July 1910

July 1, 1910 (Friday)

• The Chicago White Sox played their first game at Comiskey Park, losing to the St. Louis Browns 2–0. Eighty-one seasons later, the White Sox would play their last game there, on September 30, 1990, beating the Seattle Mariners, 2–1.
• Died: Joseph Thomas, 83, inventor of the hoop skirt.

  July 2, 1910 (Saturday)

• The patent application for the newly-invented binder clip was filed by Louis E. Baltzley of Washington, D.C., for a clip to bind multiple sheets of paper with "jaws for the reception of handles of spring metal comprising two arms having a tendency to spread laterally". U.S. patent no. 1,139,627 was granted on May 18, 1915, giving Baltzley exclusive rights for the manufacture and distribution of the office product until 1932. Essentially unchanged in its design, the binder clip continues to be used worldwide.
• U.S. President William Howard Taft first employed a new power authorized under the General Withdrawal Act of 1910, removing of Alaskan lands from public use.
• Charles K. Hamilton, known for making the first round trip airplane flight between New York City and Philadelphia, flew the first airplane in Connecticut. A historical marker would be erected in 1970 in New Britain, Connecticut.
• Born: Morris Cohen, American Communist who became a spy for the Soviet Union; in New York. After helping pass American atomic secrets to the Soviets in the 1940s, he and his wife, Lona Cohen, were given the cover of Peter and Helen Kroger, and spied against Britain's Royal Navy in the 1950s.
• Died: Frederick James Furnivall, 85, co-creator of the ''Oxford English Dictionary''

  July 3, 1910 (Sunday)

• At the second annual air show at Bétheny Plain in France, near Rheims, spectators watched the unprecedented sight of multiple airplanes in the sky at the same time, "circling the track like a flight of great birds". The show was marred by the death of aviator , whose Antoinette VII monoplane plunged from after the wings collapsed.
• Born: Esau Jenkins, African-American educator and founder of "citizenship school" movement to assist black voter registration; in Johns Island, South Carolina

  July 4, 1910 (Monday)

• In one of the most eagerly anticipated boxing matches of all time, the first African-American challenger for the World Heavyweight Championship of boxing, Jack Johnson defeated the man whom writer Jack London described as "the chosen representative of the white race, and this time the greatest of them", taking the crown from heavyweight champion James J. Jeffries in the fifteenth round of their bout in Reno, Nevada. One hour and 14 rounds after the fight began at PST, Jeffries— who boasted that he had never been knocked down in a fight— fell three times to Johnson's punches, and was being counted out when his manager called the fight. A crowd of 18,020 attended, and telegraphed reports were followed across the nation. Johnson and Jeffries both made over $100,000 from the purse, bonuses, and the sale of film rights.
• In St. Petersburg, Russia and Japan signed a treaty in which they divided their "spheres of influence" in Manchuria and in the rest of Asia. Japan annexed Korea the next month, with no objection from Russia.
• Klaus Berntsen became the new Prime Minister of Denmark.
• A "safe and sane" public education program reduced the number of serious injuries and deaths during the Fourth of July by more than 40 percent. There were 24 deaths and 1,294 injuries, down from 44 and 2,361 for July 4, 1909.
• Nineteen people were killed in a train collision at Middletown, Ohio.
• Born:
• *Robert K. Merton, American sociologist and social theorist; as Meyer R. Schkolnick, in Philadelphia
• *Gloria Stuart, American actress, whose films included Air Mail and Titanic ; in Santa Monica, California
• Died:
• *Giovanni Schiaparelli, 75, Italian astronomer who first discovered canal-like markings on the planet Mars
• *Melville Fuller, 77, Chief Justice of the United States.

  July 5, 1910 (Tuesday)

• Cities across America prohibited the exhibition of films of the Johnson-Jeffries bout, after at least ten people had been killed in racial violence that followed the fight. Authorities implemented bans in Washington, Atlanta, Baltimore, St. Louis and Cincinnati. At Ogden, Utah, three white men cursed Johnson at a railway station and attempted to board his private train car, before being turned back by one of Johnson's trainers. In Washington, police arrested 236 people, mostly African-American.
• North Carolina Central University, a historically black university in Durham, North Carolina, near Duke University, held its first classes.
• Wilhelm Beckert, formerly Germany's Minister to Chile, was executed by a firing squad in Santiago after his conviction of the February 5, 1909 murder of a Chilean employee. Beckert, who had embezzled embassy funds and set fire to the building in hopes of covering up the crime, was tried in a Chilean court after the German government waived objections to his trial.

  July 6, 1910 (Wednesday)

• The U.S. government won its first suit against the manufacture of bleached flour, under the Pure Food and Drug Act. Since 1905, the Alsop process had used nitrogen peroxide, which made wheat flour snow white, but removed the nutrients. Bleaching became permissible again after the FDA mandated vitamin enrichment of wheat flour.
• Burke County, North Dakota, was established.
• The city of Redmond, Oregon, was incorporated.

  July 7, 1910 (Thursday)

• King Alfonso XIII of Spain approved legislation to stop further religious orders from entering Spain. The Vatican protested the action four days later.
• Nadir of American race relations: Only three days after the Johnson-Jeffries fight, various states and cities in the United States declared they would not allow the screening of the footage. The picture was banned virtually everywhere in the southern United States.
• President Taft ordered the withdrawal of of coalfield lands, in the western United States, from public use, with nearly half of it in North Dakota.
• The first gold importation since the Panic of '07 began in New York City.
• The village of Cuyuna, Minnesota—named by prospector Cuyler Adams for himself and his dog Una—was incorporated.
• The town of Bucoda, Washington—-named for J.M. Buckley, Sam Coulter, and J.B. David—-was incorporated.

  July 8, 1910 (Friday)

• Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, a leader in the Indian independence movement, escaped his imprisonment on the mail ship S.S. Morea, and then swam to Marseille. Savarkar reached the jurisdiction of France, but was recaptured by three men from the Morea, and taken back to British custody. "The Savarkar Case" became an international incident over the violation of France's sovereignty by the United Kingdom, and was taken to the International Court of Justice, which ruled that the British government was not required to return Savarkar to the French government.
• In what has been described as "the beginning of performance art", Filippo Tommaso Marinetti dropped 800,000 leaflets from the Clock Tower in Venice with his manifesto "Against Traditional Venice".
• The New York American broke the story that a combination of Wall Street bankers would be working for the Princeton University's president, Woodrow Wilson, to be the Democratic Party nominee for president in 1912, with a trial run for Governor of New Jersey.
• Died: Alexander Burgener, 65, Swiss mountaineer, was killed in an avalanche

  July 9, 1910 (Saturday)

• Walter Brookins became the first person to fly an airplane to an altitude of more than one mile. After taking off from Atlantic City, Brookins reached an altitude of at, the mark being verified by triangulation from ground observers. The previous record, also set by Brookins, had been.
• Born: Govan Mbeki, South African Communist, anti-apartheid activist, Secretary and co-founder of Umkhonto we Sizwe, and father of President of South Africa Thabo Mbeki; in Mpukane, Union of South Africa

  July 10, 1910 (Sunday)

• A famous poem with the words "Tinker to Evers to Chance" was first seen, written by Franklin P. Adams of the New York Evening Mail, in his column "Always in Good Humor". The baseball players referred to were in the infield of the Chicago Cubs—shortstop Joe Tinker, second baseman Johnny Evers, and first baseman Frank Chance, who played together from 1902 to 1912.
• The village of Acme, Alberta, was incorporated.
• Died: Johann Galle, German astronomer who made the first observation of the planet Neptune.

  July 11, 1910 (Monday)

• Enforcement of the Pure Food and Drug Act continued, as U.S. Marshals seized ice cream cones from a warehouse in New York, after finding that samples were contaminated with boric acid.
• The New Brunswick towns of Campbellton and Richardsville were destroyed by fire that spread from the Richards Company Shingle Mills to adjacent buildings.
• Born: Marcel de Kerviler, French naval officer and Olympic sailor; in Angers, Maine-et-Loire, France
• Died: Henry Dexter, founder of American News Company

  July 12, 1910 (Tuesday)

• The heaviest rainfall in 24 hours in the history of India——fell at Cherrapunji. That record would stand for 95 years, until June 25, 2005, when ) killed more than 25 people in Mumbai.
• Aviator Charles Stewart Rolls was killed at Bournemouth after his airplane suddenly dropped from a height of. His partnership with Henry Royce effectively came to an end, but the automobile company that the two entrepreneurs designed, and Rolls's name lives on in the Rolls-Royce.
• A body, believed to be that of missing actress Belle Elmore Crippen, was found by London police at the home, on 39 Hilldrop Crescent, that she had shared with her husband, Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen. Dr. Crippen had fled the scene three days earlier after one interview with police, and Belle Elmore had not been seen since February.
• Died: Charles Stewart Rolls, 32, Welsh motoring and aviation pioneer, was killed in an airplane crash.