Warren Harding dies little more than half way through his term of office as US president

Warren Harding is succeeded as US president by his vice-president, Calvin Coolidge

US dramatist Elmer Rice establishes his reputation with The Adding Machine, an expressionistic drama about the machine age

George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue has its first performance, at the Aeolian Hall in New York

Clarence Birdseye, having eaten frozen fish in the Arctic, launches Birdseye Seafoods in New York

US astronomer Edwin Hubble proves that the nebula Andromeda is vastly further away than other stars and can only be a separate galaxy

The Marx Brothers (at this stage Groucho, Harpo, Chico and Gummo) make their Broadway debut with the show I'll Say She Is

US poet Robinson Jeffers publishes his first successful collection, Tamar and Other Poems

Erich von Stroheim completes Greed, his epic silent film of ferociously competitive acquisition in turn-of-the-century San Francisco

7-year-old Yehudi Menuhin gives his first professional recital, playing the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto in San Francisco

US poet E.A. Robinson publishes a narrative poem, The Man Who Died Twice, about the dissipation of artistic talent

Calvin Coolidge is elected US president in his own right, winning by a wide margin over Democrat John W. Davis

Charlie Chaplin makes The Gold Rush, involving his little tramp in the horrors of wintry Alaska

Trumpeter Louis Armstrong, in Chicago, forms the Hot Five with his wife on piano and three New Orleans musicians on trombone, clarinet and guitar

Harold Ross founds The New Yorker as a humorous weekly, and remains in charge of it until his death in 1951

Scott FitzGerald publishes his novel The Great Gatsby, set in a contemporary world of lavish indulgence underpinned by crime

DuBose Heyward publishes his first novel, Porgy, set in Charleston's Catfish Row

26-year-old Al Capone takes over the Johnny Torrio gangster organization in Chicago

House by the Railroad, by US painter Edward Hopper, introduces a new style of urban realism

The Broadway revue Garrick Gaieties is the first big success for Rodgers and Hart

Biology teacher John Scopes is prosecuted for breaking state law by teaching evolution to his class of children in Dayton, Tennessee

A round table at the Algonquin Hotel in New York becomes famous for its collection of wits

Soldiers Pay is the first published novel of the Mississippi author William Faulkner

Don Juan, starring John Barrymore, has a synchronized musical score, making it the earliest example of a film with a sound track

Dorothy Parker has a best-seller with her first collection of verse, Enough Rope