November 1911

November 1, 1911 (Wednesday)

• The first aerial bombardment in history took place when Second Lieutenant Giulio Gavotti of the Italian Army threw three Cipelli hand grenades on Turkish troops at Tagiura in Libya, then flew his Etrich Taube monoplane to Ain and dropped an additional grenade. Nobody was injured in these first bombings.
• Robert Falcon Scott and his party of 12 departed Cape Evans, at 77°38′ south on their quest to become the first persons to reach the South Pole. Roald Amundsen of Norway had begun his trek to the Pole on October 19 and was already at the Ross Ice Shelf at 81° south.
• In the largest American fleet of warships ever assembled, more than 100 U.S. Navy ships sailed on the Hudson River off of New York City for review by Secretary of the Navy George von L. Meyer, led by the USS Connecticut. "This mobilization has demonstrated the preparedness of the American Navy for any emergency." On the same day, most of the U.S. Navy's Pacific Ocean fleet sailed past Los Angeles, with 22 ships and 2 submarines, led by the USS Oregon.
• Pope Pius X issued the papal bull Divino afflatu, requiring that the new breviary be used in all Roman Catholic churches no later than October 23, 1917.
• Chinese Imperial troops were successful in recapturing Hankou for the benefit of the Manchu dynasty Emperor, but a contingent of troops from the Shanxi Province, brought along for assistance, mutinied at Shikiatan. The group massacred 1,000 Manchu civilians, including their own commander and the Governor, his family, and their own general.
• Born:
• *Sidney Wood, American tennis player, Wimbledon champion 1931; in Black Rock, Connecticut.
• *Henri Troyat, Russian-born French novelist, as Lev Aslanovich Tarasov; in Moscow.
• *Slade Cutter, U.S. Navy officer and World War II hero; in Oswego, Illinois.

  November 2, 1911 (Thursday)

• U.S. President Taft received a 3,690 gun salute on "the greatest naval day this country has known in time of peace," as he reviewed most of the fleet of the U.S. Navy. The occasion was marred by the death of Seaman Gustav Frey, who fell overboard and drowned.
• Born:
• *Odysseas Elytis, Greek poet who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1979; as Odysseas Alepoudellis in Heraklion.
• *Carlos Bulosan, Philippine-born American novelist; in Binalonan.
• Died: Kyrle Bellew, 61, celebrated English actor who was popular in the late 19th and early 20th century.

  November 3, 1911 (Friday)

• The Chevrolet Motor Company was incorporated by former General Motors Chairman William C. Durant, to begin manufacture of an inexpensive automobile that had been designed by race car driver Louis Chevrolet. The Chevrolet would prove so successful that Durant would be able to acquire sufficient GM stock to regain control of that company.
• Shanghai was taken over by rebels, led by Chen Qimei, without resistance.
• Prince Chun, the regent for his young son, the Emperor of China, issued an edict accepting the National Assembly's 19 basic points for a new Constitution. The reform, which would have permitted the Emperor to remain on the throne in a constitutional monarchy in a parliamentary government, came too late to prevent the foundation of a republic.
• Born: Vladimir Ussachevsky, Russian-American composer of electronic music; to Russian parents in the Hailar District of China.
• Died:
• *Norman J. Colman, 84, the first person to ever serve as U.S. Secretary of Agriculture after the U.S. Agricultural Commission was elevated to cabinet status in 1889.
• *Daniel Drawbaugh, 84, who claimed to have invented the telephone, pneumatic tools, hydraulic rams, folding lunchboxes, barrel faucets, self-measuring wrapping machines, coin separators, and a wireless burglar alarm.

  November 4, 1911 (Saturday)

• The Agadir Crisis ended with the signing of Franco-German peace treaty at Berlin between German Foreign Minister Alfred von Kiderlen-Waechter and France's Ambassador to Germany, Jules Cambon, ending Germany's threat to go to war over Morocco. Germany withdrew all claims to North Africa, with Morocco being partitioned between France and Spain. In return, France ceded to Germany 107,270 mi² of the French Congo, as part of Kamerun, and Germany ceded 6,450 mi² of German Kamerun to France as part of Chad. The territorial changes would last only seven years, and after Germany's defeat in World War I, German Kamerun would become French Cameroun and, decades later, the independent nation of Cameroon.
• Piloted by Melvin Vaniman, the dirigible balloon Akron, was tested in Atlantic City in its first flight, but lost altitude and came down nine miles north at Grassy Bay.
• Born:
• *Charles Assalé, Prime Minister of Cameroon and of East Cameroon ; in Ebolowa.
• *Dixie Lee Crosby, American actress and first wife of Bing Crosby, as Wilma Winifred Wyatt; in Harriman, Tennessee.

  November 5, 1911 (Sunday)

• Calbraith P. Rodgers arrived in Pasadena, California, landing his airplane, the Vin Fiz Flyer at 4:04 pm, to become the first person to fly across the United States. A crowd of 20,000 greeted him, with a large group breaking through police guards to mob him. Reportedly, "hundreds threw hats and caps into the air, and trampled them into the dirt when they fell". He had started in New York City on September 17 and flown 3,220 miles, making 69 stops. Rodgers, who had replaced 98% of the original wood, wire and fabric of the plane during the trip, and had sustained a dozen crashes, would be killed in another crash five months later, on April 3, 1912.
• Giovanni Giolitti, the Prime Minister of Italy, announced the royal decree annexing the Ottoman Empire provinces of Tripoli and Cyrenaica to the Kingdom of Italy. The decree would be confirmed by the Parliament on February 25, 1912.
• Born: Roy Rogers, American cowboy, singer and actor; as Leonard Slye in Cincinnati.
• Died: Sir Hugh Gilzean-Reid, 75, who published the first halfpenny priced newspaper in Great Britain, the Middlesbrough Daily Gazette.

  November 6, 1911 (Monday)

• The first straight pool tournament, using the rules for "14.1 continuous" pocket billiards, was held, with Alfredo De Oro winning. The game, adapted from the 1888 game of continuous pool on the suggestion of champion Jerome Keogh, scored points by the cumulative number of balls sunk.
• Francisco I. Madero was sworn into office as President of Mexico. He left many of the officers of the defeated federales in command, and his attempts at reform would lead to more rebellion. Emiliano Zapata would declare his own revolution three weeks later. Madero and Vice-President José María Pino Suárez would both be assassinated on February 22, 1913.
• Born: Leonhard Goppelt, German-born Biblical interpreter; in Munich.

  November 7, 1911 (Tuesday)

• It was announced that Marie Curie had been awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. In 1903, she had been co-winner, with Pierre Curie, for the Nobel Prize in Physics, making her the first person to win a second Nobel Prize, and the first of only two to have won in two different categories.
• Yuan Shikai was named as the Prime Minister of the Chinese Empire.
• The legislature of the Fujian Province of China voted to declare its independence from the Empire, and joined the Republic of China four days later.
• General Wu Lu-cheng, the Governor-General of the Shaanxi Province, committed suicide after refusing instructions from the Emperor's court to surrender.

  November 8, 1911 (Wednesday)

• Arthur Balfour resigned as leader of the Conservative Party and as Leader of the Opposition in the British House of Commons, after being blamed by the B.M.G. campaign for not opposing the Parliament Bill.
• João Pinheiro Chagas resigned as Prime Minister of Portugal along with his entire cabinet.
• The legislature of the Anhui Province voted to secede from Imperial China.
• At his basement in St. Louis, inventor Anthony F. Wice tested his idea to generate heat by mixing compressed air and gasoline, after telling his son that he was on the verge of a breakthrough. An explosion killed him instantly.
• Born: Jacob B. Agus, Polish-born American rabbi; as Yakov Dov Agushewitz in Swislocz .

  November 9, 1911 (Thursday)

• At Hodgenville, Kentucky, President Taft dedicated the granite temple surrounding a replica of Abraham Lincoln's log cabin. "Few men have come into public prominence who came absolutely from the soil as did Abraham Lincoln," said Taft. "With an illiterate and shiftless father and a mother who, though of education and force, died before he reached youth," said Taft, "his future was dark indeed."
• The Kwangtung Province became the latest to secede from China as the National Assembly at Canton proclaimed a republic.
• Sultan Abdelhafid of Morocco announced that he would consent to the conditions of the Franco-German peace treaty, which provided for French protection and control of all of Morocco's foreign affairs.
• The first, and only, time a November palindrome day occurred in the 20th century was on this date.. The next one would occur on November 2, 2011.
• Died: Howard Pyle, 76, American artist described as "the father of American magazine illustration" and "the most successful of American artists."

  November 10, 1911 (Friday)

• Manchu troops in Nanjing, following the command of their Tartar general, carried out what a reporter described as "a scene of fire, rapine, desolation and butchery unrecorded in modern history" attacking the Chinese residents there indiscriminately, murdering "the aged, the young, and babies in arms." Any rebel who had cut off his queue was beheaded; even the simple act of wearing white clothing, or foreign clothing, was cause for murder.
• Andrew Carnegie donated $25,000,000 to the Carnegie Corporation to carry on his philanthropic work. His total bequests up until that time were counted as $208,233,000; of that, $50,935,000 had endowed "Carnegie libraries".
• King George V turned over British royal authority to a four-member Commission, empowered to act on his behalf during his absence. The group consisted of the King's cousin, Prince Arthur of Connaught ; the Archbishop of Canterbury ; the Lord Chancellor ; and the Lord President of the Council. The King and his wife, Queen Mary departed Portsmouth the next day en route to India, where they were Emperor and Empress.