September 1913 (month)

September 3, 1913: Russians discover the last uncharted major islands on Earth, the Severnaya Zemlya

September 15, 1913: The first successful 4-wheel drive vehicle, the Jeffrey Quad, delivered to the U.S. Army (picture from 1916)

A pre-1913 map of the area

September 10 and 29, 1913: NYC Mayor Gaynor, Engine inventor Diesel, die at sea

The following events occurred in September 1913:

September 1, 1913 (Monday)

• French aviator Adolphe Pégoud demonstrated that he could fly upside an airplane upside-down on a sustained flight, traveling for 400 meters. He was using a specially constructed Bleriot monoplane, and after reaching 3,000 feet, put the plane in a quarter-loop and kept it in the upside down position.^[1] Pégoud, who would fly a full vertical loop on September 21, also did a "vertical-S" trick, which was reported in the press as having "looped the loop".^[2][3]
• The anti-government rebellion in southern China was brought to an end, when all six rebellious provinces surrendered to the Beiyang Army, led by General Zhang Xun, retook Nanjing.^[4]
• George Bernard Shaw's satirical play, Androcles and the Lion, was performed for the first time.^[5]
• Born:
  • Ludwig Merwart, Austrian painter and graphic artist, in Vienna (d. 1979)
  • Woody Stephens, American thoroughbred racehorse trainer, in Stanton, Kentucky (d. 1998)

September 2, 1913 (Tuesday)

• At New Haven, Connecticut, the collision of the White Mountain Flyer and the Bar Harbor Express, two trains on the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad, killed 21 passengers and injured 30.^[6][7]
• On the same day, a rear-end collision between two sections of the London-Scotland express at Carlisle, England, caused a fire that burned 15 passengers to death.^[8]
• Born:
  • Bill Shankly Scottish soccer football manager who guided Liverpool to three English League titles (1964, 1966, 1973), two FA Cup wins (1965 and 1974) and the 1973 UEFA Cup (d. 1981), in Glenbuck
  • Israel Gelfand, Soviet mathematician, in Krasni Okny, Russian Empire (d. 2009)
• Died:
  • Thomas Sperry, 49, creator (in 1896) of trading stamps, with the S&H Green Stamps; of ptomaine poisoning contracted while on an ocean voyage.
  • Bill Miner, 67, American criminal nicknamed "The Gentleman Robber"

September 3, 1913 (Wednesday)

• Severnaya Zemlya, a group of islands located above the Arctic Circle, was discovered on a hydrographic expedition by the crew of the Russian icebreakers Taimyr and Vaigach, and was named 'Emperor Nicholas II Land' by the explorers, in honor of the Russian Emperor.^[9] The archipelago would prove to be the last major group of previously unknown lands on Earth to be discovered.^[10]
• William Howard Taft, who had finished his term as President of the United States six months earlier, was elected President of the American Bar Association.^[11]
• Born: Alan Ladd, American film actor, in Hot Springs, Arkansas (d. 1964)

September 4, 1913 (Thursday)

• Ernst August Wagner, a schoolteacher in the German village of Mühlhausen, in Württemberg, murdered his wife, four local children and eleven other adults, after setting fires in different locations.^[12]
• Born:
  • Stanford Moore, American biochemist and co-winner of the 1972 Nobel Prize in Chemistry;in Chicago (d. 1982)
  • Kenzō Tange, Japanese architect and 1987 Pritzker Architecture Prize winner, in Osaka (d. 2005)
  • Mickey Cohen, American gangster, in Brooklyn (d. 1976)
• Died: Henry Billings Brown, 77, U.S. Supreme Court associate justice from 1890 to 1906), best known for authoring the majority opinion in Plessy v. Ferguson upholding the constitutionality of racial segregation laws.

September 5, 1913 (Friday)

• A fire in the city of Hot Springs, Arkansas, destroyed 55 city blocks of property, causing damages of six million dollars.^[6] The blaze started "in a negro dwelling on Church Street", then spread southeast, destroying the county courthouse, the city high school, four hotels, the Iron Mountain railroad station and "a hundred or more business buildings and many residences".^[13]
• Sergei Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 2 was performed for the first time. The manuscript would be destroyed by fire in 1917 during the Russian Revolution, and Prokofiev would reconstruct it, introducing a new version on May 8, 1924.^[14]
• Born:
  • George E. Valley, American nuclear physicist who developed the H2X radar for American bombers in World War II, and later conceptualized the Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) missile defense system; in New York City (d. 1999)
  • Frank Thomas, American animator for Walt Disney's films, including Pinocchio, Bambi, 101 Dalmatians and The Fox and the Hound; in Fresno, California (d. 2004)

September 6, 1913 (Saturday)

• Dr. Hideyo Noguchi of the Rockefeller Institute announced that he had isolated the virus that causes rabies.^[15]
• Excavation of the Panama Canal was completed, and the Culebra Cut was scheduled to be flooded on October 9.^[16]
• U.S. President Woodrow Wilson and his physician, Dr. Carey Grayson, were almost "run over by a streetcar" as they were walking back to the White House at night. "A policeman, seeing the possibility of an accident to the President, jumped in front of the car with both hands raised", and the car stopped less than ten feet from the President and physician.^[17]
• Professional track athlete Hans Holmér won the British championship for the mile run, winning in Edinburgh at 4 minutes, 24.4 seconds.^[18]
• Born:
  • Ross Munro, Canadian war correspondent, in Ottawa (d. 1990)
  • Leônidas da Silva, Brazilian soccer football player, in Rio de Janeiro (d. 2004)
  • Wesley A. Swift, American white supremacist and minister who founded the Church of Jesus Christ–Christian; in New Jersey (d. 1970)
• Died: James Orr, 69, Scottish theologian

September 7, 1913 (Sunday)

• Outraged over the killing of Japanese nationals at Nanjing in China, 15,000 people protested outside the Foreign Ministry in Tokyo and demanded military action against China. Japan demanded an apology and payment of damages, a request which would initially be ignored.^[19]
• Born: Valerie Taylor, American lesbian pulp fiction novelist, as Velma Nacella Young, in Aurora, Illinois (d. 1997)

September 8, 1913 (Monday)

• The poem "September 1913", by W. B. Yeats, was first published, in the Irish Times, with the title "Romance in Ireland". The 32 line poem referred to late Irish separatist John O'Leary, and contained the refrain, "Romantic Ireland's dead and gone, It's with O'Leary in the grave." ^[20]
• The Broadway musical Sweethearts, with music by Victor Herbert and lyrics by Robert B. Smith, premiered at the New Amsterdam Theatre.^[21]
• Born: Mary Carew, American athlete and gold medalist in the 1932 Olympics at Los Angeles; in Medford, Massachusetts (d. 2002)

September 9, 1913 (Tuesday)

The key to the Haber-Bosch process

• In Germany, BASF started the world's first plant for the production of fertilizer based on the Haber–Bosch process, feeding today about a third of the world's population.^[22]
• Fourteen German Navy members were killed out of 21 crewmen on the Zeppelin L-1, newly commissioned by the German Navy, wrecked in the North Sea, 18 miles off of the coast of Heligoland.^[23]
• The U.S. Department of Agriculture reported an "unprecedented" yield in wheat production for 1913. "Never before in the history of the country has there been such a bountiful wheat harvest as has been gathered this year, the New York Times noted.^[24]
• In the skies near Kiev, Russian aviator Pyotr Nesterov became the first person to execute a loop. Nesterov, a pilot for the Imperial Russian Air Service took a Nieuport IV airplane aloft, and when he reached an altitude of 3,300 feet, shut off the engine, then took the plane on a vertical dive, restarted it at 2,000 feet, and "kept on pulling until the horizon slid up over his head", then came back to right-side up.^[2] When he landed, he was arrested and spent ten days in jail for negligent use of government property.^[25] Adolphe Pegoud of France would make a loop nine days later and get publicity first.
• Robert Owen Jr. was awarded U.S. patent number 1,072,980 for his invention of the ratchet wrench, applied for on February 3.^[26]
• The Olivebridge Dam was completed on the Hudson River, creating the Ashokan Reservoir, to provide 250,000,000 gallons of water a day to New York City. In 1924, the Gilboa Dam would open, providing twice as much water to the city.^[27]
• Born: Harry Snyder, Jr., Canadian-born American fast-food entrepreneur who co-founded, in 1948, In-N-Out Burger; in Vancouver (d. 1976)
• Died: Paul de Smet de Naeyer, 70, former Prime Minister of Belgium.

September 10, 1913 (Wednesday)

• Jean Sibelius's tone poem Luonnotar was premiered at the Three Choirs Festival in Gloucester Cathedral, England, with soprano Aino Ackté and orchestra conducted by Herbert Brewer.^[28]
• William J. Gaynor, the Mayor of New York City since 1910, died suddenly while on the ocean liner RMS Baltic, as it was nearing Liverpool. Gaynor, who had announced his candidacy for re-election only one week earlier, had been in poor health since being wounded in an assassination attempt on August 9, 1910, and was succeeded by Ardolph L. Kline, who presided over the Board of Aldermen.^[29] Gaynor's body would lay in state at the Town Hall of Liverpool, after which the body was transported back to the U.S. On September 21, his funeral would be held at the City Hall in New York.^[30]
• Born: Lincoln Gordon, American diplomat who helped create the Alliance for Progress of U.S. economic aid to Latin America; in New York City (d. 2009)

September 11, 1913 (Thursday)

• Joseph Ward, who had been Prime Minister of New Zealand until March 1912, was selected again to lead the Liberal Party after returning from an extended holiday in London, and became Leader of the Opposition.^[31]
• Dominican Republic gunboats bombarded the city of Puerto Plata, the base for anti-government rebels.^[6][32]
• Born: Paul "Bear" Bryant, American college football coach who guided the University of Alabama to six national championships (1961, 1964, 1965, 1973, 1978, 1979); in Moro Bottom, Arkansas (d. 1983)

September 12, 1913 (Friday)

• In Birmingham, England, at the 83rd annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, the first discussion by scientists, of the theories of Niels Bohr quantum model of the atom, with mixed reactions from the scientists.^[33]
• Born:
  • Jesse Owens, African-American Olympic athlete who won four gold medals at the 1936 Summer Olympics; as James Cleveland (J.C.) Owens, in Oakville, Alabama (d. 1980)
  • Eiji Toyoda, Japanese industrialist who built the Toyota Motor Corporation to become one of the largest automobile manufacturers in the world; in Nagoya (d. 2013)

September 13, 1913 (Saturday)

• The impeachment trial of New York Governor William Sulzer began in the State Senate.^[6]
• Born:
  • Herman Goldstine, American computer scientist, in Chicago (d. 2004)
  • W. Stanford Reid, Canadian theologian, in Westmount, Quebec (d. 1996)
• Died: Aurel Vlaicu, 30, pioneering Romanian pilot, in an airplane crash while trying to fly across the Carpathian Mountains

September 14, 1913 (Sunday)

• The proposed route for the Lincoln Highway, which would become the first transcontinental paved highway in the United States, was announced in newspapers across the U.S.^[34]
• Baseball pitcher Larry Cheney of the Chicago Cubs, set a Major League record that still stands, for most hits allowed in a shutout. Although the Cubs got only 11 hits, and the New York Giants got 14, the Cubs still won 7-0.^[35][36]
• Born: Jacobo Árbenz, President of Guatemala, 1951–1954, until his ouster by a CIA-planned coup d'état; in Quetzaltenango (d. 1971)

September 15, 1913 (Monday)

• The first successful four-wheel drive vehicle, the Jeffery Quad, was delivered to the United States Army by the Thomas B. Jeffery Company. With modifications, the Quad would become the transport vehicle of choice for the armies of France, Russia and the United States during World War One, and a civilian version would become popular following its debut in April 1914.^[37]
• Born: John N. Mitchell, U.S. Attorney General (1969–1972) who was convicted of conspiracy, obstruction of justice and perjury in 1975, and served 19 months in prison (1977–1978); in Detroit (d. 1988)

September 16, 1913 (Tuesday)

• In Libya, Arab tribesmen fought with the occupying Italian Army, killing 33 officers and soldiers, including their leader, General Alfonso Torelli. Another 73 Italians were wounded, and the Libyan losses were unknown.^[38]

September 17, 1913 (Wednesday)

• The Anti-Defamation League was founded at a convention of the B'nai B'rith in Chicago, with Sigmund Livingston as its first president.^[39]

September 18, 1913 (Thursday)

• The bill for the Federal Reserve Act was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, 287 – 95, and moved on to the United States Senate. On December 19, the Senate would pass the bill 54 – 34, and the measure, creating the Federal Reserve System and the Federal Reserve Board, would be signed into law by President Wilson on December 22.^[40]

September 19, 1913 (Friday)

• Mexican terrorists dynamited a railroad train, sixty miles south of Saltillo, killing 40 soldiers and 10 second-class passengers. Reportedly, the rebels had set on the track two land mines, which were "set off by electricity".^[41]
• Born: Frances Farmer, American film actress, in Seattle (d. 1970)

September 20, 1913 (Saturday)

• Francis Ouimet, a 20-year-old American amateur, won golf's U.S. Open in a three-way playoff against five time British Open winner Harry Vardon and defending British Open champion Ted Ray. At the end of the regulation four rounds, all three had scores of 304 on 72 holes. In a major upset, the relatively unknown Ouimet scored a 72, compared to Vardon's 77 and Ray's 78 in the playoff.^[42][43]
• The foundation stone for the Goetheanum, center for the anthroposophical movement founded by Rudolf Steiner, was set at the building site in the Switzerland town of Dornach, though construction would not be finished for another nine years.^[44]
• U.S. Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan signed treaties in Washington with the Foreign Ministers of Panama, and Guatemala, joining El Salvador in signing the Convention for the Establishment of International Commissions of Inquiry, as a means of resolving disputes between the nations without war.^[30][45]
• With the Canadian exploration ship HMCS Karluk trapped in the Arctic ice, expedition leader Vilhjalmur Stefansson and a few shipmates set off on what was to be a ten-day hunt for food for the ship. Stefansson would return to find that the ice pack, and the trapped ship, had floated away.^[46]

Pegoud

Nesterov

September 21, 1913 (Sunday)

• Twelve days after Pyotr Nesterov's September 9 loop at Kiev, Adolphe Pégoud duplicated the feat. Because Nesterov's "misuse" of an airplane was not mentioned in the Russian press,^[2] Pégoud was reported to have been the first person to perform the aerial maneuver of flying an airplane in a vertical circle^[47] and inspired pilots worldwide to try similar stunts.

September 22, 1913 (Monday)

• The film Ivanhoe, starring King Baggot in the title role and directed by Herbert Brenon, was released in the United States by Universal Pictures.^[48]
• The Philadelphia Athletics clinched the American League baseball title, after beating the Detroit Tigers in a doubleheader, 4-0 and 1-0. with a 12-game lead over the Cleveland Naps and only 11 games left in the season.^[49]
• Born: Lillian Chestney, American illustrator, in New York City (d. 2000)

September 23, 1913 (Tuesday)

• Roland Garros made an unprecedented airplane trip across the sea, crossing the Mediterranean between Fréjus, France and landing in Bizerte in Tunisia on a 558-mile flight of slightly less than eight hours.^[50] Garros took off at 5:27 in the morning and, though a cylinder head on the airplane motor breaking in mid-flight, avoided landing on the islands of Corsica or Sardinia. With "barely 5 liters of fuel left— enough for only a few more minutes of flying", Garros sighted the French naval base at Tunisia and landed at the parade ground.^[51]
• Albanian nationalist Isa Boletini led a revolt in Serbian-occupied Macedonia, with 6,000 fighters taking control of the western Macedonian towns of Debar and Ohrid, which would revert to Yugoslavian control after World War I.^[52]
• Born: Carl-Henning Pedersen, Danish painter, in Copenhagen (d. 2007)
• Died:
  • Patrick Ford, 76, Irish-born American newspaper publisher and editor of The Irish World
  • Julius Preuss, 52, German-Jewish physician and Talmudic scholar who authored the 1911 pioneering textbook Biblical-Talmudic Medicine (Biblisch-Talmudisch Medizin)

September 24, 1913 (Wednesday)

• At Melun, French airman Albert Moreau demonstrated the first airplane with an automatic pilot, winning a prize for the design for stability control. Moreau, taking a brave passenger with him, "flew 17 miles without touching the controls of the machine". "Throughout the flight", the New York Times wrote, "even when the machine banked over and rolled so much that the passenger asked him to take the controls, Moreau sat calmly, with his arms folded, and the machine always righted itself." ^[53]
• A delegation of 500 Protestants in northern Ireland met in Belfast to organize resistance to the proposed Home Rule law, and pledged to resist any decrees made by an Irish Parliament.^[30]
• Born:
  • Wilson Rawls, American author best known for 1961 children's book Where the Red Fern Grows; in Scraper, Oklahoma (d. 1984)
  • Herb Jeffries, African-American singer and actor, in Detroit (d. 2014)

September 25, 1913 (Thursday)

• Stage actor Charlie Chaplin began his movie career, signing a one-year contract with Keystone Film Company for a salary of $150 per week.^[54]
• Baltimore, Maryland became the first U.S. city to have an ordinance "requiring the use of separate blocks for residences by white and colored people respectively", with a law going into effect creating separate zones for Whites and African-Americans to live. ^[55] Three previous attempts to segregate Baltimore, with the original plan being to force people to leave their homes, had been struck down as unconstitutional by the Maryland appellate courts; the 1913 ordinance would be deemed acceptable because it only applied to people moving to an area after the law took effect ^[56]. Similar ordinances to prohibit people from different races from living on the same city block, would soon be enacted in other Southern cities, including Atlanta, St. Louis and Birmingham, Alabama.^[57]
• Born:
  • Seaforth Mackenzie, Australian poet, in Pinjarra, Western Australia (drowned 1955)
  • Norman O. Brown, American classicist, in El Oro, Mexico (d. 2002)
• Died: Seaborn Roddenbery, 43, U.S. Representative for Georgia, who campaigned for a constitutional amendment to outlaw interracial marriages throughout the United States

September 26, 1913 (Friday)

• A tugboat became the first vessel to pass through the locks of the Panama Canal, sailing from the Atlantic Ocean and arriving at the Gatun Lake after being raised to the lake's level through three chambers.^[58] The old tugboat was, appropriately, named the Gatún.^[59]
• Japan sent a three-day ultimatum to China, demanding reparations and an apology for the deaths of more Japanese citizens in Nanjing and for "insults to the flag".^[60] General Chang Hsun, commander of government troops at Nanjing, apologized two days later, appearing before the Japanese consulate "accompanied by a bodyguard of 800 men".^[61]
• Died: H. G. Pelissier, 39, British comedian, of cirrhosis of the liver

September 27, 1913 (Saturday)

The chlorinator

• Philadelphia became the first American city to implement the use of chlorine gas for disenfection of its drinking water, a process that would become the standard in the United States by 1941.^[62]
• Baseball's New York Giants captured the National League pennant, despite losing 4-0 to the Brooklyn Dodgers, because the second place Philadelphia Phillies lost as well. As the New York Times put it, "The Phillies may now win all of their remaining games and the Giants lose all of theirs and the New Yorks will be victors by one full game. Hurrah!" ^[63]
• At Ulster, in north Ireland, 12,000 men marched in a parade to protest Home Rule.^[30]
• Born:
  • Albert Ellis, American psychotherapist who developed rational emotive behavior therapy; in Pittsburgh (d. 2007)
  • Charlotte Thompson Reid, U.S. Representative for Illinois (1963–1971), in Kankakee, Illinois (d. 2007)

September 28, 1913 (Sunday)

• General Félix Díaz was nominated as the Labor Party's candidate for President of Mexico in the upcoming October 26 elections.^[64]
• Born:
  • Alice Marble, American women's tennis player who won 12 U.S. Open titles (including four women's singles), as well as six Wimbledon titles (1939 singles) between 1937 and 1940 (d. 1990)
  • Warja Honegger-Lavater, Swiss illustrator, in Winterthur (d. 2007)
  • Richard M. Bohart, American entomologist (d. 2007)

September 29, 1913 (Monday)

Commissioner Osborne, a/k/a inmate Tom Brown

• The Treaty of Constantinople was signed between Turkey and Bulgaria, ending the last dispute in the Second Balkan War.^[65] That day, Bulgaria released its casualty reports for the First and Second Balkan Wars, announcing that 44,892 of its soldiers had been killed, and another 104,586 wounded.^[6]
• Thomas Mott Osborne, the Chairman of New York's State Commission on Prison Reform, began his personal investigation of prison conditions by spending a week as prisoner "Tom Brown" at the Auburn State Prison. At a chapel service the day before, Osborne and Auburn's warden informed the prisoners of what he was doing, but did not let the guards know. After witnessing conditions from the inside for a week, Osborne recommended immediate reforms.^[66]
• Sir Thomas Bowater was elected as Lord Mayor of London.^[30]
• Maurice Prévost of France set a new speed record, traveling 125 miles per hour in an airplane at the International Aeroplane Cup race at Rheims.^[30]
• Born:
  • Stanley Kramer, American film director and producer, in New York City (d. 2001);
  • Silvio Piola, Italian footballer who won the 1938 World Cup for Italy, and highest ever goalscorer in Serie A, the nation's highest league; in Robbio (d. 1996)
  • Trevor Howard, British stage and film actor, as Trevor Howard-Smith in Bushey, Hertfordshire (d. 1988);
  • Dennis Sandole, American jazz guitarist, composer, and teacher, in Philadelphia (d. 2000);
• Died: Rudolf Diesel, the German engineer who invented the diesel engine, died at the age of 55 after jumping, or being thrown, from his cabin on the passenger steamer SS Dresden. His body would be found in the ocean on October 10.^[67]

September 30, 1913 (Tuesday)

• The first classes were held at the new State Normal School in Minot, North Dakota. The institution is now Minot State University.^[68]
• The United Kingdom withdrew its support for the five-nation banking loan to China for railroad construction.^[30]
• All 54 passengers and crew of the British freighter Templemore were rescued after a wireless distress call was sent from the ship, sinking in the mid-Atlantic. The ship Arcadia received the signal and carried out the evacuation.^[30]
• Born:
  • Bill Walsh, American film producer, in New York City (d. 1975)
  • Robert Nisbet, American sociologist, in Los Angeles (d. 1996)
  • Cholly Atkins, American choreographer, as Charles Atkinson in Pratt City, Alabama (d. 2003)
• Died: Dr. Reginald Heber Fitz, 70, Professor of the Harvard Medical School who was credited with identifying the inflammation of the appendix, which he referred to as appendicitis, and prescribing its treatment, the appendectomy.

References