1905: Information and Much More from Answers.com
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1901 1902 1903 1904 1905 1906 1907 1908 1909 1910
Russian forces at Port Arthur surrender to Japanese infantry January 2 (see 1904) as St. Petersburg verges on revolution. The Japanese have lost 57,780 men in assaults on the fortified heights, the Russians 28,200. Gen. Kuropatkin receives reinforcements, as does Field Marshal Oyama, and the two sides resume fighting January 26 and 27 at the villages of Sandepu and Heikoutai 36 miles southwest of Mukden, Manchuria, with 300,000 Russians facing 220,000 Japanese. The encounter ends in a stalemate after the Russians have lost 20,000 men, the Japanese 9,000, but Kuropatkin has failed to regain the strategic initiative and the heavy losses leave his army demoralized.
A Russian revolution begins as news of the loss of Port Arthur and of "Bloody Sunday" incites the nation. A young priest, Father George Gapon, has led a peaceful workers' demonstration in front of the Winter Palace at St. Petersburg January 9 demanding freedom of expression and political reforms. Guards machine-gunned the demonstrators on orders from the czar (who was out of town). Revolutionary terrorists at Moscow murder the Grand Duke Serge, uncle of the czar, February 4, and peasants seize their landlords' land, crops, and livestock. Russian sailors aboard the armored cruiser Potemkin mutiny in July at Odessa, a general strike is called in October, and Nicholas II is obliged October 17 to placate the people by granting a constitution, establishing the nation's first representative assembly (the Duma), and acceding to civil liberties (see Stolypin, 1906).
The Battle of Mukden from February 21 to March 10 pits about 276,000 Russians with 1,200 guns and 54 machine guns against about 207,000 Japanese with 1,000 guns and 254 machine guns. Political intrigue, inefficiency, and the uncertainties of supply at the end of the Trans-Siberian Railway handicap Gen. Kuropatkin, and his casualties total anywhere from 59,800 to 156,000, many if not most of them taken as prisoners of war. Five Japanese armies under the command of Field Marshal Oyama capture 60 to 70 Russian guns and large quantities of war materiél, sustaining anywhere from 53,500 to 70,000 casualties, almost all of them killed or wounded, but winning the battle as the Russians withdraw north to Tieling and Harbin.
The Battle of Tsushima Strait May 27 between Kyushu and Korea ends in victory for Admiral Togo, who arrays his ships 7,000 yards in front of a Russian fleet sent around the Cape of Good Hope to relieve Port Arthur. "Crossing the T" and bringing his guns to bear on one after the other; Togo orders his big guns to fire into the eight Russian battleships, 12 cruisers, and nine destroyers, most of which explode, capsize, or stop inside of 45 minutes (only two of the 33 Russian ships survive). This and other Japanese victories challenge the prevailing world notion that whites are somehow superior to other races.
President Roosevelt mediates the dispute between Russia and Japan, and a treaty of peace is signed September 5 at Portsmouth, N.H., after a month of deliberations in which Foreign Minister Jutaro Komura, 49, a Harvard Law School graduate, has represented Japan. Both nations agree to evacuate Manchuria; Russia cedes the southern half of Sakhalin Island, recognizes Japan's paramount interest in Korea, and transfers to Japan the lease of the Liaotung Peninsula and the railroad to Ch'angchun; but rioters at Tokyo protest the failure of Japanese diplomats to obtain an indemnity. Foreign minister Komura negotiates a new Anglo-Japanese alliance.
V. I. Lenin returns from exile and hails the workers' first Soviet (council) at St. Petersburg, which is headed by Leon Trotsky, but the czar withdraws his concessions one by one. The revolt begun December 9 under the leadership of the Moscow Soviet is violently repressed by Christmas, and the Duma will be suspended by June 1906 (see 1917; Lenin, 1903; Pravda, 1912). (Dates are Julian calendar dates—13 days behind those in the Gregorian calendar of 1582, which Russia will not use until January 31, 1918).
Norway obtains her independence from Sweden after 91 years of union and nearly 600 years of association with either Denmark or Sweden. A popular plebiscite August 13 ratifies a decision of the Storting, the Swedish Riksdag acquiesces September 24, and a treaty of separation is signed October 26. Denmark's Prince Charles, 33, is elected king of Norway, and he will reign until 1957 as Haakon VII. Arctic explorer Fridtjof Nansen has furthered the cause of independence and will serve as Norway's ambassador to London from 1906 to 1908.
The government of France's Emile Combes falls in the wake of "the affair of the cards of association" ("l'affaire des fiches de délation"). The militantly anticlerical general Louis André has been accused of receiving reports from Masonic groups on suspected reactionary and clerical army officers, the scandal arouses public indignation, and the Act of Separation adopted in December formally separates church and state (see 1902).
Austrian feminist and pacifist Bertha, Baroness von Suttner, receives the fifth Nobel Peace Prize. Now 62, she is the first woman peace Nobelist (there will not be another until 1931); her 1889 book Lay Down Your Arms (Die Waffen nieder) has been translated into many European languages.
Britain's Balfour ministry ends December 4 and the Liberals take over with a cabinet headed by Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, 69, who initiates a policy of self-government for the South African colonies (see 1910).
First Lord of the Admiralty William W. (Waldegrave) Palmer, 45, 2nd earl of Selborne, is appointed high commissioner for South Africa and governor of the Transvaal and Orange River Colony in May. A son-in-law of former prime minister Lord Salisbury, Selborne has headed the Admiralty since 1900 and helped initiate a rebuilding of the Royal Navy (see 1906); he will serve in his new post until 1910.
Maji-Maji warriors in Tanganyika, East Africa, rebel against German garrisons at the instigation of a religious leader who provides his followers with a mixture of water (maji in Swahili), castor oil, and millet seeds that will make them "invulnerable," the warriors attack Mahenge with cap guns, spears, and arrows, two German machine guns cut them down, the tribesmen flee, but a 5,000-man Ngoni army joins the revolt. A German force armed with machine guns marches out of Mahenge and attacks the Ngoni camp October 21, the insurrection will end by next year with great loss of life, but the superstition that magic can overcome superior weaponry will persist (see 1987).
U.S. occupation of the Dominican Republic (DR) ends March 28, but the DR will remain a U.S. protectorate until 1941 (see 1916). Anti-Imperialist League president George S. Boutwell has died at Groton, Conn., February 27 at age 87; former Cuban rebel commander-in-chief Máximo Gómez y Báez dies at Havana June 17 at age 68.
U.S. soldier-diplomat-author Lewis "Lew" Wallace dies at Crawfordville, Ind., February 15 at age 77; Sen. Orville H. Platt at Meriden, Conn., April 21 at age 77; Secretary of State John Hay at Newburg, N.H., July 1 at age 67.
Alberta and Saskatchewan join the Dominion of Canada as new provinces September 1 (see 1869).
The Women's Vote Bill fails in Parliament May 12; English suffragist Emmeline Pankhurst begins propagandizing her cause with sensationalist methods that will include arson, bombing, hunger strikes, and window smashing (see 1903). Her daughter Christabel (Harriette), 25, and suffragist Annie Kenney, 26, attend a Liberal party meeting in the Free Trade Hall in Manchester that has been called to endorse the candidacy of Winston Churchill for Parliament. They unfurl a banner challenging foreign secretary Sir Edward Grey's suffrage policy; police arrest them October 4; and they become the first suffragists to draw prison sentences, creating a national sensation (see 1906).
French feminist Madeleine (née Anne) Pelletier, 31, becomes secretary of the Groupe de la Solidarité de Femme; she will join with anarchists in imitating the law-breaking tactics of Emmeline Pankhurst's WSPU.
Suffragist Mary Ashton Livermore dies at Melrose, Mass., May 23 at age 84.
The Harlem Equal Rights League is founded by Irish-born New York public librarian Maud Malone as part of the city's division of the National Women's Suffrage League.
The Niagara Movement to abolish all racial distinctions in the United States joins 29 black intellectuals from 14 states; they meet at Fort Erie, N.Y., under the leadership of W. E. B. Du Bois (see NAACP, 1909).
English Quaker Joseph Burtt spends 6 months at cocoa plantations on the African islands of Sao Tomé and Principe at the suggestion of cocoa magnate William Cadbury and observes that nearly half of the newly arrived laborers at one plantation died within a year (see 1903). Working conditions are tantamount to slavery, Burtt reports (see 1909).
A colonial court in the Congo convicts two French officers of having brutally tortured some natives, authorities send former Congo governor Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza on a mission to investigate, and his wife, Thérèse, insists on going along. Now 53, he finds a cold reception at Brazzaville, discovers flagrant corruption, finds living conditions in more isolated settlements abominable, and when a colonial officer organizes a festive dance Brazza realizes that the dancers are telling him about a nearby slave camp. He interrupts the performance, demands to be taken to the camp, and works on a report as his mission continues. After embarking for home, Brazza falls ill, is taken ashore at Dakar, and dies there September 14 (his wife will insist that he was poisoned); although he is given a state funeral at Paris, the French Assembly votes to suppress his report as politically embarrassing.
The first Rotary Club is organized at Chicago February 23, beginning a rise in men's philanthropic luncheon clubs. Local lawyer Paul P. Harris has started the group for professional men, with meetings to be held in rotation at members' offices, and by 1921 there will be affiliates on six continents, and the organization will adopt the name Rotary International in 1922 (see Kiwanis, 1915).
Philanthropist Thomas John Barnardo dies at Surbiton, Surrey, September 19 at age 60, having established more than 90 Barnardo Homes for destitute children. The homes provide housing for nearly 8,000 children, about 1,300 of them with disabilities; more than 4,000 are boarded out, and 18,000 have been sent to Canada and Australia. The homes will continue as such into the 1970s; social reformer Josephine Shaw Lowell dies at New York October 12 at age 61.
Explorer Sven Anders Hedin begins a 3-year expedition in which he will become the first person to explore Tibet's trans-Himalyan mountain range and prepare a detailed map of the region (see 1899; 1927).
Las Vegas, Nevada, is founded to serve as a desert way station on the rail line between Los Angeles and Salt Lake City. The place has underground sources of water.
Last year's strike by Fall River, Mass., textile workers ends January 8 after 5½ months with the workers winning their demands.
A New York law limiting hours of work in the baking industry to 60 per week is unconstitutional, the U.S. Supreme Court rules April 17 in the case of Lochner v. New York. A lower court has convicted the owner of a Utica bakery of violating the law, but the court rules that Lochner's right of contract is guaranteed under the Fourteenth Amendment and "the limitation of the hours of labor does not come within the police power." A dissenting opinion by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, 64, states that the word liberty is "perverted" when used to prevent the state from limiting hours of work as "a proper measure on the score of health," and "a constitution is not intended to embody a particular economic theory, whether of paternalism . . . or of laissez-faire."
More than 1,000 Cluett, Peabody & Co. "collar girls" go on strike in June at Troy, N.Y. Most men wear shirts with separate collars that require heavy starching to make them stiff. The company has introduced new starching machines that are expected to double productivity, but the starchers tried the machines for 9 months and found that they had almost no effect in reducing their workload. The company has reduced wages (a collar girl earns only 2¢ per dozen and is lucky to make $18.05 per week), laid off old employees without cause, and sent collars to outside laundries. By May 17 no laundry in town will handle Cluett's collars. Newspapers accuse local police of siding with the strikers by not letting non-union girls from entering the Cluett factory, the union collects $25,000 from supporters (Troy has at least 26 unions), but although the strike will continue until March of next year it will then collapse, and the company will introduce more machinery (see everyday life [Arrow shirt], 1921).
The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) joins U.S. working men in "one big union for all the workers" and attacks the American Federation of Labor (AFL) for accepting the capitalist system. Founders include Mary Harris "Mother" Jones, now 75, and Curaçao-born New York socialist Trade and Labor Alliance leader Daniel De Leon, 53, but most of the "Wobblies" are members of the radical Western Federation of Miners. The assassination of former Idaho governor Frank Steunenberg, still only 44, by a bomb blast outside his home at Caldwell December 30 brings charges that the IWW was responsible (see 1899); Ontario-born miner Harry Orchard (originally Albert Horsley), 32, has planted a small bomb containing 10 pounds of dynamite in the first use of dynamite associated with anarchism in a U.S. assassination related to industrial warfare (see Haywood, 1906; Lawrence, 1912).
Bethlehem Steel Co. is founded by Charles M. Schwab, who determines to build a great competitor to United States Steel (see transportation, 1902). Bethlehem begins as the parent company of Schwab's United States Shipbuilding Co. (see technology, 1907).
Bolivian store clerk Simon Ituri Patiño, 43, at Cochabamba is sacked by his German employer for extending $250 in credit to a poor Portuguese miner and is forced to pay the miner's bill. The miner moves away, leaving his mine to Patiño, who recruits coca-drugged local Indians to work the mine's outcroppings; the property turns out to be a fabulous deposit of tin ore that will make Bolivia a rival of Malaya, Burma, and the Dutch East Indies as a world tin source and be the basis of a $1 billion fortune for Simon Patiño. His Consolidated Tin Smelters, Ltd., will be the world's largest company of its kind.
A colorless 3,106-carat gemstone discovered at Thomas Cullinan's 3-year-old Premier mine in South Africa's Transvaal is the largest gem-quality diamond ever found. The Transvaal government will purchase the Cullinan Diamond and present it in 1907 to Britain's Edward VII; it will be cut into nine large stones and about 100 smaller ones by Amsterdam's Asscher & Co., whose experts last year cut the Excelsior Diamond found in 1893 into 21 stones ranging in size from less than one carat to more than 70. The largest two stones cut from the Cullinan Diamond will be the 530.2-carat, pear-shaped Great Star of Africa (Cullinan I), which will be set in the royal sceptre, and the 317-carat Cullinan II (Second Star of Africa). All the stones will become part of the crown jewels or the royal family's collection.
Economist Henry Varnum Poor dies at Brookline, Mass., January 4 at age 92; banker Jay Cooke at Ogontz (Elkins Park), Pa., February 18 at age 62, having long since recouped the fortune he lost in the panic of 1873; and copper magnate Meyer Guggenheim dies at Palm Beach, Fla., March 15 at age 77. Banker-philanthropist Alphonse de Rothschild of bronchitis at Paris May 26 at age 77. (His wife tried to kill him in 1895, and he has received many threatening letters. He is succeeded as head of the Paris branch of the Rothschild bank by Lambert de Rothschild of Brussels). Financier Charles T. Yerkes dies at London December 29 at age 68, having lost most of his fortune.
"Too long have the workers of the world waited for some Moses to lead them out of bondage," says socialist leader Eugene V. Debs in a speech on industrial unionism at New York December 18. "I would not lead you out if I could, for if you could be led out, you could be led back again. I would have you make up your minds there is nothing that you cannot do for yourselves."
Wall Street's Dow Jones Industrial Average ends the year at 96.20, up from 69.61 at the end of 1904.
New York's Tiffany & Co. sells a pearl necklace for $1 million—the largest single sale in the store's 68-year history and one that will not be surpassed in this century (see 1906).
Harrods Ltd. puts up a new building in Knightsbridge that will remain its home into the next century (see 1884). While still carrying the gastronomic specialties that have gained it a reputation for more than half a century, it has expanded into clothing, home furnishings, and the like, providing services that enable customers to buy theater tickets, make travel reservations, even arrange funerals.
Norsk Hydro is founded by Norwegian engineer Samuel Eyde, 39, with backing from Swedish financier Marcus Laurentius Wallenberg, 41, whose father, André Oscar Wallenberg, a naval officer, founded Stockholm's Enskilda Bank in the 1850s. Eyde has worked with Norwegian physicist Kristian Birkeland, 38, to develop an economic electric arc process for fixing nitrogen, using Norway's abundant hydroelectric power, whose potential the new company will exploit.
The 22-year-old Edinburgh-based Burmah Oil Co. provides new funds for William Knox D'Arcy's Persian petroleum venture (see 1901; 1908).
Wildcat oil prospector Thomas Gilcrease in Oklahoma Territory makes a big strike in what will be called the Glenn Pool southeast of a village on the Arkansas River called by its residents Tulsey Town. It will soon be Tulsa, "Oil Capital of the World" (see 1903; Marland, 1908).
The Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) is founded to standardize U.S. automotive parts. Andrew L. Riker, 36, of Locomobile is president, Henry Ford first vice president, John Wilkinson of Franklin third vice president (see 1911).
Flint, Mich., millionaire William C. Durant takes over the floundering Buick Motorcar Co., started by Scottish-born plumbing supply merchant David Dunbar Buick, 50, who has pioneered in automotive design but without much financial success; the 19-year-old Durant-Dorn Carriage Co. has made Durant the richest man in town (see 1906).
U.S. auto production reaches 25,000, up from 2,500 in 1899 (see 1907).
The Austin motorcar is introduced by a new company started with capital of about £9,000 by former Wolseley designer Herbert Austin (see 1895). He produces about 50 vehicles in his first year, will be producing 150 per year by 1907, and by 1914 will have 2,000 employees turning out 1,000 cars per year (see Baby Austin, 1922).
Renault Frères introduces the first automobile taxicabs, at Paris (see New York, 1907).
Italy nationalizes her railway system, establishing the Ferrovie dello Stato which will operate trains in Sicily and Sardinia as well as on the mainland and train ferries to connect them.
London's Inner Circle rail lines are electrified.
The Long Island Rail Road installs a low-voltage third rail system, becoming the first U.S. road to completely abandon steam locomotion. It has been controlled since 1900 by the Pennsylvania.
The Canadian Northern Railway reaches Edmonton, Alberta, which will become a major center of flour milling, meat packing, tanning, dairying, and lumbering (see energy [petroleum], 1947).
"The Railroads on Trial" by Michigan-born journalist Ray Stannard Baker, 35, appears in McClure's magazine. Baker has been an editor of McClure's since 1897, and his series will be instrumental in the fight for railroad regulation (see Hepburn Act, 1906).
The Wright brothers improve their flying machine of 1903 to the point where they can fly a full circle of 24.5 miles in 38 minutes, a feat they demonstrate at Dayton, Ohio. Now equipped with ailerons to control wing-warping and nose-mounted elevators to control up or down pitch, their machine will be patented in May of next year, and they will give a series of exhibitions in the United States and Europe to popularize flying (see Wilbur, 1908; Orville, 1909).
Ferdinand graf von Zeppelin in Germany launches his second rigid airship, the LZ-2, but it crashes on the first attempt to fly it at Friedrichshafen (see 1900; 1908).
Maine-born civil engineer John F. (Frank) Stevens, 52, takes over as chief engineer of the Panama Canal and helps persuade President Roosevelt that using a combination of locks and a dammed lake makes more sense than a sea-level route favored by a majority of the Isthmian Canal Commission's members, a route that would have meant moving much larger tonnages of soil and rock (see 1904). Stevens has been chief engineer of the Great Northern Railway and overseen the laying of thousands of miles of track over daunting terrain; he puts the project on a sound basis (see Goethals, 1907).
Inventor-manufacturer William Sellers dies at Philadelphia January 24 at age 80, having seen his standardized screw threads adopted by the U.S. Government; mechanical engineer Franz Reuleaux dies at Berlin May 20 at age 75.
Commercial rayon production begins in July at a factory built on the outskirts of Coventry (see Little, 1893). English entrepreneur Samuel Courtauld, 29, has purchased English rights to the Stearn patent of 1898 for £25,000; French and German companies have also bought rights and begin production in competition with Courtauld (see Viscose Co., 1910; Celanese, 1924; nylon, 1935).
Swiss theoretical physicist Albert Einstein, 26, at Bern publishes a counter-intuitive paper on the special theory of relativity that revises traditionally held Newtonian views of space and time, virtually turning common sense on its head (see Newton, 1666; Clifford, 1870; Michelson, Morley, 1887; FitzGerald, 1892; Lorentz, 1895; Zeeman, 1896). A Swiss Patent Office clerk who has studied papers written by Hendrik A. Lorentz and the late George F. FitzGerald, Einstein has received help from his Hungarian-born wife, Mileva (née Maric), 30, who is more comfortable than he with statistics. He publishes his own paper in the June issue of The Annals of Physics (Der Annalen der Physik) and within 7 months it has published four of his papers that total 43 pages and revolutionize accepted scientific theory with regard to the structure of matter, the nature of radiation, and the interaction of light and matter: "The Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies" ("Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Körper") resolves the speed-of-light dilemma posed by the Michelson-Morley experiment published in 1887. His equation E = mc2 published September 27 (he actually writes the mathematical equivalent [m = E/mc2]) demonstrates that mass (matter) and energy are not separate and distinct; it quantifies the energy that can be obtained from fission or fusion of atomic nuclei, helping to explain the source of solar energy and setting the stage for the development of nuclear reactors and weapons (see 1916; Minkowski, 1907). Einstein also produces a dissertation suggesting a method for determining the number and size of ions.
Mendelism by English geneticist Reginald C. (Crundall) Punnett, 30, is the first textbook on the subject (see Bateson, 1902). Having studied at Cambridge with biologist William Bateson, Punnett supports the theories of the late Gregor Mendel; the two men will discover genetic linkage and in 1910 will found the Journal of Genetics (see Morgan, 1909).
Cytogenetics founder Walther Flemming dies at Kiel August 4 at age 62 just as the implications of his work are gaining appreciation.
The U.S. Supreme Court upholds compulsory vaccination laws: it rules February 4 in the case of Jacobson v. Massachusetts that enacting and enforcing such laws is within the police power of any state.
Edinburgh-born Oxford physiologist J. S. (John Scott) Haldane, 45, reports his discovery that what usually determines the regulation of breathing is the effect of the tension of carbon dioxide in the blood on the brain's respiratory center (see 1907).
The first major epidemic of poliomyelitis since the disease was first identified in 1840 breaks out in Sweden. It destroys the nerves connecting muscles to the brain, sometimes affecting the muscles that control breathing and speech, and sometimes those that control limbs (see 1916).
German surgeon Heinrich Friedrich Wilhelm Braun, 43, introduces procaine (novocaine) into clinical use. The local anesthetic will find wide use in dentistry.
Pioneer surgeon Johannes von Mikulicz-Radecki dies at Breslau June 4 at age 55.
A U.S. Public Health Service antimosquito campaign ends a yellow fever epidemic that has killed at least 435 people at New Orleans. It will be the last U.S. epidemic of the disease (see Havana, 1901).
Panama Canal chief engineer John F. Stevens orders a halt to construction until the mosquitoes that cause malaria and yellow fever can be controlled (see 1904). William C. Gorgas of the Public Health Service has ordered removal of rubber tires and other receptacles in which fresh water collects, drainage of ditches in which mosquitoes breed, construction of streets, planting fish that will eat mosquito larvae, covering ponds with thin layers of oil, distribution of insecticides, and installation of window screens. By Christmas he has brought malaria under control and virtually eliminated yellow fever, permitting construction to proceed on a trans-Isthmus canal (see transportation, 1906).
The Phipps Tuberculosis Dispensary is established by steel magnate Henry Phipps at Baltimore's Johns Hopkins Hospital (see 1893; 1903).
Vicks VapoRub is introduced under the name Vick's Magic Croup Salve by the new Vick Chemical Co. founded at Greensboro, N.C., by former drug wholesaler Lunsford Richardson, 52. The mentholated salve is compounded of camphor, menthol, spirits of turpentine, oil of eucalyptus, cedar leaf oil, myristica oil, nutmeg, and thymol mixed in a petroleum base.
The Midwives Roll in Britain contains 22,308 names, of whom 7,465 hold the Obstetrical Society certificate, 2,333 hold hospital certificates, and 12,521 are in "bona fide practice" holding no certificate at all (see 1902). Many are totally illiterate and must have any required records filled in for them, others have trouble reading a clinical thermometer. In many parts of the country, illegal, uncertificated midwives—often preferred by poor women because they are cheap and not averse to helping with the housework—will continue to practice until the 1930s.
The Ladies' Home Journal charges that soothing letters from "Lydia Pinkham" often prevent women from seeking proper medical care (see 1898; 1904). It creates a scandal by publishing a photograph of Pinkham's grave as evidence that she died in 1883 and cannot still be writing letters to customers, but the proprietary medicine continues to enjoy good sales and will be a $3 million-per-year business by the 1920s; its 18 percent alcohol content draws no criticism from the Women's Christian Temperance Union (see 1926).
The Massachusetts legislature rejects a bill that would require patent medicine bottles to carry labels showing their ingredients. The $100 million-a-year patent medicine industry spends some $40 million per year in advertising, and newspapers lobby against legislation that would hinder sales of "cancer cures" and other nostrums, many of which contain cocaine, morphine, opium, and up to 40 percent alcohol. The Proprietary Association of America has devised advertising contracts that will be canceled if legislation hostile to patent medicines is enacted. Journalist Mark Sullivan, 31, exposes the newspapers' conflict of interest in Collier's magazine November 4 (see consumer protection [Hepburn Pure Food and Drug Act], 1906).
Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality by Sigmund Freud creates heated controversy with the view that women are capable of orgasm, whereas women up to now have been expected to tolerate sex with clenched teeth but not to enjoy it. The high incidence of female frigidity, says Freud, is an emotional and psychological problem of "sexually immature women" that can be treated with analysis. There are two kinds of female orgasm, clitoral and vaginal, he says, and the former is "adolescent," whereas vaginal orgasm—the true, mature, womanly orgasm—can be achieved only through vaginal penetration by the penis, but women, recognizing their inferiority to men, are reluctant to accept their femininity (see Masters and Johnson, 1970). Freud says that memories of childhood seduction are fantasized stories used to mask sexual activities such as masturbation. He has written earlier that hysteria was caused by sexual abuse (he called it "seduction") of a child by a parent but his theory of fantasized stories will be used to support the claim that women lie about having been raped, either to protect themselves or because of hysterical, masochistic proclivities.
Hindu philosopher Maharishi Debendranath Tagore dies at his native Calcutta January 19 at age 87, having long since rejected all of the ancient scriptures (Vedas) on grounds that even the most venerable of writings cannot provide complete and satisfying guidelines for human activity.
The Essence of Judaism (Das Wesen des Judentums) by Berlin Reform rabbi Leo Baeck, 32, establishes Baeck as the leading liberal Jewish theologian.
New pogroms begin in Russia (see 1904). Terrorists of the anti-Semitic "Black Hundreds" will kill an estimated 50,000 Jews by 1909.
Britain's University of Sheffield is founded as an outgrowth of the Sheffield School of Medicine that dates to 1828. It will grow to have an enrollment of about 23,000.
The Binet-Simon I.Q. (Intelligence Quotient) test devised for the French government by Nice-born psychologist and lawyer Alfred Binet, 48, and his colleague Théodore Simon, 32, measures the "mental age" of children entering school. Since 1895 Binet has been directing France's first psychological laboratory at the Sorbonne, the I.Q. test helps the government establish a program to educate mentally retarded children, and it will be expanded by Binet and Simon in 1908 from a single scale of measurement to a battery of tests for children in various age groups (see Goddard, 1912).
TIAA-CREF has its beginnings in the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (CFAT) established at New York with $10 million by philanthropist Andrew Carnegie to fund a pension system for teachers. Shocked to discover how little professors are paid, Carnegie engages former MIT president Henry S. Pritchett to set up a system of free, portable retirement annuities for teachers at non-sectarian colleges, universities, and other education and research institutions in the United States and Canada, requiring no contributions from either employers or employees (see 1918; Carnegie Corporation, 1911; philanthropy [Carnegie Institution], 1902).
Basis of Esperanto (Fundamento de Esperanto) by L. L. Zamenhof lays out the principles of the international language's principles and structure (see 1887).
Gray Manufacturing Co. installs the first outdoor coin-operated telephone in downtown Cincinnati (see Gray, 1889); local calls will cost 5¢ everywhere until 1951.
L. C. Smith & Brothers sells its first typewriter to the New York Tribune for the paper's newsroom. Formerly gunmakers, the Syracuse, N.Y., firm of Lyman, Wilbert, Monroe, and Hulburt Smith will for years be the largest producer of typewriters, gaining popularity as Smith Corona (see word processor, 1981).
Royal Typewriter Co. is founded by New York financier Thomas Fortune Ryan, who puts up $220,000 to back inventors Edward B. Hess and Lewis C. Meyers (see transportation [Southern Railway], 1894). The Royal typewriter has innovations that include a friction-free ball-bearing one-track rail to support the weight of the carriage as it moves back and forth, a new paper feed, a shield to keep erasure crumbs from falling into the nest of type bars, a lighter and faster type-bar action, and complete visibility of words as they are typed.
Manchester Guardian editor Charles P. Scott purchases the paper from the estate of his late cousin, publisher J. E. Taylor (see 1872). Now 58, Scott will continue as editor until 1929.
The Chicago Defender begins publication May 15. Georgia-born publisher Robert Sengstacke Abbott, 35, has the first issues printed on credit and sells just 300 copies of his 2¢ weekly, but the Defender is the first important black newspaper. Its circulation will reach nearly 250,000 by 1915, and by 1917 it will be so widely read in the South that critics will credit (and blame) it for inspiring a migration of blacks to the North (it will become a daily beginning in 1956).
The Copley newspaper chain has its beginnings as Chicago utilities magnate Ira C. Copley, 43, buys the Aurora (Ill.) Beacon. Copley has pioneered in developing coin-slot gas meters; will soon acquire papers at Elgin, Joliet, and Springfield to further his political ambitions; will gain election to Congress in 1910; buy the San Diego Union and Evening Tribune in 1928; and develop a powerful right-wing voice that will be carried on by an orphan whom Copley will adopt in 1920.
William Randolph Hearst acquires Cosmopolitan magazine for $400,000.
Maclean's magazine begins publication at Toronto in a large-page format with feature articles and fiction. The semi-monthly will develop a reputation for photography, become a politically conservative weekly, and grow to be Canada's leading news periodical.
Atlanta Constitution editor (and city mayor) Evan P. Howell dies at Atlanta August 6 at age 65; St. Nicholas magazine editor Mary Elizabeth Mapes Dodge at her summer home in Onteora Park, N.Y., August 21 at age 74.
"Little Nemo in Slumberland" by Spring Lake, Mich.-born cartoonist (Zenas) Winsor McCay, 34, debuts October 15 in the New York Herald. McKay eloped at age 21 with 12-year-old Maude DuFour. She gave birth to their son Robert at age 16, and the boy has inspired McCay's work. It has appeared in the Cincinnati Commercial Tribune since 1898 under the nom de plume Silas. James Gordon Bennett has invited McCay to New York, and his pioneer strip will continue in the Trib until July 23, 1911.
Nonfiction: The Life of Reason (volume I of five) by Spanish-born U.S. philosopher George Santayana (Jorge Ruis Santayana y Burrais), 42, who writes, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it"; History of the United States: The Planting of a Nation in the New World, 1000-1600 by Harvard historian Edward Channing, now 49, who will bring his work up to the Civil War by 1925, when the fifth volume is published; A Modern Utopia by H. G. Wells; Heretics by G. K. Chesterton; The Future of Intelligence (L'Avenir de l'intelligence) by Charles Maurras, whose ideas of "integral nationalism" presage some of the fascistic ideas that will emerge later in the century.
Familiar Quotations editor John Bartlett dies at Cambridge, Mass., December 3 at age 85, having written also a Complete Concordance to Shakespeare's Dramatic Works and Poems (1894).
Fiction: The House of Mirth by New York-born novelist Edith (Newbold) Wharton (née Jones), 43, who gains popularity for the first time with a fictional analysis of the stratified society that she knows so well as the wife of a rich banker and of that society's reaction to change; Where Angels Fear to Tread by English novelist E. M. (Edward Morgan) Forster, 26, of the Bloomsbury Group; Kipps: The Story of a Simple Soul by H. G. Wells; The Lake by George Moore; The Four Just Men by English novelist Edgar Wallace, now 30, who edited the Rand Daily Mail in South Africa from 1902 to 1904 and gains fame with a thriller based on an antiestablishment concept; Rigby's Romance by Joseph Furphy is serialized in an Australian periodical but will not appear in book form until 1921; The Club of Queer Trades (short stories) by G. K. Chesterton; Professor Unrat by German novelist Heinrich Mann, 34, who will be overshadowed by his older brother Thomas but whose novel will be made into the film The Blue Angel in 1929; The Tower of London (Rondon-to) and I Am a Cat (Waga hai wa neko de aru) by Japanese novelist Natsume Sōseki, 38, who graduated in English at Tokyo University in 1893, studied at London from 1900 to 1902, and in his second novel presents a witty, satirical view of the world as seen through the eyes of his cat; Doktor Glas by Hjalmar Soderberg; The Scarlet Pimpernel by Hungarian-born British novelist-playwright Emmuska, Baroness Orczy, 43; Three-Quarters of an Hour Before Daybreak (Dreiviertel Stund vor Tag) by Helene Voigt-Diederichs; The Jungle by Baltimore-born novelist Upton (Beall) Sinclair, 27, who was given a $500 advance by the socialist periodical The Appeal to Reason and has lived for 7 weeks among the stockyard workers of Chicago. His Lithuanian hero, Jurgis, is lured by steamship company posters to emigrate and takes a job in the stockyards of "Packington," where he encounters a variety of capitalistic evils (privately printed by Sinclair, the book is a bestseller and will make its author a fortune); The Clansman by North Carolina-born Baptist minister and novelist Thomas Dixon, 41, whose sympathetic treatment of the old Ku Klux Klan will be the basis of a 1915 film.
Novelist Jules Verne dies at Amiens March 24 at age 77.
Poetry: "De Profundis" by the late Oscar Wilde, who wrote it in Reading Gaol as a confession of his love for Lord Alfred Douglas and a renunciation of that love; The Book of Hours (Stundenbuch) by Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke, 30; Präludien by German poet Ernst Stadler, 22; The Soul's Destroyer, and Other Poems by Welsh-born English poet William Henry Davies, 34, who lost a foot in his 20s while trying to hop a train headed for Canada's Klondike region and became a peddler and street singer; Cantos of Life and Hope (Canto de vida y esperanza) by Rubén Darío; Distant Gardens (Jardines lejanos) by Juan Ramón Jiménez.
Poet José Maria de Hérédia dies at Château de Bourdonné, Seine-et-Oise, near Houdon October 2 at age 62.
Juvenile: The Story of the Champions of the Round Table by Howard Pyle; The Children of Wilton Chase; Dumps, A Plain Girl; and Good Luck by L. T. Meade.
Author Sarah Chauncy Woolsey dies at Newport, R.I., April 9 at age 70.
Painting: Boy with Pipe (The Young Apprentice), Seated Harlequin with Red Background, Young Acrobat on a Ball, Girl Balancing on a Ball, The Actor, At the Lapin Agile, The Absinthe Drinker, and Family of Saltimbanques by Pablo Picasso, who begins his "pink [or "rose"] period"; Les Granites Baigneuses by Paul Cézanne; The Hungry Lion by Henri Rousseau; La Noce à Nino-Patte-en-l'Air, The Couple, and The Dance by French painter-engraver Georges Rouault, 34; Grand Canal, Venice, Basin of San Marco, Venice, and Fishing Boats, Le Pouliguen by Paul Signac; At the Café by New York-born painter Alfred H. (Harry) Maurer, 37, who arrived at Paris in 1897 and will remain until 1914; The Marlborough Family by John Singer Sargent; Chez Mouquin and Central Park Winter by Philadelphia-born New York painter William (James) Glackens, 35.
Les Fauves create a sensation at the Salon d'Automne in Paris with paintings that free color to speak with new and unprecedented intensity. Artists who include Henri Matisse, 35, Maurice de Vlaminck, 29, and André Derain, 25, pioneer the magnification of impressionism, critic Louis Vauxcelles calls them "wild beasts" ("les fauves"), and their works include Matisse's The Open Window, Collioure, Girl Reading, and La Joie de Vivre, Vlaminck's La restaurant de la Machine à Bougival and The Pond at Saint-Cucufa, and Derain's The Mountains, Collioure. William Bouguereau dies at his native La Rochelle, France, August 19 at age 79.
New York's 291 Gallery at 291 Fifth Avenue opens under the direction of local photographer Alfred Steiglitz, now 41, with a group of other photographers (Steiglitz calls them "photo-secessionists" and they include Luxembourg-born photographer Edward [Jean] Steichen, 26, who opened a studio at 291 Fifth in 1902 after 2 years of study in Europe with sculptor Auguste Rodin). The new gallery will show only photographs until 1908 but will then begin to give Americans their first look at work by Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and the late Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, among others.
Sculpture: The Bather by German sculptor Wilhelm Lehmbruck, 24.
Theater: The Well of the Saints by John Millington Synge 2/4 at Dublin's Abbey Theatre; Hidada (Hidada, oder Sein und Haben) by Frank Wedekind 2/18 at Munich's Schauspielhaus, under the title Karl Hetmann, the Dwarf-Giant (Karl Hetmann, der Zwergriese); Elga by Gerhart Hauptmann 3/4 at Berlin's Lessingtheater; Alice-Sit-by-the-Fire by James M. Barrie 4/5 at the Duke of York's Theatre, London, with Irene Vanbrugh, Ellen Terry, London-born actor C. Aubrey Smith, 41, 114 perfs; Man and Superman (minus Act III) by George Bernard Shaw 5/23 at London's Royal Court Theatre, with Granville Barker, Edmund Gwenn, 14 perfs. ("Give women the vote, and in five years there will be a crushing tax on bachelors," Shaw has written in a preface); The Dance of Death (Dodsdansen forsta delen und anla delen) by August Strindberg in September at Cologne's Residenztheater; The Squaw Man by Edward Milton Royle 10/23 at Wallack's Theater, New York, with William S. Hart, 722 perfs.; Mrs. Warren's Profession by Bernard Shaw 10/30 at New York's Garrick Theater, with Mary Shaw, Arnold Daly (both are prosecuted for performing in an "immoral" play), 14 perfs. (London's Lord Chamberlain has refused to license the play about a woman whose income is derived from houses of prostitution. London will not see a production until 1926); English actress Gladys Cooper, 17, makes her debut to begin a notable career; The Voysey Inheritance by Harley Granville-Barker 11/7 at London's (Royal) Court Theatre in Covent Garden; The Girl of the Golden West by David Belasco 11/14 at New York's Belasco Theater, with Blanche Bates, Grand Rapids, Mich.-born actor James Kirkwood, 30, San Francisco-born actor Lowell Sherman, 20, 224 perfs.; The Lion and the Mouse by Charles Klein 11/20 at New York's Lyceum Theater, with Indiana-born actor Richard Bennett, 33, Memphis-born actress Grace Ellston, 27, 686 perfs.; Major Barbara by Bernard Shaw 11/28 at London's Royal Court Theater, with Annie Russell, Granville Barker, Louis Calvert, in a "discussion in three acts" about a Salvation Army officer. Shaw wrote a letter signed "S" to a Dublin newspaper at age 18 after hearing U.S. evangelists Dwight Moody and Ira Sankey; if this sort of thing was religion, he said, then he, on the whole, was an atheist.
Actor Maurice Barrymore dies at Amityville, N.Y., March 26 at age 56, survived by his children Lionel, now 26, Ethel, now 25, and John, now 23, who have begun acting careers of their own; Joseph Jefferson dies at Palm Beach, Fla., April 23 at age 76; producer Sam Shubert is killed in a Pennsylvania train wreck May 11 at age 28 (rival A. L. Erlanger refuses to adhere to an agreement with "a dead man." Shubert's brothers Lee and J. J. begin a feud that will eventually destroy the Klaw-Erlanger syndicate); Sir Henry Irving dies penniless at Bradford October 13 at age 67. The first actor ever to be knighted, he is buried in Westminster Abbey's Poet's Corner.
Variety begins weekly publication at New York December 16 under the direction of former Morning Telegraph editor Sime Silverman, 32 (see 1935).
Films: Alice Guy's Esmeralda (based on Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame); G. M. Anderson's Raffles the Amateur Cracksman with J. Barney Sherry (Arkansas-born director Gilbert Maxwell Aronson has changed his name to Anderson; his 1,000-foot one-reeler runs for 10 minutes); Cecil Hepworth's Rescued by Rover.
Opera: Salomé 12/9 at Dresden's Hofoper, with music by Richard Strauss, libretto based on the 1896 play by the late Oscar Wilde. Soprano Marie Wittich had originally refused to sing the title role's sensuous song to the imprisoned John the Baptist praising his body, his hair, his mouth, saying, "I won't do it, I'm a decent woman" (see 1907); The Merry Widow (Die lustige Witwe) 12/28 at Vienna's Theater-an-der-Wien, with music by Franz Lehár, libretto by Victor Leon and Leo Stein.
First performances: Pélleas and Mélissande (symphonic poem) by Arnold Schoenberg 1/26 at Vienna; Introduction and Allegro in G minor for Strings by Sir Edward Elgar 3/8 at the Queen's Hall, London; The Divine Poem Symphony No. 3 in C minor by Aleksandr Skriabin 5/29 at the Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris. (Skriabin has deserted his wife and four children in Russia to live openly with his pretty mistress Tatyana Schloezer in Switzerland. She believes in his messianic visions of transforming the world through music and will bear him three children); La Mer (tone poem) by Claude Debussy 10/15 at Paris; Symphony No. 5 in C sharp minor by Gustav Mahler 10/18 at Paris.
Chicago Symphony conductor Theodore Thomas dies at Chicago January 4 at age 69.
Isadora Duncan opens a dancing school for children at Berlin and gives birth to a child of her own out of wedlock. Now 27, she has developed a spontaneous style that tries to symbolize music, poetry, and elements of nature instead of conforming to the "false and preposterous" strictures of classical ballet.
March: "Die Parade der Zinnsoldaten" ("Parade of the Wooden Soldiers") by German composer Leon Jessel, 34.
"Clair de Lune" by Claude Debussy is published as part of a suite for piano.
New York's Juilliard School of Music has its beginnings in the Institute of Musical Art, founded by Frank Damrosch and James Loeb (see 1920).
Stage musicals: Fontana 1/14 at New York's Lyric Theater, with Douglas Fairbanks in a minor role, music by Urbana, Ohio-born composer Raymond Hubbell, 25, book by S. S. Shubert and Robert B. Smith, lyrics by Smith, songs that include "What Would Mrs. Grundy Say?", 298 perfs.; The Little Michus 4/29 at Daly's Theatre, London, with music by André Messager, Savoyard singers Amy Augarde, now 36, and Henry A. Lytton, now 40, 401 perfs.; The Spring Chicken 5/30 at London's Gaiety Theatre, with Gertie Millar, music by Lionel Monckton and Ivan Caryll, 401 perfs.; The White Chrysanthemum 8/31 at London's Criterion Theatre, with Isabel Jay, music by Howard Talbot, 179 perfs.; Happyland 10/5 at New York's Lyric Theater (to Casino Theater 3/12/1906, to Majestic 6/1906), with DeWolf Hopper, Ohio-born performer Marguerite Clark, 22, music and lyrics by Reginald De Koven, libretto by Frederic Ranken, 120 perfs.; Fritz in Tammany Hall 10/16 at New York's Herald Square Theater, with Joseph Cawthorn, music and lyrics by William Jerome and Jean Schwartz, book by John J. McNally, 48 perfs.; Mlle. Modiste 12/25 at the Knickerbocker Theater, with Fritzi Scheff, music by Victor Herbert, book and lyrics by Henry Blossom, songs that include "Kiss Me Again" and "I Want What I Want When I Want It," 262 perfs.
The Studio of Stage Dancing is founded at New York by Pittsburgh-born dance director Ned (originally Edward Claudius) Wayburn, 31, who has developed the first crude form of dance notation and will coach hundreds of vaudevillians, dividing chorus girls according to height and thereby defining the classic "show girl" look.
Popular songs: "Wait Till the Sun Shines, Nellie" and "What You Gonna Do When the Rent Comes Round? (Rufus Rastus Johnson Brown)" by Tin Pan Alley composer Albert von Tilzer, 27, lyrics by Andrew B. Sterling; "My Gal Sal (or, They Called Her Frivolous Sal)" by Paul Dresser; "Daddy's Little Girl" by Theodore F. Morse, lyrics by Edward Madden; "Tammany" and "In My Merry Oldsmobile" by German-born vaudeville composer Gus Edwards (originally Gustave Simon), 26, lyrics by Vincent P. Bryan, 22 (brought to Brooklyn's Williamsburg section at age 7, Edwards worked in the family cigar star as a youth, later was a song plugger, sang at lodge halls, in ferry boat lodges, and at age 17 was spotted at Johnny Palmer's Gaiety Saloon in Brooklyn and booked by a vaudeville agent with four other boys to tour as The Newsboys Quintet; his song "Tammany," written in 1 hour, is interpolated into the Broadway musical Fontana and will be the political club's theme song); "My Gal Sal (or, They Called Her Frivolous Sal)" by Paul Dresser; "I Don't Care" by Harry O. Sutton, lyrics by Jean Lewis, that will be popularized by vaudeville star Eva Tanguay; "In the Shade of the Old Apple Tree" by Egbert Van Alstyne, lyrics by Henry Williams (both are song pluggers for the publishing house Remick); "Will You Love Me in December as You Do in May?" by Cleveland-born composer Ernest R. Ball, lyrics by New York law student James J. Walker, 24, who obtains a $500 advance from his publisher and uses it to buy three custom-made suits with peg-top trousers (no cuffs), a dozen silk shirts, four pairs of shoes with sharply-pointed toes, three fedora hats, a new walking stick, and gifts for his mother and girlfriend.
Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm II challenges yachtsmen to compete in a transatlantic race that he expects will prove the superiority of German seamanship and ship construction, the winner to receive a crystal bowl that will be called the Kaiser's Cup. Ten U.S. and British millionaires accept the challenge, and the 11 ships that assemble in New York Harbor in May include a 648-ton, 245-foot ship owned by the eccentric British Lord Lindsay, 20th earl of Crawford. Manned by a professional crew of 90, she has fireplaces, a grand piano, and a formal dining room that seats 30 (Lord Lindsay spends 10 months of the year cruising the world in her with his stamp collection), but a severe storm soon takes her out of the running along with all but two of the other yachts. The 185-foot (56-meter) schooner Atlantic owned by New York playboy Wilson Marshall embarrasses the kaiser, beating Wilhelm's schooner Hamburg by crossing 3,013 miles from Sandy Hook off the New Jersey coast to Lizard Point off the south English coast in 12 days, 4 hours, 1 minute, 19 seconds—22 hours ahead of Hamburg and a record that will stand into the 21st century for displacement sailing yachts. Marshall's steel-hulled, 206-ton ship has marble floors and a grand saloon with three Tiffany skylights; she can carry more than 20,000 square feet of sail, but Marshall remains below while veteran skipper Charles Barr, now 40, averages 10.31 knots per hour.
H. L. Doherty wins in men's singles at Wimbledon, May Sutton in women's singles; Beals Coleman Wright, 25, wins in U.S. men's singles, Elizabeth Moore in women's singles.
Ty Cobb signs with the Detroit Tigers to begin an outstanding baseball career. Sportswriter Grantland Rice has nicknamed outfielder Tyrus Raymond Cobb, 18, "the Georgia Peach" for his prowess with the Augusta team of the South Atlantic League; he will play 22 seasons for Detroit and two more for the Philadelphia Athletics before retiring in 1928 with a lifetime batting average of .367, a record 4,191 hits, a record 2,245 runs scored, and a record 3,034 games played. Cobb will bat above .300 for a record 23 straight seasons and steal a record 892 bases.
The New York Giants win the World Series, defeating the Philadelphia Athletics 4 games to 1.
"Boy wonder" billiard player Willie Hoppe, 18, wins his first world championship after 10 years of barnstorming the country with pool and billiard exhibitions. Cornwall-on-Hudson, N.Y.-born William Frederick Hoppe won the Young Masters 18.2 balkline championship at 16 and will win the world's 18.1 title next year at Paris and the world's 18.2 title in 1907. He will have won 51 world billiard titles by the time he retires in October 1952.
President Roosevelt summons the athletic advisers of Harvard, Princeton, and Yale to the White House October 10 and tells them they must find ways to stop the growing roughness of football, a violent game still played with no hold barred by players wearing little in the way of protective gear (see NCAA, 1906).
The University of Michigan Wolverines end a 5-year streak of 27 games in which teams coached by Fielding Harris "Hurry Up" Yost have lost only once, been tied twice, and run up 2,821 points against 42 for all opposing teams combined.
President Roosevelt gives away the bride March 17 at New York when his cousin (Anna) Eleanor Roosevelt, 20, marries Columbia Law School student Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 23, her fifth cousin once removed (and the president's fifth cousin). Orphaned since age 10, she has been raised by a grandmother and is considered an ugly duckling, while Franklin (Harvard '04) is one of the handsomest men in America. His mother, Sara Delano Roosevelt, has tried to discourage the match and insisted that the engagement be kept secret for a year (see medicine, 1921).
Palmolive Soap is introduced by Milwaukee's 42-year-old B. W. Johnson Soap Co., whose Caleb Johnson has bought a new soap milling machine that he saw at last year's St. Louis Exposition. The toilet soap is made from a formula that includes some hydrogenated palm and olive oils, using the process invented by Wilhelm Normann in 1901; the product will be so successful that the company will change its name to Palmolive in 1917.
Old Dutch Cleanser is introduced by Milwaukee meatpacker Patrick Cudahy, who makes his household scouring powder from a mix of lye (leached from wood ashes) and animal fats left over from the rendering process (see Bon Ami, 1887).
Tobacco merchant Washington Duke dies in his native Orange County, N.C., May 8 at age 84, having established the basis for the American Tobacco Co. headed by his youngest son James, now 48.
Portland, Ore., box factory manager Gustav Carlson develops plywood for the city's Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition. He glues together thin sheets of softwood veneer, his plywood will compete with Augustine Sackett's plasterboard (see 1888), but it will not begin to revolutionize construction until 1935, when phenol-formaldehyde comes into use as a strong, water-resistant adhesive.
A syndicate organized by Harry Chandler acquires the Porter Ranch in the San Fernando Valley. Members include Chandler's father-in-law Harrison Gray Otis, Moses H. Sherman, and H. J. Whitley. Their Suburban Homes Co. will purchase most of the Van Nuys and Lankershim family holdings for about $2.5 million in 1909, and they will subdivide the 60,000 acres into residential and industrial properties that they will sell by 1916 for $17 million, having built a paved 22-mile highway (Sherman Way) to link their development to the city (which will annex the valley in 1915).
Cleveland's Shaker Heights suburb has its beginnings in a 1,400-acre tract of land owned by the Shaker Church east of the city. Real estate developers Oris Paxton Van Sweringen, 26, and his brother Mantis, 24, have secured parcels of land in the tract. They borrow heavily to acquire a total of 4,000 acres that they will develop into a model suburban community with winding roadways, artificial lakes, and restrictive covenants to control architecture, but they bar blacks and Jews, and their investment will not pay off until they persuade the Cleveland Street Railways Co. to extend a line to Shaker Heights by offering to pay 5 years' interest on the cost of laying tracks.
Photography mogul George Eastman moves with his 83-year-old mother into a new 37-room Rochester, N.Y., mansion that requires a staff of 40 and has its own cows and chickens.
A new Statler Hotel opens at Buffalo, N.Y., to replace the temporary Outside Inn put up by E. M. Statler for the Pan American Exposition of 1901. Statler advertises "a room and a bath for a dollar and a half," and he will develop a chain of Statler Hotels in other cities.
President Roosevelt creates a Bureau of Forestry in the U.S. Department of Agriculture February 1 with Gifford Pinchot as chief forester (see 1902). Congress passes a bill transferring U.S. forest reserves from the Department of the Interior to the USDA, and the reserves are soon designated National Forests as Pinchot works to make the Forest Service a defender of the public lands against private interests (see "conservation," 1907).
President Roosevelt establishes the Wichita Mountains Refuge for big game in Oklahoma Territory.
The National Audubon Society founded January 5 under the name National Association of Audubon Societies for the Protection of Wild Birds and Animals will make its headquarters at New York, center of the millinery trade that uses bird feathers in hats (see Grinnell, 1885; Pelican Island, 1903; migratory bird law, 1913).
An earthquake April 4 at Kangra, India, kills an estimated 19,000 people; a quake in Calabria, Italy, September 8 kills 2,500.
The California state legislature at Sacramento floats the first of two successful bond issues to finance construction of an aqueduct that will bring water from the Owens Valley to Los Angeles. A second bond issue 2 years hence will also be successful, and the $24.5 million raised will enable the city's water board to acquire land in the valley despite opposition from farmers and other local residents. Irish-born city superintendent William Mulholland, 50, has gained backing for the project from the water board, whose members include rapid-transit developer Moses H. Sherman; Sherman's real estate developer friend Harry Chandler has extensive interests in the San Fernando Valley (see 1913).
Ohio-born botanist George Harrison Shull, 31, journeys to Santa Rosa, Calif., on a grant from the Carnegie Institution established 3 years ago and studies plant hybridization methods pioneered by Luther Burbank in 1875 (see 1921).
Just 100 men own more than 17 million acres of California's vast Sacramento valley, while in the arid San Joaquin Valley many individuals own tracts of 100,000 acres and more.
U.S. farmers cultivate roughly 12 acres of land for every American. The number will fall rapidly as the population increases and land is made more productive.
The New York State Board of Regents gives college credit for agricultural courses taught at secondary schools at the persuasion of Liberty Hyde Bailey, 47, director of the New York State College of Agriculture at Cornell University (he serves Cornell also as dean of its faculty and professor of rural economy).
University of Utrecht nutritionist C. A. (Cornelis Adrianus) Pekelharing, 53, finds that mice die on a seemingly ample diet of purified proteins, fats, carbohydrates, and water but survive when their diet includes a few drops of milk. Pekelharing concludes that "unrecognized substances" must exist in food (see 1906; Funk, 1911).
Iodine compounds prove useful in treating goiter. Cleveland physician David Marine, 25, has moved west from Baltimore and been struck by the fact that all the dogs in town—and many of the people—have goiters (see Baumann, 1896). He begins a campaign for the iodization of table salt (see Kendall, 1915).
Upton Sinclair exposes U.S. meat-packing conditions in his novel The Jungle. The 308-page bestseller has eight pages devoted to such matters as casual meat inspection, lamb and mutton that is really goat meat, deviled ham that is really red-dyed minced tripe, sausage that contains rats killed by poisoned bread, and lard that sometimes contains the remains of employees who have fallen into the boiling vats. Many readers turn vegetarian, sales of meat products fall off, and Congress is aroused (see meat inspection amendment, 1906).
France passes the first important legislation designed to protect quality wines. Destruction of French vineyards by grape phylloxerae has led to importation of inferior North African wines that have been blended with French wines, compromising their quality.
The London borough of Islington brings a test case in November against a barkeeper for selling whisky "not of the nature, substance, and quality demanded." The borough contends that a blend containing a patent-still spirit is not whisky; a decision based on the Food and Drug Act is rendered in favor of the borough, an appeal fails, and a royal commission is convened to study the production of Scotch whisky (see sanitary commission, 1850; food and drink, 1908).
The U.S. Supreme Court orders dissolution of the Beef Trust January 20 in Swift v. United States. Articles on the trust by Davenport, Iowa-born journalist Charles E. (Edward) Russell, 44, have appeared in Everybody's magazine, but the court order will merely change the form of the trust.
Some 41 million cases of canned foods are packed in the United States. The figure will rise in the next 25 years to 200 million (see 1935).
Pittsburgh's H. J. Heinz Co. test markets Heinz Baked Beans in the north of England. Advertising advises working-class wives that baked beans make a nourishing meal for men returning from work (Heinz beans will be canned at Harlesden beginning in 1928, and Britons will consume baked beans at twice the U.S. rate per capita).
Joseph Campbell Preserve Co. renames itself the Joseph Campbell Co. and advertises in Good Housekeeping magazine: "21 Kinds of Campbell's Soups—16 million cans sold in 1904" (see 1904; Franco-American, 1915).
U.S. millers begin selling flour in small, consumer-sized bags rather than in barrels; Washburn, Crosby markets its Gold Medal Flour in the new bags (see 1880; Betty Crocker, 1921).
The New Orleans restaurant Galatoire's opens at 209 Bourbon Street, where proprietor Jean Galatoire accepts no reservations and requires that men wear jackets and ties. The place will remain in the same family for four generations, serving shrimp rémoulade, shrimp à la Créole, oysters en brochette, pompano meunière sautéed with almonds, trout Marguery, and soft-shell crab in season.
The Asiatic Exclusion League founded by U.S. nativists seeks to ban Japanese immigration (see 1908; Hearst, 1904). China boycotts U.S. goods to protest American laws barring entry of educated Chinese along with Chinese workers (see 1902).
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