December 1905

December 1, 1905 (Friday)

• Voting was held in the Republic of Cuba for the president and for the 12-member Cuban Senate and the 32-member House of Representatives. After the withdrawal by the Liberal Party of its candidates, President Tomás Estrada Palma was the only person on the ballot for that office, and all of the candidates of his Moderate Party were elected, with the exception of one independent. The election was fraudulent enough that the U.S. Department of War would institute its Platt Amendment powers nine months later to form an occupational government.
• Segismundo Moret formed a new government as Prime Minister of Spain, after the sudden resignation of Eugenio Montero Ríos.
• Rioting began in British Guiana, the only British colony on the continent of South America, after police in Georgetown fired shots into a crowd of protesters at a plantation. Before the riot was suppressed, seven people were killed and seven seriously injured.
• The Philippine Medical School, which would become the University of the Philippines in less than three years, was founded by the U.S.-sponsored Philippine Commission's Act No. 1415.
• In Korea, a protectorate of Japan, Son Byong-hi, leader of the Donghak religion, based on Confucianism, modernized the organization to make its operations more transparent and less likely to be prohibited by the Japanese. Son changed the name to Cheondoism.
• An explosion at the Diamond Coal and Coke Company near Diamondville, Wyoming killed 18 miners.
• Died: James Potter Davenport, 64, American politician and the first public official in the U.S. to be removed from office by a recall election, was killed in a streetcar accident several months after losing his job as a Los Angeles City councilman.

  December 2, 1905 (Saturday)

• Norsk Hydro-Elektrisk Kvælstofaktieselskab, predecessor of Equinor, a state-run energy product and grid brand in Scandinavia, was founded in Norway in order to bring electricity.
• Count Hayashi Tadasu presented his credentials at the Court of St James's to become Japan's first ambassador to the United Kingdom.
• The first match between the national rugby union teams of England and New Zealand took place before a crowd of 45,000 spectators at Crystal Palace Park in South London as part of New Zealand's 1905-1906 tour of Britain. New Zealand won, 15 to 0, with Duncan McGregor scoring four of the five three-point tries.
• An unknown person in north Philadelphia threw a heavy iron weight at the train taking U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt and his guests home to Washington D.C. after the Army-Navy Game played earlier in the day. The attacker apparently hurled the plumb bob in the belief that Roosevelt was riding in the presidential train car. Instead, the projectile showered glass on U.S. Army Major Webb Hayes who, "from a profile view, strongly resembled the President" and was riding in the "Salvius", a train car that "in appearance might have been mistaken very easily for President Roosevelt's private car." Roosevelt's car, however, was at the back of the train. Hayes, riding in the front car, sustained minor cuts from broken glass although the iron missile "narrowly had missed his head."

  December 3, 1905 (Sunday)

• "Tautiška giesmė", which would become the national anthem of Lithuania, was given its first public performance. Vincas Kudirka had written the music and lyrics shortly before his death in 1899. The song was performed by a choir led by Mikas Petrauskas, the day before the Great Seimas of Vilnius.
• The Saint Petersburg Soviet, a gathering of anti-government Bolshevik party members from across Russia, was suppressed with the mass arrest of delegates by the Okhrana, the Russian Empire's secret police. Among the delegates arrested were Leon Trotsky and Alexander Bogdanov.
• Born: General Francisco Javier Arana, Guatemalan military leader and chairman of the junta that ruled Guatemala in 1944 and 1945; in Villa Canales
• Died: John Bartlett, 75, American reference publisher known for editing and updating Bartlett's Familiar Quotations since 1855.

  December 4, 1905 (Monday)

• Arthur Balfour, the unpopular Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, resigned along with his entire cabinet resigned in hopes that their Conservative Party could retain their majority in the scheduled January 12 parliamentary elections. Balfour would not only see the Conservative Party lose 246 of their 402 seats in the House of Commons, he would lose his own seat in Parliament as well.
• The 59th U.S. Congress opened its first session. The Republican Party, which had a 251 to 135 seat advantage over the Democrats in the House of Representatives, re-elected Joe Cannon as Speaker of the House.
• The wreck of the Canadian steamer Lunenberg killed 11 of the 17 people aboard, after running aground on the rocks at Cape Breton while trying to travel into Amherst Harbor. Five of the crew took advantage of a chance to be rescued by a fishing boat, while 12 others declined to abandon their ship because there appeared to be little damage. When the group did abandon ship, their lifeboat overturned and only the captain survived.

  December 5, 1905 (Tuesday)

• Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, leader of the Liberal Party, formed a new cabinet as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, replacing Arthur Balfour.
• Six people were killed and eight injured when the roof of the Charing Cross railway station near London collapsed.
• Russia's government averted a nationwide railway strike by setting aside a death sentence that had been issued to a convicted strike leader.
• U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt's State of the Union address was read aloud by clerks in separately to the U.S. Senate and to the House of Representatives.
• The government of Turkey accepted the demands of Austria, Italy, France and Britain to institute reforms in Macedonia, after their fleet of warships had taken possession of Mitylene on November 28. The warships withdrew on December 15.
• Born:
• *Otto Preminger, Austrian-born American film director; in Wischnitz, Austria-Hungary
• *Frank Pakenham, 7th Earl of Longford, Leader of the House of Lords from 1964 to 1968; in North Aston, Oxfordshire
• Died: Henry Eckford, 82, Scottish horticulturalist who perfected the Grandflora sweet peas

  December 6, 1905 (Wednesday)

• Voting was held for 76 of the 80 seats in the New Zealand House of Representatives, excepting only the four seats reserved for the Māori people. The New Zealand Liberal Party, led by Prime Minister Richard Seddon increased its 42 to 21 majority to 58 of 80 seats. Voting for the four Maori seats took place on December 20.
• Born: Clifford W. Dupont, President of Rhodesia from 1970 to 1975; in London

  December 7, 1905 (Thursday)

• Dr. Eduard Zirm, an Austrian ophthalmologist, performed the world's first successful corneal transplant. Alois Glogar, a 45-year-old Czech farm worker received the corneas of an 11-year old boy at Dr. Zim's eye clinic hospital in Olmütz.
• The original British Symphony Orchestra, formed by composer William Sewell, gave its first public performance, appearing at Aeolian Hall in London.
• A Bolshevik-led revolt began in Moscow and lasted for 11 days.
• Ten people were killed in a collision of railroad trains in Wyoming.
• Sailing off of the coast of the U.S. state of Florida, three respected ornithologists witnessed a large animal while watching from the British steam yacht Valhalla. Edmund Meade-Waldo, Michael John Nicoll and the Earl of Crawford saw what Meade-Waldo described as having a six-foot wide fin and a thick neck as wide as a man's body. The press quickly dubbed their sight a "sea serpent". A freighter, the Happy Warrior, reported a similar sighting on December 10.
• Born: Gerard Kuiper, Netherlands-born U.S. astronomer for whom the Kuiper belt is named; in Tuitjenhorn

  December 8, 1905 (Friday)

• The Census and Statistics Act 1905, a law passed to establish a decennial census in Australia, received royal assent.
• The Rawalpindi Parade 1905 was held by the British Indian Army in Rawalpindi in India, to honor the visiting George, Prince of Wales and his wife, Princess Mary.
• Died:
• *John H. Mitchell, 70, U.S. Senator for Oregon since 1866, known for his conviction in the Oregon land fraud scandal earlier in the year, died of complications from a recent dental surgery. The U.S. Senate had been considering his expulsion at the time of his death.
• *Rabbi Zadoc Kahn, 66, Chief Rabbi of France since 1889
• *Olivia Floyd, 79, former spy and blockade runner for the Confederacy during the American Civil War.

  December 9, 1905 (Saturday)

• By a vote of 181 to 102, the Senate of France enacted the Law on the Separation of the Churches and the State was passed, abrogating the Concordat of 1801 that favored the Roman Catholic Church, and introducing its doctrine of laïcité or secularism.
• Representatives of Venezuela and Brazil signed protocols to settle their long-time boundary dispute.
• Georgy Khrustalev-Nosar, the first chairman of the Russian Bolsheviks' Saint Petersburg Soviet, was arrested. 1 The date is sometimes listed as November 26, in that Russia still used the "old style" Julian calendar, 13 days behind the Gregorian calendar used in most of the rest of the world. Leon Trotsky was subsequently chosen for the Bolshevik chapter in the Russian capital, and Khrustalev-Nosar never returned to the leadership.
• At the request of Walter Camp, representatives from nine colleges met at a conference at the Manhattan Hotel in New York to discuss changes in the rules of football to make the sport safer. The day before, faculty from 13 of 19 colleges invited attended a meeting at the Murray Hill Hotel to give their comments for the Rules Committee to consider.
• Died:
• *Henry Holmes, 65, British violinist and symphonic composer
• *Sir Richard Claverhouse Jebb, 64, British classical scholar known for his translations of ancient Greek literature