February 1912

[February 1], 1912 (Thursday)

• After only four years of existence, the city of Strathcona, Alberta was incorporated into Edmonton, which had been incorporated in 1904. The merger had been approved by a 518–178 margin of Strathcona voters.
• General Manuel Bonilla, elected on November 3, was sworn in as President of Honduras.
• Died: Jimmy Doyle, 30, American baseball player, third baseman for the Chicago Cubs, who had led the National League in double plays and in errors, of blood poisoning following an appendectomy

  [February 2], 1912 (Friday)

• The British submarine HMS A-3, with 14 men aboard, sank off of the Isle of Wight after being rammed by the depot ship Hazard.
• U.S. Senator Robert M. La Follette had been the foremost challenger against incumbent U.S. President William Howard Taft for the 1912 Republican Party nomination, until he went ahead with a speech to the Periodical Publishers' Association, despite being ill with a stomach virus. Instead of making the planned brief remarks, La Follette made a long, rambling speech that criticized the assembled newspaper reporters, then dropped out of sight. La Follette's disastrous showing cleared the way for former President Theodore Roosevelt to get the nomination instead.
• The Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association was organized as the first intercollegiate sports conference for African-American colleges. The original members were Hampton, Howard, Lincoln, Shaw, and Virginia Union.
• Born:
• * Millvina Dean, British public servant, youngest and last survivor of the sinking of the RMS Titanic, in Branscombe, England
• * Zhu Shenghao, Chinese academic, translated the works of William Shakespeare into the Chinese language, in Jiaxing
• * Burton Lane, American composer, known for musical hits including Finian's Rainbow and On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, in New York City

  [February 3], 1912 (Saturday)

• The rules of American football were revised by the National Collegiate Athletic Association following two days of deliberations. Among the alterations were that the length of the field was shortened from 110 yards to 100, teams would now have four downs instead of three to try to gain ten yards, kickoffs were to be made from the 40 yard line rather than the middle of the field, and the touchdown was now worth six points instead of five.
• The French government decreed that the indigenes of Algeria, male residents of Arab descent, were to be drafted for three years service into the French Army. The move was opposed by French Algerians, who did not want the indigenous population to be trained to use weapons, and the non-French Algerians themselves.

  [February 4], 1912 (Sunday)

• King George and Queen Mary arrived back in Great Britain at Spithead after an absence of almost three months. The royal family had departed on November 10 to travel to British India.
• U.S. President William Howard Taft ordered an increase of the number of American troops guarding the nation's border with Mexico.
• An ice bridge over Niagara Falls broke and carried an Ohio teenager and a Canadian husband and wife to their deaths over the falls, as thousands of spectators watched in horror. The bridge had formed two weeks earlier from the piling up of ice fields from up river, and was 60 feet thick. An article in The New York Times remarked: "This is the first time in the history of the Niagara that lives have been lost in this way."
• Parisian tailor and inventor Franz Reichelt plunged to his death after jumping from the Eiffel Tower to test a wearable parachute.
• Born:
• * Byron Nelson, American golfer, 6th all-time winner of the PGA Tour, in Waxahachie, Texas
• * Erich Leinsdorf, Austrian-American conductor, known for his collaborations with Boston Symphony Orchestra, Metropolitan Opera, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and New York Philharmonic, in Vienna

  [February 5], 1912 (Monday)

• Thornton Burgess published the first installment of his syndicated newspaper column "Bedtime Stories", which ran six days a week. He wrote 15,000 of the columns, along with 100 books, retiring in 1960 at the age of 86.
• The first exhibition of Futurist painting was held, opening in Paris.
• The first threat to the Mormon colonies in Mexico, that had been founded by Americans more than 25 years earlier, when the residents of Colonia Juárez refused a demand by a force of Mexican rebels for weapons, horses and supplies. Initially, the colonists were able to resist a takeover by pledging to remain neutral and by requesting intervention by the American consul.

  [February 6], 1912 (Tuesday)

• The colonial administration of German Samoa abolished the chieftain position of Ali'i Sili following the death of Mata'afa Iosefo. Samoans Tanumafili I and Tamasese Meaole I were appointed fautua, or advisers to the colonial administration, it place of the position.
• The city of Mt. Lebanon, Pennsylvania was created and incorporated as a township.
• Born: Eva Braun, German photographer, companion and wife of Adolf Hitler, in Munich
• Died: James B. Weaver, 68, American politician, U.S. Representative for Iowa as member of the Greenback Party from 1879 to 1889, presidential candidate for the Populist Party in 1892 presidential election

  [February 7], 1912 (Wednesday)

• One day after announcing that federal appellate judge William Cather Hook would be his nominee to fill the vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court that had been caused by the death of John Marshall Harlan, U.S. President William Howard Taft withdrew Hook's name because of protests by the NAACP and other African-American organizations. Mahlon Pitney was selected by the President in place of Hook.
• The U.S. Marines landed at Puerto Cortés in the Honduras.
• Born:
• * Russell Drysdale, British-Australian artist, known for paintings including Sofala and West Wyalong, in Bognor Regis, England
• * Roy Sullivan, American park ranger, recorded by Guinness World Records for being struck the most times by lightning, in Greene County, Virginia
• Died: Edward Wilmot Blyden, 79, Liberian politician and activist, proponent of Pan-Africanism

  [February 8], 1912 (Thursday)

• Robert G. Fowler landed his airplane in Jacksonville, Florida after starting from Los Angeles on October 19, becoming the first pilot to fly across the United States from west to east, and the second overall, after Cal Rodgers.
• Emmanouel Argyoropoulos became the first Greek pilot, taking a Nieuport airplane aloft at Athens. On his second flight of the day, he was accompanied by Greek Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos as his co-pilot.
• Australia inaugurated its first wireless telegraphic station, at Melbourne, as part of a plan to establish a network of 19 stations nationwide.

  [February 9], 1912 (Friday)

• Japan began shipment of 6,040 cherry blossom seedlings to the United States. The shipment arrived in Washington, D.C. the following month.
• Born: Thomas Hinman Moorer, American naval officer, Chief of Naval Operations during the Vietnam War, in Mount Willing, Alabama
• Died: Hyacinthe Loyson, 84, French clergy, excommunicated by the Catholic Church after questioning the doctrine of papal infallibility

  [February 10], 1912 (Saturday)

• The French Senate ratified the Morocco agreement.
• Seven state governors sent former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt a letter urging him to declare that he would accept the Republican nomination for the presidency. Roosevelt would answer on February 24.
• Born: Henry Krips, Austrian-Australian composer, known for his collaboration with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, in Vienna
• Died:
• * Joseph Lister, 84, British surgeon, introduced the practice of sterilization of wounds and surgical instruments
• * José Paranhos, 67, Brazilian diplomat, Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1902 to 1912

  [February 11], 1912 (Sunday)

• The Niger-Chad border was created by French military commanders and the Governors-General of French West Africa and French Equatorial Africa.
• Agustin Lizarraga, who found Machu Picchu in 1902 before American explorer Hiram Bingham in 1911 was reported drowned after falling off of a bridge in Peru.
• Born: Roy Fuller, English writer, member of The Movement in the United Kingdom, father to poet John Fuller, in Failsworth, England

  [February 12], 1912 (Monday)

• The Qing dynasty of China, also called the Manchu dynasty came to an end after 268 years as the Empress Dowager Longyu signed an agreement on behalf of Puyi, the six year old Emperor of China, to dissolve the Imperial Advisory Council and making General Yuan Shikai the president of the new Republic. The end came on "the 25th day of the 12th moon of the 3rd year of Hsuan Tung". In return for the peaceful transition, the Republicans signed the "Articles of Favorable Treatment". The Emperor was allowed to keep his title, his palace and servants, and to continue to live the Imperial life. The arrangement lasted until 1924, when Feng Yü-hsiang forced the Imperial family to flee from the Forbidden City to the Japanese Embassy.
• China's Foreign Ministry wired its diplomats around the world, directing them to abandon their traditional Chinese clothing in favor of "the usual dress of American civil officials". At home, many Chinese citizens began accepting foreign attire as well.
• Bonar Law began steps to merge the Liberal Unionist Party and the Conservative Party, shaping the British conservative party into its present form.
• The Oregon Eastern Railway was sold to the Central Pacific Railroad in Oregon.
• The Vancouver Sun published its first issue.
• Born:
• * Anton Buttigieg, Maltese state leader, second President of Malta, in Qala, Malta
• * Edith Houghton, the first female Major League Baseball scout ; in North Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

  [February 13], 1912 (Tuesday)

• The stern of the battleship USS Maine was raised from Havana Harbor, where it had exploded and sunk on February 15, 1898. After the stern was refloated, the ship's hulk was, on March 16, towed to the Straits of Florida, and following a ceremony, sunk in 620 fathoms of water within American territorial limits.
• Dr. Sun Yat-sen informed the National Assembly at Nanjing of his resignation as President of China, and asked the legislators "to elect a good and talented man as the new president", Yuan Shikai. Yuan was sworn in as President in Beijing on March 10.
• Bulgaria and Serbia signed an agreement forming the Balkan League
• Born: :it:Antonia Pozzi|Antonia Pozzi, Italian poet, known for poetry collections including Breath. Poems and Letters, in Milan

  [February 14], 1912 (Wednesday)

• Arizona was admitted as the 48th state of the United States, at 10:00 in the morning Washington, D.C. time, as U.S. President William Howard Taft signed a proclamation in the morning. At noon, George W. P. Hunt was inaugurated as the first State Governor.
• Amateur archaeologist Charles Dawson wrote a letter to British paleontologist Arthur Smith Woodward, describing his finding of "part of a thick human skull" in "a very old Pleistocene bed" between Uckfield and Crowborough in East Sussex. Dawson's "discovery", the "Piltdown Man", became one of the great hoaxes of the 20th century.
• The Times of London announced that Captain W.S. Patton, a British physician in Madras, had discovered the parasite that caused black fever.
• Born:
• * Juan Pujol García, Spanish spy, double agent for MI5 who infiltrated Nazi Germany's intelligence organization Abwehr during World War II, where he diverted attention away from the Normandy landings using false information, recipient of the Order of the British Empire and the Iron Cross, in Barcelona
• * Ollie Harrington, American cartoonist, known for his political cartoon collections including Dark Laughter, in Valhalla, New York

  [February 15], 1912 (Thursday)

• Yuan Shikai, who had been leader of North China from Beijing, was declared as President of the Republic of China by the assembly that controlled South China from Nanjing, at the recommendation of President Sun Yat-sen. Sun "had committed himself to put the unity of China before his own position and, had he not done so, the consequence would almost certainly have been civil war".
• Born: George Mikes, Hungarian-British journalist, known for his humorous collection including How to be an Alien, in Siklós, Hungary

  [February 16], 1912 (Friday)

• Residents of La Mesa Springs voted 249–60 to incorporate the city of La Mesa, California. Now a suburb of San Diego, the city grew in one century from 700 people to over 57,000.
• The Mexican town of Garza Galán, in Coahuila State and across the Rio Grande from Del Rio, Texas, was renamed in honor of poet Manuel Acuña. The name was shortened to Villa Manuel Acuña to Ciudad Acuña on September 16, 1957.
• Thomas Jennings, the first American criminal to be convicted by fingerprint evidence, was executed by hanging.
• Died: Nicholas of Japan, 75, Russian Orthodox missionary and saint who introduced Eastern Orthodox Christianity to Japan

  [February 17], 1912 (Saturday)

• British polar explorer Edgar Evans, 35, became the first of the five members of Robert Falcon Scott's South Pole group to perish as the group attempted to return to their base. Evans collapsed the previous day as the party descended Beardmore Glacier in Antarctica, likely due to combination of frost bite, exhaustion, and complications from injuries to his hand and head during the return trek. The group was forced to leave his body behind and it was never recovered.
• The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, commonly called the "B&O", reversed a decision to have separate waiting rooms for black and white passengers at its stations. On January 25, the managing editor of the Baltimore Afro-American, John H. Murphy, Sr., had written to B&O President Daniel Willard and pledged to use his influence to divert the black tourist and convention business to other railroad lines.
• A plot against Count Hisaichi Terauchi, the first Governor-General of Korea, was discovered.
• Robert G. Fowler landed his airplane at Pablo Beach, Florida, becoming the second person to fly an airplane across the United States, and the first to travel from west to east. He had started from Pasadena, California on October 20, after Cal Rodgers had flown east to west in 1911.
• Born: Andre Norton, American science fiction and fantasy writer, author of the Witch World series, first woman to be inducted in the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame, as Alice Mary Norton, in Cleveland
• Died:
• * John Nelson Hyde, 46, American missionary, known his missionary work in Punjab, India
• * George Fuller Golden, 43, American vaudeville entertainer and labor leader, founder of the White Rats of America
• * Alois Lexa von Aehrenthal, 57, Austrian diplomat, Foreign Minister of Austria-Hungary from 1906 to 1912

  [February 18], 1912 (Sunday)

• The 13th Dalai Lama declared Tibet independent of the Republic of China. The Buddhist kingdom would resist several invasions until being conquered in 1959.
• Under pressure from Russia and Great Britain, the government of Persia restored a pension to its former King, Mohammad Ali Shah Qajar, and granted amnesty to the followers who had attempted to return him to the throne.

  [February 19], 1912 (Monday)

• Carl Hayden was sworn in as the first U.S. Representative for the newly admitted state of Arizona. In 1927, he became one of the state's U.S. Senators, and became the first person to serve fifty years in the U.S. Congress, serving until 1969.
• Mahlon Pitney was nominated by U.S. President William Howard Taft to become a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. He would be confirmed by the Senate on March 14 by a vote of 50–26.
• Fifty people drowned in the sinking of a boat at Rangoon.
• For the first time, a small prize was placed in every box of Cracker Jack, the caramel, popcorn and peanuts snack introduced in 1896.
• Born:
• * Hermann Flohn, German climatologist, one of the first scientists to research climate change, at Frankfurt
• * Adolf Rudnicki, Polish Jewish writer, best known for his novels on The Holocaust and Warsaw Uprising, in Żabno, Poland

  [February 20], 1912 (Tuesday)

• Jens Bratlie became the fifth Prime Minister of Norway, replacing Wollert Konow and his cabinet.
• Count Leopold Berchtold replaced the late Count Alois Lexa von Aehrenthal as the Foreign Minister of Austria-Hungary.
• A cyclone swept through Louisiana and Mississippi, killing 20 people, mostly African-Americans. The heaviest damage was in Shreveport, Louisiana, where eight people died.
• Born:
• * Pierre Boulle, French novelist, author of The Bridge over the River Kwai and Planet of the Apes, in Avignon
• * Muriel Humphrey Brown, American politician, U.S. Senator for Minnesota following the death of her husband Hubert Humphrey in 1978, in Huron, South Dakota
• * George Devol, American inventor, developed the first industrial robot, in Louisville, Kentucky

  [February 21], 1912 (Wednesday)

• Construction workers successfully bored a nearly six mile tunnel through the Swiss Alps to make possible the Jungfrau Railway. The tunnel was made beneath the Eiger and Mönch mountains, both more than 13,000 feet tall. The line, at the time the highest in Europe, would open on August 1, 1912.
• The city of Houston was heavily damaged by a fire that destroyed 19 businesses and destroyed 200 buildings in the downtown. Nobody died, but 1,000 people were left homeless. The blaze, which started in an empty rooming house, was spread by a gale across the Texas city.
• Captain Fesa Bey became the first member of the Turkish Army to complete flight training and to be awarded a pilot's license.
• The Palmyra Atoll was successfully claimed as a possession of the United States by the USS West Virginia, under the command of Rear Admiral W. H. H. Southerland.
• Born: Solomon Schonfeld, British rabbi, rescued thousands of European Jews from The Holocaust, in Stoke Newington, England
• Died: Osborne Reynolds, 69, Irish chemist and physicist and pioneer in the study of fluid dynamics

  [February 22], 1912 (Thursday)

• Jules Védrines became the first airplane pilot to fly faster than 100 miles per hour.
• In Vernon, California, Johnny Kilbane defeated champion Abe Attell for the world featherweight boxing championship. Attell had held the title for 11 years, and Kilbane would hold it for 11 more.
• A fire at the No. 5 mine of Western Coal Company in Lehigh, Oklahoma, killed nine people. The death toll would have been higher, but for Rufino Rodrigues, who saved as many as 259 miners, by venturing further into the mine to warn his fellow employees. Rodrigues, a 22-year-old native of Mexico, was awarded a bronze medal by the Carnegie Hero Fund.
• Born:
• * Harold Keith Johnson, American army officer, Chief of Staff of the United States Army during the height of Vietnam War, in Bowesmont, North Dakota
• * Henry S. Reuss, American politician, U.S. Representative of Wisconsin from 1955 to 1983, in Milwaukee

  [February 23], 1912 (Friday)

• The Italian Chamber of Deputies voted 431–38 in favor of approving the royal proclamation to annex Tripolitania and Cyrenaica, both part of modern-day Libya. The Italian Senate approved the measure unanimously the next day.

  [February 24], 1912 (Saturday)

• Former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt replied to the February 10 letter from several state governors, and declared that he would be willing to accept the Republican party nomination for President "if it is tendered to me", and added that "I will adhere to this decision until the convention has expressed its preference". The letter was released the next day.
• In an attempt to force the Ottoman Empire to accept the annexation of Tripoli and Cyrenaica, Italy made a surprise attack on Beirut, at the time a part of the Empire. The cruiser Giuseppe Garibaldi and the gunboat Volturno sailed into the Lebanese port and demanded the surrender of the Turkish ships Angora and Aronillah. Before the Ottoman provincial governor could reply, the Italian ships began bombardment. The final death toll was 97 sailors and civilians.

  [February 25], 1912 (Sunday)

• The first Boy Scout troop in China was organized, by the Reverend Yen Chia-lin, in the city of Wuchang. The organization, now called the Scouts of China, is limited to the Republic of China on the island of Taiwan.
• Born: Al Tomaini, American circus performer billed as "The Tallest Man in the World", ; in Long Branch, New Jersey. He and his wife, 2'6" Jeanie Tomiani, were later billed as "The World's Strangest Married Couple"

  [February 26], 1912 (Monday)

• Coal miners in Great Britain walked out on strike, beginning with employees of the Alfretor coal pits in Derbyshire, England. By Thursday, 600,000 miners had stopped work. The walkout lasted for seven weeks. By the end of the week, one million miners joined the strike, seeking a minimum wage guarantee.
• Grand Duke William of Luxembourg died while still on throne at age 59. He was succeeded by his 17-year-old daughter, Marie-Adélaïde, who reigned over the European nation as Grand Duchess until 1919 when she abdicated the throne to her sister Charlotte.
• After announcing that he would run against U.S. President William Howard Taft for the 1912 Republican nomination, former President Theodore Roosevelt was asked at a press conference in Boston whether he intended "to support the Republican nominee, whoever he may be" and replied that he would. After Taft received the nomination, Roosevelt ran against him as candidate of the Progressive Party.
• Born: Hugues Panassié, French jazz producer, founder of Hot Club de France in Paris

  [February 27], 1912 (Tuesday)

• Eladio Victoria was sworn in as President of the Dominican Republic after his nephew, General Alfredo Victoria, pressured the Dominican Congress to elect his uncle. As a result, Horacio Vasquez returned from exile and led his followers, the "Horacistas", in a revolt against the government.
• General Electric Company obtained the U.S. Patent 1,018,502 for a tungsten filament lamp that had been invented by Austrian scientists Alexander Just and Franz Hanaman.
• Liberato Marcial Rojas was forced out of office as President of Paraguay and replaced by Pedro Peña.
• The towns of Grant, Iowa and Pollasky, California were incorporated.
• Born:
• * Lawrence Durrell, British writer, author of The Alexandria Quartet and The Avignon Quintet, in Jalandhar, British India
• * James Klugmann, British writer, historian of the Communist Party of Great Britain, in Hampstead, England

  [February 28], 1912 (Wednesday)

• Hill County, Montana was created from the northern part of Chouteau County. Its county seat is Havre.
• A storm at Lake Tamehua, within the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, caused a barge to overturn, killing 35 people. Many of the drowning victims were American employees of the Pearson Oil Company.
• Born: Clara Petacci, Italian photographer, mistress of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, in Rome

  [February 29], 1912 (Thursday)

• Russian gold miners at the Lena Mining Company in Siberia went out on strike, originally in protest about the quality of food sold to them by the company.
• Serbia and Bulgaria secretly signed a treaty of alliance for a term of eight years, with each pledging to come to the defense of the other during war. The two nations fought together against the Ottoman Empire later that year during the First Balkan War, then against each other in the Second Balkan War and in World War I.
• King Vajiravudh of Siam was overseeing military maneuvers at Nakhon Pathom, when he was informed by his army chief of staff, Prince Chakrabongse, that several junior officers were plotting his overthrow. There were 92 men arrested, and most of them had been in the class of 1909 at the military academy.
• Walter Wagner filed for a patent for the "bayonet and valve closed reservoir system", granted as U.S. Patent No. 1,142,210 but not put into use for water coolers until 80 years later. The invention reduced the possibility of contamination of bottled water during the filling and dispensing process.