The following events occurred in March 1922:
March 1, 1922 (Wednesday)
Artur Bernardes of the Mineiro Republican Party won the Brazilian presidential election, defeating former President Nilo Peçanha. He would be inaugurated as the South American republic's 12th president on November 14. The RSFSR (Russia's Republic in the Soviet Union) and Sweden signed a temporary commercial treaty in Stockholm. The Swedish Riksdag would later refuse to ratify it. The first trainload of migrating Mennonite Christians in Canada departed from the railway station in Plum Coulee, Manitoba, after that province and Saskatchewan had passed laws requiring regulating schools within their settlements. In all, 6,000 Mennonites would relocate to the Mexican state of Chihuahua to reassemble in the Colonia Manitoba north of Ciudad Cuauhtémoc. Born: Yitzhak Rabin, Prime Minister of Israel 1974 to 1977 and 1992 to 1995; in Jerusalem (assassinated 1995) William Gaines, U.S. publisher, of Mad magazine and EC Comics; in Brooklyn, New York (d. 1992) Michael Flanders, English actor and songwriter (Flanders and Swann), in London (d. 1975) Died: Pichichi (Rafael Moreno), 29, Spanish soccer football forward, died of typhus
March 2, 1922 (Thursday) Margaret Haig Thomas, 2nd Viscountess Rhondda was cleared to become the first female member of the House of Lords in the United Kingdom, after the Committee for Privileges and Conduct agreed with her argument that she was entitled under the law to succeed to the peerage of her father, David Alfred Thomas, 1st Viscount Rhondda, who had died in 1918. Charles P. Steinmetz, German-born American electrical engineer and inventor, announced at the General Electric laboratories in Schenectady, New York, that he had "succeeded in producing and controlling an indoor thunderstorm" with the successful test of generators that could discharge over 100,000 volts of electricity at 10,000 amperes for 0.01 seconds. All 25 crew of the Norwegian freighter Grøntoft died after the ship foundered in a North Atlantic storm about southeast of Nova Scotia. By the time the steamship Estonia arrived to the coordinates radioed from the ill-fated ship, there was no trace of the vessel, which had been carrying cargo from Galveston, Texas to Esbjerg in Denmark. According to the captain of the Estonia, as it was racing to the scene, the last message received, at 12:10 p.m., was that the crew had waited too long to lower the lifeboats and to evacuate. "The boats are smashed and some of the men were swept overboard," the telegraph operator signaled, "We are almost awash now. I may be driven out any minute. Hurry. You may not hear from me again." Born: Bill Quackenbush, Canadian ice hockey defenceman, inductee to the Hockey Hall of Fame; in Toronto (d. 1999) David Greenglass, U.S. machinist who was convicted of espionage for passing the secrets of the atom bomb to the Soviet Union, and the chief witness against his older sister and his brother-in-law, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, leading to their executions in 1953; in Manhattan, New York City (d. 2014)