FREE AT LAST (March 10): China abolishes slavery.

IMMIGRATION LIMITS (March 26): Congress passes an amendment to the 1907 Immigration Act. It bars, among others, criminals and carriers of disease from entering the United States.

TWAIN DIES (April 21): The immensely popular Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, dies at age 74 in Danbury, Conn. Twain's most famous work is "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer."

CELEBRATING DADS (June 19): The first Father's Day is observed in Spokane, Wash., where the local YMCA and the Spokane Ministerial Association persuade the city to set aside the Sunday to "honor thy father."

A MORAL CONGRESS? (June 25): Unconfirmed stories about international prostitution rings prompt the U.S. Congress to pass the Mann Act, forbidding the transport of women across state lines for "immoral purposes."

RACE RIOTS (July 4): Racial battles break out in several U.S. cities, including Houston, soon after black boxer Jack Johnson knocks out Jim Jeffries for the world heavyweight championship. At least eight blacks are reported killed.

EARLY TALKIE (Aug. 27): Thomas Edison unveils his latest invention, talking motion pictures. The device is called a "kinetophone," combining the sound of a phonograph with the images of a motion picture camera. His vision is to have a talking motion picture played in theaters in two years.

Comet fascination and fear are as old as the recorded history of the heavenly visitors. And in 1910, the reappearance of Halley's comet after 75 years sparks mass hysteria. Some scientists believe the comet's tail contains a deadly poison called cyanogen that could wipe out the population if, as predicted, the Earth passes through the comet's tail on the night of May 18.

From Berlin to Constantinople, Mexico City to St. Petersburg, terrified people gather to pray. Some attend doomsday soirees. Suicides are common. In Paris, the night begins with a thunderstorm that adds to the dread. In New York, crowds gather in Central Park, in Greenwich Village -- and on most of the city's rooftops.

Deaths
Leo Tolstoy, author of "War and Peace" (born 1828)
King Edward VII of England (born 1841)
Florence Nightingale (born 1820)
Jean Henri Dunant, Red Cross founder (born 1828)
Mary Baker Eddy, Christian Science Church founder (born 1821)

1911

Events

DISCOVERING THE DISCOVERED: Machu Picchu -- an ancient urban center of pre-Columbian civilization -- is claimed as a discovery by Hiram Bingham, although the ruins had long been known by the Peruvians. Bingham, a Yale University professor of Latin American history, stumbles across the ruins in his search for the last capital of Peru's ancient civilization.

SWEATSHOP BLAZE (March 25): During working hours at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory in New York City, a fire breaks out on the ground floor, and upstairs workers are trapped. Most of the 146 people who die are women earning $1 for a 10-hour workday.

NUCLEAR IDEA: British physicist Ernest Rutherford is the first to visualize the atom as composed of a positively charged central nucleus surrounded by orbiting negatively charged electrons. For this he is known to us as "the father of nuclear energy."

NO MORE MONOPOLY (May 15): The U.S. Supreme Court issues a landmark decision finding Standard Oil Co. guilty of restraint of trade and orders its dissolution within six months.

NO LOOKING BACK (May 30): Driving a Marmon Wasp outfitted with the first rear-view mirror ever used on a car, Ray Harroun wins the first running of the Indianapolis 500 auto race. He finishes the race in six hours, 42 minutes, eight seconds at an average speed of 74.59 mph.

CHINESE REVOLUTION (Oct. 9): Revolution breaks out, setting off a chain of events that will culminate in the end of the 267-year-old Manchu dynasty. Dr. Sun Yat Sen, the Western-educated founder of the revolutionary movement, has helped pave the way for the overthrow of the Manchus and establishment of a republic, but his democratic goal for China ultimately is frustrated.

NOBEL PRIZE REDUX (Dec. 10): Marie Curie is awarded the Nobel Prize for chemistry, becoming the first person to win two of the coveted awards. The Frenchwoman was awarded the Nobel Prize for physics in 1903 along with her husband, Pierre, and Henri Becquerel, for studies of radioactivity.

On Dec. 14, Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen and four companions reach the South Pole, winning a race with a British expedition led by Robert F. Scott. Amundsen's achievement means that explorers have set foot at both ends of the Earth within less than three years. Robert E. Peary reached the North Pole in 1909.

Deaths
Joseph Pulitzer, publisher (born 1847)
Gustav Mahler, Composer (born 1860)

1912

Events

NEW YEAR, NEW REPUBLIC (Jan. 1): The Republic of China is officially proclaimed.

NEW STATE: (Jan. 6): New Mexico becomes the 47th state to join the Union.

ANOTHER NEW STATE (Feb. 14): Arizona becomes the 48th state to join the Union.

GIRL SCOUT PLEDGE (March 12): The Girl Scouts of the U.S.A. originates in Savannah, Ga., where Juliette Gordon Low starts the first troop of Girl Guides. The name will be changed to the Girl Scouts in 1913, and its headquarters will be established in New York.

A PRIZE IN EVERY BOX: Cracker Jack starts putting toys inside boxes of its caramel-coated popcorn and peanut snack.

TITANIC TRAGEDY (April 15): First reports of the Titanic's encounter with an iceberg in the North Atlantic underplay the magnitude of the event. As the tragic tale unfolds, a waiting world learns that more than 1,500 people perished in the frigid Atlantic as the great ship slid into the deep. Only 711 people -- mostly women and children -- survive. The 46,328-ton Titanic, the largest, most sumptuously appointed ship ever to put to sea, did not carry enough lifeboats for even half its 2,224 passengers and crew. The sinking of the "unsinkable" ship becomes a metaphor for the frailty of human existence and the limitations of technology.

BASEBALL'S OUT (May 18): The first baseball strike takes place when 19 members of the Detroit Tigers refuse to play the Philadelphia Athletics after Tigers outfielder Ty Cobb is suspended because he mauled a spectator who taunted him at a game in New York.

THORPE'S THANKS (July): At the V Olympiad in Stockholm, Sweden, Jim Thorpe achieves the unprecedented and still unsurpassed feat of winning the gold medal in the decathlon and pentathlon. Thorpe, born in Oklahoma of Fox and Sac ancestry and a star halfback at the Carlisle Indian School at Carlisle, Pa., receives his medals from King Gustav V of Sweden, who declares: "Sir, you are the greatest athlete in the world." To which Thorpe replies: "Thanks, King."

WILSON WINS (Nov. 5): Woodrow Wilson becomes only the second Democrat elected president since the Civil War. With 435 electoral votes and 42 percent of the popular vote, he defeats Republican incumbent William Howard Taft and Theodore Roosevelt, who left the Republican Party to run on the ticket of the Progressive, or "Bull Moose," Party.

SUFFRAGETTES WIN BATTLE (Nov. 5): Women win the right to vote in Arizona, Wisconsin and Kansas.

Leon Leonwood Bean, a Maine merchant known as "L.L.," gets tired of coming home from tramps in the woods with wet feet because his heavy leather boots leak. So in 1912, he invents a boot that combines a lightweight leather top with a waterproof bottom. He sells 100 pairs to fellow sportsmen through the mail. But 90 pairs are returned because the stitching gives way. True to his word, he refunds his customers' money and starts over with an improved boot. The Maine Hunting Boot eventually becomes a staple of a mail-order sporting goods empire called L.L. Bean.

Deaths
Clara Barton, American Red Cross founder (born 1821)
Wilbur Wright, aviation pioneer (born 1867)
William Booth, Salvation Army founder (born 1829)

1913

Events

HAVE IT HER WAY: Wanting freedom from the whalebone bodices and corsets, New York debutante Mary Phelps Jacob (later famous as Caress Crosby) designs a new kind of undergarment: a brassiere. Jacob, with the help of her French maid, stitches together two handkerchiefs and pink ribbon for a soft and supporting garment.

TAXATION BY REPRESENTATION (Feb. 25): The 16th Amendment to the Constitution takes force; it empowers Congress to levy graduated taxes on incomes over $3,000 per year.

BALLET BOOED (May 29): Parisian socialites attend the premiere of Igor Stravinsky's ballet "The Rite of Spring" and drown out the unfamiliar, dissonant music with whistles and boos. Choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky has to shout out the complicated rhythms from the wings because the dancers can't hear the music, and an enraged Stravinsky leaves the theater in midperformance.

AIMING HIGH (June 7): Hudson Stuck, an Episcopal missionary in Alaska, leads a party that makes the first ascent of 20,320-foot Mount McKinley, the highest mountain in North America.

THE BIG DITCH (Oct. 10): President Woodrow Wilson pushes a button in Washington to detonate 8 tons of dynamite, opening the last segment of the Panama Canal and allowing the waters of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans to rush together. Nicknamed "The Big Ditch," it officially opens for business on April 15, 1914. The United States spent $352 million to build the canal, which required excavations totaling 262 million cubic yards. There is also a cost in blood: thousands of construction workers lost their lives to disease or accidents.

IN DEFENSE OF GANDHI (Nov. 25): The jailing of Mohandas Gandhi, leader of the passive resistance campaign against racial inequality, outrages demonstrators. Police fire into a crowd of protesters, killing two people and injuring 20 others.

MONA LISA, MONA LISA (Dec. 13): Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa," stolen two years earlier from the Louvre in Paris, is found undamaged in Florence, Italy. The suspect, Vincenzo Perugia, is caught when he tries to sell the painting.

Camel cigarettes are introduced by the R.J. Reynolds Co. in 1913. The package, which sells for a dime, features an image of a camel. Lithographers base the picture on a photograph that a company photographer shot of a Barnum & Bailey circus camel named Old Joe. The shot was taken with the animal in an unusual pose, with its nose held high, because Old Joe's trainer had just whacked him on the nose for misbehaving.

Deaths
Harriet Tubman, fugitive slave and abolitionist (born 1920)
J.P. Morgan, financier (born 1937)

1914

Events

WAR IS BREWING: The major European powers, entangled in alliances, are lurching toward a global conflict that will bring about the collapse of empires and a profound realignment of world power. On one side is the Triple Entente, comprising Britain, France and Russia; the alliance will eventually include Serbia, Belgium, Italy and Japan. On the other is a coalition called the Central Powers: Germany, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria. The Balkans, long a theater of local conflict, are a powder keg that will spark a worldwide conflagration, the first global conflict in history.

HONOR THY MOTHER (May): President Wilson officially designates the second Sunday in May as Mother's Day after schoolteacher and Philadelphia suffragist Anna May Jarvis's six year campaign to create a national holiday to honor mothers.

ASSASSINATION (June 28): The flash point comes when Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie von Hohenberg, are shot to death by a Serbian nationalist in Sarajevo, capital of the Austro-Hungarian province of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Austria-Hungary uses the event as an excuse to neutralize Serbia, which has long been a troublesome neighbor.

A CONTINENT DIVIDED (July 23): No one imagines that Europe will go to war over a punitive action against Serbia, which is something of a pariah state. But the nations of Europe are entangled in a web of alliances. Czar Nicholas II of Russia decides to stick with his ally, Serbia, dragging France into the conflict. Germany is already pledged to back Austria-Hungary.

FIRST DECLARATION (July 28): Austria-Hungary declares war on Russia.

WAR SPREADS (July 31): Germany asks Russia to cancel its mobilization. When Russia refuses, Germany declares war on Russia. Europe is immediately engulfed in a blizzard of mobilization orders and declarations of war.

GERMANY INVADES (Aug. 3): Germany declares war on France and invades Belgium; that draws Great Britain, a guarantor of Belgian neutrality, into the conflict.

ENGINEERING FEAT (Aug. 15): The 51-mile long Panama Canal officially opens, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The canal gives Western freighters a shortcut to Asian markets and allows the United States naval communication between coasts.

Charlie Chaplin introduces his "little tramp" character to the world in 1914 in the one-reel Mack Sennett film, "Kid Auto Races at Venice." The character, an immediate hit, will be the protagonist in several of Chaplin's later full-length classics.

Deaths
Ambrose Bierce, American journalist and author (born 1842)

1915

Events

LONG DISTANCE CALL (Jan. 25): With newspaper reporters poised to record every word, Alexander Graham Bell in New York and assistant Thomas Watson in San Francisco pick up telephone instruments and begin the first public transcontinental telephone conversation. At 4:30 p.m., the inventor of the telephone establishes the connection and says: "Hoy, hoy, Mr. Watson, are you there? Do you hear me?" "Yes, Mr. Bell, I hear you perfectly. Do you hear me well?" Watson responds.

POISON GAS (April 22): Hoping to break the stalemate on the Western Front, Germany unleashes a new and terrible weapon: poison gas. The German army fires chlorine gas-filled shells toward the British lines north of Ypres. Equipped with gas masks, the Germans advance 4 miles before British forces stationed beyond the gassed zone stop their drive.

THE BABE (May 6): George Herman "Babe" Ruth, a left-handed pitcher for the Boston Red Sox, hits his first major league home run off Yankee pitcher Jack Warhop at the Polo Grounds in New York.

DOOMED VOYAGE (May 7): A German submarine torpedoes the world's finest luxury liner, the Lusitania, off the south coast of Ireland. The ship goes down in 18 minutes, taking with her 1,195 passengers and crew, including 128 Americans. The attack occured in early afternoon. The German navy casts a special medal for the U-boat crew that sank the liner.

WORKERS UNITE! (Nov. 19): Joe Hill, a Swedish-born labor organizer and writer of songs for the union movement, is executed by firing squad in Salt Lake City after being convicted of slaying a grocer. On his last day alive, Hill sends a wire to "Big Bill" Haywood, president of the Industrial Workers of the World: "Don't waste any time in mourning. Organize!"

D.W. Griffith's "Birth of a Nation," a three-hour account of the Civil War and Reconstruction, includes such cinematic innovations as the close-up, the panoramic shot and the flashback. But the 1915 film reflects the racism of the time. Blacks are depicted as either foolish or evil. Despite its controversial thesis, the film is pivotal in the history of silent movies, taking the medium out of the nickelodeon and into that new phenomenon, the movie palace.

Deaths
Albert Goodwill Spalding, baseball player and sporting goods salesman
Booker T. Washington, former slave who founded Alabama's Tuskegee Institute (born 1856)

1916

Events

VICIOUS VILLA (Jan. 16): Animosity between the United States and Mexico escalates after Mexican bandit Francisco "Pancho" Villa and his band of rebels kill 16 American mining engineers. He killed 17 more American in a raid on attacks Columbus, N.M. Brig. Gen. John J. Pershing is ordered to Mexico to capture Villa. World War I will intervene, and Villa will be put on hold. A popular hero in Mexico, he will later be assassinated on his ranch.

GOLFERS UNITE: The Professional Golfers' Association is founded in New York with 82 charter members.

SCOUTS INC. (June 15): The Boy Scouts of America is incorporated in a bill signed by President Wilson.

WE WANT YOU (July 6): A portrait of Uncle Sam titled "What Are You Doing for Preparedness?" makes its appearance on the cover of Leslie's Weekly. Created by New York illustrator James Montgomery Flagg, who used his own face as a model, the image went on to become the most popular recruitment poster of all time.

POLIO EPIDEMIC (Summer): A polio epidemic strikes 28,767 Americans. About 6,000 die, 2,000 of them in New York. Thousands more are crippled.

MINDLESS MOVIES (Sept. 24): Naturalist John Burroughs asserts that moving pictures deprive viewers of brain power.

REPRODUCTIVE FREEDOM FIGHT (Oct. 16): The first birth control clinic in the United States is opened at 46 Amboy St. in Brooklyn, N.Y., by Margaret Sanger. Police raid the clinic, and Sanger is jailed for 30 days. She founds the New York Birth Control League after her release and begins publication of the Birth Control Review.

FIRST CONGRESSWOMAN (Nov. 7): Jeannette Rankin, 36, a Republican pacifist, feminist and social reformer from Montana, becomes the first woman elected to Congress.

WAR TORN (Nov. 11): President Wilson wins re-election on a platform that includes the slogan, "He kept us out of war." The United States will be heavily involved in the war within five months.

An animated drawing of three boys -- two in baseball duds and another in his Sunday best -- graces the May 20, 1916, edition of The Saturday Evening Post. It is the first cover illustration for the venerable weekly magazine by a 22-year-old artist named Norman Rockwell. Rockwell will go on to produce 322 covers for the Post, charming and delighting audiences for six decades. He, more than any other artist, mirrors the nation's daily life during the first half of the century, giving vision to its values and dreams with topical, humorous and sentimental drawings of Americans in everyday settings.

Deaths
Thomas Eakins, U.S. artist (born 1844)
Hetty Green, miserly financier known as the "witch of Wall Street" (born 1834)
Henry James, novelist (born 1843)
Jack London, author of "The Call of the Wild" (born 1876)
Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin, "mad monk" of Russia (born 1872)

1917

Events

CZARIST DEMISE (March): More than 300 years of Czarist rule in Russia comes to an end when Czar Nicholas II abdicates his throne. A provisional government is established but grows increasingly ineffective as the year wears on. On Nov. 7, Communist Bolsheviks led by Vladimir Lenin stage a bloodless coup in Petrograd (St. Petersburg) and topple the government.

NEW U.S. PORT (March 2): The Jones Act makes Puerto Rico a U.S. territory and Puerto Ricans U.S. citizens.

U.S. ENTERS WAR (April 2): German actions force the United States into the war. In January, Germany had announced unrestricted submarine warfare, going back on its pledge to warn neutral ships before firing. Under this policy, Germans blew up three U.S. ships. The British also intercepted German messages promising Mexico its U.S.-claimed land back if it helped to defeat the United States.

PATRIOTIC FERVOR (April 6): Inspired by news that the United States had declared war on Germany, song-and-dance man George M. Cohan composes his popular patriotic ditty, "Over There."

MATA HARI'S END (Oct. 15): A Dutch-Javanese courtesan and exotic dancer known as Mata Hari, Javanese for "Eye of the Morning," is executed by a firing squad at the Vincennes Barracks in Paris. Mata Hari, born as Gertrud Margarete Zelle, was convicted of spying for the Germans.

JEWISH HOMELAND (Nov. 2): The Balfour Declaration, saying that Britain favors "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people," is issued by Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour, as British troops invade Palestine and seize it from the Ottoman Turks who have held it since 1516.

PROHIBITION (Dec. 18): The 18th Amendment, outlawing the transportation and sale of alcoholic beverages, is approved by Congress and submitted to the states for ratification. It is the only amendment to have a time limit for ratification -- seven years -- and the only one to be repealed.

The Great War brings boom times for tea-leaf readers and crystal-ball gazers. The prognosticating Ouija board becomes a national craze during wartime, when the country needs a diversion -- or a means to determine the fates of soldiers, their families and the nation. In 1967, at the height of the Vietnam War, Ouija board sales will hit an all-time high of 2.3 million.

Deaths
William F. "Buffalo Bill" Cody (born 1846)
Auguste Rodin, sculptor (born 1840)
Adm. George Dewey (born 1837)
Edgar Degas, French artist (born 1834)
Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin (born 1838)

1918

Events

A PHILATELIST'S DREAM (May 13): It is probably the most celebrated graphic error in history. William T. Robey, a stock brokerage clerk and ardent stamp collector, is among the first in line at a post office in downtown Washington, D.C., to buy a 100-stamp sheet of the first U.S. airmail stamp. He hands over $24, immediately seeing that the entire sheet of two-color stamps has the airplane engraving upside down. Robey's prized sheet of misprinted stamps is apparently the only one to reach the public. He later sells it to a collector for $15,000. Over the years, collectors will resell the stamps in blocks of four or singly. The whereabouts of 85 of the upside-down stamps are known today. The value of a single stamp is estimated at more than $100,000.

MUSIC BAN (Jan. 21): In a fit of wartime intolerance, the New York Philharmonic Society bars all works by living German composers.

DEADLY FLU: Influenza spreads across Asia and war-ravaged Europe to the Americas. The Spanish Influenza pandemic eventually kills 20 million people, including 500,000 Americans.

RUSSIAN ROYALS (July 17): In the hours just after midnight, deposed Russian Czar Nicholas II, Czarina Alexandra, their son and heir, Alexis, and their four daughters, Olga, Tatiana, Marie and Anastasia, are shot to death by the Bolsheviks after being held captive for 78 days.

WAR ENDS (Nov. 11): Germany signs an armistice ending World War I. The following month, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson travels to Europe to attend the post-war peace conference. In doing so, Wilson becomes the first sitting president to travel abroad.

GENTLE RINSE: Lever Brothers introduces Rinso, the first granulated soap flakes for laundry.

On March 31, President Woodrow Wilson signs the Standard Time Act, which begins daylight-saving time as a wartime measure to conserve fuel. Farmers vigorously oppose it because their workday does not coincide with the new daylight hours.

Deaths
Wilfred Owen, English poet, (born 1873)
Claude DeBussy, French composer (born 1862)
John L. Sullivan, world heavyweight boxing champ (born 1858)

1919

Events

WAR BRIDES (March 8): Reports from Paris indicate that 6,000 American men have taken "war brides" in France during the past year.

LEGIONNAIRES (March 15-17): Flush from victory in The Great War, delegates from 1,000 units of the million-strong American Expeditionary Force convened in Paris to found the American Legion, whose purpose is to help rehabilitate war veterans, promote national security and "Americanism."

FASCIST RALLY (March 23): One time socialist journalist Benito Mussolini founds the Italian Fascist movement at a nationalist gathering in Milan.

MOON MAN (March 29): Robert Goddard, a professor of physics at Clark University in Worcester, Mass., publishes a monograph called "A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes," contending that a trip to the moon by rocket may some day be possible. Newspapers ridicule Goddard's prediction and dub him the "moon man."

ARTISTS UNITE (April 17): Four film-industry legends -- D.W. Griffith, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and Charlie Chaplin -- form United Artists to produce, release and distribute their work.

GERMANY PAYS (June 28): The Treaty of Versailles formally ends World War I. Under the treaty, Germany must pay about $40 billion in war reparations and surrender large areas to a new Polish nation and France. The treaty's severity would ultimately help facilitate the rise of Adolf Hitler in 1930s Germany.

TRIPLE CROWN (June 29): Sir Barton, with Johnny Loftus in the saddle, wins the 51st annual Belmont Stakes with a time of 2:17 2/5, becoming the first Triple Crown winner in history. The chestnut colt earlier won the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness.

The Chicago White Sox of the National League are heavily favored to take the best-of-nine games in the 16th annual World Series with the Cincinnati Reds. But it becomes apparent to many fans that the Chicagoans are not giving their all in the Oct. 1-9 series. The Reds win, five games to three. The next year, eight White Sox players will be indicted, accused of conspiring with gamblers to throw the fall classic.

Deaths
Theodore Roosevelt, U. S. president (born 1858)
L. Frank Baum, author of the "Oz" books (born 1856)
Andrew Carnegie, steel magnate and philanthropist (born 1835)
Pierre Auguste Renoir, French artist (born 1840)
Henry Clay Frick, U.S. industralist (born 1849)