1913

January 1, 1913 (Wednesday)

    Parcel post was inaugurated in the United

States
    Louis Armstrong, as an 11-year-old boy in

New Orleans, was arrested by police after

firing his stepfather's pistol to celebrate

the arrival of the new year. He was sentenced

by the juvenile court to 18 months at the

Colored Waifs' Home, where his musical talent

would be perfected, and he would go on to fame

as one of America's greatest jazz artists.
    The Council of the Russian Empire adopted

a law freeing the last of the Russian serfs.

In 1861, the Caucasus had been exempt from the

emancipation of serfs there.
    The "Six Powers" (the United States, Great

Britain, France, Russia, Germany and Japan)

agreed to a $125,000,000 loan to China at 6

percent interest.
    Born: Shih Kien, Hong Kong character

actor, in Shigang Village, Guangzhou, China

(d. 2009)

January 2, 1913 (Thursday)

    U.S. Representative W. W. Wedemeyer of

Michigan jumped overboard from the ocean liner

Panama while returning to the United States,

in an apparent suicide. Wedemeyer, who had

been defeated in November 1912 in his bid for

reelection, had accompanied U.S. President

Taft in December on a visit to Panama as part

of a 30-member congressional inspection party

and was treated for depression in a Canal Zone

hospital before sailing for home.


    The comic strip Bringing Up Father began

an 87-year run. Created by George McManus, the

strip about an Irish millionaire and his wife

(Jiggs and Maggie) was a daily; it became a

Sunday feature beginning April 14, 1918. After

McManus died in 1954, the strip continued

until May 28, 2000
    Born: Anna Lee, English film and

television actress, as Joan Boniface

Winnifrith, in Ightham (d. 2004)
    Died: Léon Teisserenc de Bort, 57, French

meteorologist credited for identifying the

stratosphere

January 3, 1913 (Friday)

    Thomas Edison gave the first demonstration

of his new invention, the kinetophone, at his

laboratory in West Orange, New Jersey,

described as "a combination of the moving

picture machine and the phonograph, with a

synchronizing device that is a marvel of

mechanical ingenuity".
    Portugal's Prime Minister Duarte Leite

resigned.
    The steamer Julia Luckenbach sank after a

collision with the British steamer Indrakuala

in Chesapeake Bay.
    U.S. Senator Joseph W. Bailey of Texas

resigned with less than two months left in his

term; he was replaced by Rienzi Johnston.
    Died: U. S. Senator Jefferson Davis, 50,

Arkansas senator since 1907.

January 4, 1913 (Saturday)

    Rienzi Melville Johnston was appointed as

U.S. Senator from Texas, to serve the

remaining two months of the term of Joseph W.

Bailey. The Texas State Legislature did not

approve of Governor Colquitt's appointment of

Johnston and selected an Senator-elect Morris

Sheppard to replace him.
    Born: Malietoa Tanumafili II, O le Ao o le

Malo (Paramount Chief of Samoa), 1962-2007 (d.

2007)
    Died: Count Alfred von Schlieffen, 79,

former chief of the general staff of the

German Army.

January 5, 1913 (Sunday)

    Gottlieb von Jagow was named as the new

Foreign Secretary of Germany.
    Died: Lewis A. Swift, 93, American

astronomer.

January 6, 1913 (Monday)

    The town of Duvall, Washington, USA was

incorporated.
    The explosion of a boiler on the French

battleship Massena killed 8 members of the

crew.
    Born: Edward Gierek, Polish Communist

leader, 1970–80, in Porąbka (d. 2001); and

Loretta Young, American film and television

actress, in Salt Lake City (d. 2000)

January 7, 1913 (Tuesday)

    The steamship Rosecrans was wrecked in a

gale and ran aground on Peacock Spit, a spit

off the coast of Oregon, killing 33 of the

crew of 36.
    William M. Burton was awarded U.S. Patent

No. 1,049,667 for his thermal cracking

process, that would dramatically increase the

supply of gasoline that could be developed

from crude oil.
    Born: Shirley Ross, American actress and

singer, as Bernice Gaunt in Omaha, Nebraska

(d. 1975)
    Died: Paul Cleveland Bennett Nash, 35,

U.S. Ambassador to Hungary was found dead in

his room at London's Claridge Hotel

January 8, 1913 (Wednesday)
Caricature of Lt-Colonel Sir Robert William

Inglis, published in Vanity Fair, January 8,

1913, as "Men of the Day" Number 2306

    Serbia gave up its demand for a port on

the Adriatic Sea as part of its negotiation at

the London peace conference to end the Balkan

War.
    Alfred Deakin resigned as leader of the

opposition in Australia.
    Dr. Alfonso Costa became the Portuguese

premier.
    The Hotel McAlpin, largest in New York,

opened with rooms for 2,500 guests. An unusual

feature of the 25-story hotel was that was one

floor was reserved exclusively for men,

another for women, and the "sleepy sixteenth"

floor was to be kept "quiet as a tomb" during

the daytime.
    Died: Xavier Mertz, 30, Swiss-born

Antarctic explorer and member of the ill-fated

Far Eastern Party; of hypervitaminosis A. (b.

1882)

January 9, 1913 (Thursday)

    The explosion of a boiler on the riverboat

James T. Staples killed 26 people and injured

21 others.
    Born: Richard M. Nixon, 37th President of

the United States (1969–74), in Yorba Linda,

California, at 9:35 p.m. (d. 1994)
    Born: Eric Berry, British stage and film

actor, in London (d. 1993)

January 10, 1913 (Friday)

    Moroccan rebels, under the command of

Ahmed al-Hiba ambushed and killed a

Mauritanian detachment of the French camel

cavalry, the méhariste corps.
    Romania demanded that Bulgaria cede all

territory between Silistria and the Black

Sea.
    Born: Gustáv Husák, Czechoslovakian

Communist Party leader (1971–87), President of

Czechoslovakia 1975-89, in Pozsonyhidegkút,

Austria-Hungary (now Dúbravka, Slovakia) (d.

1991); Mehmet Shehu, Albanian Communist

politician, Prime Minister of Albania, 1954–

81, in Tirana (suicide, 1981); and Franco

Bordoni Italian World War II ace and racecar

driver, in Milan (killed in plane crash, 1975)

January 11, 1913 (Saturday)

    Having recently proclaimed their

independence from China, Tibet and Mongolia

signed a mutual defense treaty that, under it

terms, was "for all time".

Kirstie's Cairn, Changue Forest The memorial

reads "In memory of Christopher McTaggart,

shepherd, who perished in snow storm near this

spot, 11 January 1913, aged 19 years." The

copyright on this image is owned by Oliver

Dixon and is licensed for reuse under the

Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0

license.

    The Paris intra-urban transit system went

entirely to electric streetcars, as the last

horse-drawn streetcar made its final run on

the city's rails.
    Ottawa's County Clerk was accidentally

locked inside the vault at the courthouse, and

nobody in the office knew the combination

except for him. Fortunately, former clerk John

Bell, living in Salina, remembered the

combination "after spending an hour searching

his memory for the correct numerals". After 2

1/2 hours, when the vault was opened, "the

liberated Baldwin fell to the floor

unconscious" from lack of oxygen but

survived.
    Born: Lona Cohen, aka Helen Kroger,

American Communist who became a spy for the

Soviet Union; in Adams, Massachusetts. After

fleeing the U.S., she and her husband, Morris

Cohen, were given the identities of New

Zealanders "Helen and Peter Kroger" and spied

against the United Kingdom in the 1950s (d.

1992)

January 12, 1913 (Sunday)

    Alexandre Millerand quit as France's

minister of war after Colonel du Paty de Clam

was reinstated.

January 13, 1913 (Monday)

    U.S. Commerce Court judge Robert W.

Archbald was convicted on five of 13 articles

of impeachment by the U.S. Senate and removed

from office. The vote was 68–5 on the first

article, sufficient for removal. In all, he

was convicted on three articles, acquitted on

the other ten. He became only the third U.S.

government official to be removed by the

impeachment process.
    Electors in the 48 United States, chosen

in the presidential election in November, met

in their respective state legislatures to cast

their electoral votes. Woodrow Wilson received

435 votes from 40 states, Theodore Roosevelt

88 from six states, and incumbent President

Taft, favored only by Utah and Vermont, won

eight votes.
    The Ulster Volunteer Force was organized

by Sir Edward Carson and Sir James Craig to

resist the Irish Home Rule Movement.
    Delta Sigma Theta, and African-American

sorority, was founded by 22 women at Howard

University who had become dissatisfied with

the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority. A century

later, it would have 900 chapters in eight

nations.
    The Harvard University Press was

established at a meeting of the president and

fellows of the university.
    Born: Murray Bowen, American psychiatrist

and pioneer in differentiation of self and in

family counseling, in Waverly, Tennessee (d.

1990)

January 14, 1913 (Tuesday)

    The London Peace Conference ended as the

Balkan states and the Ottoman Empire were

unable to reach an agreement in negotiations.


    Born: Luderin Darbone, American Cajun

musician, in Evangeline Parish, Louisiana (d.

2008)

January 15, 1913 (Wednesday)

    The members of Britain's Royal

Geographical Society voted overwhelmingly to

admit women, after 82 years as an all-male

organization.
    The first sickness benefits were paid

under Britain's National Insurance Act 1911 as

its provisions took effect. Men were eligible

to receive ten shillings per week for illness,

and women seven shillings and sixpence per

week. After 13 weeks, the benefits for both

men and women were five shillings a week.
    First Balkan War: The Ottoman battle

cruiser Medjidie attacked and sank the Greek

merchant ship Macedonia, which had been armed

for use as a troop transport.
    Born: Lloyd Bridges, American film and

television actor, best known for portraying a

free-lance scuba diver and adventurer on Sea

Hunt TV series, in San Leandro, California (d.

1998); and Alexander Marinesko, captain of the

S-13 submarine which sank the German ship

Wilhelm Gustloff, killing 9,000 people; in

Odessa (d. 1963)

January 16, 1913 (Thursday)

    The United Kingdom House of Commons passed

the Irish Home Rule Bill on its third reading,

by a vote of 367 to 257. The measure moved

on to the House of Lords, which was expected

to veto the bill, which happened on January

30.
    Russia's Grand Duke Michael was stripped

of his rank as officer in the Russian Army,

after his controversial marriage was met by

the disapproval of his brother, Tsar Nicholas

II.
    Srinivasa Ramanujan, a 26-year-old student

in Madras, India, sent a letter to English

mathematician G. H. Hardy, admitting that he

had no formal mathematical training, but

submitting more than 100 theorems that Hardy

recognized as ingenious.
    The first wireless transmission between

the U.S. and Germany was sent in the

inauguration of a new telegraph system at

Sayville, New York, with the message received

in Berlin.
    Died: Thaddeus S. C. Lowe, 80, American

meteorologist and balloonist, pioneer in

aerial reconnaissance

January 17, 1913 (Friday)

    Prime Minister Raymond Poincaré was

elected as the new President of France. After

none of the three candidates received a

majority on the first ballot, the result on

the second round was Prime Minister Poincaré

483, Agriculture Minister Jules Pams 296 and

Marie Eduard Maillant 69.
    Ag-ed Alach-Sultan became the new Premier

of Persia.
    The six European powers sent a joint note

advising the Ottoman Empire to surrender

Adrianople and the Aegean Islands.

January 18, 1913 (Saturday)

    British Antarctic Expedition: The Terra

Nova was finally able to break through the ice

outside of Antarctica's McMurdo Sound to pick

up the Northern Party, the remaining members

of the expedition. The group had set out to

locate explorer the Southern Party that had

been led by Robert Falcon Scott. Victor

Campbell reported to the Terra Nova crew that

Scott's party had reached the South Pole on

January 17, 1912, but had all died on the

return journey.
    Born: Danny Kaye, American film actor, as

David Daniel Kaminsky in Brooklyn (d. 1987)

January 19, 1913 (Sunday)

    Born: Rudolf Wanderone, American billiards

player and entertainer who billed himself as

"Minnesota Fats" after the release of the 1961

film The Hustler; in New York (d. 1982)
    Died: Claas Epp, Jr., 74, Russian

Mennonite who had developed a following by

predicting the Second Coming for March 8, 1889

and again on March 8, 1891

January 20, 1913 (Monday)

    Outgoing U.S. president Taft accepted a

position as a professor at the Yale University

College of Law.
    Aristide Briand was selected as the Prime

Minister of France, to replace Raymond

Poincaré, who had vacated the office after

being elected president.
    Bulgaria, Serbia and Montenegro presented

an ultimatum to the Ottoman Empire, giving the

Turks 14 days to make a favorable reply to

their demands or face a resumption of war.
    The first film footage of war scenes in

color was shown, having been taken during the

First Balkan War under the direction of

British war correspondent Frederic Villiers,

who accompanied a division of the Greek Army.


    Died: José Guadalupe Posada, 60, Mexican

cartoonist and illustrator

January 21, 1913 (Tuesday)

    Canadian Member of Parliament W.F. MacLean

of South York made the first proposal for a

central Canadian bank, in a speech on the

floor of the House of Commons.
    Died: Fanny Jackson Coppin, 75, African-

American religious leader and education

proponent

January 22, 1913 (Wednesday)
Jim Thorpe at the New York Polo Grounds in

1913

    The Worcester Gazette of Worcester,

Massachusetts, published a story that cost Jim

Thorpe his Olympic medals. One of the

sportswriters for the Gazette had played minor

league baseball in the Eastern Carolina League

for the Fayetteville Highlanders and was aware

that Thorpe had played in the league in the

1909 and 1910 seasons. The Gazette editor had

spent eight days verifying the fact before

breaking the news that Thorpe had played

professional ball for Fayetteville and for the

Rocky Mount Railroaders. The headline was

"Thorpe With Professional Baseball Team Says

Clancy", and quoted Charley Clancy, who had

tipped off reporter Roy Johnson.
    The Ottoman Grand Council voted to

surrender Edirne (Adrianople) to the Balkan

Allies and to accept the other demands for

peace, including ceding its Aegean islands and

Edirne.
    Helen Miller Gould, America's "Queen

Philanthropist", married Finley J. Shepard.


    Born: William Conway, Irish Roman Catholic

cardinal, Primate of All Ireland; in Belfast

(d. 1977); and Carl F. H. Henry, American

Protestant theologian, first editor of

Christianity Today, publisher, in Long Island,

New York (d. 2003)

January 23, 1913 (Thursday)
Nazım Pasha, the Ottoman Minister of the Navy,

killed on January 23

    1913 Ottoman coup d'état (aka "Raid on the

Sublime Porte"): Members of the Committee of

Union and Progress under Enver Bey forced

Grand Vizier Kâmil Pasha, of the rival Freedom

and Accord Party, to resign at gunpoint, with

Mahmud Shevket Pasha being made the new

premier. The mob shot and killed Naval

Minister Nazım Pasha when he confronted them

outside the Council Chambers.
    Seven U.S. soldiers were killed in the

Philippines at Jolo during a fight with the

Igorot residents.
    Born: Wally Parks, American drag racer,

founder of the NHRA, in Goltry, Oklahoma (d.

2007)

January 24, 1913 (Friday)

    Former Socialist Party presidential

candidate Eugene V. Debs was arrested at Terre

Haute, weeks after being indicted for

obstructing justice. Debs was quickly

released on bail, and the case would be

dismissed in May.
    The Norwegian cabinet resigned.
    The U.S. Senate approved the Lincoln

Memorial. On January 29, the House

appropriated $2 million for the building

January 25, 1913 (Saturday)

    In an article for the Russian-language

Paris newspaper Sozial Demokrat, Bolshevik

activist Josef Dzhugashvili first used the a

pseudonym based on the Russian word for steel

"Stal" (Стал). The issue was dated January 12

because of the differences between the Julian

calendar used in Russia at the time, and the

Gregorian calendar that would be adopted

later. "The National Question and Social

Democracy" was signed with the name "K.

Stalin", a "steel man", a name that Joseph

Stalin would use thereafter.
    The U.S. House of Representatives passed

the Dillingham-Burnett immigration bill,

requiring a literacy test for all incoming

immigrants, by a 166-71 margin.
    Born: Witold Lutosławski, Polish composer,

in Warsaw (d. 1994); and Huang Hua, Foreign

Minister of China 1976-82 (d. 2010)

January 26, 1913 (Sunday)

    The body of John Paul Jones was inhumed at

the chapel of the U.S. Naval Academy in

Annapolis, Maryland, more than seven years

after it had been returned to the United

States from France.

January 27, 1913 (Monday)
Masonic Hall, Hawarden. Formerly the Boys

Elementary School, built in 1834, the building

was taken over by the Masons in 1912. After

some internal alterations were carried out

they convened their first meeting on 27th

January 1913 and a plaque on the prominent

chimney carries that date. The copyright on

this image is owned by John S Turner and is

licensed for reuse under the Creative Commons

Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license.

    The first new American five-cent pieces,

known as "buffalo nickels", were manufactured

at the Philadelphia mint.
    The British Cabinet voted to remove the

women's suffrage bill from consideration in

the House of Commons.

January 28, 1913 (Tuesday)

    The Young Turks council of the Committee

of Union and Progress voted unanimously to

fight the surrender of Edirne (Adrianople) and

the Aegean islands, in accordance with the

demands of the new leader, Enver Bey.
    Died: Segismundo Moret y Prendergast, 74,

former Premier of Spain.

January 29, 1913 (Wednesday)

    Alpha Kappa Alpha, the first African-

American sorority, was incorporated.

January 30, 1913 (Thursday)

    The United Kingdom's House of Lords

rejected the Home Rule bill by a vote of 326-

69.
    A no-confidence motion passed in the

German Reichstag.
    The Ottoman Empire replied to the

ultimatum of the Great Powers at the end of

the First Balkan War and agreed to give up

most of Edirne (Adrianople) except for the

Muslim shrines, but it refused to surrender

its Aegean islands.
    Born: Amrita Sher-Gil, Hungarian-born

Indian woman painter, Budapest (d. 1941)
    Died: Hasan Riza Pasha, 41, the Ottoman

governor of Scutari and defender against the

Montenegrin siege, was assassinated in a plot

by Essad Pasha Toptani, who took over as

commander of Ottoman forces the next day.

January 31, 1913 (Friday)

    Izzet Pasha[disambiguation needed
    ][which?] was appointed commander-in-chief

of Ottoman forces.
    Died: James Ludovic Lindsay, Earl of

Crawford, 65, English scientist and

philatelist.


February 1, 1913 (Saturday)

    The U.S. Senate voted, 47-23, in favor of

amending Article II, Section 1, of the United

States Constitution to limit American

presidents to a single, six-year term. The

measure for an 18th Amendment to the

Constitution was passed "by the necessary

two-thirds vote and one to spare", and sent to

the House for consideration.
    Turkey accepted the terms of peace

proposed by the Great Powers.
    President Taft signed the bill authorizing

the construction of a memorial to Abraham

Lincoln in Washington's Potomac Park.
    Died: Juan Manuel Ceballos, President of

the banking house of J. M. Ceballos & Co.,

which had failed in 1906.

February 2, 1913 (Sunday)

    The first train departed from New York

City's Grand Central Terminal, having been

rebuilt, opened a moment after midnight as the

world's largest train station. At 12:01 a.m.,

the Boston Express No. 2 became the first

train to depart, with a Mr. F. M. Lamh of

Yonkers credited as the first person to buy a

ticket in the new terminal. On its first day,

between 12:01 am and 7:00 pm, the new station

attracted 150,000 visitors. "At the height

of its activity, in the years just after the

Second World War", one historian notes, "Grand

Central served about the same number of

passengers as the world's busiest airport does

today, even though Grand Central uses only 1

percent as much land as the airport does."
    Rienzi Johnston resigned as U.S. Senator

from Texas after only four weeks in office,

after having been appointed on January 4. U.S.

Senator-elect Morris Sheppard took office a

month ahead of schedule to complete the six-

year term of Joseph W. Bailey, who had

resigned.

February 3, 1913 (Monday)

    At 11:00 am local time, five minutes after

the Delaware House of Representatives had

received the state Senate resolution for

ratification, Delaware became the 36th state

to vote in favor of the Sixteenth Amendment to

the United States Constitution, allowing

Congress to create a federal income tax. The

vote in both state houses was unanimous.

With three-fourths of the 48 U.S. states

having ratified the amendment, "The first

change in the Federal Constitution in forty-

three years was made certain." Wyoming and New

Mexico voted their approval later in the day.


    First Balkan War: Fighting between Ottoman

Turkey and the Balkan league resumed at Edirne

(Adrianople) and Çatalca after the peace talks

in London broke down, and an agreed upon

cease-fire expired.
    The German railroad car manufacturer

Gothaer Waggonfabrik began an aviation

division, which would create one of the first

heavy bombers used in war, the Gotha G.I, a

twin-engine airplane that would drop bombs on

the Great Britain during the First World War.


February 4, 1913 (Tuesday)
Araujo

    The President of El Salvador, Manuel

Araujo, was fatally wounded by assassins,

although the initial report was that "none of

the wounds is considered serious".Araujo

died five days later. American warships

were dispatched to Central America to stop the

threat of a revolution.
    The wife of British Antarctic explorer

Robert Falcon Scott departed from Los Angeles

on the way to meet her husband in New Zealand.

Mrs. Scott, unaware that he husband had died

in Antarctica, told reporters, "I expect to

meet Capt. Scott in Lytleton in March... I

have not heard from my husband for about

eighteen months, but I have no doubt

whatsoever that he will arrive in New Zealand

safely." The next day, she set off from

San Francisco on the steamer Aorangi.
    Born: Rosa Parks, American civil rights

activist whose defiance and arrest led to the

Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955; in Tuskegee,

Alabama (d. 2005)
    Died: Sir John Gordon Sprigg, 83, four

times Prime Minister of the Cape Colony in

South Africa

February 5, 1913 (Wednesday)

    First Lieutenant Michael Moutoussis and

Ensign Aristeidis Moraitinis of the Greek Navy

conducted the first aerial attack on a warship

in history, dropping four bombs on Turkish

ships in the Dardanelles, albeit without

inflicting any casualties.
    Romania and Austria-Hungary signed a

treaty to renew their military alliance for

seven years. When World War One broke out,

however, Romania would remain neutral and

would later enter the war against Austria-

Hungary and Germany.
    The United Kingdom's House of Commons

passed the Welsh Church Disestablishment bill.
    Japan's Diet voted to censure the

government of Prime Minister Katsura following

riots
    Spain resumed diplomatic relations with

the Vatican after a nearly three-year break.

Fermin Calbeton y Planchon presented his

credentials to the Pope, and then spoke with

the Pontiff in the latter's private

residence.
    Born: Takeo Nakasawa, Japanese

mathematician who conceived the theory of

matroid but whose work was unpublicized until

more than 60 years after his death (d. 1946)

February 6, 1913 (Thursday)

    Bulgaria refused to allow foreigners to

leave Adrianople in advance of the city's

conquest
    Born: Mary Leakey, British anthropologist,

as Mary Douglas Nicol, in London (d. 1996)

February 7, 1913 (Friday)
Marcoux

    Opera singer Vanni Marcoux, baritone and

star of the Boston Opera Company, was

hospitalized with a concussion sustained while

he had been taking his bows. Marcoux had been

enjoying the thunderous applause of the

audience and did not realize that he was

standing directly below the heavy stage

curtain as it was being lowered, and was

struck on the head.

February 8, 1913 (Saturday)

    For the first time in more than 110 years,

an incumbent United States President

personally spoke before a house of the U.S.

Congress. President William Howard Taft

appeared before a session of the U.S. Senate

to deliver a eulogy for the late Vice-

President, James S. Sherman, who had died n

November. "Not since 1801," the New York Times

observed, "has the President spoken directly

to either house of Congress." Thomas Jefferson

had set the precedent of communicating to

Congress by written message only, which in

turn had broken the tradition set by

Presidents George Washington and John Adams in

speaking at the opening of Congress.

Mawson

    Explorer Douglas Mawson, the last

surviving member of a three member party of

explorers on the Australasian Antarctic

Expedition, made it back to the expedition's

base at Cape Denison. Mawson, who had suffered

frostbite and illness during his trek to the

base, arrived to be informed that the

expedition ship Aurora had departed a few

hours earlier, and that another ship would not

relieve the base for another year.
    The United States and Nicaragua signed the

Wertzel-Chamorro Treaty, with the U.S. paying

$3 million to Nicaragua for the option to

build a canal across the nation to link the

Atlantic and Pacific, and the right to set up

bases on Corn Island and the Gulf of Fonseca.

Construction of the Panama Canal was almost

complete; the U.S. Senate's session ended

before the treaty could be voted on.
    At Mansfield, England, thirteen coal

miners at the Bolsover Colliery were killed

when a bucket with 800 gallons of water fell

from a chain, and crashed into the workers 500

feet below.
    Died: John George Brown, 81, British-born

American painter known for his depictions of

ordinary New York City children described as

"street urchins"

February 9, 1913 (Sunday)

    Meteor procession of February 9, 1913: At

9:05 pm Toronto time, hundreds of people

observed a series of brilliant meteors

streaking across the sky. The procession,

first visible in the skies above Mortlach,

Saskatchewan, moved south-easterly across

North America. It was observed by Col. W. R.

Winter from a position on Bermuda. It was

reported by seven ships at sea, and then last

reported off the eastern tip of Brazil near

Cape Sao Roque. The procession was not

observed by Professor Clarence Chant, of the

Astronomy Department of the University of

Toronto, but on the following day he was

inundated with phone calls and letters from

witnesses to the event. He systematically

plotted the path of the procession, and

reported his findings in a 73-page report

tabled in the May–June 1913 edition of the

Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of

Canada. A witness to the event was Toronto

artist Gustav Hahn who made a painting

following his observation. This event is also

known as the "Cyrillids" because the event

happened on St. Cyril's Day. In 2000, author

Patrick Moore would write, "Nothing similar

had ever been seen before, and nothing similar

has been seen since."
    Mexico's President Francisco I. Madero was

trapped in a siege of the presidential palace

by rebels under the command of General Felix

Diaz. Former Governor of Nuevo León Bernardo

Reyes, who was one of the leaders of the

revolt, was killed in the exchange of

gunfire.

February 10, 1913 (Monday)

    The world learned the fate of Robert

Falcon Scott and the other members of his

Antarctic exploration team, who had perished

after reaching the South Pole. The news was

brought with the return of the Terra Nova.
    Charles Rumney Samson, who had been the

first person to fly an airplane off of the

deck of a ship (on May 9, 1912) became the

first person to fire a machine gun from an

airplane in flight. Samson was flying over

Eastchurch.
    At Mucklow, West Virginia, 16 people—12

miners and 4 mine guards—were killed in

fighting between striking coal miners and

police.

Frances Cleveland

    Former United States First Lady Frances

Folsom Cleveland became the first President's

widow to remarry. The widow of Grover

Cleveland, who had died in 1908, was wed to

Professor Thomas J. Preston, Jr. of Princeton

University.The only other widow of a U.S.

President to remarry would be Jacqueline

Kennedy, who would marry Aristotle Onassis in

1968.
    Born: Douglas Slocombe, British

cinematographer, in London (still living in

2012)

February 11, 1913 (Tuesday)

    Japan's Prime Minister Katsura and his

cabinet resigned, the day after tens of

thousands of protesters surrounded the

Parliament Building.
    Mexico City became the battleground for

clashes between government troops and

revolutionaries.
    Five West Virginia state legislators were

arrested on charges of accepting bribes in

advance of a vote on the state's U.S. Senator.

The six were charged with receiving a total of

$20,000 to vote in favor of Senate candidate

William Seymour Edwards. Two days later,

another six were indicted and "Every member of

the West Virginia Legislature, save those

against whom indictments have been returned"

was issued a summons to appear before a

special grand jury.
    Died: Franz Schuhmeier, 49, a Socialist

member of the Austrian parliament, was

assassinated at a railway station in Vienna.

His killer, Paul Kunschak, was the brother of

one of Schuhmeier's opponents in the Chamber

of Deputies, a member of the Christian

Socialist Party. Schuhmeier, who had led the

fight for universal suffrage in Austria, was

mourned by 250,000 people.

February 12, 1913 (Wednesday)

    Count Gombei Yamamoto became the new

Premier of Japan. The new premier, 60 years

old, was a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy

at Annapolis, one of the Class of '77.
    The electoral votes were canvassed in a

joint session of the U.S. Congress, and

Woodrow Wilson was officially proclaimed as

the winner of the election.
    Turkey requested the Great Powers to

intervene to end the Balkan War.

February 13, 1913 (Thursday)
Mother Jones

    Mary Harris Jones, the 83-year-old labor

activist remembered as "Mother Jones", was

arrested in Charleston, West Virginia after

leading a group of miners to confront Governor

William Glasscock. Transported to an area

of Charleston that was under martial law

because of confrontations between striking

coal miners and company police, Jones would be

tried by a military court in March, on charges

of conspiracy to commit murder. Convicted on

the charges, she would be sentenced to three

years imprisonment, but released by the new

Governor after 85 days.
    The United States and France signed a

five-year extension of their arbitration

treaty.
    Woodrow Wilson announced his resignation

as Governor of New Jersey, effective March 1,

three days before he was to take office as the

U.S. president.
    Born: Frank Tashlin, American film

director and animator, in Weehawken, New

Jersey (d. 1972)

February 14, 1913 (Friday)

    Outgoing U.S. President Taft vetoed the

Burnett-Dillingham Immigration Bill, that

would have turned away immigrant heads of

families who were unable to pass a literacy

test. The veto would survive an attempt at

an override; a historian would note later

that, "Following his conscience and the advice

of Charles Nagel, [Taft] defended his long-

standing belief that immigration was an

economic boon to the country and that Southern

and Eastern Europeans could assimilate as

readily as Northern and Western Europeans...

Taft left the gates of America open for many

immigrants as he left the White House."
    Born: Jimmy Hoffa, American Teamsters

Union leader, in Brazil, Indiana (disappeared

1975); Woody Hayes, American college football

coach, in Clifton, Ohio (d. 1987); Mel Allen,

American sportscaster, as Melvin Allen Israel

in Birmingham, Alabama (d. 1996); and James

Pike, American Episcopal bishop and religious

broadcaster, in Oklahoma City (d. 1969)
    Died: Stewart L. Woodford, 77, American

diplomat and politician, minister to Spain at

the time that the Spanish–American War broke

out

February 15, 1913 (Saturday)

    China's Minister of Education opened the

Conference on Unification of Pronunciation,

the first attempt to create common standards

for the Chinese language, with 44 delegates

meeting in Beijing.
    The Welsh Church Disestablishment bill was

rejected by the British House of Lords, with

only 52 in favor and 252 against.
    Emilio Vasquez Gomez crossed the U.S.-

Mexican border at Columbus, New Mexico into

Palomas, and proclaimed himself as President

of Mexico, with plans to journey to the

capital to take office.
    Former Venezuelan President Cipriano

Castro was permitted entry into the United

States by federal court order.
    Born: Erich Eliskases, Austrian chess

grandmaster, in Innsbruck (d. 1997)

February 16, 1913 (Sunday)

    West of Pierre, South Dakota, Hattie May

Foster, a 14-year-old student, spotted the

corner of a lead marker sticking out of the

ground and unearthed it. What Foster had

located was a marker that had been set 170

years earlier by a team of French explorers

under the command of Pierre Gaultier de La

Vérendrye and François de La Vérendrye, who

had marked the furthest point explored by them

before they began their journey home.

Inscribed on one side was "Anno XXVI Regni

Ludovici XV Prorege; Illustrissimo Domino

Domino Marchione; De Beauharnois M D CC XXXXI;

Petrus Gaultier de Laverendrie Posvit", and on

the other "Pose par le Chevalier de Lavr to jo

Louy la Londette Amiotte, Le 30 de mars 1743"

(March 30, 1743).
    A nine-hour armistice in the Mexican

Revolution went into effect in Mexico City.
    Joseph Hertz of New York City was elected

as Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew

Congregations of the British Empire.

February 17, 1913 (Monday)

    The "Armory Show", officially the first

International Exhibition of Modern Art, opened

in New York City at the Sixty-ninth Regiment

Armory, at the corner of Lexington Avenue and

26th Street. The exhibition featured 1,250

paintings, sculptures and decorative works

from over 300 European and American masters,

including Marcel Duchamp's Nude

Descending a Staircase, No. 2. Other artists

who were represented were Pablo Picasso, Paul

Cézanne, Wassily Kandinsky, Henri Matisse,

Claude Monet and Vincent van Gogh. American

artists were James McNeill Whistler, Edward

Hopper, Childe Hassam, Mary Cassatt, and

George Bellows.The Armory Show was the

first major exhibition in the United States of

modern art and would be called by art

historian Hélène Seckel as "the relaunching,

if not actually the birth, of the art market",

with wealthy collectors being inspired to

acquire the work of modern artists.
    U.S. President Taft assured Mexican

President Madero that the U.S. had no plans to

intervene in the Mexican Revolution other than

to protect U.S. citizens.
    Died: Edward Stanley Gibbons, 72, English

philatelist and creator of stamp catalogues

February 18, 1913 (Tuesday)

    After fighting against the rebels, federal

troops in Mexico arrested President Francisco

I. Madero and Vice-President José Pino Suárez.

General Aureliano Blanquet ordered his

soldiers to enter the palace and arrest the

President and his cabinet. The President and

Vice-President both resigned at 10:24 pm, and

Foreign Minister Pedro Lascuráin, second in

line for succession, became the interim

President. When the Mexican Congress confirmed

General Victoriano Huerta as the new leader,

President Lascuráin resigned at 11:20 pm,

having served for 56 minutes.
    Raymond Poincaré was inaugurated as

President of France.
    Born: Artur Axmann, German leader of the

Hitler Youth from 1940 to 1945, in Hagen (d.

1996)
    Died: George Washington Custis Lee, 80,

President Emeritus of Washington and Lee

University and former Confederate General, son

of Robert E. Lee; and George Lewis Becke,

Australian author

February 19, 1913 (Wednesday)

    Gustavo A. Madero, brother of the deposed

President, was executed on orders of General

Félix Díaz. Gustavo was "subjected to the

'fugitive law'", where prisoners were released

and given a chance to flee while guns were

fired at them.
    An attempt to override President Taft's

veto of the Immigration Bill failed in the

House by five votes, after having passed the

Senate, 72–18, the day before. Although the

vote was 213–114 in favor of overcoming the

President's veto, two-thirds (218) of the 327

representatives present were required to

agree.

February 20, 1913 (Thursday)

    The first survey stake for what would

become the city of Canberra, capital of

Australia, was driven into the ground by King

O'Malley, the Minister for Home Affairs.
    The most destructive fire in Tokyo, in

almost 60 years, broke out at a Salvation Army

hall in the Kanda district, spread over one-

half of a square mile, and destroyed 1,500

homes and buildings.
    Julian Krein, futurist music composer, in

Moscow (d. 1996)
    Born: Tommy Henrich, American baseball

player, in Massillon, Ohio (d. 2009)

February 21, 1913 (Friday)

    Sir Harcourt Butler, the Secretary of

State for Education in British India,

specified the goals for creating 14

universities across India.
    The State of Arkansas outlawed the

practice of convict leasing, after the state

legislature had passed a bill proposed by

Governor George Washington Donaghey and signed

by Donaghey's successor, Joseph T. Robinson.


    U.S. District Judge Nathan Goff, Jr. was

elected as U.S. Senator for West Virginia by

the state legislature, with 49 votes, compared

to 14 votes for the three other candidates.



February 22, 1913 (Saturday)
Madero
Huerta

    Four days after their forced resignations,

former Mexican President Madero, and Vice-

President Pino Suarez, were shot to death

after being transported from the presidential

palace to a prison.The official

explanation by President Huerta was that the

two men were being transported in automobiles

and "two-thirds of the way to the

penetentiary, they were attacked by an armed

group...and the prisoners tried to escape. An

exchange of shots then took place in which one

of the attacking party was killed, two were

wounded and both prisoners killed."  Other

accounts were that Major Francisco Cardenas,

who was escorting the prisoners, shot both

men and that President Huerta was told by

U.S. Ambassador Henry Lane Wilson to do

"whatever he thought best for the country",

after which "Huerta did just that", having the

two men executed at the prison. The

subsequent government investigation "resulted

in a decision that no one could be held

legally responsible".
    President Taft dispatched 4,000 men to

Galveston, Texas, for a possible deployment to

Mexico. The force was increased two days

later to 10,000 people.
    The U.S. Naval Academy, which would later

be ranked by the Helms Foundation as the best

team of the 1912-13 men's basketball season,

closed its schedule with a 67-18 win over

Georgetown University and a 9-0 finish. The

Midshipmen outscored their opponents 501-187

in nine games, defeating them by an average of

35 points per game.
    Born: Ranko Marinković, Croatian author,

in Komiža, Austria-Hungary (d. 2001)
    Died: Empress Dowager Longyu, 45, widow of

the Guangxu Emperor and former co-regent for

China's last emperor Puyi
    Died: Ferdinand de Saussure, 55, Swiss

philologist who pioneered structural

linguistics

February 23, 1913 (Sunday)

    Joseph Stalin was arrested by the Russian

secret police agency, the Okhrana, upon his

arrival at the Kalashnikov Exchange at

Petrograd (now Saint Petersburg), where

International Women's Day was being

celebrated. The future dictator of the Soviet

Union, Stalin would be imprisoned for the next

four years by the Tsarist government, until

his release in 1917 a few months before the

Russian Revolution.
    The United Synagogue of America held its

initial meeting, at which time it changed to

its present name from the working title of

"Agudath Jeshurun- A Union for Promoting

Traditional Judaism in America".
    Romania agreed to a mediation of its

boundary dispute with Bulgaria.
    Born: Sabine Sicaud, French girl poet who

was published at 13, but died of osteomyelitis

at age 15; in Villeneuve-sur-Lot (d. 1928)

February 24, 1913 (Monday)

    The first radio transmission from

Antarctica was made, with Australasian

Expedition leader Douglas Mawson telegraphing

a message by wireless to Australia.
    Born: Richard M. Goodwin, American

mathematician and economist, in Newcastle,

Indiana (d. 1996); and Walter Goldschmidt,

American anthropologist, in San Antonio, Texas

(d. 2010)

February 25, 1913 (Tuesday)

    U.S. Secretary of State Philander Knox

proclaimed that the Sixteenth Amendment had

been ratified by the necessary three-fourths

of the states, officially making a federal

income tax part of the Constitution. An

1894 attempt by the U.S. government to tax

incomes had been found unconstitutional,

except as regards salaries and wages. The

first federal income tax laws passed, after

the Amendment took effect, provided for a rate

of one percent for incomes of $20,000 or less


    Enrique Varela resigned as Prime Minister

of Peru.
    Born: Jim Backus, American comic actor

known for "Mr. Magoo" and "Thurston Howell

III"; in Cleveland (d. 1989); and Gert Fröbe,

German film actor who was the title character

in (Goldfinger), in Oberplanitz (now part of

Zwickau) (d. 1988
    Died: Jake DeRosier, 33, American

motorcycle racer, of complications from

surgeries for an accident a year earlier.

February 26, 1913 (Wednesday)

    Federico Luna Peralta became the new Prime

Minister of Peru.
    Born: George Barker, British poet, in

Loughton (d. 1991)
    Died: Felix Draeseke, 77, German opera and

symphony composer; and Bud Fowler, 54, the

first known African-American professional

baseball player

February 27, 1913 (Thursday)

    Born: Irwin Shaw (Irwin Gilbert

Shamforoff), American novelist (d. 1984);T. B.

Ilangaratne, Sri Lankan author, dramatist,

actor and politician, in Hataraliyadda (d.

1992); and Paul Ricoeur, French philosopher,

in Valence (d. 2005)
    Died: Sir William Henry White, 68, chief

constructor of the British Navy; and Leonard

Kamungu, 35, Malawian Christian missionary, of

poisoning.

February 28, 1913 (Friday)

    Proof of the existence of the pygmy

hippopotamus (Choeropsis liberiensis) was

demonstrated by German animal merchant Carl

Hagenbeck in Liberia. After "having made sure

that the species was much less rare than he

had thought", Hagenbeck shot and killed

one. The next day, he would capture a live

pygmy hippo.
    The largest pinniped ever recorded was a

southern elephant seal (Mirounga leonina),

killed at Possession Bay of South Georgia

Island, more than 22 feet in length and

weighing almost 9,000 pounds.
    At least 20 people were killed in a fire

at the Dewey Hotel in Omaha, Nebraska.
    The Webb-Kenyon bill, prohibiting the

interstate shipment of alcohol into dry

territory for purposes of resale, passed by

the House and the Senate, was vetoed by

President Taft. The veto would be

overridden the same day by the Senate, and the

next day by the House.
    The New York City garment workers' strike

was ended.


March 1, 1913 (Saturday)

    The German Navy dreadnought SMS König, first of a new line of ships with the capacity to fire 30.5 cm (12 inch) shells, was launched.
    The British steamer Calvados, with 200 passengers and crew, was lost in the Sea of Marmora off of the coast of Turkey, while traveling in a blizzard between Istanbul and Panderma.
    New Jersey Governor Woodrow Wilson resigned three days before his scheduled inauguration as United States President. Wilson was succeeded by State Senate President James F. Fielder.
    Born: Ralph Ellison, African-American writer, in Oklahoma City (d. 1994);[4] R. S. R. Fitter, British writer (d. 2005); and Helmut Gernsheim, German photographer, in Munich (d. 1995)
    Died: Mario Pieri, 52, Italian mathematician

March 2, 1913 (Sunday)

    Soldiers of the Ninth U.S. Cavalry, stationed in Douglas, Arizona, traded gunfire with Mexican Army troops who were across the border in Agua Prieta, in a skirmish between the border patrols of both nations. Reportedly, four Mexican federal soldiers were killed, and some of the U.S. Army soldiers charged across the border into Mexico to pursue the retreating Mexican troops.

March 3, 1913 (Monday)

    Woman Suffrage Parade of 1913: A group of 8,000 supporters of granting women the right to vote in the United States, led by Alice Paul of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, was besieged by a mob as the marchers, mostly women, paraded down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC, on the eve of the presidential inauguration.

March 4, 1913 (Tuesday)

    Woodrow Wilson was inaugurated as the 28th President of the United States at 1:34 p.m., 94 minutes after the expiration of the term of President Taft.
    Hours before leaving office, outgoing President William H. Taft signed legislation creating the United States Department of Labor. The former U.S. Department of Commerce and Labor was renamed as the U.S. Department of Commerce. Taft's signing came with a statement that "I think that nine departments are enough for the proper administration of the government".
    Born: John Garfield, blacklisted American film actor, as Jacob Garfinkle in New York City (d. 1952)

March 5, 1913 (Wednesday)

    Seventy-one men were drowned when the German destroyer S-178 was rammed by the German cruiser Yorck in the North Sea off of Helgoland.

March 6, 1913 (Thursday)

    Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa, who had been living at the Hotel Roma in El Paso, Texas under the alias "Doroteo Arango", crossed the Rio Grande back into Mexico, along with eight companions, to rebuild his army and to overthrow Mexican President Victoriano Huerta. By year's end, Villa would have control of the state of Chihuahua, which served as his base for anti-government raids.
    The tercentenary of the reign of the Romanov dynasty was celebrated across the Russian Empire, although on the Julian calendar then in use in Russia and 13 days behind the Gregorian calendar used in the rest of the world, the date was February 21. Tsar Nicholas II, the last of the dynasty, would be deposed less than five years later.
    William B. Wilson, no relation to newly inaugurated President Woodrow Wilson, took office as the first United States Secretary of Labor.On the same day, William C. Redfield was sworn in as the first United States Secretary of Commerce, moving into the offices of Charles Nagel, the last Secretary of Commerce and Labor.

March 7, 1913 (Friday)

    More than forty people were killed in Baltimore when 340 tons of dynamite on the steamship Alum Chine exploded. Most of the dead were on the tugboat Atlantic, which had returned to the ship to rescue two sailors who had not been evacuated.
    Born: Elmer Lower, American television news executive, in Kansas City, Missouri (d. 2011)
    Died: Pauline Johnson, 51, Canadian-Mohawk author

March 8, 1913 (Saturday)

    The second criminal trial of renowned lawyer Clarence Darrow, on charges of attempted bribery, ended in a hung jury, with 8 of the 12 jurors in favor of conviction, less than the unanimous vote necessary. After the first two trials failed to reach a verdict, a third trial was not attempted and Darrow would return to practice.
    The Federal League, intended as a third major baseball league to challenge the existing National and American Leagues, was founded in Indianapolis by John T. Powers. It would last for two seasons, 1914 and 1915.
    Died: Louis Saint-Gaudens, 59, French sculptor

March 9, 1913 (Sunday)

    Dr. Friedrich Friedmann of Germany, who had announced that he had developed a cure for tuberculosis that he would sell for one million dollars, gave the first demonstration of his treatment before U.S. government officials. Seven patients were injected with the Friedmann vaccine at the Mount Sinai hospital, in the presence of more than 30 physicians and surgeons.
    The Liberal Party won a majority of seats in the Cortes in Spanish elections.

March 10, 1913 (Monday)

    The Quebec Bulldogs, champions of the NHL-forerunner National Hockey Association kept the Stanley Cup in a two-game sweep in a challenge by the Sydney Millionaires of the Maritime Professional Hockey League. After winning the first game 14-3, the Bulldogs won the second one, 6-2.
    French sculptor Camille Claudel was committed to a mental hospital at Ville-Evrard near Paris, where she would spend the remaining 30 years of her life.
    Died: Harriet Tubman, 98, former slave famous for conducting thousands to freedom on the "underground railroad". She was given a burial with full military honors at Auburn, New York.

March 11, 1913 (Tuesday)

    Edmond Perreyon of France set a new record for highest altitude in an airplane, reaching 19,281 feet.
    The last civil suits arising from the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire of March 25, 1911. Building owners Max Blanck and Isaac Harris paid $75 apiece for each dead woman or girl whose family had brought a wrongful death suit.
    Died: Godfrey Morgan, 1st Viscount Tredegar, 82, commander of forces who led his men and survived the Charge of the Light Brigadel and Dr. John Shaw Billings, 74, first director of the New York Public Library

March 12, 1913 (Wednesday)

    The new capital of Australia was christened in a ceremony that saw the unveiling of three pillars of a memorial column by Governor-General Denman, Prime Minister Fisher, and Minister for Home Affairs King O'Malley. At noon, Lady Denman opened a gold cigarette case, withdrew the paper inside, and announced "I name the Capital of Australia 'Canberra'."  "Canberra", which among almost 1,000 suggestions submitted to the federal government, had first been used in 1826 by J. J. Moore in an application to purchase land in what would become the Australian Capital Territory. Other suggestions had been Kangaremu, Blueducks, Eucalypta, Myola, Gonebroke, Swindleville and Cooeeoomoo, and the second most popular proposal had been Shakespeare.
    Plans were announced by the British Prime Minister to reform the House of Lords, taking away its veto power and abolishing the hereditary succession.

March 13, 1913 (Thursday)

    Film stuntman and daredevil Rodman Law, who billed himself as "The Human Bullet", attempted to become the first passenger in a manned rocket flight. Law constructed a 44 foot long steel missile, set it up on a vacant lot in Jersey City, set the angle at 45 degrees and aimed the craft at Elizabeth, New Jersey, twelve miles away. Wearing a parachute, he then climbed into a seat on the rocket and told his assistant, fireworks factory manager Samuel Serpico, to light the fuse to ignite of 900 pounds of gunpowder. Law told the crowd that his plan was to bail out when he reached an altitude of 3,500 feet, but the rocket exploded on the launchpad. Law was only slightly injured in the blast, and no spectators were hurt, and he "continued to perform stunts, though never again in a rocket".
    Dr. Simon Flexner announced to an audience of physicians at Johns Hopkins University that he had discovered the germ that caused infantile paralysis (polio). The germ proved to be a virus, although Flexner's discovery that antibodies, yet to be discovered, could successfully attack the disease would send research in the direction of finding a means of developing the immunization against the poliomyelitis virus.
    Born: William J. Casey, 13th Director of Central Intelligence for the American CIA (1981-1987), in New York City (d. 1987); and H. P. Grice, British-American philosopher, in Birmingham (d. 1988)
    Died: Thomas Krag, 44, Norwegian novelist

March 14, 1913 (Friday)

    The first esophagectomy and resection was performed by Dr. Franz Torek at the Lenox Hill Hospital in New York, as Dr. Torek operated upon a patient with esophageal cancer and performed a bypass. The unidentified patient survived for 13 more years after the operation.
    In South Africa, Justice Malcolm Searle ruled that only Christian marriages were legal under the nation's laws, effectively invalidating the marital status of most of the British Indian residents.
    Born: Smoky Dawson, Australian country music singer, in Collingwood, Victoria (d. 2008); and Sergey Mikhalkov, Soviet-Russian writer and lyricist, in Moscow (d. 2009)
    Died: William Hale White, 81, British novelist,

March 15, 1913 (Saturday)

    U.S. President Woodrow Wilson assembled about 100 reporters in his office and began the practice of holding a regular "presidential press conference". President Wilson's secretary, Joseph P. Tumulty, arranged the first and subsequent events and introduced the President on each occasion, becoming, in effect, the first White House Press Secretary.
    The Antarctic ship Aurora arrived in Tasmania, Australia at Hobart, with the news of the deaths of two of the three members of the Far Eastern Party of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition (Belgrave Ninnis and Xavier Mertz) and the stranding of Douglas Mawson.
    Died: William Hale White, 84, British author who wrote under the nom-de-plume Mark Rutherford

March 16, 1913 (Sunday)

    The first animated cartoon series made its debut in movie theatresn, as filmmaker Émile Cohl produced 13 episodes adapting The Newlyweds, a comic strip by George McManus. The first installment, featuring the characters of "Maggie and Jiggs" from what would later be called Bringing Up Father, was entitled "When He Wants a Dog, He Wants a Dog".
    A crowd of 120,000 demonstrators turned out at Le Pré-Saint-Gervais, near Paris, to protest a recent decision by French Army officials to require three years of military service.
    Died: Louis-Maurice Boutet de Monvel, 63, French painter

March 17, 1913 (Monday)

    New York State Senator Franklin D. Roosevelt, 31, was sworn into office as the youngest Assistant Secretary of the Navy in American history, and the first federal government job for the future United States President.

March 18, 1913 (Tuesday)

    Exactly 50 years after his March 18, 1863 selection, King George I of Greece was assassinated in Salonika while walking the streets of the city recently captured from Turkey. The King, who had refused bodyguards and was accompanied only by his equerry, was shot in the back by Aleko Schinas, a Greek citizen.The King had told a lunch guest earlier that day that he intended to abdicate in October, on the jubilee of his coronation; Schinas would die two months later, after plummeting from a balcony while in police custody.
    Prime Minister Aristide Briand, who had recently taken office after Raymond Poincaré's election as President, resigned along with his entire cabinet after a vote that undid the new electoral reform law.
    Utah became the first U.S. state to have a minimum wage law take effect, with the authorization for a wage, and creation of a commission to regulate it, taking effect upon enactment. Massachusetts and Oregon had enacted laws earlier, which would go into effect during the summer.
    U.S. President Wilson announced that the U.S. government was withdrawing approval of American banks in the proposed six-nation loan to China. The bankers withdrew the next day.
    Born: René Clément, French film director, in Bordeaux (d. 1996); and Werner Mölders, German fighter pilot who was first to shoot down 100 enemy airplanes; in Gelsenkirchen (killed in air accident 1941)
    Died: Louis André, 75, former French Minister of War

March 19, 1913 (Wednesday)

    The opera Boris Godunov was performed for the first time in the United States, at New York's Metropolitan Opera.

March 20, 1913 (Thursday)

    Song Jiaoren (Sung Chiao-jen), the President of the Kuomintang Party in the Republic of China, was shot and fatally wounded while waiting for a train in Shanghai; Song would die two days later. Song's killer, Wu Shiying, had been assisted by Ying Guixing, and a search of their apartments found documents linking the murder to cabinet Minister Hong Shuzu, Interior Minister Zhao Bingjun, and even President Yuan Shikai. Ying would be murdered in January after escaping from prison, and Wu would be found dead in his cell shortly afterward.
    Kansas became the first of the United States to legalize the practice of chiropractors. Massachusetts would become the last, legalizing chiropractic treatment in 1966.

March 21, 1913 (Friday)

    Constantine I took the oath of office as the new King of Greece
    Louis Barthou became the new Prime Minister of France.
    Died: Manuel Bonilla, 62, President of Honduras. He was succeeded by his Vice-President.

March 22, 1913 (Saturday)

    Wireless communication between the United States and France began when the U.S. station at Arlington, Maryland sent a message received at the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
    Vajiravudh, King Rama VI of Siam, decreed two laws governing the surnames and the citizenship of subjects in what is now Thailand. Besides requiring all persons to have the family name of their father or husband, Rama VI also decreed that all persons born to a Siamese father, anywhere in the world, were Siamese citizens, as were all persons born to a Siamese mother when the father was unknown, and any foreign woman with a Siamese husband.
    Born: Lew Wasserman, American studio executive, in Cleveland (d. 2002); and Chuck Dederich, American cultist and founder of the religious movement Church of Synanon, in Toledo, Ohio (d. 1997)

March 23, 1913 (Sunday)

    On Easter Sunday, tornadoes swept through Omaha, Nebraska and killed 150 people. The storm activity was followed by heavy rainfall as it moved eastward over the next four days, killing more than 1,000 people in "the most widespread natural disaster the United States had ever endured."
    The March 23 date was the earliest Easter Sunday during the 20th Century. March 23 would also be the earliest date for Easter in the 21st Century (March 23, 2008) and will be the earliest in the 22nd Century (March 23, 2160). March 22 is the very earliest possible date for Easter (as the first Sunday after the first full Moon after the spring equinox), with the last occurrence on March 22, 1818, and the next one not to happen until March 22, 2285.

March 24, 1913 (Monday)

    Born: Ralph Fox, American mathematician specializing in differential topology and knot theory, in Morrisville, Pennsylvania (d. 1973)

Downtown Dayton, Ohio
March 25, 1913 (Tuesday)

    Great Dayton Flood/Great Flood of 1913: The Ohio River valley was flooded by heavy rains, rising to the highest recorded levels to that time and killing more than 500 people. Hardest hit was Dayton, Ohio, where 400 drowned, on the Great Miami River and the Mad River.[48] There was heavy damage to other cities in Ohio, Indiana and Illinois in what would prove to be "The second-worst flood of the 20th century in America",[49] exceeded only by the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927.
    Born: William G. Gray, English occultist, in Harrow (d. 1992)
    Died: Garnet Wolseley, 1st Viscount Wolseley, 79, retired British Field Marshal; May C. Brooke, 69, the last surviving castmember of the troupe that performed Our American Cousin for President Lincoln on the night of his assassination;

March 26, 1913 (Wednesday)

    Battle of Adrianople (1913): The Turkish city of Adrianople (Edirne in Turkish, Odrin in Bulgaria), at one time the capital of the Ottoman Empire, was captured by Bulgarian troops under the command of General Savov. Four months later, after the Second Balkan War broke out between Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria, the Turkish Ottoman troops would recapture on July 23, 1913.
    Mexican Revolution: Venustiano Carranza announced his Plan of Guadalupe, and began his rebellion against Victoriano Huerta's government as head of the Constitutionals.
    The Illinois state legislature filled the vacancies in both of its United States Senate seats by electing Republican Lawrence Y. Sherman and Democrat James Hamilton Lewis.
    Born: Paul Erdős, Hungarian mathematician, in Budapest (d. 1996); and Jacqueline de Romilly, French philologist, in Chartres (d. 2010)
    Died: Sir Garnet Wolseley, 79, British Field Marshal and Commander-in-Chief of the Forces, 1895-1900

March 27, 1913 (Thursday)

    The Arkansas Supreme Court ruled unanimously in Futrell v. Oldham that State Senate President pro tempore Junius Futrell was the Governor of Arkansas, after Futrell and former President pro tempore William Kavanaugh Oldham had both claimed the office. Joseph Taylor Robinson had resigned on March 8, and Oldham had acted as Governor. When Futrell was selected as President pro tempore five days later, on March 13, Oldham claimed that he was still the Acting Governor, while Futrell sued on grounds that only the President pro tem could serve in the Governor's duties. For the next two weeks, Governor Futrell kept his offices in the south wing of the State Capitol at Little Rock, while Governor Oldham served in the north wing.

March 28, 1913 (Friday)

    Died: Floyd Allen and his son, Claud Allen, who had murdered the judge, sheriff, county prosecutor and three other people in Carroll County, Virginia on March 14, 1912 after Floyd had been convicted of obstruction of justice. The two were put to death in the electric chair, with Floyd going first and Claud second.

March 29, 1913 (Saturday)

    Born: R. S. Thomas, Welsh poet, in Cardiff (d. 2000)

March 30, 1913 (Sunday)

    Born: Richard Helms, 8th Director of Central Intelligence for the American CIA (1966-1973), in St. Davids, Pennsylvania (d. 2002); Frankie Laine, American singer, as Francesco LoVechhio in Chicago (d. 2007); Marc Davis, American animator for Disney films (d. 2000); and Ċensu Tabone, 4th President of Malta, in Città Victoria (d. 2012)

March 31, 1913 (Monday)

    The "Skandalkonzert" took place in Vienna when the first concert performance of a song cycle by Alban Berg, Funf Orchesterlieder nach Ansichtskartentexten von Peter Altenberg, ended prematurely as a result of fights breaking out between audience members and the Vienna Orchestra, conducted by Arnold Schoenberg.
    Jim Hogg County, Texas was established from portions of Brooks County and Duval County, with Hebbronville as its seat.
    Born: Etta Baker, American Piedmont Blues musician, as Etta Reid in Caldwell County, North Carolina (d. 2006)
    Died: J. P. Morgan, 75, American multimillionaire financier


April 1, 1913 (Tuesday)

    The first trial of the assembly line method of manufacturing was made, with the Ford Motor Company testing the process in the putting together of a magneto for a flywheel motor at its factory in Highland Park, Michigan. The assembly process was split among 29 employees, each putting together a part of the magneto and then sending it over to another employee. The production time for each magneto was lowered from 20 minutes to 13 minutes. When the height of the line was raised the next year, and a moving conveyor was added, the time dropped to eight minutes, and then five minutes, a quadrupling of the production rate.
    Philippe, the Duke of Montpensier and pretender to the French throne, was proclaimed as the King of Albania by the provisional government.
    Lord Northcliffe, the publisher of the British newspaper, the Daily Mail, offered a prize of £10,000 ($50,000) to the first persons who could make a direct flight across the Atlantic Ocean, within 72 hours or less. In 2013 money, the equivalent would be £730,000 or $1.1 million. The shortest trip was 1,900 miles between Ireland and Newfoundland, which John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown would accomplish on June 15, 1919.
    The Turkish government approved the terms of peace to end the First Balkan War, losing 60,000 square miles of its territory to the Balkan nations.
    Former U.S. President William Howard Taft began serving as a professor of law at Yale University.

April 2, 1913 (Wednesday)

    The Kingdom of Montenegro rejected demands from the five major European nations (Austria-Hungary, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Russia) to withdraw its troops from Albania.
    The release was made of Apache Indians who had been held by the U.S. government as prisoners of war at the Fort Sill Military Reservation in Oklahoma since 1894. Of the group, 163 elected to be relocated to New Mexico, while another 76 received allotments of land in Oklahoma, and the last Apaches would leave Fort Sill on March 7, 1914.

April 3, 1913 (Thursday)

    The 550 foot long German dirigible Z-4, flying near the boundary with France in order to inspect French border defenses, strayed into French territory, ran out of fuel, and went down at the airfield at Lunéville, where the French Army seized control of the ship and detained its crew of eleven. France allowed civilian repairmen to cross over from Germany, and the Z-4 left the next day, but not before it was photographed and measured in detail.
    Mrs. Emmeline Pankhurst, leader of the British suffrage movement, was sentenced to three years in prison after being convicted of the conspiracy to bomb the country home of David Lloyd-George, the Chancellor of the Exchequer. She went on a hunger strike and was released nine days later.
    Real County, Texas, named for Julius Real, was established from southeast Edwards County, southwest Kerr County, and western Bandera County.
    Born: Per Borten, Prime Minister of Norway from 1965 to 1971 (d. 2005)
    Died: Thomas Q. Seabrooke, 52, American comedian and actor

April 4, 1913 (Friday)

    Born: Muddy Waters (McKinley Morganfield), African-American blues musician, in Issaquena County, Mississippi (d. 1983); Jerome Weidman, American playwright, in New York City (d. 1998); Frances Langford, American singer, in Lakeland, Florida (d. 2005); and Gene Ramey, American jazz bass player, in Austin, Texas (d. 1984)
    Died: Edward Dowden, 69, Irish critic and poet; and Emmanouil Argyropoulos, 23, first Greek pilot, in a plane crash

April 5, 1913 (Saturday)
Ebbetsdaughter.jpg

    Ebbetts Field opened as the new home of baseball's Brooklyn Superbas (later the Dodgers), who played an exhibition game against the New York City team from the rival American League. The former "New York Highlanders" had a new name, the New York Yankees. The Superbas won, 3-2, before 25,000 fans.[12]
    The United States Soccer Federation (USSF) was founded, with the name the United States of America Foot Ball Association". The word "soccer" would not be made part of the organization name until 1945 (as the United States Soccer Football Association), and the word "football" would not be dropped until the USSF adopted its present name in 1974.
    Physicist Niels Bohr completed his groundbreaking paper concerning quantum theory of the hydrogen atom.
    The new constitution for the Republic of Nicaragua came into effect, providing for a 40-member Chamber of Deputies and a 13-member Senate.
    Died: Gheorghe Grigore Cantacuzino, 89, Prime Minister of Romania 1899–1900 and 1906–1907, and reported to be the wealthiest man in the Kingdom.

April 6, 1913 (Sunday)

    Died: Otto Schmitt, 84, American engineer, inventor and founder of biometrics

April 7, 1913 (Monday)

    Champ Clark was re-elected Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.

April 8, 1913 (Tuesday)

    The Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified by Connecticut, which became the 36th of the 48 states to favor the amendment for direct election of United States senators. The measure passed the state House, 150-77, and then passed unanimously by the state Senate.
    U.S. President Woodrow Wilson broke a 100-year tradition and personally appeared before a joint session of Congress to speak in support of a bill on tariffs.
    China inaugurated its first elected Parliament at Beijing, with more than 500 of the 596 Representatives and 177 of the 274 Senators present when the assembly opened at 11:00 am.

April 9, 1913 (Wednesday)

    Ebbets Field, the new home of baseball's Brooklyn Dodgers at 55 Sullivan Place, hosted its first official game. The stadium, new, but still the smallest in the National League, could hold 25,000 people, and bad weather limited the attendance to 10,000 in a 1-0 loss to the Philadelphia Phillies. The Dodgers would play their last game there on September 24, 1957, and the last baseball game there would be a Negro League contest, with the Havana Cubans defeating the Kansas City Monarchs, 6-4 on August 23, 1959. Demolition would begin on February 23, 1960, and apartments now stand on the site.

April 10, 1913 (Thursday)

    The New York Yankees played their first official game with their new name, losing 2-1 in Washington to the Senators.

April 11, 1913 (Friday)

    Albert S. Burleson, the new Postmaster General of the United States, proposed the segregation of white and black federal employees in the postal service, at a cabinet meeting with President Woodrow Wilson. Navy Secretary Josephus Daniels wrote in his diary that Burleson advocated separation of the races in the railway mail service, "and he was anxious to segregate White and Negro employees in all Departments of the Government". President Wilson made no objection to Burleson's suggestion, implying that segregation within a federal office was left to the choice of each cabinet member. By the end of the year, separate bathrooms and lunchrooms were set aside for black and white workers at the Post Office Department. U.S. Treasury Secretary William Gibbs McAdoo implemented racial segregation at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, and Daniels had done the same at the office of the Auditor of the Navy, and layoffs of Negro federal employees took place in the South during 1914.
    Nathaniel Griffith Lerotholi was named as the new Paramount Chief of Basutoland (now the Kingdom of Lesotho) with the agreement of other tribal chiefs and the British Resident Commissioner. Chief Griffith would reign until his death on June 23, 1939.
    Born: Oleg Cassini, French-born American fashion designer, as Oleg Cassini Loiewski, in Paris (d. 2006)

April 12, 1913 (Saturday)

    The British weekly magazine New Statesman was founded by Sidney Webb and Beatrice Webb, with financial backing by George Bernard Shaw.
    The British Ecological Society, an environmentalist organization that was the first of its kind in history, was founded by 47 persons who had been invited by the British Vegetation Committee. An American counterpart, the Ecological Society of America, would be created in 1915.
    The city of San Marino, California, was incorporated by Henry E. Huntington, who owned 75 percent of the land on which the city was built, and other landowners. George S. Patton, Sr., father of the more famous U.S. Army General, served as the city's first mayor.
    Died: John Brooks Henderson, 86, former U.S. Senator from Missouri and co-author of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which outlawed slavery. "XIII. Amendment Author Expires", Milwaukee Journal, April 13, 1913, p1

April 13, 1913 (Sunday)

    The ocean liner SS Vaterland, the largest ever built by Germany, was launched for the Hamburg America Line. The ship would only be used for Germany briefly, and would be captured by on April 6, 1917, by the United States while in the harbor at Hoboken, New Jersey, on the day of the American declaration of war against Germany in World War I, and would be renamed the SS Leviathan.
    Anarchist Rafael Sancho Alegre fired three shots at King Alfonso XIII of Spain as the King was riding through the streets of Madrid. It was the eighth attempt on the life of the King, who was uninjured and would reign until 1931.
    José Bordas Valdés was elected as President of the Dominican Republic by the national legislature.
    Mexican Army troops under the command of General Pedro Ojeda, who had been fighting rebels at the border town of Naco, Sonora state, fled across the border into Naco, Arizona in order to surrender to the U.S. Army.
    Born: Charlie Whittingham, American horse trainer, in Chula Vista, California (d. 1999); and John E. Moss, U.S. Congressman for California 1953–1979 (d. 1997)
    Died: Auguste Verneuil, 56, French chemist who created the Verneuil process for the first commercially successful manufacture of synthetic gemstones

April 14, 1913 (Monday)

    A group of 200,000 Belgian men went on strike in protest over the government's failure to approve the abolition of the "plural vote" system. Under the existing law, Belgian men who were 25 or older could have as many as three votes, with extra voting rights awarded for marriage, land ownership, a university degree or government employment. The Socialist party had sought a rule for one vote for any Belgian citizen over the age of 21. The Belgian government revised the constitution a week later and the strike ended.
    Born: Jean Fournet, French conductor, in Rouen (d. 2008)
    Died: Carl Hagenbeck, 68, German zoologist

April 15, 1913 (Tuesday)

    The first issue of Scouting, the magazine of the Boy Scouts of America, was published, originally as a semi-weekly newsletter. In its 100th year, the magazine would be published five times a year.

April 16, 1913 (Wednesday)

    Dr. Albert Schweitzer of Germany arrived in Lambaréné in Gabon, beginning his mission to Africa, combining evangelism with the founding of a hospital.
    The term neuropsychology was coined by a Canadian physician, Sir William Osler, in a speech made at the opening ceremonies of the Phipps Psychiatric Clinic at Johns Hopkins University.
    California's House of Representatives passed the Webb-Heney Alien Land Act, prohibiting Japanese aliens from owning real estate in that state, and causing mob protests in Japan. Despite appeals from President Wilson and an address to the legislature by U.S. Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan, the state Senate would pass the bill on May 9, and the measure would be signed into law, with the Japanese government protest being so strong that the U.S. made preparations for a possible war with Japan.
    Born: Les Tremayne, British-born American radio actor, in London (d. 2003)

April 17, 1913 (Thursday)

    Born: Miss Read (Dora Saint), British novelist, in London (d. 2012)
    Died: Lester Frank Ward, 71, American sociologist; and Agnes McLaren, 78, Scottish physician

April 18, 1913 (Friday)

    France's General Joseph Joffre presented "Plan XVII" to the Supreme War Council, in what would become the basis for French military strategy during World War I in the event of an invasion by Germany. General Joffre's plan, approved by the War Ministry on May 2, assumed that the German Army would come across the German-French border, and failed to have any contingency for what Germany would do in 1914- Germany invading Belgium and then crossing Belgium's border with France.
    Bulgarian Prime Minister Ivan Geshov informed the parliament, the Naradno Sabranie, that the Kingdom had accepted the proposal of the Great Powers to end the war with Turkey.

April 19, 1913 (Saturday)

    The two children of dancer Isadora Duncan were killed in an automobile accident, shortly after having dined with her in Paris. Deirdre Duncan, 6, and Patrick Duncan, 3, were drowned along with their governess, Annie Sim, when the car they were in rolled down a hill into the river Seine. Duncan herself would be killed in a freak accident on September 14, 1927, while a passenger in an automobile.
    U.S. President of Wilson sent a message to the California state Senate and House, urging the members not to pass legislation aimed at barring Japanese persons from owning land in that state, requesting them to pass a broader law that would affect all aliens.
    Bulgaria and Serbia signed an armistice with Turkey, but Montenegro refused to participate.
    Luis Mena, rebel general who had briefly served as the President of Nicaragua in August 1910 before being ousted by American intervention, was released from confinement in the Panama Canal Zone by orders of President Wilson.
    Died: Hugo Winckler, 49, German archaeologist who reconstructed the history of the Hittites

April 20, 1913 (Sunday)

    Romania formed its first air force, the Corpul Aerian Romana.

April 21, 1913 (Monday)

    The 900 foot long Cunard luxury ocean liner RMS Aquitania, the largest British liner built up to that time, was launched on the River Clyde in front of a crowd of 100,000 .
    Quo Vadis? became the first motion picture to be shown in a Broadway theater, normally reserved for plays, and attracted thousands of spectators at a time, all willing to pay one dollar to watch a two-hour feature film.
    Mario García Menocal was certified as the new President of Cuba.
    Born: Dr. Richard Beeching, British engineer who redesigned that nation's railway system as Chairman of British Rail; in Sheerness (d. 1985)
    Died: Raymond Callemin, André Soudy and Élie Monier, the only three members of France's infamous Bonnot Gang to be executed. All three went to the guillotine at 4:30 a.m. and were executed within 40 seconds.

April 22, 1913 (Tuesday)

    The strike of 500,000 Belgian workers, seeking the right to vote, was ended after the Prime Minister accepted a compromise proposed by the leader of Liberals in Parliament.

April 23, 1913 (Wednesday)

    An explosion at the Pittsburgh Coal Company mine at Courtney, Pennsylvania, killed 96 miners.
    Mexico's government began the increased printing of paper currency in order to finance its armies during the revolution. The first issue put an additional five million pesos into circulation, but within two years, the government had printed 672,000,000 pesos, and other factions issued their own paper money. Between April and July, the inflation rate rose from 10% to 100%, and to nearly 1000% by April 1915 and 10,000% by April 1916 and more than 100,000% by September 1916.
    The Ottoman Turkish city of Iskodra (referred to as "Scutari" in the English-language press and "Shkodra" by Montenegro) surrendered to Montenegrin troops after 6 months.
    Born: Dhananjay Keer (Anant Vithal), Indian author specializing in biographies; in Ratnagiri, Maharashtra state (d. 1984)
    Died: Sir Richard William Scott, 88, Canadian politician who served as Opposition Leader in the Canadian Senate, 1896–1906

April 24, 1913 (Thursday)

    The 55 story Woolworth Building, located at 233 Broadway Street in New York City, officially opened as the tallest skyscraper in the world. At 7:30 pm in Washington, U.S. President Wilson pushed a button that lit the 80,000 lights in the 792 foot high structure.The event, one commentator would write later, "ushered in the era of the great skyscraper"  The architect was Cass Gilbert. The Woolworth Building's reign as the tallest in the world would last until 1930.
    U.S. Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan met with diplomats in Washington, D.C. to present his plan for world peace, with the provision that all controversies between nations had to be submitted for investigation before a war could be declared.
    Born: Joe Vogler, American political activist and founder (in 1974) of the Alaskan Independence Party, near Barnes, Kansas (d. 1993)

April 25, 1913 (Friday)

    The "Cat and Mouse Act", officially named the Prisoners' Temporary Discharge for Ill-Health Act, was given royal assent in the United Kingdom. Proposed by Home Secretary Reginald McKenna in response to the use of the hunger strike by imprisoned suffragettes, the law provided that if a prisoner has a "condition of health... due in whole or in part to the prisoner's own conduct in prison", the Secretary of State could "authorise the temporary discharge of the prisoner" who, after recuperation, would return to prison to serve the remainder of the sentence, extended by the time on leave.
    Born: Douglas Mackiernan, American spy, and first CIA agent to be killed in the line of duty (d. 1950)

April 26, 1913 (Saturday)

    Leo Frank case: Mary Phagan, a 13-year-old employee of the National Pencil Company factory in Atlanta, disappeared after collecting her weekly pay at the factory, which was closed for a holiday. Her body was found the next morning at the bottom of an elevator shaft. Leo Frank, the 29-year-old factory superintendent who had been the last person to admit seeing Mary alive, was arrested on April 29 for her murder. Frank, a prominent Jew in Atlanta and president of the city's B'nai B'rith, would be convicted of Mary's murder despite the absence of evidence linking him to the killing. Although his death sentence would be commuted in 1915 to life imprisonment, a mob of angry citizens would kidnap him from the prison farm and lynch him.
    King Albert of Belgium opened the international exposition at Ghent.
    Born: Sigrid Hunke, German author, in Kiel (d. 1999); Karl George, American trumpet player, in St. Louis (d. 1978); and Mario Visintini, Italian World War II ace, in Parenzo (killed 1941)

April 27, 1913 (Sunday)

    Essad Pasha Toptani, former commander of the Turkish troops that had surrendered to Montenegro in the Battle of Scutari, then proclaimed himself as King of Albania.
    The agreement for a $125,000,000 (£25,000,000) loan to China, from banks in five European nations, was signed in Beijing by the Chinese Prime Minister. The loan was at an interest rate of 5 percent per annum. Although the agreement was unconstitutional because it was not approved by the Parliament, President Yuan Shikai was able to use the funding to defeat his opponents in the civil war that followed.
    Dr. Albert Schweitzer opened his first hospital facility, a day after supplies had arrived at his remote location in Gabon, and began the first major medical treatment for the native African population.
    Born: Philip Hauge Abelson, American physicist, writer, and editor, in Tacoma, Washington (d. 2004)

April 28, 1913 (Monday)

    Four weeks after having been offered the Albanian throne, Ferdinand, Duke of Montpensier announced that he was declining the chance to become King of Albania. The Duke, whose candidacy was opposed by Italy and Austria-Hungary, announced his decision in a letter published in the newspaper Le Figaro. Ferdinand would die on January 30, 1924.
    After receiving a demand from the United Kingdom to pay $10,000,000 to settle a bond indebtedness, Guatemala appealed the United States for aid.

April 29, 1913 (Tuesday)

    Germany's Foreign Minister, Gottlieb von Jagow, said in a speech at the Reichstag that German would respect the guarantees of Belgium's neutrality, followed by Minister of War Josias von Heeringen, who pledged that "Germany will not lose sight of the fact that the neutrality of Belgium is guaranteed by international treaty." Germany would invade Belgium fifteen months later on its entry into World War I on August 2, 1914.

April 30, 1913 (Wednesday)

    Franklin K. Lane, the new United States Secretary of the Interior, rescinded an order that had banned automobiles from entering Yosemite National Park and other parks, increasing the tourism in those areas. Lane wrote that "This form of transportation has come to stay, and to close the park against automobiles would be as absurd as the fight for many years made by old naval men against the adoption of steam in the navy."
    Born: Edith Fowke, Canadian folklorist, in Lumsden, Saskatchewan (d. 1996)


May 1, 1913 (Thursday)

    At the ambassador's conference in London, Montenegro offered to evacuate its newly conquered territory in Scutari if it could receive territory elsewhere
    Born: Louis Nye, American comedian and actor, as Louis Neistat in Hartford (d. 2005); V. S. Reid, Jamaican author, in Kingston (d. 1987) and Walter Susskind, Czech conductor, in Prague, Austria-Hungary (d. 1980)
    Died: John Barclay Armstrong, 63, U.S. Marshal

May 2, 1913 (Friday)

    The United States recognized the government of the new Chinese republic, with American Chargé d'Affaires Edward T. Williams presenting U.S. President Wilson's message to Chinese President Yuan Shihkai. As the first world leader to give recognition to the Republic of China, Wilson acted without prior notice even to the U.S. Congress. "
    Died: Tancrède Auguste, President of Haiti since August, died suddenly, "a victim of severe anemia caused by advanced untreated syphilis, though most Haitians believed he was a victim of poison".

May 3, 1913 (Saturday)

    Raja Harishchandra, the first full-length feature film in India, was released by director Dhundiraj Govind Phalke, setting the format for Indian cinema. Although it was a silent movie, the premiere event at the Coronation Cinema in Bombay (now Mumbai) was accompanied by a live performance of music and chanting.
    The California state Senate passed the Alien Land Act, prohibiting Japanese persons from owning property in California, by a margin of 26-10 and the bill went to Governor Hiram Johnson for his signature.
    Ahkay Humar Mozumdar became the first believer in Hinduism to become a naturalized citizen of the United States, when U.S. District Judge Frank H. Rudkin of Spokane, Washington, administered him the oath. Mozumdar had filed suit two years earlier and was found entitled by the court on grounds that he was a "free white person".
    The Federal League, which would become a challenger to baseball's National League and American League in 1914 and 1915, began play as a minor league with teams in Chicago, Cleveland, Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and Covington, Kentucky (across the river from Cincinnati, with Cleveland and Covington tying 6-6 in a ten-inning game. The teams would play a 120-game schedule, ending on September 13.
    Born: Heinz Kohut, Austrian-born American psychoanalyst best known for his development of self psychology; in Vienna (d. 1981); and William Inge, American playwright, in Independence, Kansas(d. 1973)

May 4, 1913 (Sunday)

    Senator Michel Oreste was elected as the new President of Haiti by the Parliament. Port-au-Prince city governor Defly had attempted to attack the parliament building during voting, and was repulsed by Haitian Army General Poitevien, while the U.S. gunboat USS Nashville stayed outside the harbor to be ready to intervene. Auguste would serve for only eight months, being overthrown on January 27, 1914.

May 5, 1913 (Monday)

    Montenegro's King Nicholas I agreed to turn over control of Scutari to a multinational force from the Great Powers.
    Greece and Serbia signed a secret agreement to fight together against Bulgaria, their recent ally in the First Balkan War.
    Arizona's House of Representatives, following the lead of California, passed a bill prohibiting ownership of land by "any alien who has not declared his intention of becoming a citizen". The state senate passed the bill one week later, and it was signed by Governor Hunt on May 16.

May 6, 1913 (Tuesday)

    A proposed women's suffrage bill failed to pass the United Kingdom's House of Commons, 219-266, on a vote following the second reading. Fifty of the "no" votes were from Irish members of Parliament, and Prime Minister H. H. Asquith voted against it as well.
    The Hague Court of Arbitration ordered the Kingdom of Italy to pay $32,800 damages to France for seizing the steamers Carthage and Manouba during the Italo–Turkish War.
    Born: Stewart Granger, British-American actor, as James Lablache Stewart in London (d. 1993); Douglas Stewart, Australian poet, in Eltham, New Zealand (d. 1985); and Angelo Herndon, African-American Communist, in Sweet Home, Arkansas (d. 1997)

May 7, 1913 (Wednesday)

    Rodman Law, self-billed as "The Human Fly", climbed up the outside of the United States Capitol while both houses of Congress were in session, climbed up the side of the building and then climbed his way up to the top of the Dome, intending to place his hat on top of the statue at the top. A guard at the capitol persuaded Law to go no further than the statue's base.
    The controversial film, The Sons of a Soldier, produced by Alec B. Francis, was released by Eclair Pictures. The movie followed generations of a family fighting in America's wars from the American Revolution to the Spanish–American War, then gave a glimpse of a war between the U.S. and Japan in the then-future year of 1920.
    HMS Hermes became the first British Royal Navy seaplane carrier, after being outfitted with a crane from which planes on its deck could be lowered to sea and raised back again.

May 8, 1913 (Thursday)

    The American Newspaper Publishers Association was incorporated.
    The Underwood Tariff Bill, sponsored by Alabama Congressman Oscar Underwood passed the U.S. House of Representatives, 281-139. Besides lowering the tariff charged on many products imported from abroad, the bill was the first step toward enacting a federal income tax.
    French aviator Messr. Frangeois set a new record by carrying six passengers in his airplane. The group of seven stayed aloft for 75 minutes.
    Born: Bob Clampett, American animator and director (Looney Tunes), in San Diego (d. May 2, 1984); and Fritzie Zivic, world welterweight boxing champion 1940-1941, in Pittsburgh (d. May 16, 1984)

May 9, 1913 (Friday)

    Japan's ambassador to the United States, Viscount Chinda Sutemi, delivered to U.S. Secretary of State Bryan a formal protest against California's Alien Land Act.
    William D. Coolidge applied for a patent for his invention of the x-ray tube, which "made the use of x-rays for medical diagnosis safe and convenient".
    Al-Ahsa was captured from the Ottoman Turks by a guerilla army led by Ibn Saud, the King of Najd, as he expanded the territory that he would eventually call Saudi Arabia.

May 10, 1913 (Saturday)

    U.S. Representative H. Olin Young of Michigan announced that he would resign his seat, because of a technicality that prevented his Progressive Party opponent, William J. McDonald, from receiving 458 votes that would have given McDonald the victory.
    French aviator Didier Masson conducted the first aerial attack on a warship in the Western Hemisphere, attempting to drop pipe bombs onto the Mexican gunboat General Guererro, as well as the ships Democrata, 'Morelos, Tampico, and Oaxaca.
    The United States Baseball League, an independent baseball league that had sought to challenge the existing National and American Leagues, but had only operated for only two months in 1912, made a second attempt to operate. Although it had eight teams (Baltimore, Brooklyn, New York, Philadelphia and Washington, as well as Lynchburg, Virginia, Newark, New Jersey and Reading, Pennsylvania), the USL folded after only three days, having played only seven games.

May 11, 1913 (Sunday)

    A typhoon struck the Philippine Islands, sweeping 16 foot waves across what is now the Albay province, and killing 827 people.
    In recognition of the neutrality of Romania during the First Balkan War, the Bulgarian town of Silistra was awarded by an arbitration conference to the Romanians. The area is now part of Bulgaria.
    Born: Robert Jungk, German journalist, in Berlin (d. 1994)

May 12, 1913 (Monday)

    The British ocean liner RMS Lusitania was secretly refitted by the Royal Navy for use in the event of war. The ship would be torpedoed and sunk almost two years later, on May 7, 1915, with the loss of 1,195 lives, mostly civilians who had booked passage for a transatlantic trip.
    Hermogenes of Moscow was canonized as a saint in the Russian Orthodox Church, in a ceremony at the Assumption Cathedral in the Kremlin in Moscow.
    Died: John S. Wise, former U.S. Congressman from Virginia

May 13, 1913 (Tuesday)

    Jack Johnson, the world heavyweight boxing champion, was convicted by a jury in Chicago of violating the Mann Act, after being charged with taking a minor across state lines for immoral purposes. Johnson had been indicted on November 7 after Belle Schreiber, a white prostitute, testified that he had paid for her to travel by train to Pittsburgh to be with him. While the one-year prison sentence and $1,000 fine were on appeal, Johnson would flee the United States, not returning until 1920 to serve his time.
    Born: William R. Tolbert, Jr., President of Liberia 1971-1980; in Bensonville (assassinated 1980)

May 14, 1913 (Wednesday)

    New York Governor William Sulzer approves the charter for the Rockefeller Foundation, which begins operations with a $100,000,000 donation from John D. Rockefeller.
    Montenegro completed its evacuation of Scutari and turned the city, which it had captured only three weeks earlier, over to the multinational troops of the five Great Powers (Austria-Hungary, France, Germany, Russia, and the United Kingdom.
    Guatemala agreed to resume interest payments to the United Kingdom on its debt.
    The first $1.2 million installment of the $125 million loan to China was advanced by the consortium of European banks.

May 15, 1913 (Thursday)

    The ballet Jeux, choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky, with music by Claude Debussy, was premiered in Paris as the first offering of the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. Referred to in English as The Tennis Game, Jeux has been described as "the first ballet in our time to capitalize on a contemporary theme", using the sport of "tennis as a metaphor for psychogical patterns in modern manners". The feature ran for two weeks before another Najinsky work, Rite of Spring, premiered at the theatre on May 29.

May 16, 1913 (Friday)

    At Sidi Garba in Tripolitania, 1,000 Italian soldiers were killed or wounded in fighting with the Libyan natives. General Ganbretti, relying on disinformation that had been provided by the Libyans to a man who had been taken prisoner and then released, underestimated the size of the Arab defenders and divided his 3,000 men into three columns, supported by four cannons and "a battery of howitzers". After forcing a group of Libyans to retreat, the men rested and were surrounded and attacked. General Ganbretti would later describe the loss as "the bloodiest day in the whole Italo-Turkish War".
    The District Court in Vienna, Austria-Hungary, approved the release of inheritance money to a 24-year-old artist, Adolf Hitler, under the terms of the will of his late father, Alois Hitler. Adolf, who lived at 27 Meldemannstrasse in Vienna, received 839 kronen, worth about USD $168 (equivalent to $3,800 a century later), and moved a week later to neighboring Germany.
    Born: Woody Herman, American musician and band leader, in Milwaukee (d. 1987)

May 17, 1913 (Saturday)

    Two Cuban aviators, Agustin Parla and Domingo Rosillo, made the first airplane flight between the United States and Cuba, taking off from Key West and landing in Havana.
    Died: Heinrich Martin Weber, 71, German mathematician

May 18, 1913 (Sunday)

    A group of sixty-seven opium poppy farmers, who had refused to allow their crops to be burned by Chinese army, were themselves burned to death when they were meeting in Zhengzhou to discuss an organized resistance. Chinese troops set fire to the structure and prevented the defiant narcotics manufacturers from escaping.
    Born: Vincent Dole, American physician who pioneered the use of methadone to treat narcotics addiction; in Chicago (d. 2006)
    Died: Stephen Dudley Field, 67, American inventor of the trolley car, electric elevator, annunciator and stock ticker.; and "The Only Nolan" (Edward Sylvester Nolan), 55, American former major league baseball player

May 19, 1913 (Monday)

    Despite protests from Japan and pleas from the White House, California's Governor Hiram Johnson signed the California Alien Land Law of 1913, barring Japanese aliens from owning property. The U.S. government responded to Japan's protests, disagreeing that the state law violated the American treaties with Japan.
    Born: Neelam Sanjiva Reddy, sixth President of India (1977-1982), in Illur, Madras Province, British India (d. 1996); and George S. Schairer, American aircraft engineer, in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania (d. 2004)

May 20, 1913 (Tuesday)

    In an important development in the building of the Panama Canal, the nearly 8 mile long Culebra Cut was completed as excavation equipment from both sides of mountainous territory met at 4:30 pm. Engineer David du Bose Gaillard, who had overseen the cut through since work had resumed in 1904, would die in December after years of hard work.
    The U.S. Department of Justice filed an antitrust suit to dissolve the United Shoe Machinery Company.
    General Mario García Menocal was inaugurated as the third President of Cuba, succeeding José Miguel Gómez. Menocal would be re-elected to a second term in 1916, and serve until 1921.
    Born: William R. Hewlett, American businessman and multimillionaire who had co-founded the Hewlett-Packard Company; in Ann Arbor, Michigan (d. 2001)
    Died: Henry Morrison Flagler, 83, American businessman and multi-millionaire who had co-founded the Standard Oil Company and then developed railways and hotels in Florida. Flagler's death came three months after he had fallen down a flight of stairs in his home.

May 21, 1913 (Wednesday)

    The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints became the first religious organization to make a commitment to the Boy Scouts of America, as it merged its "Young Men's Mutual Improvement Association Scouts" into the BSA organization.
    Britain's King George V was welcomed in Germany by Kaiser Wilhelm II, and Russian Tsar Nicholas II was welcomed the next day. The monarchs had arrived to attend the wedding of the Kaiser's daughter, Princess Luise. King George was a first cousin of the Kaiser (George's father and Wilhelm's mother were both children of Queen Victoria) and a first cousin to the Tsar (both of their mothers were daughters of King Christian X of Denmark).

May 22, 1913 (Thursday)

    The American Cancer Society was founded in by ten doctors and five laymen in Washington, D.C., as the American Society for the Control of Cancer.It would change to its current name in 1946.
    Through the efforts of both China's Minister to the New York City police, a truce was negotiated and signed to end gang warfare among the various tongs in New York City. The agreement, between the Chinese Merchants' Association, the On Leong Tong, the Hip Sing Tong and the Kim Lan Wui Saw, and would keep relative peace until 1924.
    Death of Joseph Cooke Jackson (born August 5,1835) Col. U.S.V. (Battle Fredricksburg,Va.) Brig. Gen of Volunteers at Antietam, MD.

May 23, 1913 (Friday)

    Died: George A. Irwin, 68, former President of the Seventh Day Adventists (1897-1901)

May 24, 1913 (Saturday)

    The collapse of a municipal pier in Long Beach, California, killed 35 women and one man. There were 10,000 people crowded on the double-deck pier when the top level gave way and fell on the persons below.
    The Turkish-American steamship Nevada, with 200 passengers and crew, strayed into a mined part of the harbor at Smyrna while trying to avoid another ship, and struck three mines before sinking. Based on reports of 80 survivors, initial news stories reported 120 people had drowned. The figure was later revised to forty deaths.
    At Berlin, Germany's Princess Luise, the only daughter of Kaiser Wilhelm II, was married to Prince Ernest Augustus of Cumberland, in the last royal wedding to take place in Germany.
    Born: Peter Ellenshaw, British-born American matte designer, 1964 Academy Award winner, in London (d. 2007)
    Died: Luther McCarty, who was recognized as the "white world heavyweight boxing champion", died in the first round of a bout in Calgary against Arthur Pelkey. McCarty was killed when Pelkey punched him in the chest, and fell to the mat halfway through the first round. An autopsy later determined that McCarty had died of a broken neck and hemorrhage, as a result of a hit to the jaw 30 seconds earlier that had snapped his head back.Pelkey would be tried for manslaughter, and acquitted on June 24.

May 25, 1913 (Sunday)

    Colonel Alfred Redl, 49, director of intelligence for the Army of Austria-Hungary from 1907 to 1912, committed suicide after being discovered that he had passed secrets to the Russian Empire for eleven years. Redl had betrayed his nation after the Russians had discovered that he was a homosexual and used the information as blackmail. Redl's successor, Captain Maximilian Ronge, agreed to Redl's request for a loaded revolver after confronting him at Vienna's Hotel Klomser.
    Peter Kürten, a German serial killer called "The Vampire of Dusseldorf" by the press, committed his first provable murder, although his killing spree of at least nine people would not start until 1929.Kurten broke into a home and slit the throat of 13-year-old Christine Klein while she was sleeping. Kürten, who would claim that he killed 79 people, would be convicted of nine and would be executed on July 2, 1931.
    Adolf Hitler, an immigrant from Austria-Hungary, took up residence in Germany, a nation that he would eventually rule. The 24 year old painter and his friend, Rudolf Häusler, rented a room at 34 Schleissheimerstrasse in Munich.
    Born: Heinrich Bär, German flying ace who shot down 220 planes during World War II; in Sommerfeld (d. 1957)

May 26, 1913 (Monday)

    (May 13 Old Style) – Igor Sikorsky became the first person to pilot a four-engine fixed-wing aircraft as he took his Bolshoi Baltisky biplane Ilya Mourometz into the sky for the Imperial Russian Air Service near Saint Petersburg. Powered by 220 horsepower engines, the bomber could carry up to 1,543 pounds of bombs and had room for four machine guns and a crew of five. It was also the first plane fitted with a lavatory.
    The Actors' Equity Association was incorporated as a labor union for stage actors.
    The financial plan of France's Prime Minister Barthou was upheld by the Chamber of Deputies, 312-240.
    Born: Peter Cushing, English actor, in Kenley (d. 1994)

May 27, 1913 (Tuesday)

    At Ishpeming, Michigan, former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt testified in the trial of his libel suit against the magazine Iron Ore and its editor, George A. Newett, over an article accusing Roosevelt of drunkenness.
    Born: Henry Swan II, American surgeon who pioneered the use of hypothermia-cooling open heart surgery and performed the first aortic aneurysmectomy; in Denver (d. 1996)

May 28, 1913 (Wednesday)

    Democrats in the United States Senate followed the example of the House of Representatives, and created the office of "party whip", a person whose job it was to enforce the presence of the party's Senators at decisive votes. Senator J. Hamilton Lewis of Illinois was be selected as the first person for the job.
    Died: Sir John Lubbock, 79, British archaeologist and polymath

May 29, 1913 (Thursday)

    The ballet The Rite of Spring (Le Sacre du Printemps), with music by Igor Stravinsky conducted by Pierre Monteux, choreography by Vaslav Nijinsky and design by Nicholas Roerich, is premièred by Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris; its modernism provoked one of the most famous classical music riots in history.
    The Astor House luxury hotel, which first began operations in New York City in 1836, closed. The hotel, located at Broadway and Vesey Street, had hosted 19 future, present, and former Presidents of the United States, from Andrew Jackson to Theodore Roosevelt, with the exception of Andrew Johnson.
    The town of Zap, North Dakota was founded in Mercer County. On May 9, 1969, the town would attract more than 2,000 college students in a civil disorder that would become known as "The Zip to Zap".
    Born: Tony Zale, American boxer, as Anthony Zaleski in Gary, Indiana (d. 1997)

May 30, 1913 (Friday)

    The First Balkan War formally ended with the signing of the Treaty of London between the Ottoman Empire and the Balkan League (Bulgaria, Greece, Serbia and Montenegro). "Balkan Foes Sign Treaty of Peace", New York Times, May 31, 1913 The Ottoman Turks ceded almost all of their European territories to the Balkan nations.
    Jules Goux won the 1913 Indianapolis 500, driving a Peugeot. Averaging 76.59 miles per hour, Goux finished the race in 6 hours, 31 minutes and 33.45 seconds and won a $20,000 prize. The race continued for another hour and 18 minutes until the tenth and last racer had completed the 500 miles.
    U.S. Secretary of State Bryan announced that the U.K., France, Russia, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Brazil and Peru had responded favorably to Bryan's proposal for an international peace commission.

May 31, 1913 (Saturday)

    Australian federal election, 1913: The Commonwealth Liberal Party led by Joseph Cook, won control of Australia's 75-member House of Representatives by a single seat, with a 38-37 advantage over the Australian Labor Party led by Prime Minister Andrew Fisher. Overall, the Liberals had 930,076 votes to the 921,099 for the ALP
    The Seventeenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, providing for popular vote to elect U.S. Senators, was proclaimed in effect by Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan, who signed the announcement at 11:00 am in Washington.
    The American and British arbitration treaty was renewed for an additional five years.
    Romania's Chamber of Deputies voted in favor of letting Russia mediate Romania's dispute with Bulgaria.

    Theodore Roosevelt's lawsuit for libel came to an end with the Iron Ore publishing a retraction and an admission from the editor that nobody had substantiated claims that Roosevelt "drank to excess".
    Died: Frederick Ober, 65, German ornithologist and authority on Latin America.


June 1, 1913 (Sunday)

    Greece and Serbia signed an alliance to attack their former Balkan League ally, Bulgaria.

June 2, 1913 (Monday)

    After President Wilson warned the public about the money being spent by lobbyists to fight tariff reform, the U.S. Senate ordered the Senate Judiciary Committee to prepare a report with "the names of all lobbyists attempting to influence such pending legislation and the methods that they have employed to accomplish their ends". Over the next six days, the 96 Senators were required to appear before a special subcommittee and to state, under oath, whether they had a financial interest in the outcome of any pending bills.
    The town of Winona Lake, Indiana, was incorporated Al Disbro, Images of America: Winona Lake (Arcadia Publishing, 2012) p61
    Born: Barbara Pym, British novelist, as Mary Crampton, in Oswestry (d. 1980)
    Died: Alfred Austin, 78, British Poet Laureate since 1896.

June 3, 1913 (Tuesday)

    The last known specimen of the Canary Islands oystercatcher (Haematopus meadewaldoi) was caught, then released, by British ornithologist D. A. Bannerman. Possible sightings were reported as late as the 1960s, but the bird is considered extinct.
    Mexican rebels, commanded by General Lucio Blanco, captured Matamoros, Tamaulipas, across the Rio Grande from Brownsville, Texas.
    Russian composer Igor Stravinsky, and his wife Yekaterina, ate oysters for dinner, and then fell ill with typhus and were incapacitated for more than a month. p132
    Born: Charles H. Fairbanks, American archaeologist, in Bainbridge, New York (d. 1984); and George Hourani, British philosopher and classicist, in Didsbury (d. 1984)

June 4, 1913 (Wednesday)

    Suffragette Emily Davison was fatally injured when she ran in front of Anmer, the racehorse owned by King George V, in the running of the Epsom Derby. Davison came from out of the stands, ducked under a railing and past police, and ran out in front of the horse, who was in last place. Herbert Jones, who was riding Anmer, was thrown and was unconscious for two hours, while Davison was trampled by the horse and never woke up. She died four days later.
    The Epsom Derby was won by Aboyeur, who had 100 to 1 odds against him and had finished in second place behind the favorite, Cragonour. After Cragonour was announced as the winner, an objection was raised by race stewards, because American jockey Johnnie Reiff had bumped other horses on the way to the finish.
    Prime Minister László Lukács of Hungary and his cabinet resigned. Count István Tisza was asked by Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Joseph to form a new cabinet.
    In Chicago, world heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson was sentenced to one year and one day in prison at Joliet, Illinois, after being found guilty of violating the Mann Act. He was also given two weeks to seek a reconsideration.
    Shoeless Joe Jackson, at that time a player for the Cleveland Indians, in a game against the New York Yankees, hit what was believed to be "the longest home run ever hit in the major leagues up to that time".

June 5, 1913 (Thursday)

    The Modest Mussorgsky opera Khovanshchina premiered at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées.
    Born: Nam Il, Foreign Minister of North Korea, 1953–1967, in Russia (d. 1976)
    Died: Chris von der Ahe, 61, German-born brewer and baseball team owner

June 6, 1913 (Friday)

    Prince Albert Frederick George, the 17-year-old son of King George V, and the future King George VI of the United Kingdom, made his first visit to the United States, crossing the border from Canada into Niagara Falls, New York. Prince Albert, who was in Canada with 60 cadets from the HMS Cumberland, wasn't immediately recognized in the crowd, but told reporters later that "This is my first trip to the continent and the first time I have stood under the Stars and Stripes on American soil."
    Carlo L. Golino, Italian-American scholar, in Pescara (d. 1991)

June 7, 1913 (Saturday)

    Archdeacon Hudson Stuck and a team of mountaineers (Harry Karstens, Robert Tatum and Walter Harper) made the first ascent to the summit of Mount McKinley in Alaska, with Harper becoming the first to reach the top. The feat was reported on June 20.
    United Mine Workers President John P. White and 18 other union officials were indicted by a federal grand jury in Charleston, West Virginia, on charges of violating the Sherman anti-trust law.
    The world's largest swimming pool, as wide as a city block (400 feet) and twice as long (600 feet), opened at Palisades Amusement Park in New Jersey. The pool, made of cement, was constructed by park owners Nicholas Schenck and Joseph Schenck.

June 8, 1913 (Sunday)

    Thirty thousand German athletes attended the dedication of the Deutsches Stadion at Grunewald, near Berlin, which was scheduled to host the 1916 Summer Olympics games (which did not take place)
    Died: Emily Davison, British suffragette (b. 1872); and Charles Augustus Briggs, 72, American theologian and Biblical scholar

June 9, 1913 (Monday)

    John Maynard Keynes, whose theories of economics would have worldwide impact, published his first book, Indian Currency and Finance.
    Born: Dr. Patrick Steptoe, British obstetrician and gynecologist who, with Robert G. Edwards, pioneered in-vitro fertilization; in Oxford (d. 1988)

June 10, 1913 (Tuesday)

    The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the law requiring newspapers to publish statements of circulation and ownership, and to mark advertising plainly.
    Anna Johnson of Colfax, Wisconsin, became the first blind graduate of the Wisconsin School for the Deaf at Delavan, Wisconsin. Miss Johnson, who was blind, deaf and mute "with the further handicap of being minus one lower limb" had achieved honors in literature and history, and had plans to attend Gallaudet College.
    Born: Benjamin Shapira, a German-born Israeli biochemist and recipient of the Israel Prize (d. 1993); Wilbur J. Cohen, U.S. Secretary of Health Education and Welfare 1968–1969, in Milwaukee (d. 1987); Tikhon Khrennikov, Soviet composer, in Yelets, Russian Empire (d. 2007); and John Edmunds, American composer, in San Francisco (d. 1986)

June 11, 1913 (Wednesday)

    Turkish Grand Vizier Mahmud Shevket Pasha was assassinated in Istanbul. Shefket Pasha was being driven from the Ministry of War in a car, when another car pulled alongside him and ten shots were fired. Said Halim Pasha, the Foreign Minister, was appointed as his successor. Twelve "real or alleged plotters" were arrested, and hanged on June 24.
    Battle of Bud Bagsak: A combined force of U.S. Army troops, Philippine Scouts and the Philippine Constabulary, led by General John J. "Black Jack" Pershing began a five-day battle against a contingent of 500 Moro warriors, after Chiefs Naquib Amil, Jami and Sahipa sent word that they would not surrender.
    A record of 36 hours underwater was set by the Cage, a submarine invented by John Milton Cage, Sr., who had taken the boat down at 5:00 in the morning the day before, along with five other men.
    The German ocean liner SS Imperator, largest in the world at the time, was launched from Hamburg.
    Born: Vince Lombardi, American NFL coach, in Brooklyn (d. 1970); and Risë Stevens, American mezzosoprano, in New York City (d. 2013)

June 12, 1913 (Thursday)

    Klaus Berntsen resigned as Prime Minister of Denmark.
    The death of 30 crewmen on a Spanish gunboat that had run aground in Morocco, at the hands of a group of rebellious Berber tribesmen, the Kabyle rebels, was revealed.
    Even as both nations were preparing to go to war with each other, Serbia and Bulgaria agreed to Russian arbitration of their dispute over the territories captured during the First Balkan War.
    Said Halim Pasha was appointed as the new Turkish Grand Vizier, serving until February 3, 1917.
    John R. Bray, an American animator, premiered the innovative cartoon The Artist's Dream, which an author would later say was "the forerunner of the cartoon vogue" as the first popular animated film.
    Billed as "the longest wooden bridge in the world", the 2.5 mile long Collins Bridge opened, turning the small town of Miami, Florida (1910 population 5,471) into a premier resort area by making Miami Beach more accessible to more tourists. Previously, the beach could only be reached from the mainland by ferry boat and was impractical as an investment.

June 13, 1913 (Friday)

    The U.S. Senate Committee on Woman Suffrage reported favorably on a proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution providing that the right to vote shall not be denied because of gender.
    Attorney Walton J. Wood began work as the first public defender in the United States, earning $200 a month as an employee of Los Angeles County, California, to represent persons who could not afford a lawyer.
    The U.S. government successfully broke up the monopoly held by gunpowder manufacturer E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Company (more commonly called DuPont). The corporation was split into three competing companies, DuPont (which would diversify into chemical manufacturing), Hercules Powder Company and Atlas Powder Company.
    On the same day, the DuPont Cellophane Company, owned 52 percent by DuPont, was formed in partnership with a French consortium, for the American manufacture of the new French product, transparent cellophane sheets.
    Died: Camille Lemonnier, 69, Belgian journalist and poet. Thomas J. Shaughnessy was born.

June 14, 1913 (Saturday)

    Eleven construction workers for the Bradley Contracting Company were killed in the cave-in of new subways underneath Fifty-sixth Street in New York City.
    The German battlecruiser Defflinger, first of its class and the most powerful German battleship up to that time, was launched. Moments after it was christened by the wife of General August von Mackensen, the ship moved only fifteen inches down the skids before it came to a halt, jammed because of a defect in one of the sledges.
    The South African government passed the Immigration Act, which restricted the immigration of people from India.

June 15, 1913 (Sunday)

    Battle of Bud Bagsak: Driven out by shelling from American and Philippine troops, the 500 Moro defenders, armed only with bolo knives and kampilan swords made a charge against the firepower of the Pershing contingent's artillery, and were killed. Pershing's troops sustained 27 casualties. The uneven battle brought an end to the Moro resistance. Other sources describe the battle happening on June 13, with the deaths of 2,000 Moro defenders, including women and children, as well as the death of 340 American troops.

June 16, 1913 (Monday)

    Kaiser Wilhelm II celebrated the 25th anniversary of his ascension to the throne in 1888. "Twenty-five years of peace", the Kaiser told American industrialist and peace delegate Andrew Carnegie, "and I hope there will be twenty-five more".Germany would enter World War I less than fourteen months later. Half a million people lined the streets of Berlin to cheer the Kaiser and the Kaiserin. The Kaiser proclaimed an amnesty for "those whose misdeeds were committed through poverty or while in a state of irresponsibility", and for Army and Navy men punished for most violations of regulations.
    Died: Della Fox, 40, American comedian from the 1880s and 1890s

June 17, 1913 (Tuesday)

    Dutch general election, 1913: The first round of elections took place in the Netherlands for 54 seats in the lower house, with 46 in the following week.
    The Welsh Disestablishment Bill was passed on its second reading, by the British House of Commons, after having been reintroduced following rejection in the House of Lords. The Act, which would become law in 1914, provided for the Church of England to be disestablished in Wales in favor of a separate Church in Wales.

June 18, 1913 (Wednesday)

    John Ernest Williamson, whose father had invented a transparent diving bell called the "photosphere", became the first person to take photographs from beneath the ocean surface, by taking a camera with him and snapping pictures while underwater inside the bell.
    The Arab Congress of 1913 opened, during which Arab nationalists meet to discuss desired reforms under the Ottoman Empire.
    The Hamburg-American ocean liner Imperator, the largest ship in the world, arrived safely in New York on its maiden transatlantic voyage.
    French Algeria's Governor-General Charles Lutaud abolished the requirement for natives to obtain travel permits within Algeria, or from Algeria to mainland France.
    Born: Sylvia Porter, American economist and journalist (d. 1991); and Robert Mondavi, American winemaker (d. 2008)
    Died: Thomas Janvier, 63, American historian and short story writer

June 19, 1913 (Thursday)

    The Parliament of South Africa passed the Natives Land Act, defining which areas could be owned by white South Africans, and which by black South Africans. Black South Africans were barred from purchasing or owning white persons' property.
    The British House of Commons voted, 346-268, to acquit Attorney General Rufus Isaacs and Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George on charges of malfeasance arising from ownership of shares in the Marconi Company of America.
    Thirteen people were killed in the collision of two trains near Vallejo, California.
    Italian occupying forces fought a fierce battle against the Arab residents of Libya, at Ettangi, Tripolitania.
    Maurice Prévost set a new airplane speed record, averaging 117 miles per hour in a flight of over 217 miles, in a circular course near Paris.

June 20, 1913 (Friday)

    Australia's Prime Minister Andrew Fisher resigned after the defeat of the Australian Labor Party in parliamentary elections.
    Romania mobilized its armed forces in preparation for an invasion of Bulgaria.
    Born: Lilian Jackson Braun, American mystery writer known for the "Cat Who series", starting in 1966 with The Cat Who Could Read Backwards; in Chicopee, Massachusetts (d. 2011)
    Died: Major Sydenham Ancona, 89, former U.S. Representative, believed to be the last surviving member of Congress to have participated in the voting on the American Civil War in 1860; and Sir Frederick Johnstone, Earl of Annandale, 72, former British MP (1874–1885) and sportsman who won the English Derby twice.

June 21, 1913 (Saturday)

    Georgia Thompson "Tiny" Broadwick became the first woman to parachute from an airplane, jumping from a plane piloted by aviator Glenn L. Martin over Los Angeles. Broadwick had volunteered to test Martin's invention of a "trap seat" that would allow people to bail out of an airplane more quickly.
    Carl Theodor Zahle, who previously had served as Konseilspræsident (Council President, or Prime Minister of Denmark), formed a new cabinet to succeed Klaus Berntsen.
    Born: Jim Cavanagh, Australian Senator for South Australia (1962–1981), Minister for Aboriginal Affairs (1973–75), near Adelaide (d. 1990)
    Died: Charles E. Nash, 69, first African-American Congressman for Louisiana, in the U.S. House of Representatives, 1875–1877 during the Reconstruction Era

June 22, 1913 (Sunday)

    Serbia's Prime Minister Nikola Pašić and his cabinet resigned because of the nation's lack of progress in negotiating with Bulgaria, after which the Serbian minister left Sofia. Pašić formed a new government when the Second Balkan War broke out days later.
    Died: Judge Henry C. Jones of Alabama, 94, the last surviving member of the Confederate States of America Congress, having served as a C.S. Representative from 1861 to 1862.

June 23, 1913 (Monday)

    U.S. President Wilson addressed a joint session of Congress on his support of the McAdoo-Owen-Glass Banking Bill, and the need to create a federal reserve system for banking. The legislation would pass at the end of the year as the Federal Reserve Act.
    The first of 32 men were hanged for the assassination of Turkish Grand Vizier Shefket Pasha.
    Born: William P. Rogers, U.S. Secretary of State 1969-73, and U.S. Attorney General 1957-61, in Norfolk, New York (d. 2001); Nathan Abshire, American Cajun musician, in Gueydan, Louisiana (d. 1981); Helen Humes, American jazz and blues singer, in Louisville, Kentucky (d. 1981); and Carlos A. Cooks, Dominican-American black nationalist, in Santo Domingo (d. 1966)
    Died: General Nicolás de Pierola, 72, former President of Peru, 1896–1899; and Sir Jonathan Hutchinson, 85, British physician and expert in leprosy.

June 24, 1913 (Tuesday)

    The explosion of a grain elevator at Buffalo, New York, killed 17 men and injured 50 others.
    Joseph Cook was sworn in as the sixth Prime Minister of Australia after being requested by Governor-General Denman to form a new government.
    Prime Minister Zahle announced in the Rigsdag that he would lobby for women's suffrage in Denmark.
    Born: Vincent Ferrini, American poet, in Saugus, Massachusetts (d. 2007)

June 25, 1913 (Wednesday)

    Less than a month after they had fought as allies in the First Balkan War, Bulgaria and Serbia battled each other at Zletovo.
    The results of Dutch elections showed that the Liberal Party had obtained a 55-45 majority in the Chamber of Deputies.
    Germany's Reichstag passed the German Nationality Law.
    Astronomer Henry Norris Russell of Princeton University announced his discovery of a correlation between the total radiation of a star and its temperature.
    Born: Cyril Fletcher, British comedian, in Watford (d. 2005)

June 26, 1913 (Thursday)

    The Washington Senators hosted the Philadelphia Athletics for a baseball doubleheader, and batted first in the second game at D.C., a departure from the rule that the visitors start off the game at bat. The Athletics won 10-3. The oddity would not happen again for 94 years, until September 26, 2007, in Washington state, when the Seattle Mariners hosted the Cleveland Indians and batted first, in a game which Cleveland would win 12-4.
    The city of Avalon, California, was incorporated.
    Born: Aimé Césaire, French Martinican poet and politician (d. 2008); and Maurice Wilkes, British computer scientist (d. 2010)
    Died: Cromartie Sutherland-Leveson-Gower, 4th Duke of Sutherland, 61, "largest landowner in Europe except the Czar", with 1,385,000 acres of land, or more than 2,100 square miles.

June 27, 1913 (Friday)

    Theo Heemskerk resigned as Prime Minister of the Netherlands.
    Born: Richard Pike Bissell, American author of short stories and novels, in Dubuque, Iowa (d. 1977); Elton Britt, American country western singer, as James Britt Baker in Marshall, Arkansas (d. 1972); and Philip Guston, Canadian-born abstract expressionist painter and printmaker, as Philip Goldstein in Montreal (d. 1980)
    Died: Philip Sclater, 83, British zoologist for whom one mammal (Sclater's lemur) and six different birds were named, including the erect-crested penguin (Eudyptes sclateri); from injuries received in a carriage accident

June 28, 1913 (Saturday)

    The nine-mile long Lötschberg Tunnel through the Alps, linking Switzerland and Italy, was formally opened.
    The merger of the Union Pacific Railroad and Southern Pacific Railroad was dissolved in order to settle the antitrust lawsuit brought by the U.S. Department of Justice.
    The United States and Japan renewed their arbitration treaty in an event attended by U.S. Secretary of State Bryan and Japanese Ambassador Chenda.
    Born: Franz Antel, Austrian filmmaker (d. 2007)
    Died: Manoel Ferraz de Campos Salles, 72, 4th President of Brazil (1898–1902); and Wilhelm Schimmelpfennig, 73, German businessman and pioneer in commercial agency

June 29, 1913 (Sunday)

    The Second Balkan War formally began with a surprise attack by Bulgaria on the armies of Serbia (at Slatovo) and Greece at Salonika. The war would last for six weeks, ending with Bulgaria's defeat. On August 10, 1913 Bulgaria would sign a treaty at Bucharest, ceding territory to Romania, Greece and Serbia.
    In a baseball game between the Chicago Cubs and the Cincinnati Reds, only one baseball was necessary for the entire game.
    Died: Sir Samuel Gillott, 74, former Mayor of Melbourne, after falling down the stairs during a visit to his native England; and Alfred H. Love, 82, American peace activist, founder and President of the Universal Peace Union

June 30, 1913 (Monday)

    Germany's Reichstag voted to increase the size of the nation's army by 136,000 officers and men.[25]
    Eleven boys in Lawrence, Massachusetts, were drowned in the collapse of a pier leading to a floating bathhouse in the Merrimack River. About forty young men were waiting for the doors to open and were stomping their feet while waiting for the doors to open.
    The Mexican city of Guaymas fell to rebels.
    Born: Alfonso López Michelsen, 32nd President of Colombia from 1974 to 1978; in Bogotá (d. 2007); and Harry Wismer, American football broadcaster and owner of the AFL's New York Titans 1960-62; in Port Huron, Michigan (died in accident, 1967)
    Died: Frederick M. Shepard, 85, founder of the United States Rubber Company, of appendicitis. Shepard had also served as President of Goodyear Tire and Rubber for 41 years.


July 1, 1913 (Tuesday)

    More than fifty thousand (53,407) surviving veterans of the Union and Confederate armies assembled at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania to set up tents and to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg. Eight of the aged veterans had died by the time President Wilson's speech to the gathering.The reunion ended on July 6
    Vilhjalmur Stefansson set off from Seattle for a three and a half year exploration of the area between Alaska and the North Pole.
    American jewelers began the use of the metric carat as the standard for weighing of gemstones and pearls, with a carat being equal to 200 milligrams. The unit was slightly less than the English carat of 205.3035 milligrams.
    The city of Millville, Florida was incorporated.
    Died: Henri Rochefort, 82, French journalist and activist

July 2, 1913 (Wednesday)

    Wall Street lobbyist David Lamar testified before a U.S. Senate subcommittee that he had frequently impersonated Congressmen during telephone conversations in order to gain an advantage. The U.S. Department of Justice reluctantly concluded that there was no federal law under which Lamar could be prosecuted. Although federal law made it a felony "to impersonate an officer of the United States", the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled that members of Congress were "not officers of the United States, but of the particular States from which they come. "Can Lamar Be Punished?"
    The city of Cincinnati, seized control of eight ice plants whose workers had gone on strike during the hot summer, upon recommendation of the city Board of Health. The strike settled four days later.
    The Crocker Land Expedition, on the ship Diana, departed from New York City toward the North Pole for a three-year exploration project.
    French aviator Marcel Brindejonc des Moulinais set a new distance record for an airplane, flying 3,100 miles from Paris to Saint Petersburg.

July 3, 1913 (Thursday)

    The fiftieth anniversary of "Pickett's Charge", turning point in the Battle of Gettysburg in the American Civil War, was re-enacted by the survivors of the original battle.
    The Kingdom of Romania issued an order for mobilization of its armies in preparation of an invasion of Bulgaria.
    Born: Dorothy Kilgallen, American journalist, and panelist on What's My Line?, in Chicago (died of drug overdose, 1965)

July 4, 1913 (Friday)

    Tony Wilding of England won his fourth consecutive All-England tennis championship, ending the hope of American Maurice McLoughlin to become the first foreigner to win the Wimbledon finals. Wilding overwhelmed McLoughlin in three straight sets, 8-6, 6-3 and 10-8.
    The Russian village of Astradamovka, located in the Alatyr oblast (later the Ulyanovsk Oblast, was destroyed by a fire which killed 154 peasants.
    Major General Erich von Falkenhayn was appointed as the new German Minister of War after General Josias von Heeringen resigned.
    Second Balkan War: Greek and Serbian armies were successful in routing attacking Bulgarian troops, at Kılkış, which would later become part of Greek territory.
    Died: Alfred Lyttelton, 56, British Secretary of State for the Colonies (1903–1905) and former cricketer; and Harry Knight, 23, American race car driver, along with his "mechanician" (mechanic), Milton McAllis, when their car blew a tire during a race in Columbus, Ohio and rolled over twice.

July 5, 1913 (Saturday)

    Three days of rioting, by miners in the Rand District of South Africa, halted after the government agreed to bring legislation for improvement of working conditions. The night before, Johannesburg police had fired their guns into a crowd of protesters who ignored orders to disperse, killing 40.
    Second Balkan War: Turkey announced that it would not intervene in the war against Bulgaria on the condition that Bulgaria relinquished its claims for indemnity from Turkey from the First Balkan War
    The U.S. Post Office began the segregation of black postal clerks from white.

July 6, 1913 (Sunday)

    English clergyman Henry Charles Beeching delivered what would become a widely republished sermon at the Norwich Cathedral in the British city of Norwich, describing the faith of the late George Borrow.
    Born: Vance Trimble, American journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner
    Died: J. C. Williamson, American-Australian actor and theatrical producer

July 7, 1913 (Monday)

    The Irish Home Rule bill passed on its third reading in the British House of Commons, 352-243. The measure was sent to the House of Lords, which rejected it on July 15.
    Mexican-American folk hero and outlaw Gregorio Cortez was freed from the Texas State Penitentiary in Huntsville, Texas, where he had served eight and one half years, following a pardon issued by Governor Oscar Colquitt.
    Born: Pinetop Perkins (Joseph William Perkins), American blues pianist, in Belzoni, Mississippi (d. 2011)

July 8, 1913 (Tuesday)

    Pearl Curran, a St. Louis housewife who was experimenting with a Ouija board, began reporting the communications of "Patience Worth", whom Curran said had been an Englishwoman who had lived in Dorset more than 200 years earlier, during the 17th century, and had been killed by Indians after crossing the ocean to America. For the next 24 years, until her death in 1937, Mrs. Curran would publish novels and poems attributed to her communications with Patience Worth,
    Trainmen and conductors of most of the railroads in the eastern United States, voted 72,473 to 4,210 in favor of going on strike for higher wages, tying up the nation's commerce and travel.
    The Welsh Disestablishment Bill passed its third reading in the House of Commons and was sent to the House of Lords for consideration.
    Born: Walter Kerr, American writer and theater critic for the New York Times, in Evanston, Illinois (d. 1996)
    Died: Louis Hémon, 32, French-born novelist, after being struck by a train

July 9, 1913 (Wednesday)

    China's National Assembly ratified a treaty with Russia, relinquishing its claims on Mongolia.

July 10, 1913 (Thursday)

    The record for highest temperature in the United States (and North America) was set in Death Valley, near Baker, California, at the Greenland Ranch, when the thermometer registered 134° Fahrenheit (57 °C) in the shade. At the time, it was the highest recorded temperature anywhere, until bested on September 13, 1922 when the heat was measured at 136 degrees in El Azizia, Libya.
    Born: Salvador Espriu, Spanish Catalanonian poet, in Santa Coloma de Farners (d. 1985)
    Died: Burton E. Baker, 43, inventor and manufacturer of x-ray apparatus, from radiation sickness caused by his constant exposure to x-rays.
    Died: Viscount Tadasu Hayashi, 63, former Japanese Foreign Minister, and ambassador from Japan to the United Kingdom.

July 11, 1913 (Friday)

    Second Balkan War: With the army of Bulgaria engaged in a two-front fight with Greece and Serbia, the Kingdom of Romania crossed the Danube river for its own invasion of Bulgaria.
    Died: Redmond Berry, 47, Lord Chancellor of Ireland since 1911

July 12, 1913 (Saturday)

    The Jianxi province declared its independence from China, and the provincial assembly authorized Li Lieh-chun to lead a fight against the national government.
    The day after Romania had invaded Bulgaria from the north, Turkey attacked from the south and moved into Thrace.
    Albert Einstein was invited to become a member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences with Max Planck and Walther Nernst traveling to Zurich to make the offer in person. With the invitation came a full professorship at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin, with a high salary "without any teaching obligations", and the position of Director of the new Institute of Theoretical Physics of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society.
    The historic Grove Park Inn opened in Asheville, North Carolina.
    The Bethel Inn in Bethel, Maine opened to provide lodging and meals to the "out-patients" of Dr. John George Gehring
    Born: Willis Lamb, American physicist and co-recipient of 1955 Nobel Prize in Physics, in Tucson, Arizona (d. 2008); Mildred Cohn, American biochemist and National Medal of Science recipient 1983, in New York City (d. 2009); and Manohar Malgonkar, Indian author, in Jagalbet, British India (d. 2010)

July 13, 1913 (Sunday)

    The final report by Roger Casement, on the atrocities of the British Peruvian Amazon Company against the indigenous people in its employ, was published by the House of Commons.
    French aviator Leon Letort set a new record for nonstop flight, exceeding 500 miles and finishing at 590 miles upon landing in Berlin after setting off from Paris nine hours earlier
    Born: Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller, Danish shipping magnate who founded the Maersk corporation; in Hellerup (d. 2012); and Bryan Hextall, Canadian NHL player, 1969 inductee into the Hockey Hall of Fame, in Grenfell, Saskatchewan (d. 1984)

July 14, 1913 (Monday)

    A nationwide strike of railroad employees was averted by negotiations at the White House, which included President Wilson, Congressional leaders and the Secretary of Labor, as well as representatives of the railroads and the workers' unions. Management and labor settled their differences in light of an understanding that Congress would approve an amendment of the Erdman Arbitration Act. Passage of the bill and its signing into law were accomplished the next day.
    The British House of Commons passed a bill abolishing plural voting, on the third reading, by a margin of 293-222.
    Leslie Lynch King, Jr. who would grow up to become the 38th President of the United States was born at his parents' home at 3202 Woolworth Avenue in Omaha, Nebraska, at 12:43 am local time to Dorothy Gardner King and Leslie Lynch King. After the Kings divorced and Dorothy remarried, Leslie, Jr., would be renamed Gerald Rudolph Ford.
    Born: Magdalena Mondragón Aguirre, Mexican playwright, novelist, feminist and newspaper editor, in Torreón (d. 1988) Gerald Ford, President of the United States of America
    Died: John Bannon, 83, Irish Catholic priest who served as a chaplain in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War.

July 15, 1913 (Tuesday)

    As expected, Britain's House of Lords voted against approval of the Irish Home Rule bill, for the second time, by a majority of 238. Prime Minister H. H. Asquith announced that his government would present a plan for abolition of the House of Lords at the next session of Parliament. The bill would finally become law on September 18, 1914, after passing under the terms of the Parliament Act on May 25 of that year.
    Stoyan Danev resigned as Prime Minister of Bulgaria.
    Born: Cowboy Copas, American country singer, in Blue Creek, Ohio (killed in plane crash with Patsy Cline, 1963); and Abraham Sutzkever, Russian-born Yiddish language poet, in Smarhon’ (d. 2010)

July 16, 1913 (Wednesday)

    Dr. Robert Bridges was appointed by Prime Minister Asquith as the new Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom, to succeed the late Alfred Austin.
    China's President Yuan Shikai asked Prime Minister Zhao Bingjun to resign, the appointed Zhao to the Beijing police to guide a campaign against Yuan's opponents.
    The Argentina city of Villa Carlos Paz was founded by Carlos Nicandro Paz.
    Born: William L. Brown, American geneticist, in Arbovale, West Virginia (d. 1991)

July 17, 1913 (Thursday)

    William L. Chambers was nominated as the first U.S. Commissioner of Mediation and Conciliation.
    Born: Roger Garaudy, controversial French author and Holocaust denier, author of The Founding Myths of Modern Israel; in Marseille (d. 2012)

July 18, 1913 (Friday)

    A rebellion broke out in the Sichuan province of the Republic of China, with Tsen Chun-hsuan being declared President.
    As troops from Romania troops advanced to within thirty miles of Sofia, King Ferdinand I of Bulgaria sent an appeal to King Carol I of Romania, asking for a ceasefire and discussion of terms of peace.
    Born: Red Skelton, American comedian and television star, as Richard Bernard Eheart, in Vincennes, Indiana (d. 1997); Eric Pohlmann, Austrian-born British character actor, in Vienna; and Karl Rolvaag, Governor of Minnesota (1963–1967), in Northfield, Minnesota (d. 1990)

July 19, 1913 (Saturday)

    The French Chamber of Deputies voted 358-204 to extend the required military service from two years to three years.
    The Mental Deficiency Act 1913 was passed by the British House of Commons, 180 to 3, providing for the removal of "feeble-minded" persons to special institutions. The only three MPs to vote against it were Josiah Wedgwood, Frederick Banbury and Handel Booth. The act would receive royal assent and take effect on April 1, 1914.
    At Guangzhou (Canton), the Governor-General of the Kwangtung province proclaimed that land's independence from China.
    Born: Edward Thompson and Michael J. Murphy, both in Queens, New York; between 1962 and 1964, they were, respectively, the Fire Department Commissioner and the Police Commissioner for New York City; Thompson died in 1995, Murphy in 1997.
    Died: Clímaco Calderón, 60, President of Colombia for one day (December 21–22, 1882)

July 20, 1913 (Sunday)

    William Jennings Bryan, the U.S. Secretary of State, announced the terms of a proposed treaty with Nicaragua, that would make the Central American nation a virtual U.S. protectorate relative to international affairs.
    The Fujian (Fukien) province, led by Xu Chongzhi, seceded from the Republic of China.
    Vasil Radoslavov formed a new cabinet as Prime Minister of Bulgaria.

July 21, 1913 (Monday)

    Turkish forces for the Ottoman Empire, led by Enver Pasha, recaptured the city of Adrianople (Edirne) from Bulgaria, four months after the Bulgarians had successfully invaded the historic city on March 26, 1913. The city, which had been ceded to Bulgaria less than two months earlier by the Treaty of London, would formally be relinquished back to the Ottoman Empire by the Treaty of Istanbul, on September 29.
    China's President Yuan Shikai declared martial law nationwide as the southern provinces continued their rebellion. On the same day, former President Sun Yat-sen released a statement to the media, calling for Yuan's resignation.
    British suffragette Nellie Hall threw a brick through the window of the automobile of Prime Minister H. H. Asquith, while he was being chauffeured during a visit to Birmingham.
    Born: Catherine Storr, British children's author, in Kensington (d. 2001)

July 22, 1913 (Tuesday)

    1913 Binghamton Factory Fire: Fifty people, mostly women and girls, were killed in a fire at the Binghamton Clothing Company factory in Binghamton, New York. Although an alarm system had been installed two months earlier by state law, it was believed that there had been so many fire drills that "recent familiarity with fire drills had led the workers to become almost indifferent to alarms", the girls were slow in evacuating the second and third floors, and were trapped by the swiftly moving fire. Firefighters were also led four blocks off course by a bystander who stood at the corner and rang an alarm.
    The House of Lords rejected the Welsh Disestablishment Bill, voting 242-48 against giving the bill a second reading, after the measure had come from the House of Commons.
    Born: Tex Thornton, American inventor and businessman who founded Litton Industries; in Goree, Texas (d. 1981)

July 23, 1913 (Wednesday)

    Copper Country Strike of 1913–1914: Copper miners in Michigan walked off of their jobs in a strike called by the Western Federation of Miners, with the goal of winning an eight-hour workday without a cut in pay. The strike would last for more than eight months, until April 12, 1914, without the miners receiving the shorter day. During that time, 73 people, consisting of striking miners and their families would die in the Italian Hall disaster on December 24, 1913.
    William F. Cody, better known by his stage name Buffalo Bill, sold the assets of the Buffalo Bill's Wild West show that he had operated since May 19, 1883. The public auction followed Cody's loss of nearly one million dollars in attempts to mine gold in Arizona.
    Born: Michael Foot, British Leader of the Opposition, 1980–83; in Plymouth (d. 2010); and Licia Albanese, Italian-born American opera soprano, in Bari (still alive in 2012)

July 24, 1913 (Thursday)

    The House of Lords rejected the bill abolishing plural voting by a margin of 166 to 42.
    The U.S. Department of Justice filed an antitrust lawsuit for the first time against American Telephone and Telegraph (A T & T) for monopolistic practices in Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana. The suit would be dropped after A T & T agreed to divest itself of its ownership of Western Union stock.
    Born: Britton Chance, American biochemist and biophysicist, and Olympic athlete; in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania (d. 2010)

July 25, 1913 (Friday)

    The Washington Senators and the St. Louis Browns (now the Minnesota Twins and Baltimore Orioles, respectively) played to an 8-8 tie after their game went 15 innings until ended because of darkness. Walter Johnson set a record for a relief pitcher, throwing 15 strikeouts; Carl Weilman of the Browns became the first player to strike out six times in one game, in every single one of his times at bat. Walter Johnson's record would be broken 88 years later, by Randy Johnson on July 19, 2001.
    Austria-Hungary warned Serbia and Greece not to humiliate Bulgaria in peace settlement.

July 26, 1913 (Saturday)

    The Hunan province seceded from the Republic of China, even as Chinese troops retook the city of Zhenjiang (Chinkiang) in the Jiangsu province.
    Romania halted its armies to within ten miles of the Bulgarian capital of Sofia, at the request of Bulgaria's Foreign Minister and an assurance of a favorable settlement.
    British soldiers, who had been sent to monitor the Ulster Volunteers, fired into a crowd of Irish protesters in Dublin, killing three and wounding 38.

July 27, 1913 (Sunday)

    In an action that made headlines around the world, Dr. Rosalie M. Ladova, a prominent Chicago physician, made an unsuccessful attempt to challenge the American social mores of the time, when she discarded the "bathing skirt" that female swimmers were required to wear in addition to the bloomers that covered their legs. Police arrested Dr. Ladova at the beach at Jackson Park on Lake Michigan and charged her with obscenity.;After seeing the newspaper photographs the next day of Dr. Cordova's blouse and bloomers swimwear, Chicago Mayor Carter Harrison, Jr. declared that "No woman should think of wearing that kind of costume" at a beach, and directed the city police to "gently but firmly insist upon the lady putting on proper costumes".The "skin-tight" bathing suit had long been accepted in Britain for both men and women. After Dr. Ladova's daring experiment, almost eight years would pass before the taboo was discarded in the United States, with Mayor Robert Crissye of the city of Somers Point, New Jersey, inviting women "to bathe on his city's beaches barelegged and in a one-piece suit", in the style of Australian swimmer Annette Kellerman.

July 28, 1913 (Monday)

    Bulgaria and Romania signed a peace treaty in Bucharest, with Bulgaria ceding its territory in Southern Dobruja in return for Romania withdrawing its troops.
    The United States tennis team defeated Great Britain in the finals of the Davis Cup, held at Wimbledon. "
    The trial of Jewish factory manager Leo Frank, on charges of the murder of Mary Phagan, began in Atlanta. Because of the heat, the windows in the Fulton County courthouse were kept open, giving the opportunity for the mob outside to influence the trial's outcome, although the U.S. Supreme Court would later rule, in 1915, that Frank's due process rights had not been prejudiced by the circumstances.
    Born: Laird Cregar, American actor, in Philadelphia (d. 1944)

July 29, 1913 (Tuesday)

    At a conference of the ambassadors to Britain of the six "Great Powers" (Austria-Hungary, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, the United Kingdom), in London, it was agreed that an international commission would govern Albania until a monarch could be chosen, and boundaries were set for the new nation. The seven-member International Control Commission, composed of one representative each from each of the Great Powers, and Albania, was to govern Albania for ten years. In March, Prince Wilhelm zu Wied would be selected as King of Albania under the ICC's authority, but the Commission dissolved after its members went to war against each other.
    The Anglo-Ottoman Convention of 1913 was signed between the British and Ottoman Empires, as the "Convention relating to the Persian Gulf and surrounding territories". However, the convention was never ratified, and became a moot point in 1914 when World War One began.
    Born: Erich Priebke, German war criminal and leader of the 1944 Ardeatine massacre of 335 civilians; in Hennigsdorf (still alive in 2012)
    Died: Tobias Asser, 75, Dutch lawyer, winner of 1911 Nobel Peace Prize

July 30, 1913 (Wednesday)

    Seven spectators at a motorcycle race in Cincinnati, were killed, and 18 seriously injured. Odin Johnson lost control of his cycle while competing at the Lagoon Motordrome and crashed into a light pole, showering 35 people with flaming gasoline.
    As a bloody battle between Bulgarian and Greek troops took place at Djuma, south of Sofia, representatives of Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece, Romania and Montenegro agreed to an armistice in a meeting at Bucharest.
    Britain announced that it would not participate in the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition at San Francisco, and was followed within the next two days by Germany and Russia. ("it is regarded as Great Britain's way of intimating that she still resents the course of the United States in regard to the canal tolls"
    Born: Lou Darvas, American cartoonist, in Cleveland (d. 1987)

July 31, 1913 (Thursday)

    In the largest demonstration in for women's suffrage in the United States up to that time, a motorcade of sixty automobiles travelled from Hyattsville, Maryland to the United States Capitol to present the U.S. Senate with petitions bearing 200,000 signatures of persons favoring an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to allow women to vote. On May 9, 1915, petitions with 500,000 signatures would be presented, and on October 27, 1917, one million.
    The Second Opium Conference was convened, at The Hague, in order to take up the matter of the remaining 12 of 46 nations that had not signed. The Conference would end after eight days.


August 1, 1913 (Friday)

    The federal council of Venezuela authorized President Juan Vicente Gómez to assume dictatorial powers until the revolution led by Cipriano Castro could be suppressed.
    Mexico's President Victoriano Huerta announced that he had no intention of resigning.
    Russia announced that it would not participate in the Panama–Pacific International Exposition. In doing so, it joined Great Britain, Turkey, Bulgaria, Serbia, Egypt, Morocco and Siam. Another 27 nations had accepted the invitation to participate, including China, France, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden, as well as most of the South American and Latin American countries. Austria-Hungary, Germany, Italy and Belgium were among the 15 other invited nations that had not decided on appearing at the Exposition, to open in San Francisco in 1914.

August 2, 1913 (Saturday)

    The U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted 8-4 to reject Secretary of State Bryan's proposal to sign a treaty to make Nicaragua a protectorate of the United States.; Secretary Bryan dropped further discussion of the treaty for the rest of the year.
    Explosions at the East Brookside Colliery of the Philadelphia and Reading Coal and Iron Company mine at Tower City, Pennsylvania, killed 19 people and seriously injured 20. Thirteen men were killed in the blast, and five men who volunteered to be rescuers were killed in a second explosion in the 1,800 foot deep mine shaft.
    Pieter Cort van der Linden became the new Prime Minister of the Netherlands.
    French aviator Eugène Gilbert became the first person to fly 1,000 miles in a single day to win the semi-annually awarded Pommery Cup. The prize was to be given to the person who "makes the longest flight across country from sunrise to sunset on one day, during which he may stop as often as he wishes to replenish fuel". Gilbert departed Paris at 4:45 am, flew seven hours non-stop to the Spanish town of Vittoria, departed again at 1:00 and arrived at the Portuguese town of Pejabo at 8:00 pm.

August 3, 1913 (Sunday)

    Wheatland Hop Riot: Farm workers at the hops farm at Durst Ranch, near the town of Wheatland,in Yuba County, California, gathered for a meeting with Richard "Blackie" Ford, an organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World union. When the Yuba County Sheriff and his officers arrived to arrest Ford, a crowd of workers rushed the officers. Four people were killed in the melee.
    Died: William Lyne, 69, Australian politician who served as Premier of New South Wales prior to the 1901 creation of the Commonwealth of Australia, and served as Acting Prime Minister from July to September 1907 during the illness of Alfred Deakin

August 4, 1913 (Monday)

    U.S. President Woodrow Wilson asked Henry Lane Wilson to resign as U.S. Ambassador to Mexico, and sent former Minnesota Governor John Lind as his personal representative to attempt a settlement of the Mexican revolution. However, President Huerta said two days later that Lind would not be allowed to enter the country unless he brought an official recognition of the Huerta government. Lind arrived in Mexico City on August 11.
    As the uprising of China's southern provinces collapsed, the Fujian province rescinded its July 20 declaration of independence, and rebel general Xu Chongzhi fled to Japan, returning control of the province to Governor Sun Daoren.
    In fiction, August 4, 1913 marks the climax of the novel The Good Soldier, by Ford Madox Ford
    Joseph Knowles, a 44-year-old survivalist, began his experiment of living alone in "the uncharted forests of northeastern Maine", pledging to "live as Adam lived" for two months. Before a group of reporters, Knowles removed all of his clothes, and walked into the forest without clothing, food or tools. The American press followed his progress by written notes that Knowles left at prearranged locations. Knowles would emerge from the forest on October 4, 1913, wearing a bearskin robe, deerskin moccasins, and a knife, bow and arrows that he had crafted himself.
    Born: Robert Hayden, African-American poet, as Asa Bundy Sheffey in Detroit (d. 1980)

August 5, 1913 (Tuesday)

    Pope Pius X reformed longstanding rules of canon law that had restricted the hearing of confession for members of certain religious orders. Previously, confessions could not be heard without prior approval by a superior.

August 6, 1913 (Wednesday)

    John Henry Mears set a new record for traveling around the world, arriving back in New York City after 35 days, 21 hours and 35 minutes. Sponsored by the New York Evening Sun, Mears broke the old record (set by Andre Jaeger-Schmidt in 1911) by four days. Mears, who had departed the newspaper's offices in the early morning hours of July 2 returned to the same spot "at 10:10 o'clock" in the evening five weeks later.
    Venezuela's President Gomez temporarily left office in order to personally lead the nation's army against the rebels of Cipriano Castro. José Gil Fortoul of the Federal Council was designated by Gomez to act as President during Gomez's absence.
    Dr. Sun Yat-sen, the first President of the Republic of China, fled to the island of Taiwan, which at that time was the Japanese colony of Formosa, after being threatened by President Yuan Shikai.
    The Peruvian towns of Caravelí and Quicacha were destroyed by an earthquake that struck the Arequipa Province.

August 7, 1913 (Thursday)

    The Senate of France voted 245-37 to pass the loi de trois ans, extending compulsory military service from two years to three years.
    El Salvador and the United States signed a five-year treaty, pledging to submit all disputes between them "for investigation and report to an International Commission" composed of representatives from five nations. The proposed Commission would have one year to render its report, during which participating nations would withhold from going to war. The agreement was the first of the international peace treaties that Secretary Bryan had proposed in a "plan for world-wide peace".
    Died: Samuel Franklin Cody, 48, American-born British aviator, in a plane crash, along with cricketer William Evans, 30.

August 8, 1913 (Friday)

    Venustiano Carranza, leader of Mexico's rebellion against the government of President Huerta, and Governor of the State of Coahuila, sent a reply to U.S. President Wilson's proposal for a ceasefire until elections could be held in October. Carranza said that he did not recognize President Huerta's authority as legal and that his "comrades in arms in the just defense of our constitutional rights" would continue to fight.

    Born: John Facenda, American sports announcer famous for his narration of NFL films; in Portsmouth, Virginia (d. 1984); Cecil Travis, American MLB player, in Riverdale, Georgia (d. 2006); Axel Stordahl, American musician who arranged the background music for Frank Sinatra, in New York City (d. 1963); and Robert Stafford, Governor of Vermont, and later its U.S Representative, then U.S. Senator, between 1959 and 1989; in Rutland, Vermont (d. 2006)

August 9, 1913 (Saturday)
Last visit of Wilhelm II. in Lübeck

    Slightly less than one year before the outbreak of World War One, a diplomat from Austria-Hungary told representatives from Italy and Germany that his Empire intended to plan an invasion of Serbia. The private discussion would be revealed on December 5, 1914, by Italian Prime Minister Giovanni Giolitti, who said that Italy refused to participate.
    The German Empreror visits Lübeck the last time
    Born: Herman Talmadge, American politician and white supremacist who served as Governor of Georgia (1948-1955) and then U.S. Senator (1957-1981); in McRae, Georgia (d. 2002)

August 10, 1913 (Sunday)

    The Treaty of Bucharest was signed at 10:30 a.m., ending the Second Balkan War. Serbia and Greece agreed to withdraw their troops from Bulgaria within three days, and Romania agreed to withdraw from Bulgaria within 15 days. In return, Bulgaria, which had won control of most of the region of Macedonia from Turkey in the First Balkan War, gave up 90 percent of its gains. Serbia increased its size by 80% with the acquisition of northern Macedonia, and Greece increased in size by 68% with the southern half of Macedonia.Bulgaria also ceded Southern Dobruja to Romania, and agreed to demobilize its armed forces immediately. The parties also agreed to submit any future disputes over their borders for arbitration by Belgium, the Netherlands or Switzerland.
    Born: Wolfgang Paul, German physicist and 1989 winner of Nobel Prize in Physics, in Lorenzkirch; and Noah Beery Jr., American TV actor (The Rockford Files); in New York City (d. 1994)

August 11, 1913 (Monday)

    The London ambassadors conference, of Europe's six "Great Powers" (Austria-Hungary, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, the United Kingdom), settled on the boundaries of the new Principality of Albania, created from former Turkish territory by the Balkan League during the First Balkan War. Greece received most of the Chameria, the southern part of the region occupied by the Albanian people, which was incorporated into Epirus, with the capital, Yanina, being renamed as Ioannina. British Foreign Secretary Edward Grey told Parliament the next day that the division of the Albanian people had been made to avoid a war between the Great Powers over the region.
    Twelve workers on the Panama Canal, all but one of them Panamanian, were killed in a sudden rockslide at the quarry at Puerto Bello.
    Born: Sir Angus Wilson, British novelist, in Bexhill-on-Sea (d. 1991); H. Clay Earles, American auto racing entrepreneur, in Axton, Virginia (d. 1999)

August 12, 1913 (Tuesday)

    The brand name "Oreo" was registered by the United States Patent and Trademark Office for exclusive use by the National Biscuit Company (Nabisco) for its cookies, first marketed on March 6, 1912. Theories of the origin of the name include that it was from the Greek word oros (όρος) (for "mountain"), or the French word or (for "gold"), or the Greek word oraia (ωραία), meaning "nice".

August 13, 1913 (Wednesday)

    After an all-night session, the New York State Assembly voted 79-45 to impeach Governor William Sulzer. The eight articles included accusations of grand larceny, bribery, obstruction of justice, abuse of the public trust, and perjury. Lieutenant Governor Martin H. Glynn became the Acting Governor under state law, as confirmed by the state Attorney General on August 18, although Sulzer said that he would not abandon his office while awaiting his trial in the State Senate on September 18. Sulzer would be found guilty, by a vote of 43-12, on three of the charges, and have removed from office on October 17.
    HMCS Karluk, the flagship for the Canadian Arctic Expedition led by Vilhjalmur Stefansson, became trapped in ice in the Arctic Ocean. The Karluk would drift with the icepack and eventually be crushed by it on January 11; eleven men on the expedition would not survive the search for land.
    Chinese government troops and secessionist rebels fought a battle at Guangzhou (Canton), with 1,200 people being killed.
    The census results for Italy showed a population of 34,671,377.
    Born: Fred Davis, English snooker and billiards player; winner of World Snooker Championship 1948-49, 1951, 1952–56; and winner of World Billiards Championship in 1980; in Chesterfield (d. 1998)
    Born: Makarios III, Archbishop and first President of Cyprus (1960-1974); as Michail Christodolou Mouskos in Panagia (d. 1977)
    Died: August Bebel, 73, German politician who founded that nation's Social Democratic Party; Cornelius Moloney, British colonial administrator who governed Empire colonies that would become Gambia, Nigeria, Belize, and Trinidad and Tobago; Carlo Bourlet, 47, proponent of the artificial language of Esperanto; and Uriah M. Rose, 79, American jurist whose statue represents Arkansas in the National Statuary Hall Collection in the U.S. Capitol

August 14, 1913 (Thursday)

    In the skies near Kiev, Russian aviator Pyotr Nesterov became the first person to execute a loop, flying his Nieuport IV airplane on an upward pitch until he was upside down, then bringing it back down.

August 15, 1913 (Friday)

    Dr. Albert Schweitzer performed major surgery for the first time at the site of what would become the Albert Schweitzer Hospital at Lambaréné in Gabon, at that time a part of French Equatorial Africa in the jungle. The mission hospital was still under construction, but the patient had a strangulated hernia that required immediate attention. With his wife as the anesthetist, Dr. Schweitzer did the operation in the students' housing at the nearby mission school.

August 16, 1913 (Saturday)

    The English city of Southampton dedicated a monument to the Pilgrims who had sailed from there on July 15, 1620 to America.
    Germany became the third major nation to boycott the Panama–Pacific International Exposition.
    Born: Menachem Begin, sixth Prime Minister of Israel (1977-1983), and co-recipient of the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize, in Brest, Russian Empire (now Belarus) (d. 1992)
    Born: Ernest "Tiny" Bonham, American All-Star baseball pitcher, who died from surgical complications from an appendectomy, 18 days developing appendicitis while pitching a game for the Pittsburgh Pirates; in Ione, California (d. 1949)

August 17, 1913 (Sunday)

    The passenger ship State of California struck an uncharted reef off of Admiralty Island in Alaska, and sank within three minutes with 40 of the 179 passengers and crew drowning. The Pacific Coast Steamship Company vessel had been on its way from Seattle to Skagway.
    Harry K. Thaw, the millionaire who murdered architect Stanford White on June 25, 1906, and then was confined to an asylum rather than imprisoned, walked out of the mental hospital at Matteawan, New York and fled to Canada.Thaw would be recaptured, sent back to the hospital and finally be released in 1924, and would die in Florida on February 22, 1947.
    Massachusetts angler Charles Church caught a five foot long, 73 pound striped bass, the largest up to that time. Church's record would stand for almost 58 years as the mark that "remained the goal of every striper fisherman", until July 17, 1981, when Captain Bob Roschetta would reel in a 76-pound bass.
    The Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, was appointed as Inspector General of that nation's armed forces by his uncle, the Emperor Franz Joseph I. Franz Ferdinand would be assassinated less than a year later, leading to the outbreak of World War One.
    Born: W. Mark Felt, American law enforcer and FBI Associate Director 1972-73, identified in 2005 as the secret source for Watergate information whom reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein identified only as "Deep Throat"; in Twin Falls, Idaho (d. 2008); and Rudy York, American major league baseball player between 1934 and 1948; in Ragland, Alabama (d. 1970)

August 18, 1913 (Monday)

    At the roulette wheel at Le Grande Casino in Monte Carlo, Monaco, the color black came up 26 times in a row. The probability of the occurrence was 1 in 136,823,184 The incident is cited as an illustration of the gambler's fallacy, because after the wheel stopped at black ten straight times, casino patrons began betting large sums of money on red, on the logic that black could not possibly come up again. The odds of red or black coming up on any individual spin were the same each time—18 out of 37; to no surprise of statisticians, "the casino made several million francs that night".
    Venezuela government troops recaptured the town of Santa Ana de Coro, located in the state of Falcón, from the rebels led by former President Cipriano Castro. Two of the rebel leaders, General Lazaro Gonzales and General Urbina, were killed in the battle, while President Castro was able to flee.

August 19, 1913 (Tuesday)

    The derailing of a train carrying dynamite caused an explosion killing almost 100 people in the Mexico City suburb of Tacubaya.
    After his airplane failed at an altitude of 900 feet (270 m), aviator Adolphe Pégoud became the first person to bail out to safety from an airplane and to land safely.
    The Turkish council of ministers voted to drop claims to territory west of the Maritza River in return for keeping Adrianople.
    Born: Dick Simmons, American TV actor who played the title role in Sergeant Preston of the Yukon, in Saint Paul, Minnesota (d. 2003); and John Argyris, Greek-born German aeronautical engineer and computer scientist, in Volos (d. 2004)

August 20, 1913 (Wednesday)

    The combination of materials that would become known as "stainless steel was cast for the first time, by British metallurgist Harry Brearley. On test number 1008, at a laboratory in Sheffield, Brearley created an alloy that consisted of 12.8% chromium, 0.44% manganese, 0.2% silicon, 0.24% carbon and 85.32% iron. Brearley would later recount that "When microscopic studies of this steel were being made, one of the first noticeable things was that the usual reagent used for etching the polished surface of a microsection would not etch, or etched very slowly... The significance of this is that etching is a form of corrosion, and the specimens behaved in vinegar and other food acids as they behaved with the etching reagents."
    Dr. Mario Piacenza became the first person to climb Mount Numakum, a 22,000 foot high Himalayan peak.
    Born: Roger Wolcott Sperry, American neurobiologist, and co-recipient of the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine; in Hartford, Connecticut (d. 1994)
    Died: Émile Ollivier, 88, Prime Minister of France in 1870. Ollivier was blamed in his obituary for "diplomacy... of the wildest and most unreasonable kind" with German Prussia. He was forced to resign after the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, which saw the unification of Germany and the fall of Paris to German troops.

August 21, 1913 (Thursday)

    The San Miguel Corporation, one of the largest food and beverage conglomerates n Southeast Asia, was incorporated in the Philippines.
    Born: John Henry Faulk, American radio show host whose career was ruined after he was wrongfully identified as a Communist sympathizer and blacklisted; in Austin, Texas (d. 1990). Faulk later won a $3.5 million verdict against his accusers.
    Born: Robert Krasker, Australian-born British cinematographer, in Perth (d. 1981)

August 22, 1913 (Friday)

    Fifty men, employed at a gold mine in the Mysore State of India, were killed as they were being lowered into the mine shaft. The cable that held their elevator cage broke, sending them plummeting to the bottom.
    As it neared completion, Wolf House, built by author Jack London, was destroyed by a fire before he could move in. "Carefully designed to avert natural disasters and last a thousand years," an author would write later, "it lasted two days." In 1995, a forensic team would conclude that the fire was accidental, caused by the summer heat and the resulting combustion of an oil-soaked rag left behind by a workman.
    Born: Bruno Pontecorvo, Italian nuclear physicist and Soviet spy who defected to the USSR in 1950; in Marina di Pisa

August 23, 1913 (Saturday)

    The famous statue, "The Little Mermaid" (Den lille havrue), sculpted by Edvard Eriksen, was unveiled in Copenhagen at the Langelinie pier, commemorating the fairy tale written by Hans Christian Andersen.
    The Great Northern Telegraph Company signed an agreement with the Empire of Japan, expanding its network of cable communications into Asia.
    Born: Bob Crosby, American singer and musician, in Spokane, Washington (d. 1993)

August 24, 1913 (Sunday)

    English poet Herbert Warren, inspired by Mohandas Gandhi to convert to the Indian religion of Jainism, founded the "Mahavira Brotherhood" in London in hopes of spreading the religion in the United Kingdom and the rest of the western world.
    The city of San Gabriel, California, was incorporated, 142 years after the founding of the Mission San Gabriel Arcángel in 1771, with a population of 1,500 people. One century later, it would have over 40,000 residents.
    Born: Charles Snead Houston, American physician and mountaineer, in New York City (d. 2009); and Lan Jen Chu, Chinese-born American inventor and theoretician in microwave technology (d. 1973)
    Died: E. M. Bounds, 78, American evangelist

August 25, 1913 (Monday)

    Leo Frank, the Jewish superintendent of a pencil factory in Atlanta, was convicted by a jury of the April 26 murder of Mary Phagan, and sentenced to death.
    Born: Eugene V. Rostow, American diplomat, in Brooklyn (d. 2002)

August 26, 1913 (Tuesday)

    Dublin Lock-out in Ireland: Members of James Larkin's Irish Transport and General Workers' Union employed by the Dublin United Tramways Company begin strike action in defiance of the dismissal of trade union members by its chairman.
    The U.S. peace mission to Mexico ended, when former Governor Lind of Minnesota left Mexico City.
    Died: Edward L. Baker, Jr., African-American winner of the Medal of Honor for heroism during the Spanish–American War

August 27, 1913 (Wednesday)

    British aviator Harry Hawker was two-thirds of the way done with his quest to become the first person to fly an airplane around the British Isles, and slightly less than 500 miles from winning a £10,000 prize ($25,000 in 1913 USD, worth roughly $580,000 or £375,000 a century later), when his plane crashed in an accident blamed on his footwear. Hawker escaped serious injury, but "His boots were rubber-soled, and at a critical moment his foot slipped off the rudder bar" of his seaplane, which went out of control and crashed into the Irish Sea, a few feet from the Irish coast at Loughshinny. Hawker escaped with only a broken arm. The sponsor of the prize, the British newspaper the Daily Mail, presented Hawker with a smaller £1,000 prize "in recognition of his skill and courage. The rubber-soled boots, which cost Hawker the equivalent of half a million dollars, were ruined by the seawater.
    U.S. President Wilson delivered a written message to Congress, proclaiming American neutrality in that nation's civil war, and urged all Americans to leave Mexico. Wilson stated that he would "see to it that neither side to the struggle now going on in Mexico receive any assistance from this side of the border" and that the U.S. could not "be the partisans of either party" nor "the virtual umpire between them".
    A meteor crashed into the Sakonnet River, near Tiverton, Rhode Island. The explosion, which news reports said "sounded like the discharge of a twelve-inch gun", was heard within a 20-mile radius and broke windows in nearby homes.
    Born: Nina Schenk von Stauffenberg, Russian-born wife of German Count Claus von Stauffenberg, who was imprisoned after his 1944 attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler; in Kovno (now Kaunas), Lithuania (d. 2006)

August 28, 1913 (Thursday)

    At The Hague, Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands dedicated the Peace Palace, which would later house the International Court of Justice .
    The New York Yacht Club accepted the fourth challenge by Britain's Sir Thomas Lipton in the America's Cup.
    Born: Robertson Davies, Canadian novelist, in Thamesville, Ontario (d. 1995); Richard Tucker, American tenor,in Brooklyn (d. 1975); Boris Pahor, Slavic-language writer, in Trst, Austria-Hungary (now Trieste, Italy) (still alive in 2013); and Jack Dreyfus, American financier who founded the Dreyfus Funds; in Montgomery, Alabama (d. 2009)

August 29, 1913 (Friday)

    General Lucio Blanco, rebel commander in the Mexican Revolution, began the redistribution of land in the states of Nuevo León and Tamaulipas.
    Born: Jan Ekier, Polish pianist and composer, in Krakau, Austria-Hungary (now Kraków in Poland) (still alive in 2013); and Sylvia Fine, American composer and lyricist, in Brooklyn (d. 1991)

August 30, 1913 (Saturday)

    The U.S. Naval Air Service was established upon recommendation of Admiral George Dewey. On January 20, the Pensacola Naval Air Station would be created in Pensacola, Florida.
    French Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, assisting on the expedition to locate further remains of the Piltdown Man, found a canine tooth that perfectly fit the skull of the alleged early ancestor of homo sapiens.

    Eight men and one woman aboard the tugboat Alice were killed when the boilers exploded as the boat was towing barges on the Ohio River near Coraopolis, Pennsylvania. The force of the blast hurled one of the boilers a distance of 1,600 feet. Six other persons survived and were rescued by a passing steamer, the Harriet.
    Born: Thomas F. Torrance, American theologian, to missionary parents in Chengdu, China; (d. 2007)

August 31, 1913 (Sunday)

    The last barrier to the Pacific side of the Panama Canal was opened with the explosion of 44,800 pounds of dynamite, allowing the Pacific Ocean to flow into the locks at Miraflores. Work began two days later "to remove the last barrier of the Atlantic Channel".

    The city of Nanjing was retaken from rebels by Chinese government troops.
    Dublin Lock-out: "Bloody Sunday": The dispute escalated when the Dublin Metropolitan Police killed one demonstrator and injured 500 more in dispersing the street-car strike protesters. Thirty people were arrested, including the Irish Transport Union leader, James Larkin, whose attempt to an address the crowd from a hotel balcony was followed by the police intervention. The burial of James Nolan, three days later, was attended by 50,000 people.

    Born: Bernard Lovell, British radio astronomer, in Oldland Common (d. 2012); Helen Levitt, American photographer, in New York (d. 2009); Jacques Foccart, French politician who controlled that nation's policies toward Africa, in Ambrières (d. 1997); and Ray Dandridge, Negro League baseball player and Baseball Hall of Fame enshrinee who was the first African-American in the minor league American Association; in Richmond, Virginia (d. 1994)

    Died: Timothy Sullivan, 51, former U.S. Congressman and New York City political boss, after being struck and dismembered by a train. Sullivan remained unidentified for several days and was set to be sent to a potter's field for the poor, but was recognized on September 13 by a policeman, after which he received a large funeral.


September 1, 1913 (Monday)

    French aviator Adolphe Pégoud demonstrated that he could fly upside an airplane upside-down on a sustained flight, traveling for 400 meters. He was using a specially constructed Bleriot monoplane, and after reaching 3,000 feet, put the plane in a quarter-loop and kept it in the upside down position. Pégoud, who would fly a full vertical loop on September 21, also did a "vertical-S" trick, which was reported in the press as having "looped the loop".
    The anti-government rebellion in southern China was brought to an end, when all six rebellious provinces surrendered to the Beiyang Army, led by General Zhang Xun, retook Nanjing.
    George Bernard Shaw's satirical play, Androcles and the Lion, was performed for the first time.
    Born: Ludwig Merwart, Austrian painter and graphic artist, in Vienna (d. 1979); and Woody Stephens, American thoroughbred racehorse trainer, in Stanton, Kentucky (d. 1998)

September 2, 1913 (Tuesday)

    At New Haven, Connecticut, the collision of the White Mountain Flyer and the Bar Harbor Express, two trains on the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad, killed 21 passengers and injured 30.
    On the same day, a rear-end collision between two sections of the London-Scotland express at Carlisle, England, caused a fire that burned 15 passengers to death.
    Born: Bill Shankly Scottish soccer football manager who guided Liverpool to three English League titles (1964, 1966, 1973), two FA Cup wins (1965 and 1974) and the 1973 UEFA Cup (d. 1981), in Glenbuck; and Israel Gelfand, Soviet mathematician, in Krasni Okny, Russian Empire (d. 2009)
    Died: Thomas Sperry, 49, creator (in 1896) of trading stamps, with the S&H Green Stamps; of ptomaine poisoning contracted while on an ocean voyage.
    Died: Bill Miner, 67, American criminal nicknamed "The Gentleman Robber"

September 3, 1913 (Wednesday)

    Severnaya Zemlya, a group of islands located above the Arctic Circle, was discovered on a hydrographic expedition by the crew of the Russian icebreakers Taimyr and Vaigach, and was named 'Emperor Nicholas II Land' by the explorers, in honor of the Russian Emperor.The archipelago would prove to be the last major group of previously unknown lands on Earth to be discovered.
    William Howard Taft, who had finished his term as President of the United States six months earlier, was elected President of the American Bar Association.
    Born: Alan Ladd, American film actor, in Hot Springs, Arkansas (d. 1964)

September 4, 1913 (Thursday)

    Ernst August Wagner, a schoolteacher in the German village of Mühlhausen, in Württemberg, murdered his wife, four local children and eleven other adults, after setting fires in different locations.
    Born: Stanford Moore, American biochemist and co-winner of the 1972 Nobel Prize in Chemistry;in Chicago (d. 1982); Kenzō Tange, Japanese architect and 1987 Pritzker Architecture Prize winner, in Osaka (d. 2005); and Mickey Cohen, American gangster, in Brooklyn (d. 1976)
    Died: Henry Billings Brown, 77, U.S. Supreme Court associate justice from 1890 to 1906), best known for authoring the majority opinion in Plessy v. Ferguson upholding the constitutionality of racial segregation laws.

September 5, 1913 (Friday)

    A fire in the city of Hot Springs, Arkansas, destroyed 55 city blocks of property, causing damages of six million dollars.The blaze started "in a negro dwelling on Church Street", then spread southeast, destroying the county courthouse, the city high school, four hotels, the Iron Mountain railroad station and "a hundred or more business buildings and many residences".
    Sergei Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 2 was performed for the first time. The manuscript would be destroyed by fire in 1917 during the Russian Revolution, and Prokofiev would reconstruct it, introducing a new version on May 8, 1924.
    Born: George E. Valley, American nuclear physicist who developed the H2X radar for American bombers in World War II, and later conceptualized the Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) missile defense system; in New York City (d. 1999); and Frank Thomas, American animator for Walt Disney's films, including Pinocchio, Bambi, 101 Dalmatians and The Fox and the Hound; in Fresno, California (d. 2004)

September 6, 1913 (Saturday)

    Dr. Hideyo Noguchi of the Rockefeller Institute announced that he had isolated the virus that causes rabies.
    Excavation of the Panama Canal was completed, and the Culebra Cut was scheduled to be flooded on October 9.
    U.S. President Woodrow Wilson and his physician, Dr. Carey Grayson, were almost "run over by a streetcar" as they were walking back to the White House at night. "A policeman, seeing the possibility of an accident to the President, jumped in front of the car with both hands raised", and the car stopped less than ten feet from the President and physician.
    Professional track athlete Hans Holmér won the British championship for the mile run, winning in Edinburgh at 4 minutes, 24.4 seconds.
    Born: Ross Munro, Canadian war correspondent, in Ottawa (d. 1990); Leônidas da Silva, Brazilian soccer football player, in Rio de Janeiro (d. 2004); and Wesley A. Swift, American white supremacist and minister who founded the Church of Jesus Christ–Christian; in New Jersey (d. 1970)
    Died: James Orr, 69, Scottish theologian

September 7, 1913 (Sunday)

    Outraged over the killing of Japanese nationals at Nanjing in China, 15,000 people protested outside the Foreign Ministry in Tokyo and demanded military action against China. Japan demanded an apology and payment of damages, a request which would initially be ignored.
    Born: Valerie Taylor, American lesbian pulp fiction novelist, as Velma Nacella Young, in Aurora, Illinois (d. 1997)

September 8, 1913 (Monday)

    The poem "September 1913", by W. B. Yeats, was first published, in the Irish Times, with the title "Romance in Ireland". The 32 line poem referred to late Irish separatist John O'Leary, and contained the refrain, "Romantic Ireland's dead and gone, It's with O'Leary in the grave."
    The Broadway musical Sweethearts, with music by Victor Herbert and lyrics by Robert B. Smith, premiered at the New Amsterdam Theatre.
    Born: Mary Carew, American athlete and gold medalist in the 1932 Olympics at Los Angeles; in Medford, Massachusetts (d. 2002)

September 9, 1913 (Tuesday)

    In Germany, BASF started the world's first plant for the production of fertilizer based on the Haber–Bosch process, feeding today about a third of the world's population.
    The Zeppelin L I, newly commissioned by the German Navy wrecked in the North Sea, 18 miles off of the coast of Heligoland, drowning 14 of the 21 crewmen on board.
    The U.S. Department of Agriculture reported an "unprecedented" yield in wheat production for 1913. "Never before in the history of the country has there been such a bountiful wheat harvest as has been gathered this year, the New York Times noted.
    In the skies near Kiev, Russian aviator Pyotr Nesterov became the first person to execute a loop. Nesterov, a pilot for the Imperial Russian Air Service took a Nieuport IV airplane aloft, and when he reached an altitude of 3,300 feet, shut off the engine, then took the plane on a vertical dive, restarted it at 2,000 feet, and "kept on pulling until the horizon slid up over his head", then came back to right-side up.When he landed, he was arrested and spent ten days in jail for negligent use of government property.
    Robert Owen Jr. was awarded U.S. patent number 1,072,980 for his invention of the ratchet wrench, applied for on February 3.
    The Hudson River was dammed to create the Ashokan Reservoir, providing 250,000,000 gallons of water a day to New York City (in 1924, the Gilboa Dam would open, providing 500 million gallons a day to the city).
    Born: Harry Snyder, Jr., Canadian-born American fast-food entrepreneur who co-founded, in 1948, In-N-Out Burger; in Vancouver (d. 1976)
    Died: Paul de Smet de Naeyer, 70, former Prime Minister of Belgium.

September 10, 1913 (Wednesday)

    William J. Gaynor, the Mayor of New York City since 1910, died suddenly while on the ocean liner RMS Baltic, as it was nearing Liverpool. Gaynor, who had announced his candidacy for re-election only one week earlier, has been in poor health since being wounded in an assassination attempt on August 9, 1910, and was succeeded by Ardolph L. Kline, who presided over the Board of Aldermen. Gaynor's body would lay in state at the Town Hall of Liverpool, after which the body was transported back to the U.S. On September 21, his funeral would be held at the City Hall in New York.
    Born: Lincoln Gordon, American diplomat who helped create the Alliance for Progress of U.S. economic aid to Latin America; in New York City (d. 2009)

September 11, 1913 (Thursday)

    Joseph Ward, who had been Prime Minister of New Zealand until March 1912, was selected again to lead the Liberal Party after returning from an extended holiday in London, and became Leader of the Opposition.

    Dominican Republic gunboats bombarded the city of Puerto Plata, the base for anti-government rebels.("Puerto Plata Blockade", New York Times, September 12, 1913) (move to Sept 11)
    Born: Paul "Bear" Bryant, American college football coach who guided the University of Alabama to six national championships (1961, 1964, 1965, 1973, 1978, 1979); in Moro Bottom, Arkansas (d. 1983)

September 12, 1913 (Friday)

    In Birmingham, England, at the 83rd annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, the first discussion by scientists, of the theories of Niels Bohr quantum model of the atom, with mixed reactions from the scientists.

    Born: Jesse Owens, African-American Olympic athlete who won four gold medals at the 1936 Summer Olympics; as James Cleveland (J.C.) Owens, in Oakville, Alabama (d. 1980); and Eiji Toyoda, Japanese industrialist who built the Toyota Motor Corporation to become one of the largest automobile manufacturers in the world; in Nagoya (still alive in 2013)

September 13, 1913 (Saturday)

    The impeachment trial of New York Governor William Sulzer began in the State Senate.
    Born: Herman Goldstine, American computer scientist, in Chicago (d. 2004); and W. Stanford Reid, Canadian theologian, in Westmount, Quebec (d. 1996)
    Died: Aurel Vlaicu, 30, pioneering Romanian pilot, in an airplane crash while trying to fly across the Carpathian Mountains

September 14, 1913 (Sunday)

    The proposed route for the Lincoln Highway, which would become the first transcontinental paved highway in the United States, was announced in newspapers across the U.S.
    Baseball pitcher Larry Cheney of the Chicago Cubs, set a Major League record that still stands, for most hits allowed in a shutout. Although the Cubs got only 11 hits, and the New York Giants got 14, the Cubs still won 7-0.
    Born: Jacobo Árbenz, President of Guatemala, 1951–1954, until his ouster by a CIA-planned coup d'état; in Quetzaltenango (d. 1971)

September 15, 1913 (Monday)

    The first successful four-wheel drive vehicle, the Jeffery Quad, was delivered to the United States Army by the Thomas B. Jeffery Company. With modifications, the Quad would become the transport vehicle of choice for the armies of France, Russia and the United States during World War One, and a civilian version would become popular following its debut in April 1914.
    Born: John N. Mitchell, U.S. Attorney General (1969–1972) who was convicted of conspiracy, obstruction of justice and perjury in 1975, and served 19 months in prison (1977–1978); in Detroit (d. 1988)

September 16, 1913 (Tuesday)

    In Libya, Arab tribesmen fought with the occupying Italian Army, killing 33 officers and soldiers, including their leader, General Alfonso Torelli. Another 73 Italians were wounded, and the Libyan losses were unknown.

September 17, 1913 (Wednesday)

    The Anti-Defamation League was founded at a convention of the B'nai B'rith in Chicago, with Sigmund Livingston as its first president.

September 18, 1913 (Thursday)

    The bill for the Federal Reserve Act was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, 287 – 95, and moved on to the United States Senate. On December 19, the Senate would pass the bill 54 – 34, and the measure, creating the Federal Reserve System and the Federal Reserve Board, would be signed into law by President Wilson on December 22.

September 19, 1913 (Friday)

    Mexican terrorists dynamited a railroad train, sixty miles south of Saltillo, killing 40 soldiers and 10 second-class passengers. Reportedly, the rebels had set on the track two land mines, which were "set off by electricity".
    Born: Frances Farmer, American film actress, in Seattle (d. 1970)

September 20, 1913 (Saturday)

    Francis Ouimet, a 20-year-old American amateur, won golf's U.S. Open in a three-way playoff against five time British Open winner Harry Vardon and defending British Open champion Ted Ray. At the end of the regulation four rounds, all three had scores of 304 on 72 holes. In a major upset, the relatively unknown Ouimet scored a 72, compared to Vardon's 77 and Ray's 78 in the playoff.
    The foundation stone for the Goetheanum, center for the anthroposophical movement founded by Rudolf Steiner, was set at the building site in the Switzerland town of Dornach, though construction would not be finished for another nine years.
    U.S. Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan signed treaties in Washington with the Foreign Ministers of Panama, and Guatemala, joining El Salvador in signing the Convention for the Establishment of International Commissions of Inquiry, as a means of resolving disputes between the nations without war.
    With the Canadian exploration ship HMCS Karluk trapped in the Arctic ice, expedition leader Vilhjalmur Stefansson and a few shipmates set off on what was to be a ten-day hunt for food for the ship. Stefansson would return to find that the ice pack, and the trapped ship, had floated away.

September 21, 1913 (Sunday)

    Twelve days after Pyotr Nesterov's September 9 loop at Kiev, Adolphe Pégoud duplicated the feat. Because Nesterov's "misuse" of an airplane was not mentioned in the Russian press, Pégoud was reported to have been the first person to perform the aerial maneuver of flying an airplane in a vertical circle and inspired pilots worldwide to try similar stunts.

September 22, 1913 (Monday)

    The film Ivanhoe, starring King Baggot in the title role and directed by Herbert Brenon, was released in the United States by Universal Pictures.
    The Philadelphia Athletics clinched the American League baseball title, after beating the Detroit Tigers in a doubleheader, 4-0 and 1-0. with a 12-game lead over the Cleveland Naps and only 11 games left in the season.
    Born: Lillian Chestney, American illustrator, in New York City (d. 2000)

September 23, 1913 (Tuesday)

    Roland Garros made an unprecedented airplane trip across the sea, crossing the Mediterranean between Fréjus, France and landing in Bizerte in Tunisia on a 558-mile flight of slightly less than eight hours.Garros took off at 5:27 in the morning and, though a cylinder head on the airplane motor breaking in mid-flight, avoided landing on the islands of Corsica or Sardinia. With "barely 5 liters of fuel left— enough for only a few more minutes of flying", Garros sighted the French naval base at Tunisia and landed at the parade ground.
    Albanian nationalist Isa Boletini led a revolt in Serbian-occupied Macedonia, with 6,000 fighters taking control of the western Macedonian towns of Debar and Ohrid, which would revert to Yugoslavian control after World War I.
    Born: Carl-Henning Pedersen, Danish painter, in Copenhagen (d. 2007)
    Died: Patrick Ford, 76, Irish-born American newspaper publisher and editor of The Irish World; and Julius Preuss, 52, German-Jewish physician and Talmudic scholar who authored the 1911 pioneering textbook Biblical-Talmudic Medicine (Biblisch-Talmudisch Medizin)

September 24, 1913 (Wednesday)

    At Melun, French airman Albert Moreau demonstrated the first airplane with an automatic pilot, winning a prize for the design for stability control. Moreau, taking a brave passenger with him, "flew 17 miles without touching the controls of the machine". "Throughout the flight", the New York Times wrote, "even when the machine banked over and rolled so much that the passenger asked him to take the controls, Moreau sat calmly, with his arms folded, and the machine always righted itself."
    A delegation of 500 Protestants in northern Ireland met in Belfast to organize resistance to the proposed Home Rule law, and pledged to resist any decrees made by an Irish Parliament.
    Born: Wilson Rawls, American author best known for 1961 children's book Where the Red Fern Grows; in Scraper, Oklahoma (d. 1984); and Herb Jeffries, African-American singer and actor, in Detroit (still alive in 2013)

September 25, 1913 (Thursday)

    Stage actor Charlie Chaplin began his movie career, signing a one-year contract with Keystone Film Company for a salary of $150 per week.
    Baltimore, Maryland became the first U.S. city to have an ordinance "requiring the use of separate blocks for residences by white and colored people respectively", with a law going into effect creating separate zones for Whites and African-Americans to live. Similar ordinances to prohibit people from different races from living on the same city block, would soon be enacted in other Southern cities, including Atlanta, St. Louis and Birmingham, Alabama.
    Born: Seaforth Mackenzie, Australian poet, in Pinjarra, Western Australia (drowned 1955); and Norman O. Brown, American classicist, in El Oro, Mexico (d. 2002)
    Died: Seaborn Roddenbery, 43, U.S. Representative for Georgia, who campaigned to outlaw interracial marriages throughout the United States

September 26, 1913 (Friday)

    A tugboat became the first vessel to pass through the locks of the Panama Canal, sailing from the Atlantic Ocean and arriving at the Gatun Lake after being raised to the lake's level through three chambers. The old tugboat was, appropriately, named the Gatún.
    Japan sent a three-day ultimatum to China, demanding reparations and an apology for the deaths of more Japanese citizens in Nanjing and for "insults to the flag".General Chang Hsun, commander of government troops at Nanjing, apologized two days later, appearing before the Japanese consulate "accompanied by a bodyguard of 800 men".
    Died: H. G. Pelissier, 39, British comedian, of cirrhosis of the liver

September 27, 1913 (Saturday)

    Philadelphia became the first American city to implement the use of chlorine gas for disenfection of its drinking water, a process that would become the standard in the United States by 1941.
    Baseball's New York Giants captured the National League pennant, despite losing 4-0 to the Brooklyn Dodgers, because the second place Philadelphia Phillies lost as well. As the New York Times put it, "The Phillies may now win all of their remaining games and the Giants lose all of theirs and the New Yorks will be victors by one full game. Hurrah!"
    At Ulster, in north Ireland, 12,000 men marched in a parade to protest Home Rule.
    Born: Albert Ellis, American psychotherapist who developed rational emotive behavior therapy; in Pittsburgh (d. 2007); and Charlotte Thompson Reid, U.S. Representative for Illinois (1963–1971), in Kankakee, Illinois (d. 2007)

September 28, 1913 (Sunday)

    General Félix Díaz was nominated as the Labor Party's candidate for President of Mexico in the upcoming October 26 elections.
    Born: Alice Marble, American women's tennis player who won 12 U.S. Open titles (including four women's singles), as well as six Wimbledon titles (1939 singles) between 1937 and 1940 (d. 1990); Warja Honegger-Lavater, Swiss illustrator, in Winterthur (d. 2007); and Richard M. Bohart, American entomologist (d. 2007)

September 29, 1913 (Monday)

    The Treaty of Constantinople was signed between Turkey and Bulgaria, ending the last dispute in the Second Balkan War. That day, Bulgaria released its casualty reports for the First and Second Balkan Wars, announcing that 44,892 of its soldiers had been killed, and another 104,586 wounded.
    Thomas Mott Osborne, the Chairman of New York's State Commission on Prison Reform, began his personal investigation of prison conditions by spending a week as prisoner "Tom Brown" at the Auburn State Prison. At a chapel service the day before, Osborne and Auburn's warden informed the prisoners of what he was doing, but did not let the guards know. After witnessing conditions from the inside for a week, Osborne recommended immediate reforms.
    Sir Thomas Bowater was elected as Lord Mayor of London.
    Maurice Prévost of France set a new speed record, traveling 125 miles per hour in an airplane at the International Aeroplane Cup race at Rheims.
    Born:
        Stanley Kramer, American film director and producer, in New York City (d. 2001);
        Silvio Piola, Italian footballer who won the 1938 World Cup for Italy, and highest ever goalscorer in Serie A, the nation's highest league; in Robbio (d. 1996)
        Trevor Howard, British stage and film actor, as Trevor Howard-Smith in Bushey, Hertfordshire (d. 1988);
        Dennis Sandole, American jazz guitarist, composer, and teacher, in Philadelphia (d. 2000);
    Died: Rudolf Diesel, the German engineer who invented the diesel engine, died at the age of 55 after jumping, or being thrown, from his cabin on the passenger steamer SS Dresden. His body would be found in the ocean on October 10.

September 30, 1913 (Tuesday)

    The first classes were held at the new State Normal School in Minot, North Dakota. The institution is now Minot State University
    The United Kingdom withdrew its support for the five-nation banking loan to China for railroad construction.
    All 54 passengers and crew of the British freighter Templemore were rescued after a wireless distress call was sent from the ship, sinking in the mid-Atlantic. The ship Arcadia received the signal and carried out the evacuation.
    Born: Bill Walsh, American film producer, in New York City (d. 1975); Robert Nisbet, American sociologist, in Los Angeles (d. 1996); and Cholly Atkins, American choreographer, as Charles Atkinson in Pratt City, Alabama (d. 2003)
    Died: Dr. Reginald Heber Fitz, 70, Professor of the Harvard Medical School who was credited with identifying the inflammation of the appendix, which he referred to as appendicitis, and prescribing its treatment, the appendectomy.


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 courtmartial 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, who had hired mercenary soldiers to fight against the British in 1883 in an attempt to become King of the Zulu Nation. Dinuzulu was exiled to the island of St. Helena for seven years and then imprisoned in South Africa for another two years.

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.[62]
    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.[63] The first presentation was the George Bernard Shaw play, Caesar and Cleopatra, with the British actor Johnston Forbes-Robertson starring as Julius Caesar.[64]
    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.[65]
    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.[66] 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.[67]
    Princeton University inaugurated its first graduate school program.[49]
    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.[49]
    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.[68]
    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.[69]

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."[70]
    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.[71]
    Following a vote of no confidence, Prime Minister Romanones of Spain resigned, along with his cabinet.[49] Former Prime Minister Eduardo Dato would become the new premier on October 29.[72]
    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".[73]
    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.[74]
    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.[75]
    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.[76]
    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..."[77] 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.[78]
    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.[79]
    Eduardo Dato became the new Prime Minister of Spain.[80]
    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.[81]
    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.[82] The last strip would be published on June 25, 1944, two months after Herriman's death.[83]
    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.[84]
    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.[85]

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[86] and would be granted U.S. Patent #1,113,149 on October 6, 1914.[87]

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.[88]

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.[89]


November 1, 1913 (Saturday)

    Notre Dame upset Army, 35-13. It was the first time the forward pass was used in a football game on the national stage, showing its strategic advantage for smaller teams against larger ones.[1]
    Born: Andrzej Mostowski, Polish mathematician, in Lemberg, Austria-Hungary, developed the set theory Mostowski collapse lemma (d. 1975)

November 2, 1913 (Sunday)

    Prince Ernest Augustus became Duke of Brunswick, the last noble to hold the title before the German state was disestablished after World War One.
    St. Louis Browns manager George Stovall signed on with the Kansas City Packers as first baseman/manager, the first MLB player to jump to the Federal League.[2]
    Born: Burt Lancaster, American actor and film producer, and winner of the Oscar for Best Actor in Elmer Gantry, in New York City (d. 1994); Ivor Roberts-Jones, British sculptor, in Oswestry, England, best known for "The Two Kings" at Harlech Castle, Wales and the commissioned statue of Winston Churchill in Parliament Square, London (d. 1996); and Harry Babbitt, American singer with the Kay Kyser band during the Big Band era, in St. Louis (d. 2004)

November 3, 1913 (Monday)

    The U.S. Department of Justice filed an antitrust suit seeking to break up the International Harvester Company.[3]
    The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of a Massachusetts law, providing for a tax on foreign corporations.[3]
    The Pleasure Seekers Broadway production opened at the Winter Garden Theatre and ran for 72 performances.[4]
    Born: Marika Rökk, Austrian-German singer, dancer and actress, particularly for films during the Nazi era, In Cairo (d. 2004); Albert Cossery, Egyptian-born French writer, author of Men God Forgot and other novels, in Cairo [d. 2008)
    Died: Hans Bronsart von Schellendorf, 83, German classical composer who studied and performed with Franz Liszt (b. 1830)

November 4, 1913 (Tuesday)

    An earthquake with a magnitude of 6.3 killed 150 people in the Apurimac Region, Chile.[5]
    At least thirty-nine people were killed near Melun when the Marseilles-Lyons-Paris express train collided with a local train.[6]
    Born: Gig Young, American actor, Oscar winner for Best Actor for They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, in St. Cloud, Minnesota (d. 1978); Paul Irniger, Swiss criminal, last person to be executed in Switzerland (d. 1939)

November 5, 1913 (Wednesday)

    The first popular elections for United States Senators were held. Previously, state legislatures elected their states' two members of the United States Senate. In one of the earliest results, Blair Lee was elected as a Senator for Maryland, defeating Thomas Parran 112,000 to 71,000.[3]
    King Otto of Bavaria, known popularly was "Mad King Otto", was deposed by his cousin, Prince Regent Ludwig, who assumed the title Ludwig III, the last reigning King of Bavaria.[7]
    A declaration between Imperial Russia and China recognized Mongolia as part of China but with internal autonomy. However, the declaration was not considered legitimate by Mongolia, since its government had not participated in the decision.[8]
    China's President Yuan Shihkai dissolved the Kuomintang, the largest political party in the National Assembly, with nearly 300 deputies having to resign.[9]
    Federal troops repelled Pancho Villa and his forces from taking Chihuahua, Mexico.[10]
    Born: Vivien Leigh, British actress, Oscar winner for Best Actress in Gone With The Wind and A Streetcar Named Desire, in Darjeeling, British India (d. 1967); John McGiver, American actor best known for film roles in Breakfast at Tiffany's and The Manchurian Candidate, in New York City (d. 1975)

November 6, 1913 (Thursday)

    Saverne Affair – In Saverne, Alsace (now France but part of Germany in 1913), two local newspapers, Elsässer Anzeiger and Zaberner Anzeiger, ran articles concerning reports of disparaging remarks about Alsace residents, that had been made by 19-year-old Second Lieutenant Günter Freiherr von Forstner of the 2nd Upper Rhine Infantry Regiment No. 99 during a troop induction ceremony on October 28. Forstner reportedly told his soldiers, "If you are attacked, then make use of your weapon; if you stab such a Wackes (slur for a person who lived in the Alsace region) in the process, then you'll get ten marks from me."[11]
    Mohandas Gandhi was arrested while leading a march of Indian miners in South Africa.[12]
    All 3,000 members of the Indiana National Guard were activated by order of Governor Samuel M. Ralston, and called to Indianapolis to preserve order during the streetcar strike. The walkout was settled the next day.[13]
    Two major storm fronts converged on the western side of Lake Superior and grew into an extra-tropical cyclone. The storm - known at the 'White Hurricane' and eventually the Great Lakes Storm of 1913 - created hurricane-force winds, massive waves and whiteout conditions.[14]
    The steamer Cornell ran into a sudden northerly gale caused by the storm 50 miles (80 km) west of Whitefish Point in Lake Superior, and was badly damaged.[15]
    Died: William Henry Preece, 79, British electrical engineer and inventor who developed wireless communication for the United Kingdom (b. 1834)

November 7, 1913 (Friday)

    More than 200 people were killed in an earthquake in Peru near Abancay.[3]
    Great Lakes Storm of 1913 – Coast Guard stations and United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Weather Bureau offices at Lake Superior ports raised a vertical sequence of red, white, and red lanterns, indicating that a hurricane was coming.[16]
    Born: Albert Camus, French writer, Nobel Prize laureate, author of The Rebel and The Plague, in Dréan, French Algeria (d. 1960, killed in a vehicle accident); Elizabeth Bradford Holbrook, Canadian sculptor, co-founder of the Canadian Portrait Academy, in Hamilton, Ontario (d. 2009); Alekos Sakellarios, Greek writer and film director of 140 features including Woe to the Young, in Athens (d. 1991)
    Died: Alfred Russel Wallace, 90, Welsh biologist and naturalist who conceived the theory of evolution through natural selection, independently of Charles Darwin (b. 1823)

November 8, 1913 (Saturday)

    Great Lakes Storm of 1913 – The storm's status was upgraded to "severe", and centered over eastern Lake Superior, covering the entire lake basin.[17]
    The steamboat Louisiana ran aground and caught fire near Washington Island in Lake Michigan. The crew were able to evacuate and safely reach shore. A century later, the wreck remains a popular area for divers and archaeologists.[18][19]
    The American steamer Waldo was driven onto Gull Rock in Lake Superior. The vessel broke in two and the 24-person crew took shelter in the still-intact cabin for 90 hours until rescue from the Portage Life-Saving Station on November 11.[20]
    Georg Büchner's play Woyzeck, left unfinished at the writer's death in 1837, received its first performance, at the Residenztheater, Munich.[21]
    Born: Robert Strauss, American actor best known for film roles in The Seven Year Itch and The Man with the Golden Arm, in New York City (d. 1975)
    Died: John Belcher, 72, British architect, designer of Neo-baroque buildings such as the Ashton Memorial in London (b. 1841); and George Tracey, 52, American athlete who had been the champion in the half mile in 1886 and 1887; after being struck while crossing a railroad track in Rockingham, Nova Scotia.[22]

November 9, 1913 (Sunday)

    Great Lakes Storm of 1913 – The storm ravaged four of the Great Lakes. Most of the damage occurred in Lake Huron where huge waves battered ships, scrambling to seek shelter along the lake's southern end.[23]
    SS Henry B. Smith, a lake freighter transporting ore, was reported missing after leaving Marquette, Michigan, during a lull in the storm. Shortly after the storm returned, on-shore witnesses reported seeing the Henry B. Smith struggling through high waves to reach shelter at Keweenaw Point north of the harbor. It is believed the ship sank either the evening of the 9th or early morning of the 10th. All 25 on board were lost, with only two bodies recovered. The Henry B Smith wreck would not be found until May 2013 by shipwreck hunters, 535 feet (163 m) off Marquette.[24][25]
    SS Wexford, a British-built bulk freighter, sank while on Lake Huron. It was reported that between 17 and 25 of the crew were missing. The wreck would eventually be found on the lake bottom, 87 years after the disaster, on August 25, 2000.[26]
    SS James Carruthers, a Canadian-built freighter, and SS Hydrus, an American-built freighter, were both reported missing as the 'White Hurricane' generated 35-foot (10 m) high waves on Lake Huron. Twenty-two crewmen on the Carruthers and 25 on the Hydrus were lost. Neither wreck has ever been found.[27][28]
    SS Argus, sister ship to Hydrus, is also reported lost with crew of 28 seamen.[29]
    SS Regina, a Scottish-built package freighter, sent out a distress signal after hitting a shoal while attempting to reach shelter in Port Huron, Michigan. The ship capsized and sank. None of the 32 crew survived. The wreck would be discovered in 1986 between Lexington, Michigan and Port Sanilac, Michigan.[30]
    The United States and Honduras signed a peace treaty in Washington, DC, with Honduras becoming the latest of the Central American nations to accept the proposals of U.S. Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan.[3]

November 10, 1913 (Monday)

    John Archer became mayor of Battersea, England, the first black male to hold a mayoral seat in the United Kingdom. In his inaugural address to council, he said: "You have made history tonight ... Battersea has done many things in the past, but the greatest thing it has done is to show that it has no racial prejudice, and that it recognises a man for the work he has done."[31][32]
    Great Lakes Storm of 1913 – An unknown vessel - later identified as the Charles S. Price, a fully loaded ore carrier - was spotted floating upside-down off the eastern coast of Michigan.[33])
    Bodies from SS James Carruthers, including that of Captain William H. Wright, were recovered at Kincardine, Ontario and Point Clark, Ontario.[27]
    British Prime Minister Asquith publicly declared that the United Kingdom had no intention in intervening in Mexico's affairs. "Mexico is still in the throes of civil war," said Asquith, "but there never was and never will be any question of political intervention by Great Britain in the domestic concerns of Mexico, or in the Central or South American States." [34]
    Born: Álvaro Cunhal, Portuguese politician, secretary-general of the Portuguese Communist Party, in Coimbra, Portugal (d. 2005); Karl Shapiro, American poet, Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1946, in Baltimore, Maryland (d. 2000)
    Died: Sir Richard Solomon, 63, British High Commissioner for the Union of South Africa since 1910 (b. 1850)

November 11, 1913 (Tuesday)

    Greece and Turkey signed a peace treaty in Athens, officially ending the Second Balkan War.[35]
    Great Lakes Storm of 1913 – The storm finally subsided. In all, the storm claimed 19 ships on Lake Huron (eight were completely lost) and more than 250 lives.[36]
    The Chamber of Deputies of France defeated a proposal to grant women the right to vote. The measure attracted only 133 votes in favor, and 311 against.[3]
    The Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Professor Heike Onnes of the Netherlands, and the prize in Chemistry was awarded to Professor Werner of Zurich.[3]
    Saverne Affair – Second Lieutenant Günter Freiherr von Forstner was ordered confined to six days house arrest, while official statements from military authorities in Strasbourg, Germany downplayed the incident, claiming that the reported inflammatory term "Wackes", used by Forstner for people living in Alsace, was actually a general term for a contentious people. However, the Saverne public perceived the official action of the German military as a slight and continued to stage protests against the regiment stationed in the town.
    The Broadway musical The Madcap Duchess by Victor Herbert and starring Ann Swinburne, Peggy Wood and Glenn Hall, opened at the Globe Theatre in New York City for a 71-performance run.[37][38]
    Born: Iain Macleod, British politician, cabinet minister for the British Conservative Party from 1952 to 1963, in Skipton, Yorkshire, England (d. 1970)

November 12, 1913 (Wednesday)

    Battle of Ciudad Juárez,[10] Mexico - After several unsuccessful assaults on the city, Pancho Villa devised a Trojan Horse move by capturing a coal train and hiding 2,000 soldiers inside. The train successfully entered the city where Villa's forces fought 4,000 fortified federal troops.[10][39]
    The battleship HMS Benbow was launched at the William Beardmore and Company yard of Glasgow, the third Royal Navy ship to be named in honor of Admiral John Benbow. The ship would serve throughout World War One before it was decommissioned in 1929.[40]
    Bulgaria demanded that Greece release all prisoners of war taken captive during the Second Balkan War.[3]
    Born: Uriel Fernandes, later known as Teleco, Brazilian football (soccer) player best known for playing striker for the Corinthians, in Curitiba, Brazil (d. 2000)

November 13, 1913 (Thursday)

    British suffragist Emmeline Pankhurst delivered her "Freedom or Death" speech in Hartford, Connecticut. An excerpt of her speech reads: "Human life for us is sacred, but we say if any life is to be sacrificed it shall be ours; we won’t do it ourselves, but we will put the enemy in the position where they will have to choose between giving us freedom or giving us death."[41]
    The American College of Surgeons was founded, with 1,000 leading surgeons selected as fellows.[3]
    China's National Assembly, with 300 fewer deputies, suspended further operations because a quorum was no longer possible.[3]
    The Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Hindu poet Rabindranath Tagore, marking "the first time that this prize has been given to anybody but a white person".[3][42]
    Twelve people were killed, and more than 100 injured, in the wreck of an excursion train near Clayton, Alabama. The Central Georgia R.R. passenger train was carrying passengers from Ozark, Alabama to a country fair in Eufaula, Alabama, when it derailed and plunged down a steep embankment.[43]
    The hymn O Praise the Lord of Heaven by Vaughan Williams - based on passages in the Bible - was performed for the first time in St. Paul’s Cathedral, London.
    Born: Alexander Scourby, American actor, best known for The Big Heat, in New York City (d. 1985); Helen Mack, American actress best known for film roles such as His Girl Friday, in Rock Island, Illinois [d. 1986); Lon Nol, Cambodian politician and military general, president of the Khmer Republic from 1972 to 1975, in Prey Veng, Cambodia (d. 1985)

November 14, 1913 (Friday)

    The first volume of the 3,200-page novel In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust was published as Swann's Way.[44]
    All 103 passengers and crew of the Spanish steamship Balmes, which had caught fire at sea, were rescued by the Cunard liner Pannonia.[45][46]
    Born: George Smathers, United States Senator from Florida from 1951 till 1969, in Atlantic City, New Jersey (d. 2007); Wolfgang Heyda; German U-boat commander during World War Two, in Arys, East Prussia (d. 1947)
    Died: Kâmil Pasha, 80, Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire four times between 1885 and 1913 (b. 1833)

November 15, 1913 (Saturday)

    The ship Charles S. Price was identified as the "mystery vessel" seen capsized five days earlier off the coast of Michigan.[47] Milton Smith, an assistant engineer who decided at the last moment not to join his crew on premonition of disaster, aided in identifying any bodies that were found. Twenty-eight crew members lost their lives in the wreck.
    Battle of Ciudad Juárez, Mexico - Pancho Villa controlled the city. Eleven trainloads of federal troops were sent up from Chihuahua to engage Villa.[10]
    The polar ship Karluk reached 73°N, the most northerly point of its drift in the Beaufort Sea, since becoming trapped in ice last August. It began moving south-west, in the general direction of the Siberian coast.[48]
    Born: Arthur Haulot, Belgian journalist and member of the Belgian resistance, in Angleur, Belgium (d. 2005); Jack Dyer, Australian rules football player and coach for the Richmond Football Club, in Oakleigh, Victoria, Australia (d. 2003); Guy Green, British cinematographer, Oscar winner for Best Cinematography for Great Expectations, in Frome, Somerset, England (d. 2005); Riek Schagen, Dutch actress and artist, best known for role in Fanfare, in Amersfoort, Netherlands (d. 2008); Gus Johnson, American jazz drummer for Jay McShann and Ella Fitzgerald, in Tyler, Texas (d. 2000)
    Died: Camille Armand Jules Marie, Prince de Polignac, 81, French nobleman who served as a major general in the Confederate States Army (b. 1832)

November 16, 1913 (Sunday)

    Pancho Villa dispatched his forces to Tierra Blanca, 35 miles (56 km) south of Ciudad Juárez, expecting to engage federal troops.[10]
    President Huerta of Mexico dismissed Minister of the Interior Manuel Garza Aldape, after Garza had urged that Mexico negotiate with the United States.[45]
    Born: Dora de Pedery-Hunt, Hungarian-Canadian sculpture, designer of the Queen Elizabeth II effigy on Canadian coins, in Budapest (d. 2008)

November 17, 1913 (Monday)

    Alfred Fones established the Fones School of Dental Hygiene in Bridgeport, Connecticut, with the local board of education helping to fund the program. The first class was attended by 34 women and held in Fones' garage behind his office. Graduates of the program participated in preventative dental treatment programs in schools around Bridgeport.[49]
    The Vermilion School of Agriculture (VSA) opened in Vermilion, Alberta - the first of three agricultural colleges to open in the Canadian province - with an all-male class of 34. The college would expand its programs and campuses over the next few decades, and eventually be renamed Lakeland College in 1975.[50]
    Construction of the National Transcontinental Railway, started in 1903, was completed with the last spike driven west of Cochrane, Ontario. The rail - which ran from Winnipeg to Moncton, New Brunswick - was operated privately until 1923 when it was absorbed into the Canadian National Railway.[51]

November 18, 1913 (Tuesday)

    American aviator Lincoln J. Beachey first performed his inside loop (called the "loop the loop") at an airshow at Naval Air Station North Island, San Diego. Beachey climbed to 3,500 feet (1,066 meters) before turning the airplane down. He brought the machine up at the 1,000-foot mark and completed a 300-foot (91-meter) loop.[52]
    On the same day, French aviator Maurice Chevillard performed the first somersault loop with an airplane while a passenger was on board, something previously done solo by aviators.[53]
    Twenty-one coal miners were killed in the explosion of the Alabama Fuel and Iron Company's Mine Number 2 near Acton, Alabama.[54]
    Born: Endre Rozsda, Hungarian-French painter, member of the Surrealism movement, in Mohács, Hungary (d. 1999)

November 19, 1913 (Wednesday)

    Jack Thompson showed up at his own funeral visitation in Hamilton, Ontario, eight days after he had been believed to have drowned in the sinking of the SS James Carruthers. The body that had washed ashore from Lake Huron had been identified by his bereaved father, Thomas, at a morgue in Goderich, Ontario. In reality, Thompson had not accompanied the ship on its final voyage. The body his father identified was the same height and build, had similar facial features, tattoos (including the initials "J.T."), scars (crossed toes), and other markings on the body. Upon reading his name among the list of known dead in a newspaper while in Toronto, Thompson took a train back to his hometown and walked into his home, where his family was preparing for his burial. The identity of the body mistaken for Thompson remains unknown, and is buried with four other unknown seamen in Goderich.[27][55]
    The Governor of Pennsylvania, John K. Tener, agreed to serve as the new president of baseball's National League[56]
    Born: Harry Friedman, later known as Blue Barron, American orchestra leader in the Big Band era, in Cleveland (d. 2005)

November 20, 1913 (Thursday)

    The Eiffel Tower, made of iron, was used as a radio antenna for wireless transmission and reception by the Paris Observatory. For three weeks, the Paris Observatory and the U.S. Naval Observatory in Arlington, Virginia had been attempting to signal each other and "on November 20 the exchange worked well for the first time", in an experiment that continued until March.[57] The New York Times reported that the earlier tests had encountered interference from atmospheric conditions and other radio transmissions, but that on the evening of the 20th, "the beats of the Paris clock, as transmitted by wireless, were compared with the Washington clock for several minutes".[58]
    Born: Judy Canova, American singer and actress famous for playing an Ozark hick character in various radio, TV and film roles and her USO tours during the World War II, in Starke, Florida (d. 1983); Kostas Choumis, Greek-Romanian football player, best known as a striker for the Venus București football club, in Piraeus, Greece (d. 1981); Charles Bettelheim, French economist and historian Center for the Study of Modes of Industrialization (CEMI), in Paris (d. 2006); Libertas Schulze-Boysen, French resistance fighter during World War Two, in Paris (d. 1942, executed in Berlin)

November 21, 1913 (Friday)

    The Olds School of Agriculture and Home Economics officially opened on the site of a demonstration farm in Olds, Alberta, the second of three agricultural schools opened by the Alberta Department of Agriculture. The school would expand its programs and campus over decades and is now the Olds College.[59]
    Born: John Boulting, English film director (d. 1985) and Roy Boulting, English film director and producer (d. 2001), identical twin brothers who produced films such as Brighton Rock and I'm All Right, Jack, in Bray, Berkshire, England; Stewart McLean, Canadian politician, provincial cabinet minister in Manitoba, in Dauphin, Manitoba (d.1996)

November 22, 1913 (Saturday)

    Battle of Tierra Blanca[60] - Pancho Villa's forces (5,500 soldiers) engaged 7,000 federal troops under command of José Inés Salazar. It was rumored American journalist and fiction writer Ambrose Bierce was with Villa's army and witnessed the battle.[61]
    Saverne Affair – Ten members of the 5th Company of 2nd Upper Rhine Infantry Regiment No. 99 were arrested and charged with divulging secrets of the Saverne Affair to the local press.[62]
    The American weekly magazine Collier's published Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s 46th Sherlock Holmes story "The Adventure of the Dying Detective", ahead of British readers, who would have to wait a month to read the story when it was published in the Strand magazine.[63]
    Born: Benjamin Britten, English composer, composer of the War Requiem, in Suffolk, England (d. 1976); Cecilia Muñoz-Palma, first female Philippine Supreme Court Justice, in Bauan, Batangas, Philippines (d. 2006); Olav Bruvik, Norwegian politician, cabinet minister from 1961 to 1962, in Haus, Norway (d. 1962)
    Died: Tokugawa Yoshinobu, 76, the 15th and the last shogun of Japan (b. 1837). The last leader of the Tokugawa shogunate, he resigned in 1867 in the wake of the Meiji Restoration.

November 23, 1913 (Sunday)

    Battle of Tierra Blanca - Pancho Villa's men held their ground against attacks to their flank by federal troops.[10]
    Born: Virginia Prince, American transgender activist, founder of the Society for the Second Self, in Los Angeles (d. 2009); Raymond Hanson, Australian composer for the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, in Sydney (d. 1976)

November 24, 1913 (Monday)

    Recently defeated in his for re-election as Governor of South Carolina, Coleman Livingston Blease, issued pardons and paroles for 100 convicts.[45] These included 28 men serving life terms for murder, and another 28 incarcerated for manslaughter, and marked a total of 882 persons whom he had released from prison. The pardons too effect on the day before Thanksgiving.[64]
    Born: Geraldine Fitzgerald, Irish-American actress, Oscar winner for Best Supporting Actress in Wuthering Heights, in Greystones, Ireland (d. 2005); Gisela Mauermayer, German Olympic athlete, gold medalist for the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, in Munich (d. 1995); Howard Duff, American actor, best known for roles in Brute Force and The Naked City, in Charleston, Washington (d. 1990)

November 25, 1913 (Tuesday)

    Battle of Tierra Blanca - In a bold move, Pancho Villa ordered his cavalry to charge the center of the attacking federal army's line. At the same time, Rodolfo Fierro, Villa's second-in-command, used a locomotive filled with dynamite and percussion caps to ram into the federal soldiers' train cars.[65] Both aggressive counterattacks force the federal army to retreat, with 1,000 casualties.[66]
    The Irish Volunteers were established by acclamation at a huge public meeting at the Rotunda Hospital in Dublin "to secure and maintain the rights and liberties common to the whole people of Ireland".[67][68]
    French aviatrix Raymonde de Laroche flew 325 kilometres (202 mi) solo in four hours, winning the 1913 Fémina Cup for the longest solo flight by a woman that year.[69]
    In a wedding held in the White House, Jessie Woodrow Wilson, daughter of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, was married to Francis B. Sayre.[70]
    Panama became a signatory to the 1910 Buenos Aires Convention, a copyright treaty, the second Latin American country to do so. Guatemala had been the first to sign, on March 28, 1913.[71]
    Born: Lewis Thomas, American physician and essayist, National Book Award winner, in Flushing, New York (d. 1993); Jack Davies, English screenwriter, Oscar winner for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay for Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines (d. 1994)
    Died: Robert Stawell Ball, 73, Irish astronomer and founder of screw theory (b. 1840); and Edmond Perreyon, French aviator and holder of the record (set March 11) for highest altitude (19,650 feet) by a human being; in the crash of his monoplane in France

November 26, 1913 (Wednesday)

    Phi Sigma Sigma, the first collegiate nonsectarian sorority, was founded at Hunter College, New York City. It was the first women's fraternity of its time to allow membership of women from all faiths and backgrounds.[72]
    Police in New York City arrested José Santos Zelaya, the former President of Nicaragua (1893-1909), after he had been convicted of murder, in absentia, by a court in Managua. Zelaya was sleeping on the sixth floor of an apartment house on West End Avenue.[45][73]
    The battleship HMS Warspite was launched from the HMNB Devonport naval base, the seventh Royal Navy warship to carry the name. The ship would serve through both world wars on all four oceans before being decommissioned in 1945.
    Born: Foy Draper, American Olympic athlete, gold medalist for the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin (d. 1943, disappeared during the Battle of Kasserine Pass)
    Died: Frances Julia Wedgwood, 80, British feminist author who assisted Charles Darwin in translating the works of Carl Linnaeus (b. 1833)

November 27, 1913 (Thursday)

    Hungarian-born politician Iván Skerlecz was proclaimed ban (viceroy) of the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia, and called for parliamentary elections.[74]
    National Geographic published the article "The Non-Christian Peoples of the Philippine Islands."[75]
    Born: Robert Dougall, English broadcaster, anchor for the BBC Newsroom and author of several bestsellers on ornithology, in London (d. 1999)

November 28, 1913 (Friday)

    Saverne Affair – Month-long protests escalated in the town of Saverne over a perceived lack of disciplinary action against Second Lieutenant Günter Freiherr von Forstner for making insulting remarks against the locals. A crowd of people assembled before Prussian barracks where sentries demanded three times for the protesters to disperse, after which soldiers drove back around and arrested many people without legal basis, and imprisoned 26 people in the basement of the Rohan Palace where the barracks were stationed. Martial law was declared in the town soon after.[76]
    Pancho Villa gained control of Chihuahua and established a base of operations in the city for División del Norte.[10]
    Died: George B. Post, 75, American architect in the Beaux-Arts tradition and designer of public New York City buildings such as the New York Stock Exchange (b. 1837)

November 29, 1913 (Saturday)

    The French steamer Ville du Temple struck the Runnel Stone - a rocky pinnacle one mile south of Cornwall, England - in thick fog on her way to Cardiff. Her hull damaged, the ship was abandoned by the crew, who were picked up by the Mercutio of Penzance. The wreck drifted north before beaching at Porthmoina Cove, Zennor.[77]
    Fifth Grey Cup – The Hamilton Tigers defeated Toronto Parkdale 44-2.[78]
    The International Fencing Federation (FIE) was recognized by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) as the world governing body of fencing.[79]
    Born: Georges Spénale, French politician, President of the European Parliament (d. 1983).

November 30, 1913 (Sunday)

    Saverne Affair – Prussian War Minister Erich von Falkenhayn and General Berthold Deimling met with other officials in Donaueschingen, Germany to discuss resolutions to the civil unrest in Saverne. A lack of civilian officials at the discussions only increased the public perception that the Kaiser was only interested in the military's viewpoint, and civil unrest continued.[62]
    Born: John McCaffery, American television game show host of One Minute Please and other programs, in Moscow, Idaho (d. 1983); David Curwen, British rail engineer, designer of the miniature railway, in Sydenham, Kent, England (d. 2011)


December 1, 1913 (Monday)

    The Ford Motor Company introduced the first moving assembly line, reducing chassis assembly time from 12 1⁄2 hours in October to 2 hours, 40 minutes. Although Ford was not the first to use an assembly line, his successful adoption of one sparked an era of mass production.[1]
    Crete, having obtained self rule from Turkey after the Greco-Turkish War (1897), was annexed by Greece.[2]
    The Auckland Exhibition officially opened to the public in Auckland Domain Park, Auckland, New Zealand with an estimated 18 0000 attendees the opening day of the world's fair.[3]
    In Pittsburgh, the first drive-in automobile service station opened.[4]
    A record blizzard hit Colorado, with four to six feet (one to two meters) of snow falling in the first week of December. Georgetown, in the foothills west of Denver, was the hardest hit with a record 86 inches of snow, just over seven feet (over two meters).[5]
    Saverne Affair – German commanding officer Berthold von Deimling sent a brigadier general to take control of the barracks in the town of Saverne, Alsace (now part of France but within Germany in 1913), restoring temporary civilian authority.[6]
    Born: Mary Martin, American actress and singer, known for roles in South Pacific and The Sound of Music, in Weatherford, Texas (d. 1990)
    Died: Juhan Liiv, Estonian poet and short story writer (b. 1864); Ernest Roberts, Australian politician (b. 1868)

December 2, 1913 (Tuesday)

    In Woodrow Wilson's First State of the Union Address, the 28th President of the United States opened with a call for the end of the Victoriano Huerta regime in Mexico: "There can be no certain prospect of peace in America until Gen. Huerta has surrendered his usurped authority in Mexico."[7]
    Louis Barthou, 78th Prime Minister of France, resigned after only eight months in office following a defeat on a budget vote.[8]
    Saverne Affair – During a military practice in Saverne, Second Lieutenant Günter Freiherr von Forstner - the source of much of the town's outrage against the German military since November - was mocked by Karl Blank, a journeyman shoemaker. Eyewitnesses reported Forstner lost his temper and struck Blank with his saber, causing severe head injuries that paralyzed him on one side. Forstner was sentenced to 43 days in jail after the first trial, but an appellate trial reversed the sentence after the judge concluded Forstner had acted in self-defense.[9]
    Archbishop José Antonio Lezcano y Ortega was ordained to the newly created Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Managua in Nicaragua.[10]
    Danish author Karen Blixen left her native Rungstedlund, Denmark to settle in Kenya where she would live for almost 28 years on her African farm.[11]
    Born: Knut Myrstad, Norwegian politician for the Christian Democratic Party, in Selje, Norway (d. 2001)

December 3, 1913 (Wednesday)

    Twenty-eight men were killed in a fire at the homeless shelter at the Arcadia Hotel in Boston.[12][13]
    Saverne Affair – The Reichstag opened discussion on events in Saverne but Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg defended the actions of the military officers at the Saverne barracks.[9]
    Born: Omer Vanaudenhove, Belgian politician, president of the Liberal Party in 1961, in Diest, Belgium (d. 1994)

December 4, 1913 (Thursday)

    Saverne Affair – The Reichstag passed a vote of no-confidence against the Chancellor, the first time in the history of the Prussian Empire, with 293 votes for, 54 against, and four abstentions. Leaders of each non-governing party declared the actions of the government in relation to Saverne were "not the view of the Reichstag".[9]
    Vladimir Lenin published his paper "The Poverty of People's Teachers" in the political magazine Za Pravdu.[14]
    Georgetown, Colorado, had the highest (recorded) snowfall in U.S. history, with 63 inches (1.6 metres) of snow.[15]

December 5, 1913 (Friday)

    Saverne Affair – The Kaiser ordered a temporary move of the units stationed in Saverne to training grounds at Oberhofen (near Haguenau) and Bitche as a way to relieve tension between the military and Alsace residents.[9]
    Isabella Newman of Mordialloc, Victoria, Australia was arrested on suspicion of several reported disappearances of infants in Melbourne. Investigators connected her to several advertisements that took in infants born out of wedlock for adoption in exchange for fee of services. Upon learning that she was to be taken into Melbourne for further questioning, Newman asked to be excused to change into traveling clothes before locking herself in her bedroom and taking strychnine. Investigation following her suicide uncovered at least three infant bodies, two on the Newman farm property and a third in a different location.[16]

December 6, 1913 (Saturday)

    The 1913-1914 World Baseball Tour - The Chicago White Sox beat the New York Giants 9-4 in a baseball exhibition game in Tokyo at the start of the Asia leg of their tour.[17]
    Born: Mykola Amosov, Ukrainian heart surgeon, inventor, best-selling author, and exercise enthusiast, in Olkhovo, Russian Empire (d. 2002); Eleanor Holm, American Olympic swimmer, gold medalist at the 1932 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, in New York City (d. 2004)
    Died: Alexander Hurley, British music hall performer, married to Marie Lloyd (b. 1871)

December 7, 1913 (Sunday)

    The 1913-1914 World Baseball Tour - The Chicago White Sox swept the Japan doubleheader against the New York Giants in a 12-9 victory.[17]
    During the ongoing Copper Country Strike of 1913-1914, a boarding house owner, Thomas Dally, and two English brothers at the boarding house in Painesdale, Michigan Arthur and Harry Jane, were killed by random rifle shots fired into the house from nearby woods. The Jane brothers had arrived in Michigan with the intention of crossing strike lines to work. Later, two Finnish immigrant brothers, and an Austrian, were charged with first degree murder in connection with the shooting, but the third escaped from custody and was never recaptured.[18]
    Born: Donald C. MacDonald, Canadian politician, leader of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (Ontario Section) and its successor, the Ontario New Democratic Party, in Cranbrook, British Columbia (d.2008)
    Died: Luigi Oreglia di Santo Stefano, Italian Catholic churchman and last surviving cardinal of Pius IX (b. 1828); Aaron Montgomery Ward, American businessman, inventor of mail order (b. 1844)

December 8, 1913 (Monday)

    Construction began on the Palace of Fine Arts in the Marina District of San Francisco, California for the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition.[19]
    Born: Delmore Schwartz, American poet, notable collections including In Dreams Begin, in New York City (d. 1966)

December 9, 1913 (Tuesday)

    Pancho Villa forces left Chihuahua, Mexico in pursuit of federal troops fleeing to Ojinaga, Mexico, located on the Mexican-U.S. border.[20]
    John K. Tener, former pro baseball player and former 25th Governor of Pennsylvania, was elected president of the National League.[21]

December 10, 1913 (Wednesday)

    The Nobel Prize Committee selected Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes as recipient for the Nobel Prize for Physics; Swiss Chemist Alfred Werner for the Nobel Prize for Chemistry; and French physiologist Charles Richet for the Nobel Prize for Medicine.[22]
    The Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to Rabindranath Tagore, Bengali poet, author and artist.[22]
    The US Navy officially opened its current naval station in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba having previously operated at South Toro Cay, Cuba.
    Copper Country Strike of 1913-1914 – Offices of the Western Federation of Miners throughout Houghton County, Michigan were raided by members of Citizens Alliance, an organization backed by mining companies affected by the ongoing strike, with assistance from sheriff's deputies.[23]
    Born: Morton Gould, American composer, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Music for Stringmusic, in Richmond Hill, New York (d. 1996); Harry Locke, British character actor, notable role in BBC's adaptation of War and Peace, in London (d. 1987)

December 11, 1913 (Thursday)

    Saverne Affair – A military court in Strasbourg, Germany sentenced two recruits from Saverne to three and six weeks of military arrest, respectively, after the soldiers publicly confirmed that Second Lieutenant Günter Freiherr von Forstner had made insulting statements against people living in the Alsace region.[9]
    The Sikorsky Ilya Muromets four-engine airplane, a heavy bomber for the Imperial Russian Air Force, flew for the first time. The plane was designed by Russian aviation engineer Igor Sikorsky and named after Ilya Muromets, a hero from Russian mythology.[24][25]
    Born: Jean Marais, French actor and director, most known for the title role in Beauty and the Beast, in Cherbourg, France (d. 1998)

December 12, 1913 (Friday)

    The Norwegian sailing vessel Kwango ran aground off Bryon Island, St Lawrence River, Canada and wrecked.[26]
    The stolen Mona Lisa was recovered in Florence after Vincenzo Perugia was arrested while trying to sell it.[27]
    Roosevelt–Rondon Scientific Expedition – Following a speaking tour in Brazil and Argentina, former US President Theodore Roosevelt met up with Brazilian military officer and explorer Cândido Rondon to embark on a joint exploration of the "River of Doubt", a 1,000-mile (1,600 km) river (later renamed Rio Roosevelt) located in a remote area of the Brazilian Amazon basin.[28]
    Copper Country Strike of 1913-1914 – Charles Lawton, general manager of the Quincy Mining Company in Houghton County, Michigan, reported in a letter to mining company president William Rogers Todd that local police would often forgo arresting strikers that they had caught, writing that "some of them were ... fit subjects for the hospital...in fact, they were very roughly treated.”[23]
    In the second of three “Brides in the Bath murders”, George Joseph Smith’s new (second) wife, Alice Burnham, is found dead in her bath in her home in Blackpool, England.[29]
    Born: Eve Lister, British film and television actor, known for the role in Sweeney Todd, in Brighton, England (d. 1997); Stanley Bate, British composer, studied under Ralph Vaughan Williams and other composers (d. 1959); Clint Smith, Canadian ice hockey player and coach, played centre for New York Rangers and the Chicago Black Hawks, in Assiniboia, Saskatchewan (d.2009)
    Died: Menelik II, Emperor of Ethiopia (b. 1844)

December 13, 1913 (Saturday)

    German balloonist Hugo Kaulen stayed aloft for 87 hours, a record that would not be broken until 1935.[30]
    Born: Arnold Brown, 11th General of the Salvation Army 1977 to 1981, in London (d. 2002); Archie Moore, American boxer, longest reigning Light Heavyweight World Champion (1952 to 1962), in Benoit, Mississippi (d. 1998); John Pope-Hennessy, British art historian, leading scholar of Italian Renaissance art, in London (d. 1994)

December 14, 1913 (Sunday)

    The 1913-1914 World Baseball Tour - The New York Giants trounced the Chicago White Sox 7-4 in Hong Kong, in a shortened five-inning exhibition game due to the organization's booked ship arriving late after being delayed by quarantine.[17]
    The Imperial Japanese Navy launched the battleship Haruna at the Kawasaki Shipyards in Kobe, Japan.[31]

December 15, 1913 (Monday)

    Nicaragua became a signatory to the Buenos Aires Convention 1910 copyright treaty, the third Latin American country to do so.[32]
    The British Royal Navy launched the battlecruiser HMS Tiger - the 11th Royal Navy ship to bear that name - at the John Brown and Company shipyard in Clydebank, Scotland.[33]
    The new Elgin and Winter Garden Theatre Centre opened in Toronto, with American composer Irving Berlin performing at the opening of the new facility.[34]
    Born: Muriel Rukeyser, American poet, author of The Book of the Dead, in New York City (d. 1980)

December 16, 1913 (Tuesday)

    An explosion at Vulcan Mine in New Castle, Colorado killed 38 miners.[35]
    Parliamentary elections were held in the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia. The Croat-Serb Coalition won with 39.09% of the vote.[36]
    Born: George Ignatieff, Russian-Canadian diplomat, recipient of the 1984 Pearson Medal of Peace, in St. Petersburg (d. 1989)

December 17, 1913 (Wednesday)

    Saverne Affair – At the request of German general command in Strasbourg, police in Germany confiscated a recording, made by gramophone company Cromer and Schrack, containing evidence of insulting remarks made against Alsace residents. The military then instituted legal proceedings against the company.[9]
    The 1913-1914 World Baseball Tour - The Chicago White Sox beat the New York Giants 2-1, the first in two back-to-back exhibition games in Manila.[17]
    Died: Stefano Gobatti, Italian opera composer, composed the opera I Goti (b. 1852)

December 18, 1913 (Thursday)

    The 1913-1914 World Baseball Tour - The Chicago White Sox pulled off their second double-header sweep during the Asia leg of the tour against the New York Giants in a 7-4 win in Manila.[17]
    Born: Alfred Bester, American science fiction author, Hugo Award winner for The Demolished Man, in New York City (d. 1987); Willy Brandt, Chancellor of Germany, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1971, in Lübeck, Germany (d. 1992); Lynn Bari, American actress, known for film roles such as The Bridge of San Luis Rey, in Roanoke, Virginia (d. 1989); Ray Meyer, American basketball coach for DePaul University from 1942 to 1984, in Chicago (d. 2006), Saburō Takata, Japanese composer, known for the classical piece Takuboku Tankashu, in Nagoya, Japan (d. 2000)

December 19, 1913 (Friday)

    Boxers Jack Johnson and Battling Jim Johnson fought a 10-round match for the world heavyweight title in Paris. The novelty of two black professionals competing for the world title drew crowds, but a sportswriter from the Indianapolis Star observed spectators becoming unruly, and demanding their money back, when it became apparent that neither boxer was putting up a fight. At one point, Jack Johnson was only using his right arm to box. Organizers claimed Johnson's left arm had been broken during the third round, but there was no evidence of any injury. The fight was ruled a draw, and Jack Johnson retained his title.

December 20, 1913 (Saturday)

    The "Great Strike of 1913" in Wellington, New Zealand ended after the United Federation of Labour (UFL) conceded defeat. Their labor ally, the Federated Seamen's Union, had broken ranks by reaching a deal with shipowners to return to work. The bitter, two-month labor struggle involved up to 16,000 unionists across New Zealand, and sparked violent clashes between strikers and police.[37]
    A serious fire at Portsmouth Dockyard destroyed the semaphore tower.[38]

December 21, 1913 (Sunday)

    The first crossword puzzle in history, Arthur Wynne's "word-cross", was published in the New York World.[39][40]
    An earthquake with a magnitude of 7.2 struck the Yunnan Province, China. At least 942 people died. Another 112 were injured, and scores of homes were destroyed.[41]
    Born: Arnold Friberg, American painter, known for the painting The Prayer at Valley Forge, in Winnetka, Illinois (d. 2010); Raich Carter, British football (soccer) player and coach, team captain for Sunderland and Derby County and manager of the Hull City A.F.C.; in Hendon, England (d. 1994)

December 22, 1913 (Monday)

    British racing driver L.G. Hornsted set a new land speed record in excess of 200 kilometers per hour driving in a Benz 200 horse power racing car (“Blitzenbenz”) at the Brooklands racing circuit in southern England.[42]

December 23, 1913 (Tuesday)

    The Federal Reserve Act was signed into law by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, creating the Federal Reserve System as the central banking system of the United States by .[43]
    Died: James Bonnor Middleton, South African cricketer, played six Tests from 1896 to 1902 (b. 1865)

December 24, 1913 (Wednesday)

    Italian Hall Disaster – A stampede at the Italian Hall in Calumet, Michigan killed 73 people (59 of them children) during a Christmas Eve celebration for over 400 striking miners (Copper Country Strike of 1913-1914) and their families. An unknown person had yelled "Fire!" (even though there wasn't one). Speculation included the theory that an anti-union ally of mine management had yelled out the false alarm in order to disrupt the party.[23][44]

December 25, 1913 (Thursday)

    The polar expedition crew on the Karluk celebrated Christmas, with decorations, presents, a programme of sports on the ice, and a banquet.[45] The polar ship had been drifting west in the ice for nearly three months and was now just 50 miles (80 km) north of Herald Island, a rocky outpost east of Wrangel Island, in the Beaufort Sea.
    Born: Henri Nannen, German journalist, founder of Gruner + Jahr the news magazine Der Stern, in Emden, Germany (d. 1996); Tony Martin, American singer, known for hits such as Fools Rush In and La Vie en Rose, in San Francisco, California (d. 2012); and Arvid Nilssen, Norwegian actor, first recipient of the Leonard Statuette by the Norwegian Comedy Writers' Association in 1968 (d. 1976)

December 26, 1913 (Friday)

    Ambrose Bierce, a 71-year-old American writer and journalist, author An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, disappeared after writing a letter to Blanche Partington, from the city of Chihuahua. Dated December 26, 1913, the letter ended with the sentence: "As to me, I leave here tomorrow for an unknown destination."[46][47][48] Theories for Bierce's vanishing after the date of the letter are numerous. Stories from locals in Sierra Mojada, Coahuila, documented by the priest James Lienert, stated that Bierce was executed by firing squad in a local town cemetery.[49] However, no firm evidence has yet to turn up that resolves the mystery surrounding the famous author's fate.
    Copper Country Strike of 1913-1914 – Charles Moyer, president of the Western Federation of Miners was attacked in his hotel room in Hancock, Michigan, by assailants allegedly working for the mining companies. After being beaten with a pistol, Moyer was shot in the back and then dragged to a nearby train station. Moyer reported being met by Jim McNaughton, manager of the Calumet and Hecla Mine Company, at the station and being told "If I ever come back to Houghton or the range he would see me hanged." Moyer was forced onto a train heading to Chicago where he was treated at the city's St. Luke's Hospital for his injuries. McNaughton denied he made any threats to Moyer. The assault remains unsolved.[50]
    Born: Frank Swift, British football (soccer) goalie and journalist, played goal for Manchester City and England, in Blackpool, England (d. 1958, killed in Munich air disaster)

December 27, 1913 (Saturday)

    Baseball's new Federal League signed its first major star when Brooklyn Dodgers shortstop Joe Tinker (of "Tinker to Evers to Chance" fame) signed a contract with the Chicago Whales.[51]
    Born: Elizabeth Smart, Canadian author, known for By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept, in Ottawa (d. 1986)

December 28, 1913 (Sunday)

    The "Venus of Cyrene", a headless marble sculpture, was discovered by Italian troops in Cyrene, Libya after torrential rains washed away the topsoil at the Trajan’s Baths in the Sanctuary of Apollo.[52] It would be displayed in Rome for 94 years, but would be returned to Libya in 2008.
    Born: Lou Jacobi, Canadian-American actor, famous for stage and film roles including Broadway's The Diary of Anne Frank, in Toronto (d. 2009)

December 29, 1913 (Monday)

    The first movie serial, The Adventures of Kathlyn starring Kathlyn Williams, premiered in Chicago.[53][54]
    Charlie Chaplin signed a contract with Mack Sennett to begin making films at Keystone Studios.[55]
    The Girl on the Film, a Broadway production, opened at the 44th Street Theatre and ran for 64 performances.[56][57]
    Born: Pierre Werner, Prime Minister of Luxembourg from 1979 to 1984, in Saint-André-lez-Lille, France (d. 2002)

December 30, 1913 (Tuesday)

    The Sydney Morning Herald broke the news that thousands of people were starving in the Aomori and Hokkaidō prefectures of Japan, in one of the worst famines in the country since 1809.[58]
    Italy returned the Mona Lisa to France.[27]
    English cricketer Sydney Barnes took 17 wickets in a match between England and South Africa (8-56 and 9-103), totaling 49 wickets, the most in a Test series.[59]
    Born: Elyne Mitchell, Australian author, creator of the children's series Silver Brumby, in Melbourne, Australia (d. 2002); Svend S. Schultz, Danish composer, studied under Poul Schierbeck (d. 1998); Lucio Agostini, Italian-born Canadian composer, known for his collaborative work with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, in Fano, Italy (d. 1996)

December 31, 1913 (Wednesday)

    Pilot 1st Lt. Harold Geiger operated a Curtiss Model E, and a Curtiss SC out of Fort Kamehameha, Hawaii.[60]