June 1912

June 22, 1912: Incumbent U.S. President Taft nominated ahead of former U.S. President Roosevelt by Republicans

The following events occurred in June 1912:

June 1, 1912 (Saturday)

• The first gasoline filling station in America to use an enclosed gas pump opened on Oak Street and Young Street in Columbus, Ohio, dispensing Standard Oil gas.^[1] Gas stations had opened as early in 1905 in St. Louis, with gasoline dispensed by "a hose from a tall tank".^[2]
• The Famous Players Film Company, which would merge in 1916 with the Lasky Feature Play Company to form Paramount Pictures, was founded by Adolph Zukor.^[3]
• French troops killed 600 Moroccan tribesmen who had marched on Fez to oppose the protectorate. Governor Lyautey ordered artillery to be used against the lesser armed opposition.^[4]
• A premature detonation of dynamite killed 18 men who were working on construction of the Canadian Northern road, near Lake Opinicon, Ontario.^[5]
• Born: Evie Hayes, American-born Australian actress and entertainer, in Seattle (d. 1988); and Justin O'Byrne, President of the Senate of Australia 1974-75, in Launceston, Tasmania (d. 1993)
• Died: Philip Parmalee, 24, American pilot, in an air show at North Yakima, Washington. Parmalee ignored requests to postpone his flight until heavy winds died down, and his plane dropped from a height of 400 feet.;^[6] and Daniel Burnham, 65, American urban planner who oversaw the renovation of Chicago

June 2, 1912 (Sunday)

• The first contest for a human-powered flying machine was sponsored by Robert Peugeot and attracted 23 entrants, none of which were able to leave the ground. Peugeot then offered a competition on July 4 for any plane that could stay 10 centimeters off the ground for a distance of 100 meters.^[7]
• Official results of the parliamentary elections in Belgium gave the Catholic Party of Charles de Broqueville, in power for 28 years without interruption, 101 seats, increasing its majority in the Chamber of Representatives. The Catholic Party also retained a majority in the Belgian Senate. The results led to protests nationwide.^[8]

June 3, 1912 (Monday)

• German warships, led by the battle cruiser SMS Moltke, were received at Hampton Roads, Virginia, by President Taft^[9]
• A fire in Istanbul destroyed 2,000 houses, four mosques and seven schools.^[10]

June 4, 1912 (Tuesday)

• Massachusetts became the first state in the United States to pass a law authorizing a guaranteed minimum wage; the law would take effect on July 1, 1913 and provided only that a state commission would issue regulations. Eight other states followed in 1913, with Utah being third, but having its law taking effect first, immediately upon paasage on March 18, 1913.^[11] The Massachusetts law applied only to women and children, and penalties for its violation were light.^[12] Oregon, whose law passed second, would become the first state to have orders implementing a wage.^[13]
• Canada agreed to join in the celebration of 100 years of Anglo-American peace since the War of 1812 fought in Canada and in the United States.^[14]
• Born: Robert Jacobsen, Danish artist, in Copenhagen (d. 1993)

June 5, 1912 (Wednesday)

• A group of 570 U.S. Marines landed in Cuba at Caimanera, the first sent to protect American citizens there.^[15] After rebel leader Evaristo Estenoz was killed on June 27, the Marines would withdraw on August 5.^[16]
• After using "whistles, trumpets, rattles, or other instruments of the most discordant character" to shout down debates over the Army Bill, 75 members of the opposition party in Hungary were expelled by police, leaving a quorum from Prime Minister István Tisza's National Party, which passed the Army Bill.^[17] By the end of October, Tisza's powers would be extended to allow him to send a guard unit to use force against MPs as necessary.^[18]
• Mexico's President Francisco I. Madero and the Standard Oil Company agreed to "one of the most one-sided business concessions imaginable" ^[19] with Standard Oil being allowed to operate in Mexico tax free for ten years, and the rights to eminent domain over any private or public property it wished to obtain to support its oil fields in four Mexican states.
• Died: George S. Nixon, 52, U.S. Senator for Nevada since 1905, from an infection following surgery for an abscess in his nose.

June 6, 1912 (Thursday)

• The Mount Katmai volcano erupted in Alaska, dumping a foot of ashes at Kodiak and on other villages on Woody Island villages, killing hundreds of people. The 200 inhabitants of villages on the mainland near Shelikof Strait were gone when the tug Redondas arrived. The villages of Kanatuk, Savinodsky, Douglas, Cold Bay, Kamgamute and Katmai were empty.^[20] The revenue cutter Manning rescued 500 survivors left homeless by the volcano.^[21] Katmai was "one of the largest eruptions of the century" and produced 35 cubic kilometers of pumice, burying the Ukak River valley to a depth of 200 meters within sixty hours; steam and gas persisted for decades in the "Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes".^[22] The explosion of Katmai was heard in Juneau, 750 miles away, and spread an ash cloud of 100,000 square miles, with traces of dust were found as far east as Algeria.^[23] Eruptions would last until July 8.^[24]
• Born: Maria Montez, Dominican-born Hollywood film actress, in Barahona (d. 1951)

June 7, 1912 (Friday)

• Gyula Kovács, a legislator in the Hungarian House of Deputies, fired three gunshots at Prime Minister Tisza on the floor of Parliament, missed, and then shot himself. Tisza had just rid the chamber of opposition deputies and remarked, "Now that the House is cleared... we will proceed to work." Kovacs shouted out, "There is still a member of the Opposition in the House," while firing his gun before turning it on himself.^[25]
• A 7.0 magnitude earthquake shook Alaska at 9:26 pm, as eruptions of Mount Kitmai continued.^[24]
• Thirty soldiers and workmen were killed and 100 injured in an explosion of gunpowder at the Wöllersdorf ammunition factory in Austria-Hungary, near Wiener-Neustadt.^[26]
• Died: Hubert Latham, 29, French aviation pioneer, was fatally injured by a water buffalo while hunting in Africa. Latham had been with natives deep into the French Sudan, near the Bahr as Salamat and Lake Chad on the Chari River, when he shot the buffalo. The wounded animal then charged Latham, goring him and then trampling him. News did not reach the French Equatorial Africa Governor-General, Martial Henri Merlin, until six weeks later.^[27]

June 8, 1912 (Saturday)

• Universal Pictures was incorporated by Carl Laemmle as the "Universal Film Manufacturing Company", bringing together a consortium of six motion picture companies (Laemmle's Independent/IMP, Powers, Rex, Champion, Nestor and New York); supposedly, Laemmle was inspired to the name when a wagon of the "Universal Pipe Fittings" company passed beneath his window.^[28]
• The French submarine Vendémiaire was rammed by the battleship Saint Louis, drowning 25 sailors near Cherbourg^[29]
• Max von Laue presented the confirmation of the theory of the diffraction of radiation by a three-dimensional lattice (for which he would win the Nobel Prize in 1914), describing the April 21 experiment by Walter Friedrich and Paul Knipping to the Bavarian Academy of Sciences in Munich.^[30]
• Abel Kiviat of the United States broke the world record for running the 1,500 meter race, and set the first record recognized by the IAAF, with a time of 3:55.8 at the U.S. Olympic Trials in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The record would stand for five years.
• A monument to Christopher Columbus was unveiled at Washington D.C. President Taft eulogized Columbus as "the greatest mariner in history", before 100,000 visitors, many of them members of the Knights of Columbus.^[31]
• Governor Cuvaj of Croatia escaped an assassination attempt by Bosnian law student Lukas Vukica. The bullet struck and killed Education Minister Hervoic instead.^[32]
• Born: Walter Kennedy, National Basketball Association Commissioner (1963–77) who oversaw NBA expansion from 9 teams to 22; in Stamford, Connecticut (d. 1977); and Harry Holtzman, American abstract painter (d. 1987)

June 9, 1912 (Sunday)

• The zemstvo form of local government, already present in most of the provinces of the Russian Empire, was extended to the Cossack provinces of the Don River (Astrakhan, Orenburg and Stavropol)^[33]

June 10, 1912 (Monday)

• Villisca axe murders: In the town of Villisca, Iowa, Joseph Moore, his wife and four children, and two girls visiting the home were killed by an ax murderer.^[34]
• The Tsar Nicholas II of Russia pardoned Kate Malecka, on condition that she leave the country forever. Malecka had been sentenced to four years imprisonment for aiding secessionists in Poland, at that time the Polskoe province in the westernmost Russian Empire.^[35]
• The cruiser USS Washington and the battleship USS Rhode Island arrived in Havana, and two more ships were on the way to intervene in the rebellion in Cuba.^[36]
• Born: Mary Lavin, American-born Irish novelist, in East Walpole, Massachusetts (d. 1996)
• Died: Anton Aškerc, 56, Slovenian poet; in Rimske Toplice, Austria-Hungary

June 11, 1912 (Tuesday)

• For the first time in the U.K. Parliamentary debates over Irish Home Rule Movement, the proposal was made to treat northeast Ireland differently from the rest of the island. MP Thomas Agar-Robartes offered an amendment to exclude the mostly Protestant County Antrim, County Armagh, County Down and County Londonderry from Home Rule.^[37]
• Born: Ruth Montgomery, American journalist and self-proclaimed psychic, in Princeton, Indiana (d. 2001); William Baziotes, American abstract expressionist painter (d. 1963); and Pham Hung, Prime Minister of Vietnam 1987-88, in Vinh Long (d. 1988)
• Died: Robert Wickliffe, 38, United States Congressman from Louisiana, was struck and killed by a train as he walked across a bridge over the Potomac River.^[38]

June 12, 1912 (Wednesday)

• Allen Parish, Louisiana, was created from part of Calcasieu Parish.^[39]
• The Big Sisters organization was incorporated, eight years after the Big Brothers had been created.^[40]
• J. E. B. Seely became the new British Secretary of State for War.^[14]
• Former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, running for the Republican Party nomination against incumbent President William H. Taft, said in a speech that he was in favor of the right of women to vote in national elections.^[41]
• Born: Carl Iver Hovland, American psychologist, in Chicago (d. 1961); Eva Crane, American bee researcher (d. 2007)
• Died: Frédéric Passy, 90, French economics expert and winner, with Henry Dunant, of the first Nobel Peace Prize (1901)

June 13, 1912 (Thursday)

• The Rincón de la Vieja Volcano erupted in Costa Rica.^[42] On the same day, Alaska's volcano Mount Katmai erupted again, and Mount Redoubt and Mount Iliamna began emitting lava.^[14]
• Born: Nina Mae McKinney, African-American actress (d. 1967)

June 14, 1912 (Friday)

• Dr. Robert Bell won his libel lawsuit against Dr. Henry Howarth Bashford, who criticized his cancer treatment in the British Medical Journal, in the article "Cancer Credulity and Quackery". Dr. Bell brought the testimony of Drs. Paul Ehrlich and August von Wassermann, who testified that cancer could be cured in mice "by injecting into the blood stream a specific compound of selenium and eosin" ^[43]

June 15, 1912 (Saturday)

• In the absence of opposition to Count Tisza's National Party, the Hungarian Army bill was adopted in the House of Magnates, 174 to 33.^[14]
• Dr. Duarte Leite became the new Prime Minister of Portugal.^[14]
• Dr. F. W. Forbes Ross of Britain announced that he had developed an anesthetic, consisting of quinine and urea hydrochloride, which could eliminate pain.^[44]

June 16, 1912 (Sunday)

• Twenty people were killed and 14 injured in a railroad crash at Malmslatt in Sweden, when an express train struck a freight train, on the three sleeping cars.^[45]
• A downpour killed 29 people, including 19 in Merwin, Missouri.^[46]
• Born: Enoch Powell, anti-immigration British MP and onetime Health Minister, in Birmingham (d. 1998)
• Died: Hugh McDowell, 97, co-founder of the Republican Party and original delegate to the 1856 convention in Pittsburgh

June 17, 1912 (Monday)

• The largest payoff in American horse racing history, according to the American Racing Manual, took place when "Wishing Ring", at 941-1 odds, won a race at the Latonia Race Track near Florence, Kentucky; a $2 bet would have returned $1,885.50 to the bettor.^[47]
• The Republic of China's first Prime Minister Tang Shaoyi, announced that he would resign.^[48]
• U.S. President Taft vetoed the Army appropriation bill that had been passed by Congress with cuts of defense spending. "The army of the United States is far too vital an institution to the people of this country to be made the victim of hasty or imperfect theories of legislation. It was reported that Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson had threatened to resign if the bill was not vetoed.^[49]
• The Supreme Court of Canada held that Parliament could not pass a national law governing marriage, and that mixed marriages solemnized by a Protestant clergyman could not be outlawed.^[14]
• More than 60 people were killed in Guanajuato in Mexico after floodwaters swept through the town.^[50]
• Died: Julia Clark, American aviatrix who had become 2nd woman to receive a pilot's license, at an airshow in Springfield, Illinois. Crashing into a tall tree while flying in a fog, she was the third woman to die in a plane crash, after Mme. Deniz Moore in July, and Suzanne Bernard on March 11, both at Etampes^[51]

June 18, 1912 (Tuesday)

• The 1912 Republican National Convention opened in Chicago, with incumbent President Taft having 454 ¹⁄₂ delegates, former President Theodore Roosevelt 469 ¹⁄₂, and 239 claimed by both sides. With a simple majority (513 of 1026) required to win the nomination, the awarding of the contested delegates was critical to the nomination. The Republican National Committee, controlled by Taft's supporters, would resolve 6 in favor of Roosevelt, and the other 233 in favor of Taft.^[52]
• The French dirigible Conte and its crew of six ascended to a record height of 9,922 feet. The previous record had been 7,053 feet on December 7, 1911.^[53]
• An explosion at the Victor-American Fuel Company mine at Hastings, Colorado, killed twelve coal miners.^[54]
• Died: Arthur Verrall, 61, British classics translator

June 19, 1912 (Wednesday)

• Tennessee State University began its first classes, as the State Agricultural and Industrial Normal School, with 147 African-American students in its first summer class. A century later, TSU has 10,000 students on its Nashville campus.^[55]
• Near Douai in France, Captain Marcel Dubois and Lt. Albert Peignan, each piloting a different vehicle, were killed the first fatal mid-air collision between two airplanes, and only the second mid-air airplane collision in history. The first, on September 27, 1911, between Eugene Ely and Harry Atwood, did not seriously injure either pilot.^[56]
• William D. Coolidge of General Electric laboratories applied for a patent for his process of treating brittle tungsten with heat in order to fashion it into fine wire. U.S. Patent 1,082,933 would be granted in 1913.^[57]
• Lazar Tomanović resigned as Prime Minister of Montenegro, along with his entire cabinet. A new ministry was later formed by General Mitar Martinović.^[14]
• President Taft signed into law a provision that workers on U.S. government contracts would be limited to an eight-hour day.^[14]

June 20, 1912 (Thursday)

• Lt. (j.g.) John H. Towers survived the U.S. Navy's first fatal airplane accident after Ensign W. L. Billingsly, the pilot, was thrown out of the plane at 1,700 feet. Towers, a passenger, was able to hold onto the plane and survived a crash landing, then set about to design the first safety belt for an airplane.^[58]
• The State Duma of the Russian Empire voted in favor of a £50,000,000 program to build the Russian Navy over five years.^[14]
• Messr. Poyer of France, the most successful automobile thief to that time, was finally caught and arrested in Paris.^[14]
• Born: Markus Fierz, Swiss physicist, in Basel (d. 2006)
• Died: Voltairine de Cleyre, 45, American anarchist and feminist

June 21, 1912 (Friday)

• Eppa Rixey, who went straight into the major leagues without playing minor league baseball, appeared in his first game, as a pitcher for the Philadelphia Phillies. Rixey is one of the lesser-known enshrinees of the National Baseball Hall of Fame.^[59]
• Born: Mary McCarthy, American novelist, in Seattle (d. 1989)

June 22, 1912 (Saturday)

• 1912 Republican National Convention: U.S. President William Howard Taft received the Republican Party nomination, by a vote of 561 to 107, after 344 of the delegates refused, out of protest, to participate. The aggrieved delegates were, primarily, supporters of former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, in a convention where the National Committee had resolved most delegate challenges in favor of Taft. Robert M. LaFollette got 41 and Albert B. Cummins 17.^[60] Roosevelt left the convention and proposed to form a new Progressive Party. The nominating speech for the Ohio native had been made by Ohio U.S. Senator (and future U.S. President) Warren G. Harding.^[61]
• Mrs. John Dunville won the Royal Aero Club balloon race.^[14]

June 23, 1912 (Sunday)

• Over 100 people fell into the rushing waters of the Niagara River at Eagle Park on Grand Island, when a dock collapsed. Thirty-nine drowned or were hurled over the Falls.^[62]
• Edward, Prince of Wales, eldest son of King George V, reached the age of 18.^[14]
• Born: Alan Turing, pioneering British mathematician and cryptanalist nicknamed "The Father of Computer Science"; in Maida Vale, London (committed suicide, 1954); and Ralph B. Peck, Canadian civil engineer, in Winnipeg (d. 2008)

June 24, 1912 (Monday)

• U.S. President Taft implemented the first specific regulations governing the proportions and design of the flag of the United States, with the signing of Executive Order 1566. The President accepted the recommendation of a committee, chaired by former U.S. Admiral George Dewey, for the new, 48 star flag, to be arranged in six rows of eight stars each. The most prominent design rejected was that of Wayne Whipple, consisting of a six sided star containing 13 stars, surrounded by a circle of 25 stars (for additional states admitted in the nation's first century) and an outer circle of 10 stars for those admitted after 1876. The 48 star flag would remain the standard until 1959. The ratio of height to width of the flag ever-after would be 1:1.9^[63]
• American Federation of Labor President Samuel Gompers was sentenced to one year in prison for contempt of the U.S. Supreme Court.^[64]
• Suffragists Emmeline Pankhurst and Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence were released from prison.^[14]
• Born: Howard O. Lorenzen, American electrical engineer described as the "father of electronic intelligence gathering",^[65] in Atlantic, Iowa (d. 2000); Edward Connellan, Australian airline founder, in Donald, Victoria (d. 1983); and Mary Wesley, British novelist, in Englefield Green (d. 2002)
• Died: Sir George White VC, 76, British Field Marshal, former Commander-in-Chief, India and commander of the garrison during the Siege of Ladysmith.

June 25, 1912 (Tuesday)

• The 1912 Democratic National Convention opened in Baltimore.^[66]
• The Bornean Baillon's crake (Porzana pusilla mira), a subspecies of the waterbird Baillon's crake, was collected for the first and last time in Borneo, never located again, and is presumed to be extinct.^[67]
• At Alcorta, in the Santa Fe Province of Argentina, a crowd of 2,000 tenant farmers went on strike to protest high rents, inaugurating the first organized farm movement in that nation.^[68]
• Born: Milton Shapp, first Jewish Governor of Pennsylvania, 1971–79; as Milton Shapiro, in Merion, Pennsylvania (d. 1994); and Virginia Lacy Jones, African-American librarian, in Cincinnati (d. 1984)

June 26, 1912 (Wednesday)

• The Ninth Symphony of Gustav Mahler was given its premiere, performed by the Vienna Philharmonic and conducted by the late Mahler's assistant, Bruno Walter. Mahler had completed the symphony in 1911, shortly before his death.^[69]
• The Welsh National Museum was opened at Cardiff.^[14]
• The Austrian Chamber of Deputies adopted the Army Bill by a 2/3 majority.^[14]

June 27, 1912 (Thursday)

• Evaristo Estenoz, leader of the uprising of Negro rebels in Cuba, was killed in battle.^[70] The death of General Estenoz brought an end to the uprising, which killed 3,000 black Cubans.^[71]
• The Italian Army established its first air force, the Battaglione Aviatori (Airmen's Battalion).^[72]
• Born: Evgenii Feinberg, Soviet theoretical physicist, in Baku (d. 2005; Wilbur Jackett, first Chief Justice of the Federal Court of Canada (1971–79), in Tompkins, Saskatchewan (d. 2005); and Miné Okubo, Japanese-American artist, in Riverside, California (d. 2001)

June 28, 1912 (Friday)

• On the first ballot at the Democratic Party convention, former House Speaker Champ Clark received 440 ¹⁄₂ votes, New Jersey Governor Woodrow Wilson 324, Judson Harmon 148, Oscar Underwood 117 ¹⁄₂ and Thomas R. Marshall 31. Thirteen more ballots were taken without any candidate receiving the 2/3rds majority of delegates.^[14]
• The resignation of Premier Tang Shaoyi was accepted by President Yuan Shikai.^[73]
• The "Korean Conspiracy Trial" began for 123 defendants, mostly Christians, accused of inciting rebellion against the Japanese colonial government. On September 28, 106 would be convicted of treason and sentenced to terms of five years or more, although worldwide criticism of the unfairness of the trial would lead to the release of most of them the following year.^[74]
• Born: Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker, German nuclear physicist and philosopher, in Kiel (d. 2007)

June 29, 1912 (Saturday)

• Champ Clark moved closer to the Democratic nomination for President, when a shift of New York's votes gave him 556 of the 1,094 delegates, more than all of the other candidates combined, but still short of the two-thirds (730) needed to win.^[75]
• Thirty five Arabs were sentenced to death by a French court for participating in November 8 riots in Tunisia.^[14]
• China's Foreign Minister Lu Cheng-Hsiang became the new Prime Minister of China.^[14]
• Lt. Blaschke of Austria reached a new record altitude of 13,970 feet after takeoff from Vienna.^[14]
• Born: John Toland, American historian, in La Crosse, Wisconsin (d. 2004)

June 30, 1912 (Sunday)

• The Regina Cyclone, deadliest tornado in Canadian history, killed 28 people after touching down at 4:50 pm in the provincial capital of Saskatchewan.^[76]
• On the 30th ballot, New Jersey Governor Woodrow Wilson edged ahead of former House Speaker Champ Clark for the first time, with 460 votes to 455, as the Iowa delegation swung its support to Wilson. On the next ballot, Wilson's lead was 475 1/2 to 446.^[77]

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