Also Within This Year in History:
1924
Native Americans won U.S. citizenship in 1924, but others in the world would soon find that more difficult, due to the strict quotas of the 1924 Immigration Act. (Ironically, the Statue of Liberty, once a beacon to immigrants, became a national monument.) Walt Disney released the first cartoon from his own studio, Macy’s staged its first Thanksgiving Day parade and the first crossword puzzle book was published. In fads, Alvin “Shipwreck” Kelly set the first record for flagpole sitting: 13 hours.
Two years after British archaeologist Howard Carter and his workmen discovered the tomb of the Pharaoh Tutankhamen near Luxor, Egypt, they uncover the greatest treasure of the tomb—a stone sarcophagus…
On January 9, 1924, Virginia Woolf and her husband buy a house at 52 Tavistock Square, in the Bloomsbury district of London near the British Museum. Woolf had been associated…
Vladimir Lenin, the architect of the Bolshevik Revolution and the first leader of the Soviet Union, dies of a brain hemorrhage at the age of 54. In the early 1890s,…
On January 25, 1924, the first Winter Olympics take off in style at Chamonix in the French Alps. Spectators were thrilled by the ski jump and bobsled as well as…
Woodrow Wilson, the 28th president of the United States, dies in Washington, D.C., at the age of 67. In 1912, Governor Wilson of New Jersey was elected president in a…
The first execution by lethal gas in American history is carried out in Carson City, Nevada. The executed man was Gee Jon, a member of a Chinese gang who was…
During a concert staged at the Aeolian Hall in New York City on February 12, 1924, a young musician named George Gershwin, then known only as a composer of Broadway…
John “Jack” Mack, who co‑founded Mack Trucks, Inc.—then known as the Mack Brothers Company—with his brothers Augustus and William, is killed when his car collides with a trolley in Pennsylvania…
Adolf Hitler is sentenced for his role in the Beer Hall Putsch of November 8, 1923. The attempted coup in Munich by right‑wing members of the army and the Nazi…
On April 6, 1924, eight American pilots depart Seattle’s Sand Point Naval Air Station in four modified Navy torpedo bombers, in hopes of becoming the first people to travel around…
Patrick Mahon is arrested on suspicion of murder after showing up at the Waterloo train station in London to claim his bag. He quickly confessed that the bloody knife and…
On May 4, 1924, more than two decades after Paris hosted its first Olympic Games in 1900, the French capital launches its sophomore Olympics, becoming the first city to host…
J. Edgar Hoover is named acting director of the Bureau of Investigation (now the FBI) on May 10, 1924. By the end of the year he was officially promoted to…
On May 21, 1924, 14‑year‑old Bobby Franks is abducted from a Chicago, Illinois, street and killed in what later proves to be one of the most unusual murders in American…
On May 26, 1924, President Calvin Coolidge signs into law the Immigration Act of 1924, the most stringent U.S. immigration policy up to that time in the nation’s history. The…
With Congress’ passage of the Indian Citizenship Act, the government of the United States confers citizenship on all Native Americans born within the territorial limits of the country. Before the…
On June 8, 1924, English geologist Noel Odell catches sight of George Mallory and Andrew “Sandy” Irvine, two fellow members of a British expedition to climb Mount Everest, far in…
The first Bush president, George Herbert Walker Bush, is born in Milton, Massachusetts. Bush served in the Navy during World War II and survived a harrowing ordeal when his torpedo…
On October 1, 1924, future President James Earl Carter is born in Plains, Georgia. Carter, who preferred to be called “Jimmy,” was the son of a peanut farmer and was…
On November 1, 1924, William Tilghman is murdered by a corrupt Prohibition agent who resented Tilghman’s refusal to ignore local bootlegging operations. Tilghman, one of the famous marshals who enacted…
