May 23, 1912: Imperator, world's largest ocean liner, is launchedMay 9, 1912: Royal Navy Commander Samson of HMS Hibernia becomes first pilot to take off from a moving shipMay 18, 1912: USS Texas, largest U.S. warship, launchedMay 24, 1912: Piltdown Man hoax continues with delivery of skull fragmentsMay 18, 1912: Kongō, Japan's largest Japanese battleship is launched
A strike between news print workers and supporting union began in Chicago after pressmen were locked out from the printing plants owned by William Randolph Hearst.[7] They were joined by other unions in the news businesses throughout the month, but the strike ended in November with no new contracts with the newspaper publishers.[8]
The United States Baseball League, an 8-team challenger to the National League and American League, played its first game, with New York and the visiting team from Reading, Pennsylvania, playing to a 10–10 tie before a crowd of 2,500. Other games played on opening day were Richmond 2, Washington 0; Pittsburgh 11, Cleveland 7; and Chicago 5, Cincinnati 0.[9] After teams dropped out, the season, which was set to run until September 21,[10] ended on June 26.[11]
The first nighttime reconnaissance flight in history was made by Italian Army Captain Alberto Margenhi Marengoon, who used an airplane to assess Ottoman troop strength near Benghazi, Libya.[12]
The "Symphony for Negro Music" was performed at Carnegie Hall by the all-black Clef Club Orchestra, with 125 singers and musicians led by conductor James Reese Europe, and marked the most prestigious event for African-American musicians up to that time.[15]
Ahmed al-Hiba of Morocco,, outraged at the Sultan's signing of a treaty to make Morocco a French protectorate, declared himself "Imam al-Mujahideen" (leader of the uprising) and began inciting rebellions throughout the North African nation.[16]
May Sarton, Belgium-American writer, known for her poetry collections including Encounter in April and prose such as The Single Hound and Journal of a Solitude, in Wondelgem, Belgium (d. 1995)
John Graham, a 63-year-old bear trapper, was killed by a bear on or near Crevice Mountain, near Yellowstone National Park. According to some accounts, the bear lost three toes on one paw to one of Graham's traps during the incident, and was subsequently known as "Old Two Toes".[24]
Vladimir Lenin began the daily publication of Pravda (Russian for "The Truth"), the official newspaper of the Communist Party in Saint Petersburg, and later the leading daily paper for the Soviet Union between 1922 and 1991. The first issue carried the date "22 April 1912" (22 Апрель 1912),[26] because Russia was still using the Julian Calendar, which was 13 days behind the Gregorian calendar. The paper would later carry the slogan "Newspaper founded 5 May 1912 by V. I. Lenin".[27] Until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Pravda was the leading newspaper in the Communist nation.
The first competitive events of the 1912 Summer Olympics took place in Stockholm, Sweden, with lawn tennis being played until May 12. Most of the competition took place between June 29 and July 22, with the opening ceremonies being held on July 6.[28]
The first issue of Our Sunday Visitor was introduced in Catholic churches throughout the United States. The 35,000 copies of the first issue sold for one cent apiece.[29]
Born: Adolf Ottman, Anne-Marie Ottman, Emma Ottman and Elisabeth Ottman, the longest-lived quadruplets to date, in Munich. All four were 79 years, 316 days old when Adolf became the first to pass away on March 17, 1992.[30]
The will of John Astor, who died in the Titanic disaster, was probated. His $150,000,000 estate (worth more than $3.3 billion in 2012)[31] was left to his 20-year-old son, Vincent Astor.[32]
The cable ship Minia brought 17 more bodies from the Titanic to Halifax, Nova Scotia. Only one of the persons had drowned, and the others had died of exposure to the cold.[33]
Over 150 waiters and staff at a hotel in New York City went on strike to protest poor working conditions. The labour unrest spread to encompass 54 hotels and 30 restaurants throughout the city, with 2,500 waiters, 1,000 cooks, and 3,000 hotel workers going on strike.[35]
Pascual Orozco, who had helped in the revolution that made Francisco I. Madero the President of Mexico six months earlier, then led a second revolution against Madero, ordered his 6,000 insurrectionists to fight against Madero's troops at the state of Coahuila. Reports of the day described the oncoming clash as "the greatest body of rebels and government troops that has ever come together...in what is expected to be the turning point of the revolution".[36]
Royal Navy commander Charles Rumney Samson became the first pilot to take a plane into the air off of a ship in motion, when he flew his airplane off of HMSHibernia, which was moving at a speed of 10 knots (19km/h; 12mph).[37]
Rebel leader Eduardo Schaerer formally declared victory to end the 10 month-long civil war in Paraguay, which had claimed 5,000 lives during the fighting.[41]
W. B. Atwater, a salesman for the Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company, persuaded the Imperial Japanese Navy to begin developing its own air corps. Atwater impressed the Minister of the Navy, AdmiralSaitō Makoto, by taking aloft a Curtiss hydroplane from the ocean, in the first water takeoff ever seen in the Orient. On the third and final flight, Atwater took one of the Japanese officers with him as a passenger, then dropped a message to the Minister Saito. Japan bought four Curtiss Triads. "From this slight beginning," author Walter J. Boyne would note later, "grew the naval air force that twenty-nine years later would strike at Pearl Harbor."[42]
Bulgaria and Serbia signed a mutual defense treaty, with Bulgaria pledging 200,000 men to defend Serbia against an attack by Austria-Hungary, while Serbia agreed to send 200,000 to protect against a Bulgarian invasion by Romania, and each pledging to assist the other in a fight against the Ottoman Empire.[45]
The decommissioned Royal Navy submarine HMSA3 was sunk for a second and final time during naval target practice in the English Channel. It had sunk on February 2 after it accidentally collided with HMSHazard during training exercises off the Isle of Wight. The Royal Navy salvaged it in March.[46]
The United States House of Representatives voted 237–39 to send the proposed Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which provided for U.S. Senators to be elected directly by popular vote, rather than by the state legislatures, for ratification. An amendment for direct election of U.S. Senators had first been proposed in 1826. In 1894, 1898, 1900 and 1902, the House had approved an amendment and the Senate had rejected it.[47] The 17th amendment would be ratified by April 8, 1913, after Connecticut became the 36th of 48 states to give its approval.[48]
The remains of three people, who had been able to escape the sinking Titanic in a lifeboat, but died while awaiting rescue, were located by another White Star Line steamer, RMSOceanic.[49][50] Passenger Thomson Beattie and two of the ship's firemen (who could not be identified) had managed to get into one of the collapsible lifeboats, but drifted for a month after the ship sank, dying from hypothermia or thirst along the way.[51] Another three bodies of Titanic victims were recovered by the Canadian government ship Montmagny and brought to Louisbourg, Nova Scotia, where they were shipped to Halifax via the Sydney and Louisburg Railway.[52]
Italian ships captured more islands from the Ottoman Empire, seizing Piskopi, Nisero, Kalismo, Leno and Patmos.[20]
The first known investigation into an air crash began after a Flanders F.2monoplanecrashed at Brooklands, Surrey, England, killing the pilot and passenger. [54] The investigators would conclude that the accident was caused by pilot error.
Born:Gil Evans (stage name for Ian Ernest Gilmore Green), Canadian jazz composer, best known for his collaborations with Miles Davis; in Toronto (d. 1988)
King Frederik of Denmark collapsed and died during an evening stroll while on vacation in Germany. Found alone, and with no identification, the 68-year old monarch was taken as a "John Doe" to a morgue in a local hospital before his fellow travelers realized he was missing.[55][56]
In the California presidential primaries, Theodore Roosevelt won all 26 of the Republican delegates, defeating William Howard Taft in all 58 counties. Former House Speaker Champ Clark won the Democratic delegates, defeating Woodrow Wilson by a 2-1 ratio. Women, though not allowed to vote in national elections, were able to participate in the primaries.[57]
China's legislature rejected the six-power railroad loan agreement.[53]
King Frederik VIII
Saved from the Titanic, a silent film produced by the Eclair Film Company and starring Dorothy Gibson, was released in the United States. Coming out on the one-month anniversary of the day the Titanic struck the iceberg, it was the first disaster film, and the first to use special effects, interspersing film of the RMS Olympic with models "sometimes resembling a toy boat in a bathtub" to recreate the sinking. Ms. Gibson, at the time the most famous movie star in America, actually had been a passenger on the ship when it began to sink, and literally had been "saved from the Titanic".[58]
Austrian Prime MinisterKarl von Stürgkh stepped down due to sudden blindness caused by "an affection of the retina resulting from overwork" and was temporarily succeeded by the Interior Minister Baron von Heinold.[60]
Mohammed Ameziane, leader of insurgency in the Rif region of eastern Morocco, was killed by Spanish colonial forces, ending the near 10-month long revolt against Spain.[61] Spanish losses were recorded at 500 killed and 1,900 wounded, while casualties among native Riffians remained unknown.[62]
Detroit Tigers baseball star Ty Cobb, angry after being taunted by New York Highlanders fan Claude Lueker at Hilltop Park, charged into the stands and punched and kicked his tormentor.[64] Lueker, who was "a cripple, who lost one hand and three fingers of the other", said that when someone yelled "Don't kick him, he has no hands", Cobb replied "I don't care if he has no feet!"[65] Cobb would be suspended by the American League for ten days, leading to a sympathy strike by his teammates on May 18.[66]
Labor activists Emma Goldman and Ben Reitman arrived in San Diego to support local members of the Industrial Workers of the World and their fight to hold public soap boxes in the city. Vigilantes hounded the couple, with Reitman reportedly being abducted from his hotel room and tortured in another location before being set free. Vigilantism eventually forced the end of the soap box campaigns to end by September.[67]
Born:
Arthur Berger, American composer, known for works including Serenade Concertante and Three Pieces for Strings; in New York City (d. 2003)
Two small boys who had survived the sinking of the Titanic were reunited with their mother after having been identified. Michel Navratil, Jr., 3, and Edmond Navratil, 2, had been placed into a lifeboat by their father.[68] Michel would be the last male survivor of the disaster, dying on January 31, 2001.[69]
A suit was filed in New York City to break up the "Coffee Trust".[20]
Shree Pundalik, the first multi-reel motion picture, was released in India. It preceded by a few months the first American full-length feature, Queen Elizabeth.[70]
The Detroit Tigers baseball team walked out on strike only five minutes after the start of their game against the Philadelphia Athletics. The Tigers departed to protest the suspension of Ty Cobb three days earlier. Rather than forfeit the game, Tigers' manager Hughie Jennings recruited eight volunteers from the Philadelphia crowd to fill in for the day. Earning $25 apiece, "the nine sorry sheep who were masquerading in borrowed Tiger skins" lost the game, 24 to 2.[71] One replacement player, Ed Irvin, was the only one of the Tigers to get a hit during the game. With two hits in three times at bat, Irvin had the distinction of a "career batting average" of .667 for his lone appearance in Major League Baseball.[72]
Julia Clark of the United Kingdom became only the third woman in history to receive an airplane pilot's license. On June 17, she would become the first woman to be killed while piloting an airplane.[73]
Italian engineer Giuseppe Mario Bellanca taught himself to fly in series of short, tentative hops at Mineola Field outside Mineola, New York in front of onlookers. His success prompted him to establish the Bellanca School of Flying, which he operated from 1912 to 1916.[74]
Died:
Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo, 55, Spanish writer, known for literary and historical non-fiction including A History of the Spanish Heterodox (b. 1856)
Cuban Army General Jose de Jesus Monteagudo suspended constitutional rights in suppressing an uprising by black Cubans, and massacred 3,000 of the insurgents, as well as executing their leaders. Carlos Moore, author of Cuba, the Blacks, and Africa estimated that between 15,000 and 35,000 black Cubans were killed when including those who were lynched or shot.[75]
The Alexander Nevsky Cathedral was consecrated in Warsaw, becoming one of the tallest cathedrals in the city at the time. In post-war Poland, it was demolished as part of a political movement to remove Russian imperial properties and churches from the Polish landscape.[78]
The Reichstag overwhelmingly passed a law expanding the Imperial German Navy.[79] The expansion called for three more battleships and two more light cruisers.[80]
Mexican Federal troops commanded of General Victoriano Huertadefeated a rebel force of 8,000 fighters under command of Pascual Orozco at the Rellano rail station in Chihuahua, Mexico, resulting in at least 600 dead rebels and 140 federal troops killed or wounded. The battle effectively ended Orozco's rebellion.[83]
The U.S. Marines entered into military aviation, as 2nd Lieutenant Alfred A. Cunningham reported for flight training at the Navy Aviation Center.[84]
Count István Tisza, formerly the Prime Minister of Hungary, was elected President of the Hungarian Chamber of Deputies after a fight between the legislators. Reportedly, "all the inkpots and other articles that could be used as missiles were removed from the chamber before the voting began", and the Socialist Union party members walked out after fistfights broke out.[85]
An earthquake measuring 7.5 to 8.0 in magnitude struck around the cities of Taunggyi and Pyin Oo Lwin in Burma, the largest recorded for the country. Despite the strength, only a single death was recorded. However, property damage in both cities extensive although final dollar figures were never recorded.[88]
The Hamburg America Line's SSImperator was launched from the Vulcan Shipyards Hamburg as the world's largest ship. Kaiser Wilhelm himself christened the new ship, and almost suffered a serious injury in the process. As the ship moved down into the water, a large block of wood fell from the side, "missing the kaiser's head by only a few inches".[90]
U.S. President William Howard Taft dispatched the U.S. Marines to Cuba to protect Americans there during racial warfare.[91]
In Tyler, Texas, Dan Davis, an African-American who had confessed to raping and then slitting the throat of a young white woman on May 13, was burned at the stake after a mob of 2,000 people overpowered his jailers. Davis's executioners had brought "several wagon loads of wood" to the town's public square and tied him to a rail. After Davis said, "I am guilty," he was set ablaze.[95]
American athlete James Duncan set the first records for throwing a discus, as recognized by the International Amateur Athletic Federation later in the year when the IAAF published its inaugural list of records. At Celtic Park in Queens, New York, Duncan hurled the discus with his right hand 156 feet 1¾ inches (47.59 metres). Later in the meet, using his left hand, he reached a distance of 96 feet 7½ inches. Thus, the standard for furthest combined distance with right hand and left hand became 252 feet, 9¼ inches. [96][97] Despite having thrown one half-inch further than he would the next day, his May 27 discus throw became the first internationally recognized record for the discus throw, with a distance of 156ft 1+1⁄4in (47.581m).[98]
The U.S. Senate subcommittee to investigate the sinking of RMS Titanic filed its report, recommending multiple changes in safety practices in passenger shipping. A British inquiry into the tragedy would conclude with a July 3 report to Parliament.
Wilbur Wright, 45, the older of the two Wright brothers who invented the airplane, died of typhoid fever at his home in Dayton, Ohio. Wilbur had become ill on May 4 while on a business trip to Boston. On December 17, 1903, Wilbur became the second man in history to pilot an airplane, after his brother Orville made the first flight.[103]
In the second running of the Indianapolis 500, Ralph DePalma was less than two laps away from victory when his Mercedes developed engine trouble on Lap 198. DePalma had led all the way, and was six laps ahead of the nearest competitor, Joe Dawson, who completed the race in 6 hours, 21 minutes and 6 seconds.[106]
An experiment at Wichita Falls, Texas, to "make rain", after two weeks of drought, failed. Six thousand pounds of dynamite seemed to work at first, as cloudy skies and occasional flashes of lightning swept into the area, but without precipitation.[108]
Statement Showing, in Chronological Order, the Date of Opening and the Mileage of Each Section of Railway, Statement No. 19, p. 187, ref. no. 200954-13
Moeller, Magdalena M. (1984). "Der Sonderbund" -Eine Großstadt auf dem Weg in die Moderne. Der westdeutsche Impuls 1900-1914. Düsseldorf: Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf. pp.126–142.
Layman, R.D., Before the Aircraft Carrier: The Development of Aviation Vessels 1849–1922, Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 1989, ISBN0-87021-210-9, p. 17
