February 1912

February 1, 1912 (Thursday)

• General Manuel Bonilla, elected on November 3, 1911, was sworn in as President of Honduras.
• After four years of existence, the city of Strathcona, Alberta was incorporated into Edmonton. The merger had been approved by a 518–178 margin of Strathcona voters.
• The Stamford Brook station opened to serve District Railway and London and South Western Railway trains, eventually becoming part of the London Underground.
• A two-seat biplane prototype was test flown by aviator Geoffrey de Havilland at the Royal Aircraft Factory, Farnborough Airport, Hampshire, England.
• Died: Jimmy Doyle, 30, American baseball player, third baseman for the Cincinnati Reds and Chicago Cubs, leader in the National League for double plays and in errors, died of blood poisoning following an appendectomy.

  February 2, 1912 (Friday)

• The Royal Navy submarine HMS A3, with 14 men aboard, sank off of the Isle of Wight after being rammed by the depot ship Hazard.
• The German cargo ship SS Augsburg departed from New York City toward its destination of Durban in South Africa, with a crew of 39 people and a cargo of cans of kerosene to be delivered to Bataiva in the Dutch East Indies. Expected to arrive at Durban by March 5, the ship disappeared without a trace. The captain of another German ship, SS Magdeburg, which departed the same day, had passed through a severe storm on February 4 and speculated that SS Augsburg had sunk at that time.
• A general strike in Brisbane involving tramway workers turned violent when police officers and special constables attacked a crowd of 15,000 demonstrators assembling in the city's Market Square in what became known as "Baton Friday" and later, "Black Friday." Many of demonstrators were women, including hundreds of elderly. One of the elderly group reportedly stood her ground against a mounted police officer, stabbing the horse in the side with a hairpin that caused the horse to buck the officer off.
• The Union Party retained their majority in general elections held on the Faroe Islands.
• U.S. Senator Robert M. La Follette had been the foremost challenger against incumbent U.S. President William Howard Taft for the Republican Party nomination, until he went ahead with a speech to the Periodical Publishers' Association, despite being ill with a stomach virus. Instead of making the planned brief remarks, La Follette made a long, rambling speech that criticized the assembled newspaper reporters, then dropped out of sight. La Follette's disastrous showing cleared the way for former President Theodore Roosevelt to get the nomination instead.
• The Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association was organized as the first intercollegiate sports conference for African-American colleges. The original members of the conference were Hampton University, Howard University, Lincoln University, Shaw University, and Virginia Union University.
• Filmmaker Charles Urban released With Our King and Queen Through India, a 2½-hour Kinemacolor feature film of the Delhi Durbar attended by King George in December of 1911, at the Scala Theatre, London.
• Born:
• * Millvina Dean, British public servant, youngest and last survivor of the sinking of the Titanic; in Branscombe, Devonshire.
• * Burton Lane, American composer, known for musical hits including Finian's Rainbow and On a Clear Day You Can See Forever; in New York City.
• * Zhu Shenghao, Chinese academic, translated the works of William Shakespeare into the Chinese language; in Jiaxing, Zhejiang province.

  February 3, 1912 (Saturday)

• The French government decreed that the indigenes of Algeria, male residents of Arab descent, were to be drafted for three years service into the French Army. The move was opposed by French Algerians, who did not want the indigenous population to be trained to use weapons, and non-French Algerians.
• The rules of American football were revised by the National Collegiate Athletic Association following two days of deliberations. Among the alterations were that the length of the field was shortened from 110 yards to 100, teams would now have four downs instead of three to try to gain ten yards, kickoffs were to be made from the 40 yard line rather than the middle of the field, and the touchdown was now worth six points instead of five.
• Born:
• * Lynn Patrick, Canadian hockey player, left wing for the New York Rangers from 1934 to 1947; in Victoria, British Columbia.
• * Jacques Soustelle, French anthropologist, leading researcher on Pre-Columbian civilizations; in Montpellier, Hérault département.

  February 4, 1912 (Sunday)

• Bohemia won the Ice Hockey European Championship in Prague.
• Parisian tailor and inventor Franz Reichelt plunged to his death after jumping from the Eiffel Tower to test a wearable parachute.
• King George and Queen Mary arrived back in the United Kingdom at Spithead, England, after an absence of almost three months. The royal family had departed on November 10, 1911, to travel to British India.
• An ice bridge over Niagara Falls broke and carried an Ohio teenager and a Canadian husband and wife to their deaths over the falls, as thousands of spectators watched in horror. The bridge had formed two weeks earlier from the piling up of ice fields from up river, and was thick. An article in The New York Times remarked: "This is the first time in the history of the Niagara that lives have been lost in this way."
• U.S. President William Howard Taft ordered an increase of the number of American troops guarding the nation's border with Mexico.
• Born:
• * Erich Leinsdorf, Austrian-American conductor, known for his collaborations with Boston Symphony Orchestra, Metropolitan Opera, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and New York Philharmonic; in Vienna.
• * Byron Nelson, American golfer, winner of the 1937 British Open, the 1937 and 1942 Masters, the 1939 U.S. Open, and the 1940 and 1945 PGA Championships, and sixth all-time winner of the PGA Tour with 52 wins; in Waxahachie, Texas.

  February 5, 1912 (Monday)

• The Mormon colonies in Mexico, which had been founded by Americans more than 25 years earlier, were threatened for the first time when the residents of Colonia Juárez refused a demand by a force of Mexican rebels for weapons, horses and supplies. Initially, the colonists were able to resist a takeover by pledging to remain neutral and by requesting intervention by the American consul.
• The British Arbitration League, a peace society, issued an appeal against air warfare, with signatories including renowned British authors Arthur Conan Doyle and Thomas Hardy, and American painter John Singer Sargent.
• The first exhibition of Futurist painting was held, opening in Paris.
• Thornton Burgess published the first installment of his syndicated newspaper column "Bedtime Stories," which ran six days a week. He wrote 15,000 of the columns, along with 100 books, retiring in 1960 at the age of 86.
• Sidney Smith's cartoon Old Doc Yak made its debut in the Chicago Tribune.
• Born: Hedwig Potthast, German administrator, secretary and mistress to Heinrich Himmler; in Cologne.
• Died: Mary Greenleaf Clement Leavitt, 81, American activist against alcohol sales, leading promoter of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union .

  February 6, 1912 (Tuesday)

• Portuguese army reinforcements began arriving in Dili, East Timor to help put down a revolt in the interior.
• The colonial administration of German Samoa abolished the chieftain position of Ali'i Sili following the death of Mataʻafa Iosefo. Samoans Tanumafili I and Tamasese Meaole I were appointed fautua, or advisers to the colonial administration, in place of the position.
• The city of Mt. Lebanon, Pennsylvania was created and incorporated as a township.
• Born:
• *Eva Braun, German photographer, companion and wife of Adolf Hitler; in Munich.
• *Christopher Hill, English historian, leading expert on early modern Britain, in York.
• Died: James B. Weaver, 68, American politician, U.S. Representative for Iowa as member of the Greenback Party from 1879 to 1889, 1892 presidential candidate for the Populist Party.

  February 7, 1912 (Wednesday)

• One day after announcing that federal appellate judge William Cather Hook would be his nominee to fill the vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court caused by the death of John Marshall Harlan, U.S. President William Howard Taft withdrew Hook's name because of protests by the NAACP and other African-American organizations. Mahlon Pitney was selected by the President in place of Hook.
• The U.S. Marines landed at Puerto Cortés in Honduras.
• The Usambara Railway officially opened for operation in German East Africa.
• A rail line of in length opened between Jammerdrif to Wepener, South Africa.
• Born:
• * Russell Drysdale, British-Australian artist, known for paintings including Sofala and West Wyalong; in Bognor Regis, West Sussex.
• * Roberta McCain, American socialite and oil heiress.
• * Roy Sullivan, American park ranger, recorded by Guinness World Records for being struck the most times by lightning; in Greene County, Virginia.
• Died: Edward Wilmot Blyden, 79, Liberian politician and activist, proponent of Pan-Africanism.

  February 8, 1912 (Thursday)

• Robert G. Fowler landed his airplane in Jacksonville, Florida after starting from Los Angeles on October 19, becoming the first pilot to fly across the United States from west to east, and the second overall, after Cal Rodgers.
• Emmanouel Argyoropoulos became the first Greek pilot, taking a Nieuport airplane aloft at Athens. On his second flight of the day, he was accompanied by Greek Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos as his co-pilot.
• Australia inaugurated its first wireless telegraphic station, at Melbourne, as part of a plan to establish a network of 19 stations nationwide.