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. Thaw will later be hospitalized for mental illness. The victim, White, was also the architect of Tesla’s Wardenclyffe Tower on Long Island, which was never completed.

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 G=c=h=k=1 and deriving e=1/SQR(137)

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 people (45 per month!), only to then decline dramatically due to popular discontent. In the subsequent Soviet period, from October 1918 to October 1919, 16,000 people were executed (well over a thousand per month!!!).

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 rapidly. Edison played a key role in the development of the light bulb, but he wasn’t the one who introduced tungsten.

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 and in the same orbit. These are the first Trojan satellites discovered. There are actually very many of them: from hundreds of thousands to perhaps millions, and they are located at the gravitational stable Lagrange points L4 and L5.

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 thermal noise of atoms. In the third, completely theoretical and without bibliographical citations, he publishes Special Relativity. All this while he is employed at the Swiss Patent Office and his wife is giving birth to his second child (their first daughter, born in 1901 out of wedlock, dies at just two years old).

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, however, Tsar Nicholas II revoked these reforms, laying the foundations for the 1917 Revolution.

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 repression.

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. They resulted in the deaths of over seventy Jews, while over six hundred were injured. The violence occurred without the slightest resistance from the Tsarist authorities, thus highlighting the plight of Russian Jews in international public opinion and focusing world attention on their persecution in Russia. This led Theodor Herzl to propose the Uganda Scheme for a new Jewish settlement. This was an early 20th-century plan to establish a part of British East Africa as a homeland for the Jewish people.

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 ambitions for India vanish.

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 San Francisco after World War II). Furthermore, the Russians were forced to relinquish control of the naval base at Port Arthur and the surrounding peninsula. They also withdrew from Manchuria and recognized Korea as a zone of Japanese influence. Japan annexed Korea in 1910, sparking international protests. This was one of the first victories of an Asian nation over a European one in the modern era: Japan strengthened its prestige and began to be considered a modern great power. Russian casualties were 47,000 dead, 146,032 wounded, and 12,128 deaths from disease. Japanese casualties were 106,300 dead, 173,425 wounded, and 27,192 deaths from disease.

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. Great but uncontrollable. (…) You are not Christian at all; you are a fanatical musulman. Once you say no, come what may, it is no.” And in a subsequent letter he adds: “You say you have fulfilled your contract with me. You have not. (…) You are a big man, but your work is wrought in passing form; mine is immortal. I came to you with the greatest inventions of all time. I have more creations named after me than any man who has gone before, not excepting Archimedes and Galileo—the giants of invention. (…) You discredited me!” Despite the incredible anger at these words, Tesla still hopes for Morgan’s reconsideration. But he never will. In May 1905, Tesla’s AC motor patent also expired, after 17 years (the patent’s lifespan at the time). And in September 1905, Tesla’s partner Rankine died suddenly at just 47 years old. Tesla suffered a bout of depression and nervous breakdown, which continued until 1906. After that, he never again attempted projects as ambitious as Wardenclyffe.

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 3D to a cube)

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, radar, and finally computers. The electronics industry took off.

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 arid desert was to complete what the machine guns had begun: the extermination of the Herero people… I believe that the nation as a whole must be annihilated.” A dress rehearsal for the Third Reich…

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 far greater than what was believed (first by Kelvin) to be the Earth’s age. When he arrives to describe this passage cautiously, he discovers with relief that Lord Kelvin has dozed off. Rutherford will receive the Nobel Prize in 1908.

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, which is stable. Helium does not react with other elements; it is either attracted or repelled, so all the helium in a rock is due to radioactive decay, and the more there is, the older the rock. The initial findings contradicted the young age of the Earth estimated by the respected Lord Kelvin (80), which instilled in Rutherford a certain fear in revealing the discovery. Rutherford kept a low profile until Kelvin’s death in 1907, and then quickly demonstrated the relationship between helium and uranium and the age of the Earth, dating one of the rocks he had available to him to be at least 500 million years old (already considerably older than the 2 million years estimated by Lord Kelvin). Within a few years, with the help of geologists bringing older rocks, he arrived at an estimate of 2 billion years. Today we know the Earth is 4.5 billion years old.

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 real-time world news or personal messages. The entire planet, he says, will be converted into a single, immense cerebral entity. He had already expressed the same ideas in 1900 in Century magazine. It is an incredibly lucid vision of the future of the age of information technology, wireless communications, and the Internet, not to mention cell phones and smartphones. The article is titled: “The Transmission of Electrical Energy Without Wires.” Part of the original thesis says: “I have no doubt that it will prove very efficient in enlightening the masses, particularly in still uncivilized countries and less accessible regions, and that it will add materially to general safety, comfort and convenience, and maintenance of peaceful relations. It involves the employment of a number of plants, all of which are capable of transmitting individualized signals to the uttermost boundaries of the earth. Each of them will be preferably located near some important center of civilization and the news it receives through any channel will be flashed to all points of the globe. A cheap and simple device, which could be carried in one’s pocket, may then be set up somewhere on sea or land, and it will record the world’s news or such special messages as may be intended for it. Thus the entire earth will be converted into a huge brain, as it were, capable of response in every one of its parts. Since a single plant of but one hundred horse-power can operate hundreds of millions of instruments, the system will have a virtually infinite working capacity, and it must facilitate and facilitate immensely. cheapen the transmission of intelligence.”

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, Kaiser Wilhelm II sends General Adrian Dietrich Lothar von Trotha with orders to “restore order by any means necessary.” Von Trotha chooses the most infamous and despicable. On August 11, he carries out a massacre in Hamakari.

The Wright brothers learn to turn their aircraft; the aircraft suffers several damages but is repaired

Wilbur Wright reaches 400m in flight with his aircraft

Russia. The Russian Social Democratic Labour Party splits into the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks. The former advocate a more gradual approach to socialism, the latter more radical and revolutionary.

Rich Man’s Panic: stock market crisis on Wall Street.

Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to Henri Becquerel, Pierre Curie, and Marie Curie for their work on radioactivity.

At the age of 15, Srinivasa Ramanujan was inspired to study mathematics by a copy of a book by George Carr, a list of 4,400 classical mathematical results, without proof. Ramanujan spent the following years proving, with his own mathematics, as many assertions as possible. And it wouldn’t be long before his notebooks filled with results not found in Carr’s book. Ramanujan claimed to be guided by the goddess Namagiri, protector of his family and consort of Narashima, the lion god, the fourth incarnation of Vishnu. Ramanujan wrote to English mathematicians, and soon someone (Hardy) at Cambridge recognized the Indian’s mathematical genius. A devout Brahmin and strict vegetarian, he had several difficulties integrating in England, where he arrived in 1914.

Frank Nelson Cole, a professor of mathematics at Columbia University in New York, stood up at the American Mathematical Society conference, went to the blackboard, and without saying a word wrote: 2^67 – 1 = 193707721 * 761838257287, and returned to his seat. After a few moments, the audience of mathematicians was astonished and applauded for several minutes. It had taken him three years of Sunday afternoons to complete the calculation.

First regular radio news service between New York and London sent via Marconi’s invention

Cuba leases Guantanamo Bay military base to the United States

Pius X (Giuseppe Sarto) is Pope

Albert Einstein married Mileva Maric, who had given him a daughter a few years earlier (who was lost after being sent to an orphanage); he divorced Mileva in 1919.

William Harley and Arthur Davidson sell their first motorcycle