Directory

1907 CE

The Panic of 1907 triggers a U.S. financial crisis, sparking bank runs and paving the way for the Federal Reserve; The Santa María School massacre in Chile sees government troops kill hundreds of striking nitrate workers and their families; The 1907 Tiflis bank robbery by Bolsheviks shocks the Russian Empire and funds revolutionaries; The vast 1907 Romanian Peasants' Revolt erupts against landlords, ending in brutal crackdowns and thousands dead; The 1907 Kingston earthquake devastates Jamaica’s capital, killing more than 800; The Cornu helicopter achieves the first free flight in France, a milestone in aviation.

Geopolitics & Diplomacy

  • March 15–16 – Elections to the new Parliament of Finland are the first in the world for a national assembly with woman candidates, as well as the first elections in Europe where universal suffrage is applied; 19 women are elected.source
  • June 15 – The Second Hague Peace Conference opens at The Hague.source
  • July 1 – The Orange River Colony gains autonomy, as the Orange Free State.source
  • July 24 – The Japan–Korea Treaty of 1907 brings the government and military of the protectorate of Korea more firmly under Japanese control.source
  • August 31 – Count Alexander Izvolsky and Sir Arthur Nicolson sign the Anglo-Russian Entente in Saint Petersburg, bringing a pause in The Great Game in Central Asia, and establishing the Triple Entente.source
  • September 26 – New Zealand and Newfoundland become dominions of the British Empire.source
  • October – A committee of the Delegation for the Adoption of an International Auxiliary Language, made up of academics including Otto Jespersen, Wilhelm Ostwald and Roland Eötvös, meet in Paris to select a language for international use. The committee ultimately decides to reform Esperanto.source
  • November 16 – President Theodore Roosevelt proclaims that Oklahoma has become the 46th U.S. state.source
  • December 17 – Ugyen Wangchuck becomes the first Druk Gyalpo (king of Bhutan).source

Conflict & Security

  • March 11 – The Prime Minister of Bulgaria, Dimitar Petkov, is assassinated by an anarchist in Sofia.source
  • August 24–31 – The International Anarchist Congress of Amsterdam meets in the Netherlands.source
  • October 18 – The Hague Convention is revised by the (second) Hague Peace Conference (effective 26 January 1910), focussing on naval warfare.source
  • October 27 – Černová massacre: Fifteen people are shot during the consecration of a Catholic church in Hungary (modern-day Slovakia).source
  • December 21 – Santa María School massacre: In Chile, soldiers fire at striking mineworkers gathered in the Santa María School in Iquique; over 2,000 are killed.source

Exploration & Expansion

  • April 24 – Al Ahly SC is founded in Cairo by Omar Lotfi, as a gathering place for Egyptian students' unions in the struggle against colonization; it is the first association football club officially founded in Egypt or Africa.source
  • September 7 – British Cunard Line passenger liner sets out on her maiden voyage, from Liverpool (England) to New York City.source
  • December 16 – The American Great White Fleet begins its circumnavigation of the world.source

Religion & Belief

  • June 5 – Shastri Yagnapurushdas consecrates the murtis of both Sahajanand Swami and Gunatitanand Swami in a single central shrine, thus establishing the Bochasanwasi Shri Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha, later a United Nations affiliate organization.source
  • September 8 – Pope Pius X promulgates the encyclical Pascendi Dominici gregis, opposing modernism in the Catholic Church.source

Economy & Finance

  • June 6 – Persil laundry detergent is first marketed by Henkel of Düsseldorf, Germany, the first to combine bleach with detergent commercially.source
  • October 24 – A major United States financial crisis is averted when J. P. Morgan, E. H. Harriman, James Stillman, Henry Clay Frick and other Wall Street financiers create a $25,000,000 pool to invest in the shares on the plunging New York Stock Exchange, ending the bank panic of 1907.source

Technology & Infrastructure

  • February 16 – SKF, a worldwide mechanical parts manufacturing brand is founded in Gothenburg, Sweden.source
  • March 22 – The first taxicabs with taximeters begin operating in London.source
  • April 7 – Hershey Park opens in Hershey, Pennsylvania.source
  • April 17 – The first Minas Geraes-class battleship is laid down for Brazil, by Armstrong Whitworth on the River Tyne, in England, triggering the South American dreadnought race.source
  • June 10–August 10 – The Peking to Paris motor race is won by Prince Scipione Borghese, driving a 7-litre 35/45 hp Itala.source
  • June 22 – The London Underground's Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead Railway opens.source
  • July 15 – The London Electrobus Company starts running the first ever service of battery-electric buses between London's Victoria Station and Liverpool Street.source
  • October 17 – Guglielmo Marconi initiates commercial transatlantic radio communications between his high power longwave wireless telegraphy stations in Clifden, Ireland, and Glace Bay, Nova Scotia.source
  • James M. Spangler invents the first Hoover vacuum cleaner.source
  • The Autochrome Lumière is the first commercial color photography process.source
  • The triode thermionic amplifier invented by Lee de Forest, starting the development of electronics as a practical technology.source

Science & Discovery

  • The Diamond Sūtra, a woodblock printed Buddhist scripture dated 868, is discovered by Aurel Stein in the Mogao Caves in China; it is "the earliest complete survival of a dated printed book".source
  • November 16 – British Cunard Line passenger liner RMS Mauretania, the world's largest and fastest at this date, sets out on her maiden voyage from Liverpool to New York.source
  • The Moine Thrust Belt in Scotland is identified, one of the first to be discovered anywhere.source

Health & Medicine

  • Indiana, in the United States, becomes the world's first legislature to place laws permitting compulsory sterilization for eugenic purposes on the statute book.source

Crime & Justice

  • June 26 – Tiflis bank robbery: Bolsheviks attack a cash-filled bank coach in the centre of Tiflis, Georgia, killing 40 people.source
  • July 6 – Guardians of the Irish Crown Jewels notice that they have been stolen.source
  • September 22 – Uruguay abolishes capital punishment.source

Disasters & Accidents

  • February 11 – The French warship Jean Bart sinks off the coast of Morocco.source
  • February 12 – The steamship Larchmont collides with the Harry Hamilton in Long Island Sound; 183 lives are lost.source
  • February 21 – The English mail steamship Berlin is wrecked off the Hook of Holland; 142 lives are lost.source
  • February 24 – The Austrian Lloyd steamship Imperatrix, from Trieste to Bombay, is wrecked on Cape of Crete and sinks; 137 lives are lost.source
  • The 1907 Romanian Peasants' Revolt results in possibly as many as 11,000 deaths.source
  • The steamship Congo collides at the mouth of the Ems River with the German steamship Nerissa; 7 lives are lost.source
  • July 21 – The sinks after colliding with the lumber schooner San Pedro, off Shelter Cove, California, resulting in 88 deaths.source
  • August 29 – The partially completed superstructure of the Quebec Bridge collapses entirely, claiming the lives of 76 workers.source
  • December 6 – Monongah Mining disaster: A coal mine explosion kills 362 workers in Monongah, West Virginia.source
  • December 14 – The largest sailing ship ever built, the 7-masted U.S.-owned Thomas W. Lawson, is wrecked in the Isles of Scilly.source
  • December 19 – An explosion in a coal mine in Jacobs Creek, Pennsylvania kills 239.source

Climate & Environment

  • January 14 – 1907 Kingston earthquake: A 6.5 M w earthquake in Kingston, Jamaica, kills between 800 and 1,000.source
  • c. March 28 – The volcano Ksudach erupts, in the Kamchatka Peninsula.source

Culture & Society

  • February 9 – The "Mud March", the first large procession organised by The National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), takes place in London.source
  • March 25 – The first university sports federation in Europe is established in Hungary, with the participation or support of the associations of ten universities and colleges.source
  • Pablo Picasso completes his painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon.source
  • May 13 – The 5th Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party convenes in secret in London.source
  • August 28 – UPS is founded by James E. (Jim) Casey in Seattle, Washington.source
  • October 6 – The Deutscher Werkbund is founded in Germany.source

Births

  • January 11 – Pierre Mendès France, French politician, 142nd Prime Minister of France (d. 1982)source
  • March 9 – Mircea Eliade, Romanian religious historian, writer (d. 1986)source
  • July 6 – Frida Kahlo, Mexican painter (d. 1954)source
  • July 7 – Robert A. Heinlein, American science fiction author (d. 1988)source
  • August 21 – John G. Trump, American electrical engineer, inventor, and physicist (d. 1985)source
  • August 31 – Ramon Magsaysay, 7th President of the Philippines (d. 1957)source
  • September 1 – Walter Reuther, American labor union leader and president of the United Auto Workers (d. 1970)source
  • September 17 – Warren E. Burger, 15th Chief Justice of the United States (d. 1995)source
  • September 19 – Lewis F. Powell Jr., Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States (d. 1998)source
  • September 27 – Bhagat Singh, Indian revolutionary (d. 1931)source
  • September 29 – Gene Autry, American actor, singer, and businessman (d. 1998)source
  • October 2 – Víctor Paz Estenssoro, 45th President of Bolivia (d. 2001)source
  • October 28 – Sergio Méndez Arceo, 7th Mexican bishop of Cuernavaca 1953–1982, and advocate of Liberation theology (d. 1991).source
  • December 25 – Cab Calloway, American jazz singer and bandleader (d. 1994)source

Deaths

  • February 2 – Dmitri Mendeleev, Russian chemist (b. 1834)source
  • February 7 – Preston Leslie, 26th Governor of Kentucky and 9th territorial Governor of Montana (b. 1819)source
  • February 16 – Giosuè Carducci, Italian writer, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1835)source
  • February 17 – Henry Steel Olcott, American officer, theosophist (b. 1832)source
  • February 26 – C. W. Alcock, English footballer, journalist, and football promoter (b. 1842)source
  • April 14 – Frank Manly Thorn, American lawyer, politician, government official, essayist, journalist, humorist, inventor, and 6th Superintendent of the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey (b. 1836)source
  • May 26 – Ida Saxton McKinley, First Lady of the United States (b. 1847)source
  • June 23 – Hod Stuart, Canadian professional ice hockey player, killed in diving accident (b. 1879)source
  • July 15 – Qiu Jin, Chinese revolutionary, feminist and poet, executed (b. 1875)source
  • August 3 – Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Irish-American Beaux-Arts sculptor (b. 1848)source
  • September 6 – Sully Prudhomme, French writer, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1839)source
  • November 15 – Raphael Kalinowski, Polish Discalced Carmelite friar and saint (b. 1835)source
  • November 28 – Stanisław Wyspiański, Polish writer, painter and architect (b. 1869)source
  • December 17 – William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin, Irish-born physicist and engineer (b. 1824)source