Timeline 1898-1899
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1898 Jan 1, The
consolidation of Greater New York City occurred with the "merger" of
Brooklyn and Manhattan. Before the merger Brooklyn had absorbed
Williamsburg, Bushwick, Flatbush, Flatlands, and New Lots among other
towns. The merger created a city of 3.4 million people. Manhattan, the
Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island were consolidated into New
York City.
(WSJ, 12/31/97, p.A10)(AP, 1/1/99)
1898 Jan 1, The consolidation of
NYC ended a rivalry with Chicago which had annexed some 20,000 people
in the surrounding towns of Hyde Park, Kenwood, Pullman and Woodlawn.
(WSJ, 12/31/97, p.A10)
1898 Jan 3, Zasu Pitts actress:
Busby Berkeley's 1933 musical: Dames, was born.
(440 Int'l. 1/3/99)
1898 Jan 7, Art Baker, TV host
(You Asked For It), was born in NYC.
(MC, 1/7/02)
1898 Jan 10, Sergei M. Eisenstein
(d.1948), Russian director (Alexandr Nevski) [OS], was born in Riga,
Latvia. He became a renowned film director in Russia. In 1999 Ronald
Bergan published the biography: "Sergei Eisenstein: A Life In
Conflict." [see Jan 23]
(SFEC, 5/2/99, BR p.1,10)(MC, 1/10/02)
1898 Jan 10, In France a
court-martial against Major Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy began behind
closed doors. The next day the defendant was found not guilty. Writer
Emile Zola followed this action 2 days later with a 4-thousand word
letter in support of Captain Dreyfus and accusing the French military
of a conspiracy in the case.
(ON, 2/09, p.6)
1898 Jan 13, Emile Zola's famous
defense of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, "J'accuse," was published in Paris.
The open letter to French President Felix Faure accused the French
judiciary of giving into pressure from the military to perpetuate a
cover-up in the Dreyfus treason case.
(AP, 1/13/98)(MC, 1/13/02)
1898 Jan 14, Author Charles
Lutwidge Dodgson -- better known as "Alice in Wonderland" creator
Lewis Carroll -- died in Guildford, England. In 2008 Robin Wilson
authored “Lewis Carroll in Numberland: His Fantastical Mathematical
Logical Life.”
(AP, 1/14/98)(Econ, 7/5/08, p.93)
1898 Jan 23, Sergei Eisenstein,
Russian film director (Battleship Potemkin), was born. [see Jan
10]
(MC, 1/23/02)
1898 Jan, Henry James (1843-1916),
England-born US novelist, writer and critic, published his novella "The
Turn of the Screw."
(SFC, 1/17/98, p.C1)(WSJ, 10/25/08, p.W8)
1898 Feb 1, The Travelers
Insurance Company of Hartford, CT (the company with the red umbrella
over their logo) issued the very first automobile insurance policy on
this day. Dr. Truman Martin of Buffalo, NY, paid $11.25 for the policy,
which gave him $5,000 in liability coverage.
(AP, 2/1/97)(440 Int'l, 2/1/1999)
1898 Feb 3, Alvar Aalto (d.1979),
Finnish architect, was born.
(HN, 2/3/01)
1898 Feb 5, Ralph McGill, editor
and publisher of the Atlanta Constitution, was born.
(HN, 2/5/01)
1898 Feb 8, John Ames Sherman
patented the 1st envelope folding & gumming machine in Mass.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1898 Feb 10, Bertolt Brecht
(d.1956), German poet and dramatist, was born. He is best remembered
for his plays "Three Penny Opera" and "Mother Courage." "Because things
are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are."
(HN, 2/10/99)(AP, 3/11/00)
1898 Feb 11, Leo Szilard,
physicist, instrumental in the Manhattan Project, was born.
(HN, 2/11/01)
1898 Feb 12, [Le]Roy Harris,
composer (When Johnny Comes Marching Home), was born in Oklahoma.
(MC, 2/12/02)
1898 Feb 14, Fritz Zwicky, Swiss
astronomer (super nova), was born.
(MC, 2/14/02)
1898 Feb 15, The battleship USS
Maine exploded and sank in Havana harbor. The explosion killed 266 of
her crew. It had been sent there to menace Imperial Spain and its
sinking helped to precipitate the Spanish-American War. The
explosion—never satisfactorily explained—brought the United States
closer to war with Spain over the issue of Cuban independence.
(Civilization, July-Aug, 1995, p.14)(NH, 4/97,
p.38)(HT, 5/97, p.64) (HN, 2/15/98)(AP, 2/15/98)
1898 Feb 18, Enzo Ferrari
(d.1988), Italian sports car manufacturer, was born.
(www.britannica.com/eb/article-9034085/Enzo-Ferrari)
1898 Feb 20, Jimmy Yancey,
American blues pianist, was born.
(HN, 2/20/01)
1898 Feb 22, A black postmaster
was lynched and his wife and 3 daughters were shot in Lake City, SC.
(MC, 2/22/02)
1898 Feb 23, Writer Emile
Zola was imprisoned in France for his letter J'accuse in which he
accused the French government of anti-Semitism and the wrongful
imprisonment of army captain Alfred Dreyfus.
(HN, 2/23/01)
1898 Mar 8, Richard Straus' "Don
Quixote," premiered in Keulen.
(MC, 3/8/02)
1898 Mar 13, The ship New York,
built in Philadelphia in 1888 as the T.F. Oaks, was caught in the
surf of Half Moon Bay and broke up after a few days. It was 259 days
out of Hong Kong and all 22 aboard under Capt. Thomas Peabody made it
to shore. Most of the cargo was lost.
(Ind, 4/6/02, 5A)
1898 Mar 14, Henry Bessemer
(b.1813), English inventor and mechanical engineer, died. Bessemer
developed the first process for mass-producing steel inexpensively.
(ON, 9/06,
p.6)(www.lucidcafe.com/library/96jan/bessemer.html)
1898 Mar 23, Georgios Grivas,
Greek General, opposition leader on Cyprus, was born.
(SS, 3/23/02)
1898 Mar 24, Chicago Gas, absorbed
by Peoples Gas Light & Coke Co., was removed from the Dow Jones and
replaced by Peoples Gas.
(WSJ, 5/28/96, p. R-45,46)
1898 Mar 24, The 1st automobile
was sold.
(MC, 3/24/02)
1898 Mar 26, Lt. David Henry
Jarvis of the Revenue Cutter Service reached Point Franklin, after a
1500-hundred mile trek, with a herd of reindeer to rescue 273 iced-in
whalers stranded here and at Point Barrow.
(ON, 1/01, p.1)
1898 Mar 28, The Supreme Court
ruled in United States v. Wong Kim Ark that a child born in the United
States to Chinese immigrants was a US citizen.
(AP, 3/28/08)
1898 Apr 3, Henry R. Luce
(d.1967), magazine publisher, founder of Time, Fortune and Life, was
born. "Show me a man who claims he is objective and I'll show you a man
with illusions."
(HN, 4/3/01)(AP, 3/9/98)
1898 Apr 8, British General
Horatio Kitchener defeated the Khalifa, leader of the dervishes in
Sudan, at the Battle of Atbara. Anglo-Egyptian forces crushed 6,000
Sudanese.
(HN, 4/8/99)(MC, 4/8/02)
1898 Apr 9, Paul Robeson (d.1976),
black athlete, actor and singer, was born. He is best remembered for
his role in Othello. Lloyd L. Brown later wrote the biography "The
Young Paul Robeson: On My Journey Now." "The course of history can be
changed but not halted."
(SFC, 3/26/98, p.A26)(HN, 4/9/99)(AP, 1/18/01)
1898 Apr 11, American President
McKinley asked Congress to authorize military intervention in Cuba. The
war was fomented by New York newspapers in their own battle for
circulation.
(AP, 4/11/07)(WSJ, 5/19/98, p.A20)
1898 Apr 14, Harold Black,
electrical engineer, was born.
(HN, 4/14/01)
1898 Apr 15, Bessie Smith,
American blues singer, was born.
(HN, 4/15/01)
1898 Apr 19, Congress passed a
resolution recognizing Cuban independence and demanding that Spain
relinquish authority over Cuba. President McKinley was also authorized
to use military force to put the resolution into effect.
(AP, 4/19/97)
1898 Apr 20, President
McKinley signed a congressional resolution recognizing Cuban
independence from Spain. He signed the Joint Resolution for War with
Spain that authorized U.S. military intervention to Cuban independence.
(AP, 4/20/97)(SFC, 1/19/02, p.A19)
1898 Apr 21, The Spanish-American
War began. The U.S. North Atlantic Fleet, under the command of Rear
Admiral William T. Sampson, was ordered to begin the blockade of Cuba.
The fleet with the armored cruiser New York steamed out of Key West,
Fla., at 6:30 a.m. the next morning. The fleet had hardly left port
when it pursued and captured a Spanish merchant vessel, Buenaventura.
The Spanish-American War had begun. In 1998 David Traxel published
"1898: The Birth of the American Century," a history of the
Spanish-American War.
http://lcweb.loc.gov/rr/hispanic/1898/subjects.html
(HN, 4/21/98)(SFEC, 7/5/98, BR p.6)(HNPD, 4/25/99)
1898 Apr 22, US Congress passed
the Volunteer Army Act calling for a Volunteer Cavalry.
(MC, 4/22/02)
1898 Apr 22, With the United
States and Spain on the verge of formally declaring war, the U.S. Navy
began blockading Cuban ports under orders from President McKinley. In
the first Spanish-American War action the USS Nashville captured a
Spanish merchant ship, the Buenaventura, off Key West, Fla. Also,
Congress authorized creation of the First U.S. Volunteer Cavalry,
popularly known as the "Rough Riders." In 1998 the book "Empire by
Default" by Ivan Musicant retold the story of the was in detail.
(AP, 4/22/97)(WSJ, 2/23/98, p.A20)(AP, 4/22/98)(HN,
4/22/98)(MC, 4/22/02)
1898 Apr 24, Spain declared war on
the United States after rejecting America's ultimatum to withdraw from
Cuba.
(AP, 4/24/97)(HN, 4/24/98)
1898 Apr 24, US fleet under
commodore Dewey steamed from Hong Kong to Philippines.
(MC, 4/24/02)
1898 Apr 25, The United States
formally declared war on Spain. The US House passed the declaration 311
to 6.
(AP, 4/25/97)(HN, 4/25/98)(SSFC, 3/30/03, p.A1)
1898 Apr 28, William Soutar,
Scottish poet, was born.
(HN, 4/28/01)
1898 May 1, US Commodore George
Dewey gave the command, "You may fire when you are ready, Gridley," as
an American naval force destroyed a Spanish fleet in Manila Bay.
Admiral George Dewey led the US Navy in victory over the Spanish
navy at the Battle of Manila Bay in the Philippines. Dewey's
ships lobbed shells into Filipino-dug trenches and the battle became a
massacre.
(AP, 5/1/97)(Hem, Dec. 94, p.70)(SFEC, 1/31/99, Z1
p.4)(HN, 5/1/99)
1898 May 1, U.S. Navy Captain
Charles Gridley earned a place in history during the Battle of Manila
Bay.
(HN 8/13/98)
1898 May 3, Golda Mier (d.1978),
4th Prime Minister of Israel (1969-1974) and the first woman PM, was
born. "Whether women are better than men, I cannot say -- but I can say
they are certainly no worse."
(AP, 5/11/97)(HN, 5/3/02)
1898 May 6, Daniel Gerber, baby
food pioneer, was born in Freemont, Mich.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1898 May 10, Ariel Durant, writer
(Story of Civilization), was born in Proskurov, Russia.
(www.willdurant.com/ariel.htm)
1898 May 12, A US fleet under
Admiral William T. Sampson attacked El Morro and San Cristobal. After 2
hours of shelling the fleet headed for Cuba.
(HT, 4/97, p.30)
1898 May 12, Louisiana adopted a
new constitution with a "grandfather clause" designed to eliminate
black voters.
(SC, Internet, 5/12/97)
1898 May 18, Juan J. Domenchina,
Spanish poet, interpreter (sombra desterrada), was born.
(SC, 5/18/02)
1898 May 19, US Congress passed
the Private Mailing Card Act which allowed private publishers and
printers to produce postcards.
(www.si.edu/archives/postcard/chronology.htm)
1898 May 21, Armand Hammer,
millionaire industrialist, was born.
(HN, 5/21/98)
1898 May 25, Bennett Cerf,
publisher, founder of Random House, was born.
(HN, 5/25/01)
1898 May 25, Gustav Regler,
writer, was born.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1898 May 25, Mischa Levitzki,
composer, was born.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1898 May 25, Gene Tunney,
heavyweight boxing champion (1926-1930), was born.
(HN, 5/25/98)(SC, 5/25/02)
1898 May 25, 1st US troop
transport to Manila left San Francisco.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1898 May 28, Edward Bellamy, US
author (Looking Backward), died.
(MC, 5/28/02)
1898 May 31, Norman Vincent Peale
(d1993), American religious leader, was born in Ohio. He later authored
"The Power of Positive Thinking."
(HN, 5/31/01)(MC, 5/31/02)
1898 May, In Alaska construction
began on the White Pass & Yukon railroad. It was led by Big Mike
Heney, a Canadian Railway contractor, and Sir Thomas Tancred, who
represented the British financiers.
(SFEC, 2/8/98, p.T3)
1898 Jun 1, Molly Picon, comic
actress and singer, was born.
(HN, 6/1/01)
1898 Jun 2, So wrote Dr.
Paul-Louis Simond: "I was overwhelmed. I had just unveiled a secret
which had tormented man for so long." Simond had just made the
connection between rats, fleas and humans in the transmittance of
plague in a Bombay, India, laboratory, to which he was sent by the
Institute Pasteur.
(NG, 5/88, p.678)
1898 Jun 5, Federico Garcia Lorca
(d.1936), Spanish poet and dramatist, was born.
(WUD, 1994, p.584)(MT, Spg. '99, p.2)(HN, 6/5/01)
1898 Jun 7, Social Democracy of
America party held its 1st national convention in Chicago.
(SC, 6/7/02)
1898 Jun 9, China leased Hong
Kong's New Territories to Britain for 99 years by a convention signed
in Peking, respecting an extension of Hong Kong territory, the New
Territories, comprising the area north of Kowloon up to the Shum Chun
(Shenzhen) River and 235 islands.
(www.info.gov.hk/yearbook/2003/english/chapter21/21_03.html)
1898 Jun 10, During the
Spanish-American War, U.S. Marines landed in Cuba and camped at
Guantanamo Bay where 2 Marines became the 1st war casualties.
(HN, 6/10/98)(SSFC, 1/20/02, p.A7)
1898 Jun 11, Emperor Kuang-Hsu of
China began 100 days of Reform in effort to modernize China, but
conservative forces soon squelch the attempt.
(AP, 6/11/03)
1898 Jun 12, The Philippines
gained independence from Spain. Emilio Aguinaldo, rebel leader,
proclaimed Philippine independence. Aguinaldo served as the first
president.
(SFC, 6/8/96, p.A17)(SFC, 3/31/97, p.A14)(AP,
6/12/97)(SFEC, 1/31/99, Z1 p.4)
1898 Jun 13, The Yukon Territory
of Canada was organized.
(AP, 6/13/97)
1898 Jun 15, The U.S. House of
representatives approved the annexation of Hawaii. Some 38,000
Hawaiians opposing annexation signed the "Monster Petition" that was
delivered to Washington by Queen Lili’uokalani. The petition was
ignored.
(HN, 6/15/98)(SFEC, 8/9/98, p.D2)
1898 Jun 15, US marines attacked
the Spanish off Guantanamo, Cuba.
(MC, 6/15/02)
1898 Jun 17, Maurits C. Escher,
Dutch graphic artist, was born.
(MC, 6/17/02)
1898 Jun 18, The 1st amusement
pier opened in Atlantic City, NJ.
(MC, 6/18/02)
1898 Jun 20, During the
Spanish-American War on the way to the Philippines to fight the
Spanish, the U.S. Navy cruiser Charleston seized the island of Guam.
(AP, 6/20/98)(HN, 6/20/98)
1898 Jun 21, Guam became a US
territory. [see Jun 20, Jul 21]
(MC, 6/21/02)
1898 Jun 22, Erich Maria Remarque,
German born novelist and author of "All Quiet on the Western Front" (Im
Westen nichts Neues), was born. The book, based on Remarque's
experiences in World War I, emphasized the numbing daily routine of
grunts in the trenches in stark contrast to prevailing political
rhetoric. The novel received international acclaim and was made into a
Hollywood film in 1930. Remarque left Germany for Switzerland in 1932
because of the growing Nazi movement. He became a naturalized American
citizen in the '40s, but moved back to Switzerland later in life.
Remarque kept writing, but never attained the same level of critical
success as his first novel.
(WUD, 1994, p.1213)(SFC, 12/31/96, p.A20)(HN,
6/22/98)(HNQ, 12//00)
1898 Jun 22, US forces, 6000
soldiers under Lawton, Bates, Rafferty and Wheeler and under the
general command of General Shafter, landed at Daiquiri, Cuba. Col.
Leonard Wood and Lt. Col. Theodore Roosevelt led the Rough Riders, a
volunteer cavalry regiment, onto the beach at Daiquiri in the Spanish
American War.
(www.loc.gov/rr/hispanic/1898/chroncuba.html)(http://tinyurl.com/ckvj3)
1898 Jun 24, American troops drove
Spanish forces from La Guasimas, Cuba.
(MC, 6/24/02)
1898 Jun 26, Wilhelm Emil
Messerschmitt, German engineer, was born. He built fighters and jet
aircraft for Nazi Germany.
(HN, 6/26/99)
1898 Jun 27, Joshua Slocum
(1844-1909) became the first person to sail single-handedly around the
world. His voyage began on April 24, 1895 in Boston and ended on this
day at Newport, Rhode Island.
(Econ, 3/1/08,
p.86)(www.millicentlibrary.org/slocum.htm)
1898 Jul 1, American troops took
San Juan Hill and El Caney, Cuba, from the Spaniards. During the
Spanish-American War, Theodore Roosevelt and his "Rough Riders" waged a
victorious assault on San Juan Hill in SE Cuba. Lieutenant Colonel
Theodore Roosevelt was unsatisfied with the lack of clear orders and
decided to lead a charge up San Juan Hill himself. At first, Regular
troops were resistant to following a volunteer officer, but Assistant
Secretary of the Navy Roosevelt and his eager Rough Riders managed to
rally enough troops and convince enough officers to charge. By
nightfall, the Spaniards had retreated and the heights overlooking
Santiago were in American hands. The black Buffalo Soldiers captured
San Juan Hill. As the Rough Riders shipped off to war the band played:
"There'll Be A Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight."
(WUD, 1994, p.1267)(AP, 7/1/97)(SFEC, 4/5/98,
p.C14)(HNPD, 7/1/99)
1898 Jul 1, Major Gen. Joseph
Wheeler (63) led a cavalry division in the Battle of San Juan Hill. As
a Confederate brigadier and then major general, "Fightin' Joe" Wheeler
commanded the cavalry of the Confederate Army of Mississippi and,
later, the Army of Tennessee. Captured in May 1865, he went on to have
a prosperous postwar life, serving as a US congressman for eight terms.
After his Spanish-American War service, Wheeler retired from the army
as a brigadier general of US Regulars. When he died in January 1906, he
was interred in Arlington National Cemetery.
(HNQ, 2/13/02)
1898 Jul 1, The US Congress passed
legislation regarding bankruptcy. The Bankruptcy Act of 1898, also
known as the "Nelson Act," was the first Act of Congress involving
bankruptcy that gave companies an option of being protected from
creditors. Previous attempts at federal bankruptcy laws had lasted at
most a few years.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bankruptcy_Act_of_1898)
1898 Jul 1, China leased the New
Territories and 235 adjacent islands to Britain on a 99-year lease.
(SFEC, 11/10/96, Par p.14)(SFC, 3/11/97,
p.A12)(SFEC, 6/22/97, p.A14)(SFC, 7/1/97, p.A8)
1898 July 3, The Spanish cruisers
Cristóbal Colón, Almirante Oquendo, Vizcaya and Infanta
Maria Teresa, and two torpedo-boat destroyers, lay bottled up in
Santiago Harbor, with seven American ships maintaining a blockade just
outside. Without warning, the Spanish squadron attempted to break out,
and the Americans attacked, sinking one torpedo boat and immediately
running the other aground. The Americans gave to Oquendo, Vizcaya and
Colón. Henry Reuterdahl's painting shows the American
battleships Texas and Oregon, and the Spanish cruisers Maria Teresa,
Colón and Oquendo. After a four-hour battle, all the Spanish
warships were overtaken and practically all were destroyed, with only
two American causalities, both from the U.S. armored cruiser Brooklyn.
(AP, 7/3/98)(HNPD, 7/3/98)
1898 Jul 4, Gertrude Lawrence,
English actress, was born.
(HN, 7/4/01)
1898 Jul 4, A US flag was hoisted
over Wake Island during the Spanish-American War.
(Maggio, 98)
1898 Jul 4, The French liner "La
Bourgogne" collided with bark Cromartyshire, and 560 people died.
(Maggio, 98)
1898 Jul 7, The United States
annexed Hawaii and acquired Wake Island to complete a set of coaling
stations for ships crossing the Pacific.
(HFA, '96, p.34)(AP, 7/7/97)(WSJ, 2/23/98, p.A20)
1898 Jul 8, Alec Waugh (d.1981),
novelist (Island in the Sun); brother of Evelyn, was born in London.
"If we knew where opinion ended and fact began, we should have
discovered, I suppose, the absolute."
(AP, 2/9/00)(MC, 7/8/02)
1898 Jul 8, US battle fleet under
Adm. Dewey occupied Isla Grande at Manila.
(MC, 7/8/02)
1898 Jul 13, Guglielmo Marconi
patented his radio.
(MC, 7/13/02)
1898 Jul 17, Bernice Abbott,
photographer, was born.
(HN, 7/17/01)
1898 Jul 17, U.S. troops under
General William R. Shafter took Santiago de Cuba during the
Spanish-American War.
(HN, 7/17/98)
1898 Jul 17, During the
Spanish-American War, Spain surrendered to the United States at
Santiago, Cuba.
(AP, 7/17/97)
1898 Jul 21, Spain ceded Guam to
US.
(OGA, 11/24/98)
1898 Jul 22, Stephen Vincent
Benet, poet and short-story writer, author of John Brown's Body, was
born.
(HN, 7/22/98)
1898 Jul 22,
Alexander Calder (d.1976), American artist. He is considered the
inventor of the mobile as a sculpture. In 1998 Marla Prather, Alexander
Rower and Arnauld Pierre published the Calder retrospective: "Alexander
Calder."
(SFEM,11/30/97, p.10)(HN, 7/22/02)
1898 Jul 25, US Gen'l. Nelson A.
Miles landed troops at Guanica on the southern coast of Puerto Rico.
Spain and the US came to terms at the Treaty of Paris and the US
acquired Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico became a US territory.
(HT, 4/97, p.65)(SFC, 3/26/97, p.C3)
1898 Jul 28, Start of Sherlock
Holmes "Adventure of the Retired Colourman."
(SC, 7/28/02)
1898 Jul 28, Spain, through the
offices of the French embassy in Washington, D.C., requested peace
terms in its war with the United States.
(HN, 7/28/98)
1898 Jul 30, Henry Moore (d.1986),
English sculptor, was born. In 1998 John Hedgecoe published "A
Monumental Vision: The Sculpture of Henry Moore."
(SFEC, 7/19/98, BR p.9)(HN, 7/30/01)
1898 Jul 30, Otto von Bismarck
(b.1815), German statesman and former "Iron" chancellor (1871-1890),
died. He held the German social security system as his greatest
accomplishment. In 1986 Lothar Gall authored “Bismarck.”
(WUD, 1994, p.151)(WUD, 1994, p.A27)(WSJ, 6/23/07,
p.P10)
1898 Jul, Fred Holland Day,
photographer, led an entourage on a photo trip where he took some 250
photographs with himself cast as the crucified Christ. He showed his
work titled "Seven Last Words of Christ" at the Philadelphia Salon and
again the following year in London. At this time he also took
photographs of 13 year-old Kahlil Gibran, who would later become known
for "The Prophet" and "The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam." [see 1864-1933]
(Civilization, July-Aug. 1995, p.40)
1898 Jul, Marie and Pierre Currie
published their discovery of polonium from radiation in pitchblende.
(ON, 3/00, p.1)
1898 Aug 8, Adolph Sutro (b.1830),
former mayor of SF, died. He had acquired a 100,000 volume private
library, most of which was destroyed in the 1906 earthquake. He served
as the 24th mayor of SF (1895-1897).
(G, Winter 98/99,
p.2)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolph_Sutro)
1898 Aug 12, Hawaii was formally
annexed to the United States.
(AP, 8/12/97)
1898 Aug 12, Fighting in the
Spanish-American War came to an end. The peace protocol ending the
Spanish-American War was signed Dec 10 after three months and 22 days
of hostilities. 460 US soldiers died in battle. The US paid Spain $20
million to vacate Cuba, Guam, Puerto Rico and the Philippines. Over the
next 3 years US casualties in the Philippines war totaled over 4,000.
(AP, 8/12/97)(WSJ, 2/23/98, p.A20)(HN,
8/12/00)(SSFC, 3/30/03, p.D1)(WSJ, 7/2/03, p.B1)
1898 Aug 13, Manila, the capital
of the Philippines, fell to the U.S. Army under Adm. George Dewey. It
was later reported that Dewey had agreed to sacrifice the lives of
American soldiers in order to give Spanish officers, who had retained
dead soldiers on payroll, a chance to report heavy fatalities back to
Spain.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Manila_(1898))(SSFC, 6/29/08,
DB p.58)
1898 Aug 13, Sigmund Freud (42)
signed into the Schweizerhaus, a Swiss Alps inn, with Minna Bernays
(33), his wife’s sister, and registered her as his wife.
(SFC, 12/25/06, p.A23)
1898 Aug 16, Edwin Prescott
patented a roller coaster.
(MC, 8/16/02)
1898 Aug 24, Malcolm Cowley, poet
and translator, literary critic and social historian was born. He wrote
"The Dream of the Golden Mountains."
(HN, 8/24/98)
1898 Aug 24, Ernest Narjot
(b.1826), French-born painter, died in SF. He came to California with
the Gold Rush in 1849 and became one of the state's foremost artists.
Much of his work was destroyed in the 1906 earthquake.
(SFCM, 10/28/01, p.20)
1898 Aug 26, Peggy Guggenheim, art
patron and collector, was born.
(HN, 8/26/00)
1898 Aug 29, Preston Sturges,
American screenwriter, film director and playwright, was born.
(HN, 8/29/00)
1898 Aug, US troops began arriving
in the Philippines.
(SFEC, 1/31/99, Z1 p.4)
1898 Sep 1, Lord Kitchener's army
bombed Omdurman, Sudan. Lt. Winston Churchill approached Omdurman, the
rebel capital, as a scout in the cavalry along with the rest of Gen.
Kitchener's army of 25,000 men. [see Sep 2]
(ON, 10/99, p.2)(MC, 9/1/02)
1898 Sep 2, Anglo-Egyptian lines
under Gen'l. Kitchener were charged by 50,000 fanatical Dervishes and
were mowed down by howitzers, machine guns and rifles. Lt. Winston
Churchill led one of the last (and most useless) cavalry charges in
history. Sir Herbert Kitchener led the British to victory over the
Mahdists at Omdurman and took Khartoum. The Dervishes left 11,000 dead
and 16,000 wounded. The Anglo-Egyptian army suffered fewer than a dozen
casualties. In 1899 Winston Churchill published "The River War, An
Account of the Reconquest of the Soudan." This was the 1st use of the
machine gun in battle.
(WSJ, 8/25/98, p.A14)(HN, 9/2/98)(ON, 10/99,
p.3)(MC, 9/2/01)
1898 Sep 6, Lord Kitchener
destroyed Mahdi's tomb in Omdurman (Sudan).
(MC, 9/6/01)
1898 Sep 10, Empress Elisabeth of
Bavaria (60), Queen of Hungary and wife of Emp. Franz Josef II, was
assassinated in Geneva by the Italian anarchist Luigi Luccheni. A 1997
German rock musical, "Elisabeth," by Michael Kunze and Sylvester Levay
was based on her life.
(EWH, 1968, p.744)(WSJ, 12/8/97, p.A1,13)
1898 Sep 12, Ben Shahn (d.1969),
American painter (1964 Arts & Letters), was born In Kaunas,
Lithuania.
(WSJ, 12/1/98,
p.A20)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Shahn)
1898 Sep 13, Hannibal Goodwin
(1822-1900) patented celluloid photographic film.
(http://www.plastiquarian.com/goodwin.htm)
1898 Sep 13, 20,000 Paris
construction workers went on strike.
(MC, 9/13/01)
1898 Sep 14, General Electric was
removed as a component of the Dow Jones. US Rubber was re-instated as a
component of the Dow Jones.
(WSJ, 5/28/96, p. R-45,46)
1898 Sep 20, Theodore Fontane
(b.1819), German novelist and poet, died. He is regarded by many to be
the most important 19th-century German-language realist writer.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodor_Fontane)
1898 Sep 24, Howard W Florey,
pathologist, was born in Australia. He purified penicillin and won a
Nobel Prize 1945.
(MC, 9/24/01)
1898 Sep 26, George Gershwin,
American composer, was born as Jacob Gershvin in Brooklyn, N.Y. He
wrote many popular songs for musicals, along with his brother Ira, and
is best known for "I Got Rhythm" and "Rhapsody in Blue." His work
included "An American in Paris." As Gershwin was putting together his
famous "Rhapsody in Blue" in 1924, jazz was gaining widespread
popularity. But Gershwin sought to do something new: "Jazz, they said,
had to be in strict time. It had to cling to dance rhythms. I resolved
to kill that misconception with one sturdy blow." Audiences loved it.
He and his brother Ira collaborated in 1934 to create "Porgy and Bess,"
an opera that explored African-American culture. Many of its songs have
become ingrained in American popular culture. Just a few years later,
when he was only 38, Gershwin died of a brain tumor.
(SFEC, 8/16/98, DB p.37)(AP, 9/26/98)(HNPD, 9/26/99)
1898 Sep 27, Vincent (Miller)
Youmans, songwriter, was born. He is best known for "Tea for Two" and
musical scores such as "No, No Nanette" and "Flying Down to Rio."
(HN, 9/27/00)(MC, 9/27/01)
1898 Sep 30, Felix Kersten,
Baltic-German-Finnish masseuse and confidant of Heinrich Himmler, was
born.
(MC, 9/30/01)
1898 Sep 30, The city of NY was
established with five boroughs.
(MC, 9/30/01)
1898 Sep, Jimmy Rogers, country
singer, was born in Meridian, Miss. He died at 35 of tuberculosis. In
1997 Bob Dylan produced the album "The Songs of Jimmy Rogers: A
Tribute" by a variety of artists. His biography was written by Nolan
Porterfield: "Jimmy Rogers: The Life and Times of America's Blue
Yodeler."
(SFEC, 8/17/97, DB p.56)(WSJ, 9/26/97, p.A20)
1898 Oct 1, Jews were expelled
from Kiev, Russia.
(MC, 10/1/01)
1898 Oct 6, Gustav Mahler made his
debut conducting Vienna Philharmonic.
(MC, 10/6/01)
1898 Oct 16, William O. Douglas,
81st U.S. Supreme Court Justice (1939-75), was born.
(HN, 10/16/00)(MC, 10/16/01)
1898 Oct 17, Shinichi Suzuki
(d.1998), music teacher, was born.
(MC, 10/17/01)
1898 Oct 18, Lotte Lenya, actress
and singer (Appointment, Semi-Tough), was born in Vienna, Austria.
(MC, 10/18/01)
1898 Oct 18, The American flag was
raised in Puerto Rico shortly before Spain formally relinquished
control of the island to the US.
(AP, 10/18/97)
1898 Nov 2, Theodor Herzl,
founder (1897) of modern political National Zionism, arrived in
Jerusalem to promote his World Zionist Organization. Zionism maintains
that the Jewish people constitute a nation and are entitled to a
national homeland.
(www.wzo.org.il/home/movement/herzl.htm)
1898 Nov 9, Some white people in
Wilmington, NC, issued a White Declaration of Independence, proclaiming
"that we will no longer be ruled ... by men of African origin.
(AP, 11/28/09)
1898 Nov
10, A race riot in Wilmington, NC, left many blacks killed. A vigilante
group of armed supremacists forcibly removed the Republican city
leaders (both black and white) from office, and took control, burning
buildings and shooting blacks. Reports vary from a coroner’s total of
14 to unconfirmed eyewitness reports claiming scores of deaths.
(http://statelibrary.dcr.state.nc.us/nc/bio/afro/riot.htm)(WSJ,
1/22/02, p.A11)(AP, 11/28/09)
1898 Nov 11, Rene Clair, French
film director, was born.
(HN, 11/11/00)
1898 Nov 21, Rene Magritte
(d.1967), Belgian surrealist painter, was born. His work includes
"Golconda." In 1998 a collection of his work was edited by Giselle
Ollinger-Zinque and Frederik Leen. It included his Surrealist paintings
as well as his wallpaper designs, illustrated music scores, advertising
posters, and photographs from his amateur films.
(WUD, 1994, p.863)(WSJ, 12/3/98, p.W4)(HN, 11/21/00)
1898 Nov 22, Wiley Post, aviator
and parachutist (crashed in Alaska), was born in Grand Plain, Tx.
(MC, 11/22/01)
1898 Nov 22, Pietro Mascagni's
opera "Iris" premiered (Rome).
(MC, 11/22/01)
1898 Nov 26, The SS Portland, a
280-foot side-wheeler, left Boston for Cape Cod. A major storm arose
that killed over 400 people in the next 36 hours [see Nov 27].
(AH, 6/02,
p.53)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portland_Gale)
1898 Nov 27, The SS Portland,
under Capt. Hollis H. Blanchard, sank overnight in the Portland Gale
off New England and all 192 people aboard were killed. In 2002 John
Rousmaniere authored “After the Storm: True Stories of Disaster and
Recovery at Sea.”
(AH, 6/02,
p.55)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portland_Gale)
1898 Nov 29, C.S. Lewis (d.1963),
British author, was born. His work included "The Chronicles of Narnia."
He chose a theistic view of reality over a materialistic one and
affirmed the mutual existence of soul, god and nature. His
autobiography was titled "Surprised by Joy." His work included "The
Abolition of Man," "Miracles" and "The Problem of Pain." "Friendship is
unnecessary, like philosophy, like art. ... It has no survival value;
rather it is one of those things that give value to survival."
(AP, 12/20/97)(WSJ, 10/8/98, p.W13)(SFEC, 11/15/98,
p.T3)
1898 Dec 6, Alfred Eisenstaedt,
photojournalist, was born.
(HN, 12/6/02)
1898 Dec 6, Gunnar Myrdal, Swedish
economist and sociologist, was born.
(HN, 12/6/00)
1898 Dec 9, Emmett Kelly, circus
clown (Weary Willie), was born in Sedan, Kansas.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1898 Dec 10, The United States and
Spain signed the Treaty of Paris, ending the Spanish-American War. This
ceded Puerto Rico, the Philippines and Guam to the United States. The
US Senate ratified the treaty February 6, 1899. The US military
governed Puerto Rico from October 1898 until May 1900, when the US
Congress instituted a civil government. The civil government underwent
many changes until a Constitutional Assembly formed in 1950 and
established a Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, which was proclaimed on July
25, 1952. [see Aug 12]
(AP, 12/10/97)(HN, 12/10/98)(HNQ, 7/28/01)
1898 Dec 16, Pavel Tretyakov
(b.1832), founder of Moscow’s Tretyakov Gallery, died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavel_Tretyakov)
1898 Dec 21, French scientists
Pierre and Marie Curie discovered 2 new elements that they later named
radium and polonium.
(AP,
12/21/97)(http://fi.edu/case_files/curie/pandr.html)
1898 Dec, In Germany Emil and
Joseph Berliner founded Deutsche Grammophon, dedicated to manufacturing
the gramophone record and player invented by Emil.
(SFEC,12/797, DB p.45)
1898 Armand Hammer (d.1990),
American industrialist, was born.
(SFC, 1/17/97, p.D8)
1898 Edward Mitchell Bannister
painted "Peasants in a Forest Clearing." He was the 1st
African-American painter to win a national award.
(WSJ, 8/8/00, p.A20)
1898 Cecilia Beaux painted "Man
with the Cat" (Henry Sturgis Drinker).
(SFC, 4/11/01, p.E8)
1898 Pissaro painted "Avenue de
L'Opéra, Place du Téâtre Français: Misty
Weather."
(WSJ, 1/7/02, p.A22)
1898 Henry James (1843-1916),
brother of William and son of Henry, wrote "The Turn of the Screw."
(WSJ, 10/10/96, p.A18)
1898 Lafcadio Hearn, renowned
writer on Japan, authored “Exotics and Retrospective.” One chapter on
insect musicians listed prices for the 12 most popular singing insects.
(NH, 3/1/04, p.70)
1898 Ernest Thompson Seton
published his classic "Wild Animals I Have Known."
(Civil., Jul-Aug., '95, p.77)
1898 Mark Twain authored the play
"Is He Dead: A Comedy in Three Parts." It did not get published until
2003.
(SSFC, 5/18/03, p.M2)
1898 The William Morris Agency
began representing vaudeville performers.
(Econ, 5/2/09, p.65)
1898 H.G. Wells (1866-1946)
published the classic "War of the Worlds." It was about an invasion of
Earth by Martians.
(SFC, 11/29/96, p.A16)
1898 Rimsky-Korsakov fashioned a
short play by Alexander Pushkin, "Mozart and Salieri," into a one-act
opera.
(WSJ, 1/14/04, p.D10)
1898 Buddy Bolden, cornetist and
New Orleans brass band leader, was an early practitioner of what would
be recognized today as jazz. His 1898 brass band, Kid Ory's Creole
Band, played their early version of jazz while marching in parades, at
funerals, weddings and dances. Blues, ragtime and brass band music were
blending at the end of the 19th century into what would be known as
jazz. New Orleans was one of the key cities for the development of this
music.
(HNQ, 5/12/98)
1898 Victor Herbert composed his
“Gypsy Love Song.”
(SFC, 4/6/05, p.E4)
1898 Sunset Magazine began as a
publication by the Southern Pacific Co. to promote rail travel and to
sell real estate.
(SFEC, 4/5/98, Z1 p.1)
1898 The Diamond Head Lighthouse
in Hawaii began operating.
(SFEC, 4/6/97, p.T12)
1898 Giraud Foster after having
invented closure snaps for clothing, built a $2.5 million estate on 400
acres in Lee, Mass.
(SFC, 4/5/97, p.E5)
1898 America's first forestry
school was founded. It is commemorated by the Cradle of Forestry
historic site and visitor center in the Pisgah Nat'l. Forest in North
Carolina, the first purchased Nat'l. forest in the US.
(Hem, 8/96, p.33)
1898 The Berghoff German
restaurant in Chicago opened.
(Hem., 7/96, p.26)
1898 William Entenmann opened his
first bakery in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, New York. In 1976
Entenmann’s went public.
(http://entenmanns.gwbakeries.com/history.cfm)
1898 A US telephone excise tax was
created to help finance the Spanish-American War. It was repealed in
1902 and reintroduced during WW I. In 1990 it was given permanent
status. The tax was at 3% 2005 and faced a growing withholding by war
protesters.
(SFC, 3/27/00, p.A1)(SSFC, 12/4/05, p.J6)
1898 The US Post Office featured a
stamp with the image of Eads Bridge in Missouri.
(SFC, 9/3/98, p.A19)
1898 Simon Lake took the first
successful submarine, the Argonaut First, out through Hampton Roads for
trial runs in the Chesapeake Bay.
(NG, Sept. 1939, J. Maloney p.356)
1898 Storyville, the New Orleans
brothel district, was legalized.
(WSJ, 2/3/95, p.A-11)
1898 Guam became a US naval base
after the Spanish-American War.
(WSJ, 2/20/97, p.A20)
1898 Brooklyn merged with New York
City.
(SFC, 5/26/96, T-8)
1898 Henry Barnet and Katherine
Adams were murdered with mercuric cyanide. Roland Burnham Molineux
(1866-1917), a Manhattan socialite, was convicted in 1899 and sent to
the Sing Sing death house, but was acquitted at a 2nd trial in 1902,
due to restrictions on evidence. In 2007 Harold Schechter authored “The
Devil’s Gentleman: Privilege, Poison, and the Trial That Ushered in the
Twentieth Century.”
(WSJ, 11/1/07, p.D6)
1898 The Chicago Mercantile
Exchange began operations.
(Econ, 9/20/03, p.68)
1898 Chinese Americans formed
groups like the Chinese American Citizen's Alliance to protect their
civil rights in America.
(SFEC, 2/6/00, Rp.10)
1898 The Alaska Klondike gold rush
was in full swing.
(SFEC,11/16/97, p.T5)
1898 Adolph Gund, a German
immigrant, founded a toy company in Norwalk, Conn. In 1925 he sold it
to Jacob Swedlin, who kept the company name, Gund Mfg.
(SFC, 4/12/06, p.G4)
1898 The northern California Mount
Tamalpais and Muir Woods railroad was featured in the first documentary
film made in the Bay Area.
(SFC, 8/17/96, p.A17)
1898 The SF-based Bechtel Group
construction firm was founded. The firm's projects later included the
Hoover Dam, the Trans-Arabian Pipeline, the Nevada Test Site, and the
SF BART.
(SFC, 1/16/98, p.E2)
‘1898 In San Francisco W.A.
Merralls (d.1914), an eccentric machine inventor, built a structure
that became known as the Sunnyside Conservatory. He filled the building
with plants and artwork and used it as a private retreat. The building
was saved from demolition and purchased by the city in 1980. In 1999
community members formed the Friends of Sunnyside Conservatory and
planned its restoration.
(SSFC, 2/15/09, p.B3)
1888 The Agnews State Hospital was
opened in San Jose on farmland purchased from Abraham Agnews. It was
once called the Agnews Insane Asylum and was closed in 1995. Sun
Microsystems acquired an 82.5 acre portion of the property and planned
to build an R&D campus in 1997.
(SFC, 9/29/97, p.A21)
1898 Henry Doelger (d.1978), SF
and Daly City home builder, was born in SF.
(SFC, 10/15/02, p.A20)
1898 In Berkeley, Ca., the First
Unitarian Church at 2401 Bancroft Way was built. It was designed by
Arts and Crafts architect A.C. Schweinfurth.
(SFC, 1/29/03, p.F7)
1898 The Archdiocese of SF opened
St. Patrick’s Seminary on 86 acres in Menlo Park. Archbishop Riordan
acquired the property along Middlefield Rd. in the 1890s.
(Ind, 3/9/02, 5A)
1898 In South San Francisco the
Giffra and Sons grocery store opened on Grand Ave.
(SFC, 1/12/98, p.A15)
1898 The Levy brothers moved their
operations from the coast and opened a store in San Mateo, Ca., at 2nd
and Main.
(Ind, 11/7/98, p.5A)
1898 Willis Jepson received the
1st Ph.D. in botany granted by UC Berkeley.
(SFEM, 8/15/99, p.4)
1898 Frank Brewer purchased a
marshy bay island east of San Mateo, California. He then erected levees
and dried out 2,200 acres to grow hay for dairy cows. In the 1940s
parts of Brewer Island and adjacent salt marshes were sold to Leslie
Salt co. and the Schilling estate. In the 1960s Brewer Island was
developed to become Foster City.
(SFC, 6/14/09, p.H2)
1898 In Ohio James M. Cox
(d.1957), a 28-year-old school teacher, borrowed $26,000 and bought the
Dayton Daily News. It grew to become the 1998 Cox Enterprises with 18
daily newspapers, 21 cable TV systems and 20 radio and TV stations.
(WSJ, 1/29/98, p.A19)
1898 William Entenmann Sr. founded
the Brooklyn bakery that later grew to become the nation's largest
baked goods company.
(SFEC, 9/30/96, p.A23)
1898 Frank Seiberling named his
fledgling rubber company after Charles Goodyear (d.1860), inventor of
vulcanized rubber.
(SFC, 7/31/02, p.D10)
1898 A Campbell Soup executive
admired the red-and-white colors of the Cornell football team and
adopted them for Campbell Soup.
(SFC, 1/8/00, p.B4)
1898 Federal Steel was organized
in a merger of Illinois Steel Co. and other steel companies. The
transaction was bankrolled by J.P. Morgan. Judge Elbert H. Gary, an
Illinois Steel director, became Federal's first president.
(WSJ, 5/28/96, p. R-45)
1898 The first independent auto
dealership opened in Detroit and the first franchised dealership opened
in Reading, Pa.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)
1898 In Connecticut the Meridan
Silver Plate Co. was one of many independent silver companies that
merged to form the Int'l. Silver Co.
(SFC,12/10/97, Z1 p.9)(SFC, 8/2/06, p.G7)
1898 In Chicago the Pickard China
Co. was founded by Wilder Pickard. He hired artists to paint imported
China blanks. About 1911 Pickard started acid-etching china pieces and
coating them with gold. the "Rose and Daisy" pattern was the most
popular.
(SFC, 2/11/98, Z1 p.6)
1898 Otis Steam Elevator Works
merged with 14 other elevator makers to form the Otis Elevator Company.
It later became a subsidiary of United Technologies.
(ON, 5/05, p.12)
1898 Sunset Magazine was founded
by the Southern Pacific Railroad to lure travelers west. It was sold to
a private publisher in 1914.
(SFC, 7/8/96, p.D1)
1898 E.H. Harriman took over the
Union Pacific Railroad. He invested heavily into the company and raised
the stock price from $16 to $219 in 1907.
(WSJ, 3/21/00, p.A24)
1898 Jim White, cowboy, was one of
the 1st white settlers to venture into New Mexico’s Carlsbad Caverns.
His efforts helped turn the caves into a national park in 1930.
(SSFC, 6/20/04, p.D5)
1898 Of the 5,462 U.S. Army
officers and men who died in the various theaters of operations and in
camps in the U.S. during the Spanish-American War of 1898, only 379 of
deaths resulted from combat. The remaining deaths were attributed to
disease and other causes. Some 240,000 served in the army during the
war. The total wounded was 1,604.
(HNQ, 1/2/99)
1898 Dutchman Martinas Willem
Beijerinck was the first to name viruses, as the poison of contagious
living fluids.
(SFEC, 10/25/98, Z1 p.12)
1898 A new star in the
constellation of the Serpent Bearer was named RS Ophiuchi and faded out
within a year. It flared up again 35 years later. It is called a
recurrent novae.
(SCTS, p.182)
1898 Frederick Law Olmsted
(d.1903), the architect of Central Park in NYC, was confined to the
McLean Asylum in Waverly, Mass., for dementia. He had earlier designed
the grounds for the asylum.
(WSJ, 5/21/99, p.W5)
1898 In Bolivia Sucre began to
lose its pre-eminence to La Paz following a decline at the nearby
silver mine at Potosi.
(Econ, 7/28/07, p.39)
1898 British army officers began
using the new portable Roorkhee chair. It was named in honor of the
headquarters of the Indian Army corps of Engineers at Roorkhee.
(SSFM, 4/1/01, p.46)
1898 Charles Booth, shipping
magnate, led a project to color-code every street in London according
to its social make-up.
(Econ, 5/6/06, p.57)
c1898 In England Edmund Dene
Morel, a London employee of the shipping line Elder Dempster, came to
realize that a wealth of rubber and ivory cargo was arriving from Congo
in exchange for military officers, firearms and ammunition. He deduced
that forced labor was being used by King Leopold II of Belgium to
extract native wealth.
(SFEM, 8/16/98, p.4)
1898 In England chemists William
Ramsay and Morris Travers discovered a new gas that they named neon. It
had a natural orange-red glow.
(G&M, 7/31/97, p.A20)
1898 William Gladstone (b.1809),
former English prime minister, died. His biography, "Gladstone," by Roy
Jenkins was published in 1995.
(WSJ, 2/21/97, p.A12)
1898 Harbin, China, was built by
Russian workers who extended the trans-Siberian railway across
Heilongjiang province.
(SFC, 5/8/01, p.C2)
1898 Ye Yanlan (b.1823), Chinese
painter, connoisseur and Qing Dynasty official, died.
(SFC, 7/1/06, p.E8)
1898 In France the Michelin Tire
company began using its tire-man logo. The first ad offered a toast
with broken nails and glass and told consumers that the Michelin tire
"drinks up obstacles."
(SFC, 3/19/98, p.A3)(SFEC, 3/22/98, p.T3)
1898 In Italy government troops
killed hundreds after riots broke out in Milan during a declining
economy.
(WSJ, 1/28/07, p.P10)
1898 In the Marquesas Islands
missionaries forbade the natives to tattoo their bodies.
(SFEC, 8/25/96, p.T6)
1898 In Russia Konstantin
Stanislavsky and a partner founded the Moscow Art Theater.
(WSJ, 2/11/98, p.A20)
1898 Pyotr Smirnov (b.1831),
Russian vodka manufacturer, died. In 2009 Linda Himelstein authored
“The King of Vodka: The Story of Pyotr Smirnov and the Upheaval of an
Empire.”
(SSFC, 5/31/09, Books p.J2)
1898 In Sierra Leone the
imposition of a hut tax sparked an indigenous rebellion in which many
settlers were killed. Britain declared a protectorate and assumed
formal administration until independence.
(WSJ, 5/31/00, p.A26)
1898 Joseph Silver (d.1918), a
Polish-born Jew, arrived in Johannesburg fresh from a stint in Sing
Sing for burglary and a stay in London a decade earlier. Shortly after
arriving in Johannesburg, Silver set up a string of cafes, cigar shops
and police-protected brothels. Silver was executed as a spy in Poland
in 1918. In 2007 Charles van Onselen authored "The Fox and The Flies:
The World of Joseph Silver,” in which he suggested that Silver was
London’s “Jack the Ripper.”
(AP, 5/2/07)
1898 In South Africa Sir Thomas
Cullinan discovered a prospect that contained kimberlite, a rock that
can be rich in diamonds. A mine was established there in 1903 and
became one of the world’s most valuable diamond resources.
(Econ, 12/1/07, p.82)
1898-1900 Cezanne painted his sketchy red-ochre study
"In the Quarry of Bibemus" and his lush green and linear "Woodland
Scene."
(WSJ, 2/8/96, p.A-12)
1898-1900 Theodore Roosevelt served as governor of
New York.
(ON, 12/99, p.12)
1898-1900 A 2-year battle against American troops was
waged by the Filipinos who sought independence, not a new colonial
ruler.
(SFC, 6/9/97, p.A15)
1898-1902 Robert E. Peary led an expedition to
Ellesmere Island. He lost some of his toes to frostbite during this
expedition.
(NG, 6/1988, p.764)
1898-1905 In the US over 3,000 major mergers took
place in manufacturing and mining.
(WSJ, 12/31/97, p.A10)
1898-1913 Heroin was marketed as a cough medicine.
(NG, 10/04, Geog.)
1898-1920 In Guatemala Pres. Manuel Estrada Cabrera
was one of the first Latin dictators to create his own secret police.
He plundered the treasury, expanded the standing army and
systematically oppressed his opponents.
(WSJ, 3/3/99, p.A18)
1898-1928 12 million people in India died of the
plague.
(NG, 5/88, p.682)
1898-1937 Amelia Earhart, American aviator: "In
soloing—as in other activities—it is far easier to start something than
it is to finish it." "Courage is the price that life exacts for
granting peace."
(AP, 8/27/97)(AP, 10/20/97)
1898-1972 Maurits Corneille Escher, Dutch artist. He
created a strange world of visual puns and distorted perspectives. In
1996 a CD-ROM retrospective of his work was produced. (Byron Preiss;
Windows cd-rom; $49.95).
(SFC, 6/16/96, BR p.7)
1898-1978 Golda Meir, Israeli prime minister:
"Whether women are better than men, I cannot say—but I can say they are
certainly no worse."
(AP, 5/11/97)
1898-1982 George Miksch Sutton, ornithologist. He was
associated with Cornell and the Univ. of Oklahoma. In 1998 Paul A.
Johnsgard published "Baby Bird Portraits by George Miksch Sutton:
Watercolors in the Field Museum."
(NH, 10/98, p.14)
1898-1989 Malcolm Cowley, American author and
critic: "Talent is what you possess; genius is what possesses you."
(AP, 5/26/98)
1899 Jan 2, Alexander Tcherepnin,
composer, was born in St Petersburg, Russia.
(MC, 1/2/02)
1899 Jan 10, Filipino leader
Emilio Aguinaldo renounced the Treaty of Paris, which annexed the
Philippines to the United States.
(HN, 1/10/00)
1899 Jan 17, Notorious gangster Al
Capone was born in Brooklyn, N.Y.
(AP, 1/17/99)
1899 Jan 17, US took possession of
Wake Island in Pacific.
(MC, 1/17/02)
1899 Jan 20, Alexander Tcherepnin,
composer, was born.
(MC, 1/20/02)
1899 Jan 20, President William
McKinley appointed a Philippine Commission led by Jacob G. Schurman,
president of Cornell University, to study the situation in the island
and to submit a report to serve as a basis for setting up a civil
government. The commission issued findings in June suggesting the
ultimate independence for the islands but, for an indefinite period
continued U.S. rule.
(HNQ, 1/3/00)
1899 Jan 23, Humphrey Bogart, U.S.
actor was born. He won an Oscar for African Queen and also starred in
Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon. [see Dec 25, 1899]
(HN, 1/23/99)
1899 Jan 24, The rubber heel was
patented by Humphrey O'Sullivan.
(MC, 1/24/02)
1899 Jan, William Franklin Miller
(36) began offering an investment return of 10% per week to his
neighbors in Brooklyn. His scheme was exposed after a year by E.L.
Blake, who recognized the swindle after over $2 million was bilked from
tens of thousands. Miller was jailed for 10 years.
(WSJ, 7/23/99, p.A14)
1899 Feb 4, After an exchange of
gunfire, fighting broke out between American troops and Filipinos near
Manila, sparking the Philippine-American War (also referred to as the
Philippine Insurrection of 1899). American soldiers patrolling in Santa
Mesa opened fire on Filipino soldiers near a bridge over the San Juan
River.
(SFEC, 1/31/99, Z1p.1)(HN, 2/4/00)
1899 Feb 5, The devastation from
the battle of Santa Ana was captured in photos by F. Tennyson Neely.
The collection was published as "Fighting in the Philippines."
(SFEC, 1/31/99, Z1 p.1)
1899 Feb 6, A peace treaty between
the United States and Spain was ratified by the U.S. Senate.
Spanish-American War ended.
(AP, 2/6/97)(HN, 2/6/99)
1899 Feb 15, M Wolf & A
Schwassmann discovered asteroid #442 Eichsfeldia.
(440 Int'l., 2/15/99)
1899 Feb 18, Sir Arthur Bryant,
English historian, was born.
(HN, 2/18/98)
1899 Feb 18, Marius Sophus Lie
(b.1842), a Norwegian-born mathematician, died. He largely created the
theory of continuous symmetry, and applied it to the study of geometry
and differential equations.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophus_Lie)
1899 Feb 20, Illinois Tel &
Tel was granted a franchise for a Chicago freight tunnel system.
(MC, 2/20/02)
1899 Feb 23, Erich Kastner
(d.1974), German poet, novelist and children's author (Emil and the
Detectives), was born. "The only people who attain power are those who
crave it."
(AP, 12/1/98)(HN, 2/23/01)
1899 Feb 25, Paul Julius Reuter
(b.1816), founder of the British news agency that bears his name, died
in Nice, France. In 2003 Brian Mooney and Barry Simpson authored
"Breaking news: How the Wheels Came off at Reuters."
(AP, 2/25/99)(Econ, 11/1/03, p.81)
1899 Feb 27, Charles H. Best,
physiologist, co-discoverer of Insulin, was born in Maine.
(MC, 2/27/02)
1899 Mar 2, Congress established
Mount Rainier National Park in Washington state, the nation's 5th
national park.
(AP, 3/2/98)(SFC, 8/14/99, p.A6)
1899 Mar 3, Congress authorized
the Lafayette silver dollar.
(SC, 3/3/02)
1899 Mar 3, George Dewey became
the 1st in US with rank of Admiral of the Navy.
(SC, 3/3/02)
1899 Mar 5, Patrick Hadley,
composer, was born.
(MC, 3/5/02)
1899 Mar 5, 1st performance of
Edward MacDowell's 2nd Concerto in D.
(MC, 3/5/02)
1899 Mar 6, Richard Leo Simon,
publisher, partner of Max Schuster, was born.
(HN, 3/6/01)
1899 Mar 6, Aspirin was patented
following Felix Hoffman’s discoveries about the properties of
acetylsalicylic acid. Duisberg’s Bayer team released a drug they named
aspirin. In 2004 Diarmuid Jeffreys authored “Aspirin: The Remarkable
Story of a Wonder Drug.”
(HN, 3/6/01)(SSFC, 10/24/04, p.M6)
1899 Mar 11, Frederick IX, King of
Denmark, was born.
(HN, 3/11/98)
1899 Mar 18, Lavrenti Beria
(d.1953), chief of Soviet secret police under Stalin, was born.
(MC, 3/18/02)
1899 Mar 18, Phoebe, a moon of
Saturn, was discovered by Pickering.
(MC, 3/18/02)
1899 Mar 27, The first
international radio transmission between England and France was
achieved by the Italian inventor G. Marconi.
(HN, 3/27/99)
1899 Apr 1, Gilbert Grosvenor, a
soon-to-be son-in-law, was appointed by Alexander Graham Bell as
assistant editor of the National Geographic Magazine.
(SFEC, 9/14/97, p.T13)
1899 Apr 9, Stephen J. Field
(b.1816), former US Supreme Court Justice (1863-1897), died.
(www.oyez.org/oyez/resource/legal_entity/38/print)
1899 Apr 11, Percy L. Julian,
chemist (drugs for treatment of arthritis), was born.
(MC, 4/11/02)
1899 Apr 11, The Treaty of Paris
ending the Spanish-American War was declared in effect. Spain ceded
Puerto Rico to US. [see Apr 12, 1898]
(AP, 4/11/97)(MC, 4/11/02)
1899 Apr 13, Alfred Moser Butts,
inventor of the board game Scrabble, was born.
(HN, 4/13/98)(MC, 4/13/02)
1899 Apr 21, Randall Thompson,
composer, was born.
(MC, 4/21/02)
1899 Apr 21, American Tobacco,
Standard Rope & Twine and Laclede Gas Light Co. were removed as
components of the Dow Jones. General Electric was re-instated and
Continental Tobacco, American Steel & Wire and Federal Steel were
added.
(WSJ, 5/28/96, p.R-45,46)
1899 Apr 23, Edith Ngaio Marsh,
Kiwi mystery writer (Black Beech & Honeydew), was born in NZ.
(MC, 4/23/02)
1899 Apr 23, Vladimir Nabokov
(d.1977), writer, was born in Russia. His work included "Lolita,"
"Pnin," and "Pale Fire." He was an avid butterfly collector. "There is
no science without fancy, and no art without facts."
(WSJ, 12/27/96, p.A5)(WSJ, 4/22/99,
A20)(http://lib.ru/NABOKOW/nabokr.txt)
1899 Apr 23, Some 2000 people
gathered to watch the lynching Sam Hose, a black man questionably
accused of murdering a white planter and raping his wife. His ears,
fingers, and genitals were cut off and his face was skinned before he
was burned in kerosene soaked wood. His and other stories were later
told in the 1998 book: "Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age
of Jim Crow" by Leon F. Litwack.
(SFEC, 4/19/98, BR p.4)
1899 Apr 29, Edward Kennedy "Duke"
Ellington (d.1975), jazz composer and musician was born in Washington
D.C. A major influence in jazz, especially the big band sound,
Ellington orchestrated over 1,000 pieces of music during his prolific
career. Although some tunes most associated with Duke Ellington and
'His Famous Orchestra' were written by others (Billy Strayhorn wrote
"Take the A Train"), Ellington capitalized on his outstanding ensemble
by writing pieces emphasizing the talents of individual performers such
as Johnny Hodges and Jimmy Blanton. In addition to big band pieces, he
also wrote for film, ballet and opera.
(HN, 4/4/98)(SFEC, 2/21/99, DB p.32)(AP,
4/29/99)(HNQ, 11/10/00)
1899 May 5, Freeman F. Gosden,
radio comedy writer and performer (Amos 'n' Andy), was born in
Richmond, Va.
(HN, 5/5/01)(MC, 5/5/02)
1899 May 8, Friedrich August von
Hayek (d.1992), Austrian-born British economist. He found solutions to
problems proposed by Keynesian economics. He was dedicated to
illuminating the problems of socialism and held that inflation,
unemployment and recession result from governmental interference. He
won a Nobel prize in 1974.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R20)
1899 May 9, A lawn mower was
patented.
(MC, 5/9/02)
1899 May 10, Fred Astaire
(d.1987), movie musical star, was born in Omaha, Neb. His films
included “Easter Parade” (1948).
(AP, 5/10/99)(HN, 5/10/99)
1899 May 18, The First Hague Peace
Conference opened in the Netherlands as 26 nations met on World
Goodwill Day. The destruction or seizure of enemy property with no
military value was banned at the convention. The czar of Russia had
called for a disarmament conference that, for reasons of diplomatic
niceties and international rivalries, ended up in The Hague.
(AP, 5/18/99)(SFC, 8/11/00, p.A15)(AP, 4/17/06)
1899 May 20, John M. Harlan, the
91st Supreme Court justice (1955-71), was born in Chicago.
(MC, 5/20/02)
1899 May 24, The 1st US auto
repair shop opened in Boston.
(MC, 5/24/02)
1899 May 25, Marie-Rosalie "Rosa"
Bonheur (68), French painter, died.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1899 May 26, Pieter Menten, Dutch
war criminal, was born.
(MC, 5/26/02)
1899 May 29, Frantz Jehin-Prume
(60), composer, died.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1899 May 30, Irving G. Thalberg,
legendary MGM production executive, was born in Brooklyn, N.Y.
(AP, 5/30/99)
1899 May 30, Wilbur Wright
(1867-1912), Ohio bicycle mechanic, wrote the Smithsonian Institution
and affirmed his belief that human flight was possible.
(NPub, 2002,
p.5)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_Brothers)
1899 May, "The stock market is in
the nature of a barometer which reflects the rise and fall of general
conditions," so said Charles Dow in a WSJ column.
(WSJ, 5/28/96, p. R-26)
1899 Jun 2, Black Americans
observed a day of fasting to protest lynchings.
(SC, 6/2/02)
1899 Jun 3, A French court
overturned the 1894 guilty verdict against Capt. Dreyfus.
(ON, 2/09, p.7)
1899 Jun 3, Johann Strauss (73),
Jr., composer ("Waltz King"), died.
(MC, 6/3/02)
1899 Jun 7, Elizabeth Bowen
(d.1973), Irish-British novelist and short story writer (The Death of
the Heart), was born in Dublin. "One can live in the shadow of an idea
without grasping it." "The charm, one might say the genius of memory,
is that it is choosy, chancy and temperamental: it rejects the edifying
cathedral and indelibly photographs the small boy outside, chewing a
hunk of melon in the dust."
(AP, 4/19/97)(AP, 8/5/97)(HN, 6/7/01)
1899 Jun 11, Yasonari Kawabata
(d.1972), Japanese novelist (Thousand Cranes)(Nobel 1968), was born in
Osaka.
(SC, 6/11/02)
1899 Jun 16, Nelson Doubleday, US
publisher (Doubleday), was born.
(MC, 6/16/02)
1899 Jun 16, Helen Traubel,
soprano (Met Opera Walkure/Isolde), nightclubs, was born in St Louis,
MO.
(MC, 6/16/02)
1899 Jun 20, Jean Moulin, French
Resistance fighter against Nazi Germany, was born.
(HN, 6/20/98)
1899 Jun 27. The plague came
ashore in San Francisco. Political leaders overrode health officials
and denied its presence. The governor declared it a felony to publish
its existence. By 1904 more than 100 people had died of "syphilitic
septicemia," the official pseudonym of plague.
(NG, 5/88, p.686)
1899 Jul 1, Reverend Thomas
Dorsey, father of gospel music, was born.
(HN, 7/1/98)
1899 Jul 1, Charles Laughton,
actor (Mutiny on Bounty, Spartacus), was born in England.
(MC, 7/1/02)
1899 Jul 1, Gideon Society was
established to place bibles in hotels.
(MC, 7/1/02)
1899 Jul 3, The nation's first
juvenile court opened on the West Side after reformers like Jane Addams
pushed the Illinois legislature to recognize that children were
developmentally different from adults.
(SFEC, 6/27/99, Z1 p.1)
1899 Jul 7, George Cukor (d.1983),
film director, was born in New York City.
(AP, 7/7/99)(MC, 7/7/02)
1899 Jul 11, E. B. White (Elwyn
Brooks White, d.1985), writer, author of "Charlotte's Web" and "The
Elements of Style," was born.
(HN, 7/11/98)(PGA, 12/9/98)(MC, 7/11/02)
1899 Jul 17, James Cagney
(d.1986), American actor famous for his role in "Yankee Doodle Dandy,"
was born.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Cagney)
1899 Jul 18, Horatio Alger Jr.
(67), American clergyman, author (Disagreeable Woman), died. His books,
reissued in cheaper editions, became huge bestsellers. In 1928 Herbert
Mayes authored a biography that was highly fabricated. In 1985 Gary
Scharnhorst and Jack Bales authored "The Lost Life of Horatio Alger,
Jr."
(WSJ, 8/27/03, p.B1)(MC, 7/18/02)
1899 Jul 21, Ernest Hemingway
(d.1961), American novelist and short-story writer, was born in Oak
Park, Ill. "Never confuse motion with action."
(AP, 7/21/97)(HN, 7/21/98)(AP, 11/21/98)
1899 Jul 21, Hart Crane, American
poet, was born. He died in 1932 by jumping off a ship in the Atlantic
Ocean. His major epic poem is called "The Bridge." Brom Weber in 1952
published an edition of his letters: "Oh My Land, My Friends." This was
updated in 1997 by Langdon Hammer.
(WSJ, 8/19/97, p.A17)
1899 Jul 25, Ralph Dumke, actor
(Movieland Quiz), was born in Indiana.
(SC, 7/25/02)
1899 Jul 30, Gerald Moore, English
pianist (Am I Too Loud), was born.
(MC, 7/30/02)
1899 Aug 8, The first household
refrigerating machine was patented.
(SFEC, 8/8/99, Z1 p.8)(HN, 8/8/00)
1899 Aug 9, Pamela Lyndon Travers
(P.L. Travers), author of the Mary Poppins books, was born.
(HN, 8/9/00)
1899 Aug 13, Alfred Hitchcock
(d.1980), movie director, was born in London. "A woman, I always say,
should be like a good suspense movie: The more left to the imagination,
the more excitement there is. This should be her aim -- to create
suspense, to let a man discover things about her without her having to
tell him."
(AP, 8/13/97)(HN, 8/13/98)(AP, 8/13/99)
1899 Aug 15, Henry Ford (36) quit
his job with the Edison Illuminating Company. He soon found backers and
started the Detroit Automobile Company, with himself as chief engineer.
(ON, 3/03, p.1)
1899 Aug 23, Albert Claude
(d.1983), biologist, was born in Belgium. He never graduated from high
school and won the 1974 Nobel for his work on the sub-structure of the
cell.
(www.belgium.be)
1899 Aug 24, Jorge Luis Borges
(d.1986), Argentine poet and philosophical essayist, was born in Buenos
Aires.
(WUD, 1994, p.171)(WSJ, 9/21/98, p.A26)(AP, 8/24/99)
1899 Aug 27, C.S. Forester (Cecil
Scott Forester), novelist, was born in England. He authored the
"Horatio Hornblower" series.
(HN, 8/27/00)(MC, 8/27/02)
1899 Aug 31, Paul E. Garber, US
founder and 1st curator of National Air & Space Museum, was born.
(MC, 8/31/01)
1899 Aug 31, Lynn Riggs, writer,
was born. Her book "Green Grow the Lilacs" was adapted by Rodgers and
Hammerstein to become "Oklahoma."
(HN, 8/31/00)
1899 Sep 6, Billy Rose, songwriter
famous for "It's Only a Paper Moon," and "Me and My Shadow," was born.
(HN, 9/6/98)
1899 Sep 6, Carnation processed
its 1st can of evaporated milk.
(MC, 9/6/01)
1899 Sep 8, The British government
sent an additional 10,000 troops to Natal South Africa.
(MC, 9/8/01)
1899 Sep 9, Louis Cheslock,
composer and author (Mencken on Music), was born.
(MC, 9/9/01)
1899 Sep 13, Henry H. Bliss became
the first person killed by an automobile, an electric taxi in
Manhattan.
(SFC, 10/10/97, p.A21)
1899 Sep 14, Hal B. Wallis
(d.1986), film producer, was born in Chicago. His work included “The
Maltese Falcon, Casablanca.”
(HN, 9/14/00)(www.britannica.com)
1899 Sep 17, The 1st British
troops left Bombay for South Africa.
(MC, 9/17/01)
1899 Sep 19, French Capt. Alfred
Dreyfus won a pardon after a retrial was forced by public opinion and
he was released from Devil's Island.
(PCh, 1992, p.628)(Wikipedia)
1899 Sep, The USS Charleston
engaged in shellfire upon Subic Bay in the Philippines.
(G, Spring/98, p.5)
1899 Oct 3, J.S. Thurman patented
a motor-driven vacuum cleaner.
(MC, 10/3/01)
1899 Oct 9, Bruce Catton, U.S.
historian and journalist, famous for his works on the Civil War, was
born.
(HN, 10/9/98)
1899 Oct 10, I.R. Johnson patented
the bicycle frame.
(MC, 10/10/01)
1899 Oct 11, Byron Bancroft
Johnson, president of baseball’s Western League, renamed it as the
American League.
(ON, 6/09, p.11)
1899 Oct 11, South African Boers,
settlers from the Netherlands, declared war on Great Britain. In the
Boer War Dutch settlers of the South African Republic (the Traansvaal)
under Pres. Paul Kruger and the Orange Free State refused to accept
English rule in southern Africa. The Boers were the predominately Dutch
inhabitants of the two republics, which had gained their independence
from Great Britain in the 1850s. Years of tensions between British
settlers and the Boer governments exploded into war. Eventual British
victory resulted in the Boer republics becoming colonies of the British
Empire and in 1910 part of the Union of South Africa.
(V.D.-H.K.p.289)(HNQ, 7/12/99)(SFC, 10/8/99, p.D3)
1899 Oct 12, The Anglo-Boer War
began. [see Oct 11]
(HN, 10/12/98)
1899 Oct 14, Morning Post reporter
Winston Churchill departed for South Africa. Shortly after his arrival
he was caught in an ambush and taken prisoner in Pretoria from whence
he escaped. In 1999 his granddaughter Celia Sandys authored "Churchill:
Wanted Dead Or Alive."
(WSJ, 12/29/99, p.A12)(MC, 10/14/01)
1899 Oct 30, In South Africa two
battalions of British troops were cut off, surrounded and forced to
surrender to General Petrus Joubert's Boers at Nicholson's Nek.
(HN, 10/30/98)
1899 Oct 30, British Morning Post
reporter Winston Churchill reached Capetown.
(MC, 10/30/01)
1899 Oct, An int'l. tribunal in
Paris ruled on a border dispute between Venezuela and British Guiana
(Guyana). Britain received most of the claim for the Essequibo region,
close to 111,000 square miles. Venezuela was represented by 2 US judges
and the chairman of the panel was Russian jurist Frederic de Martens.
Venezuela rejected this decision in the 1960s.
(SFC, 10/26/99, p.A12)(Econ, 9/29/07, p.44)
1899 Nov 4, John Montgomery Ward
delivered a manifesto on baseball that said in part: "There was a time
when the League stood for integrity and fair dealing…"
(SFEC, 10/3/99, BR p.4)
1899 Nov 11,
Stuart-Rubens-Boyd-Jones' "Floradora," premiered in London.
(MC, 11/11/01)
1899 Nov 15, Winston Churchill
(24), war correspondent for London’s Morning Post, was captured by
Boers in Natal, South Africa. He escaped prison in Pretoria on Dec 12
and after some days reached the English colony in Durban, Natal.
(ON, 12/08, p1)
1899 Nov 16, Vincas Kudirka
(d.1858), author of the Lithuanian national anthem, died.
(LC, 1998, p.30)(LHC, 12/31/02)
1899 Nov 19, Allen Tate, Southern
novelist, poet and critic, was born.
(HN, 11/19/00)
1899 Nov 21, Vice President Garret
A. Hobart, serving under President McKinley, died in Paterson, N.J., at
age 55.
(AP, 11/21/99)
1899 Nov 22, Hoagy Carmichael
(d.1981), American composer, was born in Bloomington, Ind. His songs
included "Georgia on My Mind" (1930) "Stardust" and over 600 other
melodies. Lyrics for Georgia on my Mind were written by Stuart Gorrell.
(WSJ, 9/9/99, p.A24)(SFC, 11/25/99, p.C22)(Econ,
7/3/04, p.16)
1899 Nov 24, Abdullah ibn Mohammed
al-Ta'a'ishi, Mahdi of Sudan (1883-99), died.
(MC, 11/24/01)
1899 Nov 28, The British were
victorious over the Boers at Modder River.
(HN, 11/28/98)
1899 Dec 1, Robert Welch, founder
of the John Birch Society, was born.
(MC, 12/1/01)
1899 Dec 2, John Barbirolli,
English conductor (NY Philharmonic Orchestra), was born.
(MC, 12/2/01)
1899 Dec 9, Jean de Brunhoff
(d.1937), illustrator and author, creator of the Babar series of books,
was born.
(HN, 12/9/00)(SFC, 4/15/03, p.A16)
1899 Dec 12, George F. Bryant of
Boston patented the wooden golf tee.
(MC, 12/12/01)
1899 Dec 15, In South Africa the
Boars defeated the British at the Battle of Colenso.
(HN, 12/15/98)
1899 Dec 16, Sir Noel Coward
(d.1973), the English actor, playwright and composer, was born in
London. "I love criticism just so long as it's unqualified praise."
(AP, 12/16/99)
1899 Dec 22, Wiley Post, aviation
pioneer, was born in Texas.
(MC, 12/22/01)
1899 Dec 25, Humphrey Bogart,
actor ("Here's looking at you, kid" in Casablanca), was born in NYC.
[see Jan 23, 1899]
(MC, 12/25/01)
1899 Dec 30, The New York Times
listed the most significant advances of the Industrial Revolution. 1st
item on the list was friction matches (1827).
(SFEC, 8/13/00, Z1 p.2)
1899 Dec 31, Silvestre Revueltas,
composer (Sensemaya), was born in Santiago, Papasquiaro, Mexico.
(MC, 12/31/01)
1899 Dec 31, Karl Millocker (57),
Austrian conductor and composer, died.
(MC, 12/31/01)
1899 Dec, Honolulu’s chief
microbiologist reported that plague had arrived in Hawaii. The
steamship Nippon Maru had docked there in the summer with a corpse that
carried plague.
(SSFC, 12/19/04, p.E2)
1899 Alfred Mosher Butts (d.1993),
the inventor of the Scrabble game, was born in Poughkeepsie, NY. The
game was initially called Lexico and then Criss-Cross Words. It was
named Scrabble in 1947. Sales took off in 1952.
(WSJ, 6/28/01, p.B1)
1899 The Cardwell triplets (Faith,
Hope and Charity) were born near Waco, Texas. They later set a record
by all living past age 95.
(SFC, 1/18/97, p.A19)
1899 Eusebia Palomino Yenes
(d.1935) was born in Spain. She became a nun of the Institute of the
Daughters of Mary, Help of Christians and was beatified in 2004.
(AP, 4/25/04)
1899 Gustav Klimt painted "Nude
Veritas."
(WSJ, 7/11/01, p.A15)
1899 Edouard Vuillard painted "The
Salon with Three Lamps, Rue St. Florentin."
(WSJ, 2/8/96, p.A-12)
1899 "The Awakening," a novel of
loneliness and anomie by Kate Chopin was published.
(WSJ, 7/31/96, p.A13)
1899 Harry Graham, English
versifier, authored "Ruthless Rhymes for Heartless Homes."
(SFEC, 5/14/00, Z1 p.2)
1899 Rudyard Kipling authored his
poem “The White Man’s Burden.”
(SSFC, 5/8/05, p.B1)
1899 Leo Tolstoy published his
last big novel: "Resurrection." In 1999 composer Tod Machover debuted
his opera "Resurrection" with the Houston Grand Opera. It was based on
Tolstoy's work.
(WSJ, 5/4/99, p.A20)
1899 Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929),
a Norwegian-American academic, published "The Theory of the Leisure
Class," which attacked the influence of laissez faire economics and big
business on society.
(WSJ, 1/11/99,
p.R20)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorstein_Veblen)
1899 H.G. Wells authored "When the
Sleeper Wakes," the story of a man who falls asleep for 200 years.
(WSJ, 1/1/00, p.R8)
1899 Edith Wharton published her
first collection of short fiction, "The Greater Inclination." (Hem,
Dec. 94, p.71)(SSFC, 1/14/01, BR p.8)
1899 In Alaska the White Pass
& Yukon railroad, which led to the goldfields, was completed.
(SFEC, 2/7/99, p.T4)
1899 Edward H. Harriman, chairman
of the Union Pacific RR, led a survey expedition along the Alaska coast
with 126 passengers aboard a luxury steamer. The 2-month, 9,000 mile
journey from Seattle to Siberia included a stop at Cape Fox where the
visitors gathered up a items from what looked like an abandoned Tlingit
Indian settlement. Much of the plunder was returned in 2001.
(WSJ, 8/31/01, p.W13)
1899 In Cambridge, Mass., the
Semitic Museum of Harvard Univ. was founded.
(AM, 7/97, p.68)
1899 The Univ. of Pennsylvania
Museum of Archeology and Anthropology opened.
(WSJ, 5/7/03, p.D10)
1899 The US Consumers League was
founded to promote a fair marketplace for workers and consumers.
(AH, 10/07, p.34)(www.nclnet.org/about/history.htm)
1899 In Le Roy, New York, Pearle
Wait, a carpenter, and his wife May, sold their formula for Jell-O for
$450 to neighbor Orator Frank Woodward.
(SFEC, 7/27/97, p.A2)
1899 In New Orleans Oysters
Rockefeller was invented at Antoine's restaurant.
(SFEM, 6/14/98, p.8)
1899 Louis Henry Sullivan got the
commission to design the Carson Pirie Scott department store in
Chicago, at the corner of State and Madison in the heart of the Loop.
(Hem., 7/95, p.82)
1899 Lucille Mulhall, reputed as
the 1st cowgirl, first performed.
(WSJ, 4/10/01, p.A20)
1899 A treaty between American,
Germany and Britain gave Western Samoa to the Germans and Eastern Samoa
to the Americans. In an Anglo-German treaty the UK renounced its rights
to the Samoan Islands
(HN, 1/16/99)(SFCM, 10/14/01, p.45)
1899 A federal law made it illegal
to dump any waste in any US body of water.
(SFEC, 3/28/99, Z1 p.8)
1899 The US Library of Congress
introduced a classification system organized into 21 subject classes.
(ON, 3/04, p.12)
1898 South Dakota became the first
US state to allow voter initiatives.
(Econ, 12/19/09, p.47)
1899 The Western Federation of
mine workers demanded that only union workers be hired, but mine owners
refused. In Wardner, Idaho, the Bunker Hill Co. mine was dynamited.
Pres. McKinley sent in troops who gathered up thousands of miners and
confined them in "bullpens."
(SFC, 10/4/02, p.A17)
1899 The original Juvenile Court
was established in Chicago.
(SFC, 5/12/96, p.A-10)
1899 The 37-ton Tuolumne No.2
steam engine at Roaring Camp, Ca. was built. It is claimed to be the
oldest of its type, a Heisler, and began service at Roaring Camp in
1963.
(SFC, 5/12/96, p.T-3)
1899 The American Rice Food and
Manufacturing Co. of New Jersey established a copyright for an
advertising doll for Cook's Flaked Rice.
(SFC, 3/11/98, Z1 p.5)
1899 John D. Rockefeller
re-consolidated the Standard Oil of New Jersey as a holding company. In
1911, the Supreme Court upheld the dissolution of the company under the
Sherman Antitrust Act, resulting in the break up of Standard Oil into
34 companies.
(HNQ, 1/23/00)
1899 The first automobile parts
and supply company opened in St. Louis, Mo.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)
1889 Hendrik Baekeland (26),
Belgian professor of natural science, sailed for America.
(ON, 9/05, p.10)
1899 Hiram Percy Maxim, engineer
for the Pope Manufacturing Co., raced the new Mark VIII against a
Stanely Steamer in Branford and won.
(ON, 7/00, p.6)
1899 R.E. Olds moved his
Oldsmobile production plant from Lansing, Mich. to Detroit.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)
1899 The US Packard automobile
company was founded.
(Sky, 9/97, p.97)
1899 The US Postal Service began
using cars in large cities to speed delivery.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)
1899 Sebastian Spering Kresge
founded a store that developed into the Kmart Corp. The 1st Detroit
store sold merchandise for either 5 or 10 cents.
(Ind, 2/2/02, 5A)
1899 The vibrator was introduced
as a home medical appliance. By 1904 it appeared in magazine
advertisements. In 1918 a Sears Roebuck catalog described a $5.95
portable model.
(SSFC, 7/22/07, p.F6)
1899 Coburn Haskell of Cleveland
with the help of a BF Goodrich scientist came up with a liquid-center
gutta-percha golf ball. [2nd source says 1898]
(SFC, 6/21/97, p.E4) (WSJ, 6/15/00, p.A1)
1899 Johan Vaaler, Norwegian
inventor, produced the first paper clip. It was initially called the
Gem since it was first manufactured by Gem Ltd.
(WSJ, 7/24/95, p.A-1)
1899 John Mast of Lititz, Pa.,
invented the snapping mousetrap called the "Victor." It was patented in
1903.
(SFC, 11/30/96, p.B5)
1899 The Los Angeles Oil Exchange
was established to handle the securities of oil companies in southern
California.
(SSFC, 1/25/04, p.I3)
1899 In California wildcatters
discovered oil along the Kern River in Bakersfield.
(SSFC, 4/13/08, p.C1)
1899 Oakland Preserving Co. and 17
other firms combined to form the California Fruit Canners Association.
They adopted the Del Monte brand name. In 1916-17 the canner’s
association called itself Calpak and started advertising the Del Monte
brand.
(SFC, 3/1/97, p.B1)(SSFC, 10/3/04, p.J1)
1899 The Italian cemetery in
Lawndale (Colma), Ca., was established.
(Ind, 11/28/98,
p.5A)(www.colmahistory.org/History.htm)
1899 In San Francisco the
Letterman Army Hosp. opened to treat patients from the Spanish-American
War and the Philippine Insurrection.
(SFC, 6/26/96, p.A13)
1899 Scientists of the Univ. of
Calif. Berkeley expedition uncovered hundreds of crocodile mummies
encased and stuffed with papyrus covered with writings from the ruins
of the city of Tebtunis. The site dated from the 3rd century BC when
Ptolemy the Great ruled Egypt. The expedition was financed by Phoebe
Apperson Hearst.
(SFC, 12/4/96, p.A4)
1899 George Reisner, American
Egyptologist, began excavations. He directed excavations at Giza and
elsewhere for the next 40 years.
(WSJ, 12/27/95, p. A-8)
1899 La Paz became the seat of
Bolivia’s legislative and executive branches after winning a brief
civil war against Sucre, which retained the country’s high courts.
(AP, 8/6/97)(Econ, 7/1/06, p.77)(AP, 7/21/07)
1899 The Landmark Hotel was built
in London, England.
(AP, 2/17/10)
1889 In the English League First
Division match, the 1st professional league soccer championship,
Preston North End won against the Aston Villa Football Club. Preston
went through its 22-game season without losing a match.
(Econ, 7/14/07,
p.15)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1889_in_football_(soccer))
1899 In Britain the bulk of the
Bloomsbury group entered Trinity College, Cambridge.
(SFEC, 9/22/96, BR p.3)
1899 Musicologist Cecil Sharp
stumbled on a performance of Morris dancers at the Oxford Corn
Exchange. He wrote down the songs, annotated the dances and begat a
revival. Morris dancing had been banned as pagan by Oliver Cromwell in
the 17th century.
(WSJ, 5/17/04, p.A13)
1899 Sir Arthur Evans discovered
the center of Minoan civilization on the island of Crete. He erected a
house overlooking the excavations and named it Villa Ariadne after the
daughter of King Minos. As he unearthed a mound at Knossos he rebuilt
parts of a 3,500 year-old palace in modernist style. In 2009 Cathy Gere
authored “Knossos and the Prophets of Modernism.”
(WSJ, 6/26/98, p.W9)(WSJ, 2/8/02, p.AW9)(Econ,
5/16/09, p.91)
1899 In Italy the Fiat automobile
company was founded.
(Sky, 9/97, p.97)(SFEC,12/14/97, p.D7)
1899 Japan passed a statute that
discriminated against the northern Ainu people. It described them as
aborigines in need of assimilation. The law was repealed in 1997.
(SFC, 5/9/97, p.E3)(Econ, 7/12/08, p.54)
1899 When British engineers were
building a railway from the coastal town of Mombasa to what is now
Uganda, they chose the Masai's emergency watering hole as a watering
point for their steam engines and it eventually became Nairobi, Kenya's
capital.
(AP, 2/19/06)
1899 Antonio Guzman Blanco, former
president of Venezuela, died. He dominated Venezuela from 1870-1888,
when a revolution destroyed his power.
(www.bartleby.com/65/gu/GuzmanBl.html)
1899-1900 Claude Monet painted his first "Lily Pond"
series.
(WSJ, 7/1/99, p.A21)
1899-1902 With diamonds at Kimberley and gold in the
Transvaal, the British got aggressive against the Dutch Boers in the
Orange Free State and the Transvaal. The Boers lost their independence
to the British in the Anglo-Boer War. 18-28,000 women and children died
in British concentration camps as compared to 7,000 Boers who died in
battle.
(NG, Oct. 1988, p. 566)
1899-1902 In the Boer War some 12,000 blacks and
18,000 whites were killed from epidemics in British concentration
camps. Some 25,000 blacks and 94,000 whites were herded into the
world's first concentration camps. Thomas Packenham later authored "The
Boer War."
(SFC, 10/8/99, p.D3)
1899-1902 The Anglo-Boer War. Winston Churchill took
part as a war correspondent for the Morning Post. [see Oct 14, 1899]
(WSJ, 12/29/99, p.A12)
1899-1902 The civil war known as the War of the
Thousand Days took place in Colombia, beginning in1899 and ending in
1902. Some 100,000 of Colombia's four million people perished in the
conflict, mostly from disease. Colombia had been plunged into
bankruptcy and subsequent civil war in 1899 after three years of steep
declines in world coffee prices.
(HNQ, 2/25/99)
1899-1909 Cipriano Castro served as president of
Venezuela.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_state_leaders_in_1906)
1899-1944 Hans Krasa, composer. He was a Czech-born
German Jew and composed the opera Betrothal in a Dream, which premiered
in Prague in 1933 under Georg Szell. He was killed by the Nazis in
Auschwitz in 1944.
(WSJ, 1/31/96, p.A-16)
1899-1966 William C. Menninger, American scientist,
physician, engineer: "It is difficult to give children a sense of
security unless you have it yourself. If you have it, they catch it
from you."
(AP, 4/9/98)
1899-1974 Duke Ellington, American jazz artist:
"Love is indescribable and unconditional. I could tell you a thousand
things that it is not, but not one that it is."
(AP, 7/15/97)
1899-1981 David E. Lilienthal, American public
official: "A river has no politics."
(AP, 8/17/98)
1899-1983 Chang Da-chien, Chinese painter, collector
and forger. Some suspected that the 10th century work "Riverbank"
attributed to Dong Yuan was actually a forgery by Chang.
(WSJ, 12/13/99, p.A32)
1899-1985 E.B. White, American author and humorist:
"People are, if anything, more touchy about being thought silly than
they are about being thought unjust." "To perceive Christmas through
its wrapping becomes more difficult with every year."
(AP, 3/15/98)(AP, 12/24/98)
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