1901 1902 1903 1904 1905 1906 1907 1908 1909 1910
Constantinople recognizes Austrian annexation of Bosnia and Herzogovina January 12 (see 1908). Vienna pays the Turks a £2.2 million indemnity, the Russians cancel a £20-million Turkish indemnity in return for Constantinople's recognition of Bulgarian independence, and internal strife disrupts the Ottoman Empire. The 76-year-old grand vizier Kiamil is deposed February 13 and replaced by Hussein Hilmi, 50, and the Baghdad-born general Mahmud Sevket, 51, suppresses a religious uprising against the Young Turk government in what will be remembered as the 31st of March Incident. Upwards of 20,000 Armenians are massacred. The 1st Army Corps revolts at Constantinople April 13; composed chiefly of Albanians, it forces Hilmi to resign. A 25,000-man army of liberation arrives from Macedonia April 24, a 5-hour battle ensues, and leaders of the April 13 revolt are executed. The sultan Abdul Hamid II favors a return to absolutism and is imprisoned in his palace, his 4,000-man Albanian guard surrenders to the Young Turks April 25 and gives up its arms, and the sultan is deposed April 26 at age 66 after a 33-year reign by unanimous vote of the Ottoman parliament. His helpless 64-year-old brother will reign until 1918 as Mohammed V, and Gen. Sevket is promoted to inspector general of the first three army corps and minister of war (see 1913).
Bulgarian independence gains German, Austrian, and Italian recognition April 27.
Britain, France, Russia, and Italy withdraw their forces from Crete in July and the island becomes part of Greece. Former French military leader Gaston-Alexandre-Auguste, marquis de Gallifet, dies at his native Paris July 8 at age 78.
Admiral Pascual Cervera y Topete, Spanish Navy (ret.), dies at Puerto Real April 3 at age 70, having been acquitted after the 1898 war of charges arising from the loss of his squadron to U.S. naval forces off Cuba; former Spanish pretender Carlos Maria de Los Dolores de Borbón y Austria-este, duque de Madrid (Don Carlos), dies at Varese, Italy, July 18 at age 51. The advent of liberal Roman Catholicism and the development of regionalist parties has left his Carlist Party disillusioned and fragmented.
Spain's prime minister Antonio Maura resigns under pressure in October following a general strike in July, anticlerical violence at Barcelona, and the execution of propagandist Francisco Ferrer. He has reestablished constitutional guarantees at Barcelona and Gerona, reformed local governments, made education compulsory, and will head three more short-lived governments.
Britain establishes a military intelligence agency (MI5) established October 1 in response to a suggestion by Prime Minister Asquith will survive as the world's oldest. Capt. Vernon Kell, 36, heads the agency and will remain head for 30 years; a xenophobic racist who believes that true Britons "are sorry for any of our women folk who marry foreigners," he begins compiling an "Alien Register" of resident foreigners that by 1914 will have details on 16,000 people (see MI6, 1911; communications [Official Secrets Act], 1911).
The Fianna na Eireann founded by Irish actress-patriot Constance (Georgina) de Markievicz (née Gore-Booth), 41, is a paramilitary order whose avowed purpose is to train boys to fight in the cause of Irish independence from Britain; a landed aristocrat who in 1900 married the six-foot-four-inch Polish artist-playwright Count Casimir Dunin-Markievicz, a widower 6 years her junior, the "Rebel Countess" (as she will be called) teaches her young men marksmanship and otherwise prepares them for military service in the cause of a free Ireland (see 1916).
Leopold II of the Belgians dies at Laeken December 17 at age 74 after a reign of nearly 41 years in which he has exploited the Congo, amassed great wealth at the expense of the Africans, and distressed his subjects by carrying on numerous extra-marital affairs (he took a 16-year-old prostitute as his mistress in the 1890s, shocked Europe by flaunting her, and has married her on his deathbed). Leopold's only son died as a boy in 1869; a 34-year-old nephew will reign until 1934 as Albert I.
Persia's shah Mohammed Ali Shah is deposed July 16 by the Bakhtaiari tribal chief Ali Kuh Khan, who took Teheran 4 days earlier. A Russian force has invaded northern Persia, raised the siege of Tabriz March 26, and occupied the city for the shah with savage brutality, arousing the Bakhtaiari. They replace the shah with his son Ahmad, 12, who will reign until 1925 as a puppet of radical elements (see 1921).
Cuba's U.S. administrator Charles Magoon turns over the reigns of government January 28 to the newly-elected Liberal president José Miguel Gómez, whose administration will continue until 1913 despite its toleration of graft, corruption, fiscal irresponsibility, general maladministration, and insensitivity to the exploitation of blacks (see human rights, 1912).
Colombia's dictatorial president Rafael Reyes resigns under pressure after attempting without success to conclude a treaty that would require the United States to pay only $2.5 million in compensation for taking Panama in 1903. Reyes has worked to restore his nation's economy, increasing coffee production and encouraging the construction of railroads and public works.
The U.S. government supports a Conservative Party effort to unseat Nicaraguan dictator José Santos Zelaya, who fears U.S. economic domination and what he perceives as a U.S. intention to separate his country's Caribbean coast; he executes some U.S. soldiers of fortune in December for having served in the revolutionary army, Washington breaks off relations, U.S. Marines oust Zelaya December 16, he is succeeded as president December 21 by José Madriz, and he will flee to Mexico early next year.
British parliamentarians decide that the survival of the empire depends entirely on naval supremacy (see 1906). The first lord of the admiralty Reginald McKenna, 46, initiates construction of 18 Dreadnought-class battleships, and Parliament decides that the cost of building them will require support from the colonies. Canadian nationalists oppose any financial contribution to the Royal Navy's massive construction program; Montreal-born politician (Joseph-Napoléon) Henri Bourassa, 40, resigned from the House of Commons at Ottawa in 1899 to protest support of British imperialism in the Boer War. He has twice been reelected, and although most of the opposition to the naval build-up comes from French-speaking Canadians they find some support from their English-speaking colleagues (see communications [newspaper], 1910; Laurier, 1911).
Former British viceroy to India George F. S. Robinson, 1st marquis of Ripon, dies at Studley Royal, near Ripon, Yorkshire, July 9 at age 81.
Japanese forces begin a 36-year occupation of Korea, whose people have been in a state of insurrection since the abdication of their emperor in 1907. Prince Hirobumi Itō, now 73, resigns in June after confessing failure to reform Korea's administration; a Korean nationalist assassinates him at Harbin October 26, the Yi (Choson) dynasty whose 26 monarchs have reigned since 1392 comes to an end, and former Japanese prime minister Koshaku Yamagata, now 71, takes power as virtual dictator with backing from the military and the Tokyo bureaucracy (see 1910).
The Valor of Ignorance by Denver-born soldier Homer Lea, 32, makes predictions about future world history. Lea crossed the Pacific to China 10 years ago, participated in the defense of Beijing during the Boxer Rebellion despite being undersized and hunchbacked, became an associate of the reformer K'ang Yu-Wei, and has become a general in the Chinese Army. Japan will be an aggressive power, says Lea, and will make war on the United States beginning with an attack on Hawaii (see 1941). Vietnamese prince Cuong De, 27, has studied with other Vietnamese at Tokyo's Shimbu Military Academy and helped form a movement to fight French rule in his country, but the Japanese look for French financial help and expel Cuong De at French insistence (see 1915).
Mississippi-born planter's son Edward H. (Hull) Crump Jr., 35, wins election as mayor of Memphis, Tennessee, and begins a career in which he will dominate Tennessee politics until 1948 as "Boss" Crump. He was married at age 27 to the daughter of a rich and socially prominent Memphis family and was soon elected as his ward's representative to the local Democratic Party convention. Inept at public speaking, he is adept at persuading small groups, gained election to the city council in 1905 as part of a reform movement, and has built a political machine that has brought order to the city and will soon gain power throughout the state.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is founded at New York following a January meeting attended by social worker Mary White Ovington (see 1908). She joins with W. E. Walling, union leader Leonora O'Reilly, 38, immigrant leader Henry Moscowitz, Unitarian minister John Haynes Holmes, 29, and others in "a revival of the Abolitionist spirit," and the association holds its first conference May 30. The new organization is headed by W. E. B. Du Bois and is supported by social worker Jane Addams of Chicago, educator John Dewey, journalist Lincoln Steffens, Rabbi Stephen Wise, 35, and 49 others, including six blacks (see 1910).
The Apache chief Geronimo (Goyathlay) dies at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, February 17 at age 79 (his biography was published 3 years ago); former U.S. Army Indian fighter (and Howard University president) Gen. O. O. Howard dies at Burlington, Vermont, October 26 at age 78; the former Oglala Sioux leader Red Cloud (Mahpiua Luta) at the Pine Ridge, South Dakota, reservation December 10 at age 87.
Labour in Portuguese West Africa by William Cadbury draws attention to conditions of slavery in São Tomé and Principe (see 1905). Cadbury Brothers announces in November that it will no longer buy Portuguese cacao (see 1905). William Cadbury has visited both Principe and São Tomé, and he persuades two other Quaker cocoa and chocolate firms (Fry and Rowntree) to join in a boycott of cacao from the Portuguese African islands, but while working conditions in São Tomé improve, the system of cocoa slavery remains (see 1910).
A court at Birmingham, England, orders an inquiry after allegations by suffragist Laura Ainsworth that she was repeatedly force fed. Imprisoned for obstructing the police as part of a campaign to obtain voting rights for women, she followed the lead of other imprisoned suffragists, went on a hunger strike, and filed an affidavit claiming that after 3 days she was pinioned by a wardress while a prison doctor tried to force a cup through her teeth and a tube up her nostrils. Other British suffragists who refuse food will be similarly treated.
The Men's League for Woman Suffrage is founded by Canandaigua, N.Y.-born Columbia University doctoral candidate Max F. (Forrester) Eastman, 26, at the instigation of his Marlborough, Mass.-born sister Crystal, 28. Their mother, Annis Eastman (née Ford), is a self-taught minister (she preaches from Thomas K. Beecher's old pulpit at Elmira, N.Y.), and Max will recall her high school graduation essay, "O Femina, Femina," saying, "I am sure it expressed the smiling wish that women would buck up and be something, and the opinion that it was their fault and men's loss as well as theirs if they did not."
Emmeline Pankhurst arrives at New York October 19 aboard the White Star liner Oceanic and is greeted by a crowd of women holding a banner that reads, "Votes for Women." She declares that British women are on the verge of getting the vote.
Irish polar explorer Ernest H. (Henry) Shackleton, 34, and his party reach latitude 88° 23' South January 9, coming within 97 miles (156 kilometers) of the South Pole after having climbed Mount Erebus (13,200 feet, or 4,023 meters) en route. Shackleton has enlisted men by posting a notice: "Men wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages. Bitter cold. Long months of complete darkness. Constant danger. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success." His expedition has been supported by the Royal Geographical Society, and he is knighted upon his return from the Antarctic (see Amundsen, Scott, 1911).
"Reached North Pole April 21, 1909," says a wire received September 1 by the International Bureau for Polar Research at Copenhagen from Brooklyn, N.Y., surgeon Frederick A. Cook, 44, whose steamer Hans Egede has put in at Lerwick in the Shetland Islands. "I have the Pole April 9, 1909," says a wire received September 6 by the New York Times from U.S. Navy engineer Robert E. Peary, 52, who has been accompanied by his personal aide, Matthew (Alexander) Henson, 42. Cook's claim will be discredited, and Peary himself will never be able to prove that he reached latitude 90° North. (Peary's expedition has been supported in part by the 21-year-old National Geographic Society, but his journal will show signs of having been doctored and there will be serious doubts as to its authenticity.)
Britain institutes new tax measures to finance her social security programs (see 1908). Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George's budget imposes a supertax at the rate of 6d per pound on incomes exceeding £5,000 per year and levies steep estate taxes (see 1915).
Gold strikes in northeastern Ontario will lead to Canada's becoming the world's third largest producer after South Africa and Russia. Prospector Jack Wilson discovers the Dome Mine while working as leader of a crew that includes Harry Preston and establishes Porcupine Camp as news of the strike attracts others to the area. Barber-turned-prospector Benny Hollinger and his friend Alec Gillies get wind of the discovery in the Porcupine Lake area and receive a $145 grubstake from one Jack McMahon to pursue reports of "white rocks" there. Told by the Wilson party that all good lots have been staked for at least six miles to the west, they move west and come upon an abandoned excavation, where Hollinger finds large veins of gold coming to the surface but buried under moss. He and Gillies stake out their own claims plus one for a friend whose sciatica prevented him from joining them. They head south to record the claims, and news of their discovery reaches Montreal silver-mine co-owner Noah A. Timmins, 42. He sends his nephew Alphonse Pare to investigate, Pare is a student in mining engineering, and he recommends that Timmins acquire the Hollinger mine. Timmins and his brother Henry find partners, they pay Hollinger $500,000 and mount a 22-man party to cut a road more than 32 miles long from the Toronto & Northern Ontario Railroad to the property, the road crosses a 12-mile expanse of ice. Scottish-born prospector Sandy McIntyre (originally Alexander Oliphant) and his German-born partner Hans Buttner stake out their claims just hours after Hollinger and Gillies.
The Philadelphia Mint issues the first Lincoln-head penny, replacing the Indian-head penny that has been in circulation since 1864. The new copper 1¢ piece bearing the likeness of "Honest Abe" will not be redesigned until 1959.
The salary of the U.S. president rises to $75,000 per year, where it will remain until 1949. President Washington refused to accept his salary of $25,000, the salary was doubled in 1873 and will rise to $100,000 in 1949, to $200,000 in 1969, and to $400,000 in 2001.
The Payne-Aldrich Tariff Act signed into law by President Taft August 5 abolishes the import duty on hides to help the U.S. shoe industry but maintains high duties on iron and steel and raises duties on silk, cotton goods, and many minor items (see 1897; Underwood-Simmons Act, 1913).
The Sixteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution providing for an unapportioned income tax is submitted to the 46 states for ratification (see 1913).
Japanese entrepreneur Michio Suzuki, 22, starts a loom works that will evolve into a conglomerate making a variety of products. Suzuki's initial purpose is simply to build weaving looms that are easier to use, and he sets up shop at the small seacoast village of Hamamatsu, Shizuoka Prefecture.
Nearly two decades of Hawaiian plantation disturbances begin with a strike by exploited Japanese workers. It is the first major Hawaiian strike (see population, 1882).
New York garment workers assemble at Cooper Union on the night of November 22 to hear speeches by Samuel Gompers of the AFL and others about a proposed strike. Most are immigrant women under age 25 who work at piece rates in unheated lofts, and they are especially moved by Clara Lemlich, 19, who is recovering from a beating on a picket line but stands up on the floor, asks to be heard, makes her way to the platform, and says in Yiddish, "I am a working girl, one of those who are on strike against intolerable conditions. I am tired of listening to speakers who talk in general terms. What we are here for is to decide whether we shall or shall not strike. I offer a resolution that a general strike be declared—now." Her resolution is adopted and a strike begins that will last for more than 9 weeks and involve some 20,000 women wage-earners. The strikers belong to the Ladies' Waist Makers' Union Local 25 of the 9-year-old International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU) and heed the exhortations of Rose Schneiderman, now 27, who walks the picket lines, harangues the crowds, and attends countless meetings, braving cold, hunger, police brutality and attacks by company-hired thugs. Police arrest many of the strikers, a judge tells them, "You are on strike against God," but society women including Alva Ertskin Belmont (née Smith), 56, and Anne (Tracy) Morgan, 36 (daughter of financier J. P. Morgan), join the picket lines in December to avert further violence, getting more press coverage for the strikers and contributions to their strike fund. The sight of rich suffragists on the picket lines persuades thousands of working-class women to join the suffrage movement, whose success will help them in their struggle for improved working conditions (but see Triangle fire, 1911).
A labor conference at Pittsburgh ends December 14 with a "declaration of war" against United States Steel Corp.
Texas Gulf Sulphur Co. is incorporated to compete with Herman Frasch's Union Sulfur Co. in exploiting deposits found in the Gulf of Mexico (see 1895).
The U.S. Supreme Court rules that a company director must disclose inside information or abstain from trading on such knowledge, but the ruling will be hard to enforce (see Securities and Exchange Commission, 1934).
Standard Oil Co. chief executive officer (and Amalgamated Copper Co. chairman) Henry H. Rogers dies of apoplexy at New York May 19 at age 68, leaving a fortune estimated to be as much as $75 million; banker John Crosby Brown of Brown Brothers dies at Brighthurst, N.J., June 25 at age 70; financier Edward H. Harriman at his Arden, N.Y., estate in Orange County September 9 at age 61.
The Pennsylvania Trust Co. of Carlisle, Pa., introduces Christmas Club accounts December 1, becoming the first U.S. financial institution to do so.
Investment banker Spencer Trask is killed December 31 at age 65 when a freight train crashes into the midnight Montreal Express. His body is taken to his Yaddo estate at Saratoga Springs, cremated at Troy, and interred in the family plot at Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery, where four of his children lie buried (see art, 1924).
Wall Street's Dow Jones Industrial Average closes December 31 at 99.05, up from 86.15 at the end of 1908.
New York's 91-year-old Brooks Brothers closes its two downtown stores and reopens at Broadway and 22nd Street, near the city's most fashionable residential district. A Brooks Brothers branch opens at Newport, Rhode Island (see 1818; 1915).
Filene's Automatic Bargain Basement at Boston is the first of its kind (see 1901). Inaugurated by founder's son Edward A. Filene, it is designed to promote the sale of slow-moving items by steadily reducing prices until the stock is so depleted that anything left is given to charity (see 1912).
Selfridge & Co. Ltd. opens in London's Oxford Street to give Britain her first large department store. Wisconsin-born merchant Harry Gordon Selfridge, 45, has had a successful career at Chicago's Marshall Field & Co., his new store has 42,000 square feet of floor space, and it quickly finds favor among middle-class British matrons; Selfridges will rival Harrods and Marks & Spencer as it doubles in size, and it will become even more famous than Marshall Field's.
The first British F. W. Woolworth store opens in Liverpool's Church Street (see 1900). There will be 1,000 British Woolworth stores by 1958, and the British chain will break off from the U.S. company, which it will outlive.
General Electric and the National Electric Co. introduce incandescent Edison MAZDA lamp bulbs, using a trade name based on that of the Persian god of light Ahura Mazda (see Langmuir, 1912).
The Lloyd Italiano liner Florida outbound from Naples collides in the fog January 23 with the White Star Line's R.M.S. Republic, damaging her and prompting the first wireless distress call in history. The White Star's R.M.S. Baltic responds, arrives in 12 hours, takes all of Republic's passengers aboard within 4 hours, then proceeds to board Florida's people, and winds up taking on 1,650 passengers and crew, "proving" to the satisfaction of some White Star executives that assistance will always be within relatively close distance, making it unnecessary that lifeboats have enough seats for everyone on board since the boats will only be needed for ferrying passengers to and from rescue vessels (but see R.M.S. Titanic, 1912).
Orville Wright demonstrates the success of the Wright brothers' airplane, which passes U.S. Army tests in June (see 1908). The brothers obtain the first government contract in July by producing a plane that can carry two men, fly for 60 minutes, and reach a speed of 40 miles per hour. They will establish the American Wright Co. to manufacture aircraft (see Curtiss, 1910; Curtiss-Wright, 1929).
French engineer Louis Blériot, 36, makes the first crossing of the English Channel in a heavier-than-air machine July 25. Using money that he has earned from his invention of automobile lights and accessories, he has built a 28-horsepower monoplane and flies it from Calais to a field near Dover in 37 minutes, winning a £1,000 prize that has been offered by the London Daily Mail (see Alcock and Brown, 1919).
Inventor-aviator Glenn H. Curtiss wins the first international air races, using a flying machine and motor of his own design at Rheims, France to capture a cup offered by New York Herald publisher James Gordon Bennett (see 1908; 1910).
Handley Page, Ltd. is founded by English electrical engineer Frederick Handley Page, 23, whose company is the first British aircraft manufacturing corporation (see bomber, 1918).
Wilbur Wright flies from Governors Island up the Hudson to Grant's Tomb and back in 33 minutes October 4, making the first successful flight ever seen in New York. His flying machine is equipped with a red canoe for emergency water landings.
Brazilian aircraft designer Alberto Santos-Dumont, 36, in France builds the Demoiselle (or Grasshopper) monoplane that pioneers the modern light plane. Educated in France, Santos-Dumont made a balloon ascent 11 years ago, built a dirigible 8 years ago that made the first flight in a given time from Saint-Cloud to the Eiffel Tower and back, began work on heavier-than-air machines after the Wright Brothers flight in 1903, and in November 1906 traveled 220 meters in 21 seconds flying a machine that resembled a box kite.
Iowa-born Santa Ana, California, Ford and Maxwell automobile dealer Glenn L. (Luther) Martin, 23, opens an aircraft factory. A former bicycle and auto mechanic, he built a full-sized glider 2 years ago, went on to build an airplane, taught himself to fly, and begins barnstorming to raise money for his venture. He will receive his first government contract in 1913, found the Glenn L. Martin Co. at Cleveland in 1917, and move the company to Baltimore in 1929 (see Douglas, 1920).
The New York, New Haven, and Hartford buys a majority interest in the Boston and Maine, but Boston lawyer Louis D. Brandeis, now 50, fights the aggrandizement of New Haven president C. S. Mellen, whose poor administration is wrecking his railroad's finances (see 1903). Both the New Haven and the B&M will omit dividends to their stockholders in 1913, Mellen will have to resign, and in 1914 the New Haven will be forced to divest itself of its trolley-line and steamship interests.
The Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul reaches Seattle, becoming the seventh line to link the Mississippi to the Pacific Coast (see 1863).
Alfa-Romeo has its origin in the Anonima Lombarda Fabbrica Automobila (ALFA) at Milan. Entrepreneurs have split with Alexandre Darracq, take over Darracq's Milan branch, will move to Rome in 1920, and will operate under the name Alfa-Romeo.
The first transcontinental U.S. motorcar race pits two Model T Fords against an Acme, an Itala, a Shawmut, and a Stearns (which fails to start). Five cars leave New York June 1, and a Ford wins the race, traveling over rough dirt roads to arrive at the Alaska-Yukon Pacific Exposition in Seattle June 22.
General Motors acquires Cadillac from Henry M. Leland for $4.5 million (see 1905; GM, 1908). Cadillacs have interchangeable parts, unusual in the fledgling automotive industry, and Leland will head GM's Cadillac division until 1917 (see 1916; self-starter, 1911; Lincoln, 1922).
General Motors acquires Oakland Motor Car, whose factory at Pontiac, Mich., produces motorcars designed by A. P. Brush (see 1924; Pontiac, 1926).
Timken Roller Bearing and Axle Co. acquires a large, modern factory on Detroit's Clark Avenue in January, but founder Henry Timken dies of an intestinal ailment while on a business trip between San Diego and Los Angeles March 16 at age 77. His son Henry Henzelman (H. H.) Timken, now 40, takes over as head of the company, and it will remain privately owned until 1922.
Motorcar pioneer A. A. Pope dies at Cohasset, Massachusetts, August 10 at age 66.
U.S. automobile production reaches 127,731, up from 63,500 last year.
One Iowa farmer in 34 has a motorcar, while in New York City only one family in 190 has one, reports Collier's magazine. The magazine calls the motorcar the greatest social force in America—greater even than rural free mail delivery, the telephone, or university extension services (see Wilson, 1906).
Western Auto Supply Co. is founded by Kansas City bookkeeper George Pepperdine, 23, who opens a mail-order house to supply parts for Model T Fords, which are sold minus tires, fenders, tops, windshields, and lights—items that can cost a buyer as much as the car itself. By 1915 Pepperdine's company will be grossing $229,000 per year and will have a second plant at Denver.
New York's Queensboro Bridge opens March 30 to carry traffic across the East River between Manhattan and Queens. Built primarily to carry trolley cars, the $17 million span is the first important double-deck bridge.
New York's Manhattan Bridge opens December 31 to carry traffic between Manhattan and Brooklyn (the third such link). The $31 million span is the first important double-deck suspension bridge.
The modern plastics industry has its beginnings in Bakelite, developed by Belgian-born U.S. chemist Leo H. (Hendrik) Baekeland, 46. Having received his doctorate degree maxima cum laude from the University of Ghent at age 21, Baekeland came to America in 1899, joined a photographic company, invented a photographic paper that could be developed under artificial light, set up his own firm to manufacture it, and promptly sold the company and rights to the paper (Velox) to George Eastman for $1 million. Baekeland purchased an estate on the Hudson River, converted a barn into a laboratory, subjected formaldehyde and phenol to high pressure at high temperature, and has created the world's first synthetic polymer and the first thermosetting plastic (one that does not soften when heated). Far superior to the celluloid that has been in commercial production since 1872, his heat-resistant, chemically stable, synthetic shellac plastic material will be used initially for electrical insulation, and the chemist starts a company to market a molding powder used for shaping Bakelite products (see Union Carbide and Carbon, 1939).
Synthetic rubber is produced by German chemist Fritz Hofmann, 42, of Farbenfabriken Bayer, who obtains it from butadiene, a coal gas derived from butane (see Nieuwland, 1925).
Oneida County, N.Y.-born Smithsonian Institution paleontologist Charles (Doolittle) Walcott, 59, discovers fossils August 30 that date to before 500 million B.C. Walcott succeeded the late John Wesley Powell as head of the United States Geological Survey following Powell's retirement in 1894 and held that position until 2 years ago. Working in the Canadian Rockies of British Columbia, the tall, erect, red-bearded scientist steps off a horse trail near Burgess Pass and finds Middle Cambrian-age fossils in what he will call the Burgess Shale, invertebrate remains that still retain recognizable impressions of the softer parts of marine animals that evolved in the oceans 10 to 20 million years ago after 2 billion years in which life on Earth consisted only of unicellular forms. Walcott will locate the source of the fossils farther up the ridge next year and with his family's help spend the next 12 summers excavating for more, making notes, taking photographs, and collecting specimens that revolutionize human understanding of evolution.
A chromosomal theory of heredity formulated by Kentucky-born Columbia University zoologist Thomas Hunt Morgan, 43, breaks new ground in the study of heredity (see Punnett, 1905; Stevens, 1906). Fruit flies (Drosophila) have eight chromosomes, humans 23, and only one set of genes controlling embryonic development compared to four sets in humans; since new generations can be bred in a week, they are much easier to work with than humans. Keeping Drosophila in hundreds of empty milk bottles that he and his assistants have stolen from doorsteps on their way to work, Morgan has found a white-eyed mutant fly and bred it with normal red-eyed fruit flies in experiments that replicate those done by the 19th century Austrian monk Gregor Mendel with peas. Adopting the new term gene coined by Danish botanist Wilhelm Johannsen, Morgan theorizes that heredity involves genes aligned on chromosomes for specific tasks (see 1926; Sturtevant, 1913).
Russian-born New York chemist Phoebus (Aaron Theodor) Levene, 40, isolates the five-carbon sugar d-ribose from the ribonucleic acid (RNA) molecule (see 1870). Originally Fishel Aaronovich Levin, Levene went to work last year at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research (see DNA, 1929).
The Elements of Non-Euclidean Geometry by Harvard mathematician Julian Lowell Coolidge, 36, helps to clarify that branch of mathematics.
Mathematical physicist Hermann Minkowski dies of a ruptured appendix at Göttingen January 12 at age 44; chemist and industrialist Ludwig Mond at London December 11 at age 70, having improved the Solvay alkali process, devised a new process for extracting nickel from its ore, and done pioneering work on fuel-cell technology; chemical engineer Charles B. Dudley dies at Altoona, Pa., December 21 at age 67, having helped to found the science of materials testing (he helped to establish the American Society for Testing and Materials in 1898 and has been its president since 1902).
An arsenic compound formulated by Paul Ehrlich to fight syphilis is the first antibacterial therapeutic drug and pioneers chemotherapy in medicine (see diphtheria, 1891). The German bacteriologist's compound Number 592 is effective in destroying the trypanosomes that cause syphilis in mice and produces no side effects or after effects. Ehrlich's purer, more soluble variant Number 606 will prove effective next year in treating human victims of syphilis, and the drug will be marketed under the name Salvarsan. Ehrlich's arsphenamine will reduce the incidence of syphilis in England and France by 50 percent in the next 5 years, but while his work will lead to the discovery of new antibacterial agents, many will attack his syphilis cure on the ground that it encourages sin (see Fleming, 1928; Domagk, 1935).
Austrian pathologist Karl Landsteiner, 41, looks into the reasons why donors' blood sometimes causes clotting in recipients' blood; he establishes the existence of different blood types (see 1818). Further research will reveal that there are four essential blood types: O, A, B, and AB; knowledge of compatibility will make blood transfusions safe (see Rh factor, 1940).
Karl Landsteiner isolates the poliomyleitis virus (see 1905; 1916).
Bacteriologist Charles-J.-H. Nicolle at Tunis shows that typhus is transmitted only through the bite of the body louse Pediculus humanus (see 1903). He reports on studies of the ancient plague that he has made in a series of experiments using monkeys, and he distinguishes between the louse-borne disease and murine typhus, transmitted to humans by the rat flea. Pathologist Howard T. Ricketts goes to Mexico with his assistant Russel M. Wilder to study a typhus epidemic there (see Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, 1906). They locate the disease-causing organism in the bodies of the lice as well as in the blood of typhus victims and will show that the disease can be transmitted to monkeys that develop immunity after recovering, a finding that will lead to the development of a vaccine.
Pediatrician Clemens von Pirquet publishes the results of a series of tuberculin tests performed on Viennese children and shows that 70 percent of the children tested have been infected with tuberculosis by age 10 and more than 90 percent by age 14 (see allergy, 1906). His test involves scratching a drop of tuberculin into the surface of a small area of skin; the test is positive if a red, raised area appears at the site of the application.
Austria, Belgium, and France ban the use of white-lead paint for interiors; U.S. medical authorities diagnosed childhood lead poisoning in 1887, lead poisoning in children has been linked to lead-based paints since 1904, and physicians will relate pediatric lead poisoning in 1914 to eating crib paint.
The Rockefeller Sanitary Commission that will become the Rockefeller Foundation in 1913 begins a campaign to eradicate hookworm disease in the South (see 1619; Ashford, 1899; Stiles, 1902).
John D. Rockefeller gives $530 million for worldwide medical research (see Rockefeller Institute, 1901).
Baltimore-born pathologist (Francis) Peyton Rous, 29, joins the new Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research at New York, is given a Plymouth Rock hen with a cancerous tumor, and diagnoses it as a sarcoma. It has been known that cancer can be spread from one animal to another and assumed that such transmission can only be through a transfer of cancer cells; by next year Rous will have established that a sarcoma can be transmitted by a virus, and his findings will be published in the Journal of Experimental Medicine in 1912 under the title "Transmission of a Malignant New Growth by Means of a Cell-Free Filtrate." Other researchers will discover viral causes for other cancers in animals and perhaps some in humans.
Congress bans the import of opium for anything but medical purposes. Opium derivatives are widely used in the anodynes codeine and morphine as they were in the earlier anodyne laudanum, and a tincture of opium is effective in treating some intestinal disorders (see Heroin, 1898; Harrison Act, 1914).
Walter Reed Army Medical Center admits its first patient May 1. Named for the late army surgeon whose work on yellow fever is permitting construction of the Panama Canal, the 80-bed facility on Georgia Avenue will grow to have 260 beds on a 113-acre site.
Kansas bans public drinking vessels, the first state to take such action.
The Public Cup Vendor Co. is incorporated with backing from a New York investment banker who puts up $200,000 to start the company founded by Hugh Moore. It distributes free dispensers to offices, factories, schools, and other customers who contract to buy paper Dixie Cups (see 1908).
The Walgreen's drugstore chain has its beginnings in a store opened by Chicago pharmacist Charles R. (Rudolph) Walgreen, 35, who will popularize the soda-fountain lunch counter. His chain will grow to become the nation's largest.
Muslim fanatics murder 30,000 Armenians in April in a conflict over religion.
Religious leader-author-editor Edward Everett Hale dies at Roxbury, Mass., June 10 at age 87. He has been chaplain of the U.S. Senate since 1903.
Motodo della pedagogia scientifica by Italian schoolteacher-physician Maria Montessori, 39, will have remarkable influence on education worldwide. First woman graduate of the University of Rome medical school, Montessori became interested some years ago in helping "slow" students. She was assigned to a group of 8-year-old "idiots" and soon had them outscoring "normal" students on state-administered proficiency tests (see 1912).
The National Kindergarten Association (National Association for the Promotion of Kindergarten Education) is founded at New York by local businesswoman Bessie Locke, 44, who herself attended a private kindergarten in 1870 at Boston (see Peabody, 1860). She has reportedly seen the success of a friend's kindergarten in a city slum area and quit the business world. In the next 30 years, Locke will help to open more than 3,000 kindergartens serving 1.5 million U.S. children.
Harvard's president Charles William Eliot retires after a 40-year career of educational reform and is succeeded by Boston-born government professor A. (Abbott) Lawrence Lowell, 52, who will head the university until 1933. Eliot, now 75, has been instrumental in developing the institution from a regional college with 32 professors teaching 73 courses to a national university with 169 professors teaching more than 400 courses. He has introduced an elective system at the college, eliminating the totally prescribed course of study that had been traditional.
A futurist manifesto "Manifeste de Futurisme" published in the Paris newspaper Le Figaro February 20 by Alexandria-born Italian poet-publicist-playwright (Emilio) Filippo (Tommaso) Marinetti, 32, advocates rejection of the past, including abandonment of syntax and grammatical rules. He calls museums "cemeteries" and demands their destruction. Italian writers, painters, and sculptors will be quick to adopt Marinetti's ideas.
Iowa-born Western Electric electrical engineer Lee De Forest, 34, patents a three-electrode (or triode) vacuum tube amplifier that will be the basis of an electronics revolution (see Tesla, 1888; Fleming, 1904). De Forest invented electrical high-frequency "radio" surgery 2 years ago; he calls his amplifier an Audion, and it will permit the development of radio, but although he will use it next year to broadcast a violin performance next year and the voice of operatic tenor Enrico Caruso, almost nobody will hear them for lack of receivers (see 1912).
Condé Nast takes over Vogue magazine (see 1892). Now 35, the former Collier's advertising manager has organized a company to make and sell dress patterns under an arrangement with Cyrus Curtis's Ladies' Home Journal. Vogue has a circulation of only 22,500, but Nast will make it a monthly and in 1914 will name managing editor Edna Woolman Chase, now 32, as editor-in-chief; she will build circulation to more than 130,000, launch British and French editions, and train a generation of fashion editors, including Carmel Snow, now 19, who will become editor-in-chief of Hearst's Harper's Bazaar.
Collier's magazine founder Peter Fenelon Collier dies at his New Jersey horse farm April 24 at age 59. His 32-year-old New York-born son Robert J. will run the magazine until 1914.
The United States has 2,600 daily newspapers to serve her 90 million people (see 1958).
New York's Amsterdam News begins publication in December. The paper's circulation will peak at 100,000, becoming the nation's largest nonreligious black weekly.
The United States Copyright Law passed by Congress March 4 takes effect July 1, protecting U.S. authors, publishers (and composers) under terms that will remain unchanged for 68 years (see Berne Convention, 1886). The law gives copyright owners exclusive rights "to print, reprint, publish, copy, and vend the copyrighted work." The courts will develop an ill-defined doctrine of "fair use" by which to decide cases involving charges of copyright infringement, taking into account the nature of the copyrighted work, the amount of material copied, and the effect of the use on the copyright owner's potential market (see Universal Copyright Convention, 1952).
Tauchnitz Editions introduced in Germany provide readers with cheap, paperback reprints of classics (see Penguin, 1936).
Nonfiction: The Promise of American Life by New York-born journalist Herbert (David) Croly, 40, elaborates the thesis that democratic institutions are dynamic and have to be flexible and innovative if they are to meet the challenges of a changing world; Unemployment: A Problem of Industry by Indian-born English economist William Henry Beveridge, 30, argues that the organization of industry is in large part responsible for joblessness; The Ancient Greek Historians by J. B. Bury is a series of lectures that Bury gave last year at Harvard; Psychology and the Teacher by Hugo Münsterberg, whom some will call the founder of applied psychology; Kant's Theory of Knowledge by Oxford intuitionist philosopher H. A. (Harold Arthur) Prichard, 37; Plato's Logic of Being (Platos Logik des Seins) by Latvian-born Kantian philosopher Nicolai Hartmann, 27.
Author Hinton R. Helper commits suicide at Washington, D.C., March 9 at age 79, having spent his last years lobbying to have a railroad built from Hudson Bay to the Straits of Magellan; Euclides da Cunha dies at Rio de Janeiro August 15 at age 43 after being shot in a personal quarrel (Brazilians will observe a Euclides Week [Semana Euclideana] each August in his memory).
Fiction: Strait is the Gate (La Porte étroite) by André Gide; L'Enchanteur pourissant by Rome-born French novelist-poet Guillame Apollinaire (originally Wilhelm de Kostrowitzky), 29, whose emigrée Polish mother bore him out of wedlock; The Peasants (Chlopi) by Wladyslaw Reymont; Jakob von Gunten by Robert Walser; Okurov City (Gorodok Okurov) by Maksim Gorky; "The Tatooer" (story) by Tokyo-born writer Junichiro Tanizaki, 23; Actions and Reactions (stories) by Rudyard Kipling; Ann Veronica (a pro-suffragist novel) and Tono-Bungay by H. G. Wells, whose latter work shows the excesses of patent medicine exploitation; The Wooden Horse by New Zealand-born English novelist Hugh (Seymour) Walpole, 25, who has worked as a schoolteacher; The Ball and the Cross by G. K. Chesterton; Martin Eden by Jack London; The Southerner by "Nicholas Worth" (Walter Hines Page); Three Lives by Gertrude Stein includes "The Good Anna," "The Gentle Lena," and—more notably—"Melanctha"; Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton-Porter; The Glory of the Conquered: The Story of a Great Love by Davenport, Iowa-born journalist-turned-novelist Susan (Keaton) Glaspell, 27; The Circular Staircase by Pittsburgh mystery novelist Mary Roberts Rinehart, 32.
Selma Lagerlöf receives the Nobel Prize in literature, becoming the first woman writer to be thus honored.
Novelist George Meredith dies at Box Hill, Surrey, May 18 at age 81; Sarah Orne Jewett at her native South Berwick, Maine, June 24 at age 59.
Poetry: Handful of Songs (Gitangali) by Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore, 48, whose work will be promoted in the West by William Butler Yeats; Man Song by John G. Neihardt; Ballads of a Cheechako by Robert W. Service.
Poet Algernon Swinburne dies at Putney April 10 at age 72 in the home of his friend Theodore Watts-Dunton, who rescued him from dissipation and self-neglect 30 years ago and restored him to health.
Juvenile: The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies by Beatrix Potter.
Martha Farquharson Finley dies at her Elkton, Maryland, home January 30 at age 80. Her Elsie Dinsmore books will lose their popularity as standards change and Elsie comes to be regarded as priggish and overly docile.
Painting: Eiffel Tower by French painter Robert Delaunay, 24, who introduces brilliant color to cubism after having experimented with postimpressionism and fauvism (he will paint the Eiffel Tower at least 30 times); The Dance (panel) and Woman in Green with a Carnation by Henri Matisse; Bread and Fruit Dish on a Table, Woman with Pears, and Factory at Horta de Ebro by Pablo Picasso; Standing Nude by Pierre Bonnard; The Equatorial Jungle by Henri Rousseau; Violoncellist by Italian painter Amédéo Modigliani, 25; El Picador by Diego Rivera; Danae, Woman with a Black Hat, Hans Massmann, and Nude Self-Portrait by Egon Schiele; In the Garden, Corfu by John Singer Sargent; Both Members of This Club (prizefighters) by George Bellows. Alfred Steiglitz introduces Rutherford, N.J.-born water-colorist John Marin, 38, to New York, including his works in a show at his Photo-Secession 291 Gallery. Frederic Remington dies of perotonitis near Ridgefield, Conn., December 26 at age 48, having been treated too late for an acute case of appendicitis.
London's Victoria and Albert Museum opens in South Kensington, where a building designed by Sir Aston Webb has been completed after 10 years' work to house the collection of decorative arts objects that has been in the South Kensington Museum since 1857 (see 1852). The collection has grown to include materials from the East India Company's Museum (closed in 1858) plus a wide range of works ranging from paintings by John Constable to Italian Renaissance and Baroque sculptures, Chinese ceramics and jades, Italian and French armor, and 18th-century German porcelains.
Munich's Modern Gallerie opens under the direction of local art dealer Justin Thannhauser, 17, who turns his father's 5-year-old gallery into a focal point for work by "The Bridge" ("Die Brücke") expressionists Edvard Munch, Wassily Kandinsky, Swiss painter Paul Klee, 29, German expressionist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, 29, and others.
The Boston Museum of Fine Arts is completed (see 1870).
Theater: The Easiest Way by Cleveland-born playwright Eugene Walter, 35, 1/19 at New York's Stuyvesant (Belasco) Theater, with Joseph Kilgour, 157 perfs.; The Dawn of a Tomorrow by Frances Hodgson Burnett 1/25 at New York's Lyceum Theater, with Eleanor Robson, 152 perfs.; Griselda by Gerhart Hauptmann 3/6 at Vienna's Hofburgtheater; Strife by John Galsworthy 3/9 at the Duke of York's Theatre, London, with Edmund Gwenn, Charles Bishop, Norman McKinnel, C. M. Hallard, 23 perfs.; Earl Birger of Bjalbo (Bjalb-jarle-ti) by August Strindberg 3/26 at Stockholm's Swedish Theater; Going Some by Paul Armstrong and Rex Beach 4/12 at New York's Belasco Theater (to Maxine Elliott's Theater 6/21), 96 perfs.; Murderer, Hope of Women (Mörder, Hoffnung der Frauen) by Austrian playwright-painter Oskar Kokoschka, 23, 7/4 at Vienna's Gartentheater Kuntschau; Is Matrimony a Failure? by Hungarian-born playwright Leo Ditrichstein, 44, (who has adapted a German play) 9/24 at New York's Belasco Theater, with Jane Cowl, St. Paul, Minn.-born ingénue Blanche Yurka, 22, 366 perfs.; The Fortune Hunter by Winchell Smith and New York-born playwright James Montgomery, 21, 9/4 at New York's Gaiety Theater, with John Barrymore, Iowa-born actor Hale Hamilton, 26, 345 perfs.; The Melting Pot by Israel Zangwill 9/17 at New York's Artef Theater after a year on the road, with Walker Whiteside as David Quixano, a Russian-born Jewish immigrant who marries a Christian woman and, looking out from the roof garden of a settlement house, says, "There she lies, the great Melting Pot—listen! Can't you hear the roaring and the bubbling? Ah, what a stirring and seething! Celt and Latin, Slav and Teuton, Greek and Syrian, —black and yellow," 136 perfs. The play introduces the term melting pot to describe America's (and especially New York's) amalgam of nationalities and races (see Nonfiction [de Crèvecoeur], 1782); Anathema (Anatema) by Leonid Andreyev 10/2 at the Moscow Art Theater; The Man Who Owns Broadway by George M. Cohan 10/11 at the New York Theater, with Raymond Hitchcock, 128 perfs.; The School of Princesses (La escuela de las princesas) by Jacinto Benavente 10/14 at Madrid's Teatro de la Comedia; The Tinker's Wedding by the late J. M. Synge 11/11 at His Majesty's Theatre, London; Seven Days by Mary Roberts Rinehart and Avery Hopwood 11/11 at New York's Astor Theater, with Hope Latham, Florence Reed, Nashville, Tenn.-born actress Lucille La Verne, 36, 397 perfs.; The Lottery Man by Rida Johnson Young 12/6 at New York's Bijou Theater, with Jefferson City, Mo.-born actress Janet Beecher, 24, 200 perfs.; Liliom by Hungarian playwright Ferenc Molnár, 31, 12/7 at Budapest's Vigszinhaz; The Prince Who Learned Everything from Books (El principe que todo lo aprendó en los libros) (children's fantasy) by Jacinto Benavente 12/20 at Madrid's Teatro del Principe Alfonso; The City by the late Clyde Fitch 12/21 at New York's Lyric Theater, with 29-year-old Brooklyn-born actor Walter Hampden (originally Walter Hampden Dougherty) in a realistic play that shocks audiences with its profanity and treatment of taboo subjects such as incest, 190 perfs.
Playwright J. M. Synge dies of Hodgkin's disease at London March 24 at age 37; Clyde Fitch of appendicitis at Châlons-sur-Marne, France, August 4 at age 44.
Film: William Ranon's Hiawatha, a two-reel (1,988-foot-long) film version of the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow classic "Hiawatha," which appears October 25 starring Canadian-born actress Florence Lawrence, 19, who is paid an unheard of $1,000 per week, and Arcade, N.Y.-born actress Gladys Hulette, 23. Demand for films has outpaced supply, and former Chicago exhibitor Carl Laemmle, now 42, has opened a small New York studio on Eleventh Avenue to produce films (see 1906). He establishes Independent Motion Pictures (IMP), its acting troupe includes Canadian-born beauty Mary Pickford (originally Gladys Mary Smith), 17, who was brought to New York by David Belasco; Laemmle next year will produce 100 short films, challenging the virtual monopoly of the newly-established General Film Co. coalition (Motion Picture Patents Co.), which holds the patents on operating machines, limits the length of films to one or two reels (MPPC cofounder Thomas A. Edison does not believe that audiences are capable of appreciating longer pictures), and forces exhibitors to show its films, charging steep fees (see Universal Pictures, 1912); D. W. Griffith's Redemption with Florence Lawrence; Winsor McCay's Little Nemo (animated; McCay has drawn and hand-colored thousands of 35-mm. frames).
George Eastman persuades his international competitors to convert to the Eastman Kodak standard of 35-millimeter film with four perforations per frame, developed for Thomas A. Edison in 1889. Every foreign company has heretofore used film peculiar to its own cameras, but even France's Lumière brothers agree to the new standard.
Bell & Howell Company's Albert S. Howell eliminates the "flicker" from motion pictures with a standard camera that permits precise control of film movement (see 1907; 1911).
Opera: Elektra 1/25 at Dresden's Konigliches Operhaus, with Mme. Schumann-Heink creating the role of Klytemnestra, music by Richard Strauss, libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal; Le Coq d'Or (The Golden Cock) 9/24 at Moscow's Zimin Theater, with music by the late Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. Romanian-born soprano Alma Gluck (née Reba Fiersohn), 25, makes her Metropolitan Opera debut singing the role of Sophia in the 1894 Massenet opera Werther.
The Boston Opera House opens November 8 with ovations to merchant Eban Jordan of Jordan-Marsh, whose benefactions have made the house possible.
Ballet: Prince Igor 5/18 at the Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris, with music by the late Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov from the opera of 1890, choreography by Russian impresario Sergei Pavlovich Diaghilev, 37, who founds the Ballets Russes and employs dancer Waslaw Nijinsky, 19, a brilliant performer who made his debut 2 years ago with Diaghilev's Imperial Ballet at St. Petersburg. Michel Fokine takes over the Imperial Ballet.
Former ballerina and choreographer Fanny Cerrito dies at Paris May 6 at age 91, having retired at age 40 after nearly being hit by a piece of burning scenery while on tour in Russia.
The London Symphony gives its first concert June 9.
First performances: Die Todtinsel (The Island of the Dead) (Symphonic Poem, after a picture by A. Bocklin) by Sergei Rachmaninoff 5/1 at Moscow; Concerto No. 3 in D minor for Piano and Orchestra by Rachmaninoff 11/28 at New York.
Pianist-composer Isaac Albéniz dies at Cambo-les-Bains, France, May 18 at age 48.
The new United States Copyright Law secures exclusive rights to composers and/or publishers to print, publish, copy, vend, arrange, record by means of phonograph (gramophone) or any other mechanical device, and perform publicly for profit original musical compositions, and affords protection against infringement for a period of 28 years and a renewal period of the same length (see 1897; ASCAP, 1914).
The Chautauqua movement founded in 1874 gains a musical aspect as Walter Damrosch, now 47, brings his New York Symphony Orchestra to Chautauqua, N.Y. The Chautauqua will become an important training center for U.S. musical talent.
Stage musicals: The Fair Co-Ed 2/1 at New York's Knickerbocker Theater, with Elsie Janis, Gustav Laders-George Ade songs, 136 perfs.; The Beauty Spot 4/10 at the Herald Square Theater, with Marguerite Clark, music by Reginald De Koven, book by Joseph V. Herbert, 137 perfs.; The (Ziegfeld) Follies 6/14 at New York's Jardin de Paris, with Nora Bayes, Jack Norworth, Eva Tanguay, Russian-born actress-singer Sophie Tucker (originally Sonia Kalish), 25, San Francisco-born ingénue Lillian Lorraine (née Eulallean de Jacques), 17, music by Maurice Levi and others, book and lyrics chiefly by Harry B. Smith, songs that include "By the Light of the Silvery Moon" by Gus Edwards, lyrics by Edward Madden, 64 perfs.; The Dollar Princess 9/25 at Daly's Theatre, London, with Lily Elsie, New York actor Joseph Coyne, 42, Gabrielle Ray, music by Viennese composer Leo Fall, 36, 428 perfs.; Old Dutch 11/22 at New York's Herald Square Theater, with Lew Fields, dancer Vernon Castle, and Washington, D.C.-born actress Helen Hayes (Brown), 9, in her first New York appearance (she has been acting professionally since age 5), book by Edgar Smith, music by Victor Herbert, lyrics by George V. Hobart, 88 perfs.
Paris-born crooner and entertainer Maurice Chevalier, 20, teams up with Enghien-des-Bains-born comedienne Mistinguett (Jeanne-Marie Bourgeois), 34, who got her nickname (Miss Tinguett) from a song in the musical Miss Helyett because her protruding front teeth made her look English. She has beautiful long legs and a vivacious personality, so while she is no great shakes as a dancer and is not much of a singer, she works well with Chevalier (who always wears a straw boater with his dinner jacket when on stage) and their appearances in revues at the Casino de Paris and the Moulin Rouge launch them on a notable career.
Popular songs: "Meet Me Tonight in Dreamland" by Leo Friedman, 40, lyrics by Beth Slater Whitson, 30, whose song quickly becomes the theme of the Coney Island amusement park opened in 1904; "I Wonder Who's Kissing Her Now" by Harold Orlob, 24, lyrics by William M. Hough, 27, and Frank R. Adams, 26 (they are employed by Joseph E. Howard's Music Publishers Corp. and Howard will claim authorship); "Put on Your Old Grey Bonnet" by Percy Wenrich, 24, lyrics by Stanley Murphy; "Casey Jones" by Eddie Newton, lyrics by T. Lawrence Seibert (see transportation, 1900); "Yiddle on Your Fiddle" by Irving Berlin. Freeport, Ill.-born New York composer Ted Snyder, 28, started his own song-publishing firm last year and hires Berlin to write lyrics; "On Wisconsin!" (march) by W. T. Purdy, lyrics by Carl Beck; "The Whiffenpoof Song" by Tod Galloway, lyrics by Meade Minnegerode and George S. Pomeroy.
Poet-songwriter Naphtali Herz Imber dies in poverty at New York October 8 at age 53.
Arthur Gore wins in men's singles at Wimbledon, (Penelope) Dorothea Harvey Boothby, 28, in women's singles; Bill Larned wins in U.S. men's singles, Hazel V. Hotchkiss, 22, in women's singles.
"Tris" Speaker signs with the Boston Red Sox to begin a 19-year American League career. Texas-born center fielder Tristram E. Speaker, 21, will have a lifetime batting average of .344.
The Pittsburgh Pirates win the World Series, defeating the Detroit Tigers 4 games to 3. Outfielder Ty Cobb takes his World Series money and invests it in shares of a copper mine at $3 per share; he will sell the stock next year at $1,000 per share, but his best investments will prove to be Coca-Cola, whose stock he started accumulating last year after signing an endorsement contract, and a small motorcar company that will be taken over by General Motors, helping to make Cobb a millionaire by the time he retires in 1928 even though he will never have received more than $5,000 per year in salary.
Middleweight boxing champion Stanley Ketchel knocks heavyweight champ Jack Johnson down in the 12th round of a bout at Colma, California, October 16 but is himself knocked out later in the round. Former featherweight champion George Dixon has died at New York January 6 at age 38.
A field goal in football receives a value of 3 points, down from 4 in 1904, 5 in 1883.
Explorer-mountaineer Luigi, duca d'Abruzzi, climbs K2 in the Himalayas. Second in height only to Everest, the peak rises more than 20,000 feet above sea level.
Paris coutourière Jeanne Lanvin, 42, begins offering women's clothing after 19 years of specializing in custom-made children's wear. She and other Paris designers introduce fashions that flatter women by emphasizing hips and delineating waistlines. The new gowns employ high-busted corsets, but U.S. women prefer low-busted versions that accentuate smaller bosoms while minimizing larger ones.
Vienna-born New York milliner Hattie Carnegie (originally Henrietta Köningeiser), 23, goes into partnership with her seamstress neighbor Ruth Rose Roth. Carnegie (who has borrowed her name from the steel magnate Andrew Carnegie) left school at age 13 when her father died and went to work at Macy's. In 4 years she and Roth will have their own shop near Riverside Drive, with Roth designing clothes that Carnegie (who makes the hats) will model and sell (see 1919).
The "kewpie" (short for cupid) figure with a cherubic head that comes to a point is patented by New York author-illustrator Rose Cecil O'Neill, 35, whose creation is soon translated into buttons, cutouts, salt-and-pepper shakers, soap, curtain fabric, and birthday cards. Kewpie will be the basis of a mold made in 1913 by Pratt Institute art student Joseph L. Kallus and manufactured as a doll, initially in Germany from bisque. Mass-produced in America from celluloid and other materials, the Kewpie Doll and other kewpie renditions will earn $1.5 million for O'Neill, who wears a toga at her Greenwich Village salons.
London barber and wig maker Henry Truefit dies April 24 at age 85.
Stanford White's millionaire murderer Harry K. Thaw begins an appeal July 12 to prove his sanity and gain release from the asylum where he has been confined (see 1906), but he is found August 12 still to be criminally insane and returned to his mental asylum. He will escape in 1913, reach Canada, be returned to the asylum, and remain confined until 1915.
The U.S. Army builds a three-story cell block for military prisoners on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay. The Army has used the island (Alcatraz is Spanish for pelican) since 1854, initially as a fort; it is 1,650 feet long and 450 feet wide (see federal penitentiary, 1934).
New York's 42-story Metropolitan Life Insurance Tower is completed January 29 with a 40th-story observation floor on the east side of Madison Square at 23rd Street. Designed by Napoleon LeBrun & Sons in a style based on St. Mark's Campanile in Venice, the 700-foot tower of white Tuckahoe marble rises to nearly twice the height of the 386-foot Park Row Building completed in 1899. It has a giant clock on each of its four sides, with each clock measuring 26½ feet in diameter, and a beacon at the top that can be seen for miles. While in terms of usable floor space it is surpassed in height by the Singer Tower completed last year, the Metropolitan Life Tower will remain the world's tallest building until 1913.
Congress enacts legislation to prevent any private builder in Washington, D.C., from putting up a structure more than 130 feet high, but the 11-story Cairo Hotel erected in 1894 is allowed to stand.
The first International Conference on City Planning meets in late May at Washington, D.C. It has been organized largely at the initiative of the secretary of New York's Committee on Congestion of Population, Benjamin C. Marsh, 31, who has helped prepare a book on city planning that begins, "A city without a plan is like a ship without a rudder." "Make no little plans," says Chicago architect Daniel Burnham in his "Plan for Chicago of 1909." Little plans "have no magic to stir men's blood," argues Burnham, but while his Chicago Plan will spur that city and others to adopt sweeping master plans to guide their growth, some utopian master plans will be too inflexible to allow for the unpredictable social, economic, and political forces that interact to shape cities. Burnham's plan for Chicago will be implemented with a lakeshore green belt of beaches, parks, and recreational facilities that will spark a "City Beautiful" movement all across America.
Chicago's Frederick G. Robie house is completed to designs by Frank Lloyd Wright at 5757 South Woodlawn Boulevard, corner 58th Street. Built for a local motorcycle manufacturer, the two-story brick structure (with a a three-story section at its north end overlooking Woodlawn Avenue) is the world's first residence to be built on a slab foundation, incorporate garages in its structure, have roof overhangs calculated on an astronomical basis for maximum lighting in winter and maximum shade in summer, and employ indirect lighting and rheostats (dimmers). Four 110-foot steel beams serve instead of conventional bolted steel girders as the backbone of the house, whose $59,000 cost includes furnishings and is $1,000 less than its original budget. Now 42 and the father of six, Wright creates a scandal in November by abandoning his successful career and running off to Europe with his neighbor Edwin S. Cheney's wife, Mamah (née Borthwick), 30, who leaves her two children to be with Wright in Berlin and Florence. They will remain abroad for nearly a year.
An earthquake in Persia January 23 leaves an estimated 5,500 dead.
A U.S. National Bison Refuge is created near Moise, Montana (see 1900; Glacier Park, 1910).
Zion National Park has its beginnings in the Mukuntuweap National Monument designated as such by President Taft July 31 to protect more than 15,000 acres of southwestern Utah canyonlands. It will be renamed in 1918, by which time it will have grown to more than 76,000 acres, and in 1919 will become a national park with 147,000 acres (see Bryce Canyon, 1928).
U.S. lumber production reaches its peak.
Soil is indestructible, says a report issued by the U.S. Bureau of Soils, whose National Soil Survey is the first ever (see 1933).
A river and harbors bill enacted by Congress empowers the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to construct locks and dams on U.S. waterways.
Smelt are planted in the Great Lakes, where they will become an important food fish species.
Laguna Dam is completed on the Colorado River north of Yuma, Arizona, to irrigate more desert land. Water from the Colorado has been diverted to California by sluice gates built since 1900 and has created the Salton Sea.
Colorado is the most irrigated state in the nation, with more than 3 million acres under irrigation.
Congress doubles the acreage allotted under the Homestead Act of 1862 following the failure of tens of thousands of homesteaders in regions of the West for lack of enough land. But it takes at least four sections of land (2,560 acres) to support a family raising livestock in the West, so the new act is inadequate (see 1916; Powell, 1878).
The first Kibbutz opens at the Jordan Valley village of Degania Aleph in Palestine, part of the Ottoman Empire.
Chicago speculator James A. Patten corners the wheat market, driving up the world price (see Leiter, 1898). When he closes out his contracts for 35 million bushels at prices in the neighborhood of $1.34 per bushel, he has profits of at least $2 million, plus another $2 million for his partners, but he scoffs at suggestions that he has "manipulated" the market, and when bakers blame high bread prices on the high price of flour, Patten asks how often they have lowered their prices when the price of flour went down.
W. W. Cargill travels to Montana to participate in the dedication of an irrigation project his company has financed, discovers that money has been borrowed in his name all over the West, returns home to Minneapolis, catches pneumonia, and dies October 17 at age 64 (see 1873). His creditors demand payment, and a struggle begins for control of the nearly bankrupt company.
J. L. Kraft Bros. & Co. is founded at Chicago by Ontario-born entrepreneur James Lewis Kraft, 35, in partnership with his accountant Oliver Blackburn and his brothers Herbert, Fred, Norman, and John with an initial investment of $15,000. Kraft came to the United States 5 years ago, invested some of his small savings in a horse and wagon, and started a cheese delivery service with working capital of $65. Cheese is not a popular food (average annual U.S. consumption is less than one pound), Kraft lost $3,000 plus his horse in his first year, but he marries Pauline Elizabeth Platt, goes into competition with Phenix Cheese Corp., and will prosper by introducing pasteurizing processes and packaged cheese (see 1900; 1915; Kraft-Phenix, 1928).
The newly invented plastic Bakelite does not transmit heat and will come into wide use for the handles of kitchen pots and cooking appliances.
U.S. ice cream sales reach 30 million gallons, up from 5 million in 1899. Philadelphia has 49 ice cream manufacturing plants and 52 ice cream "saloons."
Coca-Cola is exported to Britain for the first time (see 1899; 1907; distinctive bottle, 1915).
Sir Thomas Lipton (he was knighted in 1901 and made a baronet in 1902) begins blending and packaging his tea at New York (see 1898). His U.S. business will be incorporated in 1915 (see 1914).
G. Washington soluble coffee powder is introduced by Brooklyn, N.Y., kerosene lamp maker George Constant Louis Washington, 38 (see Kato, 1901). Born in Belgium, Washington settled in Guatemala 2 years ago after making a small fortune in kerosene lamps, and when he noticed a fine powder on the spout of a silver coffee carafe he began experiments that led to the development of the powder for making instant coffee (see Nescafé, 1938).
The first J. Lyons & Co. Corner House opens in London's Coventry Street with 600 seats (see tea, 1903). It will be enlarged to seat 4,500, and it will be followed by other West End Corner Houses, each containing up to nine restaurants on four or five floors and each having its own menu, its own band or musical ensemble, and shops offering confectionery, cakes, fruit, teas, and coffees (plus flowers and theater tickets).
1901 1902 1903 1904 1905 1906 1907 1908 1909 1910
