February 1901

February 1, 1901 (Friday)

• New Zealand became the first nation to create a governmental agency devoted to promoting tourism, with the creation of the Department of Tourist and Health Resorts.
• China's Fists of Righteous Harmony, which had fomented the killing of foreigners that became the Boxer Rebellion, was formally outlawed by the Imperial government.
• The body of Queen Victoria was transported from the Isle of Wight to Portsmouth on board her personal yacht, HMY Alberta.
• On Wall Street, New York City, the largest railroad network in the United States was announced when the Union Pacific Railroad acquired a majority of the stock of the Southern Pacific Railroad Company. A syndicate composed of William Kissam Vanderbilt, J. P. Morgan, and the Rockefeller family purchased 1,300,000 shares of Southern Pacific for $10,000,000 to create "a continuous system under one control, extending from New York to San Francisco by rail and from San Francisco down the western coast as far as Panama and out across the Pacific to the Orient by steamers."
• Born:
• * Frank Buckles, American soldier, last surviving American veteran of World War I, in Bethany, Missouri
• * Clark Gable, American film actor, known for starring roles in Mutiny on the Bounty and Gone with the Wind, recipient of the Academy Award for Best Actor for It Happened One Night, in Cadiz, Ohio
• Died: Fitzedward Hall, 75, American linguist, one of the major U.S. contributors to the Oxford English Dictionary project and the first American to translate works from the Sanskrit language into the English language.

  February 2, 1901 (Saturday)

• The funeral of Queen Victoria took place at St George's Chapel in Windsor Castle after her body was transported from Portsmouth to London. The day before, the funeral procession had brought her from Osborne House to Portsmouth. Present at her funeral were the Kings of the United Kingdom, Germany, Portugal and Greece, and the future kings of Denmark and Sweden. According to contemporary accounts, the noise of the cannon firing at her funeral was not heard on the outskirts of London, "yet it was heard loudly at a number of villages in an approximate ring around 150 kilometres from the source".
• The United States Army Reorganization Bill, officially called "An Act To Increase the Efficiency of the Permanent Military Establishment of the United States", was signed into law by President William McKinley.
• The United States Army Nurse Corps was established as a permanent part of the United States Army's Medical Department. Although they could not yet become officers, women could now enlist in the Army for three year terms.
• Benjamin O. Davis Sr., who would become the first African-American general in the United States Army, received his first commission as an officer, when he was made a second lieutenant in the U.S. 9th Cavalry. Davis, who had enlisted as a private less than two years earlier, had been mentored by Major Charles Young, who, at the time, was the only other black officer in the United States Army.
• After starting only one week earlier, George Bernard Shaw completed the three act play The Admirable Bashville, a stage adaptation of his novel Cashel Byron's Profession.
• Born: Jascha Heifetz, Lithuanian violinist, in Vilna, Russian Empire

  February 3, 1901 (Sunday)

• The Japanese ultra-nationalist Black Dragon Society was formed by Ryōhei Uchida to advocate the conquest of Korea, war against Russia, and the expansion of the Japanese Empire's control of Asia.
• Eighteen members of the "Snake clan" of the Creek Indian tribe were charged with treason against the United States and jailed in Muskogee, Oklahoma.
• Born:
• * Rosamond Lehmann, British novelist, in Bourne End, Buckinghamshire, England
• * Arvid Wallman, Swedish Olympic diver, in Gothenburg, Sweden
• Died:
• * Fukuzawa Yukichi, 66, Japanese economist, described as "the most influential thinker of the Meiji era in Japan after 1868", who guided the modernization of Japan after the Meiji Restoration, founded Keio University, and promoted the introduction of Western ideas into Japan. It would later be written, "it was from the foundations laid down by Fukuzawa and others like him that Japan rose to become one of the economic leaders of the world".
• * Francis V. Woodhouse, 96, the last survivor of the "Twelve Apostles" of the Catholic Apostolic Church that had been organized in 1835. The central tenet of that church's members, that the Second Coming of Jesus Christ would take place before the death of the last of the new apostles, failed to be realized. No provision had been made for successors to any of the 12.
• * Tom O'Brien, American baseball player, outfielder and first baseman for the Pittsburgh Pirates, died of pneumonia caused by typhoid fever. O'Brien had been ill since a post-season player tour of Cuba, when he was persuaded to drink a bucket of salt water in order to "cleanse his system".

  February 4, 1901 (Monday)

• The Italian opera Tosca, by Giacomo Puccini, had its American premiere, at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City, with soprano Milka Ternina and tenor Giuseppe Cremonini as Floria Tosca and Mario Cavaradossi, respectively, and Luigi Mancinelli conducting the orchestra. It would be an immediate success, and an author would later call it an opera "of apparently unflagging popularity... there must be scarcely a city or a town in the United States where opera has been given in the last eighty years that has not been exposed to at least one Tosca".
• On the same evening, the three-act comedy Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines, by Clyde Fitch, opened on Broadway theatre at the Garrick Theatre for the first of 168 performances. The play was a sensation, and made a star of Ethel Barrymore.
• The body of Queen Victoria was entombed at Frogmore Mausoleum in Windsor, next to that of her late husband, Prince Albert, whom she had survived for 39 years.
• With the signing into law of the "Canteen Act" two days earlier, the United States Department of War issued General Order Number 1 implementing the Act's provision against "the sale of, or dealing in, beer, wine or any intoxicating liquors by any person in any exchange or canteen or army transport or upon any premises used for military purposes by the United States." "Commanding officers will immediately carry the provisions of this law into full force and effect," the order stated, "and will be held strictly responsible that no exceptions or invasions are permitted."
• Andrew Carnegie, who owned 54 percent of Carnegie Steel Company, sold all of his shares to J. P. Morgan and associates. Although the details were kept confidential, it was estimated that Carnegie received at least 85 million dollars, equivalent to more than 2.4 billion dollars in 2016.
• By a vote of 15–14, the Cuban Constitutional Convention approved an electoral college system for electing the nation's president, rather than a popular vote.
• "John Marshall Day" was celebrated in major cities across the United States in honor of the centennial of the day that Marshall became the Chief Justice of the United States.
• Died: Jefferson F. Long, 64, a former slave who became the first African-American elected to represent the state of Georgia in the United States House of Representatives, of influenza. He served only two months, from January to March, 1871.

  February 5, 1901 (Tuesday)

• Thomas Edison discovered and patented the rechargeable nickel–iron battery system and made plans to market it commercially, but would soon come into conflict with Swedish inventor Waldemar Jungner, who had filed a patent in Europe only two weeks earlier for a process using nickel-iron storage cells. The technologies would later be superseded by improvements on Jungner's nickel–cadmium battery.
• The United States Senate voted to declassify all United States Department of State papers relating to the peace negotiations that ended the Spanish–American War, including U.S. President William McKinley's instructions to the American negotiators. These would reveal, among other things, that the only territory that the United States originally had wanted Spain to completely give up was Puerto Rico and its surrounding islands. Other correspondence showed that the principal reason for acquiring "Porto Rico" was to expand the prestige of the United States in competition with other colonial powers.
• In Evansville, Indiana, a fire burned through the business district, causing $175,000 of damage.
• Henry E. Youtsey was sentenced to life imprisonment for being the principal conspirator in the 1900 assassination of Kentucky Governor-elect William Goebel. After serving nearly 18 years of his sentence, however, Youtsey would be paroled on December 11, 1918, and given a pardon by outgoing Governor James D. Black on December 1, 1919.
• By act of the Alabama Legislature, the city of Daphne, Alabama, ceased to be the county seat for Baldwin County and all county government offices and records were moved to the smaller town of Bay Minette. The legislation would precipitate a fight between the two cities, all the way to the state supreme court, as well as a violent confrontation during the October removal of the records.
• The West Florida Annexation Association, a group of businessmen led by Colonel J. J. Sullivan of Pensacola, appeared before the Alabama Legislature and presented their proposal for annexation of that part of the state to Alabama.
• Abraham Esau, 35, a coloured citizen of the Boer Cape Colony, worked as a British spy during the Second Boer War after local Boer commander refused to let the coloured citizens take up weapons to lead the fight. After the Boers retook the town of Calvinia, Esau was eliminated by being dragged to the outskirts of town and shot, and his body was then displayed in the village as a warning. When the British routed the Boers the next day, Esau was buried with full British Army honors.
• Born: Gaston Schoukens, Belgian film director who made numerous comedies, melodramas and documentaries, including the first Belgian sound film, La famille Kelpkens, and the popular 1950 comedy Un Soir de Joie, as Felix Bell in Brussels