-Membership in the Ku Klux Klan peaks. Estimates vary widely on the actual number of members. From just 2,000 in 1920, membership grew into the millions by 1924. The opportunity for organized hatred is not the only reason for the quick rise in membership. Recruiters and initiates who also recruited were promised quick riches as part of a recruitment pyramid scheme.

-Vladimir I. Lenin, leader of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, dies, prompting a power struggle between Joseph Stalin and Leon Trotsky.

-Woodrow Wilson dies.

-J. Edgar Hoover is appointed director of the scandal-plagued Bureau of Investigation (later renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1935), with the charge of restoring the agency's integrity and effectiveness.

-Major amendment to Immigration Quota Act further reduces number of immigrants allowed into U.S. and completely forbids Japanese immigration, sparking diplomatic protests from Japan.

-U.S. Congress declares American Indians to be U.S. citizens.

-London's Daily Mail publishes the notorious "Zinoviev Letter," purporting to show Bolshevik ties to the sitting prime minister Ramsay MacDonald., who had recently signed trade treaties with the newly formed U.S.S.R. Though an obvious forgery, the document was enough to unseat Ramsay--Britain's first Labour Party prime minister--and reinstate a Conservative majority government.

-Calvin Coolidge elected U.S. president.

-Germany accepts The Dawes Plan, which sliced war reparations into more easily payable installments and provided for foreign loans; designed to fix the German banking system, ease hardship to the German economy and arrest rampant hyperinflation. It was adopted August 16 by a London conference. The plan's co-authors, Charles G. Dawes of the U.S. and Sir J. Austen Chamberlain, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1925.

-A stock market boom that began early in the decade hits a five-year high on this date, with 2.33 million shares traded on the New York exchange.

-The crossword puzzle craze: Richard Simon and Max Schuster form the Plaza Publishing Co. to publish the first collection in book form of crossword puzzles. In mid-April, the first edition
3,600 copies--hits the shelves. A smash hit, the books supplanted mah jongg as the biggest fad of the day and sold nearly a million copies in a year.

-Czech novelist and short story writer Franz Kafka dies in obscurity in Austria.

-Although it had been around since 1913, the dance of the twenties, the Charleston, catches on nationally and internationally after appearing in the 1924 all-black musical revue, Runnin' Wild, with music composed by jazz pianist James P. Johnson.

-George Gershwin, as composer/pianist, premieres his 'Rhapsody in Blue' backed by the Paul Whiteman Orchestra, at New York City's Aeolian Hall.

-Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (M.G.M.) film studios formed by the merger of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures, and the Louis B. Mayer Co.

-The Marx Brothers take New York by storm. In one of showbiz’s great strokes of luck, the opening night of a major dramatic play is canceled, leading all the top New York critics instead to the premiere of a vaudeville revue called I'll Say She Is, starring the unknown Marx Brothers comedy team. The brothers' incredible banter and slapstick astounded the critics, ensuring the Marxes' fame.

-The surrealism movement in the arts, based on dreams and irrationality, is founded in France by philosopher/writer Andre Breton.

-Little Orphan Annie makes her comic strip debut.

-Eugene O'Neill's play Desire Under the Elms premieres.

-George Bernard Shaw's play St. Joan premieres.

-First Winter Olympic Games conducted at Chamonix, France.

-Baseballer Rogers Hornsby bats .424, an all-time season record. Hornsby is baseball's batting leader from 1920 to 1925.

- Summer Olympics held in Paris.

-Four U.S. Army airplanes embark from California, via Seattle, on first around-the-world flight. Only two of the planes make it back to Seattle successfully. Travel time, including 57 stops, is 351 hours.

-Raymond Arthur Dart, South African anthropologist, discovers the first skull of australopithecus in a South African stone quarry, one of the major finds of the century.