British hopes that Robert Falcon Scott had reached the South Pole before Roald Amundsen of Norway were ended when the Terra Nova arrived in New Zealand without Captain Scott on board, and the news that the Scott team had still been 150 miles from the Pole as of January 3. Amundsen's party had reached the Pole on December 14, 1911. Scott's party had made it to the South Pole on January 17 and died in March on their journey back.[3]
The Japanese theater Yoshimoto Kogyo was established in Osaka. It later expanded to become an entertainment company in 1932.[4]
The city of Branson, Missouri, which would become a major American tourist attraction and entertainment center in the 1980s, was chartered.[5]
Calbraith Perry Rodgers, the 33-year-old American aviator who had flown, with multiple stops, from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific Coast in the autumn of 1911, was killed while flying his Wright airplane in an airshow. One author[who?] would later write that "the first person to fly across the continental US was also the first to die as a result of a bird strike. Rodgers' Wright Pusher airplane collided with a seagull, the engine failed, and he crashed into the ocean near Long Beach, California."[11][12]
Charles B. Aycock, Governor of North Carolina 1901 to 1905, known for advancing education and the opening of schools in that state, died while making a speech in Birmingham, Alabama, to the Alabama Education Association and 5,000 teachers.[17] According to a reporter at the scene, Aycock said, "I have fought long the battles of education," and added, after asking a question of Alabama's Governor Emmet O'Neal, "However, I have determined, if such a thing is possible, to open the doors of the schools to every child..." He stopped, staggered and fell dead of a heart attack.[18]
April 5, 1912 (Friday)
After more than 200 members of the Industrial Workers of the World had been put in the city's jail, the police chief in San Diego had the prisoners released into the hands of vigilantes. The mob escorted the "Wobblies"[non sequitur] to the county line, beat them, and warned them never to return. An investigator sent by Governor Hiram Johnson described the city's police as so brutal that he thought he was "sojourning in Russia."[19]
The British coal miners' strike ended with the return of thousands of workers to the coal pits in England, Scotland and Wales. The approval of a guaranteed minimum wage ended the three-week-old strike, which had halted not only the production of coal, but the output from factories dependent on coal as a fuel.[25]
Spanish cyclist José Magdalena won the secondTour of Catalonia in Barcelona, completing the three-day, 427 km (265 mi) race course with a combined time of 18 hours, 32 minutes and 8 seconds.[27]
The Titanic, the largest ship ever constructed up to that time, began its maiden voyage from Southampton, England at noon, with a final destination of New York City.[32] On its exit, the ship caused the American liner New York to break free of its moorings.[33] It arrived in Cherbourg, France that evening at 7:00 pm where it took on more passengers before departing two hours later.[34]
The French liner Niagara, sailing from Le Havre, France to New York City, struck ice while sailing near Newfoundland. The bow plates were dented, the ship began to leak, and an S.O.S. was sent. The steamer Carmania rushed to the rescue, but the crew of the Niagara was able to make repairs.[35]
The Titanic arrived at Queenstown (now Cobh), Ireland at 12:30 pm, and picked up the last of her passengers. She then departed for New York City with 2,208 people on board.[34]
ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, leader of the Baháʼí Faith, arrived in New York City to continue his journey to spread the new religion to the Western world. The spiritual leader had been brought over by the steamer S.S. Cedric, which had left Naples on March 24, 1912. Reportedly, American and Canadian Baha'is had offered to pay extra for him to sail to New York on a much faster ship, the Titanic, but Abdul-Baha had declined.[37] The religious leader would spend the rest of the year in the U.S., giving 200 speeches on "The Oneness of Religion," and visiting 32 cities.[38]
Crosley Field, which would be the home of baseball's Cincinnati Reds for the next 58 seasons, opened to a record crowd of 26,336 people. The Reds beat the Chicago Cubs 10–6 in the opener, and would beat the San Francisco Giants 5–4 in their final game in the stadium on June 24, 1970, before moving to Riverfront Park.[39]
In a minor league American Association baseball game between the Kansas City Blues and the Columbus Senators, there were no home runs nor foul balls hit into the stands. Only one baseball was used for the entire nine innings, a feat that has never happened since in American professional baseball.[40][41]
Ernest Duchesne, 37, French physician who discovered the antibiotic properties of mold against bacteria, 32 years before the same discovery by Alexander Fleming led to the development of penicillin, died of tuberculosis (b. 1874).[43]
The French liner SS La Touraine sent a radio message to Captain Edward Smith of the Titanic, giving the ship the first warnings of an ice field as far south as 42°S (roughly the latitude of Chicago).[34][44]
The famous combination of shortstop Joe Tinker, second baseman Johnny Evers and first baseman Frank Chance appeared together in a baseball game for the last time, as their Chicago Cubs team lost at Cincinnati, 3–2. The next day, Chance, now manager of the Chicago Cubs, replaced himself at first base with Vic Saier. The trio had begun working together on September 13, 1902, and was memorialized in the poem "Baseball's Sad Lexicon."[45]
An intruder going by the name of Michael Winter successfully forced his way into the White House. He was caught and ejected by the House's doorman before reattempting and was caught again by White House police officers. Winter insisted he had to meet with the U.S. president and had a knife on him when searched. Winter was eventually incarnated at a mental institution for psychiatric evaluation.[48]
At 11:40 pm ship time, RMS Titanic struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic Ocean. Only thirty-seven seconds earlier, crewman Frederick Fleet spotted the iceberg straight ahead, but the ship was running at almost top speed, 22 knots (41 km/h; 25 mph), and tore the side after attempting to steer around. The collision occurred roughly 400 miles (640 km) east of Newfoundland. The ship would stay afloat for two hours and forty minutes. The ship closest to the Titanic, SS Californian, was only a few miles away, and had transmitted warnings about the ice field, but its radio operator had turned off his equipment at 11:30 pm, ten minutes before the collision.[51] Throughout the day, Titanic had received warnings from the Caronia, the Noordam, the Baltic, the Amerika, the Californian, and the Mesaba.[34]
China's President Yuan Shikai issued a manifesto asking the five separate race groups in the nation to unite through intermarriage.[21]
Paul Émile Chabas publicly unveiled his painting September Morn at the Paris Salon exhibition and sold it for 50,000 francs ($10,000). Although the oil painting famously depicted a nude model wading in a lake, controversy around the painting only occurred the following year when reprints of the painting were distributed in the United States.[52]
The silent film Paul J. Rainey's African Hunt was released by Carl Laemmle, who would found Universal Pictures two years later. The film was a national hit and would gross $500,000 in revenues.[55]
The Titanic sank at 2:20 am ship time. The conclusion of the investigative report by the British Board of Trade found that only 710 of the people on board had survived and 1,514 had died. Most of the survivors (338) were adult men, followed by 316 women and 56 children.[57][58] Evacuation of the ship had been ordered at 12:05 am. The first lifeboat had been lowered before 12:45 am and the last lifeboat was lowered at 2:05 am. Years later, a Titanic historian, Phil Gowan was able to pinpoint the number of people aboard at the time of impact and the number of those who died.[citation needed]Titanic was carrying 2,208 aboard and about 1,496 died, leaving 712 survivors. The RMS Carpathia arrived at 4:10 am to rescue the survivors who had been able to reach a lifeboat.[34] The victims of the sinking included:[citation needed]
Harriet Quimby became the first woman to pilot an aircraft across the English Channel, less than three years after Louis Bleriot had become the first man to make the crossing. Quimby departed Dover at 5:30 am in a fog and landed at Neufchâtel-Hardelot, 25 miles (40 km) south of her intended destination of Calais, France. She would be killed in a plane crash less than three months later.[61]
Russian soldiers killed 270 striking gold miners and wounded 270 others after firing into a crowd as they protested. The miners had gone on strike in Siberia to demand a reduction in the workday and improved food and sanitation. The dead were buried in a mass grave.[63] On the old Russian (Julian) calendar, the date was April 4, which is sometimes mistakenly cited as the date of the massacre.[64]
Italy attacked Ottoman Turkey directly, as 27 warships sailed into the Dardanelles and began bombardment of Fort Kilid-ul-Bahr and Fort Sedd-ul-Bahr for two and a half hours.[70] A Turkish gunboat was sunk after its crew escaped, and one of the yachts of the Ottoman Sultan was captured by Italian forces.[71] There were 300 Turkish soldiers killed and more wounded in the destruction of the Kunkaleh Fort.[72]
Muslim soldiers in Fez, Morocco mutinied, killing fifty French officers and soldiers and almost 100 Jewish residents, before being suppressed.[21]
Coal miners in Kanawha County, West Virginia went on strike against the mine operators. The strike became increasingly violent over time, resulting in 50 deaths by the time it ended in July 1913.[73]
The Russian Empire agreed to recognize Italian sovereignty over Libya in return for Italy's support of Russian influence in the Balkans.[21]
At a United States Senate subcommittee hearing, Titanic Second Officer Charles Lightoller testified that they loaded as few as 25 people in boats intended to hold 65, only as much as they thought the ropes would hold.[74]
The United States Hydrographic Office and representatives of the steamship lines[specify] agreed that the winter time course of ships would be 270 miles south of the course taken by the Titanic, adding between 9 and 14 hours to the trip. The new route would be 3,080 miles rather than 2,858 miles.[75]
The luxury ocean liner SS France began its maiden voyage, from Le Havre, France ten days after the Titanic had started its trip. The ship would remain in service until 1935.[79] Carrying 1,273 passengers (with room for 2,026 and enough lifeboats for all), the France arrived safely in New York City six days later.[80]
Immediate reforms were ordered by the International Mercantile Marine, requiring all steamers to carry sufficient lifeboats and rafts for all passengers and crew.[21]
The sudden death from an apparent heart attack of Oaxacan Governor Benito Juárez Maza triggered six months of battles between Mexico's national government and Juárez Maza's followers, who believed he had been poisoned.[81]
At Munich, Walter Friedrich and Paul Knipping confirmed the theory, made by German physicist Max von Laue, that the x-rays aimed at a crystal would be diffracted, and that the patterns left on a photographic plate would effectively show the location of individual atoms. Friedrich and Knippe aimed x-rays at a crystal of copper sulfate, and produced photographs, later misplaced, of the structure of the crystal. Von Laue would be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1914.[88]
Aleister Crowley was appointed by Ordo Templi Orientis leader Theodor Reuss as the "National Grand Master General for Great Britain and Ireland" to spread the Reuss's variety of the occult in the British Isles. Crowley would later be designated by Reuss as "Supreme and Holy King of Ireland, Iona and all the Britons within the sanctuary of the Gnosis."[89]
The New York Highlanders (later the New York Yankees) and the New York Giants played an exhibition baseball game at the Polo Grounds to raise money for destitute survivors of the Titanic. The Giants won, 11–2, before a crowd of 14,083 and the game raised $9,425.25.[91]
Died:Yung Wing, 83, Chinese-born American academic, first student of Chinese ethnicity to graduate from an American university (b. 1828).[citation needed]
The date of the first issue of Pravda, the official newspaper of the Communist Party, and the leading newspaper for the Soviet Union between 1922 and 1991, was 22 April 1912. Russia was using the Julian Calendar at the time, 13 days behind the Gregorian calendar.[100] In later years, Pravda would carry on its front page the slogan "Founded by V. I. Lenin on May 5, 1912."[101]
The RMS Olympic, sister ship of the White Star ocean liner Titanic, was barred from departing Southampton, England with its 1,400 passengers because of a strike by shipworkers over insufficient lifeboats. The White Star Line had added 16 "collapsible" boats which could be deployed in a hurry.[21][104]
Troops killed striking textile workers at Vila Nova de Gaia, a suburb of Porto, Portugal.[105]
The bazaar, shopping quarter for Syrians in Damascus, caught on fire, causing $10,000,000 in damages and killing several persons.[112]
Sergei Mironovich Kostrikov, an early leader in Russia's Bolshevik movement, first took on the pen name "Kirov." After his assassination in 1934 while serving as the Communist Party chief in Leningrad, the Russian city of Kirov, the Russian Kirov Oblast, and the Ukrainian city of Kirovohrad were all named in his honor.[113]
Civil war broke out again in Paraguay, with former PresidentAlbino Jara commanding rebels at Villa Encarnacion. Four Paraguayan warships bombarded the rebels, who returned fire with cannons and forced the troops to withdraw.[117]
Hubert Lyautey was appointed as the first French Resident-General of Morocco, which had recently become a protectorate of France. General Lyautey would administer most of the affairs of the Kingdom of Morocco until 1925. The city of Kenitra was renamed "Port Lyautey" in his honor, from 1933 to 1956, until reverting to its former name.[120]
The thermometer rose to 108 °F (42.2 °C) at the city of Tuguegarao, setting a record for the highest recorded temperature not only in the Philippines, but also for the islands of the South Pacific Ocean.[124]
The cable ship Mackay-Bennett and the RMS Olympic arrived at Halifax, Nova Scotia, bringing the bodies of 200 people who had drowned or frozen to death after escaping the Titanic. Although the ship had recovered 306 bodies, 116 of those were buried at sea because of a lack of sufficient embalming fluid,[126] including 54 that had been identified. Located were the remains of John Astor and Isidor Straus, while his wife Ida Straus and former presidential adviser Archibald Butt were never located.[127] One of the bodies recovered was a 19-month old toddler referred to in the media as "The Unknown Child." The identity of the child remained a mystery until 2007, when DNA research identified him as Sidney Leslie Goodwin. He was buried at Fairview Lawn Cemetery, in Halifax.[128][129]
Filmmaker Carl Laemmle formed the Universal Film Manufacturing Company in New York City. In June, he partner with other regional film companies to form the precursor to the Universal Pictures, the longest continuous running movie studio in the United States.[130]
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^"Italian Warships Shell Dardanelles". New York Times. April 19, 1912.
^"Italian Shells Sunk Warship of Sultan". New York Times. April 20, 1912.
^"Shelling Killed 300 Turks". New York Times. April 26, 1912.
^Lee, Howard B. Bloodletting in Appalachia: The Story of West Virginia's Four Major Mine Wars and Other Thrilling Incidents of Its Coal Fields. Morgantown, W.Va.: West Virginia University Library, 1969. ISBN0-87012-041-7, p. 18.
^"Many Needlessly Died on Titanic; Lifeboats Launched Only Half Full". New York Times. April 20, 1912.
^"All Ships to Take New Long Course". New York Times. April 20, 1912.
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^"Passengers Praise New French Liner". New York Times. April 27, 1912.
^Jürgen Buchenau and William H. Beezley, State Governors in the Mexican Revolution, 1910–1952: Portraits in Conflict, Courage, and Corruption (Rowman & Littlefield, 2009) pp. 34–35.
^Robert Redmount, The Red Sox Encyclopedia (Sports Publishing LLC, 2002) p. 237.
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^ ab"Flying the Irish Channel". Flight Magazine. IV (17). London: Reed Business Information: 379. 27 April 1912. Archived from the original on 26 March 2017. Retrieved 18 June 2011.
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^"Loraine's Daring Flight". Irish Times. Dublin. 12 September 1910. p. 7.
^Tony Cliff, Building the Party: Lenin 1893–1914 (Volume 1) (Haymarket Books, 2002) p. 397.
^Joseph Gibbs, Gorbachev's Glasnost: The Soviet Media in the First Phase of Perestroika (Texas A&M University Press, 1999) p. 95.
^Helen Julia Minors. La Péri, poème dansé (1911–12): A Problematic Creative-Collaborative Journey. Opera Quarterly Volume 22, Number 1, Winter 2006 pp. 117-135.
^"Taft Wins New Hampshire". New York Times. April 24, 1912.
^"Firemen Strike; Olympic Held". New York Times. April 25, 1912.
^"Many Slain in Portugal". New York Times. April 25, 1912.
^Oliphant, J. Orin (1924). History of the State Normal School at Cheney, Washington. Spokane, WA: Inland-American Printing Company.
^Session Laws Chapter 70 1913, p. 244, Session Laws 1915, p. 215.
^Fenlon, Iain (2010). Piazza San Marco. London: Profile Books. p. 147. ISBN9781861978851.
^Lluís Solà i Dachs, «Cu-cut! Setmanari de gresca ab ninots (1902–1912)». Ed. Bruguera. Barcelona, 1967
^"Damascus Bazar Burned". New York Times. April 29, 1912.
^Matthew E. Lenoe, The Kirov Murder and Soviet History (Yale University Press, 2010).
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^Kalman, Harold; Roaf, John (1 April 1983). Exploring Ottawa: An Architectural Guide to the Nation's Capital. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. p. 28. ISBN978-0802063953.
