This Year in History:
1924
Discover what happened in this year with HISTORY’s summaries of major events, anniversaries, famous births and notable deaths.
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 containing a solid gold coffin that holds the mummy of Tutankhamen. When Carter first arrived in Egypt in 1891, most of the ancient Egyptian tombs […]
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 with the district since 1902, when she took a house in the area with her three siblings after their father’s death. She had remained in […]
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, Lenin abandoned his law career to devote himself to Marxist study and the provocation of revolutionary activity among Russian workers. Arrested and exiled to Siberia […]
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 12 other events involving a total of six sports. The “International Winter Sports Week,” as it was known, was a great success, and in 1928 […]
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 landslide Democratic victory over Republican incumbent William Howard Taft and Progressive Party candidate Theodore Roosevelt. The focal point of President Wilson’s first term in office […]
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 convicted of murdering a rival gang member. Lethal gas was adopted by Nevada in 1921 as a more humane method of carrying out its death […]
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 songs, seated himself at the piano to accompany the orchestra in the performance of a brand new piece of his own composition. Its title: “Rhapsody […]
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 on March 14, 1924. After the Mack brothers sold their company to investors in 1911, it continued to flourish, becoming one of North America’s largest […]
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 Party was foiled by the government, and Hitler was charged with high treason. Despite his conviction, Hitler was out of jail before the end of […]
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 the entire globe by air—something attempted unsuccessfully by several European flyers in previous years. After 175 days (flying time: 371 hours 11 minutes), and a […]
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 case inside were connected to the death of his mistress, Emily Kaye. Mahon then directed the Scotland Yard detectives to a particularly grisly scene in […]
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 the Games twice. The 1924 Paris Olympics, the seventh occurrence of the modern Olympic Games, signals the acceptance of the elite international sporting competition as […]
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 director. This began his 48-year tenure in power, during which time he personally shaped American criminal justice in the 20th century. Hoover first became involved […]
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 history. The killers, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, were wealthy and intelligent teenagers whose sole motive for killing Franks was the desire to commit the […]
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 new law—also known as the Johnson-Reed Immigration Act—reflected the desire of Americans to isolate themselves from the world after fighting World War I in Europe, […]
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 Civil War, citizenship was often limited to Native Americans of one-half or less Indian blood. In the Reconstruction period, progressive Republicans in Congress sought to […]
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 distance, each man a “tiny black spot” silhouetted against the snow. By Odell’s reckoning, they are within about 800 vertical feet of the summit. […]
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 bomber was shot down over the Pacific. Bush drifted in the water for several hours until a U.S. submarine picked him up. He was later […]
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 the first president to be born in a hospital. Carter was raised a devoted Southern Baptist and graduated from the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, […]
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 law and order in the West, was 71 years old. Known to both friends and enemies as “Uncle Billy,” Tilghman was one of the most […]
