1926

1926

Premiere of "Sam 'n' Henry", a radio program in which the two white performers portrayed two black characters. Most shows revolved around trying to score some pocket dough during the Depression. It was the first major radio appearance of actors Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll, who later created a similar but much more popular radio show: Amos 'n' Andy.

Ireland initiates its Committee on Evil Literature, mostly to censor advertisements and crime reporting in newspapers.

Martial law in England declared after workers stage a general strike.

Successful military coups in Poland and Portugal (which actually has two separate coups). Poland gets a president (then a PM), Portugal a dictator.

born: Hugh Hefner, Chuck Berry, Don Rickles, Fidel Castro, John Coltrane

died: Harry Houdini, Rilke

Louis Armstrong - 16 songs from 1926
1. Lonesome Blues
2. Sweet Little Papa
3. Jazz Lips
4. Skid-Dat-De-Dat
5. Big Butter and Egg Man
6. Sunset Cafe Stomp
7. You Made Me Love You
8. Irish Black Bottom
9. Willie the Weeper
10. Wild Man Blues
11. Alligator Crawl
12. Potato Head Blues
13. Melancholy
14. Weary Blues
15. Twelfth Street Rag
16. Keyhole Blues

Bo Weavil Jackson - You Can't Keep No Brown

1925

1925

Mussolini announces dictatorship over Italy.

High-water mark of this century's crazy backward-Christian mania: Scopes Monkey Trial!

The Sphinx dug out of the mountain of dirt and sand that had buried it for centuries.

NYC surpasses London as the largest city in the world.

Scotch tape invented.

born: Yukio Mishima, Jack Lemmon, Flannery O'Connor, Sammy Davis Jr., Malcolm X, Barbara Bush

died: H. Rider Haggard

Trixie Smith - You Gotta Beat Me to Keep Me

1924

1924

Genius/morons/wannabe Nietzschean supermen Leopold & Loeb kill a 14-year-old kid for fun, to commit the 'perfect crime.' They are both caught and sentenced to prison. Loeb is seen here confessing to Leopold that he hopes Brit director Alfred Hitchcock makes a movie about it all one day.

Lenin dies. Stalin begins purging rivals.

Hitler begins work on Mein Kampf.

J. Edgar Hoover becomes head of FBI.

NYC: First Thanksgiving day parade held.

Chinese mobster Gee Jon becomes the first man in the country to be executed by lethal gas. As it turns out, the original idea behind gas execution was that prisoners would have a vent in their cells and the cyanide would be pumped in as they slept. When this proved impractical, a dedicated gas chamber was constructed in Carson City, Nevada. They tested it on bedbugs first, then kittens and a stray dog. It worked fine on Gee Jon too.

born: Lee Marvin, Don Knotts, Jimmy Carter, Ed Wood, Rod Serling

died: Kafka

Emery Glen - Fifth Street Blues

Fletcher Henderson - Zip with three songs: Teapot Dome Blues / Copenhagen / Shanghai Blues

1922

1922

The Irish Free State comes into existence.

First successful insulin treatment of diabetes.

James Joyce's Ulysses first published.

20-ton meteorite lands in Blackstone, Virginia

Benito Mussolini becomes the youngest Premier in the history of Italy.

Ottoman Empire finally abolished.

Vegemite invented.

born: Stan Lee, Charles Mingus, Kingsley Amis, Christopher Lee, Judy Garland, Veronica Lake

died: Ernest Shackleton

William Walton - Façade

[semi-related bonus] Here's James Bernard's 1997 score for 1922's Nosferatu:

Overture: Omens of Nosferatu

1920

1920

'Human Fly' George Polley scales the outside of NYC's Woolworth Building (pictured above) to the 30th floor, without any equipment or support.

PROHIBITION!

French president Paul Deschanel falls out of a train and is later found wandering along the railroad track, wearing pajamas.

First Negro-League baseball game is held in the U.S.

Joan of Arc canonized as saint.

Adolf Hitler makes first public political speech.

First terrorist bombing of Wall Street: a horse drawn buggy filled with several hundred pounds of dynamite explodes in front of J.P. Morgan bank at 23 Wall Street. Death toll: 39 people, 1 horse.

born: Isaac Asimov, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, Ray Bradbury, Ray Harryhausen, Frank Herbert

died: Max Weber

Mamie Smith & Her Jazz Hounds - Crazy Blues

1918

1918

Spanish flu pandemic.

Russia changes its national capital from Petrograd to Moscow.

Magician William Robinson (fakee-Chinee stage name Chung Ling Soo) dies while performing his "catching a bullet" trick. Actually, he does catch it, but with his lung.

Having lost Finland last year, all hell breaks loose for Russia: Latvia, Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia all declare their independence from the empire.

Habsburg empire ceases to exist.

born: Theodore Sturgeon, Mickey Spillane, Spike Milligan, William Holden, Richard Feynman, Jack Elam

died: Claude Debussy

Bela Bartok - The Miraculous Mandarin

1917

1917

J.R.R. Tolkien puts pen to paper and starts writing his first embryonic works about Middle Earth.

Zimmerman Telegram discovered. U.S. public thinks it's faked. A couple weeks later when everyone figures out it's for real, war is declared on Germany.

Puerto Ricans granted U.S. citizenship.

Pulitzer prize awarded for the first time. None of the books are still in print.

Balfour Declaration: Britain declares its support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

Finland declares its independence from Russia.

First jazz recording (posted below).

born: Ernest Borgnine, Anthony Burgess, Ella Fitzgerald, JFK, Dean Martin, Lash La Rue

died: Auguste Rodin

The Original Dixieland Jass Band - Livery Stable Blues

Erik Satie - Suite au Prelude du Rideau Rouge

Arnold Schoenberg - Verklaerte Nacht

1916

Battle of Verdun

1916

First successful blood transfusion. (Man, WWI's been going on two years already and they just now figure this out?)

Charles Hatfield, a professional magic rainmaker makes rain, floods San Francisco.

First U.S. air combat mission flown.

New Jersey Shore shark attacks of 1916.

Planned Parenthood founded.

born: Jackie Gleason, Glenn Ford, Kirk Douglas

died: Rasputin (finally)

Gustav Holst - The Planets

Charles Ives - Symphony #4

Don Richardson - Selected Columbia Recordings 1916

1915

1915

D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation premieres.

U.S. House of Representatives rejects proposal to give women the vote.

Typhoid Mary isolated.

First stop sign in the United States: Detroit, MI.

The cities of Great Yarmouth and King's Lynn in England are bombed by German zeppelins.

Armenian Genocide! Unless you're Turkish, in which case you believe this is a year absolutely nothing of consequence happened.

Theory of Pangea proposed.

Astronomers decide Pluto is a planet.

born: Muddy Waters, Billie Holliday, Orson Welles, Ingrid Bergman, Bob Kane, Frank Sinatra

died: William Willett, inventor of daylight savings time

Claude Debussy - Sonata pour flute

1913

1913

King George I of Greece assassinated by Grecian anarchist.

NYC: Grand Central Station opens.

16th Amendment makes federal income tax compulsory.

Woodrow Wilson creates the The Federal Reserve.

born: Richard Nixon, Alfred Bester, Tyrone Power, Peter Cushing, Gerald Ford, Robertson Davies, Jesse Owens, Frances Farmer, Burt Lancaster, Hedy Lamarr, Albert Camus

died: Tokugawa Yoshinobu, last shogun of Japan

William McEwan - Will the Circle Be Unbroken?

Anton Webern - Five Orchestral Pieces, op. 10

De Parade

I'd wanted to go to the West Indian Parade today, but instead I'm stuck at home, filling out mountains of NYPD paperwork and trying to rest up for the orgy of textbook sales that's going to be my life for the next two weeks. Today my life is so lame.

Lord Melody - Carnival Proclamation