1931 (FRIDAY)
UNITED STATES: French Premier Pierre Laval conducts a state visit to Washington, DC, to meet with President Herbert Hoover. The French outline their position on the financial crisis in Europe, arguing that Allied war debts and German reparations are directly linked. In response, President Hoover announces that when the one-year moratorium on Inter-Allied debt ends, some kind of agreement to cover the period of the business depression will be necessary.
1933 (MONDAY)
SWITZERLAND: The German government announces that Germany withdrew from the Disarmament Conference and the League of Nations in light of the failure of the Germans to gain military parity with the Western powers.
1934 (TUESDAY)
UNITED KINGDOM: The London Naval Disarmament Conference begins. The major naval powers make a last attempt at negotiating a naval disarmament treaty in London. With mounting political tensions, the conference collapses on 19 December without agreement.
October 23rd, 1939 (MONDAY)
UNITED KINGDOM:
Destroyers HMS Marne and Martin laid down.
AMC HMS Ranchi commissioned. .
U.S. freighter SS Tulsa is detained at London by British authorities.
ROMANIA: The frontier between Romania and Bulgaria erupts in localised fighting late this evening, when a band of guerrillas-cum-brigands armed with "military rifles" crosses the border and attacks the Romanian border village of Sharshaniar in a "smash and grab" looting raid. While being pursued by a patrol of Royal Romanian Gendarmes (Jandarmi), the attackers wound two gendarmes ("gravely") before fleeing back across the border into Bulgaria. Romanian authorities investigating the incident declined to attach any political significance to the incursion, declaring it to be a simple case of robbery. (Source: a copy of an article from the New York Times Newspaper) (Greg Kelley)
FINLAND: The field army is fully mobilised and in its positions along the eastern border.
U.S.S.R.: Murmansk: A German crew steers the US ship 'City of Flint' into Kola bay. On 9 October, the ship was en route from the U.S. to the U.K. when the German pocket battleship Deutschland fired a shot across the bow of the SS City Of Flint in the North Atlantic. A German boarding party determined the ship was carrying "contraband" and a prize crew sailed the ship to Tromsų, Norway, for water. The Norwegian government, however, orders the ship to leave; and she sails for Soviet waters.Moscow: The second round of Fenno-Soviet negotiations begin.
The Finns make counter proposals to Russia stating, "Finland understands the efforts which the Soviet Union is making to render the defense of Leningrad more secure. As she had repeatedly stated before, Finland wishes her relations with the Soviet Union to remain friendly and good." The Soviets reject them stating ". . . in accordance with the views defined in the memorandum of the Government of the Soviet Union of October 14, the proposals advanced by them represent their minimum terms, . . ."
EGYPT: U.S. steamship SS President Hayes, detained by British naval authorities at Alexandria the previous day, is released, but not before a consignment of rubber earmarked for delivery to Genoa, Italy, is unloaded. The cargo is held at Alexandria for about two weeks, and then reloaded on board steamship SS President Polk. The President of the shipping concern involved (American President Lines) subsequently requests the Department of State to protest methods employed by the British naval authorities at Port Said and Alexandria in searching that company's vessels. "The fact that [the] British...allowed this eventual delivery," the shipping company executive complains, "indicates that [the] shipment ought never have been interfered with in [the] first place."
U.S.A.: Writer Zane Grey, 64, dies at his home in Altadena, California.
Corvette USS Surprise (ex-HMS Heliotrope laid down).
Submarine USS Seadragon commissioned.
CARIBBEAN SEA: Destroyer HMCS Saguenay intercepted the German tanker Emmy Friederich in the Yucatan Channel. The German ship scuttled herself before she could be captured.