May 1912

[May 1], 1912 (Wednesday)

• 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.
• Congressman Oscar Underwood of Alabama won the Democratic primary in Georgia, defeating New Jersey Governor Woodrow Wilson.
• The Pittsburgh and Castle Shannon Plane coal rail line ceased operations at Mount Washington, Pittsburgh.
• 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 royal commission headed by Lord Mersey began their investigation of the sinking of the RMS Titanic on April 16.
• 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.
• Italian Army Captain Alberto Margenhi Marengoon made the first nighttime reconnaissance flight in history, using an airplane to assess Ottoman troop strength near Benghazi, Libya.

  [May 3], 1912 (Friday)

• Ahmed al-Hiba, 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.
• The 59 unidentified bodies recovered from Titanic by were buried at three cemeteries in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
• Born:
• * 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
• * Sam DeCavalcante, American gangster, leader of the DeCavalcante crime family, in Brooklyn, New York City
• * Virgil Fox, American musician, known for his "Heavy Organ" recordings for RCA and Capitol Records, in Princeton, Illinois

  [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 Turkey.
• 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 RMS Titanic in Tottenham, London, England.
• 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.
• Died: Nettie Stevens, 50, American biologist, credited for the discovery of the sex chromosome

  [May 5], 1912 (Sunday)

• 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.
• 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", in that 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".
• 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 pass away on March 17, 1992.

  [May 6], 1912 (Monday)

• The will of John Jacob Astor IV, who died in the Titanic disaster, was probated. His $150,000,000 estate was left to his 22-year-old son, Vincent Astor.
• The cable ship 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 actor, best known as the neighbor to Archie Bunker in the 1970s television sitcom All in the Family, New York City

  [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 28-pound 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: Ma Sicong, Chinese composer and musician, known as "The King of Violinists" in China before fleeting with his family to Hong Kong during the Cultural Revolution, in Haifeng County, Guangdong, China

  [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".

  [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

  [May 10], 1912 (Friday)

• The revolution in Paraguay was defeated after government troops overcame rebels led by former President Albino Jara, who was fatally wounded in the battle.
• Glenn L. Martin broke the existing record for a flight over water in an airplane, traveling 38 miles, from Newport Beach, California, to Catalina Island, in 37 minutes. He then flew back, against the wind, in 51 minutes.

  [May 11], 1912 (Saturday)

• W. B. Atwater, a salesman for the Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company, persuaded the Imperial Japanese Navy to begin developing its own air corps. Atwater impressed the Minister of the Navy, Admiral Saitō Makoto, by taking aloft a Curtiss hydroplane from the ocean, in the first water takeoff ever seen in the Orient. On the third and final flight, Atwater took one of the Japanese officers with him as a passenger, then dropped a message to the Minister Saito. Japan bought four Curtiss Triads. "From this slight beginning," author Walter J. Boyne would note later, "grew the naval air force that twenty-nine years later would strike at Pearl Harbor."
• Born:
• * Foster Brooks, American actor and comedian, best known for his collaboration with Dean Martin, in Louisville, Kentucky
• * Saadat Hasan Manto, Pakistani writer, known his short stories in the Urdu language, in Samrala, Punjab, British India

  [May 12], 1912 (Sunday)

• Bulgaria and Serbia signed a mutual defense treaty, with Bulgaria pledging 200,000 men to defend Serbia against an attack by Austria-Hungary, while Serbia agreed to send 200,000 to protect against a Bulgarian invasion by Romania, and each pledging to assist the other in a fight against the Ottoman Empire.
• Decommissioned Royal Navy submarine was sunk for a second and final time during naval target practice in the English Channel. It had sunk on February 2 after it accidentally collided with during training exercises off the Isle of Wight. The Royal Navy salvaged it in March.
• Born: Archibald Cox, American lawyer, 31st Solicitor General of the United States, special prosecutor during the Watergate scandal, in Plainfield, New Jersey

  [May 13], 1912 (Monday)

• The United States House of Representatives voted 237-39 to send the proposed Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution to the 48 states for ratification. The amendment, which provided for U.S. Senators to be elected directly by popular vote, rather than by the state legislatures, followed 86 years worth of rejections. In 1894, 1898, 1900 and 1902, the House had approved an amendment and the Senate had rejected it. The Amendment would be ratified by April 8, 1913, after Connecticut became the 36th of 48 states to give its approval.
• The remains of three people, who had been able to escape the sinking in a lifeboat, but died while awaiting rescue, were located by another White Star Line steamer,. Passenger Thomson Beattie and two of the ship's firemen had managed to get into one of the collapsible lifeboats, but drifted for a month after the ship sank, dying from hypothermia or thirst along the way. Another three bodies of Titanic victims were recovered by the Canadian government ship Montmagny and brought to Louisbourg, Nova Scotia, where they were shipped to Halifax via the Sydney and Louisburg Railway.
• The first jury trial ever conducted in China began in Shanghai.
• Italian ships captured more islands from the Ottoman Empire, seizing Piskopi, Nisero, Kalismo, Leno and Patmos.
• A Flanders monoplane crashed at Brooklands, Surrey, England, killing the pilot and passenger. The accident led to the first known investigation into an air crash, with the conclusion being pilot error.
• Born: Gil Evans, Canadian jazz composer, best known for his collaborations with Miles Davis, as Ian Ernest Gilmore Green, in Toronto

  [May 14], 1912 (Tuesday)

• King Frederick of Denmark collapsed and died during an evening stroll while on vacation in Germany. Found alone, and with no identification, the 68-year old monarch was taken as a "John Doe" to a morgue in a local hospital before his fellow travelers realized he was missing.
• Saved from the Titanic, a silent film produced by the Eclair Film Company and starring Dorothy Gibson, was released in the United States. Coming out on the one-month anniversary of the day RMS Titanic struck the iceberg, it was the first disaster film, and the first to use special effects, interspersing film of the RMS Olympic with models "sometimes resembling a toy boat in a bathtub" to recreate the sinking. Ms. Gibson, at the time the most famous movie star in America, actually had been a passenger on the ship when it began to sink, and literally had been "saved from the Titanic".
• China's legislature rejected the six power railroad loan agreement.
• In the California presidential primaries, Theodore Roosevelt won all 26 of the Republican delegates, defeating William Howard Taft in all 58 counties. Former House Speaker Champ Clark won the Democratic delegates, defeating Woodrow Wilson by a 2-1 ratio. Women, though not allowed to vote in national elections, were able to participate in the primaries.
• Died:
• * August Strindberg, 63, Swedish writer, author of novels such as The Red Room and plays such as The Father and Miss Julie
• * Albino Jara, 35, Paraguayan state leader, 37th President of Paraguay

  [May 15], 1912 (Wednesday)

• Crown Prince Christian, brother of King Haakon of Norway, was proclaimed as King Christian of Denmark.
• Austrian Prime Minister Karl von Stürgkh stepped down due to sudden blindness caused by "an affection of the retina resulting from overwork", and was temporarily succeeded by the Interior Minister Baron von Heinold.
• Detroit Tigers baseball star Ty Cobb, angry after being taunted by New York Highlanders fan Claude Lueker at Hilltop Park, charged into the stands and punched and kicked his tormentor. Lueker, who was "a cripple, who lost one hand and three fingers of the other", said that when someone yelled "Don't kick him, he has no hands", Cobb replied "I don't care if he has no feet!" Cobb would be suspended by the American League for ten days, leading to a sympathy strike by his teammates on May 18.
• The Grimsby and Immingham Electric Railway began operations, effectively closing the older Grimsby and Immingham rail stations in Lincolnshire, England, after only two years of service.
• Born:
• * Alexis Kagame, Rwandan philosopher, leading contributor to African philosophy, in Kiyanza, German East Africa
• * Arthur Berger, American composer, known for works including Serenade Concertante and Three Pieces for Strings, in New York City

  [May 16], 1912 (Thursday)

• Two small boys who had survived the sinking of the RMS Titanic were reunited with their mother after having been identified. Michel Navratil, Jr., 3, and Edmond Navratil, 2, had been placed into a lifeboat by their father. Michel would be the last male survivor of the disaster, dying on January 31, 2001.
• Born: Studs Terkel, American journalist, best known for promoting oral history in nonfiction, recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction for The Good War, in New York City

  [May 17], 1912 (Friday)

• The opera Don Quichotte, composed by Jules Massenet, opened in London.
• The Socialist Party of America nominated Eugene V. Debs for President and Emil Seidel for Vice-President.
• Born: Ace Parker, American football player, quarterback for the Brooklyn Dodgers and Boston Yanks from 1937 to 1945, in Portsmouth, Virginia

  [May 18], 1912 (Saturday)

• The Detroit Tigers baseball team walked out on strike only five minutes after the start of their game against the Philadelphia Athletics. The Tigers departed to protest the suspension of Ty Cobb three days earlier. Rather than forfeit the game, Tigers' manager Hughie Jennings recruited eight volunteers from the Philadelphia crowd to fill in for the day. Earning $25 apiece, "the nine sorry sheep who were masquerading in borrowed Tiger skins" lost the game, 24 to 2. One replacement player, Ed Irvin, was the only one of the Tigers to get a hit during the game. With two hits in three times at bat, Irvin had the distinction of a "career batting average" of.667 for his lone appearance in Major League Baseball.
• Shree Pundalik, the first multi-reel motion picture, was released in India. It preceded by a few months the first American full-length feature, Queen Elizabeth.
• and the, the two largest warships up to that time, were launched on the same day.
• Suit was filed in New York to break up the "Coffee Trust".
• Born:
• * Perry Como, American singer, known for hit songs including "And I Love You So" and "Catch a Falling Star" recipient of five Emmy Awards in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania
• * Walter Sisulu, South African activist, served as Deputy President and Secretary-General of the African National Congress, in Ngcobo, South Africa

  [May 19], 1912 (Sunday)

• Julia Clark of Great Britain became only the third woman in history to receive an airplane pilot's license. On June 17, she would become the first woman to be killed while piloting an airplane.

  [May 20], 1912 (Monday)

• General Jose de Jesus Monteagudo suspended constitutional rights in suppressing an uprising by black Cubans, and massacred 3,000 of the insurgents, as well as executing their leaders. Carlos Moore, author of Cuba, the Blacks, and Africa estimated that between 15,000 and 35,000 black Cubans were killed when including those who were lynched or shot.
• Félix Fuchs of Belgium became the Governor-General of the Belgian Congo.
• Nexhip Draga and Hasan Prishtina met with ethnic Albanian rebels at Junik, Kosovo to plan an uprising against the Ottoman Empire.
• Born:
• * Wilfrid Sellars, American philosopher, developer of critical realism, in Ann Arbor, Michigan
• * J. L. Carr, English writer, author of A Day in Summer and A Month in the Country, in Thirsk, North Yorkshire, England

  [May 21], 1912 (Tuesday)

• The Reichstag overwhelmingly passed a law expanding the Imperial German Navy. The expansion called for three more battleships and two more light cruisers.
• Sand Springs, Oklahoma was incorporated.
• Born: Monty Stratton, American baseball player, pitcher for the Chicago White Sox from 1934 to 1938, in Wagner, Texas

  [May 22], 1912 (Wednesday)

• The U.S. Marines entered into military aviation, as 2nd Lieutenant Alfred A. Cunningham reported for flight training at the Navy Aviation Center.
• Count István Tisza, formerly the Prime Minister of Hungary, was elected President of the Hungarian Chamber of Deputies after a fight between the legislators. Reportedly, "all the inkpots and other articles that could be used as missiles were removed from the chamber before the voting began", and the Socialist Union party members walked out after fistfights broke out.
• Massachusetts became the first state to ratify the Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, as the state Senate voted 30-0 in favor of direct election of U.S. Senators, after the House had approved the measure by acclamation.
• The steamer Algerine recovered the body of Titanic saloon steward James McGrady.
• Born: Herbert C. Brown, English-American chemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for this research into organoboron chemistry, as Herbert Brovarnik, in London

  [May 23], 1912 (Thursday)

• The Hamburg America Line's was launched from the Vulcan Shipyards Hamburg as the world's largest ship. Kaiser Wilhelm himself christened the new ship, and almost suffered a serious injury in the process. As the ship moved down into the water, a large block of wood fell from the side, "missing the kaiser's head by only a few inches".
• For the first time since the 10th century the three Scandinavian Kings came together. Brothers Christian of Denmark and Haakon of Norway were at Roskilde, Denmark for the funeral of their father, the late Frederick of Denmark, and were joined by Gustaf of Sweden.
• U.S. President William Howard Taft dispatched the U.S. Marines to Cuba to protect Americans there during racial warfare.
• Born:
• * Jean Françaix, French composer, known for compositions includes films scores for Napoléon and If Paris Were Told to Us, in Paris
• * John Payne, American actor, known for roles in Miracle on 34th Street and the television Western The Restless Gun, in Roanoke, Virginia

  [May 24], 1912 (Friday)

• Charles Dawson brought the first five skull fragments of the Piltdown Man to the British Museum. Dawson's "missing link" would be proven to be a hoax in 1953.
• Died: Heinrich Friedrich Weber, 68, German physicist, known for his research into specific heat capacity of certain elements

  [May 25], 1912 (Saturday)

• In Tyler, Texas, Dan Davis, an African-American who had confessed to raping and then slitting the throat of a young white woman on May 13, was burned at the stake after a mob of 2,000 people overpowered his jailers. Davis's executioners had brought "several wagon loads of wood" to the town's public square and tied him to a rail. After Davis said, "I am guilty," he was set ablaze.

  [May 26], 1912 (Sunday)

• Born:
• * János Kádár, Hungarian state leader, dictator of the Hungarian People's Republic and General Secretary of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party from 1956 to 1988, as János Csermanek, in Fiume, Austria-Hungary
• * Jay Silverheels, Canadian indigenous actor, best known for his role as Tonto in the 1950s television Western The Lone Ranger, as Harold J. Smith, at Six Nations of the Grand River near Brantford, Ontario

  [May 27], 1912 (Monday)

• A fire at a movie theater in Villa Real in Spain killed 80 people.
• James Duncan of the United States set the first internationally recognized record for the discus throw, with a distance of.
• Born:
• * Sam Snead, American golfer, all-time winner of the PGA Tour, three-time winner of the Masters Tournament and PGA Championship, and winner of the 1946 Open Championship, in Ashwood, Virginia
• * John Cheever, American writer, author of The Wapshot Chronicle series, recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his short story collection The Stories of John Cheever, in Quincy, Massachusetts
• * Cedric Phatudi, South African state leader, Chief Minister of Lebowa, South Africa from 1973 to 1987, in Mphahlele, Transvaal, South Africa

  [May 28], 1912 (Tuesday)

• Born: Patrick White, English-Australian writer, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature for works including The Tree of Man and The Burnt Ones, in Knightsbridge, London, England

  [May 29], 1912 (Wednesday)

• The Afternoon of a Faun, a ballet choreographed and performed by Vaslav Nijinsky, premiered at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris. Inspired by a poem of the same name by Stéphane Mallarmé, and using the music of Claude Debussy's Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, the ballet shocked the French audience. As the Faun, Nijinsky was booed as he closed the ballet with "vile movements of erotic bestiality and gestures of heavy shamelessness"; he would revise the ending under threat of intervention by Paris police.

  [May 30], 1912 (Thursday)

• In the second running of the Indianapolis 500, Ralph DePalma was less than two laps away from victory when his Mercedes developed engine trouble on Lap 198. DePalma had led all the way, and was six laps ahead of the nearest competitor, Joe Dawson, who completed the race in 6 hours, 21 minutes and 8 seconds.
• The first contingent of U.S. Marines landed at Daiquirí, Cuba.
• Wilbur Wright, 45, the older of the two Wright brothers who invented the airplane, died of typhoid fever at his home in Dayton, Ohio. Wilbur had become ill on May 4 while on a business trip to Boston. On December 17, 1903, Wilbur became the second man in history to pilot an airplane, after his brother Orville made the first flight.
• Born:
• * Julius Axelrod, American chemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his research into the organic compound catecholamine, in New York City
• * Joseph Stein, American playwright, author of the musicals Fiddler on the Roof and Zorba, in New York City

  [May 31], 1912 (Friday)

• An experiment at Wichita Falls, Texas, to "make rain", after two weeks of drought, failed. Six thousand pounds of dynamite seemed to work at first, as cloudy skies and occasional flashes of lightning swept into the area, but without precipitation.
• The Paddington Rifles infantry unit of the British Territorial Army was disbanded due to low recruitment.
• Born:
• * Henry M. Jackson, American politician, U.S. Representative of Washington from 1941 to 1953, U.S. Senator for Washington from 1953 to 1983, in Everett, Washington
• * Alfred Deller, English singer, credits for reviving the countertenor form of singing, in Margate, England
• * Chien-Shiung Wu, Chinese physicist, member of the Manhattan Project, conducted the ground-breaking 1956 experiment on nuclear physics, in Taicang, China