June 1920


June 1, 1920 (Tuesday)

  • Adolfo de la Huerta was sworn into office as President of Mexico. The former Governor of Mexico's Sonora state had prompted the revolution that had toppled the government of President Carranza in May.
  • U.S. President Woodrow Wilson's request to Congress to agree to a U.S. mandate over Armenia, similar to the British and French mandates over former Ottoman territories in the Middle East, was rejected by the U.S. Senate, 52 to 23.
  • The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Hawke v. Smith that Ohio could not hold a referendum to reverse its ratification of the Prohibition amendment, holding that after the constitution is amended, the ratification cannot be taken back. Ohio, which had become the 36th and ratifying state in 1919, had authorized the holding of a public vote on the issue of retraction, but a restraining order had been issued by a lower court to prevent the printing of ballots. The ruling also meant that state legislatures couldn't take back ratifications of the 19th Amendment permitting women's suffrage.
  • The Supreme Court ruled also that the salaries paid to the U.S. president and to federal judges were tax-exempt income.
  • Born: Amos Yarkoni, Bedouin Arab Muslim, decorated officer within the Israel Defense Forces; as Abd el-Majid Hidr in Na'ura, Mandatory Palestine

    June 2, 1920 (Wednesday)

  • In the first known U.S. presidential veto of a bill because of bad grammar, President Wilson vetoed House Resolution 7629, an amendment to the federal penal code that added "licentious motion-picture films" to the list of items not permitted to be transported across state lines. Writing "I return herewith without my signature", Wilson noted that the phrase "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" was in the wrong place in a sentence and that "an obvious error has occurred" and that "I have had the change definitely indicated by appropriate pencil marks." Congressman Thomas L. Blanton of Texas urged a new resolution, saying "There is nothing improper in the President of the United States correcting the English of the House or Senate, is there?" and his colleague Joseph Walsh of Massachusetts replied, "Not at all; not when their English is incorrect." House Resolution 14384 was hastily passed with the corrected version and signed by Wilson on the same day.
  • Dr. Manuel Gondra was elected as the President of Paraguay by the national legislature. Gondra had previously served as acting president for seven weeks in 1911, and had later been the Paraguayan Ambassador to the United States.
  • Delaware rejected the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which was to provide women with the right to vote. The Delaware State Senate, on the final day of its annual session, voted 24 against and only 10 for the amendment. The state would finally ratify on March 6, 1923, more than two years after the amendment had become part of the constitution.
  • Born:
  • *Tex Schramm, American professional football executive, general manager of the Dallas Cowboys for the franchise's first 30 seasons, inducted in the Pro Football Hall of Fame; as Texas Earnest Schram Jr, in San Gabriel, California
  • *Johnny Speight, English television writer, known for BBC1's Till Death Us Do Part, the inspiration for the U.S. series All in the Family; in London, England
  • *Marcel Reich-Ranicki, Polish-born German literary critic; as Marceli Reich, in Wloclawek, Poland

    June 3, 1920 (Thursday)

  • USS Tennessee, the first of the U.S. Navy's "Super-dreadnought battleships," was commissioned at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Only one other Tennessee-class ship, USS California, was also being constructed.

    June 4, 1920 (Friday)

  • The Treaty of Trianon was signed between the Allied Powers of World War I, and Hungary, which lost 72% of its territory within the former Austro-Hungarian Empire. The treaty was so unpopular that the Hungarian government had difficulty in finding anyone willing to sign the treaty, until Minister Plenipotentiary Alfred Detrashe Lazas and Minister of Labor Auguste Bernard agreed to do the task of agreeing to the breakup. A contributor to The Guardian called it "The most disastrous event in the long history of the ancient kingdom of Hungary was completed this afternoon in the long hall of the Grand Trianon at Versailles, when her two representatives put their signature at the foot of the treaty."
  • U.S. President Woodrow Wilson vetoed the federal budget for the 1921 fiscal year, because it contained an amendment that interfered with his authority to remove executive branch appointees. The U.S. House of Representatives, holding a long session before adjournment for the summer, failed to override the veto in a vote taken after midnight.

    June 5, 1920 (Saturday)

  • The Merchant Marine Act of 1920, one of several different U.S. laws referred to as "The Jones Act", was signed into law. The new law released U.S. government control of American merchant ships to private companies and provided that "No merchandise shall be transported by water... on penalty of forfeiture thereof... between points in the United States... in any other vessel than a vessel built in and documented under the laws of the United States and owned by persons who are citizens of the United States." The law provides now that U.S. ships allowed to transport from one U.S. port to another must be owned by companies with at least 75% U.S. ownership, with a crew made up of at least 75% U.S. citizens, and must be built and registered in the U.S. Critics of the Jones Act have described it as "an archaic, burdensome law" whose result has been "to impose significant costs on the U.S. economy while providing few of the promised benefits."
  • Julius Lörzing became the first botanist to find the rare carnivorous pitcher plant Nepenthes spectabilis, which grows only in the mountains on the island of Sumatra in Indonesia. Lörzing collected his specimen while climbing Mount Sibajak at an altitude of.
  • The United States Women's Bureau, which celebrates its centennial in 2020, was created as a federal agency within the U.S. Department of Labor.
  • Born: Marion Motley, American professional football running back, one of the first African American professional football players after World War II, inducted in the Pro Football Hall of Fame; in Leesburg, Georgia
  • Died:
  • *Rhoda Broughton, 79, Welsh novelist and short story writer
  • *Julia A. Moore, 72, American poet, known for her famously bad poetry

    June 6, 1920 (Sunday)

  • In elections for the Reichstag in Germany, the Social Democratic Party retained a plurality, but lost one-third of its 165 seats, while the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany, made up of former leftist SPD members, gained 61 seats to more than triple its representation in the Reichstag. Herman Mueller, recently resigned German Chancellor, tried to forge a coalition government that would include his Social Democrats.

    June 7, 1920 (Monday)

  • The Ku Klux Klan racist movement, the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, began a public relations campaign to increase its membership nationwide. The Klan hired the Southern Publicity Association, founded in Atlanta by Bessie Tyler of the Daughters of America, and Edward Young Clarke, an Imperial Wizard of the Klan Wyn.
  • The U.S. Supreme Court upheld seven separate cases challenging the ratification of the unpopular Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the enforcement of its prohibition of the general sale of alcohol. The court also upheld a challenge to the Volstead Act's provision that limited the amount of alcoholic content in drink to no more than 0.5 percent or one proof.
  • The Prime Minister of Portugal, António Maria Baptista, was conducting a meeting of his cabinet at Lisbon when he was "seized with an attack of congestion of the lungs" shortly after midnight. Baptista was rushed to a hospital and died six hours later. José Ramos Preto, the Minister of Justice, was temporarily appointed to the position of prime minister.
  • President Huerta of Mexico announced that Congressional elections would be held on August 1, and a presidential election would take place on September 3.

    June 8, 1920 (Tuesday)

  • The 1920 Republican National Convention opened at the Chicago Coliseum.
  • By a vote of 22 to 19 in favor of postponing consideration of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the Louisiana State Senate effectively rejected the measure. Only one state's ratification remained necessary for the amendment, permitting women the right to vote in all elections, to go into effect. The postponement was a surprise, in that a report the day before indicated that passage by Louisiana's senate was expected after the resolution had been passed to a third reading.

    June 9, 1920 (Wednesday)

  • Leopold Skulski resigned as Prime Minister of Poland after six months, following the failure of Poland's effort to fight along with the Ukrainian Army against the Soviet Union.
  • Italy's Prime Minister Francesco Nitti and his cabinet resigned.
  • Fourteen passengers were killed when New York Central Railroad's Train Number 28 was struck from behind by another eastbound freight train near Schenectady, New York, after the NYCRR train stalled on the track because of a defective water pipe. The engineer for Train Number 34 of the Michigan Central Railroad, which had departed later on the eastbound track for the Buffalo to New York City route, reportedly drove through two warning signals and was the only casualty on his train. Two other people died from their injuries in the days after the accident.

    June 10, 1920 (Thursday)

  • Less than a week after signing the Treaty of Trianon, Hungary's Prime Minister Sándor Simonyi-Semadam resigned along with his cabinet.
  • U.S. President Wilson signed the Federal Water Power Act into law, giving the federal government jurisdiction over utility providers whose businesses were part of interstate commerce. The signing was not announced until one week later. The act created the Federal Power Commission within the U.S. Department of Commerce and, "in order to prevent private firms from monopolizing power resources", gave the FPC "authority to determine who could build power plants."
  • Germany announced that it had successfully reduced the size of its army to 200,000 troops, in compliance with the Treaty of Versailles.
  • The British tugboat St. Boswells struck a sea mine while towing the former German cargo ship Santa Theresa, which had been transferred to British control, from South America to Germany. The St Boswells sank within two minutes after striking the mine in the North Sea, and 16 of its 22 crew went down with the ship, including its Captain, three officers, and eight maintenance crew.
  • Born: Ruth Graham, Chinese-born American Christian author, wife of evangelist Billy Graham; as Ruth McCue Bell, Huai'an, Jiangsu province, Republic of China