Spirit of America Bookstore
U.S. Timeline – 1901 to 1930
Ancient Times - 3500 B.C.E to 1490 C.E.
1491-1800
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1801-1900
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jump to 1931-1950
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1951-1968
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1969-2000
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2001-2010
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2011-2016
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2017-2018
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2019-2020
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2021 to present
Turn of The Century
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World War One
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Roaring Twenties Era
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Stock Market Crash
Turn of The Century
- 1901: Founding of Quaker Oats Co. by merger of three cereal millers.
- 1901: Founding of Monsanto Chemical Company in St. Louis, Missouri; today's sprawling international behemoth Monsanto Company agrichemical concern is being purchased for $66B by pharmaceutical giant Bayer AG [est. 1863] of Germany.
- 1901 Jan 10: The Lucas Gusher erupted in the Spindletop oil field in Beaumont, Texas - the start of the Texas oil boom.
- 1901 Jan 22: Britain's Queen Victoria died at age 91, succeeded by her son the long-time Prince of Wales, as Edward VII.
- 1901 Feb 1: Birthday of actor Clark Gable in Cadiz, Ohio; he died in 1960 in Los Angeles, California.
- 1901 Feb 25: Birthday of Herbert Manfred 'Zeppo' Marx in New York City; the youngest member of 'The Marx Brothers' comedy team died in Palm Springs, California in 1979.
- 1901 Feb 25: Financier J.P. Morgan [1837-1913] founded the United States Steel Corporation.
- 1901 April 23: Birthday of mystery author George Harmon Coxe, Jr. in Olean, New York; he died in Hilton Head, South Carolina in 1984.
- 1901 April 25: Gov. Benjamin Barker Odell of New York signed an automobile registration bill that imposed a 15 mile-per-hour speed limit on all highways.
- 1901 Sept 2: Vice President Theodore Roosevelt offered the advice "Speak softly and carry a big stick" in a speech at the Minnesota State Fair.
- 1901 Sept 6: President McKinley was shot by anarchist Leon Czolgosz at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York.
- 1901 Sept 14: President McKinley died from gunshot wounds inflicted by an anarchist assassin eight days prior; Vice President Theodore Roosevelt became President.
- 1901 Oct 16: Civil rights leader Booker T. Washington [1856-1915] dined at the White House as a guest of President Theodore Roosevelt, sparking an uproar among American bigots.
- 1901 Nov 27: U.S. Army War College established in Washington, DC.
- 1901 Dec 5: Walter Elias Disney was born in Chicago, Illinois; he died in 1966 in Burbank, California.
- 1901 Dec 10: First announcement of recipients of the Nobel Prizes. (The Prize in Economic Science was added in 1969.)
- 1902
- Founding of J.C. Penney's first store in Kemmerer, Wyoming.
- First description of the American-style hamburger, a recipe that combined ground beef, chopped onion, and pepper.
- National Biscuit Company introduced their Animal Crackers® cookies; later in the year, they introduced the
colorful box designed with a string for hanging on Christmas trees.
- 1902 Feb 4: Birthday of aviator Charles Lindbergh in Detroit, Michigan; he died in 1974.
- 1902 Feb 9: Birthday of Fred Charles Harman II in St. Joseph, Missouri; he created and drew the Red Ryder & Little Beaver comic strip in 1938; after he retired in 1963, he produced award-winning Western-themed fine art; he died in 1982
at age 79.
- 1902 Feb 27: Birthday of author John Steinbeck in Salinas, California; he died in 1968.
- 1902 March 4: Founding of the American Automobile Club in Chicago, Illinois.
- 1902 April 2: First motion picture theater was established, by Thomas L. Tally as part of a carnival in Los Angeles, California.
- 1902 May 19: The Fraterville Mine Disaster in Tennesse killed 216 miners.
- 1902 May 20: U.S. ended control of Cuba; Republic of Cuba was founded under President Tomas Estrada Palma.
- 1902 June 15: Beginning of service of the New York Central Railroad's '20th Century Limited' express passenger train
between New York City and Chicago; the last run was on 3 December 1967.
- 1902 July 19: Birthday of pulp mystery author Robert Leslie Bellem in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; he died in 1968.
- 1902 Aug 9: Edward VII was crowned King of England, succeeding his mother Queen Victoria.
- 1902 Aug 12: The International Harvester Company was formed by merger of McCormick Harvesting Machine Co., Deering Harvester Co., and several smaller manufacturers.
- 1902 Sept 1: Premiere of cinema pioneer Georges Méliès's short film "Le Voyage
dans La Lune (A Trip To The Moon)" in Paris, France.
- 1902 Dec 9: Birthday of writer Lucius Beebe in Wakefield, Massachusetts; he died at
age 63 in Hillsboro, California in 1966.
- 1903: James L. Kraft began a wholesale cheese business in Chicago.
- 1903: Launch of Crayola™ crayons brand.
- 1903 Feb 14: Founding of the U.S. Department of Commerce and Labor (split in March 1913).
- 1903 June 16: Henry Ford [1863-1947] founded the Ford Motor Company in Dearborn, Michigan.
- 1903 June 22: Birthday of bank robber John Dillinger in Indianapolis, Indiana; he was shot by Federal agents in Chicago,
Illinois in 1934.
- 1903 June 25: Birthday of British author George Orwell in India; he is most famous
for "Animal Farm" [1945 novel] and "Nineteen Eighty-Four" [1949 novel], and died
in London, England in 1950 at age 46.
- 1903 June 30: Hanna Mine Disaster in Wyoming killed 169 miners; deaths are blamed on the
Union Pacific Coal Company's greed-based 'gouging' practices intended to get coal out of the mine faster.
- 1903 Aug: Formation of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, a re-merger of T.D.I.U. & T.N.U. led by
Samuel Gompers [1850-1924] of the A.F. of L.
- 1903 Sept 1: Massachussetts was the first state to pass a law requiring license plates on automobiles.
- 1903 Sept 21: Birthday of visionary auto-maker Preston Tucker near Capac, Michigan; he died in 1956.
- 1903 Nov 3: Panama proclaimed its independence from Colombia.
- 1903 Dec 15: New York City street vendor Italo Marchiony received a patent for an ice cream cone mold; the cones became wildly popular with visitors to the Louisiana
Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri in 1904.
- 1903 Dec 17: The Wright Brothers (Orville & Wilbur) flew the first successful manned aeroplane flights in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
- 1904: Tassell Pharmacy owner David Strickler invented the banana split, per claim of Latrobe, Pennsylvania. {see 1907 Wilmington, Ohio claim}
- 1904: Founding of Brach's Palace of Sweets candy company in Chicago.
- 1904 Feb 26: The United States and Panama proclaimed a treaty of agreement for the U.S. to build a ship canal across the Panama isthmus.
(The canal opened in August 1914.)
- 1904 March 2: Birthday of children's author Dr. Seuss in Springfield, Massachusetts; he died in Laguna Beach, California in 1991.
- 1904 March 26: Birthday of mythologist Joseph Campbell in White Plains, New York;
he died at home in Honolulu, Hawai'i in 1987.
- 1904 April 22: Birthday of atomic physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer in New York City; he died in 1967 in Princeton, New Jersey.
- 1904 June 15: Fire erupted aboard the steamboat SS General Slocum in New York City's East River; more than 1,000 people died.
- 1904 July 13: Birthday of Nobel-laureate Pablo Neruda in Chile; he was arguably the most important Spanish-language poet of the XXth Century; he died in 1973 at age 69.
- 1904 July 23: Charles E. Menches claimed publicly that he invented the ice cream cone during the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri.
- 1904 Oct 12: Birthday of pulp author Lester Dent in La Plata, Missouri; the originator of the Doc Savage stories died in 1959.
- 1904 Oct 27: Opening of the I.R.T. (Interborough Rapid Transit Company) in New York City, the first underground rapid transit system.
- 1904 Dec 27: Opening of J.M. Barrie's stageplay "Peter Pan: The Boy Who Wouldn't Gtow Up" at the Duke of York's Theater in London, U.K.
- 1905:
- Delicatessen owner Richard Hellman of New York City introduced the first ready-made mayonnaise.
- First sports endorsement, when baseball star Honus Wagner put his signature on Louisville Slugger [est. 1884]
baseball bats.
- Pharmacist-grocer Claude A. Hatcher developed the Royal Crown Cola™ soft drink in Columbus, Georgia.
- 1905 Feb 2: Birthday of philosopher Ayn Rand, who emigrated from Russia to America in
1925; she died in 1982.
- 1905 March 6: Birthday of James Robert 'Bob' Wills near Kosse, in East Texas; the 'King of Western Swing' and his Texas Playboys
band still influence the music business; he died in Fort Worth, Texas in 1975.
- 1905 June 20: Birthday of playwright Lillian Hellman in New Orleans, Louisiana; she died at age 79 at Martha's Vineyard
in Massachusetts in June 1984.
- 1905 June 27: Founding of the Industrial Workers of the World [I.W.W., aka 'wobblies'] trade union in Chicago, Illinois.
- 1905 Sept 18: Birthday of reclusive actress Greta Garbo in Stockholm, Sweden;
she died in New York City in 1990.
- 1905 Sept 27: Albert Einstein published his famous mass-energy equivalence formula
- E=mc² - in the German journal Annalen der Physik.
- 1905 Oct 14: Birthday of English author and chemist Baron C.P. (Charles Percy) Snow in Leicester,
England; he died at age 74 in 1980.
- 1905 Nov 28: The Sinn Fein political party was founded in Dublin, Ireland.
- 1905 Dec 5: Frank H. Fleer & Co, of Philadelphia registered the 'Chiclets' (chewing-gum) trademark.
- 1905 Dec 9: Birthday of screenwriter Dalton Trumbo in Montrose, Colorado;
he was one of the Hollywood Ten group sent to prison by
Joe McCarthy and H.U.A.C. for contempt of Congress and served 11 months in prison;
he died in Los Angeles, California in 1976 at age 70.
- 1905 Dec 16: First weekly issue of the New York-based entertainment trade publication Variety; the company also
published Hollywood-based Daily Variety from 1933 to 2013.
- 1905 Dec 24: Birthday of billionaire aviator Howard R. Hughes in Houston, Texas; he died in 1976.
- 1906:
- 1906 Jan 22: Birthday of author Robert E. Howard in Peaster, Texas; the creator of 'Conan The Cimmerian' died in 1936
at age 30.
- 1906 April 1: Newly-formed Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Co. in Michigan started production of Kellogg's Toasted Corn Flakes™ breakfast cereal.
- 1906 April 18: San Francisco earthquake in California, which killed about 700 people; raging fires over the next several days raised the death toll to an estimated 3,000 to 7,000 people.
- 1906 May 22: The Wright Brothers received the patent for their flying machine.
- 1906 June 22: Birthday of movie writer-director Billy Wilder in Austria-Hungary;
the winner of seven Oscar Awards died in Beverly Hills, California in 2002.
- 1906 June 26: Bon-Bon Company of New York City registered the Dentyne™ chewing-gum trademark.
- 1906 June 30: The Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act became law, due to pressure from Harvey W. Wiley's 'pure food' crusade and publication of
"The Jungle" by muckraker Upton Sinclair [1878-1968].
- 1906 July 12: Wrongly-convicted French Army officer Alfred Dreyfus [1859-1935] - who was pardoned in 1899 - was finally exonerated by the military and returned to active duty with a promotion to Major.
- 1906 July 29: Birthday of movie comedy actress Thelma Todd in Lawrence, Massachusetts; she died mysteriously in 1935 at age 29 in Pacific Palisades, California.
- 1906 Aug 5: Birthday of American auteur director John Huston in Nevada, Missouri; he died in Rhode Island in 1987.
- 1906 Aug 19: Birthday of Philo T. Farnsworth near Beaver, Utah; the inventor of television (in 1927) died in Salt Lake City, Utah in 1971.
- 1906 Sept 27: Birthday of pulp author James Myers 'Jim' Thompson in Anadarko, Oklahoma; he died in 1977.
- 1906 Dec 10: President Theodore Roosevelt was the first American to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, for his work to mediate the end of the Russo-Japanese war.
- 1906 Dec 24: Reginald A. Fessenden of Canada broadcast the first pre-recorded music over the radio from Brant Rock, MA; the potential audience was radio-telegraph operators aboard ship in the Atlantic Ocean; he is considered the first 'disk jockey'.
- 1907: Hershey's™ Chocolate Kisses® put on the market.
- 1907 Jan 26: Congress passed the Tillman Act, which prohibited all monetary contributions by corporations to national political campaigns.
- 1907 Feb 3: Birthday of author James A. Michener in New York City; he died in 1997.
- 1907 March 14:
 #8 worst one-day Dow-Jones Industrial Average decline of 8.29%
- 1907 March 21: U.S. Marines invaded Honduras 'to protect American lives and interests' in the wake of political violence.
- 1907 May 26: Birthday of actor John Wayne in Winterset, Iowa; he died in 1979 in West Los Angeles, California.
- 1907 Summer: Ernest R. Hazard invented the banana split at The Cafe, per claim of Wilmington, Ohio. {see 1904 Latrobe, PA}
- 1907 July 6: Birthday of Mexicana artist Frida Kahlo in Coyoacán, DF, Mexico; her tragic life ended in 1954 at age 47.
- 1907 July 7: Birthday of sci-fi author Robert A. Heinlein in Butler, Missouri; he died in 1988 near Santa Cruz, California.
- 1907 July 8: Florenz Ziegfeld staged his first "Follies" on the rooftop Jardin de Paris of the New York Theatre (at 44th & Broadway).
- 1907 July 13: Belgian-American chemist Leo Baekeland [1863-1944] of Yonkers, New York filed for a patent on Bakelite, the world's first synthetic plastic; the patent was granted on 7 December 1909.
- 1907 July 21: Birthday of children's author Franklin Folsom in Boulder, Colorado; after writing over 80 books, mostly for children, he died in 1995 at age 88.
- 1907 Aug 1: Beginning of the U.S. Air Force, as the U.S. Army Signal Corps established an aeronautical division.
- 1907 Aug 28: Founding of the American Messenger Co. in Seattle, Washington, which evolved into today's United Parcel Service.
- 1907 Oct 17: Guglielmo Marconi began limited commercial wireless telegraph service between Nova Scotia and Ireland.
- 1907 Oct 21: The financial 'Panic of 1907' began with a run on the Knickerbocker Trust Company of New York, dragging stocks down 37%.
- 1907 Nov 16: Oklahoma was admitted to the Union as the 46th state.
- 1907 Nov 19: Birthday of Western author Jack Schaefer in Cleveland, Ohio; he died in New Mexico at age 83 in 1991.
- 1907 Nov 28: Future movie producer Louis B. Mayer [1884-1957] opened his first movie theater, in Haverhill, Massachusetts.
- 1907 Nov 30: Birthday of historian Jacques Barzun in France; he died in San Antonio, Texas in 2012 at age 104.
- 1907 Dec 6: The Monongah Mine Disaster in West Virginia killed 362 men and boys; still the worst mining disaster in U.S. history.
- 1907 Dec 19: The Darr Mine Disaster in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania killed 239 men and boys (recent research suggests that the death toll was hundreds higher).
- 1908: Founding of the Independent Halvah & Candies Company in Manhattan to manufacture a version of the Turkish confection made with crushed sesame seeds, honey & soya protein; company name later changed to The Joyva Corporation.
- 1908: Buick, Cadillac, Oldsmobile & Oakland {later Pontiac) merged to form General Motors.
- 1908 Jan 7: Killing of the last grizzly bear in California – leaving only the one on the state flag.
- 1908 Jan 9: Birthday of existentialist & feminist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir in Paris, France where she died at age 78 in 1986.
- 1908 Jan 11: Grand Canyon National Monument established by Pres. Theodore Roosevelt; it was made a National Park in 1919.
- 1908 March 22: Birthday of Western author Louis L'Amour in Jamestown, North Dakota; he died in 1988 in Glendale, California.
- 1908 April 25: Birthday of broadcaster Edward R. Murrow in Greensboro, North Carolina; he died in Pawling, New York in 1965.
- 1908 June 30: An asteroid exploded above remote Siberia in Russia, called the Tunguska Event, which left 800 square miles of scorched or blown-down trees.
- 1908 July 26: U.S. Attorney General ordered creation of a force of special agents that was a forerunner of the F.B.I.
- 1908 Aug 8: Inventor-aviator Wilbur Wright made his first public flight.
- 1908 Aug 14: Race riot in Springfield, Illinois with a white mob setting black-owned homes & businesses ablaze; at least two blacks and five whites died in the violence.
- 1908 Aug 27: Birthday of Lyndon Baines Johnson in Stonewall, Texas; he became the 36th President of the United States, and died at age 64 in 1973.
- 1908 Aug 31: Birthday of author William Saroyan in Fresno, California; he died there in 1981.
- 1908 Sept 4: Birthday of movie director Edward Dmytryk in Grand Forks, British Columbia, Canada; he died in Encino, California in 1999.
- 1908 Sept 16: Founding of General Motors Company in Flint, Michigan by William C. Durant.
- 1908 Oct 1: Henry Ford [1863-1947] introduced the 'Model T' automobile.
- 1908 Oct 15: Birthday of economist John Kenneth Galbraith in
Ontario, Canada; he died in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 2006.
- 1908 Nov 14: Birthday of anti-communist demagogue Sen. Joseph McCarthy in Grand Chute, Wisconsin; the man who spurred
H.U.A.C. & the Hollywood Blacklist died of acute alcoholism in 1957.
- 1908 Nov 25: First publication of the Christian Science Monitor newspaper in Boston, Massachu-setts; they
switched from a daily format to a weekly newsmagazine format in October 2008.
- 1908 Dec 26: Jack Johnson [1878-1946] became the first Afro-American to win the world heavyweight boxing title, by defeating Canadian Tommy Burns in Sydney, Australia.
- 1909: "The Harvard Classics" 51-volume set edited by Charles W. Eliot [1834-1926] was published.
- 1909 Jan 9: First issue of La Follette's Weekly Magazine edited by Robert M. 'Fighting Bob' La Follette [1855-1925];
name changed to "The Progressive Magazine" in 1929.
- 1909 Jan 28: U.S. ended direct control of Cuba.
- 1909 Feb 12: Founding of the N.A.A.C.P. {Natl Assn for the Advancement of Colored People}.
- 1909 Feb 17: Geronimo, the Chiricahua Apache war chief who led the Apaches for twenty years in wars against white invaders of the Southwest United States, died of
pneumonia at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.
- 1909 April 8: Birthday of author John Fante in Denver,
Colorado; he died in 1983 in California.
- 1909 June 9: Alice Huyler Ramsey, age 22, set out from New York City in a four-seater Model DA from Maxwell-Briscoe (her sponsor); her goal of becoming the first woman to drive across the U.S. was realized when she and her party arrived in San Francisco, California on August 7.
- 1909 June 20: Birthday of actor Errol Flynn in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia; he died
at a party in Vancouver, BC, Canada in 1959.
- 1909 July 12: Congress passed the 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which allowed for a federal income tax; it was declared ratified on 25 February 1913.
- 1909 July 25: French aviator Louis Bleriot became the first person to fly an airplane across the English Channel, traveling from Calais, France to Dover, England
in 37 minutes.
- 1909 July 27: Official test of the U.S. Army's first airplane at Fort Myer, Virginia; Orville Wright flew a passenger and himself for one hour and twelve minutes.
- 1909 Aug 2: The Lincoln/wheat penny went into circulation, replacing the 'Indian head' penny coin.
- 1909 Aug 14: First event at the new Indianapolis Motor Speedway, a series of motorcycle races.
- 1909 Aug 19: The first automobile race at the new Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
- 1909 Nov 13: The Cherry Mine Disaster in Illinois killed 259 men and boys, the result of a series of blunders: an electrical outage resulted in use of kerosene lanterns, which ignited a load of hay for mules working in the mine; moving the hayload ignited timbers of the mine, and reversing the above-ground air-fan caused the fan machinery to catch fire. Twenty-one miners managed to erect a barricade against the fire and smoke and subsisted on trickles of water for eight days before being rescued.
- 1909 Dec 9: Birthday of actor Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. in New York City;
he died there in 2000.
- 1909 Dec 31: The Manhattan Bridge, crossing the East River between Manhattan and Brooklyn, was opened to vehicular traffic.
- 1910: Launch of the 'Tom Swift' Books Series by Edward Stratemeyer [1862-1930],
credited to 'house name' Victor Appleby; as-of 2015 there are 104 books in the various 'Tom Swift' series.
- 1910 Jan 10: Founding of the company that later became Hallmark Cards, when Joyce Clyde Hall arrived in Kansas City, Missouri to sell postcards wholesale.
- 1910 Feb 8: Boy Scouts of America was incorporated.
- 1910 March 23: Birthday of cinema master Akira Kurosawa in Tokyo, Japan;
he died there in 1998.
- 1910 May 6: King Edward VII of U.K. died, succeeded by his son (grandson of Queen Victoria) George V.
- 1910 May 11: Glacier National Park in Montana was established.
- 1910 May 14: Lakeview Gusher wellhead blowout in Kern County, California deemed
'second-largest ever' oil spill at nine million barrels; finally halted on 14 September 1911.
- 1910 June 19: Father's Day holiday established in U.S.A.; the local celebration in Spokane,
Washington is credited to Sonora Louise Smart Dodd, and later went national.
- 1910 June 20: Entertainer Fanny Brice [1891-1951] made her official debut with The Ziegfield Follies in New York City.
- 1910 Aug 26: First demonstration of Thomas Edison's improved Kinetophone device for
showing a movie with synchronous sound.
- 1910 Oct 1: Anarchists dynamited the offices of the Los Angeles Times; 21 employees died and a hundred were injured; the press dubbed the bombing
'The Crime of The Century'.
- 1910 Oct 5: King Manuel I of Portugal abdicated in the face of a coup d'etat and the country was proclaimed a republic.
- 1910 Oct 9: A coal dust explosion at the Starkville Mine in Colorado killed 56 miners.
- 1910 Nov: The secret meeting of U.S. bankers and financiers and government officials on Jekyl Island in Georgia to design a central bank for the U.S., the U.S. Federal Reserve.
- 1910 Nov 14: Eugene B. Ely became the first aviator to take off from a ship; his Curtiss pusher aeroplane rolled off a sloping platform built on the bow of the light cruiser USS Birmingham at Hampton Roads, Virginia, lightly touched the surface of the water, then landed on a beach.
- 1910 Nov 20: A revolution led by Francisco I. Madero broke out in Mexico; it ended in December 1920.
- 1910 Nov 27: Official opening of Pennsylvania Station in New York City.
- 1910 Dec 19: First commercial production of the artificial fiber Rayon, at American Viscose Co. in Marcus Hook, Pennsylvania.
- 1911: Frank & Ethel Mars started making and selling a variety of butter-cream candies from the kitchen of their home in Tacoma, Washington; in 1922, they started Mar-O-Bar Company in Minneapolis to manufacture chocolate candy bars; later incorporated as Mars, Inc.
- 1911 Jan 18: Eugene B. Ely became the first aviator to land on a ship; his Curtiss pusher aeroplane flew from Tanforan Airfield in San Bruno, California and landed on a platform built on the armored cruiser USS Pennsylvania anchored in San Francisco Bay.
- 1911 Feb 6: Birthdate of Ronald Reagan in Tampico, Illinois; he served as Governor of California [1967-75] & U.S. President [1981-89], and died in Los Angeles, California in 2004.
- 1911 Feb 27: Charles F. Kettering demonstrated his electric automobile starter on a Cadillac in Detroit (replacing the need for hand-cranking).
- 1911 March 13: Birthday of sci-fi author L. Ron Hubbard [1911-86], founder of the bogus Scientology religion.
- 1911 March 25: Tragic Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City; 146 workers and managers died due to unsafe work conditions, including fire doors nailed shut.
- 1911 March 26: Birthdate of playwright Thomas Lanier 'Tennessee' Williams
in Columbus, Mississippi; he died in New York City in 1983.
- 1911 April 8: An explosion at the Banner Coal Mine in Littleton, Alabama killed 128 men; all but five were Afro-American convicts sentenced to hard labor for minor
crimes.
- 1911 June 16: Founding merger of the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company, renamed International Business Machines, Inc. in 1924.
- 1911 June 22: Britain's King George V [1865-1936] was crowned at Westminster Abbey in London.
- 1911 July 24: Young Yale University professor Hiram Bingham III discovered the now-famous citadel of Machu Picchu, an ancient 'city in the clouds' high in the Andes Mountains in Peru.
- 1911 Aug 8: President Taft signed a law raising the number of members in Congress from 391 to 433, with one each to be added when Arizona & New Mexico became states.
- 1911 Aug 15: Procter & Gamble Company introduced Crisco®, the first solidified shortening product made entirely of vegetable oil.
- 1911 Sept 17: Calbraith P. Rodgers set off in a Wright biplane on the first East-West crossing of the continent; the trip from Sheepshead Bay, New York to Pasadena, California took 49 days and 69 stops.
- 1911 Oct: California became the sixth state to give women the vote (by a very narrow margin).
- 1911 Oct 10: Chinese revolutionaries launched an uprising that led to the establishment of the Republic of China in 1912.
- 1911 Oct 11: Publication of J.M. Barrie's "Peter Pan" novel "Peter and Wendy" in U.K. and U.S.A.
- 1911 Nov 3: Documents completed establishing the Chevrolet Motor Car Company of Detroit, Michigan, which was merged into General Motors in 1918.
- 1911 Nov 5: Birthdate of Leonard Franklin Slye in Cincinnati, Ohio; he later became famous as singing cowboy Roy Rogers, and died in Apple Valley, California in 1998 at age 86.
- 1911 Nov 17: Founding of the Afro-American fraternity Omega Psi Phi at Howard University in Washington, DC.
- 1911 Dec 14: Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen and his team reached the South Pole first, beating the British expedition led by Robert F. Scott.
- 1912
- Chocolate sales in Cleveland, Ohio fell in warm weather, so Clarence A. Crane invented candy mints with a hole in the middle, calling them Life Savers.
- Cracker Jack® began including "A Prize In Every Box".
- Founding of growers cooperative California Associated Raisin Company; launched Sun-Maid Raisin brand in 1915.
- Whitman's Sampler boxed candy was introduced by Whitman's Candies [est. 1842] of Philadelphia.
- 1912 Jan 1: The Republic of China was established under President Sun Yat-Sen.
- 1912 Jan 6: New Mexico was admitted to the Union as the 47th state.
- 1912 Jan 8: Founding of the South African Native National Congress political party in South Africa; it was renamed the African National Congress in 1923.
- 1912 Jan 11: 'Bread and Roses Strike' began at American Woolen Company factories in Lawrence, Massachussets, with support of the I.W.W.; 20,000 workers - mostly women & children - stayed out for two months.
- 1912 Jan 22: Opening of the Florida Keys Over-Sea Railroad built by Henry Flagler, which operated until severely damaged by the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935. (In 1912, Key West was Florida's largest city, a bustling deep-water port.)
- 1912 Feb 14: Arizona was admitted to the Union as the 48th state.
- 1912 March 4: Groundbreaking for Ebbets Field, home of the Brooklyn Dodgers baseball team; structure was demolished in 1960.
- 1912 March 6: Launch of Nabisco's Oreo® Cookies.
- 1912 April 13: Founding of Britain's Royal Flying Corps, predecessor to the Royal Air Force.
- 1912 April 15: Sinking of the R.M.S. Titanic ocean liner after striking an iceberg off Newfoundland on its maiden voyage from England to New York; 1,514 people died, 710 survived.
- 1912 April 20: Fenway Park in Boston hosted its first professional baseball game (Red Sox vs. the New York Highlanders) and Navin Field (now Tigers Park) opened in Detroit, hosting a game against Cleveland.
- 1912 April 22: Founding of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce at the National Commercial Conference in Washington, DC.
- 1912 April 30: Founding of the Universal Film Manufacturing Company in New York City, by the merger of eight smaller businesses; company is now Universal Studios.
- 1912 May 16: Birthday of Pulitzer Prize-winning broadcast journalist Louis 'Studs' Terkel in New York City; he died in Chicago, Illinois in 2008 at age 96.
- 1912 June 4: Massachusetts passed a milestone of U.S. labor law, the nation's first minimum-wage law.
- 1912 June 6: The greatest volcanic eruption of the XXth Century took place in Alaska creating the Novarupta Volcano; event took several days and spewed 30 times as much debris as Mount St. Helens did in 1980.
- 1912 June 23: Birthday of British computer genius Alan Turing [1912-54] in London, England.
- 1912 July 4: The 48-star U.S. flag became official, recognizing newly-admitted states New Mexico
and Arizona.
- 1912 July 7: Horn & Hardart of Philadelphia opened an 'Automat' cafeteria at Broadway & East 14th Street in New York City, which caused a sensation.
- 1912 July 14: Birthday of folk music legend Woody Guthrie in Okemah, Oklahoma; he died at age 55 of Huntington's disease in New York City in 1967.
- 1912 July 26: Edison Studios in New Jersey released the silent serial "What Happened To Mary", considered to be the first movie serial.
- 1912 Aug 1: The first U.S. Marine Corps pilot Lt. Alfred A. Cunningham flew solo for the first time, in a Burgess/Curtis Hydroplane at Marblehead Harbor in Massachusetts.
- 1912 Aug 12: Birthday of movie director Samuel Fuller in Worcester, Massachusetts; he died in Hollywood, California in 1997.
- 1912 Aug 12: Comedy actor & producer Mack Sennett [1880-1960] founded the Keystone Pictures Studio in Edendale (East Hollywood), California.
- 1912 Sept 12: Jungle character 'Tarzan' first appeared in print, in serialized "Tarzan of The Apes" by Edgar Rice Burroughs [1875-1950] in The All-Story Magazine.
- 1912 Oct 14: The First Balkan War broke out as Bulgarian, Serbian and Montenegrin forces attempted to force the Ottoman Empire out of the Balkans.
- 1912 Oct 14: Former president Theodore Roosevelt was shot in the chest during a campaign stop in Milwaukee, Wisconsin by New York saloon keeper John Schrank; Roosevelt went ahead with his speech, declaring that "it takes more than one bullet to kill a bull moose".
- 1912 Nov 5: Democratic Party candidate Woodrow Wilson won the election for president with 41.8% of the popular vote, beating a 'split ticket' of Progressive Theodore Roosevelt (27.4%), Republican William Howard Taft (23.2%), and Socialist Eugene V. Debs (6%).
- 1912 Nov 28: Albania proclaimed its independence from the Ottoman Empire.
- 1912 Dec 28: Operations began of San Francisco's Municipal Railway as the Mayor took controls of Streetcar #1 before a crowd of 50,000.
- 1913 Jan 1: The U.S. Parcel Post system began operation.
- 1913 Jan 9: Birthday of Richard M. Nixon in Yorba Linda, California; he died in 1994 in New York City.
- 1913 Jan 11: The first sedan-type automobile, by Hudson Motors, went on display at the 13th National Automobile Show in New York City.
- 1913 Jan 18: Birthday of entertainer Danny Kaye in Brooklyn, New York; he died in Los Angeles, California in 1987.
- 1913 Feb 2: Official opening of the Grand Central Terminal that replaced Grand Central Depot in New York City.
- 1913 Feb 4: Birthday of civil rights activist Rosa Parks in Tuskegee, Alabama; she died in 2005 in Detroit, Michigan.
- 1913 Feb 13: Silk-workers labor strike in Paterson, New Jersey, supported by the I.W.W.; the work stoppage lasted six months and ended in failure.
- 1913 Feb 21: Mexico's revolutionary leader Francisco I. Madero was assassinated.
- 1913 Feb 25: 16th Amendment providing for a federal income tax was ratified and declared to be in effect.
- 1913 March 1: Birthday of author Ralph Ellison in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; he died in 1994.
- 1913 March 14: Department of Labor signed into law by President Taft (split off from Dept. of Commerce & Labor [est. February 1903]).
- 1913 April 17: Incorporation of the town of Palm Beach, Florida.
- 1913 April 29: Swedish-born engineer Gideon Sundback of New Jersey received a U.S. patent for a 'separable fastener', later known as the zipper.
- 1913 May 9: 17th Amendment providing for popular election of U.S. Senators (rather than selection by state legislators) was ratified.
- 1913 May 19: California Gov. Hiram Johnson signed the Webb-Hartley Law, which prohibited 'aliens ineligible to citizenship' from owning farm land (targeting Asians, especially Japanese).
- 1913 May 30: With hostilities halted and the Ottoman Empire defeated, the Treaty of London officially ended the First Balkan War; Ottoman territories were divided up among Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro, and Serbia, and Albania was established as a new country.
- 1913 May 31: 17th Amendment declared to be in effect.
- 1913 June 20: Birthday of mystery author Lilian Jackson Braun in Massachusetts; she wrote 29 "The Cat Who ..." novels and died in 2011 at age 97.
- 1913 June 29: The Second Balkan War broke out as Bulgaria attacked former allies Serbia and Greece.
- 1913 July 31: As foreign troops in the Second Balkan War approached Sofia, defeated Bulgaria asked for an armistice; the Treaty of Bucharest was formally signed on 10 August.
- 1913 Aug 13: British metallurgist Harry Brearley developed an alloy that became known as 'stainless steel'.
- 1913 Oct 10: Completion of the Panama Canal, as President Wilson sent a telegraph signal from the White House that triggered destruction of a section of the Gamboa dike.
- 1913 Nov 5: Completion ceremony for the Los Angeles Aquaduct at the Sylmar Cascade bringing water 223 miles from the Owens Valley to Los Angeles (see L.A. Aquaduct 100th Anniversary website).
- 1913 Dec 1: Opening of the first U.S. drive-in service station for automobiles, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
- 1913 Dec 21: The first newspaper 'word-cross' puzzle was published in the New York World, invented by editor Arthur Wynne.
- 1913 Dec 23: Enactment by Congress of the Federal Reserve Act that created the Federal Reserve central banking system in the U.S.; immediately signed into law by President Wilson.
- 1914: Morton Salt® introduced the Umbrella Girl with the slogan 'When it rains it pours'.
- 1914: William Wrigley Jr. introduced Doublemint brand chewing gum.
- 1914 Feb 5: Birthday of Beat writer William S. Burroughs in St. Louis, Missouri; he died in Lawrence, Kansas in 1997.
- 1914 Feb 12: Groundbreaking ceremonies for the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC.
- 1914 Feb 13: Founding of the American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers {A.S.C.A.P.} in New York City.
- 1914 April 20: 'The Ludlow Massacre': Colorado National Guard troops opened fire with machine guns on a tent city of 1,200 strikers and their families; 9 strikers, 2 women & 11 children died.
The Ludlow Massacre Memorial Monument is just off I-25 at Exit 27 in SE Colorado.
- 1914 May 8: W.W. Hodkinson [1881-1981] merged 11 film rental bureaus and founded Paramount Pictures, the first national U.S. film distributor.
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