1922

Events in 1922 75

• 1299 – 1922 The Ottoman Empire (1299–1922) The Ottoman Empire endured for 623 years -- from Osman I's declaration of independence from the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum in 1299 to the abolition of the sultanate by the Grand National Assembly of Turkey on 1 November 1922. At its height under Suleiman the Magnificent (1520-1566) it controlled three continents: southeastern Europe from Hungary to the Aegean, Anatolia and the Middle East from Mesopotamia to Yemen, and North Africa from Egypt to Algeria. It was the successor to Byzantium, the inheritor of Rome's eastern legacy, the protector of the Islamic holy cities and the dominant power of the Mediterranean world for three centuries. Its capital Constantinople -- renamed Istanbul -- became again the greatest city between Vienna and Beijing.
• 1839 – 1922 Reform & Collapse (1839–1922) The final 83 years of Ottoman history are the most dramatic -- a race between modernisation and disintegration that the empire ultimately loses. The Tanzimat reforms (1839-1876) attempt to create a modern centralised state with equal rights for all subjects. The Constitutional period (1876, 1908) produces two parliaments. But the Balkan Wars (1912-1913) strip the empire of nearly all its European territory; the First World War (1914-1918) destroys it; the Armenian Genocide (1915-1923) kills over a million people; and Ataturk's War of Independence (1919-1922) produces the Turkish Republic from the ruins. The sultanate is abolished on 1 November 1922.
• 1847 – 1922 Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922) Died 2 August 1922, aged 75 Alexander Graham Bell, the Scottish-born inventor credited with patenting the first practical telephone, died at his estate in Nova Scotia, Canada. He also contributed to work on hydrofoils, aeronautics, and hearing devices for the deaf. Telephone service across North America was briefly stopped in his honor at his funeral.
• 1854 – 1922 Pope Benedict XV (1854-1922) Died 22 January 1922, aged 67 Pope Benedict XV, born Giacomo della Chiesa, died in Rome of pneumonia. His papacy was dominated by efforts to keep the Vatican neutral during the First World War and to provide humanitarian relief. He was succeeded by Pope Pius XI.
• 1864 – 1922 Nellie Bly (1864-1922) Died 27 January 1922, aged 57 Nellie Bly, the American journalist famous for her 1889-90 race around the world in emulation of Around the World in Eighty Days and for her undercover exposé of a New York asylum, died of pneumonia in New York City. She was a pioneer of investigative journalism. Her real name was Elizabeth Cochrane.
• 1870 – 1922 Marie Lloyd (1870-1922) Died 7 October 1922, aged 52 Marie Lloyd, one of the most popular British music hall performers of her era, died in London days after collapsing on stage during a performance. Known for songs laced with innuendo, she was a defining figure of Victorian and Edwardian popular entertainment. Her funeral drew huge crowds of mourners.
• 1871 – 1922 Marcel Proust (1871-1922) Died 18 November 1922, aged 51 Marcel Proust, the French novelist best known for In Search of Lost Time, died in Paris of pneumonia and complications from asthma. He had spent his final years largely confined to a cork-lined room writing the multi-volume work. It remains one of the most influential novels of the twentieth century.
• 1874 – 1922 Ernest Shackleton (1874-1922) Died 5 January 1922, aged 47 Ernest Shackleton, the Anglo-Irish Antarctic explorer who led the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, died of a heart attack aboard his ship Quest off South Georgia at the start of a new expedition. He was buried on the island at his wife's request. He is remembered chiefly for the survival of his entire crew after the loss of the Endurance in 1915.
• 1881 – 1922 Enver Pasha (1881-1922) Died 4 August 1922, aged 40 Enver Pasha, the Ottoman military and political leader who had been a principal architect of the empire's entry into the First World War, was killed in battle near Dushanbe while leading Basmachi forces against the Red Army in Central Asia. He had fled Turkey after the empire's defeat and sought to build a pan-Turkic movement. His death ended one of the more dramatic post-war careers among former Ottoman leaders.
• 1890 – 1922 Michael Collins (1890-1922) Died 22 August 1922, aged 31 Michael Collins, a leading figure in the Irish independence movement and negotiator of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, was shot dead in an ambush at Beal na Bla, County Cork, during the Irish Civil War. He had been commander-in-chief of the Free State's National Army. His death made him one of the most enduring martyr figures of modern Irish history.
• 1919 – 1922 Ataturk and the War of Independence Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk) organises Turkish nationalist resistance to the Allied partition of Anatolia following WWI, defeating Greek, Armenian and French forces in the Turkish War of Independence (1919-1922). The victory is celebrated as the salvation of the Turkish homeland. The sultanate is abolished (1 November 1922); the caliphate follows (3 March 1924). The Republic of Turkey is proclaimed on 29 October 1923 with Ankara as its capital. Ataturk's radical westernisation programme -- alphabet reform, secularism, women's suffrage -- transforms Turkey into a modern nation-state.
• 1922 – 1969 Jack Kerouac (1922-1969) Died 21 October 1969, aged 47 Jack Kerouac was an American novelist and a leading figure of the Beat Generation, best known for his novel On the Road. He died of an abdominal hemorrhage linked to years of heavy drinking on 21 October 1969.
• 1922 – 1977 Janani Luwum (1922-1977) Died 16 February 1977, aged 55 Janani Luwum was the Anglican Archbishop of Uganda and an outspoken critic of Idi Amin's human rights abuses. He died in state custody in circumstances the government called a car accident, widely believed to have been an execution.
• 1922 – 1969 Judy Garland (1922-1969) Died 22 June 1969, aged 47 Judy Garland was an American actress and singer best known for her role as Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. She died of an accidental barbiturate overdose in London on 22 June 1969.
• 1922 – 2023 Norman Lear (1922-2023) Died 5 December 2023, aged 101 American television producer whose All in the Family and Maude brought race, politics and class into American sitcoms.
• 1922 Tutankhamun tomb discovered Tutankhamun tomb discovered Howard Carter uncovered the steps to Tutankhamun's tomb in the Valley of the Kings on 4 November 1922, after six seasons funded by Lord Carnarvon. It was the only near-intact royal tomb found in Egypt, holding more than 5,000 objects. Carnarvon's death a few months later gave the world the story of the pharaoh's curse.
• 1922 Tutankhamun's tomb Howard Carter discovers it Howard Carter discovered the nearly intact tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun in Egypt's Valley of the Kings in November 1922.
• 1922 – 1973 Veronica Lake (1922-1973) Died 7 July 1973, aged 50 American actress Veronica Lake, known for her peek-a-boo hairstyle and film noir roles in the 1940s, died of hepatitis and kidney failure in Vermont after struggling with alcoholism in her later years.
• 1922 Australian Open 1922 Men: James Anderson · Women: Mall Molesworth First women's Australian Championships. Mall Molesworth became the inaugural women's champion.
• 1922 Insulin First Used to Treat Diabetes Leonard Thompson becomes the first patient successfully treated On 11 January 1922 a purified insulin extract, developed by Frederick Banting, Charles Best, and James Collip at the University of Toronto, was used to treat 14-year-old diabetic patient Leonard Thompson. The treatment dramatically lowered his blood sugar and marked the first effective therapy for type 1 diabetes. Banting and colleague John Macleod received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine later that year.
• 1922 – 1994 Telly Savalas (1922-1994) Died 22 January 1994, aged 72 Telly Savalas, the American actor best known for playing the lollipop-loving detective Kojak on television, died of prostate cancer in Los Angeles. The role made him one of the most recognizable TV stars of the 1970s.
• 1922 Ulysses Published James Joyce's novel appears in Paris Sylvia Beach's Shakespeare and Company published James Joyce's Ulysses in Paris on 2 February 1922, Joyce's fortieth birthday. The novel's stream-of-consciousness technique and explicit content made it one of the most influential and controversial works of modernist literature. It was banned in the United States and Britain for years afterward.
• 1922 Reader's Digest First Published DeWitt and Lila Wallace launch a condensed-article magazine The first issue of Reader's Digest, founded by DeWitt Wallace and Lila Bell Wallace, appeared in February 1922 in New York. It republished condensed versions of articles from other magazines and grew into one of the best-selling magazines in the world. Its accessible format influenced popular publishing for decades.
• 1922 Washington Naval Treaty Signed Major powers agree to limit capital ship tonnage The United States, Britain, Japan, France, and Italy signed the treaty on 6 February 1922 at the Washington Naval Conference, fixing ratios for battleship and aircraft carrier tonnage among the signatories. It was the first arms-control agreement to limit naval construction. It slowed a costly naval arms race for over a decade.
• 1922 – 2010 Kathryn Grayson (1922-2010) American soprano and actress, the leading lady of MGM's operetta-style musicals.
• 1922 Egyptian Independence Declared Britain ends its protectorate over Egypt On 28 February 1922 the United Kingdom unilaterally declared Egypt an independent sovereign state, ending the protectorate imposed in 1914. Sultan Fuad I took the title of King of Egypt. Britain retained control over the Suez Canal, defense, and Sudan under reserved powers.
• 1922 Nosferatu Premieres F. W. Murnau's unauthorized Dracula adaptation opens in Berlin Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens, directed by F. W. Murnau, premiered in Berlin on 4 March 1922. An unlicensed adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula, it became a landmark of German Expressionist cinema despite a lawsuit from Stoker's estate that nearly resulted in all prints being destroyed. It remains one of the most influential horror films ever made.
• 1922 – 2008 Cyd Charisse (1922-2008) American dancer and actress, partner of Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly in MGM's great musicals.
• 1922 Gandhi Sentenced to Six Years' Imprisonment The Great Trial follows the non-cooperation movement Mohandas Gandhi was convicted of sedition on 18 March 1922 for articles written during his non-cooperation campaign against British rule in India, and was sentenced to six years in prison. He used the trial to indict British rule in India before the court. He was released early in February 1924 following an appendectomy.
• 1922 – 2019 Doris Day (1922-2019) American actress and singer, one of the biggest box-office stars of the 1950s and 1960s and later a leading animal-welfare campaigner.
• 1922 – 1999 Julius Nyerere (1922-1999) Died 14 October 1999, aged 77 Julius Nyerere led Tanganyika, later Tanzania, to independence and served as its first president for more than two decades. He was a prominent advocate of African socialism and Pan-Africanism, promoting the philosophy of Ujamaa. He died of leukemia in London.
• 1922 – 1995 Kingsley Amis (1922-1995) Died 22 October 1995, aged 73 Kingsley Amis was a British novelist and poet best known for his comic novel Lucky Jim, a landmark of postwar English fiction. He wrote more than twenty novels and won the Booker Prize in 1986 for The Old Devils. His son Martin Amis also became a prominent novelist.
• 1922 Treaty of Rapallo Signed Germany and Soviet Russia restore diplomatic relations Germany and Soviet Russia signed the Treaty of Rapallo on 16 April 1922, renouncing territorial and financial claims against each other and normalizing diplomatic relations. Both states were isolated after the First World War, and the treaty included secret military cooperation clauses. It alarmed the Western Allies, who had excluded Soviet Russia from the Genoa Conference then underway.
• 1922 – 2017 Barbara Hale (1922-2017) American actress, Della Street in Perry Mason.
• 1922 – 1987 Alistair MacLean (1922-1987) Died 2 February 1987, aged 64 MacLean was a Scottish novelist known for adventure thrillers including The Guns of Navarone and Where Eagles Dare, several of which were adapted into major films. He was one of the best-selling authors of the twentieth century. He died in Munich, West Germany.
• 1922 – 2009 Bea Arthur (1922-2009) Died 25 April 2009, aged 86 Arthur was an American actress best known for starring roles in the television sitcoms Maude and The Golden Girls, winning Emmy Awards for both. Her deep voice and comic timing made her one of television's most recognizable performers. She also had an extensive career on the Broadway stage.
• 1922 – 2015 Christopher Lee (1922-2015) Died 7 June 2015, aged 93 Christopher Lee was an English actor known for playing Count Dracula in a series of Hammer horror films and later Saruman in The Lord of the Rings and Count Dooku in Star Wars. He appeared in over 280 films across a career spanning seven decades. Lee was knighted in 2009 for services to drama and charity.
• 1922 – 2001 Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001) Died 4 February 2001, aged 78 Xenakis was a composer and architect who applied mathematical models, game theory and probability to music. Trained as an engineer, he worked with Le Corbusier before turning to composition. Works such as Metastaseis reshaped ideas of orchestral texture.
• 1922 – 1992 Denholm Elliott (1922-1992) Died 6 October 1992, aged 70 Denholm Elliott was an English character actor known for roles in "Chariots of Fire," "A Room with a View," and the Indiana Jones films. He won two consecutive BAFTA Awards for Best Supporting Actor in the mid-1980s. He died of AIDS-related tuberculosis at his home in Ibiza.
• 1922 – 2013 Eleanor Parker (1922-2013) American actress with three Oscar nominations, remembered as the Baroness in The Sound of Music.
• 1922 Irish Civil War Begins Pro- and anti-Treaty forces clash at the Four Courts Fighting broke out on 28 June 1922 when the new National Army shelled anti-Treaty IRA forces occupying the Four Courts in Dublin. The conflict split former allies over the Anglo-Irish Treaty and the partition it entailed. It continued into 1923 and claimed the lives of many leading revolutionary figures, including Michael Collins.
• 1922 League of Nations Confirms British Mandate for Palestine Mandate terms are formally approved The League of Nations Council approved the terms of the British Mandate for Palestine on 24 July 1922, incorporating the 1917 Balfour Declaration's support for a Jewish national home. The mandate also covered Transjordan, administered separately. It took effect the following September and shaped the region's politics for the next quarter century.
• 1922 – 2000 Jason Robards (1922-2000) Died 26 December 2000, aged 78 Jason Robards was an American actor closely identified with the plays of Eugene O'Neill, especially Long Day's Journey into Night and The Iceman Cometh. He won consecutive Academy Awards for All the President's Men and Julia, playing editor Ben Bradlee and the writer Dashiell Hammett. He survived a near-fatal car crash in 1972.
• 1922 – 1985 Philip Larkin (1922-1985) Died 2 December 1985, aged 63 Larkin was an English poet whose collections, including The Whitsun Weddings and High Windows, made him one of the most admired British poets of the postwar era. He died in Hull, England, on 2 December 1985.
• 1922 – 2010 Howard Zinn (1922-2010) Died 27 January 2010, aged 87 Zinn was an American historian and political scientist best known for his book A People's History of the United States, which presented American history from the perspective of marginalized groups. He was also a longtime civil rights and anti-war activist. He died of a heart attack while traveling in California.
• 1922 He enlists as Aircraftman Ross Uxbridge, United Kingdom At the height of his fame, Lawrence joined the RAF as a private under the name John Hume Ross, having been turned down at first for failing the medical. He wanted anonymity and the routine of the ranks.
• 1922 – 2000 Vittorio Gassman (1922-2000) Died 29 June 2000, aged 77 Vittorio Gassman was a leading Italian actor of stage and screen, a commanding classical performer who also starred in "commedia all'italiana" films such as Il Sorpasso and Big Deal on Madonna Street. He worked with directors including Dino Risi and Robert Altman. Italians knew him simply as "il Mattatore".
• 1922 – 2007 Yvonne De Carlo (1922-2007) Canadian-American actress, star of exotic 1940s adventures and Lily Munster in The Munsters.
• 1922 – 2014 Sid Caesar (1922-2014) Died 12 February 2014, aged 91 Sid Caesar, the pioneering comedian whose sketch show "Your Show of Shows" helped define early American television comedy, died in California. His writing staff over the years included Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner and Neil Simon. He was regarded as one of the founding figures of TV comedy.
• 1922 Great Fire of Smyrna The city burns amid the end of the Greco-Turkish War A fire devastated the Greek and Armenian quarters of Smyrna (modern Izmir) between 13 and 22 September 1922, days after Turkish nationalist forces retook the city at the close of the Greco-Turkish War. Tens of thousands of civilians died, and hundreds of thousands fled by sea. The event accelerated the population exchange between Greece and Turkey formalized the following year.
• 1922 Chanak Crisis Britain and Turkey come to the brink of war over the Straits In September 1922 Turkish nationalist forces advancing toward the neutral zone at Chanak (Canakkale) brought Britain and Turkey close to renewed war. British public and dominion reluctance to fight forced the government to seek a negotiated settlement. The crisis was resolved by the Armistice of Mudanya on 11 October 1922 and contributed to the fall of Lloyd George's government.
• 1922 – 2011 Jackie Cooper (1922-2011) American actor and director, the youngest Best Actor nominee ever and later Perry White in Superman.
• 1922 – 2000 Emil Zatopek (1922-2000) Died 22 November 2000, aged 78 The Czech distance runner Emil Zatopek won three gold medals at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics, taking the 5,000 metres, the 10,000 metres and, at his first attempt at the distance, the marathon. Known for his agonised style, he set eighteen world records. He was demoted to labouring work after backing the 1968 Prague Spring.
• 1922 Constantine I of Greece Abdicates Defeat in the Greco-Turkish War forces his second exile King Constantine I abdicated the Greek throne on 27 September 1922 following a military revolt that blamed him for the catastrophic defeat in the Greco-Turkish War. His son succeeded him as George II. Constantine went into exile in Italy and died there four months later.
• 1922 The Waste Land Published T. S. Eliot's poem appears in The Criterion T. S. Eliot's long poem The Waste Land was first published in October 1922 in the British literary magazine The Criterion, which Eliot had just founded. Its fragmented structure and bleak postwar imagery made it a landmark of modernist poetry. It was published as a book with explanatory notes later the same year.
• 1922 – 2025 Chen Ning Yang (1922-2025) Died 18 October 2025, aged 103 Chinese-born American theoretical physicist who shared the 1957 Nobel Prize for Physics for showing that parity is violated in certain particle decays.
• 1922 BBC Founded The British Broadcasting Company begins operations The British Broadcasting Company was formed on 18 October 1922 by a group of radio manufacturers to provide a national broadcasting service. It began daily radio broadcasts from London later that year. It was reconstituted as the publicly owned British Broadcasting Corporation in 1927.
• 1922 March on Rome Rise of Fascism The organized mass demonstration which resulted in Benito Mussolini and the Fascist Party ascending to power.
• 1922 Bonar Law Becomes British Prime Minister Lloyd George's coalition collapses Andrew Bonar Law became Prime Minister on 23 October 1922 after Conservative backbenchers voted at the Carlton Club to end their party's coalition with David Lloyd George, who resigned the same week. Bonar Law led a Conservative government and called a general election the following month. Ill health forced his resignation within a year.
• 1922 – 2014 Ruby Dee (1922-2014) Died 11 June 2014, aged 91 Ruby Dee, the actress and civil rights activist known for "A Raisin in the Sun" and "Do the Right Thing," died in New York. She and her husband Ossie Davis were prominent figures in both the entertainment industry and the civil rights movement. She received an Academy Award nomination late in her career for "American Gangster."
• 1922 – 2005 Barbara Bel Geddes (1922-2005) American actress, Broadway's first Maggie the Cat, Midge in Vertigo and Miss Ellie in Dallas.
• 1922 – 1943 Mussolini takes power Fascist era begins Benito Mussolini established a fascist dictatorship while Italy remained formally a monarchy.
• 1922 Abolition of the Sultanate -- 1 November 1922 The Grand National Assembly of Turkey abolishes the Ottoman Sultanate on 1 November 1922, separating the sultanate from the caliphate. Mehmed VI, the last sultan, flees Constantinople on a British warship on 17 November 1922. His cousin Abdulmecid II becomes the last caliph until the caliphate too is abolished in March 1924. The Ottoman Empire -- 623 years after Osman I's declaration of independence -- ceases to exist. Its territory is divided among Turkey, the British and French mandates of the Middle East, and the new Balkan states. The empire's legacy shapes the Middle East to the present day.
• 1922 – 2001 Christiaan Barnard (1922-2001) Died 2 September 2001, aged 78 Barnard was the surgeon who performed the first human-to-human heart transplant, in Cape Town in December 1967. The patient lived 18 days, and the operation made Barnard an international celebrity. He continued transplant work until arthritis ended his surgical career.
• 1922 – 1965 Dorothy Dandridge (1922-1965) American actress and singer, the first African American woman nominated for the Oscar for Best Actress.
• 1922 – 2002 Kim Hunter (1922-2002) American actress, the original Stella in A Streetcar Named Desire and Zira in Planet of the Apes.
• 1922 – 2016 Boutros Boutros-Ghali (1922-2016) Died 16 February 2016, aged 93 Boutros-Ghali was an Egyptian diplomat who served as the sixth Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1992 to 1996. His tenure included the UN's response to the Rwandan genocide and conflicts in the former Yugoslavia and Somalia. He was the first UN chief from Africa and the Arab world.
• 1922 – 2010 José Saramago Nobel in Literature The only Portuguese-language writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.
• 1922 – 2000 Charles M. Schulz (1922-2000) Died 12 February 2000, aged 77 Charles Schulz drew the comic strip Peanuts for nearly fifty years, creating Charlie Brown, Snoopy and a cast carried by thousands of newspapers worldwide. He wrote and drew every strip himself, close to 18,000 in all. He died the night before his final original Sunday strip appeared.
• 1922 – present Jose Saramago Portuguese novelist Saramago wrote philosophical novels like Blindness, blending allegory and political commentary.
• 1922 Irish Free State Established Dominion status begins under the Anglo-Irish Treaty The Irish Free State came into being on 6 December 1922, one year after the Anglo-Irish Treaty was signed. It became a self-governing dominion within the British Commonwealth, with Northern Ireland immediately opting out to remain part of the United Kingdom. W. T. Cosgrave became its first President of the Executive Council.
• 1922 – 1991 Redd Foxx (1922-1991) Died 11 October 1991, aged 68 Comedian and actor Redd Foxx, best known for starring in the television sitcom Sanford and Son, died of a heart attack on a television set in Los Angeles. He had built his career on raunchy stand-up comedy before crossing into mainstream television. His sitcom was among the first American shows to feature a predominantly Black cast.
• 1922 – 1990 Ava Gardner (1922-1990) Died 25 January 1990, aged 67 Ava Gardner was an American film actress known for roles in "The Killers," "Mogambo," and "The Night of the Iguana." She was one of the leading stars of Hollywood's studio era and was married to Mickey Rooney, Artie Shaw, and Frank Sinatra. She died in London on 25 January 1990.
• 1922 – 2018 Stan Lee (1922-2018) Died 12 November 2018, aged 95 American comic book writer and editor who co-created Spider-Man, the X-Men, the Fantastic Four and the Avengers, shaping the modern Marvel Comics universe. He became the public face of Marvel and a fixture at fan conventions through cameo appearances in its films. His characters underpin one of the most successful entertainment franchises in history.
• 1922 Soviet Union Formally Established Treaty on the Creation of the USSR signed in Moscow On 30 December 1922 the First All-Union Congress of Soviets approved the treaty uniting the Russian, Ukrainian, Byelorussian, and Transcaucasian Soviet republics into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The new state formalized Bolshevik control established after the 1917 revolution and civil war. It remained the world's largest country until its dissolution in 1991.