April 1924

April 1, 1924 (Tuesday)

• The verdicts in the Beer Hall Putsch trial were announced. Adolf Hitler, Ernst Pöhner, Hermann Kriebel and Friedrich Weber were all found guilty of treason and sentenced to five years in prison, with a chance of parole in six months. Erich Ludendorff was acquitted. Hitler was taken to Landsberg Prison and given a large and comfortable room with a fine view.
• Northern Rhodesia became a British protectorate after having been administered by a private corporation, the British South Africa Company. British colonial administrator Herbert Stanley became the protectorate's first Governor and took office in the Northern Rhodesian capital, Livingstone.
• The Royal Canadian Air Force, an all-military force was activated by royal assent from King George V, after having been created as the Canadian Air Force in 1920 to operate both military and civilian flights.
• Born: Brendan Byrne, U.S. politician and Governor of New Jersey from 1974 to 1982; in West Orange, New Jersey
• Died:
• * Frank Capone, 28, U.S. mobster and older brother of Al Capone, was shot by police in Chicago during a gun battle.
• * Clinton Burns, 52, American engineer and designer of municipal water systems across the United States

  April 2, 1924 (Wednesday)

• A huge monarchist demonstration was staged in Berlin on the occasion of the funeral for martyred criminal Wilhelm Dreyer, a German who died in a French prison after dynamiting a train in the Ruhr. Police struggled to prevent an unauthorized parade from forming in the wake of Dreyer's casket procession.
• On the Red Sea, the British cruise ship Clan McIver rescued more than 1,200 passengers, almost all of them Muslim pilgrims on their way to Mecca, from the British steamship SS Frangestan, a freighter which had caught fire after the ignition of its cargo of cotton. Clan McIver then delivered the pilgrims to Port Sudan
• U.S. President Calvin Coolidge nominated Harlan Fiske Stone to be the new Attorney General of the United States, to replace Harry M. Daugherty, whom he had fired on March 28. Stone Was confirmed by voice vote in the U.S. Senate on April 7.
• The Italian government announced it was studying measures to take against Romania over its failure to pay its debts to Italy.
• The outlawing of the Bulgarian Communist Party, in the aftermath of the September Uprising that attempted to overthrow the Bulgarian government in 1923, was upheld by the Eastern European nation's Supreme Court.
• Born: Bobby Ávila, Mexican-born baseball player, 1954 American League batting champion and Player of the Year, later the mayor of Veracruz and president of the Mexican League; in Veracruz

  April 3, 1924 (Thursday)

• The Irish Free State issued its own passports for the first time, after being unable to reach a compromise with the British government over whether to refer to an Irish citizen as a "British subject."
• The first all-woman orchestra, British Women's Symphony Orchestra, with 80 female musicians, performed its inaugural concert, making its debut at Queen's Hall in London. Gwynne Kimpton conducted the orchestra, and half of the works performed were by women composers.
• In Italy, the Mussolini government demanded 80 million gold lire from Romania to square its debts within several days, stationing several Italian warships off the port of Constanța to back up the ultimatum.
• By a vote of 408 to 151, the French Chamber of Deputies voted its confidence in the new government of Prime Minister Raymond Poincaré, who had threatened to resign and made the vote a test of whether France should accept a reduction of the German reparation payments.
• In Chicago, 24-year-old Beulah Annan shot the man with whom she had been having an affair in her apartment.
• African-American and Russian stage actress and opera singer Coretti Arle-Titz made her debut at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow.
• Born:
• * Marlon Brando, American stage and film actor, winner of two Academy Awards, known for A Streetcar Named Desire", Mutiny on the Bounty, The Godfather and Apocalypse Now"; in Omaha, Nebraska
• * Josephine Pullein-Thompson, British children's author known for writing "pony books", the first four being Six Ponies, I Had Two Ponies, Plenty of Ponies and Pony Club Team; in Wimbledon, London
• * Betsy Plank, American public relations woman; in Tuscaloosa, Alabama
• * Roza Shanina, Soviet Russian sniper for the Red Army during World War II, credited with her kills of more than 50 Germans; in Edma, Arkhangelsk Oblast, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
• * Errol Brathwaite, New Zealand novelist; in Waipukurau
• * Peter Hawkins, British voice actor for film and television; in Brixton, London

  April 4, 1924 (Friday)

• Educational broadcast media began with the initial broadcast of the first educational radio program, now called BBC School Radio, transmitted during school hours in London by station 2LO on the 860 kHz AM radio frequency.
• An extravagant funeral for slain mobster Frank Capone was held in Chicago.
• The Galeries Lafayette department store in Paris negotiated with fashion designer Coco Chanel and bought the exclusive rights to what would become the most famous perfume in the world, Chanel No. 5, and became the worldwide distributor of the fragrance.
• Born:
• * Gil Hodges, American baseball player and 3-time Gold Glove Award winner, later the manager of the New York Mets during their 1969 World Series championship, inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, 2022; in Princeton, Indiana
• * Paulo Muwanga, Ugandan politician who served briefly as Prime Minister of Uganda in 1985 and President of Uganda for 10 days in 1980
• * Noreen Nash, American film and TV actress; in Wenatchee, Washington
• * Joye Hummel, American comic book author known for ghost-writing the Wonder Woman series during the 1940s
• Died: Joseph Willard, 58, American diplomat, U.S. Ambassador to Spain 1913 to 1921, died suddenly from an attack of angina pectoris.

  April 5, 1924 (Saturday)

• In the town of Lilly, Pennsylvania, members of the Ku Klux Klan shot 22 people, two of them fatally, firing randomly into a crowd at the town's railroad station. The shooting happened after some residents of the town "played a stream of water from the town fire hose upon the visitors as they were marching back to the station." An estimated 500 Klansmen had arrived, uninvited, to Lilly and held a ceremony at a nearby field, then marched in a procession to the train, which was taking them to nearby Johnstown. After the train arrived at Johnstown, the Klansmen were met by more than 50 police officers, who arrested 25 of the Klan members and confiscated fifty guns. Four additional people, residents of Lilly, were arrested the next day and the 29 were charged with murder.
• The University of Cambridge rowing team won the 76th annual Boat Race along the River Thames.

  April 6, 1924 (Sunday)

• Voting was held in Italy for all 535 seats of the Camera dei deputati. The Lista Nazionale, in accordance with the Acerbo Law, which provided that whatever party received more than 25% of the vote and the most votes overall would automatically be awarded two-thirds of the seats. The PPI party of Alcide De Gasperi, who would become Prime Minister of Italy after World War II, received the second most votes and dropped from 108 seats to only 39.
• In the U.S. city of Seattle, Washington, a team of aviators with four specially built Douglas World Cruiser airplanes began their quest to be the first to fly all the way around the world. Lowell Smith was one of the pilots.

  April 7, 1924 (Monday)

• Ramsay MacDonald's Labour government suffered its first defeat in the British House of Commons when it failed to pass, by a margin of 212 to 221, a bill introduced by John Wheatley that would have protected unemployed people from being evicted over inability to pay rent.
• Born:
• * Stanislaw Trepczynski, Polish diplomat who served as President of the United Nations General Assembly from 1972 to 1973; in Łódź
• * J. M. Simmel, Austrian novelist, playwright and screenwriter; in Vienna
• * Espen Skjønberg, Norwegian stage, film and television actor; in Oslo
• * Juan Bautista Vicini Cabral, Italian-born Dominican Republic businessman and chairman of the nation's largest sugar company, Grupo Vicini; in Genoa
• Died: Marcus A. Smith, 73, American politician who served as one of the first U.S. Senators for Arizona from 1912 to 1921 after previously being Arizona Territory's non-voting delegate, to the U.S. House of Representatives for four terms between 1887 and 1909

  April 8, 1924 (Tuesday)

• Sharia courts were abolished by vote of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, and the Islamic law judges were dismissed.
• British inventor Harry Grindell Matthews made a laboratory demonstration to reporters of his "death ray" that could, he said, disable aircraft engines, explode ammunition dumps, render firearms useless and injure entire armies from a great distance..
• France delivered 13 tons of gold ingots, worth US$6.5 million at the time, to English officers in the port city of Calais as part of France's efforts to stabilize the nation's currency, the franc.

  April 9, 1924 (Wednesday)

• The committee headed by Charles G. Dawes submitted its plan to reorganize the German economy and for the Allies to restructure the method of reparations payments. Among the changes were that while the Allies would retain military rights in occupied territory, Germany would retain control of its railways and industries, with some Allied supervision, and Germans would pay taxes similar to the rates of other nations. Payments would be adjusted upward or downward "according to an index of prosperity", with a neutral American observer being the judge of Germany's capacity to pay.
• Pope Pius XI abruptly canceled plans to become the first Roman Catholic Pontiff since 1870 to travel outside of Vatican City. The Pope had been scheduled to travel one-half mile out of the walls of the Vatican and into Rome to dedicate the new building for the Knights of Columbus but decided, after banner headlines in papers in Rome and around the world, to remain "a voluntary prisoner" inside the Vatican. His decision came 30 minutes before he was due to arrive. Appearing in his place was the Papal Secretary of State, Cardinal Gasparri.
• The U.S. state of Mississippi authorized the creation of Delta State Teachers College, now Delta State University, to be built in Cleveland, Mississippi, with the signing of legislation by Governor Henry L. Whitfield.
• Born:
• * Milburn G. Apt, U.S. Air Force test pilot who was the first person to exceed Mach 3, but was killed in the attempt; in Buffalo, Kansas
• * Elizabeth Weisburger, American cancer researcher and chemist; in Finland, Pennsylvania