Wednesday, February 28, 2001

Thursday, February 28, 1901. Wars proving easier to start, than stop.

Negotiations took place at Middleburg between Lord Kitchener and Boer General Louis Botha.

They would fail.

The Army established the Army Nurse Corps.

The all female Army branch reflected a growing societal emphasis on professionalism as well as the growing role of women in society.

The United States Congress rejected the proposed agreement that had been signed by the United States Department of the Interior with the Choctaw and Chickasaw nations, and negotiations had to begin again.

Chemist Linus Pauling was born in Portland Oregon.

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Tuesday, February 26, 1901. Boxer executions.

Monday, February 26, 2001

Tuesday, February 26, 1901. Boxer executions.

Boxer leaders Chi-hsui and Hsu-cheng-yu were publicly beheaded in Beijing in front of a crowd of about 10,000. 

Japanese Col. Goro Shiba, the Japanese legation's military attaché, treated the two condemned men to champagne before turning them over to the Chinese Board of Punishments.  Chi-hsui told him "I do not know what I have done to make me deserving of death, but if beheading me will make the foreign troops evacuate Peking and my Emperor return, I am satisfied to die. I will die a patriot."

Reports from Bombay held that 400 people had died from the plague in two days.

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Thursday, February 22, 2001

Wednesday, February 21, 2001

Tuesday, February 20, 2001

Wednesday, February 20, 1901. Butch Cassidy, Sundance Kid, and Etta Place depart for Argentina.

Butch Cassidy (Robert Leroy Parker), the Sundance Kid (Harry Longabaugh), and Etta Place, departed the United States on board the British steamer the SS Herminius.

They all returned to the United States in 1906, as Place no longer wished to remain in South America.  The men, however, went back to Argentina.  Nobody knows what became of Place upon her return, and very little is otherwise known of her.

The Sundance Kid and Etta Place.

The Hawaii Territorial Legislature convened for the first time. 

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Monday, February 18, 1901. Churchill in parliament, Germans in China.

Sunday, February 18, 2001

Monday, February 18, 1901. Churchill in parliament, Germans in China.

Winston Churchill addressed parliament as a member of the House of Commons for the first time.  The topic was the treatment of Boer prisoners.

German Field Marshal Alfred von Waldersee announced a new military campaigns to secure territory in China. They'd be launched as a series of punitive expeditions.

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Saturday, February 16, 1901. Tariff wars.

Friday, February 16, 2001

Saturday, February 16, 1901. Tariff wars.

Russia retaliated on a tariff raise imposed on Russian sugar with a 30% increase on the tariff on American ferric goods.

Hmm. . . seems like I've heard this tune before. . . 

We don't think of Russia as a player in sugar today, in no small part due to the Russian Revolution.  Before that, however, Russia was a major sugar exporter, being a beneficiary of the German process for refining sugar beets.  The U.S. sugar industry is based on the same process.

The U.S. sugar industry was heavily impacted by the Spanish American War, oddly enough, as the U.S. became a major market for Cuban sugar and tobacco.  When Cuba went communist in the 1950s, Russia in turn became the market for both of those things.  Today, Cuba really doesn't have a market for either.  A logical trade policy would open trade back up with Cuba, which is far more likely to liberalize its government than attempting to starve it to death before Marco Rubio convinces Mad King Donny to invade it.

Also in Russia, Russian Foreign Minister Vladimir Lamsdorf presented a revised treaty proposal to China's Ambassador to the Russian Empire, Prince Yang-ju. Under the 12-article treaty, China would retain ownership of Manchuria, but Russian troops would be allowed to occupy the territory to guard the railways there, and China would be forbidden from granting rail or mining privileges to anyone without Russian consent. China wasn't impressed and leaked the details to the Japanese and British.

Most of  Alabama's Legislature arrived in Pensacola, Florida, at the invitation of the West Florida Annexation Association, to discuss the possibility of the annexing western Florida.

Macedonian demonstrators in Sofia demanded independence for Bulgaria from the Ottoman Empire.

Today In Wyoming's History: February 16: 1901  Governor Richards signed an act that required county commissions to raise taxes for the purpose of building a residence for the governor.  Attribution:  On This Day.

Wyoming's Sixth State Legislature concluded.

It was a Saturday.


The British journal The Sphere reported on a recent visit by Kaiser Wilhelm II, pictured here wearing a completely absurd helmet, to the UK.


In sharp contrast, The Saturday Evening POst had an illustration of George Washington, no doubt in commemoration of his birthday, on the cover. The attempt at illustrating a bit and bradoon was seriously flawed, however.

I'd be interested in what the article on millionaires not being able to stop making money held.  Millionaires at that time  would be like billionaires now.\

The progressive movement at the time was attempting to rein millionaires in.  The Great Depression, a good thirty years away, would accomplish it. . . for a time.

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Thursday, February 15, 2001

Friday, February 15, 1901. Right of way.

The Right-of-Way Act was signed into law by U.S. President William McKinley permitting the Secretary of the Interior to grant rights of way through any federally owned-land, including the Indian reservations and the four national parks then in existence (Yellowstone, Sequoia, Yosemite, and Mount Rainier) if he found it to be "incompatible with the public interest".

Not good.

69 coal miners at the Wellington Colliery Company, near Cumberland, British Columbia, were killed in an explosion.  Over half of them were Japanese or Chinese immigrants.

Bluesman James "Kokomo" Arnold may have been born, assuming he wasn't born on this date in 1896.  He was famous for his intense slid guitar.

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Wednesday, February 13, 1901. McKinley wins (officially).

Tuesday, February 13, 2001

Wednesday, February 13, 1901. McKinley wins (officially).

William McKinley was formally declared the winner of the 1900 Presidential election, as a joint session of United States Congress witnessed the formal counting of the electoral votes.

Hmmm. . . seems like that went so smoothly.

Today In Wyoming's History: February 13: ..1901  Stinkingwater River renamed the Shoshone River.

German troops fired on civilians at Youngqing, China.

African sleeping sickness was first noticed by  British missionary doctors J. Howard Cook and Albert Cook.

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Sunday, February 10, 1901. Boers invade Cape Colony.

Thursday, February 8, 2001

Friday, February 8, 1901. Russian overreach.

Russia presented China with Russia's conditions for withdrawing from Manchuria.

The conditions were unacceptable to China, and Japan.


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Wednesday, June 6, 1901 Joe Boot escapes.

Tuesday, February 6, 2001

Wednesday, June 6, 1901 Joe Boot escapes.

Boer commandos cut the Delagoa Bay Railroad thirty miles from the Portuguese West Africa capital, Lourenço Marques (Maputo, Angola).

The Eight-Nation Alliance demand that nine Chinese officials be executed for crimes committed during the Boxer Rebellion.

Three were already dead.

Joe Boot, likely a false name, became one of the few prisoners to escape the Yuma Territorial Prison.  At the time the prison trustee had served only two years of a thirty year sentence for robbing a stage with female robber Pearl Heart.

He was never found.

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Tuesday, February 5, 1901. What we wanted.

Monday, February 5, 2001

Tuesday, February 5, 1901. What we wanted.

The United States Senate voted to declassify all United States Department of State papers relating to the peace negotiations that ended the Spanish–American War.

This revealed to the public that the only territory that the United States originally had wanted Spain to completely give up was Puerto Rico and its surrounding islands.

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Saturday, February 2, 1901. Army matters.

Friday, February 2, 2001

Saturday, February 2, 1901. Army matters.

Queen Victoria's funeral took place at St George's Chapel in Windsor Castle.

The Kings of the United Kingdom, Germany, Portugal and Greece, and the future kings of Denmark and Sweden were in attendance.

The post Spanish American War United States Army Reorganization Bill was signed into law by President William McKinley. As part of it:

  • The United States Army Nurse Corps was established as a permanent part of the United States Army's Medical Department. Women could enlist in the Army for three year terms, but t hey could not be commissioned.
  • The Dental Corps was established.
The Army needed modernization, as di the state militia system, and it was receiving it.

Benjamin O. Davis Sr., the first African-American general in the United States Army, was  commissioned a second lieutenant in the U.S. 9th Cavalry. 



Davis had enlisted as a private less than two years earlier and been mentored by Major Charles Young, who, at the time, was the only other black officer in the United States Army. He'd be a pivotal figure in the ultimate integration of the U.S. military, as in fact was Young.

It should be noted that this date is somewhat confusing in regard to Davis' career, as he'd been an officer in the Washington D.C. National Guard in 1898.  He'd been commissioned again during the Spanish American War in the 8th  U.S. Volunteer Infantry.  After being mustered out he'd rejoined the Army as a private, showing a remarkable drive for service in the segregated Army of the time.

Davis in 1945.

He was old for an officer during World War Two, but such a seminal figure that he was retained in service.  He lived until 1970, dying at age 93, outliving both of his wives who predeceased him.  His son by the same name became a general in the U.S. Air Force.  The senior Davis was serving at Ft. D. A. Russell at the time of the younger Davis' birth.

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