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May 1901

List of events that occurred in May 1901 From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

May 1901
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The following events occurred in May 1901:

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May 1, 1901: Pan-American Exposition opens in Buffalo
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May 2, 1901: Glasgow International Exposition opens in Scotland
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May 9, 1901: The first Parliament of Australia is opened by the Duke of Cornwall and York, the Crown Prince George
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May 3, 1901: Jacksonville, Florida, destroyed
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May 1, 1901 (Wednesday)

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May 2, 1901 (Thursday)

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May 3, 1901 (Friday)

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Harriman and Schiff
  • A massive fire destroyed 148 city blocks in Jacksonville, Florida, over an area of 455 acres (1.85 square kilometers) and burning 2,361 buildings.[13] At 12:39 p.m., the 36-member city fire department was notified that a fire had broken out at the American Fiber Company at the corner of Davis Street and Union Street. Sparks had ignited a pile of Spanish moss to be used as stuffing, and the fire then spread to the adjacent W. W. Cleveland & Son mattress factory.[14] Destroyed in the blaze were the Duval Country Courthouse, the Jacksonville City Hall, the Windsor Hotel and St. James Hotel, as well as "the city armory, the opera-house, the leading churches of the city, the convent, acres of residences and scores of wholesale and retail business houses."[15] The city would be rebuilt and within two and a half years, thousands of new buildings would be erected;[13] over the next decade, the amount of cargo being handled by the Port of Jacksonville had increased to five times what it had been at the time of the fire.[16]
  • An upheaval in the stock market, known as the Panic of 1901 started as E. H. Harriman, who controlled the Union Pacific Railroad, began his attempt to acquire majority ownership of the Northern Pacific Railroad Company (NP), and directed his broker, Jacob Schiff of Kuhn, Loeb & Co. to buy as much as possible.[17]
  • Civil government was established in Manila after years of American occupation.[2]
  • Born: Hugo Friedhofer, American film score composer, Academy Award winner for the music for The Best Years of Our Lives, in San Francisco (d. 1981)

May 4, 1901 (Saturday)

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May 5, 1901 (Sunday)

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May 6, 1901 (Monday)

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James J. Hill and J. P. Morgan
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The first issue of Gorkhapatra, still running oldest Nepali newspaper
  • The British Ministry of War announced that nearly 15,000 British officers and troops had died in the Second Boer War against South African forces, with 14,264 enlisted men and 714 officers as casualties.[2]
  • The House of Commons of the United Kingdom voted 333 to 227 to approve a tax on the sale of coal.[2]
  • Gorkhapatra, the oldest still running Nepali newspaper was started on this day. The newspaper was distributed weekly then.[29][30]
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May 7, 1901 (Tuesday)

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May 8, 1901 (Wednesday)

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May 9, 1901 (Thursday)

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May 10, 1901 (Friday)

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May 11, 1901 (Saturday)

  • Sir Harry Johnston, a biologist and the British Commissioner of Uganda, cabled London to announce that the remains of an animal, long thought to be extinct, were on their way to the British Museum and that the "okapi" continued to exist. Described as "a giraffe-like creature which is closely akin to the ox in size" [56] the okapi was rediscovered by European zoologists in the forests of what is now the Semuliki National Park.
  • Professor Charles Peabody, an archaeologist from Harvard University, became the first scholar to discover the variety of music that would become known as "Delta blues". Although he had arrived in Coahoma County, Mississippi, to oversee the excavation of a Choctaw Indian burial mound, his more important finding was the folk songs that the African-American work crew was singing while doing the excavation "and the mesmerizing power of their music continued to haunt Peabody's imagination long after he returned to Cambridge". He would publish his observations under the title "Notes on Negro Music" in the Journal of American Folklore, popularizing the genre.[57][58]
  • Born: Rose Ausländer, German poet (d. 1988)
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May 12, 1901 (Sunday)

May 13, 1901 (Monday)

  • In the British House of Commons, Winston Churchill defied his fellow Conservative Party members of parliament by speaking out against a proposal to increase the size and the budget of the British Army. "Has the wealth of the country doubled? Has the population doubled? Have the armies of Europe doubled? Is there no poverty at home? Has the English Channel dried up and we are no longer an island?" [60] In the decades that followed, the words of the young politician, 26 years old at the time and in his first year in Commons, would frequently be re-quoted. Noting the effect that changing technology had on the nature of war, Churchill observed, "In former years, when wars arose from individual causes... when they were fought by small regular armies of professional soldiers, and when their course was retarded by the difficulties of communication and supply, and often suspended by the winter season, it was possible to limit the liabilities of the combatants. But now, when mighty populations are impelled on each other, each individual severally embittered and inflamed, when the resources of science and civilisation sweep away everything that might mitigate their fury, a European war can only end in the ruin of the vanquished and the scarcely less fatal commercial dislocation and exhaustion of the conquerors." Noting that "Democracy is more vindictive than Cabinets", Churchill prophesied that "The wars of peoples will be more terrible than those of kings."[61][62][63] The Parliament would favor the increased military expenditure anyway, in what one historian would later describe as "the jettisoning of Pax Britannica by Britain herself" [64]
  • Born: Witold Pilecki, Polish resistance leader (d. 1948)

May 14, 1901 (Tuesday)

May 15, 1901 (Wednesday)

May 16, 1901 (Thursday)

May 17, 1901 (Friday)

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Muslim Caliph Abdul Hamid II and Zionist leader Herzl
  • Theodor Herzl, the founder and President of the Zionist Organization, was granted an audience by Sultan Hamid of the Ottoman Empire, in a two-hour meeting at Constantinople.[75] The Sultan acknowledged that "his Empire was wide open to Jewish refugees and, among the non-Muslims, they were his most reliable subjects."[76] Herzl presented his proposal for the Sultan to grant an Imperial Charter to allow the colonization of Palestine for a Jewish state, in return for Jewish financiers assuming the responsibility to pay off of the Empire's debts. As Herzl would recount later, he told the Sultan, "His Majesty is the lion, perhaps I am Androcles, and maybe there is a thorn that has to be pulled out."[76] Although the Sultan was intrigued by Herzl's idea, which would have led to the creation of the State of Israel 47 years earlier than its May 17, 1948, founding, the Charter was not granted.[77][78]
  • Former National League baseball star Nap Lajoie was given the go-ahead to play in the rival American League after a court in Philadelphia denied a request for an injunction based on a reserve clause in the older league's contract.[79] Lajoie had played for the NL's Philadelphia Phillies for four seasons, but after the 1900 season, he signed a contract for more money with the AL's Philadelphia Athletics. The day after the decision, Lajoie began playing in the American League and became the new circuit's first superstar.[80][81]
  • Major General Chaffee issued his farewell order to the U.S. 9th Infantry Regiment, bringing an end to the American military presence in China.[82] Evacuation would be completed from Beijing by May 23.[83]
  • Born: Werner Egk, German composer (d. 1983)

May 18, 1901 (Saturday) (Sunday)

May 19, 1901 (Sunday)

May 20, 1901 (Monday)

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Decorated arch erected over George Street, Brisbane, for the royal visit of the future King George V to Australia.

May 21, 1901 (Tuesday)

May 22, 1901 (Wednesday)

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Ahmed ʻUrabi
  • Ahmed ʻUrabi Pasha, who led the Egyptian rebellion against the British in 1882 and had been banished to British Ceylon, was pardoned by the British government.[105]
  • Five hundred Boer prisoners of war arrived in India, to be relocated to a POW camp in Ahmednagar.[91]
  • Queen Yaa Asantewaa, who had led the Ashanti War against the British colonial government in Ghana in 1900 was sent into exile along with 15 other rebel leaders and their dependents, and would live for the rest of her life on the other side of Africa, on the Seychelles Islands.[106]
  • Sir Thomas Lipton and his seven guests, including King Edward of the United Kingdom, were sailing in Lipton's yacht, Shamrock II, in the strait of The Solent off the coast of the Isle of Wight, when a storm suddenly struck. The spars, masts and sails of the yacht were destroyed, effectively preventing the management of the sails, but Lipton was able to bring the monarch back to safety.[91][107]
  • Vice-President Theodore Roosevelt was the victim of an elaborate practical joke staged by the organizers of the Pan-American Exposition. The future President was asked to lead dignitaries to visit an old log cabin behind the fairgrounds, and "as he stooped to enter the cabin door there was a terrific warwhoop and two Indians in full war paint and feathers leaped up from the darkness and seized Colonel Roosevelt. Instantly there was a tremendous tumult of warwhoops and the report of many guns," the press noted the next day. The two "attackers" were well-known Oglala Sioux leaders, American Horse and Jack Red Cloud. When Roosevelt realized that it was a prank, he laughed and said, "By Jove, this is a rum on me."[108]
  • Born: Clarissa Scott Delany, African-American poet and educator (d. 1927)
  • Died: Gaetano Bresci, 31, the anarchist who assassinated King Umberto of Italy, hanged himself in his cell at the San Stefano Prison. After his arrest at the assassination scene on July 29, 1900, Bresci was sentenced to life imprisonment, the highest penalty in Italy. According to an American commentator, however, his suicide "was the result of a series of tortures inflicted by order of the government, with the intention of driving him to end his life" and that "From the hour of his conviction those in charge of the prisoner sought by every method known to make him inflict the extreme penalty for his crime."[109][110]

May 23, 1901 (Thursday)

  • The Keloet volcano on the island of Java erupted, killing hundreds of people.[111]
  • France announced "the opening of the French Soudan" (now Mali in northwest Africa rather than Sudan in northeast Africa) "to European traffic" after a successful navigation of the Niger River by Captain Eugène Lenfant. The French captain led a mission of taking flat-bottomed boats with 60 tons of provisions to French troops at Gaya, Niger.[112]
  • In another one of the great comebacks of baseball history, the Cleveland Blues (known at the time as the "Blues") defeated the Washington Senators despite being down 13–5 with two men out near the end of the final inning. After Bill Hoffer and Ollie Pickering were struck out by Washington pitcher Casey Patten, Jack McCarthy came up to bat, and hit a single that began a rally that saw nine consecutive runs scored.[113][114][115]
  • For the first time in any major league baseball game, a player was intentionally walked despite the bases being loaded. Nap Lajoie of the Philadelphia Athletics, the biggest star of the new American League was in Chicago for a game against the Chicago White Stockings. Going into the ninth inning, Chicago had an 11–5 lead, but there were no outs and men on first, second and third base when Lajoie came up to bat against pitcher Zaza Harvey; so, Clark Griffith, who the team manager and one of the pitchers, substituted himself for Harvey. Reasoning that Lajoie could bring in four scores with a home run, Griffith decided instead to throw four bad pitches so that only one run would score from Lajoie's time at bat, and Philadelphia's Phil Geier advanced from third base to home. Three of the next four batters were forced out, and Chicago won, 11–9.[116] Intentional walks with the bases loaded would happen only two more times in the 115 seasons that followed, happening on July 23, 1944 (in the New York Giants' 12–10 win over the Chicago Cubs, and on May 28, 1998, in Arizona's 8–7 defeat of San Francisco).[117]
  • The first Canadian Patriotic Fund Association, intended for relief of Canadian veterans and the families of Canadians killed in the Second Boer War, was incorporated.[118]
  • Born:
  • Died: Charles Boysset, 84, the oldest member of France's Chamber of Deputies, after 52 years in office.

May 24, 1901 (Friday)

May 25, 1901 (Saturday)

May 26, 1901 (Sunday)

  • The government of Imperial China announced that it had reached an agreement with the members of the Eight-Nation Alliance (the six European superpowers, along with Japan and the United States) on the indemnity to be paid by China for damages arising from the Boxer Rebellion of 1900. Economists at the time estimated that it would take China 39 years to pay the reparations amount of 450 million taels (£67,500,000 or $175,500,000) along with four percent annual interest, and that China would have to raise 23,000,000 taels in tax revenues each year in order to avoid default.[133][134]

May 27, 1901 (Monday)

  • The United States Supreme Court decided the first of the "Insular Cases" that arose from questions over the status of the first overseas territories captured by the U.S. in a war against a foreign power. DeLima v. Bidwell and Downes v. Bidwell were both lawsuits over the status of Puerto Rico (referred to at the time as "Porto Rico"), ceded to the United States by Spain following the Spanish–American War, but the decision would apply to all territories, including the Philippines. The cases arose when the State of New York continued to collect a tariffs and duties on a "foreign import" after the cession; as Justice Brown described it in the 5–4 majority opinion in DeLima, the question was "whether Porto Rico was a 'foreign country' at the time the sugars were shipped", and more specifically, "whether a country which had been ceded to us, the cession accepted, possession delivered and the island occupied and administered without interference by Spain or any other power, was a foreign country or domestic territory". The Court concluded "that... Porto Rico was not a foreign country within the meaning of the tariff laws, but a territory of the United States, that the duties were illegally exacted, and that the plaintiffs are entitled to recover them back." [135] In the Downes case, however, the Court concluded that although Puerto Rico was not a foreign nation, it "is a territory appurtenant and belonging to the United States, but not a part of the United States within the revenue clauses of the Constitution... and that the plaintiff cannot recover back the duties exacted in this case." The Court also ruled that "the guarantee against deprivation of life, liberty and property without due process of law is fundamental and hence applicable in all the possessions of the United States", but added that "in the case of Porto Rico and the Philippines... there is an implied denial of the right of the inhabitants to American citizenship until Congress by further action shall signify its assent thereto." [136][137]
  • In New Jersey, the Edison Storage Battery Company was founded.[138]
  • Twenty-one coal miners in the Richland Mining Company's underground excavation near Dayton, Tennessee, were killed by two simultaneous explosions that resulted from poor placement of black powder charges.[139] Because the person doing the coal firing used too much of the powder, the explosion "blew outward in a long flame" which "ignited coal dust particles suspended in a mine atmosphere, resulting in an instantaneous flash fire through the entire length of the mine", then caused massive sections of the roof to collapse.[140]
  • Boer troops captured the British outpost of the Midland Mounted Rifles, taking 41 British troops prisoner on their way to Maraisburg, South Africa.[91]
  • Died: Artur Hazelius, 77, Swedish scholar and creator of the Nordic Museum (b. 1833)

May 28, 1901 (Tuesday)

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Oilman D'Arcy and Shah of Iran

May 29, 1901 (Wednesday)

  • Fifty-one British Army soldiers and six officers of the Seventh Battalion of Imperial Yeomanry were killed, and another 122 wounded, near the South African town of Vlakfontein, in an attack on Brigadier General Henry Dixon's brigade by Boer General Jan Kemp.[151] Kemp's cavalry of 500 burghers had charged the British column, using a new technique where the soldiers fired their rifles from horseback.[152]
  • The opera Manru, written by Polish Ignacy Jan Paderewski, was performed for the first time, with the premiere at the Royal Opera in Dresden.[153]
  • The world's foremost automobile race, the James Gordon Bennett Cup, was won by Henri Fournier, who completed the 345-mile (555 km) distance from Paris to Bourdeaux in less than nine hours, crossing the finish line in a time of 8:44:44. Fournier had been a distant third until the two race leaders, Fernand Charron and Alfred Levegh (pseudonym for Alfred Velghe), collided at Orléans and were forced to withdraw.[154][155]

May 30, 1901 (Thursday)

May 31, 1901 (Friday)

  • Bulgaria amended its election law to disenfranchise the Muslim members of the Romani (or "gypsy") minority, and people classified as nomads, despite constitutional guarantees of equal voting rights.[160]
  • Detective Edward Henry began work at London's Scotland Yard as the new Assistant Commissioner, and began the process of implementing his Henry Classification System of fingerprints to create the first Central Fingerprint Branch by July.[161]
  • Bechstein Hall (now Wigmore Hall), the leading international venue for performances of chamber music because of its acoustics, held its first concert, with Ferruccio Busoni on the piano and Eugène Ysaÿe on the violin inaugurating the London facility.[162]
  • A Baptist minister from Pittsburg, Texas, Burrell Cannon, was granted U.S. Patent No. 62,509[163] for the key component to what he called the Ezekiel Airship. Cannon proposed four of the wheels as propellers for a heavier-than-air flying machine, and sold $20,000 worth of stock in the Ezekiel Airship Manufacturing Company to potential investors. "If it is true that he actually flew the craft," an author would note later, "then he beat the Wright Brothers by more than two years."[164] However, the airship itself would never be patented, nor do any blueprints survive, and the model would be accidentally destroyed while it was being shipped in a railroad car.[165] On June 23, newspapers in the United States carried a drawing of the airship and announced that "The first product of the Ezekiel Airship company will take its trial spin July 1".[166]
  • Five people were lynched by a mob in Lookout, California, after being arrested for petty theft. At 2:00 in the morning, Calvin Hall was visiting the local hotel where his three sons, Frank, James and Martin, were being held in custody along with a friend, B. D. Yantis, when "a mob of fifty persons" overpowered the two constables guarding the group, then took the Hall family and Yantis to a bridge over the Pit River. Frank was put to death even before the group reached the main bridge, and the mob hanged the other four shortly afterward.[167]
  • Born: Alfredo Antonini, Italian-born American conductor and composer, in Milan (d. 1983)

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