Thursday, October 2, 1924. The death of Governor William B. Ross.

Today In Wyoming's History: October 2: 1924  Governor William B. Ross died while in office .  His wife, Nellie Tayloe Ross, would become the US's first women governor the month thereafter when she won in a special election in spite of not campaigning.  She would serve only until 1926, however, when she would loose a subsequent election.

Secretary of State Frank Lucas became interim Governor.

His widow, Nellie Tayloe Ross, would be forever remembered as the first female governor in the United States, but her life was full of tragedy. The Ross' had lost a baby.  Of two three surviving sons, James A. Ross was killed a car accident near Saratoga in 1928 at age 25.  Only George Tayloe Ross survived of their children, going on to be a lawyer in New York.  He died in 1991.

The Geneva Protocol for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes received preliminary approval at the League of Nations.

The location of Ft. Caspar had been marked.

Last edition:

Wednesday, October 1, 1924. Jimmy Carter born, William B. Ross starts to pass.

Labels: 1920s, 1924, baseball, Disease, Health, Irish Defense Forces (Óglaigh na hÉireann), Jimmy Carter, Scandal, William B. Ross, Wyoming

Sunday, July 6, 1924 Plutarco Elias Calles elected.

Plutarco Elias Calles of the Partido Laborista Mexicano won Mexico's presidential election with 84.1% of the vote.  Before the emergence of the PRI, which Calles founded, it was the labor party, a democratic socialist party, was the most powerful party in Mexico.

That Mexico, which had just endured a violent attempt at overthrowing the government, was able to successfully stage an election was a triumph of democracy, albeit a temporary one as the PRI would later lock the country up into being a one party state with the PRI as the official party.

Calles was a left wing figure who had come up as a general in the Mexican War.  A controversial figure, he's admired by some for his work on social and institutional changes in Mexico, and an attempt, albeit only partially successful, to reform a military then dominated by revolutionary generals who were a threat to the government itself.  His administration, however, attacked the Church which lead to the January 1, 1927 Catholic rebellion known as the Cristero War, arguably the last chapter of the Mexican Revolution, in which 200,000 Mexicans died and would ultimately bring about the reelection of Alvaro Obregón in 1928.  He was exiled to the United States in 1936 but returned in 1941 when the PRI was firmly in power.  By that time, closer to death, he had become a spiritualist.

The Johnstown Meteor fell to earth in Colorado and interrupted a nearby funeral.  It's only one of eleven such events that have been witnessed.

Johnstown is famous today for the Buc-ee's located there.

Last edition:

Saturday, July 5, 1924. Hitting a concrete wall.

Labels: 1920s, 1924, 1924 Olympics, Art, baseball, Brazil, France, Germany, J. C. Leyendecker

Friday, February 24, 1923. Freistaat Flaschenhals kaput, The National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska created, Yucatán races to the divorce bottom, Gen. Allen departs.

The National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska (NPRA) was established by President Harding, via an executive order.  It was at the time called the Naval Petroleum Reserve No. 4.

The Declaration of the Rights of the Child was published in Geneva.  It stated:

1  The child must be given the means requisite for its normal development, both materially and spiritually.

2.  The child that is hungry must be fed, the child that is sick must be nursed, the child that is backward must be helped, the delinquent child must be reclaimed, and the orphan and the waif must be sheltered and succoured.

3.  The child must be the first to receive relief in times of distress.

4.  The child must be put in a position to earn a livelihood, and must be protected against every form of exploitation.

5. The child must be brought up in the consciousness that its talents must be devoted to the service of its fellow men.

It's worth noting that Putin's Russian government is kidnapping Ukrainian children, brainwashing them, and sending them out to Russian families to be "adopted" and raised as Russians.

The French eliminated the Freistaat Flaschenhals, the "Free State of the Bottleneck, which had been that bizarre self-governing strip of land between the US and French occupation zones in post World War One Germany.

No weird thing lasts forever.

On the same day, U.S. Major General Henry Allen, left the German fortress of Ehrenbreitstein in Koblenz, de facto ending the U.S. occupation in Germany.

Allen, who opposed French actions in the Ruhr, went on to lead a successful campaign to raise funds for German children and pregnant women.  In spite of his then advanced age, 77, he was considered as the running mate for Al Smith's 1928 running mate, and received votes for that office.  A West Point graduate from 1882, he was in the cavalry branch and lived an adventuresome life in the Army, being posted in Alaska, and then later serving in the Spanish American War and the Punitive Expedition, prior to serving in World War One, in which he commanded the 90th Infantry Division.

Yucatán sent a press release to American news agencies that cheap divorces were now available in that Mexican state.

Wednesday, January 20, 1943. Senseless deaths.

Attila Peschauer, Hungarian Olympic fencer and gold medalist in 1928 and 1932, is commonly thought to have died in the Davidovka concentration camp in Ukraine where Hungarian Jews had been deported by Nazi Germany, an act which required cooperation of Hungary.

It's commonly misunderstood by those in the West that all the victims of the Holocaust were gassed in camps, which is far from true, and in the few camps whose names are in common circulation in the West.  In reality, bullets and starvation were the most common means of death and most of the killing took place in the Poland, Ukraine and Belorussia in those areas where they were occupied by the Germans.

While, as noted, it's been commonly thought that Peschauer died in a concentration camp, and may even have been ordered into execution by a fellow Hungarian serving the Germans, some recent information is that he actually died in a Soviet POW camp.  The irony here would be that Hungary was a German ally during World War Two.  This might actually be more likely as while Hungary was repressive towards its Jewish citizens, it didn't deport those who actually held Hungarian citizenship, that being done to Jews who lived in areas that Hungary took in after it invaded the Soviet Union.

By this point in the war, it should be noted, countries like the Kingdom of Hungary should have been seriously reconsidering their role in the war as, at least to an astute advisor, there was no way for them to come out on the winning side.  Of course, they were also captive to their earlier decision to side with the Germans.

The Luftwaffe bombed the Sandhurst Road School in a daytime raid of the London suburb of Catford, killing 41 school children. By this point in the war, Luftwaffe raids over the UK were increasingly rare.  Six teachers were also killed.  Eleven of the German aircraft were downed by Typhoons.

The Red Army continued to advance, with the New York Daily Post noting that the Germans were now back on their 1941 line as a result.  The British took Homs and Tarhuna in Libya.  The Germans advanced in Tunisia.  Chile broke diplomatic relations off with Germany, Italy and Japan.

Blog Mirror: The First Lager Brewing in India: 1928

 

The First Lager Brewing in India: 1928

Saturday January 24, 1942. The first surface engagement between the Allies and Japan.

A committee issued its report finding Admiral Kimmel and General Short at fault for failing to coordinate their defenses or taking appropriate measures, leading to the disaster at Pearl Harbor.

This significant item, or series of items, below:

Today in World War II History—January 24, 1942: Battle of Makassar Strait—first US naval surface action in Asian waters since Spanish-American War: US destroyers and US & Dutch aircraft sink six Japanese ships at Balikpapan, Borneo. US Flying Tigers P-40s shoot down 12 planes over Rangoon, Burma. New song in Top Ten: “I Got It Bad and That Ain’t Good.”

The Battle of Makassar Strait was significant for the reasons noted, although the Japanese land action at Balikpapan was successful.

The Germans relieved a Soviet encirclement at Sukhinichi in a type of action that would remain common for the rest of the war.

Peru broke off diplomatic relations with Germany, Italy and Japan.

Abie's Irish Rose premiered on NBC. The radio comedy involves a wealthy Jewish widower whose son begins to court, and then secretly marries, an Irish Catholic girl.  The theme had been a long-running popular one and this was a radio adaptation of a play that had first premiered on May 23, 1922, and then made into a film in 1928.

It would be made into a film again in 1946.

The play, written by Anne Nichols, was loosely based on her own story, although in her case she had been raised in a strict Baptist family and married an Irish Catholic man.  It was an enduring American theme had appeared before, in other settings, by other authors, and would continue to be later. For example, O. E. Rölvaag had included it in his sequel to Giants In the Earth, Peter Victorious, but with the Irish Catholic girl marrying a Norwegian Lutheran.  It'd repeated directly in Brooklyn Bridge, the 1990s television show set in the 1950s and would, in a different twist, be repeated in the film Brooklyn, also set in the 1950s, with an Irish immigrant woman and an Italian American man, both Catholics but of different ethnic backgrounds.  In some altered form, perhaps involving somebody of Hispanic origin, it's probably ripe to be repeated.

April 12, 1920 Sonora rebels, the Ruhr Rebellion ends.

The revolution in Mexico, and that's what it now was, was back on the front page of American newspapers.

As part of this process, Sonoran Governor Adolfo de la Huerta resigned his office in preparation for taking up the part of a revolutionary soldier once again.  In his place, Plutarco Elías Calles became Governor.  Calles was already a figure in Sonoran politics and had been a general in the Mexican revolution and a supporter of Carranza. At this time, he was supporting Obregon and De La Huerta.

Plutarco Elías Calles, who later took Mexico to the edge of fascism and across the line of sectarian brutality.

Calles was a true radical and his policies were brutal, particularly against the Catholic Church.  He'd later become the President of Mexico from 1924 to 1928 when his policies resulted in the Cristero War, which might be regarded as the final stage of the Mexican Revolution as well as the point at which Mexican democracy basically essentially a joke in some ways, so much so that when his policies resulted in the assassination by a Cristero supporter of Obregon, who was set to resume office, he became a type of dictator and founded the National Revolution Party, which governed Mexico from its founding until 2000.  Calles himself at this point flirted with fascism, which had an influence upon him.

Calles would ironically fall at the hands of an associate, Lázaro Cárdenas del Río, who became President of Mexico in 1934.  Cárdenas proved to be independent of his patron and acted against Calles' supporters.  Ultimately Calles was charged with being a member of revolutionary conspiracy and deported, ironically, to the United States in 1936.  Supposedly Calles was reading Mein Kampf at the time of his arrest.  As an exile, he made contact fascists in the United States although he rejected their anti Semitism and of course their hostility to Mexicans.  He was allowed to return to Mexico, in retirement, in 1941, and began to modify his views, supporting Mexico's entry into World War Two.

Cárdenas, for his part, remained a revolutionary, but not a fascist, and continued the suppression of the Catholic Church throughout his Presidency.  That feature of Mexican politics would not abate until 1940 when Manuel Ávila Camacho became President.

While this site is not, obviously, the history of Mexico website, all of this ties into the purpose of this blog which was to look at events in the 1890 to 1920 time frame with a particular focus (among other focuses) on the Border War with Mexico.  While this phase of this time frame and the attendant history are clearly winding down, the events described here are critical elements of it.  Over time, we've seen a democratic revolution that took the eclectic Francisco I. Modero into office as a true democrat devolve into continual revolutionary cycles which at one time promised to put a collection of democrats in power, only to have that fall apart and leave the radical Venustiano Carranza in charge.  In 1920, that was flying apart as Carranza schemed to control who would replace him as President of Mexico. That would ultimately see the more radical Obregon come to power followed by Calles, who was an extremist who flirted with fascism during his lifetime.  Only beginning in 1940 did Mexico begin to turn away from that direction, although it would take sixty years for real democracy to return to the country after that date.  In 1920, it was dying.

Oskar von Watter.  He commanded German government forces that entered the Ruhr to put down the Communist rebellion there.  In 1934 he'd cause a monument to be put up in Essen in honor of Freikorps soldiers who had died in the 1920 rebellion.  He died in 1934 and was buried in Berlin's Invalid Cemetery, a cemetary associated with Prussian military figures.

On the same day the Ruhr Rebellion in Germany came to an end with the German government firmly in control  General von Watter ordered his soldiers to abstain from "unlawful behavior", but it was too late.  Reds caught with firearms were simply killed in many instances.

No poster, but. . .

a photograph.

"Washington society youngsters impersonate "Horse Marines" at children's horse show. The Misses Jinks of the Horse Marines all set for the Children's Horse Show which will be held in the National Capital on St. Patrick's Day. They are, left to right: Margaretta Rowland; Katrina McCormick, daughter of Mrs. Medill McCormick of Illinois and Miss Anne Rollins."