January 1901


The following events occurred in January 1901:

January 1, 1901 (Tuesday)

January 2, 1901 (Wednesday)

January 3, 1901 (Thursday)

January 4, 1901 (Friday)

January 5, 1901 (Saturday)

January 6, 1901 (Sunday)

  • At his apartment at 6 West 102nd Street in Manhattan, New York City, Theodore Dreiser began writing a new novel, Jennie Gerhardt, with the working title of The Transgressor. After four weeks, he would complete nine chapters, and 40 chapters by mid-April, but do repeated rewrites. In 1903, he would abandon it after suffering a nervous breakdown, but would resume writing in 1910 and publish the novel in 1911.
  • Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid received the first telegram that opened a direct telegraph line between the Ottoman capital at Istanbul, and its largest Middle Eastern city at Dimeşk, the capital of its Suriye province. Prior to that time, the Palestinian city of Al-Salt was the furthest extent that the line would reach, hindering communications with the outer provinces in the Arabian Peninsula.Died:
  • * Philip Armour, Sr., 68, American entrepreneur He acquired control of most of the American meatpacking industry through his corporation Armour and Company; the brand name still survives.
  • * Frederick Vosper, 31, Australian journalist, newspaper proprietor and politician, died of appendicitis.

January 7, 1901 (Monday)

January 8, 1901 (Tuesday)

January 9, 1901 (Wednesday)

January 10, 1901 (Thursday)

January 11, 1901 (Friday)

January 12, 1901 (Saturday)

January 13, 1901 (Sunday)

  • A statue of Robert Burns was unveiled in Walker Park, Newcastle upon Tyne, England. The statue would later be damaged, was eventually restored in the 1970s, but then destroyed by vandals in the 1980s.
  • Queen Victoria made the last entry in her journal after almost 70 years of recording her daily actions. "Had a fair night", she noted, "but was a little wakeful... Rested again afterwards, then did some signing and dictated to Lenchen", using the nickname for her daughter, Princess Helena, who often appeared on her behalf. She would become ill the next day and never write another entry in her journal, kept since 1831.Born: A. B. Guthrie Jr., American writer, recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for his novel The Way West; in Bedford, Indiana

January 14, 1901 (Monday)

January 15, 1901 (Tuesday)

  • Pennsylvania would again have two U.S. Senators after a vacancy of nearly two years in one of the seats. Colonel Matthew Quay, who had been U.S. Senator from 1897 to 1899, was selected for the vacancy as the Pennsylvania General Assembly ended the stalemate. Under the state law at the time, a candidate had to receive a majority of the combined votes of all the state senators and representatives. With 248 of the 254 legislators present, 125 votes were necessary to win. Quay, a Republican, received 130 votes.
  • Fred Alexander, an African American who had been arrested for the attempted rape of a white woman three days earlier, was burned alive by a lynch mob in the city of Leavenworth, Kansas. After threats had been made against both county Sheriff Peter Everhardy and the warden of the state penitentiary in Lansing, Everhardy obtained Alexander's release at 3:10 p.m., and escorted him back to the Leavenworth County jail. At 4:30 p.m., the mob broke in and dragged him from his cell, and hauled Alexander to the scene of the November 7 murder of another woman, Pearl Forbes, on Lawrence Avenue near Spruce Street. Her father, William Forbes, reportedly told the crowd, "Don't hang the brute men... Let's take him out where he murdered my daughter and burn him." The group chained Alexander to an iron stake, poured two cans of coal oil on a pile of kindling, and at 5:25, Forbes himself set Alexander ablaze. Kansas Governor William Eugene Stanley said afterward, "The Sheriff of Leavenworth is either a despicable scoundrel or a coward."
  • The Allied military commanders of the Eight-Nation Alliance announced the organization of a new judicial system for China.

January 16, 1901 (Wednesday)

January 17, 1901 (Thursday)

January 18, 1901 (Friday)

January 19, 1901 (Saturday)

  • At the close of a congressional subcommittee investigation of hazing at the United States Military Academy, superintendent Colonel Albert L. Mills and four cadets presented a statement signed by all of the members of the Academy, pledging to abolish hazing. The statement, which would appear on the front pages of many American newspapers the next day, said in part "we... while maintaining that we have pursued our system from the best motives, yet realizing that the deliberate judgment of the people would, in a country like ours, be above all other considerations, do now reaffirm our former action abolishing the exercising of fourth class men, and do further agree to discontinue hazing, the requiring of fourth class men to eat anything against their desire, and the practice of 'calling out' fourth class men by class action; and that we will not devise other similar practices to replace those abandoned." The hazing practices had come to national attention after the death of first-year cadet Oscar Lyle Booz on December 3. The statement to forcing men to "eat anything against their desire" was a reference to burns sustained by Booz after a tabasco sauce had been poured down his throat.Died: Jacques-Victor-Albert, 79, French politician and Prime Minister of France 1873 to 1874 and again in 1877

January 20, 1901 (Sunday)

  • "Without a protest from any Christian," as a horrified press report noted, five women and girls were openly offered for sale as slaves at a public auction in the United States. Notwithstanding the Thirteenth Amendment to [the United States Constitution|13th Amendment] and California state law, the five females had been the slaves of Leong Kow in China and continued to serve him after his immigration to San Francisco. When Mr. Leong wanted to return to his homeland, he advertised the midday sale by posting notices in the Chinatown neighborhood, and his creditors pasted their notices of claims against his estate. Four of the women were purchased, but the youngest, Leong's 12-year-old daughter, received no bids. The next day, she was rescued from her home by the local Society for the Suppression of Vice and by a Presbyterian missionary. The incident would lead to state legislative hearings investigating the practice of human trafficking that took place with the tolerance of the San Francisco police and by federal prosecutors.
  • Lord Strathcona's Horse, a Canadian mounted unit, left South Africa following service in the Second Boer War. It was disbanded shortly afterwards, but would become an official regiment of the Canadian Army later in the year.Born: Jesús Colón, Puerto Rican writer; in Cayey

January 21, 1901 (Monday)

  • The first RCA Victor record was created, as popular musician Vess Ossman played the banjo in a studio cut of the song "Tell Me, Pretty Maiden", from the popular musical comedy Florodora, which was pressed and released as a 10-inch disc. By 1946, RCA would sell its one billionth record.
  • R. R. Racey, a British colonial official in charge of administering sections of the British protectorate in Uganda, oversaw the replacement of a prior tribal monarch of the Igala people, Musinga, the Onu of Igara. King Mosinga had committed suicide rather than leaving his kingdom to be taken by Racey to the administrative office. Racey convened a meeting of 55 sub-chiefs, who elected Musinga's young son as the Onu Mukotani of Igara. Since Mukotani was too young to govern, Racey arranged another relative, Bakora, to serve as regent and to swear allegiance to the British Empire.
  • Nine days after securing her release from a jail in Wichita, Kansas, alcohol opponent Carrie Nation convened a meeting of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union and successfully persuaded other members to join her in her lone crusade of destroying places that sold liquor. That evening, she began to use a hatchet on her raids, which served as both a symbol of her cause and as an instrument for vandalism. She and three of her followers laid waste to two saloons in Wichita, and were in the process of invading a third when she was arrested by police.
  • Dr. Henry V. Passage, a physician from Peru, Indiana, as well as a Democrat member of the Indiana House of Representatives, introduced one of the earliest proposals for lethal injection as a means of capital punishment. Dr. Passage proposed that an overdose of morphine should replace hanging as the state's means of executing a murderer; the proposed amendment bill was voted down along party lines.
  • After recovering from a long illness, King Oscar of the United Kingdoms of Sweden and Norway resumed his governmental duties, which he had entrusted to Crown Prince Gustaf.Died: Elisha Gray, 65, American electrical engineer, co-founder of the Western Electric company who is sometimes credited with the invention of the telephone

January 22, 1901 (Tuesday)

  • Queen Victoria of the United [Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland] and Empress of India, died at the age of 81, at Osborne House, her residence on the Isle of Wight, at 6:30 in the evening. After a reign of more than 63 years, Victoria had ruled during the lifetimes of most living Britons. She had continued to conduct official business less than two weeks before her death. At the time of her death, the Queen was survived by six children, 32 grandchildren and 35 great-grandchildren.
  • Russia completed its transfer of the Shan-hai-kwan, built in China, to German administration.
  • At least 35 people in Herre, Norway, died in a hurricane.
  • Albert, Prince of Wales, came to the throne of the United Kingdom as King Edward VII, following the death of his mother, Queen Victoria.
  • In the Jamaican general election, 14 members were elected, although one indicated that he would refuse to take his seat and the others pledged to revise the constitution to remove a provision that four additional members be appointed by the Governor. The election also saw the first elected black member of the Council win a seat.
  • In the U.S., the Grand Opera House in Cincinnati, Ohio, was destroyed in a fire, along with other adjacent buildings. Although the theater was filled with hundreds of people watching a production of Hamlet, nobody was injured. Credit was given to stage actor E. H. Sothern, who interrupted the second scene of the play to calmly request the audience to carefully make their way to the exits.
  • The Scandinavian-crewed U.S. fishing vessel Commonwealth departed from Gloucester, Massachusetts with 17 crew to fish for haddock and was never seen again. It was believed to have been the casualty of a February blizzard in the Georges Bank.
  • The village of Ivanhoe, Minnesota, which would become the county seat for Lincoln County, was incorporated.
  • The United States Senate ratified a treaty with Spain to purchase the islands of Sibutu and Babuyan for $100,000.Born: Saint Alberto Hurtado, Chilean Jesuit priest who would be canonized as a Roman Catholic saint in 2005; in Viña del Mar

January 23, 1901 (Wednesday)

January 24, 1901 (Thursday)

  • In a state ceremony at Dublin Castle, Edward VII was proclaimed King of Ireland.
  • Emily Hobhouse arrived at Bloemfontein concentration camp to report on conditions. Horrified by what she saw, she would write:
    "They went to sleep without any provision having been made for them and without anything to eat or to drink. I saw crowds of them along railway lines in bitterly cold weather, in pouring rain–hungry, sick, dying and dead. Soap was not dispensed. The water supply was inadequate. No bedstead or mattress was procurable. Fuel was scarce and had to be collected from the green bushes on the opes of the kopjes by the people themselves. The rations were extremely meagre and when, as I frequently experienced, the actual quantity dispensed fell short of the amount prescribed, it simply meant famine."
  • Hubert von Herkomer was commissioned by King Edward VII of the United Kingdom to paint a watercolor portrait of the recently deceased Queen Victoria as she lay in her coffin, a not uncommon practice of the day as a respectful means of preserving the final image of a person. A century later, a critic would write, as praise, "the brightness of a flowing and translucent shroud seems already to be transporting the Queen into another world."

January 25, 1901 (Friday)

January 26, 1901 (Saturday)

  • Tomb KV44, in Egypt's Valley of the Kings, was opened by a team of archaeologists led by Howard Carter. The tomb was found to contain the mummies of ten people, the most notable of whom was Tentkerer, a woman who had served the Pharaoh Osorkon I, who reigned from 922 BC to 887 BC.
  • Thirty-two captured leaders of the Filipino resistance to American rule were deported to Guam on a U.S. Navy ship which steamed out of Manila Bay to send the nationalists into exile. The 32 men had refused to take the oath of allegiance to the American territorial government, and were considered likely to foment unrest against the U.S. Territorial authorities. Foremost among the deportees was Apolinario Mabini, who had been the first Prime Minister of the First Philippine Republic during its temporary independence from Spain. Mabini would finally be allowed to return to the Philippines in 1903, two months before his death.
  • Edouard Orban de Xivry, the Governor of the Luxembourg Province of Belgium, was assassinated in his office by one of his employees. Messr. Schneider asked for a meeting with the Governor. After they began talking, he drew out a revolver, shot Orban de Xivry, then killed himself.

January 27, 1901 (Sunday)

January 28, 1901 (Monday)

January 29, 1901 (Tuesday)

  • China's Empress Dowager Cixi issued an imperial decree in the name of the Emperor. "After we moved out of the capital city," the Emperor's statement began, "the empress has been constantly busy with state affairs. As Emperor, I deeply regret my mistakes... we mindlessly followed the old ways, leading to the calamity we face today. Now that peace negotiations are underway, we should reform all political affairs so that the country can become strong and prosperous." The decree directed all government officials to suggest reforms during the next two months, determining "What should be done to strengthen China, develop human talent, reach fiscal balance, and build a strong army?"
  • In French Algeria, Swiss travel writer Isabelle Eberhardt, who posed as the Sufi tribesman Si Mahmoud Saadi, was stabbed and severely wounded by a fanatic member of the Tidjani Muslims, who regarded her and other members of the Qadiriyya Muslims as infidels. The trauma was enough to make Eberhardt move back to Marseille. She would die in an accident in 1903.
  • U.S. Representative George Henry White of North Carolina's 2nd congressional district, the 22nd and last remaining African-American member of the United States Congress, gave his farewell speech. "This is perhaps the Negroes' temporary farewell to the American Congress," he told his colleagues, "but let me say, Phoenix-like, he will rise up some day and come again. These parting words are in behalf of an outraged, heart-broken, bruised and bleeding, but God-fearing people; faithful, industrious, loyal, rising people – full of potential force." There would not be another black member of the U.S. Congress for 28 years; in 1928, Oscar Stanton De Priest would be elected to represent Illinois's 2nd congressional district.Born:
  • * Allen B. DuMont, American electronics engineer, innovator of the cathode-ray tube that lead to the first commercially practical television set, founder of the DuMont Television Network; in Brooklyn, New York City
  • * E. P. Taylor, Canadian business executive, acquired multiple beer manufacturers to build Canadian Breweries, at one time the world's largest brewing company; in Ottawa

January 30, 1901 (Wednesday)

January 31, 1901 (Thursday)