July 1911

July 1, 1911 (Saturday)

• The Agadir Crisis began at noon in Paris, when Germany's Ambassador to France, the Baron von Schoen, made a surprise visit to the French Foreign Ministry and delivered to Foreign Minister Justin de Selves a diplomatic note, announcing that Germany had sent a warship, the gunboat and troops, to occupy Agadir, at that time a part of the protectorate of French Morocco. The pretext was to protect German businesses and citizens in the small port, and the note ended "As soon as order and tranquility have returned to Morocco, the vessel entrusted with this protective mission will leave the port of Agadir." The German infringement on French territory threatened to start a new European war.
• Compulsory military service was inaugurated in Australia.
• Eduard Sachau, linguist and archaeologist, completed his transcription and translation of ancient Aramaic papyri.
• Russia's Jewish Literary Society was ordered closed by Tsarist authorities in the capital city of Saint Petersburg.
• Born: Sergei Sokolov, Marshal of the Soviet Union, and Minister of Defense of USSR ; in Yevpatoria, Russian Empire .

  July 2, 1911 (Sunday)

• The comic strip Krazy Kat, by African-American cartoonist George Herriman and was spun off from The Dingbat Family, debuts. The strip ran until Herriman's death in 1944.
• The United States completed its break of diplomatic relations with Colombia, closing the consulate general there.
• The Interstate Commerce Commission ordered an investigation of all express train companies in the United States.
• Claims totaling $250,000 were filed against Mexico for the deaths and injuries of Americans in El Paso during fighting at Juarez.
• Born:
• *Dorothy Horstmann, American physician who made the critical discovery that polio reaches the nervous system through the bloodstream; in Spokane.
• *Diego Fabbri, Italian playwright; in Forlì.
• Died: Felix Mottl, 54, director of the Royal Opera in Munich.

  July 3, 1911 (Monday)

• The British strike of seamen ended, with the strikers winning most of their demands.
• Two days after it was dispatched to French Morocco by Germany, the gunboat anchored off of the coast of Agadir.
• The United States Senate voted 55-28 in favor of a resolution holding that the election of Senator William Lorimer of Illinois had been invalid, effectively removing him from office.
• Turk Yurdu Cemiyet, the Association of the Turkish Homeland, was founded by Turkish supremacist Yusuf Akçura, Mehmed Emin and Ahmen Agaoglu.

  July 4, 1911 (Tuesday)

• Third baseman Rafael Almeida and outfielder Armando Marsans, both natives of Cuba, became the first Hispanic players in Major League Baseball history, debuting in Chicago for the Cincinnati Reds against the Cubs. Although the two were dark-skinned and had played for a Negro team, they avoided the ban against African-American players by producing proof that they "were of Castilian rather than Negro heritage."
• The hottest day of the 1911 United States heat wave set records that stood a century later, in Vermont and New Hampshire, as well as 104° in Boston, and 113° in Junction City, Kansas. In Chicago, 64 died in one day, and 51 the day before.
• Born:
• *Mitch Miller, American singer and television personality ; in Rochester, New York.
• *Frederick Seitz, American physicist, and co-proponent of Wigner–Seitz cell; in San Francisco.
• * Elizabeth Peratrovich, civil rights activist for Alaskan native peoples; in Petersburg, Alaska.
• Died:
• *Vaughan Kester, 41, American novelist.
• *Franklin Fyles, 64, American playwright and theater critic.

  July 5, 1911 (Wednesday)

• By a 253-46 vote, Britain's House of Lords passed a watered down version of the Parliament Act 1911 received from the House of Commons, including amendments made by Lord Lansdowne.
• The record-breaking heat wave in North America ended after five days of record high temperatures. In the first five days of July, more than 500 deaths were attributed to the heat.
• Turkey began military preparations to suppress a revolt in Montenegro.
• Born: Georges Pompidou, President of France from 1969 to 1974, Prime Minister 1962-68; in Montboudif, Cantal département.
• Died: Maria Pia of Savoy, 63, Queen Consort of Portugal 1862-1889 as the wife of King Luis I, and later Queen Dowager of Portugal until the monarchy was abolished in 1910.

  July 6, 1911 (Thursday)

• Charles Flint acquired nearly all of the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company, buying out Herman Hollerith for $1,210,500. For the next 10 years, Hollerith retained control of design changes in the CTR tabulating machines and stifled the growth of the company.
• Publisher Charles Curtis debuted a new version of the farmers' magazine Country Gentleman, whose circulation had declined to only 2,000 paying subscribers at the time of acquisition. Within 30 years, he had increased the number of subscribers to 2,000,000. The magazine was discontinued in 1955 after being sold to the Farm Journal.
• An arbitration treaty between the United States and the United Kingdom was signed.
• U.S. President William H. Taft created the Devils Postpile National Monument in Madera County, California as federal territory after learning that mining companies were planning to demolish the area's hundreds of pillars of columnar basalt in order to build a dam. The Devils Postpile had been formed one million years earlier from volcanic lava that had cooled into columns of basalt that stood high. Only two other similar examples are known on Earth, the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland and Fingal's Cave in Scotland. Taft's order prevented the dynamiting of the natural wonder for use as construction material.
• Born: LaVerne Andrews, American singer and the eldest of the 1940s trio The Andrews Sisters; in Minneapolis.

  July 7, 1911 (Friday)

• In Washington, DC, the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom and Japan signed the Convention on the International Protection of Fur Seals, prohibiting hunting of the endangered fur seals in the North Pacific Ocean. In the first six years, the seal population increased by 30%.
• King George V and Queen Mary arrived in Dublin for a visit as sovereigns of Ireland. They stayed until July 12.
• Born: Gian-Carlo Menotti, Italian-born American composer ; in Cadegliano-Viconago.
• Died:
• *Edward Dicey, 79, English journalist and novelist.
• *Alexander C. Mitchell, 50, U.S. Congressman who represented Kansas for only four months before his death.

  July 8, 1911 (Saturday)

• The city of Burbank, California, with 500 residents, was incorporated. One century later, its population was over 100,000.
• U.S. Vice President James S. Sherman, in his capacity as President of the U.S. Senate, broke a long-standing tradition in Congress of using only hand fans for cooling, by bringing the first electric fan to the Senate Chamber. The same day, other members of Congress followed suit.
• Died: Ira Erastus Davenport, 72, American spiritualist and magician.

  July 9, 1911 (Sunday)

• Francisco I. Madero, who had won election as the President of Mexico in 1909 as the candidate of the Partido Nacional Antirreeleccionista on a platform of preventing presidents from serving consecutive terms, issued a manifesto rebranding the party after having accomplished the mission of amending the Mexican Constitution to allow presidents to serve a single six-year term. Madero's organization was renamed the Progressive Constitutionalist Party.
• The leaders of France and Germany agreed to negotiate an end to the Agadir Crisis that had arisen over the two nations' African colonies. Ultimately, Germany would recognize France's protectorate status over Morocco in return for the transfer of portions of the French Congo to Germany's neighboring colony, Kamerun.
• Born:
• *John Archibald Wheeler, American theoretical physicist who coined the astronomical terms "black hole" and "wormhole"; in Jacksonville, Florida.
• *Mervyn Peake, British writer and illustrator, best known for the Gormenghast series of books; in Lushan, Jiangxi Province, China .
• *Aleksandrs Laime, Latvian-born explorer, most noted for being the first recorded human to reach Venezuela's Angel Falls; in Riga.

  July 10, 1911 (Monday)

• In arbitration by King George V, Chile was ordered to pay $935,000 to the United States Alsop firm. Alsop had demanded $3,000,000 with interest; the $935K was paid on November 13.
• The Royal Australian Navy was bestowed its name by King George V, having previously been the "Commonwealth Naval Forces."
• Troops from Peru, arriving on the launch Loreto and backed up by the gunboat America, arrived at the settlement of La Pedrera, established by Colombia on disputed territory on the Apaporis, a tributary of the Amazon River. Peruvian Lt. Col. Oscar Benavides gave the Colombians an ultimatum to abandon the outpost. After a battle of two days, the Colombians surrendered, and agreements on July 15 and July 19 ended the fighting.

  July 11, 1911 (Tuesday)

• The Federal Express, a passenger train on the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad running the Boston to Washington route, jumped the track at Bridgeport at 3:35 am, killing 14 people and injured 42 more.
• France's Chamber of Deputies voted 476-77 to postpone further discussion of the Moroccan problem.
• The mining settlement of South Porcupine, Ontario was destroyed by forest fires that swept across the province. Forest fires had broken out across Northern Ontario, and over four days, they would kill 400 or more people.

  July 12, 1911 (Wednesday)

• Ty Cobb of the Detroit Tigers, whose career record of stealing home 54 times is unbroken, stole second base, third base and home on three consecutive pitches by Harry Krause in the first inning of a 9-0 win over the Philadelphia Athletics.
• Au Sable, Michigan, was destroyed by forest fires.