September 1921


The following events occurred in September 1921:

September 1, 1921 (Thursday)

September 2, 1921 (Friday)

September 3, 1921 (Saturday)

  • On the first full day of U.S. Army intervention in the Battle of Blair Mountain in Mingo County, West Virginia, about 400 of 4,000 armed miners agreed to disarm and surrendered their weapons to the federal troops. Most miners in the insurrection fled into the West Virginia hills, and many hid their weapons.
  • Representatives of U.S. oil companies signed an agreement with the government of Mexico after negotiating a favorable tariff on Mexican petroleum exports.
  • The Republic of China appointed Dr. W. W. Yen to be its chief delegate to the November arms limitation conference.
  • The SS Abessinia, a German-registered cargo ship, was wrecked on Knivestone in the Farne Islands off the coast of England, after being surrendered to the United Kingdom by Germany as part of World War One reparations. The wreckage can still be seen in the North Sea and the site is popular with divers.
  • Ernest Hemingway, at the time a 22-year old American journalist, married 30-year old Elizabeth Hadley Richardson, the first of four marriages for Hemingway. The couple would divorce in 1927 after his affair with Pauline Pfeiffer.

September 4, 1921 (Sunday)

  • Irish Nationalist Éamon de Valera replied to the July 20 proposals by British Prime Minister David Lloyd George and rejected the idea of limited self-government within the UK for southern Ireland. De Valera insisted on Dominion status similar to that of other dominions such as Canada, the end of British armed forces occupation, freedom from British acts of Parliament and a unity with the province of Northern Ireland.
  • A treaty between the United States and the Kingdom of Siam went into effect, with the U.S. giving up extraterritorial rights within Siam and Siam gaining full fiscal autonomy.
  • The Emirate of Afghanistan ratified a treaty of non-interference with the Soviet Union.
  • France agreed to accept reparations of building supplies worth seven billion German marks as a substitute for German gold.
  • The first Italian Grand Prix was staged on a series of roads near the village of Montichiari in the province of Brescia. The race would be moved in 1922 to a specially-built tract near Milan at the Autodromo Nazionale di Monza.
  • Prince Hirohito of Japan returned home after completing his tour of Europe. He would not return to Europe until almost exactly 50 years later, as the first Emperor of Japan to depart the nation.
  • Born:
  • *Ariel Ramírez, Argentine composer, in Santa Fe
  • *Atasi Barua, Indian painter, in Shantiniketan, Bengal Province, British India

September 5, 1921 (Monday)

September 6, 1921 (Tuesday)

September 7, 1921 (Wednesday)

  • The British government cabinet met outside of England for the first time, holding an emergency session at the Town House of the city of Inverness in Scotland. Prime Minister Lloyd George was on vacation in nearby Gairloch. From the meeting came the government's counteroffer to Ireland's Éamon de Valera, proposing a September 20 conference at Inverness in Scotland with Dáil Éireann delegates on the condition that Ireland agree to remain within the British Empire.
  • The Army of Nicaragua successfully repelled Nicaraguan rebels who were attempting to invade the Central American nation from neighboring Honduras. After the rebels fled back across the border, 1,300 of them were captured by troops of the Army of Honduras.
  • Distribution of American famine relief for Russia began in Petrograd as kitchens were opened and food was distributed.
  • Major League Baseball Commissioner and former judge K. M. Landis, who had agreed to be the arbitrator in a dispute between unionized construction workers and construction firms, ordered a reduction of up to one-third in the wages of the laborers, from $1.25 an hour to 70¢ an hour.
  • The British-registered ocean liner Almanzora ran aground at Porto, Portugal. Her 1,200 passengers were taken off the following day, and the ship was refloated on September 13.
  • Born:
  • *Alfred Schild, Turkish-born American theoretical physicist
  • *René Derolez, Belgian philologist and specialist in the study of rune inscriptions; in Aalst
  • Died:
  • *Johann Christoph Neupert, 78, founder of the Neupert company that manufactured pianos and harpsichords.
  • *John Tamatoa Baker, 69, Hawaiian-born politician who served as the governor of the Island of Hawaii within the Kingdom of Hawaii during 1892 and 1893.

September 8, 1921 (Thursday)

  • The Soviet government of Russia denied the Allied Relief Commission authority to investigate famine conditions in the Russian interior.
  • The American representatives for the November 11 arms limitation conference scheduled for Washington were named, to be led by U.S. Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes, former Secretary of State Elihu Root, and to include both the Republican and Democratic U.S. Senate leaders, Henry Cabot Lodge and Oscar W. Underwood.
  • Soviet troops completed their withdrawal from the short-lived Soviet Republic of Gilan, following negotiations with Persia.
  • U.S. philanthropist Urbain Ledoux, who billed himself as "Mister Zero", staged a job fair in Boston in which he displayed 150 unemployed job seekers on an auction block in the same manner of slaves, including having the men pose shirtless, to be "auctioned off" to potential employers.
  • British Prime Minister David Lloyd George offered Ireland's new leader Éamon de Valera a compromise allowing Ireland limited sovereignty within the British Empire.
  • Margaret Gorman was crowned the first Miss America at a beauty pageant in Atlantic City, New Jersey, United States.
  • U.S. Marine Sergeant Theodore B. Crawley set a new world record for marksmanship, shooting 177 consecutive bullseyes with a U.S. Army standard rifle from a distance of in a competition at Camp Perry in Ohio. The previous world record was 106 bullseyes in a row.
  • Born: Harry Secombe, Welsh entertainer, in Swansea

September 9, 1921 (Friday)

  • The Cunard Line ship RMS Aquitainia set a speed record in crossing the Atlantic Ocean, averaging 22.45 knots in making the run from Cherbourg to New York in 5 days, 16 hours and 57 minutes.
  • The Praya East Reclamation Scheme was launched with an order from the Hong Kong government.
  • The Ku Klux Klan announced that it would take legal action for libel against any publications that reprinted the ’’New York World’’ exposé of its activities.
  • A group of 18 federal agents of the U.S. narcotics squad raided the Greek ocean liner King Alexander while it was anchored in New York and fought a gun battle, wounding five members of the crew, beating 20 more, and arresting 326 people after being tipped off that the ship was smuggling narcotics and liquor. The agents reportedly seized more than one million dollars' worth of illegal cargo, but were unable to catch the leader of the narcotics ring, Sabas Meninthis, who was the fourth officer of the King Alexander. New York Harbor police fired at the federal agents, mistaking them as smugglers. One hour after the raid, the leader of the narcotic squad raiders, Frank J. Fitzpatrick, committed suicide by shooting himself in the chest.
  • Born: Mohamed Abdel Ghani el-Gamasy, Egyptian military officer and commander of Egypt's armed forces during the 1973 Yom Kippur War against Israel; in al-Batanun, Monufia Governorate
  • Died:
  • *Akbar Allahabadi, 74, Urdu language satirical poet in India
  • *Dr. Peter Freyer, 70, pioneering Irish genitourinary surgeon
  • *Virginia Rappe, 30, American film actress who had been raped four days earlier at a party hosted by Fatty Arbuckle, died of peritonitis from a ruptured bladder

September 10, 1921 (Saturday)

  • At least 215 people were killed in a flash flood of the Brazos River and its tributaries in the U.S. state of Texas. In San Antonio, 51 people died as waters high rushed through the downtown business district. Hardest hit was the town of Taylor, Texas, where 87 people drowned after of rain fell in 36 hours in Williamson County.
  • Thirty-four people in Chester, Pennsylvania were killed when a wooden footbridge on Third Street collapsed. A group of about 60 men, women and children had crowded the old structure to watch the recovery of a drowning victim, when the bridge fell into the river.
  • Thirty-eight people were killed and 60 more injured in France in the derailment of a Paris à Lyon et à la Méditerranée express train shortly at the station at Les Échets, after departing Lyon for Strasbourg. Most of the casualties were French Army soldiers who were returning to Alsace after being on furlough.
  • The first ascent of the steep north face of the Eiger, the mountain in the Alps of Switzerland, was made by a team of four climbers, Maki Yūkō of Japan, and Fritz Steuri, Fritz Amatter and Samuel Brawand of Switzerland.
  • Archduke Friedrich of Austria, the Duke of Teschen and former Supreme Commander of the Austro-Hungarian forces during World War One, sold almost all of his estates in Austria

September 11, 1921 (Sunday)

September 12, 1921 (Monday)

  • The Soviet Union declared war on the Kingdom of Romania in order to reclaim the territory of Bessarabia, of territory awarded from the Russian Empire to Romania by the Allied Supreme Council in 1919.
  • The government of the British Mandate for Palestine signed an agreement to provide for electric power infrastructure for most of the future nation of Israel, granting Pinchas Rutenberg's Jaffa Electric Company the exclusive right to use a 70-year concession to generate hydroelectric power from the Yarkon River.
  • Dock workers in parts of Ireland were forced to accept a reduction of one shilling per day in their wages because of a downturn in the industry.
  • The State Alien Poll Tax law in California was declared unconstitutional in a unanimous decision of The Supreme Court of California

September 13, 1921 (Tuesday)

September 14, 1921 (Wednesday)

September 15, 1921 (Thursday)

September 16, 1921 (Friday)

September 17, 1921 (Saturday)

September 18, 1921 (Sunday)

September 19, 1921 (Monday)

September 20, 1921 (Tuesday)

September 21, 1921 (Wednesday)

September 22, 1921 (Thursday)

  • At the city of Madurai in British India, the Mahatma Gandhi, leader of the passive resistance movement against British rule, decided to abandon the Western attire that he had worn as a lawyer, in favor of the traditional robe and loin cloth worn by the poorest of the Indian people. He would continue to dress in the style of the common man for the rest of his life.
  • The sinking of the Norwegian cargo ship Salina killed 14 of her 25 crew when the ship collided with the Belgian ship Jan Breydel and sank in the English Channel. Survivors were rescued by the Jan Breydel.
  • Dr. Gustav Ritter von Kahr, the right-wing Premier of Bavaria and a sympathizer with the cause of the secession of Bavaria from the Weimar Republic of Germany, was replaced by the moderately conservative Count Hugo von Lerchenfeld of Köfering—Schönberg.
  • The Central Legislative Assembly representing the indigenous majority of British India voted to lobby the British government to repeal the repressive Rowlatt Act that permitted colonial authorities to arrest and imprison suspects indefinitely without trial.
  • Seethikoya Thangal, leader of rebels in what is now India's state of Kerala, proclaimed himself the Governor of a kingdom based in Kumaramputhur.
  • For only the second time in British history, a woman was elected to the House of Commons, as Margaret Wintringham won a by-election held for the Louth constituency in Lincolnshire. Mrs. Wintringham was the widow of Liberal M.P. Thomas Wintringham, the previous holder of the seat.
  • Died: Ivan Vazov, 71, Bulgarian poet, playwright and novelist known as "The Patriarch of Bulgarian literature" for his revival of Bulgarian language in modern literary works.

September 23, 1921 (Friday)

  • At Geneva, Poland and Germany signed a treaty allowing Germany to retain the independent port of Danzig. After World War II, the "Free State of Danzig" and surrounding communities became a permanent part of Poland as Gdańsk.
  • With nine games left in the pennant race in baseball's American League, and six of the AL's eight teams eliminated from contention, the first place New York Yankees and the second place Cleveland Indians met for the first part of a four-game scheduled regular season series that would ultimately determine who would go to the World Series, and the Yankees won, 4 to 2, to take the lead in the race. Cleveland won the Saturday game, 9 to 0, while the Yankees beat the Indians in the Sunday installment, 21 to 7 and the Monday final, 8 to 7, putting the Indians two games behind the Yankees with only four left to play.
  • Johnny Buff won the world bantamweight boxing championship at the age of 32, defeating titleholder Pete Herman, who had recently reclaimed the title on July 25, in a 15-round bout at Madison Square Garden.
  • Born: Joe Hill Louis, American blues musician who died prematurely from a tetanus infection; in Raines, Tennessee
  • Died: Bernard de Romanet, 27, French Army lieutenant and World War One flying ace with 18 aerial victories, later a sporting pilot who broke the world speed record twice in 1920 (with a maximum speed of, was killed in a plane crash while taking part in the qualifying races for the Coupe Deutsch de la Meurthe, where he had planned to reclaim the world speed record from Joseph Sadi-Lecointe. According to witnesses from the ground, it appeared that Romanet had unofficially surpassed and then in a Lumière-de Monge racer monoplane but that the fabric on the left wing had torn off, causing him to crash near Étampes. The Monge had recently been converted from a biplane to a monoplane when the lower wings were removed in order to increase speed, and plunged from an altitude of.

September 24, 1921 (Saturday)

  • In Budapest, former Hungarian Prime Minister and Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister Gyula Andrássy escaped an assassination attempt. Anti-monarchist Ibrahim Kover fired five shots at Andrassy and former National Assembly leader Rakovsky, both leaders of the Christian National Union Party, which advocated bringing the last ruler of Austria-Hungary, King Karoly IV, back to the throne.
  • The first International Eugenics Conference since 1912, and only the second one ever held, was closed in London with an address by British Army Major Leonard Darwin, a eugenicist and politician, as well as the son of Charles Darwin. Major Darwin told the delegates that it was the patriotic duty of "better class" families to propagate because those persons with "superior" genetic traits were "disappearing" while "inferior" citizens were rapidly multiplying.
  • The Council of Ambassadors in the League of Nations demanded that Hungary evacuate the Burgenland section of Austria, which Hungarian partisans claimed as "Őrvidék".
  • The U.S. Army's Air Service tested its bombing skills on the retired battleship USS Alabama with a simulated bombing using smoke bombs and tear gas, as well as a crew of mannequins substituting for enemy sailors.
  • The Council of the League of Nations presented the Hymans Commission report to the League Assembly on the recommended settlement of the dispute between Poland and Lithuania over Vilnius, which Poland's General Lucjan Zeligowski had seized in October.
  • Three people were killed near Staten Island in New York when their sailboat was run over by a Cunard Line cruise ship, the RMS Caronia, which had departed New York bound for Liverpool. Harbor police concluded that the engine of the sloop John Anton had stalled as the boat was attempting to steer out of the path of the oncoming Caronia, which sliced the smaller craft in half.
  • The first college football game to be held at what is now Neyland Stadium on the campus of the University of Tennessee took place at Shields-Watkins Field, with the UT Volunteers defeating Emory & Henry College, 27 to 0. The bleachers had seating for 3,200 people on opening day; 100 years later, Neyland Stadium would be able to seat more than 30 times as many people, with 102,455 seats.

September 25, 1921 (Sunday)

  • Poland's President, Józef Piłsudski, narrowly escaped an assassination attempt in Lwow as Ukrainian activist Stepan Fedak fired at an open car carrying Pilsudski and Lwow Governor Kazimierz Grabowski. Governor Grabowski was struck twice and a third shot struck the car windshield when Pilsudski ducked.
  • The first public radio broadcast in Bulgaria was made, as the wireless telegraph station at Sofia transmitted a recording of a concert that it had received from a German radiostation at Nauen.
  • Born:
  • *Robert Muldoon, Prime Minister of New Zealand from 1975 to 1984; in Auckland
  • *Andy Albeck, Russian-born U.S. film executive and the last president of United Artists before its financial problems forced it to merge with MGM Studios; in Vladivostok
  • *Cintio Vitier, American-born Cuban poet, novelist and intellectual; in Key West, Florida
  • *Lieutenant General Tette "Ted" Meines of the Netherlands Army, member of the Dutch resistance during World War II who saved numerous Jewish children in the Netherlands from deportation; in Huizum

September 26, 1921 (Monday)

September 27, 1921 (Tuesday)

  • For the first time in more than six years, residents of the United Kingdom were allowed to have alcoholic beverages served to them at pubs, restaurants and hotels in the evening, as restrictions issued in 1915 under the Defence of the Realm Act 1914 were lifted. Alcohol could be served up until midnight, and patrons were allowed until 12:30 in the morning to consume their drinks.
  • The first radio station in Mexico went on the air, transmitting from the Chapultepec section of Mexico City at 20 watts of power.
  • At Evere Airfield in Evere, Belgium, fire broke out in the airplane hangar leased by the Belgian airline SNETA, destroying one-third of the company's fleet.
  • The Assembly of the League of Nations voted to postpone any further discussion of disarmament for a year, and approved the attendance of its members at the upcoming Washington Disarmament Conference, in accordance with the recommendations made to the League on September 19.
  • The Chicago Fire Department announced that an inspection of its records, pertaining to the Great Chicago Fire of October 8, 1871, refuted the myth regarding "Mrs. O'Leary's Cow". The popular story had been that the fire, which had started with a blaze at a barn on 137 DeKoven Street, had been caused when Mrs. Catherine O'Leary had gone into milk a cow on the evening of the fire and that the cow had kicked her, causing her to drop a lantern that set hay in the fire ablaze. A re-examination of the records, made in advance of observances of the 50th anniversary of the event, showed that Mrs. O'Leary had gone to bed at 8:30 that evening, one hour before the fire department had been alerted about the start of a fire.
  • Born: Melvin "Slappy" White, African American Vegas comedian and TV actor; in Baltimore
  • Died: Engelbert Humperdinck, 67, German composer

September 28, 1921 (Wednesday)

September 29, 1921 (Thursday)

  • British Prime Minister David Lloyd George sent a new invitation to Ireland's declared President, Éamon de Valera, proposing a "fresh invitation" to negotiations and discussion of Ireland's place as a nation within the British Empire.
  • The U.S. Committee on Unemployment Statistics reported record high unemployment in the United States.
  • Baseball's New York Giants, with a 93–57 record and three games left to play, clinched the National League pennant after the second-place Pittsburgh Pirates dropped both games of a doubleheader to the third place St. Louis Cardinals, losing the first 5 to 4 and the second 3 to 1, dropping their record to 89–62 with three games left. On September 16 and 17, the Giants had beaten the Pirates 5 to 0 and 6 to 1, the margin of difference, when at the season's end, the Giants finished four games ahead.
  • Born:
  • *Hedda Lundh, Danish journalist and teacher who served as a resistance leader against the Nazi occupation of Denmark during World War II; in Korsør
  • *Jackie Kahane, Canadian-born American standup comedian who was the warmup act for Elvis Presley's concerts; in Montreal

September 30, 1921 (Friday)