1901 (Jan 22) Queen Victoria dies. Edward VII is crowned.
1901 In China, the Dowager Empress, Cixi, signs an agreement with foreign powers formally ending the Boxer Rebellion. Leaders of the rebellion, other than the empress, are executed.
1901 The U.S. still has troops in Cuba. Congress passes the Platt Amendment, declaring the right of the U.S. to intervene militarily in Cuban affairs and to hold onto its naval base at Guantanamo Bay.
1901 (Sep 14) McKinley is assassinated. Vice President Theodore Roosevelt becomes president.
1901 (Oct16) President Roosevelt invites the "negro" educator Booker T. Washington to the White House. In the South, anger erupts and violence against African-Americans increases.
1902 Britain has won the Boar War. It creates the Union of South Africa and gives it Dominion (Commonwealth) status.
1902 Bones of the dinosaur Tyrannosaurus Rex are discovered in Montana.
1902 A sheet glass drawing machine is created, making possible mass production of glass for windows.
1902 Britain has been considering an alliance with Germany but refuses to tie itself to the German-Austrian alliance. Britain looks elsewhere, settling its differences with the United States and signing an alliance with Japan.
1903 At Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, the Wright brothers make their first engine powered air flight.
1903 A gas turbine engine is built by a Norwegian engineer, Jens William Ęgidius Elling. Such an engine spins at a speed that produces a greater thrust of air than a fan-like propeller slicing through air.
1903 Cuba has put into its constitution conditions stated in the Platt Amendment. Cuba leases Guantanamo to the U.S. in perpetuity.
1903 Colombia fails to sign a treaty that would enable the U.S. to build a canal in Panama. Panamanians take power with help from U.S. warships, which prevent Colombia from sending soldiers. The U.S. recognizes Panama's independence and begins negotiating a canal treaty.
1904 Conflicting interests in Manchuria and Korea between Japan and Russia erupts in war, with Japan attacking the Russians at Port Arthur and landing troops near Seoul, Korea.
1904 The British and French sign an agreement regarding boundaries between their colonial empires.
1904 Tensions rise between Britain and Russia while Russia is at war with Japan. German support for Russia inflames British opinion. Sir John Fischer becomes Britain's First Sea Lord and believes that war with Germany is inevitable. Misunderstanding creates a war scare, and war is narrowly averted.
1904 Germans in their colony of South West Africa combat another rebellion by machine-gunning people, poisoning their wells and driving them into the desert to die.
1904 Comic strips are extended, creating the comic book.
1904 In recording music, a flat disk replaces wax cylinders.
1904 New York's subway begins service.
1905 An Englishman, William Fletcher, discovers a connection between elements in food, such as unpolished rice, and the prevention of disease, such as beriberi.
1905 Defeats create rebellion by Russian sailors, and their rebellion spreads to cities including the capital, St. Petersburg, where Bloody Sunday occurs. On 17 October, Tsar Nicholas II relents and agrees to a constitution and some power to a legislature (the Duma), and a free press.
1905 Japan has taken control of Port Arthur and the adjoining, Liaodong, peninsula. Japanese in general are exultant in victory, and super-patriots are reinforced in the belief that they are superior to others in Asia and deserving of empire. The war between Japan and Russia is mediated by the United States at Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
1905 Japan takes power over Korea's postal, telegraph and telephone services and power over Korea's foreign affairs, its military matters and police.
1905 In Bern, Switzerland, Albert Einstein, at the age of twenty-six, publishes a number of papers that unify work in physics done by others. He creates the "special theory of relativity." This holds that the speed of light is constant and that energy (as in explosions) is mass multiplied by the speed of light, squared.
1905 Conflict has erupted between France and Germany over Morocco, where Germany has mining interests. Germany opts for a show of strength and supports Moroccan independence. French hostility toward Germany increases.
1905 Sweden's labor party, the Social Democrats, move to free their Norwegian "brothers" from forced unity with Sweden. Swedish right-wingers want to discourage independence by sending a force against the Norwegians. The labor movement in Sweden prevails. Peacefully, Norway gains its independence.
1906 Finland becomes the first European nation to grant women suffrage.
1906 Germany and Britain launch a new class of battleship, dreadnaughts, which make all other battleships obsolete regarding a primary element in naval warfare -- the reach of cannon fire.
1906 A lawyer in South Africa, Mohandas Gandhi, begins nonviolent resistance to the mistreatment of his fellow Indians.
1907 Under the leadership of President Theodore Roosevelt and various congressmen, people in the United States are given protection in the form of the Pure Food and Drug Act.
1907 Eight percent of U.S. households are wired for electricity.
1907 Oklahoma becomes a state.
1907 New Zealand is no longer a colony. It joins Britain's Commonwealth, equal in status to Canada and Australia.
1907 Modernists within the Catholic Church have been trying to institute what they consider intellectual reforms. Sixty-five of their proposals, 38 of which are biblical criticisms, Pope Pius X labels as heretical. His encyclical describes "modernism" as an alliance between faith and false philosophy.
1907 With Russia's defeat by Japan, the British see Russia as less threatening. Britain signs a treaty with Russia. Russia agrees that Britain should have controlling influence in Afghanistan and Tibet, and the two powers end their rivalry in Iran by dividing that land into two zones of influence. What is to be known as the Triple Entente is formed -- Britain, Russia and France. It is not a military alliance, but Germany is upset.
1907 In Russia the government arbitrarily alters election laws to suit reaction. The Duma is reduced to conservative landowners. The police crack down on leftists. Rightists attack Jews in Odessa.
1907 An economic recession begin in the U.S., with stocks losing nearly 50 percent of their value from the previous year. It is to be called the Panic of 1907, also the 1907 Bankers' Panic. Production falls 11 percent and unemployment rises 8 percent from under 3 percent. Banking is rescued by the interventions of financier J.P. Morgan, who loses money, but many distrust financiers and vilify him.
1907 As Klara Hitler is dying she expresses concern about the continuing well being of her 18-year-old son Adolf, whom she loves dearly. She dies of cancer on 21 December and Hitler is grief stricken.
1908 In February, Hitler leaves for the big city, Vienna, where he will fall into utter misery, the shock of which will leave him with a below the surface intensity that will often surface.
1908 Kaiser Wilhelm, the grandson of Queen Victoria, complains that the English are "mad as hares" in their suspicions of German intentions. "Time after time," he claims, he has said that he is "a friend of England."
1908 In a bloodless military coup, modernist soldiers overthrow the Ottoman sultan, Abdul Hamid. Bulgaria's Prince Ferdinand declares Bulgaria independent of Ottoman rule and himself as tsar (king).
1908 Russia's prime minister has made a secret agreement with Austria-Hungary, allowing Austria-Hungary to annex Bosnia-Herzegovina in exchange for Austrian support for Russia acquiring Constantinople from Turkey. Austria-Hungary has been administering Bosnia-Herzegovina, understood to be temporary, with Serbs looking forward to independence for all Serbs and a united Serbia. Austria-Hungary announces it is annexing Bosnia-Herzegovina. Europe is stunned. Serbs are outraged. Serbia threatens Austria-Hungary with war. A secret organization in Serbia and students in Bosnia begin organizing resistance to Austrian rule in Bosnia and Herzegovina, by violence if necessary.
1908 Russia's prime minister is discredited in Russia, and Russia threatens to go to war in support of Serbia. Russian cooperation with Austria concerning the Balkans has ended, and Europe is in greater danger. Kaiser Wilhelm refuses to join Germany with Austria-Hungary in war, and war is averted.
1908 Henry Ford produces his Model T automobile.
1908 Jack Johnson becomes the first black heavyweight boxing champion.
1908 In China, the Manchu Emperor, Guangxu, dies at age 37. He had favored reforms to modernize China but had been reduced to emperor in name only, and he had been disliked by conservatives around the throne. The day after his death the real power in China, Guangxu's aunt, Empress Dowager Cixi, dies at the age of 73. Guangxu may have been poisoned. The new emperor is Pu-yi, a two-year-old and controlled by those who had been close to Cixi. Pu-yi is to be China's last emperor.
1909 In Palestine, Jews establish their first kibbutz.
1910 Japan formally annexes Korea.
1910 The new administration governing China proclaims an end to slavery.
1910 A railway over the Andes Mountains links Chile and Argentina.
1910 The Union of South Africa is no longer a British colony. It becomes a member of the Commonwealth of Nations.
1910 In Portugal, a military revolt is followed by the abdication of King Manuel. Portugal becomes a republic on October 5.
1910 Dr. Hawley Crippen is hanged in London (November 23) following one of the most sensational of murder trials. He is innocent, the victim of police who believed him guilty and planted evidence to get a conviction and perhaps to win praise.
1910 In Mexico a popular uprising begins against the dictator Porfirio Diaz.
Copyright © 2005-2011 by Frank E. Smitha. All All rights reserved.
