1926 - What happened in 1926 ?

January 1926

Sunday 03:

General Theodorus Pángulos names himself dictator of Greece.

Thursday 07:

George Burns marries Gracie Allen.

Friday 08:

Abdul-Aziz ibn Saud becomes the King of Hejaz and renames it Saudi Arabia.

Tuesday 12:

Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll premiere their radio program Sam 'n' Henry, a precursor to Amos 'n' Andy; possibly the first situation comedy.

Wednesday 27:

John Logie Baird demonstrates the first television broadcast.

March 1926

Wednesday 10:

The first Book-of-the-Month-Club selection is produced

Tuesday 16:

Robert Goddard launches the first liquid-fueled rocket, at Auburn, Massachusetts.

April 1926

Tuesday 06:

Walter Varney Airlines makes first commercial flight from Pasco, WA to Elko, NV. Varney is the root company of United Airlines.

Monday 12:

By a vote of 45 to 41, the United States Senate unseats Iowa Senator Smith W. Brookhart and seats Daniel F. Steck, after Brookhart had already served for over one year.

Friday 16:

Lolly Willows by Sylvia Townsend Warner is distributed as the first Book-of-the-Month Club selection.

Tuesday 20:

Western Electric and Warner Bros. announce Vitaphone, a process to add sound to film.

Sunday 25:

Reza Khan is crowned Shah of Iran under the name Reza Pahlavi.

May 1926

Sunday 09:

Admiral Richard E. Byrd and Floyd Bennett claim to have flown over the North Pole (later discovery of his diary seems to indicate that this did not happen).

Wednesday 12:

UK General Strike 1926: In the United Kingdom, a nine-day general strike by trade unions ends.

Tuesday 18:

Evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson disappears while visiting a Venice, California, beach.

Tuesday 25:

Sholom Schwartzbard assassinates Symon Petliura, the head of the Paris-based government-in-exile of Ukrainian People's Republic.

Friday 28:

Military dictatorship established in Portugal to suppress the unrest of the First Republic.

June 1926

Friday 04:

Robert Earl Hughes sets current record for world's heaviest human.

July 1926

Thursday 15:

BEST buses make its début in Mumbai.

Friday 23:

Fox Film buys the patents of the Movietone sound system for recording sound onto film.

August 1926

Friday 06:

In New York, the Warner Brothers' Vitaphone system premieres with the movie Don Juan starring John Barrymore.

Friday 20:

Japan's public broadcasting company, Nippon H?s? Ky?kai (NHK) is established.

Sunday 22:

Gold discovered in Johannesburg, South Africa

September 1926

Wednesday 08:

Germany was admitted to the League of Nations.

Thursday 09:

The U.S. National Broadcasting Company formed.

Saturday 11:

An assassination attempt on Benito Mussolini fails.

October 1926

Thursday 07:

1926 - Actress Theo Mann-Master resigns from stage.

Thursday 14:

The children's book Winnie-the-Pooh, by A.A. Milne, is first published.

Sunday 31:

Magician Harry Houdini dies of gangrene and peritonitis that developed after his appendix ruptured.

November 1926

Wednesday 10:

Michinomiya Hirohito is crowned the 124th Emperor of Japan

Monday 15:

The NBC radio network opens with 24 stations.

Thursday 18:

George Bernard Shaw refuses to accept the money for his Nobel Prize, saying, "I can forgive Alfred Nobel for inventing dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize."

Saturday 27:

In Williamsburg, Virginia, the restoration of Colonial Williamsburg begins.

December 1926

Sunday 05:

Sergei Eisenstein's "Battleship Potemkin," debuts

Saturday 18:

The Makropulos Affair, an opera by the Czech composer Leoš Janáček, premieres in Brno, the Czech Republic.

Saturday 25:

Hirohito becomes Emperor of Japan, succeeding the Taisho Emperor.