January 1912

January 1, 1912 (Monday)

The Republic of China was established as Dr. Sun Yat-Sen took the oath of office as the Provisional President at Nanjing. According to Homer Lea, an advisor to Sun and the only Westerner to witness the ceremony, a band played "Behold, the Conquering Hero Comes" and the hymn "God Be with You till We Meet Again". Although Sun's supporters controlled most of southern China, Yuan Shikai retained power in the north as the chief of the Emperor's army in Beijing, and would soon become President of a united nation.

Pinellas County, Florida, came into existence after being divided from Hillsborough County.

The city of Timmins, Ontario, was incorporated as a company town located at the "Porcupine Camp" of a gold mining company.

The Swiss Civil Code, adopted on December 10, 1907, came into operation. The code was the work of law professor Eugen Huber and the product of 15 years of refinement. As one commentator noted, "there was nothing hurried in the preparation or adoption of this code".

England beat France, 7-1, in international soccer at Tufnell Park.

Born: Kim Philby (Harold Adrian Russell Philby), British intelligence officer who passed secret information to the Soviet Union until defecting in 1963; in Ambala, British India (d. 1988). Philby was born three days after Klaus Fuchs, who had betrayed American atomic secrets to the Soviets, and died four months after Fuchs.

Born: Nikiforos Vrettakos, Greek poet, at Krokees (d. 1991)

Died: Francis T. Nicholls, 77, Governor of Louisiana 1876-80 and 1888–92; former Confederate Army brigadier general, and co-founder of Nicholls State University

January 2, 1912 (Tuesday)

With 4,000 Russian troops occupying the Persian city of Tabriz, the Russian authorities executed eight of the Iranian leaders who had supported the Constitutional Revolution and had failed to leave the city. The date chosen coincided with Shi'ite holiday of the 10th of Muharram.

Neurologist Ernst Trömner, introduced a test for what he called the Fingerbeugephänomen, though it is more commonl called "Trömner's reflex" at a meeting of the Hamburg Medical Society. The reflex is tested by on a patient's fingers for signs of a lesion of the cervical nerves.

Died: Alfred D'Orsay Tennyson Dickens, 66, son and biographer of Charles Dickens; during a lecture tour in New York

January 3, 1912 (Wednesday)

British Antarctic Expedition: Robert Falcon Scott and seven fellow explorers made the planned separation, with the original goal of Scott, Edward Wilson, Lawrence Oates and Edgar Evans to make the final assault on the South Pole, and Teddy Evans, Tom Crean, William Lashly and Henry Bowers to return to base. Captain Scott changed the plan, adding Bowers to the South Pole group, and sharing four persons' resources with five people, a decision that would prove to be disastrous.

Born: Armand Lohikoski, Finnish movie director; in the United States in Astoria, Oregon (d. 2005)

Died: Rear Admiral Robley Evans, 65, former commander of U.S. Navy Asiatic Fleet (1902–1904) and then of its North Atlantic Fleet (1905–07) at the beginning of the "Great White Fleet" voyage around the world; and Felix Dahn, 77, German author

January 4, 1912 (Thursday)

The Moon was at its closest point to Earth in the 20th Century, at 221,451 miles distance (356,375 km). On March 2, 1984, the Moon would be furthest away during the century, at 252,731 miles. The closest approach in the 21st Century will be 221,535 miles, on November 14, 2016, and the most distant took place on March 14, 2002 (252,728 miles).

The Royal Charter of the Boy Scouts Association was granted by King George V, granting corporate status to the British organization that had been founded in 1908.

January 5, 1912 (Friday)

Dr. Sun Yat-sen issued the "Manifesto from the Republic of China to All Friendly Nations", shifting a change in its foreign policy with a promise to end the isolationism of the Manchu Emperors, and "to rejoin China with the international community". On the same day, Dr. Sun met with women's suffragist Lin Zongsu and pledged to aid in allowing women the right to vote in the new Republic.

At a conference in Prague: Vladimir Lenin and the Bolshevik Party broke away from the rest of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party.

The Tong wars in New York City's Chinatown resumed, one year and two days after the January 3, 1911, truce between the Hip Sing and On Leong gangs. Lung Yu, the Vice-President of the Hip Sing Tong, was killed in a shootout at a gambling hall on 21 Pell Street.

January 6, 1912 (Saturday)

New Mexico was admitted as the 47th state of the United States of America at 1:35 pm, after President Taft signed the proclamation. New Mexico had been passed up for statehood on 15 other occasions since becoming a territory in 1850. William C. McDonald was its first governor, and Albert B. Fall and Thomas B. Catron were its first U.S. Senators.

At a meeting of the Geological Association of Germany, at Frankfurt am Main, Alfred Wegener first presented the theory of continental drift, reading his paper, Die Herausbildung der Grossformen der Erdinde (Kontinente und Ozeane) auf geophysikalischer Grundlage ("The geophysical basis of the evolution of large-scale features of the earth's crust").

Born: Danny Thomas, American comedian, television actor, and founder of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital; as Amos Kairouz in Deerfield, Michigan (d. 1991); Frederick Manfred, American novelist of Westerns, as Frederick Feike Feikema VII near Doon, Iowa (d. 1994) Jacques Ellul, French philosopher, in Bordeaux (d. 1994);

January 7, 1912 (Sunday)

W. Morgan Shuster resigned as Treasurer-General of Persia, bringing to an end the war with Russia. In return for his resignation, the Russians guaranteed safe passage through occupied territory for Shuster and his family. He left Tehran on January 11 by automobile, and departed the country on the Russian steamer Teheran on January 14, returning to the United States by way of Russia.

Italo-Turkish War: Seven Turkish gunboats were sunk by three Italian warships (the cruiser Piemonte and the destroyers Garibaldi and Artigliere in a battle in the Red Sea outside of Kunfida (now Al Qunfudhah in Saudi Arabia).

Born: Charles Addams, American cartoonist of the macabre, whose recurring characters were adapted to television in The Addams Family; in Westfield, New Jersey (d. 1988); Giorgio Caproni, Italian poet, in Livorno (d. 1990) and Ivan Yakubovsky, Marshal of the Soviet Union, Warsaw Pact commander (1967–76), in Zaitsava, the Russian Empire (now Horki Raion, Belarus) (d. 1976)

Died: Sophia Jex-Blake, 71, British female physician and activist for women's suffrage

January 8, 1912 (Monday)

The African National Congress was founded as the South African Native National Congress in a four-day meeting at Bloemfontein. African lawyer Pixley ka Isaka Seme wrote letters to the leaders of South Africa's various tribes and organized the meeting, giving the opening address to 60 delegates. Reverend John Langalibalele Dube, who published the Zulu language newspaper Ilange Lasa Natal, was elected as the organization's first President, with Solomon Plaatje as secretary and Seme as treasurer. The ANC adopted its present name in 1923.

George V, Emperor of India in addition to being King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and of the British Dominions beyond the Seas, departed his Empire after a triumphant visit of more than one month, setting sail from Calcutta (now Kolkata) along with Queen Mary and his entourage.

The U.S. Monetary Commission presented its plan to Congress to establish what would become the Federal Reserve System, filing a report and the bill written by Nelson Aldrich.

Born: José Ferrer, American film actor and director, in Santurce, Puerto Rico (d. 1992); and Lawrence Walsh, U.S. federal prosecutor who investigated the Iran-Contra affair, in Port Maitland, Nova Scotia, Canada (d. 2014)

January 9, 1912 (Tuesday)

The 130 foot tall Equitable Building, New York City's first skyscraper, was destroyed by a fast moving fire. The blaze had started at 5:00 in the morning, so the loss of life was low, but the offices of three of the nation's largest financial institutions- Equitable Life, Mercantile Safe Deposit, and many law firms—were destroyed. Fireproof vaults protected several billion dollars of securities, stocks and bonds from destruction.

The Democratic National Committee announced that its presidential nominating convention would be held in Baltimore on June 25.

January 10, 1912 (Wednesday)

HMS Africa served as the first British aircraft carrier, as Charles Rumney Samson flew a Short S.38 biplane from the ship, anchored at Sheerness.

The official results of the 1911 French census were released, showing 39,601,509 residents, and increase of 349,264 from the 1906 census of 39,252,245.

Died: Thomas Hardy, 81, Australian vintner

January 11, 1912 (Thursday)

France's Prime Minister Joseph Caillaux and his cabinet were forced to resign, two days after the French Senate concluded that he had secretly negotiated the give-away of French territory without the President's knowledge in working out a treaty with Germany. The Foreign Minister, Justin de Selves, declined to deny the accusations against Caillaux.

The Russian steamer Russ, on its way across the Black Sea from Galați to Odessa, sank in the Black Sea with 172 people on board. Among the casualties were the new Consul General, Carl Anseff, and his family.

Lawrence textile strike: Receiving their paychecks a day before the rest of the employees at the Everett Mills Company in Lawrence, Massachusetts, mostly Polish-speaking women employed as weavers found that the company had cut their pay (already low, ranging from  9 ¹⁄₂ cents to 20 cents per hour) after a new state law had gone into effect limiting the work week to 54 hours. The women immediately walked off the job. The next day, the strike would spread to the other companies in the city.

January 12, 1912 (Friday)

Lawrence textile strike: A day after the first group of textile workers in Lawrence received smaller paychecks, other employees at the Everett Mills got their reduced pay, and walked off the job. Employees at the other companies—American Woolen, Arlington Mills and Pacific Mills—followed suit. Men, women and children from 25 different nationalities defied attempts to break up the strike, holding out for nine weeks until March 13, when American Woolen agreed to the strikers' demands, raising wages by 5 to 25%, and giving 25% extra for overtime.

German federal election, 1912: In the first round of the German parliamentary election, with 208 seats in the Reichstag at stake, Socialists won 64 of the seats, increasing their margin by 26, while the government coalition lost 29. The second round was set for January 23, with 121 seats to be filled.

Beauregard Parish, Louisiana, with its county seat at DeRiddger, was created after being separated from Calcasieu Parish.

The General Post Office of the British government assumed all control of the national telephone system, "leaving the United States as the only major nation in which the network was privately owned".

Professional ice hockey was played west of Toronto for the first time, and on artificial ice for the first time, in Victoria, British Columbia as the Victoria Senators lost to the New Westminster Royals, 8-3 in the initial game of the new Pacific Coast Hockey Association in Canada.

The lowest temperatures ever measured at Iowa (-47 °F at Washta, matched on February 3, 1996, at Elkader) and in Minnesota (-40 °F at Pipestone) were recorded on the same day. Pipestone also set the record for Minnesota's highest temperature (108 °F) on 4 occasions between 1930 and 1936.

January 13, 1912 (Saturday)

At the request of France's President Fallieries, Raymond Poincaré formed a new government with himself as Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of France.

The speed record for an airplane was broken, as Jules Vedrines reached 88 mph in a flight at the Pau airfield in France in the new Deperdussin Monocoque.

As a cold front swept the Atlantic states, Maryland measured its lowest temperature ever, in a record that still stood a century later: -40 °C/F at Oakland.

January 14, 1912 (Sunday)

José Canalejas, Prime Minister of Spain, resigned along with his cabinet, two days after the King Alfonso XIII pardoned 6 of the 7 rioters of Cullera, all of whom had been sentenced to death. Canalejas resumed office the next day with a new cabinet.

Born: Tillie Olsen, American feminist, in Omaha (d. 2007)

Died: Tao Chengzhang, Chinese revolutionary, was murdered while in bed in the Sainte-Marie Hospital in Shanghai.

January 15, 1912 (Monday)

Oedipus Rex was presented in English for the first time, appearing at London's Covent Garden Opera House.

The U.S. Senate voted 58-8 to discuss arbitration treaties publicly rather than in closed sessions.

The first Governor of New Mexico, William C. McDonald, was sworn in, eight days after statehood. He succeeded William J. Mills, who had served as the last Territorial Governor.

The USS Maryland was dispatched to Ecuador to protect American interests there during its civil war.

Camp Trouble, the first training site for U.S. Navy aviators, was opened on a peninsula in San Diego Bay, consisting of a set of tents and three airplanes. By May, all three of the planes had been wrecked, and the squadron was transferred to Annapolis, Maryland, on May 2, 1912.

January 16, 1912 (Tuesday)

The Turkish Chamber of Deputies was dissolved, three days after a proposed constitutional amendment, allowing Sultan Abdul Hamid II to dissolve Parliament in time of war, failed to receive more than 125 votes out of 188 that would have been necessary in the 376 member chamber.

British Antarctic Expedition: One day away from the South Pole, Captain Robert Scott wrote in his journal, "The worst has happened, or nearly the worst." After starting the afternoon "in high spirits", the party saw "the remains of a camp; sledge tracks and ski tracks going and coming and the clear trace of dogs' paws- many dogs. This told us the whole story. The Norwegians have forestalled us and are first at the Pole."

An attempt was made on the life of China's Premier Yuan Shih-kai. Three bombs were thrown at him as he was returning from an audience at the Imperial Palace. Yuan was unhurt, but twenty people around him were injured.

Born: Nigel Dennis, English novelist, in Bletchingley

Died: Henry Labouchere, 80, English politician; and Georg Heym, 24, German expressionist poet, by drowning

January 17, 1912 (Wednesday)

British Antarctic Expedition: "The Pole. Yes, but under very different circumstances from those expected. We have had a horrible day..." Robert Falcon Scott and his team of four explorers became the second expeditionary group to reach the South Pole, after Roald Amundsen and his party had become the first. "Great God! this is an awful place and terrible enough for us to have laboured to it without the reward of priority. Well, it is something to have got here..." Sick, cold, hungry and demoralized, Scott and his men camped at the Pole. "Now for the run home and a desperate struggle. I wonder if we can do it."

French scientist Alexis Carrel, working at the Rockefeller Institute in New York City, removed a piece of the heart of a chicken embryo, then kept the fragment alive for the remaining 32 years of his life. Carrel, who won the Nobel Prize later in the year (though not for the experiment), died on November 5, 1944. The tissue lasted until September 1946.

France's Chamber of Deputies overwhelmingly approved the new government of Prime Minister Poincaire, by a vote of 440-6.

January 18, 1912 (Thursday)

The ship Wistow Hall with 57 people on board, sank in a gale off of the coast of Aberdeenshire in Scotland. Only the captain and three other people were saved.

The United States Army began a presence in China that would last for the next 26 years, as the 15th U.S. Infantry landed at Qinhuangdao and then set up a permanent station at Tianjin.

Over 1,000 people were killed in fighting in the Ecuador Civil War between troops from the Quito national government and the Guayaquil rebel government at Yaguachi, northeast of Guayaquil. General Julio Andrade, leader of the Quito troops, defeated the rebels. General Flavio Alfaro, commander of the rebel troops, was wounded.

The results of the British Miners' Federation vote on a strike were released, showing 445,801 in favor and 115,921 against. The strike, aimed at securing a minimum wage for coal miners, would begin on March 1 and last until April 4.

President Taft pardoned Charles W. Morse after the Wall Street financier had served more than a year of a 15-year prison sentence, upon being advised that Morse was terminally ill. Morse recovered and outlived Taft, dying in 1933.

Born: Ivan A. Getting, American physicist and engineer and one of the co-creators of GPS, the Global Positioning System; in New York City (d. 2003)

January 19, 1912 (Friday)

British Antarctic Expedition: In despair over having been beaten to the South Pole by Roald Amundsen of Norway, exhausted and with limited supplies Robert Falcon Scott and his four fellow explorers set off on a 900-mile journey northward to their base. Caught in unusually cold weather, none of them would survive.

Born: Leonid Kantorovich, Soviet mathematician and winner in 1975 of the Nobel Prize in Economics; in Saint Petersburg (d. 1986)

January 20, 1912 (Saturday)

The first successful strike in Mexican history was settled after 25 days, as company owners agreed to reduce the workday to ten hours and increase weekly wages by ten percent.

The second round of Reichstag elections began, with 77 seats, followed by 80 on Monday and concluding with 34 on January 25.

January 21, 1912 (Sunday)

Joseph Conrad achieved his first popular success as the New York Herald began serializing his novel Chance, having bought the rights to the unfinished work, halted in 1906, in June, 1911. Conrad continued to work on finishing the book while the first chapters were appearing weekly in the Herald, completing it on March 26.

Two days after a woman and her four children in Crowley, Louisiana, were hacked to death in their home by the killer later dubbed the "Mulatto Ax Murderer", Felix Broussard, his wife and three children were killed in similar fashion in Lake Charles, about fifty miles west. Six people had been killed in November in Lafayette, 25 miles to the west of Crowley. The killings had started in January 1911 in Rayne, 15 miles from Crowley, and occurred in Texas as well. The Broussard killings marked 24 murders to that point.

Born: Konrad Emil Bloch, German-American biochemist and winner of 1964 Nobel Prize; in Neisse, German Empire (now Nysa, Poland (d. 2000); and Laurence Whistler, British poet and glass engraving artist (d. 2000)

January 22, 1912 (Monday)

The Overseas Railroad carried its first passengers from Palm Beach to Key West with the completion of the six-year construction of the Key West Extension of the Florida East Coast Railway. Henry Morrison Flagler, the railway's owner, financed the seemingly impossible project of building bridges and landfill to lay 169 miles of railroad tracks across the waters to link the islands of the Florida Keys. Flagler, 82, arrived with the other passengers at 10:43 to a cheering crowd of 10,000 people, and told the gathering, "Now I can die happy. My dream is fulfilled." He would pass away 1 year and 4 months later.

Sun Yat-sen and Yuan Shih-kai completed their negotiations on the unification of the Republic of China and the area in Northern China, with Dr. Sun agreeing to yield the presidency to Yuan upon the abdication of the Emperor.

Former Illinois Central Railroad company President J.T. Harahan and 3 other passengers were killed in a wreck in Illinois when the private car of Vice-President F.O. Melcher of the Rock Island line was struck from behind by another train. The accident happened near Kinmundy, Illinois

Born: Demetrios Capetanakis, Greek poet, in Smyrna, the Ottoman Empire (d. 1944)

January 23, 1912 (Tuesday)

The International Opium Convention was signed at The Hague by 12 nations. The signatories resolved to work toward "the gradual suppression of the abuse of opium, morphine, cocaine, as also of the drugs prepared or derived from these substances which give rise or might give rise to similar abuses."

The town of Forgan, Oklahoma, was incorporated as the end of the line for the Wichita Falls & Northwestern Railroad Company

January 24, 1912 (Wednesday)

Ripudaman Singh became the Maharaja of the Indian principality of Nabha. The Sikh leader was forced to abdicate by the British authorities on July 7, 1923.

Died: James Allen, 47, British philosopher and pioneer in the concept of self-help in his book As a Man Thinketh in 1902.

January 25, 1912 (Thursday)

General Pedro Montero, who had been proclaimed President of Ecuador on December 29 by rebelling Ecuadorian troops, was sentenced to 16 years in prison following his court-martial in Guayaquil. Montero had been captured in battle three days earlier. As soon as former President Leónidas Plaza announced the military court's findings, members of the crowd outside protested that the sentence was too light. Several rushed in inside and shot General Montero to death, then carried his corpse outside, where the mob beheaded it, then burned it in a bonfire.

Norwegian Antarctic Expedition: Roald Amundsen and his team of four men arrived back at their base at Framheim on the Bay of Whales, along with eleven surviving dogs. They left Antarctica on the Fram five days later.

Voting in elections for the German Reichstag was concluded, with the Socialists having the largest number of seats—100 out of 397, and the Radical and National Liberal parties having 44 and 47, for a total of 191, still short of a majority. Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg was able to find a new government.

Karl Grulich, German aviator, tripled the record for staying aloft with multiple passengers, flying for 1 hour and 35 minutes in a Harlan monoplane over Johannistal. The prior record had been 31 minutes by Frenchman M. Busson on March 10, 1911, at Rheims.

January 26, 1912 (Friday)

A group of 47 generals and commanders of China's Imperial Army, all of whom had pledged their allegiance to the monarchy earlier in the month, signed a petition to the Emperor and the regent, asking that the Manchu rulers give way to a Republic under Yuan Shih-kai. "This memorial dealt a lethal blow to the dynasty," an author would note later.

January 27, 1912 (Saturday)

According to his own letter to the magazine Popular Astronomy, Amateur astronomer Frank B. Harris was observing through his telescope and saw an object crossing the Moon, which he described as something that "was fully as black comparatively as marks on this paper, and in shape like a crow poised". Harris estimated it as being 250 miles long and 50 miles wide. Although nobody else reported witnessing the phenomenon, the story has been repeated in the decades that followed. The briefly reported event has been described as something "that launched the 'modern' period of anomalous lunar happenings.

Born: Arne Næss, Norwegian philosopher and founder of deep ecology in 1973 (d. 2009); Francis Rogallo, American aeronautical engineer and inventor of the Rogallo wing; in Sanger, California (d. 2009); and Marc Daniels, American television director (d. 1989)

January 28, 1912 (Sunday)

A mob in Quito stormed the penitentiary where former President Eloy Alfaro and his brothers Flavio and Medardo had been held as prisoners of war since their capture on January 22. Eloy, who had been President as recently as August, and had served from 1895 to 1901, and again from 1906 to 1911, and Flavio, who had been proclaimed President by rebels in Guayaquil, were lynched along with the others.

The Lin-shih ts'an-i-yuan, also known as the Nanking Assembly and the first legislature for the Republic of China, convened at Nanjing with representatives from all of the provinces.

U.S. Secretary of War Henry Stimson recommended closing of 16 U.S. Army posts in favor of concentrating troops at 8 strategic points.

Born: Jackson Pollock, American artist and pioneer in the abstract expressionism movement in painting; in Cody, Wyoming (d. 1956); Sidney Lens, American author (The Day Before Doomsday), in Newark, New Jersey; and Louis Wolfson, American financier, corporate raider, and philanthropist, in St. Louis (d. 2007)

Died: Gustave de Molinari, 92, Belgian economist

January 29, 1912 (Monday)

Renowned trial lawyer Clarence Darrow was indicted by a grand jury in Los Angeles, on charges of attempted bribery of a juror in the case that he was defending for J.B. McNamara. Arrested, he was released on $20,000 bail. Darrow would be acquitted in August after a three-month trial. In a separate case, the jury deadlocked with 8 of 12 jurors. The district attorney agreed not to renew the charges as long as Darrow agreed never to practice in California again.

Born: Martha Wright Griffiths, first female U.S. Representative for Michigan (1955–75), in Pierce City, Missouri (d. 2003)

Died: Alexander Duff, 1st Duke of Fife, 62, husband of Louise Victoria, The Princess Royal of Great Britain (eldest daughter of King Edward VII) and brother-in-law of King George V, died suddenly of pleurisy at Aswan, Egypt.

Died: Anna LoPizzo, striking Lawrence textile worker, shot dead by policeman Oscar Benoit.

January 30, 1912 (Tuesday)

In an interview with the Chicago Evening Post, former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt announced for the first time that he would accept the nomination for the presidency, though he would not actively seek a return to the White House.

Norwegian Antarctic Expedition: Roald Amundsen and the crew of the Norwegian Antarctic Expedition departed Antarctica on the Fram, bound for Buenos Aires.

Born: Werner Hartmann, German physicist, in Berlin-Friedenau (d. 1988); Barbara W. Tuchman, American historian, best known for The Guns of August, in New York City (d. 1989); and Francis Schaeffer, American Evangelical Christian philosopher, in Philadelphia (d. 1984)

January 31, 1912 (Wednesday)

Captain Carlo Montu of the Italian Army became the first pilot to be wounded in combat, after he was struck by anti-aircraft fire from Ottoman forces.