March 1902

March 1, 1902 (Saturday)

• In Brazil's presidential election, Rodrigues Alves of the Republican Party of São Paulo received 91.7% of the vote. Silviano Brandão, who was elected vice-president, would not live long enough to begin his term of office.
• The Canadian Amateur Hockey League season ended, with Montreal Hockey Club as champions.

  March 2, 1902 (Sunday)

• Major Littleton W. T. Waller, and the surviving members of his battalion of U.S. Marines and Filipino civilian assistants, returned to base at Cavite on the island of Luzon, after completing their disastrous march across Samar in the American territory of the Philippines. Major Waller was court martialed on March 17 on charges of murder in the execution of 11 Filipinos but would be acquitted on April 7.
• Sussex, New Jersey, received its current name, inspired by the county of the same name in England, after having been incorporated more than 10 years earlier as Deckertown.
• Born:
• * Edward Condon, American nuclear physicist for whom the Franck–Condon principle of spectroscopy and the Slater–Condon rules of computational chemistry are named; in Alamogordo, New Mexico
• * Almer "Mike" Monroney, American politician who served as U.S. Representative and then U.S. Senator for Oklahoma; in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma Territory
• Died: Colonel Linnaeus Tripe, 79, British photographer and army officer

  March 3, 1902 (Monday)

• American bandit Harry Longabaugh, popularly known as "The Sundance Kid" as partner in crime with Butch Cassidy, began his return to the United States a year after having fled to Argentina. Longabaugh and his girlfriend Etta Place, boarded the ship SS Soldier Prince in Buenos Aires. They would arrive in New York City on April 3 and remain until July 10.
• Born: Allalou, "The Father of Algerian Theatre", Algerian playwright; in Algiers

  March 4, 1902 (Tuesday)

• The United States Department of the Navy ordered the transfer of all U.S. Navy shore properties in Cuba to the control of Governor-General Leonard Wood, who, in turn, would transfer the properties to control of the Republic of Cuba.
• A tidal wave struck the coast of Central America, causing a great loss of life.
• Through the efforts of the National Civic Federation, the strike against National Cash Register was ended in Dayton, Ohio.

  March 5, 1902 (Wednesday)

• Ten months after ironworkers had gone on strike in San Francisco, the walkout was settled. Although the demand for a nine-hour workday was not agreed to, the ironworkers received some concessions.
• Died:
• * Leonard Lewisohn, 64, American philanthropist
• * Benjamin Franklin Stevens, 69, American bibliographer

  March 6, 1902 (Thursday)

• Real Madrid, one of the most valuable professional sports franchises in the world, was founded as Madrid Football Club.
• The Spanish Treaty Claims Commission ruled against American claimants seeking damages for the 1898 destruction of the battleship USS Maine in Havana Harbor.
• Prince Henry of Prussia, on the first state visit by German royalty to the United States, received an honorary doctorate from Harvard University.
• Died:
• * Moritz Kaposi, 64, Hungarian physician and dermatologist who first identified the skin cancer now called Kaposi's sarcoma
• * Worthy S. Streator, 85, American railroad and coal mining entrepreneur who created the Atlantic and Great Western Railroad and the Vermilion Coal Company. The company town, Streator, Illinois, was named in his honor.
• * Neil Bryant, 72, American minstrel show performer who continued the "Bryant's Minstrels" show into the early 80s after the death of founder Dan Bryant.

  March 7, 1902 (Friday)

• The Boers won their last major victory over the British Army of the Second Boer War, at the Battle of Tweebosch. British Army General Paul Sanford Methuen and 200 of his men were forced to surrender to Boer General J. H. de la Rey in the Western Transvaal. General Methuen was wounded, but was quickly released from imprisonment
• A permanent United States Census Bureau was created by law.
• The U.S. steamer Waesland collided with the British steamer Harmonides off the coast of Anglesey, United Kingdom and sank; two passengers were killed.
• Born:
• * Heinz Rühmann, German actor; in Essen
• * Ernő Schwarz, Hungarian soccer football player; in Budapest
• Died:
• * Christian Fenger, 61, pioneering American surgeon who refined techniques for the hysterectomy, cleft palate repair, and the safe removal of tumors from the spinal cord
• * Gaetano Casati, 63, Italian explorer of Africa
• * Pud Galvin, 45, American baseball player, member of the Baseball Hall of Fame

  March 8, 1902 (Saturday)

• Jean Sibelius's Second Symphony was performed for the first time, premiered by the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra in the Grand Duchy of Finland and conducted by Jean Sibelius himself in Helsinki.
• The Charron armoured car went into service for the first time.

  March 9, 1902 (Sunday)

• Real Madrid played its first match of soccer football, an intra-squad game between two teams composed of club members. "Club B" beat "Club A", 6 to 0. After reorganization of the squads, a second match was played later in the day with "Club A" winning, 1 to 0, over "Club B".
• Austrian classical music composer Gustav Mahler married pianist and composer Alma Schindler. The two had two children and remained together until Mahler's death in 1911.
• Born: Will Geer, American actor known for the TV show The Waltons; in Frankfort, Indiana

  March 10, 1902 (Monday)

• A U.S. circuit court ruling rejected Thomas Edison's bid to have a monopoly on motion picture technology.
• An antitrust suit was filed against the holding company that controls Northern Pacific Railway, Great Northern Railway and Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad.

  March 11, 1902 (Tuesday)

• Prince Henry of Prussia departed New York City.
• In the Queensland state election, Robert Philp's Ministerial Party were returned with a reduced majority. It was the first Queensland state election where voting was completed on a single day.
• The lower house of Denmark's Parliament, the Riksdag, ratified the treaty to sell the Danish West Indies to the United States.

  March 12, 1902 (Wednesday)

• Debreceni VSC, one of the most successful soccer football teams in Hungary, was founded in the Austro-Hungarian city of Debrecen as Egyetértés Futball Club. It would later be renamed for the Debrecen Railway as Debreceni Vasutas Sport Club.
• Died: John Peter Altgeld, 54, American political reformer and former Governor of Illinois, died after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage during a speech

  March 13, 1902 (Thursday)

• In Monte Carlo in Monaco, Dr. Ernest Guglielminetti made the first paving of a road with his invention of tar-bound macadam, the spraying of tar onto roads already "Macadamized" by paving with crushed stone, as the first effective method of holding down the amount of dust stirred up by motorized vehicles.
• The cargo ship Reporter was wrecked in San Francisco Bay when it crashed into the wreckage of the King Philip, which had been destroyed 24 years earlier on January 25, 1878.
• Born: Mohammed Abdel Wahab, Egyptian singer; in Cairo

  March 14, 1902 (Friday)

• The United States Senate, meeting in executive, closed-door session, unanimously ratified the Hague Peace Conference treaty of 1899.
• Born: Archduke Gottfried of Austria; in Linz

  March 15, 1902 (Saturday)

• The Frick Building, built at the behest of industrialist Henry Clay Frick, opened in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. At 20 stories and high, it was the tallest building in the city of Pittsburgh and would remain so for more than 55 years until surpassed by the 25-story Hilton Hotel in 1959.
• Born: Carla Porta Musa, Italian essayist and poet; in Como
• Died: Sir Richard Temple, 76, British colonial administrator who worked at alleviating famine in Bombay in the 19th century

  March 16, 1902 (Sunday)

• Five remaining members of the crew of the barge Wadena, and seven of their eight rescuers from the Monomoy Station, were drowned in a storm when the rescue barge was capsized by a wave off of the coast of Chatham, Massachusetts.

  March 17, 1902 (Monday)

• The court-martial began of U.S. Marine Major Littleton W. T. Waller on charges of murder in the execution of 11 Filipino civilians who had disobeyed orders in the march across Samar. He would be acquitted on April 7.
• Born: Bobby Jones, American golfer; in Atlanta

  March 18, 1902 (Tuesday)

• Pope Leo delivered the last papal condemnation of the Freemasons, issuing the encyclical Annum ingressi.
• Joseph Chamberlain, Britain's Colonial Secretary, sent a cable to the Governor General of Canada, the Earl of Minto, asking that Canada commit an additional 2,000 troops to fight alongside the British Army in the Second Boer War. Minto and Canada's Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier split over whether to honor the British request, but Laurier and his cabinet belatedly committed to supplying the requested men.
• Born: General Siegfried Westphal, German Wehrmacht officer who later served as a prosecution witness at the Nuremberg trials; in Leipzig
• Died: Cadwallader John Bates, 49, English antiquarian and historian, died of a heart attack

  March 19, 1902 (Wednesday)

• The Ottoman Empire rejected a demand from the United States for reimbursement for the $72,000 ransom paid to Bulgarian rebels for the release of missionaries Ellen Stone and Katerina Cilka.
• Denmark's Volksthing, the upper house of parliament, voted to ratify the treaty selling the Danish West Indies to the United States.
• The Populist Party, which had been a major American third party to rival the Republicans and Democrats during the 1890s, disbanded by merging back to the Democratic Party. At its height in 1897, the Populists had 22 seats in the House of Representatives and five in the Senate.