1923 Fun Facts, Trivia and History

1923 History, Fun Facts and Trivia

Quick Facts from 1923:

• World (Pop Culture) Changing Event: Howard Carter opened the inner burial chamber of the Pharaoh Tutankhamun’s tomb and finds the sarcophagus
• Influential Songs include: Yes! We Have No Bananas by Billy Jones and others. Also, Parade of the Wooden Soldiers and I’ll Build A Stairway to Paradise by Paul Whiteman.
• The Big Movie: November 23, 1923: Cecil B. DeMille’s (first) version of The Ten Commandments premiered.
• Other Movies to Watch include Safety Last!, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Pilgrim, Three Ages and The Extra Girl
• The Most Famous Person in America was probably Babe Ruth
• Notable books include: The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran
• Price of Men’s Mohair Suit in 1923: $14.00
• Roy and Walt Disney founded The Walt Disney Company.
• Yankee Stadium opened in The Bronx.
• The Funny Guy was: Harold Lloyd
• The Date: November 9th is known as the day of fate in German history- on the same November Day, Robert Blum was executed in 1848, Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated in 1918, Hitler’s Munich Putsch occurred in 1923, Kristallnacht occurred in 1938, and the Berlin Wall came down in 1989.

Significant news events that occurred in 1923:

• January: The signing of the Dawes Plan, which restructured Germany’s World War I reparations and led to a period of economic stability in the country.
• February: The burial of Vladimir Lenin’s body in a mausoleum in Moscow became a major tourist attraction in the Soviet Union.
• March: The governor of Oklahoma signs House Bill 197 with the Montgomery amendment outlawing the theory of evolution in public school textbooks purchased by the state, the first anti-Darwinian legislation passed in the US.
• April: The first game at Yankee Stadium, also known as “The House That Ruth Built,” was played in New York City.
• May: The Riegelmann Boardwalk at Coney Island officially opened.
• June: Frank Hayes, 35, an American jockey, died while riding the horse Sweet Kiss to victory at Belmont Park in New York.
• July: The Hollywood Sign was inaugurated in California (initially reading Hollywoodland).
• August: The Hollywood Studios, a group of film studios later known as the “Big Five,” was formed.
  (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Warner Bros., Paramount, Fox, and RKO)
• September: 1923 Berkeley Fire: Berkeley, California erupted, consuming 640 structures, including 584 homes. No one was killed.
• October: Roy and Walt Disney founded The Walt Disney Company.
• November: Adolf Hitler’s political party, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nazi Party), failed to win a majority in the German elections, but Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany in January of the following year.
• December: The Cecil B. DeMille-directed epic film The Ten Commandments premiered at Grauman’s Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood.

Firsts, Inventions, and Wonders:
The word Junkie, in the context of a drug addict.

The Hollywood(land) Sign, constructed in 1923, was designed to only stand for 18 months.

The first 24 Hours of Le Mans motor race was held (won by André Lagache and René Léonard).

Time Magazine began publication.

Warner Brothers film studio incorporated.

The Firestone Tire and Rubber Company started producing inflatable tires.

The first recorded use of the word Guesstimate.

The Poinsettia as we know it was created in 1923 by grafting two other types of poinsettias.

On April 28, 2023, Wembley Stadium opened.

Coca-Cola invented the six-pack in 1923.

The Coca-Cola ‘6 pack’ was introduced. The famed curved bottle was made beginning in 1916. That specific curve is copyrighted, so no one else can use it. The Coca-Cola logo is written in the Spenserian font.

After the filming of the 1923 film The Ten Commandments, the set pieces, including 21 sphinxes, 35-foot statues and a set of gates 110 feet tall, were left to fall over and be buried by the wind. Most are still there, covered by sand in the desert near Santa Barbara County, California.

Frederick Banting discovered insulin in 1923; he refused to put his name on the patent. He felt it was unethical for a doctor to profit from a discovery that would save lives. Banting’s co-inventors, James Collip and Charles Best sold the insulin patent to the University of Toronto for $1.

Between 1869 and 1923, seven out of the eleven US Presidents were born in Ohio.

In 1923 the USPS instituted a requirement that all delivery addresses feature a mail-box or drop slot to reduce the time mail carriers waited at each door.

The single-year car model sales record has remained unbroken since 1923 when Ford sold 2,011,125 Model Ts.

Every Vegemite jar has come from the same factory in Melbourne, Australia, since 1923.

Gene Salazar, a professional golfer who signed a lifetime endorsement deal with Wilson in 1923 and collected paychecks for 75 years until he passed away in 1997.

A man calling himself “The Human Fly” asked county officials in Murfreesboro, TN if he could climb the courthouse unassisted. Given permission, the man completed his climb, but fell forty feet to his death as he started down. A collection of $12 was taken up for his burial.

In 1923 Goodyear Tire created a subsidiary known as the Goodyear Zeppelin Company to manufacture airships, and between 1923 and 1995, it made over three hundred zeppelins.

The Monroe Cheese Company invented Velveeta in 1923 to fix imperfect cheese wheels, which were unsellable and lost the company money. The smooth cheese product was made with leftover cheese bits and whey, a byproduct of the cheesemaking process.

John Cleese’s surname was changed in 1923 by his father, who believed that the original surname “Cheese” was embarrassing.

The Sacramento Kings are the oldest team in the NBA. The franchise was formed in 1923 as the Rochester Seagrams a semi-professional team from Rochester, New York.

When organized cheerleading began in 1898, it was an all-male activity. It wasn’t until 1923 that the University of Minnesota permitted the first female cheerleaders.

The record for the longest gap between Major League appearances is 22 years, held by Paul Schreiber. Having pitched earlier in 1923 for the Brooklyn Robins, Schreiber, now a coach for the Yankees, pitched two more games in 1945 to help out a roster depleted by World War II.

Two-Thirds of Soviet Men Born in 1923 Didn’t Survive World War II.

In 1914, the exchange rate of the German mark to the American dollar was about 4.2 to one. Nine years later, it was 4.2 trillion to one, thanks to hyperinflation. The price of a loaf of bread went from 250 marks in January 1923 to 200 trillion in November ’23.

During the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 in Japan, 44,000 residents who had sought refuge near Tokyo’s Sumida River were immolated in only a matter of minutes by a freak pillar of fire known as a ‘dragon twist.’

Frank Hayes became the first-ever jockey to win a horse race despite being dead. He died from a heart attack mid-race but somehow, his body stayed strapped onto the horse and he crossed the finish line in first place, beating 20-1 odds.

John Hertz, the owner of the Yellow Cab Company, bought Walter Jacob’s Chicago-based car rental company and renamed it after himself. The yellow/black Hertz logo is a carry-on from the Yellow Cab Company.

Skippy Peanut Butter was originally a merchandising gimmick for a comic strip called Skippy, which ran from 1923 to 1945.

Yankee Stadium – ‘The House That (Babe) Ruth Built’ was opened.

Lou Gehrig had a better batting average than Babe Ruth in each of the years 1923-25, but Ruth had a better batting average than Gehrig over the three years combined. This is an example of a mathematical curiosity called Simpson’s Paradox.

Delaware’s chicken industry can trace its origins to 1923 when an Ocean View, Delaware farm received 500 chicks instead of the 50 they ordered.

The Distress Call “Mayday – Mayday – Mayday” was first used by Frederick Stanley Mockford, a senior radio operator in London. Because most of the radio traffic was between London and Paris, Mayday comes from the French word “m’aider” in “Venez m’aider,” which means “come help me.”

Gene Salazar was a professional golfer who signed a lifetime endorsement deal with Wilson in 1923 and collected on it for 75 years until he passed away in 1997.

In 1914, the exchange rate of the German mark to the American dollar was about 4.2 to one. Nine years later, it was 4.2 trillion to one. The price of a loaf of bread went from 250 marks in January 1923 to 200 trillion in November ’23.

Joseph Goebbels attributed everything he knew about population control to just two books, Propaganda (1928) and Crystalizing Public Opinion (1923). Today, the techniques in these books are used extensively by figures in politics, media, and advertising.

To get women to smoke cigarettes in the 1920s, tobacco companies devised a campaign to equate cigarettes as “torches of freedom.” The campaign helped women smoking jump from 5% in 1923 to 18.1% in 1935.

An estimated 70/80% of Soviet males born in 1923 didn’t survive World War II.

The first American president to visit Canada was Warren Harding in 1923. He made a speech and played golf in Vancouver but contracted pneumonia and died a week later.

“American” was the official language of Illinois from 1923 to 1969.

One of Hubble’s most significant contributions was his observation and measurement of the Andromeda galaxy, also known as M31. In the 1920s, Hubble used the 100-inch telescope at the Mount Wilson Observatory in California to study the Andromeda galaxy in great detail. He discovered that Andromeda was a separate galaxy far outside our Milky Way galaxy.