1900   1901   1902   1903   1904   1905   1906   1907   1908   1909

In 1900 more that half of all Americans are living in rural areas. One home in seven has a bathtub and one in 13 has a telephone. Prohibitionist Carry Moore Nation uses her hatchet on any public place selling liquor. College Entrance Examination Board is founded. The are responsible for the SAT's. The average age at death is 47. Only 144 miles of U.S. roads are hard-surfaced. Trolley cars provide transportation in major cities. On the other side of the world, in China, the Boxer Rebellion starts.

• The Olympic Games opened on May 14. Held at Paris, the games attract 1,505 athletes from 16 nations. France is the unofficial winner.
• The International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union is founded on June 3 by cloakmakers who meet in a small hall on New York’s Lower East Side. The union’s seven locals represent 2,310 workers in New York, Newark, Philadelphia, and Baltimore.
• Retired  general Ferdinand von Zeppelin, 62, launches the first rigid airship July 2 at Friedrichshafen; he will go on to build many such lighter-than-air craft.
• Firestone Tire & Rubber is founded on August 3 at Akron, Ohio, by U.S. entrepreneur Harvey Samuel Firestone, 32, who has patented a method for attaching tires to rims. He invests $10,000 to start the new firm.
• The first Davis Cup tennis matches open August 8 at Brookline, Mass., and continue for 3 days. A U.S. team defeats a British team to gain possession of an $800 silver cup donated by Harvard senior Dwight Filley Davis, 21, who has commissioned the Boston jeweler Shreve, Crump & Low to design and produce the challenge cup.
• The 1900 storm in Galveston, Texas on September 8, kills between 6,000 and 8,000 people in the worst recorded natural disaster in North American history. Thousands more are injured and property damage amounts to $17 million.
• Steam tractors first appear on wheat fields of the U.S. Pacific Northwest. Their main use was to draw portable threshing machines.
• Honey Dew Melon are introduced into the United States.
• Spanish painter Pablo Picasso, 19 paints Le Moulin de la Galette.
• Andrew Carnegie Mellon Institute of Technology is founded at Pittsburgh.
• Standard Oil Company, owned by John D. Rockefeller Sr., buys Pacific Coast Oil.
• Southern Oil puts Wesson Oil on the market.
• The hamburger is pioneered at New Haven, Conn., where Louis Lassen grinds 7¢/lb. lean beef, broils it, and serves it between two slices of toast (no catsup or relish) to customers at his 5-year-old three-seat Louis' Lunch. 
• The Interpretation of Dreams (Die Traumdeutung) by Sigmund Freud is based on psychoanalytic techniques that lean heavily on dream analysis.
• The brownie box camera camera introduced by Eastman Kodak sells at $1, puts photography within reach of everyone, and makes Kodak a household name.
• William Mckinley defeats William Jennings Bryant in a bid for a second term as President of the US.
• Hawaii becomes a US territory. 
• Harry Houdini gains wide publicity as the "Great Houdini" by executing an escape from London’s Scotland Yard, becomes a main attraction at London’s Alhambra Theatre, and begins a 4-year tour of the Continent. U.S. escape artist Ehrich Weiss, 26, has adopted the name Houdini from the French magician Jean Eugene Robert-Houdin; having studied Robert-Houdin’s work, his book The Unmasking of Robert-Houdin in 1908 will show that the Frenchman’s dexterity was much exaggerated, and he will far surpass Robert-Houdin’s reputation with feats such as having himself shackled in irons, locked into a roped and weighted box, dropped overboard from a boat, and emerging with a smile before baffled audiences.
• The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum is published.
• The U.S. Navy purchases the first modern submarine. Invented by Irish-American engineer John Phillip Holland, 60, the Holland uses electric motors under water and internal combustion engines on the surface, employing water ballast to submerge
• Popular songs "A Bird in a Gilded Cage" by New York composer Harry Von Tilzer. 

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last updated 12/04/05