Public vehicles such as taxicabs were allowed into London's Hyde Park for the first time since 1636, after the House of Commons had repealed the ban on motion by M.P. Ben Smith.[2] The 1636 law had made Hyde Park "reserved for people who kept their own carriages." Smith himself had been a taxicab driver prior to becoming an official in the Transport and General Workers' Union.[3][4]
Alice's Day at Sea, the first of 57 films in Walt Disney's Alice Comedies series, was introduced to American cinemas as a short (11-minute) movie to be shown prior to a feature film.[7][unreliable source?] The silent film featured 5-year-old Virginia Davis in a combination of live action and animation. An earlier Alice comedy, Alice's Wonderland, had been shown to theater owners but never released to the public.
Billy Armstrong, 33, British-born American comedian and silent film actor, known for starring in 1919's Hop, the Bellhop with Oliver Hardy, died from tuberculosis.[9]
Shefqet Vërlaci became the new Prime Minister of Albania after Ahmet Zogu's serious injury in the assassination attempt of February 23.[12]
The Turkish National Assembly formally ended the Ottoman Caliphate that had operated for 407 years, voting "almost unanimously" to abolish the office,[13] and ordered that Abdulmejid II and his harem were to be deported by March 15. Abdulmejid, first cousin of the last Ottoman Sultan Mehmed VI, who had become religious leader of Islam upon being elected Caliph on November 19, was formally deposed at 2:00 the next morning.[14]
Died:Pell Trenton (stage name for William T. Baker), 40, American film actor, star of The Blue Moon and other silent movies, died of pulmonary tuberculosis
March 4, 1924 (Tuesday)
A 7.1 magnitude earthquake, with an epicenter at Orotina in Costa Rica, struck at 5:23 in the morning local time[16] and killed 70 people. Damage was caused in the capital at San Jose, 40 miles (64 km) away.[17]
Aidan de Brune became the first person to walk all the way around Australia, returning to Melbourne from whence he had departed on September 20, 1921.[18]
The University of North Carolina Tar Heels men's basketball team completed a perfect season of 26 wins and no losses, as one of the major unbeaten team in the nation, by winning the 16-team Southern Intercollegiate Conference postseason tournament, defeating the Alabama Crimson Tide, 26 to 18, in Atlanta.[19] The University of Texas Longhorns also went unbeaten, finishing the Southwest Conference regular season with a 23-0 record and being 20-0 in SWC games, but did not play against North Carolina.[20]
Just two days after Turkey abolished the caliphate, Hussein bin Ali, King of the Hejaz (now Saudi Arabia) and Sharif of Mecca, was proclaimed the Caliph of all Muslims by Muslim leaders in Mesopotamia (now Iraq) and Transjordania (now Jordan).[21] The response throughout the Muslim world was mostly negative.[22]
In an elaborate nighttime ceremony at Luxor under floodlights, Egypt's Prime Minister Saad Zaghloul formally opened the site of Tutankamun's tomb to the Egyptian public, which reportedly attracted the largest crowd seen in Luxor. The reopening turned into an anti-British demonstration when the British High Commissioner, Field Marshal Allenby, arrived when the crowd was demanding immediate British withdrawal from Egypt.[23]
Turkey's first government was reorganized as Prime Minister Ismet Pasha formed a new council of ministers at the request of President Mustapha Kemal Ataturk.[24] Ismet replaced four members of his Cabinet and eliminated the Ministry of Sharia and Foundations, and the Ministry of the General Staff while splitting the Ministry of the Economy into the new Ministry of Commerce and Ministry of Agriculture.
Died:Pat Moran, 48, American baseball player from 1901 to 1914, manager of the Cincinnati Reds in 1922 and 1923, died of kidney disease during spring training in Florida while preparing for the 1924 National League season.[26]
The Governor-General of British India, Lord Reading transferred full power of administration of the princely state of Bahawalpur (now part of the Punjab province of Pakistan) to the 19-year-old Nawab of Bahawalpur, Sadeq Mohammad Khan V who had been the nominal ruler since ascending the throne at the age of two on February 15, 1907.[28] Sadeq would remain in power until 1955, when Pakistan abolished its princely states.
Inventor Nikola Tesla spoke out for the first time in years, announcing he had perfected a system of transmitting power without wires.[29]
Georgios Kafantaris was forced by the Greek Army to resign as Prime Minister of Greece, along with his cabinet, less than a month after succeeding Eleftherios Venizelos, after refusing to endorse the Army's call for the abolition of the monarchy in favor of a republic. Kafantaris had proposed a referendum on the future of the monarchy while the Army requested an immediate change.[30]
The Kingdom of Greece established diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, a policy that continued even after the kingdom was abolished less than one month later.
Born:
Walter Chiari (stage name for Walter Annicchiarico), Italian stage and film actor; in Verona (d. 1991)
Louie Nunn, American politician and the only Republican governor of the U.S. state of Kentucky during the second half of the 20th century; in Park, Kentucky (d. 2004)
Sean McClory, Irish-born U.S. television and film actor; in Dublin (d. 2003)
The French Cabinet held an emergency meeting to consider extraordinary measures to stabilize the collapsing franc,[32] which dropped to 117.60 francs against the British pound sterling.[33]
Died: General Panagiotis Danglis, 70, former Greek Army leader and Minister of Military Affairs during World War One, co-inventor of the Schneider-Danglis mountain gun
France obtained a $50 million credit from American banks and a £5 million credit from London to stabilize the franc.[35][36]
In the case of Radice v. New York, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a New York state statute banning late-night working for women on grounds of health.[37]
Born:
Angela Morley, British transsexual composer and conductor who won three Emmy Awards after her transition in 1972; as Walter Stott, in Leeds, Yorkshire (d. 2009)
Horace Busby, U.S. presidential adviser and speechwriter for president Lyndon Johnson; in Fort Worth, Texas (d. 2000)
The worst Atlantic gale in twenty years hit the east coast of the United States, downing telephone and telegraph lines and killing nine people.[39]
Belva Gaertner, a cabaret singer, was arrested for the murder of her abusive lover, Walter Law, who was found dead from a bullet wound in her car in Chicago. She would be acquitted based on reasonable doubt over whether Law's death was a murder or a suicide. The story would be the inspiration of the Maurine Dallas Watkins Broadway play, Chicago in 1926, and for the successful John Kander and Fred EbbmusicalChicago in 1975.[40]
German Chancellor Wilhelm Marx dissolved the Reichstag ahead of a general election to be held on May 4.[48]
Born:
Meinhard Michael Moser, Austrian mycologist studying Agaricales fungi, author in 1953 of Die Blätter und Bauchpilze (Agaricales und Gastromycetes) which cataloged 3,150 species; in Innsbruck. The genus Moserella is named in his honor, as well as multiple species, including the halluciogenic mushroom Psilocybe moseri (d. 2002)
Nellie Kershaw, 33, English textile worker who was the first known person to die of asbestosis. Miss Kershaw at worked for Turner Brothers Asbestos for 18 years, starting at age 13 and continuing until 1922.[51]
Cyril Harcourt (pen name for Cyril Worsley Perkins), 51, British playwright and novelist whose 1914 Broadway play A Pair of Silk Stockings was later adapted to the 1932 film comedy They Just Had to Get Married
Louis Atilla (stage name for Ludwig Durlacher), 79, German strongman and personal trainer to members of royalty and high society.[55]
Brigadier General Richard Henry Pratt, 83, controversial U.S. educator and superintendent of the Carlisle Indian School known for his policy of cultural assimilation of Native Americans into Anglo-Saxon culture. General Pratt is credited with coining, in 1902, the word racism but also his summary of erasing the native culture with the phrase "Kill the Indian...save the man."[56]
Italy formally annexed Fiume in a colorful ceremony. Crowds cheered as King Victor Emmanuel III read the annexation decree.[58]
Born:
Otto Hittmair, Austrian theoretical physicist who worked with Erwin Schrödinger on trying to find a unified field theory; in Innsbruck (killed in mountain climbing accident, 2003)
The "Eugenical Sterilization Act" went into effect in the U.S. state of Virginia upon being signed into law by Governor E. Lee Trinkle, providing for the sterilization of persons in mental institutions.[63]
Nadir of American race relations: In the U.S., the Virginia General Assembly passed the Racial Integrity Act, amending the state's racial classification law which had provided that a person was considered to be "colored" if they had a great-grandparent who was African-American. The amendment enacted the "one-drop rule", which provided that a person was considered non-white if it was shown that they had any ancestor who was African-American. The 1924 Act had what was called the "Pocahontas Clause" providing that a person with an American Indian ancestor would be considered white if they were 15/16ths European.[64]
A British soldier was killed, and 21 others wounded, in a drive-by shooting at Queenstown in Ireland's County Cork. Four IRA members dressed as Irish Free State Army officers drove into town in a converted 1919 Rolls-Royce, dubbed the "Moon Car". As the Moon Car drove past the destroyer HMS Scythe at the port of Spike Island, the men opened fire with a machine gun.[67]
London drivers of trams and public buses went on strike.[68]
Died:T. E. Dunville (stage name for Thomas Edward Wallen), 56, English comedian, committed suicide one day after his final stage performance. He left a suicide note for his wife, and his body was found in the River Thames the next day.[70]
March 22, 1924 (Saturday)
The ocean liner RMS Olympic collided with the smaller liner Fort St George in New York City. The damage required repairs to the extent of which had never been attempted on a ship the size of Olympic before.[71]
Louis Delluc, 33, French filmmaker, died of pneumonia after becoming ill during the filming of his final film, L'Inondation. The Prix Louis-Delluc for Best Film is named in his honor.
Benito Mussolini presided over a Fascist parade in Rome commemorating the fifth anniversary of the founding of the Fasci Italiani da Combattimento. Mussolini's commemorative speech doubled as a campaign speech for the upcoming general election as he listed his government's accomplishments.[73]
The U.S. House of Representatives voted to appropriate $10 million for the purchase of food supplies for impoverished women and children in Germany.[74]
The Greek Parliament voted to depose King George II and declare the Second Hellenic Republic.[75] A public referendum on the issue was set for April 13.
A three-man team of British fliers, led by navigator Archibald Stuart-MacLaren, accompanied by pilot William Noble Plenderleith and flight engineer Sergeant W. H. Andrews, became the first of six different groups to attempt the first trip around the world by airplane. The British team departed from Calshot Aerodrome, near Southampton, in a Vickers Vulture II Mark VI amphibious biplane.[78][79] Other teams from the U.S., Portugal, France, Italy and Argentina, would depart between April and June on different routes to cover a global trip of at least 23,000 miles (37,000 km) with plans to return the site of their takeoff.[80] The British attempt would eventually end on August 4 when Plenderleith was forced to make a forced sea landing in which the aircraft was badly damaged.[81]
French Prime MinisterRaymond Poincaré resigned after his government was defeated in the Chamber of Deputies by a vote of 271 to 264. The confidence vote was a complete surprise and Poincaré was not even present, as he was in a committee meeting when it was announced and voted on.[83]
Over 100 people died in landslides around Amalfi in Italy.[85][86]
March 27, 1924 (Thursday)
The opening of the first elected parliament in the Kingdom of Iraq, the 100-member Constituent Assembly, was opened in Baghdad by King Faisal I and directed to draw up the Middle Eastern nation's first constitution, which would be ratified in 1925.[87]
The New York Philharmonic orchestra began its tradition of the Young People's Concerts, with guest conductor Ernest Schelling providing a description of aspects to be listened for in the music that would be heard, or about the parts of the orchestra itself. From 1926 onward, a concert would be performed every month.
Total S.A., one of the major energy product and sales companies worldwide, was founded in France, as predecessor name was Campagnie Francaise des Petroles.[91]
The Grand National horse race at Aintree Racecourse in England was won by Master Robert, a 25 to 1 long shot, ridden by Bob Trudgill and trained by Aubrey Hastings.
Józef Sebastian Pelczar, 82, Polish Roman Catholic cleric, Bishop of Przemysl and co-founder of the Sister Servants of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus; Pelczar would be elevated to sainthood in 2003.[92]
The first known Motocross in the United Kingdom took place at Camberley, Surrey, with a "scramble race" of 89 riders, rather than the individual time trials that had been staged by clubs. Rather than everyone starting at once, however, riders started once per minute, riding two laps on a challenging course 25 miles (40 km) long.[93]
Georgiana Hill, 65, British social historian, journalist and women's rights activist
March 30, 1924 (Sunday)
The first radio broadcaster in the German state of Bavaria, Bayerischer Rundfunk, began broadcasting from Munich at 5:00 in the afternoon under the name "Deutsche Stunde in Bayern".
The London tram and bus drivers' strike ended after a vote on a new wage package from the transport companies.[100]
Born:
B. S. Perera (Balasuriyage Steven Perera), popular Sri Lankan stage and film actor who appeared in over 180 movies in a 22-year career; in Colombo, Ceylon (d. 1982)[101]
Leo Buscaglia (pen name for Felice Leonardo Buscaglia), American professor, author and motivational speaker who popularized hugging in the U.S. in the 1970s and wrote multiple books, starting with Love in 1972; in Los Angeles (d. 1998)[102]
References
^"Blast Levels a Town: TNT, Being Changed to Fertilizer, Blows Up, Killing 18". Weekly Kansas City Star. March 5, 1924. p. 2.
^"Public Vehicles in Hyde Park", Daily Telegraph (London), March 3, 1924, p.11
^"The Taxi-Driver M.P.— Labour's New M.P.", Daily Herald (London), March 14, 1924, p.4
^ abMercer, Derrik (1989). Chronicle of the 20th Century. London: Chronicle Communications Ltd. pp. 316–317. ISBN978-0-582-03919-3.
^"King of the Hedjaz Accepts Caliphate— Moslems of Three Arab Countries Offer Him Position as Head of Islam", AP report in Boston Globe, March 7, 1924, p.13
^Brown, L. Carl (2000). Religion and State: The Muslim Approach to Politics. New York: Columbia University Press. p. 117. ISBN0-231-12038-9.
^"Egyptians Reopen Tomb of Pharaoh; Ceremonies Become the Occasion for Frenzied Nationalist Demonstration". The New York Times Company. March 7, 1924. p. 4.
^"Turkish Premier Quits— President Asks Him to Form Another Cabinet". Philadelphia Inquirer. March 7, 1924. p. 3.
^"Mexican Revolt Ends as Obregon Offers Amnesty". Chicago Daily Tribune. March 8, 1924. p. 5.
^"Pat Moran Dies at Reds' Camp in Florida— bright's Disease Causes Death of Noted Baseball Pilot, Who Gave Phillies and Cincinnati Only National League Pennants", Philadelphia Inquirer, March 8, 1924, p.22
^Osmańczyk, Edmund Jan; Mango, Anthony, eds. (2003). "Javorzyna". Encyclopedia of the United Nations and International Agreements. Taylor & Francis. p. 1199.
^Clayton, John (March 14, 1924). "Socialism in Germany Dies; Reichstag Shut". Chicago Daily Tribune. p. 1.
^Dieter Nohlen, Elections in the Americas: A data handbook (Nomos, 2005), Vol. I, p247
^Helen Chapin Metz, ed., Egypt: A Country Study (Federal Research Division, 1991) p.50
^"Italian King Makes D'Annunzio Prince of Montenevoso". Chicago Daily Tribune. March 16, 1924. p. 5.
^"Requiem for a Strongman: Reassessing the Career of Reassessing the Career of Professor Louis Attila", by Kim Beckwith and Jan Todd, Iron Game History (July 2002) pp. 42–55
^"Assembly Declares Greece a Republic—This Is Subject to Confirmation of Its Action by a Popular Referendum". The New York Times. March 26, 1924. p. 1.
^"Canadiens Hockey Champions, Taking Hard-Fought Game— Locals Defeated Calgary 3 to 0 in Final of Stanley Cup Series". Montreal Gazette. March 26, 1924. p. 16.
^"Calgary Is One Down in Hockey Final— N.H.L. Champions Triumph 6-1 in Game Played on Very Heavy Ice". Vancouver Sun. March 22, 1924.
^"23,254 Miles Trip by Air— Start Of British World Flight", Birmingham (England) Gazette, March 26, 1924, p.1
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