What Happened in 1922: 1922 Events From A Hundred Years Ago

January 2022 marks the third year the world has to deal with the no-longer-novel coronavirus. While we’re on the topic of anniversaries, 100 years ago, many historical events took place. So what happened in 1922 that you should care about? The major events in 1922 can be divided into 10 categories, including education, disaster, food and health, and wars. Beyond the aftermath of World War I, other skirmishes were fought throughout the year. So let’s take a look at the 129 most important 1922 events from 100 years ago on the map below.

View 100 Years Since 1922 in a full screen map

Wikipedia’s data is the source of information for these 1922 events. Group the map by categories like media, strikes and revolutions, and sports. Or, for a more in-depth look at the trends within these 10 categories, keep reading.

Major Events in 1922 by Category

We broke them down into 11 categories with events adding up to 129 for easier digestion (yes, food is a category!)

  • Politics (46)
  • War (33)
  • Media (20)
  • Disaster (6)
  • Education (6)
  • Strikes & revolutions (5)
  • Sports (5)
  • Food & health (3)
  • Animals (3)
  • Culture (3)
  • Transport (2)

Some examples include the several educational opportunities that arose in 1922. New schools opened along with a Black sorority’s first chapter (Alpha Kappa Alpha’s Lambda Chapter) in New York. Additionally, an English archaeologist unearthed the entrance to Pharaoh Tutankhamun’s tomb in Egypt. He and his team were the first inside in 3,000+ years.

Disaster also struck in 1922, be it natural or otherwise. This included the first mid-air collision of two planes over Poix-de-Picardie in France. A British airplane carrying mail hit a French plane containing three passengers. Seven people died in total. For more on the history of place collisions, see 550+ Major Plane Crashes.

Moreover, the Swatow typhoon disastrously hit Shantou, China in 1922. The result was 5,000+ people dead. Find out if it was one of the Most Disastrous Natural Disasters in our post on the topic.

Food & Health

As for food, just two related events grace the map, along with a single notable health discovery. First up, 1922 was the year an Australian invented Vegemite. Spread on sandwiches, toast, crumpets, and cracker biscuits, it’s a staple for many in the Land Down Under.

Additionally, the Eskimo Pie ice cream bar was created in the U.S. this year. However, it would later be renamed as a result of the Reported Name Changes Due to George Floyd Protests. On June 19, 2020, makers agreed “Eskimo” can be racist towards Arctic indigenous peoples (like the Inuit and Yupik). It will rebrand, along with several other frozen treats and sports teams that contain the same name.

And in a win for those with diabetes, a Toronto-based scientist created the first successful insulin treatment. Too bad a treatment for disagreements between countries wasn’t also discovered.

War-Related 1922 Events

We could hardly mention the 1922 events related to war without including the five cases involving post-World War I German hyperinflation.

While the Great War ended in 1918, rapid price increases made it so that it took 563 German marks to buy one U.S. dollar in the middle of 1922. That continued to rise throughout the rest of the year to 1,000, and then 3,000 marks. Ultimately, the year ended with 7,000 marks needed to buy $1.

As a result of the hyperinflation (along with other unfortunate events, like the assassinations also noted on the map), the Weimar Republic asked for a three-year break on payments.

Other events related to a post-war world took place in Genoa, Italy, where representatives for 34 countries met to discuss finances in the wake of the war.

But more than post-WWI, smaller, yet still impactful wars were also fought, including the Greco-Turkish War, Irish Civil War, and Russian Civil War. You can discover more specifics about these incidents on the map when you group by war and navigate to the respective areas. But that’s not all there is left to learn.

Learn More About Past Years

The major events in 1922, such as the invention of Vegemite and Germany’s struggles to pay off war debts can still affect the world to this day—in good ways and bad. Now that you’re an expert about what happened in 1922, be sure to check out our previous posts highlighting the events of 100 years prior: 100 years since 1917, 1918, 1919, 1920, and 1921.