1913: Information and Much More from Answers.com
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France's Premier Poincaré takes office as president January 19, beginning a 7-year term that will see his country go through a terrible war. Former German Army chief of staff Alfred, graf von Schlieffen, has died at Berlin January 4 at age 79, saying, "The struggle is inevitable. Keep my right flank strong." The Germans will use a modification of the Schlieffen Plan next year to invade Belgium and France.
British Army officer Hugh Trenchard, 40, receives a transfer to the Royal Flying Corps established last year by royal warrant and serves as second in command of the Central Flying School (see 1915; Sopwith Camel, 1914).
Former British field marshal Garnet Joseph Wolseley, 1st Viscount, Baron Wolseley of Cairo and of Wolesley, dies at Mentone, France, March 26 at age 79; former British secretary for Ireland George Wyndham at Paris June 8 at age 49; former French minister of justice Emile Olivier at Saint-Gervais-les-Bains August 20 at age 88; German Social Democratic Party cofounder August Bebel at Passugg, Switzerland, August 13 at age 73.
Constantinople agrees January 22 to give up Adrianople (Edirne). A peace conference at London has broken down January 6 over Turkish refusal to yield Adrianople, the Aegaean islands, and Crete; Allied coalition troops take Adrianople after a 155-day siege, and Scutari falls to Montenegrin forces after a 6-month siege, but the 31-year-old Young Turk general Enver engineers a coup d'état January 23, ousting the aged grand vizier Mehmed Kamil and restoring his party to power with Gen. Mahmud Sevket, now 54, as grand vizier. War resumes February 3 with Greece, Bulgaria, and Serbia.
An assassin kills Greece's George I at Salonika March 18 at age 67 after a reign of nearly 50 years. The former Danish prince is succeeded as king of the Hellenes by his 44-year-old son, who will reign until his abdication in 1917 as Constantine I (see 1920).
The Treaty of London May 30 resolves the Balkan War, but the new grand vizier Mahmud Sevket is assassinated at Constantinople June 11 after only 6 months in office and a 32-day Second Balkan War begins June 29 when a Bulgarian commander orders an attack on Serbo-Greek positions. Bucharest and Constantinople declare war, Ottoman forces under the command of Gen. Enver recapture Adrianople (Edirne) from the Bulgars July 22, Bulgaria is quickly defeated, and the Treaty of Bucharest August 10 ends hostilities. Bulgaria and Turkey settle their frontier dispute September 21 (the Turks keep Adrianople), the former grand vizier Mehmed Kamil dies at Nicosia, Cyprus, November 14 at age 81, but the Balkans continue to fester (see 1914).
Mexico City is seized February 9 by a nephew of former president Porfirio Díaz, and President Madero flees. Military leader Victoriano Huerta, 58, proclaims himself president February 18 and imposes a represssive dictatorship. Madero is imprisoned and shot dead February 22 at age 39 while allegedly trying to escape. Washington refuses to recognize Huerta's regime, and civil war breaks out; insurgent general Francisco "Pancho" Villa (originally Doroteo Arango), 36, takes Ciudad Juarez November 15, vowing to conquer the country (see 1914).
The Seventeenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides for direct election of U.S. senators; ratified April 8, it marks the beginning of the end of the "Millionaire's Club" that has dominated the Senate, whose members heretofore have been selected by state legislators who could all too easily be bribed.
The last Chinese troops march out of Lhasa in January, destined for internment in India pending repatriation (see 1912; 1949). China's Nationalist Party (Guomindang, or Kuomintang [KMT]) wins 269 of the 596 seats in the National Assembly in February elections. Party founder Song Jiaoren (Sung Chiao-jen), 30, is credited with having brought the Guomindang to power, he favors a constitution that would vest executive authority in a cabinet answerable to the parliament rather than to the president, but he is shot at Shanghai March 20 as he is boarding a train for the capital and dies 2 days later. Dissidents accuse Provisional President Yuan Shikai of having instigated the murder and undermined the assembly (see 1912). The assembly is unable to block Yuan's efforts to obtain a $125 million "reorganization loan" from a consortium of foreign banks, which is granted in April. Yuan promptly dismisses three Nationalist military governors; Sun Yat-sen, Liang Qichao, and other progressives who once supported Yuan try to unseat him during the summer. Yuan puts down the rebellion, coerces Parliament into electing him formally to the presidency, obtains foreign recognition, and is inaugurated October 10, ending all hope of making China a parliamentary democracy. Sun Yat-sen flees the country, and when the assembly promulgates a constitution that contains the late Song Jiaoren's ideas, Yüan revokes the credentials of Guomindang members, accusing them of involvement in the revolt, but the resistance organized by Liang Qichao does prevent Yuan from overturning the republic and having himself declared emperor (see 1914).
Japan's final Tokugawa shōgun dies at his native Tokyo January 22 at age 75, having lived to see his country become a world power, albeit not a democratic one: Yoshinobu Tokugawa was in power briefly from 1866 to January 1868. Japan has riots against the oligarchic methods of Prime Minister Taro Katsura, who has headed the government for a third time since December but resigns in February. The elder statesmen (genro) who control the oligarchical government refuse to let the head of the dominant political party become prime minister, so Katsura is succeeded by Admiral Gonnohyoe Yamamoto, 60 (see 1914); diplomat Count Tadasu Hayashi dies at Tokyo July 10 at age 63; Katsura dies at Tokyo October 10 at age 65.
Former Egyptian minister of justice Sa'd Zaghlul wins election to the Legislative Assembly and becomes vice president of the unicameral parliament, whose powers are limited (see 1912). By next year he will have regained the respect of nationalists (see 1914).
Ethiopia's Menelek II dies at Addis Ababa December 12 at age 69 after a 24-year reign in which he has repelled an Italian invasion, expanded his territory, created ministries, built the new capital of Adis Ababa in the highlands of Shewa, constructed a railroad between the capital and Djibouti on the Gulf of Aden, initiated modern education, and built telegraph and telephone systems. Incapacitated by paralyzing strokes for at least 6 years, he is succeeded by his grandson Lij Iyasu under the regency of Ras Tesemma, who has ruled during much of Menelek's illness (see 1930).
A South African Natives' Land Act adopted by the all-white Parliament June 19 prevents Zulu, Mfengu, and other black tribesmen from owning any land outside a few arid, worthless parcels in what later will be called bantustans, or homelands. The new law restricts the size of individual land holdings inside these areas, makes it impossible for natives to live as subsistence farmers, forces them to work for wages on white-owned farms (or in factories or mines), and reserves about 92.5 percent of the country's land for whites, who make up only 20 percent of the population (blacks will be allowed to own 13 percent of the land beginning in 1936) (see 1924).
Mohandas Gandhi in South Africa leads 2,500 Indians into the Transvaal in defiance of a law, they are violently arrested, Gandhi refuses to pay a fine, he is jailed, his supporters demonstrate November 25, and Natal police fire into the crowd, killing two, injuring twenty (see 1906; 1914).
The California legislature passes a xenophobic Alien Land Act aimed primarily at Chinese and Japanese farmers. The act places a 3-year limit on leases of agricultural land and bans purchases of farmland by "aliens ineligible for citizenship"; the Issei (first generation) Japanese circumvent the act by leasing and buying land in the names of their Nisei (second generation) children, who are citizens by birthright, but the Native Sons of the Golden West and other nativist organizations will work to strengthen the act (see 1920).
Jamaican social reformer Marcus (Moziah) Garvey, 26, founds the Universal Negro Improvement Association. Largely self-educated, the charismatic Garvey began working as a printer's apprentice at age 14, was blacklisted for leading employees in a strike for higher wages, moved to South America, and has witnessed the poor working conditions of blacks in several countries; he revives the dream of the late Benjamin "Pap" Singleton, who envisioned a society in which blacks owned land, directed industries, and held power (see 1916).
Harriet Tubman dies in poverty March 10 at age 92 in the Harriet Tubman Home for Aged Negroes that she founded years ago at Auburn, N.Y.
The murder of Atlanta pencil factory worker Mary Phagan, 14, April 26 brings accusations that her killer was Texas-born New York-raised engineer and plant superintendent Leo (Moses) Frank, 28; he is indicted July 28, convicted on little evidence, and sentenced to death August 26 (see 1915).
U.S. suffragists march 5,000-strong down Washington's Pennsylvania Avenue March 3 (the day before Woodrow Wilson's inauguration) following New Jersey social worker Alice Paul, 28, who was studying at the London School of Economics in 1908 when she became involved in the militant English suffrage movement and in the next 2 years was repeatedly imprisoned for demonstrating on behalf of the cause. Force-fed through her nose when she staged hunger strikes, Paul returned to America 3 years ago to fight for woman suffrage in her own country, only to find that most U.S. suffrage leaders were fearful of offending anyone. Suffragist lawyer Inez Boissevain (née Milholland), now 27, rides a white horse down the avenue, but crowds of angry, jeering men slap the demonstrators, spit at them, and poke them with lighted cigars. A brawl stops the march before it can reach the White House, 40 people are hospitalized, and it takes a cavalry troop from Ft. Myer to restore order (see 1916).
Norwegian women gain the right to vote on the same basis as men (see Finland, 1906; Russia, 1917).
English suffragist Emmeline Pankhurst draws a 3-year jail sentence April 3 for arson (she has incited her supporters to place explosives in the house of the Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George) but will serve only 1 year and devote part of it to a hunger strike (see 1906). Pankhurst supporters invade the Manchester Art Gallery and mutilate 18 paintings. Parliament passes the Prisoners' Temporary Discharge for Ill Health Act in April to thwart hunger strikes; militant suffragists call it the Cat and Mouse Act (see 1918).
Suffragist Emily Davison, 41, sustains fatal injuries June 4 when she runs onto the track at the Derby wearing a WSPU banner, tries to grab the reins of the king's horse, and is trampled. Imprisoned several times for stone-throwing, setting mailboxes afire, and attacking a Baptist minister whom she mistook for Prime Minister Lloyd George, she had attempted suicide at Holloway Gaol to protest against force-feeding.
Sylvia Pankhurst draws a 3-month prison sentence July 8.
"I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is," writes Irish-born English journalist Rebecca West, 20, in the November 13 issue of the Clarion: "I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat." Cicily Isabel Fairfield has been using the pen name "Rebecca West" since about 1911 when she went to work as reviewer for the feminist magazine Free Woman; she joined the Clarion as a political writer last year.
The Rockefeller Foundation chartered by Standard Oil's John D. Rockefeller, Sr., will be a major force in improving world health, world agriculture, and education and will work toward world peace (see 1914). Rockefeller has acted on the advice of his confidant Frederick Taylor Gates, now 60, formerly head of the American Baptist Education Society; his lawyers obtain a state charter from Albany that insulates much of the Rockefeller fortune from income taxes, and the foundation's nine trustees hold their first meeting May 19 at 26 Broadway, New York, where they elect John D. Rockefeller, Jr. president.
Manitoba-born explorer Villhjalmur Stefansson, 33, begins a 5-year expedition that will take him on a continuous journey north of the Arctic Circle, exploring the western part of Canada's Arctic region and the far northern part of Alaska. He took part in ethnological studies of Mackenzie Delta natives and the so-called "Copper Eskimos" of Coronation Gulf from 1908 to 1912, working under the auspices of the Canadian government and the American Museum of Natural History with Rudolph M. Anderson of the University of Iowa and finding blond Eskimos whose existence was unknown. Living for long periods of time on an "Eskimo diet" of raw meat and blubber, Stefansson will discover several islands.
Rochester, N.Y., garment worker Ida Brayman, 17, dies February 15 of gunshot wounds sustained when she was shot by her employer during a labor-management struggle. Police arrest Elizabeth Gurley Flynn February 25 at Paterson, N.J., in a strike called by local silk workers to protest the installation of improved machinery that will eliminate jobs (see Luddites, 1811). The IWW (International Workers of the World) has led the strike, which continues for 5 months (see Flynn, 1912). A general strike of lingerie makers in Brooklyn and Manhattan brings out 35,000 young women, many still in their early teens, who march in picket lines organized by Rose Schneiderman. But the ILGWU strike that began last December is called off March 15 after 13 weeks.
The Sixteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution proclaimed in force February 25 by Secretary of State Philander Chase Knox, 59, empowers Congress to levy graduated income taxes on incomes above $3,000 per year. The progressive income tax will bring drastic changes to the lifestyles of a few thousand rich Americans, but the great majority does not earn enough to be subject to the tax, and the very rich will find loopholes for avoiding taxes.
The Pujo Report published February 28 by the House Committee on Banking and Currency creates a sensation by exposing the "money trust" that controls U.S. financial power. Rep. Arsène P. (Paulin) Pujo, 50, (D. La.) heads the committee that has called witnesses, including financier J. P. Morgan. The report reveals that Morgan, George F. Baker, and James Stillman have between them controlled at least nine banks or trust companies with assets of about $1.5 billion and have had a voice in the management of most railroads, industries, and public utilities. Their representatives have held 341 directorships in 112 concerns with resources exceeding $22 billion.
President Taft signs a law just before leaving office March 4 creating the Department of Labor. Congress has passed the Sulzer Bill in response to demands by the American Federation of Labor (AFL), whose membership has reached 2 million.
J. P. Morgan dies at Rome March 31 at age 75, leaving an art collection valued at about $50 million plus about $68 million in securities, prompting John D. Rockefeller to say, "To think, he wasn't even a rich man"). The largest single item in his estate is his interest in his New York and Philadelphia firms, appraised at $29,875,847, but the estate also includes many worthless securities.
The Underwood-Simmons Tariff Act passed by Congress May 8 lowers import duties by an average of 30 percent, the first real break in tariff protection since the Civil War. President Wilson has called a special session of Congress and addressed the legislators in person April 8 to urge passage of a new tariff bill, the first such appearance by a president in 113 years. Agricultural implements, raw wool, iron ore, pig iron, and steel rails are admitted duty-free under the new law, and tariffs on raw materials and foodstuffs are substantially reduced. The United States accounts for about 40 percent of world industrial production, up from 20 percent in 1860, but the new measure hurts many manufacturers; pressure mounts for restoration of tariff protection (see 1922).
The United Mine Workers strike Colorado Fuel and Iron September 23 to protest policies of the company controlled by John D. Rockefeller Jr. The United States has the world's worst mine safety record, and the record in Colorado is worse than in any other state (accidents killed 319 workers in 1910 and injured hundreds more). CFI owns 600 square miles of coal properties, operates 39 mines, produces 6 million tons of coal per year, and routinely rigs the scales at pitheads to underweigh output per worker, but miners who demand that scales be checked are fired, and 1,000 miners were fired last year on suspicion that they were union members. Detectives from the Baldwin Felts agency have picked a fight in August with labor organizer Gerald Lippiati and shot him dead in broad daylight on the streets of Trinidad, but instead of intimidating the workers the incident enrages them; they demand union recognition, an 8-hour day, a 10 percent wage boost, the withdrawal of company guards, and the right to elect their own checkweightmen. A CFI guard who has raped several miners' wives is shot dead September 18; other guards evict strikers' families from company housing, forcing them to live in tent colonies as winter approaches. Guards arrest union organizers and lock them up without trial, they escort scabs into the mines, 27 of the 11,000 strikers are killed, and some of the others set two mines afire. The U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations meets in the fall with members appointed by President Wilson to root out the causes of industrial unrest (see 1912). American Federation of Labor lawyer Frank P. Walsh heads the commission, but violence in the Colorado coal fields continues, with fatalities on both sides (see Ludlow massacre, 1914)
A Christmas party for children of copper-mine strikers at Calumet, Mich., ends in disaster as company thugs shout, "Fire!" and then lock all the doors of the building; 73 children are trampled and smothered to death in their efforts to get out.
The average British worker still earns less than £1 per week ($5 in U.S. currency) while American workers average more than $2 per day (see Ford, 1914). The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics computes its first monthly Consumer Price Index to help determine the fairness of wage levels (see Fisher, 1911).
Bethlehem Steel's Charles M. Schwab acquires Fore River Shipbuilding and makes his New Jersey-born protégé Eugene G. (Gifford) Grace, 37, president of Bethlehem. Grace will develop the company into the world's second largest steelmaker (see 1912; Sparrows Point, 1916).
Singer Manufacturing Co. sells 2.5 million sewing machines, 675,000 of them in Russia.
The Federal Reserve System created under terms of a measure signed into law by President Wilson December 23 will reform U.S. banking and currency. The charters of two previous central banks have been allowed to expire, largely because many Americans have distrusted the eastern financial establishment, and former U.S. senator Nelson W. Aldrich, now 72, has spoken out against the measure, although it contains many elements derived from his own plan to provide the nation with a modified central banking system and "elastic" currency system. Drafted to prevent panics such as the one in 1907 and still allay Populist aversion, the Glass-Owen Currency Act establishes 12 Federal Reserve banks in America's 12 major cities, with 25 branch offices, and requires member banks to maintain cash reserves proportionate to their deposits with the Fed—which loans money to the banks at low rates of interest relative to the rates the banks charge customers. The Fed's seven-man Board of Governors is appointed by the president to staggered 14-year terms and needs no congressional appropriations to operate; it acts as a lender of last resort, determines the amount of money in circulation at any given time, provides elasticity to the supply of currency, and can act to control inflation, but Aldrich has opposed it on grounds that giving the reserve banks power to issue notes is inflationary (see Banking Act, 1935).
Wall Street's Dow Jones Industrial Average closes December 31 at 78.78, down from 87.87 at the end of 1912.
Neiman-Marcus at Dallas has a fire in the spring (see 1907). Filene's Basement at Boston (see 1909) sells the old store's stock while Neiman-Marcus builds a new one.
Catalog merchant Montgomery Ward dies at Highland Park, Ill., December 7 at age 70.
Hudson, Mass.-born General Electric physical chemist William D. (David) Coolidge, 39, receives a patent on "tungsten and method for making the same for use as filaments of incandescent electric lamps" (see Langmuir, 1912). Coolidge produced the first ductile tungsten 5 years ago by using high temperatures to draw the metal into fine filaments; long-burning tungsten filament bulbs will replace the Swan-Edison carbon filament bulbs in use until now (see 1879; Owens, 1903; frosted bulbs, 1925).
Germany produces 34 percent of the world's electrical equipment, the United States 19 percent.
The Keokuk Dam completed June 5 north of St. Louis on the Mississippi River is the world's largest hydroelectric dam yet; 5,627 feet long, 52 feet high, 42 feet wide at its base, it delivers power 180 miles to St. Louis beginning July 1, and replaces 1,000 tons of coal per day.
An International Geological Congress at Toronto estimates world coal reserves, taking one foot as the minimum workable thickness of seams down to depths of 4,000 feet and two feet as the minimum for seams at lower depths. North America is judged to have more than 5 trillion metric tons of coal, Asia 1.3 trillion, Europe 784 billion, South America 33 billion, Africa 58 million, Oceania 170 million.
Oklahoma wildcatters strike oil in the Healdton Field, drilling a well in 18 days that brings in a gusher at 920 feet (see Slick, 1912). The Garber, Oilton, Sholem-Alechem, Tatum, and Velma fields will come in next year, but the Cushing and Healdton fields alone will be credited with making Oklahoma the leading U.S. oil producer, and it will remain among the top five states in terms of oil production (see Phillips, 1917).
World petroleum production reaches 407.5 million barrels per year, up from 5.7 million in 1870. Most comes from wells in the United States and from Russia's Caspian Sea and Caucasus Mountain oil fields (see Persia, 1908; Persia, 1914; Venezuela, 1914).
German chemist Friedrich Bergius, 28, extracts a liquid from coal through hydrogenation and publishes a paper describing his research on the conversion of coal into liquid hydrocarbons. He has added large amounts of hydrogen to coal under high pressure at high temperatures in the presence of a catalyst. I. G. Farben will acquire patent rights to the process in 1926, but when world oil prices collapse in the 1930s making Leunabenzin (synthesized gasoline} will prove much costlier than refining petroleum pumped out of the ground.
A thermal cracking process for petroleum receives a U.S. patent. Developed by Cleveland-born Standard Oil Co. chemist William M. (Merriam) Burton, 47, it uses chemical means to transform many of petroleum's less volatile components into gasoline, thereby doubling the yield of petroleum.
High-speed turbine (and cream separator) inventor Carl de Laval dies at Stockholm February 2 at age 67. The flexible shaft he has devised to eliminate wobbling and his special double-helical gear will be the basis for most steam turbines.
Russian aeronautical engineer Igor (Ivan) Sikorsky, 24, builds and flies the world's first multimotored aircraft. He built a prototype helicopter 4 years ago but it would not fly, and Michael E. Gluhareff, 20, has helped him to design a more successful machine (see 1939; Cornu, 1907; autogyro, 1923; helicopter, 1936).
Lord Northcliffe of the London Daily Mail offers a £10,000 prize for the first nonstop transatlantic crossing by aeroplane. No pilot has topped the distance record of 628.15 miles set last year, and many regard the offer as an empty publicity stunt (see 1919).
Aeronaut-inventor Thaddeus S. C. Lowe dies at Pasadena, Calif., January 16 at age 80.
New York's Grand Central Terminal opens February 1 at 42nd Street and Park Avenue, replacing a 41-year-old New York Central and New Haven train shed with the world's largest railway station. Trains under Park Avenue have been electrified since December 1906. Far bigger than Penn Station, Grand Central has 31 tracks on its upper level, 17 on its lower (which opened for commuter service in October 1912). Separate men's and women's waiting rooms and lavatories are at either end of the main waiting room off 42nd Street; the women's waiting room, at the east end, has amenities that include a hair-dressing salon.
Florida East Coast Railway builder Henry Morrison Flagler dies at West Palm Beach May 20 at age 83.
The first diesel-electric locomotives go into service in Sweden. Diesel-electrics will generally replace steam locomotives, but inventor Rudolf Diesel jumps or falls overboard from the Antwerp-Harwich mail steamer Dresden the night of September 30 and is lost at age 55 (see 1896; first U.S. diesels, 1924).
The White Star Line's S.S. Olympic resumes transatlantic service April 2, having been refitted at her Belfast shipyard (see 1911; Titanic, 1912). Given a double bottom up her sides to the waterline, full-height bulkheads, and additional lifeboats, she will remain in service until April 1935 (but see 1914).
The Hamburg-Amerika Line passenger ship S.S. Imperator that will later become the S.S. Berengaria leaves Cuxhaven for New York on her maiden voyage June 20. Built at Hamburg's Vulcan Werft Shipyard for Hamburg-Amerika's Albert Ballin, the 52,022-ton vessel is 919 feet in length overall, has four screws, and can reach a maximum speed of 24 knots (but see 1914).
New York Evening Sun reporter John Henry Mears, 35, circles the world in a record 35 days, 21 hours, 31 seconds (see Nellie Bly, 1890). He leaves New York on R.M.S. Mauretania July 2, arrives at Fishguard, Wales, proceeds by rail to London, crosses the Channel by ship, proceeds by rail to Paris and on to Berlin, St. Petersburg, and thence to Manchuria via the Trans-Siberian Railway, crosses by ship to Japan, proceeds by ship to Vancouver, flies to Seattle, and completes the 21,066-mile journey by rail via Chicago, arriving back at New York August 6 (see Wiley Post, 1931).
Elmer Sperry receives a patent for his stabilizer gyroscope (see 1910; rail defect detection, 1923).
A storm on the Great Lakes from November 7 to 10 is the fiercest ever known to strike the region. Some 20 vessels are sunk, about 20 damaged, and more than 270 crewmen and officers are lost as winds gusting up to 100 miles per hours create waves up to 35 feet high on upper Lake Michigan, Lake Huron, and Lake Superior, continuing for 16 hours with blinding snow.
Sales of U.S. luxury motorcars priced from $2,500 to $7,500 reach 18,500; Packard leads the field (2,300 cars), followed by Pierce Arrow (2,000), while White, Franklin, Locomobile, and Peerless provide healthy competition. Cadillac is the leading make in the $1,500 to $2,500 range and will enter the luxury market next year with a V8 model—the first eight-cylinder car.
Duesenberg Motor Co. is founded at St. Paul, Minnesota, by Fred S. and August S. Duesenberg, 36 and 34, respectively. The German-born bicycle makers (and bike racers) opened a garage at Des Moines, Iowa, in 1903, produced their first motorcar in 1904 under the name Mason, and have sold their Iowa company to Maytag Washing Machine Co., which is selling their original car as a Maytag (see 1919; everyday life [Maytag], 1907).
The new Ford Model T sells for as little as $550; the price will soon drop to $490 (see 1925). The Dodge brothers John and Horace break with Henry Ford and become independent while continuing to own stock in Ford Motor Co., which builds a big new plant at Highland Park, Mich. (see 1914; 1919).
The assembly line introduced at Ford Motor Company October 7 reduces the time required to assemble a motorcar from 12.5 hours to 1.5 hours. Devised by Danish-born engineer Charles E. Sorensen, 31, with help from engineer Clarence W. Avery, it is an improvement on a primitive line used by Ransome E. Olds in 1901. Employees remain in place while conveyor belts carry parts to their work stations, where each employee installs just one part; Ford's line reverses the disassembling line used by Chicago and Cincinnati meat packers, factories producing a wide variety of products will convert to assembly line production, but although the line will revolutionize much of industry it will also increase worker boredom and permit the industry to hire unskilled and semiskilled workers at wages lower than those of skilled workers.
Monroe Calculating Machine Co. is founded at Newark, N.J., by entrepreneur Jay R. (Randolph) Monroe, 29, to produce a machine patented in 1874 by Frank S. Baldwin, now 74. The Arithometer was the first adding machine sold in America, Baldwin patented a calculating machine in 1902, he met Monroe last year, and he has refined his machine with an independent shaft for carrying balances and a reverse order for dividing and calculating.
A commercial ammonia plant employing the Haber process of 1908 begins production at Ludwigshafen, Germany. The ammonia is used primarily for making explosives.
Physicist William H. Bragg uses an ionization chamber in January to detect reflected rays (see von Laue, 1912); by March he has constructed the first X-ray spectrometer and will use it to investigate the spectral distribution of the X-rays, relations between wave length and Planck's constant, etc.
A paper published by English physicist Henry (Gwyn Jeffreys) Moseley, 25, reports that the frequencies of corresponding lines in X-ray spectra are proportional to the squares of whole numbers that are equal to the atomic number plus a constant ("Moseley's Law"). Moseley has conducted a series of experiments in Ernest Rutherford's laboratory at the University of Manchester (see 1914).
A new model of the atom devised by Danish physicist Niels Bohr, 28, violates classical electromagnetic theory but successfully accounts for the spectrum of hydrogen (see Balmer, 1885). Applying Max Planck's quantum theory of 1900 to Ernest Rutherford's nuclear atom of 1911, Bohr proposes a planetary model of the atom in which electrons orbit the nucleus and actually jump between orbits as the atom absorbs or emits energy (see 1939; Schrödinger, 1926).
The Concept of a Riemann Surface (Die Idee der Riemannschen Fläche) by German mathematician Hermann Weyl, 27, pioneers a new branch of mathematics by uniting function theory and geometry, thus opening a synoptic view of analysis, geometry, and topology. Weyl has studied at the University of Göttingen under David Hilbert and is appointed to a professorship at Zürich's Technische Hochschule, where his colleagues include Albert Einstein.
Michigan-born Harvard mathematician George D. (David) Birkhoff, 29, gives proof of a geometric theorem in topology (the study of surfaces and spaces) first proposed by the late Jules-Henri Poincaré.
Illinois-born geneticist Alfred H. (Henry) Sturtevant, 21, develops a technique for mapping the location of the specific genes in the chromosomes of the fruit fly Drosophila (see Morgan, 1909; Lewis, 1978).
Zoologist Adam Sedgwick dies at London February 27 at age 58; naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace at Broadstone, Sussex, November 7 at age 90.
General Electric's W. D. Coolidge invents the modern X-ray tube (see 1916; Roentgen, 1895).
Hungarian-born physician Bela Schick, 36, at New York's Mount Sinai Hospital develops the Schick test for determining susceptibility to diphtheria.
The American Cancer Society has its beginnings in the American Society for the Control of Cancer, founded with support from philanthropist John D. Rockefeller Jr. Nine out of 10 cancer patients die of the disease; the mortality rate will fall sharply but the incidence of cancer will increase (see 1945).
Pathologist Johannes Fibiger at the University of Copenhagen succeeds in inducing gastric tumors on a consistent basis in mice and rats by feeding them cockroaches infected with Gongylonema neoplasticum (see 1907). He shows that the tumors metastasize (proliferate) and gives support to the prevailing idea that cancer is the product of tissue irritation (see Yamagiwa, 1915).
Russian pathologist Nikolai Nikolaevich Anichkov, 29, shows that rabbits fed large amounts of cholesterol and animal fats develop hardening of the arteries (arteriosclerosis, or atherosclerosis), but rabbits are herbivorous, and they naturally die when fed animal fats. Many scientists will question the significance of Anichkov's finding (see Herrick, 1912; Bloch, 1942; Keys, 1953).
Alsatian-born Protestant missionary-physician Albert Schweitzer, 38, founds Lambaréné Hospital in French Equatorial Africa; renowned in his youth as an organist, he began preaching at Strasbourg's Church of St. Nicholas in 1899, received his MD this year after 7 years of medical studies and will be famous for his "reverence for life."
The German chemical company Merck patents the mood/mind-altering drug MDMA (3,4 Methylene-dioxy-N-methylamphetamine, or Methylenedioxymethamphetamine) that will later find use in psychotherapy but will also be abused as a street drug under names such as Ecstasy, E, Adam, X, and Empathy (see 1985).
Chiropractic founder Daniel D. Palmer leads a gala homecoming parade of students through Davenport, Iowa, in August (his son Bartlett runs the flourishing 15-year-old chiropractic school there but Palmer has not been invited), is struck by a car, and dies of his injuries at Los Angeles October 20 at age 68; appendectomy pioneer Charles McBurney dies of a coronary thrombosis on a hunting trip at Brookline, Mass., November 7 at age 68.
The United Synagogue of America is organized by Romanian-born New York Talmudic scholar Solomon Schechter, 65, to encourage Jews to participate more fully in Jewish life. The central federation of 23 synagogues will grow to link some 835 Conservative congregations in the United States and Canada.
The Anti-Defamation League to fight anti-Semitism in America is founded by the 70-year-old B'Nai B'rith (Sons of the Covenant).
Sophia (Jochi) University has its beginnings in a college founded at Tokyo.
U.S. Parcel Post service begins January 1 (see Britain, 1880). The U.S. Postal Service has inaugurated the service after more than two decades of agitation by Populist politicians and farmers who hope to ship produce to market via Parcel Post. American Express, Adams Express, United States Express, and Wells Fargo have opposed the service. But by year's end packages are being mailed at the rate of 300 million per year; mail-order firms such as Montgomery Ward and Sears, Roebuck receive up to five times as many orders as last year; and sales of rural merchants are depressed.
Texas-born Postmaster General Albert (Sidney) Burleson, 49, proposes nationalization of telephone and telegraph communications, noting that the Constitution provided for federal control of the postal system and would have provided for federal control of other means of communication had they existed (see Britain, 1912). AT&T president Theodore N. Vail tells stockholders, "We are opposed to government ownership because we know that no government-owned system in the world is giving as cheap and efficient service as the American public is getting from all its telephone companies," but while U.S. long-distance rates are indeed lower than in Europe, local calls generally cost more. AT&T president Vail has his vice president Nathan C. Kingsbury meet with Attorney General George Wickersham; the company divests itself of its Western Union holdings to avoid antitrust action, losing $7.5 million by the divestiture; it halts plans to take over some midwestern telephone companies but retains its valuable Western Electric acquisition (see 1910; nationalization, 1918; dial telephone, 1919).
Engineer Peter Laurits Jensen patents an application of a moving coil to the reproduction of high-fidelity sound (see 1906). Backed by California industrialist Richard O'Connor, Jensen and electrical engineer Edwin Pridham have established a research firm under the name Commercial Wireless and Development Co., work out of a bungalow on the outskirts of Napa, and pursue efforts to create a dynamic loudspeaker (see 1915).
New York public relations pioneer Ivy (Ledbetter) Lee, 36, persuades John D. Rockefeller Jr. to travel to Colorado and speak personally to the miners, an act that improves relations between the Rockefeller family and the outraged strikers. A Georgia-born advocate of frank and open dealing with the public, Lee will help make the Rockefellers famous for their philanthropies—partly by having John D. Sr. hand out dimes to schoolchildren.
Illinois-born editor-author Floyd (James) Dell, 26, quits the Chicago Evening Post in September, moves to New York in November, settles in Greenwich Village, and joins the Masses as managing editor, adopting a Bohemian life. The Associated Press brings charges of criminal libel against the Masses, whose editor Max Eastman and cartoonist Art Young are indicted in November (see 1911). Young's cartoon "Poisoned at the Source" has shown a man personifying the AP pouring the contents of bottles labeled "Lies," "Suppressed Facts," "Prejudice," "Slander," and "Hatred of Labor Organizations" into a reservoir labeled "The News." The AP will drop its suit late next year (but see 1917).
The Dixon Ticonderoga pencil introduced by the 86-year-old Joseph Dixon Co. employs graphite from the company's mine near the historic fort in upstate New York. Its No. 2 model has enough "lead" to draw a continuous line 35 miles long, its hexagonal outer case is made of incensed cedar from California and Oregon (the hexagonal shape permits the company to get more pencils from the same piece of wood and prevents the pencils from rolling off desks), four coats of yellow paint have been applied to the case, and green-striped metal ferrules on each pencil hold a rubber eraser.
W. A. Schaeffer Pen Co. is founded at Fort Madison, Iowa, by jeweler Walter A. Schaeffer, 46, whose fountain pens will compete with those made by Waterman and Parker.
"Bringing Up Father" by St. Louis-born New York American cartoonist George McManus, 29, introduces readers to comic-strip characters Maggie and Jiggs. Publisher William Randolph Hearst last year lured McManus away from the New York World, where he had been producing "The Newlyweds and Their Baby."
William Randolph Hearst acquires Harper's Bazar (he will change its name to Harper's Bazaar in 1929). The magazine for women has been published since 1867 by Harper Bros.
Condé Nast launches Dress & Vanity Fair, a new fashion magazine whose name is shortened after four issues simply to Vanity Fair; edited by Frank Crowninshield, it will be merged with Vogue in 1936 and not re-emerge under its own name until the 1980s.
The first modern crossword puzzle appears December 21 in Fun, the weekend supplement of the New York World. Having seen similar puzzles in 19th-century English periodicals for children and in the London Graphic, English-born journalist Arthur Wynne has arranged squares in a diamond pattern with 31 clues, for the most part simple word definitions: "What bargain hunters enjoy," five letters; "A boy," three letters; "An animal of prey," four letters (sales, lad, lion). The puzzle is just one of several mental exercises published in the World, but within 10 years most U.S. newspapers will be carrying crossword puzzles (see London's Sunday Express, 1924).
Nonfiction: The Tragic Sense of Life in Men and Peoples (Del sentimento tragico de la vida en los hombres y en los pueblos) by Basque philosopher-novelist-poet-dramatist Miguel de Unamuno, 49, whose early realistic novel Paz en la guerra appeared in 1897. Man can exist, says Unamuno, only by resisting the absurdity and injustice of the fact that death brings oblivion, and he urges readers to base their "faith" in "doubt," which alone gives life meaning; Principia Mathematica (three volumes) by University College, London, philosopher-mathematician Alfred North Whitehead, 52, and his onetime Cambridge student Bertrand (Arthur William) Russell, 41, whose first volume appeared in 1910 (see technology [Simon, Newell], 1955); Before the War (L'Avant Guerre) by Léon Daudet, who anticipates what is to come next year; An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution by Indiana-born Columbia University history professor Charles A. (Austin) Beard, 38, points out that America's founding fathers were all men of property when they drafted the Constitution in 1787. Beard suggests certain consequent inequities; The Theory of Social Revolutions by Brooks Adams, who concludes that the very rich exercise enormous power but neglect their public responsibilities; Youth and Life by New Jersey-born New York writer Randolph S. (Silliman) Bourne, 27, who maintains that the youth of today will sweep away much of what is out-of-date and unworthy in U.S. life; "Behind the Beyond," and other Contributions to Human Knowledge by Stephen Leacock includes "Familiar Incidents," "Parisian Pastimes," and "The Retroactive Existence of Mr. Juggins."
Fiction: Swann's Way (Du côté de chez Swann) by French novelist Marcel Proust, 42, whose memories of childhood have been revived by tasting shell-shaped madeleine cakes dipped in tea and who will follow his psychological novel with six more, all under the title Remembrance of Things Past (A la récherche du temps perdu). Proust has paid publisher Bernard Grasset, 32, to bring out his book; The Wanderer (Le Grand Meaulnes) by French novelist Alain-Fournier (Henri Alban Fournier), 26; The Boys in the Back Room (Les Copains) by Jules Romains; Sons and Lovers by English novelist D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence, 38; The Village and the Jungle by English writer Leonard (Sidney) Woolf, 32, who last year married feminist writer Virginia Stephen, now 31 (daughter of the late author-critic Sir Leslie Stephen and with uncertain health, she attempts suicide this year); Fortitude by Hugh Walpole; O Pioneers by former McClure's magazine managing editor Willa (Sibert) Cather, 39, who grew up on the Nebraska frontier; Virginia by Virginia novelist Ellen (Anderson Gholson) Glasgow, 39; Pollyanna by Littleton, N.H.-born novelist Eleanor Porter (née Hodgman), 45, whose saccharine heroine always looks for the bright side of everything; The Mystery of Dr. Fu Manchu (The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu in the United States) by English mystery novelist Sax Rohmer (Arthur Sarsfield Wade), 30; The Double Life of Mr. Alfred Burton by London-born novelist E. (Edward) Phillips Oppenheim, 46, who has been churning out three to five spy and suspense novels since 1896, some of them under the nom de plume Anthony Partridge.
Author-playwright Sholom Aleichem (Solomon Rabinowitz) dies at his home in the Bronx May 13 at age 57 and is memorialized as the "Jewish Mark Twain"; Baron Corvo (Frederick William Rolfe) dies destitute at Venice October 26 at age 53.
Poetry: General William Booth Enters Heaven by Illinois-born poet (Nicholas) Vachel Lindsay, 33; The Tempers by Rutherford, N.J., poet-physician William Carlos Williams, 29; Poems Written in Discouragement by William Butler Yeats; The Daffodil Fields and Dauber: A Poem by John Masefield; Eve by Ralph Hodgson; Stone (Kamen) by Warsaw-born Russian poet Osip (Emilyevich) Mandelstam, 22, whose earliest verses were published in the avant-garde journal Apollo (Apollon) 3 years ago; Eve by Charles Péguy; Alcools by Guillaume Apollinaire; From Two Books (Iz dvukh knig) by Marina Tsvetaeva; "Trees" by New Brunswick, N.J.-born New York Times Book Review editor and poet (Alfred) Joyce Kilmer, 27, appears in the August issue of Poetry magazine and wins worldwide acclaim: "I think that I shall never see, a poem lovely as a tree" (see song, 1922).
Poet Joaquin Miller dies at his Eugene, Oregon, home February 17 at age 69; British poet laureate Alfred Austin at Asford, Kent, June 2 at age 78.
Juvenile: Laddie by Gene Stratton Porter; Kewpies and Dottie Darling and Kewpies: Their Book, Verse, and Poetry by Rose Cecil O'Neill; The Tale of Pigling Bland by Beatrix Potter.
The Armory Show that opens February 17 at New York's huge, 7-year-old 69th Regiment Armory on Lexington Avenue between 24th and 25th streets gives Americans their first look at cubism in an International Exhibition of Modern Art organized by Arthur B. Davies. Represented are the late Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, and other French impressionists, but what shocks most of the 100,000 visitors are works by Paris-born sculptor Gaston Lachaise, 31, Philadelphia-born cubist painter (and photographer) Charles R. Sheeler Jr. 30, Nyack, N.Y.-born realist Edward Hopper, 31, Philadelphia-born watercolorist Stuart Davis, 18, Dorchester, Mass.-born painter Childe Hassam, now 53, New York watercolorist John Marin, watercolorist Maurice Prendergast, and the canvas Nude Descending Staircase by French Dadaist Marcel Duchamp, 26 (who will say that the two American achievements he most admires are its bridges and its plumbing; Theodore Roosevelt describes his painting as "an explosion in a shingle factory"). Organized in part by Brooklyn-born painter Walter Francis "Walt" Kuhn, 35, the show moves to the Chicago Art Institute, where students burn postimpressionist Henri Matisse in effigy, and then to Boston; roughly 250,000 people see the Armory Show, and it ushers in a new era of unromantic art expression.
Other paintings: Student with a Pipe, Woman in a Chemise, and Woman Seated in Armchair (Eva) (his young mistress, Eva Gouel) by Pablo Picasso; Contrast of Forms (Contrastes de formes) (series) by Fernand Léger, who declares that the late Paul Cézanne was the only impressionist painter who saw what was lacking in impressionism and gave it a renewed three-dimensional sense. Léger pioneers serious abstraction with still lifes and landscapes handled in like manner; Clarinet (papier collé) and Violin and Glass by Georges Braque; Paris Through the Window by Marc Chagall; Edtaonisl by Paris cubist Francis Picabia, 34; Spanish Shawl (Woman with Pigeons) by Kees Van Dongen; Street, Berlin by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner; The Bridge by Egon Schiele; Composition in Line and Color by Dutch painter Piet Mondrian (originally Pieter Cornelis Mondriaan), 43, who has evolved a purely abstract style using only horizontal and vertical lines, the three primary colors, and shades of black, white, and grey; Henry James and Corner of the Church of San Stae, Venice by John Singer Sargent; L'Ennui by German-born English painter Walter Richard Sickert, 53; Ariadne by Giorgio de Chirico; Fleeing Mother and Child by Russian-born New York painter Max Weber, 32; Coney Island, Battle of Lights by Italian-born New York painter Joseph Stella, 36.
Les Peintures cubistes by man-of-letters Guillaume Apollinaire champions the new artistic movement.
Anthony Comstock of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice sees a print of last year's Paul Chabas painting September Morn May 13 in the window of an art dealer at 13 West 46th Street (see Comstock Law, 1872). Publicity agent Harry Reichenback has persuaded Braun & Co. to place the print in its window, hired urchins to stand in front of the building and make remarks about the picture, and then complained to Constock. Now 69, Comstock falls for the bait and demands that the picture be removed from the window because it shows "too little morning and too much maid." Chicago alderman "Bathhouse John" Coughlin vows that the picture will not be displayed publicly in Chicago, but oilman Calouste Gulbenkian will acquire the oil and it will wind up at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Sculpture: The Little Mermaid (bronze) by Danish sculptor Edvard Eriksen, 37.
Theater: Vladimir Mayakovsky—A Tragedy by Russian playwright-poet Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky, 20, who performs in his own play at Moscow; The Poor Little Rich Girl by Eleanor Gates 1/21 at New York's Hudson Theater, with Ashtabula, Ohio-born actress Grace Griswold, 40, Washington, D.C.-born ingénu Alan Hale, 20, 160 perfs.; Romance by Edward Sheldon 2/10 at Maxine Elliott's Theater, New York, with Doris Keane, 160 perfs. (it will open at the Duke of York's Theatre, London, 10/6/1915 and run for 1,099 perfs.); The Adored One (Legend of the Old Bailey) by James M. Barrie 4/19 at the Duke of York's Theatre, London, with Mrs. Patrick Campbell, New York-born actor Godfrey Tearle, 32, William Farren; Jane Clegg by Belfast-born playwright St. John Ervine, 29, 6/19 at London, with Sybil Thorndike, 30; Androcles and the Lion by George Bernard Shaw 9/1 at the St. James's Theatre, London, with O. P. Heggie, Ben Webster, Leon Quartermaine, 52 perfs.; The Temperamental Journey by Leo Ditrichstein (who has adapted a French play) 9/4 at New York's Belasco Theater (to Republic 9/29), with Ditrichtstein, Cora Witherspoon, Oakland, Calif.-born actor Lee Millar, 25, 124 perfs.; The Seven Keys to Baldpate by George M. Cohan, who has adapted a novel by Ohio-born Boston author Earl Derr Biggers, 29, 9/22 at New York's Astor Theater, with Cohan, Albany-born actor Wallace Eddinger, 22, Philadelphia-born actress Gail Kane, 26, 320 perfs.; The Misleading Lady by Charles W. Goddard and Chicago-born playwright Paul Dickey, 31, 11/25 at New York's Fulton Theater, with Forestville, N.Y.-born actor George Abbott, 26, Worcester, Mass.-born actor Lewis Stone, 34, Portland, Me.-born actor Everett Butterfield, 28, 183 perfs.; The Things That Count by Chester, Pa.-born playwright Laurence Eyre, 32, 12/8 at Maxine Elliott's Theater, New York, with Brooklyn-born actress Louis Muldener, 59, 224 perfs.; The Passion Flower (La Malquerida) by Jacinto Benavente 12/12 at Madrid's Teatro de la Princesa.
New York's Palace Theater opens March 24 at Broadway and 47th Street. Other vaudeville houses have a top price of 50¢, the Palace charges $2, and B. F. Keith of Boston and his partner Edward F. Albee in the Keith Circuit's United Booking Office present a bill that includes a wire act, a Spanish violinist, a one-act play by George Ade, and Philadelphia-born comedian Ed Wynn (originally Isaiah Edwind Leopold), 26. The Palace has no success, however, until May 5, when Sarah Bernhardt opens for a 2-week engagement that is extended for another week and a half. Philadelphia-born pantomime juggler W. C. Fields (originally William Claude Dukenfield), 33, joins the act in May, having begun his career at age 14 and played a command performance before England's Edward VII in 1901.
Actors' Equity Association is founded May 26 at New York's Pabst Grand Circle Hotel with Francis Wilson as president, Henry Miller, now 53, as vice president. Actors' Equity will set up contracts under whose terms actors are employed, will maintain a benefit system for its membership, but will not obtain recognition as the trade union of the acting profession until its members strike in August 1919.
Films: Joseph A. Golden and Edwin S. Porter's The Count of Monte Cristo with Irish-born stage actor James O'Neill, 63, whose son Eugene has been released from a tuberculosis sanatorium and will enroll next year in George Pierce Baker's 47 Workshop at Harvard; Colin Campbell's The Spoilers with Boston-born actor William Farnum, 37; Mack Sennett's Barney Oldfield's Race for Life with Sennett, Mabel Normand; George Loane Tucker's Traffic in Souls with Jane Gail, Ethel Grandin (produced by Carl Laemmle, the five-reel feature has cost $5,000 and clears nearly $500,000).
Charlie Chaplin signs a contract for $150 per week with movie maker Mack Sennett, who has discovered English actor-dancer Charles Spencer Chaplin, 24, at New York.
Paramount Pictures has its beginnings in the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Co. founded July 15 by vaudeville producer Jesse (Louis) Lasky, 32, his Polish-born brother-in-law Samuel Goldwyn, 32, and Ashfield, Mass.-born playwright Cecil B. (Blount) DeMille, 31, who has selected Hollywood for making The Squaw Man, partly because California has an abundance of sunshine (and partly to escape the restrictions of the 5-year-old, New York-based Motion Picture Patents Co., which refuses to supply equipment to uncooperative filmmakers and exibitors while terrorizing independent producers). Goldwyn (originally Schmuel Gelbfisz) is a glove maker whose business has been ruined by the new Underwood-Simmons Tariff Act, which has lowered duties on imported gloves (see Astoria film studio, 1919; Paramount, 1932).
Opera: Austrian tenor Richard (Denemy) Tauber, 21, makes his debut 3/2 at Chemnitz singing the role of Tamino in the 1791 Mozart opera Die Zauberflüte (he will soon obtain British citizenship); Pénélope 3/4 at Monte Carlo, with music by Gabriel Fauré (who is now too deaf to hear it); La Vida Breve (The Short Life) 4/1 at Nice, with music by Spanish composer Manuel de Falla, 36; L'Amore dei tre re (The Love of Three Kings) 4/10 at Milan's Teatro alla Scala, with music by Italian composer Italo Montemezzi, 37; Giovanni Martinelli makes his Metropolitan Opera debut 11/20 singing the role of Rodolfo in the 1896 Puccini opera La Bohème. He will sing regularly with the Met until 1943; Norwegian soprano Kirsten Flagstad, 18, makes her debut 12/12 at Kristiania's (Oslo's) National Theater in the 1903 D'Albert opera Tiefland.
Soprano Mathilde Marchesi de Castrone dies at London November 17 at age 92, having taught the 18th-century bel canto style of singing to pupils who included Emma Calvé, Emma Eames, and Nellie Melba.
Ballet: The Rite of Spring (Le Sacre du Printemps) 6/13 at the Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris, with Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, choreography by Waslaw Nijinsky (with considerable help from Polish ballerina-choreographer Cyvia Rambam, 25, who will move to London, adopt the stage name Marie Rambert, and eventually start her own company), music by Igor Stravinsky. Outraged audiences stage violent demonstrations at Stravinsky's wild dissonances and tumultuous rhythms, which begin a new epoch in music.
First performances: Gurre-Lieder for Vocal Soloists, Mixed Chorus, and Orchestra by Arnold Schoenberg 2/23 at Vienna with a text based on an 1868 poem by the late Danish poet Jens Peter Jakobsen; DeuxImages (symphonic diptych) by Béla Bartók 2/26 at Budapest; Kammersimphonie by Schoenberg 3/31 at Vienna's Musikvereinsaal; Six Pieces for Orchestra by Schoenberg's student Anton von Webern, 29, 3/31 at Vienna's Musikvereinsaal; Falstaff Symphonic Study in C minor (with two interludes in A minor) by Sir Edward Elgar in October at England's Leeds Festival.
Composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor dies at Croydon, Surrey, September 1 at age 37.
Stage musicals: The Sunshine Girl 2/3 at New York's Knickerbocker Theater, with Vernon and Irene Castle doing the Turkey Trot, music by John L. Golden, lyrics by Joseph Cawthorne, 160 perfs.; The Honeymoon Express 2/6 at New York's Winter Garden Theater, with Al Jolson, Fanny Brice, English-born actor Ernest Glendenning, 28, music by Jean Schwartz, book and lyrics by Harold Atteridge and Joseph W. Herbert, 156 perfs.; The Passing Show 6/10 at the Winter Garden Theater, with Charlotte Greenwood, a runway to bring the show's scantily clad chorus girls close to the audience, music chiefly by Sigmund Romberg, lyrics chiefly by Harold Atteridge, 116 perfs.; The Ziegfeld Follies 6/16 at the New Amsterdam Theater, with Fanny Brice, Leon Errol, Wilmington, Del.-born ingénue dancer Ann Pennington, 19, comedian Harry Fox (who does a trotting step that by some accounts will be the basis of "fox-trot" ballroom dance steps), 96 perfs.; America 8/30 at New York's Hippodrome with music and lyrics by Manuel Klein, 360 perfs.; Sweethearts 9/8 at the New Amsterdam Theater, with music by Victor Herbert, lyrics by Robert B. Smith, 136 perfs.; The Pearl Girl 9/25 at London's Shaftesbury Theatre, with music by Howard Talbot; Keep Smiling (revue) 10/13 at London's Alhambra Theatre, with Missouri-born singer Lee White, 27, who has appeared at the Palladium April 21; High Jinks 12/10 at New York's Lyric Theater, with music by Rudolf Friml, book and lyrics by Otto Harbach and Leo Ditrichstein, songs that include "Something Seems Tingle-angeling," 213 perfs.
Popular songs: "Danny Boy" by English philosopher-lawyer Fred Weatherly, who has added lyrics to a familiar Irish song; "Peg O' My Heart" by Fred Fisher, lyrics by Alfred Bryan; "You Made Me Love You (I Didn't Want to Do It)" by Italian-born New York composer James V. Monaco, 28, lyrics by Joe McCarthy, 28; "Ballin' the Jack" by Charleston, S.C.-born New York composer Chris Smith, 33, lyrics by James Henry Burris; "If I Had My Way" by James Kendis, lyrics by Lou Klein; "He'll Have to Get Under—Get Out and Get Under" by Grant Clarke and Byron Gay, lyrics by Byron Gay that make fun of the growingly popular automobile; "Now Is the Hour (Maori Farewell Song)" by New Zealand songwriters Maewa Kaihan, Clement Scott, Dorothy Stewart.
Hymn: "The Old Rugged Cross" by Ohio-born Methodist evangelist George Bennard, 39, who introduces the number June 7 in rural Michigan.
Anthony Wilding wins in men's singles at Wimbledon, Mrs. Chambers in women's singles; Maurice McLoughlin wins in men's singles at Newport, Mary Browne in women's singles.
Ebbets Field opens in Brooklyn April 9 (see 1898). Brewer Charles Ebbets has kept the Dodgers from moving to Baltimore by paying about $100,000 for a piece of property bordered by Bedford Avenue, Belmont Avenue, Sackman Street, and Sullivan Place, and the owners of the Dodgers have spent $650,000 to put up a steel-and-concrete stadium seating 18,000 (it will be expanded to seat nearly 31,500) that will survive until 1957.
Connie Mack's Philadelphia Athletics win the World Series, defeating the New York Giants 4 games to 1.
Knute Rockne revolutionizes football by making brilliant use of the forward pass to defeat the Army team and change the course of the game. Norwegian-born Knute Kenneth Rockne, 25, is captain of the Notre Dame varsity, he receives 17 out of 21 passes thrown by Charles "Gus" Dorais, he gains 243 yards, and Notre Dame beats Army 35 to 13.
Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) is created by a merger at Pittsburgh of three national U.S. war-veteran societies founded in 1899, soon after the Spanish-American War. Open to any active or honorably discharged male officer or enlisted man who is a U.S. citizen and has served "in any foreign war, insurrection or expedition, which service shall be recognized by the authorization or the issuance of a campaign medal" by the military or naval service, the VFW will grow to have more than 10,000 "posts" dedicated to maximizing U.S. military strength, rehabilitating disabled and needy veterans, assisting widows, orphans, and dependents of needy or disabled veterans, and promoting Americanism (see American Legion, 1919).
The first U.S. deck shuffleboard game is played on a hotel court at Daytona, Florida. The game will be popular with elderly retirees.
Pennsylvania makes Mother's Day a state holiday (see Jarvis, 1908; Wilson, 1914).
Hump bobbie pins are introduced by Cincinnati-born inventor-manufacturer Sol Harry Goldberg, 33, who has devised "humps" for hairpins to help them grip the hair and has founded the Hump Hairpin Manufacturing Co.
Clorox Co. has its beginnings in the Electro-Aquiline Co. founded May 3 at Oakland, Calif., where five entrepreneurs—a banker, a wood-and-coal purveyor, a bookkeeper, a lawyer, and a miner invest $100 each to open America's first large-scale liquid-bleach factory. Their plan is to take brine from San Francisco Bay's salt ponds and turn it into sodium hypochlorite bleach, using electrolysis, and they agree in August to pay $3,000 for a plant site; an engineer with a company that supplies equipment for the plant suggests the name Clorox (a combination of chlorine and sodium hydroxide), sketching a diamond-shaped design that the directors immediately register as their trademark. The company will not add another product for 56 years, but by the end of the century it will be a major producer of household products with $4 billion in sales to consumers in more than 110 countries worldwide.
Brillo Manufacturing Corp. is founded by New York lawyer Milton B. Loeb, 26, whose client (a manufacturing jeweler) has developed a way to clean aluminum cooking utensils using steel wool with a special reddish soap that gives the vessels a brilliant shine.
Dishwasher inventor Josephine Cochrane dies after running the Garis-Cochrane Manufacturing Co. for more than 25 years, but the smaller machine it introduces finds little acceptance (see 1886). To wash just one evening's dinner dishes may require the entire contents of a family's hot-water tank, the water in much of the country is too "hard" for soap to create the suds needed for dishwashing, and a poll conducted next year will show that most women actually enjoy washing dishes as a relaxing chore at day's end. Cochrane's company will change hands several times before being acquired in 1926 by Hobart Co., which will produce the Kitchenaid dishwasher, but few homes will have such machines for another 40 years.
London police arrest a woman July 15 for wearing a split skirt in Richmond Park.
Swedish-born U.S. inventor Gideon Sundback, 33, develops the first dependable slide fastener and efficient machines to manufacture it commercially (see Judson, 1893). He attaches matching metal locks to a flexible backing, each tooth being a tiny hook that engages with an eye under an adjoining hook on an opposite tape. He will patent improvements on his slide fastener in 1917 and assign the patents to the Hookless Fastener Co., founded this year at Meadville, Pa. It will manufacture the Talon slide fastener, but it will be another 30 years before the slide fastener replaces buttons on men's trousers and most other items (see "zipper," 1926).
The Sorbet dress is introduced by Paris fashion designer Paul Poiret, who tours America with a group of models (see 1912). A widespread interest in Russian ballet and Far Eastern art has inspired him to add draped and belted knee-length tunics to his hobble skirt His evening gowns come in bright shades of blue, green, orange, purple, and red, and he tops the flowing Greek lines of his costumes with fringed and tasseled capes, multicolored feathers, and white-fox stoles to give them a flamboyant, theatrical look, accessorizing them also with coils of pearls. Poiret collaborates briefly with St. Petersburg-born costume designer and fashion illustrator Romain de Tirtoff, 30, who came to Paris last year and calls himself Erté, a name based on the French mispronunciation of his initials R. T.
Coco Chanel pioneers sportswear for women at a new boutique in Deauville that features berets and open-necked shirts in an age when women of fashion adorn themselves with feathers and huge hats. Now 30, Gabrielle Chanel gained her nickname at age 20 while entertaining the 10th Light Horse Regiment in the small garrison town of Moulins, became a Paris milliner while mistress to Etienne Balsan, and is now mistress to English businessman Arthur Capel; her lovers will include England's second duke of Westminster, who owns 17 Rolls-Royces and has mammoth greenhouses where pears and peaches ripen all year round, and she will make sweaters the fashion of the rich as Chanel knitwear gains world fame (see 1926; Chanel No. 5 perfume, 1921).
Milan's fashion house Prada is founded by designer Mario Prada, whose leather goods will gain an international reputation, spawning an empire of men's and women's clothing, eyewear, and cosmetics.
The Casino of Monte Carlo has an historic run of one color. Black comes up 26 times in succession at a roulette wheel August 18, theoretically returning 1.35 billion francs on a 20 franc stake, but gamblers bet so heavily on red that the house wins several million francs for La Société Anonyme des Bains de Mer et Cercle des Etrangers à Monte Carlo, whose casino always averages about 125 percent return on invested capital each year.
The Erector Set introduced by the Mysto Manufacturing Co. of New Haven, Conn., will help generations of youngsters build miniature steel bridges, cranes, derricks, and other constructs (see Meccano, 1907). Oregon-born Yale and Olympic track star A. C. (Alfred Carlton) Gilbert, 29, has started the company to produce apparatus for magicians, but the girders and trusses of a power line's suspension towers have inspired him to make cardboard construction pieces and commission a toolmaker to produce a prototype set in steel. Mysto Manufacturing will become the A. C. Gilbert Co. in 1916 and will expand its line to include chemistry sets, meteorological stations, radio kits, and other educational toys (see 1914; Tinkertoy, 1914).
Camel cigarettes are introduced by R. J. Reynolds, whose factories have never before made cigarettes (see 1911). Camels are made largely from a flue-cured bright tobacco much like the tobacco discovered in 1852 by Eli and Elisha Slade, but they also contain a sweetened burley from Kentucky combined with some Turkish tobaccos that make them the first of the modern blended cigarettes. Their package design has been inspired by "Old Joe," a dromedary in the Barnum & Bailey circus menagerie (see 1917).
Chesterfield cigarettes are introduced by Liggett & Myers, which is well known for its Fatima, Picayune, and Piedmont brands (see 1926). Tobacco companies spend $32.4 million to advertise their various brands in the United States, up from $18.1 million in 1910 (see Lucky Strike, 1916).
New York's 60-story Woolworth building opens April 24 near City Hall. The 792-foot "Cathedral of Commerce" designed by Cass Gilbert will be the world's tallest habitable structure until 1930.
New York's Equitable building goes up on lower Broadway. The world's largest office building has been financed by a syndicate that includes T. Coleman du Pont, now 52, of E. I. du Pont de Nemours, who has put up $30 million and purchased a controlling interest in Equitable Life Insurance Co. from J. P. Morgan & Co. and will later dispose of its stock to policy holders (see 1915).
New York's General Post Office building opens on Eighth Avenue between 31st and 33rd streets across from the 3-year-old Pennsylvania Station. Designed by McKim, Mead, and White with two blocks of Corinthian columns, the building's front is inscribed with lines written by the Greek historian Herodotus about the 5th-century B.C. couriers of Xerxes: "Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds."
New York's Grand Central Terminal has a mammoth concourse—470 feet long, 160 wide, 125 high—designed by Warren and Wetmore with a Beaux Arts façade.
A marble Fifth Avenue mansion for steel magnate Henry Clay Frick is completed between 70th and 71st streets to designs by Carrère and Hastings.
Cincinnati's Union Central Insurance building is completed on the site formerly occupied by the Chamber of Commerce building at Fourth and Vine Streets. The $2.5 million 34-story skyscraper is second in height only to New York's new Woolworth building.
Miami Beach, Florida, begins its career as a winter resort. Carl G. Fisher, now 41, has just made $5 million by selling the Prest-O-Lite acetylene automobile lamp company that he acquired for almost nothing. He acquires 200 acres January 13 from avocado grower John S. Collins, 76, who has begun a wooden bridge across Biscayne Bay to link the sandbar to the mainland, and he loans Collins $50,000 to complete the "Venetian Way"; the two go into business together in February, selling lots at auction while building concrete bulkheads along the shore, and the bridge opens June 12. Fisher and Collins will build 27 miles of bulkheads and add 2,800 acres to Miami Beach's present 1,600 acres in the next 10 years by dredging, pumping, and filling in land over mangrove roots. By 1923 they will have built five hotels to augment the Royal Palm put up by H. M. Flagler in 1896 (see 1924).
The Mall (east front) of Buckingham Palace at London is redesigned by architect Sir Aston Webb to serve as a backdrop for the Queen Victoria Memorial Statue, which celebrates the first reigning monarch actually to live in the palace. When the sovereign is in residence there is a daily changing of the guard and the royal standard is flown.
Canada establishes Quetico Provincial Park on 1,832 square miles of wilderness west of Lake Superior in southwestern Ontario adjoining the U.S. border. Once the site of a major east-west route used by Native Americans, explorers, and traders, the park contains more than 1,000 lakes and waterways that teem with bass, lake trout, northern pike, pickerel, and sturgeon; the only access and travel is by canoe, and wildlife includes black bear, moose, white-tailed deer, and wolf.
The Weeks-McLean Act signed into law by President Taft March 4 empowers the Department of Agriculture to protect migratory game and insectivorous birds with regulations to control hunting with seasons and zones.
Ohio's Great Miami River floods its banks at Columbus March 25 after a 5-day rainfall that has dropped 10 inches of water. The flood kills 351, injures hundreds more, and creates property damage amounting to $100 million.
Forest Lawn Cemetery at Tropico (Glendale), California, is taken over by Missouri-born metallurgist-promoter Hubert Eaton, 30, who embraces the new concept of selling burial plots "before need" and will expand the tiny cemetery into a vast enterprise with branches in Hollywood Hills, Cypress, and Covina Hills. Eaton will make Forest Lawn a showplace of more than 1,200 acres of towering trees, sweeping lawns marked with bronze memorial tablets rather than with tombstones, splashing fountains, flowers, birds, bronze and marble statues, and small churches modeled on famous ones in Europe. He will forbid artificial flowers.
The Los Angeles Owens River Aqueduct opens November 5, bringing in at least 260 million gallons of water per day from 3,000 feet high in the Sierra via 234 miles of gravity-powered pipeline and ditch. Irish-born city manager William Mulholland, 58, has planned the $25 million cement-and-steel pipeline that permits irrigation of the San Fernando Valley. The city has secretly bought the water rights to the river, and a bond issue has financed the project, which Mulholland has promoted by saying, "If you don't get that water now, you'll never need it—the dead never get thirsty." Construction crews have labored for 8 years, sometimes in 105° F. heat, to complete the project, siphoning water up mountains more than 1,000 feet high and digging a five-mile tunnel under Lake Elizabeth, 50 miles north of the city. Some 30,000 Angelinos turn out to celebrate the grand opening; they hear Mulholland shout, "There it is! Take it!" Sale of hydroelectric power will pay the cost of the aqueduct within just a few years, and the water brought across the Mojave Desert makes L.A. a boom town (see farmers, 1924; Parker Dam, 1939).
The U.S. Senate votes December 16 to fund construction of California's Hetch Hetchy Dam despite public opposition (see 1907). John Muir, now 75, says it will destroy his beloved "Tuolumne Yosemite." Located about 40 miles from the Yosemite Valley, the dam will create a reservoir that will supply San Francisco with water and hydroelectric power but will bury part of the valley under 300 feet of water.
National Grange founder Oliver H. Kelley dies at Washington, D.C., January 20 at age 87; former farm equipment manufacturer William Deering at Coconut Grove, Florida, December 9 at age 87.
Pellagra kills 1,192 in Mississippi (see 1907). The U.S. Public Health Service sends Hungarian-born physician Joseph Goldberger, 39, to study the disease that is known to affect at least 100,000 in the Deep South (see 1915).
Congress amends the Pure Food and Drug Law of 1906 as it did last year to make it more effective (see 1938).
The flavor enhancer 5'-inosinic acid discovered by Tokyo University chemist Shintaro Kodoma is 10 to 20 times more effective than the monosodium glutamate (MSG) discovered in 1908 and marketed under the name Ajinimoto.
Novelist Marcel Proust has had his memory of childhood (the remembrance of things past) awakened by the taste of "one of those short, plump little cakes called 'petites madeleines,' which look as though they had been moulded in the fluted scallop of a pilgrim's shell."
Peppermint Life Savers are introduced by Cleveland, Ohio, chocolate manufacturer Clarence Crane as a summer item to sell when chocolate sales decline. Crane uses a pharmaceutical company's pill-making machine to create the uniquely-shaped peppermint with the hole in the middle, which he advertises "for that stormy breath," and when New York streetcar advertising salesman Edward J. Noble, 31, tries to persuade him to use car cards for advertising Crane offers to sell the product for $5,000. Noble goes into partnership with his boyhood friend Roy Allen and buys Crane's trademark and remaining stocks of peppermints for $2,900, but he finds that the product's cardboard box absorbs the candy's volatile taste and aroma. Retailers have been stuck with hundreds of thousands of unsold Life Savers packages and will not reorder. Noble devises an easy-opening tinfoil package that keeps the mints fresh and permits a buyer to remove one mint at a time. He and Allen start producing handwrapped rolls of Life Savers in a New York loft under the name Mint Products, Inc. Since existing retail outlets are willing to accept replacements for the stale product on their shelves but will not pay for the new product, Allen opens new outlets, selling Life Savers to saloons, cigar stores, barbershops, restaurants, and pharmacies, and when retailers complain that the round packs roll off their counters, Noble supplies cartons designed to be set up as miniature display cases (see 1920).
Prohibitionist Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan serves Welch's Grape Juice in place of wine at a dinner given for the British ambassador. Cartoonists lampoon Bryan and make Welch's a household name (see 1897; Daniels, 1914).
St. Louis brewer Adolphus Busch dies at his hunting lodge near Langenschwalbach, Germany, October 10 at age 74. He has pioneered in point-of-sale advertising and promotion, and his Budweiser and Michelob brands have earned him $2 million per year, enabling him to travel in his own private train.
Prohibitionists demonstrate at Washington, D.C., December 10 in a parade aimed at persuading Congress to pass legislation banning the sale of alcoholic beverages nationwide. Industrialists have generally stopped permitting workers to drink on the job and most support the "drys," whose efforts have resulted in prohibition laws in many states (see Volstead Act, 1919).
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