February 1909

February 1, 1909 (Monday)

• In Fort Wayne, Indiana, Dr. Herman G. Niermann died four days after having part of his digestive tract removed to prove a theory. Dr. Niermann had theorized that a portion of the tract "serves as the cesspool of poisons of the body and becomes the culture bed of certain diseases" and persuaded a surgeon to operate upon him on January 28. Peritonitis set in and killed Dr. Niermann.
• Born: George Beverly Shea, gospel singer and songwriter; in Winchester, Ontario

  February 2, 1909 (Tuesday)

• Francisco I. Madero challenged Porfirio Diaz, Mexico's president since 1884, to allow a free presidential election. Madero, author of the bestseller La sucesión presidencial en 1910, sent a copy of the book to President Diaz and then "began the greatest practical lesson that anyone had ever attempted in the history of Mexico". What followed was the Mexican Revolution of 1910; Madero toppled Diaz, but served only briefly until being assassinated himself.

  February 3, 1909 (Wednesday)

• A measure in California to forbid foreign ownership of land failed 48–28 in that state's House of Representatives.
• Born: Simone Weil, French philosopher, in Paris

  February 4, 1909 (Thursday)

• The California House of Representatives voted 46–28 to pass a school segregation bill to "establish separate schools for Indian children and for children of Mongolian or Japanese or Chinese descent" to block Asian-Americans from attending school with White students. Bills prohibiting Asian-Americans from serving on corporate boards or from living outside districts both failed. The segregation bill moved on to the California State Senate.
• Edgeworth David and his crew successfully rendezvoused with the ship.

  February 5, 1909 (Friday)

• At a meeting of the American Chemical Society at the Chemists' Club at 108 W. 55th Street in New York, Dr. Leo Baekeland announced his synthesis of a new chemical, obybenzyl-methylenglycolanhydride, which he called Bakelite. The polymer that Baekeland had created was "the first commercially useful artificial substance", and the first plastic.
• Clark County, Nevada, including Las Vegas, was created from the southern half of Lincoln County, by legislative action effective July 1, 1909
• Germany's legation in Chile was destroyed by fire, and a charred body, thought to be that of Chancellor Wilhelm Beckert, was found in the ruins. After an investigation showed that a large amount of money had been embezzled, and that the corpse was not Beckert's, a manhunt for the diplomat began. Beckert was caught one week later in Chillán, and the victim turned out to be Exequiel Tapia, a Chilean porter employed at the legation. Germany turned its former diplomat to the Chilean justice system, court, and Beckert was executed on July 5, 1910.

  February 6, 1909 (Saturday)

• The Great White Fleet passed Gibraltar from the Mediterranean Sea to the Atlantic Ocean.

  February 7, 1909 (Sunday)

• The Namibian village of Schuckmannsburg was established by Captain Kurt Streitwolf in order to claim the Caprivi Strip, a 450 km-long buffer zone between the Portuguese and British colonies.
• Born: Wilhelm Freddie, Danish painter, in Copenhagen

  February 8, 1909 (Monday)

• At his lawyer's office, Hiram Percy Maxim, son of machine gun inventor Hiram Maxim, demonstrated to reporters his new invention, the "Maxim silencer", a firearms sound suppressor. "I shall make war absolutely noiseless", he told the press.
• Died: Catulle Mendès, 67, French poet and playwright, was found dead inside a railway tunnel at Saint-Germain-en-Laye after having stepped out of a moving train after its departure from Paris.

  February 9, 1909 (Tuesday)

• The Maldivian island of Minicoy was signed over by its ruler, Imbicchi Ali-Adi Raja Bibi, to the Dominion of India.
• U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt signed into law a bill prohibiting the importation of opium into the United States. Importation would remain legal until April 1.
• Senator Philander C. Knox, President William Howard Taft's nominee for U.S. Secretary of State, was found to be constitutionally ineligible for the office because the salary for the post had been increased during his term. Article 1, Section 6, Paragraph 2 of the U.S. Constitution provided that "No Senator or Representative shall, during the term for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil office ... which shall have been created, or the emoluments whereof shall have been increased during such time." The problem was eventually solved by what would later be called the Saxbe fix, by rolling back the salary for the position until March 3, 1911, when Knox's term would expire.
• Born:
• *Harald Genzmer, German classical composer, in Bremen
• *Carmen Miranda, Portuguese-born Brazilian actress and singer; in Marco de Canaveses
• *Dean Rusk, U.S. Secretary of State from 1961 to 1969; in Cherokee County, Georgia

  February 10, 1909 (Wednesday)

• The "Saxbe fix" for Philander C. Knox's constitutional problems was sponsored by Senator Hale of Maine. After passing the Senate, the bill passed the House 173–112 and it was signed the next day.
• Nadir of American race relations: The California State Senate defeated the anti-Asian segregation bill that had passed the state House, but by a narrow margin, 41–37.

  February 11, 1909 (Thursday)

• With three weeks left until his inauguration, President-elect President William Howard Taft arrived back in the United States from his trip to Panama to cheering crowds at New Orleans. After arriving on the cruiser, Taft boarded the to sail up the Mississippi River.
• Born:
• *Max Baer, American boxer and world heavyweight champion 1934-1935); in Omaha, Nebraska
• *Joseph Mankiewicz, American filmmaker known for All About Eve; in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania

  February 12, 1909 (Friday)

• As the centennial of Abraham Lincoln's birth was celebrated across the United States, President Theodore Roosevelt appeared at Hodgenville, Kentucky, for the laying of the cornerstone for a building to house a log cabin in which Lincoln was born.
• The New York Academy of Sciences celebrated the centennial of the birth of Charles Darwin.
• The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was founded on the centennial of President Abraham Lincoln's birth, by a group that included W. E. B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells, Archibald Grimké, Henry Moskowitz, Mary White Ovington, Oswald Garrison Villard, and William English Walling.
• The ferry began sinking off of Cape Terawhiti en route to Wellington, New Zealand, then exploded when the sea's waters flooded the boilers, killing 75 of the 105 passengers and crew.

  February 13, 1909 (Saturday)

• At a dinner in New York for his financial backers, Lee De Forest announced "I have succeeded in combining the wireless telegraph and telephone in one instrument ... Some day the news and even advertising will be sent out to the public over the wireless telephone." De Forest would demonstrate the technology on January 12, 1910.
• Died: Julius Thomsen, 82, Danish thermochemist known for postulating the Thomsen–Berthelot principle

  February 14, 1909 (Sunday)

• In Acapulco, Mexico, more than 250 persons were killed in a fire at the Flores Theatre. An estimated 1,000 persons were watching an exhibition of "moving pictures" when a film caught fire and the blaze spread to some bunting. With three narrow exits from the theatre, hundreds were either trampled or burned to death.

  February 15, 1909 (Monday)

• George Spencer Millet, an office boy at an insurance company at the Metropolitan Life Building in New York City, was fleeing six young women stenographers at his workplace intent on giving him kisses for his 15th birthday while carrying an ink eraser in his breast pocket. As the women moved in for their kisses, he fell forward, and the eraser's point pierced his heart, killing him.
• The U.S. House of Representatives unanimously passed a bill for statehood for the territories of Arizona and New Mexico. The Senate Territories Committee tabled the bill on February 27 after Minnesota's Senator Knute Nelson charged that New Mexican officials were corrupt. The two states would be admitted in 1912.
• On the same day, the Arizona Territorial Legislature, which had recently changed from Republican control to Democratic Party control, voted to abolish the eight-year-old Arizona Rangers, a law enforcement body modeled after the Texas Rangers. Since the creation of the Rangers on March 13, 1901, 107 men had served as Rangers.
• Park County, Wyoming, was created.
• Born: Miep Gies, Austrian-born Dutch humanitarian who helped hide Anne Frank and preserved her diary; in Vienna

  February 16, 1909 (Tuesday)

• At the West Stanley Colliery in Stanley, County Durham, England, 160 coal miners were killed.
• Born: Hugh Beaumont, American TV actor who portrayed Ward Cleaver on Leave It to Beaver; in Eudora, Kansas

  February 17, 1909 (Wednesday)

• Geronimo, Bedonkohe Apache war chief who led the Apaches for twenty years in wars against white invaders of the Southwest United States, died of pneumonia at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. Six days earlier, the man born as Goyaałé had gone to Lawton, got drunk, fell off of his horse into a creek, and was not found until hours later, by which time illness had set in.
• Died: Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich of Russia, 61, former Military Governor of St. Petersburg and uncle of Tsar Nicholas II

  February 18, 1909 (Thursday)

• U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt convened at the White House the first North American Conservation Conference, with delegates from the United States, Canada, and Mexico meeting at the East Room of the White House to discuss the conservation of the natural resources of the continent.
• Born: Wallace Stegner, American author; in Lake Mills, Iowa