The first year of Roaring Twenties in the U.S. brought votes for women and an official start to the nationwide ban on alcohol. The League of Nations met for the first time in Geneva, and the Mexican Revolution ended after 10 years. The Band-Aid debuted, the first commercial radio broadcast hit the airwaves, transmitting the Harding-Cox presidential race results, and Jazz Age author F. Scott Fitzgerald published his first novel, “This Side of Paradise.”
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On January 10, 1920, the League of Nations formally comes into being when the Covenant of the League of Nations, ratified by 42 nations in 1919, takes effect.
The first informal meeting of the League of Nations in Geneva. (Credit: Bettmann Archive/Getty Images)
Bettmann / Contributor / Getty Images
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This Side of Paradise is published, immediately launching 23-year-old F. Scott Fitzgerald to fame and fortune.
ORIGINAL CAPTION READS: Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940), American writer. Born in St. Paul, Minnesota, and was an officer in World War I. He was also a scriptwriter in Hollywood, and famed as a chronicler of the Jazz Age. His Books included "This Side of Paradise," "The Great Gatsby," "Tender is the Night," and "All the Sad Yound Men." He is shown here seated at a desk, writing with a pen. Undated photograph.
Bettmann Archive
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On May 18, 1920, Karol Jozef Wojtyla is born in the Polish town of Wadowice, 35 miles southwest of Krakow. Wojtyla went on to become Pope John Paul II, history’s most well-traveled pope and the first non-Italian to hold the position since the 16th century. After high school, the future pope enrolled at Krakow’s Jagiellonian University, where he studied philosophy and literature and performed in a theater group. During World War II, Nazis occupied Krakow and closed the university, forcing Wojtyla to seek work in a quarry and, later, a chemical factory. By 1941, his mother, father, and only brother had all died, leaving him the sole surviving member of his family.
This Day in History – May 18, 1920, Karol Jozef Wojtyla is born in the Polish town of Wadowice. To find out more about this day, check out this video clip.
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The 19th Amendment, guaranteeing women the right to vote, is formally adopted into the U.S. Constitution by proclamation of Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby. The amendment was the culmination of more than 70 years of struggle by woman suffragists. Its two sections read simply: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex” and “Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.” Despite the passage of the amendment, poll taxes, local laws and other restrictions continued to block women of color from voting for several more decades.
Women casting their first votes for president, from New York City, 1920.
Bettmann Archive/Getty Images
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On October 25, 1920, Greece’s King Alexander dies from wounds he received after a monkey attacked him earlier in the month. He was 27 years old.
Alexander I, King of Greece, 1916
PA Images via Getty Images
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