Events

"PROSPERITY PANIC" (Jan. 1): The United States enters the 20th century with a sense of euphoria and satisfaction. Wall Street is said to be undergoing a "prosperity panic," and banker James T. Woodward declares that America is "the envy of the world."

In Washington, 2,000 stand in line to shake hands with President William McKinley and first lady Ida McKinley at a White House reception. McKinley, a Republican from Ohio, beat William Jennings Bryan in the 1896 election to become the 25th U.S. president.

LYNCHING LAW (Jan. 20): Rep. George H. White of North Carolina, the last black man elected during the Reconstruction era, introduces a U.S. House bill to make lynching a federal crime. It never gets out of committee. In 1900, 115 lynchings are recorded.

T.R. TALKS BIG (Jan. 26): Theodore Roosevelt, who led the famed Rough Riders during the recent Spanish-American War, tells friend Henry Sprague: "Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far."

BIG LEAGUE BASEBALL (Jan. 29): The American League is formed in Chicago by Byron Bancroft Johnson, its first president. Although the bid for recognition as a major league is rejected by the powerful National League, the American League -- also known as the "junior circuit" -- achieves major-league status the next year.

A FOLK HERO IS BORN (April 30): In Vaughan, Miss., railroad engineer Jonathan Luther "Casey" Jones dies at the throttle of the Illinois Central's Cannonball Limited when the six-coach express train slams into the back of a freight train stopped on the track. Jones' effort to slow the train to minimize the impact saves the lives of the passengers. Jones is killed by a wood splinter driven through his head, and he joins the ranks of American folk heroes.

OLYMPIC GAMES II (July 22): Fifty-five American athletes complete their domination of the second modern Olympic Games in Paris when J.W.B. Tewksbury wins the only final-day event, the 200-meter run.

MCKINLEY RE-ELECTED (Nov. 6): McKinley again defeats William Jennings Bryan, a Nebraskan on the Democratic and Populist tickets, to win a second term as president. Elected as vice president is the Republican governor of New York, Theodore Roosevelt.

George Eastman of the Eastman Kodak Co. in Rochester, N.Y., figures Americans are ready for a new hobby. The company begins to manufacture its Brownie Box Camera and sells it for only $1. A six-shot roll of film costs 15 cents. At these prices, thousands of Americans become amateur photographers and begin boring their friends with vacation snapshots.

Events

THE GOOD QUEEN IS DEAD (Jan. 22): At age 82, Queen Victoria, who has been on the British throne since 1837, dies at Cowes on the Isle of Wight. When she dies, the British Empire is at its height, with outposts on five continents and an enormous navy to protect its trade routes. Most of her subjects around the world have known no other monarch. Victoria is succeeded by her 59-year-old son, Albert Edward, the Prince of Wales, who ushers in the nine-year Edwardian period as Edward VII.

CORPORATE TAKEOVER (Feb. 25): J.P. Morgan and other investors buy out the industrial empire of Andrew Carnegie. They combine his business with some of theirs to create U.S. Steel Corp. The new company, capitalized at more than $1.4 billion, produces 7.7 million tons of finished steel per year. This is the largest business deal to date in U.S. history.

FIELD HOCKEY DEBUT (Aug. 1): The sport is introduced in the United States by Constance M.K. Applebee, representing the British College of Physical Education.

PRESIDENT ASSASSINATED (Sept. 6): President McKinley is shot twice in the abdomen at point-blank range by anarchist Leon Czolgosz as the president stands in a receiving line at the Pan-American exposition in Buffalo, N.Y. McKinley seems on the road to recovery, but he dies on Sept. 14 of gangrene, whispering the words of his favorite hymn, "Nearer, my God, to thee, Nearer to thee." Vice President Theodore Roosevelt becomes president at age 42.

GUESS WHO CAME TO DINNER (Oct. 16): Dr. Booker T. Washington (left) becomes the first African American to dine at the White House with a president. By extending the invitation, editorializes the Memphis Scimitar, President Theodore Roosevelt committed "the most damnable outrage ever perpetrated by any citizen of the United States." Roosevelt defends his action and continues to seek the advice of Washington, who wins fame in 1901 with his best-selling book "Up From Slavery." But Roosevelt never invites him back.

PANAMA CANAL PROVISION (Nov. 18): The Hay-Pauncefort Treaty between Britain and the United States provides for a Panama Canal under U.S. jurisdiction.

FIRST NOBEL PRIZES (Dec. 10): The king of Sweden and the Norwegian Nobel Committee award the first Nobel Prizes. The awards, according to the will of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, who invented dynamite and made a fortune in explosives, "should be annually made to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind." Among the first winners is Wilhelm Roentgen of Germany for his discovery of X-rays.

LOOK, MA, NO WIRES (Dec. 12): Guglielmo Marconi receives the first trans-Atlantic wireless message as he sits in a hut on the cliffs at St. John's, Newfoundland. An English telegrapher 1,700 miles away at Poldhu, Cornwall, taps out the letter "S," and Marconi picks it up on a crude receiver with a kite antenna. "I now felt for the first time absolutely certain that the day would come," Marconi writes at the time, "when mankind would be able to send messages without wires not only across the Atlantic but between the farthermost ends of the earth."

Events

DEADLY INSECTS (Feb. 22): Maj. Walter Reed and Dr. James Carroll of the U.S. Army Yellow Fever Commission in Cuba reveal that the dreaded disease endemic to the tropics is carried by a species of mosquito.

AAA ON THE ROAD (March 4): Every driver's savior, the American Automobile Association, or Triple A, is formed in Chicago for the "development and introduction of the automobile."

COUNT 'EM UP (March 6): Congress establishes the Census Bureau.

RECORDING SENSATION (March 18): Italian tenor Enrico Caruso makes his first phonograph recordings in a hotel room in Milan. He records 10 songs for $500.

NO CHINESE ALLOWED (April 29): The Senate votes to extend the Chinese Exclusion Act for the second time. The act bars Chinese immigration to the United States, protecting American workers from the threat of cheap Asian labor.

FREE CUBA (May 20): Cuba gains independence from Spain, and U.S. troops end the occupation that followed the Spanish-American War of 1898; Tomas Estrada Palma is elected first president of the independent Republic of Cuba.

RIDING THE RAILS (June 15): The Twentieth Century Limited goes into service to begin a 65-year career on the rail route between New York and Chicago.

TENNIS, ANYONE? (Aug. 8): The United States tennis team beats Britain in the Davis Cup, 3-2.

CRUSADING WITH CARRY NATION (Oct. 16): Carry Nation brings her crusade against "demon rum" to Austin, Texas. She wrecks a few saloons and then marches on the campus of the University of Texas in search of drunken law school professors.

ROOSEVELT BATTLES RACISM (Nov. 27): President Roosevelt says that a man's color or race is no bar to service in public office. Roosevelt is responding to Southern critics regarding his recent appointment of a black man to the post of Collector of the Port of Charleston.

On Nov. 10, 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt goes hunting in Mississippi while trying to settle a boundary dispute between that state and Louisiana. Well aware of the president's love of exotic game, his staff captures a Louisiana black bear for Roosevelt to shoot. But the president sets it free. In The Washington Post of Nov. 18, editorial cartoonist Clifford Berryman shows Roosevelt refusing to shoot the bear in a cartoon entitled "Drawing the Line in Mississippi."
Morris Michtom, a candy store owner in Brooklyn, N.Y., sees the cartoon and figures there's money to be made. He and his wife make a stuffed plush toy with movable arms, legs and head and -- with the president's permission -- call it the "teddy bear." The toy bear becomes an icon.

Events

BULL MARKET (April 24): The New York Stock Exchange's new building at Broad and Wall streets is dedicated amid a blizzard of ticker tape. In a dedication speech, financier J.P. Morgan says: "The magnificence of our new home is only in keeping with the magnitude of our business."

DERBY DARK HORSE (May 2): The Kentucky Derby is won by an ebony colt named Judge Himes, a decided longshot. But contrary to a claim in many later reference works, this does not establish "dark horse" as a term for a surprise winner. The first dark horse was Franklin Pierce, nominated for president on the 49th ballot at the Democrats' 1852 convention.

TOWARD COMMUNISM (Nov. 17): At a congress in London, Russia's embattled Social Democratic Labor Party splits into two wings -- the moderate Mensheviks ("minority") and the radical Bolsheviks ("majority"). Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, fiery young leader of the Bolsheviks, advocates in his oratory the destruction of capitalism and establishment of an international socialist state.

BROTHERS TAKE OFF (Dec. 17): On a blustery day near Kill Devil Hill at Kitty Hawk, N.C., Orville and Wilbur Wright astound onlookers by demonstrating manned flight in a heavier-than-air, mechanically propelled airplane. The Wright brothers, bicycle mechanics from Dayton, Ohio, previously have experimented with their self-made kitelike contraption, powered by a 12-horsepower motorcycle engine, but no one was around to watch. This occasion attracts a curious group that includes several speculative industrialists and some enterprising photographers.

"Not many," the Wrights recall later, "were willing to face the rigors of a cold December wind in order to see, as they no doubt thought, another flying machine not fly." Onlookers are only mildly impressed when Orville Wright in his initial flight covers 120 feet in 12 airborne seconds. But the brothers take turns in the air.

The fourth flight, manned by Wilbur Wright, is officially recorded as 59 seconds, covering a distance of 852 feet. The only newspaper in America to give the flight serious coverage is the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, which publishes an account the morning after the successful flight. Nevertheless, the Kitty Hawk flights are a birth cry for an enterprise that will change the world.

FIERY DEATH (Dec. 30): It's standing-room-only at Chicago's Iroquois Theater for a vaudeville bill headlined by comedian Eddie Foy and his "seven little Foys." A fire ignites in the outer lobby and almost instantly penetrates the auditorium, trapping almost 1,000 patrons. The reported death toll ranges from 588 to 602.

Events

RUSSO-JAPANESE WAR (Feb. 8): Japanese naval forces launch a stunning nighttime attack against the Russian fleet off Port Arthur in southern Manchuria. The attack is the start of the biggest war thus far in history -- the first in which armored battleships, self-propelled torpedoes, land mines, quick-firing artillery and modern machine guns will be used. Japan follows up its sneak attack with a declaration of war.

U.S. STAYS OUT (Feb. 10): President Theodore Roosevelt proclaims the United States' strict neutrality in the Russo-Japanese War, which will continue into the coming year.

AGITATOR (March 27): Labor organizer Mary Harris "Mother" Jones is ordered out of Colorado by state authorities, who accuse her of stirring up striking coal miners.

PERFECT GAME (May 5): Denton True "Cyclone" Young, better known as Cy Young, pitches the first perfect game in major league baseball, for the Boston Pilgrims. The perfect game, against the Philadelphia Athletics, comes during a string of 44 consecutive scoreless innings, 23 of which were hitless as well.

RAZOR SHARP (Nov. 15): King C. Gillette is granted a patent for a razor with a disposable blade. Razor and blade sales skyrocket.

Events

ROTARIANS UNITE (Feb. 23): At 37, Paul P. Harris could look back on an itinerant past as a cowboy, actor, reporter, merchant, coal dealer and mining engineer. Now, as a civic-minded lawyer in bustling Chicago, he meets with three friends downtown to form a community service organization. They agree to meet in rotation at one another's offices, spawning the group's name -- the Rotary Club.

ROOSEVELT MARRIAGE (March 17): Franklin Delano Roosevelt is married to Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, a fifth cousin and niece of President Theodore Roosevelt, in New York City.

AFRICAN-AMERICAN FORUM (May 5): The Chicago Defender, the nation's first influential black newspaper, begins publication.

SUPERSTAR DEBUT (Aug. 30): Tyrus Raymond "Ty" Cobb makes his major league debut with the Detroit Tigers. The "Georgia Peach" will play 22 seasons for the Tigers, two for the Philadelphia Athletics and record a .366 lifetime batting average, winning the batting title 12 times.

WAR ENDS IN NEW HAMPSHIRE (Sept. 5): A peace accord signed at Portsmouth, N.H., officially ends the Russo-Japanese War, the first major conflict of the 20th century, and establishes Japan as an industrialized military power. The war erupted in 1904 as a power struggle for control of northeast Asia.

JEWISH ANNIVERSARY (Nov. 26): Special synagogue services are held throughout the country to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the settlement of Jews in America in 1654 at New Amsterdam (now New York) and their role in the discovery of the New World. Speakers note that two Jewish merchants helped Queen Isabella of Spain to pay for Columbus' voyage in 1492, and that Columbus' expedition included Louis de Torres, a Jewish interpreter.

Events

WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE (March 7): Finland becomes the first country to give women the vote, decreeing universal suffrage for citizens over 24.

FOOTBALL RULES! (March 31): President Theodore Roosevelt summons to the White House representatives of Harvard, Princeton and Yale to spur changes in college football rules. One of the most brutal seasons of college football was in 1905, which featured the "flying wedge" offense. Eighteen players died and 154 were seriously injured, largely because almost no protective gear was worn in those days. At a subsequent meeting in New York, representatives of 62 schools form the Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States. The federation will become the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in 1910.

SAN FRANCISCO CRUMBLES (April 18): At 5:13 a.m., San Franciscans are jolted from their beds by a violent trembling of the earth. Afterward come the fires, fed by broken gas mains. Hapless survivors try to cook on damaged stoves, which causes more explosions and fires. Soon, it seems, everyone left in the city is either fleeing the flames and destruction, seeking missing relatives, or helping with relief efforts.

The fires rage for three days, destroying two-thirds of the city of about 400,000. Estimates at the time put the death toll in the hundreds, but modern researchers estimate that as many as 3,000 may have died in the worst quake ever to hit an American city. Hundreds of thousands more are homeless, and the City by the Bay is stripped of its Gold Rush-era finery. In all, 28,000 buildings are destroyed. Property damage is put at $400 million.

WIRELESS CHRISTMAS STORY (Dec. 24): The first Christmas Eve broadcast has no sponsor or star -- and not much of an audience. Wireless operators on ships off the New England coast are puzzled to hear a man's voice coming through the equipment normally used to send and receive Morse code; no one has ever heard a voice or music broadcast before. The man reads the Christmas story from the Gospel of Luke, then plays a violin solo and a recording of Handel's Largo. He is no performer; he is engineer Reginald Fessenden, who in 1901 patented a way of transmitting radio waves to carry natural sounds rather than chirps of code. Fessenden's brief broadcast from a remote coastal station at Brant Rock, Mass., is a harbinger of a global communications revolution.

Until the summer of 1906, fatty sausages served on long buns sliced lengthwise had a variety of names: frankfurters, franks, red hots, dachshund sausages, wieners and wienies. But it is a Hearst sports cartoonist named Thomas Aloysius "Tad" Dorgan who is generally credited with giving the quintessential American ballpark snack the name we use today: hot dog.

There are several versions of the story, but here is the most credible: In his cartoons, Dorgan already is depicting German figures as talking dachshunds. Playing off a widely held belief that the sausages sold at Coney Island and the Polo Grounds contain dog meat, Dorgan sketches a cartoon showing a vendor peddling a dachshund, slathered in mustard, in a bun. The caption reads: "Get your hot dogs.

Events

ROCKEFELLER ON TOP (Feb. 24): The New York Times publishes a list of the world's richest people. Topping it is John D. Rockefeller, whose worth is estimated at $300 million.

SCOUTING OUT AN IDEA (July 29): Sir Robert Baden-Powell, a celebrated British general, recruits 22 boys for a field test of his essay "Boy Scouts -- A Suggestion." The aim of the two-week excursion into the woods of Brownsea Island off England's coast is to instill a sense of community service, chivalry and physical fitness "to help in making the rising generation, of whatever class or creed, into good citizens at home or in the colonies." Baden-Powell would later meet with Chicago publisher William D. Boyce, who will incorporate the Boy Scouts of America in 1910.

MAJOR MAIDEN VOYAGE (Sept. 13): The Cunard liner SS Lusitania arrives in New York on its maiden voyage, setting a record of five days, 54 minutes, for the trans-Atlantic crossing from Queenstown, Ireland. The 31,500-ton Lusitania is 790 feet long, with four screws; it can carry 2,000 passengers and a crew of 600 and is by far the largest liner yet built.

A 5-RINGLING CIRCUS (Oct. 21): The five Ringling brothers -- Alf, Al, Charles, Otto and John -- from Baraboo, Wis., buy out their main competitor, the Barnum & Bailey circus, for $410,000. The deal, sealed in London, gives the Ringlings a virtual monopoly on the circus business in the United States.

OK IS IN (Nov. 16): Oklahoma becomes the 46th state.

KIPLING'S NOBEL (Dec. 10): Rudyard Kipling, author of "The Jungle Book," is awarded the Nobel Prize for literature.

Events

COMIC RELIEF (March 29): Mutt and Jeff, in William Randolph Hearst's San Francisco Examiner, is the first comic strip to appear daily with the same cartoon figures. Cartoonist Harry Conway "Bud" Fisher, then 23, will continue the strip until his death in 1954.

A MOTHER'S LOVE (May 10): The first Mother's Day is observed in Philadelphia and in Grafton, W.Va., to honor the memory of Anna Reese Jarvis and American mothers living and dead. The observance is the idea of Anna M. Jarvis, daughter of Anna Reese Jarvis. By 1911, all states will hold Mother's Day observances. On May 9, 1914, President Woodrow Wilson will proclaim Mother's Day a national observance.

WRIGHT BROTHERS MAKE IT OFFICIAL (May 22): Wilbur and Orville Wright register their flying machine at the U.S. Patent Office.

MONSTER METEOR (June 30): At 7:17 a.m, a mysterious fireball hurtles across the sky and explodes in the atmosphere about 4 miles above a remote area of Siberia called Tunguska. The explosion, with a power later estimated at between 10 and 20 megatons of TNT, flattens and burns 850 square miles of forest and kills hundreds of reindeer. The only known human casualty is a reindeer herder at a camp about 20 miles from ground zero.

Russian scientists will not venture into the area until 1927 to measure and map the site and gather eyewitness accounts. They find a scene of utter devastation, but no crater or meteor fragments. Researchers conclude that the blast was caused by a rocky meteor, perhaps 200 feet in diameter, striking the atmosphere at an angle of about 45 degrees. They believe that it disintegrated into millions of tiny fragments no larger than fine gravel.

CAR COLLECTIVE (Sept. 16): General Motors Co. is founded by William C. Durant, who brings other carmakers together into a holding company. Durant's bankers tell him that Henry Ford's company is not worth the $8 million that Ford demands, so Ford does not join.

FIRST AIR FATALITY (Sept. 17): Lt. Thomas Selfridge of the Army Signal Corps is fatally injured in the crash of an airplane piloted by Orville Wright at Fort Myer, Va. Selfridge, 26, is the first person to die as a result of a crash since the Wright brothers opened the era of heavier-than-air flight in 1903. Wright was conducting tests for the War Department.

HENRY FORD'S MODEL (Oct. 1): The Model T rolls off Henry Ford's Detroit assembly line and instantly becomes "a motorcar for the multitudes."

The black, boxlike car initially costs $850.50, but the price will drop during the 19 years the Model T is on the market: $600 in 1912, $290 in 1924. By 1927, the last year of Model T production, 15 million will be on the road.

NEW OVAL OFFICE OCCUPANT (Nov. 3): William Howard Taft defeats William Jennings Bryan and is elected 27th president of the United States.

BLACK BOXING CHAMP (Dec. 26): Jack Johnson of Galveston, Texas, becomes the first Negro to win the world heavyweight boxing championship when he scores a technical knockout over Tommy Burns in Sydney, Australia.

What's Hot
The Model T.

The car is dubbed the Tin Lizzie because "Lizzie" is an all-purpose name for a domestic servant and because the Model T has a flimsy, tinny look. The Model T is lightweight, simple to operate and relatively powerful.

The Model T's top speed is only 40 mph, but the car has good acceleration, and its high clearance is perfect for the rutted, unpaved roads of the time. Farmers use the Model T as a substitute for draft horses to haul produce. Within a few years, millions of Americans are rattling around the countryside, transforming a horse-and-buggy land of isolated hamlets into a mobile, modern nation.

Events

RACISM AND SEGREGATION ADDRESSED (Feb. 12): On the 100th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth, a group of concerned blacks and white reformers call for a meeting in New York to combat rampant racism and segregation. At the meeting later that year, attended by about 300 activists, the most stirring voice from the podium is that of W.E.B. Du Bois, a Harvard-educated black man who eloquently repudiates the policy of acquiesence advocated by Booker T. Washington. At the end of the meeting, the National Negro Committee is formed. A year later, the group adopts a new name, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

GERONIMO DIES (Feb. 17): Apache chief Geronimo, who led raids against white settlers off and on from 1858 until his last surrender in 1886, dies of pneumonia at Fort Sill, Okla. In his later years, Geronimo became a symbol of the noble savage and an international celebrity, attending the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904 and the inauguration of President Theodore Roosevelt in 1905. Just before his death, Geronimo remarked, "Now there are very few of us left."

TAFT SWORN IN (March 4): As outgoing President Theodore Roosevelt looks on, William Howard Taft is sworn in as president during a howling blizzard; because of the weather, the ceremony takes place in the Senate chamber.

PEARY MAKES THE POLE (April 6): The third time proves to be the charm for explorer Robert E. Peary. Having failed twice to be the first man to reach the North Pole, Peary sets out from the United States in July 1908, winters in Greenland and dashes to the Pole on March 1, 1909. His African-American assistant, Matthew Henson, plants the American flag at 90 degrees north latitude on April 6.

SHAH DEPOSED (July 16): The shah of Iran is deposed and is succeeded by his 12-year-old son.

TWAIN SLOWS DOWN (Aug. 9): Mark Twain's doctor advises the famous author, 73, to cut down to four cigars a day because of his "tobacco heart."

Related Links
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Sources
The People's Chronology: A Year-by-Year Record of Human Events from Prehistory to the Present; Great Events of the 20th Century; The Timetables of African-American History; Chronicle of America; Chronicle of the 20th Century; The Annals of America; What Happened When; Weatherwise Magazine; "The Good Years," by Walter Lord; "The Big Change," by Frederick Lewis Allen; Eyewitness to History; The Encyclopedia of World Facts & Dates; Hoover's Handbook; World Almanac and Book of Facts; The World Almanac Book of Who; Terry's 1904 World's Fair Page; Useless Information; A Treasury of Great Reporting; "Inventors Who Left Their Brands on America," by Frank H. Olsen; "Dreadnaught: Britain, Germany and the Coming of the Great War," by Robert K. Massie; The Dictionary of American Food & Drink; National Collegiate Athletic Association; Museum of the City of San Francisco; U.S. Geological Survey; "We Americans," by the National Geographic Society; New York Public Library American History Desk Reference; The Film Encyclopedia; The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians; "The Fight for Freedom," by Langston Hughes

Credits
Producer: Michelle Buzgon/KRT
Designer: Ron Coddington/KRT
Research: Staff of Fort Worth Star-Telegram/KRT
Photography: National Archives