The World in 1921 the year radio found a crowd

A wooden arena went up in New Jersey for one afternoon of boxing and packed in more than 80,000 people. That was a bigger crowd than the whole population of most American cities at the time.

Life back then

Radio was something you built yourself. Boys and grown men wound wire round an empty oatmeal box, added a crystal and a thin metal whisker, then hunted for a voice with headphones clamped on. A homemade crystal radio needed no batteries at all. Only a handful of stations were on the air anywhere in the world, so picking up a distant one was worth telling the neighbours about. Everything else arrived by post or in the newspaper, and a long-distance call had to be booked through an operator.

The year in 8 events

• 🤝Mar 18 Poland and Soviet Russia sign a treaty in Riga and settle the border between them.
• 🕯️May 31 A white mob attacks the Black district of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Dozens of blocks burn and as many as 300 people are killed.
• 🥊Jul 2 Jack Dempsey beats Georges Carpentier of France in New Jersey. Ticket sales pass a million dollars for the first time in sport.
• 🏛️Jul 29 Adolf Hitler takes charge of a small nationalist party in Munich.
• ⚾Aug 5 KDKA in Pittsburgh puts a major league baseball game on the air, the first ever called live on radio.
• 👑Aug 23 Faisal is crowned king of Iraq, a country Britain has just drawn on the map.
• 🕯️Nov 4 Hara Takashi, the prime minister of Japan, is stabbed to death at Tokyo station.
• 📜Dec 6 British and Irish negotiators sign the treaty that will create the Irish Free State.

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