The following events occurred in January 1923:
January 1, 1923 (Monday) The Rosewood Massacre began when racial violence erupted in Rosewood, Florida after a white woman accused a black man of assaulting her. When it was discovered that a black convict, Jesse Hunter, had escaped from a prison work gang, a posse of at least 200 white men from the neighboring white town of Sumner invaded Rosewood and made a house-to-house search for anyone who might be harboring the fugitive. By January 4, houses in Rosewood were being set afire, and four black and two white men had died. The Railways Act 1921 went into effect, consolidating 24 major British railway companies into four large regional companies. The new "Big Four" were Great Western Railway (GWR); London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS); London and North Eastern Railway (LNER); and Southern Railway (SR). Air Union was established as the largest airline in France by a merger between the airlines Compagnie des Messageries Aériennes and Compagnie des Grands Express Aériens. The first megachurch in the U.S., the 5,300-seat Angelus Temple was opened in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles by evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson. In the Rose Bowl football game, the USC Trojans beat the Penn State Nittany Lions, 14 to 3. The game was the first to be played in the new Rose Bowl Stadium in Pasadena, California and was attended by 53,000 people. In the first college football game between colleges in the U.S. and Cuba, the Tars of Rollins College (located in Winter Park, Florida near Orlando played a team representing the University of Havana and won, 80 to 0 in Miami. Born: Takeshi Hirayama, Japanese epidemiologist and cancer researcher who made the first study (in 1981) showing a link between passive smoking ("second-hand smoke") and increased risk of lung cancer; in Kyoto (d. 1995) Valentina Cortese, Italian actress; in Milan (d. 2019) Vulo Radev, Bulgarian film director; in Lesidren (d. 2001) Roméo Sabourin, Canadian World War II spy, in Montreal (d. 1944) Milt Jackson, American jazz musician; in Detroit (d. 1999) Died: Willie Keeler, 50, American baseball player, died from heart failure.
January 2, 1923 (Tuesday) The Legislative Council of Burma, the first measure of limited self-government for Burma and the first elected legislature there, opened with 80 of its 103 seats voted into office and the other 23 appointed by colonial officials, as part of the Montagu–Chelmsford Reforms in British India. An interallied conference began in Paris (with the Prime Ministers of the UK, France and Italy) to address German war reparations. The British government submitted a plan with easier payments for Germany in the early years to help avoid another default until the country got back on its feet. The nations agreed to reduce Germany's reparations debt to 50 billion gold marks, equivalent to $12.5 billion U.S. dollars. The first legally-opened birth control clinic in the United States, the Clinical Research Bureau, began services in New York City as the second clinic of Margaret Sanger and the American Birth Control League. Pierce Butler was sworn in as the newest Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court after having been confirmed on December 21 by the U.S. Senate. BKD, LLP, one of the largest accounting firms in the U.S., was founded by William Baird, Wade Kurtz and Claire Dobson with an initial investment of $1,700. Born: Chalmers Goodlin, Royal Canadian Air Force and U.S. Navy test pilot who was the first to fly the Bell X-1 rocket plane; in Greensburg, Pennsylvania (d. 2005) Stephen Yang Xiangtai, Chinese Roman Catholic bishop who survived the Cultural Revolution; in Gaocun, Hunan province (d. 2021) Died: Harrison Hunter, 53, U.S.-born Scottish stage actor, died from complications after minor surgery