1926 Wikipedia Summary

THE 1926 HITS ARCHIVE

Events

January

• January 3 – Theodoros Pangalos declares himself dictator in Greece.^[1]
• January 8
  • Abdul-Aziz ibn Saud is crowned King of Hejaz.^[2]
  • Crown Prince Nguyễn Phúc Vĩnh Thuy ascends the throne, the last monarch of Vietnam.
• January 12 – Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll premiere their radio program Sam ‘n’ Henry, in which the two white performers portray two black characters from Harlem looking to strike it rich in the big city (it is a precursor to Gosden and Correll’s more popular later program, Amos ‘n’ Andy).
• January 16 – A BBC comic radio play broadcast by Ronald Knox, about a workers’ revolution, causes a panic in London.^[3]
• January 21 – The Belgian Parliament accepts the Locarno Treaties.
• January 26 – Scottish inventor John Logie Baird demonstrates a mechanical television system at his London laboratory for members of the Royal Institution and a reporter from The Times.
• January 29 – Eugene O’Neill‘s The Great God Brown opens at the Greenwich Theatre in New York City.
• January 31 – British and Belgian troops leave Cologne.

February

• February 1 – Land on Broadway and Wall Street in New York City is sold at a record $7 per sq inch; it is only affordable for four more years.
• February 8 – Seán O’Casey‘s The Plough and the Stars opens at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin.
• February 12 – The Irish minister for Justice, Kevin O’Higgins, appoints the Committee on Evil Literature.
• February 20 – The Berlin International Green Week debuts in Germany.
• February 25 – Francisco Franco becomes General of Spain.

March

• March 6
  • The Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon (England) is destroyed by fire.
  • The first commercial air route from the United Kingdom to South Africa is established by Alan Cobham.
• March 14 – The El Virilla train accident occurs in Costa Rica killing 248 people and injuring 93.^[4]
• March 16 – Robert H. Goddard launches the first liquid-fuel rocket, at Auburn, Massachusetts.
• March 23 – Éamon de Valera organises the political party Fianna Fáil in Ireland.

April

• April 4 – Greek dictator Theodoros Pangalos wins the presidential election, with 93.3% of the vote; turnout is light, as the result is considered a foregone conclusion.^[5]
• April 7 – An assassination attempt against Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini fails.^[6]
• April 17 – Zhang Zuolin‘s army captures Beijing.^[7]
• April 24 – Treaty of Berlin: Germany and the Soviet Union each pledge neutrality, in the event of an attack on the other by a third party, for the next five years.
• April 25 – Rezā Khan is crowned Shah of Iran, under the name “Pahlevi”.
• April 30 – African-American pilot Bessie Coleman is killed, after falling 500 feet (150 m) from an airplane.

May

• May 4 – The United Kingdom general strike begins at midnight, in support of a strike by coal miners.
• May 9
  • Martial law is declared in Britain, because of the general strike.
  • The French navy bombards Damascus, because of Druze riots.
  • Explorer Richard E. Byrd and co-pilot Floyd Bennett claim to be the first to fly over the North Pole in the Josephine Ford monoplane, taking off from Spitsbergen, Norway and returning 15 hours and 44 minutes later. Both men are immediately hailed as national heroes, though some experts have since been skeptical of the claim, believing that the plane was unlikely to have covered the entire distance and back in that short an amount of time.^[8] An entry in Byrd’s diary, discovered in 1996, suggested that the plane actually turned back 150 miles short of the North Pole, due to an oil leak.^[9]
• May 10 – Planes piloted by Major Harold Geiger and Horace Meek Hickam, students at the United States Air Corps Tactical School, collide in mid-air at Langley Field, Virginia (Hickam parachutes to safety).
• May 12
  • Roald Amundsen and his crew fly over the North Pole, in the airship Norge.
  • UK General Strike 1926: In the United Kingdom, a general strike by trade unions ends (the strike began on May 3).
• May 12–14 – May Coup: Józef Piłsudski takes over in Poland.
• May 18 – Evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson disappears, while visiting a Venice, California beach.
• May 20 – The United States Congress passes the Air Commerce Act, licensing pilots and planes.
• May 23 – The first Lebanese constitution is established.
• May 25 – At least 165 persons (144 confirmed) die in the Mount Tokachi volcano eruption in Hokkaido, Japan, according to the Japanese government official report.^{[page needed]}
• May 26 – The Rif War ends, when Rif rebels surrender in Morocco.
• May 28 – The 1926 coup d’état, commanded by Manuel Gomes da Costa in Portugal, installs the Ditadura Nacional (National Dictatorship), followed by António de Oliveira Salazar‘s Estado Novo.

June

• June 4 – Ignacy Mościcki becomes president of Poland.
• June 7 – Liberal politician Carl Gustaf Ekman succeeds Rickard Sandler, as Prime Minister of Sweden.
• June 29 – Arthur Meighen briefly returns to office as Prime Minister of Canada during the King-Byng Affair.

July

• July 1
  • The Kuomintang begins the Northern Expedition, a military unification campaign in northern China.
  • The Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky is authorized by the United States Congress.
• July 3 – A Caudron C.61 aircraft, operated by Compagnie Internationale de Navigation Aérienne, crashes in Czechoslovakia.
• July 9 – In Portugal, General Óscar Carmona takes power in a military coup.
• July 10 – A bolt of lightning strikes Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey; the resulting fire causes several million pounds of explosives to blow up in the next 2–3 days.
• July 15 – Bombay Electric Supply and Transport Company in India introduces motor buses.
• July 23 – Fox Film buys the patents of the Movietone sound system for recording sound onto film.
• July 26 – The United States National Bar Association is incorporated.

August

• August 1 – In Mexico, the entry into force of anticlerical measures stipulated in the Constitution of 1917 causes the Cristero War.
• August 2 – The short-lived Western Australian Secession League is founded.^[10]
• August 5 – In New York, the Warner Brothers‘ Vitaphone system is seen by audiences for the first time, in the movie Don Juan, starring John Barrymore.^[11]
• August 6 – Gertrude Ederle becomes the first woman to swim the English Channel, from France to England.^[12]
• August 18 – In the United States, a weather map is televised for the first time, sent from NAA Arlington to the Weather Bureau office in Washington, D.C.
• August 22 – In Greece, Georgios Kondylis ousts Theodoros Pangalos.
• August 25 – Pavlos Kountouriotis announces that dictatorship has ended in Greece, and he is now the president.

September

• September 1 – Lebanon under the French Mandate gets its first constitution, thereby becoming a republic, with Charles Debbas as its president.^[13]
• September 8 – The German Weimar Republic joins the League of Nations.
• September 11 – In Rome, Italy, Gino Lucetti throws a bomb at Benito Mussolini’s car, but Mussolini is unhurt.^[14]
• September 14 – The Locarno Treaties of 1925 are ratified in Geneva, and come into effect.
• September 18 – Great Miami Hurricane: A strong hurricane devastates Miami, leaving over 100 dead and causing several hundred million dollars in damage (equal to nearly $100 billion in the modern day).
• September 19 – Giuseppe Meazza (San Siro) Stadium, well known among sports venues in Italy, officially opens in Milan.^[15]
• September 20 – The North Side Gang attempts to assassinate Al Capone, at the apex of his power at this time, spraying his headquarters in Cicero, Illinois with over a thousand rounds of machine gun fire in broad daylight, as Capone is eating there. Capone escapes harm.^[16][17]
• September 21 – French war ace René Fonck and three others attempt to fly the Atlantic, in pursuit of the Orteig Prize. Before the newsreel cameras at Roosevelt Field New York, the modified Sikorsky S-35 crashes on take-off and bursts into flames. Fonck survives, but two of his men are killed.
• September 23 – Gene Tunney defeats Jack Dempsey to become heavyweight boxing champion of the world.
• September 25
  • The League of Nations Slavery Convention abolishes all types of slavery.
  • William Lyon Mackenzie King returns to office as Prime Minister of Canada, after winning the Canadian federal election.

October

• October 2 – Józef Piłsudski becomes prime minister of Poland.
• October 12 – British miners agree to end their strike.
• October 14 – A. A. Milne‘s children’s book Winnie-the-Pooh is published in London, featuring the eponymous bear.
• October 16 – An ammunition explosion on troopship Kuang Yuang explodes near Kiukiang, China, killing 1,200.^[18]
• October 19 – The 1926 Imperial Conference opens in London.
• October 20 – A hurricane kills 650 in Cuba.
• October 23
  • Leon Trotsky and Lev Kamenev are removed from the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
  • A decree in Italy bans women from holding public office.
  • The Fazal Mosque, the first purpose-built in London and the first Ahmadiyya mosque in Britain, is completed.
• October 31 – Magician Harry Houdini dies of gangrene and peritonitis, that has developed after his appendix ruptured.

November

• November 10 – In San Francisco, a necrophiliac serial killer named Earle Nelson (dubbed “Gorilla Man”) kills and then rapes his 9th victim, a boarding house landlady named Mrs. William Edmonds.
• November 11 – The United States Numbered Highway System, including U.S. Route 66, is established.
• November 15
  • The NBC Radio Network opens in the United States with 24 stations (formed by Westinghouse, General Electric and RCA).
  • The Balfour Declaration is approved by the 1926 Imperial Conference, making the Commonwealth dominions equal and independent.
• November 24
  • The village of Rocquebillier, in the French Riviera, is almost destroyed in a massive hailstorm.
  • Sri Aurobindo retires, leaving “The Mother” to run the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Puducherry, India.
• November 25 – The death penalty is re-established in Italy.
• November 26 – All Italian Communist deputies are arrested.
• November 27 – The restoration of Colonial Williamsburg begins in Williamsburg, Virginia, United States.

December

• December 2 – British prime minister Stanley Baldwin ends the martial law that had been declared due to the general strike.
• December 3 – Agatha Christie disappears from her home in Surrey; on December 14 she is found at a Harrogate hotel.
• December 7 – The Council for the Preservation of Rural England (CPRE) is founded (later the Campaign to Protect Rural England).
• December 13 – Miina Sillanpää becomes Finland‘s first female government minister.
• December 17 – 1926 Lithuanian coup d’état: A democratically elected government is overthrown in Lithuania; Antanas Smetona assumes power.
• December 18 – Turkey converts to the Gregorian calendar, making the next day January 1 1927.
• December 23 – Nicaraguan President Adolfo Díaz requests U.S. military assistance in the ongoing civil war. American peacekeeping troops immediately set up neutral zones in Puerto Cabezas and at the mouth of the Rio Grande to protect American and foreign lives and property.^[19][20]
• December 26 – In the history of Japan, the Shōwa period begins from this day, due to the death of Emperor Taishō on the day before. His son Hirohito will reign as Emperor of Japan until 1989. Showa 1 in the Japanese calendar is just six days long, prior to January 1 Showa 2 (1927).^{[citation needed]}

Date unknown

• Dr Muthulakshmi Reddi becomes the first woman to be appointed to a legislature in India, the Madras Legislative Council.
• Stephen H. Langdon begins excavations in Jemdet Nasr, finding proto-cuneiform clay tablets (3100–2900 BCE).
• Phencyclidine (PCP, angel dust) is first synthesized.
• Earl W. Bascom, rodeo cowboy and artist, designs and marks rodeo’s first high-cut rodeo chaps at Stirling, Alberta, Canada.
• The International African Institute is founded in London.
• Industrial output surpasses the level of 1913 in the USSR.