1940-DECEMBER

Dec. 1-General Manuel Avila Camacho, 43, former Secretary of War, became Mexico's President, succeeding Lazaro Cardenas. Dec. 2-President Roosevelt has signed a bill expanding the 1918 Anti-Espionage Act to make sabotage a Federal offense in peacetime as well as during war, with maximum penalties of $10,000 fine and ten years in jail.

-An Indo-Chinese communique said that Thai (Siam) troops took over Bandong Island, in the Mekong River, below Vientiane.

Dec. 3-Collision of two express trains at Velillade Ebro, 30 miles from Saragoosa, Spain, killed more than 40 persons and injured 80. Dec. 4-A United Air Lines plane from Cleveland fell 150 feet and hit a house near the edge of Chicago Airport. The wreckage took fire; nine of the 16 persons aboard were killed and the others were injured. It was snowing at the time and there was some ice on the wings. The plane was several hours late.

-In the World's Fair grounds, New York City, six men were killed and two injured when a false ceiling in the Railroads Exhibit, which was being demolished, collapsed and they fell with it. Dec. 5-An epidemic of mild influenza is sweeping over California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Arizona and New Mexico at a speed approaching the spread of the 1918 pandemic.

Dec. 6 In New Haven, Conn., Lily Pons (Mrs. Andre Kostelanetz), singer, renounced her French citizenship and took the oath of allegiance to the United States.

Dec. 9-Adhemar Raynault was elected Mayor of Montreal and leader of a council of 97 men and two women. He succeeds Camillien Houde, still technically Mayor but powerless, having been confined to an internment camp for violating the defense of Canada regulations. -Mexico City, the Federal District, and four surrounding States, moved their clocks ahead one hour from central standard time to save electricity.

-"Madre Conchita", a nun, sentenced in 1928 to 20 years in prison as the "intellectual author" of President-elect Alvaro Obregon's assassination, went free on pardon in Mexico City. -Henri Bergson, philosopher, has resigned from the College of France at Paris in a protest against anti-Semitic laws. A Jew, he refused exemption offered by the government from the faws for his "literary and artistic services to the nation." Dec. 10-The Duke of Windsor, Governor General of the Bahamas, and his wife, arrived at Miami Beach, Fla., where the Duchess was relieved, in St. Francis Hospital, of her wisdom tooth. The Duke, by official invitation, was conveyed by a U. S. Naval patrol bombing plane Dec. 13 to the cruiser Tuscaloosa, and visited President Roosevelt in the Bahamas. The Windsors returned to Nassau Dec. 17 on the private yacht, Southern Cross.

-The Swiss Parliament elected Ernest Wetter to succeed Marcel Pilet-Golaz as president Jan. 1, 1941.

Dec. 11-In Washington, at a Congressional Committee hearing, C. F. Preller, representing the Electrical Workers Union there, Local No. 26 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (A. F. L.), testified that its initiation fee for the last 17 years and at present was $300 and dues of $7.50 a month.

Dec. 12-Gen. J. B. M. Hertzog, who quit as Prime Minister of South Africa when Parliament rejected his plans to keep the Union neutral at the outbreak of the war, and N. C. Havenga, his Finance Minister at that time, resigned from Parliament.

-The body of the Duke of Reichstadt, son of Napoleon and the Archduchess Marie Louise of Austria, was exhumed from the Capuchin mausoleum, the Hapsburg family vault in Vienna, for shipment to Paris, where, on Dec. 15, it was reinterred in the Invalides in Napoleon's Tomb. -In the Sea of Marmara, near Istanbul, a sailing vessel, Salvator, with 300 Jewish refugees from Bulgarla aboard, sank in a storm; 223 drowned. Dec. 15-A popular vote in Panama favored the proposed new constitution, with fewer than 800 out of 100,000 against it. The Supreme Court accepted it Dec. 28.

-The new Sixth Avenue Subway, in New York City, began public operation one minute after midnight.

Dec. 16-The authority of the Federal Government over streams is "as broad as the needs of commerce." The Supreme Court of the United States, 6 to 2 (Justices Roberts, McReynolds) ruled against the contention of the Appalachian Electric Power Co., that because the New River was not navigable, the commission, under the Federal Power Act of 1920, could not force the corporation to operate its $12,000,000 dam and power plant near Radford in southwestern Virginia, under a commission license. For the majority, Justice Reed held that the New River was navigable within the law, because it could be made navigable by improvements.

-The State delegates of the Electoral College, consisting of the chosen presidential electors in each of the 48 States, met in the several States as provided by the Constitution (first Monday after the second Wednesday in December) and elected Franklin D. Roosevelt and Henry A. Wallace as President and Vice President.

Dec. 17-An explosion in a Cincinnati tenement killed 13 persons, among them a baby born to Mrs. Lillian Schnetzer, 42, while she lay buried in wreckage. Mrs. Schnetzer, her husband, Frank, and four other children in the family Dec. 18-Five Army officers and a private from also perished. March Field were killed when their 22-ton bombing plane crashed into Marion Mountain in the San Bernardino Calif.) National Forest. -The U. S. House upheld President Roosevelt's veto of the Logan-Walter bill which would subject rulings and regulations of administrative agencies to court review. The vote was 153 to override against 127 to sustain the veto, twothirds being necessary to override.

Dec. 19-In Helsinki, the Electoral College, 288 to 12, chose Risto Ryti, 51, as President of Finland to succeed Kyosti Kallio, resigned; later Kallio, 67, fell dead from a heart attack. Dee. 20 Slight tremors, originating, it was guessed, 25 to 50 miles underground, south of Lake Ossipee, N. H., and lasting not more than half a minute at about 2:28 A. M., were felt throughout New England, New York State as far west as Rochester and Buffalo, and Toronto, Ontario, and Ottawa in Canada; all of New Jersey and several points in Pennsylvania, including Philadelphia.

Dec. 22-Military supplies for Chiang Kai-shek's Chinese Government are being shipped from the United States to the port of Vladivostok, thence by railroad to Chita or Verkneudinsk, forwarded to the Soviet-Outer Mongolian border and then sent, by trucks, camels, donkeys and mule carts, to the towns of Lanchow and Ningsia. -In the disputed Indo-China-Siam (Thailand) border region a "violent battle" took place. Both sides used artillery and machine guns, with the heaviest firing being across the Mekong River between Thai units around Panom and French units near Thakek. More than 100 shells struck in Thai territory.

In

Dec. 23-A Naval Reserve plane landed safely on Floyd Bennet Field, Brooklyn, N. Y., after colliding with a private monoplane; the latter fell into Deep Creek, killing the two occupants. Cuba, near San Luis, Oriente Province, a U. S. Navy bombing plane fell in a thunder storm. The two occupants were burned to death. Dec. 24-An earthquake originating deep under Ossipee, N. H., or thereabout, was felt at 8:34 A. M., throughout New England and the southern border of Eastern Canada.

-The Pope, in an address to the College of Cardinals, said: "As long as the rumble of armaments continues in the stark reality of this war it is scarcely possible to expect any definite acts in the direction of the restoration of morally, juridically imprescriptible rights."

Dec. 25-In Bethlehem, in the Holy City, the lights were out during Christmas services. In Europe, German and British warplanes did not leave the ground. In the United States, more than 165 deaths were caused by auto traffic and more than 50 by fires. King George in London, the Duke of Windsor in Nassau, in the Bahamas, radioed to the world their hopes for a just peace. Dec. 31-In the U. S. District Court in New York City, Howard C. Hopson, head of the Associated Gas and Electric system, was convicted of mail fraud. He was acquitted of conspiracy. His lawyers, Charles M. Travis and Garrett A. Brownback, were acquitted. Hopson later was sentenced to five years in prison.

1941-JANUARY

Jan. 1-New Year's revelry was fatal to 170 persons in the United States.

-In Germany there went into effect a law by which Jews must pay 15 per cent additional gross income tax to compensate for their "social inferiority."

Jan. 2-The last of the "Christian Front" cases of young men charged with conspiracy to overthrow the U. S. Government were disposed of in the Federal Court in Brooklyn, N. Y., when the following defendants were discharged and their prosecution dropped: Capt. John T. Prout, Jr., John A. Viebrock, William H. D. Bushnell, Jr., Macklin Boettger and William Gerald Bishop. Previously, 90 others were acquitted, another committed suicide during the trial, and the charges against two were dismissed during the trial. -The Hungarian Meteorological Institute states that 1940 was the coldest year since 1825, when it began keeping its records.

-Panama's new Constitution became effective and at a meeting in the National Stadium the ceremony of allegiance was led by President Arnulfo Arias.

Jan. 3-The 77th Congress opened at noon in Washington. Speaker Sam Rayburn was reelected. Vice President Garner swore in the Senate members. South Trimble of Kentucky. Iwas reelected Clerk of the House.

-The last session of the House, 76th Congress, third session, was held Jan. 2. Jan. 4-A Navy transport plane hit, in a rain torm, a granite boulder on Mother Grundy Peak, 35 miles southeast of San Diego, Calif.; 11 fliers were killed, including four who had parachuted on Jan. 2 from another Navy plane near Lamesa, Texas.

Jan. 5-A resolution barring Communists, Nazis and Fascists from national or local office in the Industrial Union of Marine and Shipbuilding Workers of America, C. I. O., was adopted by the union's general executive board in Camden, N. J.

Mrs. Cornelia Allerdice, 43, and her son Anthony, 7, died of suffocation in Indianapolis, Ind., despite the efforts of another son, David Allerdice, Jr., Princeton University football star, to save them. David, Jr., was burned, as was his father, vice president of the Kingan Packing Co. The father died.

-Miss Amy Johnson, aviatrix, was drowned when her parachute plunged into the Thames estuary, England.

Jan. 6-The U. S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the National Labor Relations (Wagner) Act required an employer to sign a written contract with a union when a collective bargaining agreement has been reached, even though the law does not say so in so many words. The H. J. Heinz Co. had contested the authority of the NLRB to require it to sign a contract with a local of the A. F. of L. Canning and Pickle Workers' Union. The company had agreed to the union's terms after bargaining and contended that it met the requirements of the law by posting notices to this effect on the bulletin boards.

-The Court, in another decision, upheld the $50,000,000 awards on claims arising from the explosions of World War munitions at Black Ton Island and Kingsland, N. J., in 1916-17. In joint session, the Congress, after the tellers had counted the Electoral votes. State by State, announced that Franklin D. Roosevelt and Henry A. Wallace had received 449 votes for President and Vice President, and Wendell L. Willkie and Charles L. McNary had received 82. Jan. 8-The Panama National Assembly adopted unanimously a resolution in support of the message sent by President Arnuflo Arias to President Roosevelt offering cooperation in hemisphere defense.

-Martial law was proclaimed in the Thai (Siamese) army, provinces bordering French Indo-China. Jan. 9 The Thai (Siamese) army, supported by 90 planes, invaded Cambodia.

-Japanese air raids along the East River in China killed 200 persons, including the Matron of St. Joseph's Hospital in Waichow. Jan. 10-In Congress, a bill (the "Lend-Lease" bill) was introduced, giving President Roosevelt personal authority to have manufactured or procured any war materials and to transfer such materials to any nations of the world in the interest of American defense. This was followed on Jan 13 by a bill to amend, by limiting aid at present to Britain and Ireland but would reserve to Congress the right to designate any other nations to be helped. The amended bill would

also limit to two years the grant of powers to the President.

-Germany and Russia signed an economic agreement; also one defining their common territorial boundaries.

Jan. 12-In Quita, Ecuador, Civil Guards stoned the Presidential mansion and attacked police in an attempt to release aviators from Quito jail, They were dispersed by officers using guns and tear-gas bombs. One man was killed and several were wounded.

-The 25,269 passenger steamship, Manhattan. bound from New York City on a West IndiesPanama cruise, ran aground off Palm Beach, Fla. The 199 passengers were taken off the next day. The vessel was refloated Feb. 3. Jan. 13-The U. S. Supreme Court confirmed. unanimously (Justice Murphy not participating). the constitutionality of the espionage act of 1917 which makes it a crime to obtain or transmit any "information respecting the national defense. to be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation", friend or foe. -The official Turkish news agency reported a "very heavy loss of human lives and material damage in a flood near Alexandretta. It was reported several hundred" persons had drowned near the Turkish border when the Asi River overflowed. Jan. 14-In Brooklyn, N. Y., six men were burned to death and four of ten other employes who were singed were in critical condition when a bucket of paint caught fire on top of a kerosene heater in a box factory. The plant destroyed 2,100 unfinished raw pine lockers, last of a U. S. Government order for 25,000 to be kept by soldiers under their cots at the army base.

-Also in New York City (Manhattan) two brother gunmen and ex-convicts, Anthony (Angelo), 35, and Joseph (William) Esposito, 33, were caught by the police after a $649 hold-up in which a messenger and a policeman (E. F. Maher) were fatally shot, a cabman seriously wounded, a bank guard hit in the shoulder, and Angelo or Anthony Esposito had been shot in the right leg. The brothers carried 6 pistols and 136 cartridges. The hold-up occurred in an elevator in a building at 34th St. and 5th Avenue.

-The body of Elsie Owen, violin teacher, wife of Prof. Arthur Z. James, 56, language expert, was found in their home, Hampstead, England. Her skull had been fractured. Her husband. 56, testified he had killed her to save her from a "bleak future". He was found guilty of slaying, but was judged insane, and was put in custody. Jan. 15-The Venezuelan Congress ratified a treaty with Brazil providing for peaceful settlement of any controversies between the two nations. The treaty, signed in Caracas in July, 1940, has been ratified by Brazil.

-In a proclamation dated at Rome, Alfonso XIII, who fled from Madrid April 14, 1931, announced renunciation of all his claims to the throne of Spain in favor of his son, Prince Juan, 27, husband of Princess Maria Mercedes of the Two Sicilies branch of the House of Bourbon-Anjou. Jan. 16 Bolivia and Chile signed, in La Paz, a non-aggression pact.

-In the Gulf of Siam, the French Asiatic squadron attacked the main force of the Thai navy. -An army bomber plane from McChord Field. Wash., for Muroc, Calif., crashed 20 miles southwest of Morton, Wash.; seven aboard were killed. Jan. 17-In Hungary, 12 persons were killed when an airplane on the regular Budapest-MarosVasarhely flight crashed in landing near NagyVarad airdrome.

Jan. 18-The Thai (Siamese) flag was raised over the French Protectorate of Cambodia, in French Indo-China, for the first time in more than 50 years.

Jan. 19-Planes bombed Luang Prabang, capital of Laos Province, which 60 years ago was burned by the Siamese before the French colonists took over. Pakkin-Dun and Ream, a seaport in southern Cambodia, also were bombed. -The German (swastika) flag was ripped.off the staff at the German consulate in San Francisco by two American sailors on leave from the Naval Hospital. Berlin complained. Washington apologized, and later the sailors were convicted of malicious mischief. Sentences of 90 days in jail were suspended.

Jan, 20-Envoys of Germany, Italy, Japan and 53 other countries, including Soviet Russia, attended, as invited witnesses, the inauguration of Franklin D. Roosevelt for a third term as President of the United States. The ceremonies were held on the steps of the Capitol, in Washington. The oath to support the Constitution was administered by Chief Justice Hughes of the Su-1

-Japan celebrated the 2601st anniversary of the founding of the Empire. There were rites before the Shinto shrines and mass parades of military and civic organizations to the Emperor's palace to lay the devotion of the people at his feet. The traditional imperial banquet in the Homei Hall of the Imperial Palace, was dispensed with this time.

Col. W. G. Peace, 64, died in Laguna Beach, Calif. He was commander of 11th U. S. Field Artillery in the Argonne Forest Nov. 11, 1918. A minute before the Armistice hour of 11 o'clock a German shell killed several members of his staff. He ordered a shot fired in retaliation, and it exploded over the German lines as the war ended.

Feb. 12-In Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, a heat wave killed 33 persons; 150 are under treatment. Feb. 15-Violent wind storms in Portugal and Northern Spain set fires at Santander, in the Bay of Biscay, that destroyed hundreds of houses, other buildings and boats. Spain and Portugal counted 145 dead, thousands injured and property damage running into millions of dollars. Hundreds were unaccounted for in Portugal. Feb. 16-Storms have spread from Africa across the Mediterranean to the south and east of Europe. Belgrade reported that Yugoslavia's Lake Scutari was rising, with some buildings already under water, while in the Batchka district floods had destroyed many dwellings and threatened others.

Feb. 17 The U. S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously that Earl Russell Browder, general secretary of the Communist party in the United States and its candidate for President last year, must serve a four-year sentence for passport fraud. The Court also sustained the passport fraud conviction in New York of Welzel Warzower, alias Robert William Weiner, whose case virtually duplicated Browder's. Warzower, a native Russian who submitted a forged birth certificate to obtain a passport, must serve two years. -In Brazil, at Porto Alegre, the Communist leader, Juvenal V. Silva, was killed when he resisted arrest. The police of Rio Grande du Sol tracked down the Communist leader, who was holding a secret meeting with other Communists from Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, and a gun fight ensued.

Feb. 18-The U. S. House passed the bill providing for reapportionment of its membership. Feb. 19-At Gatun, Army officials watched a caterpillar-type shovel lift out three and one-half cubic yards of dirt-the first dig of the job of building the third set of locks for the Panama Canal. More than 12,000,000 cubic yards are to be excavated. The work is to be done in two years, eight months.

Feb. 20-In New York City the members of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers gave formal ratification to the consent decree, announced Feb. 19, which ends the Federal Government's anti-trust suits against the society.

Moscow for one year. The agreement is based on barter.

-A truckload of ice cutters from Montreal was crossing the St. Lawrence River when the vehicle broke through and sank in 50 feet of water; 11 of the 17 men were drowned.

Feb. 26-Following a proclamation in Amsterdam, by Gen. Friedrich Christiansen, German Military Commander, establishing a military administration for the Province of North Holland, on account of the "disturbed political situation," it was announced that six civilians had been killed and a number wounded in clashes between the police and "disturbers of the peace"-strikers and alleged attackers of secret Jewish organizations. There were many prisoners. Strikers were ordered back to work. Christiansen fined Amsterdam 15 million guilders as a penalty. A Jew was shot to death in Amsterdam by a firing squad March 3. He was convicted of spraying acid on the secret police. Many were went to prison. The outbreaks were also in Hilversum and Zaandam. -In Lackawanna, N. Y., the C.I.O. called a strike at the Bethlehem Steel Company's plant; 4,000 quit and 3,000 pickets went on duty outside the place.

Feb. 27-The new $120,000, 14-passenger "Mexico Silver Sleeper' plane of Eastern Air Lines was torn to pieces in a grove of pine trees encountered in the rain on the way to the Candler landing field in Atlanta, Ga., which was only 5 miles distant; seven of the persons aboard were killed and nine were injured, one fatally. Among those hurt was Capt. E. V. Rickenbacker, president of the line. The plane had left New York City Feb. 26 and was bound for Brownsville, Tex., by way of Atlanta and New Orleans.

Feb. 28-Ex-King Alfonso XIII (54) of Spain, who had been in exile, died from a heart attack in Rome in the presence of his wife, former Queen Victoria; his two sons, Don Juan and Don Jaime, and one of his daughters, Princess Beatrix.

-Snow storms along the north Atlantic coast killed 30 persons-eight of them in New Jersey. 1941-MARCH

March 1-Earthquakes in the area of Larissa, in Northern Greece, made several thousand persons homeless.

March 2-In Delaware, and particularly in the City of Wilmington, the Attorney General of the State issued orders which resulted in hundreds of arrests for violations of the 200-year old "Blue Laws," forbidding any kind of work on Sunday. The State House of Representatives had rejected by three votes an amendment which would have permitted each community to decide the extent of its Sunday observance. The amendment had been approved by the Senate. The Legislature repealed the "Blue Laws" five days later. March 3-The U. S. Supreme Court unanimously outlawed agreements by which manufacturers of women's hats and dresses sought to eliminate style "piracy" by registering new creations and penalizing anyone copying the designs.

-President Pedro Aguirre Cerda of Chile vetoed a bill outlawing the Communist party, explaining that he regarded the measure as "contrary to the democratic principles that inspire my government."

-Sir F. G. Banting, 49, co-discoverer of insulin, was killed, with two companions, when his plane crashed in the snow near Musgrave Harbor, Newfoundland, on a "mission of high national and scientific importance," to Great Britain. Feb. 22-The Nationalist government in Spain has decreed that Castilian is the only language to be spoken or written in that country. In Catalonia and the Basque provinces the ban against all but Castilian is enforced. In Barcelona Spanish names have been given to the streets, and Castilian is the only language used in schools. the courts or the newspapers. Similar measures have been taken in the three Basque provinces which sided with the Loyalists in the Civil war. Feb. 23-Rochester, N. Y., held a public reception complete with a 100-candle cake, to Henry Lilly. commander of the State's Grand Army of the Republic on his hundredth birtnuay. A farm boy from Loretto, Pa., he enlisted in the Union Arm in 1862 at 21. He fought in the Army of the Potomac at Antietam, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg and in the Second Battle of Bull Run. Feb. 24-The first Swiss-Russian trade agreement. since the Bolshevik revolution, was signed in

Mme. Magda Lupescu, fled to Portugal, by automobile, from Seville, Spain, where they had been under detention" for several months. March 4-President Roosevelt began his ninth year in office with a head cold which had kept him secluded for four days in the White House. March 5-In Amsterdam, 18 Hollanders have been condemned to death by a German court martial in an esponiage and sabotage trial. The court, which had sat for a week, sentenced 19 others to one and one-half to seven years imprisonment; six others were set free. The defendants were charged with being leaders of a group who engaged in acts of sabotage and terrorism against the German Army and the army supply service. and also with doing espionage work. The Mayor of Amsterdam was removed. March 8-A snow storm left 11.6 inches in New York City and several inches more in Connecticut, Massachusetts and Maine.

March 10-In New York City, 1,305 buses quit operating because of a strike of the 3,500 drivers, and 900,000 daily passengers had to look for. subway. "L" and taxi ways for transportation. The strike was settled March 20, with a mutual agreement to run the buses and arbitrate. -Twelve firemen were killed and 20 hurt in Brockton, Mass., when the roof of a burning theater fell on them.

-The Chamber of Deputies in Haiti adopted a resolution extending the term of President Stento Vincent for 5 years from May 15, when his present term will expire.

-In Washington a renewal was signed to an 1899 convention which permits British and American