This Year in History:
1919
Discover what happened in this year with HISTORY’s summaries of major events, anniversaries, famous births and notable deaths.
Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th president of the United States, dies at Sagamore Hill, his estate overlooking New York’s Long Island Sound. A dynamic and energetic politician, Theodore Roosevelt is credited with creating the modern presidency. As a young Republican, Roosevelt held a number of political posts in New York in the 1880s and ’90s and […]
The day after British Prime Minister David Lloyd George’s arrival in Paris, he meets with representatives from the other Big Four nations—Prime Ministers Georges Clemenceau of France and Vittorio Orlando of Italy and President Woodrow Wilson of the United States—at the French Foreign Ministry on the Quai d’Orsay, for the first of what will be […]
Fiery hot molasses floods the streets of Boston on January 15, 1919, killing 21 people and injuring scores of others. The molasses burst from a huge tank at the United States Industrial Alcohol Company building in the heart of the city. Listen to HISTORY This Week Podcast: The Great Boston Molasses Flood The United States Industrial […]
A coup launched in Berlin by a group of radical socialist revolutionaries is brutally suppressed by right-wing paramilitary units from January 10 to January 15, 1919; the group’s leaders, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, are murdered. Germany’s long, ultimately losing struggle on the battlefield—culminating in the signing of the armistice in November 1918—and dismal conditions […]
The 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, prohibiting the “manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors for beverage purposes,” is ratified by the requisite number of states on January 16, 1919. The movement for the prohibition of alcohol began in the early 19th century, when Americans concerned about the adverse effects of drinking began forming […]
On January 18, 1919, in Paris, France, some of the most powerful people in the world meet to begin the long, complicated negotiations that would officially mark the end of the First World War. Leaders of the victorious Allied powers—France, Great Britain, the United States and Italy—would make most of the crucial decisions in Paris […]
On January 25, 1919, in Paris, delegates to the peace conference formally approve the establishment of a commission on the League of Nations. U.S. President Woodrow Wilson insisted on chairing the commission—for him, the establishment of the League lay squarely at the center of the peace negotiations. He was supported by British Prime Minister David […]
On February 5, 1919, Hollywood heavyweights Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and D.W. Griffith joined forces to create their own film studio, which they called the United Artists Corporation. United Artists quickly gained prestige in Hollywood, thanks to the success of the films of its stars, notably Chaplin’s The Gold Rush (1925), as well as the […]
Habibullah Khan, the leader of Afghanistan who struggled to keep his country neutral in World War I in the face of strong internal support for Turkey and the Central Powers, is shot and killed while on a hunting trip on February 20, 1919. Habibullah had succeeded his father, Abd-ar-Rahman, as amir in 1901 and immediately […]
On this day in history, two national parks were established in the United States 10 years apart—the Grand Canyon in 1919 and the Grand Tetons in 1929. Located in northwestern Arizona, the Grand Canyon is the product of millions of years of excavation by the mighty Colorado River. The chasm is exceptionally deep, dropping more […]
Benito Mussolini, an Italian World War I veteran and publisher of Socialist newspapers, breaks with the Italian Socialists and establishes the nationalist Fasci di Combattimento, named after the Italian peasant revolutionaries, or “Fighting Bands,” from the 19th century. Commonly known as the Fascist Party, Mussolini’s new right-wing organization advocated Italian nationalism, had black shirts for […]
Emiliano Zapata, a leader of peasants and Indigenous people during the Mexican Revolution, is ambushed and shot to death in Morelos by government forces. Born a peasant in 1879, Zapata was forced into the Mexican army in 1908 following his attempt to recover village lands taken over by a rancher. After the revolution began in […]
In Amritsar, India’s holy city of the Sikh religion, British and Gurkha troops massacre at least 379 unarmed demonstrators meeting at the Jallianwala Bagh, a city park. Most of those killed were Indian nationalists meeting to protest the British government’s forced conscription of Indian soldiers and the heavy war tax imposed against the Indian people. […]
On April 19, 1919, the Saturday before Easter, tense and complicated negotiations begin at the Paris peace conference over Italy’s claims to territory in the former Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Italians must somehow be mollified, wrote Britain’s foreign secretary, Arthur Balfour, and the only question is how to mollify them at the smallest cost to mankind. […]
On May 5, 1919, the delegation from Italy—led by Prime Minister Vittorio Orlando and Foreign Minister Sidney Sonnino—returns to the Versailles Peace Conference in Paris, France, after leaving abruptly 11 days earlier during contentious negotiations over the territory Italy would receive after the First World War. Italy’s entrance into World War I on the side […]
On May 8, 1919, Edward George Honey, a journalist from Melbourne, Australia, living in London at the time, writes a letter to the London Evening News proposing that the first anniversary of the armistice ending World War I—concluded on November 11, 1918—be commemorated by several moments of silence. Honey, who briefly served in the British […]
During the second week of May 1919, the recently arrived German delegation to the Versailles Peace Conference, convened in Paris after the end of the First World War, pore over their copies of the Treaty of Versailles, drawn up in the months preceding by representatives of their victorious enemies, and prepare to lodge their objections […]
The 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, granting women the right to vote, is passed by Congress and sent to the states for ratification. The women’s suffrage movement was founded in the mid-19th century by women who had become politically active through their work in the abolitionist and temperance movements. In July 1848, 240 woman […]
On June 20, 1919, during the final days of the Versailles Peace Conference held in Paris, France, the German cabinet deadlocks over whether to accept the peace terms presented to its delegation by the other nations at the peace conference–most notably the Council of Four: France, Britain, the United States and Italy–and ratify the Versailles […]
At the Palace of Versailles outside Paris, Germany signs the Treaty of Versailles with the Allies, officially ending World War I. The English economist John Maynard Keynes, who had attended the peace conference but then left in protest of the treaty, was one of the most outspoken critics of the punitive agreement. In his The […]
