Wednesday, February 14, 1923. Veterans, Radio Hockey, Women Marksmen, French Debt Collecting

Hollywood, California, February 14, 1923.

Some Spanish American War veterans visited Washington, D.C.  They were in a class of veterans that would increasingly be forgotten due to the swell of veteran ranks caused by World War One.

The members of George Washington University's Women's Rifle Team, located in Washington, D. C., were photographed.

Women have competed in the shooting sports forever.  Interesting to see this photograph of a group of young female marksmen in an urban environment, before firearms caused people living in cities to freak out.

Toronto's CFCA broadcast, on this Valentine's Day of 1923, the first NFL game to be subject to the same.

The game was between the Toronto St. Patrick's, now the Maple Leafs, against the Ottawa Senators, which is now defunct.  Toronto won 6 to 4.

CFCA would only broadcast for ten years before going out of business.

French authorities seized 85,000,000 Marks from the city hall treasury of Gelsenkirchen, and 17,000,000 from the railway station, in retaliation for the city's refusal to pay 100,000,000 Marks due to the wounding of two French officers in clashes with the police.

Tuesday, January 13, 1923. Record Cold Wave

 t's been cold here recently, which is the only reason I'm putting this paper up.  It was cold here a century ago as well.

The moving of inaugural day, however, was probably the more important news.  Why do feel as if this came up today, it'd meet with some real fire breathing populist right wing opposition?

This does serve as a reminder, FWIW, that just because it's in the Constitution, doesn't mean it can't be tweaked.  Originally, state legislatures picked Senators, women couldn't vote, and Native Americans weren't citizens.  We changed all that.  We should, at this point, do away with the Electoral College.

Saturday, February 3, 1923. French Guns, Legislative Hijinks, Kamchatka Earthquake

The Saturday Evening Post was out, as it was of course a Saturday, with a Rockwell.  This one is apparently entitled "Grandpa's Little Ballerina".

The Country Gentleman went with a mid winter fox and its prey.

A magnitude 8.3+ earthquake struck Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula causing a twenty-five foot tsunami.  Twelve people were killed by seven resulting waves in Maui.

The Soviet Union approved plans to create a civil aviation authority for passenger airlines, leading to the world's most dangerous major airline, Aeroflot.

French guns and legislative shenanigans were in the news.

 

Thursday, January 25, 1923. Auf Widersehen

The remaining U.S. troops in Europe, fresh off occupation duty in Germany, abandoned, most likely, their German sweethearts, girlfriends and good beer, and boarded the U.S. Navy transport the St. Mihiel, which departed thereafter from Antwerp following a simple ceremony.

The St. Mihiel, AP-32.  The ship would serve through World War Two, becoming a hospital ship.

Ah well, what could go wrong with the US turning its back on Europe, eh?

For those who might consider my initial comment too flippant, most US occupation troops in Germany were very late war conscripts, although not all of them were, who notoriously had a difficult time grasping the Germans as having been enemies.

French troops on the same day battled mobs in the Ruhr and dealt with a regional railway strike.

The Asahi Graph (アサヒグラフ, Asahi Gurafu, The Asahi Picture News) founded.  The photo magazine ran until 2000.

Issue from 1937.

The Japanese, like the Germans, took a very early interest in photography and the magazine had a reputation of being sort of a Japanese version of Life.

Monday, Januarly 22, 1923. No strike on the Rhein, Earthquake in Humboldt County.

The general strike called for in the Ruhr did not materialize.

Humboldt County, California, sustained an earthquake:

ON JANUARY 22ND 1923, A M7.1 EARTHQUAKE STRUCK NEAR CAPE MENDOCINO IN HUMBOLDT COUNTY, CALIFORNIA

One hundred years ago, a powerful magnitude 7.1 earthquake struck near Cape Mendocino and caused strong shaking and multiple aftershocks in Ferndale, Eureka, Petrolia, and many other communities in Humboldt County. The quake struck in the early hours of January 22, 1923 and was strong enough to knock down chimneys, split one home in half after shaking it from its foundation, and create a small tsunami. Shaking was felt hundreds of miles away in San Francisco and Sacramento.

Sunday January 21, 1923. Calling for strikes.

The Weimar government endorsed a general strike in the Ruhr.

A royal decree in Italy allowed coins to bear the fasces on the obverse side from the one bearing the image of the king.

Saturday, January 20, 1923. Children singing, railroad mergers, German mines, and when masks didn't cause political posturing.

 

As it was Saturday, the Saturday Evening Post hit the stands.  On this occasion it had an illustration of children playing music, probably loudly but badly, by Alan Foster.

For some reason, uploaded versions of period illustrations from the Saturday newsstands are a lot harder to find after late 1922 for a while.  Probably the drama of the war and the comparative lack of drama of the early 20s was the reason. The Country Gentleman hit the stands with an excellent illustration of Independence Hall.  Judge had a fascinating, nearly photo realistic painting of flappers in a club.

The Canadian Northern Railway and the Canadian Government Railways merged into the Canadian National Railway.  The merger of the CNR and the CGR was forced by the government due to the financial failure of the CNR, although at one time the railroad had steamships as well as trains.

The CNN is one of the world's great railways, spanning all of Canada and the Eastern United States.

You'll note that the creation of this system is either an application of the American System of economics, albeit in Canada, or of Socialism. At one time the nationalization of railroads was not the controvery it would be now.

The French arrested twenty-one German mine operators for failure to cooperate in the occupation, and Essen's banks all voluntarily closed.

The London Daily Mirror ran this cartoon:

Some current Chicago expats in the solon in Cheyenne would likely take offense.

As odd as it is to realize it, with yesterday being the birthdate for Janis Joplin, this is the same for Slim Whitman.  The country music star who came to prominence in the 50s, but who continued to record through the 90s, died at age 90 in 2013.

Sunday, January 14, 1923. Cross Atlantic Radio

Radio broadcast of cogent voices across the Atlantic Ocean demonstrated for the first time.

The Soviet Union, an entity based on occupation of foreign territories, protested the French occupation of the Ruhr.

Friday, January 12, 1923. Fallout from intervention.

British newspapers criticized the French and Belgian occupation of the Ruhr, which had started the day prior. The U.S. declined to act on a German protest of the matter, noting that it had done all it could do, and that doing more would entail "more trouble" than the US was prepared to take on.

Italy's Grand Council of Fascism was formed.

Wednesday January 10, 1923. The Klaipėda Revolt.

 Delegates to the Near East Conference in Lausanne, Switzerland, voted to accept a Turkish proposal to "exchange" the Greek and Turkish populations of the two countries.

This would result in the expulsion of 600,000 Greeks from Anatolia, where they had been since ancient times, and in which the Turks were originally an invader, for 450,000 Turks in Greece.  An exception was made for 200,000 Greeks in Constantinople, a city identified with the Greeks since ancient times, and 300,000 in Western Thrace.

Irrespective of the inequities, and even barbarism, of the Greek advances in Anatolia following World War One, the result was inhumane and effectively completed a process that the Ottoman invasion had started centuries ago.  Greek overreaching following World War One was responsible for a lot of what occurred, but it's a tragedy by any measure.

Only about 2,500 Greeks remain in Turkey today.

The French staged near Essen in preparation for intervening in the Ruhr.

Participants in the revolt.

Lithuanians rebelled in the Klaipėda Revolt in Memelland.  Lithuanian troops intervened in support of the insurrection.  The goal of the revolt was to join Memelland to Lithuania, and it met with little resistance from German troops, stationed on what had been German territory, and French occupation forces.

Both the French and the Germans had other things to worry about on this day other than Memelland.

The population of the region was about 45% German. The remaining population was Memellandish and Lithuanian.  Having said this, the ethnic composition of Memelland was complex in every fashion, with Memmelandish being a dialect of German, and the Lithuanian population of the region being predominantly Lutheran, whereas in Lithuania the vast majority of the population was Roman Catholic, a trait they shared with the Poles.  It was a mixed border region, in other words, but the border had been stable since 1441.

President Harding ordered U.S. troops withdrawn from Germany.

From Reddit's 100 Years Ago Today.

This was, of course, because it appeared that France was about to enter the Ruhr, which in fact it was.

From Reddit's 100 Years Ago Today.

Sultan Said bin Taimur of Oman was compelled to sign an agreement with the United Kingdom to provide for pre-approval by the British High Commissioner in India of any contracts between oil exploration companies and Oman.

The Sultan Said was born in 1910 and had attended Mayo College at Ajmer in Rajputana, India.  Following that it was suggested that his education be furthered in Beirut, but it was not as his father feared he'd be influenced by Christianity.  He remained in power until 1970, when he was deposed by his son.

His technical rule of the country, arranged by the British, did not happen until 1932.  He died in the United Kingdom in 1972 at the age of 62.

Tuesday, January 9, 1923. Belgium and France take a hard line.

The Allied Reparation Commission found Germany in willful default on its coal delivery requires pursuant to the Versailles Treaty, thus setting the stage for the French occupation.  On the same day, France and Belgium's commissioners voted to occupy the Ruhr. The United Kingdom opposed the measure.  The U.S. had already bowed out.

The Ruhr is an industrial region of Germany and was traditionally a coal mining region, drawing quite a few ethnic Poles at one time due to their experience in coal mining.  Locally, quite a few of those from the region refer to it as "Pott", which is a derivate of "Pütt", a derivative of "pit", or mine.  By 1925, the Ruhrgebiet had around 3,800,000 inhabitants including Eastern Europe immigrants, but also including immigrants from France, Ireland, and the United Kingdom.  Today the region is part of North Rhine-Westphalia, a British creation during the post World War Two British occupation, which merged the Rhineland with Westphalia.  Oddly, it's been preserved since that time, although at least some distantly descended Westphalians might wonder why.

A U.S. Federal board charged with studying vocational education found that 1,700,000 children dropped out of school prior to the 8th grade, and thereby impairing their occupational opportunities.

The Gorakhpus Sessions Court in Indian returned verdicts on a February 5, 1922, burning of a police station that resulted in 22 police deaths. Forty-seven people were acquitted, 107 were found guilty of various charges, with nineteen being sentenced to death and fourteen to life imprisonment.

Saturday, January 6, 1923. The US Departs.

The U.S. Senate voted to withdraw American troops from occupation duty in Germany, rather than participate in a French occupation of the Rhineland.  1,200 troops remained in Germany at the time.

Friday, January 5, 1923 Frances overflies the Ruhr.

French air force roundel.

France sent aircraft over the Ruhr in preparation for entering it.

Czechoslovak Finance Minister Alois Rašín was shot by an anarchist.

A white mob destroyed Rosewood, Florida.  We reported on the start of these events a few days ago.

In Sofia, Bulgaria, an explosion of surplus artillery shells sold to a junk dealer by the Interallied Disarmament Commission killed twelve.