January, 1909. William Howard Taft is inaugurated president of the United States, and Teddy Roosevelt goes off on a safari to Africa to let the new president get to work out of his shadow. (Unfortunately, Teddy casts a big shadow, and even from Africa he begins to realize that he doesn’t like what Taft is doing as president.)
March 31, 1909. French film producers Emile and Charles Pathe begin to film the news. The brothers have sent cameramen to every continent to look for news stories of interest to the general public, and the resulting films, called newsreels, will be shown all over the world.
April 6, 1909. Robert E. Peary reaches the North Pole along with his assistant, Matthew Henson, and four Eskimo guides. Henson and two of the guides were actually the first to reach the Pole, and Peary arrived forty-five minutes later and confirmed that they were in the right place. Read more at Who Discoverd the North Pole at Smithsonian.com.
April 27, 1909. The Young Turks overthrow the sultan of Turkey, Abdulhamid II, and replace him with his brother who takes the title of Mohammed V. Abdulhamid II ruled the Ottoman Empire as an absolute monarch, but the Young Turks demand reforms and a constitutional government which begins to be implemented as Mohammed V becomes a constitutional monarch with very little real power.
May 1909. German bacteriologist Paul Ehrlich produces the first successful drug to treat for syphilis.
July 25, 1909. Frenchman Louis Bleriot becomes the first man to pilot an aircraft 21 miles across the English Channel from Calais, France to Dover in England. You can read more about Bleriot and his adventures in flight in the picture book, The Glorious Flight: Across the Channel with Louis Bleriot, written and illustrated by Alice and Martin Provenson. And Scholastic has some teaching suggestions for using The Glorious Flight in the classroom.
July, 1909. Mohammed Ali, Shah of Persia, flees to Russia as forces favoring a constitutional government replace him with his twelve year old son, Ahmad Mirza. Persia (Iran) becomes somewhat more free with democratic reforms implemented, or at least suggested, by the Grand Majiles, Persia’s parliament.
October 26, 1909. Prince Hirobumi Ito of Japan is assassinated by An Jung-geun, a Korean nationalist opposed to the annexation of Korea by Japan. Prince Ito had been the Japanese Resident-General of Korea, and the Japanese used the assassination as an excuse to take total control of Korea and try to absorb it into the Japanese empire.
December, 1909. U.S. chemist Leo Baekeland prepares to market his newly invented plastic which he calls “Bakelite.”