April 11, 1921: Britain createsEmirate of Transjordan east of Jordan RiverApril 28, 1921: Capablanca defeats Lasker for World Chess ChampionshipApril 10, 1921: Physicist Albert Einstein and Zionist activist Chaim Weizmann arrive in New York to lobby for Jewish state
April 15, 1921: Liberian President King visits U.S. President Harding
Eight people drowned in the sinking of the passenger ship SSGovernor after it collided in the fog with the freighter SSWest Harlland, but 232 others were safely rescued in the 20 minutes available before the ship sank.[1]
Croatia's Republican Peasant Party launched the "Constitution of the Neutral Peasant Republic of Croatia".[3]
Thelockout of striking coal miners in the United Kingdom began.[4]
An attempt to impeachGovernor of OklahomaJ. B. Robertson failed when the state House of Representatives result was 42 for and 42 against, insufficient to pass the resolution for a trial.[5]
The cabinet of U.S. presidentWarren G. Harding issued a statement proclaiming that its members, individually, were in sympathy with the Allied Powers regarding Germany's indemnity payments.[5]
The U.S. State Department announced the first "Pan-Pacific Educational Conference", to be held inHonolulu in August, inviting the representatives of all nations on the Pacific Ocean with the exception of the Soviet Union and Mexico.[5]
The German classic horror silent film,The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, had its U.S. premiere with English-language dialogue cards at the Capitol Theatre in New York.[10][11]
Saad Zaghlul Pasha, who had agitated for Egypt's independence, returned from exile to an enthusiastic welcome.[5]
Charles, the last Emperor of Austria-Hungary, abandoned his attempt to reclaim his position as King Karoly IV of Hungary, after facing opposition from the Allied Council and from his former subjects in Czechoslovakia, along with a cold reception by his former Hungarian subjects.[5]
The"Russian Council" was set up as agovernment in exile for Russia by the Menshevik leaders who had been evacuated from the Crimea to Turkey. The council, chaired by BaronPyotr Wrangel received no recognition and would disband after 17 months.[citation needed]
Simon Kimbangu reportedly carried out a miraculous healing inBelgian Congo, effectively founding the "Church of Jesus Christ on Earth through the Prophet Simon Kimbangu".[21]
Arnold Marquis, German actor and voice actor who dubbed the roles of John Wayne, Lee Marvin and other stars in German-language releases of U.S. films; inDortmund (d. 1990)
The short-lived "Albona Republic", proclaimed on March 7 by striking coal miners in the then-Italian town of Albona (nowLabin inCroatia) was suppressed by Italian soldiers at the request of the mining companies.[29]
The wreckage of the U.S. Navy airshipA-5597 was located in the Gulf of Mexico, 16 days after crashing during a training flight on March 23; no trace of the five member crew was found.[30]
The Banco Nacional de Cuba, largest bank in Cuba, suspended operations after the collapse of the island's sugar export economy.[5]
In Georgia, white plantation owner Jasper S. Williams was convicted of the murder of an African-American employee.[5]
Ishar Singh
Striking miners in Scotland and Wales brought operations to a halt in 38 coal mines by abandoning pumps and allowing the pits to flood. The number of men walking off the job exceeded 100,000. After a truce was brokered by the British government between the labour unions and the mining companies, the pumping of water was resumed later in the day to prevent irreparable damage to the mines.[34]
Chaim Weizmann andAlbert Einstein were welcomed in New York City by supporters of Zionism and the proposition of the return of Israel as a Jewish state in the Mandate of Palestine. A reception for the two men at the Metropolitan Opera House filled every seat, including the orchestra pit, and attracted hundreds more who were willing to stand.[35]
Ishar Singh, a soldier of theBritish Indian Army fighting as part of the British Empire as part of theWaziristan campaign, risked his life to protect the 28th Punjabis unit, an act which later earned him recognition as the firstSikh winner of theVictoria Cross, the highest award for bravery in the United Kingdom.
Nineteen of the 22 crew on the U.S. cargo shipColonel Bowie died when the ship foundered in theGulf of Mexico.[41]
Iowa reversed a longtime ban on the sale of cigarettes as GovernorNathan E. Kendall signed a bill permitting adults to purchase tobacco starting on July 4, 1921, in any locality that chose the option of legalizing the product. Kendall commented that "The original statute was sufficiently rigorous to banish cigarettes utterly," but added that "the disregard of a restrictive law because it is unpopular entails discredit upon all laws of similar character."[42]
The Emperor of Japan sent a note of regret to U.S. president Harding, declaring that Crown Prince Hirohito would not be able to accept the President's invitation to visit the United States.[5]
Direct telephone service was established between the United States and Cuba.[5]
Italy and Turkey revealed that they had entered into a secret military pact, with Italy vowing to prevent Greece from obtaining Turkish territory if successful in the ongoing war.[5]
U.S. president Harding delivered his first message to Congress by appearing in person before a joint session, and declared that his administration would support the creation of "a non-political association of nations", and a pact separate from theTreaty of Versailles to end the state of war withGermany and the states of the formerAustro-Hungarian Empire. He added that "In the existingLeague of Nations, world-governing with its super-powers, this Republic will have no part."[45][5]
France's Minister for the Colonies,Albert Sarraut, revealed his plans for a colonial development program, primarily affectingNiger and Indo-China.[47]
D. W. Griffith's silent filmDream Street with a two-hour run time, premiered at the Central Theatre in New York.[48] On May 2, it became the first feature-length film to experiment with Griffith'sPhotokinema process for sound.
Britain's "Triple Alliance" of the trade unions for miners, railroad workers and transport workers issued a manifesto declaring a national strike to begin at 10:00 in the evening on April 15.[49]
Jean Dulieu (pen name for Jan van Oort), Dutch comic strip cartoonist and children's book writer known for creating the popular European comic characterPaulus thegnome; inAmsterdam (d. 2006)
France's Cabinet of Ministers voted to have the French Army occupy the entire Ruhr region of Germany unless payment of one billion German marks was made by May 10.[55][53]
Britain's railway and transport unions reversed their position and announced that they would not go on a sympathy strike to follow the striking coal miners.[53] The event was referred to by the striking miners as "Black Friday".
PresidentCharles D.B. King of Liberia was welcomed by U.S. presidentWarren G. Harding, after a U.S. loan of $5,000,000 to Liberia was almost completely repaid.[53]
Poland ratified its peace treaty with the Soviet Union and Ukraine, acquiring the district of Polesia from Ukraine, 3,000 square kilometers near Minsk, and 30,000,000 gold rubles.[53]
The United States announced the return from Europe of 14,852 bodies of American soldiers who had been buried in France, and that 75,882 remained overseas, including 13,000 whose families had reversed their original request for a return of their relatives to the U.S.[56]
Born:Georgy Beregovoy, Soviet cosmonaut and the earliest-born human being to orbit the Earth (onSoyuz 3 in 1968); in Fedorivka,Poltava Oblast, Ukrainian SSR (d. 1995).
Tornadoes swept across five U.S. states in the Deep South, killing 97 people altogether, 66 of whom were inHempstead County andMiller County inArkansas. Late the night before, the tornados began in northeast Texas, and then swept along an eastward path over five U.S. states, ending up in northwest Georgia.[58][59]
Born:Peter Ustinov, English actor, writer, opera director and broadcaster of Ethiopian, Russian, and other European descent, inLondon[60] (d. 2004)
By a vote of 5 to 4, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the rent reform laws that had been passed in New York and in the District of Columbia.[62]
Oilton, Oklahoma was incorporated as a city with a population of over 2,200 people.[63] A century later, it would have less than half that number.
The funeral of the former Kaiserin of the German Empire, Augusta Victoria, was carried out inPotsdam with full state honors afforded to her by therepublic, proclaimed after Kaiser Wilhelm II had been deposed in 1918. Of the 300,000 people in attendance, an estimated 25,000 were monarchists who wanted to return to rule by a Kaiser. There was no official representation at the funeral by either the German or Prussian government.[65]
Thestatue ofSimon Bolivar, a gift to New York City from Venezuela, was dedicated by U.S. president Harding in Central Park.[66]
Seven years after the original signing, the U.S. Senate ratified theThomson–Urrutia Treaty withColombia by a vote of 69 to 19, with the U.S. paying Colombia $25,000,000 in return for Colombia's recognition of the independence ofPanama.[70]
Germany requested the United States to act as a mediator in the reparation currency between the German people and the Allied Council.[53] U.S. Secretary of StateCharles Evans Hughes rejected the German request.[71]
TheCawthron Institute, the largest independent science research organization inNew Zealand, was opened in the city ofNelson, funded from a bequest made from the will of the late Thomas Cawthron.[73]
Peru's presidentAugusto B. Leguia suspended the South American nation's Congress and declared a dictatorship.[53]
Over 100 people were injured in the town ofBound Brook, New Jersey, and one died, when a cloud ofphosgene gas began spreading over the city in the early morning hours, the result of a faulty valve of a storage tank at a paint factory in town. The intervention of four people stopped further escape of the phosgene, which had been used in concentrated form as a chemical weapon during World War One.[78]
Service Employees International Union (SEIU) was founded in Chicago as a labor union for people working in health care, government employment and property services, initially as the Building Services Employees Union (BSEU).[81]
The U.S. Census Bureau announced that the total foreign-born population of the United States had increased by only 2.6% since 1910, for a total of 13,703,987 overall. From 1900 to 1910, the increase had been 30.7%. The Bureau ascribed the dramatic decrease in foreign population growth "to the almost complete cessation ofimmigration... and to considerableemigration" during World War One.[82] During World War One, the Bureau noted, over 800,000 German immigrants; 600,000 Austrians (over half of the Austrian-born U.S. population) 316,000 Irish and 203,783 Russians had left the United States.[83]
In a plebiscite in the Austrian state ofTyrol, residents voted overwhelmingly to become part of Germany.[53][85]
Herbert Hoover's Near East Relief project announced that it had provided food relief to 561,970 people and spent $13,129,117 of its budget of $13.5 million.[53] The project had also distributed 300,000 garments.
Japan's House of Peers rejected the measure adopted by the House of Representatives to authorize the participation of women in political associations.[53]
Following up on the French ultimatum to Germany, the Allied Reparations Commission demanded that Germany deposit one billion marks worth of gold into the Bank of France by April 30.[86]
Communists seized control of the government ofFiume after being defeated in voting.[53]
The U.S. state ofNebraska prohibited persons other than U.S. citizens from acquiring property.[53] The law did not affect the property already owned by alien residents.
France's Chamber of Deputies voted overwhelmingly in favor of the government of Prime MinisterAristide Briand regarding his policies toward German reparations and occupation of the Ruhr, with 424 in favor and only 29 against. Another 59 deputies abstained.[89]
The Allied reparations commission announced that the amount agreed for war reparations by Germany would be 132 billion gold marks ($33 trillion), in annual installments of 2.5 billion.[94]
TheDouglass National Bank, described in the press as "the firstnational bank to be controlled by negroes," (as opposed to a private bank not regulated by the federal government)[95] received its charter from theComptroller of Currency in Washington. It had $200,000 in capital and $50,000 in surplus, with shares of stock limited to African-Americans living inChicago.
TheWorld Federation of Agricultural Workers (Fédération mondiale de travailleurs agricoles or FMTA) was established atThe Hague in theNetherlands as the International Federation of Christian Agricultural Workers' Unions.[98] In 1982, it would merge with another union to form the World Federation of Agriculture and Food Workers (WFAFW).
TheScranton Miners team, champion of the Pennsylvania State Basketball League, defeated the New York State Basketball League titlistAlbany Senators in Game 5 of the best-3-of-5 "world series of professional basketball" to win the professional title.[100][101] In the deciding game, held at Scranton's 13th Regiment Armory building in front of 1,500 fans, the Miners won, 29 to 19.
Died:Maurice Moore, 26, Thomas Mulcahy, Patrick O'Sullivan and Patrick Ronayne, Irish Republican Army members, executed by a British Army firing squad atCollins Barracks, Cork, after a court-martial.[105]
Plans for national airline ofairships, designed to transport passengers between New York, Chicago and San Francisco before the end of 1922 were announced by U.S. engineer Fred S. Hardesty, who told reporters that fifty million dollars worth of stock would be sold to finance the construction of dirigibles 757 feet (231 m) long. Hardesty said further that the new dirigibles would be able carry 52 passengers at speeds of up to 100 miles per hour (160 km/h), with service between New York and Chicago to start by the spring of 1922.[106]
The Portuguese ocean linerMormugao, with 448 passengers and crew ran aground and was stranded nearBlock Island off of the coast of the U.S. state ofRhode Island, prompting a two-day rescue effort by the U.S. Coast Guard and the U.S. Navy.[107] Women and children were brought toNew Bedford, Massachusetts later in the day and the remaining 148 male passengers were rescued the next day.[108]
The Fascist Party staged a countercoup inFiume and drove out the Communists.[53]
The U.S. Senate passed the Knox peace resolution, 49 to 23, declaring an end to the state of war with Germany that had started on April 6, 1917, with the entry of the U.S. into World War One.[110]
^Levon Chorbajian, et al.,The Caucasian Knot: The History and Geopolitics of Nagorno-Karabagh (Zed Books, 1994) p.133
^"An Experiment in Revolutionary Nationalism: The Rebellion of Colonel Muhammad Taqi Khan Pasyan in Mashhad, April–October 1921", by Stephanie Cronin,Journal of Middle Eastern Studies (October 1997) pp. 693–750
^"Yvonne de Gaulle, Widow of French Leader, Dead", by Frank J. Prial,The New York Times, November 9, 1979
^"Draga Garašanin (6.4.1921–12.10.1997)".Projekta Rastko (in Serbian). Belgrade, Serbia: Biblioteka srpske kulture (Library of Serbian Culture). 2009. Archived fromthe original on 11 July 2010. Retrieved8 October 2016.
^"Extol Hindenburg at Kaiserin's Bier; Funeral Crowds in Potsdam Cheer the Field Marshal, Who Is Still a Popular Idol",The New York Times, April 20, 1921, p12
^"Ready to Fight for Monroe Doctrine, Plans to Invite World Disarmament, Says Harding at Bolivar Unveiling",The New York Times, April 20, 1921, p1
^"Anna Lee Aldred".Montrose Press. June 16, 2006. RetrievedJanuary 17, 2019.
^"Colombian Treaty Ratified 69 to 19; Amendments Lost",The New York Times, April 21, 1921, p1
^"Harding Rejects Germany's Plea That He Mediate and Fix Total Amount of Reparations She Must Pay; Suggests Making New Offer He Might Send to the Allies",The New York Times, April 22, 1921, p1
^Olaf J. Skjerbaek (18 July 2011)."Vibeke Salicath".Dansk Biografisk Leksikon. RetrievedMarch 6, 2021.
^Lowell Turner and Daniel Cornfield,Labor in the New Urban Battlegrounds: Local Solidarity in a Global Economy (Cornell University Press, 2007) p. 240
^"Foreign Born Total Is Put at 13,703,987",The New York Times, April 24, 1921, p7
^"Census Shows Gain Among Alien Born— But Last Decade's Increase of 358,442, or 2.6 Per Cent., Is Smallest on Record",The New York Times, April 25, 1921, p4
^Commonwealth Club of California (1921).Transactions. p. 492.
^Angus Professor Department of Political Science Michael Brecher; Michael Brecher; Jonathan Wilkenfeld (1997).A Study of Crisis. University of Michigan Press. p. 581.ISBN0-472-10806-9.
^"New Note Demands Billion Marks Gold",The New York Times, April 26, 1921, p1
^Winge, Mette; Kjeldgård Nielsen, Kenth (11 July 2011)."Cornelia v. Levetzow" (in Danish). Gyldendal: Dansk Biografisk Leksikon. Retrieved22 September 2020.
^"Four Executed in Cork for 'War' on Britain",The New York Times, April 29, 1921, p3
^"Passenger Airships To Run Between New York and Chicago",Baltimore Sun, April 30, 1921, p2
^"Take Off 300 From Liner Ashore on Block Island— War Vessels Assist Steamer Mormugao",Boston Globe, April 30, 1921, p1
^"All Rescued From Stranded Steamer",The New York Times, May 1, 1921, p6
^Pardon, Sydney (1922)."Arthur Mold (Obituary)".Wisden Cricketers' Almanack. London: John Wisden & Co.Archived from the original on 13 November 2012. Retrieved20 September 2011.
^"Senate Votes Peace With Germany; Knox Plan Wins, 49 to 23",The New York Times, May 1, 1921, p1
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