June 1922

June 24, 1922: German Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau assassinated by terrorists

June 8, 1922: King Alexander and Queen Maria marry in Yugoslavia's first and last royal wedding

June 22, 1922: Sir Henry Wilson, British Army Field Marshal, assassinated by terrorists

The following events occurred in June 1922:

June 1, 1922 (Thursday)[]

• The Royal Ulster Constabulary was formed as the police force of Northern Ireland and successor to the Royal Irish Constabulary. ^{[1] [2]}
• Rudolph Valentino appeared in Los Angeles court for a preliminary hearing on the bigamy charge against him. The courtroom was packed with spectators, mostly women, eager to see the screen idol.^[3]
• Born:
  • Povel Ramel, Swedish entertainer, in Östermalm (d. 2007)
  • Joan Caulfield, American film and stage actress; in West Orange, New Jersey (d. 1991)
  • Lala Abdul Rashid, goalkeeper for the Pakistan field hockey team and 1960 Olympic gold medalist; in Rawalpindi,
  • Lala Abdul Rashid, goalkeeper for the Pakistan Olympic men's field hockey team during the 1960 games; in Rawalpindi, Punjab Province, British India (d. 1988)

June 2, 1922 (Friday)[]

• China's acting prime minister, Zhou Ziqi (referred to in the press at the time as Chow Tsu-chi) became the acting President of the Republic of China as Xu Shichang (Hsu Shih-chang) stepped aside. ^{[4] [5]}
• Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, best known as the author of the Sherlock Holmes detective stories, premiered his film The Lost World, with the first showing at a dinner before the Society of American Magicians at New York City's Hotel McAlpin, and challenged the assembled illusionists to figure out how he had commissioned the unprecedented special effects.^[6]
• Aimo Cajander became Prime Minister of Finland.
• Voting concluded in elections in Hungary for the 245-member Hungarian National Assembly, with István Bethlen's Unity Party winning a majority with 140 seats. Voting began on May 28. ^[7]
• Japan ratified the Shandong Treaty which improved relations with China and agreed to withdraw its troops from the Shandong Province, in return for China providing for protection of foreign construction workers building the Jinghu railway between Shanghai and Beijing. ^[8][9]
• The island of Mauritius, 1,200 miles (1,900 km) from Africa and formerly accessible only by sea, was reached by airplane for the first time.
• Born:
  • Charlie Sifford, American professional golfer who became (in 1959) the first African American player allowed on the PGA Tour, in Charlotte, North Carolina (d. 2015)
  • Stanislav Chekan, Soviet Russian character actor in film; in Rostov-on-Don, RSFSR (d. 1994)
• Died:
  • Take Ionescu, 63, former Prime Minister of Romania and writer, died of typhoid fever traced to eating oysters in Italy.
  • John Moses Cheney, 63, U.S. federal judge for Florida and supporter of African-American rights

June 3, 1922 (Saturday)[]

• Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen set out from Seattle toward Nome, Alaska on the schooner Maud, on an expedition to the North Pole. ^{[10] [11]}
• The Igor Stravinsky opera buffa Mavra premiered at the Paris Opera.^[2]
• YPF S.A., an Argentine corporation for oil and gas exploration, production and distribution, was incorporated in Buenos Aires. ^[12] The company, Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales (Spanish for Petroleum Deposit Production) was the world's first oil company owned entirely by the government.
• Died: Mary Virginia Terhune, 90, bestselling American novelist

June 4, 1922 (Sunday)[]

• Eighty people were killed when the Argentine steamer Villa Franca exploded and sank off of the coast of Paraguay, near Hohenau.^[13] The ship was transporting tourists from Argentina to Iguazu Falls when the blast took place at 1:40 in the morning, and "the vessel sank so quickly that the passengers had no time to dress or to get lifebelts." ^[14]
• Born:
  • Admiral Samuel L. Gravely Jr., the first high-ranking African-American officer in the United States Navy; in Richmond, Virginia (d. 2004)
  • Joe Vancisin, American basketball coach and inductee in the College Basketball Hall of Fame; in Bridgeport, Connecticut (d. 2021)
• Died: W. H. R. Rivers, 58, English doctor

June 5, 1922 (Monday)[]

• The U.S. Supreme Court decided the case of Wyoming v. Colorado, a dispute between the two U.S. states over Colorado's upstream diversion of waters from the Laramie River that served the water needs of Wyoming. The Court ruled that Colorado's use of the Laramie River was limited, but not entirely precluded, by the needs of people downstream.
• Gago Coutinho and Sacadura Cabral, aviators of the Portuguese Navy, completed the first aerial crossing of the South Atlantic Ocean, arriving in Pernambuco in Brazil 67 days after their departure from Lisbon in Portugal, losing their first two airplanes along the way. They arrived in Rio de Janeiro on June 17. ^[15]
• Former German Foreign Minister Philipp Scheidemann, leader of Germany's Socialist Party, escaped an attack by young assassin while vacationing at the Wilhelmshohe resort near Kassel. The attacker jumped on at Scheidemann's and threw hydrogen cyanide (commonly called prussic acid) at him. Scheidemann fired two shots at his assailant before being rendered unconscious, but recovered without injury. ^[16]
• Gago Coutinho and Sacadura Cabral, aviators of the Portuguese Navy, completed the first aerial crossing of the South Atlantic Ocean, arriving in Pernambuco in Brazil 67 days after their departure from Lisbon in Portugal, losing their first two airplanes along the way. They arrived in Rio de Janeiro on June 17. ^[17]
• Horror fiction author H. P. Lovecraft wrote "What the Moon Brings".
• The U.S. state of Rhode Island licensed its first radio station, WEAN in Providence.^[18]

June 6, 1922 (Tuesday)[]

• Elections were held for the Philippine House of Representatives and the Philippine Senate as part of the limited self-government for the U.S. territory. ^[19] The Nacionalista Party, which was split into two factions, the Colectivistas headed by Manuel Quezon and the Unipersonalistas of Sergio Osmeña, had 64 of the seats in the 93-seat House and 17 in the 24-seat Senate.
• The collapse of two old buildings, both three stories tall, in Lviv (now a city in Ukraine but formerly Lemberg in Germany and part of Poland at the time as Lwow), buried 40 people inside at the time. According to the dispatch in the Associated Press, the buildings were "believed to have been shaken down by vibrations caused from a passing motor truck." ^[20]
• King Ferdinand I of Romania signed a general amnesty for 213 of 261 members of the Romanian Communist Party who had been convicted of sedition in 1921. Excluded from amnesty were 48 of the defendants, who stood accused of high treason, military espionage or terrorist attacks.
• The Soviet censorship agency Glavlit (Glavnoye upravpezhny po delam literaturi i izdatelst) or Main Administration for Literary and Publishing Affairs, was founded.

Lillian Russell and her husband in 1922

• Died:
  • Lillian Russell (stage name for Helen Louise Leonard), 61, American stage actress and singer, died at her home in Pittsburgh following an infection from injuries sustained while returning by ship from a fact-finding tour of Europe on behalf of President Harding. ^[21]
  • Richard A. Ballinger, 63, U.S. Secretary of the Interior from 1909 to 1911 ^[22]

June 7, 1922 (Wednesday)[]

• The State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company was founded in Bloomington, Illinois by tractor salesman George J. Mecherle, who had organized a mutual insurance company to lower the rates of farmer in central Illinois. ^[23]
• The British Mount Everest expedition was called off after an avalanche killed seven of the 17 mountaineers on the team of Nepalese Sherpa porters carrying the supplies. ^[24].^[11][25]
• The Greek Navy armored cruiser Georgios Averof shelled the Turkish city of Samsun, prompting the Ottoman government to deport Greek residents in western towns and villages under Turkish control.
• Born: Hubert du Plessis, South African classical music composer; in Malmesbury, Western Cape province (d. 2011)

June 8, 1922 (Thursday)[]

• King Alexander of Yugoslavia married Maria of Romania in a small cathedral in Belgrade. ^[26] A crowd of 100,000 people turned out in the rain to watch the royal procession through the streets.^[27]
• The Soviet Union's first "show trial", the Trial of the Socialist Revolutionaries, began in Moscow for the 12 members of the Central Committee (led by Abram Gots of the anti-Bolshevik Socialist Revolutionary Party and 22 other members. ^{[28] [29]} With three judges presiding in the traditional Soviet arrangement, the proceedings lasted until August 7. The 12 members of the leadership were all found guilty of conspiracy. Their death sentences were commuted, but all 12 would later be executed for different charges after the Great Purge of 1937.
• Born: Amulya Barua, Indian Assamese poet; in Jorhat, Assam Province, British India (killed 1946)
• Died:
  • Phebe Sudlow, 90, the first female school superintendent in the United States
  • Henry T. Oxnard, 59, French-born American businessman and founder of the American Crystal Sugar Company, for whom the city of Oxnard, California, is named ^[30]

June 9, 1922 (Friday)[]

• Finland's Åland Islands were allowed self-government as the Regional Assembly convened for its first plenary session in Mariehamn;^[31] today, the day is celebrated as Self-Government Day of Åland.^[32]
• Polish-born American engineer Joseph T. Tykociner of the University of Illinois gave the first public demonstration in the U.S. of a motion picture with sound recorded directly with the film. His wife, Helena Tykociner, appeared in the short motion picture saying "I will ring," and then ringing a bell. ^[33]
• In Soviet Russia, the Council of People's Commissars rejected the commercial treaty signed with Italy on May 24.^[34]
• Died: William Gowland, 79, British mining engineer known for his work as an archaeologist in Japan

June 10, 1922 (Saturday)[]

• Li Yuanhong became President of the Republic of China. After arriving in Beijing, President Li's first act was to appoint the former Chinese Ambassador to the United States, Wu Ting-fang, as the new Prime Minister, with Foreign Minister W. W. Yen as the Acting Premier until Wu's arrival. ^[35]
• The Joint Service Pay Readjustment Act was signed into law by U.S. President Warren G. Harding. The new law provided for equal policies for compensation in the U.S. Armed Forces. An amendment within the Act elevated the United States Coast Guard to a branch of the armed services.
• Henry M. Leland, who had founded the Lincoln Motor Company and his son Wilfred were fired from management of the Lincoln division of the Ford Motor Company, four months after Ford Motor had purchased the luxury car company. Ernest G. Liebold, representative of Henry Ford, announced that Ford had demanded the resignations of both men.
• Pillory won the Belmont Stakes horse race.^[36]
• Born:
  • Judy Garland, American actress and singer, as Frances Gumm in Grand Rapids, Minnesota (d. 1969)
  • Rose Mofford, U.S. politician and the first woman to serve as Governor of Arizona; in Globe, Arizona (d. 2016)
  • Robert Alan Aurthur, American screenwriter, director and producer, in New York City (d. 1978)
  • Bill Kerr, South African-born British and Australian comedian; in Cape Town (d. 2014)
• Died: Harry Collingwood (pen name for William J.C. Lancaster), 79, British children's novelist known for his books about sea adventures ^[37]

June 11, 1922 (Sunday)[]

• An afternoon storm in New York City killed 45 people, including seven who were killed in the collapse of a ferris wheel in the Bronx. Gale force winds as high as 100 miles per hour (160 km/h) began at 5:30 in the afternoon and lasted for 12 minutes before subsiding. ^{[38] [39]} The ferris wheel at the beach at Clason Point Park was 70 feet (21 m) high and had a 10 feet (3.0 m) high base when it was blown over. ^[40][41]
• The documentary film Nanook of the North was released.
• Born: Dorothy P. Rice, American statistician whose studies of the economic cost of illness contributed to the passage of Medicare; in Brooklyn, New York City (d. 2017)
• Died: Antoinette Dakin Leach, 63, women's rights pioneer and suffragist

June 12, 1922 (Monday)[]

Prime Minister Kato

• Katō Tomosaburō became the 12th Prime Minister of Japan. ^[42]
• U.S. Army Captain A. W. Stevens set a new world record for highest parachute jump, while Lieutenant Leigh Wade, the airplane pilot who brought him aloft set a world record for highest altitude in an airplane. When the twin-engine Martin bomber reached 24,206 feet (7,378 m) at 1:05 in the afternoon over Springfield, Ohio, Captain Stevens jumped out. During the freefall, Stevens's oxygen tank was torn off. He came down near Jamestown, Ohio after a descent that took half an hour. ^[43]
• Joseph B. "Frenchy" Duret, a trapper and poacher who had settled north of Yellowstone National Park after emigrating from France to the United States, was killed by a grizzly bear which had been caught in one of his traps. His body was not discovered until the following evening. The story was covered in newspapers throughout the United States during the next several months. The meadows where Duret was buried became known as "Frenchy's Meadows".^[44]
• Died: Wolfgang Kapp, 63, Prussian civil servant, journalist and nominal leader of the Kapp Putsch, died of cancer

June 13, 1922 (Tuesday)[]

• France granted Austria a loan of 55 million francs.^[45]
• Born: Mel Parnell, American baseball player, in New Orleans (d. 2012)
• Died: Fleming D. Cheshire, 73, former Consul General of the United States in China during the Boxer Rebellion of 1900

June 14, 1922 (Wednesday)[]

• Warren G. Harding became the first U.S. president to be heard on commercial radio, addressing a crowd at the dedication of a memorial site for Francis Scott Key in Baltimore.^[2][46]
• The Bashkir Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was created within the Russian Soviet Republic to provide limited self-government for the Bashkir people.
• Died: Hesketh Hesketh-Prichard, 45, Indian-born British explorer, hunter and adventurer died of sepsis and complications of malaria.

June 15, 1922 (Thursday)[]

• A 79 percent decrease in alcohol-related deaths, since the advent of Prohibition of the sale of liquor in the United States, was announced by Ralph Day, the Director of the U.S. Bureau of Prohibition, who provided statistics from the New York City Department of Health to Roy Asa Haynes, the Assistant U.S. Treasury Secretary and Prohibition Commissioner. ^[47]
• The draft of the new Irish constitution was made public on the eve of elections got a constituent assembly. Women would be given the vote and the controversial Oath of Allegiance to the king was to be maintained.^[48] The document was subject to the ratification of the parliament of the United Kingdom pursuant to the terms of the Anglo-Irish Treaty. ^[49]
• Much of the Averne neighborhood of Queens, in New York City, was leveled by a devastating fire that left 10,000 people homeless.^[50] The New York Times described the event as "fire that was disastrous in the extent of its sweep and left a whole city marveling that no lives were lost," ^[51]
• The Permanent Court of International Justice of the League of Nations, referred to in the press as "the World Court", opened for its first regular sessions, convening at the Carnegie Peace Palace at The Hague in the Netherlands. ^[52]

June 16, 1922 (Friday)[]

• The Irish general election was held in Ireland, with the Sinn Féin party candidates disagreeing over the issue of signing a treaty with Great Britain to create the Irish Free State. ^{[53] [54]} The Pro-Treaty faction of Sinn Féin, led by Michael Collins won 58 of the 128 seats, six short of a majority, while the Anti-Treaty faction of Éamon de Valera in the same party won 36. The other 34 seats were divided among the Labour Party (17), independents (9), the Farmers' Party (7) and one from the Businessman's Party.
• General Chen Chiung-ming, formerly the governor of China's Guandong province, captured Guangzhou (at the time called "Canton") and announced the departure of Southern China's secessionist leaders, including President Sun Yat-sen. ^[55] General Chen said also that the former legislative members of the old Chinese government were in favor of plans to reunite the south with the Republic of China's government at Beijing. ^[56]
• The De la Huerta–Lamont Treaty was signed in Mexico, providing for a plan for Mexico to begin paying the past-due interest on its government bonds beginning in 1923. Mexico's Finance Minister Adolfo de la Huerta signed for his government and American banker Thomas W. Lamont signed as chairman of the International Committee of Bankers on Mexico. ^[57]
• Tornadoes swept through the northwestern part of the U.S. state of Wisconsin, killing at least 25 people and injuring more than 50 in the counties of St. Croix, Polk, Barron and Dunn. The area hardest hit was in and around village of Prairie Farm, Wisconsin, where 18 people died. ^[58]
• Henry Berliner demonstrated a helicopter prototype in the presence of experts at the U.S. Navy Department's Bureau of Aeronautics at College Park, Maryland. ^[59] Berliner raised and lowered the copter three times, hovering at 7 feet (2.1 m), then flew the machine around a nearby half-mile (0.83 kilometers) track. ^[60]

June 17, 1922 (Saturday)[]

• English motorist Malcolm Campbell set a new land speed record of 134.75 miles per hour (216.86 km/h), but the international motorsport authority in Paris refused to recognize it as official because it was not recorded with the specified electrical measuring devices.^{[61] [62]}
• Born:
  • Son Duk-sung, Korean martial artist and co-founder of taekwondo; in Gyeongseong, Chōsen (now Seoul, South Korea (d. 2011)
  • Louis S. Peterson, the first African-American playwright to have a production on Broadway, for 1953's Take a Giant Step; in Hartford, Connecticut (d. 1998)
• Died: Kaymakam Kemal Bey, Ottoman Empire governor of Menemen in Turkey's Izmir Province, was one of over 200 people killed in the Menemen massacre carried out by the Greeks during the Greco-Turkish War.

June 18, 1922 (Sunday)[]

• The First Zhili–Fengtian War officially ended in China with an armistice signed aboard the British cruiser HMS Curlew.^[63]
• A Kurdish uprising began in Iraq.^[9]
• Two English members of the British Antarctic Expedition of 1920, who had been marooned in Antarctica for more than a year near Andvord Bay on the west coast of Graham Land, returned to Britain, landing at Newcastle. Maxime C. Lester of the British Mercantile Marine and Thomas W. Bagshawe, a student at Cambridge, had landed in December of 1920 during the Antarctic summer after Sir Ernest Shackleton's ship Endurance had been crushed by the ice. ^[64] Lester Cove and Bagshawe Glacier, both located in Graham Land, would later be named in their honor.
• Born:
  • Claude Helffer, French pianist, in Paris (d. 2004)
  • Nela Erzisnik, Croatian Yugoslavian actress and comedian; as Nevenka Maras in Banja Luka, [[Kingdom of Yugoslavia|Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (d. 2007)
• Died: Jacobus Kapteyn, 71, Dutch astronomer

June 19, 1922 (Monday)[]

• The New York Times reported that biochemist E.V. McCollum had isolated a new vitamin called Vitamin D which prevented rickets. Dr. McCollum told reporters that studies since 1910 had shown that there were at least three vitamins, labeled A, B and C, and that "Recently my assistants and I have demonstrated the existence of a fourth vitamin which is concerned with bone growth." ^[65]
• The U.S. Navy submarine tender USS Beaver landed at Wake Island in the South Pacific Ocean, and surveyors led by Lieutenant Commander Sherwood Picking investigated the feasibility of making the island a strategically-located fueling station to provide coal and oil for U.S. Navy ships.
• The U.S. Senate passed its annual naval appropriation bill, but defeated an amendment by William H. King to withdraw American troops from Haiti, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic.^[66]
• The regional legislatures of China's three Manchurian provinces, where Chang Tso-lin had attempted to establish a separate kingdom, sent telegrams to the Chinese government in Beijing, announcing that they were ready to reunited with the rest of China under the control of President Li Yuan-hung with Wu Ting-fang as Premier. On the same day, the military leader of southern China, General Chen Chiung-ming, sent a dispatch from Nanjing, that he was prepared for unification as well after having carried out a coup against Sun Yat-sen, who had operated a separate government. ^[67] Premier Wu, however, became sick with pneumonia on his way to Beijing and died four days after the announcement, on June 23.
• Born:
  • Aage Bohr, Danish nuclear physicist and 1975 Nobel laureate, in Copenhagen (d. 2009)
  • General Ahmad Yani, Commander of the Indonesian Army until he was killed in the 30 September coup attempt; in Purworejo, Java, Dutch East Indies (d. 1965)
  • V. Balakrishna Eradi, Indian jurist and judge on the Supreme Court of India, 1981 to 1987; in Calicut, Madras Province, British India (now Kozhikode, Kerala state (d. 2010)
  • Joan Thirsk, British historian; as Irene Joan Watkins in St Pancras, London (d. 2013)
• Died: Hitachiyama Taniemon, 48, Japanese sumo wrestler

June 20, 1922 (Tuesday)[]

• In accordance with the terms of the German-Polish Accord on East Silesia, signed on May 15 after voting in a plebiscite on March 20, the German territory of Ostoberschlesien was ceded to Poland to become part of the Slaskie province. ^[68] Polish Army troops entered the area while German troops withdrew. Among the cities that became part of Poland were Katowice (formerly Kattowitz); Giszowiec (Gieschewald); Chorzów (Königshütte); Tychy (Tichau); Czestochowa (Tschenstochau); Sosnowiec (Sosnowitz); Pszczyna (Pless); and Miasteczko (Georgenburg).^[69]
• Edward, Prince of Wales returned to London after an eight-month tour of the Far East. ^[70] The Prince, who would become King Edward VIII in 1936, stepped off the Royal Navy cruiser HMS Renown at Plymouth, where he was greeted by his younger brother Albert, Duke of York who would become King George VI upon Edward's abdication. The next day, he was cheered as his train passed by railway stations from Devonshire to London. ^[71]
• The nation of Latvia passed a law setting an effective date for a new constitution to take effect at 12:01 on November 7.
• The United Services Automobile Association (USAA), an American insurance and investment company that provides financial services to veterans of the U.S. Armed Forces, was founded in San Antonio, Texas by 25 U.S. Army officers. The original name of the company was United States Army Automobile Association.
• Died: Vittorio Monti, 54, Italian composer and conductor

June 21, 1922 (Wednesday)[]

• A group of 22 non-union strikebreakers were brutally murdered by a mob at the Southern Illinois Coal Company near Herrin, Illinois. ^{[72] [73]} Victims who weren't immediately shot were taken on a "death march" of several miles before being killed. ^{[74] [75]}
• The House of Lords voted, 60 to 29, to oppose the British government's policy in the British Mandate for Palestine after hearing Lord Balfour's first speech since his elevation to the nobility. ^[76]
• The U.S. state of Arizona got its first licensed radio station, KFAD in Phoenix.^[18]
  

  Edward, Prince of Wales
  .
• Born: Pat Ramage, Canadian skiing coach; in Vancouver (d. 2003)
• Died: Take Ionescu, 63, Prime Minister of Romania 1921-1922 and former Foreign Minister ^[77]

June 22, 1922 (Thursday)[]

• Sir Henry Wilson, Field Marshal in the British Army, Chief of the Imperial General Staff during World War One and Member of Parliament for North Down, was shot dead outside his home at 36 Eaton Place S.W. in London. Baron Wilson had just returned from ceremonies for the unveiling of the Great Eastern Railway War Memorial at the Liverpool Street Station and was struck by six bullets when two men ambushed him at 2:20 in the afternoon as he and his wife stepped out of a taxicab. ^[78] Two police officers and Wilson's chauffeur were killed in the process of pursuing the attackers, two London-based members of the Irish Republican Army, Reginald Dunne and Joseph O'Sullivan, were chased down and arrested.^[11][79] Dunne and O'Sullivan would be convicted of murder and hanged on August 10, 1922.
• U.S. President Harding told a delegation of representatives from the Philippines, headed by Manuel Quezon, that the U.S. territory was not yet ready for independence that had been promised as an eventuality to the Filipino people. Harding said in a statement, "With reiterated assurance that we mean to hold no people under the flag who do not rejoice in that relationship, I must say to you that the time is not yet for independence. I can imagine a continued progress which will make our bonds either easy to sever, or rivet them more firmly because you will it to be so." ^[80]
• The Lincoln Highway bridge over the Hackensack River in New Jersey was toppled when the steamship Glenaruel crashed into it. The bridge would be replaced in 1927 andcollapse a year later.
• Born: Mona Lisa (stage name for Gloria Lerma Yatco), Philippine film actress, in Tondo, Manila (d. 2019)
• Died:
  • Sir Alexander MacRobert, 68. Scottish entrepreneur who founded the British India Corporation
  • Theodore C. Marceau, 63, American photographer and businessman who created a chain of photo studios in the 1880s.

June 23, 1922 (Friday)[]

• London police arrested 20 men in connection with the assassination of Sir Henry Wilson. ^[81]
• Walter Hagen the first American-born winner of golf's British Open, achieving victory by a single stroke on 72 holes. Hagen finished with a score of 300, while George Duncan and Jim Barnes and were tied for second with 301. Jock Hutchison, a U.S. citizen who had been born in Scotland, had won the Open in 1921. ^{[82] [83]}
• Died: Wu Tingfang, 79, former Foreign Minister and Premier of the Republic of China, died days after being appointed to serve as the new Prime Minister of a reunified China.

June 24, 1922 (Saturday)[]

• Germany Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau was assassinated outside his home in the Berlin suburb of Grunewald by nationalist extremists, while being chauffeured in a convertible to the Foreign Ministry in Berlin. Dr. Rathenau was reportedly struck by at least eight bullets, including one to the brain, ^[84] Three men in another car, driven by Ernst Werner Techow, pulled alongside Rathenau's vehicle and one, Erwin Kern, fired at Rachenau with an MP 18 submachine gun. ^{[85][86] [87]}
• Meeting in Columbus, Ohio, owners of the first nationwide pro football circuit in the U.S., the American Professional Football Association, voted to change the organization's name to the National Football League. ^[88]
• The English Ladies Football Association, the first soccer football league for women, held its first, and only championship. The Stoke team won the ELFA Challenge Cup, defeating Doncaster & Bentley, 3 to 1, before 2,000 spectators in the rain at Cobridge. Goals for the Stoke Ladies were scored by Daisy Bates, Elsie Stanyer and team captain Dollie Cooper, while Emma Smith scored for Doncaster. ^[89]
• Japan announced it would withdraw from all of Siberia except for Sakhalin Island.^[2]
• In Munich, Adolf Hitler began serving his prison sentence for disturbing the peace and assaulting Otto Ballerstedt.^[90]
• Governor Len Small of the U.S. state of Illinois was found not guilty by a jury in Waukegan after a nine-week trial on charges of embezzlement of state funds. ^[91] Upon his return home to Kankakee the next day, his wife Ida suffered a fatal stroke during a party to celebrate the acquittal and she died a few hours later. ^[92]
• The American Professional Football Association changed its name to the National Football League.
• Born: Tata Giacobetti, singer, in Rome, Italy (d. 1988)
• Died:
  • William Rockefeller, 81, American businessman and financier ^[93]
  • Alexander Antonov, 32, Russian dissident and one of the leaders of the Tambov Rebellion during the Russian Civil War, was killed in a gun battle with agents of the Soviet spy agency, the Cheka, outside the village of Shybriay near Borisoglebsk in western Russia.

June 25, 1922 (Sunday)[]

• After a standoff of almost two years, the United States granted an application for Western Union to complete an undersea telegraphic cable between Bridgetown in Barbados, to Miami in the United States, as part of a cable network to connect Brazil and the U.S. On August 4, 1920, the U.S. Navy had blocked a freighter from entering U.S. territorial waters until Brazil agreed to allow American businesses license to operate there. ^[94]
• A coroner's jury in Williamson County, Illinois, assigned responsibility to officials of the Southern Illinois Coal Company for the murder of 21 workers killed in mine violence. ^[95]
• The Centre Party won the Saar parliamentary election.
• Died: Satyendranath Dutta, 40, Indian Bengali language poet

June 26, 1922 (Monday)[]

• In a speech before the House of Commons, Secretary of State for the Colonies Winston Churchill warned the newly elected government in Southern Ireland that if it did not act to oust its rebels occupying the Four Courts, the British would.^[96]
• Irish rebels kidnapped General JJ "Ginger" O'Connell.^[79] "Ginger" O'Connell, 2 I/C Irish Free State Pro treaty army was arrested by the Anti Treaty Army Executive in the Four Courts, in retaliation for the arrest earlier that day of Leo Henderson who was leading a raid on Fergusons garage.^[97]
• King George V opened the Wimbledon Championships at their new site in Queen's Road.^[11]
• The Hague Conference began in the Netherlands, aimed at settling the debt of Soviet Russia to the Allies.^[98]
• Albert I, 73, Prince of Monaco and the nation's ruling monarch since 1889, died after a reign of almost 32 years. Albert, who succumbed to complications from abdominal surgery two weeks earlier, was succeeded by his eldest son, Prince Louis II, who would rule until 1949. During his reign, The New York Times noted, Albert set up "the great gambling halls of Monte Carlo that have carried the name of Monaco to every corner of the world," ^[99]. He was also renowned as an oceanographer and won the Agassiz gold medal from the National Academy of Sciences in the U.S. for his work in oceanography.

June 27, 1922 (Tuesday)[]

• A freak railway accident in Germany killed 26 people, and seriously injured 30 others, outside of Berlin. According to reports from correspondents for the London Times and for the Associated Press, an overcrowded train had "Trittbrettfahrerinnen", passengers who hadn't bought tickets and were standing on the outside on the running boards outside the train cars and disaster struck when the train "was passed by another train going in the opposite direction" and which had a door that was swinging open. According to the dispatches, "The door swept scores of persons off the footboard" and "several of the dead were crushed under the wheels." ^[100]
• Edward M. Fuller & Company, one of the major stock brokerage firms in the U.S. on Wall Street, went bankrupt. Shortly afterward, both Edward M. Fuller and his partner, W. Frank McGee, were indicted for "bucketing", essentially an operation for having customers bet on the rise or fall of the prices of individual stocks without any actual transfer of stock certificates or commodities.
• The United States extended formal recognition to Albania, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.^[101]
• Born: Eleanor Parker, American film and TV actress, in Cedarville, Ohio (d. 2013)
• Died: Prince Higashifushimi Yorihito, 54, Japanese prince

June 28, 1922 (Wednesday)[]

• The Syrian Federation (Federation of the Autonomous States of Syria) was constituted as part of the League of Nations Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon, under the rule of General Henri Gouraud.
• In Dublin, the National Army troops demanded the surrender of the anti-Treaty IRA garrison in the Four Courts. When the IRA rebels maintained their positions, the government troops launched an artillery attack, beginning the Irish Civil War. ^[102]
• Artur Śliwiński became the acting Prime Minister of Poland after the resignation of Antoni Ponikowski. He served for nine days before being succeeded by Dr. Julian Nowak.
• Died: Velimir Khlebnikov, 36, Russian poet and playwright

June 29, 1922 (Thursday)[]

• The French government made 100 hectares (250 acres) of land at Vimy Ridge (in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region of France) available to Canada free of taxation, effective December 5, 1922, to be used for construction of a war memorial to the more than 60,000 Canadians killed in World War I.^[2]
• Born:
  • Dr. San Baw, Burmese orthopedic surgeon; in Tapun, Tharrawaddy District (d. 1984)
  • Indonesian Army General Maraden Panggabean, Indonesia's Secretary of Defense from 1971 to 1978; in Taroetoeng, Dutch East Indies (now Tarutung, North Sumatra) (d. 2000)
  • U.S. Army General Jack Vessey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff 1982 to 1985; in Minneapolis (d. 2016)
  • Vasko Popa, Yugoslavian Serbian poet, in Grebenac, Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (d. 1991)

June 30, 1922 (Friday)[]

The Four Courts on fire

U.S. flag over a seized Dominican Republic fort

• There was an enormous explosion, followed by a fire, in the Four Courts building in Dublin after munitions were ignited by shelling at 12:30. A cease-fire order was given at 3:30 so that the injured could be tended to. The IRA garrison, represented by Ernest O'Malley surrendered to Brigadier General O'Daly at 4:00 p.m. ^[103] Rory O'Connor, who led the takeover of the Four Courts, was among 130 men taken prisoner.
• The U.S. government agreed to end the American military occupation of the Dominican Republic, which had started in 1916, and began making plans with Dominican officials to hold elections to establish a national government.^[9] The last American troops withdrew in 1924.
• The U.S. Congress officially endorsed America's support for the Balfour Declaration through the passage of the Lodge-Fish Resolution,^{[104][105][106]} notwithstanding opposition from the State Department.
• Died: Tiny Maxwell, 37, American football player and sports editor, died of injuries sustained in an auto accident near Norristown, Pennsylvania.

References[]