August 1922

Month of 1922

The following events occurred in August 1922:

Britain published the Balfour Note, which declared that Britain would give up reparations claims as well as claims on other Allies to the extent that the United States would do the same with respect to Britain's debts. The Note was met with great anger by the Americans for their being made to appear as greedy and an obstacle to international recovery. Forty people were killed and 50 injured when two trains carrying pilgrims to Lourdes collided between Agen and Tarbes, near Auch. In all, almost 500 passengers were on the two trains, which were both climbing uphill to Tarbes and Lourdes. According to the investigation, "the first train was too heavily laden and unable to climb a sharp gradient" and "the driver decided to return to Agen and ran down the hill backward" without regard to the second train. The House of Commons voted to expel MP Horatio Bottomley, the editor of John Bull magazine and a representative of the Hackney South constituency, after Bottomley's May 23 conviction on felony charges of fraud. The International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation, and an advisory organization for the League of Nations to promote the sharing of research findings between nations, held its first session. Born: Edith Konecky, American feminist novelist; as Edith Rubin in Brooklyn, New York City (d. 2019)

Irish Free State forces captured Cork, but not before retreating Republican forces set it on fire. Stuntman John Stevenson was killed during the filming of an episode of the movie serial Plunder while standing in for actress Pearl White. Stevenson was on location at Columbus Avenue in New York City and was attempting to jump from a moving bus to catch a girder, but lost his grip, fell and fractured his skull. Plunder would be released on January 28 and run for 15 installments. Germany and the United States signed a treaty that provided for the establishment of a joint American German commission to decide the amount of reparations to be paid by the German government to the U. S. The agreement supplemented the U. S.–German Peace Treaty that had gone into effect on November 11, 1921. Irish Republican Army terrorists Joseph O'Sullivan and Reginald Dunne were hanged at Wandsworth Prison near London for the June 22 assassination of Sir Henry Wilson, a Field Marshal with the British Army. Born: Claudine Mawby and Claudette Mawby, twin sisters who joined their older sister Angela to form The Mawby Triplets as a trio of film actresses; in England. Claudette was killed in 1942 during an air raid on Brighton; Claudine would live until 2012.

U. S. President Warren G. Harding's attempt to mediate the six week old railroad strike ended in failure, after leaders of the striking labor unions rejected his plan to have the matter of seniority referred for arbitration by the Railroad Labor Board.

The first Women's World Games were held in Paris with 11 track and field athletic events. The games were organized by the Fédération Sportive Féminine Internationale under Alice Milliat as a response to the refusal of the International Olympic Committee to include women's events in the 1924 Olympic Games, and were attended by 77 athletes from five nations: Czechoslovakia, France, Great Britain, Switzerland and the United States. Cohn Brandt Cohn (CBC) Film Sales Corporation, which would change its name in 1924 to Columbia Pictures, released its first feature length motion picture, CBC's More to Be Pitied Than Scorned. The 58 minute silent film, six reels in length, was a hit and led to more productions by the team of Harry Cohn, Joe Brandt and Jack Cohn. Born: George Mackaness, Australian immunologist known for his research into activation of macrophage white blood cells for immunotherapy; in Sydney (d. 2007)

French Prime Minister Raymond Poincaré said that France would not consent to a moratorium on German reparations unless the country's mines and national forests were placed in Allied hands as a guarantee. George Bernard Shaw told the Chicago Tribune, "Everyone in Ireland is tired of the present political situation. I don't know what Éamon de Valera and Erskine Childers are after. When popular opinion turned against them they should have accepted the popular verdict and then tried to convert the Irish people to their views." Born: Mel Fisher, treasure hunter, in Indiana (d. 1998)

The crew of the American freighter SS Philadelphia mutinied after the ship had been prohibited from leaving the Bay of Naples by Italian customs officials, who had blocked it because of nonpayment for repairs. The men ransacked and burned the ship, rendering it a total loss. The Federación Peruana de Futbol (FPF), the national governing body for soccer football in the South American nation of Peru, was founded in Lima with Claudio Martínez Bodero of the Atletico Chalaco team as its first president. The FPF took over the administration of the Liga Peruana de Foot Ball, which held a tournament from 1912 to 1922. The city of Riverbank, California, located near Modesto, was incorporated in Stanislaus County. Its population increased 30 fold between 1930 when it had 803 people, to 2020 and now has a population of almost 25,000. Born: George Kell, baseball player, in Swifton, Arkansas (d. 2009)
Died: Albert J. Hopkins, 76, U. S. politician who represented Illinois in Congress from 1885 to 1909, 18 years as Representative and 6 years as U. S. Senator

All but seven of the 301 crew of the Japanese Navy cruiser died when the ship was driven aground and overturned in a storm off of the coast of the Kamchatka Peninsula. All 37 defendants who had been arrested on April 22, in the Inglewood Ku Klux Klan raid, were acquitted. The Turkish Army's Great Offensive and the Battle of Dumlupınar began as the last battle of the Greco Turkish War. Henry Ford announced that all Ford Motor Company plants would close down on September 16 because of the industrial crisis, with no definite date for reopening. The popular Broadway musical Tangerine, which had premiered at the Casino Theatre on August 9, 1921, closed after 361 performances.

An underground fire at the Argonaut gold mine in Jackson, California, killed 47 miners. A non binding referendum on prohibition of alcohol was held in Sweden, with about 889,000 (49%) voting "Ja" for banning the sale and over 925,000 (51%) voting "Nej" against it. The trimonthly Soviet humor and satire magazine Krokodil published its first issue At its height, it had 5.8 million subscribers (comparable to the circulation for Time magazine in the U. S. at the same time). Dr. Stephen Smith, 99, American surgeon who established the first public health agency in the United States, the Metropolitan Board of Health in New York City (1866), and later co founded the American Public Health Association (1872). "Dr. Stephen Smith Dies in 100th Year— Famous Physician Was a Pioneer in Sanitary Reforms in New York City", The New York Times, August 27, 1922, p. 28
David Sharp, 81, British entomologist and editor of The Zoological Record. Among the species named in his honor are flies (Drosophila sharpi in Hawaii), ants (Pheidole sharpi in India) and beetles (Laccophilus sharpi).

At 5:15 in the afternoon, WEAF of New York City, owned by the Western Electric subsidiary of AT&T, made the first ever broadcast of an advertisement, a radio commercial for a newly opened Queensboro Apartments complex in the Jackson Heights neighborhood of Queens. A man identified as Mr. Blackwell spoke on behalf of Queensboro Corporation, which had paid $50 for 15 minutes of airtime on WEAF and used it to advocate suburban living and to promote the purchase of the rent to own apartments in Jackson Heights. Referring to the advantages of an "apartment home" where one could "enjoy all the latest conveniences and contrivances demanded by the housewife and yet have all of the outdoor life that the city dweller yearns for but has deludedly supposed could only be obtained thru purchase of a house in the country," and closed with the statement "You owe it to yourself and you owe it to your family to leave the hemmed in, sombre hued, artificial apartment life of the congested city section and enjoy what nature intended you enjoy." Died: Prince Gaston of Orleans, 80, French born grandson of King Louis Philippe of France who became an officer in the Army of Spain during its war against Morocco and later in the Army of Brazil in the war against Paraguay, and who had been the groom of Isabel, Princess Imperial of Brazil in Brazil's first and only royal wedding.

Former Prime Minister of Mongolia Dambyn Chagdarjav and his successor, Dogsomyn Bodoo were both executed by gunshot after having been convicted on a charge of counterrevolution against the Communist regime that they had helped install in 1921. Their deaths came as part of a purge of officials of the Soviet backed Communist organization, the Mongolian People's Party by party leader Soliin Danzan. Danzan and his political allies would be executed two years later in a purge within the party in 1924. The Allied Reparations Commission unanimously decided to grant Germany a six month moratorium on reparations payments. Al Capone was arrested in Chicago after he hit a taxicab driving drunk, then pulled out a gun and threatened to shoot one of the witnesses. The nations of Czechoslovakia and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later Yugoslavia) concluded a treaty at Belgrade, completing the creation of the "Little Entente" that both nations had agreed to with the Kingdom of Romania.