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December 1900

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December 14, 1900: Max Planck presents the first paper on quantum mechanics, to the German Physical Society
December 19, 1900: Edmund Barton selected to become first Prime Minister of Australia

The following events occurred in December 1900:

December 1, 1900 (Saturday)

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December 2, 1900 (Sunday)

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  • 2,200 Filipino rebels took an oath of allegiance to the United States at Vigan; they were the largest group to do so to that time.[6]
  • John Hossack, a farmer near Indianola, Iowa, was killed with an axe while he slept in bed. His wife Margaret was charged with the murder and convicted on April 11, 1901, but the verdict was overturned and a second trial ended with a hung jury. Susan Glaspell, who covered the case for the Des Moines Daily News, later fictionalized it in her 1916 one-act play Trifles and a 1917 short story, "A Jury of Her Peers".[7]

December 3, 1900 (Monday)

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  • The U.S. Supreme Court released its decision in Chesapeake & Ohio Railway Company v. Kentucky. By an 8–1 margin, the Court upheld a state law requiring racial segregation even on interstate transportation. Since Kentucky's law provided that non-white passengers had to move to cars separate from white passengers after a train entered the state, the ruling effectively made separate cars a requirement on all trains.[8]
  • The census was taken in Norway, at that time a part of a union with Sweden. Its population in 1900 was 2,221,477.[9]
  • Oscar L. Booz, 21, a first-year cadet at the U.S. Military Academy, died from internal injuries sustained four days earlier during hazing. Booz refused to name his tormentors, and the public outcry over his death resulted in a U.S. Congressional investigation that ultimately led to the cadets pledging to discontinue the long-time practice of hazing of newly admitted cadets.[10]
  • Born:

December 4, 1900 (Tuesday)

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  • General Auguste Mercier, formerly Minister of War for France, warned the French Senate about "the possibility of war with Great Britain" and his strategy for an invasion, adding that "a landing in England is not beyond realization". Mercier suggested that his invasion plan "could be held over the head of England, like the sword of Damocles".[11]
  • Born: John Axon, British train driver, celebrated in song for his heroism in a fatal 1957 accident; in Stockport, Cheshire (d. 1957)

December 5, 1900 (Wednesday)

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December 6, 1900 (Thursday)

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December 7, 1900 (Friday)

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December 8, 1900 (Saturday)

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  • Pope Leo issued Conditae a Christo, redefining the rights of Catholic nuns.[19]
  • The United States called off scheduled plans to send a warship to Morocco to force the sultanate to pay its debts. "The great annual religious festival of the Moors is about to begin", reported The New York Times, referring to Ramadan, adding "it is the height of impropriety for any truly orthodox person to conduct business. The Sultan could not, without risking his soul, pay any debts, or even receive an infidel who came on diplomatic business." The State Department called off the operation until the middle of February.[20]
  • James Roosevelt, American business executive, 72, and father to Franklin D. Roosevelt died while his 18-year-old son was away as a student at Harvard University.[21]

December 9, 1900 (Sunday)

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December 10, 1900 (Monday)

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December 11, 1900 (Tuesday)

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December 12, 1900 (Wednesday)

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December 13, 1900 (Thursday)

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  • Albert Einstein submitted what would become his first published article in an academic journal, "Folgerungen aus der Kapillaritatserscheinungen" ("Deductions from the Phenomena of Capillarity"), to the Annalen der Physik.[28] The paper would be accepted and published on March 1, 1901.[29]
  • Terry McGovern became undisputed lightweight boxing champion of the world in a bout in Chicago against Joe Gans, knocking him out in the second round, in a fight that many observers thought was fixed.[30]
  • The United Kingdom, France and Italy signed an agreement to preserve, in Ethiopia, the integrity of the ancient empire of Abyssinia.[31]

December 14, 1900 (Friday)

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December 15, 1900 (Saturday)

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  • Soon after Lord Roberts declared that the Second Boer War was over, British troops in South Africa suffered a surprise defeat and the capture of hundreds of their men by the Boer attackers led by General P.H. Kritzinger.[34] A total of 573 men in four companies of the Northumberland Fusiliers were taken prisoner at the battle of Magaliesberg.[35] At Zastron on December 13, 120 British soldiers stationed there were captured by the Boers.[36]
  • In one of the earliest "bad trades" in baseball, the Cincinnati Reds sent rookie pitcher Christy Mathewson to the New York Giants in return for legendary pitcher Amos Rusie. Both were future Hall of Fame stars, one rising (Mathewson went on to win 373 games) and the other falling (Rusie pitched only 22 innings for Cincinnati).[37]

December 16, 1900 (Sunday)

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December 17, 1900 (Monday)

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  • The Guzman Prize, first and only prize ever offered for communication with extraterrestrials, was announced in Paris. A prize of 100,000 francs was provided, except for communication with Mars, which was considered too easy.[41]
  • Ellis Island's processing center reopened, after an 1897 fire. The Kaiser Wilhelm III brought 654 Italian immigrants, who were first of the 2,251 who come through on that day.[42]

December 18, 1900 (Tuesday)

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December 19, 1900 (Wednesday)

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December 20, 1900 (Thursday)

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December 21, 1900 (Friday)

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December 22, 1900 (Saturday)

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  • In Beijing, at 11:00, the ministers of the Western nations and Japan signed the diplomatic note setting out conditions for China to accept.[52]
  • Born: Alan Bush, British composer, pianist and conductor; in London (d. 1995)

December 23, 1900 (Sunday)

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  • Reginald Fessenden made the first use of amplitude modulation (the basis for AM radio) for wireless transmission of the human voice in Maryland. Two towers, set a mile apart on Cobb Island in the Potomac River, were used for the experiment. Fessenden said "One, two, three, four. Is it snowing where you are, Mr. Thiessen? If it is, would telegraph back to me?" Alfred Thiessen telegraphed back that it was snowing.[53]
  • Foot binding in China was officially outlawed by decree of the Empress Dowager Cixi, after centuries of the practice of stunting the growth of girls' feet, and years of lobbying against it.[54]
  • With the encouragement of the American government, prominent Philippine citizens founded the Partido Federal, which advocated American statehood for the Philippines.[55]

December 24, 1900 (Monday)

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December 25, 1900 (Tuesday)

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  • The National Basket Ball League was the first professional basketball circuit in the United States, founded in 1898. In an NBBL game on Christmas night in Trenton, New Jersey, referee L.P. Pratt was attacked by an angry mob of Trenton Nationals fans, upset when he declared a forfeit in a game against the visiting Penn Bikers of Philadelphia. The Bikers were leading 23–11 at the half. Trenton's Harry Stout called Pratt a "stiff" and a "lobster" and was ejected from the game, then came out during the second half. Pratt declared a 4–0 forfeit in favor of Penn and, according to the Trenton paper, the mob was chanting "Kill him!". Three city policemen escorting Pratt were also injured.[62] The Nationals, defending NBBL champs, went on to finish second to the New York Wanderers in the 1900–01 season.[63]
  • Born: Antoni Zygmund, Polish mathematician, author of Trigonometric Series, in Warsaw (d. 1992)
  • Died: Jane Spencer, 74, personal attendant for Queen Victoria who had served as Lady of the Bedchamber for 46 consecutive years since 1854; the Queen would pass away four weeks later.

December 26, 1900 (Wednesday)

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  • A strange disappearance in the Flannan Isles of Scotland was realized when the lighthouse supply ship Hesperus stopped at the Scottish island of Eilean Mòr. The three men in charge of keeping the lighthouse at this remote location had vanished without explanation. The last entry in the logbook had been for December 15, and there was no sign of a crime, but the three men were not found after a search of the island. An official investigation concluded later that the three were probably washed off a precipice by a high wave.[64] The mystery was later the subject of a 1980 chamber opera by Peter Maxwell Davies, The Lighthouse.
  • Died:

December 27, 1900 (Thursday)

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December 28, 1900 (Friday)

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  • Morning newspapers across United States ran the horrifying news that forty-nine school children had drowned the night before while ice skating near What Cheer, Iowa,[67][68] though many emphasized that it was unconfirmed.[69] By afternoon, the story was confirmed to have been a macabre practical joke.[70]
  • Mathematician Luther P. Eisenhart presented the first demonstration of the impossibility of a triply asymptotic system of surfaces, at a meeting of the American Mathematical Society.[71]
  • The first steel produced by electrometallurgy (from an electric furnace) was delivered, 9,000 kg of bars from the Heroult Company to Schneider & Co.[72]
  • Yu Hsien, former governor of Shansi Province in China, was executed for atrocities committed during the Boxer Rebellion.[51]
  • Died: Alexandre de Serpa Pinto, 54, Portuguese explorer, died from heart failure at his home. The city of Serpa Pinto in Angola had been named in his honor until that nation became independent in 1975, and the name was changed to Menongue. (b. 1846);

December 29, 1900 (Saturday)

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December 30, 1900 (Sunday)

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December 31, 1900 (Monday)

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  • At 3:00 in the afternoon in Beijing, Su-Hai, identified as the man who had killed Clemens von Ketteler, Germany's minister to China, on June 20, became the last prominent person to die in the 19th century. Su-Hai was beheaded at the scene of the crime.[77]
  • Christian churches around the world welcomed in the new century with special services beginning an hour before midnight, and the ringing of bells.[78]
  • Purists celebrated the arrival of the 20th century. In New York City, crowds gathered at City Hall Park in view of the big clock at City Hall. John Philip Sousa's band began playing at 10:45 pm, and at 11:59, the city was darkened for a minute, before the 20th century was welcomed in with fireworks.[79]

References

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  1. ^ "Growth of German Empire". Chicago Daily Tribune. February 26, 1901. p. 5.
  2. ^ The American Monthly Review of Reviews (July 1901) p90
  3. ^ "Geographic Notes". National Geographic. July 1901. p. 123.
  4. ^ Burns, E. Bradford (1993). A History of Brazil. Columbia University Press. pp. 276–77.
  5. ^ "Treaty With Nicaragua". The New York Times. December 2, 1900. p. 1.
  6. ^ "Filipinos Take the Oath". The New York Times. December 4, 1900. p. 1.
  7. ^ Ben-Zvi, Linda (2002). Susan Glaspell: Essays on Her Theater and Fiction. University of Michigan Press. pp. 22–32.
  8. ^ Wright, George C. (1985). Life Behind A Veil: Blacks In Louisville, Kentucky, 1865–1930. LSU Press. pp. 63–65.
  9. ^ Massachusetts Labor Bulletin: 35. February 1901. {{cite journal}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  10. ^ "Oscar Booz Is Dead". Chicago Daily Tribune. December 4, 1900. p. 2.
  11. ^ "Invasion of England Easy", New York Times, December 5, 1900, p. 1
  12. ^ The Secret Treaties of Austria-Hungary, 1879–1914 Translated by Denys Peter Myers, John Gilman D'Arcy Paul p. 115
  13. ^ "Ashanti War (1900)". The Victorians at War, 1815–1914: An Encyclopedia of British Military History. ABC-CLIO. 2004. pp. 32–33.
  14. ^ Gdal Saleski, Famous Musicians of a Wandering Race (Kessinger Publishing, 2006), p. 315
  15. ^ Myron Timothy Herrick, Rural Credits, Land and Cooperative (D. Appleton and Company, 1914), pp. 445
  16. ^ Mojares, Resil B. (1999). The War Against the Americans: Resistance and Collaboration in Cebu, 1899–1906. Ateneo de Manila University Press. p. 64.
  17. ^ Symonds, Craig L. (2005). Decision at Sea: Five Naval Battles That Shaped American History. Oxford University Press US. p. 193.
  18. ^ Allen, W. Gordon (1996). Enigma Fantastique. Health Research Books. p. 23.
  19. ^ Ethelred Luke Taunton, The Law of the Church: A Cyclopedia of Canon Law for English-speaking Countries (K. Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1906), p. 455
  20. ^ "Demand on Morocco Delayed", New York Times, December 9, 1900, p. 1
  21. ^ Janice Pottker, Sara and Eleanor: The Story of Sara Delano Roosevelt and her Daughter-in-law, Eleanor Roosevelt (Macmillan, 2004), p. 88
  22. ^ Richard Langham Smith, Debussy: Studies (Cambridge University Press, 1997) p. 168
  23. ^ Michael F. Palmer, Freud and Jung on Religion (Routledge, 1997), pp. 88–89
  24. ^ Paul Kennedy, The War Plans of the Great Powers 1880–1914 (Routledge, 1979) p. 50
  25. ^ Sir Harry Johnston, Liberia (Huthinson & Co., 1906), pp. 298–99, 378
  26. ^ Chernow, Ron (1990). The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance. Grove Press. pp. 83–84.
  27. ^ Annual Reports of the War Department, 1901, pt. 5. pp. 3693–94.
  28. ^ Ronald William Clark, Einstein: The Life and Times (HarperCollins, 1984), p. 66
  29. ^ Arthur J. Miller, Einstein, Picasso: Space, Time and the Beauty That Causes Havoc (Basic Books, 2008) p. 71
  30. ^ Elliott J. Gorn, Sports in Chicago (University of Illinois Press, 2008) p. 45
  31. ^ The New Century Book of Facts: A Handbook of Ready Reference (The King-Richardson company, 1910), p. 250
  32. ^ Jagdish Mehra and Helmut Rechenberg, The Historical Development of Quantum Theory: The Quantum Theory of Planck, Einstein, Bohr, and Sommerfeld: Its Foundation and the Rise of Its Difficulties 1900–1925 (Springer, 2000), pp. 50–53
  33. ^ Encyclopedia of the United Nations and International Agreements (Taylor & Francis, 2003), p. 994
  34. ^ Birgit Seibold, Emily Hobhouse and the Reports on the Concentration Camps during the Boer War, 1899–1902: Two Different Perspectives (Columbia University Press, 2011) p. 37
  35. ^ "British Lost Hundreds", New York Times, December 16, 1900, p1
  36. ^ "More British Captured", New York Times, December 16, 1900, p. 1
  37. ^ Dan Schlossberg, "Trading Players Still A Risky Venture In Majors", Baseball Digest (May 1991), pp. 63–64
  38. ^ "The Loss of the Gneisenau", New York Times, December 18, 1900, p. 1
  39. ^ Dennis E. Showalter, Tannenberg: Clash of Empires (1914, reprinted by Brassey's, 2004) p. 50
  40. ^ Judith Evans, The Politics and Plays of Bernard Shaw (McFarland, 2002) pp. 44–45
  41. ^ David Getz, Life on Mars (Macmillan, 2004) p. 9
  42. ^ John T. Cunningham, Ellis Island: Immigration's Shining Center (Arcadia Publishing, 2003) p. 64
  43. ^ Nash, Jay Robert (2004). The Great Pictorial History of World Crime. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 629.
  44. ^ "China Negotiations Seem Tangled Up; Cable Error in Official Dispatch Made the Muddle Worse". The New York Times. December 19, 1900. p. 1.
  45. ^ Carroll, Brian (2004). Australia's Prime Ministers: From Barton to Howard. Rosenberg Publishing, Ltd. pp. 23–24.
  46. ^ Polmar, Norman (1991). Submarines of the Russian and Soviet Navies, 1718–1990. Naval Institute Press. p. 10.
  47. ^ "Canal Treaty is Ratified", New York Times, December 21, 1900, p. 1; Marion Mills Miller, Great Debates in American History: Foreign Relations (Current Literature Pub. Co., 1913), pp. 382–383
  48. ^ Boot, Max (2003). The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power. New York: Basic Books. ISBN 046500721X. LCCN 2004695066.
  49. ^ Paolo Ulivi and David Harland, Robotic Exploration of the Solar System: Part II: Hiatus and Renewal, 1983–1996 (Springer, 2009), p. 61
  50. ^ Charles De Paolo, Epidemic Disease and Human Understanding: A Historical Analysis of Scientific and Other Writings (McFarland, 2006), pp. 223–225
  51. ^ a b c d e The American Monthly Review of Reviews (February 1901) pp. 152-155
  52. ^ "China Joint Note Signed", New York Times, December 23, 1900, p. 1
  53. ^ Vaclav Smil, Creating the Twentieth Century: Technical Innovations of 1867–1914 and Their Lasting Impact (Oxford University Press US, 2005), p. 254
  54. ^ Kazuko Ono and Joshua A. Fogel, Chinese Women in a Century of Revolution, 1850–1950 (Stanford University Press, 1989J), p. 33
  55. ^ Boot, op cit., p115
  56. ^ "China's Emperor Agrees to Terms". The New York Times. December 15, 1900. p. 1.
  57. ^ Nimmo, William F. (2001). Stars and Stripes Across the Pacific: the United States, Japan, and the Asia/Pacific Region, 1895–1945. Greenwood Publishing Group.
  58. ^ Schapiro, Leonard Bertram (1977). The Government and Politics of the Soviet Union. Taylor & Francis. p. 22.
  59. ^ "Affairs in Europe". The Cyclopedic Review of Current History. March 1901. p. 62.
  60. ^ Official Journal, Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen of North America, January 1906
  61. ^ Sammarco, Anthony Mitchell (2004). Boston's Back Bay in the Victorian Era. Arcadia Publishing. p. 117.
  62. ^ "Mob Nearly Kills a Referee", New York Times, December 26, 1900, p. 1; "Trenton-Pennsylvania Bicycle Club Contest Ended in a Riot", Trenton Times, December 26, 1900, p. 2
  63. ^ APBR website
  64. ^ Fanthorpe, Lionel; Fanthorpe, Patricia (2004). Unsolved Mysteries of the Sea. Dundurn Press Ltd. pp. 70–74.
  65. ^ Fran Grace, Carry A. Nation: Retelling the Life (Indiana University Press, 2001), pp. 150–55
  66. ^ Michael Burns, France and the Dreyfus Affair: A Documentary History (Macmillan, 1999), p. 164
  67. ^ "Forty-Nine Children Drowned". Fort Wayne Journal Gazette.
  68. ^ The Post-Standard. Syracuse, New York. December 28, 1900. p. 1. {{cite news}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  69. ^ "Forty-Nine Children Perish?". The New York Times. December 28, 1900. p. 1.
  70. ^ "Story Merely a Hoax". Oakland Tribune. December 28, 1900. p. 1.
  71. ^ "Scientific Serials". Nature: 432. February 28, 1901.
  72. ^ Mathews, John A. (April 1916). "The Electric Furnace in Steel Manufacture". Monthly Bulletin of the American Iron and Steel Institute: 158.
  73. ^ Sana Loue, Textbook of Research Ethics: Theory and Practice (Springer, 2000) p. 15
  74. ^ "To Buy Danish Islands", New York Tribune, December 30, 1900, p. 1
  75. ^ "United States Offers Twelve Million Kroner for Danish West Indies", St. Louis Post-Dispatch, December 29, 1900, p. 1
  76. ^ Gorton Carruth, et al., eds., The Encyclopedia of American Facts and Dates (Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1962) p. 390
  77. ^ "His Head Is Off", Fort Wayne Sentinel, January 1, 1901, p. 1
  78. ^ "Catholic Churches Celebrate"; "Watch Night Services"; New York Times, January 1, 1901, p. 2
  79. ^ "Twentieth Century's Triumphant Entry", New York Times, January 1, 1901, p. 1