June 1902

June 1, 1902 (Sunday)

• Canada's amendment to its Chinese Immigration Act of 1885 took effect, doubling the "head tax" of C$50 to C$100 per person, with exceptions for tourists, diplomats and students. British Columbia, where most of the immigrants initially settled, was allowed to keep half of the tax. In 1903, the rate would be increased to C$500 per person.
• Born: Rear Admiral C. Wade McClusky, U.S. Navy aviator and hero in the Battle of Midway; in Buffalo, New York

  June 2, 1902 (Monday)

• A strike by American anthracite miners in Scranton, Pennsylvania, escalated as maintenance employees join the industrial action by the United Mine Workers.
• Edward Elgar's latest composition, Land of Hope and Glory was performed in public for the first time, by Clara Butt.
• In the election for the governor of the U.S. state of Oregon, Democrat George Earle Chamberlain won with 46.17% of the vote.
• The Congregation of Christian Brothers celebrated its centenary with High Mass at Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago.

  June 3, 1902 (Tuesday)

• France's Prime Minister Pierre Waldeck-Rousseau and his cabinet left office following his May 23 announcement.
• Died: John Henry Barrows, 55, American Presbyterian clergyman, President of Oberlin College and proponent of the Parliament of the World's Religions interfaith movement.

  June 4, 1902 (Wednesday)

• Eight Welsh coal miners were killed in an accident at Fochrhiw Colliery in Dowlais, Wales.
• Michael Henry Herbert was named as the new British Ambassador to the United States, to succeed the late Lord Pauncefote.

  June 5, 1902 (Thursday)

• The 1902 Open Championship golf tournament was won by Sandy Herd.
• Died:
• * Sir Daniel Cooper, 80, English-Australian politician who served as the first speaker of the legislature of the Colony of New South Wales when the colony was first granted self-government in 1856; at the time, the colony included the territory of the present states of New South Wales and Queensland.
• * Louis J. Weichmann, 60, a leading prosecution witness in the trial of the co-conspirators of John Wilkes Booth in the attempted assassination of various members of the U.S. government in 1865

  June 6, 1902 (Friday)

• Émile Combes formed a government as the new Prime Minister of France.
• A new constitution for the Commonwealth of Virginia, one of the 45 states of the United States, was approved by the Virginia Constitutional Commission by a vote of 90 to 10. The new constitution provided for literacy tests for African Americans and other person who was not a former member of the Confederate States Army nor the children or descendants of a Confederate States Army veteran.

  June 7, 1902 (Saturday)

• The SS Thomas Wilson, an American whaleback freighter operating in the Great Lakes, collided with the steamer George Hadley and sank in minutes, with the loss of its cargo and nine crew members.
• Italy took possession of a concession in Tientsin, China, installing a consul.
• On the same day that the meatpackers strike in Chicago was settled, bituminous coal miners went on strike in Virginia and West Virginia.

  June 8, 1902 (Sunday)

• The Kīlauea volcano began erupting on the island of Hawaii.
• U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt asked the Commissioner of Labor, Carroll D. Wright, to look into the ongoing coal strike and seek possible solutions. When the employers refused to negotiate, Roosevelt was dissuaded from intervening.
• Born:
• *James S. Rockefeller, U.S. banker and former captain of the U.S. rowing team that won the gold medal in the 1924 Summer Olympics
• *James T. Berryman, American editorial cartoonist and Pulitzer Prize winner; in Washington D.C.
• Died: Charles Ingalls, 66, American farmer known from the Little House on the Prairie books written by his daughter, Laura Ingalls Wilder, and the television series adaptation, in which he was portrayed by Michael Landon.

  June 9, 1902 (Monday)

• Mexican soldiers massacred almost 200 men, women and children of the Yaqui Indian tribe.
• Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 3 was performed in its entirety for the first time, at Krefeld, Germany, conducted by the composer.
• Cuba's President Tomás Estrada Palma granted amnesty to all American citizens who were incarcerated in Cuba, whether convicted of a crime or awaiting trial. Jurisdiction over the prisoners was transferred to the United States government.
• Professor Woodrow Wilson was chosen as President of Princeton University, succeeding Francis L. Patton.
• Born: Nehemiah "Skip" James, African-American blues musician; in Bentonia, Mississippi

  June 10, 1902 (Tuesday)

• Thomas Thornycroft's statue of Boadicea and Her Daughters, erected on Victoria Embankment in London, was made visible to the public by removal of the surrounding hoardings, without an official unveiling. The sculptor had died 17 years earlier.
• Died:
• * Jacint Verdaguer, 57, Spanish Catalan poet and proponent of Catalan nationalism
• * Auguste Schmidt, 68, German educator, novelist and feminist

  June 11, 1902 (Wednesday)

• Arthur Lynch of Ireland, who was elected to the House of Commons of the United Kingdom in absentia while living in Paris, was indicted for high treason for becoming an officer for the Army of the South African Republic while the South Africans were fighting against the British Army during the Second Boer War. Lynch, an Irish war correspondent, had joined the enemy army after being persuaded that the United Kingdom's participation in the war was improper, then fled before he could be captured. Nominated as a candidate for the Irish Parliamentary Party, Lynch won election in 1901 from the Galway constituency.
• The Eight-Nation Alliance powers affected by the 1900 Boxer Rebellion in China agreed to reduce the Chinese Empire's indemnity to the affected nations by ten million dollars.
• An earthquake of magnitude 8.0 struck in the seabed beneath the Sea of Okhotsk in Russia.
• In Japan, the Chūō rail line from Ochanomizu to Shiojiri was completed.
• Died: Sidi Ali III ibn al-Husayn, 84, the Bey of Tunis during the North African kingdom's period as a French protectorate. Ali III was succeeded by his son, Muhammad IV al-Hadi.

  June 12, 1902 (Thursday)

• The Commonwealth Franchise Act 1902 received Royal Assent, granting universal suffrage for federal elections in Australia for British subjects over 21 years of age who have lived in Australia for six months. This made Australia the second country to grant women's suffrage at a national level and the first to allow women to stand for parliament. However, indigenous people from Australia, Asia, Africa and the Pacific Islands were disqualified.
• France's Chamber of Deputies voted its confidence in the new government of Prime Minister Émile Combes.

  June 13, 1902 (Friday)

• George Herman Ruth, Jr., an uncontrollable 7-year-old truant, was turned over to the St. Mary's Industrial School for Boys in Baltimore after his mother was unable to take care of him. George would spend the next 12 years living and working at the school, and develop his athletic ability to become one of the greatest Major League Baseball players in history and acquire the nickname "Babe Ruth".
• The U.S. state of Texas passed an appropriations bill for one million dollars to excavate a ship channel to turn the town of Houston into a deepwater port, despite the town's distance of from the Gulf of Mexico. The channel was constructed from Galveston to the city of Harrisburg, which would be annexed into Houston in 1926. Houston is now the fourth-most populous city in the United States with a population of 2.3 million people and a metropolitan area of seven million.
• The Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing Company, now known as 3M, was founded by five investors in Two Harbors, Minnesota. The company was formally incorporated almost five weeks later on July 15.

  June 14, 1902 (Saturday)

• Prince Ferdinand of Bulgaria and Tsar Nicholas II of the Russian Empire signed a military alliance providing for mutual aid in the event of an attack on either one of them by the Kingdom of Romania.

  June 15, 1902 (Sunday)

• The New York Central Railroad inaugurated its 20th Century Limited passenger train service between Chicago and New York City. Aimed at business travelers, it offered a barbershop and secretarial services.

  June 16, 1902 (Monday)

• Grane defeated Odds 2-0, to win the final of the 1902 Norwegian Football Cup.
• In a letter to Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell first described a mathematical problem that would later become known as Russell's paradox.
• Cuba's first ambassador to the United States, Gonzalo de Quesada, was received at the White House by President Theodore Roosevelt.
• Born: Barbara McClintock, American geneticist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine; in Hartford, Connecticut

  June 17, 1902 (Tuesday)

• Norwich City Football Club was formed at a meeting at the Criterion Cafe in Norwich.
• U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt signed the Newlands Reclamation Act into law, providing irrigation for the dry land of 10 of the western U.S. states and three U.S. territories.

  June 18, 1902 (Wednesday)

• , a British Royal Navy cruiser, was launched at HM Dockyard Devonport. Lady Sturges Jackson, wife of Vice-Admiral Sir Thomas Sturges Jackson, Admiral-Superintendent of Devonport, performed the ceremony.
• Died:
• * Samuel Butler, 66, English novelist known for his 1872 novel Erewhon
• * James Macaulay, 85, Scottish physician, editor and crusader against vivisection

  June 19, 1902 (Thursday)

• The United States Senate voted, 42 to 34, to build a canal between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans across the Isthmus of Panama, rather than across Nicaragua, the preference of the United States House of Representatives.
• Died:
• * King Albert of Saxony, 74, German monarch within the German Empire since 1873. He was succeeded by his 69-year-old brother, King George, who would reign for two years.
• * Lord Acton, 68, British historian and political adviser known for coining the phrase "absolute power corrupts absolutely"