1898
1891 1892 1893 1894 1895 1896 1897 1898 1899 1900
The U.S. battleship Maine blows up in Havana harbor February 15 in an explosion that kills 258 sailors and two officers, precipitating a 113-day Spanish-American War (see Sagasta, 1897). The sinking of the Maine follows by 6 days the publication in William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal of a letter stolen from the mails at Havana, a private letter from the Spanish minister to the United States calling President McKinley a spineless politician (McKinley witnessed the carnage at Antietam in 1862 and has opposed going to war, saying, "I have seen the dead piled up, and I do not want to see another [war];" Madrid has recalled the undiplomatic minister).
Commodore George Dewey, 60, receives a secret cable February 25 from Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt ordering him to proceed with his Asiatic squadron to Hong Kong and prepare for an attack on the Spanish squadron in the Philippines in the event of war.
Mobilization of U.S. Army forces begins March 9, and Congress votes unanimously to appropriate $50 million "for national defense and each and every purpose connected therewith." President McKinley has urged passage of the measure to show Madrid that America is serious, and the amount appropriated stuns the Spaniards; a U.S. naval court of inquiry reports March 21 that an external force such as a mine (torpedo), caused the destruction of the Maine, a Spanish board of inquiry reports March 22 that the explosion was internal, the U.S. report is made public March 28, a joint note to President McKinley from the ambassadors of six great powers April 6 calls for a peaceful solution to the Cuban problem, the Spanish queen Marie-Amelie acts on advice from Pope Leo XIII and orders a suspension of hostilities against Cuban rebels to "facilitate peace negotiations," but President McKinley sends a war message to Congress April 11. A Spanish squadron of four cruisers and several destroyers leaves the Cape Verde Islands for Cuba under the command of Admiral Pascual Cervera y Topete, 59, who has sent repeated dispatches warning Madrid that his ships lack sufficient coal and ammunition.
A joint resolution of Congress April 19 recognizes Cuban independence, authorizes the president to demand Spanish withdrawal from the island, and disclaims any intention to annex Cuba. Congress passes a Volunteer Army Act April 22; the first shots are fired April 22, Spain declares that a state of war exists April 24, Congress formally declares war April 25, Commodore Dewey receives the news in Hong Kong April 26, and he enters Manila Bay just before midnight April 30. A Volunteer Cavalry—the "Rough Riders"—is organized by Col. Leonard Wood, 37, of the Army Medical Corps and Lieut. Col. Theodore Roosevelt, who resigns his Navy post in May. The Rough Riders are artistocrats, cowboys, and Native Americans who require no training in shooting and horsemanship.
The Battle of Manila Bay May 1 begins at 5:40 in the morning when Commodore Dewey says to the captain of his flagship, "You may fire when you are ready, Gridley." Navigator Bradley A. (Allen) Fiske, 43, aboard the gunboat Petrel uses a stadimeter range finder that he has invented to communicate the ranges of enemy ships to U.S. gunners, and by the time a cease-fire is ordered at 12:30 in the afternoon, all 10 vessels in the Spanish squadron have been destroyed with a loss of 381 men, while eight Americans have been slightly wounded and one killed. Dewey is elevated to rear admiral May 11.
San Juan, Puerto Rico, comes under attack May 12 from the commander-in-chief of the North Atlantic Squadron William T. (Thomas) Sampson, 58, who headed the board of inquiry into the explosion that sank the Maine. Sampson blockades Admiral Cervera y Topete's Spanish fleet in the harbor of Santiago de Cuba beginning May 29.
The cruiser U.S.S. Marblehead steams into Cuba's Guantánamo Bay June 6 and knocks out Spanish artillery mounted on the hills overlooking the bay. A battalion of U.S. marines goes ashore June 10: 623 men and 24 officers take over an area that will remain in U.S. hands into the 21st century. Some 25,000 soldiers pour into Tampa, Fla., June 10, coming by train on the single-track, narrow-gauge railroad; officers are billeted at the Moorish Tampa Bay Hotel, and the troops include 10,000 "immunes," most of them with some African blood, who are considered to be more resistant than whites to malaria and yellow fever; 16,887 men leave Tampa June 14 for Santiago de Cuba, singing, "There'll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight."
Leading U.S. intellectuals meet at Faneuil Hall, Boston, June 15 and form an Anti-Imperialist League to oppose annexation of the Philippines in face of imperialist sentiment fired by the Battle of Manila. Local businessman Edward W. Atkinson, 38, lectures the founders of the league, headed by former secretary of the treasury George S. Boutwell. Now 80, Boutwell returns to the Democratic Party after more than 43 years as a Republican (see Carnegie, 1899).
U.S. Army forces under Major Gen. of Volunteers William Rufus Shafter, 63, arrives off Santiago de Cuba June 20 and disembark 2 days later with the Rough Riders of Col. Wood and Lieut. Col. Roosevelt. The Battle of Las Guasimas June 24 is the first land battle of the war and ends in a Spanish defeat at the hands of U.S. forces under the command of Major Gen. of Volunteers Joseph Wheeler, now 62, who fought in some 400 Civil War encounters on the Confederate side but has offered his services to President McKinley; Leonard Wood and Theodore Roosevelt have pushed ahead of other troops with 1,000 regulars and Rough Riders.
The Battle of San Juan Hill July 1 to 2 ends in victory for U.S. forces under Gen. Hamilton S. (Smith) Hawkins, 63, whose infantrymen take the hill (actually Kettle Hill) after a charge led by Col. Roosevelt and the Rough Riders. Some 1,460 men and 112 officers are killed, wounded, or missing after the action.
The Spanish fleet steams out of Santiago de Cuba July 3 after Admiral Cervera y Topete receives politically-driven orders from Madrid to leave port; Commander Sampson is conferring at the time with Gen. Shafter, Admiral Winfield S. Schley is in command of the U.S. Navy forces outside the harbor, and the Spanish cruiser Vizcaya is set afire and driven ashore in the ensuing Battle of Santiago Bay. "Don't cheer, boys, the poor devils are dying," shouts Capt. John Woodward Philip, 58, of the U.S. battleship Texas, and although only 3 percent of U.S. high-caliber shells score hits the battle ends with 180 Spaniards dead and 1,800 captured, while the Americans have sustained just one wound casualty. Admiral Cervera y Topete, three of his captains, and 1,800 sailors and marines are taken to Portsmouth, N.H.
U.S. troops under Gen. Nelson A. Miles invade Puerto Rico July 25, landing at Guánica, and receive the surrender of Ponce July 28, promising to liberate the island from neglect and poverty after 400 years of Spanish monarchical rule. Miles promises "to give the people of your beautiful island the largest measure of liberty [and] to bestow upon you . . . the liberal institutions of our government," but the Americans will change the spelling of Puerto Rico to "Porto Rico" and treat its people as inferiors (see 1899).
A peace protocol is signed with Spain August 12, and the Treaty of Paris signed December 10 formally ends what Secretary of State John Hay, now 60, has called a "splendid little war." Spain's prime minister Práxedes Mateo Sagasta, now 73, comes under attack for signing the "humiliating" treaty; many prominent Americans oppose its ratification on grounds that it will corrupt the United States and turn it into a colonial power (see 1899).
Former Union Army general William S. Rosecrans dies near Redondo Beach, Calif., March 11 at age 78; former Union Army general Don Carlos Buell at Rockport, Ky., November 19 at age 80.
A Fleet Act approved by the German Reichstag calls for construction by 1904 of a high-seas fleet capable of limited offensive action in a possible war against France and Russia (see 1890). Introduced by German Imperial Navy Department secretary of state Admiral Alfred Tirpitz, 49, it provides funding for a flagship, 16 battleships, eight armored coastal ships, nine large cruisers, and 26 small cruisers (see 1900). Former German chancellor Otto von Bismarck, herzog von (duke of) Lauenburg, dies at Friedrichsruh, outside Hamburg, July 30 at age 83, having said at one point, "History is simply a piece of paper covered with print; the main thing is still to make history, not to write it." "J'Accuse!" headlines the Paris newspaper L'Aurore January 13 over an open letter by novelist Emile Zola. His attack forces a new trial of Capt. Alfred Dreyfus, who has been sent to the penal colony called Devil's Island off the coast of French Guiana (see 1897). The documents that convicted Dreyfus were forged by two other officers (a Col. Henry and Major Esterházy), it is revealed, and Dreyfus was the victim of an anti-Semitic plot. France's second Henri Brisson ministry ends after just 120 days October 25 when Gen. Jules Chanoine defies the cabinet, insisting upon the guilt of Capt. Dreyfus (see 1899).
Former British prime minister William E. Gladstone dies at Hawarden May 19 at age 88 (he is buried in Westminster Abbey).
Italian anarchist Luigi Luccheni stabs the Austrian empress Elizabeth September 10 at Geneva as she walks from her hotel to the steamer. She dies within a few hours at age 60.
The Battle of Omdurman September 2 gives Gen. Kitchener a decisive victory over the Sudan's caliph (khalifa) Abd Allah, who has assembled an army of 52,000 fanatical, spear-waving Dervishes to charge the Anglo-Egyptian line outside Khartoum, screaming as they come (see 1896). The 21st Lancers mount a useless cavalry charge on the left flank, but the badly outnumbered Black Watch regiment repels 20,000 Dervishes who try to turn the British line at the rear. Using howitzers, Maxim machine guns, and rifles, the British kill 11,000 Dervishes, wound 16,000, and take 4,000 prisoner, sustaining only 48 casualties. Kitchener's British army takes Khartoum from the Dervishes, reaches Fashoda September 19, and finds it occupied by French forces under Major Jean Baptiste Marchand. France claims the left bank of the Nile, Ethiopia the right bank; London demands that the French evacuate the territory that Britain claims for Egypt by right of conquest, the French try to obtain Russian support but fail, and Paris orders the evacuation of Fashoda November 3 (see Abd Allah, 1899).
Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza reads in the newspaper that he has been dismissed from his post as governor general of the French Congo (see 1891). His administration has been above reproach, but he has created animosities by requiring that all European traders pay African employees fair wages (while workers across the river in the Belgian Congo remain in slavery), and although he has established clinics, schools, and job-training programs his enemies have used xenophobic fears raised by the Dreyfus affair to organize a smear campaign in the newspapers, labeling Brazza a negrophile and foreigner (see 1905).
The Nishi-Rosen protocol signed April 25 by the Russian minister to Japan Baron Roman Romanovich Rosen, 51, pledges both Russia and Japan to refrain from interfering in Korea's affairs while permitting Japanese economic penetration of the country. Russia leases the Liaodong (Liaotung) Peninsula with its important Port Arthur naval base from China, obtaining territory that was denied to Japan in 1895 and provoking anger at Tokyo (see 1904).
Britain and China sign a treaty July 2 giving the British a 99-year lease on 400 square miles of Chinese mainland (the New Territories) adjoining Hong Kong (see 1860; 1997).
Chinese reformers who include Kang Youwei (Kang Yu-wei), 40, propose an alliance with Britain and Japan to check Russia's advance; they also propose reforms along the lines of those enacted under Japan's Meiji emperor, and they gain the support of the Qing dynasty emperor Guangxu (Kuang-hsü), now 27, who issues a series of edicts based on progressive ideas, but the dowager empress Cixi moves September 21 to crush the 100-day reform movement, which threatens to sweep aside her corrupt Manchu bureaucracy. She enlists the support of the imperial military commander Jung-lu and stages a palace coup, imprisoning the emperor but sparing his life in response to pressure from foreign governments.
A bill signed into law by President McKinley July 7 provides for the annexation of the Hawaiian Islands (see 1897); Hawaiian sugar planters gain free access to U.S. markets (see statehood, 1959).
The United States reneges on promises to grant the Philippines independence and formally annexes the islands in July despite protests from Japan, paying Spain $20 million for the territory (see 1897). Revolutionist Emilio Aguinaldo has returned from exile in Hong Kong immediately following the Battle of Manila Bay May 1, declared independence June 12, and rekindles the insurrection begun 2 years ago, but this time against the United States, whose troops receive help from Filipino soldiers to force the capitulation of Manila's Spanish commander in August but refuse to let Filipino soldiers enter the city. Aguinaldo's right-hand man Apolinario Mabini, 33, initially urged cooperation with the United States as a way to obtain freedom from Spain, but he draws up a constitution for the independent republic proclaimed at a convention held at market town of Malolos in September and October, the United States announces that she will not annex the Philippines after all, Mabini and Aguinaldo renew their fight for independence, and when the peace treaty signed at Paris December 10 confirms cession of the Philippines to the United States, Aguinaldo and his followers feel betrayed (see 1899).
Former British colonial administrator Sir George Grey dies at London September 19 at age 86.
The new British viceroy to India George Nathaniel Curzon, Baron Curzon of Kedleston, now 39, arrives at Bombay December 30 with his wife, Mary, now 28. The Chicago department-store heiress will entertain lavishly and be far more popular than the stuffed-shirt vice regent (but make no effort in her 7 years as vicereine to span the gap between native Indians and the Raj) (see North-West Frontier, 1901).
New York City becomes Greater New York January 1 under terms of an 1897 state law uniting Kings County (Brooklyn), Richmond County (Staten Island), Bronx County, Long Island City, Newtown (Queens County), and Manhattan (New York County) to create a metropolis of just under 3.5 million inhabitants.
The U.S. Supreme Court rules March 28 in United States v. Wong Kim Ark that the 14th Amendment applies to all people born in the United States "regardless of race or color" (see 1886). Plaintiff Wong cannot be prevented by the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 from re-entering the country after returning from a trip to China.
Drunken white Ohio volunteers at Tampa seize a black child June 6, precipitating a race riot among troops awaiting embarkation orders for Cuba. The rioters burn cafés and other business establishments, but blacks fight side by side with whites in the Spanish-American War and gain praise for their courage and skill.
Louisiana adopts a new constitution with a "grandfather clause" restricting permanent voting registration to whites and those blacks whose fathers and grandfathers were qualified to vote as of January 1, 1867, a clause that virtually disenfranchises blacks. Race riots and lynchings sweep the South; 101 black men are lynched (see Mississippi, 1890; Alabama, 1901).
Wilmington, N.C., has a race riot and coup d'état November 10 that leaves at least 14 blacks dead. The city's population is mostly black, blacks have held important positions in the municipal government and more blacks have gained office in the recent election, former Confederate officer and U.S. congressman Col. Alfred Moore Waddell, 64, has called for the removal of Republicans and Populists from power and given a speech urging whites to "choke the Cape Fear with carcasses" if need be, editor Alex Manly, 32, of the black-owned Wilmington Daily Record has inflamed hatred with an August 18 editorial charging that "poor white men are careless in the matter of protecting their women," and that "our experience among poor white people in the country teaches us that women of that race are not any more particular in the matter of clandestine meetings with colored men than the white men with the colored women," some 500 white men assemble at the armory of the Wilmington Light Infantry at 8 o'clock in the morning, Manly flees the city, hundreds of black men, women, and children take refuge in the woods and swamps, the crowd grows to perhaps 2,000 as it moves toward the Daily Record offices, a fire destroys the building's top floor, Wilmington's white mayor resigns under pressure, other white and black officials follow suit, and North Carolina will adopt a Jim Crow "grandfather clause" providing that henceforth men may vote only if they can read and write or if their grandfathers voted, thereby disenfranchising black men.
Chippewa (Ojibway) in Minnesota go on the warpath, bringing U.S. Army troops to put down the tribesmen. Normally peaceful, the Chippewa protest a law that permits logging on their lands and dams that have flooded their crops and eroded tribal burial grounds.
New Zealand women gain the right to vote on the same basis as men, becoming the world's first women to enjoy equal suffrage (see 1893).
Irish women gain the right to sit on district councils beginning December 22.
The U.S. Supreme Court rules 7 to 2 February 28 in Holden v. Hardy that an 8-hour law adopted by the Utah legislature at its inaugural session 2 years ago was not unconstitutional. The first U.S. 8-hour law, it applied to underground mines, smelters, and ore-reduction works; Montana will adopt a similar law in 1901 as a result of the Court's landmark decision; Arizona and Nevada will follow suit in 1903, and other Western mining states will do the same.
The U.S. Supreme Court sustains an 1895 Illinois inheritance tax law April 25 in Morgan v. Illinois Trust and Savings Bank.
The Erdman Act adopted by Congress June 1 outlaws "yellow dog" contracts for employees of companies controlled by the Interstate Commerce Commission; the law makes it a criminal offense for railroads to dismiss employees or discriminate against prospective employees alleged to have participated in union activities (seeAdair v. U.S., 1908).
Congress imposes the first U.S. federal tax on legacies June 13 in a War Revenue Act that also provides for excise duties and taxes on tea, tobacco, liquor, and amusements. The measure authorizes sale of $200 million worth of 3 percent bonds.
Congress approves a uniform bankruptcy law July 1.
Mining engineer and former city mayor Adolph Sutro of 1878 Sutro Tunnel fame dies at San Francisco August 8 at age 68.
Virden, Illinois, coal mine operators attempt to break a strike by importing 200 nonunion black workers, an action that provokes violence (see 1897): 14 miners are killed and 25 wounded in the October 12 Mt. Olive massacre that brings demands for a union (see 1899).
Canada's Klondike yields more than $10 million worth of gold, producing at a rate that will be sustained through 1904 (see 1897).
A gold strike at Nome, Alaska, brings another rush of prospectors to the area (see 1886; Fairbanks, 1902).
Illinois Steel of Chicago and Lorrain Steel acquire Minnesota Mining with backing from J. P. Morgan & Company, obtaining a fleet of Great Lakes ore ships and railroads in the Mesabi iron range and in the Chicago area (see 1896; U.S. Steel, 1901).
Republic Steel is created by a merger of Ohio and Pennsylvania firms (see 1937).
John W. Gates becomes president of the American Steel & Wire, which has a virtual monopoly in barbed wire (see agriculture, 1875). He has established his own barbed wire company at St. Louis and negotiated a series of mergers and consolidations (see Tennessee Coal & Iron, 1906).
Businessman Warren Delano dies at Alconac, New York, January 17 at age 88, having made a fortune in the Chinese opium trade; John Murray Forbes at Boston October 12 at age 85, having grown his Chinese opium fortune with investments in railroads.
Paris jeweler Alfred Cartier takes his sons Louis, Jacques, and Pierre into the business and opens a new shop at 13 rue de la Paix (see 1847). Louis, 23, will become Cartier's creative genius (see 1902).
Union Carbide Company is founded by Chicago entrepreneurs to manufacture calcium carbide for producing acetylene gas for streetlights and home lighting, which still depends largely on coal gas and kerosene (see 1892; 1906).
Wyoming coal mines produce nearly 2.9 million tons, 283,713 tons from last year. The state will grow to be the largest U.S. source of coal, yielding more than West Virginia, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania combined.
The Supreme Court establishes the right of the courts to decide the reasonableness of U.S. railroad rates—and the doctrine of judicial review—in a ruling handed down March 7 in the case of Smyth v. Ames.
London's Waterloo & City Underground line opens to link the City with the mainline station. Known as "the Drain," it supplements "the Tube" that opened in 1890, will be extended in 1900 to the Angel in Islington and Clapham, extended in 1907 to King's Cross and Euston, and become an early part of the Northern line in 1926 (see Central London Railway, 1900).
Civil engineer Sir John Fowler dies at Bournemouth, Hampshire, November 20 at age 81, having helped to design London's underground Metropolitan Railways and Scotland's Forth Bridge. He was created a baronet in 1890.
Timken Roller Bearing Axle Company is founded by German-born carriage maker Henry Timken, 67, who was brought to America in 1838 at age 7, opened a St. Louis carriage works in 1855, patented a special type of carriage spring in 1877, and has just obtained a patent for a tapered roller bearing that will make his company the leader in its field.
U.S. motorcar production reaches 1,000, up from 100 last year.
French manufacturer (Pierre-) Alexandre Darracq, 42, makes the first effort to produce motorcars in quantity. A former draftsman who founded the Gladiator Cycle Company in 1891, Darracq sold that company 2 years ago, has manufactured electric cars, and now begins building voiturettes under license from Léon Bollée (see 1906).
Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company is founded at Akron, Ohio, by local entrepreneur and inventor Frank A. (Augustus) Seiberling, 38, whose family-owned agricultural-implement company has failed. He has gone to Chicago to collect unpaid bills, learned that an abandoned strawboard-factory site was available on the Cuyahoga River in east Akron, arranged to buy the buildings with a down payment of $3,500, and decides to enter the rubber-manufacturing business, initially to produce bicycle tires. The company is incorporated August 29 with a capitalization of $100,000, investor David Hill acquires $30,000 worth of the stock and becomes president, production begins November 21 with 13 workers (who earn the prevailing wage of 13¢ to 25¢ per hour for a 10-hour day) on a production line turning out bicycle and carriage tires, horseshoe pads, and poker chips. Seiberling will adopt the winged foot of the god Mercury as a symbol in August 1900 (see 1908).
The City of Portland founders off Cape Cod November 26; 157 passengers and crewmen are lost.
Philadelphia engineers Frederick Winslow Taylor, 43, and Maunsel White, 43, of the 41-year-old Saucona Iron Company (it will become Bethlehem Steel Co. next year) develop the Taylor-White process for heat-treating highspeed tool steels, increasing cutting capacities of blade edges by 200 to 300 percent (see Taylor, 1911).
A pilot plant to produce viscose rayon yarn that can be woven and dyed opens at Kew, Surrey, England (see Cross, Bevan, 1892). English inventor C. H. Stearn patents a viscose filament produced by treating wood pulp with caustic soda (sodium hydroxide) (see Courtalds, 1905; Little, 1902).
Engineer-inventor Sir Henry Bessemer dies at Bessemer Grange, Denmark Hill, London, March 15 at age 85, having made a fortune from the Kelly-Bessemer blast-furnace method of making steel directly from molten pig iron; adding machine inventor William S. Burroughs dies at Citronelle, Alabama, September 14 at age 43.
Polish-born French physical chemist Marie (Marja) Curie (née Sklodowska), 31, and her husband, Pierre, 39, isolate radium, the first important radioactive element (see uranium, 1896). Married 3 years ago, they have endured extreme poverty, have earlier discovered a highly radioactive and dangerous element which they called polonium, after Marie's native land, and have now detected radium while extracting pure substances from pitchblende ore (see 1904).
Physicist Wilhelm Wien analyzes the positive rays emanating from the anode in an energized Crookes tube and finds that the particles have a mass-to-charge ratio more than 1,000 times larger than that of the electron (see 1897; Wien, 1893). Since the ratio of the particles is also comparable to the mass-to-charge ratio of the residual atoms in the discharge tubes, scientists suspect that the rays may actually be ions from the gases in the Crookes tube.
Physicist Philipp Lenard constructs a cathode-ray tube with an aluminum window that permits cathode rays to pass into the air (see Lenard, 1890). Now 36, he uses a phosphorescent screen to demonstrate that the rays decrease in number as the screen is drawn away from the CR tube and disappear entirely at a distance. His experiments show that the power of substances to absorb cathode rays depends not on their chemical nature but rather on their density, and that this absorption decreases as the velocity of the rays increases. Lenard will prove next year that cathode rays are created when light strikes metal surfaces, a phenomenon that will come to be called the photoelectric effect.
Mathematics teacher Johann Jakob Balmer dies at Basel March 12 at age 72, having made the first discovery of the simple mathematical relationship between the frequencies of light emitted by hydrogen (see Bohr, 1913).
The word photosynthesis is introduced to denote the process by which plants synthesize carbohydrates from carbon dioxide, water, and inorganic salts, using sunlight for energy and chlorophyll as a catalyst (see Ingenhousz, 1779; von Sachs, 1862).
Bacteriologist Shibasaburo Kitasato at Berlin isolates the causative agent of dysentery.
Parasitology pioneer Rudolf Leuckart dies at Leipzig February 6 at age 75.
Bubonic plague will kill an estimated 3 million people in China and India in the next decade (see 1896; 1910).
The Joslin Clinic (later the Joslin Diabetes Center) has its beginnings in a practice started by Boston physician Elliott P. (Procter) Joslin, 29, at 81 Bay State Road. Few treatments for diabetes exist, complications of the disease commonly lead to blindness or amputation of lower extremities, most patients die within 2½ years of diagnosis, but Joslin is among those who have observed that drastic calorie intake can extend lives for months and even years. One of them starves herself down to 69 pounds, but Joslin urges all his patients to remain optimistic until a more effective treatment can be developed (see insulin, 1916; Banting, 1922).
Anna Wessel Williams uses her efforts to obtain enough rabies vaccine to begin large-scale production in America (see 1891). Together with Italian physician Adelchi Negri she has identified the distinctive brain cell peculiar to an animal with rabies and will develop a method that quickly detects the so-called "Negri bodies."
The Palmer School of Chiropractic is founded at Davenport, Iowa, by Canadian-born magnetic healer Daniel David Palmer, 53, who has developed a system of manually manipulating the joints, especially the spine, for which he makes extravagant claims (the word chiropractic is Greek for "done by hand"). Palmer allegedly restored the hearing of a nearly deaf man 3 years ago by manipulating his spine.
Lydia Pinkham's Vegetable Compound is widely advertised as "The Greatest Medical Discovery Since the Dawn of History" (see 1881). Production and sale will continue for another 76 years, but the patent medicine Pe-Ru-Na has a higher alcoholic content and enjoys even higher sales; promoted as a cure for catarrh, Pe-Ru-Na has made physician-promoter Samuel Brubaker Hartman, now 68, a fortune of $2.5 million. Many patent medicines contain opium; annual U.S. imports of raw opium have increased to more than 52 grains per capita, up from less than 12 grains in the 1840s, and while alcohol abuse is common among U.S. men the dependence on opiates has been increasing among women (see 1905).
Heroin is introduced under that brand name as a cough suppressant by Farbenfabriken vorm. Friedrich Bayer und Co. (see Hoffmann, 1897). Derived from opium, it is based on a formulation devised in 1874 by a London pharmacist who was looking for a non-addictive alternative to morphine (see 1806), boiled morphine together with acetic anhydride, and produced a substance five to 10 times as potent as morphine with immensely addictive narcotic properties. Absent any laws to bar its sale in a time when coughing is associated with the spread of pneumonia and tuberculosis, Heroin will enjoy wide popularity among physicians and patients (see Massachusetts law, 1905; Aspirin, 1899).
Gideons International has its beginnings at Boscobel, Wis., where traveling salesmen John H. Nicholson and Sam Hill share a room at the Central Hotel and decide to form an association of Christian businessmen (excluding those in the liquor trade) and professional men to "put the Word of God into the hands of the unconverted." The association will raise money for their work, it will place 25 bibles in a Montana hotel in 1908, and by 1976 the Gideons will be placing 16.5 million bibles per year in hotels, hospitals, prisons, schools, colleges, and other locations.
Central Hindu College is founded at Benares by English reformer Annie Besant, now 51, who embraced theosophy in 1889 and has been campaigning for nationalism in India.
Exhortation to Learning (Quan Xue Pian, or Chüan-hsüeh pien) by Chinese scholar and provincial official Zhang Zhidong (Chang Chih-tung), 60, reaffirms its author's faith in Confucianism but urges his compatriots to study abroad, read foreign newspapers, acquire Western knowledge, and establish a school system. Zhang will establish schools, newspapers, and translation bureaus in Hupei Province and send some students abroad (see 1904).
Beijing (Peking) University has its beginnings in the Capital College established in December by the emperor Guangxu (Kuang-hsü); the imperial government will make the college responsible for devising regulations for a national school system in 1904, and by 1908 Hupei Province alone will be supporting 475 students in Japan and 103 in Western countries. The college will be renamed Beijing University in 1911 and by 1920 will have become a major center for progressive thinking (see 1952; Yanjing University, 1922).
Stenotypy inventor John Celivergos Zachos dies at New York March 20 at age 77.
A message to García is delivered by Virginia-born Army lieutenant Andrew Summers Rowan, 41, who lands in an open boat April 24 near Turquino Peak on a secret mission to obtain information from Cuban insurgent Calixto García y Iñiguez. Ordinary lines of communication have broken down, but Rowan delivers an oral message from President McKinley and returns to Washington, D.C., with intelligence on the rebel army. General García is named to represent Cuba in negotiations with the United States for Cuban independence but dies at age 62 (see Fiction, 1899).
William Randolph Hearst publishes special editions of his New York Journal from his private yacht anchored in Havana Harbor. He has sent cowboy painter Frederic Remington to Cuba earlier, Journal stories inflame U.S. opinion ("Remember the Maine!"), the paper offers a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the perpetrator of the February 15 explosion, and its circulation reaches 1.6 million May 2. President McKinley has refused Hearst's offer to provide two ships and Hearst goes to Cuba as a foreign correspondent.
The New York Times drops its price from 3¢ to 1¢ and circulation triples to 75,000 within a year (see 1896; 1897). By 1901 it will be over 100,000.
Sunset magazine begins publication at Los Angeles to promote business for the Southern Pacific by attracting tourists, settlers, and developers to the West. Named for the railroad's crack Sunset Limited between New Orleans and Los Angeles, it will become a family magazine in 1928.
Offset printing has its beginnings at Columbus, Ohio, where a pressman for the Enterprise Envelope Company chastises a worker who has missed a sheet while feeding paper by hand into the press. Alfred G. Harris of the Harris Automatic Press Company founded late in 1895 at Niles has been installing an E-1 Harris Automatic envelope feeder in the shop and asks the pressman what happened. The pressman runs another sheet to show him that the press has printed the image on the impression cylinder, the cylinder then places a reverse image on the next sheet that goes through the press. Harris and the pressman see that the lithographed image on the back of the sheet is better than the one on the front, and the discovery prompts Alfred and his brother Charles to work on developing an offset lithographic press (see 1906).
Danish engineer Valdemar Poulsen, 28, of the Copenhagen Telephone Company pioneers the tape recorder with a device that employs magnetized steel piano wire to record and reproduce sounds. Thomas Edison produced a talking machine in 1887; British inventor Oberlin Smith, now 58, suggested the following year that sounds could be recorded magnetically using "tapes" of fabric containing iron filings; and a "telegraphone" devised by Poulsen 8 years ago recorded sounds on a wire. Poulsen found that he could register human speech by alternating the magnetization of a steel piano wire, recording continuously for 30 minutes on a wire moving at a speed of 84 inches per second; he now applies for a patent on this telegraphone, a machine for use with telephones that permits the user to record and erase messages (see 1900).
Electrical engineer Josiah Latimer Clark dies at London October 30 at age 76, having helped to develop pneumatic messaging and wireless telegraphy.
The National Cyclopedia of American Biography in published in its first volumes at New York. The work will run to more than 40 volumes, specializing in deceased business leaders (almost all men) whose families will pay steep prices to have illustrations accompany the glowing accounts.
Nonfiction: Mr. Dooley inPeace and in War by New York Evening Journal humorist Finley Peter Dunne, 31, whose book Mr. Dooley in the Hearts of His Countrymen also appears, beginning a series by a fictitious Chicago bartender whose witty and skeptical remarks to his silent and gloomy companion Malachi Hennessey are published in Dunne's weekly newspaper column; The Evidence (Les Preuves) by French socialist Chamber member (Auguste-Marie-Joseph-) Jean Jaurès, 38, who asks for the retrial and rehabilitation of Alfred Dreyfus and loses his bid for reelection; Studies of Good and Evil by Josiah Royce; Wild Animals I Have Known by English-born Canadian author Ernest Thompson Seton, 38, launches its author on a career.
Fiction: "The Turn of the Screw" (story) by Henry James; The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells (see communications, 1938); The Open Boat and Other Tales of Adventure by Stephen Crane, who was sent last year from Jacksonville, Fla., to report on the insurrection in Cuba, was reported to have drowned when his tugboat Commodore sank in a squall with $5,000 worth of ammunition, but actually made it to safety, rowing for 30 hours in a dinghy that carried also the ship's captain, cook, and oiler, although Crane had to jettison his money belt with all its gold before swimming ashore through rough Florida surf. Crane then took off for Greece to report on the Greco-Turkish war and hear musket fire for the first time. He leaves in April to cover the Spanish-American War for the New York World (publisher William Randolph Hearst soon hires him away to work for his New York Journal); David Harum, A Story of American Life by the late New York banker-novelist Edward N. (Noyes) Westcott: "Them that has gits;" The Prisoners of Hope: A Cautionary Tale of Colonial Virginia by Virginia novelist Mary Johnston, 27; Evelyn Innes by George Moore; The Forest Lovers by English novelist Maurice Hewlett, 37; Rupert of Hentzau by Anthony Hope, who describes the fictional adventures of Rudolph Rassendyll in the mythical kingdom of Ruritania; The Womanand the Puppet (La Femme et le pantin) by French novelist-poet Pierre Loüys (Pierre Louis), 28; As a Man Grows Older (Senilita) by Italo Svevo (published at his own expense as was his 1892 novel); Effi Briest by Theodor Fontane; Petty Sin (Kamertjeszonde) by Dutch novelist Koos Habbema (Herman Heijermans), 33, attacks prevailing attitudes toward sex; Offspring (Afkom) by Amalie Skram completes her seven-volume series The People of Hellemyr (Hellemyrsfolket).
Banker-novelist Edward N. Westcott dies of tuberculosis at New York March 31 at age 51 (his novel is published posthumously); Edward Bellamy dies at his native Chicopee Falls, Mass., May 22 at age 48; Theodor Fontane at Berlin September 20 at age 78.
Poetry: From the Dawn to the Evening Angelus (De l'Angelus d'aube à l'angelus du soir) by French poet Francis Jammes, 30; The Modern Traveller by Hilaire Belloc; "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" by Oscar Wilde, who was released from prison last year after serving the 2-year sentence imposed in 1895 and has emigrated to Paris: "Yet each man kills the thing he loves,/ By each let this be heard,/ Some do it with a bitter look/ Some with a flattering word,/ The coward does it with a kiss,/ The brave man with a sword!"
Stéphane Mallarmé dies in his summer cottage at Valvins, near Fontainbleau, September 9 at age 56.
Juvenile: The Rebellion of Lil by L. T. Meade.
Author-mathematician-poet-photographer Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) dies of influenza at Guilford, England, January 14 at age 65.
The Glasgow School of Art opens under the direction of Scottish architect-designer, water-colorist, and art nouveau exponent Charles Rennie Mackintosh, 30, who has designed the school's building.
Painting: Avenue de L'Opéra, Place du Théâtre Français: Misty Weather and Rue de l'Epicerie, Rouen—Morning, Gray Weather by Camille Pissarro; The Sleep of King Arthur in Avalon by Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, who has been painting the massive work since 1880; The Venetian Wine Shop by John Singer Sargent; Sunday Morning, Appledore by Childe Hassam. Aubrey Beardsley dies of tuberculosis at Menton, France, March 16 at age 25; Gustave Moreau at Paris April 18 at age 72; Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones at London June 17 at age 64; Pierre C. Puvis de Chavannes at Paris October 10 at age 73.
The Graflex camera patented by Rochester, N.Y., inventor William F. Folmer, 36, is the world's first high-speed multiple-split focal plane camera.
Photographs taken with artificial light are produced for the first time; magnesium flares permit faster shutter speeds, making it possible to take pictures in dark places and produce portraits without requiring subjects to hold still for several minutes (see flash bulb, 1930).
Theater: The Dream of a Spring Morning (Sogno d'un mattino di primavera) by Gabriele D'Annunzio 1/1 at Rome's Teatro Valle; Trelawny of the "Wells" by Arthur Wing Pinero 5/27 at the St. James's Theatre, London; Drayman Henschel (Fuhrmann Henschel) by Gerhart Hauptmann 11/5 at Berlin's Deutsches Theater; The Wild Beasts' Banquet (La Comida de las fieras) by Jacinto Benavente 11/30 at Madrid's Teatro de la Comedia; Ghetto by Herman Heijermans 12/24 at Amsterdam's Hollandsche Schouwburg.
The Moscow Art Theater (initially the Moscow Art and Popular Theater) opens October 26 (October 14 Old Style) with a performance of Aleksei Tolstoy's Czar Fyodor Ioannovich under the direction of Russian actor-producer Konstantin Sergeievich Stanislavski (K. S. Alekseev), 35, who will head the theater for 40 years. Playwright-novelist-director Vladimir Ivanovich Nemirovich-Danchenko, 29, has recognized the need for reform in the Russian stage, cofounded the theater, given Stanislavski his ideas, and will serve as producer and literary adviser. Observing that the cast has merely imitated his own gestures, intonations, and character conceptualization, Stanislavski urges his actors to probe their own psyches and project their feelings in a way that will affect audiences (his original company of 39 players includes Olga Leonardovna Knipper, 29, who makes her debut as Irina in Czar Fyodor Ivanovich and will marry playwright Anton Chekhov in 1901, taking the name Knipper-Chekhova. The production of Chekhov's The Sea Gull that Stanislavski and Nemirovich-Danchenko mount in December is the play's the first effective performance, and although it failed dismally 2 years ago at St. Petersburg it is now a brilliant success, dissuading Chekhov from his plan to give up playwriting. Stanislavsky's "method" will revolutionize acting with infusions of genuine emotion.
German-born theatrical agent William Morris, 25, opens a New York office in 14th Street and obtains bookings for vaudeville acts at a 5 percent commission. He will help to build shows for vaudeville house managers and by the time of his death in 1932 will have made his firm the world's leading talent agency.
French film pioneer Léon Ernest Gaumont, 34, opens a London office in Cecil Court. English film pioneer Cecil Hepworth, 23, builds a 10-foot by six-foot studio in his garden at Walton-on-Thames.
Cameraman Billy Bitzer films the Spanish-American War for publisher William Randolph Hearst (see 1896). He becomes the first motion-picture photographer to cover a war.
Opera: Croatian soprano Milka Ternina (Trnina), 34, makes her Covent Garden debut 6/3 in the role of Isolde and goes on to sing the Wagnerian roles of Sieglinde in Die Walküre, Brünhilde in Siegfried and Gotterdamerung, and Leonore in the 1805 Beethoven opera Fidelio (she will sing next year at the Bayreuth Festival); Czech soprano Emmy Destinn (Ema Destinnová), 20, makes her debut 7/19 in the role of Santuzza in the 1890 Mascagni opera Cavalleria Rusticana at the Berlin Krolloper; Fritzi Scheff makes her Metropolitan Opera debut as Marcelline in Fidelio.
First performances: Pelléas and Mélisande orchestral suite by Gabriel Fauré 6/21 at the Prince of Wales' Theatre, London, for a production of the 1893 Maurice Maeterlinck play with Mrs. Patrick Campbell.
Stage musicals: A Runaway Girl 5/21 at London's Gaiety Theatre, with comedian Edmund Payne, music by Ivan Caryll and Lionel Monckton; A Greek Slave 6/8 at Daly's Theatre, London, with music by Sidney Jones; The Charlatan 9/5 at New York's Knickerbocker Theater, with book by Charles Klein, music by John Philip Sousa, 35 perfs.; The Fortune Teller 9/26 at Wallack's Theater, New York, with music by Irish-born conductor-composer Victor Herbert, 30, book and lyrics by Harry B. Smith, songs that include "Gypsy Love Song," 40 perfs.
Popular songs: "The Rosary" by Ethelbert Nevin, 36, lyrics by Robert Cameron Rogers, 36; "When You Were Sweet Sixteen" by English-born U.S. songwriter James Thornton, 37.
Instrument maker C. G. Conn produces the first Sousaphone (see saxophone, 1889). Made to John Philip Sousa's specifications, the big brass horn will become popular with marching bands; Conn's Elkhart, Ind., factory will be the world's largest of its kind by 1905 (see 1915).
Brooklyn brewer Charles Ebbets, 38, persuades local trolley line owners to help build a stadium in Washington Park near Fourth Avenue and Third Street in the Park Slope section for the "Trolley Dodgers" baseball team, which has been playing on a field opposite the new stadium. Ebbets began his career by selling scorecards for the Dodgers and 4 years ago bought a brownstone in First Street between Fifth and Sixth avenues (see 1899).
Nova Scotia-born U.S. yachtsman Joshua Slocum, 54, brings his homemade 37-foot sloop Spray into Newport, Rhode Island, June 27 after completing the first one-man circumnavigation of the world. He has used only a compass, sextant, and "dollar clock" as navigational instruments in his 3-year voyage out of Boston in the rebuilt, derelict fishing boat, having added an extra mast en route to improve her steering, dodged pirates, and survived fierce storms.
Reginald Doherty wins in men's singles at Wimbledon, Charlotte Cooper in women's singles; Malcolm D. Whitman, 21, wins in U.S. men's singles, Juliette Atkinson in women's singles.
The touchdown in U.S. college football receives a value of five points, up from the four established in 1884, and athletic directors give the goal after touchdown a value of one point, down from two in 1884 (see 1912).
Atlantic City's Steel Pier opens with amusement park attractions (see boardwalk, 1896).
California Perfume Co. has 5,000 door-to-door saleswomen (see 1886). They offer not only perfume but also cologne, Sweet Sixteen Face Powder, Rose Lip Pomade, headache cures, shaving soap, tooth-cleaning tablets, shoe cleaner, furniture polish, spot remover, moth-proofer, food flavorings, and cookbooks (see 1929).
George Vuitton brands his late father's initials on the canvas luggage he has created, hoping to discourage imitators (see 1854). The name Louis Vuitton has gained wide acceptance for trunks and cases, and the French firm will introduce them in the United States in 1902.
British Columbia's Legislative Building opens at Victoria February 10. English-born architect Francis M. Rattenbury, 30, arrived at Vancouver in 1891, received the commission to design the structure after living in British Columbia for only 1 month, and has received $44,304 for his romanesque design.
Chicago's Gage building on South Michigan Avenue is completed by Holabird and Roche.
New York's Condict building is completed at 65 Bleecker Street for Silas Alden Condict. Designed by Chicago architect Louis H. Sullivan, the radical structure will later be called the Bayard building.
Brooklyn's Grand Army Plaza is graced with an 80-foot-high arch designed by architect John Duncan to commemorate Union Army forces in the Civil War. Stanford White creates four tall Doric columns to mark the entrance to Prospect Park, and sculptor Frederick MacMonnies works on a statue of Victory in a two-wheeled chariot drawn by four horses abreast to surmount Duncan's triumphal arch.
Claridge's Hotel opens in London's Brook Street, where it has been rebuilt on a site occupied by an earlier hotel that operated under the name Claridge's for half a century (see 1894). Owner Richard D'Oyly Carte has turned it into a nine-story building with electric lights, lifts, 209 apartments, each with private bath, and 57 suites. A staff of more than 500 serves Claridge's guests. D'Oyly Carte buys the Berkeley Hotel in Piccadilly in order to obtain the services of George Reeve-Smith, who succeeds César Ritz as managing director of London's Savoy.
The Paris Ritz opens June 5 in a 17th-century townhouse in the Place Vendôme. César Ritz has found that the duc de Lauzun's property was for sale, he has suggested the name "Grand Marnier" to London liqueur maker Marnier La Postolle for La Postolle's orange-flavored cordial, La Postolle has given him funds to buy the townhouse, and Ritz opens the new hotel with 170 guest rooms, the world's first hotel to have a private toilet and bath for every room; Auguste Escoffier of 1894 Pèche Melba fame is maître chef de cuisine (see London Ritz, 1902).
Architect Charles Garnier dies at his native Paris August 3 at age 72.
Gifford Pinchot wins appointment as chief forester in the U.S. Department of Agriculture after 3 years of managing Vanderbilt forests in the Great Smokies (see 1902).
New York's Bronx Zoo opens November 8 under the auspices of the 3-year-old New York Zoological Society.
U.S. wheat futures reach $1.85 per bushel as the outbreak of the Spanish-American War booms demand. Joseph Leiter has paper profits of $7 million (see 1897), but he holds contracts for 35 million bushels, and when wheat pours into Chicago in June, Leiter's corner on the market is broken. He not only loses his profit but winds up with a debt of $10 million, which is paid by his father.
The United States exports $200 million worth of wheat and flour, up from $60 million worth in 1870.
U.S. Secretary of Agriculture James Wilson sends Schroon Lake, N.Y.-born Louisiana rice planter Seaman A. (Asahel) Knapp, 64, to China, Japan, and the Philippines to investigate rice varieties, production, and milling. Knapp's findings will lead to a marked expansion U.S. rice growing.
China has serious famine as the northern provinces suffer drought, while in Shandong (Shantung) Province the Huanghe (Yellow River) overflows its banks to create disastrous floods.
U.S. troops sent to fight in the Spanish-American War fall ill from eating what critics call "embalmed" beef and many die (contaminated meat kills more men than battle wounds do). The deaths raise a public outcry for reform of the meat-packing industry (see 1905; Armour, 1901)and increase demands for pure food laws and meat inspection laws that would regulate packers (see St. Louis Exposition, 1904).
U.S. food prices (as reported in the Emporia Gazette): steak 10¢/lb., a frying chicken 15¢, flour $2/cwt, sugar 5¢/lb. Sugar prices soar following the outbreak of the Spanish-American War.
Sanitas corn flakes are introduced by Sanitas Nut Food Co., set up at Battle Creek, Mich., by J. H. Kellogg with his brother Will Keith (see Granose, 1895). Sold by mail order, the world's first corn flakes quickly turn rancid and have little acceptance in a market oriented toward wheat cereals, but the Kelloggs persevere and will call their company the Sanitas Food Co. beginning in 1900 (see 1902).
Henry D. Perky promotes Shredded Wheat as "the perfect food" and embarks on a lecture tour (see 1895). "From the most abject physical wreck, I have succeeded, by the use of naturally organized food, in reorganizing my body into perfectly healthy condition," says Perky (who will die in 1906 at age 66; see 1900).
Joseph Campbell Preserve Co. adds Vegetable to its line of condensed soups (see 1897). Campbell's Soups sell for 10¢ per can and appear for the first time with red and white labels whose colors have been suggested by Cornell football uniforms (see 1904).
National Biscuit Co. is formed by a consolidation of New York Biscuit, American Biscuit and Manufacturing, United States Baking, and United States Biscuit. Massachusetts-born executive Adolphus W. Green, 54, heads the new company, whose 114 bakeries comprise 90 percent of all major U.S. commercial bakeries. Seeking a way to surmount the anonymity of the cracker barrel seen in every grocery shop, Green decides to concentrate the company's efforts behind a flaky soda cracker, retains N. W. Ayer & Son as his advertising agency, and is advised by Ayer's Henry N. McKinney that a manufacturer must "insure his future sales by adopting a trade name and trade dress which will belong exclusively to him by trademark and trade right." McKinney suggests the name Uneeda Cracker, Green changes it to Uneeda Biscuit, and the name is registered December 27 with the U.S. Patent Office (see 1900).
Tea magnate Thomas J. Lipton converts all his holdings into a huge limited liability company and turns his attention to yachting; now 48 and worth an estimated £10 million ($50 million), he will finance the America's Cup challenger Shamrock next year and four more Shamrocks between 1901 and 1930, none of them successful 1909).
Annual British tea consumption averages 10 pounds per capita, up from two pounds in 1797 (see 1869). Black teas from India and Ceylon have long since gained dominance over Chinese green teas, but many connoisseurs still prefer China's green teas, especially gunpowder and hysson, and Chinese black teas, notably keemun or congou from North China (also called English breakfast tea).
Reformer Frances Willard dies of influenza at New York February 18 at age 58, having seen the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) become a major political power.
U.S. troops awaiting transport to Cuba in the Spanish-American War enjoy Cuba Libres (made of rum and Coca-Cola by a bartender at the Tampa Bay Hotel in Tampa); workers in Cuba's Daiquiri iron mines will soon enjoy a cocktail called the Daiquiri (made of rum, lime juice, and sugar).
Pepsi-Cola is introduced by New Bern, N.C., pharmacist Caleb Bradham, 31, who has been mixing the fountain drink since 1893, using ingredients that include kola nut extract, rare oils, and vanilla, but no pepsin; he has paid a Newark, N.J., competitor $100 for the man's Pep name (see 1903).
The U.S. Supreme Court rules March 28 that a child born of Chinese parents in the United States is a citizen and cannot be denied re-entrance to the United States by the Chinese Exclusion Laws of 1880 and 1892 (United States v. Wong Kim Ark).
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