May 1912

May 1, 1912 (Wednesday)

• The first aircraft with an enclosed cabin for the pilot was flown by Avro in England.
• ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, leader of the Baháʼí Faith, laid the cornerstone for the Baháʼí House of Worship in Wilmette, Illinois while touring the United States. However, construction of the largest Baha'i temple in the U.S. would not be not completed until 1953.
• Archbishop St Clair Donaldson consecrated the St James Parish Hall in Toowoomba, Australia. It was listed in the Queensland Heritage Register in 1995.
• A rail line of in length opened between Firham and Vrede in Free State, South Africa.
• The Pittsburgh and Castle Shannon Plane coal rail line ceased operations at Mount Washington, Pittsburgh.
• Congressman Oscar Underwood of Alabama won the Democratic primary in Georgia, defeating New Jersey Governor Woodrow Wilson.
• A strike between news print workers and supporting union began in Chicago after pressmen were locked out from the printing plants owned by William Randolph Hearst. They were joined by other unions in the news businesses throughout the month, but the strike ended in November with no new contracts with the newspaper publishers.
• The United States Baseball League, an 8-team challenger to the National League and American League, played its first game, with New York and the visiting team from Reading, Pennsylvania, playing to a 10–10 tie before a crowd of 2,500. Other games played on opening day were Richmond 2, Washington 0; Pittsburgh 11, Cleveland 7; and Chicago 5, Cincinnati 0. After teams dropped out, the season, which was set to run until September 21, ended on June 26.
• Born:
• * Otto Kretschmer, German naval officer, commander of German U-boats and which sank 47 ships in the first 18 months of World War II, recipient of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross, in Neisse, German Empire
• * Winthrop Rockefeller, American politician, 37th Governor of Arkansas, in New York City

  May 2, 1912 (Thursday)

• The first nighttime reconnaissance flight in history was made by Italian Army Captain Alberto Margenhi Marengoon, who used an airplane to assess Ottoman troop strength near Benghazi, Libya.
• Local tribes revolted around Khost, Afghanistan, against the reign of Emir Habibullah Khan.
• The royal commission headed by Lord Mersey began their investigation of the sinking of the Titanic.
• The "Symphony for Negro Music" was performed at Carnegie Hall by the all-black Clef Club Orchestra, with 125 singers and musicians led by conductor James Reese Europe, and marked the most prestigious event for African-American musicians up to that time.
• Born:
• *Marten Toonder, Dutch cartoonist, creator of Tom Puss and Panda; in Rotterdam
• *Axel Springer, German publisher, founder of Axel Springer SE; in Altona, Hamburg
• Died: Homer Davenport, 45, American cartoonist, best known for his political cartoons for the New York Journal-American and New York Evening Mail, died of pneumonia after a two-week illness.

  May 3, 1912 (Friday)

• Ahmed al-Hiba of Morocco,, outraged at the Sultan's signing of a treaty to make Morocco a French protectorate, declared himself "Imam al-Mujahideen" and began inciting rebellions throughout the North African nation.
• French filmmaker Georges Méliès released The Conquest of the Pole, a fantastical loose adaptation of the Jules Verne polar exploration novel Voyages extraordinaires. The film bombed and added to Méliès' financial difficulties which led to eventually dissolving his partnership with Charles Pathé later that year, but most contemporary film critics rank it as equal to his earlier successes including A Trip to the Moon and The Impossible Voyage.
• The 59 unidentified bodies recovered from Titanic by were buried at three cemeteries in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
• Born:
• * Virgil Fox, American musician, known for his "Heavy Organ" recordings for RCA and Capitol Records, in Princeton, Illinois
• * May Sarton, Belgium-American writer, known for her poetry collections including Encounter in April and prose such as The Single Hound and Journal of a Solitude, in Wondelgem, Belgium

  May 4, 1912 (Saturday)

• The Battle of Rhodes began as Rhodes, largest of the Dodecanese islands that had historically been a part of Greece, was captured by Italy from the Ottoman Empire.
• The sailors of RMS Olympic were found guilty of mutiny, but no penalty was imposed.
• The Blackburn Rovers defeated the Queens Park Rangers 2-1 during a charity football game for survivors of the sinking of the Titanic in Tottenham, London, England.
• Pro Vercelli shut out Venezia 13–0 in the final for the Prima Categoria football league championship.
• A statue by sculptor Jerome Connor of John Carroll, the first Catholic bishop appointed in the United States, was unveiled on Georgetown University campus by Chief Justice Edward Douglass White.
• John Graham, a 63-year-old bear trapper, was killed by a bear on or near Crevice Mountain, near Yellowstone National Park. According to some accounts, the bear lost three toes on one paw to one of Graham's traps during the incident, and was subsequently known as "Old Two Toes".
• The Australian drama On Our Selection by Bert Bailey and Edmund Duggan opened at the Theatre Royal in Sydney and became a nation-wide success.
• Died: Nettie Stevens, 50, American biologist, credited for the discovery of the sex chromosome

  May 5, 1912 (Sunday)

• Vladimir Lenin began the daily publication of Pravda, the official newspaper of the Communist Party in Saint Petersburg, and later the leading daily paper for the Soviet Union between 1922 and 1991. The first issue carried the date "22 April 1912", because Russia was still using the Julian Calendar, which was 13 days behind the Gregorian calendar. The paper would later carry the slogan "Newspaper founded 5 May 1912 by V. I. Lenin". Until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Pravda was the leading newspaper in the Communist nation.
• The first competitive events of the 1912 Summer Olympics took place in Stockholm, Sweden, with lawn tennis being played until May 12. Most of the competition took place between June 29 and July 22, with the opening ceremonies being held on July 6.
• The first issue of Our Sunday Visitor was introduced in Catholic churches throughout the United States. The 35,000 copies of the first issue sold for one cent apiece.
• Born: Adolf Ottman, Anne-Marie Ottman, Emma Ottman and Elisabeth Ottman, the longest-lived quadruplets to date, in Munich. All four were 79 years, 316 days old when Adolf became the first to die on March 17, 1992.

  May 6, 1912 (Monday)

• The will of John Astor, who died in the Titanic disaster, was probated. His $150,000,000 estate was left to his 20-year-old son, Vincent Astor.
• The cable ship CS Minia brought 17 more bodies from the Titanic to Halifax, Nova Scotia. Only one of the persons had drowned, and the others had died of exposure to the cold.
• Born: Bill Quinn, American TV and film actor; in New York City
• Died: Lie Kim Hok, 58, Chinese-Malay writer, credited as the "father of Chinese Malay literature" through works including Tjhit Liap Seng and ''Sair Tjerita Siti Akbari''

  May 7, 1912 (Tuesday)

• A machine gun was fired from an airplane for the first time, in a test conducted near the College Park, Maryland, airfield by the United States Army. Charles deForest Chandler, chief of the Aeronautical Division of the Signal Corps, was able to fire a Lewis gun to hit targets on the ground, while Lt. Thomas D. Milling piloted the Wright biplane.
• Over 150 waiters and staff at a hotel in New York City went on strike to protest poor working conditions. The labour unrest spread to encompass 54 hotels and 30 restaurants throughout the city, with 2,500 waiters, 1,000 cooks, and 3,000 hotel workers going on strike.
• Born:
• * Frank Reginald Carey, British air force officer, commander of the No. 135 Squadron during World War II, recipient of the Order of the British Empire, Distinguished Flying Cross, and Distinguished Flying Medal; in Brixton, London
• * Ma Sicong, Chinese composer and musician, known as "The King of Violinists" in China before fleeing with his family to Hong Kong during the Cultural Revolution; in Haifeng County, Guangdong province

  May 8, 1912 (Wednesday)

• Pascual Orozco, who had helped in the revolution that made Francisco I. Madero the President of Mexico six months earlier, then led a second revolution against Madero, ordered his 6,000 insurrectionists to fight against Madero's troops at the state of Coahuila. Reports of the day described the oncoming clash as "the greatest body of rebels and government troops that has ever come together...in what is expected to be the turning point of the revolution". Filmmaker Adolph Zukor became one of the three founders of Paramount Pictures. He produced one of America's first feature-length films, and is the also the longest continuous running movie studio in the United States.
• Born: John Deakin, English photographer, known for his collaborations with painter Francis Bacon, including Three Studies of Lucian Freud; in New Ferry, Merseyside

  May 9, 1912 (Thursday)

• Royal Navy commander Charles Rumney Samson became the first pilot to take a plane into the air off of a ship in motion, when he flew his airplane off of, which was moving at a speed of.
• At Royal Albert Hall in London, a crowd of 7,000 turned out for the last public appearance of William Booth, founder of The Salvation Army. Booth would die on August 20.
• Born: Pedro Armendáriz, Mexican actor, known for his collaborations with filmmakers Emilio Fernández and John Ford; in Mexico City