December 1921

[December 1], 1921 (Thursday)

• The United States government implemented regulations for the right to broadcast wireless radio signals commercially, requiring a license from the U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Navigation, for all transmitters and setting aside two specific frequencies on the amplitude modulation portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. Initially, stations broadcasting news reports were allowed the 485 meter wavelength and those broadcasting entertainment were allowed 360 meters.
• For the first time, a manned airship was flown filled with non-flammable helium rather than hydrogen, as the United States Navy flew the C-7, a C-class blimp from Hampton Roads, Virginia to Washington, D.C. and back. C-7 was powered by two engines and had a gondola hanging from it that was large enough to carry a crew of four people.
• British Prime Minister David Lloyd George announced, for the first time in negotiations, that dominion status within the British Commonwealth would be offered to Ireland, similar to that existing at the time in Canada, as an alternative to independence. In addition, the six counties of Ulster Province would remain as Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom, and a boundary commission would be created to arrange a permanent definition of the boundary between north and south.
• Riots broke out in Vienna as a result of price increases. Shops were looted and foreign hotel guests were robbed.
• Nicaragua ended martial law in its northwestern provinces after receiving a shipment of weapons and munitions from the U.S.

• The short silent comedy film The Lucky Dog, starring Stan Laurel, was released by the Amalgamated Producing Company. Wearing a full mustache, another comedian, Oliver Hardy, had a role in the film as an armed robber confronting Laurel.

  [December 2], 1921 (Friday)

• Under the terms of the Treaty of Kars, Soviet territory in the western Armenian SSR was ceded back to Turkey, including Mount Ararat of Biblical fame, as the former Kars Oblast came under Turkish control as the Kars Province and the Ardahan Province.
• Born: Carlo Furno, Italian Roman Catholic Cardinal; in Bairo, Kingdom of Italy

  [December 3], 1921 (Saturday)

• For the first time, the championship of Canadian football, the Grey Cup was played between the best team in Western Canada and the best in Eastern Canada. The Toronto Argonauts defeated the visiting Edmonton Eskimos, winning 23 to 0 at Varsity Stadium.

  [December 4], 1921 (Sunday)

• The Irish nationalist delegates rejected the British settlement offer of Dominion status, in that it continued to require an oath of allegiance to the British crown for all government members, and continued the partition of the island of Ireland.
• A delegation representing the "Far Eastern Republic" arrived in Washington, D.C., in hopes of obtaining American help in driving Japanese troops from Siberia and seeking diplomatic recognition.
• The value of Germany's currency, referred to retrospectively as the "paper" Mark, dropped sharply on announcements that the cost of living had increased by 22% during the month of November, and that prices were almost 60 percent higher than they had been at the beginning of the year.
• In a game that decided the second championship of the NFL, the Chicago Staleys beat the previously undefeated Buffalo All-Americans, 10 to 7. Buffalo had ended its scheduled games with a 9-0-2 record and its owner had agreed to the December 4 game in the belief that it was a post-season exhibition, while the Commissioner of the American Professional Football Association, which would adopt the name National Football League in 1922, ruled that Chicago was the league champion after both teams finished with records of 9 wins and 1 loss.
• Born: Deanna Durbin, Canadian singer; as Edna Mae Durban, in Winnipeg, Manitoba

  [December 5], 1921 (Monday)

• Irish revolutionary leader Michael Collins met UK prime minister David Lloyd George at 10 Downing Street to discuss the remaining "points of difference" between the two sides, and came to an agreement that retained the division of Ireland, but accepted dominion status for the predominantly Roman Catholic southern provinces and eliminated the requirement of an oath of allegiance.
• The Football Association, governing body of association football in England, banned women from playing at FA-affiliated pitches, the only ones with spectator facilities, saying that "the game of football was quite unsuitable for females."
• More than 20 people were killed in a train wreck near Philadelphia at Woodmont.
• The 67th United States Congress, elected more than a year earlier in 1920, convened its first regular session. The first order of business was the 1922-1923 U.S. budget sent over by U.S. president Warren G. Harding, showing a deficit of $167,571,977.
• The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that picketing during labor strikes was a lawful exercise of the First Amendment right of free speech, but that it could be subject to an injunction if obstruction or intimidation were used.
• Born: Alvy Moore, American actor; as Jack Alvin Moore, in Vincennes, Indiana

  [December 6], 1921 (Tuesday)

• The Anglo-Irish Treaty establishing the Irish Free State, an independent nation incorporating 26 of Ireland's 32 counties, was signed at the Cabinet Room of 10 Downing Street in London at 2:00 in the morning by British and Irish negotiators, bringing to an end to the Irish War of Independence.
• In elections for the Canadian House of Commons, the Liberal Party of W. L. Mackenzie King won an overwhelming majority of the 225 seats over the ruling Conservative Party, led by Prime Minister Arthur Meighen. Although Meighen's Conservatives had had a 153 to 82 lead in the House before the election, they lost 104 seats, with Meighen himself and 11 members of his cabinet losing their bids for re-election as MPs. After the voting, the Liberals had 118 seats, the new Progressives had 58 and the Conservatives had only 59. In the voting, Agnes Macphail of the Progressives became the first woman to be elected to the Canadian Parliament.
• Said Halim Pasha, the former Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire from 1913 to 1917, was assassinated in Rome while driving back to the home at Piazza Colonna. According to reports at the time, Halim was shot from a distance of six feet and fell dead inside his vehicle, and his secretary climbed in and, "not aware that his master was dead, ordered the coachman to chase the man who fired, and for half an hour the carriage, with the old statesman's corpse still inside, pursued the assassin until the secretary gave up the chase in vain."
• U.S. President Warren G. Harding addressed a joint session of Congress to present his State of the Union address in person rather than sending it over to be read out loud. Harding advocated early refunding of foreign debts, increased regulation of non-taxable securities, providing relief for cooperative agriculture associations, a flexible tariff, and other reforms, and a hope that humanitarian aid could be increased to relieve the famine in Soviet Russia.
• The names of 11,000 U.S. draft dodgers, as determined by the U.S. Department of War, were ordered published in the Congressional Record.
• In discussions at the Washington Disarmament Conference over the dispute between China and Japan over the Shandong Peninsula, China agreed to reimburse money spent by Japan for improvements to Shandong, and Japan agreed to return all public property under lease in Kiau-Chau.
• France's Prime Minister Aristide Briand received a 249 to 12 vote of confidence from the French Senate for his foreign policy, a 400 to 100 approval by the French Chamber of Deputies.
• Future Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, then 32, was arrested along with his father for the first time in his life for his participation in a strike as part of Mahatma Gandhi's Non-Cooperation movement.
• The first penalty shot in the history of ice hockey was taken in one of the first games of the Pacific Coast Hockey Association, which had recently adopted the rule. The shot missed and it would be six more days before a goal was scored on a penalty shot.
• Died: Félix Arnaudin, 77, French folklorist and photographer

  [December 7], 1921 (Wednesday)

• Guatemala's president Carlos Herrera was deposed in a coup d'état led by Guatemalan Army General José María Orellana and José Maria Lima.
• In London, King George V summoned parliament to ratify the Irish treaty, while Irish President Éamon de Valera called on similar approval from his cabinet in Dublin. Sir James Craig, the premier of Northern Ireland, asked the Stormont Assembly to delay any action on ratifying the agreement.
• A violent riot, involving an estimated 360,000 people, broke out in the U.S. city of Chicago when police attempted to make arrests during picketing by striking meatpackers. Nine people were shot, one fatally, and violence spread to Omaha, Nebraska and South St. Paul, Minnesota.
• Died: Nathan Cole Jr., 60-61, American newspaper publisher and co-founder of the Los Angeles Daily Times, now the ''Los Angeles Times''

  [December 8], 1921 (Thursday)

• A U.S. Senate subcommittee investigating capital punishment in the U.S. Army announced that only 11 of the servicemen given the death sentence during World War I had actually been executed.
• Irish republican leader Éamon de Valera declared that, after discussions with his cabinet, he and two ministers were opposed to ratification of the Anglo-Irish peace treaty, but referred the matter to the Irish parliament, Dáil Éireann, for further discussion. De Valera asked the Irish people to continue orderly conduct during the debate. Arthur Griffith, one of the Irish republicans who had signed the treaty as a delegate, declared that he was strongly in favor of ratification.
• Died: Henry D. Flood, 56, American politician, served as the U.S. Congressman for Virginia from 1901 until his death