December 1923

December 1, 1923 (Saturday)

• The damburst of the Gleno Dam killed 356 people in the province of Bergamo, sweeping away people in the villages of Bueggio, Corna and Dezzo. Initial reports from the Associated Press said that of the 500 residents of Dezzo, only three survived.
• The Irish Free State began releasing captured Irregular fighters and political prisoners.
• Queen's University defeated Regina Rugby Club
• *Stansfield Turner, U.S. Navy Admiral and Director of Central Intelligence from 1977 to 1981; in Highland Park, Illinois, United States
• *Ferenc Szusza, Hungarian soccer football forward for the national team; in Budapest, Kingdom of Hungary

  December 2, 1923 (Sunday)

• Elections for president and the legislative assembly and were held in Costa Rica. Former president Ricardo Jiménez Oreamuno won a plurality of the vote, not enough for an outright victory, but in voting for the 43 seats of the Asamblea Legislativa, Jiménez's Partido Republicano Nacional finished second to the Partido Agrícola of Alberto Echandi Montero. Ultimately, Jiménez would be selected president by the Asamblea, and third-place candidate Jorge Volio would become vice president.
• In Montevideo, Uruguay defeated Argentina, 2 to 0 to win the South American Championship of football. The format was tournament with the teams of Uruguay, Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil playing one game apiece against each other. After they both defeated Paraguay and Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina had records of 2 wins and no losses going into the final scheduled game.
• Born:
• *Maria Callas, American-born Greek soprano singer; as Maria Anna Cecilia Sophia Kalogeropoulou, in Manhattan, New York City, United States
• *Hassia Levy-Agron, Israeli choreographer; as Hassia Levy, in Jerusalem, Mandatory Palestine
• Died:
• *Tomás Bretón, 72, Spanish conductor and composer
• *Henry Haversham Godwin-Austen, 89, British mountaineer and surveyor

  December 3, 1923 (Monday)

• Joseph Conrad's novel The Rover was published.
• Seven coal miners at the Nunnery Colliery in England
• *Dede Allen, American film editor; as Dorothea Allen, in Cleveland, United States
• *Stjepan Bobek, Yugoslavian soccer football striker with 63 caps for the national team; in Zagreb, Kingdom of Yugoslavia
• *Moyra Fraser, Australian-born British actress known for As Time Goes By; in Sydney, Australia
• *George M. Keller, American business executive who merged Standard Oil Company of California with Gulf Oil in 1984 to create the Chevron corporation; in Kansas City, Missouri, United States
• Died: Elmer R. Gates, 63-64, American inventor who created the foam fire extinguisher and an improved electric iron

  December 4, 1923 (Tuesday)

• The Cecil B. DeMille-directed epic film The Ten Commandments, the most popular movie of 1924, premiered at Grauman's Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood. One critic closed his review by saying, "'The Ten Commandments' is a picture that you cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, afford to miss. It offers splendors of photography and theatrical wonders hitherto unrevealed. It is, in fact, the greatest masterpiece, thus far, of pictoral artistry— and it has a lot to offer besides." Unlike DeMille's 1956 remake, the 1923 version had two parts, with a 50-minute prologue that recounted the events of the Book of Exodus before moving forward in time to the present for the remaining 85 minutes to show the different approaches to the ten commandments by members of the McTavish family.
• The Eveready Hour, the first commercially sponsored variety program in the history of broadcasting, premiered on the radio station WEAF in New York City. Within a year, the program would be transmitted by WEAF to additional stations, creating the "WEAF chain" radio network.
• Born:
• *Henry Rowan, American engineer and philanthropist for whom Rowan University is named; in Raphine, Virginia, United States
• *Charles Keating, American financier convicted of fraud and whose activities led to the 1989 U.S. savings and loan crisis; in Cincinnati, United States
• *Philip Slier, Dutch Jewish typesetter whose letters detailing life at a Nazi labor camp, Camp Molengoot, would be published 65 years after his death; in Amsterdam, Netherlands
• Died:
• *Elena Apreleva, 77, Russian children's writer
• *Maurice Barrès, 61, French novelist

  December 5, 1923 (Wednesday)

• An insurrection began in Mexico as officers in five states — Veracruz, San Luis Potosí, Chihuahua, Michoacán and Tamaulipas — ousted the federal officials and installed their own replacements. General Guadalupe Sanchez and several other officers sent a message to President Álvaro Obregón declaring that "to contribute with our military honor to the conservation of peace and respect for the free will of the people, and to prevent the odious impositions which aim at destroying in its cradle our democratic form of government, we have resolved to assume the defense of the institutions offended so seriously by the government you represent." The rebellion was nominally led by Adolfo de la Huerta, but the rebels had little in common with each other besides opposition to Obregón.
• Six days before the conclusion of his term, Governor Edwin P. Morrow of the U.S. state of Kentucky commuted the death sentence of convicted murderer Steve McQueen, who had been a juvenile at the time of the crime. Pleas had been made to the governor's office from around the U.S. and Morrow said that he "heard the voice of God" in the requests.
• All 18 crew on the cargo steamboat T.W. Lake died when the ship sank off Lopez Island in northern Washington state.
• Born:
• *Eleanor Dapkus, American professional baseball player in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League; in Chicago, United States
• *Vladimir Tendryakov, Soviet author; in Makarovskaya, USSR
• Died: William Mackenzie, 74, Canadian railway entrepreneur

  December 6, 1923 (Thursday)

• Voting was held for the 615-seat British House of Commons after Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin had sought to increase the 344 to 142 majority held by his Conservative Party and for his protectionist tariff policy. Instead, the Tories lost 86 seats while the Labour Party of Ramsay MacDonald and the Liberal Party of H. H. Asquith gained 49 seats and 43 seats, respectively. With at least 308 seats needed for a majority, the Tory share fell to 258 seats, 50 short of control, while Labour and Liberal had a combined opposition force of 349.
• Winston Churchill was defeated by Labour candidate Frederick Pethick-Lawrence in the constituency of Leicester West
• Liberal incumbent Francis Dyke Acland retained his seat for the Tiverton constituency by only three votes, 12,303 to 12,300 over his second cousin, Conservative Gilbert Acland-Troyte.
• Gregory Zervoudakis, the Eastern Orthodox Metropolitan of Chalcedon, was elected as the Church leader as Patriarch of Constantinople. He took the ecclesiastical name Gregory VII, and served less than a year before his sudden death from a heart attack.
• U.S. President Calvin Coolidge made his first State of the Union address. The speech was broadcast on nationwide radio.
• The Chamber of Deputies of France voted, 408 to 127, to adopt the electoral reform bill proposed by the government of Prime Minister Raymond Poincaré. After a previous measure had been failed to win support, 270 to 295, Poincaré presented the question again as a vote of confidence in his government.
• Born:
• *Vasant Sabnis, Indian playwright and screenwriter; in Pandharpur, Bombay presidency, British India
• *Urbano Tavares Rodrigues, Portuguese novelist; in Lisbon, Portugal
• *Lloyd Gomez, American serial killer who committed nine murders of homeless men over one year in 1950 and 1951; in Caliente, Nevada, United States
• Died: Friedrich Rosenbach, 80, German microbiologist known for his studies of staphylococcus variations Rosenbach's disease was named for him after he discovered its etiology from contaminated seafood.

  December 7, 1923 (Friday)

• Adolfo de la Huerta, governor of the Mexican state of Sonora and former President of Mexico, joined the delahuertista rebellion against the government of President Álvaro Obregón.
• Born: Ted Knight, American TV actor known for the The Mary Tyler Moore Show and for Too Close for Comfort; as Tadeusz Konopka, in Terryville, Connecticut, United States
• Died:
• *Sir Frederick Treves, 70, British surgeon known for his pioneering treatment of appendicitis and for saving the life of King Edward VII in 1902
• *Akshay Kumar Sen, 68-69, Indian Bengali mystic, poet and author

  December 8, 1923 (Saturday)

• The Reichstag voted, 313 to 18, to pass an enabling act, giving Chancellor Wilhelm Marx the power to implement emergency economic and welfare measures.
• Rebels in Mexico captured Xalapa, the capital of the state of Veracruz, and took 200 prisoners, including Governor Angel Casarin. With the fall of Veracruz state, the insurgents began their advance toward Mexico City.
• After the U.S. Senate had declined to ratify the Treaty of Versailles, U.S. Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes and Germany's Ambassador Otto Wiedfeldt signed the Treaty of Friendship, Commerce and Consular Relations between Germany and the United States of America. The two nations would both ratify the treaty in 1925.
• The Bertolt Brecht play Baal premiered in Leipzig at the Altes Theater. The play caused such a scandal that the Mayor of Leipzig canceled any further performances.
• Born:
• *Pio Taofinuʻu, Samoan Roman Catholic Cardinal and Archbishop of Samoa-Apia, who became the first Polynesian Catholic Cardinal in 1923; in Falealupo, Savaiʻi island, Samoa
• *Michael Hargrave, British physician who wrote of his experiences in the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp; in Simla, British India
• Died: John William Brodie-Innes, 75, Scottish occult novelist known for his 1915 work The Devil's Mistress. He was a leading member of the Amen-Ra Temple of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.