96 Fun Facts About 1900s

Near which North Carolina village did the Wright brothers make the first powered flights in December 1903?

Kitty Hawk was chosen after Wilbur studied Weather Bureau wind records and heard of its steady breezes and soft sand; the flights left from the Kill Devil Hills dunes four miles to the south.

Which major US city was levelled by an earthquake and the fires that followed on April 18, 1906?

San Francisco burned for days because the quake had broken the water mains, leaving firefighters short of water; the fires destroyed some 500 city blocks.

What was Albert Einstein's day job when he published special relativity in 1905?

Patent examiner was the post Einstein took at the Swiss Patent Office after failing to find a teaching job; he worked out the 1905 papers that remade physics in his spare time.

Which city hosted the Summer Olympic Games in 1900?

Paris ran the 1900 Games as a sideshow to its World's Fair, spread over five months and so little advertised that many athletes never knew they had competed in the Olympics.

Which iconic automobile, known for its impact on mass production, was first introduced in 1908?

The Ford Model T went on sale on October 1, 1908 at $850; assembly-line production later cut the price to under $300 by 1925, putting a car within reach of ordinary wage-earners.

What do Westerners call the anti-foreign, anti-Christian Chinese uprising of around 1900?

The Boxer Rebellion (1899–1901) was led by the Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists across North China; Westerners called its martial-arts-practising members 'Boxers'.

The Nobel Prizes, first awarded in 1901, were funded by the fortune of the man who invented what?

Dynamite made Alfred Nobel rich, and his will left most of the fortune to fund the prizes; his family fought the bequest, so the first awards came only in 1901, five years after his death.

What was the name of the first fully synthetic plastic, invented in 1907?

Bakelite, named after its inventor Leo Baekeland, shrugged off heat and electricity, so it soon formed the non-conducting parts of radios, light sockets and telephones.

Which British campaign adopted militant direct action under Emmeline Pankhurst from 1903?

The Suffragette Movement took its name from the press: a Daily Mail reporter coined 'suffragette' in 1906, perhaps as a put-down, and Pankhurst's militants made it their own, even naming their newspaper after it.

Who became president following William McKinley's assassination, taking office at the age of 42?

Theodore Roosevelt had been steered into the vice presidency by his own state's party boss, who wanted the reforming governor out of the way; six months later McKinley's death made him president at 42.

In July 1909 Louis Blériot became the first person to fly an aeroplane across which stretch of water?

The English Channel took Blériot 36 and a half minutes to cross, from near Calais to Dover; he flew without a compass and collected a prize the Daily Mail had put up for the first crossing.

Which civil rights organization was founded in 1909 by a group that included W. E. B. Du Bois and Ida B. Wells?

The NAACP answered the 1908 race riot in Springfield, Illinois, Abraham Lincoln's home town; its founders issued their call on the centenary of his birth, 12 February 1909.

Which Spanish artist painted the 1907 canvas Les Demoiselles d'Avignon?

Pablo Picasso painted Les Demoiselles d'Avignon in 1907; its mask-like faces, shaped by Iberian and African art, opened the road to Cubism.

Where did Marconi report hearing the first wireless signal sent across the Atlantic, in December 1901?

Newfoundland was a fallback: storms had damaged Marconi's planned station on Cape Cod, so he listened from Signal Hill in St John's, with his aerial held up by a kite, for the Morse letter S.

Which country, then ruled by Russia's tsar, became the first in Europe to give women the vote in 1906?

Finland went further than the vote: its 1906 reform also let women stand for office, and the next year's election sent 19 of them to parliament, the first women MPs anywhere.

The first feature-length film, released in Melbourne in 1906, told which outlaw's story?

Ned Kelly's last stand was the climax of The Story of the Kelly Gang, which ran for more than an hour when most films lasted minutes; only fragments of it, about 17 minutes, survive.

The Tunguska event of June 1908 flattened roughly 2,000 square kilometres of forest in which region?

Siberia's Tunguska blast is blamed on an asteroid that exploded in mid-air: the first scientists to reach the site, in 1927, found forest flattened for miles around but no crater.

Which Sicilian city, along with Calabria, was devastated by the 1908 earthquake and tsunami?

Messina was struck at about 5:20 in the morning, so most people were asleep indoors when their houses collapsed on them, and a tsunami then swept the ruined waterfront.

Which Balkan country declared independence from the Ottoman Empire in October 1908, its prince taking the title of tsar?

Bulgaria had run its own affairs since 1878 but was still nominally Ottoman; Prince Ferdinand timed his declaration with Austria-Hungary, which annexed Bosnia the very next day.

The first zeppelin flight took place on 2 July 1900 over which body of water?

Lake Constance held Count Zeppelin's floating hangar: moored at one end, it swung to face the wind, which made it easier to ease the fragile LZ 1 out for its first flight on 2 July 1900.

Which cycling race was held for the first time in 1903?

The Tour de France was invented by the struggling sports paper L'Auto to boost its circulation; Maurice Garin won the first edition, raced over just six long stages.

Which 12-minute western of 1903, directed by Edwin S. Porter, became one of American cinema's first big hits?

The Great Train Robbery played in nickelodeons across America for years; its best-known shot, an outlaw firing his pistol straight at the audience, could be shown at the start or at the end.

The first modern World Series, in 1903, was won by the 'Americans', a club now known by what name?

The Boston Red Sox, still called the Americans, trailed three games to one in 1903 and then won four in a row, Cy Young and Bill Dinneen taking two wins apiece.

Which National League champions, with Honus Wagner at shortstop, lost the first modern World Series in 1903?

The Pittsburgh Pirates won three of the first four games, all pitched by Deacon Phillippe, but with their other ace injured he had to pitch five times, and they lost the best-of-nine series.

The teddy bear was named after an incident on a November 1902 bear hunt in which Southern state?

Near Onward, Mississippi, the president refused to shoot a bear that had been caught and tied to a tree for him; Clifford Berryman's Washington Post cartoon made the moment famous.

Which German toy company began making plush bears in 1902, just as the teddy bear craze took off in America?

Steiff's bear was designed by Richard Steiff, the founder's nephew; an American buyer ordered 3,000 of them in 1903, while in Brooklyn Morris Michtom was selling his own 'Teddy's bear'.

The 1904 Olympics were the first held outside Europe and were staged in which city?

Chicago had won the bid, but the 1904 Games moved to St. Louis to coincide with the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, making them the first Olympics outside Europe.

Which now-standard Olympic tradition was introduced at the 1904 Games?

Gold, silver and bronze medals for the first three places were new in 1904; American gymnast George Eyser won six medals at those Games despite having a wooden left leg.

Which European state annexed the Congo Free State from its king's personal rule in 1908?

Belgium annexed the Congo Free State on 15 November 1908, ending Leopold II's personal rule after international outcry over atrocities in the rubber trade.

Which company launched the one-dollar Brownie camera in 1900?

Kodak named its cheap cardboard box camera after the Brownies, Palmer Cox's popular cartoon sprites, and aimed it at children; the idea was to sell them roll after roll of film.

Who wrote the children's novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, first published in 1900?

L. Frank Baum saw the first printing of 10,000 copies sell so well, and the 1902 stage musical draw such crowds, that he went on to write thirteen more Oz books.

Which railway station, opened for the 1900 Exposition Universelle, is now a museum famed for Impressionist paintings?

Gare d'Orsay lasted under forty years as a main-line terminus: its platforms could not be lengthened for modern trains, and it was marked for demolition before reopening as an art museum in 1986.

How long did the Wright brothers' very first powered flight last on 17 December 1903?

12 seconds was all Orville managed, covering 120 feet; by the day's fourth flight Wilbur stayed up for 59 seconds and 852 feet, and then a gust wrecked the Flyer for good.

The Wright brothers built the 1903 Flyer's engine in the Dayton shop where they made and sold what?

Bicycles paid for the brothers' experiments, and their shop mechanic Charlie Taylor built the Flyer's 12-horsepower engine there in six weeks, driving the two propellers by chain.

After a long feud with the Smithsonian, Orville Wright sent the 1903 Flyer abroad in 1928 to a museum in which city?

London's Science Museum kept the Flyer for twenty years because the Smithsonian would not recognise it as the first successful aeroplane; it came home only in 1948.

In which city was Einstein living when he wrote his 1905 'miracle year' papers?

Bern was Einstein's home from 1902 to 1909; the relativity paper he wrote there cites no other publications and thanks one friend, Michele Besso, whom he called the best sounding board in Europe.

Which phenomenon from Einstein's first 1905 paper was the only specific discovery cited in his Nobel Prize?

The photoelectric effect was named in the 1921 citation and relativity was not: the committee was still waiting for experimental confirmation, so the theory that made Einstein famous never won him the prize.

Japan's surprise attack of February 1904 struck the Russian fleet at which harbour leased from China?

Port Arthur was hit by Japanese destroyers on the night of 8 February 1904 with no declaration of war, which Tokyo issued only two days later; the base fell after a long siege the following January.

After a seven-month voyage from the Baltic, Russia's fleet was annihilated by Admiral Tōgō in May 1905 in which battle?

Tsushima cost Russia almost every heavy ship it had sent 18,000 nautical miles around the world; with no fleet left, the tsar sued for peace, signed that September in the Treaty of Portsmouth.

Which physicist launched quantum theory in December 1900 by proposing that energy is emitted in discrete packets?

Max Planck called the step 'an act of despair', taken only to make his radiation formula fit the measurements; the constant in it now bears his name, and the work won him the 1918 Nobel Prize.

Which Qing ruler sided with anti-foreign rebels and declared war on the foreign powers in June 1900?

Empress Dowager Cixi issued the declaration on 21 June 1900; eight weeks later foreign troops took Beijing, and she fled with her court to Xi'an, far to the west.

Who won the first Nobel Prize in Physics, in 1901, for discovering X-rays?

Wilhelm Röntgen made one of the first X-ray pictures of his wife's hand, showing the bones and her ring; he refused to claim any rights over the discovery, so that anyone could use it.

The 1902 eruption of Mount Pelée wiped out the town of Saint-Pierre on which French Caribbean island?

Martinique's Saint-Pierre lost almost all of its roughly 30,000 people within minutes; one who lived, a prisoner in a stone-walled cell, later toured America with Barnum & Bailey's circus.

A June 1904 fire aboard which excursion steamboat killed more than 1,000 people on a church outing?

The General Slocum burned in the East River with a Lutheran parish aboard; the crew had held no fire drill that year and the life preservers fell apart, and the parish's Little Germany soon emptied.

In 1905 Norway achieved full independence by dissolving its union with which country?

The Storting declared the union with Sweden dissolved on 7 June 1905; Sweden accepted at Karlstad that autumn, and Norway chose Danish prince Carl as King Haakon VII.

On 1 January 1901, six British colonies federated to form the Commonwealth of which new nation?

Australia nearly had a seventh member: New Zealand sent delegates to the early federation conventions of the 1890s, then decided to stay out and go its own way.

The Panic of 1907 was eventually resolved through interventions led by which financier?

J.P. Morgan locked his fellow bankers in his library and pocketed the key until they pledged the money; the scare led Congress to create the Federal Reserve six years later.

Queen Victoria died in January 1901 at Osborne House on which island?

The Isle of Wight's Osborne House was the seaside home Victoria and Albert built for themselves; her heir Edward VII never liked it and gave it to the nation on his coronation day in 1902.

Which tyre company published its first guide for motorists in 1900, hoping they would drive more?

Michelin gave away nearly 35,000 copies when France had fewer than 3,000 cars, betting that more driving meant more worn tyres; its restaurant stars arrived only in 1926.

Who in 1903 became the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, sharing physics with her husband and Henri Becquerel?

Marie Curie was nearly left out: the nomination named only Pierre Curie and Becquerel until Pierre, tipped off by a Stockholm mathematician, asked that she be included; she won the chemistry prize alone in 1911.

Which Texas city was devastated by the hurricane of 8 September 1900?

The Galveston hurricane of 8 September 1900 killed an estimated 6,000–12,000 people; the city then built a seawall and raised its entire grade by up to 17 feet.

Officials helped the collapsing Italian Dorando Pietri over the line at the 1908 Olympics, getting him disqualified from which event?

The marathon title passed to the American Johnny Hayes, but Pietri's ordeal made him the hero of the Games, and Queen Alexandra presented him with a special cup the next day.

Henry Dunant, who shared the first Nobel Peace Prize in 1901, had founded which organization?

The Red Cross cost Henry Dunant his fortune: he neglected his business for it, went bankrupt and lived in obscurity for decades until a newspaper editor tracked him down in 1895.

Who in 1907 became the first English-language writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature?

Rudyard Kipling, author of Kim and The Jungle Book, accepted the Nobel at 41, yet he declined a knighthood more than once and would not be considered for Poet Laureate.

The Platt Amendment of 1901 set conditions for withdrawing U.S. troops from which island?

The Platt Amendment governed US withdrawal from Cuba and required leasing land for a naval station, which became the base at Guantánamo Bay.

Britain and France settled their colonial quarrels in April 1904 with a set of agreements known by what name?

The Entente Cordiale had each power recognise the other's sphere in North Africa, ending centuries of rivalry; it was no military alliance, yet ten years later the two went to war side by side.

Which Royal Navy battleship, launched in 1906, made every earlier battleship obsolete and gave its name to a new type?

HMS Dreadnought went from keel to sea trials at Portsmouth in a year and a day; every older battleship became a 'pre-dreadnought' overnight, the Royal Navy's own huge fleet included.

Which reform movement's 1908 revolution forced the Ottoman sultan to restore the constitution and recall parliament?

The Young Turks' revolt began among army officers in Ottoman Macedonia; Sultan Abdul Hamid II gave way within weeks, and the following year he was deposed.

The Herero and Nama genocide of 1904–08 was carried out by German colonial troops in which present-day country?

Namibia was then German South West Africa, where General von Trotha's troops drove the Herero into the Omaheke desert to die; in 2021 Germany agreed to pay Namibia 1.1 billion euros over it.

Which state joined the Union as the 46th in November 1907?

Oklahoma joined in November 1907 by merging Oklahoma and Indian Territories; tribal leaders had drafted a constitution in 1905 for a separate state called Sequoyah, but Congress would not take it up.

Upton Sinclair's 1906 novel The Jungle exposed unsanitary conditions in which industry?

The Jungle depicted the meatpacking plants in sickening detail; Sinclair wanted readers to embrace socialism, but the outcry instead produced the 1906 Meat Inspection Act and Pure Food and Drug Act.

Which scientist distinguished the main human blood groups in 1901?

Karl Landsteiner identified groups A, B and C (now O) in Vienna in 1901; the discovery eventually made safe blood transfusion possible.

The Treaty of Vereeniging, signed on 31 May 1902, ended which war?

The Second Boer War ended when Boer delegates voted 54 to 6 to give up their republics' independence; in return Britain promised eventual self-government and £3 million to rebuild.

Which 3,106-carat diamond, found in South Africa in 1905, was cut into gems now set in the British Crown Jewels?

The Cullinan travelled to England by ordinary registered post while detectives guarded a decoy box on a steamship; the largest gem cut from it sits in the Sovereign's Sceptre.

Which explorer's small sloop Gjøa completed the first voyage through the Northwest Passage in 1906?

Roald Amundsen spent two winters on the way at a harbour now called Gjoa Haven, learning from the local Inuit the fur clothing and survival skills that later took him to the South Pole.

Robert Baden-Powell's experimental camp for about 20 boys on Brownsea Island in 1907 launched which worldwide movement?

Scouting grew from that week: Baden-Powell mixed boys from Eton and Harrow with boys from the local Boys' Brigade, a bold idea in class-conscious Edwardian England, then wrote Scouting for Boys.

Harley-Davidson was founded in 1903 in which U.S. city?

Milwaukee's hills defeated Harley and Davidson's first machine, which needed pedalling to get up them; they wrote it off as an experiment and built a bigger-engined successor in a backyard shed.

W. K. Kellogg started mass-marketing corn flakes in 1906 from which Michigan city?

W. K. Kellogg founded the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company in 1906; adding sugar to the flakes caused a lasting rift with his brother John, superintendent of the Battle Creek Sanitarium.

Which city's first underground subway line opened on 27 October 1904?

New York's first line, run by the Interborough Rapid Transit Company, went from City Hall to 145th Street; Mayor McClellan took the controls for the first run, and the fare was a nickel.

What label did critic Louis Vauxcelles pin on Matisse and his circle at the 1905 Salon d'Automne?

Les Fauves means 'the wild beasts': Vauxcelles quipped that a Renaissance-style sculpture shown among their blazing canvases was 'Donatello among the wild beasts', and the name stuck.

Puccini's Madama Butterfly had its disastrous February 1904 premiere at which opera house?

La Scala, Milan, staged the premiere on 17 February 1904; it went so badly that Puccini withdrew the opera, split its long second act in two and tried again at Brescia that May, this time to great success.

The December 1903 Iroquois Theatre fire, which killed 602 people, happened in which city?

Chicago's Iroquois Theatre had opened a month earlier, billed as 'absolutely fireproof'; the deaths at a holiday matinee led cities to require panic bars and exit doors that open outward.

Cadbury's first Dairy Milk bar, launched in June 1905, was made in which English city?

Birmingham's Bournville factory launched the bar to offer more milk than any rival chocolate; in development it was called Highland Milk, Jersey and Dairy Maid before Dairy Milk stuck.

Kaiser Wilhelm II's surprise landing at Tangier in March 1905 set off a crisis over which country's independence?

Morocco's sultan got a show of support when the Kaiser rode through Tangier on a white horse and declared him sovereign; a conference at Algeciras the next year upheld France's hold on the country anyway.

Edward VII's coronation was delayed from June to August 1902 after surgery for what?

An abdominal abscess from appendicitis was drained by Sir Frederick Treves two days before the planned ceremony; the king was sitting up in bed smoking a cigar the next day.

Rookie Fred Merkle's infamous 1908 base-running blunder cost which team the pennant?

Merkle's New York Giants lost the pennant: he was ruled out for not touching second on the apparent game-winning hit, the tied game was replayed, and the Cubs won it and the pennant by one game.

The Cubs' 1908 World Series title, their last until 2016, came against which team?

The Detroit Tigers lost in five games to the Cubs, who had also beaten them a year earlier, the first rematch in World Series history; Ty Cobb's team then lost a third straight Series in 1909.

Which children's book did Frederick Warne publish in 1902 after its author had printed 250 copies herself?

The Tale of Peter Rabbit began as an illustrated letter to cheer up a sick five-year-old; six publishers turned the book down, so Beatrix Potter paid to print it herself before Warne took it on.

Jack London's 1903 novel The Call of the Wild centres on a sled dog with what name?

Buck, part St. Bernard and part Scotch shepherd dog, is stolen from a California ranch and sold north to haul sleds in the Klondike, where the author himself had gone prospecting and come down with scurvy.

L. M. Montgomery's 1908 novel Anne of Green Gables is set in which Canadian province?

Avonlea is on Prince Edward Island, Montgomery's home; the Cuthberts had asked for an orphan boy to help on the farm and got 11-year-old Anne Shirley by mistake.

In Kenneth Grahame's 1908 The Wind in the Willows, which friend of Mole, Ratty and Badger becomes obsessed with motorcars?

Toad wrecks a string of cars, lands in gaol and escapes disguised as a washerwoman; Grahame first invented him in bedtime stories for his young son Alastair.

Auguste Deter, a German woman who died in 1906 aged 55, was the first person ever diagnosed with which disease?

Alzheimer's disease is named after her doctor, Alois Alzheimer, whose 1906 lecture on her case left his audience unmoved; her medical file was lost for decades and found again in the 1990s.

Italy gave up hosting the 1908 Olympics, citing the cost of which volcano's eruption in April 1906?

Vesuvius devastated the country around Naples in April 1906, and Italy said the rebuilding left no money for the Games; Britain took them on at short notice, and Rome waited until 1960.

Walter Reed's team confirmed in 1901 that yellow fever is transmitted by what?

Mosquitoes had been blamed twenty years earlier by the Havana doctor Carlos Finlay, whose idea was dismissed; Reed's team proved him right with volunteers who let infected insects bite them.

The 1903–04 Younghusband expedition forced Tibet to sign a convention in which city?

The Convention of Lhasa was signed in the Potala Palace on 7 September 1904; the force had fought its way in from Sikkim and withdrew later that month.

The five-article Japan–Korea Treaty of 1905 turned the Korean Empire into what?

The Eulsa Treaty of November 1905 made Korea a Japanese protectorate, stripping it of diplomatic rights after Japan's victory over Russia; outright annexation followed in 1910.

Which French novelist died in 1902 of carbon monoxide poisoning from a faulty chimney?

Émile Zola's death may not have been an accident: his enemies from the Dreyfus affair were suspected at the time, and decades later a chimney sweep was reported to have confessed to blocking the flue.

Which company, formed by merger in 1901, became the world's first billion-dollar corporation?

U.S. Steel was capitalized at $1.4 billion; it was built around Andrew Carnegie's steel company, and the sale left him free to spend his last 18 years giving his fortune away.

Troops fired on Father Gapon's peaceful march to the Winter Palace in January 1905, an event remembered by what name?

Bloody Sunday set off strikes across the Russian Empire, and before the year was out the tsar had to promise an elected parliament, the Duma.

The June 1905 Potemkin mutiny began when sailors refused to eat borscht made with what?

Maggot-infested meat had been passed as fit to eat by the ship's doctor; when the men still refused their borscht, the second-in-command reportedly threatened to shoot them, and the crew seized the ship.

Panama formally seceded from which country on 3 November 1903?

Panama broke from Colombia with US naval support on 3 November 1903 and signed the Hay–Bunau-Varilla Treaty on 18 November, granting the canal zone.

Which play opened at the Duke of York's Theatre on 27 December 1904 with actress Nina Boucicault in the title role?

Peter Pan was a woman's role from that first night; in 1929 Barrie gave the rights to Great Ormond Street children's hospital, which a 1988 Act lets collect royalties in perpetuity.

Ivan Pavlov won the 1904 Nobel Prize not for conditioning but for research on which bodily process?

Digestion was Pavlov's field: measuring his dogs' gland secretions, he noticed they drooled before any food reached them, the oddity that led to his conditioning work.

Whose book The Interpretation of Dreams, dated 1900, took eight years to sell its first 600 copies?

Sigmund Freud's publisher issued it in November 1899 with 1900 on the title page; the slow seller went on to become the founding text of psychoanalysis and his best-known book.

Who became boxing's first Black world heavyweight champion by beating Tommy Burns in Sydney in December 1908?

Jack Johnson had trailed Burns around the world for two years to get the fight; police stopped it in the 14th round, and promoters were soon hunting for a 'great white hope' to beat him.

Which composer wrote the 1902 piano rag 'The Entertainer'?

Scott Joplin wrote 'The Entertainer', published by John Stark & Son in 1902; its use in the 1973 film The Sting made it a hit seventy years later.