1902: Information and Much More from Answers.com
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1901 1902 1903 1904 1905 1906 1907 1908 1909 1910
Saudi Arabia has her beginnings in January as the 20-year-old Wahabi emir Abdul-Aziz ibn Saud comes out of exile in Kuwait (see 1891) and seizes the Musmak Fortress at Riyadh, a mud fort that serves as headquarters of the Rashid governor and capital of the Nejd, still controlled by the Rashids, a rival clan (see 1818). The Saud family ruled much of Arabia from 1780 to 1880, when it was driven out by the Rashids. Left penniless as exiles in neighoring Kuwait, the family has struggled. Ibn Saud left Kuwait last year with 60 brothers and cousins mounted on camels and slipped into Riyadh at night; he seizes the Rashid governor when he comes out of his castle in the morning, rallies former supporters of his family, sets himself up as leader of an Arab nationalist movement, and begins a series of raids and skirmishes that by the end of next year will have reconquered half of central Arabia (see 1904).
The Chinese dowager empress Cixi (Tzu-hsi) returns to her native Beijing (Peking) and will work in the next 6 years to support the introduction of Western ideas (see 1901; 1908).
An Anglo-Japanese Alliance signed January 20 ends the "splendid isolation" of Britain and recognizes Japan's interests in Korea. Diplomat Count Tadasu Hayashi, now 51, serves as ambassador to the Court of St. James and has negotiated the treaty under the direction of Prime Minister Taro Katsura, 54. If either party should become involved in war with a third party, its ally is to remain neutral, but if the war should expand to involve any other power or powers, then the ally is obligated to enter the conflict (see 1904).
More than 30,000 Russian students demonstrate in February to protest government efforts to curb school organizations. Socialist revolutionaries murder the head of the secret police April 15, thousands die in riots, and Czar Nicholas II offers talks July 2 to quell the disturbances (see 1903).
Portugal declares national bankruptcy May 10 as the cost of suppressing a revolt in Angola brings her regime under financial pressure. The announcement produces industrial unrest at home and increases criticism of the extravagant Carlos I, who has reigned since October 1889 (see 1906).
Spain declares the posthumous son of the late Alfonso XII of age on his 16th birthday, May 16. His mother, Maria Christina de Habsburgo-lorena, now 43, resigns the regency that she has held since 1885, the seven-time prime minister Práxedes Mateo Sagasta resigns, minister of the interior Antonio Maura conducts honest elections, and Alfonso XIII begins a reign that will continue until 1931 despite several attempts on his life.
France's premier René Waldeck-Rousseau resigns in June because of ill health and is succeeded by former minister of education (Justin-Louis)-Emile Combes, 66, who precipitates a break in relations between Paris and the Vatican by agreeing to laws that exile nearly all religious orders from the country and dismantle major facets of the Church's function in French society, notably in education. Waldeck-Rousseau emerges from retirement to protest.
British diplomat Frederick Temple Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, 1st marquess of Dufferin and Ava, dies at Clandeboye, outside Belfast, February 13 at age 75, having served with distinction as governor-general of Canada (1872 to 1878) and viceroy of India (1884 to 1888).
Britain's prime minister Lord Salisbury retires July 11 at age 72 and is succeeded by his nephew Arthur J. Balfour, now 53, who will head the government until 1905.
Cuba gains formal independence from Spain May 20 and establishes a republic with Tomás Estrada Palma, now 66, as president (see 1898). U.S. troops are withdrawn, but Washington continues to exercise informal control under the terms of last year's Platt Amendment (see 1906).
Brazilians elect Francisco de Paula Rodrigues Alves to the presidency. Now 54, he has been president of São Paulo state since 1900 and begins a 4-year term in which he will rebuild and improve Rio de Janeiro, eliminate yellow fever by reforming the city's public health system, and settle border disputes with Bolivia, British Guiana, Dutch Guiana (Surinam), and Uruguay through the offices of his foreign minister José Maria de Silva Paranhos.
Venezuela refuses to meet her debt obligations, British and German warships seize the Venezuelan Navy December 9, and Italian warships join in a blockade of Venezuelan ports December 19 (see 1899). The blockade will continue until February of next year, when Venezuela's dictator Cipriano Castro will agree to arbitration by a Hague Tribunal commission (see 1908).
Empire builder Cecil J. Rhodes dies at Muizenburg in the Cape Colony March 26 at age 49 and is buried in the Matopo Hills near Bulawayo; imperious and autocratic in his final years, he leaves bequests that include £6 million for public service.
The Treaty of Vereeniging signed May 31 ends the Second Anglo-Boer War (see 1901). The Boers accept British sovereignty in South Africa (but will soon come to dominate the country), the British promise £3 million for rebuilding Boer farms, but many Afrikaners consider the terms of the treaty humiliating and will work to eliminate British influence in what they regard as their country.
Former Illinois governor John P. Altgeld dies at Joliet March 12 at age 54; former Confederate Army general Wade Hampton at Columbia, S.C., April 11 at age 84; Admiral William T. Sampson, U.S. Navy, at Washington, D.C., May 6 at age 62.
President Roosevelt officially ends the "great insurrection" in the Philippines July 4 and commends U.S. troops for upholding America's "lawful sovereignty" (see Jones Act, 1916).
Women textile workers in Britain present a suffrage petition to Parliament February 18 (see WSPU, 1903).
Irish-born journalist Daisy (May) Bates (née O'Dwyer), 38, sets out riding sidesaddle April 23 to help her husband, Jack, drive 770 head of Hereford cattle 600 to 700 miles through parched Western Australia to the Ethel Creek station that she has purchased on the Murchison River. Some 200 head are lost en route, the Bates's rocky marriage is further strained (it will effectively end next year), but Daisy discovers caves containing traces of prehistoric life. Having heard about Aborigine women being forced by pearlers to dive in the latter months of pregnancy, she will educate herself in anthropology, live in the bush with the Aborigines, and devote her efforts to improving their lives (see 1912).
U.S. feminists mourn the losses of suffragist Esther Hobart Morris, who dies at Cheyenne April 2 at age 87, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who dies at New York October 26 at age 87.
William Cadbury sees an advertisement for the sale of a Sao Tomé cocoa plantation. Workers are listed as assets at so much per head—a strong suggestion of slavery (see 1901; 1903).
The Carnegie Institution of Washington established with a $10 million gift from Andrew Carnegie will devote its efforts to scientific research. Carnegie has begun to systematize his philanthropies; he makes iron maker-public official Abram S. Hewitt, now 79, chairman of the board and former Johns Hopkins president Daniel C. Gilman, now 70, president (see agriculture, 1905; medicine, 1910).
Greenwich House opens in New York's Greenwich Village under the direction of Boston heiress and social reformer Mary Simkovitch (née Kingsbury), 35, who 3 years ago married a Russian-born Columbia University professor of economic history whom she had met in Berlin.
Explorer Francis E. Younghusband, now 39, sets out on an expedition that will open Tibet to the western world (see 1886; 1903).
E. I. du Pont de Nemours president Eugene du Pont dies at his Christiana Hundreds home outside Wilmington, Del., January 28 at age 68 (see 1899). Directors meet in February and decide to sell the 100-year-old explosives company to a rival for $12 million, but Alfred I. (Irenée) du Pont, 37, announces that he will buy the company. An MIT dropout who has worked for the Du Pont since the mid-1880s, he has persuaded his Louisville-born cousin T. (Thomas) Coleman du Pont, 39, and Delaware-born cousin Pierre S. du Pont, now 32, to join him in acquiring the firm that was founded by their great-grandfather. Alfred has studied the company's books and found that its assets are worth nearly twice the $12 million offered by its rival, he offers the other directors stock in a new corporation founded August 13 with $20 million in capitalization, and by October they have completed the transaction at a cost of just $3,000 in fees for incorporation (Alfred and his cousins pay only $700 each to cover the cost of drawing up the contracts); they take more than $8 million of the new stock for their services, pledging it as security on the $12 million price of the old company in what later will be called a leveraged buyout. T. Coleman is president and general manager, Alfred I. vice-president, Pierre S. treasurer (see 1906).
President Roosevelt asks for the creation of a Bureau of Corporations with authority to inspect the books of all businesses engaged in interstate commerce. He works through his attorney general Philander C. Knox, 49, to institute antitrust proceedings February 18 against the Northern Securities Co. and various other U.S. corporations. Insisting on what he calls a "Square Deal" between capital and labor, Roosevelt departs from the policies of the late President McKinley, which he had pledged himself to continue, and in the next 7 years will file "trust-busting" suits against 43 major corporations.
United States Steel Co. controls two-thirds of U.S. steelmaking capacity. Only public opinion and a sense of noblesse oblige restrain its near-monopoly (see 1901; Bethlehem Steel, 1905).
International Nickel Co. is created by a merger of Canadian Copper and Orford Copper effected by J. P. Morgan at the behest of Charles M. Schwab and other steel magnates. Based at Bayonne, N.J., Orford has found a way to refine nickel from the ore it buys from Canadian Copper (see 1885) and sells it in Europe, competing with the Rothschild-controlled firm Le Nickel, whose ore comes from New Caledonia, and with Mond Nickel Co., founded by the German-born British chemist and industrialist Ludwig Mond, now 73, whose mines in Canada and refinery in Wales use the nickel carbonyl process discovered by Mond. Despite such competition, International Nickel will meet 90 percent of world nickel needs.
A gold strike on Alaska's Chena River brings a rush to the area, where the town of Fairbanks is established, taking its name from Ohio-born U.S. Senator Charles W. (Warren) Fairbanks, 50 (R. Ind.) (see Nome, 1898).
Italian railway workers strike through January and February in a demand for recognition of their union. A general strike threatens as Turin gas company employees walk out, but the government calls up all railway workers who belong to the army reserve and a settlement is mediated in June.
Glasgow outlaws barmaids beginning April 22, creating a storm of controversy.
United Mine Workers leader John Mitchell leads his 147,000 anthracite coal workers out of the pits May 12 to begin a 5-month strike that cripples the United States (see 1900). Mine operators and railroad presidents have rejected an invitation from Mitchell to attend a conference. They continue to oppose unionization, and George F. Baker, 62, of Philadelphia and Reading Coal & Iron says July 17, "The rights and interests of the laboring man will be protected and cared for—not by the labor agitators, but by the Christian men to whom God in His infinite wisdom has given the control of the property interests of this country." By September the price of anthracite in New York has climbed from $5 per ton to $14, and the poor who buy by the bucket or bushel pay a penny per pound, $20 per ton. Schools close to conserve fuel; people buy oil, coke, and gas stoves; mobs in western towns seize coal cars; and by October the price of coal in New York is $30 per ton. President Roosevelt threatens to have the army operate the mines and thereby brings about a settlement of the coal strike. It is the first intervention by the federal government in a labor dispute except to assure continued operation of a governmental service or to protect property, and one writer hails it as "the greatest single event affecting the relations of capital and labor in the history of America." But while the strikers gain pay raises, they do not win recognition of their union as the bargaining agent for their rights.
Coal-mine strikebreakers at Pana, Ill., kill 14 workers October 12 and wound 22.
The assassination of Smuggler-Union mine manager Arthur Collins November 19 in his home at Telluride, Colo., follows settlement of a violent strike against the mine by the Western Federation of Miners (see 1899). Some 400 national guardsmen will go into Telluride next year to suppress the WFM (see IWW, 1905).
Chicago glovemaker Agnes Nestor helps organize the International Glove Workers Union (AFL) and founds Local #1 of the IGWU (see 1899; 1903).
American Federation of Labor (AFL) membership reaches 1 million (see Gompers, 1886; Department of Labor, 1913).
Millionaire Edward H. Green dies at his native Bellows Falls, Vt., March 19 at age 82. (His former wife, Hetty, now 66, has multiplied her fortune through shrewd investments in railroad stocks, government bonds, mortgages, and Chicago real estate while living penuriously. It is said that her son lost a leg because she would not hire a physician to treat him properly, she is considered the richest woman in America, will henceforth always carry a gun, and will usually dress in black. People will call her "The Witch of Wall Street.") The last of the four silver kings John W. Mackay dies of heart failure brought on by pneumonia at London's Carlton House Terrace July 20 at age 71, having made himself one of the richest men in America; cannon maker Friedrich (Alfred) Krupp dies of apoplexy at Essen November 22 at age 57. He has been Germany's richest man.
Wall Street's Dow Jones Industrial Average ends the year at 62.49, down from 64.56 at the end of 1901.
J. C. Penney Co. has its beginnings in the Golden Rule store opened at Kemmerer, Wyo., April 14 by Missouri-born merchant James Cash Penney, 26, and his wife. Penney went to work at age 19 for J. M. Hale & Brother at Hamilton, Mo., for $2.27 per month, he moved to Colorado 5 years ago at the advice of his physician and got a job at Longmont near Denver working for merchant T. M. Callahan, and the firm sent him to work in its store at Evanston, Wyo. Callahan has given him an opportunity to open a store on his own and has sold him a one-third interest for $2,000. Penney sells only for cash, charges 5¢ for suspenders, 29¢ for petticoats, and the store's first day's receipts amount to $466.59 after remaining open from dawn to midnight; by the end of the first year it has done $29,000 worth of business, and Penney will move to a better location in 1904 (see 1908).
Macy's lays the cornerstone of a new building close to New York's Sixth Avenue El on Broadway just north of 34th Street, on Herald Square (see 1896). Merchants Isidor and Nathan Straus have expanded the late R. H. Macy's store into a complex of 11 buildings in 13th and 14th streets; they sell those buildings, and although the Strauses have been unable to obtain a small parcel of land at the corner of Broadway and 34th Street, they have engaged an architect to design a nine-story red brick-and-limestone structure measuring 700 feet by 200 with bay windows and four-story-high Corinthian columns on the Broadway side between 34th and 35th streets; when they move from Ladies' Mile in the fall into the larger store, the Strauses operate a steam wagonette to transport customers uptown to what will grow to become the world's largest department store building, with more than 2 million square feet of floor space (see 1912).
Saks & Co. opens on a site just south of the new Macy's store under the management of former Siegel, Cooper department store executive Andrew Saks, 55, and two other Siegel, Cooper men (see Saks Fifth Avenue, 1924).
Tiffany & Co. founder Charles Lewis Tiffany dies at Yonkers, N.Y., February 18 at age 90, leaving an estate of $35 million; merchant Potter Palmer dies at Chicago May 4 at age 75.
Paris jeweler Louis Cartier creates 27 diamond tiaras for the coronation of Britain's Edward VII. Cartier opens a London branch in New Bond Street with his brother Jacques in charge (see 1898; 1917).
History of the Standard Oil Company by journalist Ida Minerva Tarbell, 44, begins in McClure's magazine installments, revealing that John D. Rockefeller controls 90 percent of U.S. oil-refining capacity and has an annual income of $45 million. Raised in Titusville by a father who made a fortune building barrels for the oil trade, Tarbell has uncovered facts about the secretive Rockefeller that will lead to the breakup of his Standard Oil trust by the Supreme Court in 1911. She says the corporation is guilty of "commercial sin" but regards Rockefeller himself as a genius for recognizing that he had to control the transportation of oil if he was to bring order to the oil industry.
The Texas Co. (later Texaco) is founded to battle Rockefeller interests. Former Standard Oil executive Joseph S. (Stephen) "Buckskin Joe" Cullinan, 41, receives backing from German-born financier Arnold Schlaet, 42, and enlists the support of Texas governor James Stephen Hogg, 52, and John W. Gates (see 1898). Now 47, Gates has agreed to stop his "bear" raids on the stock market (after losing a fortune) and helps Cullinan buy up oil fields near Guffey (later Gulf) Oil's Spindletop Hill in East Texas (see 1901) and build a marketing organization that will cover the United States and much of the world (see 1903; CalTex, 1933).
France's Panama Canal Co. offers to sell its interests to the United States and reduces its asking price January 4 from $109 million to $40 million (see de Lesseps, 1883). A supplementary report to President Roosevelt by the Isthmian Canal Commission January 18 recommends adoption of the Panama route in preference to a Nicaraguan route; the Isthmian Canal Act passed by Congress June 28 authorizes the president to acquire the Canal Company's concession, arrange terms with the Colombian government, and proceed with construction. If it is not possible to obtain title and necessary control, the canal is to be built through Nicaragua (see 1903).
United States Shipbuilding Co. is organized by United States Steel executive Charles M. Schwab, who merges Bethlehem Steel into the new company as a source of plates for ships (see 1886; commerce, 1905).
The Twentieth Century Limited goes into service June 15 to begin a 65-year career on the route between New York and Chicago. The New York Central's new luxury express has two buffet, smoking, and library cars, two observation cars, and 12 drawing-room and stateroom cars. It reduces running time on the 980-mile "water-level route" to 20 hours—down from 24 in 1877—but the Limited's 49-mile-per-hour average is well below the 61.3 miles per hour averaged on the 184-mile route of the Paris-Calais Express.
The Broadway Limited (initially the Pennsylvania Special) goes into service June 16 for the Pennsylvania Railroad, beginning a career of 93 years on the route between New York and Chicago. Staffed with barbers, maids, valets, and secretaries to rival the Central's Twentieth CenturyLimited, the new luxury express makes the 907-mile run in 20 hours.
Egypt's Cairo-Luxor Express goes into service with sleeping cars.
The rail link between Salisbury, Rhodesia, and Bulawayo is completed October 6.
The American Automobile Association (AAA) is founded March 4 by nine automobile clubs meeting at Chicago; a U.S. counterpart to the Royal Automobile Club founded 5 years ago at London, it will provide members with emergency road service, help them plan tours, and work in behalf of new highway construction.
The first Studebaker motorcar is introduced at South Bend, Ind. Studebaker Bros. has produced more than 750,000 wagons, buggies, and carriages since 1852; its first motor vehicle is an electric car.
Henry Ford's 70-horsepower "999" racing car driven by Ohio-born racer Berna Eli "Barney" Oldfield, 24, sets an unofficial speed record on Detroit's Grosse Point track October 25, covering five miles in 5 minutes, 20 seconds to win the Manufacturer' Challenge Cup (see 1901). Ford has built the car with help from a cyclist, and the cigar-chomping Oldfield easily beats competitors who include Alexander Winton, giving Ford his first major victory (see Ford Motor Company, 1903).
The Sturmey-Archer gear enables cyclists to pedal uphill without getting off their bikes. Raleigh bicycle maker Frank Bowden, now 73, has met schoolmaster Henry Sturmey and engineer James Archer, found that each had invented crude three-speed gears, brought them together, helped them obtain the first three-speed gear patents, and established the Three-Speed Syndicate Ltd. of Nottingham (later Sturmey-Archer Gears Ltd.)
Pratt & Whitney Co. cofounder Frederick Ashbury Pratt dies at Hartford, Conn., February 10 at age 74, having promoted the adoption of a standard system of gauges for the United States and Europe.
Boston chemist Arthur D. Little obtains a new patent on rayon, having produced the cellulose fiber with a new process (see 1894; Cross, Bevan, 1892; Courtauld, 1905; Viscose Co., 1910; Celanese, 1924; nylon, 1935).
Mendel's Principles of Heredity—A Defence by English biologist William Bateson, 41, supports the work by Hugo De Vries and others published 2 years ago (see McClung, 1901). Bateson has explored the fauna of salt lakes in western Central Asia and in northern Europe and will introduce the term genetics (see 1926; Punnett, 1905).
"On the Morphology of the Chromosome Group in Brachystola magna" by Utica, N.Y.,-born Columbia University graduate student Walter S. (Stanborough) Sutton, 25, appears in the Biological Bulletin, providing the earliest detailed demonstration that chromosomes in cells other than sex cells occur in definite, distinguishable pairs. Sutton received his master's degree last year from the University of Kansas, where he studied under Clarence E. McClung, and his work on somatic chromosomes in grasshoppers has led him to the hypothesis not only that different pairs of like (homologous) chromosomes carry the units of inheritance but also that the Mendelian law of heredity is based on the behavior of sex-cell chromosomes during division (meiosis). He will develop this hypothesis next year in his paper "The Chromosomes in Heredity" (see Stevens, 1906).
Chemist Wilhelm Ostwald obtains a patent for his process of converting ammonia to nitric acid (see 1894). The process will prove to have enormous industrial value.
Elementary Principles in Statistical Mechanics by Yale physicist J. Willard Gibbs helps to establish the basic theory for physical chemistry (see 1876; Le Chatelier, 1888).
Chemist Sir Frederick A. Abel dies at Westminster, London, September 6 at age 75.
English physiologists William M. (Maddock) Bayliss, 42, and Ernest H. (Henry) Starling, 36, discover the hormone secretin manufactured by glands on the wall of the small intestine (they will introduce the word hormone in 1904). Working at London's University College, they find that secretin acts on the liver to increase the flow of pancreatic juice when the acid contents of the stomach enter the duodenum.
French surgeon Alexis Carrel, 29, discovers a method of suturing blood vessels end to end, making it possible to replace arteries. Carrel will move in 1906 to New York's Rockefeller Institute.
Paris physiologist Charles (Robert) Richet, 52, introduces the term anaphylaxis for the sometimes fatal reaction by a sensitized person to a second injection of an antigen. Richet's work will help to elucidate problems of asthma, hay fever, and other reactions to foreign substances, explaining some cases of intoxication and sudden death that have heretofore defied explanation (see von Pirquet's allergy, 1906).
Hookworm disease is endemic in the U.S. South, reports Spring Valley, N.Y.-born Charles Wardell Stiles, 35, chief of the Division of Zoology of the U.S. Public Health Service, in an address to the Sanitary Conference of American Republics meeting at Washington, D.C. (see Puerto Rico, 1899). Victims from South Carolina to Mississippi often try to relieve the pain by swallowing clay and resin. John D. Rockefeller establishes the General Education Board that will help reform U.S. medical education and work to conquer hookworm disease in the South (see 1901; 1909).
The John McCormick Institution for Infectious Disease is established by reaper heir Harold Fowler McCormick, 30, and his wife Edith (née Rockefeller) in memory of their son who died of scarlet fever early last year at age 3 (see Rockefeller Institute, 1901; Dick, 1924).
The Canadian Medical Act establishes a central national registration for physicians and uniform standards for all licensed practitioners. Passage of the act has been pushed by physician Thomas G. (George) Roddich, 56, a Conservative member of the Dominion House of Commons.
Disease has cost the British five times as many men as enemy action in the Boer War.
Internist Adolf Kussmaul dies at Heidelberg May 28 at age 80; Pathologist Rudolf Virchow dies at Berlin September 5 at age 80; Major Walter Reed, U.S. Army Medical Corps., of chronic appendicitis at Washington, D.C., November 22 at age 51 (see Army Medical Center, 1909).
The Gospel and the Church (L'Evangile et l'Eglise) by French biblical scholar Alfred F. (Firmin) Loisy, 45, lays the foundation for modernism in Roman Catholicism, but Loisy's argument that new discoveries may be incorporated into Church teachings and not conflict with established dogma provokes sharp criticism from the Vatican (see papal encyclical, 1907).
Thousands of French Roman Catholic schools close following passage of laws designed to separate church and state in the wake of the Dreyfus Affair.
Britain's Balfour Act (Education Act) reorganizes the local administration of elementary and secondary schools.
Cecil Rhodes leaves $10 million in his will to endow 170 3-year Rhodes scholarships at Oxford University. Awarded each year to 60 young men from the British colonies, 100 from the United States, and 15 from Germany, the scholarships pay £250 per year; the trustees will increase the amount and beginning in 1976 will award some scholarships to women.
"Buster Brown" debuts May 4 in the New York Herald. Richard F. Outcault's comic-strip adventures of the middle-class boy and his dog Tige will be far more successful than his "Yellow Kid" strip (see 1896; "Mutt and Jeff," 1908).
The Rand Daily Mail begins publication at Johannesburg, South Africa, September 22. While the paper is founded by H. Freeman Cohen, its editor is English-born journalist Edgar Wallace, 27. It competes with the 15-year-old Star published at Grahamstown, and it will continue until 1985, pioneering in popular journalism with illustrations, cartoons, and entertainment features (see 1985).
The Nation magazine founder E. L. Godkin dies in England May 21 at age 70. He retired from his position as editor of the New York Post in 1899; automatic telephone exchange inventor Almon B. Strowger dies of an aneurism at St. Petersburg, Fla., May 26 at age 28; Wall Street Journal cofounder and economist Charles H. Dow dies at Brooklyn, N.Y., December 4 at age 51 (he sold Dow Jones & Co. in March to Clarence W. Barron for $130,000). The 32-year-old English-born journalist and Boer War veteran William Peter Hamilton hired by Dow as a reporter in 1899 will take over as editor of the Wall Street Journal next year and write virtually every editorial until his own death in December 1929; cartoonist Thomas Nast has been appointed consul general at Guyaquil, Ecuador, and dies there December 7 at age 62.
The Times Literary Supplement (TLS) begins publication January 17 as part of the Times of London. The journal of reviews, poems, and commentary will continue into the 21st century.
Nonfiction: Varieties of Religious Experience by William James, whose Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh constitute a classic reconciliation of science and religion. Now 60, James has used empirical methods to examine the claims of religion and concludes that the weight of evidence favors the view that there are some dimensions of consciousness that lie beyond the realm of everyday experience; Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic (Estetica come scienza dell'espressione e linqistica genrale) by Neapolitan philosopher Benedetto Croce, 36, who was left an orphan when the earthquake of 1883 shattered Casamicciola; Mutual Aid by Petr A. Kropotkin, who gives examples from every level of the animal world and of human history to demonstrate that (despite anything Darwin said about the survival of the fittest) it is cooperation rather than conflict that has led to the evolution of species; Imperialism: A Study by English economist John A. (Atkinson) Hobson, 44, whose comprehensive critique of economic imperialism will influence German theorists Rosa Luxembourg and Rudolf Hilferding. Through their writings it will shape the thinking of V. I. Lenin (see 1916); Britain and the British Seas by Oxford political geographer Halford J. Mackinder; Twelve Types by G. K. Chesterton, who has favored the Boers in Britain's Boer War; New Empire by Brooks Adams; The Rebuilding of Old Commonwealths by California-born New York author-publisher Walter Hines Page, 47; The Battle with the Slum by Jacob Riis; Rebellion in the Backlands (Os Sertos) by Brazilian engineer-journalist Eucludes (Rodrigues Pimenta) da Cunha, 36, who covered an 1896 uprising led by the religious fanatic Antonio Conselheiro in Brazil's sertão (backlands). His sympathetic treatise on history, sociology, geology, and geography defies the idea that people of mixed race are inferior, and it amounts to a national epic; Trivia by New Jersey-born English aesthete (Lloyd Logan) Pearsall Smith, 36, whose affirmation of beauty and leisure has little initial success.
Fiction: The Wings of the Dove by Henry James, younger brother of the Harvard philosophy professor; Heart of Darkness and Youth and Two Other Stories by Joseph Conrad; Anna of the Five Towns and The Grand Babylon Hotel by English novelist (Enoch) Arnold Bennett, 35; Mrs. Craddock by W. Somerset Maugham; The Immoralist by André Gide; The Supermale (Le Surmale) by Alfred Jarry; The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains by Germantown, Pa.-born novelist Owen Wister, 42, whose account of a greenhorn's misadventures in Wyoming will be famous for its line, "When you call me that, smile!" (the "cowboy" novel does not contain a single cow or steer, it enjoys sales of nearly 200,000 copies its first year, but author Wister [a grandson of the late actress Fanny Kemble] disdains popular success); "To Build a Fire" by California writer John Griffith "Jack" London, 26, who at age 17 shipped out as a common seaman aboard a sailing ship to Japan and at 21 joined the Klondike gold rush; The Thirteenth District by Toledo, Ohio, lawyer-novelist Brand Whitlock, 33; Brewster's Millions by George Barr McCutcheon; The Pothunters by English humorist P. G. (Pelham Grenville) Wodehouse, 21, who will quit his bank job next year to conduct a column in the London Globe and become famous for his characters Bertie Wooster, Jeeves, Mr. Multiner, and Psmith; After the Divorce (Dopo il divorzio) by Italian novelist Grazia Deledda, 30; "The Monkey's Paw" by W. W. Jacobs, whose short story will be turned into a one-act play by Louis Napoleon Parker; The Hound of the Baskervilles by A. Conan Doyle, who has been forced by public demand to announce that his Baker Street detective Sherlock Holmes escaped death when he fell into the mountain crevasse with the arch-criminal Professor Moriarty in December of 1893 (the new book has been serialized in the Strand magazine).
Author Bret Harte dies of cancer at London May 5 at age 65 (he has lived in the British capital since 1885); Frank Stockton dies at Washington, D.C., April 20 at age 68; novelist Samuel Butler at London June 18 at age 66; Emile Zola of carbon monoxide fumes at his Paris home September 29 at age 62 (his widow, Gabrielle, recovers after a few days in the hospital and recognizes her late husband's two children by his mistress, laundress Jeanne Rozerot, now 32); Frank Norris dies at San Francisco October 25 at age 32. Sent by the San Francisco Chronicle to report on a trip from Cape Town to Cairo in 1899, Norris enlisted in the British Army at the outbreak of the second Boer War, was captured by the Boers, and contracted fever.
Poetry: Salt Water Ballads by English poet John Masefield, 24, who ran away to sea at age 13. His "Sea Fever" contains the lines, "I must down to the sea again, to the lonely sea and the sky,/ And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by"; Songs of Childhood by English poet Walter (John) de la Mare, 29; Captain Craig by Maine-born New York poet Edwin Arlington Robinson, 32.
Juvenile: Just So Stories for Little Children by Rudyard Kipling; The Tale of Peter Rabbit by English artist-writer-naturalist Beatrix Potter, 36, who has been the first person in England to establish the fact that lichens represent a merging of algae and fungi (see science [Schwendener], 1869; Reinke, 1894)but whose efforts in botany have been frustrated by the male scientific establishment. Written in 1900 as an illustrated letter to the son of her former governess, Peter Rabbit is published now by F. Warne and Co., whose editor, Norman Warne, will be engaged to Potter but die in 1905 before they can marry. Peter, Mopsy, Flopsy, and Cottontail will be followed by 22 more books that Potter will write and illustrate in the next 11 years; Five Children and It by Edith Nesbit; Five Little Peppers Abroad by Margaret Sidney (Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop).
Painting: Waterloo Bridge in the Fog by Claude Monet; Louvre from Pont Neuf by Camille Pissarro; Crouching Woman, Woman with Crossed Arms, The Soup, and The Two Sisters by Pablo Picasso, who will move from Barcelona to Paris next year; Horsemen on the Beach by Paul Gauguin, who moved last year to the Marquesa Islands; Ladies Acheson, Misses Hunter, The Duchess of Portland, Lord Cromer, and Lord Ribblesdale by John Singer Sargent; Beethoven Frieze by Gustav Klimt; Jeanette in a Green Bonnet (La Chapeau au Fillette Vert) and Child in Orange Dress by Mary Cassatt; Self-Portrait by Thomas Eakins. Albert Bierstadt dies at New York February 18 at age 72.
Illustrator Charles Dana Gibson signs an agreement with Collier's Weekly October 23 to draw only for Life and Collier's for the next 4 years and produce 100 double-page drawings for Collier's for $100,000 (see 1890).
Crayola brand crayons are introduced by the 21-year-old Easton, Pa., chemical firm Binney & Smith, owned by Edwin Binney and C. Harold Smith, who also sell dustless white blackboard chalk, won a gold medal at the Paris Exposition of 1900 for its carbon black (which is much cheaper than competitive carbon blacks), and control the rights to a line of red oxides of iron employed in the paints used by most farmers on their barns. Founder's son Edwin Binney has developed the crayons by adding oil and pigments to the inexpensive black paraffin and stearic acid marking crayons sold by the firm, and his wife, Alice, a former schoolteacher, has suggested the name Crayola. Schools cannot afford artists' crayons; sold at 5¢ per box of eight, the new Crayola crayons come in black, blue, brown, green, orange, red, violet, and yellow, and Binney & Smith starts shipping boxes to schools on Indian reservations. The crayons will be produced through this century in more than 600 colors, although some will be dropped and others added or renamed (Prussian Blue will be renamed Midnight Blue in 1958 because Prussia will no longer mean anything to most schoolchildren, and Flesh will be renamed Peach in 1962).
Sculpture: Comin' Through the Rye (Off the Range) by Frederic Remington (bronze).
Boston's Fenway Court opens New Year's Eve with a concert by 50 Boston Symphony musicians and a crowd of socialites who have come to see the art collection of department store heiress Isabella Stewart (Mrs. John Lowell) Gardner, 62, and its diamond-and-pearl-bedizened owner, whose husband died in 1898. Novelist Henry James has compared her with "a figure on a wondrous cinquecento tapestry." She has had an ancient mosaic floor from Rome, stone lions from Florence, and balconies from Venice imported to grace her Italianate palace, under construction since 1899, and will bequeath it to the public along with its art treasures upon her death in 1924.
Carl Zeiss of Jena introduces the Tessar f.4.5 antistigmatic lens designed by Paul Rudolf (see 1889).
Theater: The Joy of Living (Es lebe das Leben) by Hermann Sudermann 2/1 at Berlin's Deutsches Theater; Her Lord and Master by Martha Morton 2/24 at New York's Gaiety Theater, with Cambridge, Mass.-born actress Effie Shannon, 34, Denver-born actor Douglas Fairbanks, 18, 69 perfs.; Soldiers of Fortune by Augustus Thomas (based on the Richard Harding Davis story) 3/17 at New York's Savoy Theater, with New Orleans-born actor Robert Edeson, 34, Albany, N.Y.-born actor Wallace Eddinger, 20, New York-born ingénue Dorothy Donnelly, 22, 88 perfs.; The Diplomat by Martha Morton 3/20 at New York's Madison Square Garden, with William Collier, 76 perfs.; Cathleen ni Houlihan by William Butler Yeats and Lady Gregory 4/2 at St. Teresa's Hall, Dublin, with English-born Irish actress-patriot Maud Gonne, 36; The Lower Depths (Na dne) by Maksim Gorky 10/25 at the Moscow Art Theater (now 34, Gorky was arrested last year after publication of his seditious prose-poem "Burevestnik"); The Admirable Crichton by James M. Barrie 11/4 at the Duke of York's Theatre, London, with H. B. Irving, Henry Kemble, London-born actor Gerald du Maurier, 29 (son of the artist-novelist George du Maurier), Irene Vanbrugh, Sybil Carlisle, 326 perfs.; Old Heidelberg by German playwright Wilhelm Meyer Forster, 40, 11/22 at Berlin; Henry of Arnë (Der arnë Heinrich) by Gerhart Hauptmann 11/29 at Vienna's Hofburgtheater; The Darling of the Gods: A Drama of Japan by David Belasco and John Luther Long 12/3 at New York's Belasco Theater, with Portland, Ore.-born actress Blanche Bates, 29, as Princess Yo-Jan, London-born actor George Arliss, 34, as the minister of war Zakkuri, San Francisco-born actor J. (Joseph) Harry Benrimo, 28, as a carp fisherman, 182 perfs.; Earth Spirit (Der Erdgeist) by Frank Wedekind 12/17 at Berlin's Keines Theater; The Girl with the Green Eyes by Clyde Fitch 12/25 at New York's Savoy Theatre, with Canadian-born actress Lucile Watson, 23, 108 perfs.
Films: George Méliés's Trip to the Moon. The world's first motion picture theater opens 4/16 at Los Angeles under the name The Electric, but films elsewhere are viewed almost entirely at nickelodeons.
Ealing Studios has its beginnings 20 minutes from London's West End in a suburb to the west of the city where impresario Will Barker buys two lots close to where he has been making films since 1896 and turns a greenhouse into a studio. Prevailing winds make the air at Ealing clearer than to the east, where smoke from the city's coal fires create a problem for filming, and Barker produces a picture about the life of the late Queen Victoria. He will set up Barker Motion Photography in 1904 and within 8 years it will be the largest film studio in Britain (see Dean, 1931).
Opera: Le Jongleur de Notre Dame 2/18 at Monte Carlo, with music by Jules Massenet; Pélleas et Mélissande 4/30 at the Opéra-Comique, Paris, with Scottish-born soprano Mary Garden, 28, music by Claude Debussy, libretto by Maurice Maeterlinck; Adriana Lecouvrer 11/6 at Milan's Teatro Lirico, with music by Italian composer Francesco Cilea, 36; The Girls of Vienna (Wiener Frauen) 11/25 at Vienna's Theater-an-der-Wien, with music by Hungarian composer Franz Lehár, 32.
Enrico Caruso makes his first phonograph recordings March 18 at Milan's Hotel di Milano, where U.S. recording engineer Fred Gaisberg, 30, of the Emile Berliner London branch and his brother Will have converted a room into a recording studio using six large crates of equipment. Now 29, the tenor is appearing at the Teatro alla Scala. He has agreed to perform 10 songs and arias for £100, the Gaisbergs have wired London asking authority to spend that much, the London office has wired a flat refusal, the Gaisbergs proceed nevertheless, the disks go on sale in London record shops in May, and they will be reissued periodically for more than 75 years.
First performances: Symphony No. 2 in C minor by Russian composer Aleksandr Nikolaievitch Skriabin, 30, 1/25 at St. Petersburg; L'aprés-midi d'un faune (Symphonic Poem) by Claude Debussy (see 1894); Symphony No. 2 by Jean Sibelius 3/8 at Helsinki; Pavane pour une Infante defunte by Maurice Ravel 4/5 at the Societé Nationale, Paris; Symphony No. 3 in D minor by Gustav Mahler 6/9 at Krefeld.
Stage musicals: A Country Girl 1/18 at Daly's Theatre, London, with Gertie Millar, London-born D'Oyly Carte veteran Isabel Jay, 23, music by Lionel Monckton, 729 perfs.; My Lady Molly 3/14 at Terry's Theatre, London, with music by Sidney Jones, 342 perfs.; The Wild Rose 5/5 at New York's Knickerbocker Theater, with Brooklyn-born vaudeville veteran Marie Cahill, 28, singing "Nancy Brown," Toledo, Ohio-born actor-lyricist Junie McCree, 36, music and lyrics by Ludwig Englander, book by Harry B. Smith and Nova Scotia-born playwright-lyricist George V. Hobart, 35, 136 perfs; A Chinese Honeymoon 6/22 at New York's Casino Theater, with music by Howard Talbot (see 1901), additional music by Hungarian-born composer Jean Schwartz, 23, lyrics by William Jerome, songs that include "Mr. Dooley," 376 perfs.; Twirly Whirly 9/11 at the Weber and Fields Music Hall, with Lillian Russell, Fay Templeton, William Collier, music by the late John Stromberg (who has been found dead in July at age 49, an apparent suicide), lyrics by Robert B. Smith, songs that include "Come Down Ma Evenin' Star," 244 perfs.
Paris entertainer Mistinguett (Jeanne Bourgeois), 29, performs the Apache dance with Max Dearly at the Moulin Rouge music hall (year approximate). She started her career singing in restaurants while selling flowers.
Popular songs: "In the Good Old Summertime" by Welsh-born composer-minstrel George Evans, 42, lyrics by Ren Shields, 34; "In the Sweet Bye and Bye" by Harry Von Tilzer, lyrics by Vincent P. Bryan; "On a Sunday Afternoon" by Harry Von Tilzer, lyrics by Andrew B. Sterling; "Bill Bailey, Won't You Please Come Home" by U.S. songwriter Hughie Cannon, 25; "The Ragtime Dance" and "Elite Syncopations" by Scott Joplin; "Electricity" by Bohemian-born composer Karl Hoschna, 25, lyrics by Harry B. Smith; "When It's All Goin' Out & Nothin's Comin' In" by Bert Williams and George Walker; "Oh, Didn't He Ramble" by Will Handy (Bob Cole and J. Rosamond Johnson); "Under the Bamboo Tree" by Bob Cole; "Then I'd Be Satisfied with Life" by George M. Cohan; "The Land of Hope and Glory" by Edward Elgar, lyrics by Eton master Arthur Christopher Benson, 40.
The Rose Bowl football game has its beginnings in a match played at Pasadena, Calif., January 1 as part of the Tournament of Roses held since 1890. Michigan defeats Stanford 49 to 0 as halfback William M. "Willie" Heston leads a backfield coached by Fielding "Hurry Up" Yost, whose team scores 644 points in the fall against 12 for its opponents (see 1916).
Manchester United is created April 28 by a renaming of the Newton Heath association football team formed in 1878; the Lancashire Football Association gives formal approval to the change in late May.
Hugh Lawrence Doherty, 25, wins in men's singles at Wimbledon, Muriel Evelyn Robb, 24, in women's singles; Bill Larned wins in U.S. men's singles, Marion Jones in women's singles.
Dan Patch breaks the harness racing mark set by his sire Joe Patchen. The 6-year-old mahogany stallion runs a mile in 2:00 3/4, a full second below his sire's fastest speed; he goes on to equal Star Pointer's record of 1:59¼, and Minneapolis feed merchant Marion Willis Savage of the International Stock Food Co. acquires the trotter for $60,000.
The brassiere invented by French fashion designer Charles R. Debevoise will have little popularity until the introduction of elastic (see 1914).
A new deodorant cream called Everdry improves on Mum (see 1888) by adding aluminum chloride to the zinc to expedite drying (see 1919).
The brown plush Teddy Bear created by Russian-born Brooklyn, N.Y., candy shop operator Morris Michtom and his wife Rose, has movable legs and head. Morris has seen a cartoon ("Drawing the Line in Mississippi") by Clifford K. Berryman in the November 10 Washington Evening Star showing "Teddy" Roosevelt refusing to shoot a mother bear while hunting in Mississippi; he obtains permission to use the president's nicknamed (see 1903).
British-American Tobacco Co., Ltd. is incorporated at London to handle international trade in cigarettes and other tobacco products in competition with the Imperial Tobacco Co. trust set up last year. Its major stockholder is the American Tobacco Co. (see 1911; 1976).
New York Philip Morris Corp. is founded with the help of local tobacco importer Gustav Eckmeyer, who has been exclusive agent since 1872 for English Ovals, Marlboros, and other cigarettes produced by Philip Morris of London (see 1858; 1933; Marlboro, 1925).
New York's "Flatiron" building opens October 1 southwest of Madison Square. Designed by Chicago architect Daniel Burnham, the steel-frame Fuller building soars 20 stories high and brings people from far and near to ascend to its top for the panoramic view. The building's shape inspires viewers to call it something other than the Fuller building.
A West Wing addition to the 101-year-old White House at Washington, D.C., accommodates the presidential staff. It replaces conservatories that were built in the last century, will be doubled in size 7 years hence to include the first presidential Oval Office, will be damaged by fire in 1929, and will be completely rebuilt in 1934. An East Wing is also added; it will be replaced in 1942.
Hungary's Houses of Parliament are completed after 9 years of construction on the Rudolph Quay of the Danube at Budapest. Designed in an imposing Gothic style by Aimery Steindl, the building has a dome 325 feet high.
The London Ritz Hotel opens in Piccadilly on the site of Walsingham House (see Paris Ritz, 1898). It has been built by owners of the 3-year-old Carlton House; hotel accountant William Harris organizes a company to build other Ritz caravansaries that will soon rise at Evian, Mentone, Lucerne, Salsomaggiore, Rome, Naples, Madrid, Barcelona, Buenos Aires, Montreal, in Boston, and in Atlantic City, N.J. César Ritz will die in an insane asylum in 1912.
Amsterdam's American Hotel is completed in art nouveau style at 97 Leidsekade.
New York's Algonquin Hotel opens at 59 West 44th Street with 143 suites and 192 rooms to begin a career as a gathering place for actors, painters, musicians, and literate. Desk clerk Frank Case, 32, has persuaded owner Albert Foster to name it the Algonquin rather than the Puritan; he will himself acquire ownership for $717,000 in 1927 and operate the hotel until his death in 1946.
New Hampshire's Mount Washington Hotel opens at Bretton Woods with 197 rooms under its Spanish Renaissance-style rooftops and a 900-foot wraparound veranda that provides guests with stunning views of the mountains of the Presidential Range (see commerce [world monetary conference], 1944).
Old Faithful Inn at Wyoming's Yellowstone National Park is completed to designs by architect Robert C. Reanor. Wings will be added in 1913 and 1927.
Rosecliff is completed at Newport, R.I., for Mrs. Hermann Oeirichs, daughter of the late San Francisco mining and banking magnate James Fair. Last of the great Newport "cottages," Rosecliff is a 40-room French château, designed by New York architect Stanford White with a Court of Love modeled by sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens after one at Versailles.
Whitehall is completed at Palm Beach for Florida East Coast Railway magnate Henry M. Flagler and his third bride. Flagler has told his architects Carrère and Hastings to "build me the finest home you can think of," they have designed a 73-room, $2.5 million Spanish-inspired temple with massive Doric columns and gigantic urns, the six-acre waterfront home has been finished in 8 months, and the New York Herald calls it "more wonderful than any palace in Europe, grander and more magnificent than any other private dwelling in the world."
Angola, N.Y.-born engineer Willis Haviland Carrier, 26, pioneers modern air conditioning (see Gorrie, 1842); he designs a humidity control process to accompany a new air-cooling system for a Brooklyn, N.Y., printing plant (see 1911).
Guatemala has an earthquake April 19 that kills an estimated 2,000 people; an earthquake in Turkestan December 16 kills an estimated 4,500.
"Forest and water problems are perhaps the most vital internal questions of the United States," says President Roosevelt in his first State of the Union message. The president asks for a federal reclamation program and a sound plan to use forest reserves (he has been influenced by Gifford Pinchot and Frederick Haynes Newell, 40, an aide to Major John Wesley Powell).
The National Reclamation Act (Newlands Act) passed by Congress June 17 authorizes the federal government to build great irrigation dams throughout the West. The act is based on ideas championed by Major John Wesley Powell, but small farmers in years to come will charge that the legislation's chief beneficiaries are large farmers.
Crater Lake National Park is created by act of Congress on 160,290 acres of Oregon wilderness.
The Boundary Waters Canoe Area created in northern Minnesota embraces roughly a million acres of virgin pine forest.
Mont Pelée on the French Caribbean island of Martinique erupts May 8, inundating the capital and commercial center St. Pierre with molten lava and ashes that destroy the city's harbor and kill 27,000 people within 2 minutes. The 4,430-foot volcano has given premonitory signals, but the people of St. Pierre have been preoccupied with an imminent local political contest, they have ignored the warnings, 10 percent of the island is devastated as further eruptions occur May 20 and August 30 (the total death toll is between 30,000 and 50,000), the Roddam is the only ship in the harbor that escapes destruction, and Martinique's capital shifts to Fort de France.
European countries sign a convention to eliminate the capture of migrating birds with lime-smeared sticks and iron traps, but the pact does not prohibit use of nets.
Arbor Day founder Julius S. Morton dies at Lake Forest, Ill., April 27 at age 70; landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted at Brookline, Mass., August 28 at age 81. Olmsted's creations include Central Park and Prospect Park plus parks in cities other than New York, but in recent years he has been insane. Major John Wesley Powell dies at Haven, Me., September 23 at age 78.
The National Reclamation Act encourages U.S. family farms by limiting to 160 acres the size of individual holdings entitled to federal water and by specifying that such water is to go only to owners who are bona fide residents. A 1926 amendment will allow larger landowners to have water provided that they sign contracts agreeing to sell acreage exceeding the 160-acre limit within 10 years at a government-approved price that does not include the value added by the federal water.
Hart-Parr Co. of Charles City, Iowa, builds the first gasoline tractors, some of them 11-ton monsters so difficult to start that farmers leave them running all night.
International Harvester is founded August 12 by Cyrus McCormick, Jr., who persuades financier J. P. Morgan to underwrite a trust that merges the four top U.S. harvesting machine makers (see 1884).The company controls 85 percent of all U.S. reaper production (see 1920).
Botanist Pierre-Marie-Alexis Millardet dies at Bordeaux December 15 at age 64, having created the fungicide that saved France's vineyards from destruction.
W. O. Atwater recommends a diet containing 150 grams of protein per day for working men but will later reduce the number to 60 (see 1895). Karl von Voit at Munich raises his 118-gram estimate of 1881 to 145 grams (but see Chittenden, 1904).
A survey in the English city of Leeds shows that in the poorest sections, half the children are marked by rickets and 60 percent have bad teeth (see School Meals Act, 1906). Fish-and-chips shops will make a significant contribution to raising protein levels of urban British diets.
A survey of British milk consumption shows that in middle-class families the average person drinks six pints per week, while in the lower middle class the average is 3.8 pints, among artisans 1.8 pints, and among laborers 0.8 pints. Britain is Europe's biggest meat eater and smallest milk drinker.
Hookworm disease is a major cause of malnutrition in the U.S. South, says Charles W. Stiles. Southerners are not inherently lazy, he observes, but the disease is sapping their energy (see Rockefeller Sanitary Commission, 1909).
San Francisco diet reformer Horace Fletcher visits Washington, D.C., in December, climbs the 854 steps of the 14-year-old Washington Monument, and climbs down again without resting (see 1901; 1903).
A "Poison Squad" of young volunteers tests the safety of U.S. foods for Harvey W. Wiley of the Department of Agriculture (see 1883; 1907).
Congress limits substitution of margarine for butter. Britain establishes statutory limits for butter.
Homogenized milk pioneer Auguste Gaulin receives a patent July 16 for an improved system that will be the basis for all future homogenizers (see 1900). Homogenized milk must first be pasteurized to destroy the enzyme lipase that would catalyze the splitting of milk-fat molecules and produce a rancid flavor. Gaulin has built an apparatus consisting of a concave agate valve, fitted perfectly and held elastically by a spring against a perforated die through which milk—heated to 185° F.—is passed under a pressure of 3,750 to 4,500 pounds per square inch. (Later processors will use pressures of about 2,500 pounds per square inch at a temperature of 140° to 175° F. [60° to 80° C.].) This reduces milk-fat globules to such small diameters (one to two microns) that they are nearly unaffected by gravity and will not rise to the surface of milk.
Britain imports £50 million worth of meat and £4.1 million worth of fish. The average Englishman consumes more than 56 pounds of cheap imported meat per year as U.S. pork, Argentine beef, and New Zealand lamb flood the market.
Barnum's Animal Crackers are introduced by the National Biscuit Co., whose brands account for 70 percent of U.S. cracker and cookie output (see 1898). The new animal-shaped crackers appear just before Christmas in a box topped with a white string so that it may be hung from Christmas trees (see Oreo, 1912).
Ralston Purina gets its name as officials of the 8-year-old Robinson-Danforth Commission Co. at St. Louis make an arrangement with officials of the Ralston Health Club, a worldwide organization established by Washington, D.C., university professor Albert Webster Edgerly, 50, who is sometimes called "Dr. Ralston" and whose book Complete Life Building propounds simple rules and facts about common foods and promotes good nutrition, urging readers to avoid heavy use of preservatives and artificial sweeteners. Ralston Purina promotes Purina breakfast food and introduces Ralston cereals that will compete with Quaker Oats, Post, and Kellogg (see 1897).
Kellogg's makes its Sanitas corn flakes lighter and crisper and gives them a malt flavoring to help them compete with their many imitators (see 1898; 1906).
Force Wheat Flakes are introduced in Britain in June, giving Britons their first taste of a dried breakfast food.
Cream of Wheat maker Emory Mapes hires a Chicago restaurant waiter to pose for photographs at $5 per hour and creates a trademark that will make the cereal famous (see 1893). The J. Walter Thompson advertising agency places the first national advertising for Cream of Wheat in the Ladies' Home Journal with copy written by Emory Mapes.
Presto brand self-rising cake flour introduced by the H-O (Hornby's Oatmeal) Co. of New York employs a formula that incorporates leavening; H-O will register the trademark in 1906.
European imports of U.S. margarine, lard, and beef tallow drop again as high U.S. corn prices continue to discourage ranchers and pig farmers from raising livestock (see 1901). Domestic U.S. prices of meat, dairy products, and margarine skyrocket.
"Prices That Stagger Humanity," headlines Joseph Pulitzer's New York World in a campaign against the "beef trust" (24¢/lb. for sirloin steak, 18¢/lb. for lamb chops, pork chops, or ham).
Hawaiian Pineapple Co., Ltd., is founded by James Drummond Dole, 24, whose Massachusetts Unitarian clergyman father is a first cousin of Hawaii's territorial governor, Sanford B. Dole (see cannery, 1892). Dole's great uncle Daniel Dole was one of the early missionaries. Young Dole visited the islands during his years at Harvard, gave up his original plan of starting a coffee plantation there, and last year used his nest egg of $1,200 to stake out a 12-acre homestead 23 miles northwest of Honolulu at Wahiawa, where the fertile plain—located between the watersheds of the Kolau and Waianae rivers and cut by deep gulches—looked promising. He set out 75,000 pineapple plants and has financed the new company initially by selling stock to local friends and associates (who subscribed to 772 shares at $20 each, producing $15,440). But pineapples are notoriously perishable, and the North American mainland is 2,300 miles away. A Honolulu newspaper has editorialized that "if pineapple paid, the vacant lands near town would be covered with them . . . Export on any great or profitable scale is out of the question." Dole returned to Boston in December of last year, gave a local printer a $20 share for printing up a prospectus, told prospective investors that he intended to "extend the market for Hawaiian pineapples into every grocery store in the United States," and raised an additional $14,000 (see 1903).
McClure's magazine carries an advertisement for Hershey's chocolate: the illustration shows a box of Hershey's powdered milk chocolate for drinking, but the headline says, "Hershey's Milk Chocolate—A Sweet to Eat" (see 1900). Readers are invited to sample Hershey's "two combinations of rich sterilized milk and pure chocolate for eating and drinking. If not at dealers, send 50 cents for ½-pound can for drinking and 6 cakes for eating." The address given is "1020 Chestnut St., Phila., Pa." (see 1903).
The Horn & Hardart Baking Co. Automat opened at 818 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, is the first coin-operated, automatic restaurant (see Exchange Buffet, 1885). Joseph B. Horn and Frank Hardart met in 1888 and soon thereafter opened a small basement lunch counter at Philadelphia. Hardart toured Europe 2 years ago, saw an automatic restaurant in Berlin, and has paid a German importer $30,000 for the mechanism that permits patrons to drop nickels into slots to open glass doors and obtain food from compartments that are refilled by employees behind the scenes. The company's engineer has made improvements in the mechanism, and the Automat is so popular that Philadelphia will soon have scores of them (see New York Automat, 1912).
French-born hotel manager Raymond Orteig, 32, takes over New York's Martin Hotel-Restaurant and turns it into the Lafayette. It rivals Delmonico's among gastronomes such as railroad-equipment salesman and financial manipulator James Buchanan Brady, 46, who has amassed a fortune of nearly $12 million.
Fish-and-chips shops open to serve London's working class. Fast deep-sea trawlers extend British fishing operations to Iceland and the White Sea, they pack the fish in ice, they ship it by rail the day it is landed, and the London shops serve it with fried potatoes and vinegar (see 1864).
London caterer Rosa Lewis (née Ovenden), 35, and her husband, Excelsior, a butler, acquire the lease on the Cavendish Hotel in Jermyn Street. Having cooked over the years for the former Prince of Wales (now Edward VII), Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm II, Lord and Lady Asquith, Lord and Lady Randolph Churchill, and other members of the nobility, Lewis has imported Virginia hams and sold them to Jackson's of Piccadilly while building up a clientele.
Fouquet's opens to give Paris a new restaurant of haute cuisine.
Immigration to the United States sets new records. Most of the arrivals are from Italy, Austro-Hungary, and Russia.
Congress revises the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 to prohibit immigration of Orientals from U.S. island territories such as Hawaii and the Philippines, and it makes the exclusion permanent (see 1943; boycott, 1905).
1901 1902 1903 1904 1905 1906 1907 1908 1909 1910
Archaeology
A French expedition at Susa (in Iran), the ancient capital of Elam, discovers tablets engraved with the code of Hammurabi, the first known set of laws.
Biology
Walter Stanborough Sutton [b. Utica, New York, April 5, 1877, d. March 10, 1916] states that chromosomes are paired and may be the carriers of heredity. See also 1895 Biology; 1903 Biology.
Clarence Erwin McClung [b. Clayton, California, April 5, 1870, d. Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, January 17, 1946] observes that grasshoppers have two types of sperm, one that produces males and one females. Studying the sperm leads him to suspect that chromosomes are involved in determining sex. See also 1905 Biology.
William Maddock Bayliss [b. Wolverhampton, England, May 2, 1860, d. London, August 27, 1924] and Ernest Henry Starling [b. London, April 17, 1891, d. at sea near Kingston, Jamaica, May 2, 1927] discover secretin, a hormone released by the walls of the small intestines that controls the pancreas. They establish the role of hormones in the body. See also 1775 Medicine & health; 1905 Biology.
Sir Jagadis Chandra Bose, who has used his training in physics to develop instruments for studying plant growth and other extremely small motions of plants, publishes Response in the Living and Non-Living which describes his use of electricity with plants. See also 1897 Physics.
Chemistry
William Pope develops optically active compounds based on sulfur, selenium, and tin. See also 1899 Chemistry.
Emil Fischer of Germany wins the Nobel Prize in chemistry for sugar and purine synthesis. See also 1887 Chemistry.
Communication
German physicist Arthur Korn [b. May 20, 1870, d. 1945] develops a method of transmitting photographs over wires by electricity, breaking the image down into components and then reconstructing it at the other end using selenium cells. The resulting fax process, then known as telephotography, soon becomes indispensable for transmitting photographs of news events. See also 1904 Communication.
The first electric typewriter to be sold worldwide is produced, the Blickensderfer Electric, invented by George Canfield Blickensderfer [b. Erie, Pennsylvania, 1850, d. Stamford, Connecticut, August 15, 1917] of Stamford, Connecticut. See also 1895 Communication.
Gugliemo Marconi develops the magnetic detector for radio, an improved way of detecting signals that replaces the coherer. See also 1890 Communication.
In November Reginald Fessenden and partners form the National Electric Signaling company (known as NESCO), the first operator of commercial wireless telegraphy stations over land, with base stations in Collingswood, New Jersey, Jersey City, New Jersey, and Washington, DC. See also 1900 Communication; 1904 Communication.
Following the example of General Electric, Du Pont Company and Parke-Davis both establish research departments. See also 1901 Communication; 1911 Communication.
Earth science
Léon Teissernec de Bort [b. Paris, November 5, 1855, d. Cannes, Alpes-Maritimes, France, January 2, 1913] is the first to discover that Earth's atmosphere has at least two different layers, which he names the troposphere and the stratosphere.
British-American electrical engineer Arthur Edwin Kennelly [b. Bombay, India, December 17, 1861, d. Boston, Massachusetts, June 18, 1939] discovers that there is a layer of electrically charged particles in the upper atmosphere that reflects radio waves, independently discovered by Oliver Heaviside a few months later. This layer later will become known as the ionosphere. See also 1882 Earth science.
Mount Pelée on Martinique erupts, killing almost all of the 38,000 people in Saint Pierre. Legend has it that one prisoner lived through the deadly cloud of hot gases that flowed from the volcano, although later research suggests that two people survived, instead of just one. See also 1883 Earth science.
Ecology & the environment
Danish physiologist Schack August Steenberg Krogh [b. Gronå, Denmark, November 15, 1874, d. Copenhagen, September 13, 1949] demonstrates that ocean waters have a role in buffering carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, a result that will later be seen as important in the question of global warming. See also 1859 Ecology & the environment; 1905 Ecology & the environment.
Energy
Robert Bosch [b. Albeck, Germany, September 23, 1861, d. Stuttgart, Germany, March 12, 1942] invents the spark plug. See also 1893 Energy.
Materials
Arthur D. Little [b. Boston, Massachusetts, December 15, 1863, d. August 1, 1935], William Hultz Walker [b. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, April 7, 1869, d. Pasadena, California, 1934], and Harry S. Mork obtain the first U.S. patent for an artificial fiber, a form of yarn for spinning based on the acetate process for rayon. See also 1884 Materials; 1940 Materials.
Mathematics
English mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell [b. Trelleck, England, May 18, 1872, d. Penrhyndeudraeth, Merionethshire, England, February 2, 1970] discovers his "Great Paradox" concerning the set of all sets that do not contain themselves. This set either contains itself or it doesn't, but if it does, then it doesn't and vice versa. This paradox undermines the foundations of Gottlob Frege's and Russell's attempts to base mathematics on logic. See also 1899 Mathematics.
Henri Léon Lebesgue [b. Beauvais, Oise, France, June 28, 1875, d. Paris, July 26, 1941] introduces a new method of integration that allows the integration of functions over domains not possible by the Riemann method. It will be known as Lebesgue integration. See also 1854 Mathematics.
Beppo Levi [b. Turin, Italy, May 14, 1875, d. Rosario, Argentina, August 28, 1961] makes the first explicit statement of the axiom of choice: One can choose exactly one element from any given collection of disjoint nonempty sets. This axiom eventually separates mathematics into two types, one that accepts it and one that rejects it. See also 1883 Mathematics; 1904 Mathematics.
Medicine & health
American surgeon and author Harvey William Cushing [b. Cleveland, Ohio, April 8, 1869, d. New Haven, Connecticut, October 7, 1939] investigates the pituitary gland. See also 1926 Biology.
Karl Landsteiner discovers a fourth blood group, AB. See also 1900 Medicine & health; 1930 Medicine & health.
Charles Robert Richet [b. Paris, August 26, 1850, d. Paris, December 3, 1935] coins the term anaphylaxis ("overprotection") to describe the phenomenon he has discovered, which is that a second exposure to a substance can provoke shock. At this point the concept of allergy is not clear (the word allergy will not be coined until 1906). Today physicians recognize anaphylaxis as the body's overreaction to an allergen. See also 1913 Medicine & health.
Sir Ronald Ross of England wins the Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine for his work on malaria infections. See also 1897 Medicine & health.
Physics
Philipp von Lenard discovers that the energy of electrons produced when zinc is exposed to ultraviolet light is a function of the wavelength of the light and not of the intensity. This photoemissive effect, whose energy distribution cannot be explained by the wave theory of light, will be explained by Einstein in a famous paper that first introduces wave-particle duality to physics. See also 1899 Physics; 1905 Physics. (See biography.)
Owen Willans Richardson [b. Dewsbury, England, April 26, 1879, d. Alton, Hampshire, England, February 15, 1959] tries to refract X rays with the edge of a Gillette safety razor blade. His failure to observe refractions tends to confirm an (incorrect) theory that X rays are a beam of neutral particles. Had he used a crystal, he would have discovered X-ray diffraction. See also 1912 Physics.
Ernest Rutherford and Frederick Soddy publish the paper "The Cause and Nature of Radioactivity," which sets forth the atomic disintegration theory of radioactivity. Their explanation recognizes that radioactive elements change into other elements as they release particles. See also 1901 Physics; 1904 Physics.
J. Willard Gibbs's Elementary Principles in Statistical Mechanics is published, providing a mathematical framework that will be used for quantum theory. It also gives other ideas from statistical mechanics a firm mathematical foundation.
Hendrik Lorentz and Pieter Zeeman of the Netherlands win the Nobel Prize in physics for their discovery of the effect of magnetism on electromagnetic radiation. See also 1896 Physics.
Tools
Richard Adolf Zsigmondy [b. Vienna, Austria, April 1, 1865, d. Göttingen, Germany, September 23, 1929] invents the ultramicroscope, a device for seeing the small particles in a colloidal solution. See also 1903 Tools.
Willis H. Carrier [b. Angola, New York, November 26, 1876, d. October 7, 1950] invents the first air conditioner. It is developed for use in a printing plant to maintain conditions under which ink dries evenly. See also 1881 Energy; 1903 Tools.
Transportation
In France, Louis Renault [b. Paris, February 12, 1877, d. Paris, October 24, 1944] develops the drum brake. In Great Britain, Frederick Lanchester invents the disk brake, which has better heat dissipation properties than the drum brake. First used on airplanes, the use of disk brakes on automobiles will become common only during the 1970s. See also 1867 Transportation; 1919 Transportation.
John Wilkinson designs the first air-cooled engine to be used in an automobile, the 1902 Franklin, built in Syracuse, New York. The engine, without the conventional water-cooled automobile radiator, is much lighter than other automobile engines of the day. The first Franklin also uses wooden frames and aluminum parts for lightness; the entire car weighs about 500 kg (1000 lb). Franklin automobiles will continue to be produced until 1929.