July 1923


The following events occurred in July 1923:

July 1, 1923 (Sunday)

July 2, 1923 (Monday)

  • Pope Pius XI sent a letter to the papal nuncio in Berlin appealing to Germany to make every effort to make its payment obligations and cease its resistance campaign which removed the possibility of coming to an agreement.
  • A railway accident in Romania killed 63 people at the station in Vinty-Leanca, between Ploiești and Buzău when a mail train was diverted onto a platform where a passenger train had stopped.
  • The Allied delegates at the Conference of Lausanne made their final offer to Turkey to settle the matter of reparations.
  • Exactly one month before his death, U.S. President Warren G. Harding "realized a boyhood ambition" by being allowed to drive a railway locomotive. Harding "took a lesson from the engineer in regard to the functions of the various buttons which are used in turning power off and on, giving signals and otherwise operating the engine" and drove the 10-car presidential train on a steep downgrade through the Bitterroot Mountains in Montana. After arriving in Spokane, Washington later in the day, Harding spoke out against "ultra-conservationists". Noting that "another century will give us a population of 300,000,000", Harding said, "There was a time when the public domain was thought of as a treasure house of potential wealth to be locked up against the day when we should need it... As a matter of fact, that would prevent it from being ready when needed." In the same speech, however, he said that he would urge Congress upon his return to Washington to add to Yellowstone National Park after having visited for two days.
  • What would become the first "perfect copy" of the printed Gutenberg Bible in the United States was purchased at an auction in London by an agent for the Rosenbach Company of New York and Philadelphia, a dealer in rare books, for the amount of £9,000, $43,350 in the dollar to pound exchange rate at the time and equivalent to $750,000 a century later.
  • An unauthorized dockworkers' strike began in England protesting the reduction of wages by a shilling a day.
  • Henry Segrave of the United Kingdom won the French Grand Prix.
  • Born: Wisława Szymborska, Polish writer, 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate; as Maria Wisława Anna Szymborska, in Prowent, Poland

July 3, 1923 (Tuesday)

  • President Harding visited the small town of Meacham, Oregon to speak at a celebration commemorating the 80th anniversary of the 1843 founding of the Oregon Trail. While it does not appear to have been part of his prepared speech a reporter wrote that Meacham was "the capital of the United States all day long," although even if the remark had been made, Harding, the reporters and most of his audience would have been aware that the U.S. president has no authority to move the national seat of government from Washington. Nevertheless, a historic marker at Meacham includes the statement that "On July 3, 1923, reporters noted that on July 3, 1923, Meacham was the capitol of the U.S. when President Harding stopped and participated in the exercises commemorating the eightieth anniversary of the covered wagon migration of 1843."
  • Four German civilians were shot by Belgian soldiers after violating a curfew that had been imposed in the Ruhr occupation zone. The curfew, and the "shoot on sight" order had been put into effect immediately after eight Belgian soldiers had been killed in the June 30 bombing of the Duisburg-Hochfeld Railway Bridge, and took place in Buer, from Gelsenkirchen.
  • Born: Bankole Timothy, Sierra Leonean journalist and author; as Emmanuel Bankole Timothy, in Freetown, Sierra Leone

July 4, 1923 (Wednesday)

  • Dempsey vs. Tommy Gibbons|Champion Jack Dempsey and challenger Tommy Gibbons] fought in a boxing bout staged in the small town of Shelby, Montana, in front of a crowd of less than 20,000 people, most of whom did not buy a ticket. Dempsey defeated Gibbons by decision to retain the World Heavyweight Championship, but the bout is mostly remembered as a debacle for the promoters who lost a fortune staging it in the remote oil town hoping to attract investors. The $116,000 lost by promoters would be equivalent to more than two million dollars a century later. Figures the next day showed that only 7,202 people paid to see the bout, but that the rentals of motion pictures would drop the deficit to $70,000.
  • A massive Ku Klux Klan rally, the largest in the organization's history, was held in Kokomo, Indiana. Attendance estimates ran as high as 200,000.
  • Stunt pilot B. H. DeLay was killed at the age of 31, along with a passenger, business owner R. I. Short, while performing in an airshow at Ocean Park in Venice, California. The wings of his airplane, the Wasp, collapsed as he was flying a loop-the-loop and the craft plunged downward. A subsequent investigation of the wreckage showed that the nuts and bolts for the wings had been tampered with in an act of sabotage although no person was ever charged with a crime.
  • Born: Bernard Loomis, American toy developer and marketing coordinator who built up the Mattel, Kenner and Hasbro companies and conceived the idea of cartoon shows based on toys; in the Bronx, New York City, United States

July 5, 1923 (Thursday)

  • Martial law was ended in the Kingdom of Egypt for the first time in almost nine years, with the release of 250 political prisoners who had been sentenced by British military courts during and after the outbreak of World War One.
  • Ethel Barrymore was granted a divorce from Russell G. Colt in Providence, Rhode Island court on grounds of nonsupport. Neither principal was present, but testimony taken by deposition for the court was entered in which Barrymore said that Colt had struck her on numerous occasions.
  • U.S. President Warren G. Harding and his entourage left Tacoma, Washington on the U.S. Navy transport USS Henderson headed for Alaska.

July 6, 1923 (Friday)

July 7, 1923 (Saturday)

July 8, 1923 (Sunday)

  • President Warren G. Harding arrived at Metlakatla, Alaska on the ship USS Henderson, becoming the first president to visit the future U.S. state.
  • In Czechoslovakia, woman deputy Betta Kerpiskova introduced a bill that would make bigamy mandatory, as it required all men to take two wives as a means of replenishing the population lost in the years of the war. Wives of the deputies shouted down the bill from the gallery, and one speaker said Czechoslovakia would face ridicule around the world if the law was passed. The session was adjourned after a shouting match.
  • The bodies of Takeo Arishima and his wife were found in the Japanese novelist's villa. They both committed suicide by hanging but were not found for a month.
  • Born: Harrison Dillard, American track and field athlete, Olympic gold medalist in the 1948 and 1952 Olympics; as William Harrison Dillard, in Cleveland, United States
  • Died: Augustine Tuillerie, 89, French children's book author

July 9, 1923 (Monday)

July 10, 1923 (Tuesday)

July 11, 1923 (Wednesday)

  • France notified Britain that it would not accept an international conference to discuss the German reparations problem. "The reparations commission was legally created by the Versailles treaty to handle the problem and this cannot be transferred elsewhere without violating the treaty", a spokesperson for the government said.
  • Harry Frazee sold the Boston Red Sox to a group led by Bob Quinn for $1.25 million.
  • Born: Dan Berry, American cartoonist

July 12, 1923 (Thursday)

July 13, 1923 (Friday)

July 14, 1923 (Saturday)

July 15, 1923 (Sunday)

  • The Soviet Union's first national airline, Dobrolet, began operations by making a flight from Moscow to Nizhny Novgorod to inaugurate regularly scheduled commercial passenger service in the U.S.S.R.; the state-owned company's name would be changed to Aeroflot in 1932.
  • The government of Egypt banned its Muslim citizens from making the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca, as well as its annual subsidy to the Kingdom of Hejaz, after King Hussein bin Ali, King of Hejaz barred the Egyptian medical escort caravan from accompanying the Egyptian pilgrims into the kingdom. The custom of sending a medical mission as part of the Hajj was "a precaution rendered necessary by the total lank of sanitary protection in the Hedjaz", and Hussein's decree was made on grounds that the escort was an infringement on Hejazi independence.
  • U.S. President Warren G. Harding symbolically completed construction of the Alaska Railroad by using a hammer to drive the golden spike linking the rails that had been built from different directions, in a ceremony near the town of Nenana.
  • The Italian parliament passed Benito Mussolini's electoral reform law by a vote of 303 to 140 which permitted gerrymandering favorable to the incumbent Fascist Party.
  • Bobby Jones, a 21-year-old amateur from the U.S. state of Georgia, won his first career major golf championship at the U.S. Open, defeating Bobby Cruickshank of Scotland.
  • French Prime Minister Raymond Poincaré made a speech to the senate rejecting almost every item of Stanley Baldwin's speech, saying that "we wish only that the treaty signed by twenty-eight powers shall not be considered an antediluvian fossil and placed in an archaeological museum after four years. It seems that we ask too much. Certain friends say to make concessions for a common interest. Since the end of the armistice we have done nothing but make concessions. We are at the end of making concessions because until now we stood all the costs ... Instead of helping us obtain payment Germany has organized resistance, forcing us to accentuate the pressure. We thus are not responsible for the resulting situation."
  • Born: Herb Sargent, American television producer and comedy writer known for the co-creation of the popular Weekend Update feature on Saturday Night Live; as Herbert Supowitz, in Philadelphia, United States
  • Died:
  • *Semyon Alapin, 66, Russian chess master and the namesake for nine different opening moves in chess
  • *Wilhelm Jerusalem, 68, Austrian Jewish philosopher; died of a heart attack

July 16, 1923 (Monday)

July 17, 1923 (Tuesday)

  • Nearly all of the Philippine-born officials of the territorial government of the U.S.-controlled Philippines resigned in protest over the actions of U.S. Governor-General Leonard Wood. The entire Council of State and the Filipino members of Wood's cabinet walked out after Wood had reinstated an American official who had been charged with bribery. Manuel Quezon, who quit as president of the Philippine Senate, sent a cable message to U.S. president Harding, saying "We welcome the present crisis because it will call the attention of Congress to the need of a definite status of government here. In the resignations of members of the Council of State and departmental secretaries, there is no attack on the sovereign power of the United States, nor a challenge to the authority of its representative in the Philippine Islands... but it is a protest against the encroachment of the Governor-General on the constitutional rights already enjoyed by the Filipino people, against usurpation of power in direct violation of existing laws."
  • A libel trial opened in England between Lord Alfred Douglas and The Morning Post of London. Douglas was suing the newspaper for printing a letter from a Jewish correspondent saying that it must no longer be a paying proposition for men like Douglas "to invent vile insults against the Jews." This remark was a reference to Douglas' newspaper, Plain English, which regularly printed antisemitic articles alleging Jewish conspiracies.
  • Born:
  • *Abida Ahmed, Indian politician, artist, and social activist; served as the First Lady of India from 1974 to 1977 as the wife of President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed; in Badaun, United Provinces of British India, British India
  • *Enrique Angelelli, Argentine Catholic priest and martyr; in Córdoba, Argentina

July 18, 1923 (Wednesday)

July 19, 1923 (Thursday)

July 20, 1923 (Friday)

  • General Pancho Villa, the retired guerrilla leader who had led the Mexican Revolution that forced out President Porfirio Díaz and brought Francisco I. Madero to power in 1911, was shot dead along with his assistant Daniel Tamayo, his chauffeur Miguel Trujillo, and two bodyguards, Rafael Madreno and Claro Huertado. Villa and his entourage had traveled from his ranch in Canutillo to the nearby town of Hidalgo del Parral to pick up cash to pay his employees. As he was being driven through town on his way back home, Villa was shot by a group of seven men who fired more than 40 rounds into his automobile. Villa, who had caused the deaths of countless numbers of people, was hit by nine bullets and killed instantly, along with all but one of his bodyguards. Only Ramon Contreras, who was wounded but killed one of the gunmen, survived. Reports from Mexico suggested that the assassination had been commissioned by Francisco Herrera, whose father and three brothers had been executed by Villa during the Revolution, and the death "was accepted as life answering for life."
  • A survey by the Carnegie Institute concluded that Germany was unable to pay any further reparations at this time because all the country's movable capital had been exhausted.
  • Born:
  • *Stanisław Albinowski, Polish economist and journalist; in Lwów, Poland
  • *Elisabeth Becker, German war criminal and Stutthof concentration camp overseer who selected which women and children would be killed; in Neuteich, Free City of Danzig

July 21, 1923 (Saturday)

July 22, 1923 (Sunday)

July 23, 1923 (Monday)

  • Two trains collided in Bulgaria near the city of Pleven, and the reports of the number of dead was unclear from reports. A dispatch the next day reported 103 killed and 200 injured. A followup report declared that 200 people died and 300 were injured in the accident "in which an engine and 11 coaches were derailed and flattened by the contact" and added "From 10 coaches, no one escaped alive." The next dispatch from Havas, the Bulgarian news agency, reported that the toll was 8 persons killed and about 20 injured and that "The correspondent's dispatch does not bear out published reports that the death list would mount into hundreds."
  • The chiefs of 16 Squamish villages in the Canadian provinces of the British Columbia signed an agreement to form the Squamish Nation, which now administers 24 Indian Reserves as one of the First Nations governments.
  • In the Rif War in Morocco between France and the indigenous Arabs, the 6th Battalion of the 1st regiment of the French Foreign Legion attempted an attack on Tagzhout Hill and lost 18 men killed and 36 wounded.
  • An attempt by Labour to get the House of Commons to call for an international disarmament conference was spurned by Stanley Baldwin and the Conservatives, who believed that the time was not right.
  • Norman Clyde became the first person to ascend an mountain summit in Glacier National Park in the U.S. state of Montana, one of 11 first ascents that he made in 36 days of climbing 36 different mountains, and out of 130 first ascents that he made in his lifetime. Park officials named the summit Clyde Peak in his honor.
  • Born: Morris Halle, Latvian-born American linguist and pioneer in the study of phonology; as Moriss Pinkovics, in Liepāja, Latvia
  • Died: Charles Dupuy, 71, French statesman, three-time Prime Minister of France

July 24, 1923 (Tuesday)

July 25, 1923 (Wednesday)

July 26, 1923 (Thursday)

July 27, 1923 (Friday)

July 28, 1923 (Saturday)

July 29, 1923 (Sunday)

  • German communists staged a "Red Sunday" with public demonstrations across the country, but turnouts in most cities were low. Four were killed in Neuruppin when communists rushed the city jail and police fired on the unruly mob.
  • President Harding's personal physician, Dr. Charles E. Sawyer, issued a nighttime bulletin saying the president's condition had worsened with new symptoms, and that his itinerary for the rest of speaking tour in California was canceled.
  • Italy's Prime Minister Benito Mussolini received "telegrams, letters and missives of all kinds from all classes of people" on the occasion of his 40th birthday, with greetings from more than 30,000 arriving at his office in the Foreign Ministry Building, and at his private residence.
  • Outside of Yazoo City, Mississippi, a mob captured Willie Minnifield, an African American accused of attacking a white woman with an axe, and burned him at the stake at a swamp where he had been captured. A man captured along with Minnifield escaped.
  • Born:
  • *Jim Marshall, English businessman and founder of Marshall Amplification; in Acton, London, England
  • *George Burditt, Emmy Award-nominated American television writer and producer; in Boston, United States

July 30, 1923 (Monday)

July 31, 1923 (Tuesday)