1910   1911   1912   1913   1914   1915   1916   1917   1918   1919

In what year did the Titanic sink, Oreo's and Lifesavers invented, and the nucleus of an atom discovered? In case you haven't figured it out by now (from the heading), the year was 1912. It was a time of change. Minimum wage laws for women and children were passed, the famous E.I. Du Pont gets some of his businesses shut down in court because of monopoly and A&P expands from 500 stores to opening a new store every three days for the following three years. Read on to find out more about the year of reform, 1912.

• International Workers of the World organizes a successful strike of textile workers on January 12 in Lawrence, Massachusetts. This promotes it among eastern textile workers.
• Juliette Gordon Low begins The Girl Guides of America on March 12 in Savannah, Georgia. The next year, it is renamed The Girl Scouts of America and its headquarters are in New York.
• In April the National Biscuit Company introduces a new biscuit with a cream filling between two chocolate wafers to rival Hydrox biscuit bon-bons. Nabisco changed the name in 1958 to Oreo Cream Sandwich.
• The supposed "unsinkable" S.S. Titanic, sinks on her maiden voyage because it scrapes and iceberg in the North Atlantic. Named the largest passenger liner in the world at that time, the Titanic sunk in 2 1/2 hours. Of the 2,223 passengers, only 706 survived.
• The 1912 summer Olympics was held in Stockholm, Sweden. The US won 63 medals: 25 gold, 18 silver and 20 bronze.
• On September 3, Filene's opens in Boston. It has a 7-foot tall doorman.
• The play, The Firefly, opens up opened at the Empire Theatre in Syracuse on October 14, 1912 and in New York on December 2, 1912.
• Boston Red Sox moved into a new ballpark on April 12. They went on to beat the New York Giants 4 games to 3 in the World Series.
• Harvey Cushing wrote a book that advanced knowledge about the relationship between the pituitary gland and diabetes.
• The Ziegfeld Follies opened up in Moulin Rouge, NY.
• During the presidential election, former U.S. president, Theodore Roosevelt ran for president again but lost to Woodrow Wilson won. This is the first time Democrats had control over the White House since 1897 when Grover Cleveland left the office.
• Oklahoma Indian James Francis "Jim" Thorpe wins both the pentathlon and decathlon at the fifth Olympiad ever held. He scored 8, 412 points out of the potential 10,000 in the decathlon and won four firsts in the pentathlon. Thorpe returned to the events to score 25 touchdowns and 198 points. But after admitting that he had played semi-professional baseball the previous year, and because of his Native American ancestry, he gets his medals taken away. Also at the insistence of the AAU, Thorpe gets his name taken out of the Olympic record book. However he is named the greatest athlete and football player in twentieth century.
• J.E. Brandemberger perfects cellophane and patents it.
• Universal Picture Corp. is created.
• German American engineer Grover Loening designs and creates the first amphibious aircraft. Two years before, he receives the first ever U.S. masters degree in aeronautic from Columbia University. This degree and his "aeroboat" caused Orville Wright to hire him as his assistant and manager the next year.
• New Mexico was annexed on January 6^th, 1912 as the 47^th state. On February 14, 1912, Arizona was annexed as the 48^th state.
• Knute Rockne was chosen as Notre Dame football captain.
• R.F. Scott travels to the South Pole and breaks the record by reaching the most southern point out of all past expeditions.
• The nucleus of an atom is discovered by a New Zealand physicist named Rutherford.
• Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung publishes his theory of psychoanalysis.
• Clarence Crane created LifeSavers Candy.
• Near Los Angeles, California, the Beverly Hills Hotel opens. It is a favorite place for many people in the movie industry.
• Pablo Picasso paints The Violin.
• An International RadioTelegraph Conference accepts three dots, three dashes and three dots (SOS) as the universal signal for distress.
• Richard Hellmann, 35, a New York delicatessen owner, presents Hellmann's Blue Ribbon Mayonnaise.
• The Russian underground Communist party circulates a newspaper called Pravda. This shows the opinions of the communists even though Lenin uses the word truth for it. It comes to have the world's largest circulation of any newspaper.
• Exaggerated claims are forbidden by the Sherley Amendment to the U.S. Pure Food and Drug Law of 1906.
• Rowenta, a German company, manufactures the electric iron.
• Rice University is established in Houston.
• Leon Leonwood Bean establishes L.L. Bean, Inc.
• Joseph Conrad writes Twixt Land and Sea.
• Zane Grey, a former dentist, writes Riders of the Purple Sage.
• Maria Montessori, an Italian educator, writes The Montessori Method. It tells how she taught slum children (from 3 to 6 years of age) how to read. Maria Montessori was the first woman ever to graduate from Rome University medical school. She spreads her method of teaching and establishes Montessori schools.
• The United States receives wild boars, which are kept in the North Carolina Appalachians, along with other types of animals. Many escape and the number of boars in the area grew to over 1,200.
• Kodiak Island is buried under several feet of ash after Katmai, a 6,175-foot tall Alaskan volcano, erupts 100 miles away.
• New Japanese cherry trees are planted in Washington, D.C. after the first set of trees die.
• On April 14, a wireless operator, David Sarnoff, unintentionally receives the message "S.S. Titanic ran into iceberg. Sinking fast." He conveys it to another ship, and learns that the Titanic has already sunk with some survivors. Other wireless stations are commanded to stay silent by the President, and Sarnoff records the names of survivors from his station.
• John C. Marin paints a watercolor known as the Woolworth Painting.
• Georges Braque invents collage, a new style of art.
• Ezra Loomis Pound writes Ripostes.
• James Weldon Johnson writes the The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man.
• Toys are added into every package of Cracker Jacks.

1910   1911   1912   1913   1914   1915   1916   1917   1918   1919

1900s   1910s   1920s   1930s   1940s   1950s   1960s   1970s   1980s   1990s

e-mail us at thongell@pocanticohills.org 
last updated 12/04/05