Victoria died at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight, on 22 January 1901 after a reign which lasted almost 64 years, then the longest in British history. Her son, Edward VII succeeded her.
Victoria died of a cerebral haemorrhage, which is a type of stroke. However, the Queen had been growing weaker for several years before her death. … On her death bed, she whispered that Turi, her Pomeranian dog, be brought to her. Her last diary entry was written from Osbourne House on Sunday 13 January 1901.
Edward was 59 when he became King on 22 January 1901, on the death of his mother Queen Victoria. The Coronation was set for 26 June 1902, but only two days beforehand the King was forced to postpone it until 9 August, owing to an attack of appendicitis which required an emergency operation.
A much loved king, the opposite of his dour father. He loved horse-racing, gambling and women! This Edwardian Age was one of elegance. Edward had all the social graces and many sporting interests, yachting and horse-racing – his horse Minoru won the Derby in 1909. Edward married the beautiful Alexandra of Denmark in 1863 and they had six children. The eldest, Edward Duke of Clarence, died in 1892 just before he was to marry Princess Mary of Teck. When Edward died in 1910 it is said that Queen Alexandra brought his current mistress Mrs. Keppel to his bedside to take her farewell. His best known mistress was Lillie Langtry, the ‘Jersey Lily’.
In 1901, Hubert Cecil Booth invented the first successful vacuum cleaner. His first machine, ‘Puffing Billy’, had a 5 hp piston pump driven by a petrol/gasoline engine or electric motor.
In 1901, the first Nobel Prizes in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine and Literature were first awarded in Stockholm, Sweden and the Peace Prize in Kristiania (now Oslo), Norway. The first Nobel Prize Award Ceremony in 1901 at the Royal Academy of Music in Stockholm.
The Spanish–American War resulted in a Spanish withdrawal from the island in 1898, and following three-and-a-half years of subsequent US military rule, Cuba gained formal independence in 1902.
Crayola Crayons were invented in 1903 by cousins Edwin Binney and C. Harold Smith, founders of the Binney & Smith Co. of Easton, Pa. The company used paraffin wax and nontoxic pigments to produce a coloring stick that was safe, sturdy and affordable.
On December 17, 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright capped four years of research and design efforts with a 120-foot, 12-second flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina – the first powered flight in a heavier-than-air machine.
The United States, led by Pres. Theodore Roosevelt, negotiated the Hay–Bunau-Varilla Treaty, giving the U.S. control of the Canal Zone. Work under U.S. supervision began in 1904.
In 1904, the Warners founded the Pittsburgh-based Duquesne Amusement & Supply Company, to distribute films. In 1912, Harry Warner hired an auditor named Paul Ashley Chase. By the time of World War I they had begun producing films. In 1918 they opened the first Warner Brothers Studio on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood.
The board game Monopoly has its origin in the early 20th century. The earliest known version of Monopoly, known as The Landlord’s Game, was designed by an American, Elizabeth Magie, and first patented in 1904 but existed as early as 1902.
In 1905, Albert Einstein determined that the laws of physics are the same for all non-accelerating observers, and that the speed of light in a vacuum was independent of the motion of all observers. This was the theory of special relativity.
On June 19, 1905, the Nickelodeon opened in Pittsburgh
The company was founded as the Sanitas Food Company in 1900 by the brothers W.K. … W.K. Kellogg eventually bought out his brother and in 1906 established the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company. Through innovative advertising techniques and improvements in the quality of the cereals, the company prospered.
Professor Richard Strong of Harvard University intentionally infected 24 Filipino prisoners with cholera, which had somehow become contaminated with plague. He did this without the consent of the patients, and without informing them of what he was doing. All of the subjects became sick and 13 died.
A key breakthrough came in 1907, when Belgian-American chemist Leo Baekeland created Bakelite, the first real synthetic, mass-produced plastic.
The Panic of 1907 – also known as the 1907 Bankers’ Panic or Knickerbocker Crisis– was a financial crisis that took place in the United States over a three-week period starting in mid-October, when the New York Stock Exchange fell almost 50% from its peak the previous year. Panic occurred, as this was during a time of economic recession, and there were numerous runs on banks and trust companies. The 1907 panic eventually spread throughout the nation when many state and local banks and businesses entered bankruptcy. Primary causes of the run included a retraction of market liquidity by a number of New York City banks and a loss of confidence among depositors, exacerbated by unregulated side bets at bucket shops.
The panic was triggered by the failed attempt in October 1907 to corner the market on stock of the United Copper Company. When this bid failed, banks that had lent money to the cornering scheme suffered runs that later spread to affiliated banks and trusts, leading a week later to the downfall of the Knickerbocker Trust Company—New York City’s third-largest trust. The collapse of the Knickerbocker spread fear throughout the city’s trusts as regional banks withdrew reserves from New York City banks. Panic extended across the nation as vast numbers of people withdrew deposits from their regional banks. It is the 8th largest decline in U.S. stock market history.
The panic might have deepened if not for the intervention of financier J. P. Morgan, who pledged large sums of his own money, and convinced other New York bankers to do the same, to shore up the banking system. This highlighted the impotence of the nation’s Independent Treasury system, which managed the nation’s money supply yet was unable to inject liquidity back into the market. By November, the financial contagion had largely ended, only to be replaced by a further crisis. This was due to the heavy borrowing of a large brokerage firm that used the stock of Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company (TC&I) as collateral. Collapse of TC&I’s stock price was averted by an emergency takeover by Morgan’s U.S. Steel Corporation—a move approved by anti-monopolist president Theodore Roosevelt. The following year, Senator Nelson W. Aldrich, father-in-law of John D. Rockefeller Jr., established and chaired a commission to investigate the crisis and propose future solutions, leading to the creation of the Federal Reserve System
three Philadelphia researchers infected dozens of children with tuberculin at the St. Vincent’s House orphanage in Philadelphia, causing permanent blindness in some of the children and painful lesions and inflammation of the eyes in many of the others. In the study, they refer to the children as “material used”
F. C. Knowles released a study describing how he had deliberately infected two children in an orphanage with Molluscum contagiosum—a virus that causes wart-like growths—after an outbreak in the orphanage, in order to study the disease.