April 1926

April 1, 1926 (Thursday)

• The U.S. House of Representatives voted, 306 to 60, to impeach U.S. District Judge George W. English on five articles of impeachment, including abuse of his powers and three arising from suspected violations of the bankruptcy laws. After the U.S. Senate began the impeachment trial, Judge English would resign on November 4, 1926 as a prerequisite for dismissal of the charges against him.
• The Transjordan Frontier Force was formed at Sarafand as a paramilitary border guard for the Emirate of Transjordan, which had been created from the British Mandate for Palestine.
• Born:
• *Charles Bressler, American tenor; in Kingston, Pennsylvania
• *Anne McCaffrey, American science fiction and fantasy novelist; in Cambridge, Massachusetts
• Died: Jacob Pavlovich Adler, 71, Russian actor

  April 2, 1926 (Friday)

• In British India, rioting between Hindus and Muslims broke out in Calcutta. As many as 50 people were killed before the rioting subsided after six days.
• The Australian steamer SS Dorrigo sank off the coast of Queensland near Fraser's Island, along with 22 of its 24 crew, while traveling from Brisbane to Thursday Island.
• Former Irish Prime Minister Eamon de Valera, who had recently split with the Sinn Féin party and led fellow members of parliament to form a new organization, proposed the name "Fianna Fáil" for the organization scheduled to organize on May 16. The name was representative of "Fianna" and the Lia Fáil, the coronation stone for the ancient kings of Ireland.
• Residents of the municipality of Watts, California, voted 1,338 to 535 to become part of the city of Los Angeles with the consolidation taking effect on June 1, 1926. The proposal had been endorsed by Mayor L. A. Edwards. In the 1940s, Watts would become a predominantly African-American section of Los Angeles and would gain fame as the cite of the Watts riots in 1965 and the Rodney King riots in 1992.
• The White House announced that U.S. President Calvin Coolidge had declined an invitation to send American delegates to a League of Nations conference in Geneva to discuss America's reservations about joining the World Court.
• Born:
• *Jack Brabham, Australian Formula One racing driver, and a three-time World Drivers' Champion in 1959, 1960 and 1966; in Hurstville, New South Wales
• *Sylvia Thorpe, British romance novelist; in London

  April 3, 1926 (Saturday)

• Lord Halifax took office as the new Viceroy of British India, succeeding Rufus Isaacs, 1st Marquess of Reading.
• In the Republic of China, warplanes of the Manchurian warlord Zhang Zuolin began bombing the portions of Beijing held by the Guominjun paramilitary group, led by Feng Yuxiang.
• The Italian company Agip, a petroleum and petrochemical product and sales business, was founded in Italy by decree of the Italian royal government, with Ettore Conti as its first president.
• Italy's reorganization of the Italian Senate and the Chamber of Deputies into a syndicalist bicameral parliament, with senators appointed for life, and deputies who represented corporate associations and labor unions appointed for 9-year terms, was approved by the King of Italy. the Chamber had approved the change four days earlier.
• Born:
• *Gus Grissom, American astronaut who served on the Mercury 4, Gemini 3 and Apollo 1 space missions, and the first American to "walk in space"; in Mitchell, Indiana |

  April 4, 1926 (Sunday)

• Greek dictator Theodoros Pangalos won the Greek Republic's presidential election with 93.3% of the vote or 782,589 altogether. The only rival candidate, Konstantinos Demertzis, had withdrawn before the vote but remained on the ballot and received 56,126 votes, with turnout light and the result a foregone conclusion.
• Italy's national basketball team played its first game, a 23 to 17 win in Milan over the France national team.
• Martial law was declared in Calcutta as rioting continued there.
• Died: August Thyssen, 83, co-founder and majority owner of the German steel manufacturing corporation Thyssen AG since its founding in 1891. He was succeeded by his son Fritz Thyssen.

  April 5, 1926 (Monday)

• The Harold Lloyd comedy film For Heaven's Sake, which would become the highest-grossing film of the year, premiered in the United States.
• Bulgaria was reported to be in the midst of economic crisis, with businesses failing throughout the country and unemployment around 11%.
• In voting in Liechtenstein for the 15-seats in the Landtag, the Christian-Social People's Party, led by Gustav Schädler, retained its majority of 9 seats.

  April 6, 1926 (Tuesday)

• The Montreal Maroons of the National Hockey League beat the Victoria Cougars of the Western Canada Hockey League, 2–0, to win the Stanley Cup in ice hockey, three games to one.
• Varney Air Lines, one of the predecessors to United Airlines, began operations as the first regularly scheduled air carrier in U.S. history As part of a contract between Varney Airlines and the U.S. Department of the Post Office, pilot Leon D. Cuddeback departed from Pasco, Washington with of mail, picked up more at Boise, and then proceeded to Elko, Nevada with a cargo of mail. Both towns had distribution centers at their railway stations. Earlier that day, Franklin Rose had departed from Elko toward Pasco, but was forced down by thunderstorms.
• The German airline Deutsche Luft Hansa, whose name and staff were used by and as part of the 1953 creation of the West German national airline Lufthansa, made its first scheduled passenger flight, departing from Berlin to Zurich in Switzerland, with stops along the way in Halle, Erfurt and Stuttgart. The fledgling airline used a Fokker F.II plane.
• The first recorded instance of a person being killed by a cassowary, a large, flightless bird indigenous to Australia and southern Pacific islands, occurred when 16-year old Phillip McClean bled to death near Mossman, Queensland after being attacked by a large Southern Cassowary while he and his brother were trying to kill it.
• Eusebio Joaquín González had a vision in which God changed Gonzales' first name to Aarón and told him to leave Monterrey in the Nuevo León state of Mexico, where Gonzalez created La Luz del Mundo, a nontrinitarian charismatic restorationist Christian church.
• Born:
• *Sergio Franchi, Italian opera tenor; in Codogno
• *Gil Kane, Latvian-born American comic book artist for both DC and Marvel; in Riga
• *Ian Paisley, Northern Ireland politician and the UK's First Minister of Northern Ireland; in Armagh
• *Randy Weston, American jazz pianist; in New York City
• *Robert Simmonds, Canadian law enforcement administrator and Commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police from 1977 to 1987; in Keatley, Saskatchewan
• Died: Gerald Chapman, 38, American criminal who was nicknamed "The Gentleman Bandit", was hanged at the Wethersfield State Prison in Connecticut for the 1924 murder of policeman James Skelly.

  April 7, 1926 (Wednesday)

• In Rome, Italian Premier Benito Mussolini was shot by Violet Gibson, sister of Lord Ashbourne, but the bullets only grazed his nose. Mussolini had stepped out to the street in Rome after an opening speech to the Seventh International Congress of Surgery, where he had praised surgeons who had treated him when he was wounded during World War One, and joked that Gibson had "chosen the wrong moment" to shoot him since he was in the presence of "several hundred of the greatest surgical scientists in the world."
• Across Italy, three staffers of anti-Fascist newspapers were murdered, others were beaten, and property was smashed in nighttime "reprisal" attacks following the attempt on Mussolini's life.
• Born:
• *Prem Nazir, Indian film actor, in Chirayinkeezhu, Travancore Kingdom, British India
• *Erik Bruun, Finnish graphic designer; in Viipuri
• *Miyoko Asō, Japanese voice actress, in Tokyo
• *Julio Scherer García, Mexican journalist, editor of the Mexico City daily Excélsior, 1968 to 1976, and founder of the magazine Proceso; in Mexico City
• Died: Giovanni Amendola, 43, Italian journalist and politician, died from injuries sustained in an attack by Fascists almost a year earlier on July 20, 1925.

  April 8, 1926 (Thursday)

• Ford Motor Company Aktiengesellschaft, the German subsidiary of the American Ford Motor Company, assembled its first vehicle, a Model T, using parts imported from the U.S. in order to circumvent the high tariff on the importation of fully-assembled vehicles.
• Nikola Uzunović took office as the Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, American comedian; in Chicago

  April 9, 1926 (Friday)

• In the first championship of a major professional basketball league in the U.S., the Cleveland Rosenblums won the best 3-of-5 series of the American Basketball League, defeating the Brooklyn Arcadians, 23 to 22, in Game 3 after sweeping the first two games, 36-33 and 37-21.
• An attempt to start a military coup against Greek dictator Theodoros Pangalos was swiftly crushed in Thessaloniki.
• Born:
• *Hugh Hefner, U.S. adult magazine publisher known for Playboy; in Chicago
• *Vsevolod Safonov, Soviet Russian stage and film actor known for Belarusan Station; in Moscow
• *Dee Anthony, U.S. talent manager and agent known for managing Tony Bennett and Peter Frampton; as Anthony D'Addario) in The Bronx, New York City
• Died:
• *Henry Miller, 67, English-born U.S. stage actor and producer
• *"Zip the Pinhead", 83, African-American circus sideshow performer

  April 10, 1926 (Saturday)

• Quill and Scroll, the largest international high school journalism honor society, was founded at a convention of high school newspaper staffers gathered at the University of Iowa in the United States, with delegates from 19 chapters from Iowa and eight other states; within its first 100 years, it would have chapters in almost 15,000 high schools in 38 nations.
• The Italian-built airship N-1, recently renamed Norge after being sold to the Norwegian Aviation Society, departed from Ciampino Airport near Rome, to begin its attempt to become the first aircraft to fly over the North Pole. Norge flew first England to the Airship Station at the Royal Naval Air Force Base at Pulham St Mary, landing later in the day.
• King Fuad of Egypt inaugurated the new Egyptian Parliament.
• The Mauna Loa volcano erupted in Hawaii.
• In Scottish soccer football, St Mirren F.C. of Paisley, Renfrewshire defeated Celtic of Glasgow, 2 to 0, to win the Scottish Cup. Celtic had finished in first place, and St Mirren fourth place, in the Scottish Football League.