January 31, 1921: Mario Lanza [Alfredo Arnold Cocozza], Italian-American actor and singer (Great Caruso; Toast of New Orleans), is born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

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Dec. 21, 1921: Movie star Charles Ray and his wife, Clara, visit the White House. “Scrap Iron” is the latest melodrama he both directs and stars in.

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Dec. 6, 1921: Peace activists from 3 nations meet in Washington to encourage world disarmament. They are Kiyoshi Kawakami of Japan, Frederick Libby of the U.S. and Britain's Francis E. Pollard. The poster notes the (undercounted) cost of the last war: 10 million lives.

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Dec. 6, 1921: The Anglo-Irish Treaty is signed at 10 Downing St., creating the Irish Free State. Ireland is to be self-governing, for the first time since British rule was imposed in the 12th century, as a dominion within the Empire. Northern Ireland is allowed to opt out. 1/5

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Dec. 5, 1921: European featherweight champion Arthur Wyns (left) of Belgium and British challenger Ben Callicott weigh in before their bout in London. Wyns wins by a knockout.

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Nov. 27, 1921: Achille Paladini, the “Fish King” of San Francisco, dies at 78. Once a poor Italian immigrant, he built a deep-sea fishing fleet and a wholesaling business that once held a virtual monopoly over fish in the city. The business remains in the family today.

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Nov. 24, 1921: Nora and Lucy, the last fire horses working in London, answer their final call to an alarm before getting a farewell nuzzle and being sent to a pasture. (Daily Mirror)

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Nov. 24, 1921: Ernest Wadsworth Longfellow, a landscape painter and son of the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, dies in Boston at 76. His works include "The Seine" and "In Cairo."

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Nov. 19, 1921: 70 prisoners suffocate to death in India after being sealed in a train car taking them to prison. British authorities had locked 100 men in the car for rioting amid the Moplah Rebellion in the town of Tirur. The 111-mile journey takes place in oppressive heat. 1/4

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Oct. 25, 1921: George Alexander McGuire is ousted as chaplain of Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association for asking members to help support McGuire's new African Orthodox Church in Harlem, N.Y. The cleric wrote Garvey's "Universal Negro Catechism."

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Oct. 24, 1921: The Bluenose wins the International Fisherman’s Cup, a race pitting the fastest Canadian and U.S. fishing vessels against each other. The newly built schooner beats defending champion Elsie, from New England, in the race off Halifax. 1/2

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Oct. 22, 1921: Norman Willey, who served as governor of Idaho from 1890-93, dies at 83 in a poorhouse in Kansas, where he had gone to live after several business reverses. He was blind and deaf in his final years, and his body will not be identified for several days.

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Oct. 17, 1921: Julius Kronberg, Swedish painter, dies at 70. His works usually had classical, historical and Biblical motifs, and many decorate Stockholm Palace.

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Oct. 15, 1921: The Rockefellers' Standard Oil of New Jersey gets exclusive rights to explore and drill oil in newly independent Czechoslovakia. The Carpathians (postcard) seem promising as an energy source, but their output as a share of world production is never large.

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Oct. 2, 1921: David Bispham, the leading baritone of U.S. opera, dies at 64 in New York. He began singing professionally at age 28, and achieved international fame in Wagnerian roles (Alberich in the Ring Cycle and Wolfram in "Tannhauser," photos) and at recitals.

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Sept. 22, 1921: Mohandas Gandhi adopts his trademark garb of a loincloth to show his identification with India's poor and encourage people to spin their own cloth. He is seen today in Madurai after shaving his head and meeting with a British supporter, Annie Besant. 1/3

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Sept. 18, 1921: An exhibition called "5X5=25" opens in Moscow, as avant-garde painters seek to push abstract art into near-total absence of representational qualities. The influential show puzzles audiences as it takes the stand that revolutionary times spell the death of art.

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