1916: Information and Much More from Answers.com
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Britain withdraws her forces from the Gallipoli by early January without further losses, but Rosika Schwimmer resigns in February from the International Committee of Women for Permanent Peace as charges increase that she has been dictatorial (see 1915; 1926). The Great War spreads and becomes more savage as all hope for neutral mediation ends.
The Battle of Verdun on the upper Meuse (Moselle) River begins February 21 with a bombardment by German artillery. The Germans have launched a massive attack in hopes of breaking the stalemate of trench warfare, Krupp of Essen supplies Gen. von Falkenhayn and Crown Prince Wilhelm with 3,000 new cannon per month, while Gen. Joffre and Gen. Pétain's Allied artillery fire Vickers shells produced under a fuse patent licensed by Krupp in 1904. Von Falkenheyn is dismissed August 29 and replaced by the more aggressive Field Marshal von Hindenburg, but the Germans fail to take Verdun, they lose 337,000 killed and wounded, French casualties total 362,000 dead and wounded (the dead on both sides total about 400,000), and the battle drags on to December 18. The overwhelming majority of troops on both sides are now conscripts.
Berlin notifies Washington that German U-boats will treat armed merchantmen as cruisers. The "extended" U-boat campaign begins March 1. Three Americans perish in the sinking of the unarmed French steamer S.S. Sussex March 24 in the English Channel, and Washington warns Berlin that the United States will sever diplomatic relations unless the Germans abandon "submarine warfare against passenger and freight-carrying vessels." Admiral von Tirpitz resigns in March, having built the world's second largest navy and championed unrestricted submarine warfare; Berlin replies to the U.S. demand in early May, saying that merchant vessels "shall not be sunk without warning and without saving human lives unless they attempt to escape or offer resistance."
Italian troops under the command of Gen. Luigi Cadorna launch a new offensive on the Isonzo River from March 9 to 17 (see 1915); Cadorna captures Gorizia with help from Gen. Emilio De Bono, 50, and secures a bridgehead across the river in the sixth Battle of the Isonzo that continues from August 6 to 17, but Austrian artillery thwarts the Italians in the three brief, intense battles that take place in September, October, and November (see Caporetto, 1917).
An Irish Easter Rebellion begins April 24 and involves more than 1,500 insurgents. Former British consular official Roger Casement has had no success in raising a brigade of Irish war prisoners in Germany, a U-boat has landed him April 20 to support the Irish Republican Brotherhood headed by Patrick Henry Pearse, 37, but German aid fails to materialize (see Casement, 1903). Rebels who include farmer's son Michael Collins, 25, gut Dublin's General Post Office in Upper O'Connell Street, but 150,000 Irish volunteers are fighting for the king in Flanders. The British have discovered the insurgents' plans, the Easter Rising has little popular support, and it collapses in less than a week. Led by Michael Mallin and Countess Markievicz, now 48, the rebels surrender April 30 (see 1909). Wearing the green uniform of the Irish Citizen Army with breeches and puttees in imitation of her heroine, Joan of Arc, the countess walks up to the British captain outside Dublin's College of Surgeons, takes her pistol out of its holster, kisses it, and hands it to the captain, tells him she is ready, and refuses his offer of a ride to the jail, saying that she prefers to walk. Police arrest the other rebel leaders, whose defiance of British rule will lead to the proclamation of a republic. Much of Dublin has been destroyed in the fighting, 262 civilians have been killed, 141 British soldiers, and 62 rebels have lost their lives. Crowds in the street hiss at Casement and the rest. Frederick E. Smith condemns them as traitors and demands their execution in his new capacity of attorney general, popular sentiment turns against the British, and 16 rebel leaders become martyrs when convicted and hanged August 3 (see 1919). The British have arrested more than twice as many people as actually participated in the uprising, they hold Countess Markievicz for a week in solitary confinement at Kilmainham Jail while some of her cohorts go before firing squads, but her life and that of one other leader (the American-born Eamon de Valera, because he has a U.S. passport) are spared, hers "solely and only on account of her sex" (British propagandists have exploited Germany's execution last year of Edith Cavell and do not want a woman's blood on their own hands). Countess Markievicz is sentenced to "penal servitude for life" (but see 1917).
French Minister of War Gen. Joseph S. Galliéni retires for reasons of health in March and dies at Versailles May 27 at age 67. Revered as the savior of Paris in the 1914 Battle of the Marne, he is buried at the Hotel des Invalides after a national funeral.
The Battle of Jutland (Skagerrak) rages in the North Sea from May 31 to June 1 as British and German fleets bombard each other with 1,000-pound shells in what will prove the only major naval engagement of the war. Ships of the Royal Navy outnumber those of its German counterpart, but poor communications cause its commander in chief, Admiral Sir John (Rushworth) Jellicoe, 56, to lose contact with the German fleet at a critical juncture and the German admiral Reinhard Scheer, 52, escapes to his base at Wilhelmshaven, having lost one battleship, a cruiser, a destroyer, and 2,545 dead; the Royal Navy loses one battleship, one battle cruiser, four light cruisers, five destroyers, and at least 6,907 men (three British cruisers blow up when German shells penetrate to their powder magazines: H.M.S. Indefatigable loses all but two of her 1,019-man crew; H.M.S. Queen Mary loses all but nine of her 1,285-man crew; and Rear Admiral Sir Horace Hood's flagship H.M.S. Invincible loses all but six of her 1,026-man crew). The outcome is undecisive, the Royal Navy holds the blockade, and Admiral David Beatty, now 44, is named commander-in-chief of the Grand Fleet, succeeding Jellicoe (Beatty has lost two ships during the hard-fought encounter but inflicted severe damage on the Germans, although few German ships are actually lost).
The Royal Navy cruiser H.M.S. Hampshire hits a German mine off the Orkney Islands June 5 while en route to Russia with Horatio Herbert Kitchener, 1st earl Kitchener (of Khartoum and Broome); he was on his way to reorganize the Russian Army but drowns at age 65 as the ship sinks with all hands.
British forces at al-Kut surrender to the Ottoman Turks April 29 after a siege that has continued for nearly 5 months and are taken prisoner. The secret Sykes-Picot Agreement signed in January by British diplomat Sir Mark Sykes, 36, with his French counterpart calls for a division of the Middle East between the two powers (see Syria, 1922), with the understanding that both are prepared to recognize an independent Arab state or confederation of states, with Britain having "priority of right of enterprise and local loans" in one area, France in another, neither of them to acquire or permit a third power to acquire, "territorial possessions in the Arabian peninsula, nor consent to a third power installing a naval base either on the east coast, or on the islands, of the Red Sea."
An Arab revolt against the Ottoman Turks begins June 5 with an attack on the garrison at Medina, whose officers surrender June 10 (information supplied by Orientalist Gertrude Lowthian Bell has helped the British foment the revolt; see 1915). The 60-year-old sharif of Mecca Hussein Ibn-Ali has previously supported the Turks, who appointed him sharif and protector of the holy places in 1909, but he has switched sides at the persuasion of his 31-year-old third son, Faisal, who has been pressing the Turks for Arab self-rule while his father was negotiating with the British in Egypt. Faisal met with Arab nationalists in Syria last year while returning from Istanbul and participated in drafing a secret Damascus Protocol. T. E. Lawrence has befriended Faisal in a plot engineered by Gen. Kitchener and his staff; English Arabist Harry St. John Philby, 31, has learned many Arab dialects, befriended Lawrence, and may have had a hand in the scheme, which has the support of Anglo-Egyptian Sudan governor general Sir Reginald Wingate, now 54, at Khartoum (see Aqaba, 1917). Sir Mark Sykes of the British Foreign Office has designed a black, white, green, and red flag for Hejaz, Hussein is proclaimed king of the Arabs October 29, and he founds the Hashemite dynasty that will rule the newly independent Hejaz until 1924 (see Transjordan, 1923).
German aviators Oswald Boelke and Max Immelmann each score eight victories in the skies over France January 12 and promptly receive membership in the order Pour le Mérite established in 1740, being awarded the medal popularly known as the Blue Max. Now 25, Boelke won the Iron Cross at age 23 for completing more than 40 missions and has created eight rules for combat pilots: 1. Try to secure advantagess before attacking. If possible, try to keep the sun behind you; 2. Once you have started an attack always carry it through; 3. Fire only at cross range, and only when your quarry is properly in your sight; 4. Always keep your eye on your opponent and do not let yourself be deceived by ruses; 5. In any attack it is essential to come at your enemy from behind; 6. If the opponent dives on you do not try to evade his onslaught but rather fly to meet it; 7. When over enemy lines never forget your line of retreat; 8. Attack in groups of four or six, and when the fight breaks up into a series of single combats take care that several do not go for one enemy plane. Immellmann, also 25, was awarded the Iron Cross in August 1915 after inventing the simultaneous loop and roll known as the Immelmann turn that has become a standard air combat maneuver. W-12 seaplanes designed by Ernst Heinkel for the Hansa Brandenburg Flutzeugwerke enable Kaiser Wilhelm's Luftwaffe to maintain air superiority over the North Sea (see Heinkel, 1911). Pilot Friedrich Christiansen will soon have 21 confirmed kills flying the W-12; Heinkel works on the W-20 that will succeed the W-12 and be the only practical monoplane to see service in the war.
French pilots struggle to gain control of the air from the Germans, who have held mastery for a year flying Fokkers equipped with A. H. G. Fokker's 1915 synchronizing gear that permits pilots to fire through their rotating propeller blades (see 1912). The Escadrille Americaine has gone into combat May 15 with seven U.S. volunteer pilots flying Nieuports in support of the French. Kiffin Rockewell downs a German plane May 18 for the Escadrille's first victory. The British introduce new de Havillands and Farman Experimentals in July, and the German ace Max Immelmann is either shot down in a dogfight July 18 at age 26 or (the Germans will claim) goes down after his Fokker fighter malfunctions and he shoots off his own propeller. French aircraft designer Marcel-Ferdinand Bloch, 24, has introduced the first variable-pitch propeller to give French pilots an edge over the Germans (see transportation, 1947).
The Battle of the Somme from July to mid-November is the bloodiest battle in human history and follows the largest artillery barrage in history (1,437 British guns rain 1.5 million shells on the enemy along an 18-mile front in the course of 7 days, and the artillery is heard as far away as Hampstead Heath, London). Hoping to end the stalemate of trench warfare with a major breakout, the British follow up their artillery offensive with a massive infantry attack: at 7:30 in the morning of July 1, just 2 minutes after five gigantic mines dug under the German lines have blown up, 66,000 British troops come out of the trenches and advance on the enemy in a ceremonial step of one yard per second, Tyneside Scotsmen march to bagpipes while the 8th East Surreys come out kicking footballs and firing Lewis Guns, but the Germans emerge from their bunkers and mow down advancing foot soldiers with machine guns firing 600 rounds per minute: 14,000 fall in the first 10 minutes by one account. Boer War veteran Gen. Henry Seymour Rawlinson has ordered the daylight attack to accommodate French artillery observers despite the known advantages of attacking at first dawn, he has not coordinated his artillery barrage with the needs of his infantry, and one-third of all the British shells fired are duds. July 1 is the bloodiest single day in British history, with 57,470 British casualties, including 19,240 dead, 35,493 wounded, 2,152 missing, 585 taken prisoner. The Germans sustain 8,000 casualties that day. The 140-day offensive involves 3 million men along a front of some 20 miles, the Allied armies lose 794,000 men, the Central Powers 538,888, the Allies drive the Germans back no more than seven miles at any point, and the Germans will regain most of the lost ground in 1918.
The Lewis Gun carried by British Tommies is a machine gun invented in 1911 by a U.S. Army officer; its weight is about half that of a Vickers machine gun, and six can be produced in the time that it takes to make one Vickers, but the commander in chief of British forces Gen. Douglas Haig is found to have said at a War Council April 14 of last year, "The machine gun is a much overrated weapon; two per battalion is more than sufficient." Like other top officers, Haig does not visit the front lines, saying that he considers it his duty to remain behind lest the sight of wounded men affect his judgment.
More of Europe is drawn into the Great War. Germany and Austria have declared war on Portugal in March, Romania declares war on Austria August 27, Italy on Germany August 28, Germany, Turkey, and Bulgaria on Romania. Field Marshal von Mackensen moves his forces into Romania, whose territory will be entirely occupied by the Germans next year.
The first tanks to be used in warfare go into action September 15 in the Battle of the Somme. British writer and Boer War veteran Ernest Dunlap Swinton, 48, has adapted the caterpillar tread invented by Benjamin Holt (see agriculture, 1911), but the contraption weighs close to 30 tons, has a top speed of less than three miles per hour, requires four men just to steer it, and is little more than a movable armored platform carrying a machine gun. A one-man French tank produced by Renault and nicknamed "the mosquito" is much lighter and can be moved by truck, saving wear and tear on the tread, which is subject to breakdown. Both sides of the conflict depend primarily on horse cavalry.
The de Havilland DH-4 bomber designed by Geoffrey de Havilland of Aircraft Manufacturing Co. (Airco) and flown for the first in August is a highly maneuverable two-seat plane with a top speed of 143 miles (230 kilometers) per hour that enables it to outfly most fighter planes. The U.S. Government will select it for production next year and build nearly 5,000 DH-4s (see transportation, 1914; 1920).
The French-built Spad S.7 fighter plane designed by engineer Louis Bechereau reaches the front in September and gains quick popularity. Its 150-horsepower, water-cooled Hispano-Suiza engine gives the single-seat machine a speed of 106 miles per hour that makes up for its lack of maneuverability in combat with planes whose maximum speed is only 85 mph.
Breslau-born German pilot Manfred von Richthofen, 24, completes his training September 17 and promptly shoots down a British Farman biplane, using skills learned from Oswald Boelke, who recruited him on the Eastern Front. A minor member of the nobility, Baron von Richthofen attached a machine gun to the top wing of his Fokker Albatros reconnaissance plane in the Battle of Verdun's waning days and shot down a Nieuport before being sent to the Eastern Front. The Nieuport landed behind French lines, and the Farman is his first confirmed kill. He sees his hero Boelke killed October 28 following a minor midair collision in which one of Capt. Boelke's wing brushed the undercarriage of his comrade Erwin Bohme's Fokker; both had scrambled with two other pilots to intercept British ace Lanoe Hawker in a dogfight over the Somme, Boelke has been credited with 40 kills, but in his haste to get airborne he has neglected to strap himself in. The German high command names von Richthofen to succeed Boelke as leader of the unit (which is renamed Jasta Boelke), and he shoots down Hawker after a long dogfight over Bapaume November 23. Dead at age 25 with a bullet through his head, Major Hawker has commanded the 24 Squadron since February and been credited with a total of seven kills (see Richthofen, 1917).
German zeppelins follow up last year's raids on England with 41 more such raids. The worst comes October 13, and on November 28 the Germans make their first airplane raid on London. The Germans have introduced Albatros and Halberstadt planes and begun flying in formation.
The German ambassador at Washington complains in November that U.S. flyers violate American neutrality, Paris orders that the Escadrille Americaine be called simply Escadrille 124, its members protest and call themselves the Lafayette Escadrille, a name (Escadrille Lafayette) that becomes official December 9. The group will grow to number 45, but never more than 30 at a time (see 1917).
Polish general Jozef Pilsudski, 49, obtains recognition of an independent Poland from the Central Powers November 16. Pilsudski 2 years ago organized an independent Polish army of 10,000, acting in secret. He has fought with Austria against Russia but has resigned his command because of German and Austrian interference in Polish affairs (see 1918).
The Austro-Hungarian emperor Franz Josef dies at Vienna's Schönbrunn Palace November 21 at age 86 after a 68-year reign. He is succeeded by his 29-year-old grandson, who became heir to the throne in 1914 when the archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated at Sarajevo; the young man favors a negotiated peace with the Entente powers and will reign until 1918 as Karl I.
The British hospital ship Britannic launched in 1914 sinks in 50 minutes November 21 after hitting a mine (or being torpedoed) while en route to pick up 3,500 wounded from the Aegean island of Lemnos for transfer to Naples. The ship has 1,136 aboard and 30 are killed, most of them by the Britannic's own propellers.
Britain's Asquith government resigns December 4 (the Liberal Party has allegedly given domestic political considerations precedence over the war effort) and a war cabinet takes over. The new prime minister is Welshman David Lloyd George, now 63, who succeeded the late Lord Kitchener as secretary of state for war in July. Lloyd George has favored an Allied attack in the Middle East, opposing the strategy of Gen. Douglas Haig and Imperial General Staff chief William R. Robertson, who believe that the war can and must be won on the Western front (see 1918). Arthur J. Balfour becomes foreign secretary.
The odious Russian faith-healer Grigori Efimovich Rasputin, 45, dies at Petrograd December 31 at the hands of a group of noblemen, led by Prince Felix Youssopoff, 27, who are bent on ridding Russia of the monk's corrupting influence on Nicholas II and the czarina Aleksandra. Rasputin had ingratiated himself with the court by promising a cure for the hemophilia that afflicts the czarevich; he is shot, stabbed, and eventually drowned (see 1918; Bolshevik revolution, 1917).
Former Mexican president Victoriano Huerta dies in exile at El Paso, Texas, January 13 at age 61. Pancho Villa raids Columbus, N. Mex., March 9, killing 17 Americans; a 7,000-man U.S. punitive expedition moves into Mexico March 15 under the command of Gen. John J. Pershing, 55 (see 1914). The Missouri-born Pershing has orders to "capture Villa dead or alive," but although he uses planes in his search for the outlaw bandit, Villa eludes him, and Pershing will withdraw in early February of next year.
Argentine statesman Hipólito Irigoyen takes office as president and will serve until 1922 (see 1912). Now 63, the Radical Party leader has been elected by secret ballot and will work with his followers in the Congress to keep the country neutral during the Great War.
U.S. Marines land at Santo Domingo in May to restore order (see 1905). Formal occupation of the Dominican Republic begins November 29 and will continue until July 1924 (see Trujillo, 1930).
Puerto Rican patriot-statesman Luis Muñoz Rivera dies at Santurce November 15 at age 57.
A U.S. National Defense Act passed by Congress June 3 provides for an increase in the standing army, which now numbers only 130,000 men, by five annual stages to 175,000 men with a National Guard of 450,000 and an officers' reserve corps. Former Confederate Army cavalry officer John Singleton Mosby has died at Washington, D.C., May 30 at age 82. The Wilson administration emphasizes "preparedness" as sentiment against neutrality increases; the president appoints an advisory commission whose members include Wall Street financier Bernard M. Baruch, now 46.
Boston lawyer Louis D. Brandeis is sworn in June 5 as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (see human rights, 1890). Now 59, Brandeis has aligned himself with progressive causes, President Wilson's nomination of a man who will be the high court's first Jewish justice has sparked debates that have gone on for months, the Senate has confirmed Brandeis's appointment by a vote of 47 to 22, but 27 senators have abstained. The new member of the court will go to great lengths to master procedural details, research the facts, and use the law to help shape social, economic, and political aspects of life on the premise that the individual is the basic force in society but has limited capabilities.
Washington protests when the London Official Gazette blacklists some 30 U.S. firms under the British Trading with the Enemy Act of July 18; Britain's refusal to permit U.S. imports of German knitting needles needed in U.S. mills has drawn a sharp protest from Washington in May. The German freight submarine Deutschland that arrived at Baltimore July 9 with a cargo of dyestuffs arrives in November at New London, Conn., with a cargo of chemicals, gems, and securities.
A bomb explosion disrupts the San Francisco Preparedness Parade July 22, killing nine and wounding 40. Labor leader Thomas J. Mooney, 34, and Warren K. Billings, 22, deny accusations that they planted the bomb, Mooney is convicted and condemned to death, Billings is given life imprisonment. Mooney's sentence will be commuted late in 1918, he will be released early in 1939; Billings will be released late in 1939 and pardoned in 1961. But acrimony over the affair will continue for years.
The Black Tom explosion July 30 blows up munitions loading docks at Jersey City, N.J., killing seven men, injuring 35, and destroying $40 million worth of property. German saboteurs are generally considered responsible.
A Naval Appropriations Act passed by Congress August 29 authorizes $313 million for a 3-year naval construction program. The Battle of Jutland has shown the value of dreadnoughts and light cruisers.
Bethlehem Steel builds submarines for the British and obtains a U.S. contract for 88 vessels to be built on a cost-plus basis, with half the savings under cost to go to Bethlehem. The company will build the ships for $93 million, $48 million below estimate, and Bethlehem will have a profit of $24 million.
"I believe that the business of neutrality is over," says President Wilson in late October to the Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce. "The nature of modern war leaves no state untouched." Wilson wins reelection on a platform that includes the slogan "He kept us out of war," but he believes that he has lost until late returns from California give him 23 more electoral votes than his Republican opponent, Justice Charles Evans Hughes of the Supreme Court. The president's 4,000-vote edge in California gives him 277 electoral votes to 254 for Hughes, who receives 46 percent of the popular vote to Wilson's 49 percent.
Montana voters elect the first U.S. congresswoman. Republican Jeanette Rankin, 36, has crisscrossed the state on horseback and says that Montana women got the vote "because the spirit of pioneer days is still alive."
The Indian Home Rule League is founded by Annie Wood Besant, now 69, who next year will become president of the Indian National Congress (see 1919). The Lucknow Pact adopted by the Indian National Congress at Lucknow December 29 and by the All-India Muslim League December 31 will lead to Hindu-Muslim cooperation in working toward self-government (see Government of India Act, 1919).
China's president Yuan Shikai dies June 6 at age 56, having tried to make himself president for life and, when that failed, to create a new imperial dynasty with the objective of uniting the country under central leadership. He has alienated the conservative civilian and military forces that supported him 4 years ago, and the Japanese have backed the widespread opposition to his leadership.
Vietnam's Nguyen emperor Duy Tan dies after a 9-year reign and is succeeded by Nguyen Bun Dao, 31, who will reign until 1925 as the emperor Khai Dinh, advocating cooperation with French colonial authorities in order to modernize what he considers a technologically backward country and thereby enable it to take its place among more advanced nations.
The Philippine Autonomy Act (Jones Act) signed into law by President Wilson August 29 announces America's intention to "withdraw their sovereignty over the Philippine Islands as soon as a stable government can be established therein" (see 1902). The act replaces the U.S.-dominated Philippine Commission that has governed the islands since 1901 with an elective Senate and extends voting rights to all literate Filipino males (it also incorporates a bill of rights). The act permits the U.S. governor general to veto any measure passed by the new legislature, but Governor General Francis B. Harrison will rarely exercise his veto, and by the end of his term in 1921 he will have replaced most of the Americans in Filipino civil service jobs with Filipino nationals (see Wood-Forbes Mission, 1921).
Former Japanese general Prince Iwao Oyama dies December 10 at age 74.
Chinese reformer Xiang Jianyu (Hsiang Kianyu), 21, graduates from a school in Changsha, opens a girls' school, and campaigns against foot binding and feudal marriage (see 1922).
Conservative U.S. suffragists expel Alice Paul from their organization; she renames her Congressional Union the National Woman's Party to spearhead the movement for woman suffrage using the more militant means employed in Britain, even if it means being imprisoned and force-fed when demonstrators go on hunger strikes (see 1913; 1917).
The Canadian provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta grant women voting rights (see 1917).
President Woodrow Wilson addresses a suffrage gathering at Atlantic City September 8 and assures his cheering listeners that women will get the vote "in a little while." Suffrage leader Anna Howard Shaw, now 69, replies that women have waited long enough and want the vote now.
Suffragist Inez Milholland Boissevain collapses from anemia during a speech and dies at Los Angeles November 25 at age 30, having campaigned for the Republican Party that had pledged to support a woman suffrage amendment.
Marcus Garvey moves to New York and establishes U.S. headquarters for the Universal Negro Improvement Association (see 1913; 1920).
Explorer Sir Ernest H. Shackleton and his 27 men embark April 9 aboard their three 22½-foot lifeboats (see 1915). They reach an uninhabited rock called Elephant Island but are still 599 miles north of the Antarctic Peninsula and 750 miles southwest of the Norwegian whaling station on the west coast of South Georgia Island, the nearest outpost of civilization. Having endured unbelievable hardships over the course of 17 months, Shackleton and four other men embark in one of the boats, cross 800 miles of water, and after 16 harrowing days at sea and a climb over rugged mountains reach the whaling station; Shackleton has long since been given up for dead but obtains a Chilean ship and goes back to rescue the 22 surviving members of his party, arriving August 30 at Elephant Island, where he finds that not a single man has been lost. He and his men reach England, where he is greeted with wild acclaim, although he has failed to traverse the continent as he had hoped.
The Russian port of Murmansk is founded on the Barents Sea 175 miles north of the Arctic Circle to receive Allied war matériel. Warm currents from the Gulf Stream keep the port open year round even when some ports to the south are frozen.
V. I. Lenin puts out a pamphlet with the title "Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism." He makes the ideas expressed by English economist John Hobson, 58, in his 1902 book Imperialism the official view of the Communist Party (see 1917; Pravda, 1907).
The Allies and Central Powers rely increasingly on women to produce munitions for the Great War that continues in Europe. Those not employed directly in factories work on railways, as porters, and as trolley-car conductors.
Industrialist Hugo Stinnes makes himself a leading supplier of Germany's war machine (see 1893). Now 46, he has worked closely with the German Luxembourg Mining AG head Albert Voegler, 39, and his Stinnes Konzern (trust) plays an invaluable role in the war effort—mining coal and iron ore, producing tools and weapons (see 1921).
U.S. iron and steel workers return to work January 13 at East Youngstown, Ohio, after receiving a 10 percent wage hike, but there are 2,000 strikes by U.S workers in the first 7 months of the year alone.
The U.S. Supreme Court upholds the constitutionality of the federal income tax (Sixteenth Amendment) January 24 in the case of Brushaber v. Union Pacific Railroad. Congress enacts an estate tax to help finance mobilization, restoring a levy that was imposed in 1898 but repealed in 1902; only a tiny percentage of Americans die with enough assets to be liable for taxation, and most of them have lawyers who set up trusts or find other ways to avoid or minimize the depletion of their legacies by taxation.
The U.S. Mint introduces a new 10¢ piece, 25¢ piece, and 50¢ piece. It will mint the Mercury dime for the next 30 years, and although the quarter with its standing figure of Liberty will be changed slightly next year it will not be replaced until 1932; the new half-dollar with its walking figure of Liberty will not be superseded until 1948.
Strikebreakers at Everett, Wash., attack picketing strikers at the Everett Mills August 19. Hired by mill owner Neil Jamison, they beat up strikers while the police look on, claiming that the waterfront area is federal property and beyond their jurisdiction, but when the strikers retaliate that evening the police do intervene, saying the strikers have crossed the line of jurisdiction, and when 22 union men try to speak out at a local crossroads August 22 they are arrested. Arrests and beatings continue for months, vigilantes force "Wobbly" speakers to run a gauntlet October 30, some are impaled on a spiked cattle guard at the end of the gauntlet, the IWW calls for a meeting November 5, and when the men arrive they are fired upon: seven people are killed, 50 wounded, others go missing (see 1917).
The Owen-Keating Act passed by Congress September 1 forbids shipment in interstate commerce of goods on which children under 14 have worked or on which children from 14 to 16 have worked more than 8 hours per day (but see Supreme Court, 1918).
The Adamson Bill signed by President Wilson September 3 averts a strike by railroad brotherhoods by providing for an 8-hour day on interstate railroads with time and a half for overtime.
A Workmen's Compensation Act passed by Congress September 7 brings 500,000 federal employees under a program to protect them from disability losses.
Japan's Diet enacts a law in September that forbids hiring girls and boys under age 12 except in special cases where the employer provides education. The law applies only to factories with 14 employees or more; it limits working hours to 12 per day, with an hour off, and provides for 2 days off per month. Children aged 12 to 15 are considered hogoshokko (protected workers): they may not work night shifts except in alternate weeks, get 4 days off per month, and must be paid each month, with the employer responsible for making sure that the child has saved some money. Where many young girls are employed, there must be a woman supervisor. Girls and boys must be kept separate in employee dormitories, and each worker must be provided with space equal to half a tatami mat with his or her own futon. Factory owners fight the new measure with such vigor that it will not become effective for 20 years.
Bethlehem Steel's Charles M. Schwab pays $49 million to acquire the Pennsylvania Steel Co., formerly controlled by the Pennsylvania Railroad. The company has a plant at Steelton, ore mines in Cuba, more in Pennsylvania, and (most important) a tidewater steel mill on Chesapeake Bay at Sparrows Point, Maryland, where Bethlehem will create a vast shipyard as it continues to prosper on government shipbuilding contracts.
Aluminum Co. of America (Alcoa) begins mining newly discovered reserves of bauxite in the Dutch colony of Suriname in northwestern South America.
Reynolds Metals Co. is founded by Bristol, Tenn.-born tobacco merchant's son Richard S. (Samuel) Reynolds, 38, to make foil wrappings for Camel cigarettes and other R. J. Reynolds brands. Reynolds is a nephew of the late R. J. Reynolds and has financial backing from the giant tobacco firm (see aluminum, 1945).
Pittsburgh Plate Glass founder John Pitcairn Jr. dies at his Cairnwood estate in Bryn Athyn, Pa., July 22 at age 75; Hetty Green has died in her son's home at 7 West 90th Street, New York, July 3 at age 80, leaving an estate of more than $100 million to her son and daughter. The eccentric "Witch of Wall Street" has kept the small fourth-floor apartment at 1203 Washington St., Hoboken, N.J. (a quick ferry ride from Wall Street and with a rent below $20 per month) that she has occupied since 1895.
Wall Street's Dow Jones Industrial Average closes December 30 at 95, down from 98.81 at the end of 1915.
The first major U.S. shopping mall opens outside Chicago at Lake Forest, Illinois. A six-shop shopping center opened at the turn of the century five miles north of downtown Baltimore, but Lake Forest's Market Square marks the true beginning of a retailing phenomenon (see Kansas City's Country Club Plaza, 1922).
Electrical engineer William Stanley Jr. dies at Great Barrington, Mass., May 14 at age 57, having received 129 patents, including one for the induction coil that permits use of alternating current.
U.S. petroleum companies raise gasoline prices 7¢ per gallon above 1914 levels as the European war and mounting domestic demand create shortages. The U.S. government predicts that oil production will peak in 5 years and that reservoirs will dry up not long thereafter; engineers predict that world petroleum reserves will be exhausted within 30 years (but see Lake Maracaibo, 1922; Iraq, 1927; east Texas, 1930; Bahrain, 1932; Saudi Arabia, 1933; Kuwait, 1938; Alaska, 1968; North Sea, 1969).
Sinclair Oil and Refining is founded by Wheeling, W. Va.-born, Kansas-raised entrepreneur Harry F. (Ford) Sinclair, 40, who acquired his first oil-bearing property at age 24, acted as a lease broker, became an independent producer, and brought in a gusher with the first well he dug. He has put together some small Midwestern refineries plus a pipeline company, floats a $16 million bond issue in Wall Street, will soon run a refinery on a 145-acre site at Vinita, Oklahoma, buy the 720-acre Allen Ranch at Houston in 1918, build a crude refinery on the site, open the first modern service station in 1921 at Chicago, and by 1923 will have added Freeport and Tampico Oil and Pennsylvania's Union Petroleum (see Teapot Dome, 1921).
Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey president John D. Archbold dies at Tarrytown, N.Y., December 5 at age 68.
The joint-stock company Russian-Baltic founded at Moscow April 30 for the production of motorcars will open a plant (the Second Russo-Baltic Automobile Plant) next year near the Intercession Church. Russia has produced motorcars since 1896, the German company Junkers will soon take over the Moscow plant for aircraft manufacturing, it will continue to be used for such purposes, but the Russians will build a sizeable motorcar industry.
A Federal Highway Act approved by Congress July 11 authorizes a 5-year program of federal aid to the states for construction of post roads on a 50-50 basis.
Henry Ford buys a site on Detroit's River Rouge for a gigantic new motorcar plant. Ford's Model T gets 20 miles per gallon of gasoline.
W. C. Durant regains control of General Motors, whose president Charles W. Nash resigns. GM is reorganized as a Delaware corporation, and will absorb the manufacturing facilities of W. C. Durant's Chevrolet Co. (see 1915). It will also absorb the Hyatt Roller Bearing Co., whose chief Alfred P. Sloan Jr., 43, is a protégé of Cadillac's Henry M. Leland; Delco, whose C. F. Kettering is a friend of Leland (see 1911); and New Departure Manufacturing, a producer of roller bearings (see Lincoln, 1917). Cadillac Motor Car is set up as a division of General Motors, but Cadillac boss Leland will leave the company next year.
Nash Motors is founded by former GM chief Charles W. Nash, who purchases the Thomas B. Jeffery Co. of Kenosha, Wisonsin, that started making bicycles in 1879 and introduced the Rambler motorcar in 1902 (see American Motors, 1954).
The first mechanically operated windshield wipers are introduced in the United States. Electric windshield wipers will not be produced until 1923.
Railroad engineer Grenville M. Dodge dies at Council Bluffs, Iowa, January 3 at age 84.
U.S. railroad trackage reaches its peak of 254,000 miles, up from 164,000 in 1890. The total will decline, but only marginally.
The Bryan-Chamorro Treaty concluded August 5 gives the United States exclusive rights to build a canal through Nicaragua, thus preventing anyone else from building a rival to the 2-year-old Panama Canal. Nicaragua receives $3 million and is thus enabled to pay off its debts to U.S. bankers, but the New York Times criticizes the pact, saying that President Wilson has made the "dollar diplomacy" of former president Taft and his secretary of state Philander C. Knox "more nearly resemble ten-cent diplomacy."
A remote-control system devised by Denver-born Westinghouse engineer Herbert T. (Thacker) Herr, 41, allows a ship's main engines to be operated from the bridge. Herr serves as advisor to the U.S. shipping Board's Emergency Fleet Corp.; the U.S. Navy will adopt a slight modification of his system for some of its capital ships.
Boeing Co. has its beginnings in the Pacific Aero Products Co., founded by Seattle lumber producer William E. Boeing, 34, who has been helped by U.S. Navy officer G. Conrad Westerveldt to design a two-seat, twin-float B&W seaplane, which he builds from strong Sitka spruce. He will rename the firm Boeing Co. next year, and beginning in the 1920s the company will build planes to carry mail and also produce some military aircraft (see United Aircraft, 1929).
Lockheed Aircraft Corp. has its beginnings in the Loughead Aircraft Manufacturing Co. founded at Santa Barbara by California-born aviation enthusiasts Malcolm Loughead, 29, and his brother Alan H. (Haines), 27, who hire Newark, N.J.-born draftsman John K. (Knudsen) Northrop, 20, as engineer to help them design the S-1 twin-engine flying boat with a cigar-shaped molded plywood fuselage whose strength comes from it outside skin rather than internal bracing. Northrop leaves later in the year for Douglas Aircraft at Santa Monica, the Lougheads will fly their F-1 biplane successfully in 1918 and attract notice from the U.S. Navy, but the navy will adopt the Curtiss HS21 as its standard. The Loughheads will lose at least $4,000 building two variations of the Curtiss on a Navy contract, they will convert the F-1 to a land plane, but it will crash at Tucson, Arizona because of engine failure, and Malcolm will quit in 1919 to promote a four-wheel hydraulic brake system for automobiles that he has had in mind since 1904 (see automobile brake, 1919).
A pistol-grip electric drill introduced by Baltimore's 6-year-old Black & Decker Co. is far easier to operate than the power drills imported from Germany before the war. It has a trigger switch patterned on the one used in Colt revolvers and will lead to a whole line of power tools. Black & Decker will have sales of $1 million per year by 1919 and in 1930 will start selling machines for household use.
Mechanical engineer John E. Sweet of 1873 micrometer caliper fame dies at Syracuse, N.Y., May 8 at age 83; paint and varnish maker Henry A. Sherwin of Sherwin-Williams at Willoughby, Ohio, June 26 at age 73; inventor Sir Hiram S. Maxim at Streatham, England, November 24 at age 76. His brother Hudson, now 63, has developed explosives that enable the Maxim machine gun to reach its full potential.
A general theory of relativity announced by Albert Einstein revolutionizes the science of physics (see 1905). Now at the University of Berlin and a director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, Einstein shows that the gravitational attraction between two bodies can be explained by assuming that their masses cause a local curvature of the four-dimensional space-time universe. He explains an anomaly in the orbit of the planet Mercury not accounted for by Newtonian theory (see 1687) and calculates the apparent displacement of stars whose light just grazes the sun. Einstein has evolved his theory from work he has done in the geometrization of physics and integration of gravitational, accelerational, and electromagnetic phenomena that he will try to unite into a unified field theory represented by a single set of equations (see 1919).
Dutch-born physical chemist Peter Debye (Petrus Josephus Wilhelmus Debije), 32, and Swiss physicist Paul Scherrer, 26, at Zürich show that solid substances can be used in powdered form for X-ray study of their crystal structures. Their method eliminates the difficult step of preparing good crystals and will come into wide use for identifying materials that do not readily form themselves into large, perfect crystals (see 1923; Hull, 1917).
The Respiratory Exchange of Animals and Man by physiologist August Krogh, now 41, expands on his discovery of the motor-regulating mechanism of small blood vessels (capillaries) (see 1906). With help from his wife, Maria, Krogh will elaborate further in his 1922 book The Anatomy and Physiology of Capillaries.
The U.S. National Academy of Sciences founded in 1863 starts a National Research Council (NRC).
Mathematician Julius Dedekind dies at his native Brunswick February 14 at age 84; physicist-philosopher Ernst Mach at Vaterstetten, near Haar, Germany, February 19 at age 78; Egyptologist Gaston Maspero at his native Paris June 30 at age 70; Nobel chemist Sir William Ramsay at Haslemere, Buckinghamshire, July 23 at age 63; astronomer-meteorologist Cleveland Abbe at Chevy Chase, Maryland, October 28 at age 77; geneticist-turned-surgeon Walter S. Sutton at Kansas City, Kansas, November 10 at age 39; astronomer Percival Lowell at Flagstad, Arizona, November 12 at age 61.
English physiologist Edward A. Sharpey-Schafer, 60, introduces the word insuline for the hormone produced by the islets of Langerhans in the human pancreas (see 1869; Joslin, 1898; Banting, 1922).
Johns Hopkins pre-medical student Jay McLean, 26, accidentally discovers the anticoagulant powers of the drug heparin but does not use that term. Working in the laboratory of physiologist William Henry Howell, now 56, McLean has isolated certain phosphatides from a dog's liver tissue and showed in vitro that the substance inhibited blood coagulation; he injects it intravenously into a dog, makes an incision, and observes excessive bleeding from the dog's wound. Swedish biochemist J. Erik Jorpes, now 21, will identify the structure of heparin in the early 1930s and help make the potent blood thinner a standard therapy for blood clots in the leg caused by thrombophlebitis, for some heart attacks, and for certain lung conditions, as well as for preventing formation of blood clots after major surgery.
GE's William D. Coolidge revolutionizes X-ray technology (see 1895; 1913). He patents a hot-cathode X-ray that will replace the cold aluminum-cathode tube and be the prototype of all future tubes.
An epidemic of infantile paralysis (poliomyelitis) sweeps the United States from midsummer to fall, affecting 28,767 in midsummer and fall (see 1905). Some 6,000 people die, 2,000 of them in New York, and thousands more are crippled. Newborn infants have throughout history had a natural immunity to the virus, inherited from their mothers, but modern sanitation and an emphasis on cleanliness, while helping to reduce the incidence of many other diseases, has lowered resistance to the polio virus, and medical authorities are unable to cope with it (see Roosevelt, 1921).
Syphilis is responsible for the deaths of 73,000 U.S. infants, including 41,700 stillbirths. An estimated 25 to 50 percent of adult blindness is due to gonococcal infection at birth.
Textbook of Psychiatry (Lehrbuch der Psychiatrie) by Eugen Bleuler will remain a standard text for decades. Now 59, Bleuler challenges the prevailing notion that psychosis is the result of organic brain damage and tries to show that some of the mechanisms that Sigmund Freud has found in neurotic patients may also be seen in psychotic patients.
Johnson & Johnson acquires the 94-year-old Chicopee Manufacturing Corp. as the war in Europe boosts demand for surgical dressings (see 1899). The New Jersey company wants to assure itself of adequate textile materials (see Band-Aid, 1921).
Nobel laureate bacteriologist Elie Metchnikoff dies of uremia and cardiac failure at Paris July 15 at age 71 (it will turn out that Bulgarian peasants do not live so long as he believed, and his theory about the efficacy of yogurt to extend lifespans will be substantially disproved; (but see nutrition [Gayelord Hauser], 1950); physiologist-neurosurgeon Sir Victor Horsley dies of heatstroke at Amarah in Mesopotamia July 16 at age 59.
"Peace, it's wonderful," says "Father Divine," and he organizes the Peace Mission movement. Georgia-born New York evangelist George Baker, 42 (approximate), served his apprenticeship as a Holy Roller preacher and disciple to two other black preachers—Samuel Morris, who described himself as "Father Jehovia," and John Hickerson, who preached, "Live Ever, Die Never." Arrested on a lunacy charge at Valdosta, Georgia, in 1914, Baker left the state to avoid imprisonment and came to New York. He and his followers will establish a communal settlement at Sayville, Long Island, that they will soon have to abandon, but Father Divine will garner a substantial following in the next 45 years, preaching a renunciation of personal property, complete racial equality, and a strict moral code in the more than 170 Peace Mission settlements, or "heavens," that he will open. Tobacco, cosmetics, liquor, motion pictures, and sex will be totally banned (see 1942).
Religious leader Charles Taze Russell dies at Pampa, Texas, October 31 at age 64 while preaching and distributing the literature of his Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society (see Jehovah's Witnesses, 1931); Episcopal bishop Charles E. Cheney dies at Chicago November 15 at age 80.
The American Association of University Professors accepts a report January 1 by its Committee of Academic Freedom recommending that every university adopt certain measures that will make the teaching profession more attractive to "men of high ability." An informal tenure system exists at many universities, but it is widely abused; henceforth tenure will more strictly defined and observed.
Harvard's annual tuition rises to $200, having remained at $150 for 47 years.
The Measurement of Intelligence by Indiana-born Stanford University psychologist Lewis M. (Madison) Terman, 39, introduces the term "I.Q." (intelligence quotient) to America and presents the first test for measuring intelligence that will be widely used. Terman has expanded the test for U.S. subjects and multiplied by 100 the Stern formula proposed 2 years ago to give a statistical definition of intelligence. The Stanford-Binet test is a revision of the 1908 version of the 1905 Binet-Simon scale and will come to be known as the Stanford-Binet Intelligence test (see Goddard, 1912).
"Krazy Kat" by New Orleans-born New York Journal cartoonist George (Joseph) Herriman, 35, appears in full-page color form for the first time April 23. Hermann created the surrealistic strip 5 years ago, it features an androgynous love triangle that involves brick-throwing Ignatz Mouse, Krazy Kat, and Offissa B. Pupp (a dog disguised as a Keystone Kop), and Herriman will continue it until his death in 1944.
W. M. A. Beaverbrook begins a vast publishing empire by gaining control of London's 16-year-old Daily Express. Canadian cement magnate William Maxwell Aitken Beaverbrook, 37, has been representing the Ottawa government at the Western Front, by 1918 he will be British minister of information and will control the Sunday Express, and by 1923 he will control the Evening Standard.
El Universal begins publication at Mexico City. Local journalist Felix F. Palavaicini, 35, sets new standards by publishing news rather than editorial opinion on his daily front page (see 1917).
The satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaine begins publication at Paris, where it will continue into the next century with a policy of refusing to accept any advertising lest its independence be compromised.
A selective-tuning device for radio receivers patented by Ernst F. W. Alexanderson will become an integral part of modern radio systems (see 1919; alternator, 1906).
The first radio news is broadcast by Lee De Forest, who has established a radio station (see 1909; 1922; Conrad, 1920).
Nonfiction: The Organization of Thought by Alfred North Whitehead; The Purpose of History by Canadian-born Columbia University philosopher Frederick J. E. (James Eugene) Woodbridge, 49, who joined Columbia's faculty in 1902 and will remain until his retirement in 1939; The Commonwealth of Nations by former British colonial administrator Lionel G. (George) Curtis, now 44, who resigned 9 years ago to work for the union of South Africa's four British colonies and began to work toward the idea of a federal world order; The Hohenzollern Household and Administration in the Sixteenth Century by Washington, D.C.-born historian Sidney B. (Bradshaw) Fay, 40; Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values (Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die materiale Wertethik) by Munich-born Berlin philosopher Max Scheler, 42, who subscribes to the teachings of the 17th-century French philosopher Blaise Pascal and throws cold water on Immanuel Kant by showing that what one "ought to do" presupposes a notion of the value of what ought to be done and divides all values into five a priori ranks, an "order, or logic, of the heart"; The Theory of Mind as Pure Act (Teoria generale dello spirito come atto puro) by Italian "actual idealist" Giovanni Gentile, 41; With Americans of Past and Present (En Amérique jadis et maintenant) by scholar Jean-Jules Jusserand, now 61, who has been France's ambassador at Washington, D.C., since 1902 and will continue in the post until 1925 (his book will win the first Pulitzer Prize to be awarded for history); Shakespeare by George Lyman Kittredge; The Mental Life of Monkeys and Apes by Robert M. Yerkes; Married Love by English paleobotanist Marie (Charlotte) Stopes (née Carmichael), 36, who says that wives have as much right to sexual pleasure as their husbands, making only incidental mention of birth control. Married to Canadian botanist R. R. Gates in 1911, Mrs. Stopes did not realize until a year later that he was impotent and she still a virgin. She began studying sexuality, initiated proceedings for an annulment in 1914, and has written a huge bestseller (although banned in the United States, it goes through seven printings and will ultimately have sales of more than 1 million copies) (see population, 1918); A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf by the late John Muir, who walked from Indianapolis to the Gulf of Mexico in 1867 and kept a journal; Whale Hunting with Gun and Camera by American Museum of Natural History naturalist-explorer Roy Chapman Andrews, 32; Further Foolishness: Sketches and Satires on the Follies of the Day by Stephen Leacock includes "Follies in Fiction," "Peace, War and Politics," "Movies and Motors, Men and Women," "Timid Thoughts on Timely Subjects," "Are the Rich Happy?," and "The Snoopopaths; or, Fifty Stories in One;" Essays and Literary Studies by Leacock includes "The Apology of a Professor," "American Humour," "The Woman Question," and "A Rehabilitation of Charles II"; A Heap o' Livin' by English-born Detroit Free Press writer Edgar (Albert) Guest, 35, who says, "It takes a heap o' livin' to make a house a home."
Philosopher Josiah Royce dies at Cambridge, Mass., September 14 at age 60; psychologist-philosopher Hugo Münsterberg drops dead December 16 at age 53 while lecturing to a class at Radcliffe College.
Fiction: The Home and the World (Gharer baire) by Rabindranath Tagore, whose novel in the Bengali vulgate creates a controversy by moving away from the traditional literary language in which Tagore has written numerous poems, plays, songs, and short stories that helped him win a 1913 Nobel Prize; Grass on the Wayside (Michigusa) by Satsume Soseki; The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (Los cuatro jinetes del Apocalipsis) by Spanish novelist Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, 49, breaks all world records for book sales; The Fire: Story of a Squad (Le Feu: journal d'une escuade) by Henri Barbusse, now 43, who has volunteered for military service; The Golden Arrow by English novelist Mary (Gladys Meredith) Webb, 35; Casuals of the Sea by William McFee; Greenmantle by John Buchan, who is serving on the British headquarters staff in France; The Dark Forest by Hugh Walpole; Kingdom of the Dead (De Dodes Rige) by Henrik Pontoppidan; Sussex Gorse by English novelist Sheila Kaye-Smith, 29; The Devil Doctor by Sax Rohmer; Mrs. Balfame by Gertrude Atherton; The Mysterious Stranger by the late Mark Twain; You Know Me Al (stories) by Chicago Tribune sportswriter Ring (Ringgold Wilmer) Lardner, 31.
Novelist-playwright Henry James dies at London February 28 at age 72 and is buried at Cambridge, Mass. He became a British subject last year; novelist-playwright Richard Harding Davis dies at his home near Mount Kisco, N.Y., April 11 at age 51; author-playwright Sholom Aleichem (Solomon Rabinowitz) at his Bronx, N.Y., home May 13 at age 57 (he is memorialized as the "Jewish Mark Twain"; H. H. Munro (Saki) is killed on the Western Front November 14 at age 45; Nobel novelist Henryk Sienkiewicz dies at Vevey, Switzerland, November 15 at age 70 while organizing relief for Polish war victims; Jack London commits suicide in an alcoholic depression at his Glen Ellen, Calif., ranch November 22 at age 40; Natsume Soseki dies at Tokyo December 9 at age 59.
Poetry: The Man Against the Sky by Edwin Arlington Robinson; The Jig of Forslinby by Savannah-born poet Conrad (Potter) Aiken, 27, who calls his work a "poetic symphony"; Sea Garden by Bethlehem, Pa.-born poet H. D. (Hilda Doolittle Aldington), 30, who married the English imagist poet Richard Aldington in 1912 but will divorce him after the war and return to America; Twentieth Century Harlequinade and Other Poems by English poet Edith Sitwell, 29, and her brother Osbert, 23; Rhymes of a Red Cross Man by Robert W. Service; Day of the Dead (Radunitsa) by Russian poet Sergei Aleksandrovich Esenin, 21; The Backbone Flute (Fleytapozvonochnik) by Vladimir Mayakovski; The Buried Harbor (Il Porto Sepolto) by Italian poet Giuseppe Ungaretti, 28.
Poet Rubén Darío dies at Léon, Nicaragua, February 6 at age 49. He became seriously ill last year while visiting New York; New York-born poet Alan Seeger is killed in action at Befloy-en-Santerre July 4 at age 28. Seeger enlisted in the French Foreign Legion at the outbreak of the war and leaves behind lines that include, "I have a rendezvous with Death/ At some disputed barricade,/ When Spring comes back with rustling shade/ And apple-blossoms fill the air"; James Whitcomb Riley dies at Indianapolis July 22 at age 66; Emile Verhaeren is killed in a railway accident at Rouen November 27 at age 61.
Juvenile: Nursery Rhymes of London Town by London-born author Eleanor Farjeon, 35, whose maternal grandfather was the late actor Joseph Jefferson; Old Peter's Russian Tales by Leeds-born journalist-author Arthur (Mitchell) Ransome, 32, who learned Russian 3 years ago; Seventeen: A Tale of Youth and Summer Time and the Baxter Family, Especially William and Penrod and Sam by Booth Tarkington.
Painting: The Three Sisters by Henri Matisse; Dining Room, Vernonnet and Mantelpiece by Pierre Bonnard; Woman in Plaid Dress by Amédéo Modigliani; Litzlbergerkeller am Attersee by Gustav Klimt; The Disquieting Muse by Giorgio de Chirico; Jeune Fille au Botiron (oil on canvas) and Le Marché au Minho by Sonia Delaunay; Hafenmole and Radrennen by New York-born musician-turned-artist Lyonel Feininger, 45, who has lived in Europe since 1887; Flags on the Waldorf by Childe Hassam; Rocky Neck, Gloucester by Philadelphia-born painter Stuart Davis, 18; Naturaleza muerta, El rastro by Diego Rivera. Thomas Eakins dies at Philadelphia June 25 at age 71; Odilon Redon at Paris July 6 at age 76.
The Dada artistic and literary movement launched at Zürich will lead to surrealism next year. German pacifist writer Hugo Ball, 30, Alsatian painter-sculptor-writer-poet Jean (or Hans) Arp, 29, Romanian-born French poet Tristan Tzara (Sami Rosenstock), 20, and their adherents believe that Western culture has betrayed itself by its easy acceptance of the World War. They protest against all bourgeois notions of meaning and order with chaotic experiments in form and language (see Duchamp, 1915).
The Saturday Evening Post buys its first Norman Rockwell picture from Boys' Life illustrator Norman Rockwell, 22, who dropped out of Mamaroneck, N.Y., High School 6 years ago to work for the monthly magazine of the Boy Scouts of America. Rockwell has been art director of Boys' Life since 1913, but he will now work mostly for the Post, whose editors will buy an average of 10 Norman Rockwell covers per year until weekly publication ends in 1969.
Sculpture: Princess X (bronze) by Constantin Brancusi; Acrobat (bronze) by Elie Nadelman.
Theater: The Cinderella Man by Philadelphia-born playwright Edward Childs Carpenter, 43, 1/17 at New York's Hudson Theater, with Marysville, Calif.-born actor Frank Bacon, 52, Lucille La Verne, Shelly Hull, Toronto-born actor Berton Churchill, 39, 192 perfs.; Field of Ermine (Campo de armiño) by Jacinto Benavente 2/14 at Madrid's Teatro de la Princesa; Moses by English poet-artist Isaac Rosenberg, 26; A Kiss for Cinderella by James M. Barrie 3/16 at Wyndham's Theatre, London, with Mrs. Patrick Campbell, Hilda Trevelyan (née Tucker), 36, 158 perfs.; A Night at an Inn by Irish playwright Edward J. M. D. Plunkett, 37, Lord Dunsany 4/23 at New York's Neighborhood Playhouse, with Henry Lambert, Tracy Barrow, Gerard Pring, 16 perfs.; The Mask and the Face (La maschera e il volto) by Italian playwright Luigi Chiarelli, 35, 5/31 at Rome's Teatro Argentina; Seven Chances by Roi Cooper Megrue 8/8 at George M. Cohan's Theater, New York, with Frank Craven, Otto Kruger, Detroit-born ingénue Helen MacKellar, 21, 151 perfs.; The Cheating Cheaters by Max Marcin 8/9 at New York's Eltinge Theater, with Cyril Keightley, 286 perfs.; Nothing but the Truth by James Montgomery (based on the novel by New York-born author Frederic S. Isham, 51) 9/14 at New York's Longacre Theater, with William Collier, Maude Turner Gordon, 332 perfs.; Upstairs and Down by Frederic and Fanny Hatton 9/25 at New York's Cort Theater, with English-born actor Orlando Daly, 43, Los Angeles-born actor Leo Carillo, 35, Chicago-born actress Mary Servoss, 35, 320 perfs.; The Son (Der Sohn) by German playwright Walter Hasenclever, 26, 9/30 at Prague's Deutsche Landestheater; Good Gracious Annabelle by Clare Kummer 10/31 at New York's Republic Theater, with Lola Fisher, London-born actor Roland Young, 28, Walter Hampden, 111 perfs.; BoundEast for Cardiff, a one-act play by playwright Eugene (Gladstone) O'Neill, 27, 11/16 at New York's rectangular, 150-seat Provincetown Playhouse, a converted brownstone stable and bottling plant with pewlike benches opened by Susan Glaspell and her husband, George Cram Cook (see 1915), at 133 MacDougal Street (son of the actor James O'Neill, now 66, the playwright was born in a Broadway hotel room in October 1888. His play is produced later in the year at the Playwrights Theater); The Thirteenth Chair by Brooklyn-born playwright Bayard Veiller, 46, 11/20 at New York's 48th Street Theater (to Fulton Theater 8/20/1917), with London-born actress Margaret Wycherly, 35, 328 perfs.; The Harp of Life by J. Hartley Manners 11/27 at New York's Globe Theater, with English-born actress Lynn Fontanne, 28, Laurette Taylor, Indian-born actor Philip Merivale, 30, Melbourne-born actor Dion Titheradge, 30, 136 perfs.; The White-Haired Boy by playwright Lennox Robinson, now 30, 12/13 at Dublin's Abbey Theatre.
Actress Ada Rehan dies at New York January 8 at age 55. She gave her last performance in the city in 1905.
Films: D. W. Griffith's Intolerance with Lillian Gish, Robert Harron, Mae Marsh, Constance Talmadge, photography by Billy Bitzer. Also Pennsylvania-born director Lois Weber's Discontent (about generational conflicts); Lois Weber's The People vs. John Doe (about capital punishment); Lois Weber's Where Are My Children (about abortion); Herbert Brenon's War Brides with Yalta-born actress Alla Nazimova (originally Adelaide Leventon), 37, New York-born actor Richard (Semler) Barthelmess, 21, whose mother has been Nazimova's English teacher.
New York's Rialto Theater opens at the northwest corner of Seventh Avenue and 42nd Street, replacing Hammerstein's Victoria Theater of 1898 (see Strand, 1914; Rivoli, 1917).
Opera: Ariadne auf Naxos 10/4 at Vienna, with Austrian soprano Maria Jeritza (Jedladecka), 28, creating the title role, music by Richard Strauss, libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Amalita Galli-Curci makes her U.S. debut 11/18 at the Chicago Opera singing the role of Gilda in the 1851 Verdi opera Rigoletto; Claudia Muzio, now 27, her Metropolitan Opera debut 12/4 in the title role of the 1900 Puccini opera Tosca.
First performances: Scythian Suite by Ukraine-born composer Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev, 24, 1/29 at Petrograd's Imperial Mariinsky Theater; Nights in the Gardens of Spain by Manuel de Falla 4/9 at Madrid's Teatro Real.
Composer Max Reger dies of heart paralysis at Leipzig May 11 at age 43; conductor Hans Richter at Bayreuth December 5 at age 73.
Stage musicals: Robinson Crusoe Jr. 2/17 at New York's Winter Garden Theater, with Al Jolson, music by Sigmund Romberg and James Hanley, book and lyrics by Harold Atteridge and Edgar Smith, 139 perfs.; Mr. Manhattan 3/30 at London's Prince of Wales Theatre, with Philip Braham, Frank E. Tours, music and lyrics by Fred Thompson; The Happy Day 5/13 at Daly's Theatre, London, with book by Seymour Hicks, music by Sidney Jones and Paul Rubens, lrycis by Adrian Ross and Rubens, 241 perfs.; The Ziegfeld Follies 6/12 at New York's New Amsterdam Theater, with W. C. Fields, Fanny Brice, Ina Claire (Ina Fagan), 23, Ann Pennington, music by Louis Hirsch, Jerome Kern, and Dave Stamper, 112 perfs. Brooklyn-born Follies girl Marion Davies (Marion Cecilia Douras), 19, meets publisher William Randolph Hearst, now 53, with whom she will remain until his death in 1951. The father of five, Hearst married another chorus girl, Millicent Wilson, in 1903; The Passing Show 6/22 at New York's Winter Garden Theater, with Ed Wynn, music chiefly by Sigmund Romberg, lyrics chiefly by Harold Atteridge, songs that include "Pretty Baby" by Tony Jackson and Egbert van Alstyne, lyrics by German-born songwriter Gus Kahn, 30, 140 perf.; Chu Chin Chow, A Musical Tale of the East 8/31 at His Majesty's Theatre, London, with Australian-born actor-writer Oscar Asche, now 45, who has written the book and created an extravaganza out of the pantomime The Forty Thieves, music by Frederic Norton, now 47, 2,238 perfs. (the show will continue through the war and beyond); The Big Show 8/31 at New York's Hippodrome, with book by R. G. Burnside, music by Raymond Hubbell, lyrics by John L. Golden, 425 perfs.; The Light Blues 9/16 at London's Shaftesbury Theatre, with songs by Adrian Ross and Jack Hulbert; Theodore & Co. 9/19 at London's Gaiety Theatre, with music by Ivan Caryll, 503 perfs.; The Century Girl 11/16 at New York's Century Theater, with Hazel Dawn, Marie Dressler, Elsie Janis, Leon Errol, music by Irving Berlin and Victor Herbert, lyrics by Berlin and Henry Blossom, songs that include Berlin's "You Belong to Me," 200 perfs.
Popular songs: "Roses of Picardy" by London composer Haydn Wood, 34, lyrics by lawyer-publisher Fred E. Weatherly, 68; "I Ain't Got Nobody" by Spencer Williams, 27, lyrics by Roger Graham, 31; "La Cucaracha" ("The Cockroach") is published at Mexico City and San Francisco; "La Cumparasita" (tango) by composer G. H. Matos Rodriguez (English lyrics by Carol Raven will be added in 1932); "Ireland Must Be Heaven for My Mother Came from There" by Fred Fisher, lyrics by Joe McCarthy and Howard E. Johnson.
The first Rose Bowl football game January 1 pits Washington State against Brown in a huge new stadium that seats 101,385. The game is part of the Tournament of Roses held since 1902 (see Orange Bowl, Sugar Bowl, 1935).
Richard Williams wins in U.S. men's singles, Molla Burjstedt in women's singles.
The first U.S. Professional Golfers Association (PGA) tournament opens at the Siwanoy Country Club in suburban Bronxville, N.Y.
Indianapolis-born golfer Charles "Chick" Evans Jr., 26, becomes the first person to win both the U.S. Open and U.S. Amateur championships in the same year, setting a U.S. Open record score of 286 that will stand for 20 years.
The Boston Red Sox win their third World Series, defeating the Brooklyn Dodgers 4 games to 1. The "Star Spangled Banner" is sung at Fenway Park for the first time at any ball game, beginning a tradition. Peoria-born Broadway producer H. H. Frazee, 36, buys the Sox franchise for $500,000 (see Babe Ruth, 1920).
The Women's International Bowling Congress has its beginnings in the Woman's National Bowling Association, founded November 29 by 40 women at St. Louis. It will become the world's largest women's sports organization.
U.S. Keds are introduced by United States Rubber Co. The first mass-marketed rubber-soled sneakers have brown canvas uppers and black rubber soles. The Converse basketball shoe is introduced by an 8-year-old Massachusetts company. Sneakers (plimsolls in Britain) have been available since the late 1860s with canvas uppers and rubber soles, but brand names have been almost non-existent.
Lincoln Logs begin to compete with the Erector Set launched in 1913 and Tinkertoy in 1914. Architect Frank Lloyd Wright's son John Lloyd Wright, 24, has invented the toy building set, will obtain a patent in 1920, and will sell it through his Red Square Toy Co. Sales of the wooden pieces will continue into the 21st century.
Germans and Austrians set their clocks ahead by 1 hour at 11 o'clock p.m. April 30, British fuel shortages motivate Parliament to pass a "summer time" act May 17, it goes into effect May 21, and most European governments (Belgium, Denmark, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, and Turkey) do the same, advancing clocks one hour to make the most of available light. Builder William Willett died at London in March of last year at age 67, having campaigned against wasting daylight (see 1907); Tasmania, Nova Scotia, and Manitoba adopt the idea, and it will be adopted next year by Australia and Newfoundland (see U.S., 1918).
Lucky Strike cigarettes are introduced by American Tobacco Co. (see 1911). The new brand will soon outsell the company's Sweet Caporal and Pall Mall brands and challenge the Camels brand launched 3 years ago by R. J. Reynolds (see 1918; 1925).
U.S. cigarette production reaches 53.1 billion, up from 35.3 billion in 1912.
Onetime bandit Cole Younger dies in Jackson County, Missouri, March 21 at age 72.
A comprehensive zoning ordinance adopted by New York's Board of Estimate is the first U.S. law of its kind. The state legislature empowered the city 2 years ago to adopt a zoning resolution, and the Equitable Life Assurance Society Building completed last year at 120 Broadway has given impetus to concerns by reformers that such massive structures are robbing the city of light and air. The Board of Estimate's Building Heights and Restrictions Commission issues a final report July 2, and while the ordinance adopted by the board at the end of the year does not set absolute limits on the height of buildings, it does require that a tower occupy no more than 25 percent of the area of a building's lot and specifies the portion of the lot that can be built up (see set-back law, 1923).
Miami's $16 million James Deering mansion Vizcaya is completed for the farm equipment heir. Roofing tile for the coraline stone Florida house once covered an entire Cuban village (the Cubans have been given new roofs), and a 300-year-old travertine marble fountain from the town square of the Italian village Bassano di Surti near Rome has been installed in Vizcaya's Fountain Garden (the Italians have been given a modern water system). The estate has 10 acres of formal gardens, including the Fountain Garden modeled after Rome's Villa Albani, and the house has 45 telephones, oversize brine-cooled refrigerators, marble floors, and two elevators.
Winfield Hall is completed on an 18-acre site at Glen Cove, L.I., for dime store magnate F. W. Woolworth, now 64. Architect Charles P. H. Gilbert has copied the 62-room "summer villa" from a Napoleonic palace at Compiègne, giving it a Gothic library, Baroque music room, Georgian dining room, and French Empire bed chambers. Its bathrooms have solid gold plumbing fixtures.
Double-shell enameled bathtubs go into mass production in the United States to replace the cast-iron tubs with roll rims and claw feet that have been standard for decades.
Tokyo's Imperial Hotel goes up across from the grounds of the Imperial Palace (an Imperial Hotel, financed in part by the emperor's family and built in 1890, has 60 rooms and 10 suites but is considered too small). Architect Frank Lloyd Wright received a visit last year from the hotel's manager, Aisaku Hayashi, his wife, and architect Tori Yoshitake, who were shown sketches and a plaster model of the second Taliesin. Wright will leave Vancouver for Yokohama in the fall of 1918 to supervise construction of the ornate and sprawling hotel, which will take 6 years to complete (see 1922; environment [earthquake], 1923).
Engineers at the 14-year-old Chicago-based U.S. Gypsum Corp. come up late in the year with drywall panels comprising a single layer of plaster and paper that can be joined flush along a wall with a relatively smooth surface (see Sackett's plasterboard, 1888). The company calls its non-warping, fire-resistant product Adamant Panel Board but will soon adopt a sales representative's suggestion and trademark the name Sheetrock.
Congress creates the U.S. National Park Service in the Department of the Interior August 20.
California's Lassen Volcanic National Park is created by act of Congress. The 107,000-acre park embraces a still-active volcano.
Hawaii Volcanoes National Park is created under the name Hawaii National Park. The 220,345-acre park on the island of Hawaii will be renamed in 1961.
Acadia National Park has its beginnings. John D. Rockefeller Jr. donates 5,000 acres of his family's Mount Desert Island in Maine to the nation; President Wilson proclaims it a national monument (see 1919).
Florida's Gulf Coast has a "red tide" caused by a proliferation of the dinoflagellate plankton Gymnodinium breve. The red tide kills millions of fish, whose nervous systems are immobilized by the expelled waste of G. breve (see 1932).
Shark attacks on the New Jersey seashore begin July 1 and continue for 11 days as a record heat wave increases surf bathing. There have been no recorded shark fatalities up to now on the Jersey coast, but a 24-year-old Philadelphia stockbroker is the first victim (at Beach Haven), a hotel bellboy is killed at Spring Lake, an 11-year-old boy is killed in Mattawan Creek, 11 miles from the ocean, a 24-year-old tailor is killed while looking for the boy's body, and a 12-year-old Mattawan boy later loses a leg. Bathers desert the beaches, seaside communities erect steel nets to keep out the sharks, bounties are offered, thousands of sharks are killed, but resorts lose millions of dollars; no further attacks occur, and a seven-and-a-half-foot great white shark caught by a fisherman in Raritan Bay July 14 is found to have in its belly what are said to be five pounds of human remains.
A Federal Farm Loan Act passed by Congress July 17 provides for Farm Loan Banks throughout the United States and creates a Federal Farm Loan Board. The legislation makes it easier for U.S. farmers to obtain credit they need to buy land, acquire farm machinery, and generally improve their productivity (see Agricultural Credits Act, 1923).
The Stockraising Homestead Act doubles the amount of land allowed under the Homestead Act of 1909, but even 640 acres—a full square mile—is too small in many areas (see 1862). Failed homesteaders will soon sell their land to stockmen bent on acquiring large ranches (see Taylor Grazing Act, 1934).
Cattleman and butcher Henry Miller dies at San Francisco October 14 at age 89.
The average U.S. corn farmer produces little more than 25 bushels per acre. Funk Brothers of Bloomington, Ill., ships the first hybrid seed corn to a Jacobsburg, Ohio, farmer. He pays $15 per bushel (see Jones, 1917).
The boll weevil reaches the Atlantic coast (see 1921; Alabama, 1915).
The Japanese beetle Popilla japonica appears for the first time in America at Riverton, N.J. The beetle, whose grubs have arrived in the roots of imported nursery stock, will proliferate and damage millions of dollars worth of fruits and vegetables.
British farmers protest that "summer time" forces them to milk their cows in the dark and then wait idly until the sun has evaporated the dew before they can harvest hay (see U.S. daylight saving time, 1918).
Germany establishes a War Food Office as Britain's naval blockade forces strict rationing of food.
A German potato blight contributes to starvation that kills 700,000 and weakens morale in the army.
France sets a maximum wheat price of 33 francs per quintal (220 pounds) to the farmer and sets controls on butter, cheese, and oil cakes. Parisians line up in milk queues.
Britain establishes a Departmental Committee on Food Prices after a sharp rise in food prices by June has brought complaints of profiteering. The government proposes one meatless day each week September 29 in hopes of reducing prices. Two-thirds of Britain's sugar came from Austria-Hungary before the war, and sugar prices have risen steeply.
British bread prices begin moving up from 9½d per four-pound loaf. An Order in Council empowers the Board of Trade to regulate food supplies and fix prices, but the president of the Board of Trade tells the House of Commons in October that there is no need to establish a Ministry of Food or to appoint a Food Controller: "We want to avoid any rationing of our people in food." British bakers face charges of profiteering in early November after raising the price of bread to 10d per four-pound loaf. Lower-class families say that costlier bread will deprive them of their staple diet, but bakers increase prices in the knowledge that prices will probably be frozen by law following a report by a commission on wheat imports. Thousands of trade unionists demonstrate in London's Hyde Park to protest the higher prices.
Geneticist Reginald C. Punnett helps to ease the shortage of chicken by pointing out the value of using sex-linked plumage color factors to establish early identity of male birds, which are less valuable than females, a process (autosexing) that he will describe in his 1923 book Heredity in Poultry.
Port of London Authority chairman Hudson Ewbanke Kearley, 60, Viscount Devenport, is appointed Food Controller in December, but the government is not prepared to ration food. Lord Devenport appeals to the public to make voluntary sacrifices; he decrees that bread is to be sold only in units or multiples of one pound, a regulation that will be followed until 1945 (see 1878; 1917).
U.S. food prices rise 19 percent as crop shortfalls, railcar shortages, and increased demand from Britain combine to put pressure on prices of bread, potatoes, and cabbage. Prices continue to rise until they have nearly doubled (see riots, 1917).
Vitamin B is isolated by E. V. McCollum, who believes it to be just one coenzyme (see 1912; Drummond, 1920; Smith, Hendrick, 1928).
The first large-scale study assesses iodine's effect on human goiter (see 1905; Mayo Clinic, 1915). Physicians David Marine and E. C. Kendall give girls in some Akron, Ohio, schools tablets containing 0.2 gram of sodium iodide, and they find a marked drop in the incidence of goiter in susceptible teenage girls given the tablets (see table salt, 1921).
Lawrence, Mass.-born Colorado Springs dentist Frederick S. McKay, 42, reports that his patients' teeth are discolored but have few caries (tooth decay). Dental caries is an infectious, communicable, multifactorial disease in which bacteria dissolve the enamel surface of a tooth. McKay first noticed the "Colorado brown stain" phenomenon when he began practicing at the Colorado town in 1901 and has traced it to the fact that the local drinking water contains fluoride salts in a concentration that an Alcoa chemist will determine in 1931 to be up to 14 parts per million (see Dean, 1933).
California Packing Co. is incorporated at San Francisco with a $16 million Wall Street underwriting promoted by George N. Armsby, son of Jacob (see 1865; Del Monte, 1891). Now the largest U.S. fruit and vegetable canner, Calpak operates 61 canneries, including some in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho (see 1895; 1917).
A mechanical home refrigerator is marketed for the first time in the United States, but its $900 price discourages buyers, who can buy a good motorcar for the same money (see 1925; Frigidaire, 1919; GE, 1927).
Planters Nut and Chocolate introduces "Mr. Peanut" (see 1906). The company has conducted a contest among Suffolk, Virginia, high school students to find an appropriate trademark; the winner is Antonio Gentile, 14, who receives a $5 prize for his sketch of an anthropomorphized peanut, and a commercial artist adds a monocle and a crooked leg.
U.S. factories produce quantities of filled milk made with vegetable oil instead of butterfat to the consternation of dairymen (see 1923).
The U.S. Supreme Court rules May 22 in United States v. Coca-Cola Co. of Atlanta that the caffeine in Coca-Cola is not injurious to health, and while it may not contain any actual extracts of coca leaves or kola beans that does not constitute mislabeling (see bottle, 1915; Woodruff, 1923).
Orange Crush Co. is incorporated at Chicago by entrepreneurs who employ a process developed by chemist Neil C. Ward using an orange concentrate obtained from the 21-year-old California Fruit Growers Exchange. Made primarily of carbonated water and sugar, Orange Crush will be introduced into Canada and Latin America in the 1920s, and within 65 years will be sold in more than 65 countries.
The Piggly Wiggly opened September 6 at Memphis, Tenn., by Virginia-born food merchant Clarence Saunders, 37, begins the first supermarket chain (see California, 1912). Saunders has realized that enormous savings could be realized if customers could select items for themselves instead of having to ask clerks behind counters to fetch them; he will price-tag every item and will equip adding machines with rolls of paper. Asked why he named his store at 79 Jefferson Street the Piggly Wiggly, he will respond that he did it just so people would ask that question (see San Francisco, 1923; King Kullen, 1930).
Nathan's Famous frankfurters have their beginning in a Coney Island, N.Y., hot dog stand at the corner of Stillwell and Surf Avenues opened by Polish-born merchant Nathan Handwerker, 25, who sells his all-beef franks at 5¢ each—half the price charged by Feltman's German Gardens on Surf Avenue, where Handwerker has worked weekends as a counterman while making $4.50 per week as a delivery boy on Manhattan's Lower East Side. Handwerker has invested his life savings of $300 in the hot dog stand and works 18 to 20 hours per day with his 19-year-old bride Ida, who laces the franks with her secret spice recipe, but the low price of their hot dogs raises some doubts about what may be in them (see 1917).
Britain's Parliament enacts a licensing law that imposes opening and closing hours for public houses (pubs) and other places that serve alcoholic beverages: 11:30 in the morning until 3 in the afternoon and 5:30 to 10:30 (11 o'clock in London and a few other cities) from Monday to Saturday, noon until 2 o'clock and 7 to 10:30 on Sunday, Good Friday, and Christmas. When a publican announces, "Time, Gentlemen, please," all glasses must be cleared away. Designed to prevent munitions workers from drinking so much that their judgment will be impaired on the assembly line, the law will stand for more than 80 years.
The first birth control clinic outside Holland opens at 46 Amboy Street, Brooklyn. Margaret Sanger distributes circulars printed in English, Italian, and Yiddish to announce the opening (see 1914). Police raid the clinic, Sanger is jailed for 30 days, founds the New York Birth Control League after her release, and begins publication of the Birth Control Review (see 1921).
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