50 Fun Facts About 1919

Which sticky substance burst from a storage tank and flooded Boston's North End in January 1919, killing 21 people?

Molasses surged through the streets in a wave about 25 feet high, moving at an estimated 35 miles per hour. Residents said the neighbourhood smelled sweet on hot summer days for decades.

In which room of the Palace of Versailles was the peace treaty with Germany signed on 28 June 1919?

The Hall of Mirrors was picked by France's prime minister because the German Empire had been proclaimed there in 1871. The empire was dismantled in the very room where it began.

Eight players from which baseball team were accused of taking gamblers' money to lose the 1919 World Series?

Chicago White Sox players were cleared by a jury in 1921, yet all eight were banned from the game for life. The affair is remembered as the Black Sox Scandal.

Which physicist won worldwide fame in November 1919 after eclipse photographs showed that gravity bends starlight?

Albert Einstein had predicted the bending in his general theory of relativity. Arthur Eddington tested it during a total solar eclipse seen from the West African island of Príncipe.

What did the Volstead Act, passed over Woodrow Wilson's veto in October 1919, set out to enforce across America?

Prohibition gained its teeth from the act, which counted any drink stronger than 0.5 percent alcohol as intoxicating. It took its name from the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, who managed the bill.

Which team agreed in December 1919 to buy Babe Ruth from Boston for $100,000, then a record for a ballplayer?

The New York Yankees got the bargain of the century: Boston did not win another championship until 2004. Fans blamed the long drought on the Curse of the Bambino.

What was the fitting name of the colt that handed Man o' War his only defeat, at Saratoga in August 1919?

Upset won by a neck after the great champion got a bad start, the one loss in Man o' War's 21 races. Despite the legend, racing writers were already using the word that way in the 1870s.

Which soft drink did Roy Allen first sell at a June 1919 parade for returning war veterans in Lodi, California?

Root beer from that roadside stand grew into the A&W brand after Allen took on a partner, Frank Wright, in 1922. The name simply joins the two men's initials.

Which future US president rode with a 1919 Army truck convoy that needed 62 days to cross America?

Dwight Eisenhower, then a young officer, watched the trucks average under 6 mph from Washington to San Francisco. As president he made better highways a signature cause.

Onto a postcard of which famous painting did Marcel Duchamp pencil a moustache and goatee in 1919?

Mona Lisa got her whiskers on a cheap reproduction that Duchamp titled L.H.O.O.Q., letters that make a risqué pun when read aloud in French.

Which boxer floored Jess Willard seven times in round one to take the heavyweight title on 4 July 1919?

Jack Dempsey, nicknamed the Manassa Mauler, kept the crown until 1926. The fight in Toledo, Ohio, set a record for gate money that he later smashed himself with boxing's first million-dollar gate.

Which NFL team, founded in 1919 by Curly Lambeau, is the only community-owned club in America's major leagues?

The Green Bay Packers owe their name to Lambeau's employer, the Indian Packing Company. It gave him $500 for uniforms on condition that the team be named after its sponsor.

Which cartoon star first appeared, under the name Master Tom, in the silent short Feline Follies in November 1919?

Felix the Cat only received his famous name in his third cartoon, released a month later. The first short had been planned as a one-off.

Which masked avenger made his debut in Johnston McCulley's 1919 pulp serial The Curse of Capistrano?

Zorro, whose name is Spanish for fox, was meant for a single story. A hit 1920 film starring Douglas Fairbanks convinced McCulley to keep writing him for about four decades.

Which natural wonder, a national monument since 1908, was made a US national park in February 1919?

The Grand Canyon had a long wait: the first attempt to make it a national park failed in 1882, and Senate bills in 1910 and 1911 were defeated as well.

Which athlete, born to Georgia sharecroppers in January 1919, broke baseball's colour line with Brooklyn in 1947?

Jackie Robinson was raised in Pasadena, California, and at UCLA became the school's first athlete to earn varsity letters in four sports. Baseball was only one of them.

Which former US president died in his sleep at Sagamore Hill, his Long Island home, in January 1919?

Theodore Roosevelt was only 60. The vice president of the day remarked that death had to catch him sleeping, because awake he would have put up a fight.

Which newspaper editor founded the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento at a meeting in Milan in March 1919?

Benito Mussolini saw his new movement flop at first: in that November's Italian election none of its members won office. Three years later he was prime minister.

Which army informant, sent to report on the tiny German Workers' Party in Munich in 1919, ended up joining it?

Adolf Hitler was enrolled as member number 555, although the party had begun its count at 500 to look bigger than it was. By 1921 he was its leader.

Which international body was created by a covenant written into the Treaty of Versailles, signed in June 1919?

The League of Nations was Woodrow Wilson's cherished project, yet his own country never joined it. The Senate refused to ratify the treaty that carried its founding charter.

Which American-born politician became the first woman to take a seat in Britain's House of Commons in 1919?

Nancy Astor won the Plymouth seat that her husband gave up when he inherited a peerage. Constance Markievicz had been elected a year earlier but never sat in the chamber.

In which Punjab city did troops under Reginald Dyer fire on a trapped crowd at Jallianwala Bagh in April 1919?

Amritsar was crowded for the Baisakhi fair when Dyer blocked the exit and ordered his men to shoot. Winston Churchill later condemned the attack in Parliament as monstrous.

Which German city gave its name to the republic whose 1919 constitution was drafted there, away from unrest in Berlin?

Weimar was also picked for its symbolism: Friedrich Ebert wanted the Allies to think of the city of Goethe and Schiller while they settled the peace terms.

From which North Atlantic island did Alcock and Brown take off in June 1919 on the first non-stop transatlantic flight?

Newfoundland's capital, St. John's, was the starting point. Their Vickers Vimy bomber ended up nose-down in an Irish bog that had looked from the air like a smooth, firm field.

Which pilot won the $25,000 prize that hotelier Raymond Orteig offered in 1919 for a non-stop flight to Paris?

Charles Lindbergh claimed the money in 1927, flying alone in the Spirit of St. Louis. Several famous aviators had tried and failed before the little-known American succeeded.

Which hotel chain began in 1919 when its founder bought the 40-room Mobley Hotel in Cisco, Texas?

Hilton began almost by accident: Conrad Hilton had come to Texas at the height of the oil boom to buy a bank, and took the hotel when that deal fell through.

Which trophy went unawarded in 1919 after a flu outbreak forced the deciding game of the final to be cancelled?

The Stanley Cup final between Montreal and Seattle stood level after five games when most of the Canadiens fell ill. Their defenceman Joe Hall died four days later.

Which symbol of the Tour de France was first worn in July 1919, by the race leader Eugène Christophe?

The yellow jersey embarrassed its first wearer: Christophe complained that spectators imitated canaries whenever he rode past.

What did the Nineteenth Amendment, passed by Congress in June 1919, set out to secure for American women?

The vote was not yet won when Congress acted: the states still had to ratify, and Tennessee's approval in August 1920 settled it.

At which Scottish naval anchorage did German sailors scuttle their own interned High Seas Fleet in June 1919?

Scapa Flow swallowed 52 of the 74 interned ships after Admiral Ludwig von Reuter gave the order. He feared the fleet would be seized by Britain or turned against Germany.

Which influential German school of art and design did the architect Walter Gropius found in 1919?

Bauhaus teaching lasted only 14 years, in three different cities. The school shut in 1933 under pressure from the Nazi regime, which had painted it as a centre of communist thinking.

Which Polish-born Marxist was murdered by Freikorps soldiers in Berlin after the Spartacist uprising of January 1919?

Rosa Luxemburg was captured and killed along with her comrade Karl Liebknecht. She had been released from prison during the German Revolution, shortly before the uprising began.

Which Massachusetts governor won national fame by taking a hard line against the Boston police strike of September 1919?

Calvin Coolidge rode that reputation onto the Republican ticket as vice president in 1920. He became president in 1923 when Warren Harding died in office.

Which anarchist, branded one of America's most dangerous by J. Edgar Hoover, was deported to Russia in December 1919?

Emma Goldman left with 248 other deportees, most of them swept up in government raids that November. At her hearing she had refused to answer questions about her beliefs.

Which Irish party's MPs refused their Westminster seats and founded a parliament in Dublin in January 1919?

Sinn Féin had won 73 of Ireland's 105 seats at the general election a month earlier. Its new assembly, Dáil Éireann, first met in the Round Room of Dublin's Mansion House.

Which general's landing at Samsun on 19 May 1919 is celebrated as the start of Turkey's War of Independence?

Mustafa Kemal, later given the surname Atatürk, had been sent as an army inspector to oversee disbanding Ottoman troops. He launched a national movement instead, against his orders.

Which British economist resigned from the Paris Peace Conference and attacked its treaty in a hit 1919 book?

John Maynard Keynes argued in The Economic Consequences of the Peace that the reparations would ruin Europe. The book spread the idea of a Carthaginian peace meant to crush Germany.

Which airline, founded by eight businessmen in October 1919, is the oldest still operating under its original name?

KLM received its royal title from Queen Wilhelmina a month before the company even existed. The K stands for Koninklijke, the Dutch word for royal.

What kind of aircraft was Britain's R34, which in July 1919 made the first east-to-west flight across the Atlantic?

An airship of the rigid type, R34 then flew home again to complete the first two-way crossing. A stowaway found on board was put to work as the cook.

Which film company did Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and D. W. Griffith found in February 1919?

United Artists let the stars distribute their own films, prompting a rival studio boss to quip that the inmates were taking over the asylum.

Which physicist's 1919 monograph on rockets was ridiculed in the press for suggesting that one could reach the Moon?

Robert Goddard gave the Moon only eight lines near the end of a 69-page paper, yet newspapers seized on them. The work is now regarded as a classic text of rocket science.

Which Italian poet marched into the Adriatic port of Fiume in September 1919 and made himself its ruler?

Gabriele D'Annunzio was angered that the peacemakers had not handed the city to Italy. His self-proclaimed state lasted into 1920, and the port is now Rijeka in Croatia.

Which US attorney general ordered raids on suspected radicals in November 1919, months after a bomb wrecked his home?

A. Mitchell Palmer put a young J. Edgar Hoover in charge of a new division tracking radical groups. The bomber, an associate of the anarchist Luigi Galleani, died when his device went off early.

Which colt swept the Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont in 1919 to become the first American Triple Crown winner?

Sir Barton had never won a race before that Derby, where he ran as a maiden. He ended 1919 as the season's top money earner, just ahead of the young Man o' War.

Ignacy Paderewski, who became Poland's prime minister in January 1919, was world-famous in which other profession?

Pianist and composer Paderewski had been a celebrated virtuoso since the 1880s. He signed the Treaty of Versailles on Poland's behalf, then resigned that December.

Which country's emir Amanullah Khan fought a brief war in 1919 that won British recognition of its independence?

Afghanistan took charge of its own foreign policy under the peace treaty, and Britain stopped the subsidies it had paid Kabul.

In which Chinese city did students launch the May Fourth Movement of 1919 in protest at the Treaty of Versailles?

Beijing students gathered in front of Tiananmen, furious that the peacemakers had let Japan keep the formerly German-held territory in Shandong province.

Which English composer's Cello Concerto had a disastrous, under-rehearsed premiere in London in October 1919?

Edward Elgar lost his rehearsal time to another conductor who overran. The piece only won wide popularity in the 1960s, through a best-selling recording by Jacqueline du Pré.

In which country did Béla Kun lead a short-lived communist republic that lasted from March to August 1919?

Hungary's Soviet republic fell after the Romanian army broke through its lines on the Tisza river. Kun had returned from Moscow only months before taking power in Budapest.

Which Scottish-born steel magnate, who died in August 1919, had given away almost 90 percent of his fortune?

Andrew Carnegie spent his last 18 years handing out around $350 million, with a special emphasis on building local libraries.