The month of March has been home to many historical events over the years. Here’s a look at some that helped to shape the world in March 1926.
The first volume of the Great Greek Encyclopedia is published on March 1. The encyclopedia would ultimately contain 24 volumes featuring 280,000 articles and 37,000 images, paintings and maps spread out across 23,000 pages.
After a six-day trial, Anthony Bimba wins an acquittal in a Brockton, Massachusetts, courtroom on March 1. Bimba is the last person in the United States to be charged with the crime of blasphemy.
Assistant Secretary of War Hanford MacNider formally rejects New York watchmaker Oscar M. Lazarus’s offer to design and install a wristwatch on the Statue of Liberty on March 2.
Zizi Lambrino files a lawsuit against Prince Carol of Romania on March 4. The lawsuit claims Lambrino, who is seeking 10 million francs, was still legally married to the Prince and entitled to financial support for herself and their son, Carol Lambrino.
The first wireless trans-Atlantic telephone call is made from New York to London on March 7, which also marks the fiftieth anniversary of the patenting of the telephone by Alexander Graham Bell.
Bertha Knight Landes becomes the first woman to be elected as mayor of a major American city on March 9. Landes defeats incumbent Edwin J. Brown to become the mayor of Seattle.
The first issue of the science fiction magazine Amazing Stories hits newsstands on March 10.
The Savoy Ballroom opens on the famed Lenox Avenue in Harlem on March 12.
Aviator Alan Cobham completes the first voyage by air from the British colony of South Africa to Great Britain on March 13. Cobham lands at Croydon and is welcomed by King George V.
The cartoon character ‘Reddy Kilowatt’ is introduced in an advertisement for the Alabama Power Company on March 14.
British driver Henry Segrave reaches a speed of 152.33 miles per hour in Southport, Lancashire, England on March 16, breaking the record for the fastest speed for an automobile.
Czechoslovakia Prime Minister Antonin Svehla and his cabinet resign on March 17. The mass resignations occur after Svehla was unable to get parliamentary approval to raise wages for government employees.
Chinese government troops shoot and kill 47 unarmed protesters on March 18. The tragedy becomes known as the March 18 Massacre. The protesters were speaking out against unequal treaties with foreign powers.
On March 18, Second Lieutenant of the U.S. Army John Sewell Thompson becomes the first American military officer executed in peacetime. The 25-year-old Thompson was hanged at Fort McKinley in the Philippines after being convicted of murdering his teenage fiancée.
The New York Police Department arrests seven members of the Whittemore Gang on March 19. The arrests mark an end to a string of bank and jewelry robberies committed by the gang.
More than 100 people are killed when the Brazilian passenger ship Paes de Carvalho catches fire and sinks in the Amazon River on March 22.
A manifesto drawn up by Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria in April 1914 is published on March 28. Franz Ferdinand, who was assassinated in June 1914, had planned to transform the Austro-Hungarian Empire into a nation of self-governing states but was killed before ascending to the throne.
The U.S. government grants permission to two breweries to make 3.76 percent alcohol “malt tonic” on March 29. The finished product could be sold at drug stores without prescriptions.
Despite previous assertions that it would close down the colonial prison on Devil’s Island, the French government ships 340 convicts to the island on March 30.
