Yesterday was my mother’s 96th birthday. In honor of that occasion, today’s Musical Monday is Growing Old Gracefully. Imagine what has happened since her birth! The song is below. Below that is was going on in 1924 (according to Wikipedia). A lot has changed and a lot is the same. Happy Birthday Mom!
- January 25 – The first Winter Olympics, the 1924 Winter Olympics open in Chamonix, in the French Alps.
- January 26 – Petrograd (Saint Petersburg) is renamed Leningrad; it reverts to Saint Petersburg in 1991.
- January 27 – Lenin is buried in Lenin’s Mausoleum, in Moscow’s Red Square.
February 1924
- February 1 – The United Kingdom recognizes the Soviet Union.
- February 5 – GMT: A radio time signal is broadcast for the first time, from the Royal Greenwich Observatory.
- February 8 – Capital punishment: The first state execution using gas, in the United States, takes place in Nevada.
- February 12 – Rhapsody in Blue, by George Gershwin, is first performed in New York City, at Aeolian Hall.
- February 14 – The Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR), based in the U.S. state of New York, is renamed International Business Machines (IBM).
- February 16 – 26 – Dock strikes break out in various U.S. harbors.
- February 22 – Calvin Coolidge becomes the first President of the United States to deliver a radio broadcast from the White House.
- April 1
- Adolf Hitler is sentenced to 5 years in jail, for his participation in the Beer Hall Putsch (he serves only 8 months).
- Frank Capone is shot to death by police in Chicago.
- The first revenue flight for Belgium’s Sabena Airlines takes place.
- April 6 – Fascists win the elections in Italy with a ⅔ majority.
- April 16 – American media company Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) is founded in Los Angeles.
- April 23 – The British Empire Exhibition opens; it is the largest colonial exhibition, with 58 countries of the empire dramatically represented.
- April 26 – Harry Grindell Matthews demonstrates his “death ray” in London, but fails to convince the British War Office.
- April 27 – A group of Alawites kill several nuns in Syria; French troops march against them.
- April 28 – An explosion in a mine at the Wheeling Steel Corporation in Benwood, West Virginia kills 119 men.
May 1924
- May 3 – The Aleph Zadik Aleph, the oldest Jewish youth fraternity, is founded in Omaha, Nebraska.
- May 4 – The 1924 Summer Olympics opening ceremonies are held in Paris, France.
- May 8 – Lithuania signs the Klaipėda Convention with the nations of the Conference of Ambassadors, taking the Klaipėda Region from East Prussia and making it into an autonomous region.
- May 10 – In the United States, J. Edgar Hoover is appointed head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
- May 11 – Mercedes-Benz is formed by the merging companies owned by Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz.
- May 24 – The Immigration Act of 1924 is signed into law in the United States, including the Asian Exclusion Act.
June 1924
- June 1 – Harry Grindell Matthews returns from Paris to London; he tries to use a Pathé film to demonstrate that his death ray works.
- June 2 – U.S. President Calvin Coolidge signs the Indian Citizenship Act into law, granting citizenship to all Native Americans born within the territorial limits of the United States.
- June 5 – Ernst Alexanderson sends the first facsimile across the Atlantic Ocean, which goes to his father in Sweden.
- June 7–16 – Rudolf Steiner delivers his Agriculture Course at Koberwitz beginning of the organic agriculture movement.[2]
- June 8 – George Mallory and Andrew Irvine are last seen “going strong for the top” of Mount Everest by teammate Noel Odell at 12:50 P.M. The two mountaineers are never seen alive again.
- June 10 – Fascists kidnap and kill Italian socialist leader Giacomo Matteotti in Rome.
- June 12 – Rondout Heist: Six men of the Egan’s Rats gang rob a mail train in Rondout, Illinois; the robbery is later found to have been an inside job.
- June 13 – In Hungary, a devastating tornado, “Wildkansas”, strikes, in 3 hours leaving a 500-1500m wide and 70 km long path of destruction from landfall at Bia to its end near Vác, completely destroying the village of Páty. 9 people are killed, 50 injured and many left homeless by one of the strongest tornadoes ever not only in Hungary but in Europe, estimated as F4.
- June 16 – Whampoa Military Academy is founded in China.
- June 23 – American airman Russell Maughan flies from New York to San Francisco in 21 hours and 48 minutes on a dawn-to-dusk flight in a Curtiss pursuit.
- June 30 – J. B. M. Hertzog becomes the third Prime Minister of South Africa.
July
- July 9 – John W. Davis of West Virginia is nominated by the Democrats to oppose Calvin Coolidge in the presidential election.
- July 12 – United States occupation of the Dominican Republic (1916–24) comes to an end. The constitutional government headed by General Horacio Vázquez, elected in the elections held in March, is established.
- July 20 – The Soviet sports newspaper Sovetsky Sport is founded.
August 1924
- August 1 – Koshien Stadium, as well known for sports venues in Japan, open in Nishinomiya, suburb of Osaka.[3][citation needed]
- August 16 – The Dawes Plan is accepted.
- August 18 – France begins to withdraw its troops from Germany.
- August 28 – August Uprising: Georgia rises against rule by the Soviet Union in an abortive rebellion, in which several thousands die.
September 1924
- September 9
- The Hanapepe massacre occurs on Kauai, Hawaii.
- The 8-hour work day is introduced in Belgium.
- September 28 – U.S. Army pilots John Harding and Erik Nelson complete the first aerial circumnavigation. It has taken them 175 days and 74 stops before their return to Seattle.
October 1924
- October 2 – The Geneva Protocol is adopted by the League of Nations Assembly as a means to strengthen the League, but later fails to be ratified.
- October 6 – 1-RO begins regular radio broadcasting services in Italy.
- October 10
- Voting in federal elections becomes compulsory in Australia, after a private member’s bill proposed by Tasmanian Nationalist senator Herbert Payne results in the passing of the Commonwealth Electoral (Compulsory Voting) Act 1924.
- The Alpha Delta Gamma fraternity is founded at the Lake Shore Campus of Loyola University, Chicago.
- October 12–15 – Zeppelin LZ-126 makes a transatlantic delivery flight from Friedrichshafen, Germany, to Lakehurst, New Jersey.
- October 19 – Abdul Aziz declares himself protector of holy places in Mecca.
- October 22 – The Toastmasters Club is founded.
- October 24
- Dixie Dean scores a hat-trick for Tranmere Rovers to become the youngest ever player to score three goals for The Superwhites.
- October 25
- Osaka Metal Industry, as predecessors of Daikin, a famous for air conditioner brand in world, founded in Japan.[page needed]
- October 27 – The Uzbek SSR joins the Soviet Union.
November 1924
- November 4
- Nellie Tayloe Ross of Wyoming is elected as the first woman governor in the United States.
- U.S. presidential election, 1924: Republican Calvin Coolidge defeats Democrat John W. Davis and Progressive Robert M. La Follette, Sr.
- November 19 – In Los Angeles, famous silent film director Thomas Ince (“The Father of the Western”) dies, reportedly of a heart attack, in his bed (rumors soon surface that he was shot dead by publishing tycoon William Randolph Hearst).
- November 26 – The Mongolian People’s Republic is founded.
- November 27
- 129 communists, including several members of the Riigikogu, are convicted during the Trial of the 149 in Estonia.
- In New York City the first Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade is held.
December 1924
- December 1
- A Soviet-backed communist coup attempt fails in Estonia.
- George Gershwin‘s Lady Be Good and Fascinating Rhythm (book by Guy Bolton and Fred Thompson, lyrics by Ira Gershwin) premiere in New York, NY.
- December 19
- German serial killer Fritz Haarmann is sentenced to death for a series of murders.
- The last Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost is sold in London, England.
- December 20 – In Germany, Adolf Hitler is released from Landsberg Prison, after serving nine months for his crucial role in the Beer Hall Putsch, from 1923.
- December 24
- Albania becomes a republic.
- A flash fire at a Christmas celebration in a one-room schoolhouse in Babbs, Oklahoma kills 36 people, mostly small children.
- December 30 – Astronomer Edwin Hubble announces that Andromeda, previously believed to be a nebula, is actually another galaxy, and that the Milky Way is only one of many such galaxies in the universe.
