February 1930

[February 1], 1930 (Saturday)

• The Soviet Union continued its crackdown on kulaks as it issued a decree forbidding kulak households to sell their property and leave their district before authorities got around to expropriating their assets.
• A bomb was found at the British Museum, attributed to Indian nationalists.
• Born: Hussain Muhammad Ershad, politician, in Dinhata, British India

  [February 2], 1930 (Sunday)

• A controversial plaque was unveiled in Sarajevo honoring Gavrilo Princip, the assassin of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria. The plaque was located at the site of the assassination and bore an inscription saying that Princip had initiated liberty there on June 28, 1914. The Yugoslav government disavowed any connection to the plaque and said it was a private memorial.
• William Howard Taft resigned as Chief Justice of the United States due to failing health.

  [February 3], 1930 (Monday)

• The Communist Party of Vietnam was established by merger of the Communist Party of Indochina, the Communist Party of Annam and the Communist League of Indochina.
• President Herbert Hoover nominated Charles Evans Hughes to be the new Chief Justice of the United States.
• Died: Michele Bianchi, 46, Italian Fascist leader

  [February 4], 1930 (Tuesday)

• The Prussian Minister of the Interior Albert Grzesinski forbade members of subversive parties and organizations to hold leading positions in local government. The regulation was mainly aimed at Nazis and communists.
• The half-hour educational radio program The American School of the Air was first broadcast.

  [February 5], 1930 (Wednesday)

• Pascual Ortiz Rubio became President of Mexico. Two hours after taking the oath of office, a gunman fired six shots at the presidential car, wounding Rubio in the jaw. The assailant was quickly arrested.
• The World Figure Skating Championships ended in New York City. Sonja Henie of Norway won the ladies' competition for the fourth straight year, while Karl Schäfer of Austria won the men's competition.

  [February 6], 1930 (Thursday)

• Austria and Italy signed a treaty of friendship.
• The Bank of England lowered its discount rate from 5 to 4.5% to encourage trade; the Federal Reserve Bank of New York followed the same day with a reduction to 4.5 to 4%.
• The new Spanish government announced an amnesty for all political prisoners.
• Born: Allan King, film director, in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

  [February 7], 1930 (Friday)

• Vice President of Brazil Fernando de Melo Viana was shot three times and five others were killed in Montes Claros during violence ahead of the March 1 general election.
• The Opium Commission of the League of Nations adopted a global resolution that only enough opium would be produced as was necessary for medicinal purposes.
• Born: David Kahn, historian, journalist and writer, in New York City

  [February 8], 1930 (Saturday)

• Pope Pius XI published a letter in L'Osservatore Romano condemning the persecution of Christians in the Soviet Union.
• Born: Jim Dooley, American football player and coach, in Stoutsville, Missouri ; Alejandro Rey, actor and television director, in Buenos Aires, Argentina

  [February 9], 1930 (Sunday)

• A riot broke out at Vincennes race track in Paris when an angry crowd stormed the track and began tearing it down, believing that certain races were being fixed.
• Enrique Olaya Herrera won the Colombian presidential election.

  [February 10], 1930 (Monday)

• The Yên Bái mutiny occurred in French Indochina. The French crushed an uprising of Vietnamese soldiers against their officers.
• Born: Robert Wagner, actor, in Detroit, Michigan

  [February 11], 1930 (Tuesday)

• At the London Naval Conference, the United States and Britain proposed the abolition of submarines, but France and Japan resisted.

  [February 12], 1930 (Wednesday)

• At the Convocations of Canterbury and York, the Archbishop of Canterbury attacked the Soviet Union for "the imprisonment, the exile, the deliberate putting to death of prelates and parish priests, of monks and nuns, and of the humblest folk."
• Born: Arlen Specter, politician, in Wichita, Kansas

  [February 13], 1930 (Thursday)

• Charles Evans Hughes was confirmed as Chief Justice by the Senate, despite significant opposition from liberals.
• The film The Green Goddess, a talking remake of the 1923 silent film of the same name and starring George Arliss, was released.

  [February 14], 1930 (Friday)

• The engagement of Edda Mussolini and Galeazzo Ciano was announced.
• The Vatican sent a note to bishops and clergy around the world instructing them to deny rites such as holy communion, baptism and confirmation to women dressed in immodest attire.
• Died: Thomas Mackenzie, 75, Scottish-born New Zealand politician

  [February 15], 1930 (Saturday)

• The Soviet newspapers Izvestia and Pravda declared that foreign attacks on the government for its suppression of churches were part of a concerted international movement against the USSR.
• Born: Bruce Bolt, seismologist, in Largs, New South Wales, Australia ; Bruce Dawe, Australian poet, in Fitzroy, Victoria; Sara Jane Moore, attempted assassin of U.S. President Gerald Ford, in Charleston, West Virginia
• Died: Giulio Douhet, 60, Italian general and air power theorist; Heinrich Kanner, 65, Austrian author, journalist and newspaper editor; William Stearns Davis, 52, American educator, historian and author

  [February 16], 1930 (Sunday)

• Cairine Wilson was appointed to the Senate of Canada, the first female senator of the entire British Empire.
• Born: Peter Adamson, actor, in Allerton, Liverpool, England ; Noah Weinberg, rabbi, in Lower East Side, New York City

  [February 17], 1930 (Monday)

• André Tardieu resigned as Prime Minister of France after his government was defeated by six votes in the Chamber of Deputies. The defeat was over a minor bill involving the taxation of married women sharing a business with their husbands.

  [February 18], 1930 (Tuesday)

• Astronomer Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto.
• Representatives of the United States, Britain, Norway, the Netherlands and Brazil signed a pact in Nanjing bringing foreign lawyers under the jurisdiction and control of the Chinese government.
• The bodies of explorer Carl Ben Eielson and his mechanic Earl Borland were recovered from the site of their plane crash in Siberia. The plane went down on November 9 while trying to reach the stranded ship Nanuk.
• Elm Farm Ollie became the first cow to fly in an airplane, as part of the International Air Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri.
• Ho Chi Minh gives the speech "Appeal Made on the Occasion of the Founding of the Indochinese Communist Party" calling for a people's communist revolution.

  [February 19], 1930 (Wednesday)

• The London Naval Conference was adjourned for a week to give France time to form a new government.
• Born: John Frankenheimer, director, in Queens, New York

  [February 20], 1930 (Thursday)

• The 17th General Election of Japan was held. The Constitutional Democratic Party won a majority of seats.
• Born: Ken Jones, actor, in Liverpool, England

  [February 21], 1930 (Friday)

• Camille Chautemps became the new Prime Minister of France.
• Richard Luttrell Pilkington Bethell, 3rd Baron Westbury committed suicide by jumping from the seventh story window of his apartment. Believers in the supernatural attributed his death to the curse of Tutankhamun, as his son was an Egyptologist who had participated in the excavation of Tut's tomb and mysteriously died in his sleep in November 1929.
• Born: Joan Metge, social anthropologist, educator, lecturer and writer, in Auckland, New Zealand
• Died: Ahmad Shah Qajar, 32, Shah of Iran 1909–1925

  [February 22], 1930 (Saturday)

• Marking the fourteenth anniversary of the Battle of Verdun, a lighthouse was dedicated at the Douaumont Ossuary which would flash alternately a red and white light over the cemetery grounds.
• Born: James McGarrell, painter and printmaker, in Indianapolis, Indiana; Marni Nixon, soprano and playback singer, in Altadena, California

  [February 23], 1930 (Sunday)

• Sir Edwin Lutyens resigned from the Royal Institute of British Architects after endorsing an unpopular government plan to build a bridge across the Thames at Charing Cross.
• Died: Mabel Normand, 37, American film actress ; Horst Wessel, 22, German Nazi Party activist

  [February 24], 1930 (Monday)

• Chicago gangster Frank McErlane was wounded three times by the bullets of rival gang members as he lay in a hospital bed recovering from a fractured right leg sustained in a previous shootout. McErlane returned fire as he lay in bed with his leg in a cast and the two assailants fled.
• Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King said that he would immediately call a new federal election on the issue of the American tariff if the U.S. government boosted its tariff against Canada.
• The U.S. Supreme Court decided United States v. Wurzbach.
• Born: Joan Diener, actress and singer, in Columbus, Ohio ; Barbara Lawrence, writer, actress and model, in Carnegie, Oklahoma ; Anita Steckel, artist and feminist, in Brooklyn, New York

  [February 25], 1930 (Tuesday)

• The Camille Chautemps government fell on a confidence vote after less than a week in power. He had tried to form a left-wing coalition but the Socialist Party refused to support him when he vowed to continue the naval policy of the previous government at the London Conference instead of adopting a more conciliatory one.
• The British bill to abolish blasphemy as a crime was dropped.

  [February 26], 1930 (Wednesday)

• President of the Dominican Republic Horacio Vásquez fled Santo Domingo as rebel forces led by General Rafael Trujillo toppled his government.
• André Tardieu was asked by French President Gaston Doumergue to try to form a new government.

  [February 27], 1930 (Thursday)

• Prayers for former U.S. president William Howard Taft were broadcast across the nation as physicians frankly stated that he had been unconscious for most of the day and that there was no hope of recovery.
• The Fox Theatre in Visalia, California opened.
• Born: Peter Stone, writer, in Los Angeles ; John Straffen, serial killer, in Bordon Camp, Hampshire, England; Joanne Woodward, actress and producer, in Thomasville, Georgia

  [February 28], 1930 (Friday)

• Spain restored censorship of the press and imposed a ban on all public meetings and speeches in an attempt to suppress republican agitation.
• Born: Leon Cooper, physicist and Nobel Prize laureate, in New York City; Frank Malzone, baseball player, in the Bronx, New York
• Died: Perceval Maitland Laurence, 75, English scholar and judge; James H. Snook, 50, American athlete and veterinarian convicted of murder