The sinking of the Titanic dominated headlines in 1912, a dramatic year on land and sea. The last emperor of China abdicated, while Teddy Roosevelt ran for president on the Bull Moose Party ticket, surviving an assassination attempt before losing to Woodrow Wilson. Native American athlete Jim Thorpe won two gold medals at the Stockholm Olympics, only to be stripped of them for eligibility issues. “Tarzan of the Apes” first appeared in fiction, and the National Biscuit Company introduced the Oreo cookie.
Jan
06
Jan
17
After a two-month ordeal, the expedition of British explorer Robert Falcon Scott arrives at the South Pole only to find that Roald Amundsen, the Norwegian explorer, had preceded them by just over a month. Disappointed, the exhausted explorers prepared for a long and difficult journey back to their base camp.
Feb
12
On February 12, 1912, Hsian-T’ung, the last emperor of China, is forced to abdicate following Sun Yat-sen’s republican revolution. A provisional government was established in his place, ending 267 years of Manchu rule in China and 2,000 years of imperial rule. The former emperor, only six years old, was allowed to keep up his residence in Beijing’s Forbidden City, and he took the name of Henry Pu Yi.
Mar
27
March 27, 1912: In Washington, D.C., Helen Taft, wife of President William Taft, and the Viscountess Chinda, wife of the Japanese ambassador, plant two Yoshino cherry trees on the northern bank of the Potomac River, near the Jefferson Memorial. The event commemorated a gift, by the Japanese government, of some 3,020 cherry trees to the U.S. government.
Brooks Kraft LLC/Corbis/Getty Images
Apr
15
At 2:20 a.m. on April 15, 1912, the British ocean liner Titanic sinks into the North Atlantic Ocean about 400 miles south of Newfoundland, Canada. The massive ship, which carried 2,200 passengers and crew, had struck an iceberg two and half hours before.
The Titanic at sea before its sinking.
Popperfoto via Getty Images
Jul
07
On July 7, 1912, Jim Thorpe wins the pentathlon at the fifth modern Olympics in Stockholm, Sweden. At the time, Thorpe, a Native American who attended Pennsylvania’s Carlisle Indian School, was only beginning to establish his reputation as the greatest all-around athlete in the world.
Getty Images
Aug
07
Theodore Roosevelt is nominated for the presidency by the Progressive Party, a group of Republicans dissatisfied with the renomination of President William Howard Taft. Also known as the Bull Moose Party, the Progressive platform called for the direct election of U.S. senators, woman suffrage, reduction of the tariff and many social reforms. Roosevelt, who served as the 26th president of the United States from 1901 to 1909, embarked on a vigorous campaign as the party’s presidential candidate. A key point of his platform was the “Square Deal”—Roosevelt’s concept of a society based on fair business competition and increased welfare for needy Americans.
Aug
10
Oct
14
Before a campaign speech in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, presidential candidate Theodore Roosevelt is shot at close range by saloonkeeper John Schrank while greeting the public in front of the Gilpatrick Hotel. Schrank’s .32-caliber bullet, aimed directly at Roosevelt’s heart, failed to mortally wound the former president because its force was slowed by a glasses case and a bundle of manuscript in the breast pocket of Roosevelt’s heavy coat—a manuscript containing Roosevelt’s evening speech. Schrank was immediately detained and reportedly offered as his motive that “any man looking for a third term ought to be shot.”
Oct
17
Nov
05
Democrat Woodrow Wilson is elected the 28th president of the United States, with Thomas R. Marshall as vice president. In a landslide Democratic victory, Wilson won 435 electoral votes against the eight won by Republican incumbent William Howard Taft and the 88 won by third-party Progressive Party candidate Theodore Roosevelt. The presidential election was the only one in American history in which two former presidents were defeated by another candidate.
Woodrow Wilson and Edith Wilson. (Credit: Library of Congress/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images)
Nov
21
On November 21, 1912, the Manchester Guardian breaks the news: After three years of digging in the Piltdown gravel pit in Sussex, England, amateur archaeologist Charles Dawson had discovered two skulls that appear to belong to a primitive hominid and ancestor of man, along with a canine tooth, a tool carved from an elephant’s tusk, and fossil teeth from a number of prehistoric animals. Despite muted criticism from a minority of paleontologists, the majority of the scientific community hailed the so-called Piltdown Man discovery as the missing evolutionary link between ape and man.
Dec
03
Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece and Montenegro sign an armistice with Turkey, ending the fighting in the first Balkan War. During the two-month conflict, a military coalition between Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Montenegro—known as the Balkan League—expelled Turkey from all the Ottoman Empire’s former European possessions, with the exception of Constantinople (now Istanbul). In January 1913, a coup d’etat in Turkey led to a resumption of fighting, but the Balkan League was again victorious.
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