February 1904

February 1, 1904 (Monday)

• Frank Wedekind's play Pandora's Box, the second part of his "Lulu" cycle, received its world premiere in Nuremberg, Germany.
• Opera singer Lillian Nordica was granted an interlocutory decree of divorce from her husband, operatic tenor Zoltán Döhme.
• At the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt met for about 10 minutes with renowned American frontier lawman and sportswriter Bat Masterson while senators and representatives waited in an adjoining room.
• In a bout at the West End club in St. Louis, Missouri, American boxer Abe Attell defeated American Harry Forbes by knockout to win the world featherweight championship.
• Born:
• * Tricky Sam Nanton, American trombonist; in New York City
• * Pierre Naville, French Surrealist writer and sociologist; in Paris, France
• * S. J. Perelman, American humorist and author; in Brooklyn, New York City
• * Joseph Asajiro Satowaki, Japanese Roman Catholic cardinal, Archbishop of Nagasaki; in Shittsu, Kyushu, Japan
• Died:
• * Curtis Coe Bean, 76, American businessman and politician, Congressional delegate from Arizona Territory
• * Mariano S. Otero, 59, Congressional delegate from the Territory of New Mexico, died of apoplexy.
• * Peter Paul Maria Alberdingk Thijm, 76, Dutch academic and writer

  February 2, 1904 (Tuesday)

• Pope Pius X issued the encyclical Ad diem illum, commemorating the 50th anniversary of Pope Pius IX's definition of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary.
• In Council Bluffs, Iowa, the home of the Christiensen family was destroyed by fire at 2 am, killing 5 children 11 years old and younger and critically burning their mother.
• The Kentucky House of Representatives indefinitely postponed consideration of a bill to disenfranchise African American voters, effectively killing the measure.
• A major fire in the wholesale district of Knoxville, Tennessee, killed fire captain William A. Maxey and John J. Dunn, a former fireman who was helping fight the blaze. The walls of a neighboring building collapsed and fell through the roof of the building where Maxey and Dunn were.
• Born:
• * Bozorg Alavi, Iranian writer, novelist and intellectual; in Tehran, Iran
• * Peter Blos, German American psychoanalyst; in Karlsruhe, Germany
• * Sonora Webster Carver, American horse diver; in Waycross, Georgia
• * Valery Chkalov, Soviet test pilot; in Vasilyevo, Russian Empire
• * Helen Rose, American costume designer; in Chicago, Illinois
• * Andreina Sacco, Italian athletics competitor; in Turin, Italy
• Died:
• * Sir Edward Braddon, 74, Cornish-born Australian politician, Premier of Tasmania
• * Ernest Cashel, 21–22, American-Canadian criminal, was executed by hanging.
• * Frederick Mills, 54, English rugby union player
• * William Collins Whitney, 62, American politician, United States Secretary of the Navy, died of sepsis while under anesthesia prior to an operation for appendicitis.
• * W. W. Woolnough, 81, American newspaperman, abolitionist and politician

  February 3, 1904 (Wednesday)

• In Vienna, Austria, the secessionist artists decided not to exhibit at the upcoming Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri.
• An intercolonial express train on its way from Halifax, Nova Scotia to Montreal and Boston derailed near Hunter's Crossing, west of Halifax, and fell into the Shuberdarie River, killing 2 people and seriously injuring 27.
• In Lexington, Kentucky, Nora Veal shot herself to death after viewing the body of her fiancé, Ellis Kinkeaid, who had taken his own life on February 1 because Veal had gone to the theater with another man.
• At a plantation in Doddsville, Mississippi, belonging to white planter James Eastland, Luther Holbert, an African American, allegedly shot and killed John Carr, also African American, and mortally wounded Eastland. Eastland, returning fire, shot and killed John Winters, an African American. When a posse arrived at the plantation another African American was shot and killed. Posses began searching for Holbert and his wife.
• Born:
• * Luigi Dallapiccola, Italian composer; in Pisino d'Istria, Austria-Hungary
• * Pretty Boy Floyd, American gangster; in Adairsville, Georgia
• * Aleksandr Kharkevich, Soviet academician, acoustician and cyberneticist; in Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire
• * Mireille Perrey, French actress; in Bordeaux, Gironde, France
• * Roger Makins, 1st Baron Sherfield, British diplomat, Ambassador to the United States of America
• Died:
• * Marie Firmin Bocourt, 84, French zoologist and artist
• * Robert Ellin, 66, English-born American stone and wood sculptor, died of heart failure.
• * William McCleave, 78–79, Irish-born Union Army officer
• * John James McDannold, 52, U.S. Representative from Illinois
• * Benjamin Pickard, 61, British coal miner, trade unionist and politician, died of heart disease.
• * Newton Talbot, 88, American publisher, politician and college administrator
• * Robert Young, 69, Canadian businessman and politician, died of heart disease.

  February 4, 1904 (Thursday)

• The last American troops left Cuba, ending the U.S. occupation of the island. Tomás Estrada Palma, the President of Cuba, and Herbert G. Squiers, the U.S. Minister to Cuba, attended a ceremony at which the flag of the United States was lowered and the flag of Cuba was raised.
• A bill was introduced in the Maryland Senate to disenfranchise African American voters.
• Lake Village, Arkansas, was almost completely destroyed by fire. Property losses were estimated at $250,000.
• The town hall of Stamford, Connecticut, was destroyed by fire, with estimated losses of $180,000.
• Born:
• * Chaudhry Ghulam Abbas, Jammu and Kashmir lawyer and politician; in Jammu
• * Deng Yingchao, Chairwoman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, wife of Zhou Enlai; in Nanning, Guangxi, Qing Empire
• * MacKinlay Kantor, American writer and historian; in Webster City, Iowa
• * Predrag Milošević, Serbian composer and conductor; in Knjaževac, Kingdom of Serbia
• * Teo Otto, Swiss scenographer; in Remscheid, Germany
• * Georges Sadoul, French journalist and cinema writer; in Nancy, Meurthe-et-Moselle, France
• * Zachari Zachariev, Bulgarian military pilot and commander ; in Basarbovo, Kingdom of Bulgaria
• Died:
• * William D. Bishop, 76, American politician and railroad executive, member of the United States House of Representatives from Connecticut, died of chronic endocarditis.
• * Walter Hill, 84, Scottish Australian botanist, first curator of the Brisbane Botanic Gardens

  February 5, 1904 (Friday)

• The National Republican Editorial association endorsed Theodore Roosevelt in the 1904 United States presidential election. Meeting with the association's delegates in Washington, D.C., Roosevelt said, "In the proper sense of the term, no man is more essentially a public servant than the editor—the man who in the public press not merely gives the news, but exercises so great a control over the thought of our country."
• Born:
• * Walter Gross, German actor; in Eberswalde, Germany
• * Frederick Gordon-Lennox, 9th Duke of Richmond, British peer, engineer and racing driver
• * Sammy Mandell, American professional boxer; in Rockford, Illinois
• * Lawrence Wager, British geologist, explorer and mountaineer; in Batley, England
• Died: Thomas Wren, 80, American lawyer, U.S. Representative from Nevada

  February 6, 1904 (Saturday)

• Several hundred men tracking Luther Holbert and his wife for the killing of James Eastland trapped them in a swamp near Greenwood, Mississippi. A posse shot and killed two African Americans, one of whom was mistaken for Holbert, in Yazoo County, Mississippi, near Belzoni.
• In Salem, Virginia, Taylor Fields, an African American man who had allegedly spoken about a recent assault on a woman and child in an offensive way, was seized from his home by a mob and publicly whipped with a rope around his neck. An African American preacher and two other African Americans had been driven out of Roanoke, Virginia, due to their comments about the same assault case.
• In the gallery of the Princess Theater in Middlesboro, Kentucky, Policeman John Burns and a bystander, railroad switchman John Sharp, were shot and killed during a minstrel show by John White, an African American ex-convict whom Burns had threatened to arrest for vagrancy. The shooting nearly caused a human crush in the theater. White, who escaped, would be captured on February 10, and would be tried and acquitted on grounds of self-defense in January 1905.
• Born:
• * Sam Leavitt, American cinematographer; in New York City
• * Raphael Tracey, American soccer player; in Gillespie, Illinois
• Died:
• * William Bramwell Powell, 67, American educator and author
• * Utagawa Yoshiiku, 71, Japanese artist

  February 7, 1904 (Sunday)

• The Great Baltimore Fire in Baltimore, Maryland, destroyed over 1,500 buildings in 31 hours. It would long be believed that no human deaths were caused directly by the fire, but in the early 21st century a historian would discover evidence that at least one man was killed.
• In Anderson County, Tennessee, mine guards Judd Reeder and James Colton shot and killed 3 men and wounded 3 others in a group of union members who approached them at the train station, where the guards had gone to escort non-union miners to the mine. Reeder and Colton were arrested after returning to the mine, but another guard, Cal Burton, shot and killed Deputy Sheriff Robert Harmon of the Anderson County Sheriff's Department while Harmon was trying to keep order.
• In Doddsville, Mississippi, Luther Holbert and his wife, both African American, were lynched for the February 3 killings of James Eastland and John Carr. Holbert and his wife were gruesomely tortured before being burned at the stake adjacent to an African American church and in front of a crowd of about 1000 people. The entire sequence of events had resulted in the deaths of 8 people, all of whom except Eastland were African American.
• Born:
• * Tom Bradshaw, Scottish footballer; in Coatbridge, North Lanarkshire, Scotland
• * Rocco D'Assunta, Italian actor and playwright; in Palermo, Italy
• * Ernest E. Debs, American politician, California State Assembly member; in Toledo, Ohio
• * Milton Krims, American screenwriter
• Died:
• * Marion T. Anderson, 64, American Union Army soldier, Medal of Honor recipient
• * James Boorman Colgate, 85, American financier
• * William Hart, 79, English-born Tasmanian businessman and politician
• * Joseph Powell Williams, 63, English politician, Member of Parliament, died of a stroke.
• * Joshua Young, 80, American Congregational Unitarian minister and abolitionist who presided over the funeral of John Brown