1910's

9/15/15

1910

The First Great Dinosaur Rush in the Garden Park area of Colorado and at Como Bluff, Wyoming in the late 1870's. There was a rivalry between two paleontologists, Edward Drinker Cope of Philadelphia and Othniel Marsh from Yale University. Stories about the rivalry between these two men may have been exaggerated, but they talk about armed field parties, spies and intercepting shipments of fossils intended for the other. These paleontologists' discoveries gave us insight into the Late Jurassic period and the largest of dinosaurs, the sauropods.

The Second Great Dinosaur Rush took place in the badlands of the Red Deer in Southern Alberta, Canada. Dinosaur remains were found in this area as early as 1884, but it didn't become an active digging site until 1910. There was a rivalry between Barnum Brown of the American Museum of Natural History in New York and C.H. Sternberg of the Geological Survey of Canada. This rivalry was a friendly competition. Discoveries from this collecting area provided insights into the dinosaurs and environment of the Late Cretaceous period.



10/13/15

1912

• New Mexico becomes the 47th state of the United States of America
• On January 22nd, The Florida East Coast Railway was completed and created a connection between Key West, FL and the mainland. It was in service until 1935 when it was destroyed by a hurricane.It was replaced in 1938 by the Overseas Highway, built on the foundation of the old railroad bed. This system of forty-two bridges, which connects the Florida Keys to the mainland, is one of the longest over-water roads in the world.
• Arizona becomes the 48th state of the United States of America.
• Girl Scouting in the United States of America began when Juliette "Daisy" Gordon Low organized the first Girl Scout troop meeting of 18 girls in Savannah, Georgia on March 12th. She believed that all girls should be given the opportunity to develop physically, mentally, and spiritually. With the goal of bringing girls out of isolated home environments and into community service and the open air, Girl Scouts hiked, played basketball, went on camping trips, learned how to tell time by the stars, and studied first aid.

• On March 27th, First Lady Helen Herron Taft and the Viscountess Chinda, wife of the Japanese ambassador, planted two Yoshino cherry trees on the northern bank of the Potomac River Tidal Basin in Washington, D.C. The event celebrated the Japanese government's gift of 3,000 trees to the United States. Trees were planted along the Potomac Tidal Basin near the site of the future Jefferson Memorial, in East Potomac Park, and on the White House grounds.

• March 6th, "Milk's favorite cookie" was introduced to the country! OREOS!! Today, there are so many different varieties of Oreos...what's your favorite flavor?
• The sinking of the RMS Titanic occurred on the night of April 14 through to the morning of April 15 in the north Atlantic Ocean, four days into her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York City.  largest passenger liner in service at the time, Titanic had an estimated 2,224 people on board when she struck an iceberg at 23:40 (ship's time[a]) on Sunday, 14 April 1912. Her sinking two hours and forty minutes later at 02:20 (05:18 GMT) on Monday, 15 April resulted in the deaths of more than 1,500 people, which made it one of the deadliest peacetime maritime disasters in history.

• Fenway Park opens in Boston on April 20th.The Red Sox defeated the New York Highlanders — later known as the Yankees — before 27,000 fans,7-6 in 11 innings. The event would have made front page news had it not been for the sinking of the Titanic only a few days before.

• Arthur Eldred becomes the first Eagle Scout for the Boy Scouts of America on August 21st. In the August 1912 issue of Boy’s Life, Eldred was listed in the Honor Roll section as having received the following merit badges: Civics, Cooking, Cycling, Electricity, Firemanship, First Aid to Animals, Gardening, Handicraft, Horsemanship, Interpreting of French, Life Saving, Painting, Pathfinding, Personal Health, Poultry Farming, Public Health, Swimming, Chemistry, Dairying, Business, and Plumbing. 

• July 7th, Houdini performs overboard box escape. Houdini first performed the escape in New York's East River. Police forbade him from using one of the piers, so Houdini hired a tugboat and invited press on board. Houdini was locked in handcuffs and leg-irons, then nailed into the crate which was roped and weighed down with two hundred pounds of lead. The crate was then lowered into water. Houdini escaped in fifty-seven seconds. The crate was pulled to the surface and found to still be intact with the manacles inside. Houdini would perform this escape many times, and even performed a version on stage, first at Hamerstein's Roof Garden (where a 5,500-gallon tank was specially built), and later at the New York Hippodrome.

September 21st, Houdini performs the Chinese water torture cell. In this escape, Houdini's feet would be locked in stocks, and he would be lowered upside down into a tank filled with water. The mahogany and metal cell featured a glass front, through which audiences could clearly see Houdini. The stocks would be locked to the top of the cell, and a curtain would conceal his escape. This replaced his milk can act

• .Gene Kelly was born on August 23rd. He was an American dancer, actor, singer, film director and producer, and choreographer.

11/24/15
Year: 1918   We are nearing the end of World War I....

• The first gasoline pipeline began operation with 40 miles of three inch pipe from Salt Creek to Casper, Wyoming. 
• Canada’s Unionist government began to enforce the Military Service Act.
• The Germans moved 75,000 troops from the East Front to the Western Front.
• President Woodrow Wilson presents his Fourteen Points to a joint session of Congress. His Fourteen Points was an outline for world peace that Wilson created during World War I. 

• Mississippi became the first state to ratify the proposed 18th amendment to the US Constitution, which established Prohibition.
• The US House of Representatives passed women's suffrage. The 19th Amendment for women's suffrage was also known as the Anthony Amendment in honor of Susan B. Anthony.
• Austria and Germany rejected U.S. peace proposals.
• "Tarzan of the Apes," 1st Tarzan film, premiered at Broadway Theater. It was a black and white, silent movie.
• The Supreme Allied Council met at Versailles. 
• The US steamship Tuscania was torpedoed by German submarine U-77 and sank off the coast of Ireland.

• The World War I first edition of The Stars and Stripes, the weekly newspaper of the American Expeditionary Forces, was published in Paris, France.
• The Soviet Red Army seized Kiev, the capital of the Ukraine.
• Germany claimed the Baltic states, Finland and Ukraine from Russia.
• Stands at the Hong Kong Jockey Club collapsed and burned, killing 604.

• Germany and Austria forced Soviet Russia to sign the Peace of Brest, which called for the establishment of 5 independent countries: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Ukraine. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which ended Russian participation in World War I, was annulled by the November 1918 armistice. 
• The Soviets moved the capital of Russia from Petrograd to Moscow.
• US naval boat "Cyclops" disappeared in "Bermuda Triangle."

• Russian Bolshevik Party became the Communist Party.
• Women were scheduled to march in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in New York due to a shortage of men.
• During World War I, Germany launched the Somme 'Michael' Offensive in France, hoping to break through the Allied line before American reinforcements could arrive. It is better remembered as the First Battle of the Somme.

• Alick Wickham dove 200' into Australia's Yarra River. 

• A flu epidemic began at Fort Riley, Kansas, where 48 men died. It was carried by recruits to Europe where it mutated and returned with a vengeance. The Spanish flu was later found to have been caused by a genetic fusion of pig and human viruses.
• The art collection of Hilaire Germain Edgar Degas, more than 500 paintings and 5,000 prints, was auctioned off in Paris.

• Baron Manfred von Richthofen, the highest-scoring German ace of World War I with 80 victories, was killed in a dogfight over France's Somme Valley over Amiens. As he pursued a Canadian pilot with jammed guns, von Richthofen, flying a red Fokker triplane, broke one of his own flying rules by following his prey too long, too far and too low. Two miles behind Allied lines, Richthofen was mortally wounded when he was fired upon simultaneously by another Canadian pilot and Australian ground troops. The following day, the Red Baron was buried by his enemies with full military honors. He was replaced with Hermann Goering.

• Gavrilo Princip, Bosnian murderer of Arch Duke Ferdinand, died in prison of tuberculosis. The assassination of Arch Duke Ferdinand was the catalyst to the beginning of World War I.
• The first US airmail stamps, featuring a picture of an airplane, were introduced. On some of the initial stamps the airplane was printed upside down; the "inverted Jenny," as it came to be called, became a collector's item. One sheet of 100 stamps got by inspectors.

• Sunday baseball became legal in Washington, DC.
• Pfc. Henry Johnson and Pfc. Needham Roberts received the Croix de Guerre for their services in World War I. They were the first Americans to win France's highest military medal. 
• First airplane bombing raid by an American unit occurred on World War I’s Western Front in France.
• Allied forces on the Western Front began their largest counter-attack against the spent German army.
• After a brief respite, the Germans began firing their huge 420 mm howitzer "Big Bertha" at Paris. During World War I, Germany’s 98-ton howitzer used to shell Verdun and Liege-Big Bertha-was named after the wife of munitions maker Gustav Krupp. Krupp went on to support Adolph Hitler and help finance the Nazis.

• Two German pilots were saved by parachutes for the first time.
• Ernest Hemingway, Nobel Prize winning writer, was wounded in Italy while working as an ambulance driver for the American Red Cross. He was later awarded the Italian Silver Medal of Military Valor. Hemingway enlisted in a Red Cross ambulance unit in 1917 during World War I.  He was commissioned a second lieutenant and served on the Italian front. After WWI he reported from the battlefields of the Spanish Civil War for American newspapers. His book "Farewell to Arms" was based on his experiences in WWI.
• 101 people were killed as an inbound local train collided with an outbound express in Nashville, Tenn. 
• Enrico Caruso joined the war effort and recorded "Over There", the patriotic song written by George M. Cohan.

• A Japanese battleship exploded in the Bay of Tokayama and some 500 people were killed.
• Russian Tsar, Nicholas II, was executed at Ekaterinburg by the Bolsheviks under orders from Lenin. His wife, son, 4 daughters, and 4 servants were also executed. The family mass grave was discovered by a former KGB agent in 1979 in the Urals and only 9 bodies were found. 

• The residents and coastguardsmen of Orleans, Massachusetts, were amazed to see the German U-boat, U-156, firing at an American tug and four barges just off shore.
• Britain’s top war ace, Edward Mannock, was shot down by ground fire on the Western Front.
• The British attacked with 450 tanks at the Battle of Amiens as the Allies pushed Germany back.
• Russia severed diplomatic ties with US.
• Britain’s battle cruiser HMS Hood was launched. It was sunk in 1941 by the German battleship Bismarck.
• Vladimir Lenin, the new leader of Soviet Russia, was shot & wounded after a speech.

• Lenin gave a command to suppress a peasant revolt in Penza with orders to hang no fewer than one hundred known kulaks. 
• Allies forced Germans back across Hindenburg Line.
• The Boston Red sox beat Chicago 4-2 to win the World Series in the 6th game.
• During World War I, U.S. forces led by Gen. John J. Pershing launched an attack on the German-occupied St. Mihiel salient north of Verdun, France.
• Pres. Woodrow Wilson ordered all US breweries to shut down on December 1 in order to save grain for the war effort.
• Sgt. Alvin C. York almost single-handedly killed 25 German soldiers and captured 132 in the Argonne Forest in France. Corporal Alvin C. York's platoon was advancing toward the Decauville railway when they were hit with machine-gun fire from all sides. The doughboys captured one gun, but the noise drew the fire of the remaining German emplacements, killing six and seriously wounding three Americans. As the most senior of the remaining doughboys, York went out alone to engage the enemy with just his rifle and service revolver, picking off the machine-gunners one by one. When the fighting was over, York had single-handedly eliminated 35 machine guns, killed more than 20 Germans and taken 132 members of a Prussian Guards regiment as prisoners. A modest man, York shrugged off his heroic actions, saying, "It's over; let's forget it."

• While President Woodrow Wilson was attempting to establish "peace without victory" with Germany, the German UB-123 torpedoed RMS Leinster, a civilian mail and passenger ferry, off the coast of Ireland. Leinster was usually escorted by a Royal Air Force airship as a precaution, but on October 10, 1918, the ferry set out alone. Leinster was sunk; 564 passengers and crewmen perished, many of them American and Allied troops. After Leinster, the Germans lost their chance for an easy peace. 
• The 1st use of iron lung  was at Boston's Children Hospital.

• A forest fire killed some 1,000 people in Minnesota and Wisconsin.
• In France the American 32nd division was sent to engage German troops on the Dame Marie, while the 5th and 42nd Divisions under Gen. Douglas MacArthur swept in pincer movements to occupy Cote de Chatillon. The objectives were taken in 3 days of tough fighting.
• The cities of Baltimore and Washington run out of coffins during the "Spanish Influenza" epidemic.
• President Wilson felt satisfied that the Germans were accepting his armistice terms and agreed to transmit their request for an armistice to the Allies. The Germans had agreed to suspend submarine warfare, cease inhumane practices such as the use of poison gas, and withdraw troops back into Germany.
• Germany’s supreme commander, General Erich Ludendorff, resigned, protesting the terms to which the German Government had agreed in negotiating the armistice. This set the stage for his later support for Hitler and the Nazis, who claimed that Germany did not lose the war on the battlefield but were "stabbed in the back" by politicians. 
• Poland proclaimed independence from Russia after WW I
• On November 11th, at ten minutes past five in the morning, German and Allied negotiators placed the final signatures on the armistice that would end World War I six hours later. After the signing, French General Ferdinand Foch sent all Allied commanders the following message: "Hostilities will cease on the entire [Western] front November 11 at 11:00 a.m." Even as the hour approached 9 of 16 commanders of US divisions on the Western Front ordered a final assault that left an additional 11,000 casualties. Although the Allies had not invaded Germany and there was no clear military victory, the Germans were forced to sign the armistice because of insurmountable problems. German troops, pushed past their limits of endurance by five years of fighting, faced a fresh stream of well-equipped American soldiers. Germany's allies, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria, had already ceased fighting and mutinies increased as German soldiers and sailors refused to carry out suicidal missions. Food shortages, both at home and at the front, had reached crisis levels. The costs of the First World War were astronomical with 7.5 million dead and more than 35 million total casualties. 
• Frank O. King premiered his comic strip "Gasoline Alley" in the Chicago Tribune. The comic strip was based on his life.

• President Wilson set sail for France to attend the Versailles Peace Conference. He was the 1st chief executive to travel outside US while in office.
• The last of the food restrictions, that had been enforced because of the shortages during World War I, were lifted. These restrictions included meat, wheat, sugar and fats.