1901: Information and Much More from Answers.com
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1901 1902 1903 1904 1905 1906 1907 1908 1909 1910
Queen Victoria dies at her Osborne House palace on the Isle of Wight January 22 at age 81 after a reign of nearly 64 years in which the United Kingdom has grown from a nation of 25 million to one of 37 million. The queen's son will reign until 1910 as Edward VII; now 59, he has formed a liaison with Alice Keppel, whose husband, George, has no objection (neither does Queen Alexandra), and she will remain the king's only mistress until his death.
Former Serbian king Milan IV (or II) (Obrenevic) dies at Vienna February 11 at age 46.
The Russian minister of propaganda is assassinated February 27 at age 41 in reprisal for his repression of student agitators. Russian revolutionary Konstantinova Nadeshda Krupskaya, 32, becomes secretary of the Bolshevik faction of the Social Democratic Party, a post she will hold until 1917.
The essay "Lebensraum" ("Living Space") by German geographer Friedrich Ratzel, 56, relates human groups to the areas where they have developed, noting that nations tend to expand or contract their boundaries with their rational capabilities. A misinterpretation of Ratzel's essay will be used to justify territorial aggression by Germany in the 1930s (see Haushofer, 1924).
Afghanistan's Barakzai dynasty emir Abdur Rahman Khan dies at his native Kabul October 1 at age 57 (approximate) after a 21-year reign in which he has crushed a revolt of the powerful Ghilzai tribe, pacified the country, reached an agreement with Russia on the demarcation of his northwestern border, and maintained a balance in dealing with British India and the St. Petersburg government. He has imported machinery for manufacturing consumer goods, agricultural tools, and munitions, brought in foreign experts, and established the nation's first modern hospital. His eldest son sets out to improve relations with the country's tribal chiefs and will reign until February 1919 as Amir Habibullah Khan, establishing Afghanistan's first secondary schools (for boys only, but Afghans are probably 98 percent illiterate), working to improve public health, importing more machinery for local industry, establishing the first public works program to improve the infrastructure, and making other attempts at modernization despite opposition from religious leaders.
Britain's viceroy to India George Nathaniel Curzon creates the North-West Frontier Province between the Punjab and Afghanistan; now 41, he works to pacify the region.
Former Italian colonial governor of Eritrea Gen. Oreste Baratieri dies at Sterzing in the Austro-Hungarian Tyrol August 7 at age 59.
The Second Boer War continues in South Africa. Lord Kitchener builds a chain of blockhouses to combat guerrilla activities and starts destroying Boer farms (see 1900). Boer forces invade the Cape Colony in October under James Hertzog, 35, and Christian de Wet, 47, coming within 50 miles of Cape Town, but British troops repel the Boers, and when their commander in chief Louis Botha, 39, raids Natal he has no success. Gen. Sir Redvers H. Buller is removed from his command October 21 after having made a tactless speech in response to his critics (see 1902).
The Commonwealth of Australia created January 1 joins New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Victoria, Tasmania, the Northern Territory, and West Australia.
U.S. Brig. Gen. Frederick Funston, 35, captures the Filipino leader Emilio Aguinaldo in March, but guerrillas massacre an American garrison on the island of Samar in September.
Former president Benjamin Harrison dies at Indianapolis March 13 at age 67; former Union Army general Fitz-John Porter at Morristown, N.J., May 21 at age 78.
The Platt Amendment provides that Cuba cede to the United States some territory suitable for naval facilities and for informal U.S. control over Cuban affairs (see 1898). Introduced February 25 by Connecticut-born U.S. Senator Orville H. Platt, 73, (R. Conn.) as an attachment to a military appropriations bill, it passes the Senate and is signed into law by President McKinley (see 1902).
"Speak softly and carry a big stick," says Vice President Roosevelt September 2 in a speech at the Minnesota State Fair, laying down a rule for U.S. foreign policy: "There is a homely adage which runs, 'Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.' If the American nation will speak softly and yet build and keep at a pitch of the highest training a thoroughly efficient navy, the Monroe Doctrine will go far."
President McKinley is shot at point-blank range September 6 with a .32 caliber Ivor Johnson revolver fired by Polish-born anarchist Leon Czolgosz, 28, during the president's visit to the Pan-American Exposition at Buffalo, N.Y. The wounds are not properly dressed, McKinley dies of gangrene September 14 at age 58, and Teddy Roosevelt at age 42 becomes the youngest chief executive in the nation's history (Mark Hanna in Cleveland calls him "that damned cowboy"). McKinley is the third U.S. chief executive to be assassinated, his death arouses the country to the need for more security, and the Secret Service of the Treasury Department that was established in 1865 to combat counterfeiters is ordered to provide 24-hour protection not only for the president but for all future presidents and visiting heads of state. Anarchist Emma Goldman is accused of having had a hand in the assassination of President McKinley (see 1893); Goldman has actually renounced the use of violence as a tactic but is stripped of her U.S. citizenship (seeMother Earth, 1906).
The Peace of Beijing (Peking) September 7 ends the Boxer Rebellion that began last year. Diplomat Li Hong Zhang (Li Hung-Chang) dies November 7 at age 88, having negotiated the accord that obliges China to pay indemnities to the world powers (see 1902).
Reformer and author Ignatius Donnelly dies of a heart attack at Minneapolis the night of January 1 at age 69.
Utah's governor vetoes a bill that would have eased restrictions on polygamy, officially outlawed when Utah gained statehood in 1894. The March 14 veto comes within days of passage by the legislature of a measure that would make it virtually impossible to prosecute people accused of multiple marriages.
The first chapter of the College Equal Suffrage League is founded by Boston suffragists Maud May Park (née Wood), 30, and Inez Gillmore (née Haynes), 28, to get more young women involved in the struggle for voting rights. Before graduating summa cum laude from Radcliffe in 3 years, Park secretly married a Boston architect and met Gillmore, who had entered Radcliffe as a special student after her marriage. Park will travel across the country organizing chapters of the CESL.
British chocolate heir William Cadbury visits Trinidad and learns that cocoa workers in Portugal's African islands of São Tomé and Principe are, for all practical purposes, treated as slaves (see 1903).
Alabama adopts a new constitution with literacy tests and a grandfather's clause designed to disenfranchise blacks (see Louisiana, 1898).
Booker T. Washington of Tuskegee Institute attends a White House dinner given by President Theodore Roosevelt October 16. Outraged whites take reprisals against southern blacks (see 1895).
Nobel Prizes are awarded for the first time from a fund (initially $9.2 million) established by the late Alfred B. Nobel. The first Nobel Peace Prize recipient is Henri Dunant, now 73, whose 1862 pamphlet about the 1859 Battle of Solferino led to the establishment of the Red Cross and the first Geneva Convention (having neglected his business affairs in his zeal for humanitarian causes, Dunant was living in poverty when he was "rediscovered" by a journalist at Heiden, Switzerland, 6 years ago).
United States Steel Co. is created March 2 by J. P. Morgan, who underwrites a successful public offering of bonds in the world's first $1 billion corporation, nets millions for himself in a few weeks of hard work, and pays $492 million to Andrew Carnegie for about $80 million in actual assets in order to eliminate the steel industry's major price cutter. Pennsylvania-born entrepreneur Charles M. (Michael) Schwab, 39, has contrived to play golf with Carnegie at a course outside New York, told him that Morgan wanted to buy him out, returned to Morgan with a paper bearing a figure scrawled by Carnegie, and obtained Morgan's acceptance. Carnegie's steel works are far more efficient than Morgan's, and he personally receives $225 million ($300 million by some accounts) in 5 percent gold bonds; Morgan congratulates him on being "the richest man in the world" and merges Carnegie's properties with other steel properties to create a company that controls 65 percent of U.S. steelmaking capacity. The other companies include Federal Steel, headed by Illinois-born lawyer Elbert H. (Henry) Gary, 54, who is elected chairman of Big Steel. Carnegie divorces himself from steelmaking (see Bethlehem, 1905).
More than 74,000 Pittsburgh steel workers walk off the job July 15.
France's parlement adopts an Associations Act in July, abolishing restrictions on the right of workers and others to associate for legal purchases (see 1884), but the new freedom does not apply to religious associations because they are directed from abroad.
The New York Stock Exchange trades more than 2 million shares for the first time January 7. Wall Street's Dow Jones Industrial Average closes December 31 at 64.56, down from 70.71 at the end of 1900.
Boston's William Filene, Sons & Co. becomes William Filene's Sons following the death of founder William Filene at age 71 (see 1881). His son Edward, now 39, moves the store to 453-463 Washington Street, trebles its floor space, and soon re-leases the former store at 445-447 Washington Street as an annex for babies' and children's wear (see Automatic Bargain Basement, 1909).
The Nordstrom retail chain has its beginnings in a Seattle shoe shop opened by Swedish immigrant John W. Nordstrom, 30, and a partner. Nordstrom arrived at New York in 1887 with $5 and has made $13,000 mining gold in Alaska and the Klondike.
The Spindletop gusher that comes in January 10 at Beaumont, Texas, gives John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Trust its first major competition. One-armed lumberman Patillo Higgins, now 36, located the Gulf Coast oil field in 1892 and has leased some 600 acres to Trieste-born engineer Anthony F. Lucas, 46, who has been drilling since July 1899 into a salt dome on the field abandoned as unproductive by Standard Oil prospectors. Backed by Pittsburgh financiers John Henry Galey, 61, and Col. James McClurg Guffey, 62, Lucas has drilled some 700 feet into the Big Hill and struck oil that spouts 110,000 barrels per day, flowing wild for 9 days before it can be brought under control. The Beaumont Field contains more oil than the rest of the United States combined, Spindletop establishes Texas as the major petroleum-producing state. Higgins has a 10 percent interest in the Lucas lease and becomes a millionaire overnight, and the Gulf Oil Co. has its beginnings as Galey and Guffey obtain backing from Pittsburgh banker Andrew W. Mellon and his brother Richard, who take 40 percent of the new J. M. Guffey Petroleum Co. (see aluminum, 1891; Texas Co., 1902).
Joseph N. Pew buys some wells near Beaumont, Texas, and builds a pipeline to the nearby Neches River; he acquires 62 acres at Marcus Hook, Pa., as the site of a refinery to supplement the refinery that he acquired at Toledo in 1894 (see 1890). The new refinery goes on stream March 20 to process crude oil that arrives by tanker from Texas. Sun Oil Co. is incorporated at New York in May to consolidate Pew's oil-producing properties in Ohio, Illinois, West Virginia, and Texas, and it begins securing more leases in the new Texas oil field.
San Francisco shipping magnate William Matson organizes the Western Union Oil Co. to build California's first pipelines, bringing oil from the wells to coastal shipping points (see transportation, 1887). Having incorporated Matson Navigation Co. and converted his steamship Enterprise from coal to oil, Matson says, "If you use fuel in large quantities you must control the source of it" (see transportation, 1908).
Persia sells a 60-year concession in May to explore for oil in four-fifths of the country to English capitalist William Knox D'Arcy, 52, who went to Queensland with his father in 1882, returned to England in 1889 with a fortune made in Australian gold mining, and has acquired a large London town house at 42 Grosvenor Square, a country mansion in Middlesex, and an estate in Norfolk. D'Arcy sent a geologist to Persia early in the year and dispatched a cousin of his private secretary to negotiate at Teheran. The emissary has promised £10,000 pounds to the government, and D'Arcy engages a qualified engineer to drill in the concession, whose area covers all of the country except for the five provinces that border Russia (see 1905).
More than half the world's oil output is from Russia's Baku oil fields, which have been developed by Ludwig Nobel, brother of the late dynamite inventor, and by Rothschild interests (see 1871). Nobel has devised the world's first oil tankers and tank cars and installed Europe's first pipeline, but the world's major supplier of petroleum is the United States, whose output will comprise as much as two-thirds of the world's export oil for 20 years (see 1946).
Allis-Chalmers Manufacturing Co. is organized through a merger of Chicago's Fraser & Chalmers Co. and the interests of the late Milwaukee lawyer Edward Phelps Allis, who died in 1889 at age 64. Allis took over a local flour-milling machinery maker when it went bankrupt in 1861 after 14 years in business and built it up. The Chicago company has been a producer of mining machinery; Allis-Chalmers will erect a huge factory on the outskirts of Milwaukee in 1903, start making electrical equipment in 1904, and grow to become a major producer of steam turbines, hydroelectric units, high-voltage transformers, farm machinery (see agriculture, 1935), and other capital-goods equipment.
Physicist Henry A. Rowland dies of diabetes at Baltimore April 16 at age 52, having consulted on the installation of electrical generators at Niagara Falls.
New York electrical engineer Peter Cooper Hewitt, 40, invents a mercury-vapor electric lamp (his father, Abram Stevens Hewitt, produced the first American-made open-hearth steel in 1870).
Fore River Ship & Engine Co. is incorporated in Massachusetts. Former Bell Telephone research director Thomas A. Watson quit Bell in 1881 to open a machine shop at East Braintree, Mass. with F. O. Wellington. He and Wellington have been receiving U.S. Navy contracts since 1896 (see commerce [Bethlehem], 1913).
Dollar Steamship Co. is founded by Scottish-born San Francisco lumberman Robert Dollar, 57, who bought a small steam schooner in 1893 because he found it hard to charter vessels when he needed them to move his lumber and now enters the China and Japan trade with the 129-foot ship S.S. Newsboy.
The Second Hay-Pauncefote Treaty signed November 18 between London and Washington gives the United States sole rights to construct, maintain, fortify, and control a trans-isthmian canal (see 1900). Washington assumes the obligation to assure passage to ships of all nations (see 1902).
American Locomotive Co. is organized by a group of family-owned companies to challenge the Baldwin company founded in 1831. By 1906 the new company will be turning out nearly 3,000 locomotives per year and will continue to produce more than 1,000 per year until 1914.
James J. Hill and investment banker J. P. Morgan join forces November 13 to form Northern Securities, a holding company that enjoys a near monopoly in northern shipping through its control not only of the Northern Pacific Railroad but also of the Great Northern and the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy (see 1902; Supreme Court ruling, 1904).
Pennsylvania Railroad president Alexander Cassatt announces December 12 that his company will build tunnels beneath the Hudson River so that his trains can enter Manhattan. The world's first electrified railway terminal (the Gare d'Orsay) has recently opened at Paris, and Cassatt intends to use electric locomotives to pull his trains through the tunnels (see 1904).
The Uganda Railway completed December 26 links Mombasa with Lake Victoria.
Detroit Automobile Co. goes bankrupt after selling only four or five cars in 2 years. William Murphy is among the men who buy its assets, and he hires Henry Ford as experimental engineer. Now 38, Ford has been so unsuccessful that he has had to move with his wife and son back into his father's house, but he understands the value of publicity and challenges Alexander Winton to a 10-lap (one-mile) race at the Detroit Driving Club in Grosse Pointe, Mich. Winton's motorcar has a 70-horsepower engine at a time when most car engines produce only 40 horsepower. Ford gets only 26 horsepower from his 8.8-liter, two-cylinder engine, but his car is much lighter than most and he is convinced that an efficient, lightweight car can beat a heavier car. Designer Otto Berthel and race-driver Ed "Spider" Huff have helped him build a car with the first modern spark plugs, a rudimentary fuel-injection system, and a "wasted-spark" ignition system that fires on both the compression and exhaust strokes. The nationally-publicized race takes place October 10 at the Grosse Point Blue Ribbon Track, and the Ford car overtakes the Winton to win, averaging 44 miles per hour in a contest that lasts 13.23 minutes. Murphy joins with some other onetime Detroit Automobile Club investors to start the Henry Ford Co., hoping to capitalize on Ford's overnight climb to prominence, giving Ford one-sixth of the stock in the new firm, which he will soon quit (see 1903; Oldfield, 1902; Cadillac, 1904).
Detroit automaker Ransom E. Olds moves his assembly plant to his hometown of Lansing, Mich. (see 1897). Copper and lumber baron Samuel L. Smith has financed the Olds Motor Works, and Olds markets 425 curved-dash "Oldsmobile" runabouts, a number that he will increase to 5,000 by 1904 as he produces the first commercially successful U.S.-made motorcar (see 1904).
John North Willys enters the motorcar business by selling two of the new Pierce "motorettes." Now 27, Willys is an Elmira, N.Y., sporting goods retailer who saw his first automobile (a Winton) on a trip to Cleveland last year and has become a Pierce dealer (see 1910).
Studebaker Bros. Manufacturing Co. president Clement Studebaker dies at South Bend, Ind., November 27 at age 70, having built wagons since 1852 and begun experiments with self-propelled vehicles in 1897. The company will enter the electric motorcar business next year (see 1902).
British Daimler introduces shaft drives in its cars to replace the chain drives employed since 1897.
The Mercedes motorcar introduced by Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft is named for the 11-year-old daughter of Emile Jellinek, Austrian consul at Nice and a distributor for the company, now located at Cannstatt (see 1895). Engineer Wilhelm Maybach has improved on an existing design for a 24-horsepower engine by providing a jet carburetor and mechanical inlet valves that the driver can throttle; having concluded that the car's high chassis and short wheelbase make it unsuitable for competition, Jellinek has offered to buy and distribute 36 Daimlers on condition that the cars be modified to his own design, that they be named for Mercédès, and that he be given exclusive rights to market them in Austria-Hungary, Belgium, and the United States. He thereby undertakes to sell nearly an entire year's production, and by next year all German-made Daimlers will be sold under the Mercedes name (see Mercedes-Benz, 1926).
Brazilian-born French balloonist Alberto Santos-Dumont, 28, wins a prize of 100,000 francs from the Aero Club of France October 19 by taking off in a dirigible from Saint-Cloud and circumnavigating the Eiffel Tower. It is the first successful application of an internal-combustion engine to ballooning. Santos-Dumont distributes the money in equal parts to his workers and to the city's beggars (see Wright Brothers, 1903).
New York City streetcars and elevated trains convert to electric power, but horsecars continue to move up and down Fifth Avenue, and commuter trains still run on steam (see 1885; 1907).
The National Institute of Standards and Technology has its beginnings in the National Bureau of Standards established at Washington, D.C., March 3 as the federal government's first physical science research laboratory. Samuel W. Stratton will head it until 1922, and it will change its name in 1988.
Toledo Scale Co. is founded by a former National Cash Register Co. general manager who has acquired a firm that makes a superior scale (see Fairbanks scale, 1830). It is the first that combines the age-old gravity principle of weighing with a pendulum-type mechanism, automatically indicating weight and computing value without the use of springs. The white porcelain scales cost six to 10 times as much as the simple gold lacquer balance scales used in retail establishments for decades, but they will nevertheless be on store counters nationwide within 5 years.
Refrigeration pioneer Carl von Linde, now 59, pioneers oxygen furnaces for steelmaking with a new method for separating pure liquid oxygen from liquid air, but the steel industry will be slow to perfect and adopt the new process (see 1954).
A hydrogenation process invented by German chemist Wilhelm Normann, 31, saturates unsaturated and polyunsaturated fatty acids to keep them from turning rancid. Normann will file in January 1903 for a British patent on his "Process for Converting Unsaturated Fatty Acids or Their Glycerides into Saturated Compounds"; it will find wide application in making soap, industrial lubricants, cosmetics, fabric softeners, and foods containing edible oils.
California-born University of Kansas zoology doctoral candidate Clarence E. (Erwin) McClung, 31, hypothesizes on the basis of his studies of the mechanisms of heredity that sex is determined by an extra, or accessory, chromosome. McClung's discovery will lead to the finding that any given chromosome carries a definable set of hereditary traits (see Bateson, 1902; Sutton, 1902; Stevens, 1906).
Physicist George F. FitzGerald dies at his native Dublin February 22 at age 49, having pioneered a method for producing radio waves that not only provides the basis of wireless telegraphy but will lead to more basic scientific theory (see Einstein, 1905).
Physicist John S. E. Townsend discovers that gas molecules can be ionized by collision with ions (see Townsend, 1897).
The first Nobel Prize in physics goes to W. C. Roentgen for his X-ray discovery.
The first Nobel Prize for medicine goes to Emil von Behring for his diphtheria antitoxin.
Adrenaline (epinephrine) is isolated by Japanese-born U.S. chemist Jokichi Takamine, 47, and Armour & Co. scientists working with Johns Hopkins Medical School chemist-pharmacologist John Jacob Abel, now 44 (see 1897). Secreted by the medullary portion of the adrenal glands, levo-methylaminoethanolcatchetol (C9H13ON3) is the first ductless gland secretion to be isolated by man. It will be used in medicine as a heart stimulant, to constrict the blood vessels, and to relax the bronchi in asthma; it will be synthesized, but it will be obtained more economically from the glands of cattle, even though it takes 12,000 head of cattle to produce one pound of the hormone that raises blood pressure (see Bayliss, Starling, 1902; Dakin, 1904).
Mosquito controls virtually rid Havana of yellow fever (see 1900). Gen. Leonard Wood, now 41, and Major William C. Gorgas, 47, of the U.S. Public Health Service have put in the controls, which eliminate artificial receptacles in which fresh water gathers (see Panama, 1904).
Rockefeller University has its beginnings in the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research incorporated June 14 by John D. Rockefeller at the advice of Louisville-born physician Simon Flexner, 38, who will head the Institute from 1903 to 1935, being paid a high salary to keep him from being tempted by a university professorship. Rockefeller's first grandchild, John Rockefeller McCormick, has died of scarlet fever January 2, and John D. Rockefeller pledges an average of up to $20,000 per year for 10 years to support the new Institute. Unlike European laboratories, built around individuals as was the Pasteur Institute founded in 1888, the Rockefeller Institute offers facilities to groups of collaborating investigators and establishes a new pattern that others will follow (see McCormick, 1902; Phipps, 1903; Rockefeller Sanitary Commission, 1909).
Britain establishes quarantine laws for pets to protect the islands from rabies. Pet lovers may bring in cats and dogs only if the animals are held in solitary confinement for 6 months; the controversial law will remain in place into the 21st century, long after rabies has disappeared from Britain, but not from the Continent or the United States (Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and other island nations will also maintain quarantines) (see European epidemic, 1939).
Life expectancy at birth for U.S. white males is 48.23 years, for white females, 51.08 years (few people die at those ages, but so many die before age 5 that they balance those who live into their 70s and 80s).
Columbus, Ohio-born Johns Hopkins Hospital research physician Dorothy Reed, 27, disproves the theory that Hodgkins disease is a form of tuberculosis by demonstrating that a particular blood cell is present in every case and is a distinctive characteristic of the disease. It will became known as the Reed (or Sternberg-Reed or Reed-Sternberg) cell. A Hopkins graduate, Reed has studied under William Osler and William H. Welch.
Girls in Western cultures menstruate for the first time at about age 14, down from age 17 in the late 18th century. The average age of menarche will decline to 13 in this century.
Argyrol begins to protect newborn infants from blindness caused by gonorrheal infection (see Crede, 1884; Howe Act, 1890). Philadelphia-born chemist Albert C. (Coombs) Barnes, 29, and his German-born colleague Herman Hille, 31, announce the discovery of the non-caustic antiseptic, quit their jobs 3 days later, and form a partnership. The "silver vitellin" they say they have developed is really a silver-gelatin colloid that they will market as Argyrol; it will find almost universal use until something better is found. Stored in bottles, however, Argyrol can become contaminated, and evaporation often raises its concentration to dangerously high levels.
Poughkeepsie-born New York physician Sara Josephine Baker, 28, gives up her private practice after 1 year and obtains a position as a city medical inspector at an annual salary that is double the $185 she earned last year (although her patients included actress Lillian Russell). Baker graduated second in her class of 18 from the Women's Medical College of New York 3 years ago; she works in the West Side slum known as Hell's Kitchen, where she inspects for contagious diseases such as influenza, dysentery, smallpox, and typhoid fever (see 1903), and she will solve the problems of contaminated and over-concentrated Argyrol by placing silver nitrate in beeswax capsules, each containing just enough solution for one eye. Her method will be adopted throughout the world.
Dresden-born Berlin surgeon Georg Kelling, 35, reports September 23 at a meeting of German natural scientists and physicians at Hamburg that he has insufflated the abdominal cavity of a dog with air, using a cystoscope to peer into it and pioneers what later will be called laparoscopic surgery (see Kussmaul, 1868). He suggests that intestinal diseases can be treated without opening patients up and works with Czech surgeon Vitezslav Chlumsky, 34, to perfect the endoscopic procedure he calls coelioscopy (see Bernheim, 1911).
The first independent Young Women's Hebrew Association is founded at New York, which has had a YMHA auxiliary for about 20 years (see 1854; YWCA, 1855). The YWHA and YMHA will eventually combine, sponsoring day camps; summer camps; nursery schools; and cultural, educational, recreational, and social activities in 240 U.S. and Canadian cities.
Keio University founder and author Yukichi Fukuzawa dies at Tokyo February 3 at age 66, having written more than 100 books on popular education, language reform, parliamentary government, women's rights, and other subjects.
Indiana's Supreme Court upholds the constitutionality of that state's compulsory school attendance laws. All states will have passed such laws by 1918.
The U.S. College Entrance Examination Board conducts its first examinations (see S.A.T. test, 1926).
The U.S. Army War College founded at Washington, D.C., by Secretary of War Elihu Root, 56, will train officers and prospective officers in mathematics, technology, engineering, and combat strategy; it will move in 1951 to Carlisle, Pa.
The Advertising World is founded by Welsh-born London journalists William Ewert Berry, 22 (later Viscount Camrose), and his 18-year-old brother J. (James) Gomer (later Viscount Kemsley) (seeSunday Times, 1915).
J. Walter Thompson Co. receives a letter from Philadelphia's Curtis Publishing Co. that applies the ANPA rules of 1893 to Curtis's Ladies' Home Journal, Saturday Evening Post, and Country Gentleman magazines. Other magazines will follow the 10 percent agency commission for placing advertisements and it will rise to 15 percent (see 1878).
Editor & Publisher magazine begins weekly publication and will cover the newspaper industry in North America for more than a century. It will merge in 1907 with the Journalist, published since 1884, and will grow by acquiring or merging with other trade journals.
John Wesley Dafoe joins the 29-year-old Winnipeg Free Press to begin a 43-year career in which he will make the paper a powerful voice.
Kansas City Evening Star publisher William Rockhill Nelson acquires the morning Kansas City Times (see 1880). Now 60, he plays an active role in both papers, remaining politically independent and using the Associated Press news service to expand his papers' coverage of international as well as local news.
Galveston News and Dallas Morning News publisher Alfred H. Belo dies at Galveston April 19 at age 61.
The Houston Chronicle begins publication October 14 from a three-story rented building at 1009 Texas Avenue. Kentucky-born Houston Post reporter Marcellus E. (Elliot) Foster, 30, has watched the Spindletop gusher come in at Beaumont January 10, paid a week's salary ($30) to buy an option on the well, sold it a week later for $5,000, and quickly raised another $20,000 from investors in his newspaper, which sells for 2¢ per copy when other papers cost 5¢. Few among the city's 44,638 people carry pennies, newsboys have trouble making change, so Foster sends some men to the U.S. Mint at New Orleans, they come back with a keg of 50,000 pennies, circulation by mid-November is 4,378, and in 1904 Foster will launch a 44-page Sunday edition with four pages of comics in color (see Jones, 1908).
"Dorothy Dix Talks" begins appearing as a column in William Randolph Hearst's New York Evening Journal. "Dix" is former New Orleans Picayune women's-page columnist Elizabeth Merriwether Gilmer, 29, who accepts the reality of a sexual double standard and counsels her readers how to deal with this reality. "The young girl who lets any one boy monopoliz her, simply shuts the door in the face of good times and her chances of making a better match," she will write. She will advise women to develop a positive self-image and to work at jobs without sacrificing their femininity, good nature, and adaptability, but she will also champion the cause of woman suffrage with three pamphlets that will appear from 1912 to 1914.
The Victor Talking Machine Co. is founded to manufacture and sell sound-reproduction equipment (see RCA, 1929).
The American Multigraph Co. is founded at Cleveland to produce the newly patented Multigraph, the first machine designed to print from a typed or handwritten image.
Telephone inventor Elisha Gray dies at Newtonville, outside Boston, January 21 at age 65 while experimenting with an undersea signaling device, fountain pen inventor and manufacturer Lewis E. Waterman dies at New York May 1 at age 53.
Guglielmo Marconi receives the first transatlantic wireless message December 12 in Newfoundland (see 1896). An English telegrapher at Poldhu, Cornwall, has tapped out the letter "S," and Marconi picks it up with a kite antenna. He will build a station at Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, next year and will send the first readable message across the Atlantic to begin regular transatlantic wireless service (see 1903).
Andrew Carnegie writes a letter March 12 to the New York Public Library's first director, John Shaw Billings, M.D., now 62, stating, "If New York will furnish sites for these branches for the special benefit of the masses of the people, as it has done for the Central Library, and also agree in satisfactory form to provide for their maintenance as built, I should esteem it a rare privilege to be permitted to furnish the money as needed for the buildings, say $5.2 million" (see 1895). The 11 existing branches of the 21-year-old Free Circulating Library are incorporated into the New York Public Library (NYPL) March 15. The Carnegie Corporation of New York awards $2 million in June to the New York Public Library and $1 million each to the Brooklyn Public Library and the Queens Borough Public Library. Between 1902 and 1909, the city will build 67 Carnegie libraries, most of them with arched windows (more will be built thereafter), and within 55 years the library will have 75 branches in Manhattan, the Bronx, and Staten Island (Brooklyn and Queens will have their own systems). The Carnegie Foundation will give $11 million to 22 other public libraries around the country, but New York will receive even more (see main branch, 1911).
Nonfiction: Up from Slavery by Booker T. Washington; The Life of the Bee (La vie des abeilles) by Maurice Maeterlinck is a pioneering exploration of natural science; Anticipations of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon Human Life and Thought by H. G. Wells; The Defendant and "A Defence of Nonsense" (essay) by London-born social critic G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton, 27, who writes in his essay that nonsense and faith are "the two supreme symbolic assertions of truth" and "to draw out the soul of things with a syllogism is as impossible as to draw out Leviathan with a hook"; The World and the Individual by Josiah Royce, whose two-volume work (the first volume appeared last year) is based on the Gifford Lectures he delivered in 1899 and 1900 at the University of Aberdeen; The Field of Ethics by Boston-born Harvard philosopher George Herbert Palmer, 59; Our National Parks by John Muir.
Historian Herbert Baxter Adams dies at Amherst, Mass., July 30 at age 51.
Fiction: Buddenbrooks by German novelist Thomas Mann, 26, who has rejected a publisher's order to cut the manuscript in half and found support from publisher Samuel Fischer; Martin Birck's Youth (Martin Bircks Ungdom) by Hjalmar Soderberg; None but the Brave (Leutnant Gustl) by Viennese novelist-playwright Arthur Schnitzler, 39, depicts the hollowness of the Austrian military code and is Europe's first great novel written as an interior monologue; Kim by Rudyard Kipling; The First Men in the Moon by H. G. Wells; Erewhon Revisited by Samuel Butler; Graustark by Lafayette, Ind., Daily Courier city editor George Barr McCutcheon, 35, whose novel about a fictional kingdom achieves great popular success (his publishers have bought his manuscript outright for $500 but will later pay him substantial royalties); The Octopus by Frank Norris dramatizes the struggle of California wheat growers against the Southern Pacific Railroad; My Brilliant Career by Australian novelist (Stella Marian Sarah) Miles Franklin, 22, who writes under the pseudonym Brent of Bin Bin (a fifth-generation Australian, she will emigrate to America in 1906 but return to her homeland for good in 1927); Regine Vosgerau by German novelist-poet Helene Voigt-Diederichs, 26; The Crisis by novelist Winston Churchill, who receives a dinner invitation to the White House from admirer Theodore Roosevelt.
Poetry: William Watson writes a coronation ode for Britain's new monarch Edward VII; The Innumerable Heart (Le coeur innombrable) and Bedazzlements (Les Eblouissements) by French poet Anna Elisabeth, Princesse Brancovan and comtesse de Noailles, 25, who was married 4 years ago to Count Mathieu de Noailles; Undercurrent (Unterstrom) by Helene Voigt-Diederichs.
Juvenile: Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch by Kentucky-born writer Alice (Caldwell) Hegan (later Alice Hegan Rice), 31; Patty Fairfield by Carolyn Wells begins a series that will be popular with girls; The Would-Be Goods by Edith Nesbit; A Sister of the Red Cross: A Tale of the South African War and Girls of the True Blue by L. T. Meade.
Author Charlotte M. Yonge dies at her native Otterbourne, Hampshire, March 24 at age 77; Johanna Spyri at Zürich July 7 at age 71.
Painting: The Gold in Their Bodies by Paul Gauguin; The Church of Saint-Jacques, Dieppe—Morning, Rainy Day by Camille Pissarro; Femme Retroussant Sa Chemise by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec; Evocation, Mourners, Self-Portrait, El Bock (Portrait of Jaime Sabartés), and Casagemas in His Coffin by Pablo Picasso, whose friend Charles Casagemas has shot himself 6 months earlier; Homage à Cézanne by Maurice Denis; Antoine Holding a Child by Both Hands, Family Group Reading, Fillette au Grand Chapeau, and Mother and Boy by Mary Cassatt; Girls on the Bridge by Edvard Munch; Medicine (mural) by Gustav Klimt; Searchlight on Harbor Entrance, Santiago de Cuba by Winslow Homer; Cat Boats, Newport by Dorchester, Mass.-born painter Childe Hassam, 41; The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone by Thomas Moran, now 64, who has worked on the huge canvas for 8 years. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec dies in his mother's arms at the Château de Malrome September 9 at age 36.
Sculpture: Mediterranean by French sculptor Aristide (Joseph Bonaventure) Maillol, 39.
Idaho-born painter-sculptor (John) Gutzon (de la Mothe) Borglum, 34, leaves his 52-year-old painter wife at Paris, having met Auguste Rodin while painting portraits for a living. He books passage to New York and will soon obtain commissions to create dozens of statues for the Cathedral of St. John, whose cornerstone was laid in 1892 (see 1915).
Photograph: Marsh at Dawn by Portland, Ore.-born photographer Imogen Cunningham, 18.
His parents give French schoolboy Jacques-Henri (-Charles-Auguste) Lartigue, 7, his first camera—a large plate camera that he must stand on a stool to operate. He receives a Kodak Brownie No. 2 at Christmas and will gain fame for the fresh spontaneity of the pictures that he takes of family and friends in the upper middle class.
Photographer Henry Peach Robinson dies at Tunbridge Wells, Kent, February 21 at age 70, having exerted wide influence with his composite photographs and writings; Josiah J. Hawes dies at Crawford's Notch, N.H., August 7 at age 93.
Theater: Vulgarity (Lo cursi) by Jacinto Benavente 1/19 at Madrid's Teatro de la Comedia; The Climbers by Clyde Fitch 1/21 at New York's Bijou Theater, with Amelia Bingham, who decided last year to become a producer and has taken over the Bijou, 163 perfs.; The Three Sisters (Tri Sestry) by Anton Chekhov 1/31 at the Moscow Art Theater with Olga Knipper as Masha; Lover's Lane by Fitch 2/6 at New York's Manhattan Theater; On the Quiet by St. Louis-born playwright Augustus Thomas, 44, 2/11 at the Madison Square Theater, with New York-born actor William Collier, 36, 160 perfs.; The Rising of the Moon by Lady Gregory (Isabella Augusta Persse Gregory, 49) 3/9 at a Dublin theater that will be called the Abbey beginning in 1904; The Wedding (Wesele) by Polish playwright-painter Stanislaw Wyspianski, 32, 3/16 at Craców's Teatr Slawackiego; The Auctioneer by Charles Klein and Lee Arthur 9/23 at New York's Bijou Theater, with David Warfield, 105 perfs.; Miranda of the Balcony by Kentucky-born playwright Anne Crawford Flexner, 27, 9/24 at Harrison Grey Fiske's new Manhattan Theater, with New Orleans-born actress Minnie Maddern Fiske (née Marie Augusta Davey), 34, to open Harrison Grey Fiske's Manhattan Theater, 62 perfs. (the Fiskes have rented the theater because the Theatrical Syndicate has refused to give Mrs. Fiske any road bookings, and they will operate the house for 6 years with a talented acting company); The Marquis of Keith (Der Marquis von Keith) by Frank Wedekind 10/11 at Berlin's Residenztheater; If I Were King by Irish playwright-novelist Justin Huntly McCarthy, 40, 10/14 at New York's Garden Theater, with Edward H. Sothern, 56 perfs.; A Grand Army Man by David Belasco 10/16 at New York's new Stuyvesant Theater on 44th Street, with Antoinette Perry, 19, and David Warfield (Perry has been performing since before she was 17 but will give up the stage for 15 years beginning in 1909); The Last of the Dandies by Clyde Fitch 10/24 at His Majesty's Theatre, London; The Way of the World by Fitch 11/4 at Hammerstein's Victoria Theater, New York, with Elsie DeWolfe, London-born actress Alison Skipworth, 38, 35 perfs.; The Conflagration (Der rote Hahn) by Gerhart Hauptmann 11/27 at Berlin's Deutsches Theater; The Girl and the Judge by Clyde Fitch 12/4 at New York's Lyceum Theater, with Annie Russell, 125 perfs.; Francesca da Rimini by Gabriele d'Annunzio 12/9 at Rome's Teatro Constanzi, with Eleanora Duse; Du Barry by David Belasco 12/25 at New York's Criterion Theater, with Mrs. Leslie Carter, 165 perfs.
Playwright-actor-director-manager James A. Herne dies at New York June 2 at age 62.
Opera: Milka Ternina makes her Metropolitan Opera debut 2/4 singing the title role in the 1900 Puccini opera Tosca (she will retire in 1906 to teach at Zagreb); Melrose, Mass.-born soprano Geraldine Farrar, 19, makes her debut singing the role of Marguerite in the 1859 Gounod opera Faust 10/15 at the Berlin Royal Opera; Fire Famine (Feuersnot) 11/21 at Dresden, with music by Richard Strauss.
Composer Giuseppe Verdi dies at Milan January 27 at age 87; producer Richard D'Oyly Carte at his native London April 3 at age 56.
First performances: Symphony No. 6 in A major by the late Anton Bruckner 3/14 at Stuttgart (first complete performance); Menuet Antique by Maurice Ravel 4/13 at Paris; Cockaigne Overture (In London Town) by Edward Elgar 6/20 at the Queen's Hall, London; Concerto No. 2 in C minor for Piano and Orchestra by Sergei Rachmaninoff 10/14 at Moscow; Pomp and Circumstance March in D major ("Land of Hope and Glory") by Elgar 10/19 at Liverpool (the march will be performed perennially at commencement exercises and other public functions); Symphony No. 4 in G major by Gustav Mahler 11/28 at Munich.
Stage musicals: The Girl from Up There 1/7 at New York's Herald Square Theater, with St. Joseph, Mo.-born vaudeville veteran Dave Montgomery, 30, his Longmont, Colo.-born partner Fred Stone, 36, New York-born actor Harry Davenport, 35, New York-born actress Leonore Harris, 20, music by Gustav Kerker, 96 perfs.; Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines 2/4 at New York's Garrick Theatre, with H. Reeves Smith, Ethel Barrymore, book by Clyde Fitch, music by T. Maclaglen, lyrics by female impersonator William H. Lingard, and a song that begins "I'm Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines,/ I feed my horse on pork and beans,/ And often live beyond my means,/ I'm a captain in the army," 168 perfs.; My Lady (extravaganza) 2/11 at New York's Victoria Theater, with Quebec-born ingénue Eva Tanguay, 22, 93 perfs.; The Governor's Son 2/25 at New York's Savoy Theatre, with music, book, and lyrics by Providence, R.I.-born song-and-dance man George M. (Michael) Cohan, 23, who began touring in vaudeville with his parents as a child, wrote songs for the act beginning in his teens, gained his first popular success at age 17 with "Hot Tamale Alley," and followed it 3 years later with "I Guess I'll Have to Telegraph My Baby," 32 perfs.; The Toreador 6/17 at London's Gaiety Theatre, with Yorkshire-born comedienne Gertie Millar, 22, Edmund Payne, music by Ivan Caryll and Lionel Monckton; Hoity Toity (revue) 9/5 at Weber and Fields Music Hall, with DeWolf Hopper, Joe Weber, Lew Fields, Lilliam Russell, music by John Stromberg, songs that include "De Pullman Porters' Ball," 225 perfs.; A Chinese Honeymoon 10/5 at London's Royal Strand Theatre, with Lancashire-born ingénue Lily Elsie (originally Elsie Cotton), 15, book by George Dance, music by Howard Talbot, songs that include "Martha Spanks the Grand Planner" and "The à la Girl," 1,075 perfs.
Popular songs: Seven Songs as Unpretentious as the Wild Rose by Janesville, Wis., songwriter Carrie Bond (née Jacobs), 39, includes "I Love You Truly"; "Mighty Lak' a Rose" by the late Ethelbert Nevin, who has just died at age 39, lyrics by Atlanta Constitution poet-journalist Frank L. Stanton, 44; "The Maiden with the Dreamy Eyes" by James Weldon Johnson and Bob Cole; "Boola Boola" by Yale undergraduate Allan M. Hirsch.
Arthur Wentworth Gore, 33, wins in men's singles at Wimbledon, Charlotte Cooper Sterry in women's singles; William A. Larned, 28, wins in U.S. men's singles, Elizabeth Moore in women's singles.
Baseball's American League is organized at New York by sportswriter Byron Bancroft "Ban" Johnson, 37, who 7 years ago took over the reorganized Western Association, a minor league, changed its name to the American League, got nowhere in talks with National League officials about moving his teams east, and now deserts the National Agreement under whose terms organized baseball has operated up to now. Johnson signs up so many National League players that his new league starts the season as a "major" league (see 1903).
The U.S. America's Cup defender Columbia with rigging by Nat Herreshoff defeats Sir Thomas Lipton's Shamrock II 3 to 0.
The Arlberg Ski Club is founded at St. Christoph.
Texas ranch owner Anna Edson Taylor, 43, goes over Niagara's Horseshoe Falls in a barrel October 24. She wears a leather harness inside the barrel, which is four-and-a-half feet long, three feet in diameter, and cushioned inside. The former Bay City, Mich., schoolteacher suffers only shock and minor cuts in the 167-foot drop, wins a reward that helps pay an installment on her ranch loan, and is the first person to go over the falls and survive.
The first practical electric vacuum cleaner is invented by British bridge builder and wheel designer Hubert Cecil Booth, 30, who demonstrates his machine at Buckingham Palace. His Vacuum Cleaner Co. Ltd. sends vans around to houses and uses the Booth machine to suck out dust via tubes to the street (see Spangler, Hoover, 1907; Electrolux, 1921).
Washing machines are introduced by the 2-year-old German company Miele that began by making cream separators (see vacuum cleaners, 1927).
King C. Gillette raises $5,000 to start a safety razor company and sets up a factory above a Boston fish store (see 1895). MIT graduate William E. Nickerson refines Gillette's idea for a safety razor and develops processes for hardening and sharpening sheet steel (see 1903).
Hanes underwear and hosiery have their beginnings at Winston-Salem, N.C., where former tobacco merchants Pleasant H. Hanes and J. Wesley Hanes establish P. H. Hanes Knitting Co. and Shamrock Mills, respectively. The brothers sold their company last year to R. J. Reynolds for $175,000; P. H. introduces two-piece men's underwear, Shamrock makes men's hosiery and will change its name in 1910 to Hanes Hosiery Mills (see 1920).
Imperial Tobacco Company of Great Britain and Ireland is created by Sir William Henry Wills, 71, 1st Baron Winterstroke, whose grandfather and father-in-law started a tobacco and snuff business at Bristol in the 18th century. American Tobacco Co. boss James Buchanan Duke has tried to take over the British industry, and Baron Winterstroke has gained support from his cousin Sir George A. (Alfred) Wills, 47, to effect a merger of British manufacturers, establishing a company that will produce pipe tobacco and cigarettes (see British-American Tobacco Co., 1902).
The William G. Fricke house is completed at Highland Park, Illinois, to designs by Frank Lloyd Wright.
The Elms at Newport, Rhode Island, is completed for Philadelphia coal magnate Edward J. (Julius) Berwind, 53—the world's largest individual owner of coal mines. Architect Horace Trumbauer has modeled the huge Bellevue Avenue "cottage" on the 18th-century Château d'Agnes at Asnières near Paris and surrounded it with a high wall that encloses extensive gardens.
New York's Carnegie mansion for steel magnate Andrew Carnegie is completed on Fifth Avenue at 92nd Street to designs by Babb, Cook and Willard. The six-story 64-room neo-Georgian house has wood panels carved by Scottish and Indian craftsmen, a utilities basement fitted like a steamship engine room, a conservatory, and a large garden opposite Central Park.
A new tenement house law takes effect in January, requiring that each New York apartment have a toilet and more than token amounts of light and fresh air. The 83,000 pre-law and "old law" masonry and wood tenements that house 70 percent of the city's population are mostly of dumbbell design (see 1879), generally have wooden staircases, and their air shafts are only three feet wide (see Flagg, 1893). Many builders have put up such structures in the past year or two, anticipating the new law that has been enacted at the urging of journalist Jacob Riis, the Charity Organization Society, and others. Since they require lots 35 to 50 feet wide in order to provide a decent economic return, most of the "new law" tenements will be constructed in the outer boroughs, where speculative builders can find such lots, and the "old law" tenements will continue to dominate Manhattan neighborhoods.
New York's Harlem begins its rise following the start of construction of a Lenox Avenue subway line that triggers a real estate boom (see transportation, 1900). The uptown Manhattan area will be overbuilt with apartment houses, many buildings will be unoccupied, and the razing of structures for Macy's department store, for Pennsylvania Station, and for large hotels, office buildings, and lofts in the Tenderloin area west of Herald Square is forcing blacks to seek new homes (see Payton, 1904).
Johns Manville Co. is created by Milwaukee's 21-year-old Manville Covering Co., which buys out New York's 43-year-old Johns Manufacturing Co. Johns Manville will import asbestos (45 percent silica, 45 percent magnesia, 10 percent water) from Canadian mines and make itself the world's largest insulation company.
The first Statler Hotel opens for Buffalo's Pan-American Exposition. Local restaurateur Ellsworth Milton Statler, 37, has erected a temporary 2,100-room structure that will be replaced by a more solid Statler Hotel in 1904 (see St. Louis, 1904).
One fourth of U.S. agricultural produce is exported, according to testimony given at hearings of the U.S. Industrial Commission. The Industrial Commission hears a government witness testify that a steam sheller can shell a bushel of corn in 1.5 minutes versus 100 minutes for the same job done by hand and that a wheat combine can do in 4 minutes what it would take a man 160 minutes to reap, bind, and thresh by hand.
Obesity and heart disease are observed for the first time to have a strong correlation.
The hydrogenation process invented by Wilhelm Normann turns polyunsaturated fats into saturated fats that will be linked to heart disease when it is found that the human liver can synthesize serum cholesterol from saturated fats (see medicine [Anichkov], 1913).
Horace Fletcher gains international scientific attention when his personal physician Ernest Van Someren, 30, reads a paper to the British Medical Association claiming that by thoroughly masticating his food Fletcher has reduced his intake of protein and "significantly and objectively increased his well-being" (see 1899). Van Someren asserts that the practice has cured Fletcher of "gout, incapacitating headaches, frequent colds, boils on the neck and face, chronic eczema of the toes . . . , frequent massive dyspepsia," and, even worse, "loss of interest" in life and in his work (see 1902).
Beriberi kills thousands in the Philippines following introduction of polished white rice by U.S. occupation authorities (see 1896; Grijns, 1906).
The Good Housekeeping Institute is founded by the 16-year-old Good Housekeeping magazine to investigate all products before they can be treated editorially or advertised in the publication. Seals of approval are awarded to acceptable products (but only if they are advertised in Good Houskeeping), and the Institute's investigators will reject products such as preparations that are supposed to help quiet babies but are found to contain morphine.
Britain establishes statutory standards for milk to protect consumers, but pasteurization is not required. British milk remains a source of diseases that include undulant fever and tuberculosis of the bone (see Evans, 1917).
Chicago meat packer P. D. Armour dies at Pasadena, Calif., January 29 at age 68, never having recovered from the shock brought on by charges that his company, along with other meat packers, sold the U.S. Army chemically-treated "embalmed beef" during the Spanish-American war of 1898. Armour leaves a fortune estimated at $50 million; his son, J. Ogden Armour, succeeds as president of the company and will hold that position until he retires in 1923, by which time Armour will be the world's largest meat packer.
Margarine prices soar worldwide following a bad U.S. corn crop, which has led to a reduction in livestock populations and consequent lower supplies of lard and beef fat. U.S. meat packers form a price-fixing cartel that European margarine makers and consumers blame for the higher prices (see 1902).
The hydrogenation process invented by Wilhelm Normann extends the shelf life of foods containing fats. The process will find wide application in the production of margarine, shortening, and other foods containing oils.
The Quaker Oats Co. is incorporated by Henry P. Crowell and Robert Stuart, who will sell all their brands under the Quaker label (see 1891; 1893). They have failed in an effort to consolidate 21 other millers with the American Cereal Co., and thus they control more than 95 percent of U.S. oat-milling capacity. But they will drop nonstandard packages, and their holding company will be roughly twice the size of their major competitor, Great Western Cereal, maker of Mother's Oats (see 1911).
C. W. Post has profits of $385,000 from his Postum and Grape Nuts (see 1897); he plows half of it back into advertising (see 1904).
The Settlement Cookbook by Milwaukee settlement house worker Lizzie Black (Mrs. Simon Kander) is published with funds raised by volunteer women through advertisements (the settlement house directors have refused a request for $18 to print a book that would save students in a class for immigrants from having to copy recipes off the blackboard). The book will earn enough money in 8 years to pay for a new settlement house building and be a perennial bestseller, with sales of half a million copies in the next 75 years. On the cover of every copy are the words, "The way to a man's heart," taken from the phrase "The way to a man's heart is through his stomach" from the novel Willis Parton by the late Sara Payson Willis Parton, who wrote under the name Fanny Fern. Parton died in 1872.
The first soluble "instant" coffee goes on sale at the Pan American Exposition at Buffalo. Japanese-born Chicago chemist Satori Kato, has invented the product (see G. Washington, 1909).
Brazil produces 16.3 million bags of coffee, up from 5.5 million in 1890.
White Rose Ceylon tea is introduced by New York's Seeman Brothers, who back the product with car cards on the city's elevated trains and streetcars (see Redi-Tea, 1953).
Britons increase their consumption of whisky and mineral water as good French wines become harder to obtain because of grape phylloxera infestation (see 1891). Despite lower duties on French wine, it will be half a century before wine regains its prestige and profitability.
Russia's Kristall vodka monopoly has its beginnings in the State Wine Store established under the direct control of the Finance Ministry. It will close from 1914 to 1921 but will then continue without interruption until 1994, producing Stolichnaya Vodka and 70 other brands of liquor.
Restaurateur Fred Harvey dies at Leavenworth, Kansas, February 9 at age 65, leaving an enterprise that includes 47 restaurants, 30 dining cars, and food services on San Francisco Bay ferries (see Grand Canyon hotels, 1903).
César Ritz suffers a nervous breakdown at age 51, leaving his chef Auguste Escoffier in charge of the kitchen at London's Carlton Hotel (see real estate, 1899). Escoffier will not retire until 1919, when he is 73.
London's population reaches 6.6 million, while New York has 3.44 million, Paris 2.7, Berlin 1.9, Chicago 1.7, Vienna 1.7, Wuhan 1.5, Tokyo 1.45, St. Petersburg 1.3, Philadelphia 1.3, Constantinople 1.2, Moscow 1.1, Xian (Sian) 1, Calcutta 950,000, Guangzhou (Canton) 900,000, San Francisco 350,000 (15,000 of it Chinese), Los Angeles 103,000, Houston 45,000, Dallas 43,000.
Europe's population tops 400 million, up from 188 million in 1800, with 56.4 million in Germany, 39.1 million in France, 34 in Austria, 33.2 in Italy. China has an estimated 373 million, India 284, Japan 44, Russia 117, Great Britain and Ireland 41.4, the United States more than 76.
Some 9 million immigrants will enter the United States in this decade.
1901 1902 1903 1904 1905 1906 1907 1908 1909 1910