November 1912

November 5, 1912: New Jersey Governor Woodrow Wilson wins U.S. presidential election

November 28, 1912: Albania declares independence from Ottoman Empire

November 29, 1912: University of Maryland destroyed by fire

The 1912 double-headed eagle flag of Albania

The following events occurred in November 1912:

November 1, 1912 (Friday)

• General Mario García Menocal, running for Cuba's Conservative Party, was elected President of Cuba, defeating Vice-President Alfredo Zayas.^[1][2]
• The Bulgarian Army occupied Demotika (Didymoteicho).^[2]
• Pope Pius X sent a letter to Portuguese Clergy condemning Portugal's Law of Separation of the State and the Church and censured those clergy who had accepted stipends under the law.^[2]
• The Germany to Russia Gordon Bennett Cup hot air balloonrace, from Stuttgart to Moscow, was won by the French team of Maurice Bienaimé and René Rumpelmayer. ^[2]
• In Warsaw, then part of the Russian Empire Lieutenant Dahm of the Imperial German Army was sentenced to 5 years hard labor for espionage.^[2]
• A federal grand jury in Omaha, Nebraska, indicted five railroads for illegal rebate policies in violation of the Elkins Act.^[2]
• Born: Gunther Plaut German-Canadian rabbi and author, in Münster (d. 2012)

November 2, 1912 (Saturday)

• King Peter of Serbia entered Uskub (now Skopje) after it was captured from the Ottoman Empire during the First Balkan War. ^[3]
• Ex-sultan Abdul Hamid II was taken to Constantinople from Salonika.^[2]
• British Navy battleships and destroyers were ordered to Turkish waters.^[4]
• Adolfo Diaz, who had been named President of Nicaragua by the National Assembly in October 1911, was elected by popular vote, without opposition.^[5]
• Three days before the presidential election, candidate Woodrow Wilson sustained a head injury when his limousine struck a hole in the street and threw him against the car's ceiling. The accident took place in Hightstown, New Jersey, at the intersection of Main Street and Monmouth Street,^[6] and although the impact was hard enough that his glasses were broken, no stitches were required to close the wound.^[7]
• Ottoman Army troops rallied at Çerkezköy (Tcherkesskeui).^[2]
• An Explosion on the battleship USS Vermont near Norfolk, Virginia kills 2 men and seriously injures 4 men.^[2]

November 3, 1912 (Sunday)

• At Urga (now Ulan Bator), the Russian Empire concluded a treaty with Mongolia, with the Russian Minister to China, Ivan Korostovets negotiated a pact with Mongolia's Foreign Minister, Mijiddorjin Khanddorj. In return for Russia's recognition of "Outer Mongolia" as an autonomous state to be protected from China, the Mongolian government would give Russia "most favored nation" status for trade and mining and timber rights.^[8]
• The Turkish government appealed to the Great Powers (Britain, France and Germany) to intervene in the Balkan War, a claim which was rejected the next day by France.^[9]
• The Greek Army captured Prevesa.^[2]
• Born: Alfredo Stroessner, President of Paraguay from 1954 to 1989, in Encarnación (d. 2006)

November 4, 1912 (Monday)

• Britain's House of Commons rejected, by a vote of 265-162, a proposed amendment to the Home Rule Bill that would have set up proportional representation for an Irish legislature.^[2]
• The Greek Army captures Yenidje and also captured 18 guns.^[2]
• French Astronomer Alphonse Borrelly discovered a new comet while observing at Marseilles.^[2]
• The keel was laid for United States Battleship Nevada at Fore River Shipyard in Quincy, Massachusetts. ^[10]
• Born: Vadim Salmanov, Soviet composer, in Saint Petersburg (d. 1978)

November 5, 1912 (Tuesday)

• Woodrow Wilson was elected President of the United States, with former Presidents Roosevelt and incumbent President Taft finishing in second and third place, respectively.^[2][11]
• Arizona, Kansas, Michigan and Oregon became the latest states to approve women's suffrage in state and local elections, but Wisconsin's men rejected the right of women to vote.^[12]
• In the Battle of Monastir, Serbian forces under the command of General Radomir Putnik army inflicted heavy casualties on Turkish forces, with the Turks losing more than half of their battle force, having 25,000 killed and wounded, and 2,000 taken prisoner.^[13][14]
• Wheeler County, Georgia was created from the western section of Montgomery County by approval of voters for an amendment to the state constitution. On November 14, the town of Alamo would become the county seat.^[15]

November 6, 1912 (Wednesday)

• Turkish Grand Vizier Kiamil Pasha summoned the Council of Ministers and Generals for a meeting at Istanbul to decide whether to continue the war with the Balkan League or seek peace. The Council elected to continue the war.^[2]
• Born: Vashti McCollum, American atheist and advocate for separation of church and state, and the plaintiff in McCollum v. Board of Education, which struck down religious instruction in American public schools; in Lyons, New York (d. 2006)

November 7, 1912 (Thursday)

• Jack Johnson, the reigning world heavyweight boxing champion and controversial African-American athlete, was indicted by a federal grand jury in Chicago for violation of the Mann Act. Belle Schreiber, a white prostitute, had testified that Johnson had arranged for her railroad trip from Chicago to Pittsburgh for immoral purposes. Johnson would be convicted six months later, and flee to France; he would eventually serve a one-year sentence in 1920 at the federal penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas.^[16]
• The largest French battleship, France, was launched from the shipyard at St. Nazaire.^[2]
• Born: Henry James Evans, New Zealand geologist, in Greymouth (d. 1990)

November 8, 1912 (Friday)

• The Army of Greece reached the Aegean Sea port city of Salonika (in Turkish, Selanik) hours ahead of the Army of Bulgaria, and, at 8:00 pm local time, arranged terms of surrender of the city by Turkish Ottoman Empire forces without firing a shot. Although Salonika was prepared for an attack from the sea, it had no fortification to defend against an assault from the surrounding land.^[17] Both Bulgaria and Greece had historical claims to the port city, which had been Thessalonica in ancient Greece, and Solun in the Bulgarian Empire in medieval times; "the Bulgarians were outraged at having been deprived of their prize", which would have given Bulgaria a port on the Aegean and access to the Mediterranean Sea, and the loss of Salonika would lead to the Second Balkan War, with Bulgaria fighting Greece and Serbia.^[18]
• Born: June Havoc, Canadian-American film and television actress, as Ellen Evangeline Hovick, in Vancouver (d. 2010)

November 9, 1912 (Saturday)

• Led by Jim Thorpe, the Carlisle Indians defeated the Army Cadets, 27-6, in a college football game at West Point, New York. Future U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, playing for Army, tackled Thorpe and forced a fumble. Later in the game, Eisenhower injured his right knee while attempting to bring down Thorpe again.^[19]
• Died: Mahuta Tāwhiao, 58, King of the Māori people since 1894^[20]

November 10, 1912 (Sunday)

• The "Far Eastern Party", consisting of Douglas Mawson, Xavier Mertz, B. E. S. Ninnis, and 17 husky dogs, set off from their camp to begin a disastrous surveying trip of the unexplored George V Land as part of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition. Ninnis and most of the team's supplies would disappear into a crevasse on December 14, Mertz would die of malnutrition, but an emaciated Mawson would survive to return to camp by February 8, and live until 1958.^[21]
• Born: Birdie Tebbetts, baseball player and manager, in Burlington, Vermont (d. 1999)
• Died:
  • Louis Cyr, 49, Canadian strongman
  • Julius Wayland, 58, American newspaper publisher and Socialist, by suicide

November 11, 1912 (Monday)

• Eighteen people were killed and 90 injured in a railroad crash at Yazoo City, Mississippi.^[2][22]
• Chile and Peru resumed diplomatic relations, severed in 1910.^[2]
• Born:
  • Larry LaPrise, American songwriter known for authoring the song "The Hokey Pokey"; in Detroit (d. 1996)
  • Cassius Marcellus Clay, Sr., African-American painter and father of boxing champion Muhammad Ali, near Louisville, Kentucky (d. 1990)
• Died: Ridgley C. Powers, 75, Ohio native and Union Army officer who served as Governor of Mississippi from 1871 to 1874 during the Reconstruction Era after the American Civil War

November 12, 1912 (Tuesday)

• José Canalejas, the Prime Minister of Spain, was assassinated in Madrid by anarchist Manuel Pardiñas, who then shot himself. Canalejas was stopped in front of a bookstore when Pardiñas fired three shots at close range from a Browning pistol.^[23]
• The fate of Captain Robert Falcon Scott, and his four fellow Antarctic explorers on the Terra Nova Expedition was confirmed when their bodies were found by a search party led by Edward L. Atkinson. A bamboo pole was spotted in the snow by party member C. S. Wright; the frozen bodies of Scott, "Birdie" Bowers and Edward Wilson were found in a tent buried beneath the snow, along with their journals, undeveloped film and supplies.^[24] The news would not reach the rest of the world until February 11.
• Two American cruisers, the Montana and the Tennessee, were sent to the Mediterranean to protect American citizens during the Balkan War.^[25]
• The first news story about the Piltdown Man was published. The Manchester Guardian reported the discovery by Charles Dawson of the earliest known ancestor of man under the headline, "The Earliest Man? A Skull Millions of Years Old- One of the Most Important of Our Time". The discovery would be exposed as a hoax in 1953.^[26]

November 13, 1912 (Wednesday)

• China's Foreign Minister Liang Men Ting resigned in protest over the government's handling of Mongolia's treaty with Russia.^[27]
• Fifteen people were killed and 20 injured in a railway accident at Irvington, Indiana, a suburb of Indianapolis. Train No. 36 of the Cincinnati, Hamilton & Dayton Railway was speeding from Cincinnati to Chicago when it collided with a freight train.^[28]
• Born: Claude Pompidou, wife of French President Georges Pompidou, as Claude Jacqueline Cahour in Château-Gontier (d. 2007)

November 14, 1912 (Thursday)

• Álvaro Figueroa Torres, the Count of Romanones, was appointed as the new Prime Minister of Spain.^[2]
• The city of Eldoret was created by European settlers in Kenya in British East Africa, and named after the Masai language word for a stony river.^[29]
• Born:
  • Barbara Hutton, American socialite and multi-millionaire heiress, sometimes dubbed the "Poor Little Rich Girl", in New York City (d. 1979)
  • T. Y. Lin (Tung-Yen Lin), Chinese-born structural engineer, in Fuzhou (d. 2003)

November 15, 1912 (Friday)

• Turkish Vizier Kiamil Pasha proposed to Bulgaria's King Ferdinand I to negotiate a ceasefire and peace between the two nations, while Greece, Serbia and Montenegro continued to advance on all fronts.^[2]
• Vincent Astor reached his 21st birthday and inherited the fortune of his father, John Jacob Astor IV, who had died exactly seven months earlier in the sinking of the Titanic. The $150,000,000 bequest under Astor's will would be the equivalent of 3.4 billion dollars in 2012.^[30]
• Born:
  • Jacob DeShazer, American pilot who participated in the 1942 Doolittle Raid on Tokyo, was captured and made a priosner of war, and later became a Christian missionary in Japan; in West Stayton, Oregon (d. 2008)
  • Albert Baez, Mexican-born American physicist, father of singers Joan Baez and Mimi Fariña; in Puebla (d. 2007)

November 16, 1912 (Saturday)

• The Napoleonic Code was amended in France to provide for recognition of paternity of illegitimate children.^[31]
• The Bober River dam was inaugurated by Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany near the village of Mauer in Silesia (now the dam over the Bóbr River at Pilchowice in Poland) ^[2]

November 17, 1912 (Sunday)

• Franz Kafka began writing his famous short story, "The Metamorphosis", in German under the title "Die Verwandlung".^[32]
• Igor Stravinsky completed the writing of the musical score for the well-known ballet The Rite of Spring (Le Sacre du Printemps).^[33]
• Turkey halted an invasion by Bulgaria at the First Battle of Çatalca, less than 20 miles from the capital at Istanbul. Because of the heavy casualties sustained by the invaders, the Bulgarian General Staff abandoned its plans during the First Balkan War to capture Istanbul (Constantinople) or Edirne (Adrianople).^[34]
• Born: Charles "Bebe" Rebozo, American banker known for being best friend and confidant of U.S. President Richard M. Nixon; in Tampa (d. 1998)
• Died: Richard Norman Shaw, 81, Scottish architect

November 18, 1912 (Monday)

• Hong Kong Governor Francis Henry May directed the British colony's two streetcar companies and the Star Ferry company to stop accepting Chinese coins for payment of its fares, and to accept only Hong Kong coins. Since there were relatively few Hong Kong coins in circulation, many passengers were unable to pay their fares and the response was a public boycott of mass transportation. Ultimately, Governor May would succeed in ridding the colony of foreign coinage and currency.^[35]
• Personnel from various foreign navies landed at Istanbul to protect their citizens residing in Turkey.^[2]
• Cotton County, Oklahoma was created from the southern portion of Comanche County.^[36]
• Born: Hilda Nickson, née Hilda Pressley, British romance novelist (d. 1977)

November 19, 1912 (Tuesday)

• An earthquake killed more than 70 people in and around Acambay in Mexico. Most died in the collapse of a church, where the victims were women attending mass, and the male priests.^[37]
• The Balkan nations telegraphed to the Ottoman Empire their terms for a peace treaty.^[2]
• Eighteen people were killed in a railway accident at Gull Lake in Canada.^[2]
• Born: George Emil Palade, Romanian-born microbiologist and 1974 Nobel Prize laureate, in Iaşi (d. 2008)

November 20, 1912 (Wednesday)

• Lt. Becker and three other persons were found guilty of the murder of Herman Rosenthal.^[2]
• A ceasefire on the Chatalja line between Bulgaria and Turkey took effect while peace terms were discussed.^[38]
• Born: Otto von Habsburg, last Crown Prince of Austria-Hungary (d. 2011)

November 21, 1912 (Thursday)

• The Turkish government rejected, as unacceptable, the Balkan nations' terms for peace, and war resumed on all fronts.^[2]
• In what one historian would later describe as "the greatest victory in the history of the Bulgarian navy" ^[39] four torpedo boats attacked the Ottoman Empire cruiser Hamidiye on the Black Sea "and scored at least one hit", causing some casualties and some damage to the bow.
• Pietro Bertolini was appointed as the first Minister of the Colonies for Italy, which had not previously had colonies until the recent acquisition of Tripolitania, Cyrenaica, and the Dodecanese Islands.^[2]
• The Japanese Imperial Navy battleship Hiei was launched. On November 13, 1942, in the Battle of Guadalcanal, it would become the first Japanese battleship to face American ships in war, and the first ever to be sunk in war.^[40]
• Born:
  • Eleanor Powell, American film actress and tap dancer, in Springfield, Massachusetts (d. 1982)
  • Abd-al-Aziz ibn Abd-Allah ibn Baaz, Muslim scholar and Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia; in Riyadh (d. 1999)

November 22, 1912 (Friday)

• The Nigerian Protectorate Order was signed by King George V at Windsor Castle, unifying the Northern Nigeria Protectorate and the colony of Southern Nigeria, effective January 1, 1914. Sir Frederick Lugard became Governor of both entities prior to the merger and would become the first Governor-General of Nigeria. ^[41]
• Native chiefs were arrested by British colonial authorities in Sierra Leone to halt the cannibalistic "Human Leopard" practice.^[2]
• John Schrank, who had shot and wounded former President Theodore Roosevelt on October 14, was found to be insane by a board of five physicians in Milwaukee, who wrote that Schrank was "suffering from insane delusions, grandiose in character and of a systematized variety... we are of the opinion he is unable to converse intelligently with counsel on the conduct of his defense."^[42]
• The Entente cordiale, military alliance between the United Kingdom and France, was strengthened by an exchange of notes between French Ambassador Paul Cambon and the British Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, providing for joint action in the event of war.^[43]

November 23, 1912 (Saturday)

• At New Haven, Connecticut, unbeaten and untied Harvard University (8-0-0) visited unbeaten Yale University (7-0-1) for what would prove to be the championship of the 1912 college football season^[44] Wisconsin and Penn State would also finish the season with perfect records.
• Eugene V. Debs, who had recently run for President of the United States on the Socialist Party ticket, was indicted by a federal grand jury in Fort Scott, Kansas, on charges of obstruction of justice. Charged also were Fred D. Warren, editor of the Girard, Kansas, newspaper The Appeal to Reason, and Warren's lawyer, J. I. Sheppard. All three were accused of having paid $200 to a federal witness, to induce him to avoid testifying in their trial for misuse of the postal system.^[45]
• The freighter Rouse Simmons, carrying a cargo of Christmas trees, sank in a violent ice storm on Lake Michigan, taking all 13 of its crew with it. Its wreckage would be discovered in 1971.^[46]
• Born: Tyree Glenn, American trombone player, in Corsicana, Texas (d. 1974)
• Died: Charles Bourseul, 83, French inventor who, in 1854 conceived the principle of using electric current to transmit the human voice, but was unable to create a practical telephone

November 24, 1912 (Sunday)

• Forty-four people were killed and 60 injured in a mass panic at a movie theater in Bilbao, Spain.^[2]
• Twenty-four miners were killed at Alais in France. The death toll would have been higher had the blast not occurred between shifts.^[47]
• Te Rata Mahuta was crowned as the new King of the Māori people in New Zealand.^[20]
• Born: Teddy Wilson, American jazz pianist, in Austin, Texas (d. 1986)

November 25, 1912 (Monday)

• William Merlaud-Ponty, the colonial Governor-General of French West Africa, ruled that the drafting of Africans into forced labor (prestations) would be allowed in order to build the colony's infrastructure.^[48]
• An explosion at a starch factory in Waukegan, Illinois, killed 8 people and injured 27, while four other employees of the Corn Products Company were missing.^[49]
• Three delegates each from Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire met at the town of Bahçeköy, near Çatalca, to discuss peace. Nazim Pasha, the commander of the Turkish forces, shook hands with his counterpart, General Savoff of Bulgaria.^[50]
• A cyclone destroyed the Philippine city of Tacloban, the capital of the Leyte island, and killed 310 people on the islands of Samar, Leyte and North Fanay.^[51]
• The first trade union ever founded in China was created by the nation's goldsmiths.^[2]
• Died: U.S. Senator Isidor Rayner, 62, Jewish American politician who represented Maryland in Congress between 1887 and 1912

November 26, 1912 (Tuesday)

• Eleven men, of the Russian Navy's Black Sea Fleet, were executed at Sevastopol after being convicted of mutiny.^[52]
• Amoako Atta III, King of the Akyem Abuakwa state in Ghana, was removed from office by British colonial authorities.^[53]
• In Salem, Massachusetts, leaders of the Lawrence textile strike were acquitted of charges of murder resulting from the strike. Joseph Caruso had been indicted for the killing of Anna Lopizzo, who died during a strike-related riot, and Joseph J. Ettor and Arturo Giovannitti had been charged as accessories for with conspiracy to incite the January 12 riot.^[54]
• Born: Eric Sevareid, American TV news commentator, in Velva, North Dakota (d. 1992)
• Died:
  • John T. Brush, 67, American baseball team owner
  • Robert Knight, 86, at one time the owner of the largest share of cotton production in the U.S., co-founder in 1851 of Fruit of the Loom
  • Princess Marie of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, 67, Countess of Flanders and mother of King Albert I of Belgium.

November 27, 1912 (Wednesday)

• France and Spain signed a treaty dividing Morocco into two separate protectorates, with a 350 square mile zone around Tangier being an "international zone". Spain's holdings would be administered from Tétouan and consist of 20,000 square km in the north and 23,000 in the south.^[55]
• Sir Edward Henry, the Police Commissioner for London, was wounded by a man who shot him three times as the chief was returning from Scotland Yard to his residence in Kensington. The attacker, identified as a Mr. Bowes, had been denied a license to operate a taxicab and was angered that Chief Henry would not reconsider the ruling.^[56]

November 28, 1912 (Thursday)

• The Albanian Declaration of Independence was made by 83 delegates to the All-Albanian Congress at the Ottoman Empire city of Vlorë, bringing an end to more than 400 years of Turkish rule. Between 1393 and 1501, Ottoman forces had incorporated the Albanian homeland into the Empire.^[57] Ismail Kemal Bey, an Albanian who had served as an Ottoman colonial governor for Tripolitania, was proclaimed the leader of the new nation.^[58]
• General Yaver Pasha and 9,000 Turkish troops surrendered to the Bulgarian Army at Dedeagach.^[59] Bulgaria would later lose the territory to Greece in World War One, and the city would be renamed Alexandroupoli.
• Born:
  • Morris Louis, American painter, in Baltimore (d. 1962)
  • Alan Gewirth, American philosopher, in Union City, New Jersey (d. 2004)
• Died: Walter Benona Sharp, 41, American pioneer in oil drilling, and developer of the Sharp-Hughes Rock Bit

November 29, 1912 (Friday)

• In College Park, Maryland, most of Maryland Agricultural College was destroyed by fire, with all of the dormitories and administration buildings, and most of the classrooms of being devastated. The college would rebuild, become a coeducational institution with the admission of women students, be renamed the University of Maryland in 1920, and grow to become one of the leading public universities in the United States.^[60]
• Born: Sir John Templeton, U.S. native who became a billionaire investor and philanthropist in the United Kingdom, and obtained British citizenship in 1964; in Winchester, Tennessee (d. 2008)
• Died:
  • Lorentzos Mavilis, 52, Greek poet who had volunteered for the Greek Army to fight in the First Balkan War, was killed in battle at Driskos. Reportedly, his last words were, "I expected many honors from this war, but not the added honor that I offer my life for my Greece."^[61]
  • William Waugh Smith, 67, American educator who founded Randolph College for Virginia women in 1891

November 30, 1912 (Saturday)

• Eladio Victoria resigned as President of the Dominican Republic and was replaced by the Archbishop of Santo Domingo, Monsignor Adolfo Alejandro Nouel, who pledged to organize free elections under the supervision of the United States.^[62]
• A.E.B. Danquah was installed by British authorities in Ghana as King Ofori Atta I to rule the Akyem Abuakwa state. As the first literate monarch in Ghana, he would reign until 1943.^[53]
• The Waihi miners' strike ended in New Zealand.^[2]
• Born:
  • Gordon Parks, African-American photographer and film director, in Fort Scott, Kansas (d. 2006)
  • Hugo del Carril, Argentine film star, director and tango singer, in Buenos Aires (d. 1989)
• Died:
  • Dharmavaram Ramakrishnamacharyulu, 60, Indian Telugu language playwright and lawyer, of an accidental fall
  • Robert Collyer, 88, British-born American preacher

References