THE 1900s: WORLD EVENTS: SELECTED OCCURRENCES OUTSIDE THE UNITED STATES

1900

World population reaches 1.55 billion.
Max Planck formulates the quantum theory in physics. He will receive the Nobel Prize for physics in 1918.
Sigmund Freud publishes Die Traumdeutung, later translated as The Interpretation of Dreams.
José Enrique Rodó publishes Ariel, a work that heightens anti-U.S. sentiment among South American intellectuals.
In Japan the Police Regulations of 1900 institute a near-total ban on collective bargaining and the right to strike.
The Paris Métro {Chemin de Fer Métropolitain) opens, with more than six miles of track completed.
At the Paris Exposition, the elevator is unveiled to the public. An elevator of similar design, first patented by American Charles A. Wheeler in 1892, is installed in Bloomingdale's department store in New York the same year.

1 Jan.: A British protectorate is established over northern Nigeria.
20 Jan.: John Ruskin, influential English art critic and social reformer of the Victorian era, dies.
31 Jan.: John Sholto Douglas, eighth Marquess of Queensbury, dies. Douglas had sponsored a set of rules governing the sport of boxing. Issued in 1867, they became known as the Queensbury rules.
27 Feb.: The British Labour Representation Labour Committee, which would soon become the Labour Party, is founded. Ramsay MacDonald is named first secretary.
28 Feb.: In South Africa, British forces under the command of Redvers Buller relieve the Boer siege of Ladysmith.
4 Apr.: The Prince of Wales narrowly escapes an assassination attempt in Brussels.
7 Apr.: The ministers of Germany, France, Britain, and the United States issue an ultimatum to the Chinese government, giving it two months to suppress the Boxer uprising.
14 Apr.: The president of France opens the Paris International Exhibition, which covers 547 acres.
22 Apr.: Rabah Zubayr, conqueror of the Sudan, is defeated by French forces in the Battle of Kusseri, in presentday Chad. With this victory, the French unite their colonial possessions in Algeria, West Africa, and the French Congo.
26 Apr.: The Canadian cities of Ottawa and Hull are almost completely destroyed by fire. Fire ravages five square miles of buildings, causes $15 million in damage, and leaves twelve thousand people homeless.
May: The Russians occupy Manchuria, and their forces massacre an estimated forty-five thousand Chinese inhabitants.
17 May: After 217 days, British forces break the siege of Mafeking in the Boer War.
20 May: The second Olympic Games of the modern era open in Paris. More than one thousand athletes from twenty-two nations compete.
24 May: The Orange Free State in southern Africa is annexed by Great Britain.
12 June: The German Reichstag announces a program to expand its naval fleet by thirty-eight battleships over twenty years.
13 June: The Boxer Rebellion intensifies in China and is quickly diverted by the government into an attack against foreigners.
2 July: The maiden voyage of a Zeppelin airship takes place. It features an aluminum hull with sixteen separate compartments filled with hydrogen for buoyancy and two sixteen-horsepower motors. Regular passenger service in dirigibles will not commence until 1910.
29 July: Umberto of Italy, king since 1878, is assassinated and is succeeded by his son, Victor Emmanuel III, who will remain titular ruler of Italy until 1946.
12 Aug.: Wilhelm Steinitz, the world's first acknowledged chess champion, dies.
25 Aug.: Friedrich Nietzsche, German philosopher and poet and bitter critic of Christianity, dies.
31 Aug.: Johannesburg in southern Africa is occupied by British forces. The process of forcing Boers into concentration camps, which continues until 1902, is begun.
18 Oct.: Bernhard von Bülow becomes chancellor of Germany, succeeding Chlodwig Karl Hohenlohe, who resigned two days earlier. Von Billow's aggressive foreign policy strains Germany's relations with Russia, France, and Great Britain, driving those three countries into closer union.
22 Nov.: English composer Arthur Sullivan, best known for his collaboration with W. S. Gilbert on popular comic operas, including H.M.S. Pinafore (1878) and The Pi-rates of Penzance (1879), dies.
30 Nov.: Irish-born writer Oscar Wilde, author of The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) and other works, dies.

1901

The first Nobel Prizes are awarded for work in physics (Wilhelm Röntgen), chemistry (Jacobus Hendricus van't Hoff), and physiology or medicine (Emil von Behring).
The Trans-Siberian railway is completed between Moscow and Port Arthur.
British annexation of Baluchistan, comprising parts of presentday Pakistan and Iran, is completed, effectively extending Britain's empire in India.

1 Jan.: The Commonwealth of Australia is officially founded, following an act of the British Parliament (9 July 1900). Edmund Barton will become its first prime minister.
22 Jan.: Queen Victoria of Great Britain, after a reign of sixty-four years, dies. Her son Edward VII ascends to the throne.
27 Jan.: Italian opera composer Giuseppe Verdi dies.
23 Mar.: Emilio Aguinaldo, leader of an insurrection in the Philippines against U.S. rule, is captured. On 19 April he issues a proclamation recognizing U.S. sovereignty.
June: The Cuban Congress adopts a new constitution, which grants certain powers to the United States under the terms of the Platt Amendment.
Sept.: The Socialist Revolutionary Party of Russia is founded.
7 Sept.: The Boxer Rebellion in China ends with the signing of the Peace of Peking between China and major European nations, sometimes called the "Great Powers."
9 Sept.: French lithographer and poster artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, famous for his depictions of Paris nightlife in the 1890s, dies.
18 Nov.: The Hay-Pauncefote Treaty is negotiated between the United States and Great Britain, providing for the construction of the Panama Canal and ending British treaty rights in the region.
10 Dec.: The first Nobel Prize for literature is awarded to French poet and writer Sully Prudhomme.
The first Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to Jean-Henri Dunant, Swiss founder of the International Red Cross, and Frédéric Passy, French founder of the International League of Peace.

1902

French composer Claude Debussy composes Pelléas et Mélisande.
Joseph Conrad publishes "Heart of Darkness."
The Times Literary Supplement of London is founded.
In separate experiments, English physicist Oliver Heaviside and British American electrical engineer Arthur Kennelly discover the existence of an electrified layer of the earth's atmosphere, which, by reflecting radio waves, makes radio transmissions across long distances possible.

26 Mar.: Cecil John Rhodes, architect of British colonial rule in Africa and wealthy diamond miner, dies. Part of his fortune is used to establish the Rhodes scholarships.
Apr.: Under the terms of the Russo-Japanese Convention, Russia agrees to remove its forces from Manchuria.
15 Apr.: A peasant uprising in Russia is suppressed by forces of the czar.
20 Apr.: At an exhibition of La Société Nationale des Beaux Arts in Paris, the Art Nouveau style, whose influence will be felt in everything from painting to interior design to the subway entrances of the Paris Métro, is put on triumphant display.
7 May: A volcanic eruption on the island of Saint Vincent, in the Windward Islands, kills an estimated two thousand inhabitants.
8 May: The eruption of Mount Pelée, on the island of Martinique in the Windward Islands, sends a cloud of ash, steam, and gas onto the city of Saint Pierre, killing an estimated thirty thousand people, nearly the entire population of the city.
20 May: Tomás Estrada Palma is elected first president of the independent Republic of Cuba, marking the end of U.S. occupation of the island following the Spanish-American War.
31 May: The Peace of Vereeniging ends the Boer War in South Africa. Britain promises representative government.
18 June: Samuel Butler, the British writer best known for his Utopian romance Erewhon (1872), dies.
12 July: Arthur James Balfour is named prime minister of Great Britain, succeeding his uncle, Lord Salisbury. After the First World War, he issues the Balfour Declaration, pledging British support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
28 Sept.: Emile Zola, a French naturalist writer, dies. Zola's influence was widespread in American fiction at the turn of the century.
Dec.: The Aswan Dam, one of the architetural marvels of the century, is completed in Egypt.
7 Dec.: Great Britain and Germany issue an ultimatum demanding reparations from Venezuela following a violent takeover of the government there in 1899.
10 Dec.: The Nobel Prize for literature is awarded to Theodor Mommsen of Germany.
13 Dec.: Germany and Britain institute a blockade of Venezuela and begin bombarding its forts as punishment for Venezuela's failure to make payments on its international debt.
18 Dec.: In England and Wales the Education Act extends primary education.

1903

The Krupp Works, a famous armaments factory in Essen, Germany, becomes a public company.
Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen begins the first successful voyage through the Northwest Passage, the narrow sea connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. He completes the journey in 1906.
Willem Einthoven, a Dutch physiologist, develops the string galvanometer, a forerunner of his electrocardiogram (EKG).
Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov reports for the first time on his experiments in behavior and "conditioned reflexes."
The first Tour de France bicycle race is won by M. Garin of France.
• The Nobel Prize for literature is awarded to Norwegian writer Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson.

Jan.: A border dispute between Canada and the United States over Alaska is resolved.
19 Jan.: The first radio message is transmitted from the United States to England.
20 Mar.: The paintings of Henri Matisse are exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants.
Apr.: In a three-day pogrom in Kishinev, Bessarabia, forty-five Russian Jews are killed and fifteen hundred Jewish homes are destroyed.
8 May: French painter Paul Gauguin dies in the Marquesas Islands.
11 June: Alexander of Serbia and his wife, Draga Mishin, are assassinated by disaffected army officers.
July: Pope Leo XIII, elected to the papacy in 1878, dies. He is succeeded in August by Pope Pius X.
17 July: American-born painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler, who spent most of his life in France and England, dies.
30 July: The Russian Social Democratic Party splits into two wings, the Mensheviks and the more radical Bolsheviks, during a meeting in London.
Oct.: The Women's Social and Political Union is founded by British feminist Emmeline Pankhurst.
1 Nov.: German historian Theodor Mommsen, world-renowned scholar of ancient Rome, dies.
3 Nov.: The U.S. warship Nashville arrives off the coast of Colón, Colombia. Colombia refuses Theodore Roosevelt's demand for permission to construct the Panama Canal.
6 Nov.: Panama declares its independence from Colombia as a U.S. protectorate.
13 Nov.: French Impressionist painter Camille Pissarro dies.
18 Nov.: The Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty between Panama and the United States cedes control of the Panama Canal Zone to the United States.
8 Dec.: British philosopher and social theorist Herbert Spencer dies. Spencer is widely credited with disseminating what became known as social Darwinism, the idea that society benefited from living by the rule of "survival of the fittest."

1904

Joseph Conrad publishes Nostromo.
French sculptor Auguste Rodin creates one of his best-known works, The Thinker.
In Britain the Rolls-Royce automobile company is established.
Italian Giacomo Puccini composes his opera Madame Butterfly.
In Dublin, Ireland, the Abbey Theatre opens.
Russian playwright Anton Chekhov writes The Cherry Orchard.
French writer Frédéric Mistral and Spanish writer José Echegaray y Eizaguirre share the Nobel Prize for literature.
Silicone is developed by F. S. Kipping.
Sigmund Freud publishes The Psychopathology of Everyday Life.
British scientist John Fleming invents the diode vacuum tube, a crucial step in the development of radio.
Several industrial cartels merge to form the German Steel Union. With monopoly control of steel markets at home, it sells its products for lower prices on world markets. Its existence aids Germany's expanding military.

8-9 Feb.: The Russo-Japanese War begins when Japanese launch an attack on the Russian fleet. Japan officially declares war on 10 February.
8 Apr.: France and Britain sign the Entente Cordiale after resolving territorial disagreements over Egypt, Newfoundland, Morocco, and Siam. France accepts Britain's position in Egypt, while England allows France and Spain to assert claims in Morocco.
1 May: Czech composer Antonín Dvorák dies.
17 May: A dispute breaks out between the anticlerical government in France and the Vatican.
2 June: A major exhibit of the works of Henri Matisse is staged at Galeries Vollard, Paris.
1 July-23 Nov.: The Summer Olympic Games are held in Saint Louis, Missouri.
2 July: Russian playwright Anton Chekhov dies.
3 July: Theodor Herzll, a leader of the Zionist movement, dies of a heart attack.
4 July: Construction of the Panama Canal begins.
7 July: In France, religious orders are prohibited from teaching by the government.
14 July: Paul Kruger, three-time president of the Boer Republic of Transvaal and foe of British expansion in South Africa, dies.
28 July: Russian Minister of the Interior V. K. Plehve is assassinated.
7 Sept.: The Dalai Lama, spiritual and political leader of Tibet, is forced to sign a treaty granting Great Britain trading rights in three cities. His capitulation follows the capture of Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, by British forces in August.
3 Oct.: In South-West Africa, a rebellion of Hottentots and Herero against German colonial rule begins. It will continue until 1908.
18 Oct.: France establishes Dakar as the capital of its newly reorganized possessions in French West Africa.
21 Oct.: British fishing vessels in the North Sea are mistakenly fired on by the Russian navy. The incident becomes known as the Dogger Bank incident.

1905

Claude Debussy composes La Mer.
The Fauves (wild beasts), a short-lived group of painters led by Henri Matisse and André Derain, stages an exhibition at the Salon d'Automne in Paris.
Die Brüke (The Bridge), a group of German Expressionist painters explicitly opposed to Impressionism, is formed in Dresden. It disbands in 1913.
British novelist E. M. Forster publishes Where Angels Fear to Tread.
The Nobel Prize for literature is awarded to Polish writer Henryk Sienkiewicz.
Sigmund Freud publishes Three Contributions to the Sexual Theory.
The zipper is invented.
The Trans-Siberian Railroad between Moscow and Vladivostok on the Pacific coast is completed. Construction had begun on Russia's longest rail line in 1881.
The Mining Act is passed in Japan, limiting the hours of work for women and children and establishing age ten as the minimum age for child laborers. It will be extended by the Factory Act of 1911, though both measures affect only companies employing more than fifteen workers.

1 Jan.: The Russian city of Port Arthur is captured by the Japanese.
22 Jan.: The "Bloody Sunday" massacre in Saint Petersburg sparks the Russian Revolution of 1905.
17 Feb.: Grand Duke Serge, the governor of Moscow, is assassinated in the Kremlin.
3 Mar.: Czar Nicholas II of Russia promises religious reforms.
24 Mar.: Jules Verne, French pioneer of the genre of science fiction, dies.
26 Mar.: British actor Maurice Barrymore, whose children, Lionel, Ethel, and John, will find fame on the American stage and screen, dies.
27 May: Japan completely destroys the Russian naval fleet in the Battle of Tsushima, with the loss of only three Japanese torpedo boats.
7 June: The parliament of Norway votes to dissolve the union of Norway and Sweden under Oscar II, king of Sweden. Sweden is compelled to agree when a majority of Norwegians approve the dissolution in a plebiscite.
27-28 June: The crew of the Russian naval vessel Potemkin mutiny in the harbor at Odessa. Soon the entire Russian Black Sea Fleet is immobilized. The mutiny is triggered by political unrest in Russia and anger about the country's recent defeats in the Russo-Japanese War.
30 June: Albert Einstein announces his special theory of relativity. On 27 September he issues a second paper on the subject containing his famous formulation, E=mc². The theory is fully elaborated by Einstein in 1915 as the general theory of relativity.
July: Muslims (Maji-Maji) in German East Africa stage an uprising.
3 July: Both houses of the legislature in France endorse a law establishing complete separation of church and state.
20 Aug.: Chinese nationalist leader Sun Yat-Sen issues his Three People's Principles—nationalism, democracy, and livelihood for the people—in his first public statement of his philosophy after a decade of secret activities.
1 Sept.: Alberta and Saskatchewan are made provinces of Canada.
5 Sept.: Under the terms of the Treaty of Portsmouth, brokered by President Theodore Roosevelt, Japan establishes a protectorate over Korea and is granted lease rights to Port Arthur and Sakhalin Island after its victory in the Russo-Japanese War. Roosevelt will receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts.
27 Sept.: Norway gains its independence from Sweden.
Oct.: Under Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky, the first of the Russian soviets (councils) is created in Saint Petersburg.
17 Oct.: Czar Nicholas II issues the October Manifesto, promising civil liberties and democratic institutions in Russia. The manifesto establishes a constitutional monarchy with an elected Duma (parliament). A general strike in support of the manifesto spreads throughout Russia and lasts until December.
28 Nov.: In Ireland the Sinn Féin (Ourselves Alone) party is established with the goal of ending British rule in Ireland.
4 Dec.: Arthur Balfour, Britain's Conservative prime minister, resigns after his party is split between protectionists and advocates of free trade.
4-5 Dec.: A congress meeting in Vilnius declares Lithuania's independence from Russia.
5 Dec.: All 230 members of the Saint Petersburg soviet are arrested.
9 Dec.: The law in France establishing separation of church and state is officially promulgatedd.
15 Dec.: Russian troops crush a citizen uprising in Moscow.

1906

Joseph Thomson discovers gamma rays.
Frederick Gowland Hopkins discovers vitamins.
Explorer Roald Amundsen determines the position of the magnetic North Pole.
Spanish architect Antonio Gaudi begins constructing Casa Milá in Barcelona.
A test for diagnosing the sexually transmitted disease syphilis is developed by German bacteriologist August von Wassermann and dermatologist Albert Neisser.
German scientist Walther Hermann Nernst develops the third law of thermodynamics.
Tears of Blood by Yi Injik, generally recognized as the first modern novel m Korean, is published in serialized form in a Korean newspaper.
Giosuè Carducci of Italy wins the Nobel Prize for literature.
Le Mans, France, hosts that country's first Grand Prix auto race.

12 Jan.: The Liberal Party wins in a landslide in Britain, and, led by Prime Minister Henry Campbell-Bannerman, inaugurates a period of far-reaching social reforms.
29 Jan.: The king of Denmark, Christian IX, dies.
Feb.: Pope Pius X's encyclical Vehementer Nos condemns the separation of church and state in France.
10 Feb.: The HMS Dreadnought, prototype of a vastly more powerful warship, is launched by Great Britain.
Mar.: Britain agrees to pay compensation for damages resulting from the Boer War.
7 Mar.: Finland institutes universal suffrage for everyone older than twenty-four, thus becoming the first nation to grant women's suffragdd.
10 Mar.: A coal-mine explosion in Courières, France, kills more than one thousand miners.
6 Apr.: Mount Vesuvius erupts, destroying several towns near Naples, Italy.
7 Apr.: France and Spain agree to spheres of influence in Morocco at the Algeciras Conference, which had begun on 16 January.
19 Apr.: French chemist Pierre Curie dies.
6 May: Czar Nicholas II issues the Fundamental Laws, which restore most of the imperial powers he had surrendered in the October Manifesto.
10 May: The first meeting of the Duma, an elected parliament, begins in Russia.
19 May: Jöao Franco, a fervent monarchist, is named prime minister by King Carlos I of Portugal. Franco limits press freedom and suspends parliamentary government. The Simplon Tunnel, running 12.3 miles between Brig, Switzerland, and Isella, Italy, opens as the longest railway tunnel in the world.
23 May: Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, whose plays revolutionized modern drama, dies.
June: Several pogroms, targeted at Jews, occur throughout Russia.
July: A peace treaty is negotiated, bringing to an end a war between Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras in Central America.
4 July: Britain, France, and Italy agree to guarantee the independence of Ethiopia.
9 July: The Russian Duma is prevented from meeting and martial law is declared.
12 July: Alfred Dreyfus, whose initial trial on treason charges had become a cause célèbre among French intellectuals, is found innocent by France's Supreme Court of Appeals after another trial.
22 July: Nicholas II dissolves the Duma and begins a crackdown on dissenters.
16Aug.: An earthquake devastates Valparaiso and Santiago, Chile, killing twenty thousand people and causing an estimated $300 million in property damage.
Sept.: The Chinese Imperial Court agrees to the gradual adoption of a constitution.
An imperial order aims at ending the opium trade in China. Britain cooperates by restricting the flow of the drug into China from India. China, in turn, limits the harvest of poppies, the source of the drug.
29 Sept.: U.S. troops occupy Cuba and repress a liberal uprising against the government of Tomás Estrada Palma.
Oct.: In Cuba a provisional government led by Charles Magoon is put in place by the United States.
1 Oct.: Great Britain, Egypt, and Turkey settle their boundary dispute over the Sinai Peninsula, most of which remained under Turkish control.
18 Oct.: Georges Clemenceau becomes premier of France for the first time. He will remain premier until 1909, when repression of a miners' strike brings down his government.
22 Oct.: French Impressionist master Paul Cézanne dies.
Nov.: Leon Trotsky, one of the leaders of the 1905 Russian Revolution, is exiled to Siberia.
Dec.: Aga Khan forms the All-India Muslim League, demanding representative government and separate electorates for Muslims.
21 Dec.: In Great Britain, the Trade Disputes Act limits the liability of trade unions for damages resulting from strikes and makes picketing legal.
30 Dec.: The shah of Persia, Muzaffer-ed-Din, grants that country its first constitution.

1907

Austrian Gustav Mahler composes his Eighth Symphony, known as the "Symphony of a Thousand."
Pablo Picasso paints Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, one of the early works of the Cubist movement led by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque.
British writer Rudyard Kipling receives the Nobel Prize for literature.
A secret Russo-Japanese agreement carves up Manchuria into spheres of influence and renders Korea a de facto colony of Japan.
The Mauretania—with a top speed of twenty-five knots, the fastest ocean liner of the era—is launched in Great Britain, ushering in the age of elegant cruise ships.
Maria Montessori, who had earlier pioneered the education of children with below-normal capabilities, opens in Rome her first school for average children.

1 Jan.: Universal suffrage is instituted in Austria.
14 Jan.: An earthquake strikes Kingston, Jamaica, killing approximately fourteen hundred people.
26 Jan.: The premiere of Irish playwright John Millington Synge's The Playboy of the Western World at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin provokes public outrage.
26 Feb.: Louis Botha, a Boer, is elected prime minister of the Transvaal in southern Africa. His government adopts on 22 March the Asiatic Registration Bill, limiting immigration from India.
18 Mar.: French chemist Eugène-Marcelin Bertholet dies. He is best known for his work synthesizing compounds such as alcohol (1855), methane (1858), and benzene (1866).
22 Mar.: In Morocco, widespread unrest begins, which will eventually lead to the bombardment of Casablanca and the occupation of that city, as well as Rabat, by French troops.
14 June: Women's suffrage is achieved in Norway.
July: The Orange Free State is granted autonomous status by Britain in South Africa.
10 Aug.: The world's most grueling automobile race to date ends when Italy's Prince Borghese arrives in Paris, having driven eight thousand miles in sixty-two days from Peking (Beijing), China.
31 Aug.: An agreement between Russia and Britain carves out defined spheres of influence in central Asia and Persia (Iran).
4 Sept.: Edvard Grieg, Norway's foremost classical composer, dies.
6 Sept.: Pope Pius X's encyclical Pascendi Gregis condemns religious modernism. The pope had broached many of the same themes in an encyclical of 4 July titled Lamentabili.
26 Sept.: New Zealand, a former British colony, is granted dominion status.
18 Oct.: The Second International Peace Conference (which had begun on 15 June) ends without accomplishing its main objective: the reduction of armaments. However, new limits on the use of aerial bombardment, poison gas, and undersea mines are agreed to by the forty-six nations in attendance.
8 Dec.: Oscar II, the king of Sweden, dies. His son, Gustav V, succeeds him on the throne.
16 Dec.: The "Great White Fleet," a flotilla of sixteen U.S. warships, embarks on a cruise around the world to demonstrate American naval power.
17 Dec.: William Thomson, first Baron Kelvin, who developed an absolute scale of temperature (the Kelvin scale), dies. He also consolidated the law of the conservation of energy, one of the basic principles of modern physics.

1908

Hungarian composer Béla Bartók composes his First String Quartet.
Ecce Homo, the autobiography of German philosopher and poet Friedrich Nietzsche, is published posthumously.
German writer Rudolf C. Eucken wins the Nobel Prize for literature.
The first newsreel is shown in a Paris theater by Charles Pathé.
German chemist Fritz Haber successfully synthesizes ammonia, a break-through with major commercial implications.
German bacteriologist Paul Ehrlich, soon to discover a chemical treatment for syphilis that becomes known as the "magic bullet," shares the Nobel Prize in medicine with immunologist Elie Metchnikoff.

24 Jan.: Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell forms the Boy Scouts.
1 Feb.: King Carlos I and Crown Prince Luís Filipe are assassinated in Portugal. Carlos is succeeded by his second son, Manuel II.
20 Feb.: Emilio Marinetti publishes the Futurist Manifesto, galvanizing a school of Italian artists fascinated with movement and action and scornful of past artistic achievements.
8 Apr.: Herbert Asquith, chancellor of the exchequer, becomes prime minister of Britain following the resignation of Henry Campbell-Bannerman.
27 Apr.: The fourth Summer Olympic Games of the modern era begin in London and are completed on 31 October.
26 May: Major deposits of oil are discovered in Persia (presentday Iran), igniting an oil boom is southwestern Asia and leading to the discover}' of other large oil supplies in the Middle East.
21 June: Russian composer Nikolay Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov dies.
24 July: The "Young Turks" force Abdülhamid II, sultan of the Ottoman Empire, to restore the constitution of 1876.
25 July: Louis Blériot achieves the first crossing of the English Channel in a heavier-than-air machine.
Aug.: The first general elections under the supervision of the United States are held in Cuba. Liberal candidate José Gomez is elected president and serves until 1913.
Sept.: In Russia, an Asiatic cholera epidemic claims more than seventy-one hundred lives, close to two thousand in Saint Petersburg alone.
5 Oct.: Bulgaria declares its complete independence from the Ottoman Empire.
6 Oct.: Austria annexes the former Turkish provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina (setting the stage for events that will spark the First World War six years later).
8 Oct.: Polish-born Hebrew scholar and poet Naphtali Herz Imber, whose hymn "ha-Tiqwa" (also spelled "Hatikvah") later becomes the anthem of the Zionist movement and of the state of Israel, dies.
12 Oct.: The Cape Colony and Natal meet with the former Boer states of the Transvaal and Orange Free State to form the Union of South Africa. The union formally takes effect on 31 May 1910.
18 Oct.: Leopold II gives the Belgian parliament control over the Belgian Congo, which he had held as a personal possession.
14 Nov.: The Chinese government announces the deaths of Kuang Hsü, the Chinese emperor since 1875, and his empress, Tzu Hsi. Hsüan-T'ung, the emperor's infant nephew, becomes the last emperor of the Manchu dynasty.
30 Nov.: The danger of war between Japan and the United States is averted when the Root-Takahira Agreement is signed. The agreement establishes the territorial integrity of China and declares mutual respect for the Pacific possessions of Japan and the United States.
28 Dec.: French Impressionist painter Henri Matisse publishes Notes d'un peintre in La Grande Revue, setting forth the principles of his art.
A major earthquake causes widespread devastation in the Italian provinces of Calabria and Sicily, killing eighty-three thousand people.

1909

Selma Lagerlöf of Sweden is awarded the Nobel Prize for literature.
Rafael Reyes Prieto is ousted as president of Colombia following his recognition of the independence of Panama in a treaty with the United States.

1 Jan.: Astronomers in London report the possibility of another planet in the solar system beyond Neptune.
9 Jan.: British explorer Ernest Henry Shackleton misses reaching the South Pole by one hundred miles.
18 Jan.: Brewers in New Zealand decide to abolish barmaids and ban women from purchasing alcohol in bars.
9 Feb.: A British court rules that a wife is not permitted to divorce her husband, even if her claim is based on desertion.
24 Mar.: John Millington Synge, a major figure in the Irish literary awakening at the turn of the century whose The Playboy of the Western World had shocked Dublin theater audiences in 1907, dies.
6 Apr.: Robert Peary reaches the North Pole, though his achievement will remain in dispute for decades.
10 Apr.: British poet Charles Swinburne dies.
13 Apr.: Armenians rebel against Ottoman rule following a massacre by the sultan's troops at Adana in southern Turkey.
18 Apr.: Joan of Arc is beatified in Rome, bringing her a step closer to canonization as a saint of the Roman Catholic Church.
27 Apr.: The "Young Turks" depose Sultan Abdülhamìd II. He is succeeded by Muhammad V, his younger brother.
18 May: Sergey Diaghilev's Ballets Russes perform for the first time in Paris.
25 May: A Russian court jails the publisher of Tolstoy's "Thou Shalt Not Kill" but declines to prosecute Tolstoy, a devout pacifist.
11 June: An earthquake in Provence, in southern France, kills sixty people.
26 June: The shah of Persia annuls a new election law and indefinitely postpones adoption of a promised constitution.
24 July: Aristide Briand becomes premier of France.
Aug.: An uprising in Barcelona, Spain, is put down by government forces. As many as one thousand people die in the fighting.
28 Aug.: American Glenn Curtiss wins the first airplane race for the Gordon Bennett Cup in Rheims, France, with an average speed of 47 MPH.
10 Oct.: The execution of Spanish anarchist leader Francisco Ferrer ignites protests across Europe.
26 Oct.: Former Japanese prime minister Hirobumi Ito is assassinated by a Korean nationalist.
28 Nov.: The French national assembly endorses a law granting pregnant women an eight-week leave from their jobs.
17 Dec.: King Leopold II of Belgium dies. He is succeeded by Albert I, his nephew.