The month of August has been home to many historical events over the years. Here's a look at some that helped to shape the world in August 1924.
The month of August has been home to many historical events over the years. Here's a look at some that helped to shape the world in August 1924.
· Three people are killed and 10 others are injured when a boiler fire erupts on the French battleship Courbet on August 1. The Courbet survives the fire and is eventually utilized during World War II.
· Boca Raton, Florida, is incorporated as "Bocaratone" on August 2. The name is changed to "Boca Raton" less than a year later.
· John Carroll O'Connor is born on August 2 in Manhattan. O'Connor would become one of the most memorable television actors of all time, notably portraying "Archie Bunker" in the sitcoms "All in the Family" and "Archie Bunker's Place" in the 1970s and early 1980s.
· Berlin Jews hold a memorial service for Jewish soldiers who died during World War I on August 3. The Jewish service takes place after a Jewish preacher was forbidden from delivering a prayer during a similar service held outside the Reichstag commemorating German soldiers who died during the war.
· Women from six European nations compete in the first Women's International and British Games in London on August 4. The competition is held because track and field events at the Summer Olympics were limited to men only.
· Confidence man Charles Ponzi is released from prison in Plymouth, Massachusetts on August 6. Ponzi served less than four years of a five-year sentence for financial crimes.
· Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich of Russia, a first cousin of the late Tsar Nicholas II, declares himself "Guardian of the Throne" for the Russian Empire on August 8. Two years later, the Grand Duke would declare himself the emperor-in-exile.
· On August 10, Austrian police claim they discovered a Soviet slush fund for stirring up unrest and revolt in the Balkans.
· The earliest sound film footage of an American president is recorded on August 11 when Lee de Forest films U.S. President Calvin Coolidge on the White House lawn. De Forest uses his experimental Phonofilm process to make the recording.
· Andrew S. Anderson, the Democratic Party nominee for South Dakota Governor, is gored by a bull on his property on August 11. Anderson does not survive the attack.
· Former world middleweight title holder Kid McCoy shoots his lover, Teresa Mors, on August 12 in Los Angeles. McCoy, retired from boxing at the time of the shooting, shot Mors in a drunken rage after she told him what her friends thought of him.
· Anthropologist Margaret Mead arrives in Samoa on August 17. Mead proceeds to begin working on her book, Coming of Age in Samoa: A Psychological Study of Primitive Youth for Western Civilisation, which became a landmark text and sparked years of ongoing, intense debate upon its publication in 1928.
· Canadian mountaineers complete the first ascent of the 2,603-meters-tall Mount Fitzsimmons in British Columbia on August 19.
· United States Senator Nathaniel B. Dial and John J. McMahan, his challenger for the Democratic Party nomination in an upcoming election, are each arrested for disorderly conduct in South Carolina on August 20. Dial approached McMahan brandishing a chair during a campaign meeting that became contentious.
· On August 23, the planets Mars and Earth are the closest they had been since August 18, 1945. The two planets, which were the equivalent of around 34.6 million miles from one another, would not be as close again until August 2003.
· On August 26, The Montreal Star publishes an interview with American automotive executive Henry Ford in which the industrialist claims the Ku Klux Klan was a patriotic organization and "a victim of lying propaganda."
·Director John Ford's first major film, "The Iron Horse," premieres in New York City on August 28.