The following events occurred in May 1901:
May 1, 1901 (Wednesday) Prince Itō Hirobumi resigned as Prime Minister of Japan, along with almost all of his cabinet, after the Finance Minister, Viscount Watanabe Kunitake, announced that his department would have to postpone public works projects indefinitely. The only member of the cabinet not to quit was the Minister of War, Baron Kodama Gentarō.The American Monthly Review of Reviews (June 1901), pp. 666-669. The Pan-American Exposition opened in Buffalo, New York. William McKinley became the first President of the United States to tour the Deep South, speaking at Mississippi before stopping for the night at New Orleans. Born: Sterling Allen Brown, African-American poet and folklorist, in Washington, D.C. (d. 1989) Hotsumi Ozaki, Japanese journalist and spy for the Soviet Union during World War II, in Shiba, Tokyo (d. 1944, executed) Died: Rousseau Owen Crump, 57, U.S. Representative for Michigan since 1895 (b. 1843) Lewis Waterman, 64, American inventor, created the first practical fountain pen and founded the Waterman Pen Company (b. 1836)
May 2, 1901 (Thursday) In Scotland, the Glasgow International Exhibition opened.David Jeremiah, Architecture and Design For the Family in Britain, 1900–1970 (Manchester University Press, 2000) p17"Glasgow Fair Is Opened", Chicago Daily Tribune, May 3, 1901, p. 4 Refined crude oil was delivered by pipeline for the first time to the Eastern seaboard in the United States, as the Standard Oil Company's "United States Pipe Line" began operation. Construction of the line, which started at the oil fields in Titusville, Pennsylvania, and ran to Philadelphia, took nine years to complete.Ida M. Tarbell, The History of the Standard Oil Company (McClure, Phillips and Co., 1904; reprinted by Cosimo, Inc., 2010) p. 187 In Berlin, the musical score for the ballet Aschenbrödel (Cinderella), which Johann Strauss had been working on when he died in 1899, was performed for the first time, after being completed and modified by composer Josef Bayer."New Look, Old Cinders", by George Jackson, in Dance Chronicle, pp. 135-141 (2008) On the same day in Berlin, another ballet whose score Bayer had composed, Die Braut von Korea ("The Korean Bride"), closed after a four-year run; Gustav Mahler would describe it as "one of the most stupid ballets ever to have been staged".Gustav Mahler: Letters to His Wife, edited by Henry-Louis de La Grange and Günther Weiss (Cornell University Press, 2004) pp. 34-35 Two future members of the Baseball Hall of Fame played key roles in the first forfeited baseball game in American League history, as the Chicago White Stockings hosted the Detroit Tigers. Chicago had a 5–2 lead going into the final inning, but Detroit scored five runs in the ninth; with rain clouds gathering, Chicago pitcher (and team manager) Clark Griffith tried to stall the game down "hoping that rain would wipe out the top of the inning, and the game's score would revert to the eight inning, resulting in a Sox win."David Blevins, The Sports Hall of Fame Encyclopedia: Baseball, Basketball, Football, Hockey, Soccer (Rowman & Littlefield, 2012) pp. 387-388 "But their delays were so palpable and so clumsily done," the Chicago Tribune would report the next day, "that everyone could see the purpose.""White Stockings Forfeit a Game", Chicago Daily Tribune, May 3, 1901, p. 8 Umpire Tom Connolly ordered a forfeit, and Detroit was declared a 9–0 winner under baseball rules. Born: Willi Bredel, East German author (d. 1964)
May 3, 1901 (Friday)
A massive fire destroyed 148 city blocks in Jacksonville, Florida, over an area of 455 acres (1.85 square kilometers) and burning 2,361 buildings."Jacksonville, Fla.", in The Americana: A Universal Reference Library, Comprising the Arts and Sciences, Literature, History, Biography, Geography, Commerce, Etc., of the World (Scientific American Compiling Dep't, 1911) At 12:39 p.m., the 36-member city fire department was notified that a fire had broken out at the American Fiber Company at the corner of Davis Street and Union Street. Sparks had ignited a pile of Spanish moss to be used as stuffing, and the fire then spread to the adjacent W. W. Cleveland & Son mattress factory.John W. Cowart, Men of Valor: A History of Firefighting in Jacksonville, Florida 1886–1986 (Bluefish Books, 2006) pp. 41-43 Destroyed in the blaze were the Duval Country Courthouse, the Jacksonville City Hall, the Windsor Hotel and St. James Hotel, as well as "the city armory, the opera-house, the leading churches of the city, the convent, acres of residences and scores of wholesale and retail business houses.""Big Fire Loss at Jacksonville", Chicago Daily Tribune, May 4, 1901, p. 1 The city would be rebuilt and within two and a half years, thousands of new buildings would be erected; over the next decade, the amount of cargo being handled by the Port of Jacksonville had increased to five times what it had been at the time of the fire.William Garrott Brown, The South at Work: Observations from 1904 (University of South Carolina Press, 2014) An upheaval in the stock market, known as the Panic of 1901 started as E. H. Harriman, who controlled the Union Pacific Railroad, began his attempt to acquire majority ownership of the Northern Pacific Railroad Company (NP), and directed his broker, Jacob Schiff of Kuhn, Loeb & Co. to buy as much as possible.Lloyd J. Mercer, E.H. Harriman: Master Railroader (Beard Books, 1985) pp. 94-95 Civil government was established in Manila after years of American occupation. Born: Hugo Friedhofer, American film score composer, Academy Award winner for the music for The Best Years of Our Lives, in San Francisco (d. 1981)
May 4, 1901 (Saturday) The Caste War of Yucatán, the decades-long resistance of the Maya peoples against the Mexican government, ended as General Ignacio Bravo marched his troops into the Mayan capital at Noh Cah Balam (now Chan Santa Cruz) and set up his new headquarters. Italy rejected a request from the Ottoman government to help prevent the settlement of foreign Jews in Palestine, at the time a part of Turkish territory.
May 5, 1901 (Sunday) Arriving earlier than expected, the royal yacht RMS Ophir reached Australia with the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall on board. The yacht dropped anchor a mile from the shore at Mornington, Victoria at 12:30 p.m., escorted by HMS Juno and followed by a line of other British warships. The United States began its withdrawal of forces from Beijing, after a year of occupation that followed the Boxer Rebellion. The troops of the cavalry and artillery of the U.S. 9th Infantry marched out of the Chinese capital toward Tianjin after being dismissed by Major General Adna Chaffee. In Lahore (at the time a part of British India, and now in Pakistan) Vishnu Digambar Paluskar established as the first publicly supported school of Indian classical music on the subcontinent, the Gandharva Mahavidyalaya. The government of the Ottoman Empire began seizing all overseas correspondence directed to post offices operated by embassies in Constantinople, declaring that any mails had to go through the nation's post office. After protests from the ambassadors, Foreign Minister Tewfik Pasha would relent and apologize to the various diplomats. On his 28th birthday, Leon Czolgosz attended a lecture by anarchist Emma Goldman in Cleveland, where she spoke on the subject "Modern Phases of Anarchism"., quoted in Czolgosz, an unemployed steelworker, would say later that the speech by Goldman (who told her audience that "Anarchism aims at a new and complete freedom ... We merely desire complete liberty and this can never be obtained as long as there is an existing government.") "set me on fire".Sarah Vowell, Assassination Vacation (Simon and Schuster, 2005) pp. 215-216 On September 6, Czolgosz would travel to Buffalo, New York and fatally shoot U.S. President William McKinley. Born: Blind Willie McTell (Willie Samuel McTier), influential African-American blues guitarist and singer, in Thomson, Georgia (d. 1959); 24 years after McTell's death, Bob Dylan would record the song Blind Willie McTell Died: Dinshaw Maneckji Petit, 77, Indian entrepreneur and textile manufacturer (b. 1823) Axel Wilhelm Eriksson, 64, Swedish settler and trader in South West Africa (b. 1846) Mariano Ignacio Prado, 75, Peruvian state leader, 27th President of Peru (b. 1825)
May 6, 1901 (Monday)
The British Ministry of War announced that nearly 15,000 British officers and troops had died in the Second Boer War against South African forces, with 14,264 enlisted men and 714 officers as casualties. The House of Commons of the United Kingdom voted 333 to 227 to approve a tax on the sale of coal. Gorkhapatra, the oldest still running Nepali newspaper was started on this day. The newspaper was distributed weekly then.
May 7, 1901 (Tuesday) Russian painter Ilya Repin began work on his painting Torzhestvennoi Zasedanie Gosudarstvennogo Sovieta 7 Maya 1901 Goda (The Ceremonial Meeting of the State Council, 7 May 1901), commissioned by the Russian State Council to celebrate the 100th anniversary of its first session in 1801. The large work (400 cm x 877 cm, or 13'2" high by 28'9" wide) is housed at the Russian Museum in Saint Petersburg.Grigori Sternin and Jelena Kirillina, Ilya Repin (Parkstone International, 2012) pp122-124Peter Leek, Russian Painting (Parkstone International, 2012) pp. 63-64 Allis-Chalmers, a manufacturer of agricultural, industrial, mining and construction machinery, was incorporated."Chalmers, William James", in Illinois Biographical Dictionary, Caryn Hannan, ed. (State History Publications, 2008) pp. 128-129 Created by a merger of a steam engine and mill equipment producer, the Edward P. Allis Company, and two companies owned by Thomas Chalmers (the Fraser & Chalmers Company and the Gates Iron Works), the new corporation quickly acquired the engine making products of the Dickson Manufacturing Company, and then purchase additional companies; it would sell off most of its lines in 1985. German troops routed the Chinese cavalry in a battle at Kalgan (now Zhangjiakou) in the Hebei Province of China. Born: Gary Cooper, American film actor, known for leading film roles in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town and The Pride of the Yankees, recipient of the Academy Award for Best Actor for Sergeant York and High Noon, as Frank James Cooper in Helena, Montana (d. 1961)
May 8, 1901 (Wednesday) The Australian Labor Party was created, initially with the name "Federal Parliamentary Labor Party", under the leadership of Chris Watson of New South Wales.Judith Brett, Australian Liberals and the Moral Middle Class: From Alfred Deakin to John Howard (Cambridge University Press, 2003) p18Frank G. Clarke, The History of Australia (Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002) p. 97 The largest plunge in prices on the New York Stock Exchange took place as panicked investors began selling shares of all stock except for Northern Pacific Railway, which jumped from $143.50 to $200 a share. "Many fortunes that had been made in the last six months by men who never before had a dollar," it was noted the next day, "were in some cases wholly wiped out as a result of the crash, and in others so considerably reduced that little remains.""Panic Sweeps Stock Exchange— Bitter Fight of Financial Powers for Control of Northern Pacific Wrecks Many Lesser Ventures, Chicago Daily Tribune, May 9, 1901, p. 1