January 1900

January 1, 1900 (Monday)

• The Fists of Righteous Harmony, popularly known as the "Boxers", stepped up their opposition to the foreign presence in China, killing the first foreign missionary. Reverend S.M. Brooke from the United Kingdom was kidnapped the day before while returning to his home in Tainanfu and beheaded on New Year's Day.
• Born:
• * Xavier Cugat, Spanish musician; as Francesc Xavier Cugat de Bru i Deuflofeu; in Girona, Catalonia
• * Chiune Sugihara, Japanese diplomat who rescued an estimated 6,000 Lithuanian and Polish Jews from the Holocaust, Righteous Among the Nations; in Yaotsu, Gifu Prefecture
• *Major General Vasily Askalepov, Soviet Red Army officer who was arrested and imprisoned from 1936 to 1937 as a major, then released and promoted in rank; later proclaimed a Hero of the Soviet Union; in Don Host Oblast, Russian Empire

  January 2, 1900 (Tuesday)

• Following a brief cabinet meeting, United States Secretary of State John Hay announced the success of negotiations with other nations to begin the Open Door Policy to promote trade with China.
• The "autostage", the first electric bus, became operational, running on Fifth Avenue in New York City. Eight people could sit inside, and four outside, and the fare was one nickel.
• Born: William Haines, American actor; in Staunton, Virginia

  January 3, 1900 (Wednesday)

• Friedrich Weyerhäuser purchased 900,000 acres of forestlands in Washington from railroad owner James J. Hill for $5,400,000 in advance of the founding of the Weyerhauser Timber Company.
• An insurance carrier concluded that the British transport Victoria, last seen on November 14, had been lost in a typhoon.

  January 4, 1900 (Thursday)

• In Manila, Philippines, General Elwell Otis, the highest ranking American officer, issued orders providing for the first regulations of the sale of liquor in the city. "Until January 4, 1900", wrote the Assistant Adjutant-General, "there was, strictly speaking, no liquor license law in Manila."
• An earthquake was registered in Tiflis, killing more than 1,100 people. Ten villages, along with the town of Akhalkalaki were destroyed.
• In Lagos, formal ceremonies were held to lower the flag of the Royal Niger Company and replace it with the British flag, as the United Kingdom took over administration of Nigeria.
• United States Senator Lucien Baker of Kansas announced that he would not seek re-election.
• Born: James Bond, American ornithologist; in Philadelphia. In 1953, author Ian Fleming would get Bond's permission to use the name in his 007 novels.

  January 5, 1900 (Friday)

• In Baltimore, physicist Dr. Henry A. Rowland of Johns Hopkins University announced that he had discovered that the cause of Earth's magnetic field was its own rotation, based on experiments to produce magnetism by the rotation of a motor.
• In film, January 5, 1900, provided the opening of the 1960 George Pal production of The Time Machine, with the traveler having returned from 802,701 AD.
• Born: Yves Tanguy, French painter; in Paris

  January 6, 1900 (Saturday)

• Battles occurred in multiple venues in Southern Africa in the Second Boer War. The German steamship Herzog was seized by the British warship HMS Thetis outside of Delagoa Bay in East Africa, on suspicions that it was carrying supplies to Boer troops. The Portuguese colonial governor of Zambesia was among the passengers. After no troop supplies were found, the ship and its crew were released on January 22.
• In the Siege of Ladysmith, Boer troops under the command of General C.J. de Villiers attempted a raid against the British fortress in South Africa. 1,000 soldiers died in its defense. British Lieutenant-General Sir George White held the defense until relief arrived on February 28. His command during the battle earned him the Order of St Michael and St George.
• For the first time in centuries, the sword of the Gorsedd bards was solemnly unsheathed at Merionethshire in Wales. According to contemporary records, "The chief bard invoked the blessing of God on British arms in South Africa, and announced that the sword would not be sheathed again till the triumph of the forces of righteousness over the hordes of evil."

  January 7, 1900 (Sunday)

• Melville E. Ingalls, President of the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis Railway, known commonly as the "Big Four", reported that William Kissam Vanderbilt had taken control of that line. Vanderbilt had also taken control of the Lake Erie and Western, and the Chesapeake and Ohio railroads. Ingalls was quoted as saying, "There is no doubt that the Vanderbilts now own the 'Big Four'. As a matter of fact, they have controlled it for some time, but the practical ownership has just been secured." A meeting was held the following day, at Vanderbilt's office in Grand Central Station, of the directors of Big Four railroads.
• General A.W. Greely, polar explorer and Chief Signal Officer of the United States Army, was beaten unconscious at his home in Washington, D.C.
• Nikola Tesla closed down his laboratory in Colorado Springs, Colorado, after seven months of experiments in the long-distance transmission of energy.

  January 8, 1900 (Monday)

• U.S. President William McKinley added a large section of land in the Arizona Territory to the existing Navajo Indian Reservation, extending the Navajo territory westward to the edge of the Colorado River. The area includes Tuba City, Arizona and Cameron, Arizona. President McKinley also placed Alaska under military rule, creating the Department of Alaska within the War Department, citing increased migration to the territory. Colonel George M. Randall of the 8th U.S. Infantry was set to command the new department.
• Marshal O. Waggoner, an attorney in Toledo, Ohio who had recently converted to Christianity, destroyed his library of books "consisting of the writings of infidels". "Many of the volumes were exceedingly rare. There were a large number of manuscripts and first prints not to be found in any other library in America."
• The first 27 immigrants from Okinawa arrived in Hawaii on the ship City of China, following transportation arranged by Kyuzo Toyama, and were set to begin work on a sugar plantation.

  January 9, 1900 (Tuesday)

• Italian football club Lazio was founded as Società Podistica Lazio, being the first football club founded in the Italian capital of Rome.
• Arthur Balfour, Conservative leader of the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, acknowledged the United Kingdom's reverses in the Second Boer War, but added, "I know of no war in which Great Britain has been engaged, except that resulting in the independence of the American colonies, which did not end triumphantly."
• The home of New York World publisher Joseph Pulitzer was destroyed in a fire that killed a governess and a friend of the family. The fire broke out at the home, located on 10 East 55th Street in New York City, at 7:30 in the morning.
• Boxer Terry McGovern defeated George Dixon in a bout for the world featherweight championship, winning a $10,000 purse.
• The town of Willard Crossroads was founded in the U.S. state of Virginia.

  January 10, 1900 (Wednesday)

• The first through train from Cairo to Khartoum arrived in the Sudanese city.
• Field Marshal Lord Roberts arrived at Cape Town to replace General Redvers Buller as commander of British forces in the Second Boer War. Roberts, who had left from Southampton 18 days earlier on the Dunottar Castle, was accompanied by his chief of staff, Lord Kitchener.
• The Deutschland, operated by the Hamburg America Line and promising to be the fastest passenger ship to that time, was launched from the shipyards at Stettin, Germany.
• United States Secretary of War Elihu Root announced in Milwaukee that he would not accept the nomination to be William McKinley's running mate in 1900. The spot became available after the death, in 1899, of Vice President Garret Hobart.
• Kentucky Governor William S. Taylor told associates that he would not release his office, even if challenger William Goebel were to be ruled the winner of the recent state election.
• Collector F.M. Davis of Chicago was arrested after bills representing $100,000 of Confederate money were found at his mail order business on Monroe Street.

  January 11, 1900 (Thursday)

• Following a drought during the 1899 rainy season, famine affected more than three million people in the Central Provinces of British India. The colonial government extended the area for famine relief in response to reports.
• The New York Times reported that new cleaning machines had been placed in use at the Navy Department offices in Washington, D.C., with rubber tires and spreading brushes. The machines were operated by the women who formerly scrubbed the floor by hand.

  January 12, 1900 (Friday)

• Wilhelm Eppstein, an 18-year old German sailor, became the first person in Australia to die of bubonic plague. Eppstein had traveled from Gawler, South Australia to the Adelaide Hospital, arriving on January 1 "in a semi-delirious condition", and said that he had deserted from the ship Formosa after it had arrived on November 12. Following his death in quarantine, an autopsy confirmed the presence of the plague bacteria.
• Henry Ford introduced his first commercial motor vehicle, a two-seat electric-powered delivery wagon, under the name of the five-month old Detroit Automobile Company, which would produce eleven other models of cars before going bankrupt in November, at the rate of two per day. "Every one of the 12 or so vehicles produced through late 1900 had its own unique set of problems," a biographer would write later, "causing rip ups, tear downs, and redos that resulted in extensive, and expensive, delays. Motor vehicles retailed to the public for $1,000 were in fact costing about $1,250 to build." Rather than departing the business after the failure of the D.A.C., Ford would spend a year at designing a new, gasoline-powered automobile, and launch the Ford Motor Company on November 30, 1901.
• The Canadian Patriotic Fund was announced by Lord Minto, the Governor General of Canada, as a way of coordinating relief for Canadian soldiers who had been casualties of the Second Boer War. The fund would be incorporated by the Parliament of Canada on May 23, 1901 and would raise $339,975.63 during its existence, with charitable disbursements to 1,066 recipients.
• Born: Fuller Albright, American endocrinologist, identified two genetic illnesses, Albright's hereditary osteodystrophy and McCune–Albright syndrome; in Buffalo, New York