1908
1901 1902 1903 1904 1905 1906 1907 1908 1909 1910
Portugal's licentious Carlos I is assassinated February 1 while riding in a carriage near the home office at his native Lisbon; Crown Prince Luiz is also killed. Police fire at random, killing a cavalry sergeant who is identified as the ringleader of an assassination plot, and many people are seriously injured in the panic that follows the shooting. Dead at age 44 after a reign of nearly 19 years, the king is succeeded by his younger son, 18, who will reign until 1910 as Manoel II. He ends the dictatorship of his father's prime minister João Franco that began in 1906.
British statesman Spencer C. Cavendish, 8th duke of Devonshire and marquis of Hartington, dies at Cannes March 24 at age 74, having three times declined the office of prime minister. Prime Minister Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman resigns April 5 (he has been recuperating from a heart attack suffered last November) and dies at No. 10 Downing Street, London, April 22. He is succeeded by Herbert Henry Asquith, 55, earl of Oxford and Asquith, whose Liberal ministry will continue until 1916.
Gen. Sir Redvers H. Buller dies near Crediton, England, June 2 at age 68.
The Russian diplomat Nikolai, Graf Ignatiev, dies at his Ukraine estate July 3 (June 20 Old Style) at age 76, having had a great influence on Ottoman affairs. A military revolt against the Ottoman sultan Abdul Hamid II begins July 3 as Major Ahmed Niyazi of the 3rd Corps leads his men against provincial authorities at Resna (see Young Turk movement, 1891). Members of the Young Turk conspiracy stir up further revolts, and the rebellion quickly spreads throughout the Ottoman Empire, with many government troops joining in. The sultan announces July 23 that he is restoring the constitution of 1876 and recalls parliament, but although the Young Turks have achieved their primary objective they are prevented by internal dissension from taking effective control of the government (see 1909).
Bulgaria declares independence October 5 as Prince Ferdinand assumes the title "czar" (he will reign until 1918). Austria annexes Bosnia and Herzogovina October 6, producing consternation in Russia, Serbia, Montenegro, and Turkey. Berlin supports Vienna, London and Paris support objections by Russia, the Ottoman Empire, and the Balkan nations, Crete aggravates the crisis October 7 by proclaiming union with Greece, and Constantinople boycotts Austrian goods (see 1909).
Egyptian nationalist Mustapha Kamel dies February 10 at age 34, and his death deals the reviving nationalist movement a heavy blow (see 1907); the khedive moves to counteract nationalism November 10 by appointing as premier the Coptic Christian Butros Ghali; Muslims stage violent demonstrations (see 1910).
Persia's shah Mohammed Ali succeeds in a coup d'état June 23 with help from the Cossack Brigade and secret support from the Russian legation (see 1907). He shuts down the national assembly and imposes martial law at Teheran; many liberal leaders are killed.
The Battle of Marakesh August 23 ends in defeat for the Moroccan sultan Abd-al-Aziz IV, who has met the ransom demands of the brigand Raisuli to avert foreign wars but whose actions have provoked his older brother Mulay Hafid to revolt (see 1906). Insurgents proclaimed Mulay Hafid sultan of Morocco at Marakesh in May of last year, Fez has proclaimed him sultan in January, Berlin announces September 3 that Germany will recognize the new sultan, the French seize German deserters from the French Foreign Legion, Franco-German relations grow tense, but Mulay Hafid agrees to respect French and Spanish interests as accepted by his brother after the Algeciras Conference in 1906, and he will reign until 1912 as Abd-al-Hafiz.
Belgium's Parliament annexes the Congo State of the aged Leopold II October 18 and begins to remove the abuses that have existed since 1885 (see human rights, 1906).
Former president Grover Cleveland dies at Princeton, N.J., June 24 at age 71; Sen. William B. Allison (R. Iowa) at Dubuque August 4 at age 79.
President Roosevelt adheres to the tradition against a third term. Republicans nominate Roosevelt's secretary of war William Howard Taft of Cincinnati, who has served as governor of the Philippines, quelled a potential rebellion in Cuba, and organized construction of the Panama Canal. Now 50, Taft easily defeats his Democratic rival, William Jennings Bryan (who runs for the third and last time), winning 321 electoral votes to 162 for the "Great Commoner," but Taft has little interest in being president and will antagonize Roosevelt by allowing Wall Street and business interests to control his administration (see 1912).
A Venezuelan military junta seizes power under the leadership of Gen. Juan Vicente Gómez while President Cipriano Castro, now 49, is in Europe recuperating from illness after a dictatorial 9-year rule in which he has embezzled huge sums of money. Gómez is a nearly full-blooded Indian whose age is somewhere between 44 and 51, he has had no formal education, he helped Castro gain power in 1899, has controlled the government in Castro's absence, and will rule ruthlessly as absolute dictator until his death 1935, either as president or through puppets (see energy, 1922).
Peru's prime minister Augusto Bernardino Leguía y Salcedo, 45, wins election as president and begins negotiations to settle boundary disputes with Brazil and Bolivia. A member of one of the nation's oligarchical families, he founded his own insurance company 12 years ago, served on the board of a large British sugar company, and will encourage economic development by introducing fiscal and administrative reforms.
President Roosevelt visits Panama November 15 to inspect progress on the canal; he is the first sitting president to travel abroad.
Vietnamese tribal chief Deo Van Tri dies at Lai Chau March 1 at age 58.
China's dowager empress Cixi (Tzu-hsi) dies under suspicious circumstances at her native Beijing (Peking) November 15 at age 72 after 52 years as the power behind the Qing throne, and it is announced that the emperor Guangxu (Kuang-hsü), who was perfectly healthy until now, has died the previous day at age 37, having reigned since 1875 while his adoptive mother ran the show. In her final decree she has given the throne to Guangxu's 3-year-old nephew Pu Yi, who will reign until 1912 as the emperor Xuan Tong (Hsian Tung) (but see 1911).
New York women socialists demonstrate for equal rights and better working conditions March 8 to commemorate the demonstration of March 8, 1857. They demand voting rights and an end to sweatshops and child labor (see 1910).
The Shelby County, Alabama, sheriff arrests Green Cottenham, 22, on charges of vagrancy March 30. The young black is sentenced April 3 to an unspecified term of hard labor (see Georgia, 1866); he is handed over April 4 to a unit of United States Steel Corp. and put to work with hundreds of other convicts digging coal in the Pratt Mines on the outskirts of Birmingham, where he dies in August of tuberculosis. Use of convict labor has been common in some Southern states since the Civil War and will continue until 1928.
An intruder breaks into the home of Springfield, Illinois, mining engineer Clergy Ballard the night of July 4. Ballard finds a stranger at the bedside of his young daughter and chases him out, the intruder turns and slashes Ballard's throat with a straight razor, and Ballard dies the next day. Police arrest a black man on charges of murder, and they later arrest another black man on charges of having "outraged" a white woman (the rape charge will later be withdrawn). An influx of black workers has created economic pressure in the area, newspapers sensationalize the events, a mob of white men gathers outside the jail on the night of August 14 demanding "justice." Police smuggle the accused out of town in a motorcar, the crowd grows in size, and several thousand men go on a rampage in black residential areas, burning homes, looting stores, mutilating and lynching two elderly blacks, and forcing 2,000 to run for their lives before state militia can restore order. Eight people are left dead, the populace shows no remorse, and some whites go so far as to demand disenfranchisement as a way to keep blacks "in their place." An account of the riot by Southern-born New York journalist William English Walling, 30, is published September 3 in the liberal weekly the Independent under the title "Race War in the North," and it calls for a revival of abolitionist fervor to resist any repetition of the incident. Walling describes the plight of U.S. blacks. He asks, "What large and powerful body of citizens is ready to come to their aid?" Walling receives a response from New York social worker Mary White Ovington, 44 (see NAACP, 1909).
"We are not ashamed of what we have done," says Christabel Pankhurst March 19 in a speech at the Albert Hall, "because, when you have a great cause to fight for, the moment of greatest humiliation is the moment when the spirit is proudest." Suffragists 100,000 strong storm Parliament on the evening of October 13 and two dozen are arrested. Parliament immediately passes an order forbidding women access to the building. Emmeline Pankhurst speaks out in court October 21 to say, "We have taken this action, because, as women . . . we realize that the condition of our sex is so deplorable that it is our duty even to break the law in order to call attention to the reasons why we do so." She and Christabel draw prison sentences October 24 after a sensational trial in which two cabinet members have testified for the defense. Novelist Mrs. Humphry Ward, now 57, fears that women's emancipation will lead to a loss of moral influence and establishes the Anti-Suffrage League.
"The true objection to woman suffrage lies far deeper than any argument," declaims Bryn Mawr president M. Carey Thomas, now 51, in an October address to the North American Woman Suffrage Association at Buffalo, N.Y. "Giving women the ballot is the visible sign and symbol of a stupendous revolution and before it we are afraid. Women are one-half the world but only a century ago the world of music and painting and sculpture and literature and scholarship and science was a man's world. The world of trades and professions and of work of all kinds was a man's world. Women lived in a twilight life, a half-life apart, and looked out and saw men as shadows walking. It was a man's world. The laws were man's laws, the government a man's government, the country a man's country . . . The man's world must become a man's and woman's world. Why are we afraid? It is the next step forward on the path toward the sunrise, and the sun is rising over a new heaven and a new earth."
Parliament enacts legislation granting noncontributory old-age pensions of 5d per week to needy people over age 70 (see Germany, 1891; British taxes, 1909; U.S. Social Security Act, 1935).
The U.S. Supreme Court upholds Louisville & Nashville Railroad official William Adair, who has fired employee O. B. Coppage for belonging to a union. The court rules 6 to 2 January 27 in Adair v. United States that Section 10 of the 1898 Erdman Act making it illegal for railroads to fire employees who involve themselves in union activities violates the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment, which guarantees freedom of contract and property rights. In fact, says the majority ruling, while Congress may have constitutional authority over interstate commerce that authority does not extend to issues of union membership.
The Danbury Hatters' case (Loewe v. Lawlor) brings a Supreme Court ruling February 3 that the Sherman Act of 1890 applies to combinations of labor as well as to management combinations. The court decides that a nationwide secondary boycott against D. E. Loewe & Co. by the United Hatters of North America in support of a striking Danbury, Conn., local is a conspiracy in restraint of trade.
The U.S. Supreme Court sustains Oregon's 1903 10-hour day law for women in factories and laundries February 4 in Muller v. State of Oregon. The decision classes women with minors and rests on women's biological "inferiority," their potential maternity, and their "natural dependence on men." Says the Court, "That woman's physical structure and the performance of maternal functions place her at a disadvantage in the struggle for subsistence is obvious. This is especially true when the burdens of motherhood are upon her. Even when they are not, by abundant testimony of the medical fraternity continuance for a long time on her feet at work, repeating this from day to day, tends to injurious effects upon the body, and as healthy mothers are essential to vigorous offspring, the physical well-being of woman becomes an object of public interest and care in order to preserve the strength and vigor of the race."
Congress votes May 30 to adopt the first federal workmen's compensation law.
The Aldrich-Vreeland Currency Act approved by Congress August 5 and signed into law by President Roosevelt authorizes special paper currency to ease a shortage of money and will help pave the way for federal control of monetary policy. Nelson W. Aldrich has been in the Senate since 1881; his investments in banks, electricity, gas, rubber, and sugar have made him a small fortune; and he chairs a new National Monetary Commission that will continue until 1912 (see Federal Reserve Act, 1913).
Namibian railway worker Zacharias Lewala finds a small diamond in the desert and turns it over to his supervisor, August Stauch, who obtains a prospecting license from the German colonial government. Consolidated Diamond Mines of South-West Africa, a De Beers subsidiary, will monopolize the new industry (see De Beers, 1880). The Ottoman sultan Abdul Hamid II pays a reported $400,000 to acquire the Hope Diamond from the New York jewelry firm Joseph Frankel & Sons, whose Simon Frankel bought it 6 years ago for $148,000 from Lord Henry Thomas Hope, who sold it to pay his debts (see 1830). The sultan will put the diamond up for sale next year (see Evalyn Walsh McLean, 1911).
The Supreme Court hands down prison sentences December 3 to American Federation of Labor (AFL) officers Samuel Gompers, John Mitchell, and Frank Morrison for violating an injunction against a boycott of Buck's Stove and Range Co.
Wall Street's Dow Jones Industrial Average closes December 30 at 86.15, up from 58.75 at the end of 1907.
Thomas J. Watson makes an easel presentation to National Cash Register salesmen and writes the word THINK at the head of every sheet of paper (see 1903). NCR president J. H. Patterson sees the presentation and orders that "THINK" signs be made up for every NCR office (see IBM, 1924).
J. C. Penney buys out T. M. Callahan's interest in two western stores and begins a chain that will have 22 stores by 1911 with headquarters at Salt Lake City (see 1902). By the time Penney moves to New York in 1913 he will have 48 stores; by 1916 he will have 127 (see 1927).
Petroleum production begins in the Middle East May 26 as drillers employed by William Knox D'Arcy strike oil at Masjid-i-Salaman (Mosque of Solomon) and begin tapping what will prove in the 1930s to be the world's largest reservoir of oil (see D'Arcy, 1901). British cabinet member Winston Churchill, now 33, persuades London to buy up D'Arcy's 1901 concession from the shah of Persia, and the Anglo-Persian Co. will be established next year to begin commercial exploitation (see Gulbenkian, 1914; Anglo-Iranian, 1935; British Petroleum, 1954).
Hughes Tool Co. has its beginnings in Sharp-Hughes Tool Co., founded at Houston, Texas, by Harvard dropout Howard R. (Robard) Hughes, 39, in partnership with driller Walter B. Sharp, 38. Hughes has invented a steel-toothed drill bit with 166 rolling cone cutting edges that can penetrate the thick rock shale of southwest Texas and found a way to keep it lubricated, revolutionizing oil-drilling technology that has been based until now on a pulverizing technique. He tests it successfully at Goose Creek, Texas, rents drill bits at $30,000 per well, and will obtain patents in August of next year. Sharp will die in 1912 at age 42; Hughes Tool will be making profits of $1 million per year by the time Hughes himself dies early in 1924 (see transportation, 1938).
Continental Oil has its beginnings in the new state of Oklahoma, where Pittsburgh lawyer and gambler Ernest W. (Whitworth) Marland, 34, strikes oil on Ponca tribal lands (see 1905). He used geological surveys to core for coal in West Virginia 4 years ago, opened the state's Congo oilfield, sank 54 wells without a dry hole and made a fortune, lost his money in last year's recession, and has come to Oklahoma in December on borrowed money. Having noticed a geologic outcropping in a Ponca cemetery, he has received help from rancher George L. Miller to obtain drilling rights in the cemetery and on surrounding leased lands (see 1911).
Isthmian Canal Commission chairman George W. Goethals takes full charge in January of the Panama Canal construction project (see 1907). Malaria and yellow fever have been brought under control in the Canal Zone, and although many of the 30,000 employees engaged in the project have been ill, Goethals infuses them with a new spirit as he addresses the problems of housing and feeding them while he tackles the issues of building massive locks (see 1914).
British seamen go on strike, causing massive shipping delays. Furness, Withy & Co. cofounder Sir Christopher Furness offers to sell out to the striking workers, making them partners on a profit-sharing basis.
Matson Navigation Co. has a second Lurline ship built with accommodations for 51 passengers and puts her into service between West Coast ports and Honolulu, which is gaining popularity as a tourist destination (see 1887; energy [California pipeline], 1901). In the next 7 years founder William Matson will have larger passenger and freight vessels built with distinctive red-brown hulls and aft-mounted engines as he builds an empire of ships (the Wilhelmina, Manoa, and Matsonia will all go into service in 1913), pipelines, and hotels (see 1917).
The gyrocompass invented by German engineer Hermann Anschutz-Kampfe, 36, indicates true north by sensing the rotation of the earth and then pointing the rotor axis toward the North Pole even when a ship is rolling in high seas (see Sperry, 1910).
The Tenyo Maru launched by the 23-year-old Mitsubishi Heavy Industries shipyard at Nagasaki is Japan's first large-turbine passenger steamship.
A New York-to-Paris motorcar race sponsored by the New York Times and Le Matin begins February 12 at Times Square and 250,000 spectators line eight miles of snowy New York roads to watch the contestants set out for Paris via Detroit, Cleveland, Chicago, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, Tokyo, Vladivostok, Irkutsk, Novosorirs, Moscow, Berlin, Bonn, and Brussels, a distance of 13,341 miles. U.S. contestant George Schuster, 35, driving a Thomas Flyer made by the 9-year-old E. R. Thomas Motor Co. of Buffalo, N.Y., thwarts a scheme by a French contestant to buy up all available gasoline at Vladivostok; he wins the race, arriving at Paris in 169 days.
The Model T Ford introduced August 12 will soon outsell all other motorcars (see 1903). Ford's $850 "flivver" has a four-cylinder, 20-horsepower engine and a wooden body on a steel frame that makes it "stronger than a horse and easier to maintain." It has a planetary transmission with gears operated entirely by pedals, comes only in black, and has complicated operating instructions: "Close the coil switch; place the spark lever at about the third or fourth notch of the quadrant; open the throttle about five or six notches, and prime the carburetor if the engine requires it; engage the starting crank firmly and pull up on it. Two or three times will usually suffice to draw the mixture into cylinders and ignite it." It takes the average American 4,696 hours of work to earn $850, but nearly 17 million Model Ts will be sold worldwide by the time production ends in 1927 (see Selden lawsuit, 1911).
Harvey S. Firestone sells Ford 2,000 sets of tires for the new Model T and begins a lasting relationship (see 1900; 1924).
W. C. Durant's Buick Motor Car Co. introduces a White Streak model and builds 8,820 motorcars.
General Motors Corp. is created September 16 by W. C. Durant, who acquires Olds Motor Vehicle Co. and brings other automakers together into a holding company (see 1906). His bankers tell him that Henry Ford's company is not worth the $8 million in cash that Ford demands, so Ford does not join (see Cadillac, Oakland, 1909; Storrow, 1910).
U.S. auto production reaches 63,500, with at least 24 companies producing motorcars. Fewer than two farm families in 100 own cars, but there are 200,000 cars on the road, up from 8,000 in 1900 (see 1923).
Hammondsport, N.Y., motorcycle maker Glenn H. (Hammond) Curtiss, 30, test the June Bug he has designed and built, uses it July 4 to make the first public flight in America, and wins a trophy offered by Scientific American.
The U.S. Army Signal Corps accepts a $25,000 bid by the Wright brothers February 8 to make a flying machine that meets War Department specifications (see 1905). Wilbur Wright undertakes a tour to Europe, demonstrates the machine he and Orville flew in 1905, meets with great enthusiasm, and returns with a number of contracts. The brothers complete the machine for the Army, Orville makes the first 1-hour flight September 17 at Fort Myer, Virginia, but after proving that it can bank and turn it crashes when a guy wire breaks, damaging the propeller and killing Lieut. Thomas A. Selfridge, who has flown as a passenger on the test flight and becomes the first person to die in an aircraft accident. Orville sustains a broken leg, four broken ribs, and multiple hip fractures, but Wilbur repairs the machine and wins the Michelin Cup in France by completing a 77-mile flight December 21 in 2 hours, 20 minutes (see 1909).
French aviation pioneer Henri Farman, 34, and his brother Maurice, 31, fly from Bony to Reims in the first city-to-city flight, using the Voisin biplane they have built. They will develop the Farman biplane and build an aircraft factory at Boulogne Billancourt (see 1919).
Ferdinand graf von Zeppelin launches the LZ-4 rigid airship, and it makes a 12-hour flight before crashing (see 1905). Having poured his fortune into his obsession, the count avoids bankruptcy with help from contributions by thousands of people and is provided with 1.5 million goldmarks; by 1911 he will have a small fleet of airships (see 1928; politics, 1915).
Arab engineers complete the 833-mile Hejaz Railway from Damascus to Mecca and Medina after 8 years of construction by a multi-racial workforce under the direction of a German engineer; it has a single narrow-gauge track (see politics [T. E. Lawrence], 1917).
New York's 4-year-old IRT Broadway subway line is extended to Kingsbridge in the Bronx.
Two subway tunnels open to traffic at New York. The McAdoo Tunnel goes under the Hudson River to Hoboken (see 1904; 1906), another tunnel connects Bowling Green in Lower Manhattan with Brooklyn's Joralemon Street across the East River.
England's King Edward VII Bridge opens to span the River Tyne at Newcastle.
The Haber process for synthesizing ammonia begins to free the world from its dependence on Chilean nitrates for making explosives and nitrogen fertilizers (see Winogradsky, 1890). German chemist Fritz Haber, 40, and his colleague W. H. Nernst have devised the process, and it uses far less energy and is far less costly than the Frank-Caro process used earlier; it combines nitrogen and hydrogen directly, using as a catalyst iron (plus some aluminum, potassium, and calcium) and employing high temperatures. Since ammonia is one part nitrogen to three parts hydrogen, it can easily be reduced to nitric acid for munitions or to sulfate of ammonia or sodium nitrate for fertilizers. German industrial chemist Karl Bosch, 34, will adapt the Haber process and Badische-Anilin-und-Soda Fabrik will employ it to produce sulfate of ammonia and sodium nitrate but mostly to make nitric acid (see 1913).
Swiss-born French chemist Jacques (Edwin) Brandenberger, 35, patents cellophane, a transparent wrapping material. He had tried to make a cloth that was impervious to dirt and liquid, the cloth was brittle and inflexible, but the clear film he designed to bond to cloth to make it waterproof has turned out to have other advantages (see 1912).
Corning Glass Works sponsors one of the first research laboratories to address the problem of its lantern globes' tendency to crack if unevenly heated by kerosene flames or cooled by rain or snow (see 1851; energy [incandescent bulb], 1879). Founder's son Amory Houghton, Jr. took over as head of the company in 1870. He will die next year at age 72, but by next year his laboratory will have come up with NoNex, the first low expansion glass for barn and railroad lanterns (see food [Pyrex], 1915).
The Geiger counter developed by German physicist Hans Geiger, 26, and New Zealand-born British physicist Ernest Rutherford, 37, at Manchester University detects radioactive radiations. A high-voltage wire runs down the center of a cylinder in a near vacuum, alpha particles passing through the gas in the cylinder cause it to ionize into charged particles, and a pulse of electrical current for each alpha particle can be observed on a dial. Geiger will improve the counter in the 1920s with help from W. Muller to distinguish between alpha particles and beta and gamma rays by reduced voltage and to produce clicks through a loudspeaker (see Rutherford, 1911).
Nobel physicist Henri Becquerel dies at his wife's ancestral home in Le Croisic, Brittany, August 25 at age 55, having discovered radioactivity.
Helium is liquefied for the first time by Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh-Onnes, 54, who has discovered superconductivity. He founded the Cryogenic Laboratory at the University of Leyden in 1894 and has demonstrated that the resistance of some electrical conductors (metals) suddenly disappears at a temperature near absolute zero (-273.15° C.).
Elementary Mathematics from an Advanced Standpoint (Elemntar mathematik von höheren standpunkte aus) by Felix Klein gains a wide readership for its author's Erlanger Programm, a synthesis of geometry based on the unifying possibilities of group theory.
"On the Untrustworthiness of the Logical Principles" ("Over de onbetrouwbaarheid der logische principes") by L. E. J. Brouwer rejects the use in mathematical proofs of the principle of the excluded third (excluded middle), which holds that every mathematical statement is either true or false (see 1907). Brouwer will teach at the University of Amsterdam beginning next year and remain until 1951.
Physician-physiologist-experimental pathologist Joseph, Freiherr von Mering, dies at Halle an der Saale January 5 at age 58. He has been director of the medical clinic at Halle since 1900 and has worked with chemist Emil Fischer to develop the barbiturates barbital, proponal, and veronal.
Washington, D.C., banker and patent-medicine purveyor Robert N. Harper goes on trial in February to answer charges by Harvey W. Wiley that his Cuforhedake BraneFude violates the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Law. Harper has began making the headache remedy as a student at the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy 20 years ago, mixing alcohol with acetanilid, a coal-tar derivative discovered accidentally 2 years earlier by two German physicians. The jury finds Harper guilty on two charges; the judge fines him $700, but Harper has made $2 million from his "cure" and receives no prison sentence (see 1911).
Ex-Lax Co. is founded by Hungarian-born pharmacist Max Kiss, 25, who came to New York penniless 10 years ago, learned English, and heard from a physician aboard ship while traveling home for a visit to his family about the newly developed Bayer laxative phenolpthalein. Kiss has developed a chocolate-flavored phenolpthalein formula that he will promote in movie theaters with a film he will make using neighborhood children as actors.
French bacteriologist Albert Calmette, now 45, finds that virulent bovine tubercle bacilli become less virulent when cultured on a medium containing bile. His colleague at the Pasteur Institute in Lille Camille Guérin, 35, demonstrated 2 years ago that resistance to tuberculosis was relaed to the presence of living bacilli in the body. For a person exposed to bovine (or human) tubercle bacilli, Calmette's attenuated bacilli can confer a degree of immunity against infection (see 1922).
Buerger's disease gets its name as Viennese-born U.S. physician-surgeon Leo Buerger, 29, describes a vascular disease (thromboangiitis obliterans) that affects chiefly the peripheral arteries and sometimes the veins, especially in young men, and will be confused with atherosclerosis.
Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler, 51, introduces the term schizophrenia to describe the condition previously known as dementia praecox (see 1911; Kraepelin, 1899).
The first international meeting of psychiatrists opens at Salzburg, Austria, with participants who include Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung (see 1906). Also present are Eugen Bleuler, Alfred Adler, Abraham Arden Brill, 34, and Welsh-born pyschoanalyst Ernest Jones, 30. Psychoanalysis will begin to gain support from reputable international medical circles next year, when Freud and Jung are invited to speak at Clark University in Worcester, Mass., but resistance to Freudian and Jungian techniques and philosophies will remain strong.
A bill grudgingly signed into law by President Roosevelt May 18 says in part, "Be it enacted . . . that the motto 'In God We Trust,' heretofore inscribed on certain denominations of gold and silver coins of the United States of America, shall hereafter be inscribed on all such gold and silver coins of said denominations as heretofore" (see currency, 1864). Roosevelt has asked the sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens to design new coinage and has found no statute mandating that the coins bear the words, "In God We Trust." To a clergyman who has expressed dismay at the omission, TR has replied, "As the custom, altho without legal warrant, had grown up, I might have felt the liberty to keep the inscription had I approved of its being on the coinage. But as I did not approve of it, I did not direct that it should again be put on." In fact, he has written, "to put such a motto on coins . . . not only does no good but does positive harm" by cheapening and trivializing the words: "In all my life I have never heard any human being speak reverently of this motto on the coins or show any sign of its having appealed to any high emotion in him . . . The existence of this motto on the coins was a constant source of jest and ridicule." Religiosity has prevailed, however, and Congress has overruled the president (see currency, 1957).
The University of California opens a Davis campus.
The University of Alberta is founded at Edmonton.
The University of British Columbia is founded at Vancouver.
The University of the Philippines is founded at Manila.
The Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration opens October 1 with courses that include notably "Corporate Finance" and "Industrial Organization" and lecturers who include efficiency expert Frederick Winslow Taylor. Unlike the business school founded by New York University in 1900, the Harvard school requires applicants to have bachelor degrees for admission, whereas law and medical schools still have low admission standards. A recent Harper's Weekly survey has shown that 90 percent of U.S. business leaders started at the bottom, and Harvard's Master of Business Administration (MBA) students will work each summer in factories and business offices to gain hands-on experience.
Former Johns Hopkins (and later Carnegie Institution) president Daniel Coit Gilman dies at his native Norwich, Conn., October 13 at age 77.
A letter about "Distant Electric Vision" in the June 18 issue of Nature magazine by Edinburgh-born London electrical engineer A. A. (Alan Archibald) Campbell Swinton, 45, advances the technology of television with a suggestion that using a cathode ray to scan pictures electronically, synchronize the images, and display them may be more practical than using the Nipkow Disk invented in 1883. Swinton has devised a new method of insulating electric cables with lead and explored the medical applications of radiography, but although he will lecture on his television concept with circuit diagrams in 1911 he will not apply for a patent (see Baird, 1926; Farnsworth, 1927).
A new model of the L. C. Smith typewriter introduced by the Syracuse, N.Y., firm is the only full-keyboard frontstrike machine that will ever be built (see 1905). It will be made for a total of 13 different languages, with special characters or keyboard layouts, including a Siamese version with more than 70 different letters. The company will go out of business following the death of Lyman Cornelius Smith in 1910; Remington Typewriter Co. will acquire the brand name; and it will continue to launch conventional office typewriters and portables under the L. C. Smith name (see Smith-Corona, 1926).
An electric typewriter is introduced, but manual typewriters will continue for decades to reign supreme in offices and newsrooms (see IBM Selectric, 1961).
The first professional school of journalism opens at the University of Missouri.
Des Moines Register and Leader publisher Gardner Cowles acquires the newly-established Des Moines Tribune to enter the afternoon field. The Register and Leader will become simply the Register in 1915. Cowles will go on to absorb two other local papers, and by 1930 he will have a virtual monopoly of Iowa's morning, evening, and Sunday papers, rejecting liquor ads, establishing a bureau to screen out other ads that may make false claims or promote injurious products, and using home delivery to make circulation rather than advertising his major source of revenue (see Gallup Poll, 1935).
Houston Chronicle founder Marcellus E. Foster lets Tennessee-born building contractor Jesse (Holman) Jones, 33, have 50 percent of his ownership in the 7-year-old paper to finance construction of a 10-story plant and office tower at the corner of Travis and Texas streets. Foster remains editor and publisher (see 1922).
The Times of London changes hands as Daily Mail and Daily Mirror publisher A. C. W. Harmsworth acquires the 120-year-old paper (see 1903). Harmsworth was made a baronet 3 years ago and is now Viscount Northcliffe.
Comic-strip pioneer Wilhelm Busch of "Max und Moritz" fame dies at Mechtshausen bei Seesen January 9 at age 75.
"Mutt and Jeff" debuts in William Randolph Hearst's San Francisco Examiner March 29. The first comic strip to appear daily with the same cartoon figures, it is initially a racetrack tip sheet; Chicago-born cartoonist Harry Conway "Bud" Fisher, 23, will draw all the panels until 1932, acquire his own racing stable, and continue the strip until his death in 1954.
Nonfiction: Cosmopolitanism and the Natural State (Weltbürgertum und Nationalstaat) by German historian Friedrich Meinecke, 45; Philosophy of Law (Lehrbuch der Rechtsphilosophie) by German jurist Josef Kohler, 59, presents a theory of justice based on Hegelian philosophy of history; The Franco-German War (La Guerre franco-allemande) by Jean Jaurès; Literature and the American College by Dayton, Ohio-born Harvard philosopher Irving Babbitt, 43, who teaches French and comparative literature. He attacks dilettantism and calls for a curriculum based on ethical principles; Ways of Nature by John Burroughs; "On Running After One's Hat" (essay) by G. K. Chesterton.
Scholar and man of letters Charles Eliot Norton dies at his native Cambridge, Mass., October 21 at age 80.
Fiction: A Room with a View by E. M. Forster; The Man Who Was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton, whose allegorical novel gains wide popularity; Old Wives' Tale by Arnold Bennett, who has quit as assistant editor of Woman to devote himself to writing; An Ocean Tramp by English marine engineer-novelist William McFee, 27, who will continue writing at sea until 1922; Penguin Island (L'ile des pingouins) by Anatole France, who satirizes short story writer Guy de Maupassant; The Inferno (L'Enfer) by French novelist Henri Barbusse, 35; La Rétraite Sentimentale by Colette, who last year divorced Henry Gauthier-Villars; The Outcast (L'esclusa) by Luigi Pirandello; The Road to the Open (Der Weg in Freie) by Arthur Schnitzler analyzes the position of Jews in Austria; The Factotum by Robert Walser; Spring (Haru) by Shimazaki Toson; Ayres Memorial (Memorial de Aires) by Joaquim Machado de Assis; Holy Orders by Marie Corelli; A Confession (Ispoved) by Maksim Gorky; The Cross in Venn (Das Kereuz in Venn) by Clara Viebig is about the suppressed hatred and secret patriotic longings of servile Polish peasants under German domination.
Author Joel Chandler Harris dies of cirrhosis of the liver at Atlanta July 3 at age 59; Joaquim Machado de Assis at his native Rio de Janeiro September 29 at age 69.
Poetry: Nature Poems and Others by William Henry Davies; A Bundle of Myrrh by Illinois-born Nebraska poet John Gneisenau Neihardt, 27.
Juvenile: The Wind in the Willows by Scottish writer Kenneth Grahame, 49, whose stories will be dramatized by A. A. Milne; Anne of Green Gables by Canadian novelist L. M. (Lucy Maud) Montgomery, 35, who begins a series of Anne books about the Canadian wilderness; The Ruby of Kishmoor by Howard Pyle, who has established a free art school at his native Wilmington, Delaware, and has illustrated works by James Branch Cabell among others.
Painting: Murnau by Russian-born painter Wassily Kandinsky, 41; Nu Rouge by Russian painter Marc Chagall, 21; The Kiss by Gustav Klimt; Meadow with Flowers and Trees and Madonna with Child by Egon Schiele; The Doge's Palace, The Contarini Palace, The Palazzo Dario, San Giorgio Maggiore, and The Grand Canal, Venice by Claude Monet; Père Juniet's Cart, The Football Players, and Zeppelins by Henri Rousseau; Still Life with Fruit and Glass by Pablo Picasso; Nude Against the Light and After Dinner by Pierre Bonnard; Saltimbanque with Nude Breast (the dancer Nini at the Folies Bergère) by Kees Van Dongen; Woman's Head and Landscape with Red Tree by Alfred H. Maurer; Cashmere by John Singer Sargent; Harmony in Red by Henri Matisse, whose work is exhibited at New York's Steiglitz-Photo-Secession 291 Gallery; North River by George Bellows.
The Ash Can school of U.S. realist art has its beginnings in an exhibition of work by The Eight (see 1907). The group includes cartoonist George Luks, who has worked on "The Yellow Kid."
Sculpture: The Kiss by Romanian-born French sculptor Constantin Brancusi, 32, who has evolved a "primeval" style of stone and wood carving. Harriet G. Hosmer dies at her native Watertown, Mass., February 21 at age 77, having returned from Europe in 1900.
The 41-year-old German dye-making company Agfa (Aktiengeselschaft für Anilinfabrication) begins producing photographic film (see IG Farben, 1925).
Theater: Salomy Jane by Paul Armstrong (who has adapted the Bret Harte story "Salomy Jane's Kiss") 1/19 at New York's Liberty Theater, 122 perfs.; The Ghost Sonata (Spoksonaten) by August Strindberg 1/21 at Stockholm's Intimate Theater; Getting Married by George Bernard Shaw 5/12 at London's Haymarket Theatre: "Women are called womanly only when they regard themselves as existing solely for the use of men," Shaw has written in a preface; The Tragedy of Nan by John Masefield 5/24 at London's New Royalty Theatre; The Man from Home by Booth Tarkington and Illinois-born novelist-playwright Harry Leon Wilson, 41, 8/17 at New York's Astor Theater, with William Hodge, 496 perfs.; Love Watches by Gladys Unger (who has adapted a French play by Roibert de Flers and Gaston Armand De Caiillavet) 8/27 at New York's Lyceum Theater, with Washington, D.C.-born actress Billie Burke, 23, Australian-born actor Cyril Keightley, 32, 172 perfs.; What Every Woman Knows by James M. Barrie 9/3 at the Duke of York's Theatre, London, with Lady Tree, Norman Forbes, Hilda Trevelyan: "It's a sort of bloom on a woman. If you have it, you don't need to have anything else; and if you don't, it doesn't much matter what else you have" (Maude Adams stars in the Broadway opening at the Empire Theater 12/23); Wildfire 9/7 at New York's Liberty Theater, with Lillian Russell, Kansas City-born actor Ernest Truex, 18, in a racetrack melodrama, 64 perfs.; The Blue Bird (L'Oiseau bleu) by Maurice Maeterlinck 9/30 at the Moscow Art Theater; Via Wireless by Paul Armstrong with Winchell Smith 11/2 at New York's Liberty Theater, 88 perfs.; Days of Our Life (Dui nashey zhizni) by Leonid Andreyev 11/6 at St. Petersburg's Novy Theater; Salvation Nell by Chicago-born playwright Edward (Brewster) Sheldon, 22, 11/17 at Hackett's Theater, New York, with Minnie Maddern Fiske, 71 perfs. (Sheldon was George Pierce Baker's star student at Harvard's 47 Workshop); The Patriot by J. Hartley Manners and William Collier 11/23 at the Garrick Theater, with Collier and his 6-year-old son William Jr., 160 perfs.; The Nigger by Edward Sheldon 12/4 at New York's New Theater, in repertory.
Playwright Charles Bronson-Howard dies at Avon-by-the-Sea, N.J., August 4 at age 65; vaudevillian Tony Pastor at his Elmhurst, L.I., home August 26 at age 76. The theater he has owned in 14th Street since 1881 will not survive; Victorien Sardou dies at his native Paris November 8 at age 77.
Films: D. W. Griffith's The Adventures of Dolly with Arthur Johnson and Griffith's wife opens 7/14 at Proctor's Union Square Theater (it has been filmed at the Biograph studio in a brownstone at 11 East 14th Street); Emile Cohl's Fantasmagorie pioneers animated films. French cartoonist Cohl (originally Courtet), 41, studied under the late caricaturist André Gill, had his first cartoons published in Le Rire in 1880, and has been hired as comedy writer/director at the Gaumont Studio after accusing Léon Gaumont of using his comic strips as the basis of scenarios. The stick figures drawn frame-by-frame in Cohl's film are projected in negative as if they were chalk figures drawn on a blackboard (see Bray, 1910).
The Motion Picture Patents Co. founded at New York by 10 film producers and distributors tries to monopolize the industry in America by controlling the patent rights to camera and production equipment created by Thomas A. Edison and others. It will enter into a contract with Eastman Kodak Co. to restrict the supply of raw film stock to licensed members, who initially include Edison, Biograph, Vitagraph, Essanay, Selig, Lubin, Kalem, and the French companies Pathé, Méliès, and Gaumont (but see 1912).
Stage musicals: Our Miss Gibbs 1/23 at London's Gaiety Theatre, with Gertie Millar, Edmund Payne, George Grossmith Jr., music by Ivan Caryll and Lionel Monckton, songs that include "Moonstruck," 336 perfs.; The Arcadians 4/28 at London's Shaftesbury Theatre, with Sydney, Australia-born comedienne Cicely Courtneidge, 26, London-born actress Zena Dare (originally Phyllis Haddie Dones), 18, book by producer Robert Courtneidge (the star's father), music by Lionel Monckton and Howard Talbot, 809 perfs.; The Three Twins 6/15 at New York's Herald Square Theater, with Bessie McCoy, Long Branch, N.J.-born ingénu Richard Taber, 22, music by Karl Hoschna, book and lyrics by Salt Lake City-born advertising copywriter Otto (Abels) Hauerbach (later Harbach), 35, songs that include "Cuddle Up a Little Closer" and "Yama Yama Man" (lyric by Colin Davis), 288 perfs.; The (Ziegfeld) Follies 6/15 at New York's Jardin de Paris, with Joliet, Illinois-born contralto Nora Bayes (originally Dora Goldberg), 28, book and lyrics mostly by Harry B. Smith, music by Maurice Levi and others, songs that include "Shine On, Harvest Moon" by Nora Bayes, lyrics by her husband, Jack Norworth, 120 perfs.; King of Cadonia 9/3 at London's Prince of Wales Theatre, with book by St. Heller, Jersey-born playwright Frederick (Leonard) Lonsdale, 27, music by Sidney Jones, lyrics by Adrian Ross, 333 perfs.; The Chocolate Soldier (Der tapfere soldat) (operetta) 11/14 at Vienna's Theater-an-der-Wien, with music by Vienna-born composer Oscar Straus, 38, libretto from the 1894 Bernard Shaw play Arms and the Man.
The 2,200-seat Colón Theater opens at Buenos Aires with a performance of the 1871 Verdi opera Aïda.
New York's Metropolitan Opera House hires Giulio Gatti-Casazza, 40, from Milan's Teatro alla Scala. He will mastermind the Met until 1935, raising it to new heights of artistic and financial success.
New York impresario Oscar Hammerstein announces March 30 that he has signed Italian coloratura soprano Luisa Tettrazini, 36, to a 5-year contract. She had her first big success last year singing the role of Violetta in the 1853 Verdi opera La Traviata; English soprano Maggie Teyte (Tate), 19, makes her debut at the Opéra-Comique, Paris, having been chosen by composer Claude Debussy to succeed Mary Garden in the role of Mélisande in his 1902 opera Pélleas et Melissande. Teyte has changed the spelling of her name to avoid mispronunciation by the French and will specialize in French songs, those of Debussy in particular.
Librettist Ludovic Halévy dies at his native Paris May 8 at age 75, having written the books for fully half the well known French operas and operettas of the last century, often in collaboration with the late Henri Meilhac; composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakoff dies at Liubensk, near St. Petersburg, June 21 at age 64 (in addition to his operas, he was the first Russian to write a symphony).
First performances: Brigg Fair by English composer Frederick Delius, 44, 1/18 at London; Symphony No. 2 in E minor by Sergei Rachmaninoff 1/26 at Moscow; RomanianRhapsody No. 1 by Romanian composer Georges Enesco, 27, 2/7 at Paris; Rapsodie Espagnole by Maurice Ravel 3/15 at Paris; Symphony No. 7 in D major by Gustav Mahler 9/19 at Prague; Poem of Ecstasy by Aleksandr Skriabin late in the year at St. Petersburg; Symphony No. 1 in A flat major by Sir Edward Elgar 12/3 at Manchester; In a Summer Garden by Delius 12/11 at London.
Composer Edward MacDowell dies at New York January 23 at age 47 after a long period of mental collapse.
The Brooklyn Academy of Music opens November 4 on Lafayette Avenue between Ashland Place and St. Felix Street, replacing a structure that opened in 1861.
Popular songs: "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" by Albert von Tilzer, lyrics by Jack Norworth that popularize the confection Cracker Jack introduced in 1896; "Sunbonnet Sue" by Gus Edwards, lyrics by Will D. Cobb; "Sensation Rag" by Montclair, N.J.-born songwriter-accountant Joseph Lamb, 21; "It's a Long Way to Tipperary" by English songwriters Harry Williams and Jack Judge.
Columbia Phonograph Co. introduces the first two-sided disks.
Hymn writer Ira D. Sankey dies at Brooklyn, N.Y., August 13 at age 67.
Golfer Thomas "Young Tom" Morris dies at St. Andrews, Scotland, in May at age 58.
The United States has only 25 operating racetracks, down from well over 300 at the turn of the century, as state legislatures ban gambling (often in tandem with bans on selling alcoholic beverages).
Arthur Gore wins in men's singles at Wimbledon, Charlotte Cooper (Sterry), now 37, in women's singles; Bill Larned wins in U.S. men's singles, Maud Bargar Wallach, 36, in women's singles.
The Olympic Games at London attract 2,666 contestants from 22 countries. British figure skater Madge Syers wins her event—the first woman Olympic gold medalist since Mrs. Sterry won in tennis in 1900 (all other Olympic events have been for men only since the revival of the games in 1896). Baron Pierre de Coubertin hears the bishop of Pennsylvania deliver a sermon at a service marking the games and is inspired to adopt a message that will be displayed hereafter on Olympic scoreboards: "The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part. Just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle." Officials lengthen the Olympic Course so that the British royal family may view the start of the marathon race at Windsor Castle; Bostonians extend the length of the annual 25-mile Patriot's Day race held since 1897 to 26 miles, 385 yards to give the Boston Marathon Olympic dimensions.
Providence, R.I.-born climber Annie Smith Peck, 57, makes it to the top of Mount Huascarán in the Peruvian Andes September 2—the first mountaineer of either sex to scale the 21,812-foot peak. When Peck climbed the Matterhorn in the Swiss Alps 13 years ago (she was the third woman to make the ascent) the Singer Company gave away a picture of her in climbing gear with every machine it sold; a writer observed at the time that "Ladies pumping away at the treadle could sigh with admiration at one of their sex who had launched into the world's most daring occupation." Harper's magazine has sponsored Peck's expedition to South America.
The Chicago Cubs win the World Series, defeating the Detroit Tigers 4 games to 1 with help from Tinker and Evers and Chance.
Grand Rapids, Mich.-born boxer Stanley Ketchel (originally Stanislaus Kiecal) wins his first title February 22 at age 21, knocking out Mike "Twin" Sullivan in the first round of a bout at Colma, California. He is knocked out himself September 7 in the 12th round of a bout at Los Angeles, losing his title to Billy Papke, but he regains the title November 25, knocking out Papke in the 11th round of a match at San Francisco (see 1909).
Texas prizefighter Jack Johnson, 30, wins the world heavyweight title December 25 by knocking out Tommy Burns in the 14th round of a championship bout at Sydney, Australia. Johnson is the first black titleholder (see 1910).
The Boy Scouts of Britain is founded under the leadership of Boer War hero Robert Smyth Baden-Powell, who held Mafeking through a 215-day siege from 1899 to 1900 (he will be knighted in 1922 and created 1st Baron Baden-Powell in 1929). He wrote a military textbook that was published in 1899 under the title Aids to Scouting and it has been used to train boys in woodcraft (see Boy Scouts of America, 1910; Girl Guides, 1910).
The Archer-Shee case begins to stir passions in Britain after a cadet at Osborne Naval College accuses cadet George Archer-Shee, 13, of having stolen a five-shilling postal order. George is dismissed, but Bristol banker Martin Archer-Shee refuses to accept young George's guilt and determines to have him readmitted; his older son and namesake is a major in the British Army, and through that connection he is able to engage Irish-born barrister Sir Edward Carson, now 54, who hears the story of George's dismissal, sees what he considers blatant injustice, is impressed by the father's willingness to risk his fortune in defense of the boy, agrees to represent young George without charging his usual fee, and in 1910 will force the government to pay an indemnity of £7,120 (see Theater [The Winslow Boy], 1946).
Mother's Day is observed for the first time at Philadelphia. Suffragist-temperance worker Anna May Jarvis, 44, attended a memorial service last year at the Methodist Church in Grafton, West Virginia, for her mother, Anna Reeves Jarvis, who first championed the idea of such a day in 1858 and died at Philadelphia May 9, 1905. Julia Ward Howe promoted the idea in 1872. Mother's days have been observed in various places in mid-spring ever since with speeches about improved sanitation, first aid, and world peace, but Anna May has conceived the idea of an annual worldwide tribute to mothers and will agitate for a national U.S. Mother's Day (see 1913).
Hobos of America is founded by hobo Jeff Davis, 20, who struggles to distinguish hobos from tramps and vagrants.
Palm Beach brand cloth has its origin in a lightweight fabric of long-staple cotton and mohair from Angora goats created by English-born U.S. chemist William S. Nutter, who was an apprentice at a Lancashire mill when he became interested in tropical fabrics. He sells the patent to Goodall Worsted Co. of Sanford, Maine. The fabric contains 1,600 tiny "windows" per square inch, resists wrinkling, and will revolutionize summer menswear beginning in the 1930s. By 1939 the cloth will be sold in 62 countries worldwide.
Paris couturier Paul Poiret revives the 1850s Empire style of women's fashion by placing a belt high under the bosom on the straight silhouette (see 1904). He has been designing costumes for actresses such as Sarah Bernhardt and Eleanora Duse and issues an illustrated brochure that shows simple but elegant gowns that fit softly in a sharp departure from the ornate, tightly-corseted dresses that have been the fashion for decades (see 1911).
Mrs. Astor dies of heart disease at New York October 30 at age 78. "Many people think I could have done a great deal in making New York society as democratic as it is in London and open to anyone of intellectual attainments, as it is over there," she has told a reporter in one of her last interviews, "but one can only do one's best under the conditions. We have to be more exclusive in New York because in America there is no authority in society. Each woman is for herself in trying to outdo the others in lavish display and mad extravagance."
The Sullivan Ordinance enacted January 21 by New York's Board of Aldermen orders restaurant and hotel owners to forbid women to smoke in a public place. Police arrest one Katie Mulcahey for lighting up a cigarette January 22 and she says in night court, "I've got as much right to smoke as you have. I never heard of this new law and I don't want to hear about it. No man shall dictate to me." But when she cannot pay a $5 fine she is sent to jail.
Former New Mexico Territory lawman Pat Garrett is shot to death near his Las Cruces horse ranch February 29 at age 57 (see 1881). He has had a dispute with rancher Wayne Brazel, who has leased his place, a witness agrees with Brazel's claim that he fired in self-defense after Garrett drew on him, and Brazel is not indicted.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) established by Attorney General Charles J. Bonaparte July 26 as a division of the Justice Department will fight crime but will be used in many cases against labor organizers and civil rights workers (see politics [J. Edgar Hoover] 1919). It will officially be called simply the Bureau of Investigation (BI) until 1935.
Unity Temple is completed early in the year at Oak Park, Illinois, to designs by Frank Lloyd Wright. Built of reinforced concrete for $43,000, it replaces the wooden-frame Unitarian Church that burned to the ground in June 1904, and Wright has sealed its interior to shut out the noise of the Lake Street trolley cars. A separate Unity House in the rear contains facilities for social and recreational programs.
Minnesota's National Farmers Bank building is completed at Owatonna to designs by Louis H. Sullivan.
The Empress Hotel opens at Victoria, British Columbia, where Francis M. Rattenbury has designed a 460-room hostelry for the Canadian Pacific Railway.
Grand Canyon National Monument is created January 11 by President Roosevelt, who acts under provisions of the 1906 Antiquities Act to protect Arizona's spectacular canyon from private land speculators (see architecture [hotels], 1903; National Park, 1919).
Muir Woods National Monument is created by presidential proclamation. The 500-acre forest of California redwoods and sequoias is on land donated to the federal government by William Kent, U.S. congressman from Marin County (see Hetch Hetchy, 1913).
President Roosevelt calls a White House Conference on Conservation to publicize the cause.
Boston's neighboring city of Chelsea has a fire April 12 (Palm Sunday) that destroys one-third of the town before burning itself out in late afternoon.
The deadliest U.S. tornado since 1899 cuts a 155-mile path through parts of Louisiana and Mississippi April 24, killing 143 people.
Fewer than 60 heath hens remain on Martha's Vineyard. They constitute the world's last colony of the birds once plentiful in New England (see 1839; 1929).
A mysterious fireball explodes on the morning of June 30 over Tunguska in Siberia, creating shock waves that are felt miles away; its thermal currents set great tracts of tundra woodlands afire, and the mushroom cloud and "black rain" that follow it inflict a scabby disease on reindeer herds. Irkutsk, Batavia, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Jena, and even Washington, D. C., record seismic shocks. Russian scientists will not visit the sparsely populated area until 1927, they will find no meteorite fragments, and some people will later speculate that the fireball was a crippled alien space vehicle powered by atomic energy.
An earthquake rocks Messina, Sicily December 28, creating a tidal wave (tsunami) and killing from 70,000 to 100,000 people in the worst quake ever recorded in Europe.
Nearly 90 percent of the horsepower used on English and Welsh farms comes from horses.
J. I. Case Co. turns to selling gasoline tractors after 66 years of producing farm equipment that has made it the leading U.S. maker of farm steam engines (see Froelich, 1892).
Chilled-steel plow inventor James Oliver dies at South Bend, Indiana, March 2 at age 84, having received 45 patents, the last one less than 2 years ago for an improved way to turn out a mold. His 58-year-old son J. D. (Joseph Doty) takes over the business, whose payroll has grown to 2,000.
Half of all Americans live on farms or in towns with fewer than 2,500 residents, and the country has 6 million farms. The new Model T Ford will soon be adapted for use as a pickup truck for farmers.
California rice cultivation begins on an experimental basis in an area where sufficient water exists (see 1865). The state will grow to rival Louisiana, Texas, and Arkansas as a rice producer, but only with the benefit of vast irrigation projects.
Nutrition pioneer Carl von Voit dies at Munich January 31 at age 76.
In February President Roosevelt intervenes in the controversy over sulfur dioxide in dried fruits (see 1907). He suspends enforcement of Harvey W. Wiley's order limiting sulfur content to 350 parts per million, appoints five scientists to a board to study the question, and directs them to investigate the fruit-curing process and determine what dangers, if any, are presented to human health by sulfurous acid in foods. Selected groups of men are fed large amounts of dried cut fruit (one man, a police officer, consumes 28 pounds of dried cut fruits in 30 days), the men are then tested and examined, and no negative findings are made. Future tests by competent researchers will consistently confirm the safety of sulfur dioxide as routinely used in the dried-fruit industry, but some people will suffer severe allergic reactions to sulfites, and laws will be passed requiring that any food product containing more than 10 parts per million state that fact on its label.
Chicago imposes the first U.S. law making pasteurization of milk compulsory (unless it comes from tuberculin-tested cows).
New England entrepreneur Hugh Moore develops a vending machine that sells drinking water at a penny per cup and individual paper cups that will be improved and sold as Dixie Cups. The individual cups are promoted as being more sanitary than communally-shared glasses and cups (see medicine [National Lung Association], 1904).
Sugar magnate Claus Spreckels dies at San Francisco January 10 at age 79. Two of his four sons wrested control of his vast Hawaiian sugar plantations in 1899 but a family reconciliation has left his son Rudolph in charge of the Spreckels enterprises.
The U.S. recession that began with last year's financial panic depresses demands for luxury food items, including canned pineapple. Hawaii's eight packers produce 400,000 cases (James D. Dole's Hawaiian Pineapple Co. alone packs 242,822 cases) and have orders for only 120,000 cases. Pineapples pile up on the wharves of Honolulu. Dole summons his competitors to a meeting as the glut of pineapple production depresses prices (see 1904). The packers agree to subscribe to a fund of $50,000 and undertake a joint program of national advertising to win acceptance for canned Hawaiian pineapple, regardless of brand, in the big eastern U.S. markets, the first advertising campaign for a commodity by any growers' association (see Sunkist, 1919). Consumption of Hawaiian pineapple will quadruple in the next 18 months (see 1911).
Tokyo University chemist Kikunae Ikeda isolates from seaweed the flavor enhancer monosodium glutamate (MSG) that gives a meaty flavor to vegetable diets. He calls the white salt "aginimoto," meaning "the essence of taste" (see Arome, 1889). The Ajinimoto company will become the world's leading MSG producer, and the name ajinimoto will become a generic for MSG in Japan (in China it will be called Wei-chin or Ve-tsin, but some Chinese will say that it adds a harsh, heavy, metallic taste to food) (see 1934; 5'-inosinic acid, 1913).
The Melitta drip coffee maker invented by Dresden hausfrau Melitta Bentz, 35, and introduced at the Leipzig Fair begins a movement away from percolators (see 1827). Bentz began experimenting with coffee filters 5 years ago, first cutting a circle out of a sheet of blotting paper from her son's schoolbook and sticking it in the bottom of a brass pot that she has poked full of holes. By putting coffee grounds on top of the filter and pouring boiling water over it, she has obtained better-tasting coffee in less time and without the bother of wrapping loose grounds in a cloth bag and boiling water around it. Her husband, Hugo, hired a tinsmith 2 years ago to make pots based on her idea, and they sell more than 1,200 coffeemakers at the trade fair. By 1912 her company will be making a line of coffee filters that will soon give way to cone-shaped filters, and the metal pots will be replaced by porcelain and plastic models as her drip-coffee method gains worldwide popularity, but for most of this century people will continue to drink bitter percolated coffee that is either too weak or too strong.
Tea bags are pioneered by New York tea and coffee wholesaler Thomas Sullivan, who operates a small retail shop in the city's spice district. He sends samples of his various tea blends to customers in small hand-sewn muslin (or China silk) bags instead of in the small metal cans generally used. Finding that they can brew tea simply by pouring boiling water over a tea bag in a cup, the customers place hundreds of orders for Sullivan's tea bags, and they will soon be packed by a machine designed specifically for the purpose.
General Electric Co. introduces the first commercially successful electric toaster, pricing it at about $1.45 (see Britain, 1893). Its wire body, resting on a porcelain base, holds a slice of bread close to bare electric coils, but only about 10 percent of U.S. homes are wired for electricity (see Strite, 1921).
The 31-year-old British wine-exporting firm Williams and Humbert of Jerez de la Frontera, Spain, introduces Dry Sack Sherry, a name derived from a 16th-century English term for dry Spanish wine.
A commission appointed by the British crown investigates disputes between distillers of single-malt Scotch whiskies and blenders who market brands consisting almost entirely of "patent" whisky (see consumer protection, 1905).
Iceland bans the sale of intoxicating beverages, a prohibition that will continue until 1934.
A "gentlemen's agreement" concluded February 18 binds Japan to issue no further passports to workers for immigration directly to the United States; Japanese diplomat Ishii Kikujirō acquiesces to last year's order by President Roosevelt barring Japanese immigration. Roosevelt agrees to urge San Francisco authorities to rescind their order to segregate children of Japanese parents from their white classmates, and the San Francisco School Board repeals its order (see 1924).
Anglican Bishops at the Lambeth Conference refer to contraception as "preventive abortion," but clergymen in the next two decades will gradually come to accept the utilitarian argument that contraception spares society high social costs (see 1930).
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