December 1922

December 1, 1922 (Friday)

• At the Lausanne Conference in Switzerland, İsmet İnönü of Turkey informed the European delegates that his government had decreed that the remaining Greek Christians in Eastern Thrace, numbering nearly one million, were banished and that the Greek citizens had two weeks to leave peacefully.
• The 1922 Land Code that guided the regulation of private and public property in the Soviet Union, took effect after being enacted by the All-Russian Central Executive Committee.
• The Bavarian towns of Passau and Ingolstadt were fined 50,000 gold marks each by the Allied governments for recent attacks on French and British military officers.
• Monica Cobb became the first woman solicitor in the United Kingdom to address a court, speaking at the Birmingham Assizes to prosecute a man for bigamy. The New York Times wrote the next day, "For the first time in the history of England a woman advocate appeared today in court to plead." Cobb had been admitted to the practice of law on November 17.
• The Canadian province of New Brunswick switched from driving on the left side of the road to driving on the right side; the resulting slaughter of oxen & increase in beef supplies was reportedly described in Lunenburg County, Nova Scotia as "The Year of Free Beef."

  December 2, 1922 (Saturday)

• The Uqair Protocol was signed at the Saudi fort of Uqair, defining the borders between the Sultanate of Nejd and Iraq, as well as between Nejd and the Sheikhdom of Kuwait. The result was that Kuwait lost two-thirds of its territory to the Saudis and to Iraq. The treaty provided for the creation of two "neutral zones" of desert land for the benefit of the then-nomadic Bedouin people who wandered regularly between the two nations. The Saudi Arabian–Kuwaiti neutral zone of existed until 1970 and the Saudi Arabian–Iraqi neutral zone of until 1982, when the affected nations divided the lands.
• The body of Annie "Ruby" Hendry, a white schoolteacher, was found in Perry, Florida. In the course of searching for her killer, white citizens killed four black men and burned down buildings in the black section of town over the next two weeks.
• Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark was sentenced to lifelong exile from Greece for disobeying orders during the disastrous Greco-Turkish War, after pressure on the Greek government from the United Kingdom and other Allied nations to prevent the Prince from being sentenced to a long prison term or execution.
• The Republican caucus of the U.S. Senate voted to drop further pursuit of a bill that would have made lynching a federal crime, after being unable to stop a filibuster by Senator Lee Slater Overman, a Democrat from North Carolina. The proposed law, drafted by U.S. Representative Leonidas C. Dyer, had overwhelmingly passed in the U.S. House of Representatives.
• Queen's University beat the Edmonton Elks, 13 to 1, to win the Grey Cup of Canadian football.
• A valise containing all but one of Ernest Hemingway's unpublished manuscripts was stolen while he Hemingway had stopped at the Gare de Lyon railway station in Paris, where his wife Hadley Richardson had been preparing to catch a train to Switzerland to join Hemingway, who was on assignment to cover the Lausanne Conference. The valise and its contents were never recovered.
• Born: Leo Gordon, American character actor, in Brooklyn, New York

  December 3, 1922 (Sunday)

• Prince Andrew of Greece and wife Princess Alice of Battenberg boarded HMS Calypso, a British warship, bringing along their 17-month old son, Phillip, and emigrated to France. Phillip, who would be sent a few years later to live with Alice's mother in the United Kingdom, would grow up to marry Princess Elizabeth, heir to the British throne, in 1947 and, in 1952, would become the Prince Consort on her accession to the throne as Queen.
• The first radio station in Puerto Rico, WKAQ-AM, began broadcasting.

  December 4, 1922 (Monday)

• U.S. President Warren G. Harding presented a federal budget of over three billion U.S. dollars to Congress for the fiscal year beginning July 1, 1923. Harding said that the federal deficit would be reduced by more than half from nearly $700 million to less than $300 million.
• Britain's House of Lords voted overwhelmingly to approve the Irish Free State Constitution Act 1922 on its third reading, with the only dissent coming from Lord Carson, who had blocked home rule in 1914 as Leader of the Opposition in the House of Commons.
• Died: Hermann Baagøe Storck, 83, Danish architect and heraldist

  December 5, 1922 (Tuesday)

• Following the lead of the House of Lords, the British House of Commons approved the Irish Free State Constitution Act 1922, sanctioning the new Constitution of the Irish Free State. The Act and the Constitution were given royal assent that evening at 6 o'clock, formally granting independence to Ireland.
• Royal assent was given to the Irish Free State Act 1922, granting Northern Ireland 30 days to decide whether to exercise its option to not be included in the Irish Free State.
• The Russian government closed all of Petrograd's Catholic churches.
• José Sánchez-Guerra y Martínez announced his resignation as Prime Minister of Spain and that of his cabinet of ministers after nine months in office.
• Convicted American murderer Clara Phillips, nicknamed "The Tiger Woman", escaped from the women's section of the Los Angeles County Jail by sawing through the bars and climbing out the window of her cell. She would remain at large for more than four months before being arrested in the Honduras and returned to the United States.
• Born: William Davidson, American businessman, in Detroit, Michigan

  December 6, 1922 (Wednesday)

• The Irish Free State was established by proclamation of King George V of the United Kingdom. Tim Healy, who had been an Irish member of the UK House of Commons, represented the King as the nation's Governor-General. At a ceremony in Dublin, the Union Jack was lowered in front of Healy's lodge and the new orange, white and green flag was raised in its place.
• Georges Clemenceau spoke in Washington, D.C., during his American lecture tour and visited Woodrow Wilson at his home.
• Born: Lloyd Gomez, American serial killer who murdered 9 homeless men over 12 months in 1950 and 1951; in Caliente, Nevada
• Died: Hason Raja, 67, Indian Bengali mystic poet and songwriter

  December 7, 1922 (Thursday)

• The day after the Irish Free State came into existence, both houses of the Parliament of Northern Ireland voted unanimously to exercise the option to not remain part of the new nation. The six predominantly-Protestant northern counties approved a resolution to remain in a union with Britain, and the UK adopted its present name of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The Anglo-Irish Treaty had included a 30-day option for Northern Ireland to decide whether to be part of the Free State.
• Seán Hales, a member of the Dáil Éireann, the lower house of the parliament of the Irish Free State, was shot to death by a member of the Irish Republican Army who had been against the Anglo-Irish Treaty. Another member of parliament, Patrick O'Malley, was wounded in the shooting, which took place as both men were leaving their hotel to attend the session of Parliament.

  December 8, 1922 (Friday)

• After an emergency cabinet meeting in the newly independent Irish Free State, the new government carried out the executions of four Irish Republican Army leaders who had led the takeover of the Four Courts in Dublin in April. Executed by hanging at Mountjoy Prison were Rory O'Connor, 39; Joe McKelvey, 24; Liam Mellows, 30; and Richard Barrett, 32. Irish Free State Justice Minister Kevin O'Higgins signed the order authorizing the death penalty, one day after the IRA assassination of Seán Hales. Ironically, O'Connor had been the best man at the wedding of O'Higgins 14 months earlier.
• Former Prime Minister of Spain Manuel García Prieto, Marquis of Alhucemas, formed a government following the resignation of the previous cabinet three days earlier.
• A lynch mob in Perry, Florida, numbering more than 3,000 people, stopped the transport of two African-American prisoners suspected of the December 2 murder of a white teacher. Charley Wright was given a mock trial that evening, pronounced guilty, and then burned to death by the mob. The other prisoner, Albert Young, was turned over to the custody of the sheriff of Taylor County but taken from jail by a different mob on December 12 and shot to death.
• In one of the worst disasters in the history of the U.S. state of Oregon, about 24 city blocks of the business district in Astoria were destroyed by a fire that burned under the streets. The town had been constructed on a foundation of wooden pilings and spread quickly, destroying the town's department stores, hotels, banks and many other businesses and homes.
• Appearing in person at a meeting of both houses of Congress, U.S. President Warren G. Harding delivered his State of the Union message to Congress. "It is four years since the World War ended", Harding said, "but the inevitable readjustment of the social and economic order is not more than barely begun." Harding spoke at length about the country's recent labor strife and recommended the creation of a non-partisan tribunal to replace the current Labor Board. On the matter of Prohibition he said, "The day is unlikely to come when the Eighteenth Amendment will be repealed. The fact may as well be recognized and our course adapted accordingly."
• Born: Lucian Freud, German painter; in Berlin
• Died: Mary Marcy, American socialist

  December 9, 1922 (Saturday)

• The National Assembly of Poland chose the nation's first President, with Foreign Minister Gabriel Narutowicz receiving 289 votes and Maurycy Zamoyski 227 votes.
• The Second London Conference began, with the purpose of once again talking about reparations. British Prime Minister Bonar Law made a surprising statement when he said that the Balfour Note no longer existed for the British government and indicated that Britain would consider canceling France's debt if a new reparations settlement made it possible.
• The American radio station WJZ made the first broadcast that could be heard across the Atlantic Ocean. Shortly after midnight, with the benefit of an increase in the wattage of the broadcast signal, listeners overseas were able to hear the Star-Spangled Banner, followed by a voice saying WJZ repeatedly, then a greeting from the British consul-general in New York to British listeners. Afterward, at 12:30 in the morning, Vaughn De Leath sang her new hit, "Oliver Twist", commissioned to be played on a phonograph in theaters showing the newly released silent film of the same name. Afterward, a jazz orchestra called "Black and White Boys" played "God Save the King" and a person read aloud the 23rd Psalm from the King James Version of the Bible.
• German physicist Erwin Schrödinger delivered his inaugural lecture at the University of Zürich, contributing to the history of quantum theory.
• By royal assent, the office of Governor of Northern Ireland was created as the principal officer and British representative for the six northern counties of Ireland, to assume the powers previously held by the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, whose office had been abolished with the creation of the Irish Free State after having governed the entire island for 750 years.
• Born: Redd Foxx, African-American comedian and actor known for the TV situation comedy Sanford and Son; in St. Louis