July 1901

July 1, 1901 (Monday)

• The British and Japanese sections of Beijing were formally restored to the control of Imperial China.
• In Germany, the Versicherungsaufichtsgesetz went into effect, regulating private insurance companies for the first time. The Act, passed on May 12, was modeled on similar provisions in Austria-Hungary, Switzerland, and several individual states in the United States.
• France's "Law on Associations" took effect, requiring that any associations in France had to be "composed of French citizens without foreign obligations". Championed by Prime Minister Pierre Waldeck-Rousseau, the 1901 law had its strongest effect on French members of the Catholic Church, since it had obligations to the Vatican in Rome. "Ultimately," a historian would write, "12,000 Catholic schools were closed, and 50,000 members of religious orders were dispersed."
• The last issue of Le Moniteur Universel, which had been the official newspaper of the French government from 1789 until 1871, was published. In the thirty years since becoming a private publication, its circulation had gradually declined.
• In the Lake View section on Chicago's north side, a bolt of lightning killed four men and seven boys who had taken refuge from the rain in a zinc-covered shed near the Robbins Pier. The youngest victim was an 11-year-old boy, while two others were 12 years old.

  July 2, 1901 (Tuesday)

• Coroners' offices reported 225 heat-related deaths in a single day in New York City and its suburbs as temperatures of 98° continued, the day after 96 people there had died from the "hot wave". Fifty deaths each were reported in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. The death toll the day before in New York had been 96, and, in the days before air-conditioning, thousands of tenement dwellers "brought their mattresses from inside the houses and camped in the street" and 250 horses died. On July 3, New York lost 188 people, and Philadelphia another 59, even as temperatures began to drop.

  July 3, 1901 (Wednesday)

• American outlaw Kid Curry and the remaining members of The Wild Bunch pulled off a train robbery of the Great Northern Flyer. Curry and Ben Kilpatrick boarded the train at Malta, Montana, as passengers, rode for seven miles, and as the train approached Exeter Switch near the town of Wagner, Logan left his seat, walked to the front of the train, climbed over into the engineer's cab, pulled out his two six-guns, and ordered the men to stop. After it halted, the train was boarded by O. C. "Deaf Charley" Hanks and Laura Bullion, who had been waiting at the switch. Breaking into the express car, they dynamited a safe that was carrying $40,000 worth of bank notes that was being transported to the Montana National Bank in Montana. Some accounts place Butch Cassidy at the scene, while other historians conclude that Cassidy had already departed the United States on a ship bound for Argentina.
• A district judge in Omaha declined to continue an injunction, and cleared the way for the first ever exhibition the sport of bullfighting in Nebraska, to take place on July 4. Although the filers of the suit cited the state law against animal cruelty, the organizers noted that "the picadores are to be without real lances, the chulos without real banderillos and the matador without a real sword", since the instruments "are to be imitated in soft pine and papier mache." Judge Jacob Fawcett commented that "he was satisfied that the bull fights will not present one-tenth of the brutality that is to be witnessed on a football field."
• Born:
• *Ruth Crawford Seeger, American composer, in East Liverpool, Ohio
• *Thelma Wood, American sculptor, in Kansas

  July 4, 1901 (Thursday)

• Future U.S. President William Howard Taft was sworn in as the Governor-General of the Philippines in a ceremony at Cathedral Plaza in Manila coincided with 125th anniversary of the independence of the U.S., where General Arthur MacArthur formally transferred his authority as Military Governor to Taft's civilian government. MacArthur transferred his command of American troops in the Philippines to Major General Adna Chaffee. In his address, Governor-General Taft announced that the Philippine Commission that served as legislature would include three new Filipino members on September 1. As Taft took office, 22 of the 27 organized Philippine provinces were at peace, while the insurrection continued in five and 16 had not yet been organized.
• The longest covered bridge in the world, the 1,282-foot span over the Saint John River at Hartland, New Brunswick, was opened.
• Died:
• *John Fiske, 59, American philosopher
• *Johannes Schmidt, 58, German linguist
• *Peter Tait, 70, Scottish physicist and pioneer in the study of thermodynamics

  July 5, 1901 (Friday)

• The French Navy submarine Gustave Zédé stunned the naval world by demonstrating its potential to sneak up upon and sink even the most powerful of surface ships. The occasion was exercises of the French Mediterranean Fleet; the Gustave Zédé traveled 160 miles under its own power, moved undersea into Ajaccio harbor on the island of Corsica, and struck the Fleet's flagship, the Charles Martel, with a dummy torpedo. "The successful 'sinking' of a fully protected battleship by a tiny submarine which could approach its target, deliver a lethal blow and escape without being detected," a historian would write later, "was a watershed in the history of submarines and was an object lesson to the naval planners of all major countries in the changes that were going to be wrought into the future shape of sea power."
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City received its largest contribution up to that time, as the beneficiary of $5,750,000 or more, representing nearly all of the estate of the late Jacob S. Rogers, a locomotive manufacturer and philanthropist. Only $250,000 total was left to eight relatives.
• Born: Len Lye, New Zealand-American kinetic sculpture artist and filmmaker, in Christchurch

  July 6, 1901 (Saturday)

• Canadian sportsman John Voss and freelance journalist Norman Luxton departed from Vancouver to begin a cruise around the world the Tilikum, a 38-foot long dugout canoe that had been carved by Nuu-chah-nulth tribesmen from the trunk of a cedar tree. Voss and Luxton modified the canoe by raising its sides, installing a deck, adding support, and installing a keel, a rudder, a cabin, a cockpit, and sails. Luxton would depart after sustaining an injury on a reef in the South Pacific. After the boat reached South Africa in 1902, Voss would abandon the circumnavigation attempt, sailing along the Atlantic coast of South America for refitting in Brazil, rather than attempting to reach the Pacific Ocean. He would end his adventure in October, 1904, sailing the Tilikum up the River Thames into London.
• Born:
• * Marshal Pavel Rotmistrov, Soviet commander of armored troops during World War II
• * Syama Prasad Mukherjee, Indian politician, founder of the right wing nationalist party Bharatiya Jana Sangh in 1951, in Calcutta
• * Philip Wheelwright, American philosopher, in Elizabeth, New Jersey
• Died:
• * Prince Chlodwig, Prince of Hohenlohe, 82, Chancellor of Germany from 1894 to 1900
• * William J. Stillman, 73, American war correspondent and former U.S. Ambassador to Italy
• * Joseph LeConte, 78, American geologist and physician who co-founded the Sierra Club conservation society

  July 7, 1901 (Sunday)

• U.S. President William McKinley proclaimed the opening to settlers of particular Indian territories in the Oklahoma Territory, including the Creek Nation, effective August 6.
• Born:
• * Vittorio De Sica, Italian film director and actor, three-time recipient of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, in Lazio, Italy
• * Sam Katzman, American B-movie film director and producer, best known for Earth vs. the Flying Saucers and the Jungle Jim series, in New York City
• Died:
• * Pierre Lorillard IV, 67, American tobacco manufacturer and millionaire
• * Johanna Spyri, 74, Swiss writer best known for creating the 1880 children's book ''Heidi''

  July 8, 1901 (Monday)

• The House of Lords ruled that the United Kingdom had no jurisdiction in overturning a decision by a foreign court that had acted in accordance with the foreign nation's laws. The case in question involved the 1897 seizure of the British freighter S.S. Baluchistan by the Sultanate of Muscat and Oman, and the confiscation of its cargo of 280 cases of rifles and 306 cases of cartridges, being shipped to Persia. Exercising their judiciary power, the Lords concluded that the seizure was legal under the laws of Muscat, which had outlawed the supply of arms to Islamic rebels.
• An attempt was made to assassinate Reginald Wingate, the British Governor-General of the Sudan, when his train was derailed in Egypt at Damanhur as he approached Alexandria. Wingate was able to escape unharmed, and the saboteurs of the rail line were never found.
• The Texas Legislature voted an extensive reorganization and reduction of the Texas Rangers state police force, eliminating the "Frontier Battalion" and consolidated the organization into four companies of no more than 21 members. However, the initial budgeting allowed for only eight rangers and a sergeant for each division.
• My Brilliant Career, the first novel by Australian author Miles Franklin, was first published. In 1979, 25 years after her death, her book would be adapted to a film of the same name.
• Texas entrepreneur John Henry Kirby chartered the largest lumber manufacturer in the world, Kirby Lumber Company, and one of the largest oil producers in the world at that time, the Houston Oil Company, on the same day.
• Born: Paul David Devanandan, Indian Christian theologist and pioneer in comparative religion dialogues, in Madras