April 1911

April 1, 1911 (Saturday)

• With the nation in revolt, President Porfirio Díaz of Mexico opened the new session of the Congress of Mexico, outlining his plans for reform, including a one-term limit on presidents. The proposals came too late, and Díaz's 25 consecutive years in office ended the following month.
• Tsinghua University was opened in Beijing, with an enrollment of 468 students, as the Imperial Tsinghua Academy. The 325 enrolled in the "middle division" were taught by 20 Chinese professors, while 143 students in the advanced division were instructed by Americans.
• United Mine Workers of America President Thomas Lewis was defeated in his bid for re-election by John P. White.
• Born: Charles Coles, American tap dancer and actor, in Philadelphia.

  April 2, 1911 (Sunday)

• The United Kingdom census was taken, based on two acts of Parliament, one for Great Britain and the other for Ireland. "Schedules" with multiple questions were distributed to each household, and collected by enumerators the following day. The final count, released on June 16, was 45,216,665. One out of every seven employed persons was a domestic servant. Suffragette Emily Davison hid in a cupboard in the crypt of the Palace of Westminster so that she could legitimately be recorded as resident on census night at the House of Commons of the United Kingdom.
• The first Australian National Census was taken, with information to be filled out on a "Householder's Card". The final count showed 4,455,005 people.
• British evangelist John Henry Jowett, celebrated at the time as "the greatest preacher in the English-speaking world," began a revival in New York City at the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church.

  April 3, 1911 (Monday)

• The first performance was given of the Fourth Symphony of Jean Sibelius.
• Draft registration became mandatory for all boys aged 14 to 20 in New Zealand.
• An imperial edict was issued in the name of the two-year-old Emperor of China, Puyi, proclaiming him to be supreme commander of the army and appointing his father, Prince Chun, to serve as Prince-Regent until the Emperor reached a majority.
• President Taft ordered the reassignment of the all-African-American U.S. 9th Cavalry to move them out of San Antonio, where they had been sent to guard the border with Mexico, after the regiment's northern-born soldiers had defied the Texas city's segregation laws. Reportedly, two white streetcar conductors had been beaten up after insisting that the soldiers move to the colored section of the cars. The order was reversed two days later after complaints came from the mayors of cities where the troops were to be moved, including Brownsville, Laredo and Del Rio.

  April 4, 1911 (Tuesday)

• As the 62nd United States Congress opened with a Democratic majority in the House, James Beauchamp "Champ" Clark was elected as the new Speaker of the House, succeeding Joseph G. Cannon. In a vote along party lines, Clark received 217 Democrat votes while James Mann received 131 Republican votes. New members took office, including Victor L. Berger, the first Socialist Party of America member to ever serve in Congress.
• Ratifications of the Japan-United States Treaty of Commerce and Navigation were exchanged at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo, as the Emperor Meiji, Prime Minister Katsura, and Foreign Minister Komura welcomed Ambassador O'Brien. The Emperor's greetings to U.S. President Taft were cabled by the ambassador, and Taft cabled a reply, with both leaders welcoming the extension of their nations' friendship.
• Born:
• *Stella Walsh, Polish athlete who won an Olympic medal in 1932 for the women's 100 meter dash and who was discovered after her death to have been a man; as Stanisława Walasiewicz in Wierzchownia.
• *Grover C. Nash, African-American pilot; in Dry Branch, Georgia.
• *Michael Woodruff, British surgeon and pioneer in organ transplantation; in London
• *Pietro di Donato, American writer; in West Hoboken, New Jersey.
• *Freddie Miller, American boxer; in Cincinnati.
• Died: John S. Trower, 61, "reputed to have been the wealthiest negro in the United States" at the time of his death. Trower was born in Virginia, grew up in Germantown, Pennsylvania, and left a fortune of $1,500,000 after building a catering business.

  April 5, 1911 (Wednesday)

• In one of the largest union labor demonstrations in the United States to that time, a group of 120,000 employees and 230,000 citizens took the day off and marched in the rain along Fifth Avenue in New York City in a memorial service for the 146 victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire that had happened on March 25. The procession lasted for three hours and was watched by 400,000 spectators.

  April 6, 1911 (Thursday)

• By a vote of 198–135, the U.S. House of Representatives changed its rules to remove much of the power that the Speaker of the House had formerly wielded. Never again would the Speaker have the exclusive right to assign members to committees or to select the chairmen.
• For the first time, the State Council of Imperial Russia approved an interpellation resolution criticizing the Tsarist government. The vote was 98–52 in favor of the measure, which rebuked Prime Minister Stolypin's proposal for self-government for Poland.
• Mayor of Baltimore J. Barry Mahool signed into law an ordinance prohibiting African-Americans from moving into, or establishing businesses, in white neighborhoods.
• Born: Feodor Lynen, German biochemist and 1964 Nobel Laureate; in Munich.

  April 7, 1911 (Friday)

• The U.S. Department of Justice won its first conviction in its prosecution of members of the Black Hand, for extortion and murder by dynamite in Chicago. Under tight security, a federal court jury convicted Gianni Alongi of employing the U.S. mail to send death threats to Garmila Marsala, who operated a butcher shop.
• A fire at the Price-Pancoast Colliery at Throop, Pennsylvania, near Scranton, Pennsylvania, killed 73 coal miners, many of them boys.
• Francisco I. Madero, Pancho Villa and Pascual Orozco led an army of 2,500 Mexican rebels on an attack on march toward Ciudad Juárez.

  April 8, 1911 (Saturday)

• Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes discovered superconductivity at the Leiden University, finding that the electrical resistance of the metal mercury completely disappeared at a temperature of 4.15 kelvins. The exact moment of his finding has been traced to the series of notebooks that he kept at the time, at 4:00 in the afternoon. Presentation of the results was made on April 28. For his discovery, Kamerlingh Onnes would be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1913.
• An explosion at the Banner Mine of Pratt Consolidated Coal Company, near Littleton, Alabama, killed 128 coal miners. All but five of them were African-Americans who had been convicted of minor crimes and were sentenced to hard labor.
• Elsie Paroubek, aged 5, vanished from the corner of 23rd Street and Troy Avenue in Chicago. The subsequent exhaustive search for her would preoccupy Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota law enforcement for six weeks. Her body would be discovered in a canal on May 9.
• Born:
• *Melvin Calvin, American chemist and 1961 Nobel laureate; in St. Paul, Minnesota.
• *Emil Cioran, Romanian philosopher; in Rășinari, Austria-Hungary.
• *Ichiro Fujiyama, Japanese musician; in Tokyo.

  April 9, 1911 (Sunday)

• The Sufi Inayat Khan introduced the music of India to the West with a recital at the Hindu temple in San Francisco, before going on further international tours.
• A fire in the Yoshiwara district of Tokyo, where geishas were housed for pleasure, killed 300 people, injured 800 and left 6,000 homeless.

  April 10, 1911 (Monday)

• By an imperial decree that followed pressure by Chinese petitioners seeking a constitutional government, an "Imperial Cabinet" of Ministers was created to replace the royal family's Grand Council, and Yikuang was named to the new office of Premier of China. Though still dominated by the Manchu people, who occupied 8 of the 13 cabinet seats, room was made for four Chinese and one Mongol as ministers.
• The "twin paradox" was first proposed by French physicist Paul Langevin
• The steamer SS Iroquois capsized in the Strait of Georgia between Vancouver Island and the rest of British Columbia, killing 20 people. Eleven others were saved.
• Born: Maurice Schumann, French foreign minister 1969–1973; in Paris.
• Died:
• *Sam Loyd, 70, American creator of puzzles known as the "Puzzle King."
• *Ras Bitwaddad Tesemma, Regent for the Emperor of Ethiopia from 1909 to 1911.
• *Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall, 75, British historian.
• *Mikalojus Čiurlionis, 35, Lithuanian musical prodigy and composer; from pneumonia.

  April 11, 1911 (Tuesday)

• The Senate of France voted 213–62 in favor of a resolution supporting an end to territorial limitations on where the wine champagne could be produced and still be referred to by that name. Upset by the vote wine-growers in the Marne department rioted, burning establishments and dumping thousands of gallons of champagne. Order was restored by the end of the week
• In the closest parliamentary election in British history, at the race for the Exeter constituency, incumbent Liberal Henry Duke, 1st Baron Merrivale was found to have defeated Unionist Harold St Maur by a single vote. In December, St Maur appeared to have won by four votes, 4,786 to 4,782. Duke petitioned for a review and the court at first invalidated 14 ballots, finding that the two men had tied at 4,777 apiece. Another review followed, and Duke was found to have beaten St Maur, 4,777 to 4,776.
• Isaac Harris and Max Blanck, co-owners of the Triangle Waist Company, were indicted for manslaughter for the fire that killed 146 employees, with probable cause based upon the finding of a bolted door. Blanck and Harris would be acquitted following a trial in December. Civil suits against them would be settled on March 11, 1913, with payment of $75 apiece to the families of each of the deceased victims.
• Mae West, 17, married musician Frank Wallace; they separated after a few months, but never divorced, until after Wallace resurfaced in 1935.
• Born: Leon Mandrake, Canadian-born American magician; in New Westminster, British Columbia.
• Died: Crazy Snake, 64, real name Chito Harjo, Creek Indian warrior who had, on March 27, 1909, led the last American Indian uprising in the Indian Territory, later Oklahoma.