December 1920


The following events happened in '''December 1920'''

December 1, 1920 (Wednesday)

  • General Alvaro Obregón was sworn into office as the new President of Mexico, bringing a close to the Mexican Revolution. Obregón, who had lost part of his right arm in battle, took the oath by raising his left hand, despite complaints by his critics. "It was the answer to placards posted around the city," Los Angeles reporter Robert Armstrong wrote, "saying that the new President could not comply with the Constitution which requires the right hand to be lifted during the ceremony." A historian would later write, "he put in place not only educational and labour reform but anticlerical policies, which were, ultimately, and in the most literal sense, fatal for him."
  • William C. Durant, co-founder and president of General Motors, resigned under pressure from creditors and the GM board of directors.
  • Born:
  • *Le Duc Anh, Vietnamese politician, fourth President of Vietnam from 1992 to 1997; in Phú Lộc District, French Indochina
  • *Yevgeniya Zhigulenko, Soviet Air Force bomber pilot, awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union for 968 missions over Germany during World War II, later a film director; in Krasnodar, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union

December 2, 1920 (Thursday)

December 3, 1920 (Friday)

December 4, 1920 (Saturday)

December 5, 1920 (Sunday)

  • Voters in a plebiscite in Greece overwhelmingly favored the return of King Constantine to the throne, with 999,954 votes out of 1,012,337 cast. Only 10,383 voted against Constantine; there were no other candidates for the throne and only half of the eligible voters participated.
  • Born: Cao Tianqin, Chinese biochemist, discovered the structure of the myosin proteins responsible for the function of the muscle; in Beijing, Republic of China
  • Died:
  • *Benjamin Holt, 71, American inventor, patented the first workable tractor vehicle that used a continuous track to spread the weight of its wheels, founder of the Caterpillar Tractor Company
  • *Boris Batursky, 41, Russian trade union organizer; died of typhus two days after his release from a Soviet prison

December 6, 1920 (Monday)

December 7, 1920 (Tuesday)

December 8, 1920 (Wednesday)

December 9, 1920 (Thursday)

December 10, 1920 (Friday)

December 11, 1920 (Saturday)

  • In retaliation for a Sinn Féin ambush on two truckloads of military police, Unionists set fire to the business district of the Irish city of Cork and burned down the City Hall. Earlier in the evening, three Unionist police were killed and several wounded in the ambush at Pillons Creek. Shortly afterward, fires were set in the commercial section area bounded by St. Patrick's Street, Cork Street, Old Georges Street and Maylor Street.
  • The garment workers' labor unions of New York City formed the Needle Trade Workers' Alliance.
  • Died: Olive Schreiner, 65, South African Afrikaner novelist and political activist

December 12, 1920 (Sunday)

  • The American Professional Football Association teams with the best records met in the regular season closer, with the undefeated Akron (O.) Pros playing against the Decatur (Ill.) Staleys, who had only one loss in their first 12 games. Although the game was not a post-season playoff, it was described in the press as a meeting between the "champions of the east" and the "winners of the western title". The game took place at Cubs Park in Chicago before a crowd of 12,000 and ended in a scoreless tie, 0 to 0, allowing Akron to remain undefeated. At a meeting of team owners on April 30, 1921, a vote would be taken and Akron would be awarded the Brunswick-Balke-Collender Cup. The Akron Pros are recognized by the NFL as the league's first champion.
  • Haribo candy founded in Germany in Bonn by Hans Riegel. The name is an acronym for Hans Riegel Bonn. In 1922, Riegel would introduce Gummibärchen, gum arabic based candies in the shape of a bear, and known in English-speaking nations as "gummy bears."
  • Born:
  • *Jorge Dória, Brazilian film actor and humorist; as Jorge Pires Ferreira, in Rio de Janeiro
  • *Margot Duhalde, Chilean pilot, Chile's first female military pilot; in Río Bueno

December 13, 1920 (Monday)

December 14, 1920 (Tuesday)

December 15, 1920 (Wednesday)

December 16, 1920 (Thursday)

  • 1920 [Haiyuan earthquake|An 8.7 magnitude earthquake killed over 234,000 people] in the Haiyuan area of China's Gansu province. The earthquake struck at 8:05 in the evening local time and killed 73,027 people in the city of Haiyuan, as well as 30,000 in Guyuan and 20,000 in Longde. The official death toll announced by the Chinese government was 234,117 with more than 100,000 buried alive in landslides of loess deposits. A contemporary report by Upton Close and Elsie McCormick, summarizing the reluctance of local authorities to allow news to travel outside of Gansu, said of the earthquake, "It is, perhaps, the most poorly advertised calamity that has occurred in modern times."
  • Bulgaria, Costa Rica, Finland and Luxembourg were admitted to the League of Nations. However, the admission committee reported unfavorably and the League Assembly voted against the admission of Georgia, Estonia, and Lithuania and Latvia and the application filed earlier by the First Republic of Armenia was not considered, in that the First Republic government had been deposed earlier in the month.

December 17, 1920 (Friday)

December 18, 1920 (Saturday)

December 19, 1920 (Sunday)

December 20, 1920 (Monday)

  • Felix Dzerzhinsky reorganized the Soviet Union's intelligence service with the creation of the Foreign Intelligence Section of the Cheka secret police. The new agency was called the "IO", and its first director was Yakov Davtyan, who went by the codename Davidov.

December 21, 1920 (Tuesday)

  • The last U.S. War Savings Certificate stamps to raise revenue during World War I, were sold. Issued since 1917, the stamps were a quarterly-compounded 4% investment with a five-year maturity date. The final series had a maturity date of January 1, 1926.
  • The first regularly scheduled daily radio broadcasts in the U.S. were started by the lone commercial radio broadcaster, Westinghouse Electric's KDKA-AM in Pittsburgh.
  • The 300th anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims and their ship, the Mayflower, was observed at Plymouth, Massachusetts. On the day before the celebration, movers were hoisting the Plymouth Rock with chains to transfer it to the site of the festivities outside of the Old Colony Theatre when it split along the repairs that had been made to the rock in 1880. The two sections were cemented back together at the new site.
  • The first patent for a hot comb, a self-heating comb used to straighten hair, was granted to Walter H. Sammons of Philadelphia, who received U.S. Patent number 1,362,823 after applying for it on April 9. The Sammons comb included a thermometer that extended into a well-insulated handle after noting that previous devices had been unsatisfactory because "when placed in other than very experienced hands they have resulted in irreparable damage to the hair and not infrequently to the hands of the user."
  • Born:
  • *Adele Goldstine, American mathematician and computer scientist, wrote the manual for the first electronic computer, ENIAC; as Adele Katz, in New York City
  • *Alicia Alonso, Cuban prima ballerina and choreographer; as Alicia Ernestina de la Caridad del Cobre Martínez del Hoyo, in Havana

December 22, 1920 (Wednesday)

  • The Soviet Union's Eighth All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers’, Peasants’, Red Army and Cossack Deputies was convened in Moscow for eight days, and adopted economist Gleb Krzhizhanovsky's economic plan that would guide Soviet planning for the next 65 years, the GOELRO plan.
  • The Brussels Conference came to a close as the victorious allies of World War I established a 42-year timetable for Germany to pay reparations to France and Belgium for damages caused by their invasion.
  • At Nauvoo, Alabama, a member of Company M of the Alabama National Guard shot and killed Adrian Northcutt, one of the UMWA officials leading the strike of coal miners in Walker County. Northcutt's son-in-law, Willie Baird, shot and killed the guard, James Morris. Baird turned himself over to county officials to stand trial for charges of murder. On January 5, nine of the guardsmen of Company M broke into the county jail at Jasper, removed Baird, and executed him.

December 23, 1920 (Thursday)

  • The Government of Ireland Act 1920, passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom, received Royal Assent from King George V at 11:50 p.m., taking effect ten days later at midnight. The King wrote that "I deplore the campaign of violence and outrage, whereby a small section of my subjects seek to sever Ireland from the empire, and I sympathize with the loyal servants of the crown who are endeavoring to restore peace and maintain order under conditions of unexampled difficulty and danger... I sincerely hope that this act, the fruit of more than 30 years of ceaseless controversy, will finally bring about unity and friendship between all the peoples of my kingdom." The law provided for the partition of Ireland into the six predominantly Protestant counties of Northern Ireland and the predominantly Roman Catholic 26 northwestern and southern counties into Southern Ireland, each to have separate parliaments, and granting a measure of home rule.
  • With warrants for his arrest pending in the United Kingdom, Irish nationalist Éamon de Valera secretly returned to Dublin after being smuggled across the Irish Sea from Liverpool on the ocean liner RMS Celtic, ending ten days at sea that had started with his departure from New York City at the end of an American tour. De Valera had been hidden in the cabin of the liner's second mate, and had almost been caught by the ship's captain and first mate when the liner was still in harbor at Liverpool.
  • France and the United Kingdom signed a convention at San Remo whereby France agreed that the British could cross the desert in the French Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon. With the easement across Syria, the British Empire achieved a direct land route to British India for the first time in history, with the ability to build a railway line from the Mediterranean Sea at Palestine, to existing railway lines in Mesopotamia and Persia.
  • Arturo Alessandri was inaugurated as President of Chile.
  • Arthur Schnitzler's controversial play Reigen was publicly performed for the first time, 20 years after it had first been printed, with a debut in Berlin. With ten scenes of couples seeking sexual relations, and the second partner in one moving on to a new relationship in the next scene, the play elicited a violent reaction from the public and charges of immorality. The production would be met with a similar reaction at its debut in Vienna in February.
  • The unincorporated community of Plehweville, Texas, changed its name at the request of the U.S. Department of the Post Office because of the number of letters misdirected because of the difficulty in spelling its name. The new name of the Mason County community, conferred by the new postmaster, Eli Dechart, was "Art", drawn from the last three letters of his surname.
  • Born: Charles Heidelberger, American cancer researcher, developed the anticancer medication 5-Fluorouracil in 1956 as an effective treatment for multiple cancers; in New York City
  • Died: Cayetano Arellano, 73, first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the Philippines from 1901 to 1920

December 24, 1920 (Friday)

December 25, 1920 (Saturday)

December 26, 1920 (Sunday)

  • A record crowd to watch women play soccer football — 53,000 spectators — turned out at Goodison Park at the Walton in the British city of Liverpool, to watch the Dick, Kerr & Co. Ladies F.C. defeat the St. Helen's Ladies F.C., 4 to 0, in a charity fundraiser. The match attendance set a world record that would stand for 98 years, until March 17, 2019, when 60,739 fans in Madrid watched the Atletico Madrid and Barcelona women's teams play. In 1921, The Football Association of England stopped the increasing popularity of women's football by enacting a ban against female use of the FA's stadiums, including Goodison, the home stadium for the Everton F.C. men's team. The ban would not be lifted until 1971.

December 27, 1920 (Monday)

December 28, 1920 (Tuesday)

December 29, 1920 (Wednesday)

December 30, 1920 (Thursday)

December 31, 1920 (Friday)

  • French Marshal Ferdinand Foch, the Commander-in-Chief of the Allied Armies during World War I, presented his year-end report to the Allies and announced that Germany had failed to fully comply with the disarmament agreement made in the Treaty of Versailles. Although Germany had dismantled its fortresses and had reduced its regular army, the Reichswehr, to the agreed number of 100,000 troops, Marshal Foch noted that Germany had made no attempt to disarm its militias in eastern Prussia or in Bavaria. German factories were also continuing to manufacture and export munitions and aviation components.
  • At Auckland, the United States team of Bill Johnston and Bill Tilden reclaimed the Davis Cup of tennis from the defending champion, Australasia, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan New Jersey, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania as the prospective teams.
  • Born: Rex Allen, American film and television actor, nicknamed "The Arizona Cowboy"; in Willcox, Arizona