James Chadwick discovered that the energy of beta radiation varied from one measurement to the next. To solve the problem, Wolfgang Pauli soon suggested that the energy was shared between two particles: one visible (the electron) and the other invisible (later discovered to be the neutrino), with one particle sometimes taking all the energy. Pauli thus did what he had always abhorred: postulating the existence of something unmeasurable to solve a physics problem. Pauli offered a case of fine champagne to anyone who could see the missing particle. After 42 years, he had to keep his promise and drink champagne with Clyde Cowan and Fred Reines.

Marie and her daughter Irene begin working together for a radiological (X-ray) service for the French army.

Srinivasa Ramanujan, an Indian mathematician, spent three intense years collaborating with Professor Godfrey H. Hardy at Trinity College, Cambridge. Ramanujan, alone, independently rediscovered countless mathematical theorems, retracing their history, unfortunately wasting considerable time rediscovering their foundations. In a long letter to Professor Godfrey H. Hardy, he listed his results, but also cited 120 completely unknown theorems.

Ernst Mahler and James Kimberly of the small American company Kimberly Clark, during a trip to Europe, discovered a material five times more absorbent than cotton and even less expensive to produce. They brought it to the United States, patented it, and began large-scale production. They called it Cellucotton. When the United States entered the war in 1917, the army began purchasing it and using it in military hospitals. But especially, Red Cross nurses began using it as a sanitary pad, on their own initiative. After the war, Kimberly Clark purchased the US Army’s surplus stock, and after years of research and development, began mass production of feminine hygiene products, Kotex. Initially, it was difficult to introduce the product to the market: many women were embarrassed to ask for Kotex at the store, so Kimberly Clark asked stores to leave a box where customers could leave their money without going through the checkout. Kimberly Clark is now one of the largest companies in the world.

The Federal Reserve Bank was established by President Woodrow Wilson, approved by the United States Congress, to administer monetary policy and stem periodic panics in the financial markets.

Construction of the first Aswan Dam by the British

In the United States, the Federal Reserve was created as a supervisory body for banks and credit institutions in order to restore investor confidence, which had been shaken by decades (from 1970 to 1910) which had seen the failure of thousands of banks.

According to Niall Ferguson, we are at the height of the West’s direct domination of the world: the 11 Western empires control 50% of the earth’s land mass, 57% of the population, and a full 80% of the GDP. The British control 25% of the land mass and population.

After a year of revolts, Pu Yi (the last Chinese emperor) abdicates. Yuan Shikai is elected president.

Littlewood discovers that, contrary to predictions, Gauss’s hypothesis is a mirage: if you continue counting, sooner or later you reach a point where Gauss’s integral logarithm goes from overestimating to underestimating. In fact, after a century, no one has yet reached such large numbers.

Benito Mussolini heads the revolutionary branch of the socialists and takes control of the party (PSI)

Modena. The new electric tram replaces the horse-drawn one. Not without heated controversy, which was abolished in a referendum, which won the YES vote. Complaints included “What if you’re driving on the street?”, “What if you’re driving on a road with Armagnac?”, and “Overhead power lines, what about lightning?”

Wilbur Wright, the most inventive of the Wright brothers, dies of typhus.

Thomas Alva Edison decides that his invention, the Type A alkaline battery, is mature enough for industrial use. He invests $1.2 million in this manufacturing project. The following January, he begins supplying the Ford Motor Company with 450,000 Type A batteries each year.

Robert Goddard, the future father of astronautics, graduated in Physics from Clark University.

The workplace fatality rate in the United States is 60 per 100,000 workers per year (0.060%/year). It will progressively decline to less than 5 from 2010 onwards (0.005%/year).

Victor Hess measures radioactivity during a hot air balloon flight at 5,300 meters: the radioactivity is triple that of the ground level. He therefore concludes that at least part of the radiation is of extraterrestrial origin.

Max von Laue experiments with the diffraction of X-rays by crystals, thus proving their wave nature.

Roald Engelbregt Gravning Amundsen at the South Pole after 1400 km of walking

Italian aviator Giulio Gavotti conducts the first tactical bombing in history. He drops explosive charges by hand on Turkish lines in Libya.

First Conference of Physicists at Solvay

Lane, with interference experiments, demonstrates that X-rays are electromagnetic radiation

Scottish physicist Charles C. T. R. Wilson became the first to observe the motion of individual alpha or beta particles in a cloud chamber he had specially invented. Fifteen years earlier, Wilson had taken meteorological measurements for two weeks from the summit of Mount Nevis, the highest mountain in the British Isles, to study clouds and their formation. Upon returning to Cambridge, he performed several confirmatory experiments. He had thus understood that when air expands due to the drop in pressure at altitude, it becomes supersaturated. Under the right conditions, the humidity in the air then condenses around small dust particles or ionized particles.

Former President Teddy Roosevelt, a big-game hunting enthusiast and zoologist, publishes the essay: “Revealing and Concealing Coloration in Birds and Mammals”

John Archibald Wheeler, one of the greatest physicists of the 20th century, was born in Jacksonville, Florida.

Hiram Bingham, in two expeditions (the second financed by National Geographic and Yale), discovered three lost Inca cities: Vizco, Vidca Bab, and Macchu Picchu (the latter never found even by the Spanish).

William D. Coolidge at General Electric Research Labs develops a thin tungsten filament still used in incandescent lamps.

The phenomenon of superconductivity is discovered for the first time in Mercury.

Heike Kamerlingh Onnes discovers superconductivity in Mercury at 4K

Frank C. Mars began making candy from his home in Tacoma, Washington; he later rented his first candy factory with 125 employees; by the end of the century, Mars’s chocolate business alone had reached $10 billion.

American Glenn Curtiss builds the first seaplane

Elmer Sperry builds a mechanism for operating a ship’s rudder, incorporating a PID controller with automatic gain adjustment

The New York Times publishes the news of Percival Lowell’s latest observation of Mars: “Martians build two immense canals in two years” on a full page; subhead: “Incredible feat by our planetary neighbors.”

Italy invades Libya and the Dodecanese in the southern Aegean; the government is that of the liberal Giovanni Giolitti.

The U.S. Antitrust Commission broke up the Rockefeller family’s Standard Oil into 34 companies, including Continental Oil (renamed Conoco), Standard of Indiana (renamed Amoco), Standard of California (renamed Chevron), Standard of New Jersey (renamed Esso, and then Exxon), and Standard of New York (renamed Mobil).

Just 10 years after entering the international machine-made textile business, Japan crushed its competition. By 1910, the Japanese were Asia’s only exporter of thread, yarn, and fabric, and their exports surpassed those of Germany, France, and Italy.