August 1900

August 1, 1900 (Wednesday)

• Hugh Marshall Hole, colonial administrator of Matabeleland and Bulawayo in Rhodesia, solved the problem of a shortage of coins and bills by issuing his own money, now known by collectors as "Marshall Hole Currency".
• The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum, was published for national distribution.
• Race rioting broke out in the predominantly African-American town of Keystone, West Virginia after a white policeman shot a black arrest subject who lunged at him with a knife. An angry crowd threatened to lynch policeman Harry Messer who was then taken into the custody of the McDowell County sheriff.
• National University, the first private nonsectarian university in the Philippines and the first to instruct students in English in addition to Spanish, was founded in Manila as the Colegio Filipino. It would be renamed Colegio Mercantil and then National Academy before attaining its present name.

  August 2, 1900 (Thursday)

• Mozaffar ad-Din Shah Qajar, the Shah of Persia, survived an assassination attempt while visiting Paris. The Shah hit the assailant on the head with a cane and his Grand Vizier, Ali Asghar Khan twisted the assassin's wrist and forced the dropping of a pistol. The gunman, identified as Francois Salson, said that he had also tried to assassinate former French President Jean Casimir-Perier but that the gun had misfired.
• By a margin of 187,217 to 128,285, voters in North Carolina approved an amendment to Article VI of the state constitution, worded specifically to disenfranchise African-American voters. Under section 4, all persons registering to vote were required to pass a literacy test, "But no male person who was on January 1, 1867, or at any time prior thereto, entitled to vote and no lineal descendant of any such person, shall be denied the right to register and vote by reason of his failure to possess the educational qualifications herein proscribed"

  August 3, 1900 (Friday)

• Harvey S. Firestone established the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company as an automobile tire supply store in Akron, Ohio. Three years later, he began manufacturing tires.
• Three days of shooting events during the Olympics were staged in Paris, including live pigeon-shooting. Some were retrospectively recognized as Olympic events. Almost 300 pigeons were killed, the format being that the birds were released in front of the shooter and the prize went to whoever shot down as many pigeons as possible before missing two. The event would later be described as "the one and only time in Olympic history when animals were deliberately killed in the name of sport." Léon de Lunden of Belgium won the gold medal by killing 21 birds in flight.
• Born: Ernie Pyle, American journalist, war correspondent who received the Pulitzer Prize for covering the American infantry experience during World War II; near Dana, Indiana

  August 4, 1900 (Saturday)

• In China, a force of 20,000 soldiers of the Eight-Nation Alliance began their march from Tianjin to Beijing to relieve the besieged envoys in the Chinese capital. The group was composed of 9,000 Japanese, 4,800 Russians, 2,900 Britons, 2,500 Americans, 1,200 French and a few hundred Austrian, German and Italian troops. At the same time, Chinese imperial troops were on their way from Beijing to resist the Allied troops.
• Born:
• * Nabi Tajima, Japanese supercentenarian and the last remaining survivor of the 19th century in Kikai, Kagoshima. She became the oldest person on Earth from September 15, 2017 when the last survivor of the 1800s, Violet Brown of Jamaica, died. Tajima would die on April 21, 2018, aged 117.
• * Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, Queen Consort during the reign of her husband King George VI and mother of Queen Elizabeth II

  August 5, 1900 (Sunday)

• In a seven-hour-long battle at Peit-sang, Chinese imperial troops fought against the advancing allied troops. The Allies had an estimated 1,200 killed and wounded, while the Chinese lost 4,000 killed and wounded.
• Died: James Augustine Healy, 70, the first African-American Catholic Church bishop, and Bishop of Portland since his appointment in 1875 by Pope Pius IX. Healy's father was a white Irish immigrant and plantation owner, while his mother had been an African-American slave of mixed race and he was born in Macon, Georgia. Under the laws of that state, he was regarded as a "Negro".

  August 6, 1900 (Monday)

• Gustav Mahler completed his Symphony No. 4.
• Born: Cecil Howard Green, English-born American entrepreneur, co-founder of Texas Instruments; in Bury, Lancashire, England

  Tuesday, August 7, 1900

• The Allies captured Yang-tsun after losing 700 men.

  August 8, 1900 (Wednesday)

• The Allied troops routed Chinese defenders at Tsi-nin, clearing the way for the liberation of foreign envoys at Beijing.

  August 9, 1900 (Thursday)

• From Constantinople came word of the massacre of 200 men, women and children in the village of Saganik in the Sassun District of Anatolia. Two weeks later, the Ottoman Sultan ordered a committee to investigate the reports.
• In Boston, the first Davis Cup competition was won by the United States, as Dwight F. Davis and Holcombe Ward defeated the British team of Ernest Black and Herbert Roper Barrett in straight sets, winning the third of five scheduled matches.

  August 10, 1900 (Friday)

• A plot to kidnap Lord Roberts was foiled as the ringleaders were arrested in Pretoria. Hans Cordua was the only one of the perpetrators to be executed, dying before a firing squad on August 24.
• Milton S. Hershey got out of the business of making caramel candy, selling his Lancaster Caramel Company to investor Daniel F. Lafean for one million dollars in cash. Hershey and his attorney, John Snyder, turned down initial offers for a merger, then for $500,000 and finally for $900,000 cash and $100,000 stock before sealing the deal in Providence, Rhode Island, at 11:00 in the morning. With the infusion of capital, The Hershey Company built a factory in Derry Church, Pennsylvania, and created the largest chocolate manufacturer in the United States, with sales of five billion dollars a year by 2007.
• Born: Arthur Porritt, Governor-General of New Zealand 1967–1972; in Wanganui. Porritt had been a bronze medalist in the 1924 Summer Olympics, finishing in third place in the 100 metre dash.
• Died: Charles Russell, Baron Russell of Killowen, Lord Chief Justice of England, 67, died of complications from surgery the previous day for an internal gastric disorder.

  August 11, 1900 (Saturday)

• Violence broke out on Laysan in the Territory of Hawaii, after the 41 Japanese miners on the small island confronted the four white American managers of Pacific Guano & Fertilizer Company. In response, manager Joseph Spencer pulled two pistols and announced that the first person to step forward would die. When the group charged en masse, Spencer fired away, killing two of the Japanese and wounding three others. The next day, the 39 survivors were arrested and imprisoned on the ship Ceylon, and on August 16, everyone sailed back to Honolulu. Spencer was acquitted after a ten-day trial, and the other men were fired.
• Born: Philip Phillips, American archaeologist; in Buffalo, New York

  August 12, 1900 (Sunday)

• The Allies captured Tung-chau, placing them within of Beijing.
• The French destroyer Framee sank after a collision with the battleship Brennus, during maneuvers off the coast of Portugal, at Cape St. Vincent. The accident occurred when the Framee turned to the right as the French fleet was ordered to turn left. Forty-six of the 60 men on the Framee died, including Captain du Plessix.
• Wilhelm Steinitz, who reigned as the world's chess champion for 20 years until losing in 1894 to Emanuel Lasker, died, penniless and insane, at the Manhattan State Hospital in New York City.

  August 13, 1900 (Monday)

• As troops from the Eight-Nation Alliance neared Beijing, the Chinese army set up a Krupp cannon to fire down on the foreign legations, in the heaviest attack to that time. A counterattack by guns within the embassy compound killed the Chinese gun crew and halted the attack. The allied force was within, in Tungchow.
• Thomas C. Lawler, who verified the identity of the corpse of John Wilkes Booth, died in Lynn, Massachusetts. Lawler, a barber at the National Hotel in Washington, D.C., had given Booth a haircut the day before the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

  Tuesday, August 14, 1900

• The 20,000-member multinational force arrived at Beijing for the Battle of Peking. The Russian forces attacked the Tung Pien gate. The 9th and 14th American infantries reached the high Tartar Wall where command asked for a volunteer to scale the structure. Corporal Calvin Pearl Titus, a 20-year-old bugler from Company E, climbed footholds on the wall, found it undefended, and the rest of the force followed, planting the flag at With Japanese and American attackers drawing the Chinese army away from the walled city, a group of Sikh soldiers from the British force were the first to enter Beijing, at. By 4:00, the 55-day siege of the foreign legations was over, and the next phase was to take the Imperial City and the Forbidden City.
• The Hamburg America Line cruise ship Deutschland broke the record for the fastest transatlantic crossing, arriving in Plymouth, England, at, five days, 11 hours and 45 minutes after passing the Sandy Hook Lighthouse, the point where New York City departures were considered to be underway.
• The world's first six-masted ship, the George W. Wells, was launched from Camden, Maine. At in length and wide, the Wells was the largest wooden ship in the world at that time.
• Died: Collis Potter Huntington, 78, American industrialist, built the Central Pacific, the Southern Pacific and the Chesapeake and Ohio railroads