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 workers upstairs are trapped. Most of the 146 people who die are women earning $1 for a 10-hour workday.

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.

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. The French scientist was awarded the Nobel Prize for physics in 1903 along with her husband, Pierre, and Henri Becquerel, for studies of radioactivity.