VG

Arabia, part of the Ottoman Empire. To promote the technological and commercial progress of the declining empire, the Hamidiye Hijaz Railway is inaugurated, sponsored by Sultan Abdul Hamid II, who will be deposed by the Ottoman army the following year. The railway will be largely

General Motors (GM) is born

Swiss Jacques Brandenberger discovers cellophane, which is immediately used to wrap food.

Firestone produces treaded tires

Godfrey Hardy and Willhelm Weinberg publish the Hardy-Weinberg Law in which they practically express the evolution of species with mathematical laws.

In 1908, the Italian Antonio Grossich invented tincture of iodine, which would save hundreds of thousands of lives in World War I. But since the Libyan War (1911-12), the Italian armed forces had already been experimenting with it on a large scale. Made from purified

The Japanese chemist Ikeda, trying to understand what the fundamental flavor of a typical Japanese soup of seaweed and fish, dashi, discovered a fifth flavor (in addition to salty, sweet, bitter, sour), due to glutamate, an acidic salt of glutamic acid, an amino acid, and

German-Jewish scientist Paul Ehrlig receives the Nobel Prize for his fundamental contributions to immunology. Specifically, he discovers the first cure for syphilis and antitoxins for diphtheria and tetanus. He helps save 42 million lives (estimate updated at the beginning of the 21st century). He is

Godfrey Hardy and Willhelm Weinberg independently discover the mathematics of evolution.

Dorando Pietri finishes first in the Olympic marathon but is disqualified because he is being helped and supported by the referees. Pietri, from Correggio, arrives at the end of the race dehydrated and exhausted and loses his composure: he takes the wrong path, falls several

Crete. Archaeologists working at a Minoan site discovered a circular clay disk covered in spiral script, with 241 very elaborate signs or letters, evidently printed on the clay. The meaning of these signs remains a mystery, as nothing else of the same type has been

At the London Olympics, the royal family prepares to watch the start and finish of the marathon. Part of the family is at Windsor Castle, the start, and the finish is at White City Stadium. The distance is 26 miles and 385 yards (42 km

London Olympics

Wilbur Wright’s exploits reached Europe shrouded in myth, and no one believed the tales of his prodigious feats. Wright was then tempted by the desire for solemn recognition in the skies of France: at Le Mans in August he flew 66 km, in December he

James Murray Spangler perfected what we call the vacuum cleaner for household use, combining Booth’s invention with the practicality of a small electric motor mounted on two wheels, a broom handle, and a dust bag; his business partner was Hoover. The vacuum cleaner concept was

Empress Dowager dies in China, succeeded by Pu Yi, the last emperor

American geologist Frank Bursley Taylor decides to delve deeper into the reason for the similarity in shape of the coasts of South America and Africa.

Mining disaster in Monongah, West Virginia: officially, there were almost 400 deaths, 171 of whom were Italian; in reality, the number was probably more than 500, most of whom will never be identified; at the beginning of the 20th century, in the United States alone,

The Jew Ernesto Nathan is elected mayor of Rome, supported by a reformist, secular, and staunchly anti-clerical bloc. It is an event that seems legendary and revolutionary: Nathan was not only a Mazzinian, Jewish, Freemason, and republican, but had only recently acquired Italian citizenship and

United States. The state of Oklahoma becomes part of the United States of America. This ends the existence of the so-called Indian Territory, where the Indian population was sent. Since the Civil War, American policy had shifted from Indian Removal to Indian Assimilation.

James E. Casey and Claude Ryan, teenage postmen, founded the future UPS in Seattle.

American philosopher William James published Pragmatism, explicitly inspired by Peirce. It is a theory of truth, but individualistic and subjective. An idea is true to the extent that believing it benefits our lives: what works is true. Things are reality, while ideas are true.

French philosopher Henri Bergson publishes Creative Evolution, in which he addresses the problem of freedom and determinism. For this work, he will win the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Beijing-Paris Car Raid. The raid, using only automobiles, sets out from Beijing at 8:00 a.m. on June 10th, aiming to reach Paris, a distance of 16,000 kilometers. There are five crews in five European vehicles. On August 10th, the first car to arrive in Paris

Nikola Tesla’s friend and close collaborator, Scherff, leaves Wardenclyffe and Tesla. He will, however, continue to manage Tesla’s finances, working almost always for free on weekends.

Geronimo, chief of the Chirikawa Apache tribe, published his memoirs in 1906: Geronimo’s Story of His Life.

Modena. Buffalo Bill performs his Wild West show in Piazza d’Armi (Novi Sad Park), featuring hundreds of cowboys and rednecks.

Alva Fisher (USA) produces the first electric washing machine

First production of the articulated track

Austrian physician Clemens von Pirquet discovers allergy

Architect Stanford White is fatally shot three times by Pittsburgh financier Harry K. Thaw, who claims he is the lover of his wife, Evelyn Nesbit. The incident takes place in front of the 400 wealthiest people in the United States gathered at Madison Square Garden.

Kurt Godel was born in Austria to a wealthy family.

Through a series of experiments, Ernest Rutherford of Cambridge University, demonstrates the existence of the atomic nucleus, where 99.98% of the mass of the atom resides.

Pierre Curie dies in a car accident in Paris, hit by a horse-drawn carriage

Max Planck in a scientific article proposes for the first time to normalize the constants of physics (those that will later become known as Planck-Wheeler units); he proposes G=c=k=e=1; much later Wheeler will emphasize this idea by adopting it in all his writings, but assuming

Tsarist Russia. In the thirty-year period from 1876 to 1905, 486 people were sentenced to death, or 17 people per year, throughout Russia, including those convicted of common crimes. From 1906 to 1908, during the years of the first revolution, death sentences soared to 2,200

The tungsten filament of the light bulb, much stronger and more durable, was introduced in 1906 by William David Coolidge, a General Electric engineer. Tungsten has a very high melting point, making it ideal for withstanding the high temperatures required for incandescent light without deteriorating

Irish geologist R.D. Oldham, while examining the readings of a seismometer after an earthquake in Guatemala, notices that some shock waves have penetrated the planet to a certain depth and then bounced back to the surface, and thus discovers the existence of the Earth’s core.

San Francisco earthquake: 8.3 on the Richter scale, 700 dead

Earthquake in India (Kanjia): 8.6 on the Richter scale, 19,000 deaths

Maximilian Wolf discovers a strange asteroid, moving in the same orbit as Jupiter but 55.5 degrees behind. It is 588 Achilles. It will remain a strange case for years, until the discovery of another, 617 Patroclus, which is instead exactly 55.5 degrees ahead of Jupiter

Humanity is shocked: The Great War

Albert Einstein proposed that light is composed of quantized particles (later called photons)

Albert Einstein publishes four articles that will revolutionize physics. Three of them are published in volume 17 of Annalen der Physik. In the first, he hypothesizes that light is composed of quantized particles (later called photons). In the second, he explains Brownian motion with the

Albert Einstein hypothesized the existence of photons (already hypothesized by Planck in 1900 for the solution of another problem) with energy E = hf, therefore proportional to the frequency.

Russia. After the failed war with Japan and the attempted popular revolution, the Tsar implemented concessions, including parliamentary reforms, agrarian reform (following which a quarter of the peasants became landowners), and a general increase in power granted to private enterprise and the banks. Shortly thereafter,

Anti-Tsarist Revolutionary Movements in Russia: the first Soviets are formed and call for a general strike; the Tsar grants the constitution of a parliament called the Duma, but when a workers’ revolt breaks out in St. Petersburg, the Cossacks intervene and carry out a ferocious

Namibia. A German decree confiscates all Herero and Nama land. The German population, however, triples, reaching nearly 15,000 people in 1913.

England. The Conservative government resigns. The path is clear for the Liberals, who will win the subsequent elections in January 1906.

The Norwegian Parliament, the Storting, elects Prince Carl of Denmark as the new King of Norway, who will take the name Haakon VII.

Japan, after winning the war with the Russians and gaining control of the South Manchurian Railway, established a protectorate over Korea, which it annexed in 1910.

Swedish King Oscar II recognizes independent Norway

Russian Empire. Second Chisinau Pogrom. The Chisinau pogroms (Russian: Кишинёвский погро́м; Yiddish: קישינעוו פאגראם‎) were two separate antisemitic pogroms, the first on April 19–20, 1903, and the second on October 19–20, 1905, in Chisinau, the future capital of Moldavia, then part of the Russian Empire.

The Karlstad Peace Treaty between Sweden and Norway marks the dissolution of the Union between the two countries.

A Russia still suffering from the war with Japan, also signs a peace agreement with England, and Iran is divided into two zones of influence, with the eastern part firmly in English hands: the Russians see any possibility of influencing Afghan politics and their own

American President Theodore Roosevelt’s offer of mediation led to the Treaty of Portsmouth (New Hampshire). Russia ceded to Japan the southern half of Sakhalin Island, which had until then been under Russian rule (the island would return to Russia in 1952 with the Treaty of

The Russo-Japanese War ends with the signing of a peace treaty in the United States; it ends with a substantial Japanese victory and the destruction of the Tsarist fleet.

Iosif Vissarionovic Dzhugashvili, known as Stalin, knew Vladimir Il’jc Ul’janov, known as Lenin, and supported his theses.

In the referendum in Norway on the dissolution of the Union with Sweden, 368,208 votes were yes, only 184 were no.

Anti-Tsarist Revolutionary Riots in Russia: The crew of the battleship Potemkin mutinies and bombs the port of Odessa.

The Norwegian Parliament, the Storting, declares the Union with Sweden dissolved

Henri Poincare’ formulates the Poincare’s Conjecture, which will remain unsolved for more than a century: every compact and simply connected 3-manifold (i.e. on which every closed path can be reduced to a point) is homeomorphic (i.e. topologically identical) to the 3-sphere.

Nikola Tesla, after exploring other potential financiers, writes to JP Morgan again for financial support. Morgan responds with a clear “No.” Tesla responds with a truly angry response, and knowing that Morgan considers himself a devout Anglican, he writes: “You are a man like Bismark.

St. Louis Olympics

Fractals: Georg Cantor creates Cantor Dust (a line is divided into three parts, two black and one transparent, ad infinitum); Sierpinsky Carpet (a square is divided into nine squares and the central one removed, ad infinitum); Menger Sponge (this is the Sierpinsky Carpet applied in

The Swede Helge Van Koch creates the Koch Flake: a triangle on whose sides another triangle ad infinitum is obtained, a fractal figure with dimension 1.2618

The Japanese launch a surprise attack on Vladivostok’s port facilities: the Russo-Japanese War begins.

John Ambrose Fleming, a former student of Maxwell and a former consultant to Edison and later Marconi, patented the diode, or Fleming Valve. It would spark a technological revolution. By 1911, the triode, derived from Fleming’s diode, was used in oscillators, frequency modulators, radio, telecommunications,

Arthur Korn invents the photoelectric cell

Thomas Hunt Morgan attempts to produce mutations in the genetic makeup of animals using various methods: light, X-rays, and centrifuges; he finally achieves results on flies, obtaining white-eyed flies; he is the first to discover relationships between certain bodily characteristics and certain chromosomes.

Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy writes Chadzi-Murat.

Hamakari, Namibia. General Adrian Dietrich Lothar von Trotha, sent by Kaiser Wilhelm II with orders to “restore order by any means necessary,” encircles, bombs, and finally machine-guns the Herero he manages to find. The survivors flee into the desert. In his report, he writes: “The

Count Piero Ginori Conti powers a piston engine with dry steam obtained from a well dug into the boiling subsoil: this is the birth of geothermal energy.

St. Louis, Missouri, Games. The International Olympic Committee decides that the medals for the top three qualifiers should be gold, silver, and bronze, respectively.

London. Ernest Rutherford presents the results of his studies on radioactivity at the Royal Institution. Kelvin, present in the room, is considered the foremost authority on the age of planet Earth. Rutherford presents experimental evidence that some of the elements he observed demonstrate an age

Robert J. Oppenheimer was born into a family of second-generation German immigrants, ethnically and culturally Jewish: Julius Oppenheimer (a successful businessman and art enthusiast) and Ella Friedman (a painter with a congenitally malformed right hand).

Rutherford, 33, realized that one way to date rocks was to measure the amount of helium (in bubbles) present within them, due to the decay of uranium into thorium-90, and then into radium, spewing out an alpha particle. Radium then generates polonium, which generates lead,

Nikola Tesla writes in Electrical World & Engineering about the future of wireless transmission and envisions the transmission of information to every population in the world, sparking a cultural and lifestyle revolution. He envisions pocket-sized devices that can be carried on land and sea, receiving

Namibia. The Herero tribe is exterminated by the German army: an estimated 65,000 dead. The Herero population is reduced from 80,000 to 15,000. By 1911, their number will be fewer than 10,000.

Namibia. The Herero, tenacious and tough Namibian herders, rise up en masse against the German settlers. Led by Samuel Maharero, they kill all the Germans they can find in the Okahandja area, sparing only women and children. The victims number over a hundred. In response,