1923
Great Kantō Earthquake
A magnitude-7.9 earthquake struck the Kantō plain at noon, when charcoal cooking fires were lit across Tokyo and Yokohama. Firestorms consumed the wooden cities. A hundred and forty thousand died, many in the firestorm that swept the Rikugun Honjo clothing depot. Japan rebuilt Tokyo as a modern city. The old Edo was gone in an afternoon.
Ataturk founds the Turkish Republic
Out of the wreckage of the Ottoman Empire, Mustafa Kemal declared a republic with its capital at Ankara. Within a few years he would abolish the caliphate, ban the fez, adopt the Latin alphabet, and drag Turkey by force into Western modernity. His countrymen gave him the name Ataturk, father of the Turks.
Hitler's Beer Hall Putsch fails
In a Munich beer hall Adolf Hitler fired a pistol at the ceiling and declared a national revolution. The next day his Brownshirts marched into central Munich and the Bavarian police shot them down. Sixteen Nazis died. Hitler got five years, served nine months, and used the time to write Mein Kampf in a comfortable cell.
Time magazine founded
Two young Yale graduates, Henry Luce and Briton Hadden, launched a weekly news magazine written in a compressed, witty style that would become known as Timespeak. It filled a gap between the daily paper and the monthly quarterly. Luce's magazine empire would shape American middle-class opinion for half a century.
Great Kanto earthquake devastates Tokyo
At two minutes before noon a 7.9 tremor hit just as families lit charcoal cooking fires. Tokyo and Yokohama burned for three days; firestorms generated their own winds. More than a hundred thousand died. In the chaos, mobs hunted down and killed thousands of Koreans based on baseless rumors of poisoned wells.
Harding dies, Coolidge sworn in by oil lamp
President Warren Harding died suddenly in a San Francisco hotel while on a speaking tour; rumors of poisoning by his wife still circulate. Calvin Coolidge was sworn in as president by his father, a Vermont notary, by the light of a kerosene lamp in a farmhouse. It was the last inauguration of a president in a private home.
Typhoid Mary quarantined for life
Mary Mallon, an Irish-born cook who had infected dozens with typhoid while remaining an asymptomatic carrier, was confined to a North Brother Island cottage off the Bronx. She had been caught, released, and caught again. She stayed confined until her death in 1938. Public health had found its most famous and unwilling subject.
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Frequently asked
What happened in the year 1923?
Saeculum lists 7 curated events from 1923. The most significant is Great Kantō Earthquake: A magnitude-7.9 earthquake struck the Kantō plain at noon, when charcoal cooking fires were lit across Tokyo and Yokohama.
What era was 1923 part of?
1923 falls within the Modern Era (1901-2000). World wars, cold war, and the splitting of the atom.
Which regions saw notable events in 1923?
The curated events from 1923 span East Asia, Middle East, Europe and North America.