in the air for the transcontinental trip was 25 hours and 53 minutes. Knight was one of four pilots making simultaneous transcontinental flights. The two westbound flights from New York were grounded by bad weather after reaching Chicago, and the other eastbound flight, piloted by U.S. Army Captain W. F. Lewis, crashed at Elko, Nevada.
  • Died:
  • *Major General Alexander Mackenzie, 76, American engineer
  • *Henry C. Stanley, 80, Scottish-born Australian engineer
  • *Otto Piper, 79, German architectural historian

February 24, 1921 (Thursday)

February 25, 1921 (Friday)

February 26, 1921 (Saturday)

February 27, 1921 (Sunday)

February 28, 1921 (Monday)

  • The Kronstadt rebellion was initiated by sailors of the Soviet Navy's Baltic Fleet with the presentation by Stephen Petrichenko, chief clerk of the battleship Petropavlovsk, of 15 demands by the men of that ship and the Sevastopol, to the Kronstadt Communist Party Council.
  • The Cleveland Clinic, now one of the most famous hospitals in the United States, admitted its first patients, with 42 persons being checked in.
  • An attempt by Costa Rica to invade Panama was halted by the Panamanian Army at the border town of Coto, and U.S. troops moved into Panama City to protect that nation's government.
  • At the Irish city of Cork, six IRA members were executed by order of court martial for levying war on British forces. In reprisal, five British soldiers in Cork were killed by the IRA.
  • Aircraft Transport and Travel, founded in 1916 and one of the first airlines in Britain, ceased operations along with two others, after the French government began subsidizing its three airlines licensed to carry passengers.
  • French troops, including Algerian, Moroccan and Senegalese soldiers recruited from French-controlled portions of Africa, were sent to the border with Germany in preparation of an invasion and occupation of Germany's Ruhr area to enforce reparations.
  • Born:
  • *Pierre Clostermann, French fighter pilot who shot down 33 German planes in dogfights during World War II; in Curitiba, Brazil to a French diplomat
  • *James L. Baldwin, U.S. Army Major General and the last general to be removed from command for combat errors; in Omaha, Nebraska
  • *Saul Zaentz, American film producer, in Passiac, New Jersey,