February 1900

February 1, 1900 (Thursday)

• The Eastman Kodak Company introduced the Brownie camera, shipping it to dealers on this date. The inexpensive box camera made photography affordable to the average person, and over the next twenty months, around 245,000 of the cameras would be sold. In October 1901, Eastman would introduce the next version, the No. 1 Brownie.

  February 2, 1900 (Friday)

• The Manila Bulletin, the newspaper of largest circulation in the Philippines, published its first issue. Starting as a publisher of information about shipping, the broadsheet became "The Nation's Leading Newspaper".
• U.S. President William McKinley convened a cabinet meeting about election violence in Kentucky. William S. Taylor, initially declared the winner of the recent state election, had petitioned the President to be recognized as the Governor of Kentucky. Meanwhile, Taylor's Democratic opponent, William Goebel, had been declared winner of the election and had been administered the oath of office on his deathbed. United States Attorney General John W. Griggs and Secretary of War Elihu Root agreed with McKinley that there was no legal basis for Washington, D.C., to become involved in the matter. A statement was issued that "The President has decided that no case has yet arisen to justify the intervention of the National Government in Kentucky, and has so informed the Governor."

  February 3, 1900 (Saturday)

• Birsa Munda, the rebel leader in British India, was arrested in the woods near Porahat after seven of his followers tipped off police. He would die in prison 6 days later. Birsa is celebrated a century later as a martyr to the Indian independence movement.
• Dumbell's Bank, a principal deposit holder in the Isle of Man, failed, leaving many of the British island's businesses and residents without money.
• William Goebel, Governor of Kentucky since January 31, died at at the Capitol Hotel in Frankfort, Kentucky. Lieutenant Governor J. C. W. Beckham was sworn in an hour later as the 35th Governor of Kentucky. At the same time, William S. Taylor continued to assert that he was the lawfully elected Governor of Kentucky as well.
• B. H. Roberts, would-be U.S. Representative from Utah, was arrested in Salt Lake City for unlawful cohabitation, and released on his own recognizance. The charge arose from Roberts's practice of polygamy.

  February 4, 1900 (Sunday)

• In Buenos Aires, Argentina, a heat wave continued into its second day. The New York Times reported that "There were 219 cases of sunstroke here Sunday, of which 124 cases were fatal. The thermometer on Saturday registered 120 degrees in the shade, with 93 of 120 cases fatal."
• Harvard University astronomy professor William Henry Pickering announced that, beginning in May, he and a team would commence a search for an "intermercurial planet", between Mercury and the Sun.
• A fire in St. Louis caused losses of more than $1,000,000 and killed fireman Charles Mebus, who died after a wall fell upon him. The fire started in the Penny & Gentles dry goods on Broadway and Franklin, then spread along both streets for three blocks.
• Born: Jacques Prévert, French poet and screenwriter, known for his screenplays including Children of Paradise and song lyrics including "Autumn Leaves" in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine département

  February 5, 1900 (Monday)

• At the United States Department of State building in Washington, D.C., State Secretary John Hay and British Ambassador to the United States Lord Pauncefote signed a treaty to amend the Clayton–Bulwer Treaty of 1850, in order to permit construction of the proposed Nicaragua Canal. The amendment was then transmitted by the President to the United States Senate. A bill relating to the Nicaragua Canal would be approved by the House on May 2, but fail in the Senate.
• The United States Senate unanimously ratified the 1899 convention that created the International Arbitration Convention at The Hague.
• In New Orleans, the Republican state convention endorsed William McKinley for president, Cornelius Newton Bliss for vice-president, and Eugene S. Reems for Governor of Louisiana. "The convention was unique in the history of the State", reported The New York Times, adding "A majority of the delegates were white men."
• At a conference in the Galt House in Louisville, Kentucky, Republican and Democratic party leaders agreed that Republican Governor William S. Taylor and Lieutenant Governor John Marshall would defer to the Kentucky Legislature to decide whether Taylor or J. C. W. Beckham, should be Governor of Kentucky. The "peace agreement" averted further violence following the state election.
• Troops fired on 1,200 rioting miners in Fort-de-France, Martinique and killed at least nine people.
• Born: Adlai Stevenson, American politician, Democratic candidate for the 1952 and 1956 presidential elections, 31st Governor of Illinois, 5th U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations; in Los Angeles

  February 6, 1900 (Tuesday)

• Recently elected to the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, MP John Redmond was selected as chair of the United Irish League. Redmond was a proponent of the movement to create the Irish Free State as a nation independent of the United Kingdom.
• The House of Commons of the United Kingdom voted on Lord FitzMaurice's motion of no confidence in the government after one week's debate. The resolution, which had been introduced following British reversals in the Second Boer War, failed by a vote of 352 to 139.
• U.S. President William McKinley appointed Judge William Howard Taft of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals to be the president of the newly created Philippine Commission. Taft, who would sail for the Philippines on March 1, would oversee a transition from military government to a civil rule with himself as Governor-General. Taft's successor on the bench would be Judge Henry Franklin Severens.

  February 7, 1900 (Wednesday)

• The Empress Dowager Cixi of China issued an edict abolishing the teaching of the "new, depraved and erroneous subjects of the Western schools", and providing that teachers who violated the rule would be punished. In addition, examinations for official rank would be revised to remove Western influences and to return to the teachings of Confucius.
• After a 13-day special session, the California State Legislature voted for Thomas R. Bard to become United States Senator, filling the seat which had been vacant since March 4, 1899. After the term of Stephen M. White had expired, the California State Senate had failed to fill the seat during its regular 1899 session. During 1899, four states had only one United States Senator apiece.
• A Chinese immigrant in San Francisco, lumber yard owner Wong Chut King, became the first person known to fall ill of bubonic plague in the San Francisco area, the first epidemic of the disease in the continental United States.

  February 8, 1900 (Thursday)

• In the Midwestern United States, warm weather gave way to a blizzard in the space of less than a day. "From a weather standpoint Feb. 8 was one of the most remarkable in the history of the local meteorology office", wrote one observer. In Chicago, the temperature was at, and fell to by. The drop of 52 °F during the day is a record that still stands.
• By a vote of 26 to 15, the States of Jersey first permitted the use of the English language in its parliamentary debates. Though the Jersey island, located off of the coast of Normandy, had been a British crown dependency since the 13th century, its local government continued to use the French language in all proceedings.

  February 9, 1900 (Friday)

• Dwight F. Davis, president of the United States National Lawn Tennis Association, announced in Boston that he would donate a silver bowl to the nation that won the international tennis championship. The United Kingdom and the United States would compete in August for what has been known, ever since, as the Davis Cup. The trophy was manufactured by the William B. Durgin Company, and accepted by the USNLTA on February 21, 1900.
• Some sources cite February 9, 1900, as the date that the Hershey bar was introduced.

  February 10, 1900 (Saturday)

• In competition at the Eisstation in Davos, Switzerland, Peder Østlund of Norway set two new world records in speed skating, in the 1000 and 500 meter races. The next day, Østlund set two additional records in the 1,500 meter and 10,000 meter races. Ostlund's records would stand for years. The time was not broken until 1906, by Rudolf Gundersen. Oscar Mathisen set new records in the other events; the 10 kilometer record stood until 1912.
• Aristocrat Roland B. Molineux was convicted of the December 1899 murder, by mercury cyanide poison, of Mrs. Katherine J. Adams, and sentenced to death. A jury concluded that Molineux had anonymously mailed a poisoned bottle of Bromo Seltzer to an athletic club rival, Henry Cornish, on December 21, 1899. Cornish's aunt, Mrs. Katherine B. Adams, was poisoned instead and died on December 27. The sentence would later be reversed, and Molineux would be acquitted in his 1902 trial. He died in 1917.
• The New York Times reported that over 80,000 people were preparing to move from Utah to the Bighorn Basin in northern Wyoming, where had been set aside by the state under the Carey Act.

  February 11, 1900 (Sunday)

• After four years, Vladimir Lenin was released from his exile to the Siberian village of Shushenskoye. He and his wife travelled by horseback for to Ufa and arrived there on February 18.
• In Port Arthur, Texas, James Sweeney, a white man, was lynched by a mob at, only hours after being acquitted of the bayonet murder of Charles Crumbach. Tried in Beaumont, Sweeney returned by train to Port Arthur. "Word had been telegraphed ahead that he was coming, and a mob met him at the station, marched him up town, and strung him up to a telegraph pole without ceremony. In the first attempt the rope broke. The second attempt was made successful by tying Sweeney's legs so that his feet could not touch the ground, and drawing the rope taut."
• The Spanish steamship Alicante arrived in Barcelona, repatriating 1,100 soldiers who had been imprisoned by rebels during the Philippine–American War.
• Born: Hans-Georg Gadamer, German philosopher, author of Truth and Method; in Marburg