1912

Events

January

• January 1 - The Republic of China is established.
• January 5 - The Prague Conference opens.
• January 6
• * German geophysicist Alfred Wegener first presents his theory of continental drift.
• * New Mexico becomes the 47th U.S. state.
• January 8 - The African National Congress is founded as the South African Native National Congress, at the Waaihoek Wesleyan Church in Bloemfontein, to promote improved rights for black South Africans, with John Langalibalele Dube as its first president.
• January 12 - In the 1912 German federal election the Social Democrats for the first time becomes the party with the most seats.
• January 14 - Raymond Poincaré forms a coalition government in France, beginning his first term of office as Prime Minister on 21 January.
• January 17 - British polar explorer Captain Robert Falcon Scott and a team of four become the second expeditionary group to reach the South Pole.
• January 18 - Prague Conference: Vladimir Lenin and the Bolshevik Party break away from the rest of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party.
• January 22 - The Overseas Railroad officially opens with Henry Flagler, its owner, arriving on the first train to Key West, Florida, to a cheering crowd of 10,000.
• January 23 - The First International Opium Convention is signed at The Hague to restrict exports.

  February

• February 12 - The Manchu Qing dynasty of China comes to an end after 268 years with the abdication of the Xuantong Emperor Puyi in favour of the Republic of China.
• February 14 - Arizona is admitted as the 48th state.
• February 24 - Battle of Beirut: Italy makes a surprise attack on the Ottoman port of Beirut, when the cruiser Giuseppe Garibaldi and the gunboat Volturno bombard the harbour, killing 97 sailors and civilians.
• February 29 - Serbia and Bulgaria secretly sign a treaty of alliance for a term of eight years, with each pledging to come to the defense of the other during war. The treaty of alliance would eventually be dishonored in World War I.

  March

• March 1 - Albert Berry is reported to have made the first parachute jump from a flying airplane.
• March 6 - Italian forces become the first to use airships in war as two dirigibles drop bombs on Turkish troops encamped at Janzur, from an altitude of 6,000 feet.
• March 7 - Roald Amundsen, in Hobart, Tasmania, announces his success in reaching the South Pole the previous December.
• March 12 - The Girl Scouts of the USA is founded by Juliette Gordon Low, in Savannah, Georgia.
• March 16 - Lawrence Oates, dying member of Scott's South Pole expedition, leaves the tent saying, "I am just going outside and may be some time."
• March 22 - The State of Bihar is formed out of the erstwhile State of Bengal, in British India.
• March 27 - Mayor Yukio Ozaki of Tokyo gives 3,000 cherry trees to be planted in Washington, D.C., to symbolize the friendship between Japan and the United States.
• March 29 - Robert Falcon Scott and the remaining members of his South Pole expedition die.
• March 30 - The French Third Republic establishes the French protectorate in Morocco by the Treaty of Fes with Sultan Abd al-Hafid of Morocco.

  April

• April 1 - A partial lunar eclipse takes place, the first of two lunar eclipses this year. It is the 61st lunar eclipse of the 111th Saros cycle, which started with a penumbral lunar eclipse on June 10, 830 AD and will conclude with another penumbral lunar eclipse on July 19, 2092.
• April 10 - White Star liner departs from Southampton, England, with more than 2,200 passengers and crew on her maiden voyage, bound for New York.
• April 11 - makes her last call, at Queenstown in Ireland.
• April 14-15 - Sinking of the RMS Titanic: strikes an iceberg in the northern Atlantic Ocean and sinks with the loss of more than 1,500 lives.
• April 14 - Santos FC, a Brazilian association football club, is founded in State of Sao Paulo.
• April 16 - Harriet Quimby becomes the first woman to fly across the English Channel.
• April 17
• * Lena massacre: Russian troops kill or wound 500 striking gold miners in Siberia.
• * A hybrid solar eclipse is the 30th solar eclipse of Solar Saros 137.
• April 18 - Cunard Line vessel arrives in New York with the 705 survivors.
• April 20 - Fenway Park in Boston, Massachusetts opens.
• April 24 - English association football club Barnsley win the FA Cup.
• April 30 - Carl Laemmle founds Universal Studios as the Universal Film and Manufacturing Company in the United States.

  May

• May 1 - ʻAbdu'l-Bahá lays the cornerstone for the Bahá'í House of Worship in Wilmette, Illinois.
• May 5 - The 1912 Summer Olympics open in Stockholm, Sweden. Modern Pentathlon is contested for the first time in these games.
• May 11 - Alaska becomes a territory of the United States.
• May 13 - In the United Kingdom, the Royal Flying Corps is established.
• May 23 - The Hamburg America Line's is launched in Hamburg and is the world's largest ship.
• May 30 - Pioneer aviator Wilbur Wright dies of typhoid fever in Dayton, Ohio.

  June

• June 6 - The Novarupta volcano is formed in Alaska by a VEI 6 eruption, the world's largest in the 20th century.
• June 26 - Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 9 is premiered posthumously by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Bruno Walter.
• June 30 - Regina Cyclone: Canada's deadliest tornado strikes Regina, Saskatchewan, killing 28 people.

  July

• July 1 - Harriet Quimby, who set the record as the first woman to fly the English Channel two months previously, dies in Squantum, Massachusetts, after her brand-new two-seat Bleriot monoplane crashes, killing both Quimby and her passenger.
• July 12 - The United States release of Sarah Bernhardt's film Les Amours de la reine Élisabeth is influential in the development of the movie feature. Adolph Zukor, who incorporates Paramount Pictures on May 8, 1914, launches his company as the distributor. Paramount celebrates its centennial in 2012.
• July 30 - Emperor Meiji of Japan dies; he is succeeded by his son Yoshihito, who becomes Emperor Taishō. In the history of Japan, the event marks the end of the Meiji period and the beginning of the Taishō period.

  August

• August 1 - The Jungfrau Railway is inaugurated with the opening of the subterranean Jungfraujoch railway station in the Bernese Oberland of Switzerland, Europe's highest at above sea level.
• August 4 - United States occupation of Nicaragua: U.S. Marines land from the USS Annapolis in Nicaragua, to support the conservative government at its request.
• August 12 - Sultan Abd al-Hafid of Morocco abdicates.
• August 21 - The first Eagle Scout earns his rank.
• August 29 - A typhoon strikes China, killing at least 50,000 people.

  September

• September 4 - The government of the Ottoman Empire agrees to the demands put forward in the Albanian Revolt of 1912.
• September 28 - W. C. Handy publishes "The Memphis Blues" in the United States.

  October

• October 8 - The First Balkan War begins: Montenegro declares war against the Ottoman Empire.
• October 10 - The Maternity Allowance Act goes into effect in Australia, but excludes minorities.
• October 14 - John Flammang Schrank attempts to assassinate Theodore Roosevelt in Milwaukee.
• October 16 - Bulgarian pilots Radul Minkov and Prodan Toprakchiev perform the second bombing with an airplane in history, at the railway station of Karaagac near Edirne, against Turkey.
• October 17 - Krupp engineers Benno Strauss and Eduard Maurer patent austenitic stainless steel.
• October 18 - Italy and the Ottoman Empire sign a treaty in Ouchy near Lausanne, ending the Italo-Turkish War.
• October 18-21 - First Balkan War: The Greek navy captures the island of Lemnos for use as a forward base against the Dardanelles.
• October 24 - First Balkan War: Battle of Kumanovo - Serbian forces defeat the Ottoman army in Vardar Macedonia.
• October
• * Edgar Rice Burroughs' character Tarzan first appears in Tarzan of the Apes, in American pulp magazine The All-Story.
• * Sax Rohmer's character Fu Manchu first appears in the first story of The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu in English pulp magazine The Story-Teller.

  November

• November 5 - 1912 United States presidential election: New Jersey Governor Woodrow Wilson wins over former president Theodore Roosevelt and incumbent president William Howard Taft.
• November 11 - William Lawrence Bragg presents his derivation of Bragg's law for the angles for coherent and incoherent scattering from a crystal lattice, creating the field of x-ray crystallography, and making possible the eventual imaging of the double helix of DNA.
• November 25 - Românul de la Pind, the longest-running newspaper by and about Aromanians until World War II, ceases publication.
• November 28 - Albania declares independence from the Ottoman Empire.

  December

• December 3 - Bulgaria, Montenegro, and Serbia sign an armistice with the Ottoman Empire at Çatalca, temporarily halting the First Balkan War after 2 months.
• December 18 - Piltdown Man, thought to be the fossilized skull of a hitherto unknown form of early human, is presented to the Geological Society of London.
• December 24 - Merck files patent applications in Germany for synthesis of the entactogenic drug MDMA, developed by Anton Köllisch.