In a year that would revolutionize transportation, Henry Ford’s introduced his first Model T and the Wright Brothers’ made their first public flight to demonstrate the airplane they’d invented several years earlier. In Europe, Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina, now seen as a prelude to World War I. In America, Sears started selling "kit" homes through its mail-order catalog, starting for $650. And the charismatic outlaws Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid reportedly met their end in Bolivia—although not everyone believed it.
Jan
11
On January 11, 1908, U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt declares the massive Grand Canyon in northwestern Arizona a national monument.
A colorful sunset overlooks the Colorado River deep in the Grand Canyon.
Getty Images / Dean Fikar
Jan
24
On January 24, 1908, the Boy Scouts movement begins in England with the publication of the first installment of Robert Baden-Powell’s Scouting for Boys. The name Baden-Powell was already well known to many English boys, and thousands of them eagerly bought up the handbook. By the end of April, the serialization of Scouting for Boys was completed, and scores of impromptu Boy Scout troops had sprung up across Britain.
Jul
26
On July 26, 1908, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is born when U.S. Attorney General Charles Bonaparte orders a group of newly hired federal investigators to report to Chief Examiner Stanley W. Finch of the Department of Justice. One year later, the Office of the Chief Examiner was renamed the Bureau of Investigation, and in 1935 it became the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Aug
27
On August 27, 1908, future President Lyndon Baines Johnson is born on a farm near Stonewall, Texas. The brash, outspoken Johnson grew up in an impoverished rural area and worked his way through a teachers’ training college before entering politics.
Katherine Young/Getty Images
Sep
16
On September 16, 1908, Buick Motor Company head William Crapo Durant spends $2,000 to incorporate General Motors in New Jersey. Durant, a high-school dropout, had made his fortune building horse-drawn carriages, and in fact he hated cars–he thought they were noisy, smelly, and dangerous. Nevertheless, the giant company he built would dominate the American auto industry for decades.
Oct
01
On October 1, 1908, the first production Model T Ford is completed at the company’s Piquette Avenue plant in Detroit. Between 1908 and 1927, Ford would build some 15 million Model T cars. It was the longest production run of any automobile model in history until the Volkswagen Beetle surpassed it in 1972.
The Ford Model T was introduced by Henry Ford in 1908, and made by the Ford Motor Company in Detroit. By means of true mass production, this car was affordable for far more people than ever before. By 1913 motorised production lines were in use, enabling the Model T to be made in such quantities that, in 1915, a tourer cost half the price it was when first introduced. The new production methods were so speedy that only one paint, japan black enamel, would dry fast enough to prevent problems, hence the remark attributed to Ford that “customers can have any color they want so long as it’s black.” The Model T was hugely popular, and by the time it was phased out in 1927 over sixteen million vehicles had been made.
Getty Images / Science & Society Picture Library / Contributor
Oct
06
Oct
30
Dec
26
Jack Johnson becomes the first African American to win the world heavyweight title when he knocks out Canadian Tommy Burns in the 14th round in a championship bout near Sydney, Australia. Johnson, who held the heavyweight title until 1915, was reviled by whites for his defiance of the “Jim Crow” racial conventions of early 20th-century America.
American boxer Jack Johnson
Anthony Barboza/Getty Images
Dec
28
At dawn, the most destructive earthquake in recorded European history strikes the Straits of Messina in southern Italy, leveling the cities of Messina in Sicily and Reggio di Calabria on the Italian mainland. The earthquake and tsunami it caused killed an estimated 100,000 people.
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