July 1909

July 1, 1909 (Thursday)

• In the first political assassination in Britain attempted since 1882, Curzon Wyllie, chief aide to British India's Secretary of State, was shot and killed in London by Indian student nationalist Madan Lal Dhingra. Another bystander, Dr. Cawas Lalcaca, was fatally wounded by Dhingra's shots.
• Clark County, Nevada, Palm Beach County, Florida, and Lincoln County, Montana, all came into existence on the same day.
• Alice Blériot, wife of Louis Blériot, saved a child from death, and the grateful family loaned the almost bankrupt aviator 25,000 francs, enough to help him perfect his Blériot XI airplane in an attempt to be the first person to fly across the English Channel.
• Arctic explorer Joseph-Elzéar Bernier placed a plaque at Winter Harbour on Melville Island that proclaimed "The Memorial is erected today to commemorate the taking possession for the Dominion of Canada of the whole Arctic Archipelago lying to the north of America from long. 60 W to 141 W up to the latitude of 90 N."

  July 2, 1909 (Friday)

• At the BASF laboratories, chemists Fritz Haber and his assistant, Robert Le Rossignol, first demonstrated a nitrogen fixation process for synthesizing ammonia from hydrogen and nitrogen, using osmium as the catalyst. Carl Bosch and Alwin Mittasch adapted the Haber Process to large scale production, making it possible to artificially produce nitrates for fertilizer.
• Born:
• *Stavros Niarchos, Greek shipping magnate; in Piraeus
• *Earl Butz, controversial U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, 1971–76; in Albion, Indiana

  July 3, 1909 (Saturday)

• The first Hudson automobile, the "Model 20", came off the assembly line in Detroit. The last Hudson was manufactured in 1957, after the company merged into AMC.
• Federal charges were filed against the manufacturers of Koca Nola, the third most popular cola after Coke and Pepsi, after a one-gallon jug of the syrup was found to include cocaine. Ironically, the company's slogan was "Delicious and Dopeless". The company was fined $100 for "adulteration" and failure to disclose ingredients; bottling of Koca Nola ceased after the company went bankrupt in 1910.

  July 4, 1909 (Sunday)

• Architect Daniel Burnham and a team of planners unveiled the Plan of Chicago, also known as the Burnham Plan, a long range vision for the Windy City.
• A pedestal and bust of Abraham Lincoln was dedicated in Scranton, Pennsylvania, at Nay Aug Park. The statue disappeared at some point in the next few decades, and clues to its whereabouts were still being sought a century later.
• France's battleship Danton, the first to have turbine engines, was launched from the shipyard at Brest. The Danton was torpedoed and sunk on March 19, 1917.

  July 5, 1909 (Monday)

• Suffragette Marion Wallace Dunlop introduced the "hunger strike" to Britain, after being jailed for disturbing Parliament. Dunlop's fast lasted 91 hours, attracting enough publicity that the government agreed to meet with the suffrage movement leaders. She was released on July 8, becoming a heroine for women's suffrage and an example for protestors ever since.
• The proposed Sixteenth Amendment passed the U.S. Senate unanimously, 77–0, and moved on to the House.
• Born: Mohammad Gharib, known as the "Father of Pediatrics in Iran" after authoring a 1941 Persian language textbook on childhood disease; in Tehran

  July 6, 1909 (Tuesday)

• Albert Einstein resigned from his job at the Patent Office in Zürich in order to pursue the full-time study of physics.

  July 7, 1909 (Wednesday)

• Physicist Walther Ritz, who had formulated the Ritz method for analyzing combinations of particles, and who had contributed to the Rydberg formula, died of pleurisy in Göttingen at the age of 31.
• T. E. Lawrence, immortalized as "Lawrence of Arabia", departed Britain for his first trip to the Arab world. Lawrence, a second-year undergraduate at Oxford University, traveled to Syria and Palestine for his thesis on the influence of the Crusades on European military architecture.
• Born: Gottfried von Cramm, German tennis player, French Open winner in 1934 and 1936; in Nettlingen, Saxony

  July 8, 1909 (Thursday)

• In a reversal of policy, the British government met with women seeking the right to vote. Home Secretary Herbert Gladstone met with eight representatives, led by Charlotte Despard, after being requested to do so by King Edward VII.
• The first professional baseball game played at night under lights was a Central League game at Grand Rapids, Michigan. The Grand Rapids team beat Zanesville, 11–10.

  July 9, 1909 (Friday)

• A boundary dispute between Bolivia and Peru was settled by President José Figueroa Alcorta of Argentina, whom the two nations selected as arbitrator.
• Miss Anita Stewart of New York announced her engagement to Prince Miguel, Duke of Viseu, eldest son of Miguel, Duke of Braganza, the Miguelist pretender to the throne of Portugal. The younger Dom Miguel was the grandson of King Miguel I, who had ruled Portugal from 1828 to 1834.
• Died: Lord Ripon, 82, former Viceroy of India and Leader of the House of Lords

  July 10, 1909 (Saturday)

• The United States reached an agreement with Qing China which allowed Chinese students to enroll at American universities. The Imperial Court approved the Qianpai YouMei Xuesheng Banfa Dagang, an outline of regulations for selecting suitable candidates for study in the U.S., after its delivery by the Ministry of Education.

  July 11, 1909 (Sunday)

• At 3:00 in the morning, a heat burst south of Cherokee, Oklahoma, reportedly caused the temperature to rise briefly to, desiccating crops in the area.
• Born: Fritz Leonhardt, German structural engineer; in Stuttgart
• Died: Simon Newcomb, 74, American astronomer

  July 12, 1909 (Monday)

• By a margin of 317–14, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution sending the proposed Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution to the states for ratification. Alabama was first to ratify the income tax amendment, which was, on February 3, 1913, ratified by the required 36 states.
• Korea agreed to turn over the functions of prison administration and the court system to Japan. Annexation would follow on August 22, 1910.
• The U.S. ore carrier SS John B. Cowle sank after being rammed by the freighter Isaac M. Scott on Lake Superior, killing 14 of its 24-man crew.
• President Taft set aside as the Oregon Caves National Monument.
• Born:
• *Bimal Roy, Hindi film director; in Dhaka, Bengal Province, British India
• *Joe DeRita, "the last of the Three Stooges" after replacing Curly Howard; as Joseph Wardell, in Philadelphia
• *Herbert S. Zim, author of science books for children; in New York City

  July 13, 1909 (Tuesday)

• Mohammad Ali Shah Qajar, the Shah of Persia, was forced to flee to the Russian embassy after rebel armies poured into the Persian capital of Tehran. Mujahidin forces from the north, and Bakhtiari tribesmen from the south, were joined by local supporters of the revolution. By week's end, constitutional government had been restored.
• Born: Prince Souphanouvong, first President of Laos ; in Luang Phrabang, five days before Savang Vatthana, last King of Laos

  July 14, 1909 (Wednesday)

• Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg became Chancellor of Germany upon the resignation of Chancellor von Bülow. Bethmann Hollweg served until 1917.
• As the Anglo-Siamese Treaty of 1909 took effect, the Malayan peninsula states of Kedah, Kelantan, Perlis and Terengganu became British protectorates. More than, or half of Thailand's territory, were forfeited.
• The British submarine sank in the English Channel, off Cromer, after the steamer Eddystone sheared off the submarine's stern, killing 13 of the 16 men aboard.
• Edward Payson Weston arrived in San Francisco on the 105th day of his transcontinental walk. He had set off from New York on his 75th birthday on March 15 on a goal of reaching the West Coast in 100 days—not including Sundays—and reached the St. Francis Hotel at
• Born: Frank Tinker, American flying ace and mercenary; in De Witt, Arkansas

  July 15, 1909 (Thursday)

• After China refused to let American banks participate with Germany, Britain and France in financing of a railway building project, U.S. President William Howard Taft personally cabled a request to Prince Chun, the regent for the Chinese Emperor, to be allowed in. China renegotiated the agreement to include American banks, and problems with the project later contributed to the downfall of the Empire in 1911.
• Born: Hendrik B. G. Casimir, Dutch theoretical physicist and discoverer of the Casimir effect; at The Hague
• Died: George Tyrrell, 48, Modernist theologian within the Catholic Church

  July 16, 1909 (Friday)

• The Persian Constitutional Revolution succeeded in forcing Mohammad Ali Shah Qajar from the throne of Iran. The National Assembly proclaimed the 12-year-old Crown Prince, Ahmed Mirza, as Shah, and Azud ul Mulk as regent.
• August Horch founded the Horch Automobile Works in Zwickau, beginning a century of manufacture of luxury autos. Because a company he had founded in 1899 already made Horch automobiles, Horch—whose surname meant "Hark!" in German—chose the Latin equivalent, Audi.
• The Detroit Tigers and the visiting Washington Senators played 18 scoreless innings of baseball before darkness ended the game. The 0–0 tie was bettered on September 11, 1945, by a 19 inning scoreless game between the Reds and Dodgers.

  July 17, 1909 (Saturday)

• Glenn Curtiss piloted the airplane Gold Bug for at Mineola, New York, earning a $10,000 prize from Scientific American magazine.
• After 45 consecutive at-bats without a hit, Brooklyn Dodgers' catcher Bill Bergen got a single. The record still stands a century later.
• Huntington Beach, California, was incorporated, with 915 residents within its. From 1960 to 1970, with the annexation of adjoining farmland, the city's population grew tenfold, from 11,492 to 115,960, and is now nearly 200,000 inhabitants.