1922 in the United States

Incumbents

Federal Government">Federal government of the United States">Federal Government

• President: Warren G. Harding
• Vice President: Calvin Coolidge
• Chief Justice: William Howard Taft
• Speaker of the House of Representatives: Frederick H. Gillett
• Senate Majority Leader: Henry Cabot Lodge
• Congress: 67th

  Governors

Lieutenant Governors

Events

January–March

• January 28 - Snowfall from the Knickerbocker storm, the biggest-ever recorded snowstorm in Washington, D.C., causes the roof of the Knickerbocker Theatre to collapse, killing 98.
• February 1 - Irish American actor William Desmond Taylor is shot dead by an unknown assailant in Los Angeles.
• February 7 - Five Power Naval Disarmament Treaty signed between United States, Britain, Italy, Japan and France
• February 10 - President of the United States Warren G. Harding introduces the first radio in the White House.
• February 24 - Leser v. Garnett: A challenge to the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, allowing women the right to vote, is rebuffed by the Supreme Court of the United States.
• March 20 - The USS Langley is commissioned as the first United States Navy aircraft carrier, having been converted at Norfolk Naval Shipyard from fleet collier Jupiter. On October 17, Lt. Virgil C. Griffin pilots the first plane — a Vought VE-7 — launched from her decks.

  April–June

• April 7 – Teapot Dome scandal: The United States Secretary of the Interior leases Teapot Dome oil reserves in Wyoming.
• April 13 - The State of Massachusetts opens all public offices to women.
• April 22 - The Lambda Chapter of the Joe Whelan Sorority, Incorporated is chartered.
• May 5 - In the Bronx, construction begins on Yankee Stadium.
• May 11 - Radio station KGU begins broadcasting in Hawaii.
• May 12 - A 20-ton meteorite lands near Blackstone, Virginia.
• May 30 - In Washington, D.C., the Lincoln Memorial is dedicated.
• June 11 - Première of Robert J. Flaherty's Nanook of the North, the first commercially successful feature-length documentary film.
• June 14 - U.S. President Warren G. Harding makes his first speech on the radio.

  July–September

• July 11 - The Hollywood Bowl opens.
• July 25 - The United States recognizes Albania as a country.
• July 28 - The United States recognizes Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania as countries.
• July 30 - Radio station WMT begins broadcasting as WJAM in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

  October–December

• October 3 - Rebecca Latimer Felton of Georgia becomes the first female United States Senator, when the governor of Georgia gives her a temporary appointment, pending the election of a replacement for Senator Thomas Watson, who has died suddenly. She will not take office till November 21, and will thus serve for only one day.
• November 12 - Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Incorporated is founded by 7 educators in Indianapolis, Indiana. The group becomes an incorporated national collegiate sorority on December 30, 1929, when a charter is granted to the Alpha Chapter at Butler University in Indianapolis, Indiana.

  Undated

• The Molly Pitcher Club is formed as a women's organization to promote the repeal of Prohibition in the U.S. by M. Louise Gross in New York.
• James O. McKinsey publishes Budgetary Control.
• The California grizzly bear becomes extinct.

  Ongoing

• Lochner era
• U.S. occupation of Haiti
• Prohibition
• Roaring Twenties

  Births

• January 1
• *Ernest Hollings, U.S. Senator from South Carolina from 1966 to 2005
• *Roz Howard, race car driver
• January 17 - Betty White, actress, comedian and writer, pioneer television entertainer
• January 22 - Howard Moss, poet, playwright and critic
• January 24 - Bob Hoover, World War II air ace and test pilot
• February 6
• *Leon Bibb, American-Canadian singer
• * Jocelyn Burdick, U.S. Senator from North Dakota in 1992
• February 10 - Harold Hughes, U.S. Senator from Iowa from 1969 to 1975
• February 12 - Elisabeth Carron, operatic soprano
• February 17 - Tommy Edwards, singer-songwriter
• February 18
• *Joe Tipton, baseball player
• *Connie Wisniewski, baseball player
• March 12 - Jack Kerouac, novelist and poet
• March 20 - Carl Reiner, comedian, actor, director and screenwriter
• March 23 - Marty Allen, comedian and television actor
• April 3 - Doris Day, actress, singer and animal rights activist
• April 16 - Pat Peppler, American football player and coach
• April 19 - Billy Joe Patton, amateur golfer
• May 11
• *Nestor Chylak, baseball player and umpire
• *Thelma Eisen, baseball player and manager
• June 1
• * Joan Caulfield, actress
• * Joan Copeland, actress
• June 9 - George Axelrod, scriptwriter
• June 10
• * Judy Garland, singer and movie actress
• * Jake LaMotta, boxer
• July 15 - Leon M. Lederman, experimental physicist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1988
• July 19
• * Al Haig, jazz pianist, best known as a pioneer of bebop
• * George McGovern, U.S. Senator from South Dakota from 1963 to 1981 and Democratic Party presidential nominee in the 1972 presidential election
• June 27 - George Walker, African American classical composer
• July 25 - John B. Goodenough, German-American solid-state physicist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2019
• August 2 - Paul Laxalt, U.S. Senator from Nevada from 1974 to 1987
• September 2 - Arthur Ashkin, physicist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2018
• October 30 - Marie Van Brittan Brown, inventor
• December 24 - Ava Gardner, actress
• December 28 - Stan Lee, comic-book writer, editor, publisher, media producer, television host, actor and president and chairman of Marvel Comics

  Deaths

• January 17 - George B. Selden, patent lawyer and inventor
• January 21 - John Kendrick Bangs, fiction writer
• January 27 - Nellie Bly, journalist
• March 4 - Bert Williams, entertainer
• March 6 - Webb C. Ball, jeweler and watchmaker from Fredericktown, Ohio
• March 10 - Harry Kellar, magician
• April 14 - Cap Anson, baseball player
• May 12 - John Martin Poyer, U.S. Navy Commander, 12th Governor of American Samoa
• June 6
• * Richard A. Ballinger, politician
• * Lillian Russell, singer and actress
• June 22 - Newton C. Blanchard, U.S. Senator from Louisiana from 1894 to 1897
• August 1 - Francis S. White, U.S. Senator from Alabama from 1914 to 1915
• August 2 - Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of telephone
• August 5 - Tommy McCarthy, baseball player
• August 23 - Albert J. Hopkins, U.S. Senator from Illinois from 1903 to 1909
• September 5 - Sarah Winchester, builder of the Winchester Mystery House
• September 7 - William Stewart Halsted, surgeon
• September 26 - Thomas E. Watson, Populist politician
• October 27 - Rita Fornia, opera singer
• November 6 - Morgan Bulkeley, U.S. Senator from Connecticut from 1905 to 1911
• November 7 - Sam Thompson, baseball player
• November 14 - Godfrey Chevalier, naval aviation pioneer
• December 12 - John Wanamaker, businessman