December 21, 1929: Personality cult of Joseph Stalin booms on his 50th birthday (shown, a 1938 example)December 24, 1929: Electrical fire destroys the West Wing of the White House, rebuilding planned
U.S. President Herbert Hoover called on the Soviet Union and China to end armed hostilities and resolve the Chinese Eastern Railway dispute by peaceful means. Simultaneously, Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson asked all the other signatories of the Kellogg–Briand Pact to join the United States in urging the two warring countries to refrain from further fighting.[2]
Tuesday, December 3, 1929
President Hoover delivered his first State of the Union message to Congress. It was presented in the form of a written message rather than a speech.[3] The message asserted that "during the past year the Nation has continued to grow in strength" and that the country's problems were "problems of growth and of progress." Of the economic situation, Hoover stated that he had "instituted systematic, voluntary methods of cooperation with the business institutions and with State and municipal authorities to make certain that fundamental businesses of the country shall continue as usual, that wages and therefore consuming power shall not be reduced, and that a special effort shall be made to expand construction work in order to assist in equalizing other deficits in employment ... I am convinced that through these measures we have reestablished confidence."[4]
Wednesday, December 4, 1929
Former Prime Minister David Lloyd George, at 66 the eldest member of the British House of Commons, told his colleagues that a second world war was inevitable without disarmament. "The League of Nations has been going on for ten years", he said. "There have been meetings and eloquent speeches delivered in favour of peace, disarmament and arbitration, but the League of Nations is in danger of failure from being run by flapdoodlers."[5]
King Victor Emmanuel III and Queen Elena visited Vatican City to meet with the Pope, the first time the sovereign of unified Italy had ever entered the Vatican. Thousands watched the royal motorcade procession through Rome.[7]
The Aga Khan, Imam of the Nizari Isma'ilism sect of Islam and one of the world's wealthiest men, was married in Aix-les-Bains, France to a former candy store clerk and dressmaker in a simple ceremony with no guests.[11]
Sunday, December 8, 1929
The Nazi Party received 11.3% of the vote in local elections in Thuringia, a marked increase over the 2.6 percent the party received in the national elections in May 1928.[12]
A fire at the Pathé film studio in New York killed 11 people during the filming of a musical revue, The Black and White Revue after a hot lamp set a velvet curtain ablaze on the movie set. The studio had no sprinklers. The tragedy led to stricter enforcement of New York's fire regulations.[15]
Seventeen passengers were killed and 60 injured in a train accident near Namur in Belgium.[16]
Died:Harry Crosby, 31, wealthy American poet and publisher, was found with a gun in his hand and a single gunshot wound to the head, lying next to the body of his 21-year-old lover Josephine Rotch, who had a single wound to the head from a different pistol, in what appeared to have been a suicide pact.
Wednesday, December 11, 1929
A prison riot broke out at Auburn Prison in upstate New York, apparently after a gun had been smuggled into the cell block. Eight convicts and a prison superintendent keeper were killed.[18]
The trial of 26 women in the Angel Makers of Nagyrév case opened in Szolnok, Hungary.[21][22] The defendants were tried in batches with the final trial ending in the summer of 1930. Ultimately, eight were sentenced to death.[23][24]
Fifty Communist Party of the U.S. members were arrested for staging an anti-administration protest in front of the White House without a permit, but they were released, almost immediately, in compliance with a request from President Hoover. White House Press SecretaryGeorge E. Akerson issued a statement saying that the President Hoover did "not believe that any such discourtesy in any way endangers the republic and that a night in jail is only doing them a favor of cheap martyrdom."[26]
Died: Royal Navy Admiral of the Fleet Sir Henry Jackson, 74. Jackson had been the First Sea Lord during World War One until being replaced after German warships were sighted in the English Channel in 1916.
Pope Pius XI created six new Roman Catholic Cardinals, including the Vatican's Apostolic Nuncio to Germany, Eugenio Pacelli. In 1939, Pacelli would become the successor of Pius XI and take name Pope Pius XII.[27]
President Hoover signed a $160 million income tax reduction bill into law.[28]
R100 in 1938
The British airship R100 carried out its first flight.
The cruise ship RMS Fort Victoria was hit by the ocean liner SS Algonquin while sailing in a dense fog in the Ambrose Channel between the U.S. states of New York and New Jersey. All on board the Fort Victoria were rescued before the ship sank, and the Algonquin survived the collision. [30]
Thursday, December 19, 1929
The Austrian government set limitations on the freedom of the press by penalizing offenses against the military.[31]
Friday, December 20, 1929
With no advance public announcement, Pope Pius XI left the Vatican, entered Italian territory and celebrated mass at the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran. It was the first time since the unification of Italy in 1870 that a pope had left the Vatican and entered foreign territory.[32]
The occasion of Joseph Stalin's fiftieth birthday marked the beginning of the state-orchestrated cult of personality around him.[33] An enormous press campaign showered hyperbolic acclaim on the "glorious leader", and that day's issue of Pravda was exclusively devoted to him.[34][35] The city of Volgograd had been renamed in his honor in 1925, but the personality cult would see the erection of statues and other monuments in Stalin's honor until a few years after his 1953 death.
Parliamentary elections were held in Egypt. The Wafd Party won 198 of the 236 seats in the Chamber of Deputies, after all other parties boycotted the election. Thirty-eight of the seats were won by independent candidates.
The German referendum on whether to reject, further payment of Germany's reparations owed under the Treaty of Versailles, failed as expected. Although over 90% of the votes cast approved the measure, only about 13.5% of the eligible voting population had participated at all, and the referendum needed a turnout of at least 50% in order to be accepted.[37][38]
At a railway station in Delhi, the Viceroy of India, Lord Irwin, survived an attempt on his life when a bomb was thrown through the window of a train he was riding in. An attendant was hurt but Lord Irwin escaped injury.[42]
An investigative committee in India submitted a report to the British government urging full Dominion status for India.[43]
The West Wing of the White House was seriously damaged in an evening fire. President Hoover left a Christmas Eve reception for children in order to direct efforts to retrieve important documents, but not all records could be saved. It was the most serious fire at the White House since it was burned by the British in 1814.[46] Congress would authorize the construction of a new West Wing to replace the burned building.
Three shots were fired at Argentine President Hipólito Yrigoyen as he left his home on the way to his office, but only his bodyguard was wounded. The assailant, a native Italian thought to be possibly an anarchist, was wounded when police guards returned fire. Efforts were made to save the shooter so he could be brought to trial but he died of his wounds.[47]
Pope Pius XI received royalty and nobility from the Houses of Savoy and Aosta as a gesture of goodwill marking the restoration of friendly relations between the Italian royal court and the Vatican since the Lateran Treaty.[51]
The British Foreign Office publicized a note from a Soviet ambassador promising that the USSR would refrain from communist agitation in British Dominions.[52]
Saturday, December 28, 1929
Black Saturday occurred in Samoa when nine demonstrators were killed by New Zealand mandate government police.[53]
Ogden L. Mills, the acting United States Secretary of the Treasury, announced that an accord had been reached with Germany on a payment agreement separate from the Young Plan, covering military occupation costs and mixed claims awards.[54]
In the Nazi newspaper Der Angriff, Joseph Goebbels published a controversial article titled "Hindenburg, are you still alive?", accompanied by a cartoon depicting President Paul von Hindenburg as a Teutonic god sitting on a throne supported by a stereotypical Jewish figure, watching pitilessly as generations of Germans marched into slavery. Hindenburg sued Goebbels for libel over the article.[56][57]
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Cosmo Lang, made a radio broadcast from Canterbury Cathedral heard around the world calling on all British citizens to do their part for the country in 1930. "For more than a century we have taken for granted the industrial and commercial leadership of this country", he said. "Let the experience of the passing year suffice to show that this leadership is seriously threatened. Our great industries in coal, iron, steel and cotton textiles are anxious and ill at ease. Competitors have arisen to supplant us in markets in which we thought our positions assured. More than 1 million of our people are unemployed, and the future is clouded with uncertainty." The Archbishop said that the only possible remedy was not through a political solution, but by "each citizen realizing and fulfilling his own personal responsibility."[58]
Sixty-nine children in Scotland perished in a movie theatre fire in Paisley, Renfrewshire. None of the deaths were from the fire itself, which was quickly put out, but due to suffocation, choking from the noxious fumes of the burning celluloid or trampling in the rush to get out.[60]
United States Secretary of CommerceRobert P. Lamont issued a statement predicting that 1930 would mark "a continuance of prosperity and progress." Secretary of the Treasuary Andrew W. Mellon likewise issued an optimistic statement: "During the winter months there may be some slackness or unemployment, but hardly more than is usual at this season each year. I have every confidence that there will be a revival of activity in the spring and that during the coming year the country will make steady progress."[62]
^"Martial Lae in Nanking; 30,000 Rebels Close In". Chicago Daily Tribune. December 7, 1929. p. 8.
^ abcdMercer, Derrik (1989). Chronicle of the 20th Century. London: Chronicle Communications. pp. 384–385. ISBN978-0-582-03919-3.
^Allen, Jay (December 8, 1929). "Aga Kahn, Rich Moslem Pope, Weds Candy Girl". Chicago Daily Tribune. p. 5.
^Lepsius, M. Rainer. "The Model of Charismatic Leadershi and its Applicability to the Rule of Adolf Hitler." Charisma and Fascism. Ed. António Pinto, Roger Eatwell and Stein Ugelvik Larsen. Oxon and New York: Routledge, 2007. p. 41. ISBN978-1-317-83453-3
^"World Court Protocol Is Signed by U.S.". Brooklyn Daily Eagle. December 9, 1929. p. 1.
^Koszarski, Richard (2008). Hollywood On the Hudson: Film and Television in New York from Griffith to Sarnoff. New York: Rutgers University Press. pp. 173–175. ISBN978-0-8135-4552-3.
^"Woman Poisoners of Husband Dies on the Gallows". Chicago Daily Tribune. January 14, 1931. p. 13.
^"U.S. Supreme Court to Have New Home Costing $9,740,000". Chicago Daily Tribune. December 14, 1929. p. 8.
^"50 Young 'Reds' Let Out of Jail on Hoover Plea". Chicago Daily Tribune. December 15, 1929. p. 1.
^ abDarrah, David (December 16, 1929). "Pope Beatifies 136 Martyrs, Hanged by Kings". Chicago Daily Tribune. p. 4.
^"Hoover Signs Bill; Taxes Are Cut 160 Million". Chicago Daily Tribune. December 17, 1929. p. 3.
^Greenberg, Michael I. (2006). Encyclopedia of Terrorist, Natural, and Man-made Disasters. Sudbury, Massachusetts: Jones and Bartlett Publishers. p. 179. ISBN978-0-7637-3782-5.
^"Liners Crash in Fog; One Sinks; No Lives Lost". Chicago Daily Tribune. December 19, 1929. p. 1.
^Owen, Bernard; Rodriguez-McKey, Maria (2013). Proportional Western Europe: The Failure of Governance. New York: Palgrave MacMillan. p. 82. ISBN978-1-137-37437-0.
^"Pope by Trip Ends 59-Year Vatican Exile". Brooklyn Daily Eagle. December 20, 1929. p. 1.
^Tumarkin, Nina (1997). Lenin Lives! The Lenin Cult in Soviet Russia. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. pp. 248–249. ISBN0-674-52431-4.
^Bonnell, Victoria E. (1997). Iconography of Power: Soviet Political Posters Under Lenin and Stalin. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. p. 156. ISBN978-0-520-92406-2.
^Bradley, Edwin M. (1996). The First Hollywood Musicals: A Critical Filmography of 171 Features, 1927 Through 1932. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company. p. 75. ISBN978-0-7864-2029-2.
^"Young's Plan Wins 4 to 1 in German Poll". Brooklyn Daily Eagle. December 23, 1929. p. 3.
^"Germans Refuse to Reject Young Plan at Polls". Chicago Daily Tribune. December 23, 1929. p. 3.
^Soares, André (2010). Beyond Paradise: The Life of Ramon Novarro. University Press of Mississippi. p. 372. ISBN978-1-60473-458-4.
^Elleman, Bruce A. (1997). Diplomacy and Deception: The Secret History of Sino-Soviet Diplomatic Relations, 1917–1927. M. E. Sharpe, Inc. p. 187. ISBN978-0-7656-0143-8.
^"Russia, China End War; Sign Railway Pact". Chicago Daily Tribune. December 23, 1929. p. 1.
^"India's Viceroy Escapes Bomb; Car Wrecked". Chicago Daily Tribune. December 23, 1929. p. 2.
^Steele, John (December 24, 1929). "Give India Home Rule, Report to Britain Urges". Chicago Daily Tribune. p. 1.
^Bradley, Edwin M. (1996). The First Hollywood Musicals: A Critical Filmography of 171 Features, 1927 Through 1932. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc. p. 87. ISBN978-0-7864-2029-2.
^Mosher, John C. (January 4, 1930). "The Current Cinema". The New Yorker. p. 48.
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