Also Within This Year in History:
1923
After scandal-plagued U.S. President Warren G. Harding died unexpectedly, Vice President Calvin Coolidge ascended to the Oval Office. Adolf Hitler gained worldwide attention—and a five-year prison sentence—as leader of a failed coup in Munich, Germany, the Beer Hall Putsch. In Japan, a massive earthquake killed more than 140,000 people. And in Egypt, English archaeologist Howard Carter opened the sealed tomb of Tutankhamun, finding the ancient boy king’s mummified body in a solid-gold coffin.
On the first day of 1923, white vigilante mobs begin their descent upon the predominantly Black community of Rosewood, Florida. In an attack that would last several days, they shoot…
Albert Fall, the secretary of the U.S. Department of Interior, announces he is resigning in response to public outrage over the Teapot Dome scandal. Fall’s resignation, which took effect two…
Four years after the end of World War I, President Warren G. Harding orders U.S. occupation troops stationed in Germany to return home. In 1917, after several years of bloody…
Four years after the end of World War I, President Warren G. Harding orders U.S. occupation troops stationed in Germany to return home. In 1917, after several years of bloody…
On this day in 1923, jazz pioneer Sidney Bechet cuts his first record, featuring “Wild Cat Blues” and “Kansas City Blues.” Bechet was born in New Orleans in 1897. Like…
Novelist Norman Mailer is born in Long Branch, New Jersey, on this day in 1923. Mailer grew up in Brooklyn and attended Harvard. During World War II, he joined the…
On February 13, 1923, the New York Renaissance, the first all‑Black professional basketball team, is organized. The Renaissance, commonly called the Rens, become one of the dominant teams of the 1920s…
On February 16, 1923, in Thebes, Egypt, English archaeologist Howard Carter enters the sealed burial chamber of the ancient Egyptian ruler King Tutankhamen. Because the ancient Egyptians saw their pharaohs…
The New Republic publishes Robert Frost’s poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” The poem, beginning with the famous line “Whose woods these are, I think I know. His…
On this day in 1923, Pulitzer Prize‑winning poet Louis Simpson is born in Jamaica, West Indies. Simpson, of Scottish and Russian descent, was the son of a lawyer. He emigrated…
Tito Puente, the bandleader and percussionist who helped popularize Latin dance music and jazz in America, is born on this day in 1923 in New York City. During a career…
Joseph Heller, author of Catch‑22, is born this day in 1923 near Coney Island in Brooklyn. His father, a Russian immigrant who drove a bakery delivery truck, died when Heller…
The Crow scout Curley, the last man on the army side to see Custer and the 7th Cavalry alive, is buried at the National Cemetery of the Big Horn Battlefield…
On June 18, 1923, the first Checker Cab rolls off the line at the Checker Cab Manufacturing Company in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Morris Markin, founder of Checker Cab, was born in…
John Herbert Dillinger joins the Navy in order to avoid charges of auto theft in Indiana, marking the beginning of America’s most notorious criminal’s downfall. Years later, Dillinger’s reputation was…
Best known today for his inadvertent role in the death of Sitting Bull, the prominent Indian agent James McLaughlin dies in Washington, D.C. Unlike some Indian agents of the later…
One of the most influential figures in the history of American popular music was born on this day in 1923 in perhaps the unlikeliest of places: Istanbul, Turkey. The son…
In a hotel in San Francisco, President Warren G. Harding dies of a stroke at the age of 58. Harding was returning from a presidential tour of Alaska and the…
On August 3, 1923, Calvin Coolidge is sworn in as the 30th president of the United States, hours after the death of President Warren G. Harding. Born July 4, 1872,…
On September 1, 1923, a routine lunch hour in Japan’s capital city of Tokyo and neighboring “City of Silk” Yokohama is disrupted when a massive, 7.9‑magnitude earthquake strikes just before…
