Top News Stories from 1923

World Events

• Adolf Hitler's "Beer Hall Putsch" in Munich fails; in 1924 he is sentenced to five years in prison where he writes Mein Kampf. He is released after eight months.
• Earthquake destroys one-third of Tokyo.
• Occupation of Ruhr by French and Belgian troops to enforce reparations payments. Background: Holocaust Reparations

U.S. Events

• President Warren G. Harding suddenly falls ill (July 28) while returning from a trip to Alaska and is rushed to San Francisco, where he dies on Aug. 2.
• The second Ku Klux Klan movement in U.S. history grows, stirring widespread controversy and violence.

Economics

Sports

World Series

Stanley Cup

Wimbledon

Kentucky Derby Champion

NCAA Football Champions

Entertainment

Events

• Russian immigrant Vladimir Kosma Zworykin patents the iconoscope, the first television transmission tube. He patents the first color tube in 1925.
• A.C. Nielsen Company is founded and provides measurements of radio audiences for advertisers.
• "Queen of the Blues" Bessie Smith records her first song, "Down Hearted Blues," which becomes an immediate success.
• Harlem's Cotton Club opens and presents all-black performances to white-only audiences. Entertainers will include Lena Horne, the Nicholas Brothers, and Cab Calloway.
• German Shepherd Rin Tin Tin becomes film's first canine star.
• Time Magazine debuts.

Science

• A whooping cough (pertussis) vaccine is developed.
• Harry Steenbock discovers that radiating food with ultraviolet light adds vitamin D.
• Scopolamine, previously used as a childbirth anesthetic, is found to act as a "truth" serum after tests on convicts at San Quentin Prison.

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