January 1921

January 1, 1921 (Saturday)

• E. W. Scripps and William Emerson Ritter founded Science Service, later renamed Society for Science & the Public in the United States, with the goal of keeping the public informed of scientific developments.
• The Allied forces announced that the Turkish government at Constantinople would be permitted to use 400,000 Turkish Pounds worth of gold from the Imperial Ottoman Bank for funds for the new government's treasury.
• The 24-acre Ambassador Hotel opened in Los Angeles at 12:01 a.m. to usher in the new year. The hotel, remembered now as the site of Robert F. Kennedy's assassination in 1968, would close to guests in 1989 and be torn down in 2005.
• In U.S. college football's only major postseason game, the 1921 Rose Bowl, an east-west match-up of two of the major undefeated teams, the California defeated Ohio State, 28 to 0. In later years, the NCAA would retroactively named California the national college football champion for 1920. In the other postseason football game of the 1920 season, the Fort Worth Classic, Centre College defeated Texas Christian University, 63 to 7.
• Born: César Baldaccini, French modern sculptor of the Nouveau Réalisme movement; as Cesare Baldaccini; in Marseille
• Died:
• *Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, 64, Chancellor of Germany from 1909 to 1917, during the reign of Kaiser Wilhelm II
• *Mary Macarthur, 40, Scottish suffragist and national secretary of the Women's Trade Union League; died of cancer

  January 2, 1921 (Sunday)

• The Spanish liner Santa Isabel sank after running aground during a storm the night before, and striking rocks off the coast of Villa Garcia, killing 244 of the people on board. Most of the passengers and crew were below deck because of the rough weather.
• The British government issued an order to residents of Ireland requiring all households to post a list on their doors of the people residing in the dwelling, on penalty of criminal proceedings.
• Gabriele D'Annunzio ended his attempt to take over Fiume and abandoned the Italian Regency of Carnaro proclaimed by him in 1919.
• Cruzeiro Esporte Clube, one of Brazil's most successful soccer football teams, was founded in Belo Horizonte.
• Pittsburgh's KDKA radio station made the first live broadcast of a church service, and the first remote broadcast, as it aired the Sunday services from Calvary Episcopal Church. The National Religious Broadcasters association would celebrate the anniversary half a century later by making "the first international religious broadcast to be transmitted live by satellite" on January 27, 1971.
• Word arrived that the U.S. Navy balloon A-5598, which had been missing since the day after its departure from Rockaway, New York on December 13, had been located after its crash landing north of Moose Factory, Ontario. The three aeronauts, U.S. Navy Lieutenants Louis A. Kloor Jr. ; Stephen A. Farrell and Walter Hinton, had been missing and were found alive. The trio of aeronauts recovered at Moose Factory, and arrived at the nearest town on a railway line, Mattice on January 11. The group, stranded in the wilderness, narrowly avoiding coming down in the James Bay, had wandered for four days before they located a Cree Indian fur trader who initially mistook them for Canadian revenue agents, and then guided the Americans to safety. The group returned to a heroes' welcome in New York City on January 14.
• Died:
• *William Robinson, 80, Irish-born American electrical engineer, inventor of the automatic track circuit signal that made railroad travel safer starting in the 1870s
• *Doud Dwight "Ikky" Eisenhower, 3, son of U.S. Army Major Dwight Eisenhower and Mamie Eisenhower; died of scarlet fever. In his memoir after his service as President of the United States, Eisenhower would describe his child's death as "the greatest disappointment and disaster of my life, the one I have never been able to forget completely."

  January 3, 1921 (Monday)

• At 12:30 in the afternoon Milwaukee's radio station 9XM delivered the first weather forecast to be read on commercial radio, followed by the message in Morse code. Radio weather forecasts had previously been heard in the U.S. and the UK.
• A fire destroyed the West Virginia State Capitol Building in Charleston. The blaze started about 5:00 in the afternoon in a small room containing paper records of the state Public Service Commission and quickly spread, leaving only the outer shell of the building. An electrician and a fireman were killed in the collapse of a section of the roof. As a result, a 1921 session of the West Virginia Legislature created a seven-member "Capitol Building Commission", which would ultimately complete construction of the present Capitol building in 1932.
• Germany filed its reply to France's disarmament ultimatum over the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. The letter from German Chancellor Constantin Fehrenbach recited that Germany had done its best to adhere to the terms of the agreement, turning over 50,000 cannons, 60,000 machine guns, 5,000,000 rifles and 20,000 grenade launchers, but the fulfillment of the terms of the treaty to the letter had proven impossible.
• Amelia Earhart had her first flying lesson, given at Kinner Field, in what is now South Gate, California. Her teacher was Neta Snook, a pioneer female aviator who used a surplus Curtiss JN-4 "Canuck" for training.
• Born: Jean-Louis Koszul, French mathematician and algebraic topology theorist for whom the Koszul complex is named; in Strasbourg

  January 4, 1921 (Tuesday)

• The U.S. House of Representatives voted 250 to 66 to override the veto made by U.S. President Wilson of the resolution to reviving the War Finance Corporation. The day before, the U.S. Senate had voted 53 to 5 to override.
• Britain extended martial law to four additional counties in Ireland— County Clare, County Waterford, County Wexford and County Kilkenny.
• The Mayor of Davenport, Iowa, C. L. Bargwald, elected as a candidate of the Socialist Party of America along with a majority of the city aldermen, announced that he was leaving the Socialist Party and called the leftist aldermen "disciples of Lenin, with whom no one could compromise." Over the previous six months, the mayor said, the Socialist majority had blocked any conservative proposal made by him and "forced a program of radical legislation on the city." Mayor Bargwald, who professed to be a follower of Leon Trotsky rather than Vladimir Lenin, said of the SPA "I'm through with them. The principles of Trotsky have no place in America."
• Born: Pedro Richter Prada, Peruvian General, served as Peru's Interior Minister from 1971 to 1975, then as Prime Minister of Peru and Defense Minister from 1979 to 1980, later charged in absentia in Italy for the murder of 25 Italian citizens; in Ayacucho

  January 5, 1921 (Wednesday)

• New York City put into effect "the most radical change in street traffic regulations in the history of New York" at 7:00 in the evening, changing the route through Times Square to northbound only on Broadway and on Seventh Avenue for five hours each night. The new routing affected 40,000 automobiles that traveled through the square during the hours that theaters operated.
• Born:
• *Jean, Grand Duke of Luxembourg, monarch and head of state of Luxembourg from 1964 until his abdication in 2000, son of Grand Duchess Charlotte; in Colmar-Berg
• *Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Swiss author and dramatist; in Konolfingen

  January 6, 1921 (Thursday)

• The First Battle of İnönü began, marking the first clash between the newly organized Army of the Grand National Assembly against Greek troops in the Greco-Turkish War.
• Rufus Isaacs, Lord Reading was appointed as the new Governor-General of India.
• A special committee of the U.S. House of Representatives voted, 10 to 4, to raise the number of U.S. Representatives from 435 to 483 and to set a permanent limit of no more than 500 members of the House.
• Racist protestors in Harlingen, Texas, drove out two Japanese families who had recently purchased farmland for cultivation.
• Born: Marianne Grunberg-Manago, Russian-French biochemist and academic; in Petrograd, Soviet Union

  January 7, 1921 (Friday)

• The Republic of Central Lithuania, a puppet state financed by Poland around the rebellion of Lucjan Żeligowski, was established with a capital in Vilnius under Żeligowski's rule. Poland annexed the area a little less than 18 months later, on March 24, 1922. On October 12, 1920, Żeligowski announced the creation of a provisional government. Soon the courts and the police were formed by his decree of January 7, 1921, and the civil rights of Central Lithuania were granted to all people who lived in the area on January 1, 1919.
• The British Columbia House of Assembly elected Mary Ellen Smith of Vancouver as Speaker of the Assembly, the first woman legislative leader in North America and in the British Empire.

  January 8, 1921 (Saturday)

• Walker D. Hines, the American arbitrator who had been selected by the Allies to make rulings concerning the disbursement of German munitions, assigned 13½ percent of Germany's Rhine river fleet of barges and tugs to France.
• U.S. Navy Lieutenant Warren H. Langdon was shot by a Japanese sentry in Vladivostok, part of the area of Russia occupied by American and Japanese troops during the Bolshevik Revolution.
• Died: Béatrice La Palme, 42, Canadian singer and musician

  January 9, 1921 (Sunday)

• Elections were held for the 96 seats of the Senate of France, and the Radicals and Radical Socialists received a plurality with 43 seats, followed by the Republicans with 39. Former President Paul Deschanel was elected as a Senator.
• The United Kingdom returned the colors of the Royal American Regiment, which had existed from 1756 to 1783 as the only British Army regiment to be recruited from American colonial subjects, with the regimental insignia to be hung at the chapel at Governors Island in New York.
• Born: Ágnes Keleti, Hungarian gymnast, five-time Olympic gold medalist, won four gold medals in the 1956 Summer Olympics; as Ágnes Klein, in Budapest, Kingdom of Hungary
• Died: Rafael Antonio Gutiérrez, 75, President of El Salvador from 1894 to 1898