Jan 8 With the Boxer Rebellion defeated, China's Empress Cixi, with her nephew the emperor in tow, returns to her palace in Beijing.
Jan 8 In New York City a train collision in the Park Avenue tunnel kills 17 and injures 38. This will be followed by the state banning steam locomotives.
Jan 10 In New Zealand the Nurses Registration Act of 1901 comes into effect, making New Zealand the first country that requires state registration of nurses.
Jan 28 An ad in the Washington DC Evening Times reads: "Don't look old! Keep your hair! COKE DANDRUFF CURE." Coke is a reference to cocaine, not quite yet illegal.
Jan 28 The Carnegie Institution for scientific research is founded with a $10 million gift from Andrew Carnegie.
Jan 30 Britain has been considering an alliance with Germany but Germany is demanding that Britain join its alliance with Austria-Hungary. So Britain has been looking elsewhere. It settles its differences with the United States and today signs an alliance with Japan.
Feb 9 Fire levels 26 city blocks of Jersey City.
Feb 11 In Brussels, police clash with people demonstrating for universal suffrage.
Feb 18 President Roosevelt prosecutes the Northern Securities Company, a railroad trust, for violation of the Sherman Act of 1890. The company controls the Northern Pacific Railway, Great Northern Railway, Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad and other associated lines.
Mar 25 In the United States, Irving W Colburn patents a mass production sheet glass machine.
Mar 31 The Russian Marxist, Lenin, is about to turn 32. His book What Is to be Done is to be published this month. In it he describes his elder in the socialists movement, the German Eduard Bernstein, 52, as having abandoned Marx's scientific socialism. Bernstein wants to update Marxism, taking into account Marx's failed predictions. Lenin is fervent and sees no failed predictions.
Apr 5 In the land of his birth, Georgia, on the Black Sea coast at Batumi, Stalin (real name, Jughashvili), 23, is an impoverished but bright young man devoted to anti-establishment politics. He has been organizing oil workers into action, made easier by horrible working conditions while foreign oil company executives are living in mansions and sailing their yachts. There are clashes between workers and police. Blood flows. Stalin on this day is arrested and to be put in prison.
Apr 8 His Majesty, the Tsar of all the Russias, wishing to give fresh proof of his peaceable and friendly disposition towards His Majesty the Emperor of China, agrees to evacuate Manchuria in three stages. China agrees to protect Russia's railway, all Russian subjects and their undertakings. Russia considers its railway to its warm water port, leased from China and renamed Port Arthur, as vital.
Apr 13 A new car speed record of 74 mph (119 kph) is set in Nice, France, by Leon Serpollet.
May 20 The US recognizes Cuba as a republic independent of Spain. This is to be Cuban Independence Day.
May 31 Britain has crushed Boer resistance. With the four Boer states Britain signs the Treaty of Vereeniging, officially ending Boer War.
Jun 6 By now the Empress Cixi has issued an edict exhorting the gentry "to influence their families to refrain from 'the evil practice' of foot binding women." Also, her government this year attempts to improve relations with her subjects by lifting a ban on marriages between Manchu males and Chinese females.
Jun 12 In Australia most women are granted the right o vote and to stand in elections. As in the United States, Wyoming for example, it is more of the greater progressive nature of frontier regions than areas dominated by conservative establishments and traditions, as in England.
Jul 3 On Broadway in New York, the song "In the Good Ol' Summertime" is introduced. This year it will sell a million copies in sheet music,
Aug 22 Theodore Roosevelt becomes the first American President to ride in an automobile when he rides in a Columbia Electric Victoria through Hartford, Connecticut.
Sep 3 Paleontologist Barnum Brown is in Montana working at the site near the town of Jordan, where he recently discovered remnants of a dinosaur to be known as Tyrannosaurus Rex.
Oct 1 This month, France's Governor-General Paul Beau arrives in Vietnam. Every province is assigned how much alcohol they must buy, and the Vietnamese are prohibited from distilling their own drinks.
Oct 23 For five months coal miners have been on their biggest strike ever. They want higher wages, an eight-hour day and recognition of their union. Mine owners have refused to negotiate. One of the owners, George Baer, cites Darwinistic struggle as his reason for refusing, and in a letter leaked to the press he claims that the "rights and interests of the laboring man will be protected and cared for not by the labor agitators but by the Christian men to whom God in His infinite wisdom has given the control of the property interests of the country." President Roosevelt has ordered a commission to solve the conflict. Speaking before the commission, Baer closes his argument saying, "These men don't suffer. Why, hell, half of them don't even speak English." On this day, October 23, the strike ends. Owners don't have to recognize the United Mine Workers' union but they accept an arbitration board and the miners have won a nine-hour day and a 10 percent wage increase.
Dec 9 British, German and Italian governments want Venezuelans to pay debts owed Europeans. Their warships arrive in Venezuelan waters to impose a naval blockade.
Copyright © 1998-2018 by Frank E. Smitha. All rights reserved.