The month of March has been home to many historical events over the years. Here’s a look at some that helped to shape the world in March 1923.
· The Eli Lilly Corporation makes a breakthrough in the mass production of highly refined insulin by late 1922 or early 1923 and makes it available for purchase by the general public to treat diabetes, a condition that had previously been assumed to be fatal.
· March 1: March 1 becomes March 1 in the Kingdom of Greece, which officially abandons the Julian calendar in favor of the Gregorian calendar. Prior to the transition, what is now March 1 in Greece would have been February 16.
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· March 2 – The first issue of Time magazine is published.
· March 4: American President Warren G. Harding signs the Agricultural Credits Act, which provides for the establishment of regional banks to offer loans to farmers.
· March 4: The Anti-Flirt Club is launched in Washington, D.C. The club is founded to protect young women and girls from unwelcome attention from men in automobiles and on street corners.
· March 6: Ed McMahon, who would gain fame as the beloved sidekick of late night talk show host Johnny Carson, is born in Detroit, Michigan.
· March 9: General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party Vladimir Lenin suffers his third stroke in less than a year. Lenin would pass away in January 1924.
· March 12: Lee de Forest, an electronics engineer whose work is considered vital to the dawn of the Electronic Age, demonstrates his new system in which sound is recorded directly on to film so viewers can see and hear content simultaneously. The invention is dubbed the “Phonofilm” and is used to create more than 200 short films.
· March 13: Lee de Forest showcases sound-on-film motion movies in New York City.
· March 14: Pete Parker handles play-by-play duties for the first ice hockey game ever broadcast on the radio in its entirety. The game is a contest between the Regina Capitals and the Edmonton Eskimos of the Western Canada Hockey League.
· March 14: The first president to pay taxes was President Warren Harding.
· March 19: Lord Carnavon, the man who financed the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun, is bitten by a mosquito in Egypt. His death within two weeks of a resulting infection and blood poisoning would become the first of several to be dubbed the “curse of the pharaohs.”
· March 23: The popular blended Scotch whiskey Cutty Sark is introduced in Great Britain.
· March 29: The streets of Paris are lined with thousands of mourners for the funeral procession of French actress Sarah Bernhardt. Bernhardt was known as a versatile talent, even taking on the role of the male lead in an adaptation of William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.”
· March 31: The first dance marathon in the United States ends at the Audobon Ballroom in New York City at 9:57 p.m. Alma Cummings outlasts all competitors after 27 hours of dancing.
· Otto Schnering, the founder of Curtiss Candy Company, had Baby Ruth candy bars dropped from airplanes in various locations across the nation as a marketing gimmick.
