Timeline 1895 - 1897
Return to home
1895 Jan 1, J.
Edgar Hoover, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigations
(FBI), was born.
(HN, 1/1/99)
1895 Jan 2, Count Folke
Bernadotte (d.1948), statesman (Red Cross, UN), was born in Swe-den.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folke_Bernadotte)
1895 Jan 5, French Capt. Alfred
Dreyfus, convicted of treason, was publicly stripped of his rank. He
was ultimately vindicated. Dreyfus, a Jew falsely accused of spying
for the Germans, was imprisoned alone on Devil’s Island until 1899.
(AP, 1/5/98)(SSFC, 12/15/02, p.L5)
1895 Jan 7, The new government
of Hawaii placed the country under martial law following news of a
planned revolt. Queen Lili’uokalani was convicted of treason and
sentenced to 5 years in prison. She was released after serving 2
years under house arrest.
(ON, 11/02, p.7)
1895 Jan 10, Benjamin Louis
Paul Godard (45), composer, died.
(MC, 1/10/02)
1895 Jan 13, J.R. Seeley
(b.1834), English essayist and historian, died. His essay Ecce Homo,
published anonymously in 1866, and afterwards acknowledged by him,
was widely read, and prompted many replies, being deemed an attack
on Christianity.
(WSJ, 12/8/08,
p.A17)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Robert_Seeley)
1895 Jan 24, Hawaii’s Queen
Lili’uokalani formally abdicated her throne and swore allegiance to
the Republic of Hawaii.
(AH, 2/05, p.16)
1895 Jan 31, Jose Marti and
others left NYC for invasion of Spanish Cuba.
(MC, 1/31/02)
1895 Feb 1, John Ford was born.
(Sean O’Feeney) (Academy Award-winning director: The Informer
[1935], The Grapes of Wrath [1940], How Green Was My Valley [1941],
The Quiet Man [1952].
(440 Int'l, 2/1/1999)
1895 Feb 2, George Halas,
National Football League co-founder, was born.
(HN, 2/2/99)
1895 Feb 4, The 1st rolling
lift bridge opened in Chicago.
(MC, 2/4/02)
1895 Feb 6, George Herman
"Babe" Ruth, baseball's most dominant player, was born in
Bal-timore. He played with the Boston Red Sox, the New York Yankees
and the Boston Braves and was the first player to hit 60 home runs
in one season.
(USAT, 1/29/97, p.1D)(AP, 2/6/97)(HN, 2/6/99)
1895 cFeb 6, Silas Burroughs
(b.1846), American-born co-founder of the British pharmaceuti-cal
firm Burroughs Wellcome (1880), died in Monte Carlo. His sudden
death made Henry Well-come the sole owner of the company.
(http://tinyurl.com/7jhqv)
1895 Feb 8, Tchaikovsky's "Swan
Lake," premiered in Petersburg.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1895 Feb 9, Volleyball was
invented by W.G. Morgan in Massachusetts. A game called
"min-tonette" was created by William George Morgan, physical
director at the YMCA in Holyoke, Mass., to accommodate players who
thought basketball was too strenuous. The objective was to hit a
basketball over a rope. It was the predecessor to volleyball.
(SFC,11/15/97, p.C4)(HNQ, 11/26/99)(MC, 2/9/02)
1895 Feb 11, Georgetown became
part of Wash, DC.
(MC, 2/11/02)
1895 Feb 13, A moving picture
projector was patented.
(MC, 2/13/02)
1895 Feb 14, Nigel Bruce, actor
(Dr Watson in Sherlock Holmes movies), was born in Baja, Mexico.
(MC, 2/14/02)
1895 Feb 14, Oscar Wilde’s
final play, "The Importance of Being Earnest," opened at the St.
James’ Theatre in London.
(AP, 2/14/98)
1895 Feb 15, 23 cm (9") of snow
fell on New Orleans.
(440 Int’l., 2/15/99)
1895 Feb 18, Semjon Timoshenko,
Russian marshal, inspector-general (WW II), was born.
(MC, 2/18/02)
1895 Feb 20, Frederick Douglass
(77), Abolitionist and escaped slave, died in Washington, D.C. In
1881 Douglass authored "The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass."
(AP, 2/19/98)(MC, 2/20/02)(ON, 7/02, p.8)
1895 Feb 21, The NC Legislature
adjourned for the day to mark the death of Frederick Doug-lass.
(MC, 2/21/02)
1895 Feb 24, The Cuban War of
Independence began. [see Oct 10, 1868]
(HN, 2/24/98)
1895 Feb 26, Michael Owens of
Toledo, OH., patented a glass-blowing machine.
(SC, 2/26/02)
1895 Feb 27, Rudolf von
Eschwege, German fighter pilot with 20 victories in World War I, was
born. He was the only German fighter pilot on the Macedonian Front.
(Internet)
1895 Feb 28, Guiomar Novaes,
pianist (Brazilian Order of Merit), was born in Brazil.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1895 Feb 28, Marcel Pagnol,
French playwright, director (Marchands de Gloire), was born.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1895 Mar 2, Berthe Morisot
(b.1841) French impressionist painter, died of pneumonia.
(NMWA, 12/04, p.10)
1895 Mar 3, General Matthew
Ridgeway, U.S. Army leader in World War II and Korea, was born.
(HN, 3/3/99)
1895 Mar 3, Ragnar Frisch,
economist (1st Nobel prize in economy-1969), was born in Nor-way.
(SC, 3/3/02)
1895 Mar 4, Gustav Mahler's 2nd
Symphony, premiered in Berlin.
(SC, 3/4/02)
1895 Mar 5, Henry Creswicke
Rawlinson (85), soldier and scholar, died in England. In 1835 he had
begun examining the ancient inscriptions on the rock of Behistun in
the Kurdish foothills of the Zagros mountain range and found that
they had been made to honor Darius the Great, Persian ruler in the
5th century BCE. He deciphered text from Old Akkadian cuneiform. In
2004 Lesley Adkins authored “Empires of the Plain: Henry Rawlinson
and the Lost Languages of Babylon.”
(www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/information/biography/pqrst/rawlinson_henry.html)
(ON, 4/04, p.9)(WSJ, 12/21/04, p.D8)
1895 Mar 9, Leopold von
Sacher-Masoch, Austrian writer (Masochism), died.
(MC, 3/9/02)
1895 Mar 15, Bone Mizell, the
famed cowboy of Florida, appeared before a judge for altering cattle
brands.
(HN, 3/15/00)
1895 Mar 15, Fridtjof Nansen
and Hjalmar Johansen left their ship Fram in an attempt to reach the
North Pole by dogsled. [see Jun 17, 1896]
(ON, 7/05, p.5)
1895 Mar 17, Shemp Howard,
comedian (3 Stooges, Bank Dick), was born in Brooklyn.
(MC, 3/17/02)
1895 Mar 18, Some 200 blacks
left Savannah, Ga., for Liberia.
(MC, 3/18/02)
1895 Mar 19, Los Angeles
Railway was established to provide streetcar service.
(MC, 3/19/02)
1895 Mar 22, Auguste and Louis
Lumiere showed their first movie to an invited audience in Paris;
this is generally regarded as the first-ever public display of a
movie projected onto a screen. [see Dec 28] One of their first films
was "L'Arrivee d'un Train en Gare."
(AP, 3/22/97)(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R40)
1895 Mar 24, Arthur Murray,
American dancer, was born.
(HN, 3/24/98)
1895 Mar 26, King Alfonso
planted a pine sapling in Madrid and started Spain's Arbor Day.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1895 Mar 28, Spencer W.
Kimball, 12th Prophet of the Mormon Church, was born.
(HN, 3/28/98)
1895 Mar 31, Vardis A. Fisher,
US author (Darkness & Deep), was born.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1895 Mar 31, John Jay McCloy,
lawyer, banker (Sec of War 1941-45, High Commissioner for Germany,
pres Chase Manhattan), was born.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1895 Mar, In Ireland Bridget
Cleary (26) disappeared from her home in County Tipperary. Her
burned body was found several days later. Her husband, father and
several relatives and friends were charged with murder. Prosecutors
maintained that she was burned because her husband believed her to
be a changeling. In 2000 Angela Bourke authored "The Burning of
Bridget Cleary: A True Story," and Joan Hoff and Marion Yeates
authored ""The Cooper’s Wife Is Missing: The Trials of Bridget
Cleary."
(SFEC, 9/10/00, BR p.5)
1895 Apr 1, Alberta Hunter,
blues singer, was born.
(HN, 4/1/01)
1895 Apr 3, Mario
Castelnuovo-Tedesco, composer, was born in Firenze (Florence),
Italy.
(MC, 4/3/02)
1895 Apr 5, Start of Sherlock
Holmes' "Adventure of 3 Students."
(MC, 4/5/02)
1895 Apr 5, Playwright Oscar
Wilde lost his criminal libel case against the Marquess of
Queensberry, who’d accused the writer of homosexual practices.
(AP, 4/5/97)
1895 Apr 11, Anaheim, Ca.,
completed it's new electric light system.
(MC, 4/11/02)
1895 Apr 13, Start of Sherlock
Holmes "Adventure of Solitary Cyclist."
(MC, 4/13/02)
1895 Apr 14, 1st performance of
Gustav Mahler's (incomplete) 2nd Symphony.
(MC, 4/14/02)
1895 Apr 15, Josephine Blatt of
the US made a record hip-and-harness lift of 3564 lb.
(MC, 4/15/02)
1895 Apr 17, China and Japan
signed the peace treaty of Shimonoseki. This followed a war over
control of the Korean peninsula.
(HN, 4/17/98)(Econ, 1/15/05, Survey p.4)
1895 Apr 23, Russia, France,
and Germany forced Japan to return the Liaodong peninsula to China.
(HN, 4/23/99)
1895 Apr 24, Joshua Slocum
(1844-1909), a Canadian-American sailor, began a voyage around the
world from Boston in a 37-foot rebuilt fishing boat called the
Spray. He ended on Jun 27, 1898, at Newport, Rhode Island. His
record was not beaten until 1938. In 1899 Slocum authored "Sailing
Alone Around the World."
(www.millicentlibrary.org/slocum.htm)(WSJ,
3/9/00, p.A27)(WSJ, 6/21/08, p.W8)
1895 Apr 24, S. Constantine
Timoshenko, Russian marshal, people's commissioner, was born.
(MC, 4/24/02)
1895 Apr 29, Malcolm Sargent,
English conductor (Promenade Concerts), was born.
(MC, 4/29/02)
1895 May 2, Lorenz Milton Hart,
lyricist, collaborator with Richard Rodgers.
(HN, 5/2/02)
1895 May 6, Legendary
silent-screen star Rudolph Valentino was born in Castellaneta,
Italy.
(AP, 5/6/97)
1895 May 8, Edmund Wilson,
American critic and essayist, was born.
(HN, 5/7/02)
1895 May 8, China ceded Taiwan
to Japan under the Apr 17 Treaty of Shimonoseki. This fol-lowed a
war over control of the Korean peninsula. Japan began administering
the Senkaku Is-lands between Okinawa and Taiwan following the Treaty
of Shimonoseki. Japanese occupation ended in 1945. The US took over
after WW II but returned them to Japan in 1972. China later disputed
Japanese control of the islands.
(SFEC, 10/8/96, A8)(Econ, 1/15/05, Survey
p.4)(SSFC, 2/18/07, p.G5)(Econ, 9/25/10, p.54)
1895 May 11, William Grant
Still was born. He is considered the Dean of black African
com-posers.
(HN, 5/11/99)
1895 May 19, Johns Hopkins,
merchant and philanthropist, was born.
(HN, 5/19/01)
1895 May 20, The 1st commercial
movie performance was at 153 Broadway in NYC.
(MC, 5/20/02)
1895 May 20, The US income tax
was declared unconstitutional.
(SFEC, 1/25/98, Z1 p.8)
1895 May 23, The New York
Public Library had its origins with an agreement combining the
city’s existing Astor and Lenox libraries.
(HFA, ‘96, p.30)(AP, 5/23/97)
1895 May 24, Samuel I.
Newhouse, US millionaire publisher (Parade, Vogue, Glamour), was
born.
(HN, 5/24/98)(MC, 5/24/02)
1895 May 25, Playwright Oscar
Wilde was convicted of a morals charge in London; he was sentenced
to two years in prison.
(AP, 5/25/08)
1895 May 25, Ahmed Djevdet
Pasja (73), Turkish minister of Justice, died.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1895 May 26, Dorothea Lange,
documentary photographer, was born.
(HN, 5/26/01)
1895 May 26, Paul Lukas, actor
(Watch on the Rhine, Sphynx), was born in Budapest, Hun-gary.
(MC, 5/26/02)
1895 May, Newspaper cartoonist
Richard Felton Outcault introduced a new and "distinctly dif-ferent"
cartoon to the readers of Joseph Pulitzer's New York World. "At the
Circus in Hogan's Alley" set the standard for modern newspaper comic
strips with a zany cast of recurring charac-ters in boisterous plots
printed in a color supplement. Americans loved the cartoon,
especially the character Mickey Dugan, the goofy-looking boy
described as having big ears, a gap-toothed grin and a long yellow
nightshirt. By the summer of 1896, "The Yellow Kid" was so closely
iden-tified with Pulitzer's newspaper that the term "yellow
journalism" was coined to describe the new style of sensationalistic
reporting that characterized the World and many of its competitors.
(HN, 5/18/99)
1895 Jun 4, Dino Conte Grandi,
Italy’s delegate to League of Nations, was born.
(HN, 6/4/98)
1895 Jun 10, Hattie McDaniel
was born in Wichita, Kansas. She was the first African-American
actress to win an Oscar which she won for her role as a maid in Gone
With the Wind.
(www.imdb.com/name/nm0567408/)
1895 Jun 11, Nikolai A.
Bulganin, premier of the Soviet Union from 1955 to 1958, was born.
(HN, 6/11/99)
1895 Jun 11, Charles E. Duryea
received the first U.S. patent granted to an American inven-tor for
a gasoline-driven automobile.
(HN, 6/11/98)
1895 Jun 24, Jack Dempsey,
American boxer, was born. He later became world heavyweight champion
with a record of 62-1-0 and 49knockouts.
(HN, 6/24/99)
1895 Jul 4, The words to
"America the Beautiful" appeared for the first time in "The
Congre-gationalist", a Boston magazine; the author was Katherine Lee
Bates (1819-1910), a Wellesley professor, who penned it in 1893. It
has often been suggested that this song be adopted as the national
anthem of the US since it is easier to sing than the "The Star
Spangled Banner." In 1904 Clarence Barbour adapted it to the melody
of Samuel Ward’s “Materna” (1890). Bates’ fi-nal version was
completed in 1911. In 2001 Lynn Sherr authored "America the
Beautiful."
(WSJ, 9/28/01, p.W13)(SSFC, 10/21/01, Par
p.8)(AH, 10/04, p.26)
1895 Jul 5, Gordon Jacob,
composer (William Byrd Suite), was born.
(MC, 7/5/02)
1895 Jul 10, Carl Orff,
composer (Carmina Burana/Antigonae; Mozart prize 1969), was born in
Munich, Germany.
(MC, 7/10/02)
1895 Jul 12, Kirsten Flagstad,
Norwegian opera singer, was born.
(HN, 7/12/01)
1895 Jul 12, R. Buckminster
Fuller (d.1983), architect and engineer, was born. "The more we
learn the more we realize how little we know."
(AP, 7/1/97)(HN, 7/12/01)
1895 Jul 12, Oscar Hammerstein
II, lyricist who worked with Richard Rodgers, was born in NYC.
(MC, 7/12/02)
1895 Jul 14, William Leefe
Robinson, the first man to win the Victoria Cross for shooting down
a German Zeppelin, was born.
(HN, 7/14/98)
1895 Jul 15, Stephen Stambulov,
ex-prime minister of Bulgaria was murdered by Macedonian rebels.
(HN, 7/15/98)
1895 Jul 24, Robert Graves,
poet and novelist (Goodbye to All That, I Claudius), was born.
(HN, 7/24/02)
1895 Jul 26, Gracie Allen,
vaudeville, screen, radio and television personality, wife and foil
of George Burns, was born.
(HN, 7/26/01)
1895 Aug 5, Friedrich Engels
(b.1820), English socialist who collaborated with Karl Marx on “The
Communist Manifesto” (1848) and “Das Kapital” (1867), died. Engels
had edited the sec-ond and third volumes of Das Kapital after Marx's
death (1883). In 2009 Tristram Hunt authored “Marx’s General: The
Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Engels)
1895 Aug 10, The 1st Queen's
Hall Promenade Concert featured Wagner's "Rienzi."
(MC, 8/10/02)
1895 Aug 19, John Wesley Hardin
was gunned down.
(MesWP)
1895 Aug 20, Start of Sherlock
Holmes "Adventure of Norwood Builder."
(MC, 8/20/02)
1895 Aug 24, Richard Cushing,
the director of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, was
born.
(HN, 8/24/98)
1895 Sep 3, The first
professional American football game was played in Latrobe,
Pennsyl-vania between the Latrobe Young Men’s Christian Association
and the Jeannette Athletic Club. Latrobe wins 12-0.
(HN, 9/3/00)
1895 Sep 8, Adam Opel (58),
German manufacturer of sewing machines and bicycles, died. In 1899
the firm acquired a car factory.
(MC, 9/8/01)(www.histomobile.com)
1895 Sep 17, Ethiopia’s Emperor
Menelik II issued a mobilization proclamation calling on men to
gather to resist the Italian army.
(ON, 2/11, p.7)
1895 Sep 18, John G.
Diefenbaker, conservative prime minister (13th) of Canada from 1957
to 1963, was born in Neustadt, Ontario.
(HN, 9/18/98)(MC, 9/18/01)
1895 Sep 18, D.D. Palmer of
Davenport, Iowa, founded the 1st "college" of chiropractic near a
duck farm in Iowa.
(MC, 9/18/01)
1895 Sep 18, The Montana State
Capital Site Commission received the four property deeds from
developer Peter Winne for the new seat of government in Helena.
(HIR, 9/11/97, p.5A)
1895 Sep 21, Juan de la Cierva,
aeronautical engineer who invented the autogyro, was born.
(HN, 9/21/98)
1895 Sep 21, The Duryea Motor
Wagon Company, the 1st auto manufacturer, opened.
(MC, 9/21/01)
1895 Sep 22, Paul Muni, actor
(Academy Award 1936-Angel on My Shoulder), was born in Juarez.
(MC, 9/22/01)
1895 Sep 28, Louis Pasteur
(b.1822), French chemist (Pasteurization), died at 72. In 1995
Gerald Geison (d.2001) authored "The Private Science of Louis
Pasteur.
(SFC, 7/13/01, p.D6)(MC, 9/28/01)
1895 Oct 1, Romanians in
Constantinople were massacred.
(MC, 10/1/01)
1895 Oct 2, The 1st cartoon
comic strip was printed in a newspaper. [see May, 1895]
(MC, 10/2/01)
1895 Oct 4, Buster Keaton
(Joseph F. Keaton), star of silent film comedies including
Sher-lock, Jr. and The General, was born in Piqua, Kan. He is
considered a legendary presence in the history of cinema. Nicknamed
'The Great Stone Face', he graduated to full-length films in the
1920s, which featured his amazing stunts rivaled only by Chaplin.
(AP, 10/4/97)(HN, 10/4/98)(MC, 10/4/01)
1895 Oct 4, Hattie McDaniel,
actress (Gone With the Wind, Academy Award), was born.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1895 Oct 4, Richard Sorge,
German spy for USSR in Tokyo (WW II), was born.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1895 Oct 4, The first U.S. Open
golf tournament was held, at the Newport Country Club in Rhode
Island. At the US Amateur Golf Championship at Newport, R.I.,
officials ruled against the prone position use of a pool cue to sink
a put.
(AP, 10/4/97)(SFC, 11/29/97, p.C3)
1895 Oct 6, Caroline Gordon,
writer, was born. Her work included "The Strange Children."
(HN, 10/6/00)
1895 Oct 8, Juan Peron,
Argentinean dictator, was born. He served as President from
1946-55 and 1973-74.
(HN, 10/8/98)(MC, 10/8/01)
1895 Oct 17, Doris Humphrey,
modern dance choreographer, was born.
(HN, 10/17/00)
1895 Oct 19, Lewis Mumford,
American social critic who wrote "The City in History," was born.
(HN, 10/19/98)
1895 Oct 22, David Belasco's
"Heart of Maryland," premiered in NYC.
(MC, 10/22/01)
1895 Oct 31, Basil H. Liddell
Hart, English military historian and publicist, was born.
(MC, 10/31/01)
1895 Nov 2, In San Francisco
the Chutes amusement park first opened on Haight Street, fea-turing
the shoot-the-chutes water slide. It relocated to Fulton Street and
10th Avenue in 1902 and was extremely popular right after the 1906
earthquake and fire, because it was the only amusement park and
theater that survived. In the post-quake years, Fillmore Street
became the entertainment area, with numerous nickelodeons and other
attractions. The Chutes on Fulton Street closed after New Years Eve,
1908, and reopened on Fillmore and Turk Streets on July 14, 1909,
but without the shoot-the-chutes. The New Chutes offered a host of
other amusement attractions and soon built a first class vaudeville
Theater, where in 1910, Sophie Tucker revived her career after being
black-balled by Flo Ziegfeld back in New York. The New Chutes would
burn on the Memorial Day weekend of the opening of the Summer
season, on May 29, 1911, the same weekend that Dreamland at Coney
Island would be destroyed on the other side of the continent. The
theater was saved, but the entire wooden Chutes amusement park was
de-stroyed and never reopened.
(AJSF, Vol. 14. No. 2, Winter, 2003)
1895 Nov 5, Walter Gieseking,
German pianist and composer, was born.
(MC, 11/5/01)
1895 Nov 5, US state of Utah
accepted female suffrage.
(MC, 11/5/01)
1895 Nov 5, George B. Selden of
Rochester, N.Y., received the first U.S. patent for an "im-proved
Road Engine."
(AP, 11/5/07)
1895 Nov 5, King Edward VII
said "We are all Socialists nowadays."
(MC, 11/5/01)
1895 Nov 8, Wilhelm Konrad von
Röntgen (50), German physicist, discovered X-rays.
(ON, 11/04,
p.6)(www.slac.stanford.edu/pubs/beamline/25/2/25-2-assmus.pdf)
1895 Nov 10, John Knudsen
Northrop, aircraft designer (Northrop Air), was born.
(MC, 11/10/01)
1895 Nov 13, 1st shipment of
canned pineapple from Hawaii.
(MC, 11/13/01)
1895 Nov 16, Paul Hindemith
(d.1963), composer and violinist, was born in Hanau, Germany. His
work included "Cardillac."
(WUD, 1994, p.672)(WSJ, 8/20/96, p.A8)(MC,
11/16/01)
1895 Nov 17, Grace Carolyn
Swanson, the mother of future Playboy Magazine publisher Hugh
Hefner, was born in Holdrege, Nebraska.
(SFC, 3/22/97, p.A21)
1895 Nov 19, Frederick E.
Blaisdell patented the pencil.
(MC, 11/19/01)
1895 Nov 25, Wilhelm Kempff,
pianist (Unter dem Zimbelstern), was born in Juterbog, Ger-many.
(MC, 11/25/01)
1895 Nov 26, Bertil Lindblad,
Swedish astronomer (Milky Way system), was born.
(MC, 11/26/01)
1895 Nov 26, Hawaiian Sugar
Planters Assn. formed.
(MC, 11/26/01)
1895 Nov 27, Alfred Nobel,
explosives magnate, signed his last will and testament at the
Swedish-Norwegian Club in Paris, setting aside his estate to
establish the Nobel Prize after his death (see Dec 10, 1896). He
named Ragnar Sohlman (25), his favorite lab assistant, as his
executor and Rudolf Lilljequist as co-executor.
(http://nobelprize.org/alfred_nobel/will/will-full.html)(ON, 4/07,
p.6)
1895 Nov 28, Jose Iturbi,
pianist (Pequena danza Espanola), was born in Valencia, Spain.
(MC, 11/28/01)
1895 Nov 28, America's first
auto race between gasoline-powered automobiles was staged on
Thanksgiving Day. The race, sponsored by the Chicago Times Herald,
was to be run along a 52-mile course of muddy, frozen streets from
Jackson Park to Waukegan, Illinois. The race at-tracted 80 entries
but only six starters. James Franklin Duryea drove his brother’s car
(Charles Edgar Duryea) in the first automobile race from Chicago to
Waukegan over 52 miles of snowy roads at an average 7.5 mph. He
collected $2,000 from the Chicago Times-Herald. It took him 7 hours
and 53 minutes to complete the round trip. The average speed was 7
mph. 80 cars en-tered the race, 6 started and 2 finished. J. Frank
Duryea, driving the Duryea at an average speed of 5 mph, crossed the
finish line 10 hours and 23 minutes after the start. One other
par-ticipant was forced to drop out of the race, suffering from
hypothermia.
(SFC, 5/17/97, p.E3)(AP, 11/28/97)(DTnet,
11/28/97)(HNPD, 11/28/98)
1895 Nov 29, Busby Berkeley,
director, was born. His work included "42nd Street."
(HN, 11/29/00)
1895 Dec 7, Sir Milton Margay,
first Prime Minister of Sierra Leone, was born.
(HN, 12/7/98)
1895 Dec 14, Britain’s King
George VI (d.1952), was born. He rule from 1936-1952.
(HN, 12/14/98)(MC, 12/14/01)
1895 Dec 17, Anti-Saloon League
of America was formed in Washington, DC.
(MC, 12/17/01)
1895 Dec 28, The French Lumiere
Brothers showed the first commercial moving pictures in Paris to a
small audience of around 40 people. This event is considered to mark
the birth of the movie industry.
(NPR, 12/28/95)
1895 Frank Raymond Leavis,
English literary critic, was born. He edited the journal "Scrutiny."
In 1997 Ian McKillop published his biography: "F.R. Leavis: A Life
in Criticism."
(WSJ, 6/10/97, p.A16)
1895 English landscape painter
Francis Barraud painted "His Master’s Voice." The work fea-tured his
dog, Nipper, listening to a gramophone. It was commissioned by the
Gramophone Co. The Philadelphia Victor Talking machine Co. acquired
rights to use it as a trademark and it first appeared in the US in
1903.
(SFC, 2/19/96, zz-1 p.2)
c1895 Degas painted "Jockeys."
(SFEC, 6/21/98, BR p.8)
c1895 Elizabeth Jane Gardner,
American artist, painted “The Shepherd David” and exhibited it at
the Paris Salon of 1895. She was the 1st American woman to exhibit
in the Paris Salon.
(NMWA, 12/04, p.28)
1895 Ethel Reed, graphic
artist, designed the cover for the Arabella & Araminta Stories.
(Smith., 5/95, p.36, illus.)
1895 John Singer Sargent
painted "Mrs. Carl Meyer and Her Children."
(WSJ, 2/16/00, p.A14)
1895 Kate Sowerby painted "A
Portrait of a Bulldog."
(SFEM, 10/18/98, p.15)
1895 A Parisian artist and 5
assistants completed a 15,400-sq.-foot circular painting of
Jeru-salem at the moment of Christ’s crucifixion after 4 years of
work. It went on display at the St. Anne Museum in St. Anne de
Beaupre, Quebec.
(SSFC, 1/21/01, p.T10)
1895 The American best seller
book list 1st appeared. Fiction by George du Maurier and Ar-thur
Conan Doyle appeared on the list.
(WSJ, 12/20/01, p.A1)
1895 Stephen Crane (b.1871)
published "The Red Badge of Courage."
(SFEC, 8/23/98, BR p.3)
1895 Theodore Fontane
(1819-1898), German novelist and poet, authored Effi Briest, the
last of the great 19th-century novels of adultery.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effi_Briest)
1895 Thomas Hardy published
"Jude the Obscure." "The bold sexual content of Jude caused a
Victorian outcry that prompted Hardy to abandon narrative writing
for verse."
(V.D.-H.K.p.279)(SFC, 11/1/96, p.C3)
1895 H.G. Wells wrote "The Time
Machine." In 1960 it was made into a film.
(NH, 4/97, p.6)(NH, 4/97, p.7)
1895 George Whitefield
Chadwick, composer and long time director of the New England
Con-servatory of Music, began work on the first of 4 "Symphonic
Sketches," completed in 1904.
(SFC, 2/3/97, p.D3)
1895 A.A.B. Peterson, aka Banjo
Paterson, (1864-1941) wrote his poem Waltzing Matilda while on
holiday in Queensland, Australia. The name referred to a slang term
for drifting around the outback with a bedroll (your matilda) slung
over the shoulder. Christina Macpherson adopted the poem to the
Scottish tune “Thou Bonnie Wood o’ Craigielea.” He later had his
im-age pictured on Australia's $10 bill.
(SFEC, 5/30/99, Z1 p.8)(NG, 8/04, p.24)
1895 Oscar Wilde wrote his play
"An Ideal Husband."
(WSJ, 5/9/96, p.A-16)(WSJ, 9/16/98, p.A20)
1895 Henry James was hissed by
a theater audience at the presentation of his first and only play.
Cynthia Ozick described the event in an essay in her 1996 book:
"Fame & Folly."
(WSJ, 5/22/96, p.A-18)
1895 John Philip Sousa composed
his march "El Capitan."
(SI-WPC, 12/6/96)
1895 The National Trust started
in the Lake District of NY state to "hold places of national
in-terest and natural beauty for the benefit of the nation."
(SFCM, 3/17/02, p.18)
1895 The first Mormon
missionaries went to Russia.
(SFC, 3/21/98, p.A12)
1895 The Biltmore House in
Asheville N.C. boasted all the new electrical conveniences.
(WSJ, 10/25/96, p.B10)
1895 Cornelius Vanderbilt built
his 70-room mansion, the Breakers, in Newport, Rhode Island.
[Cornelius died in 1877, it must have been William]
(USAT, 5/8/98, p.3D)
1895 Booker T. Washington
addressed a crowd at an exposition in Atlanta and expounded on the
need for self-reliance among Blacks.
(WSJ, 11/16/98, p.A36)
1895 The first pizza joint in
Manhattan opened for business.
(Hem., Nov.’95, p.129)
1895 Emile Levassor won the
Paris to Bordeaux auto race. Later in auto racing a yellow flag with
a red stripe came to mean oil on the track.
(SFC, 8/24/96, p.E1)(SFC, 7/3/97, p.D4)
1895 US Congress passed
corrective legislation for the counterfeiting or possession of
coun-terfeit stamps.
(http://www.ustreas.gov/usss/history.shtml)
1895 Captain Michael A. Healy
(b.1839) was stripped of his command in the US Revenue Cutter
Service and his position with the Arctic Patrol, in which he served
for 21 years. During his service he ferried reindeer across the
Bering Strait to Alaska provide a food source for the Inuit.
(SFC, 4/15/05, p.E15)
1895 The New York Stock
Exchange first proposed that companies distribute an annual
statement of earnings to shareholders.
(WSJ, 1/8/96, p.C-1)
c1895 Capital flows between
Europe and America reversed with a net credit to America. In 2003
Thomas Kessner authored "Capital City," the story of New York’s rise
to a world financial center.
(WSJ, 4/2/03, p.D8)
1895 George Henderson founded
Dorchester Pottery outside Boston. Charles A. Hill, his
brother-in-law, was the plant manager and decorator. It went out of
business in 1979.
(SFC, 6/17/98, Z1 p.3)(SFC, 12/26/07, p.G3)
1895 Diebold Co. introduced its
Tisco time lock and safe. It was advertised as “anti-dynamite” and
production continued to 1900.
(WSJ, 12/2/06, p.P9)
1895 William Randolph Hearst
(1863-1951) bought the New York Morning Journal for $180,000 and
moved from SF to NYC. He soon renamed it the New York Journal. In
2008 Ken-neth Whyte authored “The Uncrowned King: The Sensational
Rise of William Randolph Hearst,” an account of Heart’s first three
years in NYC.
(SFEM, 11/8/98, p.16)(SFC, 8/7/99, p.A9)(WSJ,
12/27/08, p.W8)
1895 Sears Roebuck issued its
1st catalog. Within 2 years it was advertising 6,000 items.
(WSJ, 12/17/03, p.B1)
c1895 John E. Wells was editor
and publisher of the Caldwell (Kansas) Weekly Advance.
(SFEC, 3/8/98, BR p.1)
1895 King Camp Gilette imagined
an inexpensive double-edged razor that could be discarded after a
few shaves.
(WSJ, 2/13/98, p.A13)
1895 Charlie Fey, a German
immigrant, sold the first Liberty Bell nickel slot machine, to a San
Francisco saloon keeper.
(SFEC, 5/30/99, Z1 p.8)
1895 By this year the US
produced more steel than did Great Britain.
(WSJ, 5/28/96, p. R-26)
1895 Bastian Brothers was
founded in Rochester, NY, as a jewelry store. It later expanded to
manufacture custom award pins, medals and similar items.
(SFC, 5/21/08, p.G7)
c1895 In Chicago the Fairbank’s
Company introduced “Fairbank’s Fairy Soap.” The brand dis-appeared
in the 1930’s when the company was bought out. Nathaniel Kellogg
Fairbank had be-gun producing soap following his involvement in the
lard-rending business in the 1880s.
(SFC, 5/4/05, p.G5)
1895 The Montgomery Ward
catalog offered the game of Tiddledy Winks for 20 cents.
(WSJ, 12/17/03, p.B1)
1895 The J&E Stevens Co.
began making Rival toy stoves. The mass-produced cast-iron toys were
sold with a coal bucket, a tea kettle, frying pan and cooking pot.
The company was in business until the 1930s.
(SFC, 3/19/97, z1 p.3)
1895 The US Bowling Congress
began keeping league records.
(WSJ, 5/24/08, p.A7)
1895 US Cordage failed and was
again reorganized. Standard Rope & Twine eventually be-came
successor to its operations.
(WSJ, 5/28/96, R46)
1895 In Wisconsin Frank Grove,
James Clark, J. Howard Jenkins and George Jones co-founded OshKosh
B’Gosh.
(SSFC, 8/20/06, p.M4)
1895 Philosopher John Dewey
founded the Dept. of Education at the Univ. of Chicago. Clo-sure of
the dept. was announced in 1997.
(MT, Fall. ‘97, p.19)
1895 Prof. Emile Pierre van
Ermengem of Belgium identified the bacterium Bacillus botulinus.
(NW, 5/13/02, p.54)
1895 While searching for gold
in Montana’s Yogo Gulch, Jake Hoover found sapphires. Hoo-ver found
little gold in the Yogo Creek and Gulch, however, the small,
translucent blue pebbles that frequently cluttered the riffles of
his sluice box turned out to be gem-quality sapphires. From 1898 to
1923, the Yogo Dike yielded 16 million carats of sapphire-2.4
million carats of gem quality.
(HNQ, 5/13/98)
1895 Richard Wetherill, a young
cowboy and amateur archeologist, discovered the Keet Seel Anasazi
ruins in northern Arizona. Shards of broken pottery marked the site
and some say that Keet Seel in Navajo means "place of broken
pottery."
(Hem., 5/97, p.80)
1895 John Hardin (b1853),
gunslinger, was shot in the back of the head by gunslinger, John
Selman. Hardin used a .38 caliber Colt six-shooter and killed 44 men
during his life. The book "The last Gunslinger" by Richard C. Marohn
tells his story.
(SFC, 10/12/96, p.E1,3)
1895 Etienne Leopold Trouvelot
(b.1827), French artist, amateur entomologist and immigrant to the
US, died. In 1869 he imported gypsy-moth eggs to set up a silk
production project in the backyard of his Medford, Mass., home. The
moth became a national pest.
(WSJ, 5/1/01, p.A24)(SSFC, 5/22/05, Par p.4)
1895 Paul Otlet (1868-1944),
Belgian librarian, met future Nobel Prize winner Henri La Fontaine,
who joined him in planning to create the Mundaneum, a master
bibliography of all the world’s published knowledge. Otlet and
LaFontaine eventually persuaded the Belgian govern-ment to support
their project, proposing to build a “city of knowledge” that would
bolster the government’s bid to become host of the League of
Nations.
(www.nytimes.com/2008/06/17/science/17mund.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&emc=eta1)
1895 Chinese authorities
discovered a consignment of some 1000 revolvers hidden in casks of
cement that had been shipped by the Scientific Agricultural Society,
a group organized by Sun Yat-sen aiming to overthrow the Qing
emperor.
(ON, 10/08, p.6)
1895 Winston Churchill was
garrisoned in Havana, Cuba, and began smoking cigars at age 22. On
leave for several months from his unit, the 4th Hussars, he reported
on the events for the Daily Graphic.
(SFEM, 12/15/96, p.15)(HNQ, 1/25/01)
1895 In Paris, France, the
Castel Beranger at 14 Rue la Fontaine, designed by Hector Gui-mard
(1867-1942), was completed. The Art Nouveau building was nicknamed
“Castel Derange” (Mad Castle).
(WSJ, 1/6/06, p.P16)
1895 The Central Market Hall
was built in Budapest, Hungary.
(Sm, 3/06, p.82)
1895 Bank Rakyat (BRI) was
founded by the Dutch in Indonesia as an institution for the elite.
In 1983 the state bank reorganized and began lending successfully to
poor people.
(Econ, 11/5/05, Survey p.10)
1895 The Venice Biennale was
launched as a display for decorative arts.
(Econ, 6/11/11,
p.84)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venice_Biennale)
1895 The Heian Shrine was built
in Kyoto, Japan as a 2/3 replica of the Imperial Palace. It was
built to commemorate the 1,100th anniversary of Kyoto and exhibits
regal Heian architec-ture.
(Hem., 2/96, p.57)
1895 Japan’s Nara National
Museum was established.
(Hem, 9/04, p.46)
1895 Modern-day Kenya became
part of the British East African Protectorate.
(WSJ, 1/30/08, p.A18)
1895 Work began on a rail line
between Nairobi and Mombasa, Kenya, and became the Lu-natic Express
from media speculation that the planners were insane. [see 1905]
(SSFC, 12/22/02, p.C4)(AP, 10/19/05)
1895 In Nigeria a massacre
occurred in Nembe over palm oil.
(SFC, 9/30/98, p.A10)
1895 In Senegal French
authorities, fearing his growing influence, exiled religious leader
Sheikh Ahmadou Bamba to their other colonial holdings in West
Africa.
(AP, 4/22/03)
1895 Abdullah Hassan, the “Mad
Mullah” of Somaliland, returned from a pilgrimage to Mecca with
inspiration to defy the British in emulation of the Mahdi in Sudan.
(Econ, 8/26/06, p.20)
1895 In South Africa Barney
Barnato, a mining magnate, bought a block of land at the corner of
Eloff and Commissioner streets in Johannesburg to develop a
world-class hotel. His untimely death and the Boer War delayed the
opening of the Carlton Hotel to 1906.
(SFEC, 5/31/98, p.A22)
1895 Cecil Rhodes supported the
Jameson Raid to help rebellious British settlers in the Dutch
Transvaal.
(WSJ, 7/11/03, p.W19)
1895-1896 Prince Henri d’Orleans encountered the
dwarf T’rung people of Burma during a journey to the sources of the
Irrawaddy River.
(CW, Fall ‘03, p.9)
1895-1905 The Central Station of Antwerp, Belgium,
was built. It looks like a Baroque church and is often referred to
as the Railway Cathedral.
(www.aviewoncities.com/antwerp/centralstation.htm)
1895-1935 The C.A. Lehmann & son Co. ran a
porcelain factory in Kuhla, Thuringia.
(SFC, 8/19/98, Z1 p.6)
1895-1937 Ninety-three men were hanged at
California’s Folsom Prison.
(SFEC, 1/26/97, p.B4)
1895-1946 Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Bauhaus member,
founds new Bauhaus in Chicago.
(V.D.-H.K.p.363)
1895-1956 Michael Arlen, English novelist: "Any
man should be happy who is allowed the patience of his wife, the
tolerance of his children and the affection of waiters."
(AP, 9/27/98)
1895-1972 Edmund Wilson, American literary critic,
becomes a major literary figure for his analysis of writers such as
Hemingway, Eliot, Joyce, Lawrence, James, Fitzgerald, and other
modern-ists.
(WSJ, 4/26/95, p.A-14)
1895-1978 William Grant Still, the first important
black symphonic composer.
(WSJ, 12/9/98, p.A20)
1895-1979 Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, American
religious leader: "Freedom is the right to do what you ought to do."
(AP, 5/22/00)
1895-1982 Anna Freud, Austrian-born
psychoanalyst: "Creative minds always have been known to survive any
kind of bad training."
(AP, 5/12/98)
1895-1985 Robert Graves, English poet: "There's no
money in poetry, but then there's no poetry in money either."
(AP, 4/8/99)
1895-1986 Jiddu Krishnamurti, Indian author and
philosopher: "To seek fulfillment is to invite frus-tration."
(AP, 6/19/98)
1895-1991 Martha Graham, founder of the Graham
Modern Dance Company.
(WSJ, 11/21/95, p.A-12)
1896 Jan 4, Utah was
admitted to the Union as the 45th state.
(AP, 1/4/98)
1896 Jan 5, An Austrian
newspaper (Wiener Presse) reported the discovery by German physicist
Wilhelm Roentgen of a type of radiation that came to be known as
"X-rays."
(AP, 1/5/98)
1896 Jan 7, Fanny Farmer
published her 1st cookbook.
(MC, 1/7/02)
1896 Jan 8, Jaromir Weinberger,
composer (Bird's Opera, Schwanda der Duddelsacpfeifer), was born in
Prague, Czechoslovakia.
(MC, 1/8/02)
1896 Jan 12, The 1st X-ray
photo on record in the US was made by Dr. Henry Louis Smith at
Davidson, NC. Dr. Henry Smith shot a bullet into the hand of a dead
human body and made a 15 minute x-ray exposure to reveal the bullet.
(SFEC, 6/14/98, Z1 p.8)(MC, 1/12/02)
1896 Jan 15, Matthew B. Brady
(73), US Civil War photographer, died in the charity ward of a New
York hospital at age 73. His project "Gallery of Illustrious
Americans" included many lead-ing figures of his time. In 1955 James
D. Horan authored "Matthew Brady, Historian with a Camera." In 1946
Roy Meredith authored "Mr. Lincoln’s Camera man, Matthew B. Brady."
(ON, 1/00, p.12)(ON, 12/06, p.10)
1896 Jan 20, George Burns
(d.3/9/96), vaudeville comedian and actor, was born Nathan Birn-baum
in New York City. He hosted radio and television show with his wife
Gracie Allen before going into movies like The Sunshine Boys. "By
the time you're 80 years old, you've learned eve-rything. You only
have to remember it."
(WSJ, 3/11/96, p. A1)(AP, 1/20/98)(HN, 1/20/99)
1896 Feb 1, The first
production of Puccini’s opera "La Boheme" was performed in Turin.
(SFC, 5/26/96, SFEM p.4)(AP, 2/1/97)
1896 Feb 8, Georges Feydeau's
"Le Dindon," premiered in Paris.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1896 Feb 11, Oscar Wilde's
"Salome," premiered in Paris.
(MC, 2/11/02)
1896 Feb 14, Theodor Herzl
published "Der Judenstaat."
(MC, 2/14/02)
1896 Feb 18, Andre Breton
(d.1966), French writer, founder and principal provocateur of the
surrealist movement, was born. An exhaustive biography was published
in 1995 by Mark Poliz-zotti titled: Revolution of the Mind: The Life
of Andre Breton.
(WSJ, 8/1/95, p.A-9)(MC, 2/18/02)
1896 Feb 23, Tootsie Roll was
introduced by Leo Hirschfield.
(MC, 2/23/02)
1896 Feb 28, Philip Showalter
Hench, physician (cortisone-Nobel), was born in Pittsburgh.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1896 Feb 29, A person born on
this day would have celebrated their first birthday in 1904. The
year 1896 was a leap year, thus February had 29 days. The next leap
year was not until 1904. Leap years, which have 366 days instead of
the common 365, are those years divisible by four, except centesimal
(those ending in 00) years unless they are divisible by 400.
Therefore, three of every four centesimal years are common years,
including 1900.
(HN, 2/29/00)
1896 Feb, Teddy Roosevelt,
Police Commissioner of NYC, closed all the police lodging houses on
the advice of Jacob A. Riis (1849-1914), Danish-born author and
photographer.
(WSJ, 8/25/08, p.A11)
1896 Feb, Georges Melies, a
French professional magician, purchased a film projector from Robert
Paul, an English camera maker. He then designed his own camera based
on the projec-tor and began making movies in March.
(ON, 1/00, p.8)
1896 Mar 1, The Battle of Adowa
(Adwa, Adua) began in Ethiopia between the 80,000 forces of Negus
Menelik, Emperor Menelik II, and 18-20,000 Italian troops. The
Italians suffered a crushing defeat with some 6,000 killed. Menalik
II and his wife Taitu led Ethiopia to independ-ence from Italy. In
2000 Haile Gerima made a 90 minute documentary of the event, "Adwa:
An African Victory."
(WSJ, 5/16/96, p.A-12)(AP, 3/1/98)(SFC, 5/15/00,
p.D3)(Econ, 2/26/11, p.89)(ON, 2/11, p.9)
1896 Mar 2, Bone Mizell, the
famed cowboy of Florida, was sentenced to two years of hard labor in
the state pen for cattle rustling. He would only serve a small
portion of the sentence.
(HN, 3/2/00)
1896 Mar 6, Charles B. King
rode his "Horseless Carriage," the 1st auto in Detroit.
(MC, 3/6/02)
1896 Mar 7, Gilbert and
Sullivan's last operetta "Grand Duke," premiered in London.
(MC, 3/7/02)
1896 Mar 10, Bob Fitzsimmons
KO’d much larger Jim Corbett to win world Heavy Weight championship
and said, "The bigger they are, the harder they fall."
(MC, 3/10/02)
1896 Mar 13, The 1st
telephone station in Vilnius began operating.
(LHC, 3/13/03)
1896 Mar 17, Adolph Ochs in
Tennessee received a telegram from Harry Alloway that the New York
Times available for acquisition.
(SFEM, 1/16/00, p.17)
1896 Mar 20, U.S. Marines
landed in Nicaragua to protect U.S. citizens in the wake of a
revo-lution.
(AP, 3/20/97)
1896 Mar 23, Umberto Giordano's
opera "Andrea Chénier" premiered in Milan.
(SS, 3/23/02)
1896 Mar 25, The 1st modern
Olympic Games officially opened in Athens. Greece was on the old
Julian calendar at this time. The revival was masterminded by Baron
Pierre de Coubertin of France. [see Apr 6]
(Econ, 5/29/04, p.81)(www.forthnet.gr/olympics)
1896 Mar 28, The opera "Andrea
Chenier," by Umberto Giordano, premiered in Milan, Italy.
(AP, 3/28/97)
1896 Mar, Brahms spent time in
Vienna with the Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg.
(BLW, Geiringer, 1963 ed.p.193)
1896 Apr 2, Theodore Robinson
(b.1852), American Impressionist painter, died in NYC.
(WSJ, 10/1/04,
p.W2)(http://97.1911encyclopedia.org)
1896 Apr 4, Arthur Murray,
ballroom dance instructor, was born.
(HN, 4/4/01)
1896 Apr 4, Robert Sherwood,
playwright, was born.
(HN, 4/4/01)
1896 Apr 4, Tristan Tzara,
[Samuel Rosenfeld] French poet (Approximate Man), was born.
(MC, 4/4/02)
1896 Apr 6, The first modern
Olympic Games formally opened in Athens, Greece, after a lapse of
1,500 years. 13 countries besides Greece participated. [see Mar 25]
Pierre de Couber-tin (d.1937) administered the Games and subsequent
ones until 1924.
(SFC, 7/14/96, p.T1)(AP, 4/6/97)(ON, 8/07, p.5)
1896 Apr 6, James Connolly, a
self-educated 27-year-old American, won the first gold medal at the
1896 Olympic games in Athens. Connolly‘s event, the triple jump,
which was then called the hop, step, and jump, was the first final
of the games. The U.S. Olympic team hadn’t realized that the Greeks
followed the Hellenic calendar, so they arrived not days in advance
but just a few hours before the opening ceremonies. Despite being
hastily prepared, Connolly competed last and beat his opponents‘
distances by more than three feet. He went on to become a
suc-cessful author of 25 novels. [see Mar 25]
(HNQ, 4/8/00)
1896 Apr 14, John Philip
Sousa's opera, "El Capitan," premiered in NYC.
(MC, 4/14/02)
1896 Apr 15, The first modern
Olympic Games closed in Athens. 164 of the 241 competitors were from
Greece. The remaining represented 13 countries, the largest
international participa-tion of any sporting event up to that time.
(ON, 8/07, p.5)
1896 Apr 20, 1st public film
showing in US John Philip Sousa's "El Capitan," premiered in NYC.
(MC, 4/20/02)
1896 Apr 23, The Vitascope
system for projecting movies onto a screen was demonstrated in New
York City. Motion pictures premiered in New York City. It was
developed by Thomas Armat and C. Francis Jenkins and marketed by
Thomas Edison.
(AP, 4/23/97)(HN, 4/23/99)(Sm, 3/06, p.105)
1896 Apr 25, Fight in Central
Dance Hall started a fire in Cripple Creek, Colorado.
(SS, 4/25/02)
1896 Apr 25, In Kansas a
tornado swept through several counties killing at least 9 people in
Clay County. 27 farms were destroyed.
(SFC, 4/25/09, p.D12)
1896 Apr 27, Wallace Hume
Carothers (d.1937), American chemist, was born. Carothers be-came a
brilliant organic chemist who, in addition to first developing
nylon, also helped lay the groundwork for Neoprene.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallace_Carothers)
1896 Apr 27, Rogers Hornsby
(d.1963), among the greatest hitters in baseball history, was born
in Texas.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogers_Hornsby)
1896 Apr 28, Heinrich von
Treitschke, German historian, died.
(MC, 4/28/02)
1896 May 1, Mark Clark,
American general, was born. He commanded the Fifth Army in Italy
during World War II.
(HN, 5/1/99)
1896 May 1, Nasr-ed-Din (65),
shah of Persia, was murdered.
(MC, 5/1/02)
1896 May 6, Samuel P. Langley
(1834-1906), American physicist and aviation pioneer, launched the
first reasonably large, steam-powered model aircraft.
(NPub, 2002,
p.5)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Pierpont_Langley)
1896 May 7, Dr. Henry Howard
Holmes (b.1860), serial killer, was hanged to death in
Phila-delphia, Pennsylvania. Born as Herman Webster Mudgett in
Gilmantown, New Hampshire, to a devout Methodist family, Holmes
spent much of his childhood torturing animals. He later gradu-ated
from the University of Michigan with a medical degree. Holmes
financed his education with a series of insurance scams whereby he
requested coverage for nonexistent people and then presented corpses
as the insured. In 1886, Holmes moved to Chicago to work as a
pharmacist. A few months later, he killed the elderly owner of the
store but told everyone that the man had left him in charge. With a
new series of cons, Holmes raised enough money to build a giant,
elaborate home across from the store. The home, which Holmes called
"The Castle," had se-cret passageways, fake walls, and trapdoors.
Young women in the area, along with tourists who had come to see the
1893 World's Fair in Chicago, and had rented out rooms in Holmes'
castle, suddenly began disappearing. Medical schools purchased many
human skeletons from Dr. Holmes during this period but never asked
how he obtained the anatomy specimens. Holmes was finally caught
after attempting to use another corpse, his assistant Benjamin
Pitezel, in an insurance scam. He confessed, saying, "I was born
with the devil in me. I could not help the fact that I was a
murderer, no more than a poet can help the inspiration to sing."
Reportedly, au-thorities discovered the remains of over 200 victims
on his property.
(www.thecrimeweb.com/hhholmes.htm)
1896 May 9, The 1st horseless
carriage show in London featured 10 models.
(MC, 5/9/02)
1896 May 15, A tornado killed
78 in Texas.
(MC, 5/15/02)
1896 May 18, The US Supreme
Court upheld the State of Louisiana Separate Car Act in Plessy vs.
Ferguson. The Plessy v. Ferguson decision allowed that as long as
accommodation existed, segregation did not constitute
discrimination, establishing the doctrine of "separate but equal."
The decision gave legitimacy to the segregationist policies known as
Jim Crow laws. The ruling that was overturned in the 1954 Brown
case, which involved elementary education. The Court ruled
unanimously that segregation in public education was a denial of the
equal pro-tection of the laws.
(www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/links/misclink/plessy/)(SFC, 5/12/96, p.A-6)
(Econ, 4/2/11, p.24)(AP, 5/18/03)
1896 May 20, Clara Schumann,
composer and wife of Robert Schumann, died in Frankfort, Germany.
(BLW, Geiringer, 1963 ed. p. 191)
1896 May 25, Jan N. Bakhuizen
van den Brink, theologist, church historian, was born.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1896 May 26, The Dow Jones
Industrial Average [DJIA] was first published. Charles H. Dow set up
an index of 12 industrial companies that began at 40.94. Of the
current 30 stocks in the Dow Jones, only General Electric was in the
original group. The 12 companies included: The American Cotton Oil
Company, American Sugar Refining Company, American Tobacco, Chi-cago
Gas, General Electric Co., Laclede Gas Light Co., National Lead,
North American Co., Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Co., U.S.
Leather, U.S. Rubber Co.
(WSJ, 1/8/96, p.C-1)(WSJ, 5/28/96, p.R45)
1896 May 26, Nicholas II, the
last Czar of Russia, was crowned.
(HN, 5/26/98)
1896 May 27, 255 people were
killed when a tornado struck St. Louis, Mo., and East St. Louis,
Ill.
(AP, 5/27/97)
1896 May 29, George L. Funke,
botanist (Flower Physiology), was born.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1896 May 30, 1st car accident
occurred when Henry Wells hit a bicyclist in NYC.
(MC, 5/30/02)
1896 Jun 4, Henry Ford made a
successful pre-dawn test run of his horseless carriage, called a
quadricycle, through the streets of Detroit. The quadricycle
consisted of a simple motor mounted on a buggy frame. Before Ford
began to produce the automobiles that made him fa-mous, he had been
an unimpressive student from a Michigan farming family. But he began
to demonstrate skill and interest in mechanical work, and left
farming and business school behind to work with machines. He learned
about steam engines at his job with Westinghouse, and later worked
as an engineer for Edison Electric Illuminating Company. As Ford
Motors developed, he hoped to emulate Edison. Ford died in 1947 a
fabulously wealthy and influential businessman.
(AP, 6/4/97)(HNQ, 6/4/98)
1896 Jun 7, Vivien Kellems, TV
hostess (The Power of Women), was born.
(SC, 6/7/02)
1896 Jun 7, Robert Mulliken, US
chemist, physicist (Nobel 1966), was born.
(SC, 6/7/02)
1896 Jun 7, G. Harpo & F.
Samuelson left NY to row the Atlantic. The trip took 54 days.
(SC, 6/7/02)
1896 Jun 8, The 1st car was
stolen.
(MC, 6/8/02)
1896 Jun 11, US Assay Office in
Deadwood, South Dakota, was authorized.
(SC, 6/11/02)
1896 Jun 16, Jean Peugeot,
French auto manufacturer, was born.
(MC, 6/16/02)
1896 Jun 18, Blanche Sweet,
film actress, was born.
(HN, 6/18/01)
1896 Jun 19, Bessie Wallis
Warfield Simpson, Duchess of Windsor, divorcee, was born.
(MC, 6/19/02)
1896 Summer, W.B. Yeats and
Arthur Symons make a trip to the Aram Islands off the west coast of
Ireland.
(WSJ, 12/6/95, p.A-18)
1896 Jun 24, Booker T.
Washington became the first African American to receive an honorary
MA degree from Howard University.
(HN, 6/24/98)
1896 Jun 26, The 1st movie
theater in US opened and charged 10 cents for admission.
(MC, 6/26/02)
1896 Jun 30, W.S. Hadaway
patented an electric stove.
(MC, 6/30/02)
1896 Jun, Marconi filed patent
papers in England for his wireless invention.
(ON, 11/99, p.10)
1896 Jul 1, Harriet Beecher
Stowe (85), US author (Uncle Tom's Cabin), died.
(MC, 7/1/02)
1896 Jul 7, The Democratic
National Convention opened in Chicago. The National Democ-ratic
Party formed to run a slate of candidates in 1896 because the
Democratic Party had been taken over by the free-silver faction,
which called for the free and unlimited coinage of silver at the 16
to 1 ratio. They also condemned trusts, monopolies, high protective
tariffs and the use of injunctions against labor. The "sound money"
or gold Democrats withdrew from the party con-vention, organized the
National Democratic Party and nominated John M. Palmer of
Illinois its presidential candidate. The gold plank in the
Republican Party caused a similar split, with free-silver
Republicans bolting the party and forming the National Silver
Republicans, who endorsed the Democratic Party candidate for
president, William Jennings Bryan. Republican William McKinley won
the presidential election.
(AP, 7/7/97)(HNQ, 8/23/99)
1896 Jun 8, William Jennings
Bryan propelled himself to presidential candidacy when he stood
before the Democratic Convention and made his famous "Cross of Gold"
speech. The paramount issue in the 1896 presidential election was
one of economics—the U.S. government promised to pay the holder of
one dollar bill one dollar in gold. Democrats, farmers and
west-erners demanded that the government redeem paper money in
silver as well, while Republicans and easterners protested that this
policy would destroy the economy. It was on this dull, techni-cal
issue that 36-year-old William Jennings Bryan, a former congressman
from Nebraska, launched his national political career. When he made
his "Cross of Gold" speech, the Democ-rats had no strong
presidential candidate. His dramatic words—"You shall not press down
upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns; you shall not crucify
mankind upon a cross of gold!"—electrified his audience and resulted
in his nomination for president in 1896. [see Jul 9]
(HNQ, 6/8/98)(MC, 7/8/02)
1896 Jul 14, The Pacific Mail
$680,000 Steamship Colombia was destroyed on rocks near Pescadero,
Ca.
(Ind, 7/20/02, 5A)(Ind, 8/10/02, 5A)
1896 Jun 15, The Meiji Sanriku
tsunami struck Japan and caused some 27,000 deaths.
(CW, Spring ‘99,
p.28)(http://eklektikos.org/Science.html)
1896 Jul 16, Trygve Lie, first
secretary-general of the United Nations, was born.
(HN, 7/16/98)
1896 Jul 16, William Hamilton
Gibson, illustrator, author, novelist, died.
(MC, 7/16/02)
1896 Jun 17, Fridtjof Nansen
and Hjalmar Johansen met up with English explorer Frederick Jackson
at Franz Joseph Land in the Arctic.
(ON, 7/05, p.5)
1896 Jul 19, A.J. Cronin,
Scottish novelist (The Citadel, The Keys of the Kingdom), was born.
(HN, 7/19/01)
1896 Jul 21, Mary Church
Terrell founded the National Association of Colored Women in
Washington, D.C.
(HN, 7/21/98)
1896 Jul 25, An estimated 5,000
cyclists gathered in SF to demonstrate for better roads.
(Ind, 8/2/03, p.5A)
1896 Jul 28, The city of Miami,
Fla., was incorporated.
(AP, 7/28/97)
1896 Aug 7, Ernesto Lecuona,
composer (Malaguena), was born in Havana, Cuba.
(MC, 8/7/02)
1896 Aug 8, Marjorie Kinnan
Rawlings (d.1953), author of "The Yearling," was born.
(HN, 8/8/00)
1896 Aug 9, Leonide Massine,
Russian-born US choreographer (Diaghilev Ballet Russe 1914-20), was
born.
(WUD, 1994, p.882)(MC, 8/9/02)
1896 Aug 9, Jean Piaget,
psychologist who did pioneering work on the development of
chil-dren's intellectual faculties, was born.
(HN, 8/9/98)
1896 Aug 9, Otto Lilienthal,
German aerodynamic engineer, made his last glide when his glider No.
11 was upset by a sudden gust of wind and he was unable to regain
control. Lilien-thal broke his back in the crash and died the next
day in a Berlin clinic. He had made more than 2,000 test flights in
gliders and convinced many people that flight was possible and set
the stage for early aviation. He once wrote that "we must fly and
fall, fly and fall until we can fly without falling." He also
influenced flight theory by using bird flight as a model for the
basis of aviation.
(HNPD, 8/9/98)
1896 Aug 11, Harvey Hubbell
patented an electric light bulb socket with a pull chain.
(MC, 8/11/02)
1896 Aug 12, Gold was
discovered near Dawson City, Yukon Territory, Canada. [see Aug
16,17] After word reached the United States in June of 1897,
thousands of Americans headed to the Klondike to seek their
fortunes.
(HN, 8/12/01)
1896 Aug 13, The New-York Times
Company under Adolph Ochs purchased the New-York Times Publishing
Company. The control of the New York Times has rested with the
Sulzberger and Ochs clans since this year. Adolph S. Ochs purchased
a failing newspaper and turned it into the prestigious New York
Times. Natives of Chattanooga, Adolph and Milton Ochs later
as-sembled over 2,700 acres along the slopes of Lookout Mountain,
site of the Civil War Battle of Chattanooga, and donated the land
for a Nat’l. Park.
(WSJ, 1/22/96, p.A-1)(NH, 8/96, p.78)(HT, 4/97,
p.59) (SFEM, 1/16/00, p.20)
1896 Aug, 16, A white man from
California named George Carmack, a fellow not employed at anything
in particular, was hiking around northwest Canada’s Yukon River area
with his two In-dian brothers-in-law "Skookum Jim" Mason and "Tagish
Charley." The three found gold on Rabbit Creek, a stream that feeds
the Yukon River near Dawson, Alaska. [see Aug 12,17]
(CFA, '96, p.88)(HN, 8/19/01)
1896 Aug 17, A prospecting
party discovered gold in Alaska, a finding that touched off the
Klondike gold rush. [see Aug 12,16]
(AP, 8/17/97)
1896 Aug 18, Adolph Ochs (39)
took over the New York Times. He served as publisher until 1935.
(HN, 8/18/00)(SFC, 4/6/01, p.D3)
1896 Aug 18, The northern
California Mount Tamalpais and Muir Woods railroad was com-pleted.
It was 8 ½ miles long. The Mount Tamalpais Scenic Railroad
attracted visitors to what later became known as Stinson Beach. The
railway continued operating to 1930.
(SFC, 8/17/96, p.A17)(SFC, 11/27/07, p.A13)(SFC,
2/24/09, p.B1)
1896 Aug 19, Adolph Oaks
proclaimed the journalistic principles for the New-York Times: "to
give the news impartially, without fear of favor, regardless of
party, sect or interests involved." He soon launched the "Review of
Books and Arts" and a new "Illustrated Sunday Magazine."
(SFEM, 1/16/00, p.22,23)
1896 Aug 20, Dial telephone was
patented.
(MC, 8/20/02)
1896 Aug 20, Fridtjof Nansen
and Hjalmar Johansen arrived back in Norway following a 3 year
Arctic venture. In 1898 Nansen published “Farthest North,” a
best-selling account of his adventure. In 1922 Nansen was awarded
the Nobel Prize for Peace.
(ON, 7/05, p.5)
1896 Aug 21, Roark Bradford,
writer, humorist (Ol' Man Adan an' His Chillun), was born.
(SC, 8/21/02)
1896 Aug 24, Thomas Brooks was
shot and killed by an unknown assailant, beginning a six year feud
with the McFarland family.
(HN, 8/24/98)
1896 Aug 26, North American Co.
was removed the Dow Jones and US Cordage was added.
(WSJ, 5/28/96, p.R45,46)(WSJ, 5/28/96, R45)
1896 Aug 29, The
Chinese-American dish chop suey was invented in New York City by the
chef to visiting Chinese Ambassador Li Hung-chang. [see 1878]
(SFC, 6/9/96, Zone 1 p.2)(SFEC, 1/12/97, zone 3
p.4)(AP, 8/29/97)
1896 Aug, The New York Tribune
reported that excessive heat and lack of rainfall in the southern
states had hurt the cotton crop; and that elsewhere grain in shock
and stack had been injured by excessive rain. A help wanted ad
requested a skilled dressmaker for one dollar and fifty cents per
day.
(HFA, ‘96, p.37)
1896 Aug, The new chief of
French military intelligence, Lt Colonel Picquart, reported to his
superiors that he had found evidence to the effect that the real
traitor in the Dreyfus case was a Major Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy.
Picquart was silenced by being transferred, in November 1896, to the
southern desert of Tunisia.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Dreyfus)
1896 Sep 10, Elsa Schiaparelli,
French fashion designer, was born.
(MC, 9/10/01)
1896 Sep 21, General Horatio
Kitchener's army occupied Dongola, Sudan. Gen’l. Herbert Kitchener
led the British conquest of the Sudan. The "kit bag," another name
for a knapsack, was named after him.
(SFEC, 3/29/98, Z1 p.8)(WSJ, 8/25/98, p.A14)(MC,
9/21/01)
1896 Sep 23, Louis-Gilbert
Duprez, composer, died at 89.
(MC, 9/23/01)
1896 Sep 24, American author F.
Scott Fitzgerald (d.1940) was born in St. Paul, Minnesota. He wrote
about the "Jazz Age" between World War I and World War II. He
published his first novel in 1920, "This Side of Paradise," and
gained instant acclaim and celebrity, marrying Zelda Sayre shortly
afterward. In 1924, Fitzgerald wrote what has become his best-known
novel, "The Great Gatsby." Although it was not especially popular at
the time, as more readers began to appreciate the novel for its
perspective of how materialism drives people, it became an Ameri-can
classic. As years passed, Fitzgerald battled alcoholism and his wife
sought treatment for her mental illness. He died in Hollywood at age
45 in 1940. "If you're strong enough, there are no precedents."
(HFA, ‘96, p.38)(AP, 9/24/97)(HNPD, 9/24/98)(HN,
9/24/98)(AP, 8/16/99)
1896 Sep 27, Sam Ervin,
(Sen-D-NC), Watergate committee chairman, was born.
(MC, 9/27/01)
1896 Oct 1, The U.S. Post
Office established Rural Free Delivery, with the first routes in
West Virginia.
(AP, 10/1/97)
1896 Oct 3, William Morris
(b.1834), English artist and writer, died. In 1995 Fiona MacCarthy
authored the biography: “William Morris.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Morris)(WSJ, 1/21/07, p.P9)
1896 Oct 7, Elijah Muhammad,
US, leader of Nation of Islam, was born.
(MC, 10/7/01)
1896 Oct 7, Nicholas and
Alexandra of Russia made a state visit to France and with Pres.
Felix Faure laid the cornerstone for the Pont Alexandre III.
(WSJ, 6/26/96, p.A16)
1896 Oct 11, Richard Etheridge
(d.1900) and his life-saving team rescued the hurricane sur-vivors
of the E.S. Newman on Pea Island, North Carolina. Pea Island later
became part of Hat-teras Island.
(ON, 1/02, p.2)
1896 Oct 11, Anton Bruckner
(b.1824), Austrian composer (Te Deum, Wagner Symphony), died at 72.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton_Bruckner)
1896 Oct 14, Lilian Gish,
American actress, was born.
(HN, 10/14/98)
1896 Oct 18, H.L. Davis,
novelist and poet, was born.
(HN, 10/18/00)
1896 Oct 22, Charles Glenn
King, biochemist, was born. He later discovered vitamin C.
(MC, 10/22/01)
1896 Oct 28, Howard Hansen,
composer, was born in Wahoo, Nebraska. He became the di-rector of
the Eastman School of music.
(HN, 10/28/00)(MC, 10/28/01)
1896 Oct 30, Ruth Gordon,
actress (Rosemary's Baby, Harold & Maude), was born in Mass.
(MC, 10/30/01)
1896 Oct 30, Kaspar Wicki,
Swiss inventor, received Swiss patent Nr. 13329 for a key
con-figuration for the concertina, that made fingering identical in
any key.
(WSJ, 12/7/07,
p.W4)(www.concertina.com/gaskins/wicki/)
1896 Oct 31, Ethel Waters,
actress and blues singer, was born.
(HN, 10/31/00)
1896 Nov 1, The 1st bare women
breast (Zulu) appeared in National Geographic Mag.
(MC, 11/1/01)
1896 Nov 3, Republican William
McKinley was elected 25th president. He defeated Democrat William
Jennings Bryan for the presidency. McKinley and Garret Hobart
supported the gold standard while The Democrats supported the free
coinage of silver. Marcus Hanna, an Ohio in-dustrialist, led the
fund-raising for McKinley and personally underwrote the cost of
winning this 1st modern presidential campaign. In 1929 Thomas Beer
authored a biography of Hanna.
(AP, 11/3/97)(SFC, 10/28/98, Z1 p.7)(HN,
11/3/98)(WSJ, 3/24/04, p.B1)
1896 Nov 3, J.H. Hunter
patented portable weighing scales.
(MC, 11/3/01)
1896 Nov 6, Jim Jordan, radio
comedian (Fibber McGee), was born in Peoria, Il.
(MC, 11/6/01)
1896 Nov 10, U.S. Rubber Co.
was removed from the Dow Jones and Pacific Mail Steamship Co. was
added.
(WSJ, 5/28/96, p.R45,46)
1896 Nov 11, Charles "Lucky"
Luciano, NYC Mafia gangster, was born in Sicily.
(MC, 11/11/01)
1896
Nov 14, Mamie G. Doud Eisenhower (d.1969), 1st lady (1953-61) of
Pres. Dwight D. Ei-senhower (1890-1969), was born in Boone, Iowa.
(www.whitehouse.gov/history/firstladies/me34.html)
1896 Nov 16, Lawrence Tibbett,
baritone (Metropolitan Opera 1923-50), was born in Bakers-field
Calif.
(MC, 11/16/01)
1896 Nov 16, Oswald Mosley,
baron and British Nazi, was born.
(MC, 11/16/01)
1896 Nov 19, Start of Sherlock
Holmes "Adventure of Sussex Vampire."
(MC, 11/19/01)
1896 Nov 22, George Washington
Gale Ferris, inventor (Ferris wheel), died.
(MC, 11/22/01)
1896 Nov 25, Virgil Thompson,
American composer, was born. His work included "Four Saints in Three
Acts" and "The Mother of Us All."
(HN, 11/25/00)
1896 Nov 26, Coach Amos Alonzo
Stagg of Univ. of Chicago created the football huddle.
(SFEC, 12/5/99, Z1 p.5)(MC, 11/26/01)
1896 Nov 26, Russia disclosed a
plan to seize Constantinople if Britain intervenes in Crete.
(AP, 11/26/02)
1896 Nov 27, Richard Strauss'
"Also Sprach Zarathustra" (Thus Spake Zarathustra) debuted in
Frankfurt.
(MC, 11/27/01)
1896 Dec 1, 1st certified
public accountants received certificates in NY.
(MC, 12/1/01)
1896 Dec 2, Georgi Zukov,
Soviet general during World War II who captured Berlin, was born.
(HN, 12/2/98)
1896 Dec 6, Ira Gershwin
(d.1983), lyricist ('S Wonderful, I Got Rhythm), was born. Together
with his brother, George, he wrote 14 Broadway musicals. Many of his
700 songs were written with other composers.
(SFC, 12/4/96, p.E1)(SFC, 5/10/97, p.E1)
1896 Dec 7, Stuart Davis,
painter, was born.
(HN, 12/7/00)
1896 Dec 10, Alfred Nobel (63),
Swedish Nobel Prize ceremony on this date, died. By the time of his
death Nobel had acquired a massive fortune. In his will, he left
instructions that the bulk of his estate should endow the annual
Nobel prizes for those who had most contributed to the areas of
physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and peace. In 1968, a sixth
award for eco-nomics was established [see Nov 27, 1895]. The
Nobel Peace Prize is therefore awarded on December 10. The first of
the Nobel Prizes was presented in 1901 according to instructions in
his will. At his death he was one of the richest men in the world,
he also felt it would be wrong to leave his fortune to relatives.
"Inherited wealth is a misfortune which merely serves to dull man's
faculties." Nobel wished the Peace Prize to be administered in
Norway.
(HNPD, 10/21/98)(AP,
12/10/06)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Peace_Prize)
1896 Dec 14, James H.
Doolittle, American Air Force general, was born. He commanded the
first bombing mission over Japan. His Tokyo raid was a great boost
for American war morale.
(HN, 12/14/99)
1896 Dec 23, US Cordage was
removed from the Dow Jones and replaced by its successor Standard
Rope & Twine Co.
(WSJ, 5/28/96, p.R45,46)
1896 Dec 23, Giuseppe Tomasi di
Lampedusa, Sicilian writer (The Leopard), was born.
(MC, 12/23/01)
1896 Dec 25, "Stars &
Stripes Forever" was written by John Philip Sousa.
(MC, 12/25/01)
1896 Dec 31, The Teatro
Amazonas opened in Manaus, Brazil. It was built by the rubber
bar-ons over 15 years with everything imported from Europe.
(SFEC, 7/16/00, p.T12)
1896 Henry Doelger (d.1978), SF
and Daly City home builder, was born in SF.
(www.dalycityhistory.org/westlake/doelgerprofile.htm)
1896 Roger Huntington Sessions,
composer, was born. His work included the opera "The Trial of
Lucullus."
(WUD, 1994, p.1395)(SFC, 1/27/98, p.A20)
1896 Peter Carl Faberge, master
jeweler and goldsmith, began work on the Imperial Corona-tion Easter
Egg (1896-1908), an enameled, diamond-studded golden egg about 5
inches long that opens to reveal a three-inch-long replica of the
carriage that took the czarina to her corona-tion in1896.
(SFC, 5/234/96, p.D1,10)
1896 Paul Gauguin made his
sculpture "Tahitian Girl."
(SFEM, 11/24/96, p.62)
1896 George Bernard Shaw wrote
his comedy play "You Can Never Tell."
(WSJ, 6/24/98, p.A16)
1896 Brooks Adams wrote "The
Law of Civilization and Decay."
(WSJ, 8/11/97, p.A12)
1896 Colonel C.E. Caldwell
authored “Small Wars: Their Principles and Practice.
(www.buy.com/prod/small-wars-their-principles-and-practice/q/loc/106/30156775.html)
1896 In Germany Magnus
Hirschfeld under a pseudonym published the pamphlet "Sappho und
Sokrates," that examined same sex love.
(SFEC, 6/15/97, DB p.47)
1896 A.E. Housman, British
poet, had his work "A Shropshire Lad" published. The 1997 play "The
Invention of Love," by Tom Stoppard was based on Housman’s life.
(SFC, 7/7/96, Par, p.10)(WSJ, 10/27/97, p.A20)
1896 Rev. Charles Shelton
authored the novel "In His Steps," which included the phrase "What
would Jesus Do?" (WWJD).
(SFC, 9/15/00, p.A4)
1896 The Ida Tarbell biography
of Madame Roland, a republican sympathizer during the French
Revolution, was published.
(WSJ, 3/28/08, p.W5)
1896 H.G. Wells wrote "The
Island of Dr. Moreau."
(WSJ, 8/23/96, p.A8)
1896 Andrew Dickson White,
scientist and the 1st president of Cornell Univ., authored "His-tory
of the Warfare of Science With Theology in Christendom." He argued
that his fellow Prot-estants kept mankind in darkness and tried to
prevent him from establishing Cornell as a secu-lar Univ.
(WSJ, 10/8/99, p.W15)
1896 "Yellow journalism" was
named after the color comic featuring the Yellow Kid that ran in the
Hearst New York Journal and the Pulitzer New York World.
(SFEM, 1/16/00, p.21)
1896 Henry Flagler built the
Palm Beach Inn, later called the Breakers, in Palm Beach, Flor-ida,
as he developed the area.
(WSJ, 6/24/08,
p.D7)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Flagler)
1896 In San Francisco
construction began on the Ferry Building at the foot of Market St.
and its 235-foot clock tower. It was completed in 1898.
(SFC, 1/3/97, p.A1,4)(SSFC, 4/25/10, p.A2)
1896 Col. Griffith J. Griffith
donated over 3,000 acres to California. In 2008 efforts began to
formally preserve the 4,218-acre Griffith Park as a Los Angeles
historic cultural monument.
(SFC, 7/23/08, p.B12)
1896 In SF the Anchor Brewing
Co. was founded and brewed beer at Pacific Ave. and Larkin St. It
later moved to 8th and Bryant and then to Kansas and 17th before
settling on Mariposa St. by Potrero Hill.
(SFC, 10/8/97, Z1 p.4)
1896 Brooks Brothers introduced
button down collars after observing polo players button down their
collar points to keep them from flapping during play.
(WSJ, 6/23/03, p.B1)
1896 Floodwaters swept coffins
from the California Folsom Prison cemetery into the American River.
(SFEC, 1/26/97, p.B4)
1896 The Olivet Memorial Park
non-denominational cemetery was established in Lawndale (Colma), Ca.
(www.colmahistory.org/History.htm)
1896 Giovanni Foppiano founded
Foppiano Vineyards in Sonoma, Ca.
(SFC, 12/19/02, p.D4)(SSFC, 5/23/10, p.L3)
1896 In San Francisco Fr. John
P. Frieden, SJ (1844-1911) succeeded Fr. Allan as president of St.
Ignatius College. Frieden continued for the next 12 years.
(GenIV, Winter 04/05)
1896 The Molinari family began
making air dried salami in San Francisco’s North Beach.
(SSFC, 10/30/11, p.G3)
1896 Cody, Wyoming, was
founded. It was named after William "Buffalo Bill" Cody in the hopes
that his reputation would bring settlers. Cody guards the eastern
gate to Yellowstone, the country’s first official national park,
accessed through the Wapiti Valley of the Shoshone Na-tional Forest,
the first such forest. Buffalo Bill guided hunting parties, and even
Yale paleontolo-gist O.C. Marsh, through the Yellowstone and Big
Horn Basin area as early as 1871. Although he played a limited role
in the founding of the town that would eventually bear his name (at
his suggestion), he contributed much to its development.
(HNQ, 5/19/01)
1896 William Ashley "Billy"
Sunday (1863-1935) was well known in America as a professional
baseball player prior to becoming an evangelist in 1896. Sunday, who
was born in Ames, Iowa, was among the top professional baseball
players from 1883 to 1890, playing for National League teams in
Chicago, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Sometimes called a
sensationalist, the unconventional Sunday became a traveling
evangelist in 1896, was ordained a Presbyterian minister in 1903 and
went on to have a great following.
(HNQ, 8/27/99)
1896 The Minneapolis Millers
won the Western League baseball pennant. All the stars of the team
were soon drafted by the National League and the following year it
became one of the worst teams in the Western League.
(ON, 6/09, p.10)
1896 Wyatt Earp spent
some time refereeing boxing matches, including the 1896 heavy-weight
title fight between Bob Fitzsimmons and Tom Sharkey. In a
controversial and highly-disputed decision, Earp charged Fitzsimmons
with a foul and awarded the fight to Sharkey. The two famed western
lawmen, Bat Masterson and Wyatt Earp became known for their
involve-ment in sporting events years after the 1881 gunfight at the
O.K. Corral. Former Dodge City lawman William Barclay "Bat"
Masterson went on to become a sports writer. He died at his desk in
1921.
(HNQ, 9/20/98)
1896 Jane Addams visited
Russia. Tolstoy berated her as an absentee landlord.
(WSJ, 1/2/02, p.A16)
1896 Dr. Herman Hollerith,
inventor of a tabulating machine (1889), founded the Tabulating
Machine Company. In 1911 it became part of CTR. In 1924 CTR was
renamed IBM.
(www.answers.com/topic/herman-hollerith)
1896 F.W. Rueckheim &
Brother of Chicago received a trademark for "Cracker Jack." The
popcorn and peanuts covered with molasses syrup sold for a nickel a
box in 1899.
(HFA, ‘96, p.67)(SFC, 7/29/98, p.)(SFC, 7/29/98,
Z1 p.23)(AH, 10/01, p.34)
1896 The US Army took over the
operation of Yellowstone National Park.
(SFEC, 10/18/98, p.T5)
1896 Students at the Univ. of
Michigan demanded a new and more representative yearbook than the
one controlled by the administrators and faculty. Thus began the
Ensian.
(MT, Fall ‘96, p.9)
1896 Orville H. Gibson founded
his Kalamazoo musical instrument manufacturing company. In 1904 it
was incorporated as the Gibson Mandolin Guitar Co.
(SFC, 10/5/05, p.G3)
1896 The Luce Furniture Co.
began operations in Grand Rapids, Mich., and continued to 1930. In
1912 it claimed to be the largest shipper of Mission dining room
furniture in the coun-try. The company reorganized and reopened from
1935 to 1938.
(SFC, 1/28/09, p.G2)
1896 Fred Macey opened his own
furniture factory in Grand Rapids, Mich. His company made rolltop
desks and other furniture. In 1905 he merged with Wernicke Furniture
to form Macey-Wernicke Co., which name was simplified in 1908 to
Macey Co. It went out of business in 1940.
(SFC, 5/24/06, p.G3)
1896 In Pennsylvania American
Rabbi Joseph Krauskopf bought 118 acres of land about 25 miles north
of Philadelphia. The National Farm School (later Delaware Valley
College), open to all faiths, began the following year with 10
students. Krauskopf had met Leo Tolstoy on an 1894 trip to Russia,
during which the author of "War and Peace" said US immigrants would
be better off tilling soil than living in cramped industrial cities.
In 2010 the Warwick Foundation of Bucks County gave the school an
estimated $30 million in property and cash.
(AP, 11/7/10)
1896 Budweiser introduced
Michelob beer as "draught beer for connoisseurs."
(WSJ, 5/27/08,
p.A18)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelob)
1896 J. Frank and Charles
Duryea launched the American automobile industry after being the
first to produce more than one vehicle off the same model, the
Duryea Motor Wagon. They built 13 gasoline powered autos and put
them on sale in Springfield, Mass.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)(F, 10/7/96, p.66)
1896 An ad in Horseless Age,
the first automotive trade journal, posted an ad for the Duryea
Motor Wagon Company.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)
1896 Samuel Langley, the first
Secretary of the Smithsonian Museum, launched a pilotless plane from
a floating platform and saw it fly nearly 4,00 feet.
(WSJ, 6/12/96, p.A14)
1896 A. Belopolsky, Russian
astronomer, discovered that the fainter component of the star Castor
is itself a double star with a period of three days.
(SCTS, p.162)
1896 Henri Becquerel discovered
radioactivity. The work was elaborated upon by Marie and Pierre
Curie. Becquerel found that minerals containing the element uranium
emit a peculiar type of radiation that is invisible to the eye but
which darkens photographic plates even when they are wrapped in
black paper.
(NG, May 1985, , p.642)(SCTS, p.117)
1896 Svante Arrhenius, Swedish
chemist, explained the "greenhouse effect" in an article of the
April issue of the London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical
Magazine. This article in-cluded a table of predictions as to how
warming the planet could expect latitude by latitude.
(NOHY, Weiner, 3/90, p.29,58)
1896 Franz Pfaff, American
physician, discovered that the oily residue in poison oak was
re-sponsible for the painful rash.
(PacDis, Fall/’96, p.32)
1896 NYC selected William
Temple Hornaday to head a new zoo. It opened in 1899 and Hor-naday
bred there a herd of bison.
(ON, 3/02, p.9)
1896 Charles Field Haviland,
US-born porcelain manufacturer, died. In 1876 he took over the
Alluaud factory, one of the oldest porcelain factories in Limoges,
France.
(SFC, 8/2/06, p.G7)
1896 In Afghanistan Emir Abdul
Rachman converted the eastern kafirs to Islam by force.
(WSJ, 11/16/01, p.W12)
1896 Argentina became the first
nation to adopt fingerprint identification.
(SFC, 6/30/96, Zone 1 p.5)
c1896 In Brazil police were
sent to Canudos but were repelled by the settlement in what came to
be call the First Military Expedition to Canudos. The government
feared a threat to the na-tional order and sent the Second Military
Expedition of 550 soldiers, who were also repelled by the
settlement. In the Third Military Expedition 1,500 troops under
Colonel Antonio Moreira Ce-sar, aka The Ground Trembler" and "The
Beheader," were defeated at Canudos and the colo-nel was killed.
(SFC, 10/7/97, p.A14)
1896 A Catholic Chaplaincy was
established at Britain’s Oxford University.
(Econ, 9/4/10,
p.57)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_University_Newman_Society)
1896 Sir Charles Tupper,
Conservative Party, served as the 6th Prime Minister of Canada.
(CFA, ‘96, p.81)
1896 Erland Nordenskiold, a
Swedish scientist, explored the Milodon Cave in Patagonia, Chile. He
found a large piece of leather with gray-red hair and declared it to
have been the hide of a Milodon, a giant sloth, extinct for 8,000
years. The site was later made famous in the Bruce Chitin book: In
Patagonia.
(SFEC, 11/24/96, p.T6)
1896 Chinese cinema was born a
year after it was invented in France.
(Econ, 4/29/06, p.69)
1896 In Egypt Solomon
Schechter, a Romanian-born reader in rabinics at England’s
Cam-bridge Univ., discovered a cache of hundreds of thousands of
documents collected by the Jews of Fustat (Old Cairo). In 2011 Adina
Hoffman and Peter Cole authored “Sacred Trash: The Lost and Found
World of the Cairo Geniza.”
(SSFC, 5/29/11, p.G4)
1896 Chinese agents tricked Sun
Yat-sen (1866-1925), Chinese revolutionary, into entering the
Chinese Legation in London. They planned to ship him secretly back
to China where a re-ward for his arrest amounted to half a million
dollars. The story was made public by the London press and the
Legation was forced to release him. In 1911 Sun Yat-sen played an
important role in the overthrow of the Qing dynasty and came to be
revered as the “Father of Modern China.”
(ON, 10/08, p.7)
1896 In England Alfred
Harmsworth, later Lord Northcliffe, launched the Daily Mail
newspa-per.
(SFC, 9/3/98, p.C6)
1896 A French cinematic society
held a screening in Turin, Italy.
(SFC, 2/11/06, p.E10)
1896 The Schafer & Vater
porcelain factory began operating about this time in Rudolstadt,
Germany, and continued operations to 1962.
(SFC, 5/24/06, p.G3)
1896 In Hungary the first
subway in Europe was installed under Andrassy Ut in downtown Pest.
(WSJ, 12/26/96, p.A4)
1896 Bewley’s Oriental Cafes
opened a shop on Westmoreland Street in Dublin, Ireland. It later
became a hangout for James Joyce. It was scheduled to close in 2004.
(SSFC, 11/14/04, p.F2)
1896 Maria Montessori (22)
graduated from the Univ. of Rome’s school of medicine, the 1st woman
to earn a medical degree in Italy.
(ON, 3/07, p.3)
1896 Numico was founded by
Martinus van der Hagen, a Dutch inventor, after he won the
ex-clusive right to make infant formula out of cow’s milk.
(Econ, 9/2/06, p.59)
1896 Henrik Ibsen, Norwegian
playwright, authored “John Gabriel Borkman.” This was Ibsen’s
penultimate play.
(Econ, 1/22/11,
p.100)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gabriel_Borkman)
1896 Theodore Herzl called for
a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
(SFC, 4/30/02, p.A8)
1896 F. Hoffman-La Roche &
Co. was founded in Switzerland.
(SFC, 3/13/09, p.A10)
1896 Moises Saba Amigo arrived
in Mexico from Aleppo, Syria. He was part of a large migra-tion of
Jews known as "Turcos" from Syria and Palestine whose passports were
issued by Ot-toman Turkey. He started peddling dry goods and moved
up to a chain of stores, then textiles. The family savings were put
into real estate. The Saba family were billionaires by 1997.
(WSJ, 8/22/97, p.A10)
1896 Cecil Rhodes rode unarmed
into the Matopos Hills [later Zimbabwe] in the midst of an Ndebele
uprising to negotiate peace. He told the Ndebele chiefs that he
wanted to be buried there and asked them to guard his grave.
(WSJ, 12/9/98, p.A13)
1896-1897 The Barbour Gymnasium, dedicated
exclusively for women’s use, was built at the Univ. of Mich. in Ann
Arbor. It was designed by Detroit architect John Scott and was built
for $50,000. It was demolished in the spring of 1977 to make way for
an addition to the chemistry buildings.
(LSA., Fall 1995, p.10,15,16)
1896-1911 Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Liberal Party,
served as the 7th Prime Minister of Canada.
(CFA, ‘96, p.81)
1896-1936 The SS Tahoe, a 169-foot steamer,
carried passengers and cargo to the California and Nevada towns
around Lake Tahoe. The ship was scuttled in Glenbrook Cove in 1940.
(SFEC, 4/2/00, p.B1)
1896-1940 Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald, American
author of novels and short stories. "It is in the 30s that we want
friends. In the 40s we know they won’t save us any more than love
did."
(HFA, ‘96, p.38)(AHD, 1971, p.497)(AP, 4/27/97)
1896-1951 Peter Cheyney, English author: "The line
of least resistance was always the most diffi-cult line in the long
run."
(AP, 11/4/98)
1896-1965 Dawn Powell, American writer, was the
author of 15 novels.
(SFEC, 2/14/99, BR p.5)
1896-1969 Gorham Munson, American author and
editor: "We are all more average than we think."
(AP, 4/18/97)
1896-1985 Ruth Gordon, American actress and
playwright: "I think there is one smashing rule: ‘Never face the
facts."
(AP, 2/6/97)
1896-1989 Virgil Thomson, American composer and
critic. He wrote his autobiography in 1966. "The clearest statement
of principle goes bad if it is repeated too often. It ceases to be a
state-ment and becomes a slogan."
(WUD, 1994, p.1477)(AP, 1/22/98)
1896-1990 Dodie Smith, English playwright: "Noble
deeds and hot baths are the best cures for de-pression."
(AP, 3/8/01)
1896-1974 David Alfaro Siqueiros, Mexican painter,
muralist.
(SFC, 4/18/96, E-1)
1896-1978 Harry Winston, jeweler to the stars. He
purchased the Hope diamond in 1949 and later donated it to the
Smithsonian Institute.
(WSJ, 2/14/96, p.A-1)
1896-1981 E.Y. "Yip" Harburg, Broadway songwriter,
wrote the lyrics of over 500 songs by 48 com-posers including such
hits as "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime," "April in Paris," "Only a
Paper Moon," "Old Devil Moon," and "Over the Rainbow."
(MT, 10/94, P. Ephross, p.15)
1896-1982 Helen Merrell Lynd, American
sociologist and author: "Our whole life is an attempt to discover
when our spontaneity is whimsical, sentimental irresponsibility and
when it is a valid expression of our deepest desires and values."
"One of the sources of pride in being a human being is the ability
to bear present frustrations in the interests of longer purposes."
(AP, 3/25/98)(AP, 6/29/98)
1896-1992 The Olympiad’s Greatest Moments was a
16-hr video package that featured highlights of all the summer games
since 1896 in eight 2-hr videotapes.
(SFC, 6/9/96, Par, p.9)
1897 Jan 1, Brooklyn merged
with NY to form the present NYC. [see Jan 1, 1898]
(MC, 1/1/02)
1897 Jan 2, The S.S. Commodore,
a small American ship used to smuggle weapons to Cuba, sank off the
coast of Florida. Writer Stephen Crane was aboard, along with a crew
of 11 and 16 Cuban rebel soldiers. Crane based his 1897 short story,
“The Open Boat,” on his survival ex-perience in a lifeboat.
(ON, 4/10, p.9)
1897 Jan 3, Marion (Cecilia
Douras) Davies actress: Runaway Romany, When Knighthood Was in
Flower, The Patsy, Show People, Going Hollywood, was born.
(440 Int'l. 1/3/99)
1897 Jan 14, The 6,960-m
(22,834') Cerro Aconcagua in Argentina was 1st climbed.
(MC, 1/14/02)
1897 Jan 22, Rosa Ponselle,
opera diva (Norma, La Forza del Destino), was born.
(MC, 1/22/02)
1897 Jan 22, Eighty-two British
soldiers held off attacks by 4,000 Zulu warriors at the Battle of
Rorke's Drift in South Africa.
(HN, 1/22/99)
1897 Jan 23, In San Francisco
Fong Ching (32), known as the king of Chinatown, was killed by two
gunmen at the Wong Lung barbershop at 819 Washington St. Nobody was
ever con-victed. “Little Pete” had led the Sam Yup Tong and was
rumored to have killed 50 men.
(SFC, 2/17/09, p.A10)
1897 Feb 2, Fire destroyed the
Pennsylvania state capitol in Harrisburg. A new statehouse was
dedicated on the same site nine years later.
(AP, 2/2/97)
1897 Feb 5, The Indiana House
of Representatives unanimously passed a measure redefin-ing the area
of a circle and the value of pi. The bill died in the state Senate.
(AP, 2/5/97)
1897 Feb 6, Ebenezer C. Brewer,
British writer (Dictionary of Phrase & Fable), died.
(MC, 2/6/02)
1897 Feb 10, John F. Enders,
virologist, was born.
(HN, 2/10/01)
1897 Feb 17, The US National
Congress of Mothers was founded in Washington, D.C. It later became
the National congress of Parents and Teachers known as the PTA
(Parent Teachers Association).
(USAT, 2/14/97, p.13D)(SFC, 2/22/96, p.A20)(AP,
2/17/98)
1897 Feb 27, Miriam Anderson,
was born. She became a world renown opera singer and civil rights
pioneer, and is best remembered for singing "My Country Tis of Thee"
in front of the Lin-coln Memorial.
(HN, 2/27/02)
1897 Feb, Adolph Ochs of the
New-York Times published for the 1st time his slogan "All the News
That's Fit to Print."
(SFEM, 1/16/00, p.23)
1897 Mar 2, President
Cleveland vetoed legislation that would have required a literacy
test for immigrants.
(AP, 3/2/98)
1897 Mar 4, Lefty O’Doul
(d.1969), baseball star, was born in SF in the old Butchertown
neighborhood south of Market. He played for the SF Seals, and spent
11 years in the major leagues with the Phillies, Dodgers, Yankees
and Giants before returning to manage the Seals and the Pacific
Coast League. He was the National League batting champ in 1929 with
the Phillies and again in 1932 with the Brooklyn Dodgers.
(SFC, 3/5/96, p.C1)(SFC, 7/18/97, p.A9)
1897 Mar 4, William McKinley
was sworn in as the 25th president.
(AP, 3/4/98)
1897 Mar 5, Mei-ling Soong
(d.2003, Madame Chiang Kai-shek, was born on Hainan Island, China.
As wife of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek she was instrumental in
enlisting U.S. sympa-thy and relief for China in World war II.
(www.nndb.com/people/978/000086720/)(HN, 6/5/99)
1897 Mar 9, Premiere of (parts
of) Gustav Mahler's 3rd Symphony in Berlin.
(MC, 3/9/02)
1897 Mar 18, Fr. Anthony
Maraschi (b.1820), founder of the University of San Francisco and
Saint Ignatius College Preparatory as well as the first pastor of
Saint Ignatius Church in San Francisco, California., died.
(GenIV, Winter
04/05)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Maraschi)
1897 Mar 24, Wilhelm Reich
(d.1957), Austrian-US psychoanalyst (character analysis), was born.
In 1999 Farrar, Straus & Giroux published: "American Odyssey:
Letters and Journals 1940-1947."
(WUD, 1994,
p.1209)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Reich)
1897 Apr 3, The Vienna
Secession was founded by artists Gustav Klimt, Koloman Moser, Josef
Hoffmann, Joseph Maria Olbrich, Max Kurzweil, and others. Although
Otto Wagner is widely recognized as a fundamental member of the
Vienna Secession he was not a founding member.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vienna_Secession)
1897 Apr 3,
Johannes Brahms (63), German composer, conductor (Hungarian Dances),
died.
(SFEC, 1/5/97, p.B11)(MC, 4/3/02)
1897 Apr 6 & 16, Frank M.
Chapman, ornithologist with the American Museum of Natural His-tory,
observed large numbers of flying hawks over Veracruz, Mexico.
(NH, 10/96, p.37)
1897 Apr 7, Walter
Winchell, American newscaster and newspaper columnist, was born in
Harlem, NYC.
(HN, 4/7/97)(MC, 4/7/02)
1897 Apr 12, Prof. Edward
Drinker Cope (b.1840), paleontologist, died in Pennsylvania. He had
discovered many hitherto unknown dinosaur species. He willed his
bones to science and by 1994 was settled in the Univ. of
Pennsylvania’s Museum of Archeology and Anthropology and proposed as
a type specimen for Homo sapiens. In 1999 David Rains Wallace
authored "The Bonehunter's Revenge: Dinosaurs, Greed, and the
Greatest Scientific Feud of the Gilded Age," which covered the feud
between Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh.
(WSJ, 11/1/94,
p.1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Drinker_Cope)
1897 Apr 17, Thornton Wilder
(d.1975), novelist and playwright, was born. His work included "Our
Town" and "The Bridge of San Luis Rey."
(HN, 4/17/99)(WSJ, 10/4/08, p.W8)
1897 Apr 19, 1st performance of
Debussy's "Pelleas et Melisande."
(MC, 4/19/02)
1897 Apr 19, The first Boston
Marathon was run from Ashland, Mass., to Boston. Winner John J.
McDermott ran the course in 2 hours, 55 minutes and 10 seconds.
(AP, 4/19/97)
1897 Apr 22, NYC Jewish
newspaper "Forward" began publishing.
(MC, 4/22/02)
1897 Apr 23, Lucius du Bignon
Clay, was born. He was the U.S. military governor of occupied Berlin
following WW II, who promoted German self government.
(HN, 4/23/99)(MC, 4/23/02)
1897 Apr 27, Grant's Tomb was
dedicated.
(MC, 4/27/02)
1897 Apr 30, Physicist Joseph
John Thomson described the electron as a particle of negative charge
whose motion constitutes electricity at a meeting of the Royal
Institution in London. J.J. Thomson worked on cathode rays and
identified electrons, charged particles smaller than the hydrogen
atom.
(SFC, 5/1/97, p.A7)s(NG, May 1985, , p.642)
1897 Apr, The Jewish Daily
Forward began publishing. It was a socialist and secular paper in
Yiddish founded by Russian immigrant Abraham Cahan.
(WSJ, 4/25/97, p.A16)
1897 May 14, Sidney Bechet
(d.1951), jazz clarinetist and soprano saxophone player, was born.
(HN, 5/14/01)
1897 May 14, "Stars and Stripes
Forever" by John Phillip Sousa was performed for the first time in
Philadelphia.
(HN, 5/14/01)
1897 May 14, Guglielmo Marconi
made the first communication by wireless telegraph.
(HN, 5/14/98)
1897 May 18, Frank Capra, movie
director, was born. He is best remembered for "It's A Won-derful
Life."
(HN, 5/18/99)
1897 May 18, A public reading
of Bram Stoker’s new novel, "Dracula, or, The Un-dead," was staged
at the Royal Lyceum Theatre in London, an event that roughly
coincided with the book’s publication.
(WUD, 1994 p.432)(AP, 5/18/97)
1897 May 18, Paul Dukas
"L'Apprenti Sorcier Pruimtabak on the Market" premiered.
(SC, 5/18/02)
1897 May 18, An Irish Music
Festival was 1st held in Dublin.
(SC, 5/18/02)
1897 May 29, Erich Wolfgang
Korngold, movie composer (Violanta), was born in Brno, Aus-tria.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1897 May 29, Ignace Lilien,
composer, was born.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1897 Jun 2, Responding to
rumors that he was dying or perhaps even dead, humorist Mark Twain,
61, was quoted by the New York Journal in London as saying that "the
report of my death was an exaggeration."
(AP, 6/2/97)
1897 Jun 7, George Szell,
conductor (Metropolitan 1942-45), was born in Budapest, Hungary.
(SC, 6/7/02)
1897 Jun 12, Anthony Eden,
British prime minister (1955-1957), was born. He helped estab-lish
the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO).
(HN, 6/12/99)
1897 Jun 12, Possibly the most
severe quake in history struck Assam, India. Shock waves were felt
over an area size of Europe.
(MC, 6/12/02)
1897 Jun 14, Dr. Karl Wolfert
and his mechanic were killed in Germany when their dirigible,
powered by a Daimler car engine, crashed on its 4th flight.
(ON, 3/03, p.10)
1897 Jun 15, May Belle Elsas
(d.2003), opera singer and actress, was born in NYC. She changed her
name to Mary Ellis when she joined the Metropolitan Opera at age 18.
(SFC, 2/3/03, p.B4)
1897 Jun 16, The US government
signed a treaty of annexation with Hawaii. The US Con-gress annexed
Hawaii--without a vote from the Hawaiian people. Nearly 22,000
native Hawai-ians had signed a petition opposing the annexation.
(AP, 6/16/98)(HNPD, 1/25/99)(SSFC, 8/30/09, p.M1)
1897 Jun 19, Moe Howard, comic
actor, one of the Three Stooges, was born.
(HN, 6/19/98)
1897 Jun 19, Charles Cunningham
Boycott (b.Mar 12, 1832) English land agent in Ireland, died in
England. He was a faulty estate manager whose tenants "boycotted"
him into poverty; when the crops failed and the farmers went broke,
he unsympathetically gave them the choice of paying immediately or
being evicted. The farmers retaliated and his staff quit. His family
was isolated. This tactic gave us the word whose last name became
part of the English language.
(www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Charles-Cunningham-Boycott)
1897 Jun 21, In Austria a giant
Ferris wheel, designed by Walter Bassett of England, opened in
Vienna. It was built in the Wurstelprater amusement park to
commemorate the 50th anniver-sary of the accession of Emperor Franz
Joseph to the Habsburg throne.
(Econ, 5/31/08, p.71)(http://tinyurl.com/3tawph)
1897 Jun 23, Winifred
Wagner-William, German organizer (Bayreuth Wagner Festival), was
born.
(MC, 6/23/02)
1897 Jul 14, Swede Saloman
Andrée (43) and 2 accomplices, Knute Fraenkle and Nils
Strindberg, in the Ornen balloon were forced down after 64 hours in
the first expedition to fly by balloon across the North Pole. Their
attempt to return ended on White Island. Their fate was only
discovered Aug 5-6, 1930, by Norwegian whalers.
(HNQ, 5/22/01)(ON, 11/01, p.11)
1897 Jul 15, The gold-laden
ship Excelsior from Alaska landed in San Francisco. Seattle mayor
W.D. Wood was visiting and immediately resigned his job, hired a
ship, and organized an expedition from SF to the Yukon territory.
(WSJ, 7/17/97, p.A20)
1897 Jul 15, W. Sheldon of NY
patented a seed counter for retail seed sales.
(SFC, 4/13/05, p.G4)
1897 Jul 17, The Steamer
Portland arrived into Seattle from Alaska with 68 prospectors
carry-ing more than a ton of gold. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer
announced that men with gold from Alaska were landing. This
unleashed the Klondike gold rush and tens of thousands headed for
the Yukon. The Klondike gold rush gave America and Canada a
psychological boost in getting the economy moving again after the
terrible depression that followed the 1893 crash.
(CFA, ‘96, p.88)(Hem., 7/95, p.79)(CFA, ‘96,
p.89)(WSJ, 5/1/97, p.A16)(WSJ, 7/17/97, p.A20)
1897 Jul 21, The Tate Gallery
opened in England.
(MC, 7/21/02)
1897 Jul 24, Amelia Earhart was
born in Kansas. She was the first woman to fly solo across the
Atlantic and disappeared in the South Pacific while trying to fly
around the world. Her sister Muriel (d.1998 at 98) wrote a biography
of Amelia titled: "Courage Is the Price."
(SFC, 3/6/98, p.E2)(HN,
7/24/02)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amelia_Earhart)
1897 Jul 24, African-American
soldiers of the 25th Infantry Bicycle Corps arrived in St.
Louis, Mo., after completing a 40-day bike ride from Missoula,
Montana.
(HN, 7/24/99)
1897 Jul 31, The commercial
treaty between Britain and the German zollverein (established in
1865) was denounced by Britain and pronounced to end in one year.
(G&M, 7/31/97, p.A2)
1897 Aug 8, Anarchist Miguel
Angiolillo assassinated Spanish PM Antonio Canovas del Casti-llo at
Santa Agueda, Spain. Práxides Mateo Sagasta became prime
minister of Spain.
(NG, 11/04,
p.76)(www.loc.gov/rr/hispanic/1898/chronpr.html)
1897 Aug 10, Felix Hoffmann, a
German worker for Bayer, rediscovered aspirin (acetyl sali-cyclic
acid), the active ingredient of the willow plant’s (salicin). In
1832 a French chemist named Charles Gergardt had experiments with
salicin and created salicylic acid. On March 6, 1899, Bayer
registered Aspirin as a trademark.
(http://didyouknow.org/aspirin/)(Econ, 12/11/10,
p.100)
1897 Aug 16, Robert Ringling,
circus master, was born.
(MC, 8/16/02)
1897 Aug 28, Charles Boyer
(d.1978), French actor of film and stage, was born. Films in-cluded
"Algiers,'' “Fanny,” and "Gaslight.''
(RTH, 8/28/99)
1897 Aug 31, Thomas Edison
patented his movie camera (Kinetograph).
(MC, 8/31/01)
1897 Aug 31, General Kitchener
occupied Berber, North of Khartoum.
(MC, 8/31/01)
1897 Sep 1, The first section
of Boston’s subway system was opened. The Park St. Station in Boston
was the nation’s first subway station. The Boylston Street subway
opened in 1897.
(AP, 9/1/97)(BS, 5/3/98, p.5R)(HNQ, 5/17/99)
1897 Sep 2, "McCall's" magazine
was 1st published.
(MC, 9/2/01)
1897 Sep 5, A.C. Nielson,
founder of the Nielson Ratings, was born.
(HN, 9/5/00)
1897 Sep 10, Police shot at
striking mine workers in Pennsylvania and 20 people were killed.
(MC, 9/10/01)
1897 Sep 11, A strike by some
75,000 coal miners in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia
ended after 10 weeks. Concessions included an eight-hour work day,
semi-monthly pay, and the abolition of company stores (which were
famous for over charging workers). The day be-fore, about 20 miners
were killed when sheriff's deputies opened fire on them in
Pennsylvania.
(AP, 9/11/97)(MC, 9/11/01)
1897 Sep 12, Irene
Joliot-Curie, French physicist (neutron, Nobel 1935), was born.
(MC, 9/12/01)
1897 Sep 18, Alberto
Santos-Dumont crashed his 1st dirigible into trees at the Zoological
Gardens in Paris.
(ON, 3/03, p.10)
1897 Sep 20, Alberto
Santos-Dumont successfully flew his repaired motorized dirigible
around the Zoological Gardens in Paris.
(ON, 3/03, p.10)
1897 Sep 21, The New York Sun
ran its famous editorial that answered a question from 8-year-old
Virginia O’Hanlon: "Is there a Santa Claus?" Francis P. Church
wrote, in part: "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as
certainly as love and generosity and devotion ex-ist, and you know
that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy."
(AP, 9/21/97)
1897 Sep 23, The 1st frontier
days rodeo celebration in Cheyenne, Wyoming, was held. By 1998 it
had become the world’s largest outdoor rodeo.
(SFEC, 6/28/98, p.T3)(MC, 9/23/01)
1897 Sep 25, William Faulkner
(d.1962), American author, was born in New Albany, Miss. "The poet’s
voice need not merely be the record of man; it can be one of the
props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail."
(AP, 9/25/97)
1897 Sep 26, Pope Paul VI
(Giovanni Battista Montini), the 262nd pope of the Roman Catho-lic
Church, was born.
(MC, 9/26/01)
1897 Sep, Eight whaling ships
with 273 men became trapped in ice off Point Barrow, Alaska, in an
early freeze. Lt. David Henry Jarvis of the Revenue Cutter Service,
the forerunner of the US Coast Guard, led a 1500-mile expedition
overland from Nelson Island Point Barrow with a herd of reindeer to
the stranded men.
(ON, 1/01, p.1)
1897 Sep, In Brazil Antonio
Conselheiro, the founding leader of Canudos, died of dysentery.
(SFC, 10/7/97, p.A14)
1897 Oct 4, George Bernard
Shaw's "The Devil's Disciple," premiered in NYC.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1897 Oct 5, In Brazil after a
4-month battle government forces defeated the settlement of Canudos.
Pres. Prudente de Morais sent 8,000 soldiers with Krupp cannons,
dynamite and ma-chine guns in the Fourth Military Expedition to
overcome the settlement led by Antonio Consel-heiro.
(SFC, 10/7/97, p.A14)
1897 Oct 8, Journalist Charles
Henry Dow, founder of the Wall Street Journal, began charting trends
of stocks and bonds.
(HN, 10/8/00)
1897 Oct 8, Emperor Karl Joseph
I named Gustav Mahler director of Vienna Opera.
(MC, 10/8/01)
1897 Oct 15, Aaron and Samuel
Bloch carried the 1st US Mail Pouch.
(MC, 10/15/01)
1897 Oct 22, The world's 1st
car dealer began business in London.
(MC, 10/22/01)
1897 Oct 24, The first comic
strip appeared in the Sunday color supplement of the New York
Journal called the 'Yellow Kid.' [see May 1895,1896]
(HN, 10/24/00)
1897 Oct 28, Hans Speidel, Nazi
chief-staff and NATO-supreme commander, was born.
(MC, 10/28/01)
1897 Oct 29, Joseph G.
Goebbels, German Nazi Propaganda Minister who died of suicide in
Hitler’s bunker, was born.
(HN, 10/29/98)
1897 Nov 3, David Schwarz of
Austria crashed his 156-foot aluminum powered airship with 2
propellers on its maiden flight.
(ON, 3/03, p.11)
1897 Nov 13, The first metal
dirigible was flown from Tempelhof Field in Berlin.
(HN, 11/13/98)
1897 Nov 15, Sacheverell
Sitwell, English poet and author (People's Palace), was born.
(MC, 11/15/01)
1897 Nov 19, The Great "City
Fire" in London.
(HN, 11/19/98)
1897 Nov 23, Willie "The Lion"
Smith, jazz and ragtime pianist, was born.
(HN, 11/23/00)
1897 Nov 23, A pencil sharpener
was patented by J.L. Love.
(MC, 11/23/01)
1897 Nov 25, Spain granted
Puerto Rico autonomy.
(MC, 11/25/01)
1897 Dec 1, Stephen J. Field
(1816-1899), US Supreme Court Justice, left office after serving on
the court for 34 years.
(www.oyez.org/oyez/resource/legal_entity/38/print)
1897 Dec 3, Kate O'Brien, Irish
writer (Without My Cloak), was born.
(MC, 12/3/01)
1897 Dec 12, Lillian Smith,
Southern writer and civil rights activist, was born.
(HN, 12/12/00)
1897 Dec 12, "The Katzenjammer
Kids," the pioneering comic strip created by Rudolph Dirks, made its
debut in the New York Journal.
(AP, 12/12/97)
1897 Dec 16, The 1st submarine
with an internal combustion engine was demonstrated.
(MC, 12/16/01)
1897 Dec 26, Peter French shot
and killed sodbuster, Ed Oliver, after Oliver drew a gun on him.
French confessed to the murder but was acquitted.
(SFEC, 7/6/97, p.T5)
1897 Dec 28, Edmond Rostand’s
play on Cyrano de Bergerac (1619-1655), French poet, was unveiled at
the Theatre de la Porte-Saint-Martin in Paris. Cyrano’s noted nose
was an invention of the poet Theophile Gautier introduced in an 1844
book.
(SFEC, 4/27/97, DB p.3)(AP, 12/28/97)
1897 Dec 31, Brooklyn, N.Y.,
spent its last day as a separate entity before becoming part of New
York City.
(AP, 12/31/97)
1897 The 1890 Vincent van Gogh
painting "Portrait of Dr. Gachet" was sold to Alice Ruben, a Danish
art collector, for $58. In 1990 Japanese businessman Ryoei Saito
paid $82.5 million for the painting.
(BS, 5/3/98, Par p.26)
1897 Gustav Klimt (1862-1918)
helped found the Vienna Secessionist art movement. He was chosen as
its 1st president. It rebelled against the sentimental academic
painting of the 19th century.
(WSJ, 10/22/99, p.W14)(WSJ, 7/11/01, p.A15)
1897 Claude Monet
painted "The Cliffs of Dieppe." In 1998 it was
stolen from the French Fine Arts Museum of Nice.
(SFC, 9/22/98, p.B7)
1897 Giovanni Segantini painted
"Primavera sulle alpi," a Divisionist landscape. It was valued at
$4-6 million in 1999.
(SFC, 11/6/99, p.B8)
1897 Bert Corgan published his
autobiography "Mining Camp Lawyer."
(WW, 12/96)
1897 Mark Twain published
"Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World, " his last
travelogue.
(SFC, 8/25/99, p.C3)
1897 Edith Wharton wrote "The
Decoration of Houses."
(WSJ, 12/9/97, p.A20)
1897 Arthur Schnitzler wrote
his play "Reigen." The name meant round dance and repre-sented a
circle of sexual encounters. It was premiered in Vienna in 1920 and
was promptly closed down by police. A 1998 adaptation by David Hare
featured Nicole Kidman and AIain Glen in "The Blue Room."
(WSJ, 12/16/98, p.A21)
1897 Alfred Stieglitz invited
Fred Holland Day to contribute to Camera Notes.
(Civilization, July-Aug. 1995, p.40-47)
1897 West Point military
academy adopted the motto: "Duty, Honor, Country."
(SFEC, 5/7/00, Par p.7)
1897 US Marine Band Conductor
Francesco Fanciulli was arrested and charged for insubor-dination
after refusing to play any more Sousa marches.
(WSJ, 7/11/96, p.A12)
1897 The recording giant EMI
was founded.
(Sky, 9/97, p.54)
1897 Anson Phelps Stokes, an
eccentric business man in the Reese River Valley, built Stokes
Castle in Austin, Nevada. He built the 92-mile Nevada Central
Railroad from Battle Mountain to Austin.
(SFCM, 3/28/04, p.43)(ACC, 2004)
1897 The yellow brick King’s
County Courthouse in Hanford, Ca., was built in neo-classical
revival style.
(SFEC, 1/4/98, p.T3)
1897 In San Francisco the
4-unit building at 425-431 Buchanan St., designed by William T.
Cummins, was built. The roofline was enhanced by 4 round towers.
(SSFC, 9/6/09, p.C2)
1897 The US Army began building
Fort Michie on Great Gull Island to protect the eastern ap-proaches
to Long Island Sound.
(NH, 10/02, p.12)
1897 In Le Roy, New York,
Pearle Wait, a carpenter, and his wife May, made a concoction of
gelatin and fruit flavor that they named Jell-O.
(SFEC, 7/27/97, p.A2)
1897 The American Cat
Association was founded to promote the welfare of cats and their
owners.
(Smith., 4/1995, p.136)
1897 The American Negro Academy
was founded by W.E.B. Du Bois and other black intellec-tuals.
(Civilization, July-Aug, 1995, p. 37)
1897 Old Del Monte golf course
in Monterey, Ca., opened.
(Hem, 6/96, p.137)
1897 James J. Corbett lost his
boxing title to Robert Fitzsimmons.
(HNQ, 6/20/00)
1897 In Wyoming the first
annual Cheyenne Frontier Days Rodeo was held. By 1998 it had become
the world’s largest outdoor rodeo.
(SFEC, 6/28/98, p.T3)
1897 Pres. Grover Cleveland
established a forest reserve in the Olympic Peninsula of Wash-ington
state with sharp restrictions on commercial logging. 3 years later
McKinley remanded a third of the reserve back to open logging.
(NG, 7/04, p.66)
1897 The US Library of
Congress’s Jefferson Building opened to the public.
(SFEC, 2/16/97, p.A6)
1897 The US Supreme Court ruled
that "Seamen are... deficient in that full and intelligent
re-sponsibility for their acts that is accredited to ordinary
adults." The court added that sailors "had to be protected from
themselves and therefore were not subject to the Constitution’s
Thirteenth Amendment that prohibited involuntary servitude." This in
essence condoned the practice of "shanghaiing." The practice was
later described by Bill Picklehaupt in his 1997 book "Shang-haied in
San Francisco."
(SFC,1/22/97, p.E5)
1897 The USS Constitution (aka
Old Ironsides) was put into dry-dock.
(SFC, 7/22/97, p.A11)
1897 The American Federation of
Labor backed literacy requirements for immigrants.
(WSJ, 3/29/04, p.A8)
1897 The suffragette movement
started in England as a peaceful protest. The movement turned
militant in 1903. Women in England won the right to vote in 1918.
(SFC, 8/23/06, p.G7)
1897 The Chicago Teachers Club
met to protest the sale of cigarettes as "poison laden and
corrupting."
(Hem., 7/96, p.28)
1897 In NYC Col. Fred Grant
withdrew from the Board of Police Commissioners as a protest against
the methods employed by the NY police to gain evidence.
(G&M, 7/31/97, p.A2)
1897 In northern California
Lime Point Military Reservation was renamed Fort Baker in honor of
Col. Edward D. Baker, who was killed leading a regiment of Union
troops in the Civil War. The former US Senator from Oregon was
active in California politics in the 1850s.
(The Park, Summer "95)(SFEC, 8/1/99, p.B4)
1897 Marcus Hanna was elected
to the US Senate. Hanna, an Ohio industrialist, led the 1896
fund-raising for Pres. McKinley and personally underwrote the cost
of winning the 1st modern presidential campaign. In 1929 Thomas Beer
authored a biography of Hanna.
(WSJ, 3/24/04, p.B1)
1897 American Telephone &
Telegraph Co. began to use wooden poles when it put up a
communication line from Washington DC to Norfolk, Va.
(WSJ, 3/2/00, p.A1)
1897 BD was founded in 1897 in
New York City by Maxwell Becton and Farleigh S. Dickinson, Sr. The
company sold glass hypodermic syringes for $2.50. "It was Maxwell
Becton’s kind ges-ture in closing a shade to block the glare of the
sun in Dickinson’s eyes that brought the two men together."
(Horizon, Fall ‘95, p.12)(EIH, BDID, SLC,
1981)(cc: mail 3/3/97)(SFC, 4/13/98, p.A6)
1897 Chicago Gas was one of a
host of utilities absorbed by Peoples Gas Light & Coke Co. as
part of a massive industry consolidation.
(WSJ, 5/28/96, p. R-45)
1897 Olds Motor Vehicle Co. was
the first auto maker to organize in Lansing, Michigan. R.E. Olds
called his first car the Oldsmobile.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)
1897 The Sears Roebuck catalog
offered a gun for 68 cents.
(WSJ, 12/17/03, p.B1)
1897 The Singer sewing machine
company built a huge factory in Russia.
(SFC, 5/16/01, p.D4)
1897 The Stanley Rule &
Level Co. of in New Britain, Conn., began making 6-inch folding
rul-ers. They introduced a 4-inch one in 1907.
(SFC, 11/1/03, p.E4)
1897 The Sterling China Co.
started working in Sebring, Ohio. In 1904 it changed its name to
Limoges China and in the 1940s added "American" to its name. It
experimented with some un-usual glazes in the 1930s, including a
green one called "Emerald Glow."
(SFC, 1/29/97, z-1 p.2)
1897 Orison Swett Marden
founded Success magazine. The magazine began as a nonfiction monthly
featuring biographical sketches and articles espousing the virtue of
success, and con-tributions by such notables as Theodore Dreiser,
Booker T. Washington, Edward Everett Hale, Mary A. Livermore, and
Julia Ward Howe. In 1911 it merged with the National Post.
(www.proquest.com/products_umi/descriptions/American-Popular-Culture-42.shtml)
1897 Alexander Winton organized
the Winton Motor Carriage Co. in Cleveland.
(F, 10/7/96, p.66)
1897 Victor Durand Jr.,
French-born glassmaker, started the Vineland Glass Manufacturing Co.
in Vineland, NJ.
(SFC, 3/31/99, Z1 p.6)
1897 Ransom E. Olds started the
Olds Motor Vehicle Co. In 2004 the last Oldsmobile Alero rolled of a
GM assembly line in Lansing, Mich.
(SFC, 4/28/04, p.C1)
1897 Gilbert Loomis was the
first car-owner to purchase auto insurance for his vehicle. The
premium was $7.50 for $1,000 worth of liability insurance.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)
1897 In Grand Rapids the male
only Diamond Hall club was formed for Polish immigrants. In 2004 the
club voted to allow women full membership.
(USAT, 5/18/04, p.17A)
1897 Michigan passed a law
prohibiting the use of obscenities in front of women and children.
The law was challenged in 1999 after a canoeist, Timothy J. Boomer,
hit a rock on the Rifle River and was cited for swearing in 1998. A
state appeals court struck down the law in 2002
(SFC, 6/3/99, p.A8)(SFC, 4/2/02, p.A3)
1897 In Midland, Michigan,
Herbert Dow, founder of Dow Chemical, first tapped the local brine
wells for his pioneering electrolysis process.
(Econ, 7/9/11, p.62)
1897 Otto H.L. Wernicke moved
his Wernicke Furniture Co. from Minneapolis, Minn., to Grand Rapids,
Mich.
(SFC, 8/9/06, p.G3)
1897 Thaddeus Cahill
(1867-1934) patented (pat no. 580,035) what was to become the
"Tel-harmonium" or "Dynamophone." It can be considered the first
significant electronic musical in-strument. The 1st fully completed
model was presented to the public (1906) in Holyoke, Mass.
(www.obsolete.com/120_years/machines/telharmonium/)(Econ, 9/3/05,
p.77)
1897 Adolphe Chaillet, French
inventor and US immigrant, developed a coiled filament carbon lamp
that burned brighter than existing models. He met John C. Fish of
Shelby, Ohio and be-gan an association that was to be the start of
the Shelby Electric Company. In 1901 a Shelby bulb was installed in
a Livermore, Ca., firehouse. Though it was moved a few times, as of
2011 it was still working.
(www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~ohscogs/shelbymuseum/ShelbyMuseum3.html)(SSFC,
2/6/11, p.C1)
1897 Lord Kelvin calculated the
age of the earth on the assumption that it had cooled from an
initial molten state. His work indicated an age of between 200 and
400 million years for the earth.
(DD-EVTT, p.32)
1897 R.D. Oldham, English
seismologist, recognized the three main kinds of seismic waves
recorded by his instruments. They are the primary waves (P waves) of
the push-pull kind, like sound waves, secondary waves (s-waves) in
which the vibrations are at right angles to the di-rection in which
the shock wave is moving, and longitudinal waves (l-waves) which
move over the earth’s surface.
(DD-EVTT, p.77)
1897 The world’s first offshore
oil well was drilled just east of Santa Barbara, Ca.
(SSFC, 10/29/06, p.F6)
1897 Robert Peary, Arctic
explorer, took 6 Eskimos from Greenland back to NYC as living museum
specimens. In 2000 Kenn Harper authored "Give Me My Father’s Body,"
the story of Minik, one of the 6 Eskimos, who died in 1918 in a New
Hampshire lumber camp at age 28.
(SFEC, 7/16/00, Par p.8)
1897 The Red River in Fargo
North Dakota crested at 39.1 feet. The record was broken in 1997.
(SFC, 4/16/97, p.A3)
1897 The Ellis Island
immigration center was destroyed by fire.
(SFEC, 6/20/99, p.T10)
1897 Belgium established the
Tervuren Royal Museum for Central Africa following the World Fair of
this year. It was a result of the country’s colonial venture in the
Belgian Congo, later Za-ire, later Democratic Republic of Congo. The
museum was founded as a showcase for business opportunities on the
Congo.
(SFC, 2/21/98,
p.E1)(www.africamuseum.be/museum/about)
1897 Belo Horizonte was founded
in the state of Minas Gerais as the first modern planned city of
Brazil.
(USA Today, OW, 4/22/96, p.9)
1897 British officer Capt. H.
Deasy encountered migrating chirus in Tibet and named the local
Antelope Plain.
(NH, 5/96, p.50)
1897 The Royal Pigeon Racing
Association formed in England. In 2004 it began drug testing among
its members for the use of steroids in their pigeons.
(WSJ, 11/11/04, p.A1)
1897 Isaac Pitman (b.1813),
inventor of Pitman shorthand, died in Britain.
(WSJ, 8/20/04, p.A1)
1897 Alphonse Daudet (b.1840),
French novelist, died. In 2002 Julian Barnes translated writ-ings
from his last 12 years, "In the Land of Pain," in which he conveyed
his thoughts on pain from his tertiary-stage syphilis.
(WUD, 1994 p.369)(WSJ, 1/24/03, p.W9)
1897 St. Theresa of Lisiex,
known to her followers as The Little Flower, died.
(SFC, 1/11/00, p.A15)
1897 Ragnar Sohlman, executor
of Alfred Nobel’s will, moved Nobel’s stock certificates and papers
out of France to Sweden, and thus beyond the jurisdiction of French
courts.
(ON, 4/07, p.7)
1897 The Greeks were defeated
by Turkey at Velestino in their war over the independence of Crete.
(WSJ, 8/6/98, p.A13)
1897 Japan’s Kyoto National
Museum was established.
(Hem, 9/04, p.46)
1897 Ottoman authorities
disbanded a reactivated League of Prizren, executed its leader and
banned Albanian language books.
(www, Albania, 1998)
1897 Benin City, capital of Edo
state, Nigeria, was burned and ransacked by the British after the
Bini killed a British diplomatic mission. 16th century brass plaques
were looted from the royal palace and sold to the British Museum.
(SFC, 3/29/02, p.D8)
1897 The first Zionist Congress
was held in Basel, Switzerland.
(SFEC, 4/26/98, BR p.1)
1897 Mbuya Nehanda, a spirit
medium of the Zezuru Shona people, was executed for the kill-ing of
administrator Henry Pollard, known for his brutality toward blacks.
She provided inspira-tion to the Hwata Dynasty for their revolt
against the British South Africa Company colonization of Mashonaland
and Matabeleland (later Zimbabwe). She is believed to have had
immense powers was later remembered as the ancestral grandmother of
the Zimbabwe nation.
(AP,
12/8/11)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nehanda_Nyakasikana)
1897-1898 Paul Gauguin created his painting "D'ou
venons-nous? Que sommmes-nous? Ou al-lons-nous?" (Where do we come
from? What Are We? Where are we going?)
(WSJ, 4/12/04, p.D8)
1897-1901 William McKinley is the 25th President
of the US.
(A&IP, ESM, p.96b, photo)
1897-1902 The Jesup North Pacific Expedition was
made to study the biological and cultural con-nections between
peoples on each side of the Bering Strait. It was one of the first
instances where a camera was used in such a study.
(WSJ, 12/30/97, p.A8)
1897-1904 Henry-Louis de La Grange, French writer,
focused on these years in Vienna in writing his multivolume
biography of Gustav Mahler titled: Vienna: The Years of Challenge.
Vol. 1 in English was released in 1973. A 3-volume French edition
came out between 1979-1984. A new 4-volume English was launched in
1995.
(WSJ, 6/9/95, p.A-12)(SFEC, 6/7/98, DB p.37)
1897-1946 John Steuart Curry, American painter,
was known as a regionalist for his paintings of Kansas. Many of his
best works were actually done in Westport, Conn. He became artist in
residence at the Univ. of Wisconsin, the first to hold such an
academic position in the US.
(SFC, 6/13/98, p.E1)
1897-1955 Bernard De Voto, American author,
journalist and critic: "History abhors determinism, but cannot
tolerate chance." Determinism refers to the notion that a cause
precedes every event.
(AP, 8/20/97)(SSFC, 4/6/03, p.M5)
1897-1957 Erich Wolfgang Korngold, composer. He
went into exile in 1938 and wrote film music in Hollywood.
(WSJ, 3/5/99, p.W10)
1897-1957 The Griswold Manufacturing Co. of Erie,
Pa., made cast-iron skillets, pans and other kitchen items over this
time.
(SFEC, 10/9/96, z1 p.8)
1897-1966 Lillian Smith, American writer and
social critic: "Education is a private matter between the person and
the world of knowledge and experience, and has little to do with
school or col-lege." "The human heart dares not stay away too long
from that which hurt it most. There is a return journey to anguish
that few of us are released from making."
(AP, 11/13/97)(AP, 8/8/99)
1895-1972 L.P. Hartley, British author: "The past
is a foreign country; they do things differently there."
(AP, 7/1/00)
1897-1973 Catherine Drinker Bowen, American
author: "I speak the truth, not so much as I would, but as much as I
dare; and I dare a little more, as I grow older."
(AP, 3/23/98)
1897-1980 Dorothy Day, American activist and
founder of the Catholic worker newspaper: "How much did I hear of
religion as a child? Very little, and yet my heart leaped when I
heard the name of God. I do believe every soul has a tendency toward
God." "The best thing to do with the best things in life is to give
them up."
(AP, 6/8/97)(AP, 8/18/99)(WSJ, 3/26/03, p.D8)
1897-1988 George Sakier, designer. He designed the
Myriad pattern of Fostoria Glass. he also de-signed packaging,
furniture, bath fixtures, and painted abstract landscapes.
(SFC, 6/12/96, Z1 p.5)
Go to 1898-1899