October 1913

October 1, 1913 (Wednesday)

The Culebra Cut of the Panama Canal was completed, after nearly 32 years, with the waters of Gatun Lake flowing to the Gamboa Dike. Engineers from France had begun excavation on January 20, 1882, before halting the project, which was resumed later by American engineers.

Died: Eugene O'Keefe, 85, Canadian brewer and philanthropist

October 2, 1913 (Thursday)

Well-known American author Ambrose Bierce decided, at the age of 71, that he wanted to conclude his life by leaving his Washington, D.C. home to participate in the Mexican Revolution, departing by train after writing to his niece that "being stood up against a Mexican stone wall and shot to rags... beats old age, disease, or falling down the cellar stairs". After reaching Mexico and sending a letter from the city of Chihuahua on December 26, Bierce vanished "without a trace".

China's National Assembly passed a law limiting the President of China to a five-year term of office, with only one re-election.

Flooding in Southern Texas caused $50,000,000 of property damage, though only 12 lives were lost.

The Mexican city of Torreón fell to rebel invaders, led by Pancho Villa, a day after Mexican federal troops evacuated the area.

Born: Roma Flinders Mitchell, Australian politician and the first woman to serve as a Governor of an Australian state, serving as Governor of South Australia from 1991 to 1996; in Adelaide (d. 2000)

Died: Patrick Higgins, Scottish murderer, by hanging after being convicted of the November 1911 murder of his two sons, based on by forensic evidence developed by Dr. Sydney Smith; Higgins, a habitual drinker, had admitted to the killings but had raised the defense of "insanity caused by epilepsy".

October 3, 1913 (Friday)

At 9:10 pm, the Revenue Act of 1913, also known as the Underwood–Simmons Tariff Act, was signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson, dropping or reducing many of the tariffs of the United States. An amendment to the bill also provided the first federal income tax authorized by the Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, though the initial rates were modest in comparison to the lowered cost of living provided by the tariff elimination. The charges on imported meats, fish, dairy products, flour and potatoes were eliminated, as well as those for coal, iron ore and lumber from abroad, and farm machinery and office machinery made outside the United States. On the average the tariff rate was reduced from 37 percent to 27 percent. Wilson said afterwards, "We have set the business of this country free from those conditions which have made monopoly not only possible, but, in a sense, easy and natural." The U.S. Senate had approved the bill, 36–17, the day before, and the House of Representatives had voted, 254–103, in its favor on September 30.

The government of Austria-Hungary passed a bill increasing the size of its army to 600,000 men, and authorizing an army of 2,000,000 men in the event of war; the Austro-Hungarian war against Serbia, less than nine months later, would escalate into enter World War One.

October 4, 1913 (Saturday)

Oregon, though it was the second of the United States to pass an authorization for a minimum wage law (after Massachusetts), became the first state to have orders implementing a wage, beginning with a regulation for girls between the ages of 16 and 18. Later rules would extend coverage to experienced adult women in Portland (November 23) and to all women, regardless of experience (February 7);

At Marion, Illinois, legendary sharpshooter Annie Oakley gave the last public performance of her shooting skills.

Survivalist Joseph Knowles, who had gone into the forests of Maine on August 4 without clothing, food or tools, emerged after completing his two-month experiment. Not only had he survived, but he had fashioned "a bearskin robe, deerskin moccasins, and a knife, bow and arrows" from the materials in the wilderness.

Mexican rebel leader Emiliano Zapata issued a widely circulated order to his troops, commanding them that "under no pretext nor for any personal cause should crimes be committed against lives and properties". Officers were directed to punish any soldiers who violated the order, or to face court-martial themselves.

Born: Martial Célestin, the first Prime Minister of Haïti (1988), in Ganthier (d. 2011)

Died: Faisal bin Turki, Sultan of Muscat and Oman, 49

October 5, 1913 (Sunday)

Taimur bin Feisal became the new Sultan of Oman. He would abdicate on February 10, 1932, in favor of his son, Said bin Taimur, who would become the new Sultan.

Henry Spencer was arrested by Chicago police for the murder of Mrs. Mildred Rexroat nine days earlier. Spencer confessed to her murder, then told police that he had killed 13 other people over the years.

Born: Rear Admiral Eugene B. Fluckey, U.S. Navy officer, Medal of Honor recipient and former Director of Naval Intelligence; in Washington, D.C. (d. 2007); Jack Mullin, American audio engineer who perfected high fidelity recordings by magnetic tape, in San Francisco; and Dan Smoot, American conservative political activist, in East Prairie, Missouri (d. 2003)

Died: Hans von Bartels, 56, German painter

October 6, 1913 (Monday)

Barely receiving the two-thirds majority required, Yuan Shihkai was formally elected by the National Assembly after three rounds of voting, to a five-year term as the President of China. A total of 759 of the 850 Chinese Senators and Representatives participated in Beijing. With a candidate needing 506 votes, Yuan received 507 on the third ballot. Li Yuan-Heng, who had already said that he would not be a candidate for the office, received 179 votes, while the other legislators abstained. The votes for Yan and Li were 471-153 on the first round, and 497-162 on the second. After the second round, a mob of Yuan's supporters surrounded the legislative building and blocked the exits. Li was elected Vice-President the next day. President Yuan would dissolve the legislature four weeks later and assume dictatorial powers, then proclaim himself the Emperor.

Chicago became the first major American city to pass a resolution declaring the immorality of the tango, a dance which had recently become popular in the United States after originating in Argentina. The tango differed from acceptable dances because of the contact between the upper thighs of the dancers.

At his inauguration as the new American Governor-General of the Philippines, Francis Burton Harrison delivered a promise, from President Wilson, that Filipinos would be granted a majority of the seats on the Philippine Commission, the appointed group that had to approve bills passed by the Philippine legislature.

Heavy rains killed more than 600 people in the Bosphorous straits around Istanbul, Turkey.

Born: Inga Arvad, Denmark-based journalist who known for her romantic relationship with U.S. President John F. Kennedy, as Inga Petersen in Copenhagen; Alfred Harvey, American comic book publisher who founded Harvey Comics, in Brooklyn (d. 1994); and Richard Dyer-Bennet, English-born American folk singer, in Leicester (d. 1991)

October 7, 1913 (Tuesday)

The Ford Motor Company factory in Highland Park, Michigan began use of the moving assembly line to manufacture its Model T automobiles. With 140 assemblers, each assigned a different task, the time to produce a single car was cut by more than half, from 12 1/2 hours to 5 1/2 hours.

The Maryland Supreme Court struck down Baltimore's recently passed ordinance requiring segregation of neighborhoods and its retroactive application, which would have forced families to move.

Died: Benjamin Altman, American merchant, philanthropist and art collector who founded B. Altman's Department Store

October 8, 1913 (Wednesday)

1913 Championship of Australia: In Australian rules football, the champions of the two major leagues met to decide the national championship. The Port Adelaide Magpies (of the South Australian Football League) hosted the Fitzroy Lions of the Victorian Football League. Port Adelaide, with 13 six-point goals, and 16 one-point behinds, won 94-31 over Fitzroy (which had scored 4 goals 7 behinds).

The University of South Wales was founded as the South Wales and Monmouthshire School of Mines, located at Treforest in South Wales in the United Kingdom, with a class of 17 students. In 1949, it would become Glamorgan Technical College, and, in 1975, Polytechnic of Wales, before becoming the University of Glamorgan in 1992. On April 11, 2013, the University of Wales, Newport would be merged with the University of Glamorgan to create USW, located at the Treforest campus.

Born: Solveig Gunbjørg Jacobsen, the first person to be born on the island of South Georgia, and at the time, the person born closest to the South Pole; in Grytviken (d. 1996)

October 9, 1913 (Thursday)

The passenger ship Volturno, operated by the Uranium Line, caught fire while crossing the Atlantic Ocean. Although 125 passengers and crew died while trying to evacuate, the other 532 people were rescued by ten other steamers that traveled to the rescue after hearing the S.O.S. signal by wireless telegraph, Popular Mechanics magazine would observe in its next issue that "The day of the 'mystery of the sea,' when a vessel might sail from port and never be heard from again, is past."

The Russian Arctic Expedition arrived at St. Michael, Alaska, and delivered the first reports of the discovery of the previously unknown land mass which they had named Nicholas II Land.

Born: George M. Foster, American anthropologist, in Sioux Falls, South Dakota (d. 2006)

Died: Robinson Ellis, 69, British professor described as "the greatest of English Latinists"

October 10, 1913 (Friday)

U.S. President Wilson pressed a telegraph key at his desk in the White House, sending the electrical charge that ignited dynamite to destroy the Gamboa Dike, thereby completing the Panama Canal between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. There was no ceremony; after Wilson pressed the button at 2:00 pm, he said, "There, it is all over. Gamboa is busted."

Sixteen days before the legislative and presidential elections scheduled for October 26, Mexico's President Victoriano Huerta ordered the arrest of 110 members of the Chamber of Deputies. Soldiers of the Mexican Army surrounded the legislative building, then marched in to arrest the legislators, who had signed a resolution protesting the disappearance of Senator Belisario Dominguez. Seventy-four of the legislators were later charged with conspiring to overthrow the Huerta government.

At the inauguration ceremony for China's president Yuan Shihkai, the Chief of Beijing's mounted police was arrested and charged with plotting to assassinate Yuan. Police Chief Chen, who confessed that he had been bribed by leaders of the Southern provinces rebellion, had aroused suspicion because of his persistence in trying to be near President Yuan during the ceremony, and several bombs were found at Chief Chen's home.

The body of Rudolf Diesel, inventor of the diesel engine, was found floating in the sea, 11 days after his September 28 disappearance from the passenger liner SS Dresden. The crew of the steamer Coertsen, from Belgium, found the body, which was identified by the items Diesel had been carrying.

Born: Claude Simon, French novelist, and 1985 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate, in Tananarive, French Madagascar (d. 2005)

Died: Prince Katsura Tarō, 66, former Prime Minister of Japan; and Adolphus Busch, 76, St. Louis beer brewer.

October 11, 1913 (Saturday)

The Philadelphia Athletics won the deciding game of the 1913 World Series, over baseball's New York Giants, winning 3–1 to take the series in five games.

Mayor of Boston John F. Fitzgerald issued an order banning the tango, the turkey trot, "and other dances of a similar character". The order required that "a matron and a policeman must stand guard in every public dance hall in Boston" to breakup any attempts at the controversial dances, and pledged to revoke the license of any dance hall that failed to observe the rules.

The day after President Huerta dissolved parliament in Mexico, Britain's Sir Lionel Carden greeted the President as the new British Minister to Mexico, which the U.S. inferred to be a British attempt to gain Huerta's alliance.

Franz Rosenzweig, preparing to convert from Judaism to Christianity, decided at the last moment to reaffirm his Jewish faith. Rosenzweig would go on to become an Orthodox Jewish philosopher whose most famous work was The Star of Redemption.

Born: Joe Simon, American comic book writer best known for creating, with Jack Kirby, the character of Captain America, in Rochester, New York (d. 2011); John T. Parsons, American computer scientist who pioneered numerical control for machinery, in Detroit; and Jake Pickle, U.S. Congressman for Texas (1963–1995), in Roscoe, Texas (d. 2005)

October 12, 1913 (Sunday)

The lineups were announced for an unprecedented round the world tour to be made by baseball's Chicago White Sox and New York Giants, managed, respectively, by Charles Comiskey and John McGraw. The two teams, which included stars from other major league clubs, would begin their westward journey on October 18 with a game in Cincinnati, then set sail for Tokyo on November 19 and would return in March after playing exhibition games in ten foreign nations.

Born: Alice Chetwynd Ley, British romance novelist, in Halifax, Yorkshire (d. 2004); and Leo Fleider, Polish-born Argentine film director, in Hermanowa (d. 1977)

October 13, 1913 (Monday)

Baron Alverstone resigned the office of Lord Chief Justice of the United Kingdom.

Died: James H. McKenny, 76, Clerk of the U.S. Supreme Court since 1880

October 14, 1913 (Tuesday)

Senghenydd Colliery Disaster: In the worst mining disaster in British history the explosion of the Universal Colliery at Senghenydd, in Wales, killed 439 coal miners. At 6:00 a.m., 935 miners went underground into the pits, designated "Lancaster" and "York". Two hours later, there was an explosion in the Lancaster pit. There were 498 survivors. After 74 bodies had been removed and no survivors located by rescuers, the decision was made to leave the other 343 in the mine.

British Prime Minister H. H. Asquith and Leader of the Opposition Andrew Bonar Law met secretly to discuss a bipartisan solution to the growing demand for Home Rule in Ireland. From their meetings, there would emerge the eventual separation of the mostly Protestant counties, in Northern Ireland, from the mostly Roman Catholic counties in the rest of the island.

Edward Steininger, the owner of the St. Louis Terriers franchise in baseball's newly formed Federal League, announced that "We are going to invade the majors and we will take some of their players, too", beginning with the National League's St. Louis Cardinals and the American League's St. Louis Browns.

New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art was announced as the recipient of the $10,000,000 art collection of the late Benjamin Altman, a New York City dry goods merchant, who had died on October 7.

U.S. President Wilson notified Mexican President Huerta that the U.S. would not recognize the legitimacy of the results of the October 26 elections.

October 15, 1913 (Wednesday)

Four natives of the Philippines were appointed by U.S. President Wilson to the Philippine Commission, giving Filipinos a majority (five of nine) on the governing commission for the first time.

China's President Yuan Shikai ordered the arrest of a list of his opponents, including former president Sun Yat-sen, Huang Hsing and Chang Chi.

October 16, 1913 (Thursday)

The Republic of Central Albania was proclaimed by politician Essad Pasha Toptani, who installed himself as President with his capital at Durrës. Toptani, a rival of Albanian leader Ismail Qemali, disbanded the government three months later under pressure from the leaders of the Great Powers nations, shortly before the outbreak of World War I.

The play Pygmalion, by George Bernard Shaw, was performed for the first time, albeit in the German language, at the Burgtheater in Vienna. The play, which would later become the basis for the musical My Fair Lady, would premiere in London on April 11, 1914.

The New York State Senate voted 43-12 to convict Governor William Sulzer on three of the eight counts of impeachment against him, removing him permanently from office. Lieutenant-Governor Martin H. Glynn, who had served as Acting Governor since the impeachment was voted in September, was sworn in as Governor of New York.

The British battleship HMS Queen Elizabeth, the first to use oil, rather than coal, for its fuel, was launched from Portsmouth. The new generation of British battleship had ten 15-inch guns. After service during the First and Second World Wars, the ship would be dismantled in 1948.

Died: Ralph Rose, 28, American athlete, holder of the world record for distance in the shot put, and gold medalist in 1904, 1908 and 1912 Olympics; of typhoid fever.

October 17, 1913 (Friday)

In the worst air disaster up to that date, the German Zeppelin airship L-2 exploded in mid-air, 600 feet over the city of Johannisthal, killing all 28 passengers and crew on board.

Born: Robert Lowery, American television actor, as Robert Larkin Hanks, in Kansas City, Missouri (d. 1971)

Died: Sir George Orby Wombwell, 81, last of the surviving British officers in the Charge of the Light Brigade

October 18, 1913 (Saturday)

Austria-Hungary, acting on its own without consultation with the other "Great Powers", delivered an ultimatum to the Kingdom of Serbia, demanding that Serbian troops be withdrawn within eight days from the territory set aside for Albania by the Great Powers. The Serbians withdrew on October 25, but the unilateral action of the Austrian Emperor began the breakup of the Great Powers.

The Italo-Turkish War was formally ended with the signing of a peace treaty at Lausanne in Switzerland, with Turkey ceding to Italy the territories of Cyrenaica and Tripoli (now Libya), as well as the Dodecanese Islands.

Born: Evelyn Venable, American actress, in Cincinnati (d. 1993)

Died: Dinuzulu kaCetshwayo, 45, King of the Zulu Nation since 1884.

October 19, 1913 (Sunday)

Twenty people, all U.S. Army soldiers, were killed, and another 102 injured, when the train they were riding on fell while crossing a high trestle over the Buckatunna river, near State Line, Mississippi.

Patrick Ryan set a world record for the 12-pound hammer throw, hurling the item 213 feet and breaking the record of 207 feet, 7 3/4 inches, set by John Flanagan on October 24, 1910.

Arthur Zimmerman, the Deputy Foreign Minister of Germany told the British Ambassador to Berlin, Edward Goschen, that the Germans had been surprised by Austria's ultimatum as a policy that "might lead to serious consequences", but (according to Goschen) added that "restraining advice at Vienna on the part of Germany was out of the question". Historian Martin Gilbert would write years later that "In these final fourteen words lay the seeds of a European war."

Born: Dean S. Tarbell, American chemist (d. 1999), in Hancock, New Hampshire

Died: Charles Tellier, 85, scientist who invented the cold storage process, but died penniless and hungry; and William Garrott Brown, 45, American historian

October 20, 1913 (Monday)

Sir Rufus Isaacs was appointed as the new Chief Justice of the United Kingdom, and Sir John Simon became the new Attorney General.

Born: Grandpa Jones, American banjo player and country musician, in Niagara, Kentucky (d. 1998)

Died: Polk Miller, 69, American banjo player and folk musician; and Theodore Dubois, 76, French composer

Died: D. D. Palmer, 68, American healer who founded chiropractic medicine in 1895, and established the Palmer College of Chiropractic in 1897

October 21, 1913 (Tuesday)

Camel cigarettes were introduced by the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. The brand name was a reference to the cigarette's blend of Turkish and Oriental tobacco, and the image of a dromedary camel, on the packet, was based on "Old Joe", an animal at the Barnum and Bailey Circus.

Broadway's Shubert Theatre, most famous for its fifteen-year run of the musical A Chorus Line, opened at 225 West 44th Street in New York. The first presentation was the George Bernard Shaw play, Caesar and Cleopatra, with the British actor Johnston Forbes-Robertson starring as Julius Caesar.

A conspiracy, by monarchists within the Portuguese Army, to overthrow the republic and to restore King Manuel II to the throne, was put down by loyal officers in the city of Viana do Castelo.

Born: Octav Botnar, Ukrainian-born British businessman and billionaire, in Czernowitz, Austria-Hungary (now Chernivtsi, Ukraine) (d. 1998)

Died: Mary Lathbury, 52, children's author and hymn-writer

October 22, 1913 (Wednesday)

An explosion at Mine Number 2 of the Stag Canyon Fuel Company, near Dawson, New Mexico, killed 263 coal miners. Thirty-seven years later, when the Phelps-Dodge Coal Company shut down its operations at the end of April, 1950, Dawson would become a ghost town.

Princeton University inaugurated its first graduate school program.

Born: Robert Capa, Hungarian-born photojournalist and war correspondent, as Friedmann Endre Ernő, in Budapest, Austria-Hungary (killed 1954); Bảo Đại, the last Emperor of Vietnam until he was deposed in 1955, as Prince Nguyen Vinh Khai, in Huế (d. 1997); and Tamara Desni, German-born British film actress, in Berlin (d. 2008)

Died: Reuben Gold Thwaites, historian; Dr. Just Lucas-Championiere, 70, French surgeon

October 23, 1913 (Thursday)

The first worldwide convention of the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) was held, with representatives of 50 nations assembling in Brooklyn.

The U.S. Senate passed the "La Follette Seaman's Bill", which "ended the virtual enslavement of sailors" by outlawing one-year service contracts and allowing workers on private American ships to quit upon reaching port. The bill, sponsored by Robert M. La Follette, Sr., also required that before a ship could sail from an American port, it had to have sufficient lifeboats and rafts for all aboard, and training for the crew to permit two seamen for each boat.

The Giacobini–Zinner comet, initially discovered by Michel Giacobini on December 20, 1900, was recovered by German astronomer Ernst Zinner, who confirmed that it had an orbital period of slightly more than 6.5 years. The comet would return to Earth's solar system in 1985 and would be explored by the International Cometary Explorer space probe.

October 24, 1913 (Friday)

Winston Churchill, at the time the British First Lord of the Admiralty, made a final attempt to halt to the ongoing arms race between the United Kingdom and Germany, suggesting a joint moratorium on the building of more warships. A previous suggestion had been rejected by Kaiser Wilhelm II; "This time", a historian would write later, "his proposal wasn't even acknowledged."

Died: Isabel Barrows, 68, prison reform champion; U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Washburn Maynard, 68, whose ship, the USS Nashville, fired the first shots of the Spanish–American War; and Cornelia Cole Fairbanks, 61, American suffragist

October 25, 1913 (Saturday)

One day before the expiration of the eight-day ultimatum given by Austria-Hungary on October 18, Serbian troops withdrew from Albania.

Following a vote of no confidence, Prime Minister Romanones of Spain resigned, along with his cabinet. Former Prime Minister Eduardo Dato would become the new premier on October 29.

The restoration of Congress Hall in Philadelphia, where the U.S. Congress met from 1790 to 1800 before Washington, D.C. became the American capital, was completed, and the building returned to its 1776 appearance. at the dedication, President Wilson commented that "it has seemed to me that I saw ghosts crowding in, a great assemblage of spirits, no longer visible to us, but whose influence we still feel as we feel the molding power of history itself".

Born: Klaus Barbie, German war criminal known as "The Butcher of Lyon", in Bad Godesberg (d. 1991); and Larry Itliong, Philippine-born American labor leader, in San Nicolas, Pangasinan (d. 1977)

Died: Frederick Rolfe, 53, British novelist who wrote under the pen name Baron Corvo; and Isabel Barrows, 68, American feminist

October 26, 1913 (Sunday)

Presidential and legislative elections were held as scheduled in Mexico, but the results were not announced. The Mexican Constitution required that at least one-third of the registered voters had to participate in order for an election to be valid, and it was estimated than less than one-eighth of the electorate turned out.

Parliamentary elections were held in Italy, with the Liberal Party of Prime Minister Giovanni Giolitti retaining its majority. "Bloodshed Attends Italian Elections", NYT 10.27 For the first time, there was no literacy requirement for voters and the secret ballot was used throughout the nation.

Born: Charlie Barnet, American saxophonist and bandleader, in New York City (d. 1991)

October 27, 1913 (Monday)

The Emir of Kuwait signed a treaty with the United Kingdom, pledging that if oil were discovered in Kuwait, the British government would have to approve the granting of a concession to any company seeking drilling rights.

In a foreign policy address made in Mobile, Alabama at the Southern Commercial Congress, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson announced a new direction. "I want to take this occasion to say", President Wilson told the delegates, "that the United States will never again seek one additional foot of territory by conquest. She will devote herself to showing that she knows how to make an honorable and fruitful use of the territory she has..." Wilson's statement is sometimes misquoted, usually in stories about Mobile, as "the United States would never again wage a war of aggression".

A Russian surgeon, Dr. Yustin Djanelidze, became the first person to successfully fix a wound on the ascending aorta of the heart.

Two people were killed by a tornado in Wales. As of 2007, this was the last instance of a fatality from a tornado in the United Kingdom.

Eduardo Dato became the new Prime Minister of Spain.

General Félix Díaz, who had been a candidate for President of Mexico in the elections the day before, was granted refuge at the American consulate in Veracruz, and transferred to the safety of the American battleship USS Louisiana.

Born: Joe Medicine Crow, American Indian historian and chronicler of the history of the Crow Nation (died 2016)

October 28, 1913 (Tuesday)

The classic American newspaper comic strip Krazy Kat, by George Herriman, made its debut, first appearing in the New York Evening Journal. The last strip would be published on June 25, 1944, two months after Herriman's death.

Menahem Mendel Beilis, a Jewish factory superintendent who had been falsely accused ("blood libel") of the ritualistic murder of a child, was acquitted by a jury in Kiev.

Ten minutes before baseball's New York Giants and Chicago White Sox were preparing to start an exhibition game in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the bleachers over the right field collapsed, injuring more than 100 people. Seven hundred fans had crowded onto benches that were meant to hold 400. One spectator, U.S. Army Private Chester Taylor, was killed.

October 29, 1913 (Wednesday)

After months of delay, Edwin H. Armstrong filed a patent application on his invention of the regenerative circuit. On the same day, Irving Langmuir applied for a patent on his own regenerative circuit. In the lawsuits that followed over nearly 20 years, Armstrong would be given priority on the strength of a diagram of the circuit, which he had had notarized on January 13, 1913 and would be granted U.S. Patent #1,113,149 on October 6, 1914.

October 30, 1913 (Thursday)

Serbia and Montenegro signed a treaty defining the border between the two Balkan kingdoms. Serbian Minister of War Milos Bozanovic and Montenegrin Education Minister Mirko Mijuskovic executed the agreement on behalf of their monarchs.

October 31, 1913 (Friday)

One of the great partnerships in the writing of history began when 15-year-old Ida Kaufman, a student at the Ferrer Modern School in New York, married her former history teacher, 28-year-old Will Durant, 28. Ida would take on the name Ariel Durant, and the Durants would go on to write the eleven-volume study of Western history, The Story of Civilization. According to some accounts, Ariel roller-skated to the New York City Hall to attend the civil ceremony.