The following events occurred in November 1925:
November 1, 1925 (Sunday) A mine explosion killed 17 miners near Gelsenkirchen in Germany. In British India, the Sikh Gurdwaras Act, 1925 went into effect, bringing the houses of worship of the Sikh religion (gurdwaras) under the control of an elected body of orthodox Sikhs and defining a Sikh adherent by a person who solemnly affirmed their belief in the Guru Granth Sahib and the Ten Gurus. The Buster Keaton film Go West opened. Died: Lester Cuneo, 37, American film actor and director; committed suicide with a gunshot to the head (b. 1888) Max Linder, 41, French actor and comedian; committed suicide along with his wife, Helene Peters Linder (b. 1883) The two had taken several doses of the barbiturate Veronal and several injections of morphine before slashing their wrists in their room at the Hotel Baltimore in Paris.
November 2, 1925 (Monday) A dam burst killed 16 people in the village of Dolgarrog in Wales after five days of heavy rains caused the Llyn Eigiau dam to fail. Water from a reservoir held back by the dam then flowed downhill to the Coedty Reservoir, which then burst its dam and swept away homes in the Conwy Valley community and inundated the village. The Victor Talking Machine Company, now part of RCA Victor, introduced breakthrough sound technology with the unveiling of its new electrically-recorded phonograph records, which could be played at their optimum level on the Victor Orthophonic Victrola phonograph. Starting price for the new Orthophonic was $95 (equivalent to almost $1,700 a century later). In Australia, about 100 police clashed with an estimated 1,000 striking seamen on the wharf in Fremantle. The confrontation began as the officers tried to board a ship that the strikers were trying to damage. About 100 people were arrested. The unidentified body of a young Polish Army soldier, killed in the Battle of Lemberg during the Polish-Ukrainian War, was interred in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier (Grób Nieznanego Żołnierza) in Warsaw. The operetta Princess Flavia opened on Broadway. The Emperor's Cup the championship tournament of Japanese soccer football, was won by defending champion Rijo Shukyu-Dan, 3 to 0 over the Tokyo Imperial University team.
November 3, 1925 (Tuesday) Jimmy Walker was elected as the 97th Mayor of New York City, to replace Mayor John Francis Hylan, whom he had defeated in the Democratic primary election on September 15. Walker easily defeated Republican nominee Frank D. Waterman in the general election. At the age of 21, film actress Constance Bennett married millionaire socialite Philip Morgan Plant in a hotel lobby in Greenwich, Connecticut. She would not make another film until they divorced in 1929. Born: George Eiferman, American bodybuilder and trainer; in Philadelphia, United States (d. 2002) Died: Lucile McVey, 35, American actress, part of the husband-and-wife comedy team Mr. & Mrs. Sidney Drew; died from cancer (b. 1890)
November 4, 1925 (Wednesday)
Italian Socialist deputy Tito Zaniboni, an expert marksman, was arrested in a room at the Dragoni Hotel, which he had reserved across from the Palazzo Chigi, with the intent of shooting Benito Mussolini with a telescopic-sight rifle when the Italian Prime Minister was scheduled to come out to the balcony to make a speech. Police had been tipped off by an phone call from an informant who had posed as a friend of Zaniboni, and broke into the hotel room after Zaniboni had set up a sniper's nest, but before Mussolini came out to the balcony. (Book on Internet Archive is only available to patrons with print disabilities) Elections were held in New Zealand for all 80 seats of the House of Representatives. The ruling Reform Party, led by Prime Minister Gordon Coates, won 56 seats, well more than the 41 needed for a majority
Born: Bobby Breen, Canadian-born American actor and singer; as Isadore Borsuk, in Montreal, Canada (d. 2016)The National Archives in Washington, DC; Washington, DC, USA; Petitions For Naturalization, U.s. District Court For the Central District of California (Los Angeles), 1940-1991; NAI Number: 594890; Record Group Title: Records of District Courts of the United States, 1685-2009; Record Group Number: Records of District Courts of the United States, 1685-2009 Doris Roberts, American actress and comedienne best known for Everybody Loves Raymond, for which she won four Emmy Awards for Best Supporting Actress; as Doris May Green, in St. Louis, Missouri, United States (d. 2016) Xhoni Athanas, Albanian-American operatic tenor; in Brockton, Massachusetts, United States (d. 2019) Helene Stanton, American singer, actress and operatic soprano; as Eleanor Mae Stansbury, in Philadelphia, United States (d. 2017)
November 5, 1925 (Thursday) The most popular film of 1925, The Big Parade, distributed by MGM and directed by King Vidor, premiered at Grauman's Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood. Produced on a budget of $400,000 and grossing 15 times that much in rentals and sales, The Big Parade realized a profit for MGM of more than five million dollars. The Italian language opera L'Orfeide, composed by Gian Francesco Malipiero and based upon the myth of Orpheus, was performed for the first time, premiering in Germany at the Opernhaus Düsseldorf. Died: Sidney Reilly, 51, Russian-born British spy for the Secret Service Bureau, Foreign Section; executed by the OGPU, the secret police of the Soviet Union (b. ) John Newport Langley, 73, British physiologist and neuroscientist known for proposing the concept of the parasympathetic nervous system and for coining the term "autonomic nervous system" (b. 1852)
November 6, 1925 (Friday) The election for President of Latvia was made by an electoral college in Riga. With 94 electors casting votes, and 48 needed for a majority, incumbent president Janis Cakste received only 29 votes, author Janis Plieksans had 33, and former prime minister Karlis Ulmanis 32. Plieskans withdrew from the race and on the second ballot, President Cakste was re-elected with 60 votes against 34 for Ulmanis. Kliment Voroshilov was appointed Soviet Union Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs following the death of Mikhail Frunze. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 159.39 points. This was the 65th record close of the calendar year 1925, a record in itself almost doubling the old mark of 34 record closes set in 1899. The record stood until 1995. Khai Dinh, the 40-year-old Emperor of Vietnam under the French Protectorate since 1916, died from tuberculosis at his home in the Imperial City of Huế. The task of governing Vietnam was then worked out by a convention between French colonial and Vietnamese leaders providing for a Vietnamese regency council (Hội đồng thượng thư) to decide domestic matters, and leaving most power with the French Cochinchina protectorate governor Maurice Cognacq and the French Indochina Governor-General, Alexandre Varenne. Khai Dinh was succeeded by his 12-year-old son, Prince Nguyen Phuc Vinh Thuy, who was formally enthroned on January 8 as the Emperor Bao Dai. The Sergei Prokofiev ballet Trapèze premiered in Germany at a theater in the town of Gotha. Born: Michel Bouquet, French film actor and winner of two César Awards for Best Actor for Comment j'ai tué mon père (2001) and Le Promeneur du Champ de Mars (2005); in Paris, France (d. 2022) Nan Winton, British broadcaster known for becoming the first female BBC national television newsreader in 1960; as Nancy Wigginton, in Southsea, Hampshire, England (d. 2019) Died: Khải Định, 40, Emperor of Vietnam from 1916 until his death; died of tuberculosis (b. 1885)
November 7, 1925 (Saturday) The Indian Hockey Federation (IHF), governing body for the sport of field hockey in India for almost 90 years, was founded in Gwalior (now in Madhya Pradesh). Within three years, the India men's national field hockey team would win the gold medal in the 1928 Summer Olympics. It would exist until it was replaced by Hockey India in 2009. Pittsburgh was granted a franchise by the National Hockey League. The club was named the Pirates, after the baseball team also based in the city. Several Italian opposition leaders were arrested in connection with the assassination attempt on Benito Mussolini. France announced that the remains of Manfred von Richthofen, "The Red Baron", would be disinterred from France and repatriated to Germany.
November 8, 1925 (Sunday) Parliamentary elections were held in Portugal for the 163 seats of the Câmara dos Deputados. With 82 seats needed for a majority, the Partido Democrático of Prime Minister Domingos Pereira gained nine to hold 83 seats, while the Partido Republicano Nacionalista of former premier António Maria da Silva lost 15 to win only 36 seats. The film The Eagle, starring Rudolph Valentino, was released.
German patent No. 442,057 for the "Rhönrad", a metal wheel used by gymnasts in the specialized sport of wheel gymnastics, was issued to Otto Feick. Born: Francisco Granizo, Ecuadorian poet; in Quito, Ecuador (d. 2009) Died: Domício da Gama, 63, Brazilian journalist and diplomat (b. 1862) Paul Héger, 78, Belgian chemist (b. 1846)
November 9, 1925 (Monday) Forces allied with Chinese warlord Wu Peifu of the Zhili clique defeated warlord Zhang Zuolin of the Fengtian clique after several days of fighting south of Xuzhou in Jiangsu province. The Kip Rhinelander divorce trial opened in White Plains, New York. Rhinelander was seeking an annulment of the marriage because his wife Alice had failed to inform him of her "colored" blood before the wedding. The trial was a significant media circus event at the time. The race film Body and Soul was released, directed by Oscar Micheaux and starring Paul Robeson in his film debut. Born: Fred Jordan, Austrian-born American publisher and business manager who fought for the publication of the original, uncensored versions, of numerous novels including Lady Chatterley's Lover, Tropic of Cancer, and The Naked Lunch; as Alfred Rotblatt, in Vienna, Austria (d. 2021)
November 10, 1925 (Tuesday) The Archbishop of Canterbury appointed a committee of six doctors and six clergymen to investigate the veracity of faith healing. Born: Richard Burton, Welsh stage and film actor, winner of a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical for Camelot, seven-time nominee for an Academy Award without winning; as Richard Walter Jenkins Jr., in Pontrhydyfen, Glamorgan (d. 1984)
November 11, 1925 (Wednesday) Howard Carter and an autopsy team began the unwrapping of the mummy of Pharaoh Tutankhamun. The process was exceedingly difficult due to the extreme fragility of the bandages and the resinous coating that held the mummy fast inside the sarcophagus. The Civil and Commercial Code of Thailand, codifying a common law for the civil cases in the Kingdom of Siam, was promulgated for use across the nation's courts, with the release of Books I and II. The Great White Train, part of a promotion by the Australia Made Preference League began a six-month tour of the state of New South Wales, lasting until May 20, 1926. With a locomotive pulling 19 cars (15 exhibition coaches, two passenger carriages, a sleeping car and a dining car), it was long and the longest train, up that time, to operate in Australia. The first tour of New South Wales made 61 stops after departing Sydney and running from Gosford to Granville. A second New South Wales tour of three months began the following spring on August 25, 1926. Hendrikus Colijn, Prime Minister of the Netherlands, announced his resignation along with his entire cabinet, though a new government would not be formed until four months later on March 8. Le Faisceau, a French Fascist party, was founded, consisting of about 10,000 members. The Czech language opera Šárka, written by Leoš Janáček in 1887 but never produced, was performed for the first time after 38 years, premiering at Brno at the Divadlo na Hradbách.
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