1926: 100 years ago &#8211; life in the U.S., entertainment, famous firsts, more

CLEVELAND, Ohio – The year 1926 was notable in many ways, from a handful of famous firsts, birthdays, deaths, cost of living and much more.

This is the 13th year we have dived back 100 years, researching famous firsts, milestones and more. (Links to all of our previous stories by year are at the bottom, along with sources.)

Coming Tuesday, Jan. 6: 1926 in sports

Here’s a look at life in 1926:

Happy 100!

Looking to join the centenarian club this year:

• British biologist/naturalist David Attenborough

• Comedian-writer Mel Brooks

Born in 1926 …

• African-American civil-rights leader Ralph Abernathy

• Musician Chuck Berry

• Bluesman John Coltrane

Each January we do a 100-year-lookback. Here’s a snapshot of what life was like in 1926 – in Cleveland, Ohio, the United States and the world, from entertainment to news, disasters and more. — Jazz great Miles DavisAssociated Press

• Jazz artist Miles Davis

• Economist and former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan

• Comedian Jerry Lewis

• “Twilight Zone” writer Richard Matheson

• Actress Marilyn Monroe, who was born Norma Jeane Mortenson

• Comedian Don Rickles

• Native American ballerina Marjorie Tallchief

… died in 1926

• Bessie Colman, American aviator and first African-American woman and Native American to hold a pilot’s license, in a plane crash. She was 34.

• Escape artist Harry Houdini

• Robert Todd Lincoln, son of President Abraham Lincoln

• Artist Claude Monet

• Louisa Kirwan Capron Thiers, believed to have been the last surviving Real Daughter of the American Revolution. She was 111 and died in Milwaukee.

• Silent-movie idol Rudolph Valentino

Life in the United States

Calvin Coolidge is president. Charles G. Dawes is vice president.

Republicans hold a slight majority in the 69th Congress with 54 seats.

William Howard Taft is chief justice.

The nation’s population is about 117.4 million. Today it’s around 342 million.

The country has 48 states. It would be another 33 years before the final two are added.

Unemployment is 1.8%. Today it is around 4.5% to 4.8%.

A stamp costs 2 cents. Consider that today it’s 78 cents!

The U.S. numbered highway system is introduced. The famed U.S. Route 66 is established.

The Ford Model T is the most popular car. Nearly half of all automobile sales from 1920 to 1926 are of the model. It sold for $260 – about $4,700 today.

Norma Smallwood – 5 feet, 4 inches and 18 years old – becomes the first Native American and first person from Oklahoma to become Miss America. It’s a lucrative booty: She received a $5,000 gold cup, vaudeville contract, $1,000 watch, $1,000 wardrobe and a statue of a mermaid – go figure on the last item.

The North Side Gang tries to assassinate rival Al Capone in Cicero, Illinois. More than a thousand submachine-gun rounds were fired into a restaurant in daylight; Capone survived.

Henry Ford popularizes the eight-hour, five-day work week. More than a decade later, it becomes law.

On Christmas Eve, Wheaties airs what is believed to be the first-ever radio commercial singing jingle.

Thomas Edison, who invented the record player, among other devices, says: “The radio is a commercial failure, and its popularity with the public is waning. Radio is impractical commercially and esthetically distorted. … Radio is a highly complicated machine in the hands of people who know nothing about it.” Wonder what he would say about social media today.

The Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) is administered for the first time.

National Broadcasting Corp. – NBC – radio network is launched.

The two-man comedy series “Sam ‘n’ Henry” debuts on Chicago’s WGN radio. Two years later it would change its name to what it is remembered by: “Amos ‘n’ Andy.” It was one of the most popular radio programs in American history. Its creators, Freeman Gosden and Charles Carrell, were white, but the characters they portrayed were Black men from the Deep South who had moved to Chicago.

Father Coughlin begins his radio broadcasts from Detroit, becoming one of the first to use the medium for his messages which, over time, changed its tone from an emphasis on social justice to more divisive opinions.

Silent-movie star Rin Tin Tin makes $6,000 a month. Not bad for a dog.

Land on Wall Street and Broadway sells for a record $7 per square inch.

In 1926, 75 percent of new-vehicle purchases are financed. The concept of financing soon expands to appliances.

Philadelphia hosts the Sesquicentennial International Exposition, a world’s fair, to mark the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence’s signing.

Ethylene glycol is first used as automotive antifreeze.

The Air Corps Act of 1926 changes the name of the Air Service to Air Corps. In August, the Army established the Air Corps Training Center in San Antonio.

Bertha Knight Landes becomes mayor of Seattle. She is the first female mayor of a major U.S. city.

Chrysler Corp. has its first full year of business, expanding its line of automobiles.

Ham in a can! Hormel Co. begins selling canned ham.

Life in Cleveland and Ohio

Construction begins on the Terminal Tower.

On Jan. 1, a Cleveland dealership is selling used cars, models 1921 to 1924, starting at $100.

The village of Broadview Heights is incorporated.

The famed comedy duo of George Burns and Gracie Allen marry Jan. 7, in Northeast Ohio.

Alvin Victor Donahey is governor. He served three terms. He and his wife Mary Edith had 12 kids.

Republicans Frank B. Willis and Simeon D. Fess are Ohio’s U.S. Senators.

World affairs

Population is around 2 billion. Today it’s about 8.1 billion.

Britain’s miners walk out. Workers from other industries show solidarity, and it becomes the first general strike in Britain. The number of strikers would reach 1.5 million.

French pilot Rene Fonck goes after the Orteig Prize, which was pledged for a non-stop flight across the Atlantic. Fonck’s plane burst into flames upon takeoff; he lived. Eight months later, Charles Lindbergh won the prize for his famed flight aboard the “Spirit of St. Louis.”

After his father’s death, Hirohito becomes emperor of Japan.

The Rhine River overflows, causing 50,000 residents of Cologne, Germany, to be evacuated by the military.

Deutsche Luft Hansa – a forerunner of Lufthansa airliner – is founded in Berlin.

Godiva (Belgium) and Mercedes-Benz (Germany) are founded.

Eureka!

Robert H. Goddard launches the first liquid-fuel rocket.

Roald Amundsen and crew fly over the North Pole in the airship Norge. It is the first verified crossing of the Arctic. Days later, they landed in Alaska, and the Norge was dismantled to be shipped to Italy for repairs. That never happened; it never flew again. (Also in 1926: Richard E. Byrd claimed to fly over the pole first, but it was debunked; an oil leak forced him to turn around sooner.)

Scottish inventor John Logie Baird gives the first public demonstration of a television system in London.

Herbert Sellner invents the Tilt-a-whirl. The ride with nine cars, which held two passengers each, first appeared at the Minnesota State Fair. Rides cost 15 cents.

The overhead garage door was invented a few years earlier, but C.G. Johnson – who founded the Overhead Door Corp. – introduces the electric garage door opener.

Engineer Francis Davis introduces a practical version of power steering. The concept, though, would take decades before it was used widely.

Entertainment

Dance pioneer Martha Graham gives her first New York performance. A vanguard in choreography, her name remains one of the most iconic in dance.

In December, English writer Agatha Christie disappears for 11 days. She would never explain the disappearance. Theories ranged from stress to a purported stunt.

Two classics of literature are published: A.A. Milne’s seminal children’s book “Winnie-the-Pooh” and Ernest Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises.”

Paul Whiteman’s “Valencia” spends 17 weeks atop the U.S. Billboard charts. Also out this year: Gene Austin’s “Bye Bye, Blackbird,” which was No. 1 for 12 weeks.

Disasters

A hurricane slams Miami Beach in the early hours of Sept. 18. Florida author Marjory Stoneman Douglas would write: “Miami Beach was isolated in a sea of raving white water.” The hurricane was considered the nation’s greatest natural disaster since the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. Taking in consideration fatalities in other cities, 243 people were killed, 854 hospitalized, 2,000 homes destroyed and 3,000 damaged. Approximately 25,000 to 47,000 people became homeless.

Twenty bandits hijack and loot the Guadalajara-Mexico City train. Dozens are stabbed to death in the bloody attack.

An explosion on the Chinese troop-transport ship Kuang Yuang kills 1,200.

The Pabst Mine disaster occurs in Ironwood in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. A mine shaft collapsed, killing three workers. Days later, 43 trapped miners were rescued.

An open light ignites gas, causing an explosion in a Wilburton, Oklahoma, mine, killing 91 miners.

Honors

The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to Aristide Briand and Gustav Stresemann for their work on the Locarno Treaty, which aimed to create peace in post-World War I Europe.

Sinclair Lewis’ “Arrowsmith” wins the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. It’s about an idealistic doctor whose integrity battles the forces of commercialism.

George Kelly’s drama “Craig’s Wife,” about a woman who values possessions over her husband, wins the Pulitzer Prize for drama.

Italian Grazia Deledda, who was first published at age 13 before the turn of the century, wins the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Historian-author Carter G. Woodson wins the Spingarn Medal, an annual NAACP award honoring outstanding achievement by an African-American.

Colleges opened

• Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (originally founded as Lunken Field in Cincinnati)

• Long Island University – Brooklyn, New York

• Mercyhurst University – Erie, Pennsylvania

Sources

66carmuseum.com, britannica.com, bloomberg.com, bls.gov, case.edu, census.gov, charleslindbergh.com, cleveland.com, coolidgefoundation.org, crankshaft.com, dafhistory.af.mil, erau.edu, ewa.org, findagrave.com, frammuseum.no, historic-newspapers.com, historic-uk.com, history.com, hormelfoods.com, infoplease.com, jimramsburg.com, lakewoodgaragedoor.biz, loc.gov, losttables.com, manifold.umn.edu, masterauto.tech, minnpost.com, motorsportmemorial.org, nbcuniversal.com, nga.org, nobelprize.org, ohiosos.gov, okhistory.org, onthisday.com, pawsh-magazine.com, pbs.org, philadelphiaencyclopedia.org, skateguardblog.com, Smithsonian Channel via Facebook, thegreenpapers.com, theinventors.org, The Plain Dealer, The World Almanac, trove.nla.gov.au, usminedisasters.miningquiz.com, www2.sos.wa.gov