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The Fourteen Points for a just and generous peace outlined by President Wilson January 8 in a message to Congress are intended to counter the Russian Bolsheviks, who have released secret agreements revealing Allied plans to carve up the German Empire. Wilson calls for "open covenants openly arrived at" and for self-determination of government by Europe's peoples; he asks for the creation of a League of Nations to mediate future international disputes and preserve the peace, but he has failed to obtain advance Allied agreement to his proposals, which do receive support from Canada's Prime Minister Borden (Canada has recruited some 500,000 volunteers for overseas service but since last year has used conscripts to keep her forces at full strength, despite opposition from nationalist Henri Bourassa).
Gen. William R. Robertson resigns as chief of the British Imperial General Staff in February and is given a command in England, having failed to make peace with Prime Minister Lloyd George (see 1916).
Nobel jurist-educator Louis Renault dies at Barbizon February 8 at age 74; Renault's fellow 1907 Nobel Peace Prize recipient Ernesto T. Moneta at his native Milan February 10 at age 84, having worked for years in behalf of international peace before becoming an advocate of Italian military expeditions.
The Russo-German peace talks that began in December at Brest-Litovsk break down in February when the Russians balk at signing a treaty. The British have released diplomat Georgy Vasilyevich Chicherin, 45, January 3 in exchange for their ambassador Sir George Buchanan, and he works to make peace with the Germans, but Gen. Max Hoffmann denounces the armistice between the two countries February 16 and launches a massive offensive against the Russians February 18, forcing the Bolshevik government to come to terms March 1. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk signed March 3 ends Russian participation in the "capitalist-imperialist" war despite opposition from Left Communists (including Inessa Armand) to the capitulation. Armand, now 42, has shared living quarters at Paris and Kraków with V. I. Lenin and his wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya. Commissar for Foreign Affairs Leon Trotsky has negotiated the treaty, which provides for an abandonment of all Russian claims to Poland, Lithuania, Finland, the Baltic provinces, and the Ukraine, turning over much of Armenia to the Ottoman Turks (who come under attack from Armenian forces). Admiral Aleksandr Kolchak mounts a coup d'état in Siberia, makes himself supreme ruler, but will soon antagonize elements in the government and members of the Czechoslovak Legion that controls the Trans-Siberian Railroad (see 1919).
The Lafayette Escadrille of 1916 becomes the U.S. Pursuit Squadron February 18. The 94th Pursuit Squadron founded in March under the command of French-born pilot Raoul Lufbury, 32, includes Ohio-born pilot Edward Vernon "Eddie" Rickenbacker, 27, whose favorite plane is a Nieuport 28.
Turkish troops under the command of Gen. Otto Liman van Sanders hold up the British advance in Syria and Palestine in March, but the British force the 4th, 7th, and 8th Turkish armies to withdraw to Aleppo.
German forces launch a major offensive on the Western Front from March 21 to April 5, gaining ground against French and British armies depleted of able fighting men and almost devoid of reserves. A shell from the German cannon Big Bertha hits the Church of St. Gervais in Paris on Good Friday, leaving 156 dead and injured, but the tide of war has turned with the entry of U.S. troops.
Britain's Royal Air Force (RAF) is created April 1 through an amalgamation of the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service under the leadership of men who include primarily Gen. Hugh Montague Trenchard, 45, who has become chief of the Air Council formed in January. Frederick Handley Page has produced the world's first twin-engine bomber at his 8-year-old aircraft works, and it can carry an 1,800-pound bomb load. But the war will end before his new V-1500 four-engine bomber can be used (it is designed to reach Berlin with three tons of bombs).
German air ace Baron Manfred von Richthofen leads the "Flying Circus" that downs dozens of Allied aircraft but he is shot in the heart April 21 over enemy territory near St. Quentin while flying his red Fokker Albatros triplane in pursuit of an inexperienced British pilot, brought down with a bullet fired either by Ottawa-born RAF ace A. (Arthur) Roy Brown, 24, flying a Sopwith Camel or—perhaps more likely—by Australian gunners on the ground. Not quite 26 at his death, the "Red Baron" is credited with 80 confirmed kills (21 of them in the red Fokker triplane), a record that will stand for more than 25 years; the RAF retrieves his body and buries it with full military honors.
Raoul Lufbury is killed in action May 7. French pilot René (Paul) Fonck, 24, of "Les Cigones" Groupe de Combat No. 12 shoots down six German fighter planes in 45 seconds May 9.
Russian Army commander in chief Gen. L. G. Kornilov leads a makeshift army in a counter-revolutionary attack on Yekaterinodar but is mortally wounded and dies April 13 at age 47.
A White Army in Finland under the command of soldier-statesman Carl Gustaf (Emil) Mannerheim, 51, and Prime Minister Svinhufvud wins the Battle of Tampere in April. German troops arrive to support Mannerheim and drive the Reds out of Helsinki, and a rebellion that started in January is suppressed by May (see 1917). Finnish Bolsheviks seized Helsinki January 28, forcing the right-wing government of Pehr Evind Svinhufvud to flee to the western part of the country, and assumed control also of the larger industrial towns, although fully 70 percent of Finns are employed in agriculture and forestry. Revolutionist Georgi V. Plekhanov dies in Finland May 30 at age 61, having favored the Mensheviks and opposed Lenin's Bolsheviks. Some 20,000 Finnish revolutionaries are either executed or die in prison camps by fall, and the total death toll exceeds 30,000. Royalists decide to make Finland a monarchy and select the German prince Frederick Charles of Hesse as king in October, with Mannerheim as regent, but Germany's defeat in November will make it clear that Finland will become a republic (see 1919).
An armed gang led by Russian communist Stepan Shaumiyan massacres the Azeri population of Baku March 30 with help from Armenian Dashnak groups, killing as many as 10,000 people by some accounts. Nikolai S. Chkheidze heads an independent Transcaucasian Federal Republic created in April, the republic dissolves in May, and Chkheidze helps to organize an independent republic of Georgia (see 1921). Azerbaijan proclaims herself an independent state May 28—the first democratic republic in the Middle East; Armenia's national council declares Armenian independence the same day as her troops drive back the Turks; Azerbaijan's leaders order their forces to leave the Armenian capital of Erivan May 29, Armenian forces then attack three Azer provinces, and the Azers ask protection from the Ottoman government, whose diplomats sign a peace treaty with Armenia June 4 afer Turkish forces have taken heavy casualties. Combined Ottoman and Azeri forces begin an attack from Ganja and march into Baku September 15, killing as many as 30,000 Armenians; British forces capture Stepan Shaumiyan and 26 of his followers as they try to reach Russian lines and take them to Turkmenistan, where they are executed for crimes against humanity. London recognizes the new Azeri government by December and allows the Azerbaijan Army to remain in Baku (see 1919). Hostilities begin December 13 between Armenia and Georgia but end December 31 with British intervention.
The Central Powers force Romania to return southern Dobruja to Bulgaria under terms of the Treaty of Bucharest. Signed May 7, it also obliges Romania to give Austria-Hungary control of the Carpathian Mountain passes and give Germany a 90-year lease on her oil wells, but the pact will be nullified when the Central Powers collapse in November (see 1919).
Royal Navy ships raid the German U-boat base at Zeebrugge, Belgium, on the night of April 23 in an operation directed by Commodore Roger J. B. Keyes that helps to close the Strait of Dover to enemy submarines. Appointed director of plans at the Admiralty last year, Keyes sent a volunteer crew to Ostend aboard H.M.S. Vindictive, which was sunk at the entrance to the harbor to discourage U-boat operations in the Channel.
British authorities at Dublin rearrest Countess Markievicz May 18, take her to London, and imprison her in Holloway Gaol, where she is soon joined by Mrs. John McBride (actress Maud Gonne, whose late husband, John, was executed for treason in 1916) and Mrs. Thomas J. Clarke (Kathleen Daly, whose husband and brothers have been murdered). All are suspected of involvement in a German plot (see 1917; 1919).
The Sedition Act adopted by Congress May 16 amends last year's Espionage Act and makes it illegal willfully to "utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States, or the Constitution of the United States, or the military or naval forces of the United States . . . or advocate, teach, defend, or suggest the doing of any of the acts or things in this section enumerated."
Four-time Socialist candidate for president Eugene V. Debs delivers an academic speech at Canton, Ohio, June 16 analyzing the economic consequences of war; now 62, he is arrested and tried in a federal court at Cleveland, acts as his own lawyer, is convicted, makes an eloquent statement to the jury, but is sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment and disenfranchised for life, losing his citizenship.
The U.S. 2nd and 3rd Divisions stop a German offensive in early June with support from some disorganized French units under the command of Gen. Denis Duchene. Newly arrived U.S. Marines capture Belleau Wood north of Château-Thierry June 6 and hold a small scrub forest, less than one square mile in size, through 19 days of repeated German attempts to dislodge them. Machine gunners of the U.S. 3rd Division under the command of Gen. J. T. Dickman stop Gen. Max von Bohn, whose forces are then driven back across the Marne after 1,600 of them have been taken prisoner. The engagement 50 miles east of Paris has left 1,811 Allied dead, but the success of the aggressive Americans reinvigorates Allied spirits.
Gen. Hugh Trenchard organizes intensive strategic bombing attacks in June on German airfields, industrial centers, and railways, using two Royal Air Force (RAF) squadrons as part of the Independent Air Force based near Nancy, France.
British, French, and U.S. troops land at Murmansk with Bolshevik permission June 23 to begin Allied intervention in northern Russia. The Allied Supreme War Council voices support for intervention in Siberia July 2.
The Second Battle of the Marne begins July 15 on a line extending between Chalons in the east to Soissons in the west. Four German armies attack the Allied lines in what Gen. Ludendorff calls a Friedensturm, suggesting that it will produce a decisive victory and bring peace. Ludendorff's object is to isolate Reims, but the French throw five armies into a strategic counter-offensive, receive strong support from U.S., British, and Italian units, and have 746 tanks, whereas the Germans have only a small number of tanks, including some captured British vehicles.
A German gunner shoots down Winnipeg-born Royal Air Force fighter pilot William S. (Samuel) Stephenson, 22, July 18, and capture him after he has shot down 12 enemy planes. Formerly a sergeant in the Canadian engineers, he was badly wounded in a gas attack 2 years ago and last year transferred to the Royal Flying Corps (see 1940). René Fonck repeats his May 9 feat September 26 and by war's end will claim to have shot down 127 enemy planes (he will be credited with 71). Richthofen's "Flying Circus" scores 644 victories by war's end, having lost only 52 of its own planes, and 81 German airmen will have been awarded the Blue Max.
France's Senate tries former minister of the interior Louis-Jean Malvy on charges of laxity and high treason (see 1917). The trial has been held at Malvy's request, the Senate sits as a high court, and although it acquits him of high treason August 6, it finds Malvy guilty of forfaiture (culpable negligence) and sentences him to 5 years' banishment (he moves to Spain, will be pardoned, and will return to the Chamber of Deputies in 1924).
Russia's royal Romanov family is shot to death July 16 at Yekaterinburg by order of the Bolsheviks, 4 days after other members of the Russian nobility have been assassinated elsewhere. Nicholas II, the czarina Aleksandra, their daughters Olga, Tatiana, Marie, and Anastasia, their son Alexis, Prince Dolgorolkoff, their physician, a nurse, and a lady in waiting are all put to death July 16 or within a few weeks of that date, but rumors will persist that one or more of the daughters has somehow been spared.
German and Austrian expeditionary forces move into the Ukraine to clear out the Bolsheviks, French troops land at Russian Black Sea ports, Britain announces support July 31 of a Central Caspian Dictatorship to thwart any Turkish or Azeri advances, British and French forces seize Archangel August 2 to support a puppet government in northern Russia, and 7,000 U.S. troops occupy the Russian Pacific port of Vladivostok August 3, partly to prevent Japanese expansion in Siberia. Some 3,000 Canadian troops are also sent to Vladivostok in hopes of obtaining eventual trade concessions, but public opinion at home forces their recall. British forces enter Baku August 4.
The Second Battle of the Marne ends August 7 after more than 3 weeks of heavy combat. Having achieved numerical superiority on the Western Front by reassigning men from the Eastern Front, the Germans now lose that superiority and are forced to retreat after both sides have sustained staggeringly heavy casualties. Ludendorff's failure plunges the Germans into despair.
The British attack with 450 tanks at the Battle of Amiens from August 8 to 11. Gen. Sir Henry Rawlinson's 4th Army includes the Australian and Canadian Corps with a total of 13 divisions, the Cavalry Corps with three divisions, and the Tank Corps with 324 Mk V tanks, 96 Whippet tanks, 42 tanks in reserve, and 22 supply tanks. Two French divisions under the command of Gen. M. Eugene Debeney mount a diversionary operation on Rawlinson's right flank, German forces under the command of Gen. Georg von der Marwitz and Gen. Oskar von Hutier are taken by surprise, the Allies penetrate to a depth of seven and a half miles, and although German gunfire knocks out 109 tanks the first day, the Germans have lost more than 75,000 men (including nearly 30,000 prisoners) by August 11. British losses total 22,000 killed, wounded, and missing, French losses 24,232 (up to August 15). The Germans are forced to fall back to the Hindenburg Line after British and French offensives in September.
Russian terrorist Fanya Kaplan (née Feiga Efimovna Roidman), 28, shoots at the Bolshevik leader V. I. Lenin August 30 and says she did it because he betrayed the Revolution in making peace with Germany; she is executed soon thereafter despite Lenin's opposition. "A revolutionist executed in a revolutionary country! Never," Lenin's wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya, has said.
Australian statesman-explorer Sir John Forrest is raised to the peerage as Baron Forrest of Bunbury (the first Australian-born peer) but dies at sea September 3 at age 71, leaving no male survivor.
U.S. forces land at Archangel September 4, but Azerbaijani and Turkish troops drive the British out of Baku September 15.
Six Sopworth Camels take off from the Royal Navy's aircraft carrier H.M.S. Furious in July and attack Zeppelin sheds in the world's first carrier strike (see 1917). Furious has been modified to give her a full-length flight deck (see U.S., 1921).
The Royal Navy's H.M.S. Argus completed in September is the world's first aircraft carrier; begun in 1914 as the Italian ocean liner Conte Rosso, she was purchased by the Royal Navy in 1916, has an unobstructed, 560-foot flight deck that can accommodate 20 planes, can reach a speed of 20.2 knots, and is armed with six four-inch guns.
The U.S. Navy commissions its first aircraft carrier (see 1912; Langley, 1921).
Gen. Pershing launches his first major offensive in mid-September at Saint-Mihiel and forces the Germans to give up salients they have held since 1914. German casualties total 5,000 dead or wounded, Pershing's 1st Army (seven U.S. and four French divisions) loses 7,000 men, the Americans take 15,000 prisoners, and the Allies push north and east in the battles of the Argonne Forest and Ypres from late September to mid-October.
Eddie Rickenbacker engages seven German planes in a dogfight September 25; he will win the Congressional Medal of Honor for his performance in the encounter, and by war's end his combined balloon and aircraft kills will total 26.
Britain's 3rd Army under Gen. Sir Julian Byng breaks the Hindenburg Line September 27.
Phoenix, Ariz.-born U.S. Air Service second lieutenant Frank Luke, Jr., 21, takes off in his Spad September 29 in defiance of his commanding officer, who has grounded him. Luke has shot down 16 enemy balloons and planes, 10 German Fokkers have gone up expressly to seek him out, he downs two of the Fokkers before a ground-fired antiaircraft shell fragment hits him in the shoulder, he goes down behind enemy lines near Murvaux, empties his pistol at approaching soldiers, and is mortally wounded 17 days after he first went into combat. Canadian ace William Avery "Billy" Bishop, 24, continues an outstanding career and will be credited by November with having shot down 72 enemy planes.
German chancellor Georg von Hertling, now 75, resigns September 29 as British forces advance on the Western Front.
Bulgaria signs an armistice September 29 following defeat of her forces at Dobropole in Macedonia. Ferdinand I abdicates under pressure October 4 at age 57 after a 32-year reign and leaves Sofia; he is succeeded by his 11-year-old son, who will reign until 1943 as Boris I. Politician Aleksandr Stamboliski, 40, opposed Bulgaria's entry into the war and was imprisoned from 1915 to 1918, but he now becomes premier (see Treaty of Neuilly, 1920).
Kaiser Wilhelm appoints Prince Maximilian of Baden, 51, chancellor October 3 in hopes that someone with a humanitarian reputation can bring hostilities to an end. The prince demands a few days' wait before making peace overtures lest it appear that Germany is admitting to imminent collapse. He is overruled by military authorities, and a note is sent to President Wilson the night of October 3 requesting an armistice and negotiations based on Wilson's 14 Points. Washington responds October 8 that Germany must first agree to negotiate on the sole question of ways to put Wilson's principles into practice and withdraw her forces from Allied soil. Berlin accepts these requirements in a note sent October 12 and suggests a mixed commission to arrange the evacuation. Washington responds October 14 with a note alluding to Germany's "illegal and inhuman" methods of warfare and demanding that the conditions of the armistice and the evacuation be determined unilaterally, that the "arbitrary power" of the German regime be removed, and that negotiations be conducted by a government that represents the German people.
Allied troops rescue the "Lost Battalion" in the Argonne Forest October 7. Commanded by Wisconsin-born New York lawyer Maj. Charles W. (White) Whittlesey, 34, and made up mostly of volunteers and enlistees from the streets of New York, the 308th Battalion of the U.S. 77th Division crashed through the German line with about 800 men October 1 but was soon isolated and surrounded. By October 2 it numbered only 463 men, well-supplied German troops have kept it under almost constant machine-gun and mortar fire, its only means of communication has been homing pigeons, its position has come under "friendly fire" from Allied artillery, rations and water have been reduced almost to nothing, ammunition is low, but Whittlesey has refused a German demand that he surrender. Only 194 survivors of the battalion are able to walk, Maj. Whittlesey is promoted to lieutenant colonel and awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, but he will commit suicide in November 1921, jumping overboard from a United Fruit Co. ship bound for Havana.
The Ottoman grand vizier Mahmed Talat resigns October 14, Constantinople signs an armistice at Mudros October 30 and withdraws from the war, Gen. Sir William Marshall accepts the surrender of the Turkish army at Mosul that day, and British authorities banish the former Ottoman grand vizier Said Halim to Malta. Russia returns Kars to the Turks after 63 years of efforts to make the Turkish city Russian, but British forces have occupied Baghdad and Basra throughout the war and beginning in November occupy Mosul and the Kurdish cities of Kirkum and Suleymaniya, violating the Mudros Treaty with the Ottoman Turks (see 1920).
Mutiny breaks out in the German fleet at the Kiel naval base October 28 and spreads quickly to Hamburg, Bremen, Lübeck, and all of northwestern Germany. The imperial government commissions Reichstag member Gustav Noske, 50, to restore order.
The Czechoslovak National Council at Paris issues a declaration of independence October 28, having organized a provisional government October 14 with Thomas Garrigue Masaryk, 68, as president and Eduard Benes, 34, as foreign minister.
An independent Austrian state is proclaimed October 30 with a State Council (Staatsrat) made up of leaders of the three chief parties and other elected members. More than 200 German members of Austria's imperial parliament (Reichsrat) have formed themselves into a national assembly for German-Austria (Deutschösterreich) October 21, and radical uprisings at Vienna impel the State Council toward making Austria a republic.
Assassins kill Hungary's premier Count Stephen Tisza at his house in Buda October 31 at age 57 for having supported Germany as revolution breaks out in his country; the Hapsburg emperor Karl I appoints Count Mihály Károlyi, 43, premier and recognizes Hungary as a separate country with a separate army. The emperor is forced to renounce participation in the government of Austria November 11 and of Hungary November 13 (he ascended the throne in 1916 at the death of Franz Josef); Austria's national assembly resolves unanimously November 12 that "German-Austria is a democratic republic." A Hungarian republic is proclaimed November 16 with its premier Count Mihály Károlyi to take office as president in January. The Austrian national assembly defines the republic's territory November 22, claiming all the Hapsburg lands in which Germans comprised a majority (see 1919).
The 10-day Battle of Vittorio Veneto ends November 3 with a victory for Italian forces under the command of Gen. Armando Diaz over Austrian forces, whose Gen. Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf is stripped of his command and recalled to Vienna (now nearly 66, he soon retires). Diaz stabilized the army after last year's devastating defeat at Caporetto and has repelled a strong Austrian offensive in June, but the Italians have accomplished little in the war despite the loss of 250,000 troops on a 60-mile front along the Isonzo River.
A Polish republic is proclaimed November 3 at Warsaw. Poland regains independence November 11, having been partitioned for 120 years between Austria, Prussia, and Russia; she quickly comes under the control of Gen. Josef Pilsudski, who was imprisoned by the Germans in 1916 when his troops refused to join the Central Powers against the Allies but who has been released after the collapse of the Central Powers.
Revolution breaks out November 7 at Munich. Independent Social Democratic Party leader Kurt Eisner, 52, dethrones Bavaria's last Wittelsbach duke Ludwig III and declares Bavaria a republic November 8; Eisner was convicted of treason earlier in the year for inciting munition workers to strike but has been released from prison (see 1919). Prince Maximilian von Baden resigns November 9 in favor of Heidelberg-born Social Democratic Party leader Friedrich Ebert, 47, who accepts the imperial chancellorship, Baden announces the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm, and Social Democrat Philipp Scheidemann proclaims all of Germany to be a republic November 9. U.S. strength in France has risen to 42 divisions, the British prepare to bomb Berlin from the air, Germany is exhausted, and hostilities on the Western Front cease at 11 o'clock in the morning of November 11 under terms of an armistice signed by a German deputation (headed by Reichstag leader Matthias Erzberger, 43) with Allied representatives 6 hours earlier in the railway car of Marshal Foch at Compiègne outside Paris. Germany is required to evacuate Belgium, France, Alsace-Lorraine, and all the rest of the west bank of the Rhine, neutralize the east bank between the Netherlands and Switzerland, withdraw to the prewar frontier in the East, annul the treaties of Brest-Litovsk and Bucharest, repatriate all prisoners of war, order her troops in East Africa to surrender, turn over 5,000 artillery pieces, 25,000 machine guns, 1,700 aircraft, 5,000 locomotives, and 150,000 railroad cars, but the Germans obtain some easing of these terms by citing the danger of Bolshevism as private paramilitary groups (Freikorps) enlist ex-soldiers, unemployed youths, and other malcontents under the leadership of former officers and noncoms.
Berlin-born National Liberal Party leader Gustav Stresemann, 40, founds the German People's Party (Deutsche Volkspartei, or DVP) November 18. A patriot who 2 years ago supported unrestricted submarine warfare against Allied shipping, he has by some accounts become disillusioned with an imperial government dedicated to military force and recognized that the only sensible course is to cultivate political and commercial relationships with the other world powers; by other accounts he remains opposed to a republican form of government and accepts the theory that Germany would have won the war had she not been "stabbed in the back" by cowardly civilian politicians. The entire German High Fleet steams in single file into Scotland's Scapa Flow November 21 and surrenders to Admiral Beatty, turning over 90 ships plus 87 U-boats (see Washington Naval Conference, 1921). A new German republican government takes power in December under a six-member ruling council; it commissions political theorist-legal expert Hugo Preuss, now 58, to draft a national constitution (see 1919).
The Great War has killed 1.8 million Germans, nearly 2 million Russians (the Russians will lose more than three times that many in their civil war over the next few years), 1.4 million French, 1.2 million Austrians and Hungarians, between 750,000 and 950,000 British, 460,000 Italians, 325,000 Turks, and 115,000 Americans. Some 20 million have been blinded, maimed, mutilated, crippled, permanently shell-shocked, or otherwise disabled. More than 1 million Indian troops have gone overseas to fight or serve as noncombatants behind Allied lines on every major front, and they have sustained over 100,000 casualties, including 36,000 dead.
Nearly all of the war has been fought on French soil, and it has left one in every 28 French citizens dead; gassed and dismembered corpses swing from barbed wire that stretches along thousands of miles of trenches, 1,039 villages have been completely destroyed, and only half the buildings remain standing at Reims, Soissons, Verdun, Ypres, and more than 1,200 other cities that have suffered persistent shelling.
The Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes is proclaimed December 4 under the regency of Serbia's Prince Aleksandr Garageorgevic, 30, who will become Yugoslavia's Aleksandr I in 1921. A Congress of Oppressed Nationalities, most of them ruled by the Hapsburgs, has been held at Rome in April, and Italy has recognized the unity and independence of a new Yugoslav nation organized in 1917 (see 1919).
French forces occupy Odessa December 18 and will remain until April of next year. British forces land at Batumi on the eastern shore of the Black Sea near the Turkish border.
A pamphlet entitled "The League of Nations: A Practical Suggestion" by South African statesman Jan Christiaan Smuts appears in December with recommendations for a lenient peace. Now 48, Smuts accepted a commission as lieutenant general in the British Army in 1916 and will play a significant role at the Versailles Peace Conference (see 1919).
Egyptian nationalist Sa'd Zaghlul leads a three-man delegation to meet with the British high commissioner Sir Reginald Wingate November 13 (see 1914; Zaghlul, 1913). Zaghlul has spent the war years forming activist groups to agitate for eventual independence; he and his colleagues advise Wingate that they regard themselves as the true representatives of the people and demand a treaty of alliance in place of the protectorate that has existed since late in 1914. Wingate refuses their demand that they be allowed to proceed to London to negotiate such a treaty, and disorder break out across the country (see 1919).
Chinese soldier Chang Tso-lin, 45, is appointed inspector general of Manchuria's three provinces. He will control Manchuria as a virtually autonomous state within the Chinese republic and in 2 years will begin trying to expand his power southward into North China, making himself a warlord who threatens the unity of the republic (see 1924).
Former Japanese home minister Takashi Hara, 62, becomes prime minister September 29, having built his Friends of Constitutional Government Party (Rikken Seiyukai) into an American-style political party, gaining popular support by dispensing patronage and promoting regional economic development. Hara will try to reduce the power of the military and enlarge the electorate by lowering property qualifications to include small landowners, and although he will balk at extending universal male suffrage, his Seiyukai machine will hold power for nearly 20 years (but see 1921).
Hailed as a U.S. war hero is Tennessee doughboy Alvin C. (Cullum) York, 30, whose draft board denied his petition for exemption as a conscientious objector. In the battle of the Argonne Forest October 8, Private York of the 82nd Infantry Division led an attack on a German machine gun nest that killed 25 of the enemy and he then almost singlehandedly captured 132 prisoners and 35 machine guns. Promoted to sergeant November 1, York will be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor and French Croix de Guerre.
Haiti gets a constitution that permits foreigners to own land (see 1915); an election is held under U.S. Marine Corps supervision, and the Marines revive an old law dating to the reign of Henri Christophe permitting them to use forced labor on the roads. The Marines will occupy the Caribbean nation until 1934.
Former U.S. vice president and Republican stalwart Charles W. Fairbanks dies at Indianapolis June 4 at age 66; former ambassador to Britain Walter Hines Page at his native Cary, N.C., December 21 at age 63.
Southern whites continue to lynch blacks for such alleged "crimes" as having bad reputations, refusing to give up a farm, using offensive language, slapping a child, stealing hogs, or (in 19 percent of cases) for alleged rape. A Valdosta, Georgia, mob lynches the husband of Mary Turner in June; she learns of his death, and although in her 8th month of pregnancy vows to find those responsible, swearing out warrants for their arrest, but a mob of several hundred indignant white men and women decide to "teach her a lesson." Tying her ankles together, they hang her from a tree head down, douse her clothing with gasoline, burn them from her body, and while she is still alive someone takes a knife used for splitting hogs to open her belly, her unborn infant spills to the ground, whereupon the mob stomps the child to death and then fires hundreds of bullets into Turner's body. Lynchings remain common throughout the Southern states that continue to be home to 80 percent of the nation's blacks; with newspapers sometimes announcing when and where they will be held, parents send notes to schools asking that their children be excused to attend the events, special "excursion" trains carry spectators to the sites, and parents lift up their children to let them see.
White supremacist Sen. Benjamin R. "Pitchfork Ben" Tillman (D. S.C.) dies at Washington, D.C., July 3 at age 70 (he suffered strokes in 1908 and 1910 but was reelected in 1912).
Suffragist Alice Paul gains release from jail in January and President Wilson says woman suffrage is urgently needed as a "war measure." A resolution providing for a U.S. Woman Suffrage Amendment passes the House of Representatives in January, but the Senate rejects the resolution for a third time October 1 despite a rousing speech that day from President Wilson, who asks the Senators, "The strange revelations of this war having made many things new and plain to governments as well as to peoples, are we alone to refuse to learn the lesson, are we alone to ask and take the utmost that our women can give, service and sacrifice of every kind, and still say that we do not see that they merit the title that gives them the right to stand by our side in the guidance of the affairs of their nation and ours? We have made partners of the women in this war. Shall we admit them only to a partnership of suffering and sacrifice and toil and not to a partnership of privilege and right?" (see 1919).
Suffragist-reformer-art collector Bertha Palmer dies of breast cancer at Osprey, Florida, May 5 at age 67, having doubled the value of the estate left by her late husband, Potter, in 1902. U.S. war plants have employed 1 million women, but many suffragists have followed the lead of pacifists Carrie Chapman Catt and Jane Addams in opposing anything that supported the war effort. Few labor unions accept women, whose health is neglected and who generally receive less than men for equivalent work.
German, Austrian, and Polish women gain the right to vote on the same basis as men (see Russia, 1917; Netherlands, 1919).
British women over age 30 gain the right to vote under terms of the Fourth Franchise Bill, passed last year, which also grants suffrage to all men over age 21. A new Representation of the People Act enfranchises about 6 million women; Emmeline Pankhurst has favorably influenced masculine opinion by persuading women to do war work and has helped obtain passage of the Franchise Bill and the new legislation (see 1913; 1928). A law enacted November 21 permits women to be members of Parliament, and in the Irish elections December 14 Countess Markievicz, still in Holloway Gaol, is elected to the Irish parliament (the Dail Eireann; see 1919). Women in England, Scotland, and Wales vote for the first time in a national election December 28.
Nova Scotia grants female suffrage (see 1917), and the Ottawa government grants full female suffrage in federal elections. Suffragist Clara MacDonald Denison, 51, has worked to persuade the provincial legislatures to let women vote (see New Brunswick, 1919).
United Way of America is founded to coordinate activities of local philanthropic fund-raising groups that include labor unions, nonprofit agencies, and governmental agencies. It will grow by the end of the century to have 23 state groups and 2,100 local groups, with headquarters at Alexandria, Virginia.
Explorer Carl Peters dies at Bad Harzburg September 10 at age 61, having lost his commission in 1897 for mistreating the Africans but having remained for a few years to study the Zambezi River area with a view to establishing German mining ventures.
The anti-Bolshevist government in North Russia establishes a National Emission Caisse, or currency board, which issues rubles backed by British pounds sterling and can be exchanged for sterling at a fixed rate.
Inflation begins in Germany. The mark will decline in value by 99 percent in terms of gold over the course of the next few years (see 1922).
British income taxes rise to 30 percent, up from 15 percent in 1915, as the national debt climbs to an unprecedented £8 billion.
National City Bank chairman James Stillman dies of heart disease at New York March 15 at age 67, leaving a fortune estimated at more than $50 million.
Forbes magazine publishes a list of the 30 richest Americans (see communications, 1917). Their combined wealth is $3.7 billion.
A Third Liberty Loan bill signed into law by President Wilson April 4 provides for 10-year bonds paying 4.5 percent interest to raise an additional $3 billion for the war effort; a Fourth Liberty Loan drive launched September 28 offers $6 million in bonds at 4.25 percent.
British Columbia becomes the first Canadian province to pass a law guaranteeing that women will not be paid less than a living wage. By 1922 all provinces except New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island will have women's minimum wage laws.
The Owen-Keating Child Labor Law of 1916 is an unconstitutional encroachment on states' rights, the Supreme Court rules 5 to 4 June 3 in the case of Hammer v. Dagenhart. Justice Holmes writes a dissent in which Justices Brandeis, Clarke, and McKenna concur (see Fair Labor Standards Act, 1938).
The Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union begins striking against open shops, sweatshops, and piece-work pay (see 1914). The union will stage at least 534 strikes in the next 6 years and claim victory in 333 (see 1937).
A Chicago jury finds IWW leaders guilty of conspiring against the prosecution of the war (see 1917). The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will sustain the heavy fines, and Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis will hand down prison sentences to some 100 leaders (see Butte massacre, 1920).
Wives of 43 Japanese fishermen gather on the beach at Namekawa in Toyama Prefecture July 23 to complain about the high price of rice. They go into town and demand that rice shops sell to them at lower prices, and their efforts begin a nationwide movement. Police arrest 7,813 protesters.
Wall Street's Dow Jones Industrial Average closes December 31 at 82.20, up from 74.38 at the end of 1917.
U.S. Fuel Administrator Harry A. Garfield orders all plants east of the Mississippi to shut down January 16 if they are not producing essential war materials. The purpose of the order is to conserve coal needed for troop transports, warships, and merchant vessels, the order remains in effect for 5 days, and it is followed by nine Monday closings. The Fuel Administration orders four lightless nights per week beginning July 24 to conserve fuel for the coming winter. The order remains in effect until November 22.
Dutch interests open the Schottegat oil refinery on the Caribbean island of Curaçao December 5, using petroleum brought in from nearby Venezuela (see 1914). The island's population increases as immigrants pour in from Venezuela and Europe (see Venezuelan oil, 1922).
Matsushita Electric Co. has its beginnings as Japanese entrepreneur Konosuke Matsushita, 27, invests $50 to start a firm that will manufacture electrical adapter plugs (see food and drink [rice saucepan], 1946).
The 63-year-old Grace Line inaugurates direct passenger service between the United States and Peru and Chile, using freight-and-passenger steamships that include the Santa Ana, Santa Luis, Santa Teresa, and Santa Elisa.
The New York Barge Canal that opens to traffic May 15 replaces the 93-year-old Erie Canal while using some of the same natural waterways to connect Albany on the Hudson River with Lake Erie and Lake Champlain (see 1882). Under construction since 1905, it is 12 feet deep, 75 to 200 feet wide, 524 miles long (801.3 miles counting 347.1 miles of connecting rivers and lakes), and has 57 electrically-operated concrete locks whose gates open or close in 30 seconds and lift vessels anywhere from six feet to 40½. Steam power has long since made the old canal obsolete (see St. Lawrence Seaway, 1959).
Shipbuilder and shipping magnate Albert Ballin dies of a sleeping-powder overdose at his Hamburg mansion November 9 at age 61.
The Railway Control Act adopted by Congress March 21 puts all U.S. railroads under federal government management (see 1917; Esch-Cummins Act, 1920).
A head-on collision between two trains on the Nashville, Chattanooga, and St. Louis Railway in Tennessee June 22 kills 99 and injures 171, an all-time high for U.S. railroad mismanagement.
New York's worst subway accident kills 97 and injures 100 November 2 as a train jumps the track at 30 miles per hour approaching the new Prospect Park station of the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Service. Manned by inexperienced supervisors in the absence of striking motormen who belong to the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, the train goes into the treacherous S curve at five times the speed limit, many of its cars are wooden, and it is wrecked at the Malbone Street Tunnel of the Brighton Beach line that runs along Fulton Street and Franklin Avenue to Coney Island.
Stanley Steamer co-inventor Francis E. Stanley dies at Wenham, Mass., July 31 at age 69 following an auto accident. He and his twin brother Freelan formed the Stanley Motor Carriage Co. in 1902 and ran it until last year.
Aeronautical engineer and manufacturer Glenn L. Martin founds the Glenn L. Martin Co., opens a factory at Cleveland, and comes up with an innovative design for a military bomber (see 1909). Now 32, Martin will move his operation to Baltimore in 1929 as he builds planes for the army and navy, training a generation of aircraft designers and engineers (see Douglas, 1920).
German aeronautical engineer Hugo Eckener, 50, returns to commercial production of rigid airships at the Friedrichshafen plant of the late graf von Zeppelin. Eckener helped the count develop his airships in the early 1900s, directed the construction of 88 Zeppelins for the German Navy during the war, and trained pilots to operate them (see 1924).
Frankfurt-am-Main-born Berlin chemist Otto Hahn, 39, and his Viennese-born physicist colleague Lise Meitner, 39, isolate the most stable isotope of the element protactinium, the long-lived mother substance of the actinium series. They have used the radioactive recoil discovered by Hahn before he entered the German military; he will go on to discover uranium Z (the first case of a nuclear isomerism of radioactive kinds of atoms), and she will investigate the behavior of beta rays and the disintegration products of radium, thorium, and actinium (see 1938).
The mass spectrometer invented by Toronto-born University of Chicago physicist Arthur (Jeffrey) Dempster, 32, revolutionizes chemical analysis by making it possible to measure the weight of isotopes and detect chemicals in minute quantities (see uranium 235, 1935).
Space, Time, Matter (Raum, Zeit, Materie) by mathematician Hermann Weyl at Zürich incorporates Weyl's findings on relativity while revealing a strong interest in philosophy.
Mathematician Georg Cantor dies in a psychiatriac hospital at Halle January 6 at age 72, having founded set theory and introduced the concept of transfinite numbers, which are indefinitely large but distinct from each other. Afflicted with mental illness beginning in about 1884, he remained active until at least 1897.
A pandemic even more lethal than the Black Death of the mid-14th century sweeps through Europe, North America, and the Orient, as the European war winds down, having taken about 10 million lives.The first of the mysterious "flu" cases are reported March 11 at Fort Riley, Kansas, where more than 100 come down with what is diagnosed as pneumonia but is actually a viral infection (that the deadly mutating virus was transmitted from birds to humans will not be established until 2005). Some 48 men suffocate to death when their lungs fill with fluid, and other doughboys exposed to the virus through airborne droplets at Fort Riley are shipped overseas, infecting many of their comrades aboard ship and in France, where 1.5 million U.S. troops have been landed. The "Spanish" influenza affects 80 percent of the people in Spain, including Alfonso XIII, and quickly spreads throughout Europe, affecting mostly children and young adults with fatal outcomes, especially among previously healthy people aged 25 to 34 (the misnomer "Spanish" flu comes from the fact that Spain is neutral and does not censor news of the epidemic); the first U.S. cases since the outbreak at Fort Riley appear August 27 at Boston, where two sailors report to sick bay at Commonwealth Pier; by August 31 the Navy Receiving Ship has 106 flu cases. Many communities fail to institute isolation or quarantine measures. By mid-September the rapidly mutating flu virus has spread all over the East Coast, and by October 1 some 12,000 Americans have died of flu and related bacterial infections, most of them within a few days because the virus has destroyed the air sacs in their lungs. Viruses cannot be seen with existing microscopes, and scientists search in vain for an anti-bacterial vaccine. Nearly 25 percent of Americans fall ill, 195,000 die in October, schools are closed, parades and Liberty Loan rallies banned, and hospitals jammed. Emergency tent hospitals go up throughout America as the epidemic taxes regular hospital facilities. Coffin supplies are exhausted at Baltimore and Washington, and before the pandemic ends next year some 675,000 Americans will have died, including 43,000 servicemen. In many countries, trolley conductors, store clerks, and others wear masks to avoid contracting the flu, but the cloth masks are porous and provide little or no protection; the flu will kill as many as 50 million people worldwide by the end of next year.
Typhus takes a heavy toll in Galicia, the Ukraine, and the Black Sea region (see 1917). The International Red Cross helps fight the disease.
Some 46 percent of fracture cases in the U.S. Army result in permanent disability, chiefly by amputation, and 12 percent of fracture cases are fatal (see 1937).
The alkaloid drug ergotamine is extracted from the ergot fungus Claviceps purpura (see 1808). Useful in small doses as a muscle and blood vessel contractant, the drug will be used to treat migraine attacks and induce abortion (see ergonovine, 1935).
The International Church of the Four-Square Gospel is founded at Los Angeles by Canadian-born evangelist Aimee (Elizabeth) Semple McPherson (née Kennedy), 28, who accompanied her first husband as a missionary to Hong Kong, has walked out on the father of her second child, and comes to the city in a seven-passenger Oldsmobile whose doors carry the message, "Jesus is coming soon—Get Ready. Where will you spend Eternity?" in six-inch-high letters. She conducts healing services for victims of the influenza epidemic, promises that the "deaf hear, the blind see, and the lame walk," and offers hope and salvation to Southern and Midwestern migrants newly arrived in Southern California. McPherson will create a large following that will provide funds to build the huge Angelus Temple from which her sermons will be broadcast over a radio station purchased with contributions from the faithful. Patriotic-religious music played by a 50-piece band will precede the sermons, and the McPherson movement, based largely on faith healing, adult baptism, and fundamentalist spectacle, will attract thousands (see 1923).
The board of Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association (later TIAA-CREF) holds its first meeting May 17 at New York and elects Henry S. Pritchett president (see 1905). Chartered by New York State as a non-profit company, its stock is all held by the Carnegie Corporation and it will enjoy tax exemption until 1997.
Educator Luther H. Gulick dies at South Casco, Maine, August 13 at age 62; Cornell University cofounder Andrew Dickson White at Ithaca, N.Y., November 4 at age 75, leaving his library to the university.
Former Collier's magazine publisher Robert J. Collier returns home to New York April 12 from a long tour of the front, sits down to dinner at his 1067 Fifth Avenue town house, and dies of a heart attack at age 41 (see Crowell-Collier, 1919); Nobel physicist (and cathode-ray tube inventor) Ferdinand Braun dies in a Brooklyn, N.Y., hospital April 20 at age 67 (he had come to the United States to testify in litigation involving radio broadcasting and was detained here last year when America entered the war).
Congress appropriates $100,000 for an experimental airmail service to be operated jointly by the army and post office between Washington, D.C., and New York via Philadelphia. An army surplus Curtiss JN-4 biplane leaves May 14 on the first flight from Belmont Park, Long Island, lands at Philadelphia, and continues the next day to Washington, where it is greeted by President Wilson. The first official U.S. mail flight never makes it to New York. The pilot discovers on his first takeoff attempt at Washington that someone has forgotten to fill the fuel tank, and after he does take off he becomes lost over Maryland and has to land in a cow pasture. The first U.S. airmail stamps are issued in expectation that regular service will begin between Washington and New York (the 24¢ stamps show a biplane in flight, but some of the stamps are accidentally printed with the plane inverted and the faulty stamps become rare collectors' items) (see transportation, 1921).
Chicago Tribune foreign correspondent Floyd P. Gibbons loses an eye in June as a bullet goes through his steel helmet while he is trying to observe a German machine gun too closely at Belleau Wood.
David (Alexander Cecil) Low joins the London Star at age 27 to pursue a career as political cartoonist. The New Zealand-born Australian will transfer to the Evening Standard in 1927 and become famous for satirizing the British ruling class with his "Colonel Blimp" (modeled on Field Marshal Herbert Charles Onslow, Viscount Plumer, now 61, who led the successful offensive on Messines Ridge last year and will serve as governor of Malta from 1919 to 1925).
The Boston Post reaches a circulation of 540,000 and claims the widest readership in America. The Post sells for 1¢ while the Globe and the Herald have joined most other U.S. dailies in going to 2¢.
"Gasoline Alley" by Wisconsin-born Chicago Tribune staff cartoonist Frank (O.) King, 35, capitalizes on America's growing fascination with the motorcar. Popularity of the new comic strip will zoom when its main character Walt adopts foundling Skeezix in 1921, and it will be the first strip whose characters grow and age.
"Believe It or Not!" by Santa Rosa, Calif.-born New York Globe sports cartoonist Robert L. (LeRoy) Ripley, 24, begins appearing with sketches of men who have set records for such unlikely events as running backward and broad jumping on ice. Encouraged by reader response to pursue his quest for oddities, Ripley will move to the New York Post in 1923, syndication of his cartoons will begin soon after, and "Believe It or Not!" will eventually be carried by newspapers in 65 countries worldwide.
Marconi Co. radio operator Clair L. Farrand, now 23, quits to perfect his cone loudspeaker, which will do away with earphones (see 1912). The hard, horn-type speaker now in use is unable to produce the vibrations of higher fidelities; Farrand's paper cone speaker will prove far superior.
The U.S. Government nationalizes the telecommunications industry August 1 for reasons of national security (see Burleson, 1913); Postmaster General Albert S. Burleson appoints ATT's Theodore Vail to manage the telephone system, he names Western Union's president Newcom Carlton to run the telegraph system, both companies are able to raise rates, and long-distance rates will increase by 20 percent (see 1919).
Nonfiction: Eminent Victorians by London-born writer (Giles) Lytton Strachey, 38, introduces a new genre of biography by injecting imagined conversations and taking other liberties while debunking the Victorian eminences of Florence Nightingale and such; Reflections by an Unpolitical Man by Thomas Mann, whose term is eagerly applied to themselves by people who want to turn their thoughts to private concerns; The New Economy (Die neu Wirtschaft) by industrialist Walter Rathenau, who advocates industrial self-government combined with employee participation and effective state control rather than outright nationalization of industry; The Colonial Merchants and the American Revolution by Ohio-born historian Arthur M. (Meier) Schlesinger, 30.
Historian-editor Hubert H. Bancroft dies at Walnut Creek, California, March 2 at age 85; historian-writer Henry Adams at Washington, D.C., March 27 at age 80; philosopher Hermann Cohen at Berlin April 4 at age 75; pacifist essayist and literary critic Randolph S. Bourne in the influenza epidemic at New York December 22 at age 32.
Fiction: The Defeat of Youth by English novelist-critic Aldous (Leonard) Huxley, 24; Tarr by English poet-novelist-painter (Percy) Wyndham Lewis, 33; Sylvia Scarlett by Compton Mackenzie; Man of Straw (Der Untertan) by Heinrich Mann; The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West; My Antonia by Willa Cather; The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington; Frenzied Fiction by Stephen Leacock includes "My Revelations as a Spy," "Lost in New York," "In Dry Toronto," "To Nature and Back," and "Merry Christmas"; "A Madman's Diary" (short story) by Chinese writer Lu Xun (Lu Hsün), 36, condemns traditional Confucian society. Lu has studied Western-style medicine in northern Japan after seeing his father die of tuberculosis while being treated with traditional Chinese medicine. Modeled on Nikolai Gogol's story of the same title, it is the first Western-style story written entirely in Chinese.
Poetry: Poems by the late Gerard Manley Hopkins, whose rich rhythmic system will inspire a new generation of poets; Counter-Attack and Other Poems by Siegfried Sassoon; Forty New Poems by William Henry Davies; Ecstasy Collection (Skrizhal sbornik) by Anna Akhmatova; "Ode to Revolution" by Vladimir Mayakovski; Cornhuskers by Carl Sandburg, whose poem "Prairie" states: "I speak of new cities and new people./ I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes." Sandburg's poem "Grass" states: "Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo./ Shovel them under and let me work—/ I am the grass; I cover all"; "Richard Cory" by Edwin Arlington Robinson, includes the lines: "Whenever Richard Cory went down town/ We people on the pavement looked at him:/ He was a gentleman from sole to crown,/ Clean-favored, and imperially slim./ . . . And he was rich—yes, richer than a king—/ And admirably schooled in every grace:/ In fine, we thought that he was everything/ To make us wish that we were in his place./ . . . And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,/ Went home and put a bullet through his head"; The Charnel Rose by Conrad Aiken; The Ghetto by Irish-born New York poet Lola (née Rose Emily) Ridge, 44; Minna and Myself by Mississippi-born New York poet Maxwell Bodenheim, 25; The Sweet Loss (or The Sweet Injury; El dulce daño) by Alfonsina Storni; The Black Messengers (Los Heraldos Negros) by Peruvian poet César (Abraham) Vallejo, 26.
Poet William Wilfred Campbell dies near Ottawa January 1 at age 56; surgeon-poet John McCrea of pneumonia and meningitis at his field hospital in France January 28 at age 45; English poet-playwright-painter Isaac Rosenberg is killed in action April 7 at age 27; Sgt. Joyce Kilmer is killed in action July 30 at age 31; poet Wilfred Owen is awarded the Military Cross for gallantry and is killed in action November 4 at age 25; Guillaume Apollinaire dies at Paris November 9 at age 38 of influenza and a head wound received in March 1916. His book Calligrammes has recently been published, and he leaves behind erotic poems relating battle action to sexual desire: "Two shell-bursts/ A pink explosion/ Like two bared breasts/ Snooking their tips/ HE KNEW LOVE/ What an epitaph."
Juvenile: The Tale of Johnny Town-Mouse by Beatrix Potter; A Patriotic Schoolgirl by Angela Brazil.
Painting: Gartenplan by Paul Klee; Engine Rooms, Le Moteur, Propellers, and The Typographer by Fernand Léger, who was mobilized as sapper during the war and found himself working with miners and artisans; Act, Portrait of Baranowski, Seated Young Girl, Seated Man with Orange Background, and Portrait of Mme. Zboroski by Amédéo Modigliani; Friends and Saxonian Landscape by Oskar Kokoschka; Bathing Man by Edvard Munch; Odalisques by Henri Matisse; Still Life: Dead Game by André Derain; Still Life with Coffee by Spanish painter Joan Miró, 25; Hot Spring (Ideyu) by Kokei Kobayashi; William Henry Davies by Augustus John; Landscape of Piquey by Diego Rivera; Red Cross Drive, May 1918 and Flags on Fifty-Seventh Street, The Winter of 1918 by Childe Hassam; Blue Flower by Georgia O'Keeffe; Knitting for the Soldiers by George Luks; Baby by Gustav Klimt, who dies of influenza at Vienna February 6 at age 55; Ferdinand Hodler dies at Geneva May 20 at age 65; Egon Schiele of influenza in his mother-in-law's house at Vienna October 31 at age 28 (his wife, Edith, 6 months pregnant, has died of the flu 3 days earlier).
Sculpture: Muse by Constantin Brancusi.
German portrait photographer August Sander, 41, takes pictures of his countrymen to satisfy the need for photo identification cards required by Allied occupation authorities. Son of working-class people, he was given a camera in his teens, received help from his family to study painting, determined to become a photographer, began nearly a decade ago to develop an unobtrusive technique of photographing his subjects, and will create clear, realistic images that capture the essence of German life in his time.
Theater: Seven Days' Leave by Walter Howard 1/17 at New York's Park Theater, with H. Cooper Cliffe, English-born actor Percy Ames, 33, New York-born actress Evelyn Varden, 24, Cleveland-born actor Edwin Forsberg, 45, 156 perfs.; Seventeen 1/22 at New York's Booth Theater, with Brooklyn-born actor Paul Kelly, 18, Wollaston, Mass.-born actress Ruth Gordon, 21, in a play based on Booth Tarkington's novel, 225 perfs.; Schoolmaster Kleist (Rektor Kleist) by Georg Kaiser 1/26 at Königsberg's Schauspielhaus; Deburan by French playwright-actor Sacha Guitry, 32, 2/9 at Paris, with Guitry himself (matinées only, since Paris is under bombardment by German cannon); The Copperhead by Augustus Thomas 2/18 at New York's Shubert Theater, with Lionel Barrymore, New York-born actor Raymond Hackett, 15, New York-born actor Chester Morris, 17, 120 perfs.; Sea Battle (Seeschlacht) by German physician-playwright Richard Goering, 30, 3/3 at Berlin's Deutsches Theater; A Woman's Sacrifice (Das Frauenopfer) by Georg Kaiser 3/23 at Düsseldorf's Schauspielhaus; The Man Who Stayed at Home by Lechmere Worral and J. Harold Terry 4/3 at New York's 48th Street Theater, with Amelia Bingham, John L. Shine, Louise Muldener, 109 perfs.; Three Faces East by Chicago-born playwright Anthony Paul Kelly, 21, 8/13 at New York's Cohan and Harris Theater (to Longacre Theater 2/17/1919), with Emmet Corrigan, London-born actor Herbert Evans, 36, Cora Witherspoon, 335 perfs.; Lightnin' by actor-playwright Winchell Smith, now 47, and Marysville, Calif.-born actor-playwright Frank Bacon, 54, 8/26 at New York's Gaiety Theater, with Bacon as Lightnin' Bill Jones, 1,291 perfs.; The Unknown Purple by Roland West and Carlyle Moore 9/14 at New York's Lyric Theater, with Richard Bennett, California-born actress Marion Kerby, 41, 273 perfs.; Abraham Lincoln by English playwright John Drinkwater, 36, 10/12 at Birmingham's Repertory Theatre; Three Wise Fools by San Francisco-born playwright Austin Strong, 37, 10/31 at New York's Criterion Theater, with Harry Davenport, Helen Menken, 632 perfs.; Mystery Bouffe (Misteriya Buff) by Vladimir Mayakofsky 11/7 at Petrograd's vich Communal Theater; Fire in the Opera House (Der Brand in Opernhaus) by Georg Kaiser 11/16 at Nuremberg's Stadtheater; The Crowded Hour by Edgar Selwyn and Channing Pollock 11/22 at New York's Selwyn Theater, with Jane Cowl, 139 perfs.; Gas by Georg Kaiser 11/28 at Düsseldorf's Schauspielhaus; The Moon of the Caribees by Eugene O'Neill 12/20 at New York's Playwrights Theater; East Is West by New York-born playwright Samuel Shipman, 34, and Nashville, Tenn.-born playwright John B. Hymer, 42, 12/25 at New York's Astor Theater, with Fay Bainter, 680 perfs.; The Invisible Foe by Walter Hackett 12/30 at New York's Harris Theater, with H. Cooper Cliffe, New York-born actor Robert Barrat, 29, 112 perfs.
Playwright Frank Wedekind dies at Munich March 9 at age 53; playwright Harry J. Smith is killed outside Murrayville, British Columbia, March 16 at age 37 when his chauffeur-driven car is hit by a train while he is on an expedition to collect sphagnum moss for use in surgical dressings in France (the chauffeur survives and says he did not hear the train because he was listening to his passenger); playwright Edmond Rostand dies at Paris December 2 at age 50.
Warner Brothers Pictures is incorporated in California by Polish-born cinematists Harry Warner, 36, and Albert, 34, with their Canadian-born brother, Jack, 26, and their Baltimore-born brother, Sam, 31. All are sons of cobbler Ben Warner (originally Eichelbaum), who came to America in 1883, settled at Youngstown, Ohio, and opened a butcher shop-general store; Harry and Albert grossed a handsome return last year filming Ambassador James W. Gerard's book My Four Years in Germany, produced at New York's Vitagraph studios but will have little success in Hollywood until 1926.
Louis B. Mayer Pictures is organized at Los Angeles by Russian-born movie theater operator Louis B. (Burt) Mayer, 33, who was brought to St. John, New Brunswick at age 3, went into business at age 8 pulling a little red wagon loaded with junk, expanded his junk business to ship salvage, relocated to Boston, fell in love with the flickering images at nickelodeons, acquired a small theater at Haverhill, Mass., in 1907, refurbished it and installed an organ, opened it on Christmas day with a hand-tinted film of a passion play, built up a chain of theaters, acquired a Boston distributorship that supplied product to theaters throughout New England, made a fortune before he was 30, and in 1915 bought New England rights to D. W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation for an unprecedented $25,000, earning a lot of money. Deciding to make his own films, Mayer joined with a group a showmen 3 years ago to start Metro Films, and he will play a leading role in transforming pictures from freak attractions to one of the world's leading industries (see M-G-M, 1924).
Films: Charles Chaplin's Shoulder Arms with Chaplin; J. Gordon Edwards's Salome and When a Woman Sins, both with Theda Bara; Edwards's A Pair of Silk Stockings with Constance Talmadge; F. Richard Jones's Mickey with Mabel Normand; Scott Sidney's Tarzan of the Apes with Elmo Lincoln, Enid Markey; Winsor McCay's The Sinking of the Lusitania (feature-length historical cartoon).
Technicolor is pioneered by Massachusetts-born physicist Herbert T. (Thomas) Kalmus, 36, and his wife, Natalie, 40, who began their work 6 years ago and this year film The Gulf Between outdoors in Florida. They will organize Technicolor, Inc., in 1922 and move to Hollywood in 1927.
Louella Parsons loses her job at the Chicago Record-Herald when William Randolph Hearst acquires the paper but starts a new gossip column in the New York Morning Telegraph that catches Hearst's eye (see 1914; 1925).
Opera: Where the Lark Sings (Wo die Lerche singt) 2/1 at Budapest's Königstheater, with music by Franz Lehár; Duke Bluebeard's Castle (A Kék szakállu Herceg Vára) 5/24 at Budapest, with music by Béla Bartók; Meriden, Conn.-born soprano Rosa Melba Ponselle (originally Rosa Ponzillo), 21, makes her Metropolitan Opera debut 11/15 singing the role of Donna Leonora opposite Enrico Caruso in the 1862 Verdi opera La Forza del Destino. She is the first U.S. woman to become a Met prima donna without having trained in Europe; Il Trittico 12/14 at New York's Metropolitan Opera House, with music by Giacomo Puccini, who has written a trio of short operas—Il Tabarro, Suor Angelica, and Gianni Schicchi.
Composer Claude Debussy dies of cancer at Paris March 25 at age 55; librettist-composer Arrigo Boito at Milan June 10 at age 76.
First performances: Classical Symphony by Sergei Prokofiev 4/21 at Petrograd; The Legend of the World at Play (Le Dit des Jeux du Monde) by Swiss composer Arthur Honegger, 26, 12/2 at Paris.
Stage musicals: Oh, Lady! Lady! 2/1 at New York's Princess Theater, with New York-born actress Constance Binney, 21, music by Jerome Kern, book and lyrics by Guy Bolton and P. G. Wodehouse, 219 perfs.; Sinbad 2/14 at New York's Winter Garden Theater, with Al Jolson, book by Harold Atteridge, music by Sigmund Romberg and others, songs that include "My Mammy" by Brooklyn-born composer Walter Donaldson, 25, lyrics by Joe Young, 20, and Sam M. Lewis, 33, "Rock-a-by Your Baby with a Dixie Melody" by Jean Schwartz, lyrics by Joe Young and Sam M. Lewis, 164 perfs.; The Bing Boys on Broadway 2/16 at London's Alhambra Theatre, with music by Nat D. Ayer, lyrics by Clifford Grey, songs that include "If You Were the Only Girl in the World"; Oh, Look! 3/7 at New York's Vanderbilt Theater, with Alfred Kappeler, New York-born actress Genevieve Tobin, 18, book by James Montgomery, songs that include "I'm Always Chasing Rainbows" by Harry Caroll, who has adapted Chopin's Fantaisie Impromptu in C sharp minor, lyrics by Joseph McCarthy, 68 perfs.; The Rainbow Girl 4/1 at the New Amsterdam Theater, with music by Louis A. Hirsch, book and lyrics by Rennold Wolf from a comedy by Jerome K. Jerome, 160 perfs.; Hitchy-Koo of 1918 (revue) 6/6 at New York's Globe Theater, with comedian Raymond Hitchcock, now 52, Leon Errol, Irene Bordoni, songs that include "You—oo Just You" by New York-born Tin Pan Alley song plugger and composer George Gershwin, 20, lyrics by Irving Caesar, now 23 (the two have met at the offices of Remick, the music publisher), 68 perfs.; The Ziegfeld Follies 6/18 at the New Amsterdam Theater, with Eddie Cantor, Will Rogers, Marilyn Miller, W. C. Fields, music by Louis A. Hirsch, 151 perfs.; The Passing Show 7/25 at the Winter Garden Theater, with Marilyn Miller, Fred and Adele Astaire, Eugene and Willie Howard, Charles Ruggles, Frank Fay, music chiefly by Sigmund Romberg and Jean Schwartz, lyrics chiefly by Harold Atteridge, songs that include "Smiles" by J. Will Callahan and Lee G. Robert, and with June Caprice singing "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles" by John William Kellette, lyrics by Jean Kenbrovin (James Kendis, James Brockman, Nat Vincent), 124 perfs.; Yip Yip Yaphank 8/19 at New York's Century Theater, with a cast of 350 recruits from Camp Upton at Yaphank, Long Island, music and lyrics by Irving Berlin, songs that include "Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning," "Mandy," "Soldier Boy," 32 perfs.; Bran-Pie 8/28 at the Prince of Wales's Theatre, London, with English comedienne Beatrice Lillie (originally Constance Sylvia Munston), 23, Lee White, songs that include "Ja Da" by London songwriter Bob Carleton; Sometime 10/4 at New York's Shubert Theater, with Francine Larrimore, Ed Wynn, Brooklyn-born vaudeville trooper Mae West, 26, singing songs that include "Any Kind of Man" by Rudolf Friml, book and lyrics by Rida Johnson Young, 283 perfs.; Everything 8/22 at New York's Hippodrome, with DeWolf Hopper, book by R. H. Burnside, music by John Philip Sousa and Irving Berlin, lyrics by John H. Golden, 461 perfs.; Mr. Tower of London 10/28 at Nottingham's Coliseum, with Gracie Fields, now 20 (created by impresario Archie Pitts, it will tour the country for 9 years).
Lyricist Junie McCree dies at New York January 13 at age 52; dancer Vernon Castle at Fort Worth, Texas, February 15 at age 30. He returned to his native England 2 years ago, enlisted in the Royal Flying Corps, flew in combat over France, was awarded the Croix de Guerre, began teaching U.S. pilots, and has collided in flight with another plane after maneuvering to save the other pilot's life; Anna Held dies in pain of multiple myeloma (bone cancer) at New York August 13 at age 45.
Popular songs: "Till We Meet Again" by Peoria, Ill.-born composer Richard A. Whiting, 27, and Canadian-born songwriter Richard B. Egan, 28; "K-K-K-Katy" by Canadian-born songwriter Geoffrey O'Hara, 36; "After You're Gone" by Richmond, Va.-born composer Henry Creamer, 39, lyrics by Washington, D.C.-born writer Turner Layton, 24; "Somebody Stole My Gal" by Leo Wood; "Beautiful Ohio" by Robert A. King, lyrics by Ballard MacDonald.
The Original Dixieland Jazz Band tours Europe at year's end, spreading appreciation for the American musical idiom.
Exterminator wins the Kentucky Derby after starting as a late entry 30 to 1 longshot. The chestnut gelding goes on to win a record 34 stakes races.
Robert Murray wins in U.S. men's singles, Molla Burjstedt in women's singles.
The Boston Red Sox win their fourth World Series, defeating the Chicago Cubs 4 games to 2. The "Sawx" will not win another Series until 2004.
Congress enacts a "summer time" daylight saving law that follows the example of Britain and Europe. Enacted March 19, the new law goes into effect March 31 (see 1942).
The Raggedy Ann doll introduced by a New York firm is based on a doll produced to promote sales of the first book of Raggedy Ann stories. Indianapolis Star political cartoonist John Gruelle, 37, found the handmade rag doll in his attic last year and gave it to his tubercular daughter Marcella. They named it Raggedy Ann through a combination of neighbor James Whitcomb Riley's "Little Orphan Annie" of 1885 and Riley's poem "The Raggedy Man." The doll inspired Gruelle to make up stories that he told to entertain Marcella. She died holding the doll in March of 1916 after being vaccinated by a contaminated needle. Gruelle's book will have 25 sequels, and the Raggedy Ann doll will grow to become a $20 million-per-year business.
Lever Brothers introduces Rinso, the world's first granulated laundry soap (see Lux Flakes, 1906; Lux Toilet Form, 1925; detergent, 1946).
Kotex is introduced under the name "Celu-Naps" by the 46-year-old Neenah, Wisconsin, firm Kimberly-Clark Co., whose German-born chemist Ernest (originally Ernst) Mahler, 31, has developed a wood-cellulose wadding for use as a filter in gas masks and as a substitute for cotton to fill the desperate need for dressings and bandages in European field hospitals. When word reached Wisconsin that Red Cross nurses were using celucotton for sanitary napkins, the company began developing the first commercial sanitary napkin; it will be sold as Kotex beginning in 1921 (see Kleenex, 1924; Tampax, 1936). Johnson & Johnson will introduce Modess sanitary napkins as a way to get rid of surplus stocks of bandages.
The fashion house Fendi has its beginnings in a leather and fur shop opened at Rome by Adèle Casagrande (see 1925).
Paris jeweler René Lalique acquires a large factory at Wingen-sur-Moder to make perfume bottles and other art nouveau glassware (see Coty, 1907). Now 58, he has prospered mostly from his perfume bottles (see 1925).
Camel cigarettes are the favorite smoke among U.S. forces in France and enjoy a 40 percent share of the U.S. market as R. J. Reynolds dies at his Reynalda estate outside Winston-Salem, N.C., July 29 at age 68. Camel sales exceed those of American Tobacco's Lucky Strike and Liggett & Myers's Chesterfield.
The Staatliches Bauhaus founded at Weimar by German architect Walter Gropius of 1911 "curtain wall" fame combines two art schools in a revolutionary center that interrelates art, science, technology, and humanism. Artist Lyonel Feininger is among those who accept Gropius's invitation to join the Bauhaus, which will move to a new Gropius-designed building at Dessau in 1925 and continue until 1933 (see 1937).
The Dutch Staats-General appropriates money to drain the Zuider Zee for the creation of fertile dry land. The Dutch will build dams, dykes, sluiceways, watergates, canals, and locks to "impolder" more than 800,000 acres that will increase the territory of the Netherlands by 7 percent.
An earthquake in China's Guangdong (Kwangtung) province February 13 leaves an estimated 10,000 dead.
The North American lobster catch falls to a low point of 33 millon pounds, down from its all-time high of 130 million in 1885 (but see 1990).
Prime Minister David Lloyd George asks British women to help bring in the harvest.
Daylight saving time angers U.S. farmers as it has angered the British (see 1916). Many do not even own clocks or watches, they work from sunup to sundown, their livestock are not about to change their schedules, and dairymen must milk their cows by lantern light in order to get their product to market on the milk train. Congress will repeal the measure August 20 of next year, overriding President Wilson's veto of two bills.
More horses and mules are on U.S. farms than ever before, and farmers plant enormous acreages to oats for the animals, whose numbers will now begin to decline.
Horse-drawn wheat combines used in the Pacific Northwest with 16- and 20-foot cuts are reduced in size to 12-foot cuts for use in Kansas and other prairie states. Machines with eight- and 10-foot cuts will be introduced in the 1920s.
Harry Ferguson receives a British patent for a means of attaching a plow to a tractor (see 1914). Further patents will be issued to him from 1926 through 1929 as he develops hydraulic methods for assuring automatic depth control in tillage.
U.S. Corn Belt acreage sells for two and three times 1915 prices.
British food rationing begins with sugar January 1 and is extended in February to include meat, butter, and margarine. By summer it includes all important foodstuffs except bread and potatoes. Fresh meat is rationed by price, and consumers are required to buy from a particular butcher to avoid deception. Ration books are issued in July and the bacon ration is raised from eight ounces per week to 16 ounces. Other rationed commodities include eight ounces of sugar, five ounces of butter and/or margarine, four ounces of jam, two ounces of tea (weekly).
Britain's milling extraction rate is raised to 92 percent, up from 81 percent last year, with soy and potato flour mixed in to stretch Britain's short wheat supplies. The bread is dark and unattractive.
France rations bread and restricts consumption of butter, cream, and soft cheese. Manufacture and sale of all confectionery is banned.
Average per-capita British consumption of "butchers' meat" falls to 1.53 lb. per week, down from 2.36 in 1914. Average per-capita sugar consumption falls to .93 lb., down from 1.49 in 1914, but calorie intake remains close to 1914 levels and the British eat far better than do their enemies.
U.S. sugar rationing begins July 1, with each citizen allowed eight ounces per week. The U.S. Food Administration orders severe limitations on use of sugar in less essential food products, including soft drinks. As shortages of sugar continue, the Administration prepares to declare the entire soft drink industry nonessential and to order the industry closed down for the duration, but the threat fails to materialize and sugar prices begin to soar (see 1920).
U.S. Food Administrator Herbert Hoover asks for voluntary observance of wheatless Mondays and Wednesdays, meatless Tuesdays, porkless Thursdays and Saturdays, and the use of dark "Victory bread."
U.S. Secretary of Agriculture David F. Houston issues a circular May 2 entitled, "Use Soy-Bean Flour to Save Wheat, Meat, and Fat." It gives recipes for "victory bread," soybean meat loaf, and soybean mush croquettes, but few U.S. farmers produce soybeans, few facilities exist to process the beans, and few stores carry soy products (see agriculture, 1920).
"Hunger does not breed reform; it breeds madness," says President Wilson in an Armistice Day address to Congress.
All food regulations are suspended in the United States in late December but remain in effect in Britain and Europe.
English researcher Edward Mellanby, 34, shows that cod-liver oil contains an agent that cures rickets, giving recognition to a treatment used by North Sea mothers for generations (see McCollum, 1921).
Yale biochemists Lafayette B. Mendel and B. Cohen show that guinea pigs cannot develop vitamin C (ascorbic acid) and fall prey to scurvy even more easily than do humans (see Drummond, 1920; Szent-Györgyi, 1928).
Italian-born pasta maker Emanuele Ronzoni, 48, acquires American-made macaroni machinery and incorporates under his own name. Production manager for the past 12 years of a Brooklyn, N.Y., macaroni factory, Ronzoni has seen the growing demand for U.S.-made pasta products. With the help, first, of his two daughters and, later, of his three sons, he will have so much success supplying the Italian-American market with macaroni, spaghetti, and egg noodles that he will build a large Long Island City, N.Y., factory in 1925 and start selling under the Ronzoni name in 1932.
Americans call sauerkraut "liberty cabbage"; German toast becomes "French toast."
Hobart Manufacturing Co. engineer Herbert L. Johnston receives a patent April 23 for an electric mixing machine for stores and bakeries (see 1897). He will adapt it to kitchen use and will also invent electric food cutters, potato peelers, and potato slicers (thousands of young U.S. men are now peeling potatoes by hand for consumption by "doughboys").
Cadbury's acquires Joseph Fry & Sons, pioneer producer of candy bars, in the first major British candy-company consolidation.
The nickel Hershey Bar that weighed 9/16 oz. in 1908 now weighs 15/16 oz., and the company's gross sales top $35 million, up from little more than $10 million in 1915.
U.S. candy sales escalate in the second half of the year as the Food Administration permits confectioners to use 80 percent of the amount of sugar they used before the war, up from 50 percent last year. Distribution of candy to soldiers in the field has increased men's demand for sweets; more significantly, perhaps, high wages have put more money in people's pockets and there is not that much to spend it on. Industry employs more women than ever before and the chief candy buyers are women.
Jamaica's Red Stripe beer is introduced by Kingston brewers Desnoes and Geddes, whose dark, ale-like brew will give way in 1934 to a light-tasting lager.
Wise Parenthood by Marie Stopes approaches the subject of birth control directly by providing diagrams of the reproductive organs and giving descriptions of various means of contraception. Her 1916 book produced so many letters from women seeking ways to limit fertility that she has quickly written a new one, and she marries aircraft manufacturer Humphrey Vernon Roe, 42, who will support her in her efforts (see 1921).
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