January 1921


The following events occurred in January 1921:

January 1, 1921 (Saturday)

January 2, 1921 (Sunday)

  • The Spanish liner Santa Isabel sank after running aground during a storm the night before, and striking rocks off the coast of Villa Garcia, killing 244 of the people on board. Most of the passengers and crew were below deck because of the rough weather.
  • The British government issued an order to residents of Ireland requiring all households to post a list on their doors of the people residing in the dwelling, on penalty of criminal proceedings.
  • Gabriele D'Annunzio ended his attempt to take over Fiume and abandoned the Italian Regency of Carnaro proclaimed by him in 1919.
  • Cruzeiro Esporte Clube, one of Brazil's most successful soccer football teams, was founded in Belo Horizonte.
  • Pittsburgh's KDKA (AM) radio station made the first live broadcast of a church service, and the first remote broadcast, as it aired the Sunday services from Calvary Episcopal Church. The National Religious Broadcasters association would celebrate the anniversary half a century later by making "the first international religious broadcast to be transmitted live by satellite" on January 27, 1971.
  • Word arrived that the U.S. Navy balloon A-5598, which had been missing since the day after its departure from Rockaway, New York on December 13, had been located after its crash landing north of Moose Factory, Ontario. The three aeronauts, U.S. Navy Lieutenants Louis A. Kloor Jr. ; Stephen A. Farrell and Walter Hinton, had been missing and were found alive. The trio of aeronauts recovered at Moose Factory, and arrived at the nearest town on a railway line, Mattice on January 11. The group, stranded in the wilderness, narrowly avoiding coming down in the James Bay, had wandered for four days before they located a Cree Indian fur trader who initially mistook them for Canadian revenue agents, and then guided the Americans to safety. The group returned to a heroes' welcome in New York City on January 14.
  • Died:
  • *William Robinson, 80, Irish-born American electrical engineer, inventor of the automatic track circuit signal that made railroad travel safer starting in the 1870s
  • *Doud Dwight "Ikky" Eisenhower, 3, son of U.S. Army Major Dwight Eisenhower and Mamie Eisenhower; died of scarlet fever. In his memoir after his service as President of the United States, Eisenhower would describe his child's death as "the greatest disappointment and disaster of my life, the one I have never been able to forget completely."

January 3, 1921 (Monday)

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

January 4, 1921 (Tuesday)

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

January 5, 1921 (Wednesday)

  • New York City put into effect "the most radical change in street traffic regulations in the history of New York" at 7:00 in the evening, changing the route through Times Square to northbound only on Broadway and on Seventh Avenue for five hours each night. The new routing affected 40,000 automobiles that traveled through the square during the hours that theaters operated.
  • Born:
  • *Jean, Grand Duke of Luxembourg, monarch and head of state of Luxembourg from 1964 until his abdication in 2000, son of Grand Duchess Charlotte; in Colmar-Berg
  • *Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Swiss author and dramatist; in Konolfingen

January 6, 1921 (Thursday)

January 7, 1921 (Friday)

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

January 8, 1921 (Saturday)

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

January 9, 1921 (Sunday)

January 10, 1921 (Monday)

January 11, 1921 (Tuesday)

  • Riots in towns near Allahabad in British India, over land occupation rights and seniority, reached the point where troops were called in from Lucknow.
  • The Battle of İnönü ended after five days with a retreat by the Greek forces from the Turkish Army defenders. The Turks suffered 95 deaths and the Greeks 51 deaths.
  • The United States formally withdrew from further participation in the Allied Council, as U.S. Ambassador to France Hugh Wallace announced the severance of U.S. participation in all European councils.
  • Born:
  • *Kathleen Byron, English actress; as Kathleen Elizabeth Fell, in Manor Park
  • *Juanita M. Kreps, American economist, first woman to serve as the United States Secretary of Commerce from 1977 to 1979; as Clara Juanita Morris, in Lynch, Kentucky

January 12, 1921 (Wednesday)

  • France's Premier Georges Leygues and his government lost a vote of no confidence held in the National Assembly, by a margin of 463 to 125 expressing their dissatisfaction with his failure to enforce reparations from Germany.
  • Died: Gervase Elwes, 54, English musical tenor; killed after being struck by a train in Boston while on a concert tour of the United States

January 13, 1921 (Thursday)

January 14, 1921 (Friday)

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

January 15, 1921 (Saturday)

File:HerbertClarkHoover.jpg|100px|thumb|right|U.S. Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover
  • The first live radio broadcast of a public address from a remote location took place as incoming U.S. Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover gave a speech about humanitarian aid to Europe. The speech was made at the Duquesne Club in Pittsburgh and relayed by telephone line to radio station KDKA, ten miles away. According to KDKA's owner, the broadcast would be strong enough to be picked up by amateur radio operators up to away on wavelength of 330 meters.

January 16, 1921 (Sunday)

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

January 17, 1921 (Monday)

January 18, 1921 (Tuesday)

January 19, 1921 (Wednesday)

January 20, 1921 (Thursday)

January 21, 1921 (Friday)

  • The full-length silent comedy-drama film The Kid, written, produced, directed by and starring Charlie Chaplin, with Jackie Coogan was premiered, making its first public showing at Carnegie Hall in New York before being distributed throughout North America and then the world.
  • The Italian Communist Party was founded in Livorno, splitting from the Socialist Party after the delegates at the Socialist Party convention voted against joining the Moscow Internationale. The vote taken, based on the number of party members represented by each delegate, was 58,900 for joining Moscow, and 112,241 against. Amadeo Bordiga reportedly announced, "We who are in the minority are not going to accept this vote.... Therefore, we announce that the Communists will leave this hall and congregate in St. Mark's Theatre, where a new Communist party will be formed. Hurrah for the Communists!"
  • The French Chamber of Deputies approved Aristide Briand as the new premier by a vote of 475 to 68, in response to his more moderate policy regarding German reparations.
  • The Irish Republican Army attempted an ambush on Dublin police officers in Drumcondra, a district of Dublin. The attack was unsuccessful; one of the IRA members was fatally wounded, and five were captured and sent to Mountjoy Prison. Six of them, led by Patrick Doyle, were executed by hanging on March 14 after being convicted of treason by a military tribunal.
  • Born:
  • *Andreas Ostler, German Olympic bobsledder; in Bavaria, Weimar Republic
  • *Howard Unruh, American mass murderer who killed 13 people in less than 15 minutes in 1949; in Camden, New Jersey
  • Died:
  • *Arthur Sifton, 62, Canadian politician, second Premier of Alberta, 20th Secretary of State for Canada
  • *Charles F. Booher, 72, American politician, U.S. Representative for Missouri from 1889 until his death; died six weeks before the scheduled March 4 expiration of his term

January 22, 1921 (Saturday)

  • The Soviet government announced, in Pravda, an immediate one-third reduction in the daily ration of bread for cities, in the middle of winter during an ongoing famine prompted by a drought and poor grain harvest in 1920. "Severe though it was," a historian would note later, "the reduction apparently was unavoidable. Heavy snows and shortages of fuel had held up food trains from Siberia and the northern Caucasus, where surpluses had been gathered to feed the hungry towns of the center and north." The unpopular decision led to protests in cities throughout the Soviet Union, the most prominent of which would be the Kronstadt rebellion in March.
  • The formation of the Council on Foreign Relations was proposed by Frank A. Vanderlip, formerly the Assistant U.S. Secretary of Treasury for President McKinley, and later the President of the National City Bank of New York. Vanderlip spoke in New York City at a meeting of the League for Political Education, and described a body of 30 American business and political leaders who would "direct American intercourse with foreign nations" as well as being a watchdog over the U.S. Department of State. Vanderlip envisioned that the Council would eventually take over the functions of the U.S. Senate in making treaties.
  • The Allied Reparations Commission provided a detailed report of German deliveries of reparations made in 1920.
  • Sweden's Crown Prince Gustaf who would later reign from 1950 to 1973 as King Gustaf VI Adolf, saved the life of a British sailor in Stockholm's harbor. The man, not otherwise identified, had fallen into deep waters from a vessel that was in port, and Prince Gustaf saw the man in danger of drowning.

January 23, 1921 (Sunday)

January 24, 1921 (Monday)

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

January 25, 1921 (Tuesday)

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

January 26, 1921 (Wednesday)

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

January 27, 1921 (Thursday)

January 28, 1921 (Friday)

January 29, 1921 (Saturday)

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

January 30, 1921 (Sunday)

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

January 31, 1921 (Monday)

  • The commercial sailing cargo schooner Carroll A. Deering was found after it had run aground off of the coast of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina in choppy waters, but none of its crew of 10 people were ever seen again. The last communication from the Deering had been on January 28 when it attempted to hail a light ship, and was spotted on January 29 moving toward the Diamond Shoals. The only living thing on board was the ship's mascot, a parrot. When the U.S. Coast Guard was finally able to board the ship on February 4, investigators found that both of the ship's lifeboats had been taken down and evidence that the evacuation had happened quickly. The fate of the Carroll A. Deering has remained a mystery for almost a century.
  • With less than five weeks left in his term, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson announced that he would not commute the prison sentence of Socialist Party leader Eugene V. Debs, despite the recommendations of Wilson's anti-Communist Attorney General, A. Mitchell Palmer to release Debs on February 12 for Lincoln's birthday. Debs had slightly less than five years remaining of a 10-year prison sentence for espionage and was incarcerated at the U.S. Penitentiary in Atlanta.
  • Born:
  • *Carol Channing, American stage and film actress and singer, winner of the 1964 Tony Award for Hello, Dolly!; in Seattle
  • *Mario Lanza, American opera tenor, singer and film actor; as Alfredo Arnold Cocozza in Philadelphia
  • *Abu Sayeed Chowdhury, President of Bangladesh 1972 to 1973; in Kalihati Upazila, Bengal Province, British India
  • Died: Frederic Hale Parkhurst, 56, Governor of Maine, of pneumonia, 26 days after his inauguration. Parkhurst became ill after winning the general election in September. The president pro tempore of the Maine Senate, Percival P. Baxter, served the remaining 3 years and 11 months of Parkhurst's term.