April 1922

April 1, 1922 (Saturday)

• Over 500,000 United Mine Workers of America miners across 26 states went on strike in the United States.
• The British government formally transferred all functions of the former Government of Southern Ireland to the new Provisional Government by an Order in Council.
• In order to alleviate a budget deficit, the government of Greece implemented a program that required the existing Greek drachma banknotes to literally be cut in half, with the side on the right to be exchanged for new bank notes at half value. The left side of the note had to be surrendered to the bank in exchange for a government bond with a 6.5 percent annual interest rate.
• The Arnon Street killings of five men and a 7-year-old boy were carried out in Belfast in Northern Ireland by a group of police officers in retaliation for the sniper killing of Royal Irish Constable George Turner.
• The University of Cambridge rowing team won the 74th Boat Race.
• Born:
• *Saad el-Shazly, Egyptian military commander who led the Egyptian Armed Forces during the Yom Kippur War; in Basyoun, Kingdom of Egypt
• *William Manchester, American author, biographer and historian; in Attleboro, Massachusetts, United States
• *Sonny King, American lounge singer and comedian; as Luigi Schiavone, in Brooklyn, United States
• Died:
• *Emperor Charles I of Austria, 34, last monarch of the Austro-Hungarian Empire; died of respiratory failure at his home on Madeira Island, where he had lived in exile after the end of World War I
• *Jane Bunford, 26, British woman who was recognized as the tallest woman in the world in her lifetime, at a height of ; died from complications of gigantism

  April 2, 1922 (Sunday)

• Marcelo T. de Alvear was elected to a six-year term as the new President of Argentina, receiving 50.51% of the popular vote, more the other five candidates combined. Alvear, who carried 9 of 14 Argentine provinces, received 216 of the 336 electoral votes and was inaugurated on October 12. His Unión Cívica Radical political party won 49 of the 85 contested seats in the Chamber of Deputies to hold 95 of the 158 overall.
• Jews who had immigrated to Palestine established two settlements that are now mid-sized cities in Israel. A group of four Americans from New York state, and five employees, established Ra'anana on land purchased by the Ahuza Company for Jewish Settlement. On the same day, Givatayim was established by 22 Russian Jewish immigrants on the hills of Borochov and Kozlovsky.
• The Charlie Chaplin comedy short film Pay Day was released.
• Died: Hermann Rorschach, 37, Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, best known for developing what would become known as the Rorschach test; died of peritonitis from a ruptured appendix

  April 3, 1922 (Monday)

• On Vladimir Lenin's designation of a successor, Joseph Stalin was made the new General Secretary of the Communist Party in Soviet Russia.
• British Prime Minister David Lloyd George resoundingly won a motion of confidence in the House of Commons, 372 to 94, strengthening his hand going into the Genoa Conference.
• Born:
• *Doris Day, American singer and film star; as Doris Kappelhoff, in Cincinnati, United States
• *Maurice Riel, Canadian politician, served as a Senator from 1973 to 1999 and Speaker of the Senate of Canada from 1983 to 1984; in Saint-Constant, Quebec, Canada
• Died:
• *Cyrus Northrop, 88, American educator, served as President of the University of Minnesota from 1884 to 1911
• *Serapio Calderón, 78, Peruvian statesman, served as interim President of Peru for five months in 1904 after the death of President Manuel Candamo
• *Aaron Y. Ross, 93, American stagecoach guard and driver for Wells Fargo, known for defending the company from multiple armed robberies, including an 1883 attempt to rob a train of $80,000 in gold bullion

  April 4, 1922 (Tuesday)

• H. V. Kaltenborn became the first person to "broadcast an editorial opinion over the air" when his newspaper, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, sponsored his appearance on New York City's WVP radio station. Kaltenborn became the first radio commentator, offering news analysis of the ongoing nationwide United Mineworkers of America walkout from the viewpoints "of a miner, a mine owner, and an average citizen" in what he called a "spoken editorial".
• A bomb attack at a dinner for members of Hungary's "Democratic Club" in Budapest killed eight people. All the victims were Jewish, and it was suspected that the attack had been an assassination attempt aimed at the party leadership because of the placement of the explosive. Károly Rassay, the Party's leader, had not yet arrived when the explosion happened.
• The bodies of the six victims of the Hinterkaifeck murders, which had been carried out on March 31, were discovered in a farmhouse near Waidhofen, Bavaria. The case, one of Germany's most gruesome unsolved crimes, would be closed in 1955 without any person having been charged.
• Voters approved the creation of the suburban borough of Paramus, New Jersey by a vote of 238 to 10.
• Born: Elmer Bernstein, American film score composer and conductor; in New York City, United States
• Died:
• *Sten Lagergren, 45, Swedish chemist, pioneer in the study of adsorption kinetics
• *Peter Waite, 87, Scottish-born Australian pastoralist, businessman and philanthropist
• *Paul W. Beck, 45, American military officer and senior member of the U.S. Army Air Service who advocated for an air force separate from control of other branches of the military; killed by his friend Jean P. Day, a retired Oklahoma Supreme Court judge, whose wife alleged that Beck had made sexual advances towards her

  April 5, 1922 (Wednesday)

• Firestone Tire and Rubber Company introduced the "balloon tire", a thicker but more flexible tire that required less air pressure for full inflation, could hold more weight and was more durable. The "Firestone Balloon" was also thick enough to be the first to have visible lettering in raised letters on the tire itself.
• The Original Celtics, based in New York City, won the championship playoff of the premier professional basketball circuit in the U.S. at that time, the Eastern Basketball League, by defeating the Trenton Potters, 27–22, in a game at Camden, New Jersey to win the tie-breaking game of the best-of-three series.
• KOB in Las Cruces, New Mexico went on the air, the first radio station in that state.
• Born:
• *Tom Finney, English football star and outside left end for the English national football team in 76 international games; in Preston, Lancashire, England
• *Gale Storm, American television actress and singer; as Josephine Cottle, in Bloomington, Texas, United States
• Died:
• *Pandita Ramabai, 63, Indian women's rights activist
• *John H. Murphy Sr., 81, African American newspaper publisher, founder of the Baltimore Afro-American
• *Frederic Villiers, 70, British war artist and war correspondent

  April 6, 1922 (Thursday)

• The territory of the former Republic of Central Lithuania was incorporated by annexation into Poland and renamed "Wilno Land". It included Vilnius, the former and future capital of the nation of Lithuania.
• The Reichstag approved a bill allowing women to serve on juries as lay judges.
• At an auction in Paris, the rarest postage stamp in the world, the British Guiana 1c magenta was sold for a record high price to a representative of Arthur Hind who paid over $32,000. A "Mr. Griebert" made the winning bid of 300,000 French francs, and paid an additional 17.5% tax of 52,500 francs.
• Died: Arabella Goddard, 86, English concert pianist who toured the world in the 1870s

  April 7, 1922 (Friday)

• The first midair collision between an airliner and another airplane occurred, over Picardie in France. A Grands Express Aériens Farman F.60, designated as "Goliath" and carrying five people collided with a Daimler Airway de Havilland DH.18 that was carrying mail, as both were flying at an altitude of. All seven people aboard the two planes were killed. Only five days earlier, Grands Express had inaugurated its passenger service between London and Paris and was making the flight from Paris–Le Bourget Airport to Croydon Aerodrome, while Daimler was approaching Paris on its flight from London.
• Sprint car driver Sig Haugdahl and officials of the International Motor Contest Association reported that he had broken the record for fastest speed on land and had reached that day while driving a 250 hp car at the Daytona Beach Road Course in Florida. The claim of a new record had not been timed by the American Automobile Association and was not accepted because it was unverifiable. Remarkably, Haugdahl's claimed speed of 180 mph was 45% faster than the official record of set by Lydston Hornsted on June 24, 1914, in a 200 hp car.
• Morton F.C. won soccer football's Scottish Cup, defeating Rangers at Hampden Park before a crowd of 75,000 in Glasgow.
• Born:
• *Stan Polley, American entertainment manager later convicted of defrauding numerous clients; in New York City, United States
• *Mongo Santamaría, Cuban jazz percussionist; as Ramón Santamaría Rodríguez, in Havana, Cuba
• Died: A. V. Dicey, 87, British jurist and constitutional scholar whose 1885 treatise Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution is still relied upon by courts as part of the uncodified British Constitution

  April 8, 1922 (Saturday)

• During an exhibition game, the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team first wore their now-iconic uniforms, with two cardinals perched on a baseball bat emblazoned across the front of the jersey.
• An early morning series of tornadoes killed 15 people in Texas and two in Oklahoma, as well as injuring 80 others. Hardest hit were the towns of Ballinger and Oplin, Texas.
• Died: Erich von Falkenhayn, 60, German general, served as Chief of the German General Staff from the beginning of World War I until August 29, 1916, after setbacks in the Battle of Verdun and the Battle of the Somme ruined his pledge to win the war by 1917