December 1924: Difference between revisions – Wikipedia

 

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==December 19, 1924 (Friday)==

==December 19, 1924 (Friday)==

*German serial killer [[Fritz Haarmann]] was sentenced to death for murdering twenty-four young men.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Bischoff |first1=Eva |last2=Siemens |first2=Daniel |chapter=Class, Youth and Sexuality in the Construction of the ”Lustmörder”: The 1928 Murder Trial of Karl Hussmann. |title=Crime and Criminal Justice in Modern Germany |editor-first=Richard |editor-last=Wetzell |editor-link=Richard Wetzell |publisher=[[Berghahn Books]] |year=2014 |page=222 |isbn=978-1-78238-246-1}}</ref>

*German serial killer [[Fritz Haarmann]] was sentenced to death for murdering twenty-four young men.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Bischoff |first1=Eva |last2=Siemens |first2=Daniel |chapter=Class, Youth and Sexuality in the Construction of the ”Lustmörder”: The 1928 Murder Trial of Karl Hussmann |title=Crime and Criminal Justice in Modern Germany |editor-first=Richard |editor-last=Wetzell |editor-link=Richard Wetzell |publisher=[[Berghahn Books]] |year=2014 |page=222 |isbn=978-1-78238-246-1}}</ref>

*”’Born:”’ [[Doug Harvey (ice hockey)|Doug Harvey]], hockey player, in [[Montreal|Montreal, Quebec]], Canada (d. 1989)

*”’Born:”’ [[Doug Harvey (ice hockey)|Doug Harvey]], hockey player, in [[Montreal|Montreal, Quebec]], Canada (d. 1989)

* ”’Born:”’ [[Cicely Tyson]], Tony and Emmy Award-winning actor and model, in [[Harlem]], New York City, New York (d. 2021)

* ”’Born:”’ [[Cicely Tyson]], Tony and Emmy Award-winning actor and model, in [[Harlem]], New York City, New York (d. 2021)

Month of 1924

The following events occurred in December 1924:

December 1, 1924 (Monday)[edit]

• An attempt by Communists to overthrow the government of Estonia failed, leaving 125 of the 335 rebels dead, and 500 more arrested. The Estonian Army lost 26 soldiers and cadets. Communist International (Comintern), based in the Soviet Union, had ordered the Estonian Communist Party to stage the coup and provided weapons. The rebels attacked a dormitory for cadets of the Estonian Military Academy with grenades, but fled when the cadets fought back. The Toompea Castle in Tallinn and a military airfield at Lasnamäe were briefly under Communist control, but within five hours after the 5:00 a.m. start, government forces had defeated the rebels.^[1]
• Boston Arena hosted the first National Hockey League game ever played in the United States as the NHL’s two newest franchises, with the Boston Bruins and the Montreal Maroons. Boston won, 2 to 1.^[2][3] Smokey Harris scored the first-ever Bruins goal.^[4]
• Plutarco Elías Calles was inaugurated to a 4-year term as the 47th President of Mexico.^[5]
• From Latakia, leaders of the Alawite State within the semi-autonomous Syrian Federation announced that they would not join the states of Aleppo and Damascus in the creation of the State of Syria.
• An agreement to start the first chapter of the Ku Klux Klan in Canada was signed between C. Lewis Fowler of New York City and Richard L. Cowan of Toronto. Cowan named himself the Imperial Wizard of the white supremacist Knights of Ku Klux Klan of Canada on January 1.^[6]
• Fritz Angerstein, an official with a limestone mine in the German town of Haiger, murdered eight people in the villa where he lived, killing his wife, his mother-in-law and sister-in-law, his maid and two gardeners, and two of his fellow workers. He would be executed by behading on November 17, 1925.^[7]
• The musical Lady, Be Good, with music by George and lyrics by Ira Gershwin, opened at the Liberty Theatre on Broadway for the first of 330 performances.^[8]
• The drama film Romola, starring Lillian Gish, premiered at George M. Cohan’s Theatre in New York City.^[9]
• Born:
  • Suraj N. Gupta, Indian-born U.S. theoretical physicist noted for his contributions to quantum field theory, including the Gupta–Bleuler quantization; in Punjab Province, British India (d. 2021)^[10]
  • Fazle Kaderi Mohammad Abdul Munim, Chief Justice of Bangladesh from 1982 to 1989; in Dhaka, Bengal Province, British India (d. 2001)^[11]
  • General Sawar Khan, Vice Chief of Staff of the Pakistan Army 1980 to 1984, and Governor of Punjab province, 1978-1980;^[12] in Rawalpindi District, Punjab Province, British India (d. 2023)
• Died: Reuben “Dummy” Stephenson, 55, the first deaf Major League Baseball player.^[13] Stephenson played as a center fielder for eight games for the Philadelphia Phillies in September 1892.^[14]

December 2, 1924 (Tuesday)[edit]

December 3, 1924 (Wednesday)[edit]

• The third, and longest, expedition by the Compagnie générale transsaharienne (CGT) to find an effective automobile route across the Sahara Desert completed an 18-day, 2,200-mile (3,500 km) journey, reaching Savè (now in Benin) after having departed from Colomb-Béchar in Algeria on November 15. Led by CGT founder Gaston Gradis, with eleven other persons, the expedition featured three six-wheel, double-tired Renault automobiles.^[20]
• U.S. president Calvin Coolidge delivered his 2nd State of the Union message to the United States Congress. Unlike in 1923, Coolidge delivered a written address instead of giving a speech.^[21] The message stated that the present state of the Union “may be regarded with encouragement and satisfaction by every American.”^[22]
• Born:

December 4, 1924 (Thursday)[edit]

• The silent film Greed, written and directed by Erich von Stroheim, premiered at the Cosmopolitan Theatre in New York.^[24] The psychological thriller, starring Gibson Gowland and ZaSu Pitts, with Jean Hersholt, was edited to 22 reels^[25] and eventually to 10 reels (2 hours and 10 minutes) for general audiences.^[26][27] It would be described by later filmmakers as a major influence on their technique, and by many critics as one of the greatest films ever made.^[24]
• Portuguese swindler Alves dos Reis carried out one of the largest frauds in history against the Bank of Portugal, approaching the currency printer Waterlow and Sons of London with a letter of introduction from the Joh. Enschedé currency printing company of the Netherlands and arranging for the printing of 200,000 bank notes, each with a face value of 500 Portuguese escudos, with the same serial numbers as a previous Waterlow printing. The first notes were delivered in February by accomplices of Reis.^[28]
• The 85-foot (26 m) high Gateway of India monument, designed by architect George Wittet, was inaugurated in Bombay (now Mumbai) in British India in a ceremony by the Governor-General, the Earl of Reading.^[29]
• The ocean liner SS Belgenland departed from New York City with at least 350 passengers to begin a cruise around the world that would last for more than four months.^[30] Only 235 of the passengers remained aboard on the Belgenland for the entire cruise.^[31]
• The trial of confessed serial killer Fritz Haarmann began in Germany. Haarmann would be convicted of 24 murders on December 19.^[32]
• Died: Cipriano Castro, 66, president of Venezuela from 1899 to 1908

December 5, 1924 (Friday)[edit]

• The Battle of Mecca took place as Abdulaziz Ibn Saud, ruler of the Sultanate of Nejd, overwhelmed the outnumbered defenders of the Kingdom of Hejaz and forced Ali bin Hussein, King of Hejaz, to flee the city. The final rout completed the Saudi conquest of Hejaz and the union of Nejd and Hejaz as Saudi Arabia. After the battle, Ibn Saud entered Mecca in ihram clothing, making the umrah, one of the two forms of the Muslim pilgrimage to the Great Mosque of Mecca. The umrah differs from the hajj in that the umrah pilgrimage takes place outside of the month of Dhu al-Hijjah, and Saud made the trip on the 8th day of Jumada I.^[33]
• The State of Syria (Dawlat Sūriyā) was created within the Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon by Decree No. 2980, uniting the State of Aleppo and the State of Damascus under one common native assembly and administration.^[34]
• Fayzulla Xoʻjayev became the Chairman of the Revolutionary Committee of the Uzbek SSR, which had become a part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. On February 17, he would become Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars.^[35]
• Benito Mussolini introduced a bill enforcing widespread press censorship.^[36]
• A first Woolworths Australia department store opened in downtown Sydney, as predecessor name was Woolworths Stupendous Bargain Basement.^[37]
• Born:
• Died:

December 6, 1924 (Saturday)[edit]

• France rounded up over 300 communists in raids on their headquarters, including some 70 of foreign nationality that were to be deported. “There are too many foreign communists in France who forget their duty to the country that has given them asylum”, Prime Minister Édouard Herriot told the Chamber of Deputies. “They are indulging in political demonstrations, and we will not tolerate it, we will not let them meddle in our political life. If we meet with resistance we will break it, and we will deport as many as necessary.”^[39]
• Born:
• Died:

December 7, 1924 (Sunday)[edit]

December 8, 1924 (Monday)[edit]

December 9, 1924 (Tuesday)[edit]

December 10, 1924 (Wednesday)[edit]

December 11, 1924 (Thursday)[edit]

• James B. Duke, founder of the American Tobacco Company and Duke Power Company, a philanthropist who was one of the wealthiest men in the U.S., gave $40,000,000 to The Duke Endowment, a trust fund he had created. The Duke Fund was directed to support four colleges, as well as multiple non-profit hospitals, children’s homes and rural United Methodist churches in North Carolina and South Carolina. The largest share of the gift (40% or $12,800,000) went to Trinity College in Durham, North Carolina, on the condition that the institution rename itself in honor of James Duke’s father, the late Washington Duke, and Trinity College changed its name to Duke University upon accepting the endowment. Shares of 5% of the endowment were given to Davidson College and Furman University, while 4% was given to the historically black Johnson C. Smith University. Another $67,000,000 was provided to the endowment under Duke’s will upon his death on October 10, 1925.^[47]
• The absolute world record for speed, 279.481 miles per hour (449.781 km/h), was set by the Bernard SIMB V.2 airplane, designed by French aviator Jean Hubert and piloted by Florentin Bonnet.
• Photographer Alfred Stieglitz and painter Georgia O’Keeffe were married in New Jersey.^[48]
• Born:

December 12, 1924 (Friday)[edit]

• The Central Executive Committee of the USSR issued a decree prohibiting the possession of almost all firearms, with the exception of hunting rifles. The decree, titled “On the procedure of production, trade, storage, use, keeping and carrying firearms, firearm ammunition, explosive projectiles and explosives”, outlawed personal possession of handguns and rifles other than smoothbore shotguns, and illegal gun possession was severely punished.^[50]
• The first issue of the weekly Saudi Arabian newspaper Umm Al-Qura was published. Based in Mecca, Umm Al-Qura is the official newspaper of the Saudi government.^[51]
• Addressing American correspondents at the League of Nations, French politician Aristide Briand said that American entry into the League was essential to ensure world peace.^[52]
• Born:

December 13, 1924 (Saturday)[edit]

• Former Albanian Prime Minister Ahmet Zogu, who had been driven into exile in June, led an invasion of Albania with guerrillas backed by Yugoslavia, and marched toward the capital, Tirana, in order to remove Prime Minister Fan Noli from office.^[55]
• Born:

December 14, 1924 (Sunday)[edit]

December 15, 1924 (Monday)[edit]

• German Chancellor Wilhelm Marx announced that he and his cabinet of ministers were resigning after the coalition’s recent loss in the December 7 elections. The cabinet remained in office in a caretaker government until Finance Minister Hans Luther was able to form a new government on January 15.^[60]
• The first launch, docking and recovery of an aircraft in mid-air was performed when a U.S. Army pilot flew a Sperry Messenger biplane over a TC-3 Army dirigible and used a “skyhook” to link to the airship and bring it under control.^[61][62]
• Samuel Smith, a 15-year-old African-American arrested for shooting and wounding a white grocer, was seized from his hospital room in Nashville, Tennessee, by a group of masked and armed vigilantes shortly after midnight, driven to Nolensville and hanged from a tree near the grocer’s home. Onlookers then shot the hanging body multiple times.^[63] Nashville’s Mayor Hilary Howse denounced the lynching and the Nashville Chamber of Commerce offered a $5,000 reward for the arrest and conviction of the lynchers, but nobody was ever charged with the crime.^[64]
• In a letter to British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, Winston Churchill opined that Singapore’s defences did not need to be completed for another fifteen to twenty years, writing, “I do not believe there is the slightest chance of war with Japan in our lifetime. Japan is at the other end of the world. She cannot menace our vital security in any way.”^[65][66]
• Born:
• Died: Friedrich Trendelenburg, 80, German surgeon and innovator known for the Trendelenburg operation for the treatment of varicose veins, as well as various diagnostic procedures, including the Brodie–Trendelenburg percussion test for finding nonfunctioning valves in veins, Trendelenburg’s test for hip mobility, and Trendelenburg’s sign identifying a congenital dislocation of the hip.^[68]

December 16, 1924 (Tuesday)[edit]

• The Spanish confiscation (Desamortización española) law, authorizing the government of Spain to expropriate land and personal property received by the Roman Catholic Church and various religious orders from wills and grants, was repealed after being promulgated in 1766.^[69]
• The Supreme Court of Hungary confiscated the property of former president Mihály Károlyi for high treason. Károlyi was convicted of negotiating with Italy in 1915 to keep the Italians out of the war in exchange for Austrian territory, and for allowing a communist revolution to happen in 1919 by deserting his position.^[70]
• Born:

December 17, 1924 (Wednesday)[edit]

December 18, 1924 (Thursday)[edit]

• Pope Pius XI made his first statement against communism after an abandoned pontifical relief mission returned from Russia. He said the Vatican would continue to make efforts to help needy Russians, but “nobody certainly can have thought by our efforts on behalf of the Russian people we intended in any way to lend our support to a system of government which we are so far from approving.”^[72]

December 19, 1924 (Friday)[edit]

December 20, 1924 (Saturday)[edit]

December 21, 1924 (Sunday)[edit]

• The string of murders by German serial killer and cannibal Karl Denke came to an end when a homeless drifter, Vincenz Olivier, narrowly escaped being killed after being lured into Denke’s home and alerted police in Münsterberg (now Ziębice in Poland).^[77] Denke hanged himself in his jail cell the next day, and police searched his house, finding a ledger with the names of 30 victims (and a 31st entry for Olivier) and a large number of body parts deemed to have come from 42 or more people.^[78]
• In the Republic of China, the “New National Pronunciation”, a standardized pronunciation for the character sounds of the Chinese language, was set by delegates of a Commission established for the purpose of reforming the “Guóyīn Zìdiǎn”. The delegates recommended the usage of Beijing, and later incorporated the new standard in 1932 in the “Guóyīn Chángyòng Zìhuì” (國音常用字匯, “Vocabulary of National Pronunciation for Everyday Use”).^[79][80]
• Roughly 100 people were injured in rioting between communists and police in Berlin as a group of 50,000 German communists turned into a crushing mob when they gathered to greet Erich Mühsam upon his release from prison in the same general amnesty that freed Hitler.^[81]
• Born: Dankwart Rustow, German-born professor of political science and sociology, known for his research on democratization; in Berlin (d. 1996)
• Died: Francesco Negri, 83, Italian photographer known for his development of the telephoto lens and improvements in photomicroscopy^[82]

December 22, 1924 (Monday)[edit]

December 23, 1924 (Tuesday)[edit]

• German president Friedrich Ebert lost a libel trial in Magdeburg. Newspaper editor Erwin Rothart was sentenced to three months in prison for insulting the president, but his accusation that Ebert had betrayed the country for leading a strike in 1918 was ruled as proven.^[87]
• Albanian Prime Minister Fan Noli and his ministers fled Tirana as rebel forces led by the deposed leader Ahmet Zogu approached the city.^[88]
• The F. W. Murnau-directed film The Last Laugh premiered at the Ufa-Palast am Zoo in Berlin.^[89]
• The Nicolae Bretan opera Golem was first performed at the Hungarian Theater in Cluj, Romania.^[90]
• Born:
  • Bob Kurland, American college and AAU basketball player, inductee to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, credited as the first person to dunk in a college basketball game;^[91] in St. Louis, Missouri (d. 2013)
  • Matthäus Hetzenauer, Austrian sniper for Nazi Germany during World War II, with 345 confirmed kills against Soviet troops; in Brixen im Thale (d. 2004)^[92]
  • Richard E. Bush, U.S. Marine and Medal of Honor recipient who survived throwing himself on an enemy grenade during the Battle of Okinawa during World War II; in Glasgow, Kentucky^[93] (d. 2004)
  • E. O. Kane, American physicist known for developing the Kane model of the structure of energy bands of semiconductors; in Kane, Pennsylvania (d. 2006)^[94]
• Died: Christopher Whall, 75, British stained-glass artist

December 24, 1924 (Wednesday)[edit]

• A fire killed 36 people in a one-room school house at Babbs Switch, Oklahoma, where over 200 people were attending a party on Christmas Eve. Candles near a dry Christmas tree spread the blaze after a student handing out presents accidentally brushed a wrapped gift against a candle flame.^[95]
• All eight people aboard an Imperial Airways de Havilland DH.34 airliner— seven of them passengers— were killed while traveling between London and Paris. In Britain’s deadliest air disaster up to that time, Imperial airplane G-EBBX plummeted seconds after taking off from Croydon Airport toward Le Bourget Airport.^[96]
• Pope Pius XI opened the holy door at St. Peter’s Basilica to begin the Jubilee Year of 1925.^[97]
• Albania, nominally a principality since becoming independent in 1916, but never able to find a monarch, was declared a republic as Ahmet Zogu entered Tirana without resistance. Zogu, a former Prime Minister, reclaimed leadership of the country and completed the overthrow of Fan Noli’s government.^[98]
• Egypt’s 215-member House of Representatives, the Maglis El Nowwab, was dissolved by King Fuad I at the request of Prime Minister Ahmed Zeiwar Pasha, and new elections were set for March 23.
• Born:
• Died: David Stewart, 34, British flying ace and the pilot in the fatal Imperial Airways airplane crash

December 25, 1924 (Thursday)[edit]

December 26, 1924 (Friday)[edit]

December 27, 1924 (Saturday)[edit]

• An editorial written by the estranged Fascist politician Cesare Rossi ran in Giovanni Amendola’s newspaper Il Mondo, simultaneously published in other opposition papers. In it, Rossi claimed that Benito Mussolini had directly ordered the Fascists to carry out several crimes.^[101][102]
• During a transfer of 10.5 tonnes dynamite from a cargo ship to freight car, there was an explosion in Temiya railway station, Otaru, Hokkaido, Japan, 94 persons were killed and more than 300 persons were hurt, according to a Japanese government official document figured report.^[103]

December 28, 1924 (Sunday)[edit]

• A general election was conducted in Honduras. Miguel Paz Barahona of the conservative National Party was elected president virtually unopposed, as liberals boycotted the election.^[104]
• With Franco-German tensions high over the issue of the occupation of Cologne, a sensational report was published in Paris claiming that German scientists had secretly developed a new and devastating poison gas that could annihilate a whole city in a matter of hours.^[105]

December 29, 1924 (Monday)[edit]

December 30, 1924 (Tuesday)[edit]

• Mussolini called an unexpected cabinet meeting and requested a show of support from all present, which he received from a majority.^[101] The two Liberal ministers in Mussolini’s cabinet were convinced to withdraw their resignations.^[107]
• German Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann told international media that peace in Europe and fulfillment of the Dawes Plan were in danger unless a compromise was reached on the Cologne evacuation issue.^[108]

December 31, 1924 (Wednesday)[edit]

• Thirty-three Blackshirt consuls, headed by Enzo Galbati arrived unannounced in Mussolini’s office, demanding that Mussolini crush the opposition or they would do so without him.^[101]
• Italian police were ordered to search the houses of prominent opposition leaders over allegations that enemies of the government had stockpiled vast stores of arms. Issues of opposition newspapers in several Italian cities were seized, with Florence becoming especially violent as thousands of Blackshirts converged on the city and ransacked several buildings, including the printing plant of an opposition newspaper which was set on fire.^[109]
• Julius Schaub, the chief adviser to Adolf Hitler, was released from Landsberg Prison, where he had been incarcerated with Hitler for participating in the 1923 attempt to overthrow the government of Munich.Joachimsthaler, Anton (1999). The Last Days of Hitler: The Legends, Evidence, and Truth. Brockhampton Press. p. 287. ISBN 978-1-86019-902-8.
• Three of four brothers in the Barmat family of merchants were arrested as the industrial corruption scandal known as the Barmat scandal broke in Germany. One report claimed that President Friedrich Ebert’s son “Fritz” was connected to the scandal.^[110][111]
• Born:
• Died:

References[edit]