1903: Information and Much More from Answers.com
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1901 1902 1903 1904 1905 1906 1907 1908 1909 1910
U.S. gunboat diplomacy expedites construction of a Panama Canal (see 1902). The Hay-Herran Treaty signed January 22 by Secretary of State John Hay and the foreign minister of Colombia provides for a six-mile strip across the Isthmus of Panama to be leased to the United States for $10 million plus annual payments of $250,000. Many at Washington have favored a route across Nicaragua, but French engineer-promoter Philippe Jean Bunau-Varilla, 42, has made a deal with New York lawyer William (Nelson) Cromwell, 49, of Sullivan and Cromwell, approached Cleveland industrialist Mark Hanna, warned of possible volcanic eruptions in Nicaragua, and persuaded Hanna to favor the route across Panama. Cromwell has made a $60,000 contribution to the Republican party. The treaty wins Senate ratification March 17, and gives $40 million to stockholders in the French canal company, many of whom are now U.S. speculators, while stipulating that Colombia is to give up all rights to sue for any portion of the $40 million and give up all police powers in the contemplated canal zone. When Colombia's Senate votes unanimously August 12 to reject the Hay-Herran Treaty, President Roosevelt calls the Colombians "Dagos," "cat-rabbits," "homicidal corruptionists," and "contemptible little creatures." Bunau-Varilla has his wife stitch up a flag for a new Panamanian republic, meets in room 1162 of New York's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel with a physician who works for the cross-isthmus railroad that is represented by William Cromwell, and provides him with a secret code, a declaration of independence, the flag, the draft of a Panamanian constitution, and transportation back to Panama.
Britain, France, and Italy sign a treaty February 13 agreeing to lift the blockade of Venezuelan ports (see 1902).
U.S. Marines occupy the Dominican Republic to maintain order March 30 and will remain for 2 years (see 1904).
The U.S. cruiser Nashville arrives in Panamanian waters November 3. Panama declares her independence, the railroad refuses to transport Colombian troops sent to put down the provincial revolt, Secretary Hay recognizes Panama's independence November 6, Bunau-Varilla is named Panamanian ambassador to the United States, and on November 18 he signs a treaty on the same general terms as those rejected by Colombia in the Hay-Herran Treaty, granting "rights in perpetuity . . . as if [the United States] were the sovereign" but not granting outright sovereignty. New York financier J. P. Morgan receives $40 million for transfer to the French canal company stockholders, whose names lawyer William Cromwell refuses to divulge to a Senate committee. Cromwell receives $800,000 for his legal services (see 1904).
The Alaska Boundary Tribunal settles a dispute between Canada and the United States over the boundary between British Columbia and the Alaska panhandle, adopting the U.S. position that it should follow the crest of the Boundary Ranges. Mapping of the area will be completed in 1913.
Former Spanish prime minister Práxedes Mateo Sagasta dies at Madrid January 5 at age 77; Filipino revolutionist Apolinario Mabini at Manila May 13 at age 38, having been released from imprisonment on Guam by U.S. authorities a few months earlier.
Serbian conspirators invade the royal palace and assassinate Aleksandr I Obrenovic at his native Belgrade June 10 after he tries to make some unconstitutional changes (see 1900). Dead at age 27, he has reigned since 1889 and ruled personally since 1893, alienating his subjects with his authoritarian policy. The Obrenovic dynasty that has ruled since 1858 ends with his death; his wife, Draga, now 37, is also killed, as are some 20 members of his court. The Serbian assembly votes June 15 to elect Prince Peter Karageorgevic, 59, to succeed Aleksandr, he will reign until 1921 as Peter I, and Serbians are generally happy about the coup d'état, but the new king is a puppet of the conspirators who murdered Aleksandr, and they restore the constitution of 1889 (see Black Hand Society, 1911).
A Macedonian insurrection against Constantinople ends after roving bands of Serbs, Greeks, and Bulgarians have ravaged the country. A Russo-Austrian reform program organizes a gendarmerie with Muslim and Christian constables assigned according to the makeup of local populations; the reformers appoint foreign officers, and they reorganize the Macedonian financial system.
Former British prime minister Robert Cecil, 3rd marquess of Salisbury, dies at his native Hatfield, Hertfordshire, August 22 at age 73.
Failure of the Russians to evacuate Manchuria under last year's Russo-Chinese agreement brings Japanese notes that the Russians contemptuously ignore (see 1904).
A manifesto issued by Czar Nicholas II March 12 concedes reforms, including religious freedom, but resentment against the czar mounts as famine takes a heavy toll. Former U.S. minister to Russia and onetime abolitionist Cassius Marcellus Clay is adjudged insane and dies soon thereafter (July 22) at his Madison County, Ky., estate White Hill at age 92. Russian industrial wages fall beginning in October while food prices rise; half the nation lives in dire poverty, and more than 90 million peasants are treated little better than serfs on lands owned for the most part by absentee landlords (see 1905).
Bolsheviks (extremists) led by V.I. Lenin split off from Mensheviks (moderates) at the London Congress of the Social Democratic party November 17 (see 1900). Revolutionary Leon Trotsky (originally Lev Davidovich Bronstein), 24, escaped from a Siberian prison camp last year and has joined Lenin at London (see 1905).
British forces complete the conquest of northern Nigeria.
Boston authorities indict local politician James Michael Curley, 29, and his brother Thomas on charges of having taken civil service examinations for job applicants (see 1904).
"Everybody is talking about Tammany men growing rich on 'graft,'" says New York political boss George Washington Plunkitt, 61, "but nobody thinks of drawing the distinction between honest graft and dishonest graft. There's an honest graft, and I'm an example of how it works. I would sum up the whole thing by saying, 'I seen my opportunities and I took 'em.'" A long-time opponent of civil service reforms, Plunkitt will leave an estate of between $500,000 and $1.5 million when he dies late in 1924.
Former U.S. senator Henry L. Dawes dies at Pittsfield, Mass., February 5 at age 86, having authored the 1887 legislation that allocated lands to Native Americans.
The U.S. Supreme Court upholds a clause in the Alabama constitution denying blacks the right to vote. The court rules April 27 in the case of Giles v. Harris.
The Souls of Black Folk (Essays and Sketches) by Great Barrington, Mass.-born Atlanta University economics professor W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt) Du Bois, 35, challenges the philosophy of Booker T. Washington by declaring that blacks cannot accept an inferior role in the economic, political, and social life of America and cannot give up the right to vote (see 1905).
Agents of the king of the Belgians Leopold II commit atrocities against natives in the Congo, reports British consul Roger (David) Casement, 39. He has conducted a government investigation of the rubber trade in lands of the Upper Congo owned personally by the king (see 1906; Casement, 1916).
William Cadbury visits Lisbon to investigate the question of alleged slavery in the Portuguese African cocoa islands São Tomé and Principe (see 1901). Portuguese authorities tell him that his suspicions are unfounded and invite Cadbury to see for himself (see 1905).
The Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) is founded at London October 3 by reformers who include Emmeline Pankhurst, now 46, whose husband, Richard, died in 1898 (see 1882). She gathers like-minded women at her house and they begin to work through the Independent Labour party to achieve their goal of voting rights for women (see 1905).
Explorer Francis Younghusband enters Tibet in December (see 1902); accompanied by ponies and mules, his party arrives from Sikkim through Jelap La Pass, 14,398 feet above sea level (see politics, 1904).
Congress votes February 14 to create a Department of Commerce and Labor, its secretary to be a member of the president's cabinet (see 1888; Department of Labor, 1913).
The Oregon state legislature enacts a law February 19 prohibiting employment of women for more than 10 hours per day in any factory or laundry (see Supreme Court decision, 1908).
Steelmaker-philanthropist Abram Stevens Hewitt dies at Ringwood, N.J., January 18 at age 80; the Treasury Department's first Secret Service chief William P. Wood dies almost penniless at a Washington, D.C., soldiers' home March 20 at age 83.
Irish-born labor agitator Mary Harris "Mother" Jones leads child workers in a July demonstration demanding a 55-hour work. A septuagenarian widow who lost all her possessions in the 1871 Chicago fire, Jones received help from the Knights of Labor and later went to work organizing for unions (see 1904).
Agnes Nestor and Elizabeth Christman lead female glove makers out of the International Glove Workers Union and form their own women's local (see 1902); Nestor, now 23, is elected president. Sweatshop workers must accept whatever treatment they are given and have no means of redress. They are penalized not only if their stitches are crooked or they stain goods with machine oil, but also if they talk or laugh while at work. They may be charged 50¢ per week for the use of a machine and electricity, 5¢ per week for the use of a mirror and towel, 5¢ per week for drinking water.
U.S. anthracite coal miners win shorter hours and a 10 percent wage hike from President Roosevelt's Anthracite Coal Commission, but the commission refuses to recognize the United Mine Workers as bargaining agent (see 1902; Colorado, 1913); 1914).
India's Tata iron and steel empire has its beginnings in Orissa, where Dorabji Jamsetji Tata, 44, and his cousin Shapurji Saklatvala, 29, discover a hill of almost solid iron ore. Dorabji's father, Jamsetji, began establishing the country's first large-scale ironworks 2 years ago; together with the family's cotton mills (see 1877), the new Tata Iron and Steel Co. will be the basis of modern industrial development in much of the country (see 1907).
Irish-born Colorado gold miner Thomas F. Walsh, 53, sells his Camp Bird mine at Quary for $5 million and retires to Washington, D.C., where he has had a 60-room Beaux-Arts house built for him at 2020 Massachusetts Avenue, on Dupont Circle. Walsh arrived in America penniless at age 19, discovered gold in the Rocky Mountains, and opened a mine that produced $5,000 worth of gold per day at its peak.
Utah Copper Co. is organized to mine ore at Bingham, Utah. The growing use of electricity and telephones has created a shortage of copper wire, and the Bingham mine provides cheap production from low-grade ore.
American Brass Co. is created by a merger of U.S. copper companies that include the Guggenheim family's American Smelting and Refining, United Copper (controlled by Montana mine operator F. Augustus Heinze, now 34), and Amalgamated Copper (controlled by Standard Oil's H. H. Rogers and Anaconda's Marcus Daly).
Striking miners riot at Cripple Creek, Colorado; troops are sent in November 23 to restore order (see 1904).
Singer Manufacturing sells 1.35 million sewing machines, up from 1 million in 1889 (see 1913).
The New York Stock Exchange building is completed at 8 Broad Street between Wall Street and Exchange Plaza to Roman temple designs by architect George B. Post. The new exchange opens April 23 with an enunciator board for paging brokers and 500 telephones at the sides of the trading floor to connect traders with their offices.
Speculator Bernard M. Baruch leaves A. A. Housman and Co. to establish a firm under his own name (see 1891). Now 33, Baruch will add to his fortune in the next decade by buying and selling raw materials—copper, gold, iron, tungsten, zinc, rubber, and sulfur—in America and abroad, often in alliance with the Guggenheim brothers. In 1905 he will buy the Hobcaw Barony estate near his native Camden, S.C. (see politics, 1916).
Wall Street's Dow Jones Industrial Average ends the year at 49.11, down from 62.49 at the end of 1902.
National Cash Register (NCR) Co. president J. H. Patterson gives his executive Thomas John Watson, 29, a budget of $1 million to start a company that will pose as a rival to NCR but will actually take control of the U.S. used cash-register business (see 1884). Watson's Cash Register and Second Hand Exchange opens in New York's 14th Street, undersells competitors, and drives them out of business or forces them to sell out. Watson will set up similar operations in Philadelphia and Chicago (see THINK, 1908).
A new Wanamaker Department Store opens at New York to supplement the former A. T. Stewart store of 1862 that Wanamaker has operated since 1896. Designed by Chicago's Daniel H. Burnham and Co., the enormous 15-story department store fills the block between Broadway and Fourth Avenue from 9th to 10th Streets and has no inner courtyards.
Bergdorf Goodman has its beginnings in a New York tailoring firm for affluent women founded by Rochester, N.Y.-born tailor Edwin Goodman, 28, who buys out his elderly Alsatian-born employer for $15,000, moves from a private house in 19th Street to a building in West 32nd Street, and will move in 1914 to 616 Fifth Avenue (see 1928).
Texaco (the Texas Company) brings in its first oil well in January as prospectors make a major strike at Sour Lake, Texas (see 1902; SoCal's Bahrain strike, 1932).
Oil gushes out of a new well on Osage Nation land in Oklahoma Indian Territory. The town of Bartlesville springs up near Jake Bartle's trading post (see 1905; Phillips Petroleum, 1917).
The first successful gas turbine goes on display at Paris: air supplied by a three-cylinder, multistage reciprocating compressor is burned with liquid fuel in a combustion chamber, water is injected to cool the resulting gases, which are then fed to an impulse turbine. Thermal efficiency is only about 3 percent, but the system proves the feasibility of a practical gas-turbine engine.
A new bottle-blowing machine permits volume production of electric light bulbs, whose high cost has discouraged widespread use of electric lighting (see Edison, 1879; Langmuir, 1912).
The Elkins Act passed by Congress February 19 strengthens the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887. The new law forbids railroads to deviate from published rate schedules and holds railroad officials personally liable in cases of rebating (see Hepburn Act, 1906).
The New York, New Haven, and Hartford begins a campaign to take over trolley and steamship lines and monopolize New England transportation in violation of the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887, the Sherman Act of 1890, and the laws of Massachusetts (see 1893). New Haven director J. P. Morgan installs Charles S. (Sanger) Mellen, 51, as president and helps him expand the road's interests (see Boston & Maine, 1909).
A fire in the 3-year-old Paris Métro's Couronnes station takes 84 lives. Passengers waiting on the platform demanding refunds for their 3-sou tickets wait too long and are asphyxiated, prompting Parisians to call their subway the Nécropolitain.
Construction begins in March on a 1,200-mile railroad from Africa's west coast through the center of Angola into the copper-rich Katanga district. Started by Robert Williams on a concession from Portugal's queen Marie-Amélie, the Benguela Railroad will reach 300 miles inland by 1913 but will not reach the copper mines until 1931.
The Trans-Siberian Railway is completed with the exception of a 100-mile stretch along the mountainous shores of Lake Baikal (see 1900). Built in 12 years, the new rail line will bring hundreds of thousands of settlers into the black-soil wheat-growing areas of central Asia (see 1904).
A Cuban trunk railroad line engineered by Grenville M. Dodge opens between Santa Clara and Santiago de Cuba.
Canada's 51-year-old Grand Trunk Railway organizes the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway to compete with the Canadian Pacific (but see 1919).
A Packard leaves San Francisco for New York May 23 and arrives after 52 days in the first successful transcontinental trip by a motorcar under its own power, but the poor quality of roads discourages sales of motorcars in the United States (see New York to Seattle race, 1909).
Two-thirds of all U.S. motorcars sell at prices below $1,375, but most are too small, too light, and too unreliable to present serious competition to the horse and buggy, much less the railroad.
Ford Motor Company is incorporated June 16 with $28,000 raised by 12 stockholders who include John F. Dodge, 37, and his brother Horace E., 36 (see Oldfield, 1902). Henry Ford receives 225 shares in exchange for his design and 17 patents on its mechanism. Production begins in a converted wagon factory on Detroit's Mack Avenue before moving to suburban Highland Park, and the $750 Model A Ford introduced by the company July 23 has a two-cylinder, eight-horsepower, chain-drive engine mounted under its seat. The half-ton vehicle has a 72-inch wheelbase, is 99 inches in length overall, and its steering wheel is on the right. In all, 658 will be sold by next March, and the company will produce 1,700 motorcars its first year (see Model T, 1908).
Ford Motor refuses to join the new Association of Licensed Automobile Manufacturers formed to license rights to the 1895 Selden patent at a royalty of 1.25 percent of the retail price of each automobile sold (see 1899). The Association will soon be receiving a royalty on nearly every other U.S.-made motorcar but not on Fords (see 1911).
The Harley-Davidson motorcycle is introduced by Milwaukee draftsman William Harley, 21, and patternmaker Arthur Davidson, 20, who have built the racer in a 10-by-15-foot wooden shack, using an engine with a 3⅛-inch bore and a 3½-inch stroke. They soon recruit Davidson's mechanic brother Walter, but the new firm produces only three machines this year and will make three next year.
Massachusetts issues the first true automobile license plates September 1; all states will soon follow its example.
New York's Williamsburg Bridge opens to traffic December 19, providing a second link between Brooklyn and New York to supplement the 20-year-old Brooklyn Bridge. The new $24.1 million 488-meter span is the first major suspension bridge with steel towers instead of masonry (see Queensboro, Manhattan bridges, 1909).
Astronomer and aviation pioneer Samuel P. Langley sends his assistant Charles M. Manly up in the first manned heavier-than-air craft December 8 (see 1896). Manly has designed a five-cylinder air-cooled gasoline engine to power the flying machine, but it snags upon launching from a catapult and crashes into the Potomac River at Washington, D.C., December 8.
The Wright brothers make the first sustained manned flights in a controlled gasoline-powered heavier-than-air craft December 17. Dayton, Ohio, bicycle mechanics Wilbur and Orville Wright, 36 and 32, respectively, have only high school educations and little scientific background, but they have worked for 5 years and spent $1,200 of their own money to build box kites and wind tunnels that have helped them solve aeronautical problems of balance, control, and lift that have defied the late Otto Lillienthal and others, patiently addressing each problem and taking photographs of their efforts to document each step. Engineer Octave Chanute's 1894 book Progress of Flying Machines has inspired them, as have his practical suggestions on visits to their camp on North Carolina's Outer Banks near Kill Devil Hill at Kitty Hawk, a site selected for its favorable wind currents. Using wings whose curvature they have designed to create lift and wires to warp the wings for control, they have developed their wood-and-canvas Flyer I from gliders they have flown, equipping it with a 200-pound chain-drive, four-cylinder, 12-horsepower reciprocating motorcycle engine whose cast aluminum engine block gives it a high strength-to-weight ratio. The pilot lies flat on the wing and controls wing-warp and rudder by means of a cradle around his waist. The plane weighs 700 pounds including the weight of the pilot. It has two propellers that rotate in opposite directions to prevent torque that would send the craft into a roll, but it has no wheels and must be launched from a greased wooden slide made of two-by-fours. Wilbur's 120-foot journey December 14 lasted only 12 seconds before he made a pancake landing. It has taken 3 days to make repairs, Orville makes the first flight on December 17, a photographer records his takeoff, and on their fourth effort Wilbur achieves a 59-second flight of 852 feet at a 15-foot altitude, but the brothers have been obsessively secretive to prevent anyone stealing their ideas before they can get patent protection (the Smithsonian will claim for decades that Samuel P. Langley's design has prior claim), so while a number of newsmen witness the historic event only three U.S. newspapers report it (see 1905).
German aviation pioneer Karl Jatho, 30, claims that he made a successful flight August 5, more than 4 months before the Wright brothers. Jatho built a gasoline-powered biplane in 1899 and will establish an aircraft works at Hanover in 1913.
Inventor Thomas L. Wilson devises the first safe, practical oxyacetylene torch for welding metals (see 1895; Union Carbide, 1892; Claude, 1897). It uses a tiny amount of acetylene gas in a mixture that is 99.5 percent pure oxygen to produce a flame of about 6,476° F. (3,480° C.) and will increase demand for acetylene and for oxygen (see 1907; Union Carbide, 1911).
The Springfield Rifle developed at the 108-year-old U.S. arsenal at Springfield, Mass., will be called the M1903 from the marking on its receiver ring; it will become general issue in the U.S. Army and some foreign armies (see 1926).
Gatling gun inventor Richard J. Gatling dies at New York February 26 at age 84; paper bag machine inventor Luther C. Crowell at his native West Dennis, Mass., September 16 at age 63, having worked at New York since 1879 for R. Hoe & Co.; mechanical engineer Robert H. Thurston dies at Ithaca, N.Y., October 25 at age 64.
"Secondary Radiation from Gases Subject to X-Rays" by Lancashire-born physicist Charles G. (Glover) Barkla, 26, appears in Philosophical Magazine and begins to establish Barkla's reputation. X-ray discoverer Wilhelm Roentgen observed the phenomenon of secondary radiation, produced when a substance is exposed to primary radiation; Barkla's studies have provided support to the theory that the atoms of different substances are different systems of similar corpuscles, the number of which in the atom is proportional to its "atomic weight," and his work lays the basis for the theory that X-rays are a form of electromagnetic radiation (see 1904).
Physicist-mathematician Sir George Gabriel Stokes dies at Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, February 1 at age 83 (a unit of kinematic viscosity in the centimeter-gram-second system will be named the stoke [in Britain, the stokes] after him in 1928; mathematical physicist J. Willard Gibbs dies at his native New Haven, Conn., April 28 at age 64.
The Scripps Institute of Oceanography has its beginnings in the Marine Biological Association of San Diego, founded by publisher E. W. Scripps, now 49, and his London-born half sister Ellen Browning Scripps, 66, who moved to California in 1891 and built a house at La Jolla 6 years later.
Marie Curie receives the Nobel Prize December 10 together with her husband, Pierre (see 1898). She is the first woman Nobelist (see 1911).
French bacteriologist Charles-Jules-Henri Nicolle, 37, suggests that typhus may transmitted by something in the clothing. He was appointed director last year of a Tunis outpost of the Institut Pasteur and has noticed that while the disease is highly contagious outside the hospital it is not transmitted after patients are bathed and their clothing laundered (see 1909).
The electrocardiograph pioneered by Java-born Dutch physiologist Willem Einthoven, 43, at Leyden will expand knowledge of the heart's functioning and be used routinely to measure and record the changes of electrical potential caused by contractions of the heart muscles of patients with potential or actual heart disease. Einthoven's string galvanometer will be developed into a more sophisticated instrument.
German surgeon Georg Clems Perthes, 34, makes the first observations that X-rays can inhibit carcinomas and other cancerous growths (see Roentgen, 1895).
Polish surgeon Johannes von Mikulicz-Radecki pioneers colon cancer surgery, becoming the first to remove a malignant portion of a patient's large intestine (see 1885). Now 53 and a professor at the University of Breslau since 1890, he describes a symmetrical swelling of the lacrimal (tear) glands and salivary glands caused by an overgrowth of lymph tissue (it will be called Mikulicz' disease).
Spanish histologist Santiago Ramón y Cajal, 51, at the University of Madrid establishes the neuron, or nerve cell, as the basic unit of the nervous system. By developing stains superior to those devised by Camillo Golgi in 1873, he has been able to differentiate neurons from other cells and to trace the structure and connections of nervous tissues in the brain, sensory centers, and spinal cords of embryos and young animals.
Steel magnate Henry Phipps establishes the Phipps Institute for the Study, Treatment, and Prevention of Tuberculosis at Philadelphia (see 1905). John D. Rockefeller of Standard Oil contributes $7 million to fight tuberculosis.
"Typhoid Mary" gets her name as New York has an outbreak of typhoid fever, with 1,300 cases reported. City medical inspector Sara Josephine Baker helps trace the epidemic to one Mary Mallon, an Irish-born carrier of the disease (but not a victim), who has taken jobs that involve handling food. By all accounts an excellent cook, Typhoid Mary refuses to stop (see 1907).
Sara Josephine Baker is appointed assistant health commissioner of New York (see 1901). Her all-male staff resigns en masse, but Baker will license midwives; standardize the inspection of school children for contagious diseases; teach mothers hygiene, proper ventilation, and nutrition; establish "milk stations" where mothers can obtain free pasteurized milk; distribute baby formula of lime water and milk sugar that any woman can make at home; and start a "Little Mothers League" that teaches infant care to children whose mothers leave them in charge of their siblings. Baker's efforts will cut the death rate in New York's slums from 1,500 per week to 300 within 15 years, enabling the city to claim the lowest infant mortality rate of any in the Western world (see 1916).
Martha Jane "Calamity Jane" Burke dies in poverty somewhere in South Dakota August 1 at age 51 (approximate) and is buried beside Wild Bill Hickok at Deadwood.
Pope Leo XIII dies at Rome July 20 at age 93 after a 25-year pontificate in which he has condemned liberalism but pushed for the abolition of African slavery. He is succeeded by Venice's Treviso-born patriarch, Giuseppe Melchiore Cardinal Sarto, 68, who will reign until 1914 as Pope Pius X.
The "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" purport to be a verbatim record of 24 secret meetings held at an 1897 Zionist congress in Basel. Published in the Russian newspaper Znamya at St. Petersburg from August 26 to September 7, the anti-Semitic articles will be used to "prove" an international conspiracy and will lead to massacres of Jews (see 1904), even after the Times of London shows in 1921 that the "protocols" were plagiarized from a veiled attack on Napoleon III published in 1864, and even after a Russian historian reveals that they were fabricated by the czar's secret police (see Ford, 1919).
The General Education Board incorporated January 12 will become the world's most powerful educational foundation. John D. Rockefeller has endowed the entity with $150 million to promote education.
The University of Puerto Rico opens at Rio Piedras. Classes in Puerto Rican elementary and secondary schools will be taught in English until 1935.
Guglielmo Marconi sends a wireless greeting January 19 from President Roosevelt to Britain's King Edward VII (see 1901). Marconi has built four 250-foot wooden towers anchored in cement at South Wellfleet, Mass., he uses electrical waves generated by a three-foot spark gap rotor, an operator working a huge key transmits the message at the rate of 17 words per minute, and while Marconi has arranged for a station at Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, to relay the message, the signal is so powerful that the station 3,000 miles away at Poldhu in Cornwall is able to pick it up direct (see 1907).
Engineer Valdemar Poulsen obtains an English patent on the first device for generating continuous radio waves (see telegraphone, 1900). He has taken the "singing arc" devised by an English inventor to generate audio waves and altered it to generate radio waves, using a copper cathode as the positive terminal and a carbon anode as the negative terminal, enclosing them in an atmosphere of hydrocarbon gas and a transverse magnetic field; modifications will permit long-wave radio broadcasting by 1920.
Germany's Telefunken electronic manufacturer is created through a partnership between the 20-year-old Deutsche Edison Gesellschaft and the 56-year-old Siemens und Halske. Telefunken will become a major radio manufacturer.
The Pacific Cable links San Francisco with Honolulu January 1 and Manila July 4. A message sent by President Roosevelt from San Francisco to Manila is relayed around the world and returned in 12 minutes.
Telegraphy pioneer Jean-(Maurice)-Emile Baudot dies at Sceaux outside Paris March 28 at age 57. His binary telegraphic alphabet will largely supplant the Morse Code in this century except for radio communications (later versions will generally use seven or eight on/off signals, with groups of seven permitting transmission of 128 characters). Baudot's name will survive in the word baud, a measurement of the number per second of symbols, or discrete units of information, expressed by phase and amplitude modification (see modem, 1960).
Pulitzer Prizes have their beginning in an agreement signed by New York World publisher Joseph Pulitzer April 10 to endow a school of journalism at Columbia University. Pulitzer has made a fortune since acquiring the World in 1883 and specifies that $500,000 of his $2 million gift shall be allotted for "prizes or scholarships for the encouragement of public service, public morale, American literature, and the advancement of education."
The Indianapolis Star begins publication June 6 at 1¢ per copy. Muncie, Ind., traction magnate George McCulloch has made a fortune in interurban trolley cars, paid a balloonist $650 to drop red stars on Indianapolis in early June, and runs a greeting from President Roosevelt on the front page of the 12-page first edition. Costs of running the paper will deplete McCulloch's wealth, and he will sell it next year to Richmond, Ind., banker and tinplate king Daniel G. Reid, who has made a fortune in tin plating, railroads, and steel.
The Knight newspaper chain that will merge with the Ridder chain in 1974 has its beginnings at Akron, Ohio, where local lawyer Charles L. Knight buys a part interest in the Akron Beacon Journal. By 1974 there will be 16 Knight newspapers up and down the U.S. East Coast (see Ridder, 1892).
Rocky Mountain News founder William N. Byers dies at Denver March 25 at age 72; journalist William Demarest Lloyd at Chicago September 28 at age 56 while working on a campaign for public ownership of the city's street railways.
The Spanish newspaper ABC has its beginnings in a weekly founded by Seville-born journalist Torcuato Luca de Tena y Alvarez-Ossorio, 42, who will publish on a daily basis beginning June 1, 1905, with a three-column format, emphasizing pictures and carrying some news (along with classified advertising) on its front page.
The London Daily Mirror begins publication November 2. Daily Mail publisher Alfred C. W. Harmsworth and his brother Harold hire a woman editor, address the tabloid to women, but will make it a general-interest "picture newspaper" next year to pick up lagging sales. It will attain a circulation of more than a million by 1909 and spawn two competitors. A. C. Harmsworth will be made a baronet (Viscount Northcliffe) in 1905, his brother Harold Viscount Rothermere.
Nonfiction: The Story of My Life by Helen Keller, now 23; Principia Ethica by London-born Cambridge philosopher G. E. (George Edward) Moore, 29, whose article "The Nature of Judgment" appeared in a journal 4 years ago and whose article "The Refutation of Idealism" is published in a scholarly journal this year; Pure Sociology by Lester F. Ward; Animal Education by South Carolina-born University of Chicago psychology instructor John Broadus Watson, 25; A History of Egypt from the Earliest Times to the Persian Conquest by Illinois-born archaeologist-historian James Henry Breasted, 40, who heads a University of Chicago expedition to Egypt and the Sudan that will continue until 1907; Mankind in the Making by H. G. Wells, who joins the Fabian Society but will soon start to criticize its methods.
Historian William Lecky dies at London October 22 at age 65; philosopher Francis Ellingwood Abbot commits suicide October 23 at age 66 by taking poison at his late wife's grave; Nobel historian Theodor Mommsen dies at Charlottenburg, near Berlin, November 1 at age 85; philosopher-social scientist Herbert Spencer at Brighton, Sussex, December 8 at age 83.
Fiction: The Way of All Flesh by the late Samuel Butler; The Ambassadors by Henry James; The Riddle of the Sands by Anglo-Irish Boer War veteran (Robert) Erskine Childers, 33, whose story of an imaginary German raid on England will be a classic for small boat enthusiasts (Childers will devote himself beginning in 1908 to agitating for full dominion status for Ireland); The Pit: The Epic of the Wheat by the late Frank Norris, whose work exposes price rigging by wheat speculators on the Chicago Board of Trade. Illustrations are by German-born Saturday Evening Post cover illustrator J. C. (Joseph Christian) Leyendecker, 29; Norris had planned to write a trilogy whose third volume (The Wolf) would have been an account of U.S. wheat relieving a European famine, but his "epic" was never completed; The Call of the Wild by Jack London; The People of the Abyss by Jack London, who has lived in the London slums; The Tremendous Adventures of Major Brown (short stories) by G. K. Chesterton.
The prix Goncourt is awarded for the first time from a fund established in 1895 by the late French writer Edmond de Goncourt, who died the following year. His Académie Goncourt will honor the best French novel published each year, and the prix will be France's most prestigious literary award (see Booker Prize, 1968).
Novelist George Gissing dies of pneumonia at Saint-Jean de Luz, France, December 28 at age 46, having suffered for years from emphysema.
Juvenile: Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm by Kate Douglas Wiggin, now 47 (her book is actually an adult bestseller); The Tailor of Gloucester and The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin by Beatrix Potter; Five Little Peppers at School by Margaret Sidney (Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop); The Story of King Arthur and His Knights by Howard Pyle.
Painting: The Old Guitarist, La Celestina, La Vie, Blind Man's Meal, Old Jew and a Boy, Sick Child, and The Tragedy by Pablo Picasso; Waterloo Bridge in the Mist by Claude Monet; Bridge at Bruges by Camille Pissarro; Child with Puppet by Henri Rousseau; Woman in a Blue Hat by Pierre Bonnard; Jurisprudence (mural) and Hope I by Gustav Klimt; Mrs. Fiske Warren (Gretchen Osgood) and Her Daughter Rachel by John Singer Sargent. Paul Gauguin dies of syphilis in the Marquesas Islands May 18 at age 54; James A. McNeill Whistler at London July 17 at age 69; John Calcott Horsley of 1843 Christmas card fame at London October 18 at age 86; Camille Pissarro of blood poisoning at Le Havre November 13 at age 73.
Britain creates the National Art Collections Fund to prevent works of art from leaving the country.
Steuben Glass Works is founded at Corning, N.Y., by English-born designer Frederick Carder, 40, and a partner. Carder specializes initially in colorful art nouveau glass, and his lustrous Aurene technique will produce products that rival in their iridescent color the Favrile designs of Louis Comfort Tiffany, now 55 (see 1878). Carder will head the firm until 1933 and not retire until he is 96 (see 1933).
Theater: The Hour-Glass by W. B. Yeats and Lady Gregory 3/14 at Dublin's Moleworth Hall; The King's Threshold by Yeats and Lady Gregory 3/14 at Dublin's Moleworth Hall; Saturday Night (La noche del sábado) by Jacinto Benavente 3/17 at Madrid's Teatro Español; Little Mary by James M. Barrie 9/24 at Wyndham's Theatre, London, with Nina Boucicault, Gerald du Maurier, 207 perfs.; In the Shadow of the Glen by Irish playwright John Millington Synge, 32, 10/8 at Moleworth Hall; Rose Bernd by Gerhart Hauptmann 10/31 at Berlin's Deutsches Theater; The County Chairman by George Ade 11/24 at Wallack's Theater, New York, 222 perfs.; Quality Street by James M. Barrie 11/28 at London's Vaudeville Theatre, with Charles Daly, Ellaline Terriss, Irene Rooke, Henrietta Watson, 457 perfs; Sweet Kitty Bellairs by David Belasco (who has adapted Agnes Castle's The Bath Comedy) 12/9 at New York's Belasco Theater, with Indiana-born actor James Carew, 27, Wheeling, W. Va.-born actress Henrietta Crosman, 42, Louisville, Ky.-born ingénu Shelly Hull, 18, 412 perfs.; Merely Mary Ann by Israel Zangwill 12/28 at New York's Garden Theater (to Criterion Theater 2/15/1904, to Garrick Theater 4/4/1904), with Eleanor Robson, San Francisco-born ingénue Laura Hope Crews, 24, 148 perfs.; Glad of It by Clyde Fitch 12/28 at New York's Savoy Theater, with John Barrymore, 21, 32 perfs. A nephew of actor John Drew, Barrymore is the younger brother of Lionel, 25, and Ethel, 24, who have been on the stage since ages 6 and 14 respectively. "The Great Profile" will become a matinee idol and gain fame for his performance of Hamlet beginning in 1924.
Film: Edwin S. (Stratton) Porter's The Great Train Robbery is the first motion picture to tell a complete story (see 1896). Produced by Edison Studios and photographed at the Paterson, N.J., freight yards of the Delaware & Lackawanna Railroad, the 800-foot-long, 12-minute epic opens in October and establishes a pattern of suspense drama that future moviemakers will follow; the American Mutoscope & Bioscope Co. has opened Kit Carson 3 weeks earlier (September 21) and it runs for 21 minutes with 11 scenes depicting the late explorer-Indian fighter. (A reel of 35-millimeter film holds roughly 1,000 feet and runs for about 10 minutes, so a 21-minute film is a "two-reeler.")
Opera: L'Etranger (The Stranger) 1/7 at the Théâtre de la Monnaie, Brussels, with music by Vincent d'Indy; Adelina Patti begins her final American tour 11/4 at New York's Carnegie Hall; Tiefland (The Lowlands) 11/15 at Prague's Neues Deutsches Theater, with music by German composer Eugen d'Albert, 39.
Enrico Caruso makes his New York debut November 21, singing Rigoletto at the 20-year-old Metropolitan Opera House. The Italian tenor has made a worldwide reputation since his debut at Milan's Teatro alla Scala in 1899, will be the Met's leading tenor for years, and will have a repertoire of more than 40 operatic roles (see 1902; Victrola, 1906).
Composer Hugo Wolf dies in a Vienna mental asylum February 22 at age 42; soprano Sibyl Sanderson at Pais May 15 at age 37; mezzo-soprano Rosine Stoltz at Paris July 28 at age 97.
Cantata: "Hiawatha" by English composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, 28, 11/16 at Washington, D.C.
The encyclical Inter Solicitudines On Sacred Music issued by Pope Pius X November 22 bans all church music except for Gregorian chants. The new pope has regarded music as a distraction and by imposing limitations he ends employment of castrati who have performed for centuries.
First performances: Transfigured Night (Verklärte Nacht) sextet by Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg, 28, at Vienna. The work is based on the Richard Dehmel poem Weih und die Welt.
Stage musicals: The Wizard of Oz 1/21 at New York's new Majestic Theater (put up by publisher William Randolph Hearst at 5 Columbus Circle), with Fred Stone and Dave Montgomery in a musical extravaganza based on the L. Frank Baum novel of 1900, 293 perfs.; Mr. Bluebeard 1/21 at New York's Knickerbocker Theater, with New York-born veteran vaudeville soft-shoe dancer and comedian Edwin Fitzgerald "Eddie" Foy, 46, music by Frederick Solomon and C. Herbert Kerr, lyrics by J. Cheever Goodwin, 134 perfs.; Nancy Brown 2/16 at New York's Bijou Theater, with Marie Cahill, music by Henry K. Hadley, lyrics by George H. Broadhurst and Frederic Ranken, songs that include "Navajo" by Chicago-born composer Egbert (Anson) Van Alstyne, 20, lyrics by Harry H. Williams, 104 perfs.; In Dahomey 2/18 at the New York Theater, with an all-black 15-member cast, music by Marion Cook, lyrics by poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, 53 perfs.; The School Girl 5/9 at London's Prince of Wales Theatre, with music by Leslie Stuart, songs that include "One of the Boys" by Howard Talbot, 333 perfs.; Whoop-Dee-Doo 9/24 at the Weber & Fields Music Hall, with Weber and Fields, music by W. T. Francis, book and lyrics by Edgar Smith, 151 perfs.; Babette 11/16 at the Broadway Theater, with Fritzi Scheff, now 21, music by Victor Herbert, book and lyrics by Harry B. Smith, 59 perfs.; Babes in Toyland 10/13 at the Majestic Theater, with music by Victor Herbert, lyrics by Glenn MacDonough, songs that include the "March of the Toys" and the title song (lyrics by Glen MacDonough), 192 perfs.; The Dutchess of Dantzic 10/17 at London's Lyric Theatre, with music by Ivan Caryll, 115 perfs.; The Orchid 10/28 at London's newly rebuilt Gaiety Theater, with Gertie Millar, dancer Gabrielle Ray, 20, music by Ivan Caryll, 559 perfs.; The Office Boy 11/2 at New York's Victoria Theater, with Eva Tanguay, Missouri-born actor Sidney Toler, 29, music by Ludwig Englander, book by Harry B. Smith, 66 perfs.; The Girl from Kay's 11/2 at the Herald Square Theater, with a cast that includes Harry Davenport, Hartford, Conn.-born actor Winchell Smith, 32, Leonore Harris, music by Ivan Caryll, additional music and lyrics by California-born writer-composer-lyricist Clare Kummer, 31, 223 perfs.
Fire engulfs Chicago's Iroquois Theater December 30. Blazing balls of cotton fall on the stage during a matinee performance of the musical Mr. Bluebeard, the scenery catches fire, the musicians stop playing, entertainer Eddie Foy appears in front of the footlights and makes heroic efforts to calm the crowd, the musicians resume, but patrons rush for the exits and 602 die in the panic or from injuries suffered. The tragedy will lead to passage of safety laws for theaters but not for restaurants and nightclubs (see everyday life [Cocoanut Grove fire], 1942).
Waltz: "Gold and Silver Waltz" by Franz Lehár, who wrote it for an elaborate ball given last year by the Princess Metternich.
Popular songs: "Dear Old Girl" by Theodore F. Morse, lyrics by Richard and Henry Buck; "Bedelia" by Jean Schwartz, lyrics by William Jerome; "Ida, Sweet as Apple Cider" by U.S. minstrel Eddie Leonard; "(You're the Flower of My Heart) Sweet Adeline" by Somerville, Mass.-born composer Henry W. Armstrong, 24, lyrics by Richard H. Gerard (R. G. Husch), 27, whose words, inspired by the farewell tour of Italian diva Adelina Patti, will be sung by generations of barbershop quartets (the song will be used as a campaign theme for Boston mayoralty candidate John W. "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald); "Waltzing Matilda" by Australian Marie Cowan, who has adapted the 1818 Scottish song "Thou Bonny Wood of Craigie Lee" by James Barr, lyrics by Sydney lawyer-poet A. B. "Banjo" Paterson, now 39, who has adapted an Australian bush ballad (Matilda is Aussie slang for a knapsack; a swagman is a worker).
New York's "Tin Pan Alley" gets its name from songwriter-publisher Harry Von Tilzer. He receives a visit from songwriter-journalist Monroe H. Rosenfeld, who has earned little from his 1897 song "Take Back Your Gold" and other hits. Von Tilzer's piano has a peculiarly muffled tone and he explains that since other tenants of the building at Broadway and 28th Street have demanded that piano players make less noise, he has used newspapers to reduce volume. Rosenfeld says, "It sounds like a tin pan," Von Tilzer replies, "Yes, I guess this is tin pan alley," and Rosenfeld repeats the phrase in his New York Herald music columns.
Five Kalamazoo, Mich., businessmen approach mandolin and guitar maker Orville Gibson and offer to finance construction of a factory (see 1896). Gibson accepts. The Gibson Mandolin-Guitar Manufacturing Co. will be incorporated in 1904, and Gibson will remain until 1909 as a consultant, training workers in his art, but he will move back to his native New York in 1909 and die there in 1918 (see Loar, 1919).
H. L. Doherty wins in men's singles at Wimbledon, D. K. (Mrs. Dorothea Katherine) (née Lambert) Douglass, 30, in women's singles; Doherty wins in U.S. singles, the first non-American champion, Elizabeth Moore wins in women's singles.
The Tour de France organized as a publicity stunt by sports journal editor Henri Desgranges of L'Auto is a bicycle race that begins July 1 with 60 contestants trying to cover 2,388 kilometers (about 1,400 miles) and win a prize of 20,000 francs. Now 38, Desgranges is himself a onetime champion cyclist, he boosts circulation and creates interest by running stories on individuals involved, and when the winner rides into Paris July 19 some 20,000 spectators have paid to watch the finish; a course through the Pyrenése will be added in 1910, a course through the Alps in 1911, and before being scaled back to between 3,500 and 4,000 the Tour will have 24 stages and cover 5,564 kilometers.
Ban Johnson's 2-year-old American League gains recognition under baseball's new National Agreement. Johnson sells Tammany Hall politician Joseph Gordon the New York franchise for $18,000. Gordon awards local district leader Thomas McAvoy a $200,000 contract to excavate a site in northern Manhattan and a $75,000 contract to build a stadium. McAvoy puts up Hilltop Park, a flimsy wooden stadium with 16,000 seats (1,500 of them go for 25¢ each). The New York Highlanders have moved from Baltimore and play their opening game April 3 before a capacity crowd, everyone going through the turnstile has received an American flag, and the Highlanders win, defeating the Washington Senators 8 to 6 (see Yankees, 1915). The American League's annual pennant winner is to compete in World Series playoffs with the top team of the 27-year-old National League under the new National Agreement.
Christy Mathewson pitches his first full season for the New York Giants, winning 30 games with a 267-strikeout record that will stand for 50 years (see 1900). He will be nicknamed "Big Six" after a famous fire engine and will have a lifetime record of 373 wins, 187 losses, and 2,499 strikeouts.
The first World Series baseball playoffs pit the American League's Boston team against the National League's Pittsburgh team. Boston wins 5 games to 3 in a best-of-nine series.
The U.S. yacht Reliance defends the America's Cup by defeating Sir Thomas Lipton's Shamrock III 3 to 0. Rigged by Nat Herreshoff, the Reliance has been built by a syndicate headed by J. P. Morgan.
The Teddy Bear created last year by Morris Michtom and his wife , Rose, goes on sale at New York in February and creates a sensation, but it encounters a challenge from the German firm Steiff Co., founded in 1880 at Giengen in Swabia by crippled seamstress Margarete Steiff. Her nephew Richard claims to have designed a plush bear last year with jointed limbs and a movable head. He shows it at the Leipzig Fair with little success, but a U.S. buyer sees the bear on the last day of the fair and orders 3,000. The wholesale firm Butler Brothers takes Michtom's entire output of Teddy Bears; Butler will call itself Ideal Novelty and Toy beginning in 1938, shorten it later to Ideal Toy, and become the world's largest manufacturer of dolls.
The 2-year-old Commonwealth of Australia ends its ban on daytime beach bathing. Lifesaving clubs spring up, and by the end of the century an estimated one in three Australians will live within 15 minutes of a beach.
The 17-year-old Salem, Mass., firm Parker Brothers obtains U.S. rights to the table tennis game Ping Pong from a British company and opens branch offices at New York and London. The British company has acquired table tennis, originally a child's game played with battledores and a jacketed ball, and substituted a celluloid ball to create Ping Pong, which soon becomes a sensational success on both sides of the Atlantic (see Monopoly, 1935).
Safety razor inventor King C. Gillette goes $12,000 into debt but escapes bankruptcy (see 1901). Boston investor John Joyce advances funds to permit marketing of the safety razor and Gillette makes his first sale, a lot of 51 razors and 168 blades (see 1904).
Justice of the peace and saloon keeper "Judge" Roy Bean dies at Langtry, Texas, March 16 at age 77 (approximate), having once reportedly fined a dead man $40 for carrying a concealed weapon and pocketing the proceeds; blue jeans and overalls maker Levi Strauss dies a bachelor at San Francisco September 26 at age 73, leaving an estate of more than $5 million, much of which is bequeathed to charities.
Quick-tempered Missouri-born bank and train robber Kid Curry (Harvey Logan) escapes from prison in June, robs a train at Parachute, Colo., July 7, is wounded in a shootout with a pursuing posse, and either shoots himself at age 38 (as Pinkerton agents allege) or (by some accounts) will join Butch Cassidy and be killed in Bolivia in 1909 or escape to Idaho and survive until the late 1920s.
Los Angeles millionaire Griffith J. Griffith takes the presidential suite at the Arcadia Hotel in Santa Monica in late August at the urging of his wife, Christina, who has become alarmed at her husband's heavy drinking (he puts away two quarts of whiskey per day) and paranoiac fears that someone is trying to poison him (see Griffith Park, 1896). Deciding that it is Tina who wants him dead, Griffith points a handgun at her head September 4 and pulls the trigger; she ducks in time to avoid being killed, but the shot tears out one of her eyes and she escapes only by throwing herself out a window, landing on an awning, and crawling into another room. Griffith's lawyers base his defense on a theory of alcoholic insanity, but he will be convicted of attempted murder early next year and serve 2 years' imprisonment at San Quentin; Griffith Peak in the city's Griffith Park will be renamed Mount Hollywood in 1905.
Cincinnati's 16-story Ingalls building, the world's first skyscraper with a reinforced concrete framework, revolutionizes the construction industry (see Monier, 1849). Designed by Elzner & Anderson, the $400,000 structure at Fourth and Vine Streets is named for Big Four Railroad president Melville E. Ingalls, 60, but the Cincinnati Transit Co. will acquire it in 1959 and rename it the Transit building.
London's Westminster Cathedral is completed in Byzantine style with striped brick and stone. Its architect, John Francis Bentley, died last year at age 63.
Amsterdam's Stock Exchange building is completed to designs by Hendrik Berlage, who has used structural steel and traditional brick for a building that is distinguished for its Romanesque arches.
The Ward W. Willits house is completed at Highland Park, Ill., to designs by Frank Lloyd Wright, as is the Edwin H. Cheney house at Oak Park.
Grand Canyon's Angel Lodge and El Tovar open under the aegis of the Santa Fe Railroad, which has built a branch from its main line at Williams to bring tourists to the canyon's rim. Operated by the sons and son-in-law of the late Fred Harvey (see restaurants, 1876), the new hotels are two of the 17 under Fred Harvey management. President Roosevelt visits the canyon, glories in its beauties, and in 1908 will change its status from national forest and game reserve to national monument (see environment [national park], 1919).
Fire destroys Florida's 8-year-old Breakers at Palm Beach. H. M. Flagler orders construction of a new hotel that will replace the vast wooden structure and become a winter resort hotel favored by millionaires (see 1925).
Florida acquires title to the Everglades swamp, the largest area ever conveyed in a single patent issued by the U.S. Land Department. Drainage operations will begin in 1906 (see national park, 1947).
President Roosevelt designates Florida's Pelican Island a National Wildlife Refuge, a seabird sanctuary where the fowl will be safe from the plume hunters who shoot birds to obtain feathers for milliners (see National Audubon Society, 1905). Roosevelt thus begins a fish and wildlife reserve system that will set aside 30 million acres of U.S. lands in the next 70 years. Under his three predecessors, about 40 million acres of land have been reserved for future generations, but Roosevelt in his 7 years in office will close an additional 194 million to commercial development.
Wind Cave National Park is established in South Dakota's Black Hills by an act of Congress. The 28,000-acre park has limestone caverns and prairie dog towns plus herds of bison, elk, deer, and pronghorn antelope.
Turkish earthquakes April 19 and April 28 kill 1,700 and 2,200 people, respectively.
A machine devised by U.S. inventor A. K. Smith cuts off a salmon's head and tail, splits the fish open, cleans it, and drops it into hot water all in one continuous operation. The Smith machine adjusts itself automatically to the size of the fish and will be called the "Iron Chink" because it replaces Chinese hand labor in West Coast canneries, which have been hurt by the Chinese Exclusion acts of 1882 and 1902. Arthur R. Rogers of the William Underwood sardine cannery at Jonesport, Me., filed a patent application last year for a machine similar to Smith's (see 1881). A patent will be granted in 1905 for the Rogers machine, which, according to the inventor's application, will "separate the fish according to sizes and feed them to my improved apparatus for severing their heads and cleaning them."
A San Pedro, Calif., packer puts white albacore tunafish into cans and launches a major industry. Used in salads, sandwiches, and casseroles, canned tunafish will become a staple in many U.S. household cupboards.
The Irish Land Purchase Act (Wyndham Land Purchase Act) sponsored by London-born chief secretary for Ireland and man of letters George Wyndham, 40, applies British government funds to Irish land transfers, alleviating the problem of farm ownership by facilitating the sale of smallholdings and even large estates on terms that are profitable to landlords yet affordable to peasant tenants.
Philippine rice production begins to fall behind demand. The Philippines will be net importers of rice from 1904 to 1968 (see IRRI, 1962).
Russia's harvest fails again as it did in 1891. Since millions live at the edge of starvation even in the best of years, the crop failure produces famine that kills millions.
The A.B.-Z. of Our Own Nutrition by Horace Fletcher launches a fad by urging readers to chew their food not only carefully but excessively (32 times) and never to eat when angry or worried (see 1902). Fletcher's theory is that most people eat too much and that the longer one chews the less one eats. "Nature will castigate those who don't masticate," says Fletcher (see 1919; Chittenden, 1904).
Wilhelm Normann receives a patent for his 1901 process of hydrogenating fats and oils, a process that will lead to increased consumption of saturated fats.
Argentina bans imports of U.S. beef January 10, citing sanitation issues.
Meat packer G. F. Swift dies at Chicago March 29 at age 63, having increased Swift & Co.'s capital worth 80-fold to some $25 million; his five sons retain control and management of the company.
James D. Dole's Hawaiian Pineapple Co. packs 1,893 cases of fruit (see 1902). Dole's cannery measures only 44 by 88 feet, employs the crudest hand-operated equipment, and uses handmade cans; he and his 15 employees insert small pieces of broken pineapple through a small opening in the top of each can, which is then soldered shut (see 1904).
Minnesota Valley Canning Co. is founded to pack sweet corn at La Seur, Minn., where promoter Silver Smith has persuaded 67 local merchants to put up $100 each for construction of a cannery (see peas, 1907).
Portland, Ore., inventor Alexander Hewitt Kerr introduces a lacquered metal lid for jars with an attached rubber-compound gasket held in place by a screw-type ring top (see Ball Brothers, 1887). Kerr will move his company to Oklahoma in 1915.
The Owens Bottle Machine Co. is founded at Toledo, Ohio, by Michael J. Owens, who has improved his 1895 machine to create a completely automatic mechanism containing more than 9,000 parts. Hand-blown bottles and jars have been produced mostly by the blow-over process, in which excess glass above the lip is cracked off and the sharp mouth ground smooth. Using the new machine, two men can produce 2,500 bottles or jars (or electric light bulbs) per hour. The company will be incorporated in 1907 and later become the Owens-Illinois Glass Co.
Caleb Bradham trademarks the name Pepsi-Cola June 16 and sells 7,968 gallons of his syrup as compared with 881,423 for Coca-Cola syrup (see 1898). He gave up his pharmacy last year to devote full time to his soft drink (see 1907).
The Thermos bottle announced October 1 by Berlin glassblower Reinhold Burger, 37, is a bottle within a bottle that will be widely used to keep beverages hot or cold in lunch boxes, picnic hampers, and such. Burger has worked for Sir James Dewar, recognized a commercial potential for the Dewar vacuum flask of 1892, created a double-walled vacuum container, and offered a prize for the best name to be used. King-Seeley Thermos Co. will obtain U.S. rights.
Sanka Coffee is introduced by German coffee importer Ludwig Roselius, who has received a shipload of beans that were soaked with seawater by a storm and who has turned the beans over to researchers. They have perfected a process to remove caffeine from coffee beans without affecting the delicate flavor of the beans, and Roselius has named the product Sanka, using a contraction of the French sans caffeine (see 1923).
J. Lyons & Co. introduces Maharajah Tea, packaged in Cadby Hall. Lyons, which has bought in bulk to supply its teashops, has for years been displaying the tea near its cash registers and now begins selling it through grocers (see restaurant, 1909).
Milton Hershey breaks ground in March for a chocolate factory whose products will dominate the chocolate candy and beverage industry by taking milk chocolate out of the luxury class (see 1900; advertisement, 1902). Hershey lays out Chocolate Avenue and Cocoa Avenue at Derry Church, 13 miles east of Harrisburg, Pa.; builds new houses for his workers to rent or buy; and constructs a street railway to connect his cornfield at Derry Church (it will be renamed Hershey in 1906) with five neighboring towns in the area that he has selected for milk production, water supply, and rail links to U.S. ports and consumer markets. By year's end he has a series of one-story buildings with a total of six acres of floor space, and by the time he begins making chocolate in 1905 he will have several hundred workers (see education, 1910; Kisses, 1907).
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