January 1913

January 17, 1913: Raymond Poincaré elected as 10th President of France

Dutch calendar for January 1913, designed by Theo van Hoytema

January 9, 1913: Future U.S. President Richard Nixon (2nd from right) born in California

The following events occurred in January 1913:

January 1, 1913 (Wednesday)

• Parcel post was inaugurated in the United States.^[1][2]
• Louis Armstrong, as an 11-year-old boy in New Orleans, was arrested by police after firing his stepfather's pistol to celebrate the arrival of the new year. He was sentenced by the juvenile court to 18 months at the Colored Waifs' Home, where his musical talent would be perfected, and he would go on to fame as one of America's greatest jazz artists.^[3]
• The Council of the Russian Empire adopted a law freeing the last of the Russian serfs. In 1861, the Caucasus had been exempt from the emancipation of serfs there.^[4]
• The "Six Powers" (the United States, Great Britain, France, Russia, Germany and Japan) agreed to a $125,000,000 loan to China at 6 percent interest.^[5]
• Born: Shih Kien, Hong Kong character actor, in Shigang Village, Guangzhou, China (d. 2009)

January 2, 1913 (Thursday)

• U.S. Representative W. W. Wedemeyer of Michigan jumped overboard from the ocean liner Panama while returning to the United States, in an apparent suicide. Wedemeyer, who had been defeated in November 1912 in his bid for reelection, had accompanied U.S. President Taft in December on a visit to Panama as part of a 30-member congressional inspection party and was treated for depression in a Canal Zone hospital before sailing for home.^[6]
• The comic strip Bringing Up Father began an 87-year run. Created by George McManus, the strip about an Irish millionaire and his wife (Jiggs and Maggie) was a daily; it became a Sunday feature beginning April 14, 1918. After McManus died in 1954, the strip continued until May 28, 2000.^[7]
• Born: Anna Lee, English film and television actress, as Joan Boniface Winnifrith, in Ightham (d. 2004)
• Died: Léon Teisserenc de Bort, 57, French meteorologist credited for identifying the stratosphere

January 3, 1913 (Friday)

• Thomas Edison gave the first demonstration of his new invention, the kinetophone, at his laboratory in West Orange, New Jersey, described as "a combination of the moving picture machine and the phonograph, with a synchronizing device that is a marvel of mechanical ingenuity".^[8]
• Portugal's Prime Minister Duarte Leite resigned.^[9]
• The steamer Julia Luckenbach sank after a collision with the British steamer Indrakuala in Chesapeake Bay.^[10]
• U.S. Senator Joseph W. Bailey of Texas resigned with less than two months left in his term; he was replaced by Rienzi Johnston.^[2]
• Died: U. S. Senator Jefferson Davis, 50, Arkansas senator since 1907.

January 4, 1913 (Saturday)

• Rienzi Melville Johnston was appointed as U.S. Senator from Texas, to serve the remaining two months of the term of Joseph W. Bailey. The Texas State Legislature did not approve of Governor Colquitt's appointment of Johnston and selected an Senator-elect Morris Sheppard to replace him.
• Born: Malietoa Tanumafili II, O le Ao o le Malo (Paramount Chief of Samoa), 1962-2007 (d. 2007)
• Died: Count Alfred von Schlieffen, 79, former chief of the general staff of the German Army.

January 5, 1913 (Sunday)

• Gottlieb von Jagow was named as the new Foreign Secretary of Germany.^[11]
• Died: Lewis A. Swift, 93, American astronomer.

January 6, 1913 (Monday)

• The town of Duvall, Washington, USA was incorporated.
• The explosion of a boiler on the French battleship Massena killed 8 members of the crew.^[12]
• Born: Edward Gierek, Polish Communist leader, 1970–80, in Porąbka (d. 2001); and Loretta Young, American film and television actress, in Salt Lake City (d. 2000)

January 7, 1913 (Tuesday)

• The steamship Rosecrans was wrecked in a gale and ran aground on Peacock Spit, a spit off the coast of Oregon, killing 33 of the crew of 36.^[13]
• William M. Burton was awarded U.S. Patent No. 1,049,667 for his thermal cracking process, that would dramatically increase the supply of gasoline that could be developed from crude oil.^[14]
• Born: Shirley Ross, American actress and singer, as Bernice Gaunt in Omaha, Nebraska (d. 1975)
• Died: Paul Cleveland Bennett Nash, 35, U.S. Ambassador to Hungary was found dead in his room at London's Claridge Hotel

January 8, 1913 (Wednesday)

Caricature of Lt-Colonel Sir Robert William Inglis, published in Vanity Fair, January 8, 1913, as "Men of the Day" Number 2306

• Serbia gave up its demand for a port on the Adriatic Sea as part of its negotiation at the London peace conference to end the Balkan War.^[15]
• Alfred Deakin resigned as leader of the opposition in Australia.^[2]
• Dr. Alfonso Costa became the Portuguese premier.^[2]
• The Hotel McAlpin, largest in New York, opened with rooms for 2,500 guests. An unusual feature of the 25-story hotel was that was one floor was reserved exclusively for men, another for women, and the "sleepy sixteenth" floor was to be kept "quiet as a tomb" during the daytime.^[16]
• Died: Xavier Mertz, 30, Swiss-born Antarctic explorer and member of the ill-fated Far Eastern Party; of hypervitaminosis A. (b. 1882)

January 9, 1913 (Thursday)

• The explosion of a boiler on the riverboat James T. Staples killed 26 people and injured 21 others.^[17]
• Born: Richard M. Nixon, 37th President of the United States (1969–74), in Yorba Linda, California, at 9:35 p.m.^[18] (d. 1994)
• Born: Eric Berry, British stage and film actor, in London (d. 1993)
• Born: Ruby Wilson, Centenarian, award winning community contributor.

January 10, 1913 (Friday)

• Moroccan rebels, under the command of Ahmed al-Hiba ambushed and killed a Mauritanian detachment of the French camel cavalry, the méhariste corps.^[19]
• Romania demanded that Bulgaria cede all territory between Silistria and the Black Sea.^[2]
• Born: Gustáv Husák, Czechoslovakian Communist Party leader (1971–87), President of Czechoslovakia 1975-89, in Pozsonyhidegkút, Austria-Hungary (now Dúbravka, Slovakia) (d. 1991); Mehmet Shehu, Albanian Communist politician, Prime Minister of Albania, 1954–81, in Tirana (suicide, 1981); and Franco Bordoni Italian World War II ace and racecar driver, in Milan (killed in plane crash, 1975)

January 11, 1913 (Saturday)

• Having recently proclaimed their independence from China, Tibet and Mongolia signed a mutual defense treaty that, under it terms, was "for all time".^[20]

Kirstie's Cairn, Changue Forest The memorial reads "In memory of Christopher McTaggart, shepherd, who perished in snow storm near this spot, 11 January 1913, aged 19 years." The copyright on this image is owned by Oliver Dixon and is licensed for reuse under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license.

• The Paris intra-urban transit system went entirely to electric streetcars, as the last horse-drawn streetcar made its final run on the city's rails.^[21]
• Ottawa's County Clerk was accidentally locked inside the vault at the courthouse, and nobody in the office knew the combination except for him. Fortunately, former clerk John Bell, living in Salina, remembered the combination "after spending an hour searching his memory for the correct numerals". After 2 1/2 hours, when the vault was opened, "the liberated Baldwin fell to the floor unconscious" from lack of oxygen but survived.^[22]
• Born: Lona Cohen, aka Helen Kroger, American Communist who became a spy for the Soviet Union; in Adams, Massachusetts. After fleeing the U.S., she and her husband, Morris Cohen, were given the identities of New Zealanders "Helen and Peter Kroger" and spied against the United Kingdom in the 1950s (d. 1992)

January 12, 1913 (Sunday)

• Alexandre Millerand quit as France's minister of war after Colonel du Paty de Clam was reinstated.^[23]

January 13, 1913 (Monday)

• U.S. Commerce Court judge Robert W. Archbald was convicted on five of 13 articles of impeachment by the U.S. Senate and removed from office. The vote was 68–5 on the first article, sufficient for removal. In all, he was convicted on three articles, acquitted on the other ten. He became only the third U.S. government official to be removed by the impeachment process.^[24]
• Electors in the 48 United States, chosen in the presidential election in November, met in their respective state legislatures to cast their electoral votes. Woodrow Wilson received 435 votes from 40 states, Theodore Roosevelt 88 from six states, and incumbent President Taft, favored only by Utah and Vermont, won eight votes.^[25]
• The Ulster Volunteer Force was organized by Sir Edward Carson and Sir James Craig to resist the Irish Home Rule Movement.^[26]
• Delta Sigma Theta, and African-American sorority, was founded by 22 women at Howard University who had become dissatisfied with the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority. A century later, it would have 900 chapters in eight nations.^[27]
• The Harvard University Press was established at a meeting of the president and fellows of the university.^[28]
• Born: Murray Bowen, American psychiatrist and pioneer in differentiation of self and in family counseling, in Waverly, Tennessee (d. 1990)

January 14, 1913 (Tuesday)

• The London Peace Conference ended as the Balkan states and the Ottoman Empire were unable to reach an agreement in negotiations.^[29]
• Born: Luderin Darbone, American Cajun musician, in Evangeline Parish, Louisiana (d. 2008)

January 15, 1913 (Wednesday)

• The members of Britain's Royal Geographical Society voted overwhelmingly to admit women, after 82 years as an all-male organization.^[30]
• The first sickness benefits were paid under Britain's National Insurance Act 1911 as its provisions took effect. Men were eligible to receive ten shillings per week for illness, and women seven shillings and sixpence per week. After 13 weeks, the benefits for both men and women were five shillings a week.^[31]
• First Balkan War: The Ottoman battle cruiser Medjidie attacked and sank the Greek merchant ship Macedonia, which had been armed for use as a troop transport.^[32]
• Born: Lloyd Bridges, American film and television actor, best known for portraying a free-lance scuba diver and adventurer on Sea Hunt TV series, in San Leandro, California (d. 1998); and Alexander Marinesko, captain of the S-13 submarine which sank the German ship Wilhelm Gustloff, killing 9,000 people; in Odessa (d. 1963)

January 16, 1913 (Thursday)

• The United Kingdom House of Commons passed the Irish Home Rule Bill on its third reading, by a vote of 367 to 257.^[33] The measure moved on to the House of Lords, which was expected to veto the bill, which happened on January 30.^[34]
• Russia's Grand Duke Michael was stripped of his rank as officer in the Russian Army, after his controversial marriage was met by the disapproval of his brother, Tsar Nicholas II.^[35]
• Srinivasa Ramanujan, a 26-year-old student in Madras, India, sent a letter to English mathematician G. H. Hardy, admitting that he had no formal mathematical training, but submitting more than 100 theorems that Hardy recognized as ingenious.^[36]
• The first wireless transmission between the U.S. and Germany was sent in the inauguration of a new telegraph system at Sayville, New York, with the message received in Berlin.^[37]
• Died: Thaddeus S. C. Lowe, 80, American meteorologist and balloonist, pioneer in aerial reconnaissance

January 17, 1913 (Friday)

• Prime Minister Raymond Poincaré was elected as the new President of France. After none of the three candidates received a majority on the first ballot, the result on the second round was Prime Minister Poincaré 483, Agriculture Minister Jules Pams 296 and Marie Eduard Maillant 69.^[38]
• Ag-ed Alach-Sultan became the new Premier of Persia.^[37]
• The six European powers sent a joint note advising the Ottoman Empire to surrender Adrianople and the Aegean Islands.^[2]

January 18, 1913 (Saturday)

• British Antarctic Expedition: The Terra Nova was finally able to break through the ice outside of Antarctica's McMurdo Sound to pick up the Northern Party, the remaining members of the expedition. The group had set out to locate explorer the Southern Party that had been led by Robert Falcon Scott. Victor Campbell reported to the Terra Nova crew that Scott's party had reached the South Pole on January 17, 1912, but had all died on the return journey.^[39]
• Born: Danny Kaye, American film actor, as David Daniel Kaminsky in Brooklyn (d. 1987)

January 19, 1913 (Sunday)

• Born: Rudolf Wanderone, American billiards player and entertainer who billed himself as "Minnesota Fats" after the release of the 1961 film The Hustler; in New York (d. 1982)
• Died: Claas Epp, Jr., 74, Russian Mennonite who had developed a following by predicting the Second Coming for March 8, 1889 and again on March 8, 1891

January 20, 1913 (Monday)

• Outgoing U.S. president Taft accepted a position as a professor at the Yale University College of Law.^[40]
• Aristide Briand was selected as the Prime Minister of France, to replace Raymond Poincaré, who had vacated the office after being elected president.^[41]
• Bulgaria, Serbia and Montenegro presented an ultimatum to the Ottoman Empire, giving the Turks 14 days to make a favorable reply to their demands or face a resumption of war.^[42]
• The first film footage of war scenes in color was shown, having been taken during the First Balkan War under the direction of British war correspondent Frederic Villiers, who accompanied a division of the Greek Army.^[43]
• Died: José Guadalupe Posada, 60, Mexican cartoonist and illustrator

January 21, 1913 (Tuesday)

• Canadian Member of Parliament W.F. MacLean of South York made the first proposal for a central Canadian bank, in a speech on the floor of the House of Commons.^[44]
• Died: Fanny Jackson Coppin, 75, African-American religious leader and education proponent

January 22, 1913 (Wednesday)

Jim Thorpe at the New York Polo Grounds in 1913

• The Worcester Gazette of Worcester, Massachusetts, published a story that cost Jim Thorpe his Olympic medals. One of the sportswriters for the Gazette had played minor league baseball in the Eastern Carolina League for the Fayetteville Highlanders and was aware that Thorpe had played in the league in the 1909 and 1910 seasons. The Gazette editor had spent eight days verifying the fact before breaking the news that Thorpe had played professional ball for Fayetteville and for the Rocky Mount Railroaders.^[45] The headline was "Thorpe With Professional Baseball Team Says Clancy", and quoted Charley Clancy, who had tipped off reporter Roy Johnson.^[46]
• The Ottoman Grand Council voted to surrender Edirne (Adrianople) to the Balkan Allies and to accept the other demands for peace, including ceding its Aegean islands and Edirne.^[47]
• Helen Miller Gould, America's "Queen Philanthropist", married Finley J. Shepard.^[48]
• Born: William Conway, Irish Roman Catholic cardinal, Primate of All Ireland; in Belfast (d. 1977); and Carl F. H. Henry, American Protestant theologian, first editor of Christianity Today, publisher, in Long Island, New York (d. 2003)

January 23, 1913 (Thursday)

Nazım Pasha, the Ottoman Minister of the Navy, killed on January 23

• 1913 Ottoman coup d'état (aka "Raid on the Sublime Porte"): Members of the Committee of Union and Progress under Enver Bey forced Grand Vizier Kâmil Pasha, of the rival Freedom and Accord Party, to resign at gunpoint, with Mahmud Shevket Pasha being made the new premier. The mob shot and killed Naval Minister Nazım Pasha when he confronted them outside the Council Chambers.^[49]
• Seven U.S. soldiers were killed in the Philippines at Jolo during a fight with the Igorot residents.^[37]
• Born: Wally Parks, American drag racer, founder of the NHRA, in Goltry, Oklahoma (d. 2007)

January 24, 1913 (Friday)

• Former Socialist Party presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs was arrested at Terre Haute, weeks after being indicted for obstructing justice.^[50] Debs was quickly released on bail, and the case would be dismissed in May.^[51]
• The Norwegian cabinet resigned.^[2]
• The U.S. Senate approved the Lincoln Memorial. On January 29, the House appropriated $2 million for the building.^[2]

January 25, 1913 (Saturday)

• In an article for the Russian-language Paris newspaper Sozial Demokrat, Bolshevik activist Josef Dzhugashvili first used the a pseudonym based on the Russian word for steel "Stal" (Стал). The issue was dated January 12 because of the differences between the Julian calendar used in Russia at the time, and the Gregorian calendar that would be adopted later. "The National Question and Social Democracy" was signed with the name "K. Stalin", a "steel man", a name that Joseph Stalin would use thereafter.^[52]
• The U.S. House of Representatives passed the Dillingham-Burnett immigration bill, requiring a literacy test for all incoming immigrants, by a 166-71 margin.^[53]
• Born: Witold Lutosławski, Polish composer, in Warsaw (d. 1994); and Huang Hua, Foreign Minister of China 1976-82 (d. 2010)

January 26, 1913 (Sunday)

• The body of John Paul Jones was inhumed at the chapel of the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, more than seven years after it had been returned to the United States from France.^[54]

January 27, 1913 (Monday)

Masonic Hall, Hawarden. Formerly the Boys Elementary School, built in 1834, the building was taken over by the Masons in 1912. After some internal alterations were carried out they convened their first meeting on 27th January 1913 and a plaque on the prominent chimney carries that date. The copyright on this image is owned by John S Turner and is licensed for reuse under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license.

• The first new American five-cent pieces, known as "buffalo nickels", were manufactured at the Philadelphia mint.^[55]
• The British Cabinet voted to remove the women's suffrage bill from consideration in the House of Commons.^[56]

January 28, 1913 (Tuesday)

• The Young Turks council of the Committee of Union and Progress voted unanimously to fight the surrender of Edirne (Adrianople) and the Aegean islands, in accordance with the demands of the new leader, Enver Bey.^[2]
• Died: Segismundo Moret y Prendergast, 74, former Premier of Spain.

January 29, 1913 (Wednesday)

• Alpha Kappa Alpha, the first African-American sorority, was incorporated.^[57]

January 30, 1913 (Thursday)

• The United Kingdom's House of Lords rejected the Home Rule bill by a vote of 326-69.^[34]
• A no-confidence motion passed in the German Reichstag.^[2]
• The Ottoman Empire replied to the ultimatum of the Great Powers at the end of the First Balkan War and agreed to give up most of Edirne (Adrianople) except for the Muslim shrines, but it refused to surrender its Aegean islands.^[58]
• Born: Amrita Sher-Gil, Hungarian-born Indian woman painter, Budapest (d. 1941)
• Died: Hasan Riza Pasha, 41, the Ottoman governor of Scutari and defender against the Montenegrin siege, was assassinated in a plot by Essad Pasha Toptani, who took over as commander of Ottoman forces the next day.^[59]

January 31, 1913 (Friday)

• Izzet Pasha was appointed commander-in-chief of Ottoman forces.^[2]
• Died: James Ludovic Lindsay, Earl of Crawford, 65, English scientist and philatelist.

References

• "Record of Current Events", The American Monthly Review of Reviews (June 1912), pp. 289–292