The
following took place in 100 years ago -- in 1915:
Jan
9 -- Pancho Villa (Mexico) signed a treaty with the USA halting border
conflicts.
Jan
12 -- The U.S. House of Representatives rejected a proposal to give women the
right to vote.
Jan
13 -- An earthquake in Italy killed some 30,000 people.
Jan
15 -- Japan claimed economic control of China.
Jan
18 -- A train crashed in Guadalajara, Mexico, killing 600 people.
Jan
19 -- The first neon tube sign was patented.
Jan
25 -- Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, inaugurated
transcontinental USA telephone service by placing a ceremonial call from New
York to his former colleague Thomas Watson in San Francisco. -- “Leave the beaten track behind occasionally
and dive into the woods. Every time you do, you will be certain to find
something you have never seen before.” Alexander Graham Bell
Jan
28 -- The U.S. Coast Guard was founded by an act of Congress to assist
distressed vessels at sea and halt contraband trade.
Jan
31 -- During World War I, the Germans used poison (chlorine) gas for the first
time against the Russians, and German U-boats sank two British ships in the
English Channel.
Feb
4 -- The Germans declared British waters to be part of the war zone whereby all
ships would be sunk without warning.
Feb
8 -- The premier of "The Birth of a Nation" -- D. W. Griffith's
silent movie about the U.S. Civil War.
Feb
10 -- The Germans captured 100,000 Russians in Lithuania. U.S. President Wilson
denounced Britain for using U.S. flags on merchant ships to deceive the
Germans.
Feb
12 -- Actor, Lorne Greene (Bonanza) was born in Ottawa, Canada.
Feb
12 -- The cornerstone for the Lincoln Memorial was laid in Washington, D.C.
Feb
20 -- President Wilson opened the Panama-Pacific Expo in San Francisco to
celebrate the opening of the Panama Canal.
Feb
21 -- The 20th Russian Army Corps surrendered to Germany.
Feb
22 -- Germany began unrestricted submarine warfare.
Feb
23 -- Germany sank two U.S. ships and a Norwegian ship.
Feb
26 -- The Germans utilized the first flamethrowers in World War I.
Feb
28 -- Actor, Zero Mostel, was born in Brooklyn.
Mar
2 -- A Jewish military force was organized to fight in Palestine.
Mar
13 -- The Brooklyn Dodger baseball manager, Wilbert Robinson, attempted to
catch a baseball dropped from an airplane, but the pilot substituted a
grapefruit.
Mar
14 -- The British Navy sank a German battleship.
Mar
16 -- The U.S. Federal Trade Commission was formed.
Mar
22 -- A German Zeppelin made a night raid on a railway station in Paris.
Mar
25 -- A U.S. submarine sank off the coast of Hawaii, killing 21 sailors.
Apr
4 -- American blues musician, McKinley Morganfield, a.k.a. Muddy Waters, was
born. -- "I been in the blues all my life. I'm still delivering 'cause I got
a long memory."
Apr
5 -- Jack Johnson, U.S. heavyweight boxing champion since 1908, lost the
heavyweight title to Jess Willard in Cuba, in the 26th round. -- “You don't
always have to hold your head higher than your heart.” Jack Johnson
Apr
7 -- Jazz singer, Billie Holliday, was born. -- "If I'm going to sing like
someone else, then I don't need to sing at all."
Apr
10 -- Actor, Harry Morgan, was born in Detroit, Mich.
Apr
21 -- Actor, Anthony Quinn, was born in Chihuahua, Mexico. -- "On stage,
you have to find the truth, even if you have to lose the audience."
Apr
25 -- Australian and New Zealand troops landed in Turkey in a failed attempt to
take the Ottoman Empire out of the war.
May
1 -- The luxury liner Lusitania sailed out of New York harbor on a voyage to
Europe.
May
1 -- A German submarine sank a U.S. ship (Gulflight I).
May
5 -- Actress, Alice Faye, was born in New York City.
May
6 -- Actor and director, Orson Welles (Citizen Kane) was born in Kenosha,
Wisconsin. -- “Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not
giving a damn.”
May
6 -- Writer and historian, Theodore H. White was born. -- “To go against the
dominant thinking of your friends, of most of the people you see every day, is
perhaps the most difficult act of heroism you can have.”
May
6 -- Baseball player, Babe Ruth, made his pitching debut with the Boston Red
Sox against the New York Yankees, losing 4 to 3 in 15 innings -- he also hit a
home run. -- “It's hard to beat a person who never gives up.”
May
7 -- The ocean liner, Lusitania, was struck by a torpedo fired by a German
U-boat and sank off the coast of Ireland, killing 1,959 people, including U.S.
millionaire, Alfred G. Vanderbilt.
May
12 -- Mary Kay Ash of Mary Kay Cosmetics was born. -- “The greatest pollution
problem we face today is negativity.”
May
12 -- Croatians attacked and plundered Armenia, killing 250 people.
May
15 -- In Germany, chemist Clara Immerwahr, wife of chemist Fritz Haber, shot
herself in the heart with her husband's revolver in their garden -- her husband
had personally supervised the use of chlorine poison gas by the Germans in the
battlefield against the Russians.
May
20 -- Moshe Dayan, Israeli general and Minister of Defense, was born. --
"Freedom is the oxygen of the soul."
May
23 -- Italy declared war against Austria and Hungary.
May
24 -- Thomas Edison invented a devise called the telescribe to record telephone
conversations. -- "I have not failed. I have just found 10,000 ways that
won't work."
May
27 -- Author, Herman Wouk (The Caine Mutiny), was born. -- “When in danger or
in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.”
May
31 -- A German Zeppelin made an air raid on London.
Jun
8 -- Woodrow Wilson's Secretary of State, William Jennings Bryan, resigned in a
dispute of the U.S. handling of the sinking of the ocean liner Lusitania.
Jun
10 -- The Girl Scouts of America was founded.
Jun
12 -- International banker, David Rockefeller, was born. -- "We are part
of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States… If
that's the charge, I stand guilty and am proud of it."
Jun
14 -- An excursion steamer capsized at Chicago's Clark Street dock, killing
more than 800 people.
Jul
10 -- Author, Saul Bellow (Pulitzer Prize & Nobel Prize) was born in
Montreal, Canada. -- “I love solitude but I prize it most when company is
available.”
Jul
24 -- An excursion ship capsized in Lake Michigan, killing 852 people.
Jul
28 -- By the authority of President Wilson, U.S. Marines landed at
Port-au-Prince on the island of Haiti to safeguard the interests of U.S.
corporations.
Jul
28 -- Some 10,000 blacks marched on 5th Avenue in New York City to protest
lynchings.
Jul
30 -- A homemade bomb, made by a former Harvard professor who was upset by the
private sales of munitions to the allies during World War I, exploded in the
U.S. Senate Reception Room.
Aug
14 -- A German U-boat sank a British transport ship, killing some 1,000 people.
Aug
16 -- A hurricane hit Galveston, Texas, killing `12 people and causing an
estimated $8 million in property damage.
Aug
17 -- In Cobb County, Georgia, a Jewish factory manager, Leo Frank, was lynched
by a mob seeking justice for the killing of a 13-year-old girl who worked in
his pencil factory. Although Leo Frank had been convicted of the crime, the
governor of Georgia believed in his innocence and had commuted his death
sentence in June.
Aug
19 -- A British ocean liner was sunk by German U-boats. Following this
incident, Germany promised it would no longer torpedo merchant ships without
warning because of fear the USA would be brought into the war. Some 16 months
later, Germany once again announced it would "sink on sight" thereby
bringing the USA into the war.
Aug 21 -- Italy declared war on Turkey.
Aug
27 -- Economist, Walter Heller, was born in Buffalo, NY. He would become the
Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors in 1961-1964 under President John
F. Kennedy. Later, he was also a professor of Economics at the University of
Minnesota where I was in one of his classes many moons ago.
Aug
29 -- Actress, Ingrid Bergman, was born in Sweden. -- “I was the shyest human
ever invented, but I had a lion inside me that wouldn't shut up.”
Sep
4 -- The U.S. military placed Haiti under martial law to quell a rebellion.
Sep
21 -- Stonehenge was sold at auction for 6,600 pounds sterling ($11,500) to a
man who bought it as a present to his wife. Three years later, he presented it
to the British nation.
Sep
30 -- Lester Garfield Maddox was born. He would become Democratic governor of
Georgia in 1967 to 1971. As a rabid segregationist, he gain his popularity as a
restaurant owner who passed out axe handles to his white customers in an effort
to prevent black customers from entering his establishment. Incidentally, I
lived in Atlanta in 1966 to 1968 when I was a draftee in the U.S. Army at Third
Army Headquarters during the Vietnam Era and Maddox was in the local governor's
mansion -- his strange antics were often great fodder for daily TV news --
"That's part of American greatness, is discrimination."
Oct
8 -- During World War I, the Battle of Loos ended with virtually no gain on
either side. Over 100,000 French, British and German men lost their lives in
this encounter.
Oct
9 -- Woodrow Wilson became the first U.S. President to attend a World Series baseball
game. -- “Some people have a large circle of friends while others have only
friends that they like.”
Oct
16 -- Great Britain declared war on Bulgaria.
Oct
17 -- Author, Arthur Miller (Pulitzer Prize) was born. He married actress
Marilyn Monroe in 1956 and they were divorced in 1961. -- “Maybe all one can do
is hope to end up with the right regrets.”
Oct
21 -- The first transatlantic radio-telephone message was transmitted from
Arlington, Virginia, to Paris, France.
Oct
23 -- Tens of thousands of women marched in New York City, demanding the right
to vote.
Oct
30 -- The U.S. Secret Service captured two former Oakland policemen in Utah and
Ohio after a 12,500 mile chase, and charged them with counterfeiting $100,000
in bogus $5 gold pieces.
Dec
12 -- Singer and actor, Frank Sinatra, was born in Hoboken, New Jersey. --
"The big lesson in life is never be scared of anyone or anything -- I'm
gonna live till I die.”
Dec
16 -- Albert Einstein published his General Theory of Relativity. -- “When you
are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot
cinder a second seems like an hour. That's relativity.”
Dec
18 -- Widowed the previous year, President Woodrow Wilson married Edith Rolling
Galt.
Dec
22 -- Yuan Shikai proclaimed the Empire of China and named himself the Emperor
of China
Dec
31 -- The Germans torpedoed a British ocean liner without warning, killing 335
people.
* * *
World
War One was originally called "The War to End all Wars" -- but once
it became apparent that mankind was not exactly enlightened as a collective
species, they began numbering future World Wars.
Life
can be understood by examining the past, but it must be lived forward -- we are
the products of our past, but we don't have to become prisoners of it.
All
we have is now.
___________
Quote for the Day -- "Life's under no obligation to give us
what we expect." Margaret Mitchell
___________
Bret Burquest is the author of 11 books. He lives in the Ozark
Mountains with a few dogs and where yesterday is just a memory & tomorrow is
never what it's supposed to be.
___________
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