The following events occurred in October 1926:
October 1, 1926 (Friday) Electrosurgery was performed at the first time as Dr. Harvey Cushing used an electrosurgical device in an operation for removal of a mass from a patient's head at the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. English pilot Alan Cobham landed his de Havilland seaplane on the River Thames to complete a 28,000-mile flight from England to Australia and back.Cobham had departed from Rochester, Kent in England on June 30, making multiple stops in a route survey flight for Imperial Airways and arriving at Melbourne in Australia on August 15. After leaving Melbourne on August 29, he mad multiple stops on the way back and landed on the Thames after making a round trip of over a 78-day period. He was met at his landing by Sir Samuel Hoare, the British Secretary of State for Air. In the U.S., 27-year-old oil rig worker Wiley Post, who had an act as a parachutist for a traveling circus, lost his left eye in a work accident. He would use the money from his injury settlement to buy an airplane, and go on to become a world-famous aviator."Wiley Post Makes History," by Barbara Maranzini, History.com (July 22, 2013) Born: Manfred Messerschmidt, German military historian; in Dortmund (d. 2022)
October 2, 1926 (Saturday)
All seven people aboard an Air Union airliner were killed following the first in-flight fire in airline history when the Blériot 155 air plane sustained an engine fire at crashed at Leigh, Kent."7 on Blazing Plane Die in British Crash; French Cross-Channel Liner Bursts Into Flames in Kent and Plunges 400 Feet", The New York Times, October 3, 1926, p. 1
Józef Piłsudski became Prime Minister of Poland after being appointed by President Ignacy Mościcki to replace Kazimierz Bartel. The drama film The Ice Flood opened. Born: Jan Morris (Catherine Jan Morris), Welsh historian, journalist and mountaineer on the 1953 British Mount Everest expedition; in Clevedon, Somerset, as James Humphry Morris, before gender transitioning in 1972 (d. 2020)
October 3, 1926 (Sunday) Father Charles Coughlin began his weekly sermons on station WJR in Detroit."Jazz Age Evangelism", by John H. Barnhill, in Jazz Age: People and Perspectives, ed. by Mitchell Newton-Maza and Peter C. Mancall (ABC-CLIO, 2009) p. 68. . The first Islamic temple in London, the Fazl Mosque, was opened at Southfields, Wandsworth."Minaret Call to Prayer— London Mosque Opened", Liverpool Post and Mercury, October 4, 1926, p.8"Mohammedan's Open First London Mosque", Evening Courier (Camden NJ), October 4, 1926, p.2"Some Facts about the Opening Ceremony", by Marzia Balzani, The Review of Religions (October 1926) pp. 15–23, quoted in, An Ethnographer among the Ahmadis: Learning Islam in the suburbs, ed. by Gabriele Marranci (Routledge, 2014) p. 111. The Domica Cave was discovered in what is now southern Slovakia near the town of Plešivec, Slovakia, by Ján Majko. The first no-hitter in a major league postseason game was pitched by Red Grier of the Bacharach Giants in Game 3 of the Colored World Series, against the Chicago American Giants.
The drama film The Temptress, distributed by MGM and starring Greta Garbo, Antonio Moreno and Lionel Barrymore premiered."The Temptress (1926)", AFI Catalog of Feature Films Born: Harvey Matusow, American Communist who later became an informant for the FBI; in New York City (d. 2002)
October 4, 1926 (Monday) As part of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's reforms of Turkey, all Islamic courts were closed as the new Turkish civil code went into effect.Ihsan Yilmaz, Authoritarianism, Informal Law, and Legal Hybridity: The Islamisation of the State in Turkey (Springer Nature Singapore, 2022) p. 70 A labour dispute of coal miners in Britain ended as the remaining miners returned to work with miners' representatives making local settlements with pit owners. Over 170,000 miners had gone back to work by this time. The Mexican rebellion spread to southern Guanajuato as former general Rodolfo Gallegos led an uprising there. An explosion killed 32 miners at an underground coal mine owned by the Roane Iron Company near Rockwood, Tennessee.Explosion Traps 32 Men in Tennessee Mine; Four Found Dead, Hope Given Up for Others, The New York Times, October 5, 1926, p. 1 Carbon monoxide poisoning at Switzerland's Ricken Tunnel killed six crew of a freight train and three men who attempted to rescue them. "Furchtbare Katastrophe im Rickentunnel" ("Terrible catastrophe in the Ricken Tunnel"), Liechtensteiner Volksblatt, October 6, 1926, p. 2"Die Todesursache im Rickentunnel" ("The cause of death in the Ricken Tunnel"), Liechtensteiner Volksblatt, October 16, 1926, p. 7 Chemists Frederic Joliot and Irene Curie, who would jointly win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1935, were married in Paris and adopted the hyphenated surname Joliot-Curie. The 15-minute radio program Housekeepers' Chat, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and featuring the fictional "Aunt Sammy" (billed as the wife of "Uncle Sam". At its height, Housekeepers' Chat would be heard on 194 radio stations, each one having its own performer reading the script for the role of Aunt Sammy, and running until 1934."Aunt Sammy of the Airwaves, by Jan Holden, in Fireside Companion (October-November 1990) pp. 40–42
Born: Phar Lap, New Zealand-born Australian throughbred considered one of the greatest race horses of all time (d. 1932) Kazuhiko Nishijima, Japanese particle physicist known for the Gell-Mann–Nishijima formula; in Tsuchiura, Ibaraki Prefecture (d. 2009) Raymond Watson, American businessman who served as the president of the largest real estate developer in the U.S., the Irvine Company, and Chairman of the Board of The Walt Disney Company; in Seattle (d. 2012) Born: Georgi Georgiev-Getz, Bulgarian film and stage actor, known for A Peasant on a Bicycle (Selyaninat s Koleloto) (1974) Died: Annie Trumbull Slosson, 88, American entomologist and fiction writer
October 5, 1926 (Tuesday) The first radio orchestra in Japan, the New Symphony Orchestra performed its first concert, as conducted by Hidemaro Konoye.Official website of the NHK Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo The Mikhail Bulgakov play Days of the Turbins (Dni Turbinykh) premiered at the Moscow Art Theatre under the direction of Konstantin Stanislavsky. The four act play was based upon Bulgakov's novel, The White Guard.Mikhail Bulgakov at the Moscow Art Theatre Born: Baji Rout, Indian boy who became a martyr for the Indian independence movement at the age of 12 when he was shot by the Imperial Police for refusing to ferry police across the Brahmani River; at Nilakanthapur, Bihar and Orissa Province , British India (killed 1938) Died: Saint Bartolo Longo, 85, Italian lawyer and former Satanist who converted to Roman Catholicism in 1862. He would be canonized by Pope Leo XIV in 2025. Dorothy Tennant, 71, English painter and wife of explorer Henry Stanley
October 6, 1926 (Wednesday) Pennsylvania's blue laws from 1794 were invoked in Pittsburgh, banning all Sunday sports in the city of Pittsburgh. In Game 4 of the World Series, Babe Ruth became the first player in the fall classic to hit three home runs, in a 10 to 5 win over the St. Louis Cardinals."Ruth Hits 3 Homers and Yanks Win, 10–5", The New York Times, October 7, 1926, p. 1 The feat would not be matched again until 1977 (by Reggie Jackson for the Yankees against the Los Angeles Dodgers), and then again in 2011 by Albert Pujols (for the Cardinals against the Texas Rangers). Born: Howard Stein, American financier and a founder of the first "no load" money market fund and the first tax-free municipal bond fund; in Brooklyn, New York City.
October 7, 1926 (Thursday) The Vietnamese religion Caodaism, with more than an estimated six million adherents worldwide, was formally established in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) by Ngo Van Chieu with the signing of the "Declaration of the Founding of the Cao Đài Religion"."The Political-Religious Sects of Viet-Nam", by Bernard B. Fall, in Pacific Affairs journal (September 1955) Vol.28, No.3 (Institute of Pacific Relations, 1955) p. 238 Choral Evensong, one of the longest-running radio programmes in history, was broadcast for the first time, making its debut on the British Broadcasting Company with a 15-minute airing of the Evensong, the Anglican church afternoon prayer, at 3:00 pm. The first 15-minute episode was relayed live from Westminster Abbey."Programmes for Thursday", The Radio Times No. 157, October 3, 1926 Choral Evensong, broadcast weekly, is now in its 100th year.Choral Evensong, BBC 3 Born: Czeslaw Ryll-Nardzewski, Polish mathematician known for the Ryll-Nardzewski fixed point theorem; Wilno, Second Polish Republic (now Vilnius, Lithuania) (d. 2015)"Czeslaw Ryll-Nardzewski", by Michal Morayne, in Wiadomości Matematyczne, Series II, No. 52, pp. 163–165 (in Polish) Opal Lee, African-American teacher, Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient, and activist who succeeded in having Juneteenth (June 19) recognized as a federal holiday in 2021; in Marshall, Texas (alive in 2026) Jim Allen, English playwright for radio and television; in Miles Platting, Manchester (d. 1999)"Jim Allen", by Ken Loach, The Guardian, June 25, 1999 Died: Emil Kraepelin, 70, German psychiatrist
October 8, 1926 (Friday) A methane explosion killed 124 coal miners at the Durban Navigation Colliery at Durnacol in South Africa, in what remains the deadliest mine disaster in South African history."120 Believed Dead in Mine— 30 Bodies Removed From Colliery in South Africa", United Press report in The Pittsburgh Press, October 9, 1926, p. 1 All but four of the persons killed were black or coloured South Africans."Mine Disaster. 120 men Entombed by Durban Pit Explosion", Evening Despatch (Birmingham), October 9, 1926, p. 1 ("Four white men and 116 natives are believed to have been killed as the result of a gas explosion at the Durban Navigation Colliery.")
German General Hans von Seeckt was forced to resign as head of the Reichswehr after republicans objected to his permitting Prince Wilhelm, grandson of the former Kaiser Wilhelm III and second-in-line for succession at the time the German monarchy was abolished, to take part in military maneuvers in the uniform of the old Imperial First Foot Guards without first getting permission from the government. Buckminster Fuller and his father-in-law, James Monroe Hewlett, applied for the patent for the Stockade Building System, with blocks made of compressed wood fiber coated with plaster. They would receive U.S. Patent No. 1,633,702 on June 28, 1927. (Link to full text here) Born: Raaj Kumar (stage name for Kulbhushan Pandit), Indian film star, known for Mother India (1957), Dil Apna Aur Preet Parai (1960), and Karmayogi (1978); in Loralai, Baluchistan province, British India (now in Balochistan province in Pakistan) (d. 1996) Krzysztof Skubiszewski, Foreign Minister of Poland from 1989 to 1993; in Poznań (d. 2010) William Greaves, African-American actor and filmmaker; in New York City (d. 2014) Died: William Dwight Porter Bliss, 70, American Episcopalian priest and activist for the Christian socialism movement
October 9, 1926 (Saturday) Benito Mussolini made himself the head of Italy's national militia, giving him personal command of all the armed forces in the country. Melbourne defeated Collingwood, 17.17 to 9.8 (119 to 62) to win the championship of Australian rules football in the Victorian Football League, in front of 59,632 spectators at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. Born: Shi Jiuyong, Chinese judge and President of the International Court of Justice from 2013 to 2010 after serving as one of the associate judges since 1994; in Ningbo, Zhejiang ProvinceICJ Biography of Shi Jiuyong (d. 2022) Ruth Ellis, Welsh-born English murderer and the last woman in the United Kingdom to be executed; as Ruth Neilson in Rhyl, Denbighshire (hanged, 1955)