So read the headlines.
Eugene Lefebvre crashed an airplane at Juvisy-sur-Orge in France and was killed, the first pilot to die flying an airplane.
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Robert Pesry telegraphed his claim to the North Pole to the New York Times.
I have the pole, April sixth. Expect arrive Chateau Bay September seventh. Secure control wire for me there and arrange expedite transmission big story. PEARY.
He claimed an April 6, 1909 date. Cook had claimed an April 21, 1908 date. It's clear that Cook didn't make it to the pole, and that Peary believed he had, but it's not clear that he actually did.
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A group of girls approached the Scout's founder, Sir Robert Baden-Powell, and asked for him to create an organization for girls, which was then entrusted to his sister, Agnes Baden-Powell. They would become the Girl Guides.
I'm tempted to comment on declined standards, and contemporary events, but I'll forgo it.
Japan and China agreed to the positioning of the north east Chinese-Korean border at the Gando Convention. The boundary that was established was a natural one, being a watercourse.
Today, due to 19th and 20th Century migration, a large ethnically Korean population lives north of North Korea in the People's Republic of China, in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture which rivals the combined North and South Korea in size.
Orville Wright made the first airplane flight in Germany.
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The Leconte Observatory in Brussels received a message cabled from Lerwick in the Shetland Islands as follows:
Reached north pole April 21, 1908. Discovered land far north. Return to Copenhagen by steamer Hans Eged. (Signed) FREDERICK COOK
Not everyone was convinced, and not without good reason, but he no doubt believed it, and it was hard to establish, then and now.
Does it really matter? It's almost impossible to see how, but then in future years reaching the Moon might seem similarly irrelevant.
Or significant.
Cook died in 1940 at age 75, his reputation never recovered from the attacks that would soon occur on it.
Baguio, Philippines, elevation 5,100 ft, was incorporated.
The American Governor General would make it his summer residence due to its cool summer temperatures.
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Banking was unknown as a flying technique to retain speed until that time.
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Honestly, I don't know when these started, or ended (1970s?) but yet another military coup in Greece occurred on this day.
Henry Farman became the first person to fly an airplane 100 miles. He accordingly won the Grand Prix de la Champagne endurance test.
Farman would live to age 84 and die in 1958.
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Catcher Bill Bergen of the Brooklyn Dodgers threw out six batters on the base paths in a game against St. Louis.
The record still stands.
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A major downtown fire broke out in Victor, Colorado. The fire was caused by a prostitute in the city's red light district catching a gown she was washing in kerosene with a cigarette. The fire rapidly spread from the red light district to the downtown.
The burnt area was rapidly rebuilt.
A set of great grandparents lived in Victor at the time.
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The first automobile race occurred at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. William Bourque and his mechanic, Harry Holcomb, were killed when their car left the track, struck a fence, and turned over. Louis H. Schwitzer won the race, averaging 57.4 mph.
Schwitzer as an engineer who would go on to be responsible for numerous important automotive inventions.
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St. Pope Pius X became the first Pope to ride in an automobile.
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The location of Rainbow Bridge, the world's largest natural ridge, was disclosed by Jim Mike (1872–1977), a Paiute Indian, to William B. Douglas of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.
The first motor race took place at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway took place. It was a motorcycle race sanctioned by the Federation of American Motorcyclists.
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Briggs & Stratton started manufacturing engines.
Georgian Besarion Ivanes dze Jughashvili, father of Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili, know to history as Joseph Stalin, died of cirrhosis of the liver.
He was a cobbler by trade, and had hoped his son would be as well.
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Howard Hughes Sr was issued a patent for the rotary bit that would revolutionize petroleum drilling and found the fortune of the Hughes economic empire.
Hughes had originally been a lawyer.
After leaving Harvard in '94, I found myself in the Law School of the Iowa State University. It was my father's wish that I succeed him in his practice. Too impatient to await the course of graduation, I passed the examination before the Supreme Court of Iowa and began the practice of law. I soon found the law a too-exacting mistress for a man of my talent, and I quit her between dark and dawn, and have never since been back. I decided to search for my fortune under the surface of the earth.
Howard Hughes Sr., 1912.
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"The Isles", Lake Hopatcong, N.J. August 9, 1909.
Alabama became the first state to ratify the Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution providing for an income tax.
The U.S. mint halted the production of the Lincoln head VDB marked pennies, with the initials of designer Victor David Brenner, on them. 22,350,000 of the pennies had been put into circulation.
Production had only been ongoing for one week.
He was executed on August 26, 1944, for his role in the plot.
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I received an unexpected and surprising of how much things have changed even in my own lifetime this week, and in the kitchen at that.The first native Australian saint, St. Mary Helen MacKillop, the co-founder of the Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart, died in North Sydney, Australia,
Nearly the entire upper elements of the US Government went on vacation. President Taft arrived at the "Summer White House" in Beverly, Massachusetts. Vice-President Sherman went to his home in Utica, New York. House Speaker Cannon went home to Danville, Illinois.
Only two cabinet officers remained in Washington, D.C.
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A building in Deadwood South Dakota that was once a Hudson and Terraplane dealer, two extinct brands of automobiles.The United States Army accepted the delivery of a Wright Military Flyer.
The Wright brothers were hired at the same time to train the first two pilots, Lts. Frank P. Lahm and Frederick E. Humphreys
It was just six years after the first flight, and less than a decade before airplanes would become a major weapon of war.
Lincoln penneys went into circulation. The 1909 penny had the equivalent of $.35 spending power in contemporary dollars.
It replaced the Indian head penny that had been in circulation since 1859.
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