A MONTH BY MONTH LOOK AT NINETEEN TWENTY-SIX

HAPPY NEW YEAR! Last New Year’s Day’s look at 1925 in America month by month was so popular I’m doing a month by month look at 1926 this time around.

JANUARY

1st – The ROSE BOWL GAME was broadcast on radio for the first time. This game pitted the undefeated UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA CRIMSON TIDE, then from the Southern Conference, against the undefeated UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON HUSKIES, then from the Pacific Coast Conference. The Huskies led 12-0 at Halftime, but the Crimson Tide came from behind to win the game 20-19 in what has been called “the football game that changed the South.”

6th – Mickey Hargitay, bodybuilder, movie star, husband of Jayne Mansfield and father of their daughter Mariska Hargitay, was born.

11th – The Whittemore Gang, led by Richard Reese Whittemore and his wife Margaret, robbed a Manhattan jewelry store of $175,000 worth of gems, equal to $3,205,000 here in 2026.

12th – The radio comedy program Sam ‘n’ Henry debuted on WGN in Chicago. Two years later the title would be changed to Amos ‘n’ Andy but it’s inane under any name.

13th – 91 coal miners were killed in a mine explosion in Wilburton, OK.

15th – The silent film The Sea Beast starring John Barrymore opened.

18th – African American woman Indiana Little led her famous march on Birmingham pushing for equal voter registration rights for black people.

23rd – Eugene O’Neill’s play Great God Brown premiered in New York City. 

27th – The United States Senate approved the U.S. joining the World Court.

29th – Violette Neatley Anderson became the first African American woman to be admitted to practice law before the U.S. Supreme Court.

FEBRUARY

1st – Land on Broadway and Wall Street in New York City sold for a then-record amount of seven dollars per square inch. I would have bought three or four square inches far apart from each other, but I’m kind of weird.

2nd – A stage play version of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel The Great Gatsby opened on Broadway at the Ambassador Theater.

          Also the 2nd – Sixty-eight-year-old textile tycoon William Wood shot himself to death at Daytona Beach. At least according to his chauffer and valet who claimed he wanted to be taken to “a lonely spot above Flagler Beach.”

3rd – In Horning, PA 20 coal miners were killed in an explosion at the Pittsburgh Terminal Coal Company’s Number 15 mine. 

5th – The funeral procession of silent movie actress and screenwriter Barbara La Marr was watched by over 10,000 people in the streets of Los Angeles. Numerous women were injured as they fought to get a look at the starlet’s silver coffin. La Marr had died of tuberculosis and kidney problems on January 30th.

7th – African American historian Carter G. Woodson launched Negro History Week, which was expanded over the years to Black History Month.

8th – The silent film Torrent, the first American movie to star the legendary Greta Garbo, debuted at the Capitol Theatre in New York City.

11th – The one and only Leslie Nielsen was born.

12th – At 165 days, the then-longest coal mine strike in U.S. history came to an end with the signing of a new contract between the United Mine Workers and Samuel D. Warriner.

17th – An earthquake killed 79 people in the copper mining town of Highland Boy in Utah’s Bingham Canyon.

18th – The one and only Ayn Rand arrived in the U.S.

20th – American serial killer Earle Nelson committed the first of his 22 murders, a spree he continued in Canada, where he was ultimately arrested.

22nd – The first auto race was held at the Fulford-Miami Speedway attended by 20,000 people. The Speedway was destroyed later in the year during the Great Miami Hurricane.

24th – The silent film La Boheme, based on Puccini’s opera and starring Lillian Gish and John Gilbert, premiered.

26th – Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five recorded the song Heebie Jeebies, Armstrong’s first big hit.

          Also the 26th – At Madison Square Garden, black boxer Theodore “Tiger” Flowers defeated white boxer Harry “The Pittsburgh Windmill” Greb to win the World Middleweight Title.

MARCH

1st – On this last day of his 6-day trial for blasphemy, American Anthony Bimba was acquitted. He had violated a law that had been on the books in Massachusetts since 1697 and was the last American to date to be charged with blasphemy. 

2nd – Watchmaker Oscar M. Lazarus’ offer to add a giant wristwatch to one of the Statue of Liberty’s wrists was declined by the U.S. government. I’m not joking.

7th – At the AT&T headquarters in New York City, the very first wireless phone call was made between New York and London. The date was chosen since it was the 50th anniversary of Alexander Graham Bell’s patenting of the telephone.

9th – Seattle City Council Member Bertha Knight Landes was elected Mayor. Seattle was the largest city to elect a female mayor at the time.

10th – The first issue of Hugo Gernsback’s landmark science fiction magazine Amazing Stories hit newsstands.

14th – The silent film The Bat, based on the 1920 Broadway play of the same name, was released by United Artists classified as a comedy-drama-mystery.

16th – Scientist Robert Goddard launched the very first liquid-fuel rocket at his Aunt Effie’s farm in Auburn, MA.

19th – The New York City police arrested the Whittemore Gang, led by Richard Reese Whittemore and his wife Margaret, bringing an end to their 13-month multi-state spree of bank and jewel store robberies from Maryland to New York.

21st – The silent comedy film Tramp, Tramp, Tramp starring Harry Langdon and Joan Crawford was released.

23rd – Decades before the Magic Bullet, a bullet from an accidental firing from the rifle of a soldier in a U.S. Army base in San Juan, PR struck SIX PEOPLE, finally lodging in the hip of Private A. Roque.

APRIL

1st – The House of Representatives voted 306-60 to impeach U.S. District Judge George W. English on five counts, including abuse of powers. English resigned before his trial in the Senate and the charges were dropped. 

5th – Harold Lloyd’s silent comedy For Heaven’s Sake hit theaters and would go on to be the year’s highest grossing movie.

6th – Varney Airlines became America’s first regularly scheduled airline. You can insert your own “Hey, Verne!” joke here.

9th – Hugh Hefner of Playboy magazine fame was born.

13th – On professional baseball’s Opening Day, Washington Senators Pitcher Walter Johnson won a 15-Inning 1-0 epic against Eddie Rommel and the Philadelphia Athletics. 

18th – Lava from the Mauna Loa volcano eruption flooded Ho’opuloa on Hawaii’s Big Isand.

27th – Scarface Al Capone and Machine Gun Jack McGurn killed Illinois prosecutor William H. McSwiggin, who was caught in the crossfire of Capone and McGurn’s firefight with rival gangsters James Doherty and Red Duffy, who were also killed in the battle.

28th – Benjamin F. Levins committed the first of his ten murders in Tampa, FL. He was arrested in 1927 and executed.

          Also the 28th – President Calvin Coolidge designated the General Grant Sequoia Tree in Kings National Park as “the nation’s Christmas Tree.” It would be adorned with oversized decorations for years to come. 

30th – Bessie Coleman, a mixed Native American and African American, died in a plane crash while preparing for an Air Show in Florida. She was the first Native American and African American woman to hold a pilot’s license in the U.S.

MAY

1st – The Ford Motor Company became the first major company to lower its employees’ week from 48 hours to 40 hours by adding Saturday as a weekly day off, joining Sunday.

7th – The Nicaraguan Civil War reignited, prompting the U.S. to send 213 officers and men to Bluefields, Nicaragua to protect American citizens there.

8th – The first of very few color silent films – The Black Pirate starring Douglas Fairbanks – premiered. It was the most expensive movie in history up to that point.

10th – The Preakness Stakes horse race was held. The horse Display won, ridden by jockey John Maiben.

14th – The silent film Sparrows was released, starring “America’s Sweetheart” Mary Pickford, wife of Douglas Fairbanks.

15th – The National Hockey League admitted three new teams – the New York Rangers, the Chicago Blackhawks and the Detroit Cougars (later the Redwings). 

          Also the 15th – The silent comedy Aloma of the South Seas was released. It starred Gilda Gray and is one of the many, many silent movies that has not survived.

18th – The famous but shady evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson disappeared at Venice Beach in California. She was given up for dead and a funeral service was held at her Angelus Temple. On June 23rd she turned up alive near the Mexican border and claimed she had been kidnapped. To this day some dismiss this incident as a publicity stunt or worse by McPherson and the truth remains unknown.

26th – Jazz legend Miles Davis was born.

30th – The silent film The Unknown Soldier opened.

31st – In Philadelphia, the opening ceremonies were held for America’s Sesquicentennial Exposition, celebrating 150 years since the passage of the Declaration of Independence.

JUNE

6th – The silent films Little Ella Cinders starring Colleen Moore and A Trip to Chinatown starring Margaret Livingston and THE Anna May Wong opened.

8th – Babe Ruth hit his renowned Home Run at Navin Field in Detroit.

14th – American artist Mary Cassatt died at age 82.

17th – Pittsburgh’s Seventh Street Bridge opened.

19th – DeFord Bailey became the first African American to perform on Nashville’s radio show The Grand Ole Opry.

21st – President Calvin Coolidge announced that the U.S. had a surplus of $390,000,00 dollars for the fiscal year ending June 30th. That would equal over 7 billion dollars here in 2026.

25th – African American Freddie Spruell became the first Delta Blues musician to be recorded when he cut Milk Cow Blues.

27th – The silent films Miss Nobody starring Anna Q. Nilsson, and The Gentle Cyclone starring Buck Jones and the pre-Laurel Oliver Hardy opened.   

JULY

4th – The United States of America marked its 150th birthday.

8th – Aimee Semple McPherson faced grand jury questioning over discrepancies in her account of the weeks she was missing.

9th – Silent film superstar Rudolph Valentino‘s final movie The Son of the Sheik premiered in Los Angeles. Like Douglas Fairbanks had done in Don Q the Son of Zorro, Valentino appeared in split screen photography as both the older Sheik character and as his own son.   

10th – Lightning struck the Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey, starting a fire that caused several million pounds of explosives to detonate over the next three days.

16th – Newspaper editor Donald Ring Mellett of the Canton Daily News was murdered after confronting organized crime in that newspaper.

18th – The silent comedy Mighty Like a Moose starring Charley Chase opened.

20th – The grand jury in the case of Aimee Semple McPherson adjourned after finding insufficient evidence to indict her on charges of manufacturing evidence and giving false testimony to police.

22nd – In Astoria, OR the Astoria Column was dedicated.

23rd – Word spread that Aimee Semple McPherson had really spent the weeks when she claimed she was being held captive living with a man named Kenneth Ormiston in a rented cottage at Carmel-by-the-Sea, CA.

26th – Robert Todd Lincoln, the last surviving son of Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln, passed away at age 82. 

AUGUST 

5th – Don Juan starring John Barrymore opened. It was the first silent film released with synched sound effects, but no dialogue yet at this point. 

15th – Actor Rudolph Valentino was rushed to a New York City hospital due to a ruptured appendix. He would die on August 23rd from complications. 

24th – Over 100 people were injured during a riot to glimpse Rudolph Valentino’s corpse in Campbell’s Funeral Parlor.

25th – The silent film Beau Geste based on P.C. Wren’s novel about the French Foreign Legion opened. Ronald Colman, Noah Beery (Rockford’s dad) and Neil Hamilton (Commissioner Gordon) starred.

30th – The funeral mass for Rudolph Valentino was finally held at St. Malachy’s Roman Catholic Church in New York. Thousands lined the streets to watch the funeral cortege pass down Broadway.

SEPTEMBER

2nd – Rudolph Valentino’s corpse continued its Long Goodbye as it was sent out of New York on a train taking it to its final resting place in California.

3rd – The shameless milking of Valentino’s death continued as the Cadaver Express stopped in Chicago for some more crowd hysteria and viewings of the late actor’s body.

6th – The exploitation continued as poor Rudolph Valentino was transported to the Guardian Angel Mortuary Chapel in Los Angeles.

7th – After a second funeral mass at the Catholic Church of the Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills, the hardest working corpse in show business was finally allowed some dignity as Rudolph Valentino was laid to rest at Hollywood Memorial Park Cemetery.

11th – Aloha Tower in Honolulu, HI opened.

15th – African American Jelly Roll Morton and his Red Hot Peppers recorded Black Bottom Stomp.

16th – Asa Keyes, District Attorney of Los Angeles County, ordered the arrest of Aimee Semple McPherson, her mother and three others on conspiracy charges.

17th – Iconic silent film comedienne Mabel Normand married actor Lew Cody.

18th – The Great Miami Hurricane – Category Four – struck the city, causing over 100 million dollars in damage.

19th – The always-feisty Aimee Semple McPherson used one of her sermons at the Angelus Temple to announce the formation of a defense fund that her faithful could donate to while she “fought the Devil” as she called her ongoing prosecution.

20th – In Cicero, IL, the North Side Gang sprayed Al Capone’s base with over a thousand rounds of machine gun fire in an attempt to kill him. Capone and his boys were unharmed. 

23rd – Boxer Gene Tunney defeated Jack Dempsey, the Manassa Mauler, by unanimous decision to take the World Heavyweight Boxing Championship in Philadelphia.

26th – The silent film Paradise starring Betty Bronson opened.

OCTOBER

2nd – The Viola Dana silent film The Ice Flood premiered.

10th – The St. Louis Cardinals won Game 7 of the World Series, defeating Babe Ruth’s Yankees 3-2.

          Also the 10th – The silent film The Temptress starring Greta Garbo was released.

14th – A.A. Milne’s book Winnie the Pooh was published.

17th – The silent Tom Mix western The Great K&A Train Robbery hit theaters.

18th – Chuck Berry was born.

19th – Queen Marie of Romania dined at the White House with President Calvin Coolidge and First Lady Grace Coolidge.

22nd – Ernest Hemingway’s novel The Sun Also Rises was published.

25th – In the case of Myers v United States, the Supreme Court upheld a president’s powers to remove executive branch appointees without Senate approval.

31st – Escape artist and silent film star Harry Houdini died from appendicitis.

NOVEMBER

8th – The George Gershwin musical Oh, Kay opened on Broadway.

11th – The U.S. numbered highway system was established.

16th – Native American Taffy Abel became the National Hockey League’s first player of color when he joined the New York Rangers.

21st – The silent film adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel The Great Gatsby opened, starring Warner Baxter as Jay Gatsby and Neil Hamilton as Nick Carraway.

26th – Boston Mayor Malcolm E. Nichols married his late wife’s twin sister.

27th – This year’s edition of the Army-Navy Game between the West Point Cadets (not yet the Black Knights) and the Annapolis Midshipmen ended in a 21-21 tie.

30th – African American blues musician R.L. Burnside was born.

DECEMBER

1st – Silent film comedy giant Charlie Chaplin was left by his second wife Lita Grey after 2 years of marriage.

3rd – Boxer Mickey Walker defeated African American boxer Theodore “Tiger” Flowers for the World Middleweight Title.

11th – African American rhythm and blues singer Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton was born.

23rd – Nicaraguan President Adolfo Diaz requested renewed military assistance from the United States.

          Also the 23rd – The Lon Chaney silent film Tell It to the Marines premiered in New York City.

25th – The silent movie Flesh and the Devil starring Greta Garbo and John Gilbert opened.

29th – District Attorney Asa Keyes dropped the charges against Aimee Semple McPherson and the others, stating he couldn’t get a conviction given the current state of the case. McPherson’s disappearance was dramatized in the 1976 telefilm The Disappearance of Aimee starring Faye Dunaway and James Woods.

31st – Buster Keaton’s Civil War comedy The General opened.