| World Chronology: 1910 |
1901 1902 1903 1904 1905 1906 1907 1908 1909 1910
A nationalist fanatic assassinates Egypt's British-supported Coptic Catholic premier Butros Ghali February 20 as Islamic agitation increases (see 1908; 1913).
Britain's Edward VII dies at Buckingham Palace May 6 at age 68 after a 9-year reign of peace and prosperity. He is succeeded by his 44-year-old second son, who will reign until 1936 as George V with help from his wife, Mary, nearly 44 herself. She will be credited with helping the bluff king adapt to changing conditions and make himself popular with the people, although he will never be as popular as she.
Montenegro proclaims herself an independent Balkan kingdom August 28, and Prince Nicholas, who obtained recognition of his country's independence in the Treaty of Berlin in 1878, receives the title king by a vote of the national legislature. Now 69, he will reign until 1919 as Nicholas I.
The Portuguese monarchy founded in 1143 by Afonso Henriquez ends October 4 in a revolution at Lisbon after a 2-year reign by Manoel II. He flees to England (where he will live as a country gentleman until his death in 1932) and a republic is proclaimed with a provisional government headed by scholar-writer Teofilo Braga, 67.
A coalition of rebellious U.S. congressmen led by George W. (William) Norris, 48, (R. Neb.) and Champ (originally James Beauchamp) Clark, 60, (D. Ky.) curtails the powers of Speaker Joseph (Gurney) "Uncle Joe" Cannon, 73, (R. Ill.) and excludes him from the House Rules Committee March 19. The congressmen establish a system of seniority that will control committee chairmanships for decades, Clark will be speaker of the House from 1911 to 1919, and Norris will serve in the Senate from 1912 to 1942.
The Federal Corrupt Practices Act (Publicity Act) approved by Congress June 25 requires candidates for the House of Representatives to disclose the sources of their campaign financing (see Tillman Act, 1907). Former president Theodore Roosevelt delivers an address at Ossowatomie, Kansas, August 31 calling for full federal control of the special interests that have gained so much political power: "The true friend of property, the true conservative, is he who insists that the property shall be the servant and not the master of the man who made it. The citizens of the United States must effectively control the mighty commercial forces which they themselves have called into being." The new law will be amended next year to cover candidates for the Senate and establish limits as to how much a candidate can spend, but like the Tillman Act of 1907 it will prove unenforceable (see 1925).
U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Melville W. Fuller dies at Sorrento, Maine, July 4 at age 77 after 22 years on the Court and is succeeded by Louisiana-born jurist Edward D. (Douglass) White, 64, who will preside until his own death in 1921.
U.S. Marines and sailors land in Nicaragua May 19 to protect the interests of banks that have loaned the country $14 million; they seize the national bank and take control of Nicaraguan customs (see 1912).
Mexico's president Porfirio Díaz celebrates his 80th birthday and the centennial of the nation's struggle for independence September 15 with a dinner at which 2,000 guests eat from golden plates. His regime has controlled the country since 1876, attracting foreign capital but allowing white landowners to take over the lands of its 6 million Indians and 8 million mestizos. Having quipped, "He who counts the votes wins," he wins election to a sixth term despite massive demonstrations against his rule. U.S.- and European-educated northern landowner Francisco Indalécio Madero, 37, leads the opposition to Díaz, but the president has rigged the election and claims that Madero has won only 195 votes; Madero flees to the United States (but see 1911).
The Republic of South Africa is established May 31 under terms of the South Africa Act approved by Parliament in September of last year. Independent of Britain (whose high commissioner William W. Palmer, 2nd earl of Selborne, proposed the union and has returned to his native London), the new Union of South Africa has dominion status. It unites the Cape Colony, Orange River Colony, Natal, and Transvaal; its legislative seat is at Cape Town; its seat of government is at Pretoria; and its prime minister is Boer statesman Louis Botha, now 47, who will continue in the post until his death in 1919.
France renames the French Congo French Equatorial Africa and redivides it into the colonies of Gabon, Middle Congo, and Ubanghi-Shari.
Tibet's Dalai Lama reaches Darjeeling, India, February 24, and is deposed for a second time February 25 by the Chinese government, which issues an edict describing him as "proud, extravagant, lewd, slothful, vicious, and perverse" (see 1912).
Bhutan signs a new treaty with Britain, agreeing to be guided by the British in external affairs (see 1865). The British, in return, increase their annual subsidy and promise not to interfere in the landlocked, mountainous country's internal affairs; Bhutan will continue to trade with Tibet but will gradually become oriented more toward British-ruled India (see 1949).
Siam's king Somdeth Phra Paraminda Maha Chulalongkorn (Rama V) dies at his native Bangkok October 23 at age 57 after a 42-year reign in which he has abolished slavery, adopted other reforms based on Western ideas, and kept his country free of foreign colonial domination (although he has been forced to give up its rights in Cambodia and Laos to the French and cede four Malay states to Britain, both Western countries wishing to keep Siam independent as a buffer state between their respective colonie). Rama V is succeeded by his 30-year-old son, who will reign until his death in 1925 as Vajiravudgh (Rama VI). Following his father's practice of seeking counsel from European advisers, the new ruler will continue his father's reforms, establishing Siam's first university; he will create the Boy Scouts, travel with a bodyguard of Boy Scouts, translate Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and The Merchant of Venice into Siamese, marry in 1922, abjure polygamy, and give up the royal harem.
Japanese police arrest 26 anarchists and socialists on charges of planning to assassinate the Meiji emperor Mutsuhito. All are men except revolutionist Suga Sugano, 29, who will be executed next year along with 11 other alleged conspirators after a secret trial without witnesses.
Japan formally annexes Korea by treaty August 22 and calls it Chōsen (see 1909). The outright annexation fulfills the long-held goal of Prime Minister Taro Katsura, now 62, who began a second term as premier in 1908. His foreign minister Jutaro Komura, now 54, has helped negotiate the treaty (see 1945).
China abolishes slavery March 10, but enslavement of women will continue in many areas.
Stollwerck Bros. of Cologne joins with Cadbury, Fry, and Rowntree in their boycott of Portuguese cacao to protest slavery on the Portuguese islands of Principe and São Tomé, but U.S. companies resist the boycott (see 1909).
The Mann White Slave Traffic Act signed into law by President Taft June 25 discourages interstate transportation of women for immoral purposes. Newspaper stories about black prizefighter Jack Johnson and his white wife have inspired passage of the law, but Emma Goldman has written in essays published by her Mother Earth Publishing Association, "Our reformers have suddenly made a great discovery—the white slave traffic . . . Prostitution has been, and is, a widespread evil, yet mankind goes on its business, perfectly indifferent to the sufferings and distress of the victims of prostitution . . . Nowhere is woman treated according to the merit of her work, but rather as a sex . . . It is therefore almost inevitable that she should pay for her right to exist . . . with sex favors. Thus it is merely a question of degree whether she sells herself to one man, in or out of marriage, or to many men. Whether our reformers admit it or not, the economic and social inferiority of woman is responsible for prostitution."
The "great white hope" James J. Jeffries comes out of retirement to challenge Jack Johnson for the world heavyweight title but loses July 4 (see sports, 1909). Race riots ensue at Boston, Cincinnati, Houston, New York, and Norfolk, three blacks are killed at Uvalda, Georgia, as white bigots vent their rage at the continuing supremacy of the first black prizefight champion.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is founded at New York (see 1909). Eight out of 10 U.S. blacks still live in the 11 states of the Old Confederacy, but a "great migration" begins that will bring more than 2 million blacks to the North (see 1917; population [census], 1940).
English suffragist Lady Constance Lytton tells visitors to her Walton gaol in January that she was allowed only 4 days without food on a hunger strike before a steel gag was pushed into her mouth and liquified food poured into her stomach via a four-foot tube (see 1909).
The International Socialist Women's Congress at Copenhagen adopts the suggestion of German delegate Clara Zetkin (née Eissner), 53, and establishes March 8 as International Women's Day—the female equivalent of May Day (see New York, 1908). The day will be observed for the first time next year with parades and demonstrations, bringing out crowds mostly in Europe and Asia, not in North America.
Women in Washington State gain the right to vote in a constitutional amendment adopted November 8 (see California, 1911).
Humanitarian (and first Nobel Peace Prize winner) Jean Henri Dunant dies in poverty at Heiden, Switzerland, October 30 at age 82.
The average U.S. workingman earns less than $15 per week, working from 54 to 60 hours, and there is wide irregularity of employment. German peasants still work 18-hour days and are treated little better than serfs.
Economist Léon Walras dies at Clarens, outside Montreux, Switzerland, January 5 at age 75, having pioneered mathematical analysis of general economic equilibrium.
Chicago clothing workers who include Sidney Hillman, 23, rebel against low wages and piecework as they begin agitating for a stronger union in the men's clothing industry. U.S. clothing workers participated in more strikes during the last quarter of the 19th century than did workers in any other industry, and their activity now accelerates (see Amalgamated Clothing Workers, 1914).
Russian-born garment worker Bessie Abramowitz, 21, leads a strike against Hart, Schaffner and Marx. For 20 years she will be the only female union leader in Chicago's clothing industry (see 1914).
Work Accidents and the Law by New York suffragist Crystal Eastman, 29 (Vassar '03), will contribute to the passage of U.S. worker-safety legislation.
The International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU) wins its 9-week strike for New York cloakmakers with help from Rose Schneiderman. The strike ends February 15 after arbitration proceedings mediated by lawyer Louis Marshall, now 53; the strikers win higher wages, better working conditions, and a 52-hour week. Data collected 2 years ago by the U.S. Immigration Service showed that garment workers actually received 8 percent more than the average in 21 industries, although some sweatshops still remain, but 60,000 ILGWU workers strike from July 7 to September 2, demanding a "Protocol of Peace" that will give them a 50-hour work week, overtime pay, 10 legal holidays, compulsory arbitration of disputes, and a joint labor-management board. The strike will be followed in the next few years by similar job actions in Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston, Cleveland, Muscatine (Iowa), Kalamazoo (Mich.), Lawrence (Mass.), and Paterson (N.J.), but the ILGWU's success paves the way for a long period of labor stability (see Dubinsky, 1932).
The New York State legislature at Albany enacts a workers' compensation insurance system that increases financial incentives for employers to improve workplace safety. Most employers have taken measures to make their factories safer, if only to avoid lawsuits and avoid attracting workers who would demand higher wages to work under dangerous conditions (but see Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, 1911).
France's prime minister Aristide Briand, 48, averts a general strike and forces an end to a railroad strike begun by the Conféderation Genérale du Travail (CGT). He calls all railroad workers "to the colors" and the CGT orders the men back to work.
Britain's National Transport Workers' Federation is founded by trade unionist Ben Tillett with help from socialist Tom Mann, now 54, who has returned to England after nearly a decade spent organizing in Australia.
Chile's enormously productive Chuquicamata copper mine is acquired by the U.S. copper trust ASARCO, controlled since 1901 by the Guggenheim family (see education [Guggenheim Foundation], 1925).
German entrepreneur Willy Heidinger founds Deutsche Hollerith Maschinen Gesellschaft (Dehomag) to exploit punched-card tabulating technology invented by Herman Hollerith 20 years ago. The Computing-Tabulating-Recording Co. founded by Hollerith in 1896 will acquire a 90-percent interest in Dehomag in 1919, and the company will open a plant outside Berlin in 1934.
National Cash Register has sales of $100,000 (see THINK, 1908). The registers have been improved by the addition of a small electric motor, invented by Dayton, Ohio, electrical engineer Charles F. (Franklin) Kettering, 34, that eliminates manual operation (see 1912; transportation [self-starter], 1911).
The first "Morris Plan" bank opens at Norfolk, Virginia, and pioneers in granting personal bank loans at a time when people who want to borrow money must generally ask family or friends or go to loan sharks, pawn shops, or eleemosynary institutions that make compassionate loans to relieve distress. The Fidelity Loan and Trust Co. founded by local lawyer Arthur J. Morris, 29, makes 1-year loans to locally employed citizens of good character, requires two cosigners, obliges borrowers to repay in monthly installments, and deducts 6 percent in advance to give the bank an actual interest return of 11.6 percent. By 1920 there will be Morris Plan banks in 37 states (see National City Bank, 1928).
A bomb exploded October 1 at the Los Angeles Times kills 20 men. Authorities arrest James McNamara, 28, and his brother John, 27, on charges of having placed the bomb to silence opposition to organized labor by Harrison Gray Otis, now 73 (see communications, 1882). Chicago lawyer Clarence Darrow defends the McNamara brothers, but they will confess their guilt next year following exposure of the facts by detective William J. Burns, who in the past 5 years has uncovered political corruption in San Francisco, kickback schemes in the railroad industry, land frauds in the Northwest, and other crimes including bank embezzlements. Burns will become head of the FBI for 4 years beginning in 1921 (see crime, 1886; 1908).
A dynamite bomb destroys part of the Llewellyn Iron Works at Los Angeles December 25.
Wall Street's Dow Jones Industrial Average closes December 31 at 81.36, down from 99.05 at the end of 1909.
May Department Stores is incorporated to replace the partnership of founder David May and his three brothers-in-law (see 1879). The corporation adds the M. O'Neill store at Akron, Ohio, to its Denver and St. Louis stores (see Cleveland, 1914).
Fuller Brush Co. founder Arthur C. Fuller places advertisements in a national magazine for salesmen, offering to let agents sell his products for a $17 fee plus the cost of the brushes, and within a month has 260 men knocking on doors around the country (see 1906). He will incorporate the firm in 1913; it will have sales of nearly $12 million per year by 1920. A salesman at the Saturday Evening Post will coin the phrase "Fuller Brush Man" in 1922, and revenues will rise to $15 million by 1923 as A. C. Fuller builds a reputation for quality—and the nation's largest corps of independent door-to-door salesmen (see Stanley Home Products, 1931).
Pennsylvania Station opens to Long Island Rail Road commuter traffic September 8 via a new rail tunnel under the East River that connects Long Island with Manhattan and New Jersey (LIRR passengers up to now have had to take ferries across the river). Built in the heart of the old Tenderloin area, the station opens to long-distance trains from Chicago and points west beginning November 27, with 46 Pennsylvania trains heading west and 43 LIRR trains heading east. Tunnels from the New Jersey meadowlands permit Pennsylvania Railroad passengers to come directly into Manhattan instead of having to be transferred by ferry across the Hudson River. The Pennsy uses its Manhattan Transfer in New Jersey to switch passengers between steam trains and the electric lines that go through the tunnels (the entire main line will be electrified in 1933), and it is finally able to compete on equal terms with the New York Central. The Pennsy's late president Alexander Johnston Cassatt died at Philadelphia in 1906 at age 67, having proposed putting up a hotel on the terminal's air rights, but he was persuaded to create a monumental gateway to New York as a matter of obligation. Covering two square blocks between Seventh and Eighth avenues from 31st Street north to 33rd, the $112 million granite and travertine depot has been modeled by McKim, Mead, & White on the warm room of Rome's ancient Baths of Caracalla with 84 doric columns each 35 feet high. Great steel girders support the 150-foot coffered ceiling of its vast waiting room, whose skylights allow it to be bathed in natural light by day. Penn Station has three levels below the street—one for tracks and platforms, one for subway lines and for the LIRR concourse and ticket offices, and a third for the general concourse and main waiting room. The world's first station designed to separate incoming and outgoing pedestrian traffic, its exit concourse is located between the main concourse and the train platforms, ensuring uninterrupted movement; the LIRR has its own waiting room and ticket offices at the northern end of the station, below 33rd Street (see architecture, 1963; Connecting Bridge, 1917).
A trans-Andean railroad linking Argentina with Chile is completed following plans of U.S. entrepreneur William Wheelwright, who began the road before his death in 1873.
President Taft intercedes on behalf of U.S. financiers to let them join a consortium of French, British, and German financiers in underwriting China's Huguang (Hukuang) Railroad.
Railroad heir Henry E. Huntington sells his California transit holdings to the Southern Pacific Co. and uses the proceeds to increase his huge real estate holdings and his investments in the development of electric power. Now 60, he will fill the mansion of his estate at San Mateo with a valuable art collection and a library containing rare early English and American books.
The Western Pacific Railroad reaches Oakland, California. It is the last of the country's transcontinental lines.
Sperry Gyroscope Co. established at Brooklyn, N.Y., by Elmer A. Sperry manufactures a gyroscopic compass and other instruments invented by Sperry to stabilize ships in rough waters (see 1879; Foucault, 1852; Anschutz-Kampfe, 1908; patent, 1913). Sperry's entirely nonmagnetic gyroscope is installed in the U.S. battleship Delaware.
The Cunard liner R.M.S. Mauretania sails from Cobb to New York in 4 days, 20 hours, 41 minutes to set a new transatlantic speed record that will stand until 1929 (see 1907).
Hampshire-born English aviator Claude Grahame-White, 30, obtains his country's first aviation certificate of proficiency January 4.
The London Daily Mail offers a £10,000 prize for the winner of an air race from London to Manchester (see Blériot, 1909). The prize goes to French aviator Louis Paulhan, 27, who this year reaches a height of 4,149 feet in a plane that he flies at Los Angeles.
English aircraft designer Geoffrey de Havilland, 28, builds a plane with a 50-horsepower engine and flies it successfully. Working as a draftsman at London last year, he got backing from a rich grandfather, built an engine, and with help from his fiancée's brother constructed a plane whose wing broke on takeoff. He now joins the army's balloon factory, where he will develop the British Experimental (BE) series of tractor biplanes (see 1914).
Glenn M. Curtiss in May flies from Albany to New York in 150 minutes to break the long-distance speed record and win a $10,000 prize put up by Joseph Pulitzer's New York World (see 1909; 1919).
Rolls-Royce cofounder C. S. Rolls flies from Dover to Calais and back without stopping but is killed in an accident at Bournemouth, Hampshire, July 12 at age 32, becoming the first English aviation victim (see 1906; Blériot, 1909).
Aviation pioneer Octave Chanute dies at Chicago November 23 at age 78.
"Barney" Oldfield drives a mile in 27½ seconds at Daytona Beach, Florida, setting a speed record of 131.724 miles per hour that will stand for years.
The United States has 1,000 miles of concrete road, up from 144 in 1900 (see surfaced roads, 1921).
Steel begins to replace wood in U.S. automobile bodies (see Ford Model T, 1908).
General Motors directors oust W. C. Durant and replace him with Boston financier James J. Storrow of Lee, Higginson (see 1912; Chevrolet, 1911).
John North Willys produces 18,200 motorcars, up from 4,000 last year and 465 the year before (see 1917; 1915).
Rubber cultivation on East Asian plantations occupies 1 million acres, up from 5,000 in 1900, as the growing use of automobiles increases demand for rubber tires. By 1920 some 4 million acres will be devoted to rubber trees, the figure will exceed 9 million by 1945, and 50 years later it will be more than 15½ million.
Safety glass is patented by French artist and chemist Edouard Bénédictus, whose glass will initially find use in gas-mask goggles. Bénédictus accidentally knocked over a test tube in 1903, the tube was lined with a film left by evaporation of a nitrocellulose mixture, Bénédictus observed that the cracked glass did not shatter, and he devised a process that involves bonding a sheet of celluloid between two panes of glass, creating a glass that bulges or breaks into tiny fragments when struck but does not splinter into sharp, jagged pieces (see transportation [Triplex Safety Glass], 1926; PVB, 1936).
American Viscose Co. is founded at Marcus Hook, Pa., by Courtaulds, Ltd. of Britain (see 1905). It will start making rayon from spruce pulp next year, become the first successful U.S. producer, and control U.S. rayon production for years, protected by patents and tariff laws (see Little, 1902; Celanese, 1924; Du Pont, 1920).
Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Co. is founded at St. Paul, Minnesota, in a reorganization of a firm established 3 years ago to mine "corundum." The "corundum" has turned out to be a low-grade anorthosite unsuitable for heavy-duty abrasives, and the company has quit mining to turn its efforts to producing a poor-quality sandpaper (see 1914).
Black & Decker Co. is founded at Baltimore by local tool-and-die cutter Duncan Black, who sells his car for $600, borrows $s1,200 from a bank, and goes into partnership with fellow tool-and-die cutter Alonzo Decker, renting a warehouse in Calvert Street and making tools—a bottle-cap machine for a local dairy, a vest-pocket adding machine, a device for the government that splits and coils stamps, etc. (see power drill, 1916).
British-made steel remains one-third more costly than German or U.S.-made steel; Britain's steel mills have failed to install coke ovens or employ other technological advances.
Physicist F. W. G. Kohlrausch dies at Marburg January 17 at age 69; physical chemist R. W. H. (Richard Wilhelm Heinrich) Abegg at Köslin April 3 at age 41, having contributed to the understanding of valence (the capacity of an atom to combine with another atom); chemist Stanislao Cannizzaro dies at Rome May 10 at age 83.
The Flexner Report (Medical Education in the United States and Canada) shows that three out of four North American medical schools are inadequate and that only the Johns Hopkins school founded at Baltimore in 1893 is a match for the great medical schools of Europe. Funded by a $14,000 grant from the 8-year-old Carnegie Foundation, Louisville, Ky.-born physician Abraham Flexner, now 44, has inspected 155 medical schools. His findings spur a $600 million reform program in medical education, and they will lead to the closing of every women's medical college except Woman's Medical College of Philadelphia. The Flexner Report inspires Washington University president Robert S. (Somers) Brookings, 60, at St. Louis to embark on a program that will make his university's medical school second to none within 3 years; other U.S. universities are similarly motivated to elevate medical school standards.
"Every day, in every way, I'm growing better and better," says French pharmacist Emile Coué, 28. He has studied hypnotism, suggests the slogan for autosuggestive healing, and will develop a system of psychotherapy called Couéism.
Midwives still attend at half of all births in the United States, delivering infants mostly of black and immigrant women.
Chicago physician James B. (Bryan) Herrick, 49, examines a 20-year-old West Indian student and makes the first diagnosis of sickle cell anemia (it will be given that name in 1922). The hereditary disease of the blood protein hemoglobin will be found to affect up to 50 percent of people in some African tribes and from 0.25 to 3 percent of U.S. blacks, although as many as 10 percent may carry the sickle cell trait that in itself has no ill effects and will be found common among non-blacks in India, Turkey, Greece, and southern Italy, wherever malaria is prevalent (children with the trait will prove to have a high degree of resistance to some kinds of malaria). The actual anemia in which the blood cells take on a crescent-shaped appearance occurs only in the offspring of parents who both have the trait. It is often extremely painful, and it kills most of its victims before age 21. Few live beyond age 40.
Tularemia afflicts ground squirrels of Tulare County, California. Physician George W. (Walter) McCoy, 34, and his colleague Charles W. (Willard) Chapin recognize the disease and will name the responsible organism Bacterium tularense. An epizootic of wild rabbits and other animals that is communicable to humans, tularemia is the first distinctly American disease and will remain a threat to people preparing wild rabbits for cooking without taking proper precautions.
A Paris fashion for imitation sable and sealskin encourages amateur Chinese hunters to trap Manchurian marmots, many of them infected with bubonic plague. An epidemic of the plague transmitted by unhealthy marmots will kill 60,000 people in Manchuria and China in the next 2 years, and in the next 9 years will kill 1.5 million in China and India.
Antiseptic bandage pioneer Robert Wood Johnson dies at New Brunswick, N.J., February 7 at age 64; pathologist Howard T. Ricketts of typhus (called tabardillo in Mexico) at Mexico City May 3 at age 39; bacteriologist Robert Koch of heart disease at Baden Baden May 27 at age 66; physician Elizabeth Blackwell at Hastings, Sussex, May 31 at age 89; Crimean War nurse Florence Nightingale at London August 13 at age 90, having been awarded the British Order of Merit 3 years ago, the first woman to be thus honored.
Christian Science founder Mary Baker Eddy dies at Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, December 3 at age 89. Her denomination has grown to number 100,000 but will never have more than about 250,000 followers.
Kent State University is founded at Kent, Ohio; Bowling Green State University at Bowling Green, Ohio.
Women account for nearly 40 percent of all U.S. college undergraduates, up from 32 percent in 1880 (see 1920). But Wesleyan College in Connecticut returns to being for men only after nearly 50 years as a coeducational institution, and many co-ed colleges establish quotas to limit female admissions.
The Hershey Industrial School for Orphan Boys chartered at Hershey, Pa., will enroll its first four boys next year. Chocolate king Milton S. Hershey, now 52, did not marry until 1898, and ill health has prevented his wife from having children (she will die in 6 years).
The Mann-Elkins Act passed by Congress June 18 amends the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 to regulate telephone, telegraph, and cable companies. The new law declares such companies to be common carriers subject to ICC regulations (see Federal Communications Commission, 1934).
American Telephone and Telegraph chief Theodore N. (Newton) Vail, 65, has himself elected president of Western Union and abolishes the 40¢ to 50¢ charge for placing telegraph messages by telephone. AT&T has acquired for $30 million in stock a controlling interest in Western Union from the Jay Gould estate, and while the courts will force AT&T to sell its Western Union stock in 1914 free placement of telegraph messages by telephone will continue even after Vail resigns (see 1913).
Tropical Radio Telegraph Co. is founded by United Fruit Company to provide uninterrupted radio contact between the United States and Central America (see 1904). United Fruit has been handling 77 percent of world banana exports, it is shipping fruit to Europe, and it will make Tropical Radio Telegraph a subsidiary in 1913 (see 1929; ITT, 1920).
French cinematographer Charles Pathé, 47, and his brother Emil launch Pathé Gazette, a pioneer film newsreel. They have become Paris agents for the Edison phonograph, visited London to acquire film-making equipment invented by British instrument maker Robert Paul, obtained financial support, show their newsreel in Britain and the United States, and will set up production units in Britain, the United States, Italy, Germany, Russia, and Japan.
The French-language Montreal newspaper Le Devoir begins publication under the direction of Quebec legislator Henri Bourassa (see politics, 1909; 1911).
The Pittsburgh Courier begins publication March 10.
Chicago Tribune editor Robert W. Patterson dies of apoplexy (or commits suicide) at Philadelphia April 1 at age 59, not knowing that his mother has died at Chicago the same day at age 87 (see 1855); control of the paper passes to his nephews Robert R. (Rutherford) McCormick, 30, and Joseph Medill Patterson, 31, who will be coeditors until 1925. A nephew of the late reaper inventor, McCormick will build circulation from 200,000 to 892,000 (1.4 million on Sundays), make the Tribune number one in advertising revenue, and establish a radio station with the call letters WGN (for "world's greatest newspaper") (see 1920; New York Daily News, 1919; real estate [Tribune Tower], 1925).
Women's Wear Daily begins publication at New York July 13 under the direction of journalist Edmund Fairchild, 44, whose trade paper for the garment industry will be the basis of a publishing empire.
Typewriter manufacturer Lyman Cornelius Smith dies at Syracuse, N.Y., November 5 at age 60.
The Miami Herald begins publication December 1 to serve a city whose population is still under 6,000 (Key West has close to 20,000).
Hallmark Inc. has its beginnings in a wholesale card jobbing company started at Kansas City by Nebraska-born entrepreneur Joyce Clyde Hall, 18, and his brother, who will soon start dealing in greeting cards (see Prang, 1875). They will buy their own printing plant in 1916 and become the world's largest maker of greeting cards.
Neon lighting for advertising signs is invented by engineer-chemist Georges Claude, now 29, who 13 years ago found a safe way to transport acetylene gas (see 1922; Ramsay, 1894).
The Harvard Classics are published by the Harvard University Press. Edited by former Harvard president Charles William Elliott, the volumes in the "five-foot shelf" began appearing last year.
Nonfiction: Adam in Paradise (Adán en el paraiso) by Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset, 27; "The Nature of Truth According to Modern Logic" ("Das Wesen der Wahrheit nach der modernen logik") by German empiricist philosopher Moritz Schlick, 28, who has studied under physicist Max Planck (the paper is his doctoral dissertation); The Breath of Life by John Burroughs; Literary Lapses: A Book of Sketches by English-born Canadian humorist Stephen (Butler) Leacock, 40, who has lectured in economics at McGill University in Montreal since 1903 but will become better known for funny essays such as "My Financial Career," "The Conjurer's Revenge," and "The Awful Fate of Melpomenus Jones."
Social scientist-author William Graham Sumner at Englewood, N.J., April 12 at age 69; psychologist-philosopher William James at his Chocurua, N.H., summer home August 26 at age 68.
Fiction: The Village (Derevnya) by Russian poet-novelist Ivan (Alekseyevich) Bunin, 39, whose first volume of poems appeared in 1891; The Life of Matvey Kozhenyaksov by Maksim Gorky; Gora by Rabindranath Tagore; Clayhanger by Arnold Bennett begins a trilogy about the ugly life in the "five towns" that are the center of England's pottery industry; Howard's End by E. M. Forster; Prester John by Scottish novelist John Buchan, 35; The History of Mr. Polly by H. G. Wells; The Notebook of Malte Laurids Brigge (Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge) by Rainer Maria Rilke; The Penholder (Pennskaftet) by Elin Wägner, whose new novel is based on the Swedish feminist movement; La Vagabonde by Colette, who marries Henry de Jouvenal.
Humorist Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) dies at Redding, Conn., April 21 at age 74 as Halley's Comet streaks across the skies and hucksters sell "comet pills" to protect people from supposedly poisonous gases (Twain has predicted that he would go out of the world with the comet just as he came into it). He is buried with a funeral oration written by feminist preacher Annis Ford Eastman, and some of Twain's friends recollect that when he was asked, "What would men be without women?" he replied, "Scarce, sir. Mighty scarce"; O. Henry dies penniless of tuberculosis at New York June 5 at age 47; Count Leo Tolstoy at the Astapovo railway station November 7 at age 82.
Poetry: Gitañjali by Rabindranath Tagore; A Handful of Sand (Ichiaku no suna) by Japanese poet Takuboku Ishikawa, 25, whose 551 tanka in the traditional 31-syllable form have a content that is not traditional; The Evening Album: Poems (Vechernii al'bom: Stikhi) by Russian poet Marina (Ivanovna) Tsvetaeva, 18; Five Great Odes (Cinq Granites Odes) by Paul Claudel; The River and I by John G. Neihardt; The Town Down the River by Edwin Arlington Robinson includes his poem "Miniver Cheevy" (who "loved the days of old" but was "born too late . . . called it fate,/ And kept on drinking").
Poet-playwright William Vaughn Moody dies of tuberculosis at Colorado Springs October 17 at age 41; Julia Ward Howe at Newport, Rhode Island, October 17 at age 91.
Juvenile: The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett; The Tale of Mrs. Tittlemouse and The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck by Beatrix Potter; Rewards and Fairies by Rudyard Kipling; Captain January by Gardiner, Maine, author Laura E. (Elizabeth) Richards (née Howe), 60, a daughter of Julia Ward Howe.
Painting: The Enigma of an Autumn Afternoon and The Enigma of the Oracle by Italian painter Giorgio de Chirico, 22; Nudes in the Forest (Nus dans la forêt) by Fernand Léger; Blue Nude, The Dance, and Music by Henri Matisse, who shows the influence of a Munich exhibition of Near Eastern art; Portrait of Ambroise Vollard and Portrait of Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler by Pablo Picasso; Girl with Striped Stockings, The Scornful Woman (his sister Gerti, topless, in a large hat), Standing Nude Girl, Seated Young Girl, and Nude Girl with Crossed Arms by Egon Schiele, whose work verges on the pornographic; White Azaleas (oil on canvas) by Rome-born painter Romaine Brooks (née Goddard), 36; Yadwiga's Dream, Exotic Landscape, and Horse Attacked by Jaguar by Henri Rousseau, who dies at Paris September 2 at age 66. Holman Hunt dies at London September 7 at age 83; Winslow Homer at Prout's Neck, Maine, September 29 at age 74.
Wassily Kandinsky produces the world's first nonrepresentational paintings.
Photographer Imogen Cunningham opens a portrait studio at Seattle (see 1901); now 27, she has worked with Edward Curtis but is mainly interested in still-life flower studies.
Theater: Deirdre of the Sorrows by the late J. M. Synge 1/13 at Dublin's Abbey Theatre, which has lost its funding from Annie Horniman and is taken over by playwright-director (Esmé Stuart) Lennox Robinson, 23; Alias Jimmy Valentine by Paul Armstrong 1/21 at Wallack's Theater, New York, with Providence, R.I.-born actor Frank Kingdon, 54, New York-born actress Laurette Taylor (née Helen Laurette Magadalene Cooney), 25, 115 perfs. (Armstrong has written it in the warden's office of the Tombs, adapting the O. Henry story "A Retrieved Reformation," and, possibly with help from his raffish California-born friend Wilson Mizner, 36, introducing terms such as stir to mean prison, and the big house to mean Sing Sing Prison up the river at Ossining); Chantecler by Edmond Rostand 2/7 at the Théâtre de la Porte-Saint Martin, Paris, with Lucien Guitry in the title role; Justice by John Galsworthy 2/21 at the Duke of York's Theatre, London, with Dion Boucicault, Edmund Gwenn, Sydney Valentine, 26 perfs.; Misalliance by George Bernard Shaw 2/23 at the Duke of York's Theatre, London; Old Friends and The Twelve-Pound Look by James M. Barrie 3/1 at the Duke of York's Theatre, London; The Dragon's Head (La farsa infantil de la cabeza del dragon) by Ramón del Valle-Inclán 3/5 at Madrid's Teatro de la Convents; The Madras House by Harley Granville-Barker 3/9 at the Duke of York's Theatre, London; Baby Mine by Margaret Mayo 8/23 at Daly's Theater, New York (to Majestic 4/3/1911, to Lyric 4/24/1911), 287 perfs.; Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford by George M. Cohan 9/19 at New York's Gaiety Theater, with Hale Hamilton as J. Rufus Wallingford (Wilson Mizner has turned down the role, telling Cohan that regular stage appearances would spoil his evenings), Francis Ring, Columbus, Ohio-born actor Grant Mitchell, 36, in a comedy based on a novel by George Randolph Chet, 424 perfs.; English comedian Charles Chaplin, 21, arrives in late September, rents a back room above a drycleaning shop in a dirty and malodorous brownstone in West 43rd Street, and initially finds the city unfriendly and intimidating although he will later be stimulated by the energy of American life and its apparent classlessness. He appears in an English farce The Wow-Wows, or A Night in a London Secret Society at the Colonial Theater and Sime Silverman says in Variety, "Chaplin will do all right for America, but it is too bad that he didn't first appear in New York with something more in it than this piece." Although audience response is not encouraging, the show goes on tour to Chicago and points west; A Night in an English Music Hall 10/3 at the Colonial Theater with Charles Chaplin as an inebriate in a farce that had been called Mummingbirds in London; The Concert by Austrian playwright Hermann Bahr, 46, in an adaptation by Leo Ditrichstein 10/4 at New York's Belasco Theater, with Janet Beecher, Ditrichstein, New Orleans-born ingénue Cora Witherspoon, 20, 264 perfs.; The Gamblers by Charles Klein 10/31 at Maxine Elliott's Theater, New York, with Jane Cowl, 192 perfs.; Nobody's Widow by Avery Hopwood 11/15 at New York's Hudson Theater, with Blanche Bates, 215 perfs.; The Guardsman (A tester) by Ferenc Molnár 11/19 at Budapest's Vigszinhaz; Pomander Walk by Louis N. Parker 12/20 at Wallack's Theater, New York, 143 perfs.
Playwright-poet-political leader Bjornstjerne Bjornson dies at Paris April 26 at age 77; playwright Henry Guy Carleton at Atlantic City, N.J., December 10 at age 54.
Films: Joseph A. Golden's The New Magdalene with Pearl White; D. W. Griffith's Ramona with Mary Pickford. Griffith's cameraman is Billy Bitzer, who has been using candlelight, firelight, the morning sun, and other such "lighting effects" and is the first to film entirely with artificial light.
The Solax Co. founded at Flushing, N.Y., September 7 by Paris-born film maker Alice Guy-Blaché will soon be the most successful independent U.S. photoplay studio (see 1906). Now 35, Guy-Blaché will build modern facilities at Fort Lee, N.J., in 1912, but the company will survive only briefly thereafter.
Brooklyn Eagle cartoonist John Randolph Bray, 31, pioneers animated motion picture cartoons, using a "cel" system he has invented and that will be used by all future animators (see Cohl, 1908). Each cartoon frame is a photograph of several layers of celluloid transparencies, the only layers that change from frame to frame are those that involve movements of figures, backgrounds (and some figures) remain constant, and the technique avoids the distracting moves that existed when each frame was drawn entirely by hand (it also reduces production costs enormously). Charles Pathé acquires Bray's cartoon "The Dachshund and the Sausage"; Bray develops a "Colonel Heeza Liar" cartoon based roughly on Theodore Roosevelt, and he will employ animators Max and David Fleischer, who will create "Popeye" cartoons (see 1929), Paul Terry, who will produce "Terry Toons," and Walter Lantz, who will create "Bugs Bunny" (see 1937; Disney, 1928).
Opera: Italian soprano Claudia Muzio (Claudina Muzzio), 20, makes her debut in the 1884 Massenet opera Manon 1/15 at Arezzo; Macbeth 11/30 at the Opéra-Comique, Paris, with music by Swiss composer Ernest Bloch, 30; The Girl of the Golden West (La Fanciulla del West) 12/10 at New York's Metropolitan Opera House with Enrico Caruso as Dick Johnson, Emmy Destinn as Minnie, music by Giacomo Puccini.
Ballet: Scheherezade 6/4 at the Théâtre National de l'Opéra, Paris, with Waslaw Nijinsky of Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes dancing the role of the Favorite Slave, music by the late Nikolai Rimski-Korsakov, choreography by Michel Fokine; The Firebird 6/25 at the Paris Opéra, with St. Petersburg-born ballerina Tamara (Platonovna) Karsavina, 25, dancing the role of Ivan Czarevich, music by Russian composer Igor Federovich Stravinsky, 28, choreograpy by Michel Fokine.
Choreographer Marius Petipa dies at Gurzuf in the Crimea July 14 (July 2 Old Style) at age 92, having produced more than 60 ballets at St. Petersburg.
First performances: Three Piano Pieces by Arnold Schoenberg 1/14 at Vienna; Mother Goose (Ma Mère l'Oye) by Maurice Ravel 4/20 at Paris. The four-handed piano piece will have its first orchestrated performance early in 1912; Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis for Double String Orchestra by English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, 37, 9/6 at Gloucester Cathedral; Symphony No. 8 in E flat major by Gustav Mahler 9/12 at Munich's Exposition Concert Hall, with 146 orchestral players, two mixed choruses of 250 voices each, a children's choir of 350, and 7 vocal soloists.
Stage musicals: The Balkan Princess 2/19 at London's Gaiety Theater, with ingénue Alice Brady, book by Frederick Lonsdale, music by Paul A. Rubens; Tillie's Nightmare 5/5 at New York's Herald Square Theater, with Marie Dressler, music by A. Baldwin Sloane, lyrics by Edgar Smith, songs that include "Heaven Will Protect the Working Girl" based on the 1898 song "She Was Bred in Old Kentucky," 77 perfs.; The (Ziegfeld) Follies 6/20 at New York's Jardin de Paris, with Bert Williams, New York-born singer Fanny Brice (originally Fanny Borach), 18, who won a Brooklyn talent contest 5 years ago singing "When You Know You're Not Forgotten by the Girl You Can't Forget," left school to start a theatrical career, and has been hired at $75 per week by Florenz Ziegfeld. Music by Gus Edwards and others, book and lyrics by Harry B. Smith, 88 perfs.; Madame Sherry 8/30 at the New Amsterdam Theater, with songs that include "Ev'ry Little Movement (Has a Meaning All Its Own)" by Karl Hoschna and Otto Harbach, "Put Your Arms Around Me, Honey" by Albert von Tilzer, lyrics by Junie McCree, 231 perfs.; The Quaker Girl 11/5 at London's Adelphi Theatre, with Gertie Millar, Joseph Coyne, book by James T. Tanner, music by Lionel Monckton, 536 perfs.; Naughty Marietta 11/7 at the New York Theater, with music by Victor Herbert, book and lyrics by Baltimore-born actress manqué and songwriter Rida Young (née Johnson), 35, songs that include "Tramp! Tramp! Tramp!," "I'm Falling in Love with Someone," "Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life," 136 perfs.
Former music-hall burlesque star Lottie Collins dies at her native London May 2 at age 44.
The London Palladium opens December 26 with 2,500 seats. It will be London's most popular theater for vaudeville and revues, beginning with one-night musical comedy turns.
Popular songs: "Come, Josephine, in My Flying Machine" by German-born New York composer Fred Fisher, 35, lyrics by Canadian-born Alfred Bryan, 39; "Mother Machree" by Chauncey Olcott and Ernest R. Ball, lyrics by Rida Johnson Young; "Down by the Old Mill Stream" by Tell Taylor, 34; "A Perfect Day" by Carrie Jacobs-Bond; "Let Me Call You Sweetheart" by Leo Friedman, lyrics by Beth Slater Whitson; "Some of These Days" by Shelton Brooks; "'Opie'-The University of Maine Stein Song" by Norwegian-born composer E. A. Fenstad, 40, lyrics by 1906 University of Maine graduate Lincoln Colcord, 27 (see Rudy Vallée, 1929).
World heavyweight champion Jack Johnson knocks out former titleholder James J. Jeffries in the 25th round of a match held July 4 at Reno, Nevada.
Middleweight champion Stanley Ketchel is shot to death October 15 at age 24 in a personal quarrel on a ranch at Conway, Missouri; former English heavyweight champion (and by some measures world champion) James "Jem" Mace dies at Jarrow, Durham, November 30 at age 79.
Anthony Frederick Wilding, 26, (New Zealand) wins in men's singles at Wimbledon, Mrs. Chambers in women's singles; Bill Larned wins in U.S. men's singles, Hazel Hotchkiss in women's singles.
Spanish matador Juan Belmonte kills his first bull July 24 at age 18 in the new ring at El Arahal.
The All-Ireland Championship finals that have been played since 1887 move into Dublin's Croke Park, where they will be played each year (except in 1947 when New York's Polo Grounds will host the games in an effort to revive interest in Gaelic football among Irish-Americans).
The Grey Cup offered by Canada's governor general Lord Earl Grey will be the most coveted trophy in amateur Canadian football play. Most clubs and colleges still field rugby-style 15-man teams (see 1912).
Connie Mack's Philadelphia Athletics win the World Series, defeating the Chicago Cubs 4 games to 1. Massachusetts-born manager Mack (originally Cornelius McGillicuddy), now 47, was a catcher and manager for the Pittsburgh Pirates beginning in 1894, became manager and part owner of the Athletics when it was formed as part of the new American League in 1901, and will see his team win six more pennants.
Greenwich Mean Time is standardized (see 1884).
Evinrude Motors is founded at Milwaukee by Norwegian-born inventor Ole Evinrude, now 33, who helped develop the Harley Davidson motorcycle carburetor in 1903 and last year designed a 1½-horsepower outboard motor with a single horizontal cylinder, a vertical crankshaft, and a drive with direction-changing gear housed in a submerged lower unit; it will be the first commercially successful internal-combustion engine for marine use (see 1921; Johnson Motor Wheel Co., 1917).
The Girl Guides is founded by Robert S. S. Baden-Powell with his sister Agnes, 52 (see Girl Scouts of America, 1912).
The Camp Fire Girls of America is founded by Luther Halsey Gulick, 45, who helped James Naismith invent the game of basketball in 1891 at Springfield, Massachusetts. Now director of physical education for New York City public schools and a social engineer for the Russell Sage Foundation, Gulick gets help from his wife.
The Boy Scouts of America is founded by a committee that includes painter-illustrator Daniel Carter "Uncle Dan" Beard, now 60, who has illustrated books by the late Mark Twain and written books of his own about camping and nature. Naturalist-author Ernest Thompson Seton, now 50, has chaired the committee, whose work has been inspired by the 2-year-old British organization founded by Robert S. S. Baden-Powell, and it consolidates organizations that include Beard's Boy Pioneers.
Father's Day is observed for the first time June 19 at Spokane, Washington, where the local YMCA and Spokane Ministerial Association have persuaded the city fathers to set aside a Sunday to "honor thy father." The idea has come from local housewife Mrs. John Bruce Dodd, 28, who has been inspired by the selflessness and responsibility of her father, William Smart, a Civil War veteran who raised his daughter and her five brothers after the early death of his wife (see 1924).
The Elizabeth Arden beauty-salon chain has its beginnings in a New York beauty treatment parlor started by Canadian-born beauty shop secretary Florence Nightingale Graham, 25, who first goes into business with Elizabeth Hubbard, has a falling out with her partner, borrows $6,000 from a cousin, and opens a Fifth Avenue shop under the name Elizabeth Arden inspired by the 1864 Tennyson poem "Enoch Arden." Graham repays the loan within 4 months, will move farther uptown and open a Washington, D.C., branch in 1915. She will help formulate the first non-greasy skin cream and package it under the name Amoretta and introduce lipsticks in colors coordinated to skin tones and clothing; by 1938 there will be 29 Elizabeth Arden salons, 10 of them in foreign countries, while Graham's Maine vacation home will be operating as a health resort under the name Maine Chance Farm. Elizabeth Arden beauty products will be sold at major department stores.
Mme. C. J. Walker Manufacturing Co. moves into its own Indianapolis building and prospers in the business of making and marketing a hair straightener invented by Sarah Walker (née Breedlove), 42, who 5 years ago either devised a formula for treating tightly curled hair or appropriated it from her Illinois employer Annie Pope-Turnbo and sold it by mail order. Orphaned before she was 6, Walker married at age 14, was widowed at 20, worked as a St. Louis washerwoman to support herself and her daughter A'Lelia while educating herself in her spare time, and in her late 20s found that her hair was falling out. She has sold Pope-Turnbo's products and her own door to door, set up factories to produce them at Denver and Pittsburgh, and recruited a sales force of "beauty analysts" who go from house to house dressed in white shirts and long black skirts. Walker will soon be the first black woman to make herself a millionaire.
The Tielocken coat introduced by Burberry's will be called the trenchcoat beginning in 1914 (see 1856). Tied and locked closed with a strap and buckle, it will be given buttons, epaulettes, and rings for hanging grenades.
The Cooper Underwear Co. that began as a hosiery producer in 1876 introduces a men's undergarment that will replace the union suit, a one-piece suit of underwear that covers a man from wrist to ankle but requires total disrobing if the man needs to use the bathroom or outhouse. Cooper's patented Kenosha Klosed Krotch is a two-piece union suit with two lapping pieces of fabric that can be drawn apart for bodily functions without any need to undress (see 1911).
Jantzen Knitting Mills has its beginnings in the Portland Knitting Co. founded at the Oregon city by merchants John A. Zehntbauer and Carl C. Jantzen who operate a retail store with a few knitting machines on the second floor, where operators manufacture heavy sweaters, woolen hosiery, and other garments. The company will use the name Jantzen in its advertising beginning in 1916 and change its name officially to Jantzen Knittng Mills in 1918 (see swimsuits, 1921).
U.S. cigarette sales reach 8.6 billion with 62 percent of sales controlled by the American Tobacco Trust created in 1890. The tobacco companies spend $18.1 million to advertise their brands (see 1911; 1913).
Gitanes and Gauloises brand cigarettes are introduced by the French government tobacco monopoly Seit (Service d'Exploitation Industrielle du Tabacs) that will be renamed Seita in 1935 (see 1936).
Scotland Yard's chief inspector arrests Michigan-born physician manqué Hawley Harvey Crippen, 48, aboard the S.S. Montrose off Canada July 31 and charges him with having murdered his second wife, Cora Turner (originally Kunigunde Mackamotski), who was 17 when Crippen married her at New York and whose remains have been discovered buried in the basement of his London house at 39 Hilldrop Crescent, Camden Town. Scotland Yard pathologist Bernard (Henry) Spilsbury, 33, determines that Crippen poisoned Cora, dissected the body, burned the bones, and buried the rest. Posing as "Mr. and Master Robinson," Crippen has been traveling with his secretary and mistress Ethel le Neve, who has been disguised as his "son," but the ship's master has seen them holding hands, become suspicious, and sent a wireless message July 22 to Scotland Yard, whose chief inspector has crossed the Atlantic aboard a faster ship and come aboard the Montrose disguised as the St. Lawrence pilot. Both Crippen and le Neve are brought home for trial at the Old Bailey, and Crippen is hanged November 28 at London's Pentonville Prison.
Barcelona's Casa Milà is completed in the Passeig de Gracia to designs by Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí (i Cornet), 58, after 5 years of construction.
Vienna's Steiner House is completed to designs by Adolf Loos, who has written essays denouncing ornamentation. Architectural historians will call his new structure the first completely modern dwelling (its main [rear] façade is a symmetrically balanced composition of rectangles), and although the new Goldman and Salatsch Building completed at Vienna to Loos designs has some classical exterior details they are offset by the structure's large areas of blank, polished marble.
Pittsburgh's 24-story Henry W. Oliver Building is completed at 535 Smithfield Street to designs by architect Daniel H. Burnham. A memorial to the late industrialist who died in 1904, it will be the city's tallest structure for years.
Madrid's Ritz Hotel opens October 23 with 200 bedrooms and salons, 100 baths.
The Audubon Plumage Act passed by the New York state legislature at Albany makes it illegal to possess certain bird feathers used by the millinery trade (see Audubon Society, 1905; migratory bird law, 1913).
Boston's Charles River Dam is completed to maintain the water level of the Charles River and remove the flats exposed at low tide.
Wyoming's Shoshone Dam is completed by the Bureau of Reclamation. The arch of rubble on the North Platte River rises 328 feet high.
Glacier National Park in Montana is created by an act of Congress that sets aside more than a million acres of lakes, peaks, glaciers, and Rocky Mountain flora and fauna (see 1932).
Forest fires destroy perhaps 50 million acres of timberland in the northern Rockies: the Big Blowup in Idaho's Coeur d'Alene forest kills 78 firefighters August 20 and 21 as they implement the Forest Service policy of trying to fight fires that Native Americans allowed to rage wild for thousands of year, letting them consume the dried underbrush that fuel such fires (see Weeks Act, 1911).
The National 4-H Clubs have their beginnings in a three-leaf clover pin awarded by Iowa school-teacher Jessie (née Celestia Josephine) Field Shambaugh, 29, who in 1901 formed a Boys Corn Club and a Girls Home Club to foster feelings of pride and self-worth in her students. She began 4 years ago to establish such clubs in each of the 130 Page County schools, where she has taught improved farming techniques and home management. Seaman Knapp, now 76, started Boys Cotton and Corn Growing clubs in 1906 and now starts Girls Canning and Poultry Clubs; he will extend the work next year to include farm women and will be credited by some with having fathered the 4-H Club movement, but the name will come from Shambaugh's pin, whose design incorporates the letter H on each of its three leaves to symbolize head, hand, and heart, with the county name Page in its center. A fourth H will be added, first to represent home, then to represent health, and 4-H will evolve into a national organization, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Africa's cacao industry begins shifting to Britain's Gold Coast (later Ghana), using seeds from trees on the Portugese islands of Principe and São Tomé.
Florida orange shipments finally regain their 1894 levels, but Florida's northern groves have been abandoned and population in the Orlando area has declined sharply.
Sunbeam Corp. has its beginnings in a company started by the Chicago Flexible Shaft Co. to make kitchen appliances (see Mixmaster, 1930). The company has been making tools for grooming farm animals.
Seventy percent of U.S. bread is baked at home, down from 80 percent in 1890 (see 1924).
Aunt Jemima pancake flour is sold throughout the United States as pancakes become a year-round staple served at many meals rather than just at winter breakfasts (see 1893).
Hydrox "biscuit bon bons" are introduced by the Kansas City-based Loose-Wiles Biscuit Co. (see Oreo, 1912).
Saccharin codiscoverer Constantin Fahlberg dies in his native Germany August 5 at age 59.
The world's first glass-lined milk car goes into service on the Boston & Maine Railroad for Boston's Whiting Milk Company.
The first refrigerated tank car for wine (originally designed for milk) brings California wine to the east, but most California wine is shipped by steamer or sailing vessel around Cape Horn in oak or redwood barrels at a cost of 3¢ per gallon plus the cost of the barrels (versus an almost prohibitive 7¢ per gallon by rail in tank cars).
The introduction of high-speed bottling machinery for beer enables brewers to increase production enormously (see Painter, 1892). Pasteurization and rail transportation permit major brewers to ship their products nationwide and achieve economies of scale that put pressure on smaller brewers.
The U.S. population reaches 92 million with 13.5 million of it foreign-born. Just over half live in cities and towns of 2,500 or more, up from 21 percent in 1860 (in Germany, 34.5 percent of the people live in cities of 20,000 or more, up from 18.4 percent in 1885). Seoul, Korea, has a population of only about 250,000, up from about 100,000 in 1429.
The Angel Island immigrant station opens in San Francisco Bay, where it will continue until 1943 to serve as a processing center for Asian immigrants, and although the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1880 requires officials to keep out would-be immigrants from China nearly 180,000 will be admitted, many of them wives who have pretended to be sisters or other relatives of Chinese already in the country (wives are not eligible). The U.S. Immigration Commission winds up nearly 4 years of study with a 41-volume report that recommends restricting immigration, especially of unskilled labor (see 1917).
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