November 14 in World History: Prague’s New Assembly Elected Masaryk President While He Was Still in America

Independent New Hampshire Journalism · Northfield, NH

Czechoslovakia’s first legislature chose Tomáš Masaryk in 1918 with an ocean between them, the BBC began daily broadcasts from London in 1922, and Germany and Poland put their postwar border in a treaty in 1990.

November 14 keeps turning up as a day when governments decided who holds power and where the lines run. A new Czechoslovak legislature picked its first president in 1918 while he was across the Atlantic. Spain, Morocco and Mauritania agreed a declaration on Western Sahara in 1975, and Germany and Poland signed a border treaty in 1990. In between, a London studio began daily broadcasts, a Midlands city burned through a moonlit night, and American air cavalry landed in a valley in Vietnam.

November 14, 1918

Prague’s Provisional Assembly Elects a President Who Is Still in America

Czechoslovakia’s revolutionary National Assembly held its first meeting in Prague on November 14, 1918, according to the Český Krumlov online encyclopedia. That day it elected Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk the republic’s first president. Britannica and the history page of the Villa Tugendhat heritage site both give the date.

No one had elected this assembly for the job. The Library of Congress country study of the Czech Republic says the borders were uncertain and elections impossible, so the body was built from the results of the 1911 elections to the Austrian parliament, with 54 representatives from Slovakia added. National minorities had no seats. Besides electing Masaryk, the assembly chose a provisional government headed by Karel Kramář and drafted a provisional constitution.

Kramář declared the break with the old ruling house. In the Český Krumlov encyclopedia’s English translation, he said: “All bonds with The Dynasty of Habsburg-Lotrin were severed.” The same account says those present stood and applauded, and that Kramář then declared Masaryk elected with one voice.

The new president was not in the room. Masaryk had been negotiating in the United States since April 1918, the Villa Tugendhat page says. The Český Krumlov account reports that New York newspapers carried word of his election on November 16, that he boarded a ship in New York on November 20, and that he traveled home through London, Paris and Italy. Quoting the National Newspaper of December 21, 1918, the account says he reached his country on December 20, near 1 p.m., four years after he left as a political emigrant.

Britannica records that Masaryk was reelected in 1920, 1927 and 1934. International sign-off on the state came after the vote in Prague: the Library of Congress study says the Paris Peace Conference, which convened in January 1919, approved the establishment of the Czechoslovak Republic.

November 14, 1922

The BBC Starts Daily Broadcasts From London’s 2LO

At 6 p.m. on November 14, 1922, the BBC broadcast its first programme and began daily transmission from its London studio, 2LO, according to the National Science and Media Museum. Arthur Burrows, a former Oxford Times journalist who had joined as director of programmes, read a news report twice, first quickly and then slowly, and asked listeners which speed they preferred.

The museum says the news would have come from Reuters, and that the early BBC was not allowed to report its own news, out of concern that radio would compete with newspapers, and did not win the right to edit the news it received until 1934. A forecast followed the bulletin, describing the Met Office’s predictions for the seas around the British Isles. Listeners came to know the station by its opening line, “this is 2LO calling.”

November 14, 1940

Coventry Burns Under a Bright Moon, and a Myth Endures

On the night of November 14, 1940, Luftwaffe bombers struck Coventry, an engineering and armaments center in the English Midlands. Coventry City Council calls it the single most concentrated attack on a British city in the Second World War. The raid, codenamed Moonlight Sonata, lasted 11 hours and involved nearly 500 bombers, which dropped 500 tons of high explosive, 30,000 incendiaries and 50 landmines. The medieval cathedral of St Michael’s was destroyed, along with the central library and the market hall. More than 43,000 homes, just over half the city’s housing stock, were damaged or destroyed.

The council gives the official death toll as 554 and says the real figure could have been much higher. GCHQ, Britain’s intelligence and cyber agency, puts the number killed at 568; GSR treats the council’s count as the stronger number because the council labels it the official toll.

GCHQ uses its account to take on what it calls “a widely spread myth”: that Britain let Coventry burn to protect its reading of German Enigma traffic. Its version: a decrypt read on November 11 pointed to an operation called Moonlight Sonata at the next full moon, but a captured map fit targets in London and the south-east just as well, and the Air Staff told the Prime Minister the likely targets were in or near London. German navigation beams switched on at 1 p.m. on November 14, and by 3 p.m. airborne intercepts showed them crossing over Coventry. By 1947, the council notes, Coventry had twinned with Kiel; Dresden followed in 1956.

November 14, 1965

Air Cavalry Lands at X-Ray in the Ia Drang Valley

In late morning on November 14, 1965, helicopters set down the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry, of the U.S. 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) at Landing Zone X-Ray in Vietnam’s Ia Drang Valley. The Department of Defense’s Vietnam War Commemoration places the zone at the foot of the Chu Pong massif, next to a base area for several North Vietnamese Army regiments, and says the battalion fought a significantly larger force. Dates here are local.

Britannica names the battalion commander as Lt. Col. Harold G. Moore Jr.; the commemoration page calls him colonel. The fighting at X-Ray ran over most of three days, and the North Vietnamese withdrew on November 16, the commemoration says. For the whole battle, which it dates November 14–18, Britannica puts U.S. casualties at 234 dead and 242 wounded and estimates North Vietnamese deaths at 1,800 to 2,000. Its verdict on what the battle settled is short: it “encouraged both sides to continue fighting.” New Hampshire paid for the war that followed: the federal casualty file, as GSR has reported, lists 226 Vietnam War dead from the state.

November 14, 1975

At Madrid, Spain Agrees to Leave Western Sahara

On November 14, 1975, delegations representing the governments of Spain, Morocco and Mauritania, meeting in Madrid, agreed to a Declaration of Principles on Western Sahara. Morocco registered it with the United Nations on December 9, 1975, and the English translation sits in volume 988 of the UN Treaty Series.

In that translation, Spain confirmed its resolve to decolonize the territory by ending the responsibilities and powers it held as administering power. It agreed to set up a temporary administration with Morocco and Mauritania taking part, in collaboration with the Yema’a, the body the text names as voicing the views of the Saharan population. Two deputy governors nominated by Morocco and Mauritania would assist the territory’s governor-general, and Spain’s presence would end “by 28 February 1976 at the latest.” The declaration took effect on November 19, 1975, when Spain’s official gazette published the act authorizing the Spanish government to implement it. The English translation does not use the word sovereignty; it speaks of transferring responsibilities and powers. The names printed at the foot are Carlos Arias Navarro, Ahmed Osman and Hamdi Mouknass.

November 14, 1990

Germany and Poland Put the Oder-Neisse Line in a Treaty

In Warsaw on November 14, 1990, German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher and Polish Foreign Minister Krzysztof Skubiszewski signed the German-Polish border treaty, according to Germany’s Federal Agency for Civic Education (bpb). The border runs along the Oder and the Lusatian Neisse.

The line had been in dispute since 1945. The bpb account says the Potsdam agreement of August 2, 1945 put the former German lands east of the Oder-Neisse line under Polish administration until Poland’s western border was settled for good. East Germany recognized the line in 1950; the CDU-led West German government of the time would not. A 1970 treaty with Poland recognized it in practice but not under international law. The Two-Plus-Four Treaty of September 12, 1990 provided that a united Germany and Poland would confirm their border in a binding treaty.

The text, printed in the federal government’s Bulletin on November 16, 1990, is brief. Article 1 confirms the existing border as drawn in the 1950 agreement between East Germany and Poland, its implementing agreements and the 1970 treaty. Article 2 declares that border inviolable now and in the future. In Article 3, each side states it has no territorial claims against the other and will raise none. Both parliaments ratified it at the end of 1991, and it entered into force on January 16, 1992, the bpb says. The final settlement Potsdam had left open in 1945 was, at last, on paper.

Fact check

Editor’s note. This edition draws on the UN Treaty Series, the German federal government’s Bulletin, GCHQ, Coventry City Council, the U.S. Department of Defense Vietnam War Commemoration, Germany’s Federal Agency for Civic Education, the Library of Congress, Britannica, the National Science and Media Museum, the Český Krumlov online encyclopedia and the Villa Tugendhat. Where sources disagree (the Coventry death toll, Moore’s rank) both are named. Translations from German are GSR’s; the Kramář line is the Český Krumlov encyclopedia’s English translation. All dates are Gregorian and local to the place of the event.

Corrections: Granite State Report corrects verified errors promptly and appends a dated note identifying what changed and when. The corrections policy and the corrections register are public, and correction notes are never removed.