Charles Fort: A Fortean Chronology, 1924.

Year of 1924 (MCMXXIV) was a leap year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar.

January

• January 10: The British submarine L-34 sinks in the English Channel; 43 are killed.
• January 12: Gopinath Saha shoots a man he erroneously thinks is the police commissioner of Calcutta (Charles Augustus Tegart); he is arrested soon after.
• January 21: Vladimir Lenin dies and Joseph Stalin begins to purge his rivals to clear the way for his leadership.
• January 22: Ramsay MacDonald becomes the first Labour Prime Minister.
• January 25: The 1924 Winter Olympics open in Chamonix, France (in the French Alps).

February

• February 1: The United Kingdom recognizes the Soviet Union.
• February 4: Mohandas Gandhi is released prematurely on medical grounds.
• February 5: GMT: A radio time signal is broadcast for the first time from the Royal Greenwich Observatory.
• February 7: The first state execution using gas in the United States takes place in Nevada.
• February 12: Rhapsody in Blue, by George Gershwin, is first performed in New York City at Aeolian Hall.
• February 16-26: Dock strikes break out in various U.S. harbors.

March

• Adolf Hitler begins dictating his book Mein Kampf while imprisoned in Bavaria.
• March 3: The 1,400-year-old Islamic caliphate is abolished when Caliph Abdul Mejid II of the Ottoman Empire is deposed. The last remnant of the old regime gives way to the reformed Turkey of President Kemal Atatürk.
• March 8: The Castle Gate mine disaster kills 172 coal miners in Utah, United States.
• March 11: See Charles Fort's Notes, Letter E, Box 27 - " was reading last night, in the kitchen, when I heard a thump. Sometimes I am not easily startled, and I looked around in a leisurely manner, seeing that a picture had fallen, glass not breaking, having fallen upon a pile of magazines in the corner. Two lace curtains at sides of window. Picture fell at foot of left curtain. Now, according to my impression, the bottom of the righthand curtain was vigorously shaken, for several seconds, an appreciable length of time after the fall of the picture." (Books977)
• March 12: See Charles Fort's Notes, Letter E, Box 27 - "Morning of the 12th - find that one of the brass rings, on the back of the picture frame, to which the cord was attached, had been broken in two places - metal bright at the fractures. A (Anna Fort) reminded me that, in the C's (the tennants upstairs) room, two pictures had fallen recently. I have kept this little brass ring, broken through in one place, and the segment between the breaks, hanging by a metal shred at the point of the other break. The picture was not heavy. the look is that there had been a sharp, strong pull on the picture cord, so doubly to break this ring." (Books977)
• March 18: See Charles Fort's Notes, Letter E, Box 27 - "-about 5pm, I was sitting in the corner, where the picture fell. There was a startling, crackling sound, as if of window glass breaking. It was so sharp and loud that for hours afterward I had a sense of alertness to dodge missiles. It was so loud that Mrs. C, (the tennant upstairs), upstairs, heard it. But nothing had broken a windowpane. I found one small crack in a corner, but the edges were grimy, indicating that it had been made long before." (Books977)
• March 25: Greece proclaims itself a republic.
• March 28: See Charles Fort's Notes, Letter E, Box 27 - "This morning, I found a second picture - or the fourth, including the falls from the rooms upstairs - on the floor, in the same corner. It had fallen from a place about three feet above a bureau, upon which are piled my boxes of notes. It seems clear that the picture did not ordinarily fall, or it would have hit the notes, and there would heve been a heartbreaking mess of notes all over the fall." (Books977)

April

• April 1: Adolf Hitler is sentenced to 5 years in jail for his participation in the Beer Hall Putsch (he serves only 9 months).
• April 6: Fascists win the elections in Italy with a two-thirds majority.
• April 16: American media company Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM) is founded in Los Angeles, California.
• April 18: See Charles Fort's Notes, Letter E, Box 27 - "A (Anna Fort) took a picture down from the kitchen wall, to wash the glass - London smoke. The picture seemed to fall from the wall into her hands. A (Anna Fort) said: 'Another picture cord rotten.' Then: 'No: the nail came out.' But the cord had not broken, and the nail was in the wall. Later, that day, A (Anna Fort) said: 'I don't understand how that picture came down.' (Books978)
• April 26: Harry Grindell Matthews demonstrates his "death ray" in London but fails to convince the British War Office.
• April 27: A group of Alawites kill some Christian nuns in Syria; French troops march against them.

May

• May 4: The 1924 Summer Olympics opening ceremonies are held in Paris, France.
• May 10: J. Edgar Hoover is appointed head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
• May 21: University of Chicago students Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold, Jr. murder 14-year-old Bobby Franks in a thrill killing.

June

• June 1: Harry Grindell Matthews returns from Paris to London; he tries to use a Pathe film to demonstrate that his death ray works.
• June 2: U.S. President Calvin Coolidge signs the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 into law, granting citizenship to all Native Americans born within the territorial limits of the United States.
• June 5: Ernst Alexanderson sends the first facsimile across the Atlantic Ocean (to his father in Sweden).
• June 8: George Mallory and Andrew Irvine are last seen "going strong for the top" of Mount Everest by teammate Noel Odell at 12:50 P.M. The two mountaineers are never seen alive again.
• June 10: Fascists kidnap and kill Italian socialist leader Giacomo Matteotti in Rome.
• June 12: Rondout Heist: Six men of the Egan's Rats gang rob a mail train in Rondout, Illinois; the robbery is later found to have been an inside job.

July

• July 17: Voting in federal elections becomes compulsory in Australia, after a private member's bill proposed by Tasmanian Nationalist senator Herbert Payne results in the passing of the Commonwealth Electoral (Compulsory Voting) Act 1924.
• July 24: Flight-Lieutenant W.T. Day and Pilot Officer D.R. Stewart disappear whilst flying a reconnaissance mission over Mesopotamia. Their aircraft was found in the desert - "There was some petrol left in the tank. There was nothing wrong with craft. It was, in fact flown back to the aerodrome." (Books954)
• July 26: See Charles Fort's Notes, Letter E, Box 27 - "Heard a sound downstairs. then Fannie called up: 'Mrs Fort, did you hear that? A picture fell right off the wall.'" (Books979)

August

• August 18: France begins to withdraw its troops from Germany.
• August 28: Georgia rises against the Soviet Union in an abortive rebellion, in which several thousands die.

September

• September 9: The Hanapepe Massacre occurs on Kauai, Hawaii.
• September 9-11: The 1924 Kohat riots break out in India.

October

• October 2: The Geneva Protocol is adopted as a means to strengthen the League of Nations.
• October 19: Abdul Azis declares himself protector of holy places in Mecca.
• October 22: See Charles Fort's Notes, Letter E, Box 27 - ".....I was in the front room, thinking casually of the pictures that fell from the walls. This evening, my eyes bad, unable to read. was sitting, staring at the kitchen wall, fiddling with a piece of string. Anything to pass away time. I was staring right at a picture above the corner of bureau, where the notes are, but having no consciousness of the picture. It fell. It hit boxes of notes, dropped to the floor, frame at a corner broken, glass broken. [...] The cord was broken several inches from one of the fastenings on back of picture. But there should have been this fastening, , a dangling piece of cord, several inches long. This missing. I can't find it." (Books979)
• October 22: The Toastmasters Club is founded.
• October 24: An extraordinary carcass is washed up on the coast of Natal. It was 47 feet long and was covered with white hair, like a polar bears. (Books622)

November

• November 4: U.S. presidential election, Republican Calvin Coolidge defeats Democrat John W. Davis and Progressive Robert M. LaFollette, Sr. Nellie Tayloe Ross of Wyoming is elected as the first woman governor in the United States
• November 19: In Los Angeles, California, famous silent film director Thomas Ince ("The Father of the Western") dies, reportedly of a heart attack, in his bed (rumors soon surface that he was shot dead by publishing tycoon William Randolph Hearst).
• November 27: In New York City the first Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is held.

December

• December 19: German serial killer Fritz Haarmann is sentenced to death for a series of murders.
• December 24: An air crash at Croydon Air Field in London kills 8.
• December 24: Albania becomes a republic.