January 1, 1912. The Republic of China is officially established. Emperor Pu Yi abdicates the throne.

March 27, 1912. The first of the famous cherry trees that beautify Washington D.C. were planted on this date in 1912 by First Lady Helen Taft and the Japanese ambassador’s wife, Viscountess Chinda.

April 15, 1912. RMS Titanic,a passenger liner, strikes an iceberg on her maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York City, and sank, resulting in the deaths of 1,517 people.
Pictures of the Titanic and of some of its passengers:

May, 1912. Italy and Turkey continue to make war, with Italy bombarding the Dardanelles and occupying the Greek island of Rhodes.

May, 1912. In the House of Commons, the British government passes a bill to grant Home Rule (semi-independence) to Ireland. Northern Ireland, also called Ulster, which is mostly Protestant doesn’t want to be a part of a mostly Catholic independent Ireland. The Home Rule bill will be put into effect in 1914, then suspended for the duration of the war (WW I), then reinstated in 1918 as a part of the British plan to draft more soldiers into the war from Ireland.

May, 1912. The first issue of the Bolshevik (Communist) newspaper Pravda is published in St. Petersburg, Russia. Pravda means “truth”.

June-September, 1912. Amateur scientist Charles Dawson and Arthur Smith Woodward of the British Museum gather fragments of a skull and jawbone from a gravel pit at Piltdown, East Sussex, England. A reconstruction of the fragments comes to be known as The Piltdown Man believed to be the skeleton of a primitive man 50,000 years old. In 1953 the Piltdown Man was finally exposed as a forgery consisting of the lower jawbone of an orangutan combined with the skull of a modern human.

September-December, 1912. The Balkan League—Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Montenegro–goes to war against Turkey (Ottoman Empire). This conflict is known as The First Balkan War.

October, 1912. Turkey, busy in the Balkans, signs a treaty to end its war with Italy.

November 5, 1919. Woodrow Wilson is elected the first Democratic president of the United States in more than twenty years. His rivals Taft, the Republican, and Teddy Roosevelt, running for his own Progressive (Bull Moose) party, split the Republican vote. Labor Union leader Eugene V. Debs is the nominee of the Socialist Party of America.

All year: The French and the Germans squabble over influence in Morocco. In November, the Germans finally agree to recognize French influence in Morocco in return for territory in the French Equatorial African colony of Middle Congo. The crisis leads to Britain and France making a naval agreement where the Royal Navy promises to protect the northern coast of France from German attack.

March, 1911. The British announce plans to build five more Dreadnought battleships for the Royal Navy in response to German naval expansion.

May 25, 1911. Mexican dictator Porfirio Diaz is forced by the rebels to resign from office. Francisco Madero takes over as provisional president. Diaz leaves Mexico a few days later for exile in France. At the beginning of the year, President Taft sent forces to the Mexican border to guard the border territory from the unrest in Mexico, and in April U.S. troops entered Mexico to quell the rebellion.

July 24, 1911. Hiram Bingham rediscovers the ancient Inca city of Machu Picchu in the Andes Mountains in Peru.

August 22, 1911. The theft of the Mona Lisa is discovered in the Louvre. (It was two years before the real thief was discovered. Louvre employee Vincenzo Peruggia had stolen it by entering the building during regular hours, hiding in a broom closet and walking out with it hidden under his coat after the museum had closed.)

September, 1911. Italy declares war on Turkey (Ottoman Empire). In November, Italy annexes Tripoli and Cyrenaica and wins a decisive victory over Turkish forces in North Africa.

November 1, 1911. The world’s first combat aerial bombing mission takes place in Libya during the Italo-Turkish War. An Italian flier drops several small explosives.

December 14, 1911. Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen and his party become the first men to reach the South Pole five weeks ahead of British Captain Robert F. Scott and his team who reach the South Pole in March, 1912. Tragically, Scott and his men do not survive the journey back to their base camp on the coast of Antarctica.

December, 1911. Scientist Marie Curie wins an unprecedented second Nobel Prize “in recognition of her services to the advancement of chemistry by the discovery of the elements radium and polonium, by the isolation of radium and the study of the nature and compounds of this remarkable element”.

December 29, 1911. Dr. Sun Yat-sen is elected president of the newly declared Republic of China. In October, Pu Yi, the five year old emperor of China, surrendered his power and agreed to grant a constitution.

Director Sergei Diaghilev brings his Ballets Russes to Paris featuring the dancers Vaslav Njinsky and Anna Pavlova and with choreographer Michel Fokine and designer Léon Bakst. The Ballet Russes is regarded by some as finest ballet company of the twentieth century. When Diaghilev died in 1929, the ballet company was broken up, and the dancers scattered to other companies.

In December 1909, American architect Frank Lloyd Wright completes the famed Robie House in Chicago, one of the most important buildings in American architecture.

Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 is premiered in New York City on November 28, 1909.

Mark Steyn on the #1 Hit of 1911: Come Josephine in My Flying Machine.

NPR story on the song of the decade, “Alexander’s Ragtime Band”:

More Popular Songs of 1911:
“I Want A Girl (Just Like The Girl)” by William Dillon and Harry Von Tilzer.
“(On) Moonlight Bay” by Edward Madden and Percy Wenrich.
“Oh, You Beautiful Doll” w. A. Seymour Brown, m. Nat D. Ayer.

February 12, 1910. A force of 2,000 Chinese troops march into Lhasa, the capital of Tibet. The 13th Dalai Lama, Thubten Gyatso, is forced to flee to India.

February 20, 1910. Boutros Pasha Ghali, the first native-born prime minister of Egypt, is assassinated by an Egyptian nationalist. Egypt is under British control, and the Egyptians themselves have only limited power of self-rule.

February 27, 1910. U.S. surgeons find and remove a nail from the lung of a boy by using an X-ray machine.

May 6, 1910. George V becomes King of Britain upon the death of his father, Edward VII.

May 31, 1910. The Union of South Africa becomes a self-governing dominion of the British Empire. The new government will be led by Prime Minister Louis Botha who was a leader in the defeated Boer army that fought against Britain in 1900-1901. He is now a convinced supporter of South Africa’s independence and participation in the British Dominion.

June 30, 1910. Russian prime minister Pyotr Stolypin easily persuades the Duma to pass a law that ends most aspects of Finnish independence. Russia takes over Finland completely.

August 22, 1910. After defeating the Russians in war and in peace, Japan officially annexes Korea.

October 4, 1910. Republican revolutionaries overthrow the Portuguese monarchy. 20 year old King Manuel II, who came to the throne after the assassination of his father and brother two and a half years ago (1908), flees to Gibraltar.

November 20, 1910. In Mexico, rebels begin the attempt to oust president and dictator Porfirio Diaz, who has ruled Mexico for over thirty years. Leaders in the rebellion include Francisco Madero, Emiliano Zapata, Pancho Villa, Victoriano Huerta, and Pascual Orozco.

More than a million immigrants enter the United States in 1910. The largest ethnic groups are Italians, Poles, Jews, Slovaks, and Greeks.

In 1910:

The average life expectancy for men was 47 years. Only 14 percent of the homes had a bathtub. Only 8 percent of the homes had a telephone.

There were only 8,000 cars and only 144 miles of paved roads. The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph.

The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower!

In Old California was the first film to be made in Hollywood.

Map of the World in 1910.

The average US wage in 1910 was 22 cents per hour. The average US worker made between $200 and $400 per year. A competent accountant could expect to earn $2000 per year, a dentist $2,500 per year, a veterinarian between $1,500 and $4,000 per year, and a mechanical engineer about $5,000 per year.

More than 95 percent of all births took place at home.

Ninety percent of all doctors had no college education. Instead, they attended so-called medical schools, many of which were condemned in the press AND by the government as ‘substandard.’

Sugar cost four cents a pound. Eggs were fourteen cents a dozen. Coffee was fifteen cents a pound.

Most women only washed their hair once a month, and used Borax or egg yolks for shampoo.

Canada passed a law that prohibited poor people from entering into their country for any reason.

The five leading causes of death were:
1. Pneumonia and influenza
2. Tuberculosis
3. Diarrhea
4. Heart disease
5. Stroke

The American flag had 45 stars.

The population of Las Vegas, Nevada, was only 30!

Crossword puzzles, canned beer, and iced tea hadn’t been invented yet.

There was no Mother’s Day or Father’s Day.

Two out of every 10 adults couldn’t read or write and only 6 percent of all Americans had graduated from high school.

Marijuana, heroin, and morphine were all available over the counter at the local corner drugstores. Back then pharmacists said, ‘Heroin clears the complexion, gives buoyancy to the mind, regulates the stomach and bowels, and is, in fact, a perfect guardian of health’.

Eighteen percent of households had at least one full-time servant or domestic help.