April 1925

April 1, 1925 (Wednesday)

• The Hebrew University of Jerusalem opened at a gala ceremony attended by the leaders of the Jewish world, distinguished scholars and public figures, and British dignitaries, including the Earl of Balfour, Viscount Allenby, Winston Churchill and Sir Herbert Samuel.
• Yeta III, King of Barotseland and the Lozi people in what is now Zambia, abolishes the corvee, the last vestige of slavery in the British colony of Northern Rhodesia.
• Radioordningen, the oldest and largest radio, television and electronic media company in Denmark, was established. The publicly funded company would be renamed Statsradiofonien in 1926 and Danmarks Radio in 1959, and is now known as "DR".
• Anadolu Sigorta, the first national insurance company of Turkey, was established.
• Mike Ballerino became the new World Junior Lightweight Boxing Champion by defeating title holder Steve Sullivan in a unanimous decision at a 15-round bout in Philadelphia.
• Born: Ernest Kinoy, American playwright and screenwriter; in New York City

  April 2, 1925 (Thursday)

• France and Turkey agreed on the autonomy of Alexandretta.
• The Police Forces Amalgamation Act 1925 went into effect in the Republic of Ireland, after having been passed on February 27, 1922, consolidating the Garda Síochána and the Dublin Metropolitan Police into a single national police force.
• American bank robber Harry Pierpont, who had led a gang in the hold-ups of six banks in Indiana and Michigan since November 26, was arrested in a Detroit apartment, along with his accomplice Ted Skeer and Skeer's girlfriend Louise Brunner. In 1933, Pierpont would escape from prison and joing John Dillinger on a new string of bank robberies, Recaptured several months later, he would be executed on October 17, 1934.
• A new flag was adopted for the U.S. state of Oklahoma, replacing the red flag that had been in use since 1911. The flag was designed by Louise Fluke, winner of a contest sponsored by the state's Daughters of the American Revolution. The only change to the flag in its first 100 years was the addition, in 1941, of the word "OKLAHOMA" on the banner.
• Born:
• *Saqi, Iraqi-born Pakistani film and television actor who appeared in more than 500 films between 1955 and 1986; in Baghdad.
• *Hard Boiled Haggerty, American professional wrestler, pro football player, and actor
• Died:
• *C. E. Humphry, 81, Irish-born British feminist, journalist and columnist who went by the byline "Madge".
• *Baroness Fanny Moser, 76, eccentric Swiss heiress, profiled as "Emmy von N." in Sigmund Freud's 1895 book ''Studies on Hysteria''

  April 3, 1925 (Friday)

• The Ulster Unionist Party, led by Northern Irish Prime Minister Craigavon, won 32 of the 52 the seats in voting for the Parliament of Northern Ireland.
• The British government repealed the Reparation Recovery Act, which had placed import duties on German goods as a means of recovering reparations payments.
• Henry Ford opened offices for Ford Air Transport Service, soliciting contracts for a private air freight service between Detroit and Chicago, with the first flight departing ten days later on April 13.
• Born: Tony Benn, British Secretary of State for Industry from 1974 to 1975 and Secretary of State for Energy, 1975 to 1979; in Westminster, London

  April 4, 1925 (Saturday)

• Retired 77-year-old Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg agreed to run in the second round of the German presidential election in the place of Karl Jarres, who had won the first round.
• By a margin of 65% to 35%, voters overwhelmingly rejected a proposal to ban the sale of beer and liquor in the Australian state of Western Australia.
• Born: Fariza Magomadova, Chechen education pioneer; in Chechen Autonomous Oblast

  April 5, 1925 (Sunday)

• Voting was held in Belgium for the 187 seats in the Chamber of Representatives and the 93 seats in the Belgian Senate. The Catholic Party and the Belgian Labour Party each won 78 seats in the Chamber and formed a coalition government headed by Aloys Van de Vyvere of the Catholic Party. In the Senate, the Catholic Party won 34 seats and the Labour Party won 33.
• An F3 tornado struck Dade County, Florida and caused $300,000 of damage, equivalent to more than five million dollars in 2025.
• The Swedish Bandy Association was formed.

  April 6, 1925 (Monday)

• A flight billed as showing the first "in-flight movie" was conducted by Imperial Airways from London to Paris, showing The Lost World. Subsequent research has established that this was actually not the first, as the earliest known in-flight movie has been dated to 1921.
• Investigative reporter Robert St. John was severely beaten by several of Al Capone's men after writing a series of exposés about Capone's criminal operations in the Chicago suburb of Cicero, Illinois.
• Died: Alexandria "Xie" Kitchin, 60, British photographic model for Lewis Carroll from the age of 4 until she was 15.

  April 7, 1925 (Tuesday)

• Adolf Hitler formally renounced his Austrian citizenship, appearing before the High Magistrate in the city of Linz, and wrote that "I have been in Germany singe 1912, served in the German army for almost 6 years, including 4½ years at the front, and now intend to acquire German citizenship. For almost seven years, he would be stateless and unable to run for public office, until being granted German citizenship on February 26, 1932.
• France's Chamber of Deputies voted, 389 to 140, to grant women the right to vote, something the Deputies had done in 1919. As in 1919, however, the French Senate refused to put the matter to a vote. Other attempts would fail in 1927, 1932, 1935 and 1936 before an action by General Charles de Gaulle in 1944 to decree women's suffrage.
• Born: Chaturanan Mishra, Indian Communist politician, Secretary of Agriculture 1996 to 1998; in Nahar, Bihar and Orissa Province, British India
• Died: Patriarch Tikhon of Moscow, 60, Patriarch of Moscow and all Rus' since 1925, later canonized in 1981 as a saint of the Russian Orthodox Church.

  April 8, 1925 (Wednesday)

• The Australian government and British Colonial Office announced a joint plan to encourage 450,000 British citizens to move to Australia by offering low-interest loans and skills training, in accordance with the Empire Settlement Act 1922.
• A group of airmen, including John D. Price, made the first planned night landing on a U.S. aircraft carrier when he landed his TS fighter biplane on the USS Langley, which was anchored off of North Island on the coast of California in the U.S.
• Died:
• *Frank Stephen Baldwin, 86, American inventor known for the 1874 creation of the "arithmometer", the first popular adding machine, and the 1901 creation of the improved mechanical Monroe Adding-Calculator
• *Abbie Carrington, 68, American coloratura soprano opera singer during the 19th century

  April 9, 1925 (Thursday)

• The Trustee Act 1925, officially "An Act to consolidate certain enactments relating to trustees in England and Wales", was given royal assent by King George V, to take effect on January 1, 1926.
• Two people were killed and 11 wounded in Damascus when a demonstration against Lord Balfour near the hotel where he was staying turned into a violent confrontation with police. Arabs resented Balfour's promotion of Jewish interests in Palestine.
• Born:
• *Linda Goodman, American astrologer and author of the bestsellers Sun Signs and Linda Goodman's Love Signs ; in Morgantown, West Virginia
• *Frank J. Shakespeare, American television executive and diplomat; in New York City
• *Virginia Gibson, dancer, singer and actress, in St. Louis
• *Heinz Nixdorf, German computing pioneer and founder of Nixdorf Computer AG; in Paderborn, Province of Westphalia, Germany

  April 10, 1925 (Friday)

• The novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald was first published by Charles Scribner's Sons.
• The Russian city of Tsaritsyn was renamed Stalingrad to honor the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, Soviet Communist Party General Secretary, who had guided the defense of Tsaritsyn during the Russian Civil War in 1920. On November 10, 1961, as part of the Soviet program of "de-Stalinization" and the dismantling of Stalin's personality cult, the city would be given its present name, Volgograd.
• French Prime Minister Édouard Herriot and his cabinet announced their resignations after losing a vote of confidence in the French Senate, with 156 against him and only 132 favoring him.
• The U.S. Forest Service established Dix National Forest in New Jersey, Eustis, Humphreys and Lee National Forests in Virginia, Meade National Forest in Maryland, Upton National Forest in New York and Tobyhanna National Forest in Pennsylvania on the same day, for a total of of new federally protected territory.
• On the morning of Good Friday, police in Denver, Colorado, carried out a raid at the direction of Mayor Benjamin F. Stapleton, that led to the arrest of over 200 bootleggers, prostitutes, and gamblers in the city. Although Stapleton was a member of the Ku Klux Klan, whose members had benefited from the illegal institutions, and although the Klan had supported the campaign of Stapleton and of members of the Denver City Council, Stapleton declared his independence from the organization. The Klan would strip Stapleton of his KKK membership three months later.
• Lord Balfour hastily left Damascus as Arab protests against him continued.
• Born:
• *Kharis Suhud, Indonesian general and politician, Chairman of the Indonesian Armed Forces 1971 to 1974, Speaker of the People's Consultative Assembly, 1987 to 1992; in Madiun, East Java
• *U.S. Army Major Charles L. Kelly, American helicopter pilot and med evac specialist, nicknamed "Dustoff" for his daring flights into combat zones; in Wadley, Georgia
• *Mongush Kenin-Lopsan, Russian Tuvan writer and researcher in Tuvan shamanism; in Kyzyl, Tannu Tuva, Soviet Union
• *Angelo Poffo, American professional wrestler; in Downer's Grove, Illinois
• Died:
• *General Hu Jingyi, 32, Chinese warlord and Military Governor of Henan Province since 1924, of undisclosed causes.
• *Leslie C. Brand, 65, American real estate developer who created Glendale, California.