June 1900

June 1, 1900 (Friday)

• In South Africa, the city of Pretoria surrendered to British troops under Lord Roberts.
• Workers began the actual count for the 1900 United States census. In New York City, a force of 1,210 had two weeks to finish the count. The tally was eventually 76,212,168. The complete census forms would not be unsealed until December 3, 1973.

  June 2, 1900 (Saturday)

• Samori Ture, formerly Emperor of the Wassoulou Empire in West Africa, died at Ndjolé, an island in Gabon's Ogooué River where he was exiled by France after his 1898 defeat by commander Henri Gouraud. Associate Albert Baratier commented that Toure "would have compared to Napoleon, found his St. Helena".
• The French Senate voted an amnesty for Alfred Dreyfus who had been pardoned earlier by President Émile Loubet. Not until July 19, 1906 was the verdict against Dreyfus set aside.

  June 3, 1900 (Sunday)

• William Howard Taft arrived in Manila on the USS Hancock as Governor-General of the Philippines, replacing General Arthur MacArthur, the last military governor. Taft would say later, "I cannot describe the coldness of the Army officers and the Army men who received us any better than by saying that it somewhat exceeded the coldness of the populace."
• The International Ladies Garment Workers Union was founded in New York City.
• In Germany, the most comprehensive meat inspection laws in the world, to that time, took effect.
• The railroad line between Beijing and Tianjin was cut by Boxer rebels.
• Born: Gordon Sinclair, Canadian journalist, who had a Top Ten hit single in 1973 with his spoken-word recording "The Americans"; in Toronto
• Died: Mary Kingsley, 37, English adventurer and ethnologist who had written two bestsellers about the various peoples of West Africa, died of typhoid fever in South Africa.

  June 4, 1900 (Monday)

• The Battle of Makahambus Hill took place near Cagayan de Oro in the Philippines. The event is commemorated in the Philippines as the first victory of the Filipino soldiers against the American occupation forces and a historical marker is on the site.
• Born: George Watkins, American baseball player who had a record.373 batting average in his rookie season; in Freestone County, Texas

  June 5, 1900 (Tuesday)

• At 2:00 in the afternoon, Pretoria, capital of the South African Republic, surrendered to British General Lord Roberts.
• Born: Dennis Gabor, Hungarian physicist, inventor of holography and recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1971; in Budapest, Austria-Hungary
• Died: Stephen Crane, 28, American writer, author of The Red Badge of Courage, died of tuberculosis in Badenweiler, Germany.

  June 6, 1900 (Wednesday)

• U.S. President William McKinley signed into law the federal charter for the American Red Cross.
• The United States Congress enacted a civil and judicial code for Alaska, setting the capital at Juneau and creating a territorial government.
• The United States Congress approved the 1892 Agreement with the Comanche, Kiowa and Apache, by which of indigenous land in southwest Oklahoma had been purchased for a bargain price of 93 cents an acre for 29,000,000 acres. The act passed despite assertions by the affected tribes that the terms had been misrepresented and the agreement had not legally been ratified as required by 3/4 of the adult males of the tribe. A Kiowa chief named Lone Wolf brought suit in 1901 against the law, but the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the Indians in the case of Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock, 187 U.S. 553. On July 4, 1900, President McKinley proclaimed the area open for settlement effective August 6, 1900. Since the mid-20th century, the government has paid tens of millions of dollars in compensation settlements to the three tribes because of their claims of being defrauded in these issues of the treaty and allotments.
• United States Congress funded the reinterment of 267 Southern soldiers from Northern grounds to a special section of the Arlington National Cemetery.
• Mr. Ryall, the Superintendent of Police in British East Africa, was eaten by a lion after being taken by a railcar where he was traveling with two other hunters. The lion jumped into the window of a railcar at Kima where Ryall was sleeping and dragged him off.
• Born: Arthur Askey, English comedian and actor; in Dingle, Liverpool

  June 7, 1900 (Thursday)

• Carrie Nation started her crusade against liquor. Walking into a saloon in Kiowa, Kansas at 8:30am, she told owner John Dobson, "I don't want to strike you, but I am going to break up this den of vice." She then smashed his liquor bottles and the mirror behind the bar, vandalized three other bars in Kiowa and rode out of town. Because the saloons were operating illegally, she was not arrested. Nation continued her destruction until her death in 1911.
• Born:
• * Glen Gray, American jazz musician, saxophonist and band leader for the Casa Loma Orchestra; as Glen Gray Knoblauch in Metamora, Illinois
• * Frederick Terman, American academic, credited as the "Father of Silicon Valley"; in English, Indiana

  June 8, 1900 (Friday)

• In Beijing, Boxer rebels burned the grandstand of the horse racing track at the country club for western diplomats. Three British students who rode out to investigate the fire were charged by a crowd of the Chinese and retreated. One of the British horsemen, however, drew his pistol and killed one of the Chinese men. In response, the Imperial government sent armies to surround the foreigners at the Peking Legation Quarter.
• The telescopic sight was approved for mass production, following the report of a special "Board of Officers on Test of Telescopic Sight for U.S. Magazine Rifle", issued to the United States Department of War. On May 24, the Board reported that the scope made by the Cataract Tool and Optical Company had proved accurate even at a range of 2,000 yards—more than a mile.

  June 9, 1900 (Saturday)

• In Beijing, Imperial Chinese troops surrounded the legation quarter where the diplomatic corps from western powers and Japan were headquartered. British minister Sir Claude Maxwell MacDonald telegraphed: "Situation extremely grave. Unless arrangements are made for immediate advance to Peking, it will be too late."
• Birsa Munda, the 24-year-old rebel who led the Munda rebellion in British India's Bihar region, died in prison in Ranchi under mysterious circumstances, becoming one of the martyred heroes of the Indian independence movement. In his memory are named the Birsa Agricultural University and the Birsa Munda Airport, both in Ranchi, and the Birsa Institute of Technology at Sindri.
• Patrolman William "Mox" McQuery of the Covington, Kentucky Police Department, a former Major League Baseball player, was shot in the chest while trying to arrest two murder suspects at the base of the Cincinnati–Covington Bridge. McQuery would die of his wounds on June 12.

  June 10, 1900 (Sunday)

• In response to the Boxer Rebellion, a multinational force of more than 2,000 foreign troops set off by train from Tien-tsin for Peking to protect the citizens of their respective countries. The trains, carrying troops from the United Kingdom, the United States, France, Germany, Italy, Russia and Japan, halted at Langfang, not far into the trip, because the rails had been destroyed and had to march the rest of the way.
• In the 1960 film The Time Machine, the traveler stops at this date before proceeding onward to the year 802,701.

  June 11, 1900 (Monday)

• In Beijing, violence against foreigners took a new turn when Japanese diplomat Sugiyama Akira was murdered by Imperial Chinese soldiers. Akira, the chancellor of the Japanese legation, had dressed in "top hat and tails" and driven by carriage from the legation quarter to the train station where he had planned to greet the relief force arriving from Tianjin, but the rails had been destroyed by the Boxers. Imperial soldiers under the command of General Tung dragged Akira from his carriage and hacked him to bits, then displayed his severed head at the station.
• Belle Boyd, American writer who spied for the Confederacy during the American Civil War and later recounted her experiences to audiences, died of a heart attack while touring Wisconsin.

  June 12, 1900 (Tuesday)

• By a vote of 201–103, the Reichstag approved the expansion of the Imperial German Navy, doubling the number of ships to 96 in all.
• In Chicago, hundreds of spectators at a circus were thrown to the ground when the seating collapsed, just as the performance began. Fourteen people were hospitalized. A week earlier, twelve people had been hurt in a collapse of seats at the same circus.
• Died: Mox McQuery, 38, Major League Baseball first baseman and police officer, shot in the line of duty on June 9.

  June 13, 1900 (Wednesday)

• When three Chinese Boxers came too close to the German legation, one of them, a young man, was captured by the German guards. Baron von Ketteler, the German minister thrashed the Boxer with his cane, ordered his guards to extend the beating and warned the Chinese Foreign Ministry that the boy would die. Over the next few days, the foreign diplomats began shooting at Chinese nationals near the Peking Legation Quarter. Von Ketteler himself would be killed on June 20. The same day, communication between the foreign embassies and the rest of the world was halted as their telegraph lines were severed.

  June 14, 1900 (Thursday)

• The Republic of Hawaii formally came to an end as the "Act to Provide a Government for the Territory of Hawaii" took effect. Sanford B. Dole who had continued as president even after sovereignty was transferred to the United States in 1898, became the first territorial Governor. All persons who were citizens of the Republic as of August 12, 1898, became U.S. citizens.
• At 7pm, German embassy guards, under the direction of Ambassador Baron von Ketteler, fired on Boxer rebels outside the legation quarter, killing 20. Lancelot Giles of the British embassy, recorded the incident in his diary that night, noting the furious shouts from a crowd trying to get into the city. G.E. Morrison, correspondent for the London Times, noted another incident where 45 Chinese were killed in a raid by the Europeans on a temple.
• The first Bennett Cup auto race, for a prize sponsored by New York Herald publisher James Gordon Bennett Jr., began as five entrants departed from the Parc de Saint-Cloud, near Paris, on a 566 kilometer trip to Lyon. Departing at two minute intervals starting at 3:14 in the morning, the competitors passed through Châteaudun, Orléans, Gien, Nevers, Moulins and Roanne. Only two drivers would finish the race.