July 1912

July 1, 1912 (Monday)

• The French Chamber of Deputies voted 460–79 to approve the protectorate over Morocco.
• The first payments under the British National Insurance Act 1911 were collected, with the first benefits to be paid on January 1, 1913.
• The British Copyright Act 1911 came into effect.
• A new law went into effect in Egypt, making all ancient artifacts property of the state. Dealers were required to have a license, items could not be exported without a permit, and any evasion of the law would be punishable by confiscation of the items.
• The Woolworth Building in New York City became the world's tallest skyscraper, at, with the driving in of the final rivet to its steel frame, and would be completed by April 1, 1913.
• Russian ethnologist Shloyme Ansky, with the backing of philanthropist Goratsii Gintsburg, launched the Jewish Ethnographic Expedition, a project that collected and preserved thousands of Jewish artifacts in Russia until the outbreak of World War I.
• The Conway Seashore Railroad was bought out by Atlantic Coast Line Railroad in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
• The Minnesota–Wisconsin Minor Baseball League formally disbanded with the Winona Pirates being its final champions.
• Born:
• * David Brower, American activist, founder of Friends of the Earth and the Earth Island Institute; in Berkeley, California, United States
• * Sally Kirkland, American fashion editor, manager of Lord & Taylor, editor for Vogue and Life; as Sarah Phinney in El Reno, Oklahoma, United States
• Died: Harriet Quimby, 37, the first American woman to gain a pilot's license and first woman to fly solo across the English Channel, is killed, along with a passenger, William A.P. Willard, when her airplane suddenly pitched forward, throwing them out of their seats. Quimby and Willard fell from an altitude of, into deep waters in Dorchester Bay near Squantum, Massachusetts, where Quimby had been participating in an airshow organized by Willard.

  July 2, 1912 (Tuesday)

• New Jersey Governor Woodrow Wilson received the Democratic Party nomination for President of the United States, after 46 ballots had been taken at the party convention. On the 45th ballot, with 730 votes needed to win, Wilson had 633, former House Speaker Champ Clark had 306, and Alabama Senator Oscar Underwood had 97. Underwood then withdrew his candidacy, putting the nomination within reach, and Clark followed suit. The final result was 990 votes for Wilson, 84 for Champ Clark, and 12 for Judson Harmon. With the Republican Party split between the followers of U.S. President William Howard Taft and former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, the Democrats would win the U.S. presidency for the first time since 1892.
• The airship Akron exploded in mid-air near Atlantic City, New Jersey, killing the five crew members on board including pioneer aerial photographer Melvin Vaniman.
• Denmark established an army air corps to complement the naval air corps formed the previous year. The two units merged in 1950 to become the Royal Danish Air Force.
• Born: Bill Mitchell, American automobile designer, best known iconic vehicle designs for Chevrolet including the Bel Air, the Stingray, and the Camaro; in Cleveland, Ohio, United States
• Died: Tom Richardson, 41, English cricketer, fast bowler for the England cricket team from 1893 to 1898, died from a heart attack.

  July 3, 1912 (Wednesday)

• The royal commission into the sinking of the Titanic wrapped in London after 42 days of investigation involving interviews with nearly 100 witnesses, making it the longest and most detailed British public inquiry up until that time.
• Sixteen miners were killed and six injured in an explosion at the Osterfeld colliery near Oberhausen in Germany.
• Sir Francis Henry May, recently appointed as the British Governor of Hong Kong, escaped an assassination attempt. A Chinese resident fired a revolver, striking the chair in which May had been sitting, but missed the Governor.
• Indiana Governor Thomas R. Marshall received the Democratic Party's nomination for vice-president at 1:56 am, more than eight hours after Woodrow Wilson had won the presidential nomination. In a statement, Wilson said of Marshall, "I feel honored by having him as a running mate," cited by William Safire as the possible "first recorded use of the term by a presidential nominee" to describe the vice-presidential nominee on his ticket, and giving a new meaning for a horse racing term.
• The Turkish Air Academy was founded as the Ottoman Empire began training its own pilots and flight officers.
• William Merriam Burton applied for the patent of the thermal cracking process that he had invented, which greatly increased the amount of gasoline that could be developed from crude oil. U.S. Patent No. 1,049,667 would be granted on January 7, 1913.
• In fiction, con man Harold Hill arrives in River City, Iowa, on the day before the town's Independence Day festivities in the opening act of Meredith Willson's 1957 musical The Music Man.
• Born:
• * Hans Raj Khanna, Indian judge, justice of the Supreme Court of India from 1971 to 1977, recipient of the Padma Vibhushan; in Amritsar, Punjab Province, British India
• * Elizabeth Taylor, British writer, author of A View of the Harbour and Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont; as Elizabeth "Betty" Coles in Reading, Berkshire, England
• Died: Robert Hoke, 75, American army officer, major general for the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War

  July 4, 1912 (Thursday)

• Forty-one people were killed and 50 injured in a railroad accident near Corning, New York. Train Number 9 of the Lackawanna Railroad had stopped at Gibson, a village near Corning, when at 5:06 am it was struck at by a train of the United States Express, whose engineer had disregarded "three sets of conspicuous warning signals."
• The International Olympic Committee voted to hold the 1916 Summer Olympics in Berlin, rejecting a bid from Budapest. The Games of the Sixth Olympiad would be cancelled after the outbreak of World War I in 1914.
• The new 48-star American flag was first raised. Proclaimed as the symbol of the United States, it would continue to be used for forty-seven years, until July 4, 1959, when replaced by a 49-star banner. Until 2007, the 48-star flag had been the longest-lasting American flag in history.
• Heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson successfully defended his title against white challenger "Fireman Jim Flynn" in East Las Vegas, New Mexico. The bout was scheduled to go for as many as 45 rounds but was stopped by New Mexico state police, who entered the ring in the ninth round at the request of Governor McDonald.
• Lightweight boxing champ Ad Wolgast fought challenger "Mexican Joe Rivers" in Los Angeles. In the third round, the fighters knocked each other out with simultaneous blows. Referee Jack Welch lifted the arm of the prone Wolgast and declared him the winner and still champion.
• French cyclist Gabriel Poulain won a contest for human powered flight by remaining at least off the ground for 3.6 meters, slightly less than 12 feet.
• Died: Emil Stang, 78, Prime Minister of Norway

  July 5, 1912 (Friday)

• In the second fatal American railroad crash in two days, 26 people were killed and 29 injured when a freight train rear-ended a passenger train on the Ligonier Valley Railroad near the resort town of Wilpen, Pennsylvania. Most of the victims were women and children, who were returning home after a day at the Wilpen Fair Grounds.
• The first International Radiotelegraph Convention was signed in London. It would be replaced in 1927 by the Radiotelegraph General Convention.

  July 6, 1912 (Saturday)

• The 1912 Summer Olympics were formally opened at the national stadium in Stockholm by declaration of King Gustaf. Twenty-eight nations and 2,407 athletes, including 48 women, participated.
• The brief administration of New Zealand Prime Minister Thomas Mackenzie was brought down in a motion of no confidence, with a vote of 41–33, after four members of his own party voted against him.
• The cornerstone for the high school in Moscow, Idaho, was laid, with the school completed and opened six months later. It was registered with the National Register of Historic Places in 1992.
• Born:
• * Heinrich Harrer, Austrian mountaineer and writer, leader of the mountaineering team to climb the north face of Eiger in the Bernese Alps, author of Seven Years in Tibet and The White Spider; in Hüttenberg, Austria-Hungary
• * Molly Yard, American social activist, feminist, assistant to Eleanor Roosevelt, President of National Organization for Women from 1987 to 1991; as Mary Yard in Chengdu, Republic of China

  July 7, 1912 (Sunday)

• A dynamite explosion in Rancagua, Chile, killed 38 people.
• A riot broke out during a strike among lumber mill workers in Grabow, Louisiana, resulting in four deaths, fifty injuries, and a total 58 strikers arrested.
• The first Automat in New York City, providing fast food to customers in a self-service format, was opened by Horn & Hardart at 1557 Broadway in Times Square. Similar to a vending machine, the service featured foods prepared in a kitchen and then placed in windowed slots, which a diner could access by placing coins into a machine. The service had existed in Philadelphia since 1902.
• Magician and escape artist Harry Houdini performed his most dangerous stunt up to that time. In addition to his familiar act of having to escape being locked up in handcuffs and leg irons, Houdini was placed in a wooden box that was weighted down, nailed shut, and then thrown off of the tugboat Catherine Moran into the East River at New York City. A minute after the coffin sank, Houdini surfaced before hundreds of spectators, including reporters and photographers.
• Born: Gérard Lecointe, French army officer, final commander of colonial forces in French Algeria, recipitient of the Legion of Honour and National Order of Merit; in Poitiers, France
• Died: William Howard Durham, 39, American theologian, advocate of the Finished Work in Pentecostalism, from pneumonia.