Saturday, October 6, 1923. Unassisted triple play

Marine Mascot, USMC v. Georgetown football game.

Ernie Padgett, playing for the Boston Braves, made an unassisted triple lay in a game against the Phillies.

The Turkish military marched into Istanbul.

Thursday January 5, 1922. Interruptions.

On this day in 1922, A.B. Kent of the London Times was kidnapped by the Irish Republican Army, which was upset about an article he had written regarding public opinion in Cork on the Anglo-Irish Treaty.

He was having lunch at a pub at the time.

They released him later that evening.

The Washington Naval Conference adopted a declaration outlawing submarine warfare against merchant ships.

The French, including the French Armenian Legion, withdrew from the Turkish city of Adana which they had held in Turkish Armenia for three years.

Ernest Shackleton, Antarctic explorer, age 47, died of a heart attack.  He almost certainly had an earlier one in Brazil on his way to the Antarctic but had refused medical treatment.  His ship was docked at South Georgia at the time, where he was buried.

South Georgia.

September 24, 1920. The Turkish-Armenian War

Armenian coat of arms.

This day in 1920 is regarded as the start of the Turkish Armenian War, but in reality it would be better regarded as the recognition of a conflict that had commenced several days earlier.

The root of the war was a Turkish decision to take back lands allotted to Armenia in the Treaty of Sevres which the Allies had negotiated with the Ottoman Empire but which the Turkish rebels, who had displaced the Ottoman government, did not recognize.  They correctly gambled that the Allies would not intervene on Armenia's behalf and commenced an invasion of Armenia on September 13, which should be regarded as the real beginning of the war.  On this date Armenia declared war on Turkey and commenced offensive actions, which worked at first.

The war soon went badly and the Armenians were forced to accept an armistice on November 18, 1920.  The Soviets then invaded on November 29, 1920, effectively putting an end to the country.  A peace treaty by the new government, essentially a treaty between the USSR and the Turkish rebels, was concluded on December 2, 1920.

The early 20th Century was one disaster after another for the Armenian people.  The Ottoman government killed over 1,000,000 Armenians during World War One and the Turkish rebels committed further atrocities upon Armenian civilians as it entered the country.  The country regained its independence on September 21, 1991.

March 8, 1920. Villa back in the headlines, Syria declares a putative state, Allies and Turks clash, Motoring hazards.

Pancho Villa was back in the headlines on this day in 1920, seemingly back to his old habits.

And the unfinished results of World War One were in the headlines in regard to Turkey, whose new government was fighting the Allied powers that were in the country and seeking to redraw its map.

Part of that map had already been redrawn as imperial possessions of the Ottoman Empire were severed from it. What would become of them wasn't quite known at the time, but the Syrian National Congress thought it knew what should happen to that part which was Syrian.  On this day in 1920 it declared Syria to be an independent Arab kingdom with Hashemite Emir Faisal, famous for his role in the Arab Revolt during the Great War as its king.

King Faisal I of Syria.

Syria had been regarded as the prize by Arab revolutionaries during World War One and Faisal's ascendency of its thrown was therefore a personal ascendency as well.  It would be instantly challenged by France, which felt itself to have a special role in Syria dating back to the Middle Ages.   This was known to the  Syrians at the time, and indeed Faisal had already entered into an agreement with France which more or less made Syria a French protectorate. That agreement was massively disliked in Syria and was renounced by Faisal prior to his being declared the king.  The declaration of independence would shortly lead to the San Remo Conference which would decide Syria's statuts, at least for the short term, as well as the status of Faisal's claim to a Syrian throne.

Also in the Middle East on this day, there were protests in Jerusalem.  

Protests at the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem.

The protests would keep on and would soon turn violent.  Their focus was opposition to Jewish immigration into Palestine but the motivation for protests on this day and the day prior were sparked by the Syrian National Congress declaring the existence of the Syrian state, which claimed British controlled lands within its boundaries.

On a lighter note, Gasoline Alley pondered one of the hazards of the motor age.

I was actually in a motor vehicle accident in the late 1980s when a kid doing something just such as this rear ended my 1954 Chevrolet sedan.

September 23, 1919. Trips and foreign lands.

President Wilson, travelling on the Union Pacific was planning stops for Wyoming towns along the way, and the press was reporting on them a day ahead of his scheduled arrival.

Wilson, as we've noted here already, was making a hectic tour across the United States in support of the Versailles Treaty.  On this day, he delivered speeches in Ogden and Salt Lake City Utah, before traveling on to Wyoming. The Laramie Boomerang noted it, with that "1:50" time being 1:50 a.m., very early in the morning.  In other words, after leaving Utah, he was traveling through Wyoming in the evening and nighttime hours.

One of the Cheyenne papers noted that children wouldn't be allowed at the event.

We haven't checked in on the world scene here for awhile, and we'd note that while President Wilson was touring in support of a treaty that he was confident would end wars, wars were raging, including a war in Turkey. The Red Cross was still active there.

"On the road - Sept. 23, 1919 - near Kurds' camp after being fired upon--Col. beeuwkes attending the sick".  LoC title.

And while the President was away, Congress remained in session.

Arizona Senator  Henry F. Ashurst.  I don't know much about Ashurst but I've linked this both for the reason that the photo was taken on this day in 1919, and for the dress he is affecting.  It's common to depict Western Senators dressed in a Western fashion, and Ashurst here has affected a fairly typical and even modern style of cowboy hat to go with his Edwardian suit.  Note the extremely high waistline however, and the stiff collar.

While Woodrow Wilson was traveling, Walt Wallet was cleaning up due to the recent Gasoline Alley gang camping trip.

May 19, 1919. Laramie to get a refinery, Daniels comes home, Ataturk in Samsun

Big news in Wyoming, and most particularly in Laramie, was that the Midwest Oil Company, which was very active in Natrona County, had determined to build a refinery in Laramie.

People in Laramie today may be surprised to know that this was even considered, let alone that it was actually built, which it was later that year, although the remnants of the refinery remain there.  Indeed, oddly enough, discussion has been going on for several years on how to clean the remnants of the refinery up, a project that has been ongoing, and on May 5 of this present year a legal notice regarding the final work on it was published.

The refinery operated from 1919 to 1932, making it a plant that closed during the height of the Great Depression.  The same location was later operated for a few years as a Yttrium plant, although most of the refining equipment had been removed in the 1930s.  Clean up of the site is nearly complete.

Navy Yeomanettes welcoming the Secretary of the Navy back to Washington, D.C., May 19, 1919.

On the same day Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels was welcomed back from Europe by female sailors at the new Navy Building.

The first anniversary of air mail was commemorated.

The Post Office and the Army, which provided the flyers, were also commemorating the first anniversary of ail mail service in the United States.

Cambridge and Harvard, May 19, 1919.

And Cambridge and Harvard were photographed.  I don't know what this area looks like today, so I don't know how much this view has changed. Does anyone here?

And students were doing toothbrush drills at the school located at the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company.  At the time I was a student we didn't do drills, but we were instructed in school on toothbrush use and given some odd stuff that would color our teeth prior to brushing to see if we were effective in the use of our toothbrushes.  If we were, the stuff would brush off.  I recall that we did that for several different years, so toothbrush instruction was still going on at least as late as the 1960s and 1970s.

Today is regarded in Turkey as the centennial of Turkish independence, we should note, but because Mustafa Kemal Ataturk reached Samsun, a city in Turkey, and set about organizing military efforts.

The dating to this date seems oddly subject to propaganda in my view, as Ataturk went on to be the post war leader of Turkey and was the central figure in the new Turkish state.  In reality, the Turkish War of Independence was ongoing as it was effectively the Greco Turkish War, which had started a few days prior.  That war itself was one of the odd ancillary wars of the theoretically over First World War, as it started off as an Allied licensed Greek landing in Turkey in anticipation of carving up the Ottoman Empire.

May 15, 1919 The Winnipeg General Strike, the Greco Turkish War commences.

A more localized strike in Winnepeg, Manitoba  that commenced a few days prior spread to being a complete working class strike on this day in 1919.  It would become one of the largest sustained labor strikes in Canadian history.

The world was slipping into an economic depression, one now largely forgotten, and surprisingly brief, but in the immediate politically tense post war situation, a serious event indeed.

Also serious, Greece landed troops in the Smyrna, on the Turkish coast.

Greek troops landing on Smyrna.

An intent to land had been declared the day prior and the action was supported by the Allies.

The city had a large Greek population as did many areas of Turkey at the time.  Like many of the European states prior to the end of World War Two, Turkey contained significant ethnic enclaves including Greek ones, reflecting that Turkey itself had once been a Greek speaking and culturally Greek domain.  It's primarily Greek status had ended with the fall of Constantinople to the invading Ottomans in 1453 but large Greek populations remained.

The Ottoman Empire itself had come to a near end with the Central Power defeat in World War One. The Allies were sympathetic to national claims in Turkey and the Ottoman Empire was being dismantled.  As part of that, Greek claims in Turkey were received sympathetically.

With in a few days, the Greek beachhead in Turkey would expand to the entire province that the city was in, a significant expansion of the operation.  

The landing is the practical starting date for the Greco Turkish War, a war that initially had strong Allied support and which supported extensive Greek claims in Turkey.  Indeed, the war effort was aided by the fact that other Allied powers, including Italy and the United Kingdom, occupied parts of Anatolia and Turkish islands off of the Turkish coast. The initial goals were to partition Anatolia leaving the domain of the Turks much smaller than is presently the case, and which would have not only left a very large portion of it under Greek control, but which would have also left substantial coastal island areas under Italian control, but also some areas under Armenian control and possibly even the creation of a Kurdish state.

In its greatly weakened state Turkey did poorly in the war at first and this vision of a diminished Turkey appeared likely to come into existence.  A treaty to that effect was drafted between the warring powers but neither Greece nor the Ottoman Empire ratified it.  The war would spark support of the young Turkish nationalist who displaced the Ottoman Empire, which fell prior to the war concluding.  The year after the war's full conclusion the Turkish parliament would abolish the caliphate, and the political regime that had come into existence in 1299 would end.

By that time, the Turks were on the advance in the war, which Turks regard as the Turkish War of Independence.  Rather than the treaty that had been negotiated but not ratified, the end result was much more favorable to Turkey which achieved its present borders.  As part of that treat, a massive population exchange was entered into in which Greece and Turkey exchanged their respective ethnic populations and approximately 1,000,000 Greeks whose homes had been in Anatolia left it.  The practical result was, therefore, that a Greek population that dated back to the Byzantine Empire was effectively nearly completely removed, although small Greek populations remain in Turkey to the present day.

In Philadelphia, a Military Police unit paraded, including its mounted officers.