WHAT HAPPENED IN 1924 ?

We should really have begun the year with this post, but things got in the way.........anyhow, here's what was happening one hundred years ago this year:

1st January - Meteorological Office issues its first broadcast Shipping Forecast.

3rd January - British Egyptologist Howard Carter finds the Sarcophagus of Tutankhamun.

10th January - British submarine HMS L24 sinks with all hands in a collision with battleship HMS Resolution in the  English Channel - 43 dead.

21st January - In Russia, Vladimir Lenin dies at the age of 53.

22nd January - following Stanley Baldwin's resignation after the Conservative Government loses a vote of confidence on the King's Speech, Ramsay MacDonald becomes the First Labour Prime Minister, leading a minority Government.

23rd January - Margaret Bondfield becomes the first woman to be appointed a Government Minister.

25th January - in the French Alps, the first Winter Olympics opens in Chamonix. Great Britain and Ireland compete and win 1 gold, 1 silver and 2 bronze medals.

27th January -  in Russia, Lenin placed in Mausoleum in Red Square.

1st February - the United Kingdom recognises the Soviet Union.

5th February - the Greenwich Time Signal from the Royal Greenwich Observatory ("the Pips") is broadcast by radio for the time.

12th February - in the United States, President Calvin Coolidge makes the first Presidential radio speech.

12th February - in the United States, the first performance of George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" at New York City's Aeolian Concert Hall.

14th February - in the United States, the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR), based in US State of New York, is renamed International Business Machines (IBM).

18th February - commissioning of HMS Hermes, the RN's first purpose-designed aircraft carrier:

HMS Hermes

1st April - in Germany, Adolf Hitler is sentenced to 5 years in Landsberg Prison for his participation in the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch.

6th April - in Italy, the Fascists win a General Election with a two thirds majority.

16th April - in the United States, media company Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer ("MGM") is founded in Los Angeles as a result of the merger of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures, and Louis B. Mayer Pictures.

23rd April - The British Empire Exhibition opens in London. First radio broadcast by King George V.

26th April - Newcastle United win the FA Cup Final, beating Aston Villa 2-0.

4th May - in France, the 1924 Summer Olympics opening ceremony is held in Paris. Great Britain and Ireland will win 9 Gold, 13 Silver and 12 Bronze medals during the course of the Games. 

10th May - in the United States, J. Edgar Hoover is appointed Head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

11th May - in Germany, Mercedes-Benz is formed by merger of the companies owned by Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz.

3rd June - Gleneagles Hotel opens in Scotland.

8th June - in Nepal, George Mallory and Andrew Irvine are last seen "going strong for the top" of Mount Everest by their team mate Noel Odell. The two mountaineers are never seen alive again.

2nd June - in the United States, President Calvin Coolidge signs the Indian Citizenship Act into law, granting citizenship to all Native Americans born within the United States.

9th June - in the United States, "Jelly-Roll Blues" is recorded by the blues great, Jelly Roll Morton.

7th July - Chariots of Fire (1) : Harold Abrahams wins 100m gold at the Paris Olympics in a time of 10.6 seconds. YOU TUBE

11th July - Chariots of Fire (2) - Eric Liddell wins 400m gold at the Paris Olympics in a world record time of 47.6 seconds. YOU TUBE

7th August - Housing (Financial Provisions) Act provides government subsidy for the construction of houses to rent, principally by local authorities ("Council Houses")

13th August - Campbell Case. The MacDonald Labour Government forces charges of incitement to mutiny against Communist newspaper editor J.R.Campbell to be dropped, leading to its defeat in a vote of confidence in the House of Commons.

16th August - in France, the Dawes Plan is signed in Paris, temporarily resolving German war reparations disputes.

28th September - US Army pilots John Harding and Erik Nelson complete the first aerial circumnavigation of the globe. It has taken them 175 days and 74 stops before their return to Seattle.

9th October - dissolution of Parliament for a General Election.

15 October - in France, the first Surrealist Manifesto is published, in which Andrew Breton defines the movement as "pure psychic automatism".

24 October - the Foreign Office releases the Zinoviev Letter, which is published in the following morning's "Daily Mail". This purports to be a directive from Grigory Zinoviev, head of the Communist International in Moscow, to the Communist Party of Great Britain, ordering it to engage in seditious activities within the UK.

25 October - in India, authorities of the British Raj arrest Subhas Chandra Bose and jail him for the next two and a half years.

29 October - the General Election is won by the Conservative Party under Stanley Baldwin, who duly becomes Prime Minister again. Conservatives have a majority of 209 seats, with Labour losing 40 seats, and Asquith's Liberals being electorally destroyed, going down from 158 seats to just 40 seats. Oswald Mosley (standing for Labour) loses to Neville Chamberlain in Chamberlain's Birmingham Ladywood constituency - but only (after 3 recounts) by 77 votes.

2 November - the "Sunday Express" becomes the first newspaper to publish a crossword.

4 November - in the United States, Republican and sitting President, Calvin Coolidge, defeats Democrat John W. Davis and Progressive Robert M. La Follette Sr. in the Presidential election. It's a Coolidge landslide.

7 December - in Germany, the Social Democrats win the national elections with an increased vote share.

20 December - in Germany, Adolf Hitler is released from Landsberg Prison, having served only nine months of his five year sentence.

24 December - Imperial Airways de Havilland DH.35 G-EBBX crashes at Purley short after take off from Croydon Airport, killing all eight people on board. It is the new airline's first fatal crash, leading to the first UK public enquiry into a civil aviation accident.

30 December - Edwin Hubble announces existence of other galactic systems.