November 1, 1922: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire

Kemal Atatürk

November 1, 1922: The Grand National Assembly of Turkey votes to declare that the monarchy of the Ottoman Empire is abolished, and moves the national capital from Constantinople to Ankara.

The monarch, Sultan Mehmed VI, left the country on November 17, living in exile in Malta, and then in Sanremo on the Italian Riviera. He died in 1926, and was buried in Damascus, Syria.

The government changed the name of Constantinople -- which the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great had given to the city of Byzantium in AD 330 -- to Istanbul, meaning "to the city," in 1930.

The Empire had been founded in 1299, by Osman I, its name an anglicization of his. The term "Turk" was used to refer to the Anatolian peasant and tribal population, and was seen as disparaging when applied to urban, educated individuals. In Western Europe, the names Ottoman Empire, Turkish Empire and Turkey were often used interchangeably, with Turkey being increasingly favoured both in formal and informal situations.

Mustafa Kemal, the Ottomans' hero of the Battle of Gallipoli in 1915, and leader of the Turkish National Movement, was elected President of Turkey in 1923. He initiated a rigorous program of political, economic, and cultural reforms with the ultimate aim of building a modern, progressive and secular nation-state.

He made primary education free and compulsory, opening thousands of new schools all over the country. He gave women the right to vote in 1934. That same year, the Parliament gave him the honorific name Atatürk, meaning "Father of the Turks." He died in office in 1938, having turned a nation that straddled the divide between Europe and Asia, but was so backward it was known as "the Sick Man of Europe," into a modern state that could stand on its own.

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November 1, 1922 was a Wednesday. Baseball was out of season. Football was in midweek. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. And the NHL season wouldn't start until December 16.

But there was a notable sporting event that day: Edward "Mickey" Walker, a boxer from Elizabeth, Union County, New Jersey, known as "the Toy Bulldog," defeated Jack Britton in a unanimous decision at the 2nd Madison Square Garden, to win the Welterweight Championship of the World.