May 1910

May 1, 1910 (Sunday)

• Edward VII, the 68-year-old King of Great Britain and Ireland and its possessions, and Emperor of India, developed a bad cold after spending a cold and rainy weekend at his estate in Sandringham. Refusing to rest and ignoring medical advice, the popular monarch developed bronchitis, then pneumonia, and was dead by Friday.
• Born:
• *J. Allen Hynek, American UFO author; in Chicago
• *Cliff Battles, American pro football player, in Akron, Ohio
• Died:
• *Pierre Nord Alexis, 90, former President of Haiti
• *J.Q.A. Ward, 80, American sculptor

  May 2, 1910 (Monday)

• The United States Senate confirmed Charles Evans Hughes as a Supreme Court Justice, without debate.
• The U.S. Senate also voted to approve creation of the United States Bureau of Mines, as part of the Department of the Interior, in the first federal regulation of mining. U.S. President William Howard Taft signed the legislation on May 16.
• Edward Payson Weston walked into New York City Hall at, completing a walk across the continent that he had started in Santa Monica on February 1. The septuagenarian was greeted by New York Mayor William Jay Gaynor, who proclaimed, "Weston, you are a benefactor to the human race, for you have shown people what can be done by a man who lives simply and healthfully in the open air."
• Homesteading of the Flathead Indian Reservation in Montana was permitted by the federal government, with the drawing of the first names in a lottery.

  May 3, 1910 (Tuesday)

• The President of the United States returned to his hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio, for the first time since his inauguration. At his own request, William Howard Taft was treated as an "ordinary" citizen as he renewed acquaintances.
• The city of Robins, Iowa, was incorporated.
• Born:
• *Bernard Orchard, British biblical scholar; in Bromley, Kent
• *Norman Corwin, American screenwriter; in Boston
• Died:
• *Howard Taylor Ricketts, 38, American biologist for whom bacteria of the genus Rickettsiae are named, died of typhus during research on that disease
• *Lottie Collins, 44, English singer and dancer known for introducing the song "Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay", died from heart disease.

  May 4, 1910 (Wednesday)

• The Royal Canadian Navy came into existence when the Naval Service Act became law, creating a force separate from Britain's Royal Navy. The first two ships, designated "HMCS" for "His Majesty's Canadian Ship", were the and the Niobe.
• Twelve years after the USS Maine had exploded and sunk in Havana Harbor, the U.S. Senate passed legislation to pay for the raising of the ship's remains at "all convenient speed", and the bill was signed into law.

  May 5, 1910 (Thursday)

• The city of Cartago, Costa Rica, was destroyed by an earthquake that killed more than 1,500 people.
• Seventy coal miners were killed in an explosion at the Palos Coal and Coke Company at at Walker County, Alabama.
• The town of Hillsborough, California, was incorporated.
• The U.S. Weather Bureau, predecessor to the National Weather Service, set a record, which still stands, for the highest altitude achieved by a kite. An altitude of was reached by the highest of ten kites on an 8 mile long steel wire.
• Dearfield, Colorado, was founded as an all-black community by Oliver Toussaint Jackson. The town made a steady decline after World War I, and the last resident died in 1973.
• Former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt accepted the Nobel Peace Prize, for 1909, in Christiana, Norway, and pledged to donate the money "as a nucleus for a foundation to forward the cause of industrial peace".

  May 6, 1910 (Friday)

• King Edward VII of the United Kingdom died at after an illness of six days.
• Oklahoma Governor Charles N. Haskell settled the dispute over which town should be the county seat of Adair County, choosing Stilwell over Westville.
• The village of Stratford, Wisconsin, was incorporated.

  May 7, 1910 (Saturday)

• USS Cyclops, a U.S. Navy coal hauling ship, was launched. The ship would become famous in the world of the paranormal after its disappearance in 1918 while sailing, with 306 people on board, into the area known as the Bermuda Triangle.
• A total eclipse of the Sun was visible in New Zealand and in parts of Antarctica.
• The village of Acme, Alberta was incorporated.

  May 8, 1910 (Sunday)

• A fire at the General Explosives Company near Hull, Quebec set off a blast that killed fifteen people, and injured more than 100. Most were spectators who ignored warnings to leave the area. The blast shattered windows in neighboring Ottawa, Ontario.
• In elections in Spain, Premier José Canalejas retained his majority.
• For the first time in its history, the United States Supreme Court ordered the release of a convict from his sentence, on grounds that his punishment violated the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. Paul Weems, who had served at a lighthouse in the Philippines, had been held in heavy chains for malfeasance of office.

  May 9, 1910 (Monday)

• Three days after his father's death, King George V was formally proclaimed worldwide throughout the British Empire, starting with the Duke of Norfolk's reading of the proclamation at St James's Palace that closed with, "God Save the King!"
• A total eclipse of the Sun was visible in the southernmost portions of the British Empire, including Tasmania and part of the Australian Antarctic territory.
• President Taft approved an act passed by the United States Congress to remove the wreck of the battleship USS Maine, which had been destroyed 12 years earlier in Havana Harbor.

  May 10, 1910 (Tuesday)

• Two hundred women from Peru, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay and Argentina gathered in Buenos Aires for the first Congreso Femenino Internacional.
• The town of Powell, Wyoming, was incorporated.
• Beginning the history of aviation in Switzerland, Ernest Failloubaz piloted the first aircraft built and flown by a Swiss citizen.
• Died: Stanislao Cannizzaro, 83, Italian chemist known for discovering the Cannizzaro reaction, the of base-induced disproportionation of two molecules of a non-enolizable aldehyde to give a primary alcohol and a carboxylic acid

  May 11, 1910 (Wednesday)

• Glacier National Park was established in Montana by federal law. The park has an area of, and contains 653 lakes, 175 mountains, and 26 glaciers. After attracting 4,000 visitors in its first full year as a park, the park had more than 2,000,000 visitors in 2009.
• In the U.S., 12 people were killed when the steamer SS City of Saltillo struck rocks and sank in the Mississippi River near Pevely, Missouri. The boat was carrying 57 people, and seven of the 27 passengers drowned.
• Born: Johnnie Davis, American actor and singer known for Hooray For Hollywood; in Brazil, Indiana

  May 12, 1910 (Thursday)

• An explosion at the Wellington Coal Mine in Cumbria killed 137 miners.
• , the first of the all-steam turbine s of the United States Navy, was launched.
• Born:
• *Johan Ferrier, President of Suriname from 1975 to 1980; in Paramaribo
• *Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin, British chemist and 1964 Nobel Prize in Chemistry laureate; in Cairo, Egypt
• *Giulietta Simionato, Italian mezzo-soprano; in Forlì

  May 13, 1910 (Friday)

• Woolworth's became the first large retail chain to sell ice cream cones, test-marketing the treat at counters at several sites that had been supplied with modern refrigerator-freezers. The idea was successful enough that it would be introduced nationwide by the variety store, and then by other chain stores.
• French aviator Gabriel Hauvette-Michelin became only the seventh person in history to be killed in an airplane accident, crashing while attempting a takeoff at a show in Lyons.

  May 14, 1910 (Saturday)

• At Brussels, representatives of Belgium, Great Britain and Germany signed a border agreement regarding their central African colonies, respectively the Belgian Congo, the British protectorate in Uganda, and part of German East Africa now in Tanzania.

  May 15, 1910 (Sunday)

• The Italy national football team played its first international, defeating France, 6–2, at Milan. Italy would win FIFA World Cup championships in 1934, 1938, 1982 and 2006.
• The Reverend Henry Scott Holland, Canon of St. Paul's Cathedral, delivered a sermon following the death of King Edward VII, entitled "Life Unbroken", but often referred to by its first line, "Death is nothing at all." Largely forgotten for nearly 80 years, the words would find new popularity in the late 1980s as part of the consolation of grief.

  May 16, 1910 (Monday)

• While watching a parade of the Barnum and Bailey Circus, several thousand people in Newark, New Jersey, ran in panic caused by a false rumor. As the animals passed, a calliope had frightened a police horse, spectators scattered, and someone shouted that a lion or lions had broken loose. More than 20 people were injured, and five taken to the city hospital, but none fatally.
• In Missouri, Dr. Bennett Clark Hyde was convicted of murder, by poison, in the October 3, 1909, death of his patient, Kansas City philanthropist Thomas H. Swope. However, the conviction would be reversed and two retrials would end in hung juries. State law prohibited Hyde from being tried a fourth time, and he lived until 1934.
• Troops from the armies of Peru and Ecuador massed on the common border between those two nations.
• The case of Liliuokalani v. United States, 45 Ct.Cl 418 was decided by the United States Court of Claims, which ruled that the former Queen of Hawai'i was not entitled to compensation for the "Crown Lands" taken when the monarchy had been overthrown in 1893.
• The United States Bureau of Mines was formed, coming into existence on July 1.
• The city of Wedgeport, Nova Scotia was incorporated.