Showing posts with label Rif War. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rif War. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 22, 2023

Wednesday, August 22, 1923. Sloppy Thurston in the 12th Inning.

The Spanish war department announced that Spain had landed 5,000 additional troops in Morocco in support of its position in the Rif War.

Hollis "Sloppy" Thurston struck out three Philadelphia A's on nine itches in the 12th inning, pitching for the Chicago White Sox.

Thurston pitched the screwball.  The Nebraskan played ball, in the majors and the minors, until 1938.


Friday, January 27, 2023

Saturday, January 27, 1923. Nazis meet for the first time, San Marino temporarily ceases to exist, Rifian POWs released.

Samuel L. Rothafel, Director of Capitol Theatre, New York, using Western Electric microphone, January 27, 1923
 

The German National Socialist Party, the NASDP, commonly called the Nazi Party, held its first party congress.  It was held in Munich, where the party was centered at the time, and drew 6,000 members.

The tiny Republic of San Marino was forced by local fascists into union with Italy.  The micro state has since regained independence.

The Republic of the Rif released the remaining 326 prisoners of war it held to Spain, in exchange for 4,000,000 pesetas. 261 POWS had died in Rifian captivity.

The Country Gentleman had an age-old theme.


Of interest, that style of winter hat is still very popular with outdoorsmen and agriculturalist.  I have two of them.

The Saturday Evening Post had an extraordinarily boring cover.



Sunday, October 3, 2021

Monday October 3, 1921. William H. Taft sworn in as Chief Justice.

Taft leaving the White House on this day in 1921.
 

William Howard Taft was sworn in as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court on this day in 1921.  He's been named to the position that prior June.

United States Supreme Court at White House on same occasion.

Spanish forces took Selouane, a sign that its slow recovery from major defeats in Morocco earlier that summer had begun.

Monday, August 9, 2021

Tuesday August 9, 1921. Skylines, Swearing Ins and Disasters.

Los Angeles skyline, August 9, 1921

Rif forces took Monte Arruit after a negotiated surrender.  For reasons that remain unclear, including confusion or just a disobeying of orders, the Riffians then killed all about 400 to 500 of the 2,000 prisoners, keeping those who remained for bargaining purposes.


Charles R. Forbes was sworn in as the head of the U.S. Veterans Bureau.

The Scottish born Forbes had an unusual personal history and should have been suitable for his appointed role.  He had joined the Marine Corps as a musician at age 16.  Upon leaving the Marines, he attended university and graduated with a degree in engineering.  In spite of that, however, he then enlisted in the Army in 1900 at age 22, overcoming an early charge of being AWOL at one point early in his service to leave the Army as a Sergeant First Class in 1908.  He entered the Army again in 1917 and was a Lt. Col. by the end of his World War One service.

His period of leadership of the Veterans Bureau was marked by corruption and his divorce from his wife, who accused him of neglect.  He didn't finish his full term and resigned in 1923.  He was charged due to his activities with crimes which lead to a conviction, and an eight-month period of incarceration in Leavenworth.

Thursday, August 5, 2021

Friday August 5, 1921. First live broadcast of baseball.

 A live baseball game was broadcast for the first time when KDKA broadcast the Pirates v the Phillies.  The Phillies won, 8 to 5.

Mustafa Kemal is elected to the position of generalissimo for a period of three months by the Turkish National Assembly.

The Rif forces took Nador and Selouane.  The Spanish forces in Selouane had numbered 200, of which only nine survived the event.

Monday, August 2, 2021

Tuesday August 2, 1921. Scandalous baseball players, honest rum runners, and scandal free beauties.

The Chicago trial of the Black Sox ended with an acquittal.  Major League Baseball nonetheless judged the accused as sufficiently convicted it in its eyes and continued their lifetime ban from baseball.


On this Tuesday, this first week of August 1921, Riffian forces took Nadar and Selouane in Morocco.


The Spanish presence in Morocco was effectively collapsing.

Enrico Caruso, legendary opera singer, then age 48, died of peritonitis in Naples.

The U.S. Coast Guard seized the British schooner Henry L. Marshall twelve miles off of New Jersey, i.e., international waters, where it was found to hold, upon boarding, 12,000 cases of liquor.  The boat was one of several owned by the McCoy brothers who had turned to liquor smuggling with the advent of Prohibition.  Of them, William McCoy is the best remembered, with his refusal to cut what he was shipping leading to the phrase "the real McCoy".

Ironically, Daytona Beach based McCoy was a teetotaler.

McCoy's strategy relied upon his being in international waters.  His ship didn't run booze into Atlantic City itself, but rather transferred to smaller boats that came out to it.

Margaret Gorman, Miss Washington D. C. was photographed.


Gorman was regarded as a great beauty and would go on that year to be crowned Miss America.  She married a few years later and lived happily the rest of her life in Washington D.C, noting in later years that she'd become bored with her beauty pageant history.



Thursday, July 22, 2021

Friday July 22, 1921. The Disaster at Annul.

Spanish forces in Morocco, fighting in the Rif War, sustained a defeat at the Battle of Annul.   The defeat was crushing and involved the loss of the entire Spanish command right down to senior leadership.  Only a cavalry unit was able to maintain order and extract itself in a fighting retreat. Most of the command being made up of Spanish conscripts, they lost order quickly and were mowed down by Moroccan forces.

Bodies of Spanish soldiers killed in the battle being observed in January, 1922.

The disaster led to a Spanish retreat that would feature additional disasters.  Losses at Annul amounted to at least 13,000 Spanish dead out of a command of 20,000.

Spain was in Morocco, as was France, as part of an effort to expand its colonies into Africa.  Spain had, of course, a long association with Morocco, and it was frequently not a pleasant one.  Morocco had proven politically weak, but Berber tribes were highly organized and fielded what amounted to a regular army.  Spain in contrast garrisoned conscripts in the country who did not wish to be there, and its officer corps spent most of its time in non-military, and often low, pursuits.  Spain's military leadership believed that its forces would prevail, when the Rif Berbers went into war with them, simply because they were Spanish.

As an added comment on this disaster, It's interesting to note that it didn't instantly destroy the Spanish government and bring it down.  It actually did contribute to that, and a coup resulted in 1923, but it was a military coup, not a coup that tossed out the monarchy right that moment. That would take until 1931 when a democratic regime, albeit a very shaky one, was restored.

Additionally, for those who romanticize monarchy, and there are those who do, the Spanish crown was a Catholic monarchy but the military mission to Morocco was a moral sewer.  Prostitution was rife in the territory with Spanish prostitutes following the Spanish army into the region, resulting in a high social disease infection rate.  Officers were far from immune from this and the molestation of Moroccan women was common, which no doubt contributed to the rebellion.

Friday, July 22, 1921. The Douglas Aircraft Company founded.

On this day in 1921 the legendary Douglas Aircraft Company was founded in Santa Monica, California.

A manufacturer of legendary aircraft, particularly the DC-3, the company merged with McDonnell Aircraft in 1967.  The new McDonnell Douglas merged with Boeing in 1997.