August 6, 1901: Scott leads RRS Discovery on the British Antarctic ExpeditionAugust 15, 1901: SS Islander sinks in Alaskan watersAugust 11, 1901: Drygalski leads the Gauss on the German Antarctic ExpeditionAugust 3, 1901: World's fastest ship, HMS Viper, wreckedAugust 14, 1901: The alleged flight of the Condor 21
W. F. Wright, a farmer and a former official with the
Nebraska Department of Agriculture, ended his experiment at bring a rainfall by firing cannons at a clear sky after two days.[2] Starting the previous afternoon, Wright and his assistants lined up 24
mortars at his farm near
Lincoln, Nebraska, loaded them with gunpowder, and fired them once a minute until his supply of several thousand pounds of gunpowder was exhausted, to test Wright's own theory of "special vibration".[3] Wright explained his theory that clouds were not formed from evaporation of water and that hydrogen and oxygen in the atmosphere could only combine to form water if "outside force is brought to bear upon them", and that the force was atmospheric electricity. The concussion from firing a cannon, Wright told reporters, created friction that would produce the atmospheric electricity necessary to form water.[4] The next day, the area around Lincoln steadily cooled off and temperatures dropped 41 degrees over a period of 38 hours, and on August 3, heavy rain came down "throughout the northern portion of Nebraska, southern South Dakota and the northern portion of Iowa",[5] and Wright declared that he had been the person responsible.[6][7]
HMS Viper, the first navy ship ever to be powered by
steam turbine propulsion and described as the "fastest vessel in the world", was wrecked beyond repair during
Royal Navy maneuvers near the
Channel Islands. Operating in poor weather, the lightweight Viper struck a reef near the island of
Alderney, ripping out the bottom of its hull.[10][11] Its sister ship,
HMS Cobra, would be wrecked less than seven weeks later.[12]
Three explorers made the
first ascent of
Canada's 11,870-foot (3,620 m)
Mount Assiniboine, described as "one of the classic mountaineering peaks of the world".[13]
Died: William V.B. Beach, the "Father of the British House of Commons"
August 4, 1901 (Sunday)
Prime MinisterKatsura Tarō of
Japan convened a secret meeting of the
genrō, the empire's group of elder statesmen, and discussed an alliance with the
British Empire. Former Prime Minister
Itō Hirobumi, who had advocated an alliance with the
Russian Empire as a means of averting the conflict over the control of the Korean peninsula, agreed with the rest of the elders that an alliance with the
United Kingdom would be in
Japan's best interests.[14] and volunteered to prepare a draft proposal for negotiating with the British.[15] With the possibility of an agreement with
Russia no longer under consideration, relations between the Japanese and Russian Empires would continue to deteriorate and the two would
go to war within two and a half years.
Born:Louis Armstrong, American jazz musician, in
New Orleans (d.
1971). During his lifetime,
Louis Armstrong believed that he had been born on July 4, 1900. In 1988, seventeen years after Armstrong's death, however, biographer
Gary Giddins located the record of the musician's 1901 baptism at the Sacred Heart of Jesus Church and found the true birthdate.[16][17]
King Edward and
Queen Alexandra came aboard
RRS Discovery on the eve of its departure.
Dr. Edward Wilson, the ship's surgeon, noted in his diary that "The King shook hands with us all round when he came on board, and again when he left. The Queen also. The King gave the Victorian Order of the Fourth Class to Captain Scott before leaving, having with great difficulty fished it out of his tail-coat pocket, which was a long way round on the wrong side of his stout figure."[18]
Robbers dug a tunnel underneath the vault of the Selby Smelting and Lead Company in
Vallejo, California, and escaped with 1,200 pounds (540 kg) of gold, worth $280,000 at the time.[19] The equivalent of $280,000 in 2016 would be over $7.5 million, but at more than $1,300 for an ounce of gold in 2016, the value of the haul would be more than $25 million. Most of the loot would be recovered four days later after a former employee confessed to the crime and led investigators to the hiding place.[20]
The Monacan steam yacht Princess Alice II, owned by
Prince Albert of Monaco and loaned out by him for scientific exploration, set a record for the greatest depth, up that time, at which
bottom trawling had ever taken place, collecting plankton and other undersea life at a depth of 6,035 meters (19,800 ft), at a location southwest of the
Cape Verde Islands. The depth would not be exceeded until 1947, when the Swedish vessel Albatross trawled in the
Puerto Rico Trench.[24]
The town of
Lawton, Oklahoma, came into being as the United States Land Office began auctioning lots divided from a 320-acre townsite located near the
United States Army's
Fort Sill. The auction "drew an overnight population of ten thousand. Mostly it was made up of men, with their families, who had failed to secure 160-acre homesteads in the lottery of August 1 and came to the townsite in the hope of bidding successfully at the sale of lots. By August 3, in anticipation of the sale, four hundred temporary business structures, nearly all tents, had been raised; a newspaper, the Lawton State Democrat, was being printed; and three streets had been laid out."[25][26]
Field MarshalHerbert Kitchener of the
British Army issued a proclamation giving all Boer soldiers until September 15 to surrender, or to be exiled permanently from
South Africa if captured and to have their property confiscated at war's end.[29][30] "He was disappointed that it had no effect," an historian would write later, "for he was anxious to leave South Africa so that he could take up the post of Commander-in-Chief in India, an office that he had been promised by the Viceroy, Lord Curzon."[31]
The
British House of Commons enacted an amendment to its
cloture rule, reducing the number of votes necessary to end a
filibuster against legislation. The rule was used the next day for the first time.[1]
The
White Star ocean liner
RMS Oceanic rammed and sank an Irish freight vessel, the Kincorn, off the coast of
Tuskar Rock in
Ireland. Seven of the Kincorn crew were drowned as the steamship went down, while 14 others were rescued.[32]
Future
Baseball Hall of Fame inductee and
Milwaukee Brewers manager
Hugh Duffy punched an
American League umpire,
Al Mannassau, in the jaw after Mannassau's controversial call led to the team's 5–4 loss to the
Cleveland Bluebirds. In the final inning, Milwaukee had a 4–3 lead in the final inning when Cleveland's
Jack Bracken (who was playing his first major league game) hit the ball deep into left field along the foul line. Duffy thought the ball was foul, and Mannassau ruled that it was fair, allowing two runs to come in and ending the game.[33] Despite the magnitude of his offense, Duffy was suspended for 12 days rather than being banned for life from the American League, and would go on to a long career.[34]
Josiah Johnson Hawes, 94, called "the oldest photographer in the world". Sixty-eight years earlier, he and his business partner Albert Southworth had opened the
Southworth & Hawes studio in
Boston (b.
1808)
August 8, 1901 (Thursday)
Alberto Santos-Dumont was nearly killed on his third attempt at flying a
dirigible around the
Eiffel Tower to win the
Deutsch Prize 100,000 French francs. As before, his task was to depart the
Longchamp Racecourse, fly to the Tower and circle it three times, then return to his starting point in less than half an hour. Departing at 6:12 in the morning, he reached the Tower and completed the circuits within nine minutes, but then lost control of the airship on his way back. The balloon deflated, and several of the wires connecting the framework and Santos-Dumont were severed by the turning screw that propelled the ship forward, sending the Brazilian-born aviator skimming over rooftops before wrecking on the roof of the Exposition Trocadro hotel. A team of firemen rescued him after the frame became wedged between two buildings.[36][37] Asked what he would do now that his airship was wrecked, Santos-Dumont reportedly said, "Why begin again, of course. One has to have patience."[38]
Jesse Jamison, Principal Chief of the
Seneca Nation in western
New York, was killed in a gunfight with another member of the Seneca tribe.[39]
August 9, 1901 (Friday)
U.S. President
William McKinley made arrangements to attend the
Pan-American Exposition in
Buffalo, New York on September 5, after meeting at his summer home in
Canton, Ohio with the president and the director of the exposition, who designated the 5th as "President's Day". The original plan was for the presidential party to visit the event, then to "spend a day at
Niagara Falls before returning to
Cleveland" to attend an encampment of American Civil War veterans, the
Grand Army of the Republic.[40] Instead of returning home, however, the President would visit the Pan-American event a second day, and would be fatally wounded by
anarchistLeon Czolgosz on September 6.
The city of
Rantoul, Illinois, which would later serve the nearby
Chanute Air Force Base, was destroyed by a fire that had been ignited by an
Illinois Central Railroad train passing through downtown. Hot cinders from the locomotive set fire to the contents of a
grain elevator during a heat wave and drought, and strong winds spread the blaze through the business district, destroying 54 businesses and nine homes, at an estimated loss of $314,000 (equivalent to $8.4 million).[41][42]
August 10, 1901 (Saturday)
France withdrew all of its forces from
China, with the exception of the
legation guard that protected the French diplomatic mission in
Beijing.[43]
The "
Moberly–Jourdain incident" gave rise to one of the more famous "ghost stories" of the early
20th century, which
Charlotte Anne Moberly and
Eleanor Jourdain would recount a decade later in their bestselling book An Adventure. Both of them were administrators at
St Hugh's College, a women's college associated with the
University of Oxford. While in
France visiting the
Palace of Versailles, they walked into the
Petit Trianon, a
château on the grounds of the former French royal palace. According to the 1911 book, they not only saw the ghost of
Marie Antoinette (who had been arrested at that location on August 10, 1792), but her companions as well.[44] After researching the era, they would conclude that they had witnessed the area as it had looked exactly 109 years earlier, by experiencing the memories that two different people had had in 1792, with Jourdain seeing from the point of view of the doomed Queen of France, and Moberly watching through the eyes of one of the Queen's escorts.[45][46][47]
The
United States Department of Agriculture announced that the drought of summer had destroyed at least half of the American corn crop for the year, a greater loss than the USDA had anticipated.[52] Nationwide, food prices showed an unprecedented increase from the year before, with potatoes and corn more than doubled; tomatoes and onions tripled; and a sixfold increase in the price of peas, carrots, beets, cucumbers and radishes. Meat prices increased between 35 and 60 percent, as did many fruits, but the price of apples had tripled.[53]
The
German Antarctic Expedition, led by Professor
Erich von Drygalski, began with the departure of the ship
Gauss from
Kiel. Guided by Captain Hans Ruser, the ship had a crew of five officers, 27 crew, and Drygalski's five-member team.[54] After reaching the previously-unexplored area of Antarctica between 60° E and 100° E, the ship would come within 46 miles (74 km) of the coast of what Drygalski would claim for
Germany as
Kaiser Wilhelm II Land, but would be trapped in an icefield on February 22, 1902, and be unable to depart for 14 months. After getting free, the Gauss would successfully return to
Kiel on November 24, 1903.[55]
Cotton manufacturers in
Fall River, Massachusetts, voted unanimously to enact a 14% cut in wages, effective September 3.[1]
Two men became the first people to take an automobile to the summit of
Pikes Peak. Driver William B. Felker, Jr. and mechanic Charles A. Yont took a steam-powered
Locomobile along a treacherous road used for horse-drawn carriages, and found the descent even more dangerous. There were no other attempts to ascend Pikes Peak until nearly 12 years later.[56]
Serial killer
Jane Toppan claimed her last victim, with the death of Minnie Davis Gibbs. During the summer of 1901, the nurse nicknamed "Jolly Jane" because of her cheerful disposition had come to work for the Davis family in
Boston, and within the space of six weeks, Minnie's mother, father and two sisters had passed away.[57] When Minnie died, the cause of death was listed as "exhaustion", blamed on her grief from losing her family, but her father-in-law was suspicious and sought the help of Dr. Edward S. Wood of
Harvard University's College of Medicine.[58] Minnie's body would be exhumed for an autopsy, which would show high levels of
arsenic,
morphine and
atropine, and Toppan would be arrested on October 29.[59]
August 14, 1901 (Wednesday)
German-born American aviator
Gustave Whitehead drove the Condor 21 along a road in
Bridgeport, Connecticut, pulled its canvassed wings taut, and flew for fifty feet, banked sharply to avoid hitting a stand of chestnut trees, and continued "through the air for more than a mile" before landing again, according to his own account and that of a reporter for the Bridgeport Herald. However, no photograph was ever taken of the Condor 21 in flight, nor of even longer flights that the newspaper reported to have been made in the two years before the
Wright brothers flew at
Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.[60] Reproductions of the Condor, constructed from Whitehead's blueprints, would be flown in 1986 and in 1997.[61] More than 35 years after the event, on April 2, 1937, a person identified as a Whitehead assistant in the Herald articles, James Dickie, would write, "I believe the entire story in the Herald was imaginary, and grew out of comments of Whitehead in discussing what he hoped to get from his plane. I was not present and did not witness any airplane flight on August 14, 1901."[62][63]
In
Havana, American nurse
Clara Maass, who had already survived allowing herself to be bitten by an infected mosquito on
June 24 for the cause of discovering a vaccine against
yellow fever, volunteered for the experiment a second time, "hoping to prove that her earlier case of yellow fever had immunized her against the disease."[64] Instead, she would become even more severely ill, and die ten days later. The Las Animas Hospital would be renamed in her honor, and she would be honored decades later as a martyr to the cause of medicine, on postage stamps issued in
Cuba in 1951, and in the
United States in 1979.
Sixty-five people drowned after the
Canadian Pacific Navigation Company steamer
SS Islander struck an iceberg near
Douglas Island off of the coast of
Juneau, Alaska and sank. The ship had moved ahead in a heavy fog, and the collision tore an immense hole in the
bow, causing water to come rushing in before the water-tight compartment doors could be closed. Compounding the disaster was that the engine room exploded as lifeboats were being lowered.[65][66]
The population of
Canada was announced as 5,338,883 people, an increase of ten percent in the previous decade.[69]
August 17, 1901 (Saturday)
A timepiece created in Victoria Hong Kong on 17 August 1901
General
Leónidas Plaza was declared to be the winner in the elections for
President of Ecuador, two weeks before the scheduled August 31 election day.[70]
The crew of the
General Slocum, a steamship which would be destroyed in 1904 in
New York City's worst disaster of the
20th century, fought off an attempt by passengers to seize control of the vessel. The ill-fated Slocum could be rented for excursions, and was carrying a party of "nine hundred drunken anarchists" from
Paterson, New Jersey, when a riot broke out. The crew of 22 was able to fight back against the mob, and steamed to the pier used by the boats of the
New York City Police Department, where 17 of the instigators were arrested.[71][72]
In
Pierce City, Missouri,
all of the African-American residents were driven from town by a white mob following the murder of Gisella Wild, a 24-year-old white woman. The vigilantes invaded the black section of the segregated town, burned and looted houses, and ordered the more than 200 black citizens to get on a train leave permanently, or risk being killed. Other rural towns and counties in southwestern Missouri would follow Pierce City's example, including neighboring
Barry County,
Monett and
Neosho.
Stroud, Oklahoma followed the Pierce City example two weeks later. Miss Wild's murderer was never convicted, but one black suspect was taken from jail by the mob and lynched, while another was tried and acquitted, and two others were released without being indicted.[73][74][75] The 2010 census for Pierce City would show two African-American residents (0.22%) among its population of 1,292 people.[76] Disgusted by the mob mentality in his home state of
Missouri, author
Mark Twain would write an essay, "
The United States of Lyncherdom", commenting on "man's commonest weakness, his aversion to being unpleasantly conspicuous, pointed at, shunned, as being on the unpopular side. Its other name is Moral Cowardice, and is the commanding feature of the make-up of 9,999 men in the 10,000." He added that in the case of a lynching, most of the vast majority of people were "right-hearted and compassionate, and would be cruelly pained by such a spectacle— and would attend it, and let on to be pleased with it, if the public approval seemed to require it."[77]
The steamship City of Golconda capsized in a storm as it was sailing down the
Ohio River from
Elizabethtown, Illinois to
Paducah, Kentucky. Despite fears that as many as 20 of the people on board had been drowned,[78] the final death toll was 11 passengers and four crew members.[79]
In the years when only one umpire was provided for a major league baseball game, it was not unusual for players not in the lineup to handle the officiating if the regular umpire failed to show up, in which case the procedure was for the opposing managers to each select a player to handle officiating duties.
Al Orth of the
Philadelphia Phillies earned the distinction of umpiring and playing in the same game, when he was put in as a pinch hitter in the ninth inning, and hit a single to drive in a run in a 3–2 loss to the
Brooklyn Dodgers.[81] Orth's feat would later be described as "the first instance on record where an umpire was called to bat to win a game."[82]
The battleship USS Iowa was dispatched to the Pacific coast of the isthmus of
Panama as the third U.S. Navy ship to monitor fighting between
Colombia and
Venezuela.[80]
A group of 509 American schoolteachers (368 men and 141 women) [83] arrived in
Manila after being recruited to teach throughout the U.S. territory of the
Philippines as employees of the Department of Public Instruction.[84] Teaching Filipino students in English, preparing many of them for the prospect of attending college in the
United States, and instructing all children in the American way of life, the new teachers and their successors would become known as "the
Thomasites" because the 509 had arrived on the
United States Army Transport Thomas.[85][86]
France and the
Ottoman Empire severed diplomatic relations after the French ambassador said that the
Ottoman Sultan had broken his promise to settle disputed French claims.[90] The French cruiser Cussard was dispatched to get Ambassador J.A.E. Constans, who would depart Constantinople on August 26.
U.S. President
William McKinley issued a proclamation inviting "all the Nations of the Earth" to participate in the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, scheduled to be held in St. Louis starting May 1, 1903, encouraging them to send exhibits "as will most fitly illustrate their resources, their industries and their progress in civilization."[91]
Wilbur and Orville Wright departed from
Kitty Hawk, North Carolina after the failure of their experiments with a glider that could be adapted to become a heavier-than-air flying machine. Their design for a wing provided only one-third of the lift that they had predicted from their calculations. Wilbur would recount later that on the train back to
Dayton, Ohio, he told Orville, "Not within a thousand years will man ever fly!" [92] Upon their arrival, however, they concluded that the problem lay in the data gathered by Otto Lilienthal and John Smeaton was incorrect and "they decided to recheck all the earlier data, taking nothing as proven until they proved it themselves." [93]
August 23, 1901 (Friday)
MorantFawcett
Reverend Daniel Heese, a German missionary assigned by the
Basel Mission, was shot to death along with a young black child, on orders of
Lt. Harry "Breaker" Morant of the
Bushveldt Carbineers, an Australian infantry division fighting on the British side of the
Second Boer War. Heese had been working along with British missionaries in evangelical activities, and he and the child had been the only surviving witnesses to the Carbineers' murder the day before of four Boer schoolteachers and four Afrikaner soldiers. The missionary's murder would expose the atrocities that had been committed by British forces against civilians during the Boer War. Morant and Lt.
Peter Handcock would be convicted of numerous murders in their court martial, and executed on February 27, 1902.[94]
Led by
Millicent Fawcett, the "Ladies' Commission" appointed by the British government began its inspection tour of the civilian internment camps set up in
South Africa by the
British Army during the
Second Boer War, starting with the one at
Vryburg. On the first camp on the list, they noted that the majority of the 458 internees were living in tents without beds and that there was no school for the children, but concluded that the food and fuel rations were adequate, and advised the superintendent.[95]
A war between the
Ottoman Empire and the
British Empire seemed imminent after the Ottoman gunboat
Zuhaf was turned back by a British warship as it attempted to enter the harbor of
Kuwait City. Concerned that the Ottomans would attempt to take the port, the British government ordered the
Royal Navy to prevent any Ottoman soldiers from debarking. The captain of the British ship warned the Zuhaf captain that any attempt to land men or supplies at
Kuwait would be resisted by force, and the Ottoman captain misunderstood and telegraphed a report to
Istanbul that the
United Kingdom had conquered the Kuwaiti emirate as a colony. The
German Empire, alarmed over the perceived change of the balance of power in the
Middle East, would join the Ottomans in accusing the British Foreign Office of reneging on its previous pledges. In clearing up the misunderstanding the powers would come to a new agreement that Britain would permit the Kuwait's right to self-rule (
suzerainty) but not to the extent that
Kuwait would have control over its foreign relations (
sovereignty).[96]
Died:Clara Maass, 25, American nurse who sacrificed her life in an attempt to contribute to a cure for
yellow fever (b.
1876) [97]
August 25, 1901 (Sunday)
The diplomatic crisis between
France and the
Ottoman Empire appeared settled when the Turkish government agreed to pay 700,000 French francs (equivalent to 150,000 American dollars) to the Quays Company of France as compensation for a breach of contract.[98] Two days later, however, came word that the Sultan had changed his mind, and Ambassador Costans left
Constantinople, while
Turkey's Ambassador to
France, Munir Bey, was sent a request by the French Foreign Ministry to not return to
Paris.[99]
Born:
Elmer W. Engstrom, American engineer and business executive who served as President and later Chief Executive Officer for
RCA, in
Minneapolis (d.
1984)
The American Standard Version of the
Bible, a revision of the
King James Version, was published by Thomas Nelson and Sons after translators had worked for decades "in hope of a revision that would more adequately represent the American scholars' insights and style of English language."[100]
The village of
Hamtramck, Michigan (pronounced Ham-TRAM-ik) was incorporated. It would be incorporated as a city in 1922, by which time it had become a center for Polish-Americans.[101] Hamtramck and a smaller city that borders it,
Highland Park, are entirely surrounded by the city of
Detroit.
In the
Congo Free State, a column of Belgian and Congolese soldiers invaded the
Kasaï region, where the
Batetela tribesmen and their leader, King Kabongo, had been conducting raids against the
Luba people for the previous four years. The two sides, both armed with rifles, fought a pitched battle at the village of Kakipango, and the Belgians defeated the Batetela, although small groups would continue to make sporadic raids for another ten years.[102]
August 28, 1901 (Wednesday)
Twenty-four people were killed when a boiler on board the steamer City of Trenton exploded. The ship was racing up the
Delaware River toward
Philadelphia with 150 passengers on board, and was ten minutes behind schedule when the ship's captain ordered it to move full steam. Reports the next day speculated that Captain Worrell had been attempting to catch up to the Twilight, a steamer from a rival company, which began speeding up as the Trenton approached it. At about 2:00 in the afternoon, the explosion of the port side boiler caused the ship to list and threw passengers from upper decks into the river, while others were scalded by clouds of escaping steam.[103][104] The final death toll was reported on September 4 to be 24.[105]
Silliman University, the first American private school in the
Philippines, was founded by Presbyterian missionaries
David Sutherland Hibbard and his wife, Laura Crooks Hibbard, as the Silliman Institute, a primary school for Filipino boys, with money given by a New York City philanthropist, Dr.
Horace Silliman. It would become a university in 1938.[106][107]
Voters in
Los Angeles approved a
bond issue to purchase the privately owned
Los Angeles Water Company.[108] The final vote was 6,284 in favor, 1,267 against, well above the necessary two-thirds majority required to allow the city to borrow two million dollars for the purchase.[109] Control of the distribution of water would help the city of 103,000 people triple in size by 1910, and surpass one million residents by the end of the
1920s.[110]
Zina Huntington Young, 80, Mormon religious leader who had been President of the Church's women's auxiliary, the
Relief Society, since 1888. Mrs. Young had been married to the Church's first President,
Joseph Smith, until his death in 1844, and to its second President,
Brigham Young, until he died in 1877. (b.
1821)
August 29, 1901 (Thursday)
The British concentration camp at
Standerton, in
South Africa, became the first to be completely enclosed by
barbed wire fences. With 3,329 inmates occupying 550 tents, the camp was surrounded by two rows of fences, by order of the British superintendent, Frank Winfield, who had ordered the inmates to erect the enclosure. On August 11, a party of Boer soldiers had raided the camp and stolen 157 cattle, and the ostensible purpose was to keep in the livestock and keep the enemy from making further raids. However, as author Reviel Netz would note later, this was "a new phenomenon: a human settlement whose boundaries are defined by barbed wire... while raised to prevent motion of Boer men from outside the camp to its inside, the fence immediately served also to prevent the motion of Boer women inside the camp to its outside. They were no longer under curfew; they were now imprisoned."[111]
The German passenger liner
SS Deutschland set a new record for the fastest crossing of the
Atlantic Ocean, steaming into
Lower New York Bay at 1:20 in the morning, only 5 days, 12 hours and 5 minutes after its departure from
Liverpool on Friday evening, August 23. The new mark was 24 minutes faster than the previous record, set by the Deutschland on September 1, 1900.[112]
August 30, 1901 (Friday)
British inventor
Hubert Cecil Booth patented the first motorized vacuum cleaner, after concluding that if a motor could blow air to disperse dust, it could also be reversed to suck dust into a container. Booth originally used his invention as part of his cleaning service "using a large horse-drawn, petrol-driven unit, which was parked outside the building to be cleaned, with hoses stretching through the windows."[113]
Thirty-six workers who were riding on the
Great Northern Railroad through Montana were killed when freight cars from one train crashed into the one on which they were riding.[115] According to reports at the scene, a line of 18 railcars broke loose from a freight train that was climbing a grade near
Essex, Montana, and headed downhill toward the station at Nyack, colliding with Great Northern's Passenger Train No. 3 at almost 9:00 in the evening.[116]
Leon Czolgosz, a 28-year old former millworker from northern
Ohio, arrived in
Buffalo, New York by train from
Chicago, after learning that U.S. President
William McKinley was going to be visiting the
Pan-American Exposition September 5. Czolgosz rented a hotel room above John Nowak's Saloon at 1078 Broadway Street at the corner of Broadway and Loepere, and perfected his plan to shoot the President.[117][118][119]
^"'Rainmaker' Claims All the Credit". Des Moines Register. August 4, 1901. p. 5.
^Select Documents Relating to the Unification of South Africa, Arthur Percival Newton, ed. (Routledge, 2013) p. 190
^John Boje, An Imperfect Occupation: Enduring the South African War (University of Illinois Press, 2015) p. 86
^"Viper Sinks in Mimic Battle— British Torpedo Boat Destroyer Wrecked Off Alderney During Fleet Maneuvers". Chicago Daily Tribune. August 5, 1901. p. 1.
^Osborne, Eric W. (2005). Destroyers: An Illustrated History of Their Impact.
ABC-CLIO. p. 37.
^Scaife, W.G.S (1999). From Galaxies to Turbines: Science, Technology and the Parsons Family.
CRC Press. p. 338.
^Sandford, Robert W. (2010). Ecology & Wonder in the Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks World Heritage Site.
Athabasca University Press. p. 61.
^Reischauer, Haru Matsukata (1986). Samurai and Silk: A Japanese and American Heritage.
Harvard University Press. p. 131.
^"Robbers Secure $280,000 in Gold". Chicago Daily Tribune. August 7, 1901. p. 1.
^"Stolen Gold Is Found". Chicago Sunday Tribune. August 11, 1901. p. 2.
^"Kaiser's Mother Dies at Cronberg— Dowager Empress Frederick Passes Away After Long Period of Suffering". Chicago Daily Tribune. August 6, 1901. p. 2.
^"Scott, Robert Falcon", in Historical Dictionary of the British Empire, by Kenneth J. Panto (Rowman & Littlefield, 2015) p. 465
^Satya S. Sharma, Breaking the Ice in Antarctica: The First Indian Wintering in Antarctica (New Age International, 2001) p. 19
^Gilbert T. Rowe, Deep-Sea Biology (Harvard University Press, 2005) p. 50
^The WPA Guide to Oklahoma: The Sooner State (Federal Writers Project, 1939; reprinted by Trinity University Press, 2013) pp. 142-143
^"Town of Lawton Springs from Prairie in a Night", Chicago Daily Tribune, August 3, 1901, p1
^Tingle, Laura (2013). Great Expectations: Government, Entitlement and an Angry Nation.
Black Inc.
^Omara-Otunnu, Amii (1987). Politics and the Military in Uganda, 1890–1985. Springer. p. 27.
^"Threat of Exile for Boer Chiefs— All Who Do Not Surrender Before Sept. 15 Will Be Banished". Chicago Daily Tribune. August 10, 1901. p. 4.
^Baker, Ray Stannard; et al. (1904). Modern Inventions and Discoveries.
J. A. Hill and Company. pp. 70–71.
^"Seneca Indian Chief Is Killed in Ugly Fight". August 9, 1901. p. 1.
^"M'Kinley to Visit Exposition— Chief Executive Sets Date of 'President's Day' at Pan-American for Sept. 5". Chicago Daily Tribune. August 10, 1901. p. 1.
^"Town Hard Hit by Fire— Rantoul, Ill., Loses Every Business House but One". Chicago Daily Tribune. August 10, 1901. p. 2.
^Hanson, Mark D. (2011). Rantoul and Chanute Air Force Base.
Arcadia Publishing. p. 8.
^"French Troops Leave Pekin". Chicago Sunday Tribune. August 11, 1901. p. 1.
^"King Goes to Germany". Chicago Daily Tribune. August 10, 1901. p. 1.
^Thompson, J. Lee (2015). A Wider Patriotism: Alfred Milner and the British Empire. Routledge. p. 69.
^"Order out for All to Strike". Chicago Daily Tribune. August 7, 1901. p. 1.
^"Strike Order Is in Full Effect". Chicago Sunday Tribune. August 11, 1901. p. 1.
^"Half of Corn Crop Is Lost". Chicago Sunday Tribune. August 11, 1901. p. 1.
^"Record Prices for Food". Chicago Sunday Tribune. August 11, 1901. p. 1.
^Hund, Andrew J., ed. (2014). "Gauss Expedition". Antarctica and the Arctic Circle: A Geographic Encyclopedia of the Earth's Polar Regions.
ABC-CLIO. p. 298.
^Tim Blevins, Enterprise & Innovation in the Pikes Peak Region (Pikes Peak Library District, 2011) p214
^"Jane Toppan", in The A to Z Encyclopedia of Serial Killers, by Harold Schechter (Simon and Schuster, 2012) p. 283
^Katherine Ramsland, The Human Predator: A Historical Chronicle of Serial Murder and Forensic Investigation (Penguin, 2013)
^Peter Vronsky, Female Serial Killers: How and why Women Become Monsters (Penguin, 2007) p. 131
^Andrew Glass, Flying Cars: The True Story (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015) pp. 8-10
^E. H. Hirschel, et al., Aeronautical Research in Germany: From Lilienthal until Today (Springer, 2012) p. 139
^Peter L. Jakab, The Published Writings of Wilbur and Orville Wright (Smithsonian Institution, 2016) p. 71
^Bob Rickard and John Michell, The Rough Guide to Unexplained Phenomena (Penguin, 2007) p. 39
^"Maass, Clara Louise", in The Encyclopedia of the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars: A Political, Social, and Military History, Spencer Tucker, ed. (ABC-CLIO, 2009) p. 351
^"Ship Crashes into Iceberg; Seventy Die", Chicago Daily Tribune, August 19, 1901, p. 1
^Peter Pigott, From Far and Wide: A Complete History of Canada's Arctic Sovereignty (Dundurn, 2011) p. 99
^Richard Kaczynski, Perdurabo, Revised and Expanded Edition: The Life of Aleister Crowley (North Atlantic Books, 2012) p. 117
^Peter Berresford Ellis, Celtic Dawn: The Dream of Celtic Unity (Constable and Company, 1993) p. 95
^"Canada's Census Is Out", Chicago Daily Tribune, August 17, 1901, p. 13
^"Plaza Ecuador's President". Chicago Sunday Tribune. August 18, 1901. p. 6.
^"Start Riot on Steamer's Deck". Chicago Sunday Tribune. August 18, 1901. p. 4.
^Capo, Fran (2011). Myths and Mysteries of New York: True Stories of the Unsolved and Unexplained. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 160.
^"Negroes Killed or Driven Away— Pierce City, Mo., Mob Hangs, Shoots and Burns Three Colored Men and Exiles All Others". Chicago Daily Tribune. August 21, 1901. p. 1.
^Jaspin, Elliot (2008). Buried in the Bitter Waters: The Hidden History of Racial Cleansing in America.
Basic Books. pp. 67–78.
^Rucker, Walter; Upton, James Nathaniel, eds. (2007). "Southwest Missouri Riots (1894–1906)". Encyclopedia of American Race Riots.
Greenwood Publishing. pp. 603–609.
^"Ohio River Steamer Lost", Chicago Daily Tribune, August 20, 1901, p. 1
^Annual Report of the Supervising Inspector General, Steamboat Inspection Service to the Secretary of Commerce (Government Printing Office, 1902) p. 62
^Halfon, Mark S. (2014). Tales from the Deadball Era: Ty Cobb, Home Run Baker, Shoeless Joe Jackson, and the Wildest Times in Baseball History.
Potomac Books. p. 65.
^"Another Hard Blow for the Phillies". Brooklyn Daily Eagle. August 21, 1901. p. 12.
^Christian Huck and Stefan Bauernschmidt, Travelling Goods, Travelling Moods: Varieties of Cultural Appropriation (1850–1950) (Campus Verlag, 2012)
^"Philippines" in Colonialism: An International, Social, Cultural, and Political Encyclopedia, Penny M. Sonnenburg, ed. (ABC-CLIO, 2003) p. 469
^Teresa Brawner Bevis and Christopher J. Lucas, International Students in American Colleges and Universities: A History (Springer, 2007) p. 75
^"Teachers Arrive at Manila", Chicago Daily Tribune, August 22, 1901, p. 6
^"International Federation of Trade Unions", in Historical Dictionary of Organized Labor, by James C. Docherty (Scarecrow Press, 2012) p. 142
^Charles F. Faber, Baseball Prodigies: Best Major League Seasons by Players Under 21 (McFarland, 2014) p. 227
^"Three Hits Off Waddell", Chicago Daily Tribune, August 22, 1901, p. 5
^"French Cruisers Menace Turkey— Diplomatic Relations Between the Ottoman Empire and the Republic Are Severed", Chicago Daily Tribune, August 22, 1901, p1
^Harper Barnes, Standing on a Volcano: The Life and Times of David Rowland Francis (Missouri History Museum, 2001) p. 115
^Alan Axelrod, Profiles in Audacity: Great Decisions and how They Were Made (Sterling Publishing, 2006) p. 100
^"Light at the End of the Tunnel", Flying magazine (June 2003) p. 108
^Graham Jooste and Roger Webster, Innocent Blood: Executions During the Anglo-Boer War (New Africa Books, 2002) p. 214
^Birgit Seibold, Emily Hobhouse and the Reports on the Concentration Camps during the Boer War, 1899–1902: Two Different Perspectives (Columbia University Press, 2011) p. 140
^Frederick F. Anscombe, The Ottoman Gulf: The Creation of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar (Columbia University Press, 1997) pp. 122-123
^"Nurse Tests Theory, Dies— Yellow Fever Experiment in Cuba Kills Clara Maas", Chicago Sunday Tribune, August 25, 1901, p. 5
^"Sultan Comes to French Terms", Chicago Daily Tribune, August 27, 1901, p. 5
^"Relations with Turkey Severed— France Recalls Envoy from Constantinople; Tells Abdul's Minister Not to Return", Chicago Daily Tribune, August 28, 1901, p. 1
^V. George Shillington, 30 years of work Reading the Sacred Text: An Introduction in Biblical Studies (A&C Black, 2002) p. 192
^Greg Kowalski, Hamtramck: The Driven City (Arcadia Publishing, 2002)
^Thomas Q. Reefe, The Rainbow and the Kings: A History of the Luba Empire to 1891 (University of California Press, 1981) p. 192
^"Fatal Explosion Sinks Steamer City of Trenton", Philadelphia Times, August 29, 1901, p. 1
^"Steamer Horror Due to Racing", Chicago Daily Tribune, August 30, 1901, p. 2
^"Byerson to Tell Story at Inquest— Coroner Issues Subpoena for Oiler of City of Trenton Who Survived Explosion", Philadelphia Times, September 4, 1901, p. 4
^Cristina Pantoja-Hidalgo, Over a Cup of Ginger Tea: Conversations on the Literary Narratives of Filipino Women (University of the Philippines Press, 2006) p. 22
^"Today Will Decide Water Campaign", Los Angeles Times, August 28, 1901, p. 5
^"Bonds Carried by about Five to One— Water Question Happily Settled; Opposition Defeated in Every Precinct in the City", Los Angeles Times, August 29, 1901, p. 10
^Kevin Starr, Material Dreams: Southern California Through the 1920s (Oxford University Press, 1991) p. 47
^Reviel Netz, Barbed Wire: An Ecology of Modernity (Wesleyan University Press, 2004) p. 141
^"Deutschland Again Sets New Record for Speed", Chicago Daily Tribune, August 29, 1901, p. 1
^Gilly Pickup, What the British Invented: From the Great to the Downright Bonkers (Amberley Publishing, 2015)
^JaapJan Zeeberg, Into the Ice Sea: Barents' Wintering on Novaya Zemlya, a Renaissance Voyage of Discovery (Rozenberg, 2005) p. 151
^"Many Killed in Western Wreck", Chicago Sunday Tribune, September 1, 1901, p. 2
^"Thirty-Six Were Killed", Minneapolis Journal, August 31, 1901, p. 1
August 6, 1901: Scott leads RRS Discovery on the British Antarctic ExpeditionAugust 15, 1901: SS Islander sinks in Alaskan watersAugust 11, 1901: Drygalski leads the Gauss on the German Antarctic ExpeditionAugust 3, 1901: World's fastest ship, HMS Viper, wreckedAugust 14, 1901: The alleged flight of the Condor 21
W. F. Wright, a farmer and a former official with the
Nebraska Department of Agriculture, ended his experiment at bring a rainfall by firing cannons at a clear sky after two days.[2] Starting the previous afternoon, Wright and his assistants lined up 24
mortars at his farm near
Lincoln, Nebraska, loaded them with gunpowder, and fired them once a minute until his supply of several thousand pounds of gunpowder was exhausted, to test Wright's own theory of "special vibration".[3] Wright explained his theory that clouds were not formed from evaporation of water and that hydrogen and oxygen in the atmosphere could only combine to form water if "outside force is brought to bear upon them", and that the force was atmospheric electricity. The concussion from firing a cannon, Wright told reporters, created friction that would produce the atmospheric electricity necessary to form water.[4] The next day, the area around Lincoln steadily cooled off and temperatures dropped 41 degrees over a period of 38 hours, and on August 3, heavy rain came down "throughout the northern portion of Nebraska, southern South Dakota and the northern portion of Iowa",[5] and Wright declared that he had been the person responsible.[6][7]
HMS Viper, the first navy ship ever to be powered by
steam turbine propulsion and described as the "fastest vessel in the world", was wrecked beyond repair during
Royal Navy maneuvers near the
Channel Islands. Operating in poor weather, the lightweight Viper struck a reef near the island of
Alderney, ripping out the bottom of its hull.[10][11] Its sister ship,
HMS Cobra, would be wrecked less than seven weeks later.[12]
Three explorers made the
first ascent of
Canada's 11,870-foot (3,620 m)
Mount Assiniboine, described as "one of the classic mountaineering peaks of the world".[13]
Died: William V.B. Beach, the "Father of the British House of Commons"
August 4, 1901 (Sunday)
Prime MinisterKatsura Tarō of
Japan convened a secret meeting of the
genrō, the empire's group of elder statesmen, and discussed an alliance with the
British Empire. Former Prime Minister
Itō Hirobumi, who had advocated an alliance with the
Russian Empire as a means of averting the conflict over the control of the Korean peninsula, agreed with the rest of the elders that an alliance with the
United Kingdom would be in
Japan's best interests.[14] and volunteered to prepare a draft proposal for negotiating with the British.[15] With the possibility of an agreement with
Russia no longer under consideration, relations between the Japanese and Russian Empires would continue to deteriorate and the two would
go to war within two and a half years.
Born:Louis Armstrong, American jazz musician, in
New Orleans (d.
1971). During his lifetime,
Louis Armstrong believed that he had been born on July 4, 1900. In 1988, seventeen years after Armstrong's death, however, biographer
Gary Giddins located the record of the musician's 1901 baptism at the Sacred Heart of Jesus Church and found the true birthdate.[16][17]
King Edward and
Queen Alexandra came aboard
RRS Discovery on the eve of its departure.
Dr. Edward Wilson, the ship's surgeon, noted in his diary that "The King shook hands with us all round when he came on board, and again when he left. The Queen also. The King gave the Victorian Order of the Fourth Class to Captain Scott before leaving, having with great difficulty fished it out of his tail-coat pocket, which was a long way round on the wrong side of his stout figure."[18]
Robbers dug a tunnel underneath the vault of the Selby Smelting and Lead Company in
Vallejo, California, and escaped with 1,200 pounds (540 kg) of gold, worth $280,000 at the time.[19] The equivalent of $280,000 in 2016 would be over $7.5 million, but at more than $1,300 for an ounce of gold in 2016, the value of the haul would be more than $25 million. Most of the loot would be recovered four days later after a former employee confessed to the crime and led investigators to the hiding place.[20]
The Monacan steam yacht Princess Alice II, owned by
Prince Albert of Monaco and loaned out by him for scientific exploration, set a record for the greatest depth, up that time, at which
bottom trawling had ever taken place, collecting plankton and other undersea life at a depth of 6,035 meters (19,800 ft), at a location southwest of the
Cape Verde Islands. The depth would not be exceeded until 1947, when the Swedish vessel Albatross trawled in the
Puerto Rico Trench.[24]
The town of
Lawton, Oklahoma, came into being as the United States Land Office began auctioning lots divided from a 320-acre townsite located near the
United States Army's
Fort Sill. The auction "drew an overnight population of ten thousand. Mostly it was made up of men, with their families, who had failed to secure 160-acre homesteads in the lottery of August 1 and came to the townsite in the hope of bidding successfully at the sale of lots. By August 3, in anticipation of the sale, four hundred temporary business structures, nearly all tents, had been raised; a newspaper, the Lawton State Democrat, was being printed; and three streets had been laid out."[25][26]
Field MarshalHerbert Kitchener of the
British Army issued a proclamation giving all Boer soldiers until September 15 to surrender, or to be exiled permanently from
South Africa if captured and to have their property confiscated at war's end.[29][30] "He was disappointed that it had no effect," an historian would write later, "for he was anxious to leave South Africa so that he could take up the post of Commander-in-Chief in India, an office that he had been promised by the Viceroy, Lord Curzon."[31]
The
British House of Commons enacted an amendment to its
cloture rule, reducing the number of votes necessary to end a
filibuster against legislation. The rule was used the next day for the first time.[1]
The
White Star ocean liner
RMS Oceanic rammed and sank an Irish freight vessel, the Kincorn, off the coast of
Tuskar Rock in
Ireland. Seven of the Kincorn crew were drowned as the steamship went down, while 14 others were rescued.[32]
Future
Baseball Hall of Fame inductee and
Milwaukee Brewers manager
Hugh Duffy punched an
American League umpire,
Al Mannassau, in the jaw after Mannassau's controversial call led to the team's 5–4 loss to the
Cleveland Bluebirds. In the final inning, Milwaukee had a 4–3 lead in the final inning when Cleveland's
Jack Bracken (who was playing his first major league game) hit the ball deep into left field along the foul line. Duffy thought the ball was foul, and Mannassau ruled that it was fair, allowing two runs to come in and ending the game.[33] Despite the magnitude of his offense, Duffy was suspended for 12 days rather than being banned for life from the American League, and would go on to a long career.[34]
Josiah Johnson Hawes, 94, called "the oldest photographer in the world". Sixty-eight years earlier, he and his business partner Albert Southworth had opened the
Southworth & Hawes studio in
Boston (b.
1808)
August 8, 1901 (Thursday)
Alberto Santos-Dumont was nearly killed on his third attempt at flying a
dirigible around the
Eiffel Tower to win the
Deutsch Prize 100,000 French francs. As before, his task was to depart the
Longchamp Racecourse, fly to the Tower and circle it three times, then return to his starting point in less than half an hour. Departing at 6:12 in the morning, he reached the Tower and completed the circuits within nine minutes, but then lost control of the airship on his way back. The balloon deflated, and several of the wires connecting the framework and Santos-Dumont were severed by the turning screw that propelled the ship forward, sending the Brazilian-born aviator skimming over rooftops before wrecking on the roof of the Exposition Trocadro hotel. A team of firemen rescued him after the frame became wedged between two buildings.[36][37] Asked what he would do now that his airship was wrecked, Santos-Dumont reportedly said, "Why begin again, of course. One has to have patience."[38]
Jesse Jamison, Principal Chief of the
Seneca Nation in western
New York, was killed in a gunfight with another member of the Seneca tribe.[39]
August 9, 1901 (Friday)
U.S. President
William McKinley made arrangements to attend the
Pan-American Exposition in
Buffalo, New York on September 5, after meeting at his summer home in
Canton, Ohio with the president and the director of the exposition, who designated the 5th as "President's Day". The original plan was for the presidential party to visit the event, then to "spend a day at
Niagara Falls before returning to
Cleveland" to attend an encampment of American Civil War veterans, the
Grand Army of the Republic.[40] Instead of returning home, however, the President would visit the Pan-American event a second day, and would be fatally wounded by
anarchistLeon Czolgosz on September 6.
The city of
Rantoul, Illinois, which would later serve the nearby
Chanute Air Force Base, was destroyed by a fire that had been ignited by an
Illinois Central Railroad train passing through downtown. Hot cinders from the locomotive set fire to the contents of a
grain elevator during a heat wave and drought, and strong winds spread the blaze through the business district, destroying 54 businesses and nine homes, at an estimated loss of $314,000 (equivalent to $8.4 million).[41][42]
August 10, 1901 (Saturday)
France withdrew all of its forces from
China, with the exception of the
legation guard that protected the French diplomatic mission in
Beijing.[43]
The "
Moberly–Jourdain incident" gave rise to one of the more famous "ghost stories" of the early
20th century, which
Charlotte Anne Moberly and
Eleanor Jourdain would recount a decade later in their bestselling book An Adventure. Both of them were administrators at
St Hugh's College, a women's college associated with the
University of Oxford. While in
France visiting the
Palace of Versailles, they walked into the
Petit Trianon, a
château on the grounds of the former French royal palace. According to the 1911 book, they not only saw the ghost of
Marie Antoinette (who had been arrested at that location on August 10, 1792), but her companions as well.[44] After researching the era, they would conclude that they had witnessed the area as it had looked exactly 109 years earlier, by experiencing the memories that two different people had had in 1792, with Jourdain seeing from the point of view of the doomed Queen of France, and Moberly watching through the eyes of one of the Queen's escorts.[45][46][47]
The
United States Department of Agriculture announced that the drought of summer had destroyed at least half of the American corn crop for the year, a greater loss than the USDA had anticipated.[52] Nationwide, food prices showed an unprecedented increase from the year before, with potatoes and corn more than doubled; tomatoes and onions tripled; and a sixfold increase in the price of peas, carrots, beets, cucumbers and radishes. Meat prices increased between 35 and 60 percent, as did many fruits, but the price of apples had tripled.[53]
The
German Antarctic Expedition, led by Professor
Erich von Drygalski, began with the departure of the ship
Gauss from
Kiel. Guided by Captain Hans Ruser, the ship had a crew of five officers, 27 crew, and Drygalski's five-member team.[54] After reaching the previously-unexplored area of Antarctica between 60° E and 100° E, the ship would come within 46 miles (74 km) of the coast of what Drygalski would claim for
Germany as
Kaiser Wilhelm II Land, but would be trapped in an icefield on February 22, 1902, and be unable to depart for 14 months. After getting free, the Gauss would successfully return to
Kiel on November 24, 1903.[55]
Cotton manufacturers in
Fall River, Massachusetts, voted unanimously to enact a 14% cut in wages, effective September 3.[1]
Two men became the first people to take an automobile to the summit of
Pikes Peak. Driver William B. Felker, Jr. and mechanic Charles A. Yont took a steam-powered
Locomobile along a treacherous road used for horse-drawn carriages, and found the descent even more dangerous. There were no other attempts to ascend Pikes Peak until nearly 12 years later.[56]
Serial killer
Jane Toppan claimed her last victim, with the death of Minnie Davis Gibbs. During the summer of 1901, the nurse nicknamed "Jolly Jane" because of her cheerful disposition had come to work for the Davis family in
Boston, and within the space of six weeks, Minnie's mother, father and two sisters had passed away.[57] When Minnie died, the cause of death was listed as "exhaustion", blamed on her grief from losing her family, but her father-in-law was suspicious and sought the help of Dr. Edward S. Wood of
Harvard University's College of Medicine.[58] Minnie's body would be exhumed for an autopsy, which would show high levels of
arsenic,
morphine and
atropine, and Toppan would be arrested on October 29.[59]
August 14, 1901 (Wednesday)
German-born American aviator
Gustave Whitehead drove the Condor 21 along a road in
Bridgeport, Connecticut, pulled its canvassed wings taut, and flew for fifty feet, banked sharply to avoid hitting a stand of chestnut trees, and continued "through the air for more than a mile" before landing again, according to his own account and that of a reporter for the Bridgeport Herald. However, no photograph was ever taken of the Condor 21 in flight, nor of even longer flights that the newspaper reported to have been made in the two years before the
Wright brothers flew at
Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.[60] Reproductions of the Condor, constructed from Whitehead's blueprints, would be flown in 1986 and in 1997.[61] More than 35 years after the event, on April 2, 1937, a person identified as a Whitehead assistant in the Herald articles, James Dickie, would write, "I believe the entire story in the Herald was imaginary, and grew out of comments of Whitehead in discussing what he hoped to get from his plane. I was not present and did not witness any airplane flight on August 14, 1901."[62][63]
In
Havana, American nurse
Clara Maass, who had already survived allowing herself to be bitten by an infected mosquito on
June 24 for the cause of discovering a vaccine against
yellow fever, volunteered for the experiment a second time, "hoping to prove that her earlier case of yellow fever had immunized her against the disease."[64] Instead, she would become even more severely ill, and die ten days later. The Las Animas Hospital would be renamed in her honor, and she would be honored decades later as a martyr to the cause of medicine, on postage stamps issued in
Cuba in 1951, and in the
United States in 1979.
Sixty-five people drowned after the
Canadian Pacific Navigation Company steamer
SS Islander struck an iceberg near
Douglas Island off of the coast of
Juneau, Alaska and sank. The ship had moved ahead in a heavy fog, and the collision tore an immense hole in the
bow, causing water to come rushing in before the water-tight compartment doors could be closed. Compounding the disaster was that the engine room exploded as lifeboats were being lowered.[65][66]
The population of
Canada was announced as 5,338,883 people, an increase of ten percent in the previous decade.[69]
August 17, 1901 (Saturday)
A timepiece created in Victoria Hong Kong on 17 August 1901
General
Leónidas Plaza was declared to be the winner in the elections for
President of Ecuador, two weeks before the scheduled August 31 election day.[70]
The crew of the
General Slocum, a steamship which would be destroyed in 1904 in
New York City's worst disaster of the
20th century, fought off an attempt by passengers to seize control of the vessel. The ill-fated Slocum could be rented for excursions, and was carrying a party of "nine hundred drunken anarchists" from
Paterson, New Jersey, when a riot broke out. The crew of 22 was able to fight back against the mob, and steamed to the pier used by the boats of the
New York City Police Department, where 17 of the instigators were arrested.[71][72]
In
Pierce City, Missouri,
all of the African-American residents were driven from town by a white mob following the murder of Gisella Wild, a 24-year-old white woman. The vigilantes invaded the black section of the segregated town, burned and looted houses, and ordered the more than 200 black citizens to get on a train leave permanently, or risk being killed. Other rural towns and counties in southwestern Missouri would follow Pierce City's example, including neighboring
Barry County,
Monett and
Neosho.
Stroud, Oklahoma followed the Pierce City example two weeks later. Miss Wild's murderer was never convicted, but one black suspect was taken from jail by the mob and lynched, while another was tried and acquitted, and two others were released without being indicted.[73][74][75] The 2010 census for Pierce City would show two African-American residents (0.22%) among its population of 1,292 people.[76] Disgusted by the mob mentality in his home state of
Missouri, author
Mark Twain would write an essay, "
The United States of Lyncherdom", commenting on "man's commonest weakness, his aversion to being unpleasantly conspicuous, pointed at, shunned, as being on the unpopular side. Its other name is Moral Cowardice, and is the commanding feature of the make-up of 9,999 men in the 10,000." He added that in the case of a lynching, most of the vast majority of people were "right-hearted and compassionate, and would be cruelly pained by such a spectacle— and would attend it, and let on to be pleased with it, if the public approval seemed to require it."[77]
The steamship City of Golconda capsized in a storm as it was sailing down the
Ohio River from
Elizabethtown, Illinois to
Paducah, Kentucky. Despite fears that as many as 20 of the people on board had been drowned,[78] the final death toll was 11 passengers and four crew members.[79]
In the years when only one umpire was provided for a major league baseball game, it was not unusual for players not in the lineup to handle the officiating if the regular umpire failed to show up, in which case the procedure was for the opposing managers to each select a player to handle officiating duties.
Al Orth of the
Philadelphia Phillies earned the distinction of umpiring and playing in the same game, when he was put in as a pinch hitter in the ninth inning, and hit a single to drive in a run in a 3–2 loss to the
Brooklyn Dodgers.[81] Orth's feat would later be described as "the first instance on record where an umpire was called to bat to win a game."[82]
The battleship USS Iowa was dispatched to the Pacific coast of the isthmus of
Panama as the third U.S. Navy ship to monitor fighting between
Colombia and
Venezuela.[80]
A group of 509 American schoolteachers (368 men and 141 women) [83] arrived in
Manila after being recruited to teach throughout the U.S. territory of the
Philippines as employees of the Department of Public Instruction.[84] Teaching Filipino students in English, preparing many of them for the prospect of attending college in the
United States, and instructing all children in the American way of life, the new teachers and their successors would become known as "the
Thomasites" because the 509 had arrived on the
United States Army Transport Thomas.[85][86]
France and the
Ottoman Empire severed diplomatic relations after the French ambassador said that the
Ottoman Sultan had broken his promise to settle disputed French claims.[90] The French cruiser Cussard was dispatched to get Ambassador J.A.E. Constans, who would depart Constantinople on August 26.
U.S. President
William McKinley issued a proclamation inviting "all the Nations of the Earth" to participate in the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, scheduled to be held in St. Louis starting May 1, 1903, encouraging them to send exhibits "as will most fitly illustrate their resources, their industries and their progress in civilization."[91]
Wilbur and Orville Wright departed from
Kitty Hawk, North Carolina after the failure of their experiments with a glider that could be adapted to become a heavier-than-air flying machine. Their design for a wing provided only one-third of the lift that they had predicted from their calculations. Wilbur would recount later that on the train back to
Dayton, Ohio, he told Orville, "Not within a thousand years will man ever fly!" [92] Upon their arrival, however, they concluded that the problem lay in the data gathered by Otto Lilienthal and John Smeaton was incorrect and "they decided to recheck all the earlier data, taking nothing as proven until they proved it themselves." [93]
August 23, 1901 (Friday)
MorantFawcett
Reverend Daniel Heese, a German missionary assigned by the
Basel Mission, was shot to death along with a young black child, on orders of
Lt. Harry "Breaker" Morant of the
Bushveldt Carbineers, an Australian infantry division fighting on the British side of the
Second Boer War. Heese had been working along with British missionaries in evangelical activities, and he and the child had been the only surviving witnesses to the Carbineers' murder the day before of four Boer schoolteachers and four Afrikaner soldiers. The missionary's murder would expose the atrocities that had been committed by British forces against civilians during the Boer War. Morant and Lt.
Peter Handcock would be convicted of numerous murders in their court martial, and executed on February 27, 1902.[94]
Led by
Millicent Fawcett, the "Ladies' Commission" appointed by the British government began its inspection tour of the civilian internment camps set up in
South Africa by the
British Army during the
Second Boer War, starting with the one at
Vryburg. On the first camp on the list, they noted that the majority of the 458 internees were living in tents without beds and that there was no school for the children, but concluded that the food and fuel rations were adequate, and advised the superintendent.[95]
A war between the
Ottoman Empire and the
British Empire seemed imminent after the Ottoman gunboat
Zuhaf was turned back by a British warship as it attempted to enter the harbor of
Kuwait City. Concerned that the Ottomans would attempt to take the port, the British government ordered the
Royal Navy to prevent any Ottoman soldiers from debarking. The captain of the British ship warned the Zuhaf captain that any attempt to land men or supplies at
Kuwait would be resisted by force, and the Ottoman captain misunderstood and telegraphed a report to
Istanbul that the
United Kingdom had conquered the Kuwaiti emirate as a colony. The
German Empire, alarmed over the perceived change of the balance of power in the
Middle East, would join the Ottomans in accusing the British Foreign Office of reneging on its previous pledges. In clearing up the misunderstanding the powers would come to a new agreement that Britain would permit the Kuwait's right to self-rule (
suzerainty) but not to the extent that
Kuwait would have control over its foreign relations (
sovereignty).[96]
Died:Clara Maass, 25, American nurse who sacrificed her life in an attempt to contribute to a cure for
yellow fever (b.
1876) [97]
August 25, 1901 (Sunday)
The diplomatic crisis between
France and the
Ottoman Empire appeared settled when the Turkish government agreed to pay 700,000 French francs (equivalent to 150,000 American dollars) to the Quays Company of France as compensation for a breach of contract.[98] Two days later, however, came word that the Sultan had changed his mind, and Ambassador Costans left
Constantinople, while
Turkey's Ambassador to
France, Munir Bey, was sent a request by the French Foreign Ministry to not return to
Paris.[99]
Born:
Elmer W. Engstrom, American engineer and business executive who served as President and later Chief Executive Officer for
RCA, in
Minneapolis (d.
1984)
The American Standard Version of the
Bible, a revision of the
King James Version, was published by Thomas Nelson and Sons after translators had worked for decades "in hope of a revision that would more adequately represent the American scholars' insights and style of English language."[100]
The village of
Hamtramck, Michigan (pronounced Ham-TRAM-ik) was incorporated. It would be incorporated as a city in 1922, by which time it had become a center for Polish-Americans.[101] Hamtramck and a smaller city that borders it,
Highland Park, are entirely surrounded by the city of
Detroit.
In the
Congo Free State, a column of Belgian and Congolese soldiers invaded the
Kasaï region, where the
Batetela tribesmen and their leader, King Kabongo, had been conducting raids against the
Luba people for the previous four years. The two sides, both armed with rifles, fought a pitched battle at the village of Kakipango, and the Belgians defeated the Batetela, although small groups would continue to make sporadic raids for another ten years.[102]
August 28, 1901 (Wednesday)
Twenty-four people were killed when a boiler on board the steamer City of Trenton exploded. The ship was racing up the
Delaware River toward
Philadelphia with 150 passengers on board, and was ten minutes behind schedule when the ship's captain ordered it to move full steam. Reports the next day speculated that Captain Worrell had been attempting to catch up to the Twilight, a steamer from a rival company, which began speeding up as the Trenton approached it. At about 2:00 in the afternoon, the explosion of the port side boiler caused the ship to list and threw passengers from upper decks into the river, while others were scalded by clouds of escaping steam.[103][104] The final death toll was reported on September 4 to be 24.[105]
Silliman University, the first American private school in the
Philippines, was founded by Presbyterian missionaries
David Sutherland Hibbard and his wife, Laura Crooks Hibbard, as the Silliman Institute, a primary school for Filipino boys, with money given by a New York City philanthropist, Dr.
Horace Silliman. It would become a university in 1938.[106][107]
Voters in
Los Angeles approved a
bond issue to purchase the privately owned
Los Angeles Water Company.[108] The final vote was 6,284 in favor, 1,267 against, well above the necessary two-thirds majority required to allow the city to borrow two million dollars for the purchase.[109] Control of the distribution of water would help the city of 103,000 people triple in size by 1910, and surpass one million residents by the end of the
1920s.[110]
Zina Huntington Young, 80, Mormon religious leader who had been President of the Church's women's auxiliary, the
Relief Society, since 1888. Mrs. Young had been married to the Church's first President,
Joseph Smith, until his death in 1844, and to its second President,
Brigham Young, until he died in 1877. (b.
1821)
August 29, 1901 (Thursday)
The British concentration camp at
Standerton, in
South Africa, became the first to be completely enclosed by
barbed wire fences. With 3,329 inmates occupying 550 tents, the camp was surrounded by two rows of fences, by order of the British superintendent, Frank Winfield, who had ordered the inmates to erect the enclosure. On August 11, a party of Boer soldiers had raided the camp and stolen 157 cattle, and the ostensible purpose was to keep in the livestock and keep the enemy from making further raids. However, as author Reviel Netz would note later, this was "a new phenomenon: a human settlement whose boundaries are defined by barbed wire... while raised to prevent motion of Boer men from outside the camp to its inside, the fence immediately served also to prevent the motion of Boer women inside the camp to its outside. They were no longer under curfew; they were now imprisoned."[111]
The German passenger liner
SS Deutschland set a new record for the fastest crossing of the
Atlantic Ocean, steaming into
Lower New York Bay at 1:20 in the morning, only 5 days, 12 hours and 5 minutes after its departure from
Liverpool on Friday evening, August 23. The new mark was 24 minutes faster than the previous record, set by the Deutschland on September 1, 1900.[112]
August 30, 1901 (Friday)
British inventor
Hubert Cecil Booth patented the first motorized vacuum cleaner, after concluding that if a motor could blow air to disperse dust, it could also be reversed to suck dust into a container. Booth originally used his invention as part of his cleaning service "using a large horse-drawn, petrol-driven unit, which was parked outside the building to be cleaned, with hoses stretching through the windows."[113]
Thirty-six workers who were riding on the
Great Northern Railroad through Montana were killed when freight cars from one train crashed into the one on which they were riding.[115] According to reports at the scene, a line of 18 railcars broke loose from a freight train that was climbing a grade near
Essex, Montana, and headed downhill toward the station at Nyack, colliding with Great Northern's Passenger Train No. 3 at almost 9:00 in the evening.[116]
Leon Czolgosz, a 28-year old former millworker from northern
Ohio, arrived in
Buffalo, New York by train from
Chicago, after learning that U.S. President
William McKinley was going to be visiting the
Pan-American Exposition September 5. Czolgosz rented a hotel room above John Nowak's Saloon at 1078 Broadway Street at the corner of Broadway and Loepere, and perfected his plan to shoot the President.[117][118][119]
^"'Rainmaker' Claims All the Credit". Des Moines Register. August 4, 1901. p. 5.
^Select Documents Relating to the Unification of South Africa, Arthur Percival Newton, ed. (Routledge, 2013) p. 190
^John Boje, An Imperfect Occupation: Enduring the South African War (University of Illinois Press, 2015) p. 86
^"Viper Sinks in Mimic Battle— British Torpedo Boat Destroyer Wrecked Off Alderney During Fleet Maneuvers". Chicago Daily Tribune. August 5, 1901. p. 1.
^Osborne, Eric W. (2005). Destroyers: An Illustrated History of Their Impact.
ABC-CLIO. p. 37.
^Scaife, W.G.S (1999). From Galaxies to Turbines: Science, Technology and the Parsons Family.
CRC Press. p. 338.
^Sandford, Robert W. (2010). Ecology & Wonder in the Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks World Heritage Site.
Athabasca University Press. p. 61.
^Reischauer, Haru Matsukata (1986). Samurai and Silk: A Japanese and American Heritage.
Harvard University Press. p. 131.
^"Robbers Secure $280,000 in Gold". Chicago Daily Tribune. August 7, 1901. p. 1.
^"Stolen Gold Is Found". Chicago Sunday Tribune. August 11, 1901. p. 2.
^"Kaiser's Mother Dies at Cronberg— Dowager Empress Frederick Passes Away After Long Period of Suffering". Chicago Daily Tribune. August 6, 1901. p. 2.
^"Scott, Robert Falcon", in Historical Dictionary of the British Empire, by Kenneth J. Panto (Rowman & Littlefield, 2015) p. 465
^Satya S. Sharma, Breaking the Ice in Antarctica: The First Indian Wintering in Antarctica (New Age International, 2001) p. 19
^Gilbert T. Rowe, Deep-Sea Biology (Harvard University Press, 2005) p. 50
^The WPA Guide to Oklahoma: The Sooner State (Federal Writers Project, 1939; reprinted by Trinity University Press, 2013) pp. 142-143
^"Town of Lawton Springs from Prairie in a Night", Chicago Daily Tribune, August 3, 1901, p1
^Tingle, Laura (2013). Great Expectations: Government, Entitlement and an Angry Nation.
Black Inc.
^Omara-Otunnu, Amii (1987). Politics and the Military in Uganda, 1890–1985. Springer. p. 27.
^"Threat of Exile for Boer Chiefs— All Who Do Not Surrender Before Sept. 15 Will Be Banished". Chicago Daily Tribune. August 10, 1901. p. 4.
^Baker, Ray Stannard; et al. (1904). Modern Inventions and Discoveries.
J. A. Hill and Company. pp. 70–71.
^"Seneca Indian Chief Is Killed in Ugly Fight". August 9, 1901. p. 1.
^"M'Kinley to Visit Exposition— Chief Executive Sets Date of 'President's Day' at Pan-American for Sept. 5". Chicago Daily Tribune. August 10, 1901. p. 1.
^"Town Hard Hit by Fire— Rantoul, Ill., Loses Every Business House but One". Chicago Daily Tribune. August 10, 1901. p. 2.
^Hanson, Mark D. (2011). Rantoul and Chanute Air Force Base.
Arcadia Publishing. p. 8.
^"French Troops Leave Pekin". Chicago Sunday Tribune. August 11, 1901. p. 1.
^"King Goes to Germany". Chicago Daily Tribune. August 10, 1901. p. 1.
^Thompson, J. Lee (2015). A Wider Patriotism: Alfred Milner and the British Empire. Routledge. p. 69.
^"Order out for All to Strike". Chicago Daily Tribune. August 7, 1901. p. 1.
^"Strike Order Is in Full Effect". Chicago Sunday Tribune. August 11, 1901. p. 1.
^"Half of Corn Crop Is Lost". Chicago Sunday Tribune. August 11, 1901. p. 1.
^"Record Prices for Food". Chicago Sunday Tribune. August 11, 1901. p. 1.
^Hund, Andrew J., ed. (2014). "Gauss Expedition". Antarctica and the Arctic Circle: A Geographic Encyclopedia of the Earth's Polar Regions.
ABC-CLIO. p. 298.
^Tim Blevins, Enterprise & Innovation in the Pikes Peak Region (Pikes Peak Library District, 2011) p214
^"Jane Toppan", in The A to Z Encyclopedia of Serial Killers, by Harold Schechter (Simon and Schuster, 2012) p. 283
^Katherine Ramsland, The Human Predator: A Historical Chronicle of Serial Murder and Forensic Investigation (Penguin, 2013)
^Peter Vronsky, Female Serial Killers: How and why Women Become Monsters (Penguin, 2007) p. 131
^Andrew Glass, Flying Cars: The True Story (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015) pp. 8-10
^E. H. Hirschel, et al., Aeronautical Research in Germany: From Lilienthal until Today (Springer, 2012) p. 139
^Peter L. Jakab, The Published Writings of Wilbur and Orville Wright (Smithsonian Institution, 2016) p. 71
^Bob Rickard and John Michell, The Rough Guide to Unexplained Phenomena (Penguin, 2007) p. 39
^"Maass, Clara Louise", in The Encyclopedia of the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars: A Political, Social, and Military History, Spencer Tucker, ed. (ABC-CLIO, 2009) p. 351
^"Ship Crashes into Iceberg; Seventy Die", Chicago Daily Tribune, August 19, 1901, p. 1
^Peter Pigott, From Far and Wide: A Complete History of Canada's Arctic Sovereignty (Dundurn, 2011) p. 99
^Richard Kaczynski, Perdurabo, Revised and Expanded Edition: The Life of Aleister Crowley (North Atlantic Books, 2012) p. 117
^Peter Berresford Ellis, Celtic Dawn: The Dream of Celtic Unity (Constable and Company, 1993) p. 95
^"Canada's Census Is Out", Chicago Daily Tribune, August 17, 1901, p. 13
^"Plaza Ecuador's President". Chicago Sunday Tribune. August 18, 1901. p. 6.
^"Start Riot on Steamer's Deck". Chicago Sunday Tribune. August 18, 1901. p. 4.
^Capo, Fran (2011). Myths and Mysteries of New York: True Stories of the Unsolved and Unexplained. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 160.
^"Negroes Killed or Driven Away— Pierce City, Mo., Mob Hangs, Shoots and Burns Three Colored Men and Exiles All Others". Chicago Daily Tribune. August 21, 1901. p. 1.
^Jaspin, Elliot (2008). Buried in the Bitter Waters: The Hidden History of Racial Cleansing in America.
Basic Books. pp. 67–78.
^Rucker, Walter; Upton, James Nathaniel, eds. (2007). "Southwest Missouri Riots (1894–1906)". Encyclopedia of American Race Riots.
Greenwood Publishing. pp. 603–609.
^"Ohio River Steamer Lost", Chicago Daily Tribune, August 20, 1901, p. 1
^Annual Report of the Supervising Inspector General, Steamboat Inspection Service to the Secretary of Commerce (Government Printing Office, 1902) p. 62
^Halfon, Mark S. (2014). Tales from the Deadball Era: Ty Cobb, Home Run Baker, Shoeless Joe Jackson, and the Wildest Times in Baseball History.
Potomac Books. p. 65.
^"Another Hard Blow for the Phillies". Brooklyn Daily Eagle. August 21, 1901. p. 12.
^Christian Huck and Stefan Bauernschmidt, Travelling Goods, Travelling Moods: Varieties of Cultural Appropriation (1850–1950) (Campus Verlag, 2012)
^"Philippines" in Colonialism: An International, Social, Cultural, and Political Encyclopedia, Penny M. Sonnenburg, ed. (ABC-CLIO, 2003) p. 469
^Teresa Brawner Bevis and Christopher J. Lucas, International Students in American Colleges and Universities: A History (Springer, 2007) p. 75
^"Teachers Arrive at Manila", Chicago Daily Tribune, August 22, 1901, p. 6
^"International Federation of Trade Unions", in Historical Dictionary of Organized Labor, by James C. Docherty (Scarecrow Press, 2012) p. 142
^Charles F. Faber, Baseball Prodigies: Best Major League Seasons by Players Under 21 (McFarland, 2014) p. 227
^"Three Hits Off Waddell", Chicago Daily Tribune, August 22, 1901, p. 5
^"French Cruisers Menace Turkey— Diplomatic Relations Between the Ottoman Empire and the Republic Are Severed", Chicago Daily Tribune, August 22, 1901, p1
^Harper Barnes, Standing on a Volcano: The Life and Times of David Rowland Francis (Missouri History Museum, 2001) p. 115
^Alan Axelrod, Profiles in Audacity: Great Decisions and how They Were Made (Sterling Publishing, 2006) p. 100
^"Light at the End of the Tunnel", Flying magazine (June 2003) p. 108
^Graham Jooste and Roger Webster, Innocent Blood: Executions During the Anglo-Boer War (New Africa Books, 2002) p. 214
^Birgit Seibold, Emily Hobhouse and the Reports on the Concentration Camps during the Boer War, 1899–1902: Two Different Perspectives (Columbia University Press, 2011) p. 140
^Frederick F. Anscombe, The Ottoman Gulf: The Creation of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar (Columbia University Press, 1997) pp. 122-123
^"Nurse Tests Theory, Dies— Yellow Fever Experiment in Cuba Kills Clara Maas", Chicago Sunday Tribune, August 25, 1901, p. 5
^"Sultan Comes to French Terms", Chicago Daily Tribune, August 27, 1901, p. 5
^"Relations with Turkey Severed— France Recalls Envoy from Constantinople; Tells Abdul's Minister Not to Return", Chicago Daily Tribune, August 28, 1901, p. 1
^V. George Shillington, 30 years of work Reading the Sacred Text: An Introduction in Biblical Studies (A&C Black, 2002) p. 192
^Greg Kowalski, Hamtramck: The Driven City (Arcadia Publishing, 2002)
^Thomas Q. Reefe, The Rainbow and the Kings: A History of the Luba Empire to 1891 (University of California Press, 1981) p. 192
^"Fatal Explosion Sinks Steamer City of Trenton", Philadelphia Times, August 29, 1901, p. 1
^"Steamer Horror Due to Racing", Chicago Daily Tribune, August 30, 1901, p. 2
^"Byerson to Tell Story at Inquest— Coroner Issues Subpoena for Oiler of City of Trenton Who Survived Explosion", Philadelphia Times, September 4, 1901, p. 4
^Cristina Pantoja-Hidalgo, Over a Cup of Ginger Tea: Conversations on the Literary Narratives of Filipino Women (University of the Philippines Press, 2006) p. 22
^"Today Will Decide Water Campaign", Los Angeles Times, August 28, 1901, p. 5
^"Bonds Carried by about Five to One— Water Question Happily Settled; Opposition Defeated in Every Precinct in the City", Los Angeles Times, August 29, 1901, p. 10
^Kevin Starr, Material Dreams: Southern California Through the 1920s (Oxford University Press, 1991) p. 47
^Reviel Netz, Barbed Wire: An Ecology of Modernity (Wesleyan University Press, 2004) p. 141
^"Deutschland Again Sets New Record for Speed", Chicago Daily Tribune, August 29, 1901, p. 1
^Gilly Pickup, What the British Invented: From the Great to the Downright Bonkers (Amberley Publishing, 2015)
^JaapJan Zeeberg, Into the Ice Sea: Barents' Wintering on Novaya Zemlya, a Renaissance Voyage of Discovery (Rozenberg, 2005) p. 151
^"Many Killed in Western Wreck", Chicago Sunday Tribune, September 1, 1901, p. 2
^"Thirty-Six Were Killed", Minneapolis Journal, August 31, 1901, p. 1