November 1920


November 1, 1920 (Monday)

  • Dr. Alfredo Zayas was elected President of Cuba, defeating the Liberal candidate, former president José Miguel Gómez.
  • On the eve of the U.S. presidential election, the father of candidate Warren G. Harding went to the press to deny rumors that candidate Harding had African-American ancestry. Dr. George Tryon Harding went into downtown Marion, Ohio, and angrily confronted Probate Judge William S. Spencer, accusing him of circulating a photo and literature that said that Dr. Harding's father was African-American. Judge Spencer executed an affidavit, denying that he had contributed to the rumor, before Dr. Harding apologized.
  • Employees of the Faxton Hospital in Utica, New York, made a desperate search of sewer lines serving the institution, hoping to find one milligram of radium that Dr. George Fletcher had applied, in a small vial under a bandage, to a female patient as a means of treating breast cancer." The unidentified patient was irritated by the burning of the radium, went into a bathroom and flushed the vial and its radioactive material, valued at $13,000 at the time, down a toilet. Despite the excavation of the sewer system, there was no subsequent report of the recovery of the radium.
  • Born: James J. Kilpatrick, American journalist and conservative TV commentator for 60 Minutes; in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
  • Died: Kevin Barry, 18, Irish republican convicted in a military tribunal for the September murder of three British soldiers; hanged at Mountjoy Jail in Dublin, sparking outrage in Ireland over the execution of a teenager. Barry's hanging, shortly after 7:00 in the morning, was "the first execution that has taken place in connection with Sinn Fein disturbances;" in 14 attacks across Ireland later in the day, six policemen were killed in reprisal for Barry's death. In a ceremony in Dublin almost 80 years later, Barry and nine other celebrated martyrs in the Irish War of Independence, would be disinterred from the grounds of Mountjoy and buried with full state honors at Glasnevin Cemetery.

    November 2, 1920 (Tuesday)

  • Ohio U.S. Senator Warren G. Harding, the Republican nominee, was elected President of the United States in a landslide, winning more than 60% of the vote and 404 electoral votes compared to 127 for Ohio Governor James M. Cox, and almost 17 million popular votes to Cox's 9 million. Although Governor Cox did not make a comment, the newspaper that he owned, the Dayton News, printed an extra edition at 11:00 pm with the headline "Republican Landslide; Harding Wins." In the U.S. House of Representatives, the balance was 307 Republicans against only 127 Democrats, and the Republicans' slim 49 to 47 majority in the U.S. Senate increased to 59 to 37.
  • The first licensed commercial radio station in the U.S., KDKA-AM of Pittsburgh, made its debut by broadcasting news updates of the presidential and other elections with a speed unmatched by printed news. "Those results were borrowed from a newspaper but", a historian would later write, "for individuals with a radio receiver, managed to arrive much more rapidly." The Westinghouse Electric Company, owner of KDKA, had been transmitting instructions for two weeks before the election. With Leo Rosenberg as the anchorman for the broadcast, the results could be picked up by wireless receivers within a radius of Pittsburgh. Although KDKA would be the lone U.S. radio station for ten months, 30 stations would be broadcasting by 1922 and over 500 by 1924.
  • Alice Robertson of Oklahoma, a Republican, was elected as the U.S. representative for 2nd congressional district in the northeastern part of that state, defeating incumbent Democrat William W. Hastings. Robertson was only the second woman to serve in Congress, after Jeannette Rankin had been elected in Montana in 1916.
  • Referendums were held in towns across Scotland on the issue of whether to ban the sale of liquor, with 18 districts banning the sale, 24 restricting sale of certain types of alcohol, and 149 staying "wet."
  • The Ocoee massacre began at the black community of Ocoee, Florida, when a white mob carried out the murder of six African Americans after two white men were shot to death while trying to arrest Jules Perry, a black man who had attempted to vote earlier in the day but was denied on grounds that he hadn't paid the poll tax. The white mob then burned down the house from which the shots had been fired to kill the white vigilantes, killing the five men inside. Perry was then taken from the city jail and lynched.
  • Born: Rocco Morabito, American photographer, Pulitzer Prize winner; in Port Chester, New York
  • Died:
  • *Louise Imogen Guiney, 59, American poet and essayist; died of a stroke
  • *James Daly, 22, Irish nationalist and British Army lieutenant with the Connaught Rangers in British India; executed by a firing squad after his court-martial conviction of mutiny. Private Daly remains the last member of the British armed forces to be executed for mutiny

    November 3, 1920 (Wednesday)

  • After the initial killing of six African Americans, the Ocoee massacre continued as the Ku Klux Klan returned to burn the homes of other black residents of the town of Ocoee, Florida, near Orlando. Estimates range from 50 to 65 additional murders of black residents in the northern section of town until dawn. In the aftermath, black residents in the southern section were intimidated into moving away.
  • With a 75 percent vote necessary to continue plans for a strike, British coal miners fell short, rejecting a proposed settlement by only a small majority.
  • The Inter-Allied Control Commission met at Munich to request that Bavaria disarm its militia detachments.
  • Born: Oodgeroo Noonuccal, aboriginal Australian poet and activist; as Kathleen Jean Mary Ruska, on Stradbroke Island, Queensland
  • Died: Warren Terhune, 51, United States Navy Commander, Governor of American Samoa; committed suicide by shooting himself in the chest

    November 4, 1920 (Thursday)

  • The capsizing of the Philippines steamer San Basilio killed 44 of the 64 people on board as the ship was trying to anchor off of the island of Leyte during a typhoon. Although some of the 44 drowned while trying to swim to one of the lifeboats of San Basilio, others were killed by sharks before they could reach safety.
  • Deutsche Bank announced that its capital had increased from 275 million to 400 million marks in the two years since the end of World War One, and that it would use the capital to buy three other banks in Germany, the Gothaer Privatbank, Hannoversche Bank and Braunschweigische Bank.
  • Former Vermont Governor Horace F. Graham, convicted of embezzlement of state funds while he had served as State Auditor, was sentenced to five years at hard labor in the state penitentiary. Two hours later, incumbent Governor Percival W. Clement issued Graham a pardon for all crimes.
  • Died: Ludwig von Struve, 62, German astronomer; died of a stroke

    November 5, 1920 (Friday)

  • At a press conference at the crowded ballroom of the Hotel Claridge in New York City, world heavyweight boxing champion Jack Dempsey and world light heavyweight champion and European heavyweight champ Georges Carpentier formally signed a contract to face each other in an eagerly-anticipated "Fight of the Century". Each fighter would receive an unprecedented amount of money — $500,000. The date and location of the bout remained to be negotiated, but it would eventually take place on July 2, 1921, in Jersey City, New Jersey.
  • Born: Douglass North, American economist, recipient of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences; in Cambridge, Massachusetts

    November 6, 1920 (Saturday)

  • The Princeton University Tigers, who claim a share of the mythical college football championship for 1920, suffered the only blemish in a season of six wins and no losses after the unbeaten Harvard Crimson overcame a 14–7 deficit in the final minute to tie the game, 14 to 14. Princeton finished with a 6-0-1 record and outscored its opponents, 144 points to 23. The other claimant, the California Golden Bears, scored 510 points to its opponents 14, had a record of 9-0-0 with six shutouts, including its postseason Rose Bowl win against unbeaten Ohio State University.

    November 7, 1920 (Sunday)

  • Under the command of General Mikhail Frunze, 135,000 Soviet troops began a 10-day final offensive to end the Southern Front of the Russian Civil War and driving the rebel White Army from the Crimean peninsula. By November 13, General Pyotr Wrangel and most of his other White Army subordinates and soldiers began a desperate evacuation from Sevastopol, Yalta and other ports before the Soviets arrived on November 16.
  • The Soviet Union celebrated the third anniversary of the October Revolution with the first staging of mass theatrical production, The Storming of the Winter Palace, with 8,000 participants directed by Nikolai Evreinov for an audience of 100,000 spectators in at the square in front of the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg.
  • Died: Samuel Meltzer, 69, American physiologist

    November 8, 1920 (Monday)

  • After the clubs within the two 8-team major baseball leagues could not agree on whether to have a powerful executive to control the sport, the peaceful coexistence of baseball's American League and National League came to an end. Three AL teams, opposed to AL President Ban Johnson, broke with the other five and agreed a plan to organize a new 12-team National League— composed of two franchises each in Boston, New York, Chicago, the remaining five other NL teams, as New York, Chicago and Boston AL franchises jumped to the National League. A 12th team was to be selected before the 1921 baseball season. The American League announced that it would operate in 1921 as a six team circuit, consisting of the Cleveland Indians, Detroit Tigers, Philadelphia Athletics, St. Louis Browns, Washington Senators and a new Boston Americans franchise.
  • The popular British comic strip Rupert Bear, by Mary Tourtel, made its debut as a feature in the London newspaper, the Daily Express.
  • The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that private stocks of liquor could be moved and stored by their owners without violating the 18th Amendment.
  • Born:
  • *Esther Rolle, African American actress, Emmy Award winner and Golden Globe nominee; in Pompano Beach, Florida
  • *Sitara Devi, Indian Kathak dancer, singer and actress; as Dhanalakshmi, in Calcutta, Bengal Presidency, British India
  • Died:
  • *Nectarios of Aegina, 74, Eastern Orthodox Metropolitan bishop, recognized as a saint in 1961; died of cancer
  • *Abraham Kuyper, 83, Prime Minister of the Netherlands from 1901 to 1905, Neo-Calvinist pastor
  • *Alberto Blest Gana, 90, Chilean novelist and diplomat, ambassador to France and the United Kingdom