Directory

1912 CE

The Titanic sinks on her maiden voyage, killing over 1,500 people and becoming one of history's deadliest maritime disasters; The 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm, Sweden introduces electronic timing and public address systems; The First Balkan War sees the Balkan League of Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece, and Montenegro push the Ottoman Empire out of Europe; The Lena massacre in the Russian Empire kills hundreds of striking gold miners, fueling revolutionary anger; The death of Emperor Meiji ends the Meiji era in the Japanese Empire and begins the Taishō period; The Novarupta eruption in the U.S. Territory of Alaska becomes the century's most powerful volcanic event.

Geopolitics & Diplomacy

  • January 1 – The Republic of China is established.source
  • January 6 – New Mexico becomes the 47th U.S. state.source
  • January 8 – The African National Congress is founded as the South African Native National Congress in Bloemfontein, to promote improved rights for black South Africans, with John Langalibalele Dube as its first president.source
  • January 12 – In the 1912 German federal election the Social Democrats for the first time becomes the party with the most seats.source
  • January 14 – Raymond Poincaré forms a coalition government in France, beginning his first term of office as Prime Minister on 21 January.source
  • February 12 – The Manchu Qing dynasty of China comes to an end after 268 years with the abdication of the Xuantong Emperor Puyi and the establishment of the Republic of China.source
  • February 14 – Arizona is admitted as the 48th state of the United States, the last contiguous state to be admitted into the Union.source
  • February 29 – Serbia and Bulgaria secretly sign a treaty of alliance for a term of eight years, with each pledging to come to the defence of the other during war. The treaty would eventually be dishonored in World War I.source
  • March 30 – The French Third Republic establishes the French protectorate in Morocco by the Treaty of Fes with Sultan Abd al-Hafid of Morocco.source
  • May 11 – Alaska becomes a territory of the United States.source
  • August 12 – Sultan Abd al-Hafid of Morocco abdicates.source
  • September 4 – The government of the Ottoman Empire agrees to the demands put forward in the Albanian Revolt of 1912.source
  • October 18 – Italy and the Ottoman Empire sign a treaty in Ouchy near Lausanne, ending the Italo-Turkish War.source
  • November 5 – 1912 United States presidential election: New Jersey Governor Woodrow Wilson beats former president Theodore Roosevelt and incumbent president William Howard Taft.source
  • November 28 – Albania declares independence from the Ottoman Empire.source

Conflict & Security

  • February 24 – Battle of Beirut: Italy makes a surprise attack on the Ottoman port of Beirut, when the cruiser Giuseppe Garibaldi and the gunboat Volturno bombard the harbour, killing 97 sailors and civilians.source
  • March 6 – Italian forces become the first to use airships in war as two dirigibles drop bombs on Turkish troops encamped at Janzur, from an altitude of 6,000 feet.source
  • April 11 – makes her last call, at Queenstown in Ireland.source
  • April 17 – Lena massacre: Russian troops kill or wound 500 striking gold miners in Siberia.source
  • April 18 – Cunard Line vessel arrives in New York with the 705 survivors.source
  • August 4 – United States occupation of Nicaragua: U.S. Marines land from the USS Annapolis in Nicaragua, to support the conservative government at its request.source
  • October 8 – The First Balkan War begins: Montenegro declares war against the Ottoman Empire.source
  • October 14 – John Flammang Schrank attempts to assassinate Theodore Roosevelt in Milwaukee.source
  • October 18–21 – First Balkan War: The Greek navy captures the island of Lemnos for use as a forward base against the Dardanelles.source
  • October 24 – First Balkan War: Battle of Kumanovo – Serbian forces defeat the Ottoman army in Vardar Macedonia.source
  • December 3 – Bulgaria, Montenegro, and Serbia (the Balkan League, but not Greece) sign an armistice with the Ottoman Empire at Çatalca, temporarily halting the First Balkan War after 2 months. (The armistice will expire on February 3, 1913, and hostilities will resume.)source

Exploration & Expansion

  • January 17 – British polar explorer Captain Robert Falcon Scott and a team of four become the second expeditionary group to reach the South Pole.source
  • March 7 – Roald Amundsen, in Hobart, Tasmania, announces his success in reaching the South Pole the previous December.source
  • March 16 – Lawrence Oates, dying member of Scott's South Pole expedition, leaves the tent saying, "I am just going outside and may be some time."source
  • March 29 (probable date) – Robert Falcon Scott and the remaining members of his South Pole expedition die.source
  • April 16 – Harriet Quimby becomes the first woman to fly across the English Channel.source

Religion & Belief

  • January 18 (Old Style January 5) – Prague Conference: Vladimir Lenin and the Bolshevik Party break away from the rest of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party.source
  • Wilfrid Voynich discovers the eponymous manuscript in the Villa Mondragone.source

Economy & Finance

  • April 30 – Carl Laemmle founds Universal Studios as the Universal Film and Manufacturing Company in the United States.source
  • July 12 – The United States release of Sarah Bernhardt's film Les Amours de la reine Élisabeth is influential in the development of the movie feature. Adolph Zukor, who incorporates Paramount Pictures on May 8, 1914, launches his company as the distributor.source

Technology & Infrastructure

  • January 5 – The Prague Conference (6th All-Russian Conference of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party) opens.source
  • January 22 – The Overseas Railroad officially opens on the Florida Keys.source
  • March 1 – Albert Berry is reported to have made the first parachute jump from a flying airplane.source
  • French aviator Henri Salmet makes the first nonstop flight from Paris to London, in three hours. ##claim retracted see Flight, 23 March 1912, p. 264 M. Salmet's London-Paris Flight ##source
  • April 20 – Fenway Park in Boston, Massachusetts opens.source
  • May 13 – In the United Kingdom, the Royal Flying Corps (forerunner of the Royal Air Force) is established.source
  • August 1 – The Jungfrau Railway is inaugurated with the opening of the subterranean Jungfraujoch railway station in the Bernese Oberland of Switzerland, Europe's highest at 3450 m ft above sea level.source
  • October 16 – Bulgarian pilots Radul Minkov and Prodan Toprakchiev perform the second bombing with an airplane in history, at the railway station of Karaagac near Edirne, against Turkey.source
  • October 17 – Krupp engineers Benno Strauss and Eduard Maurer patent austenitic stainless steel.source
  • December 24 – Merck files patent applications in Germany for synthesis of the entactogenic drug MDMA (Ecstasy), developed by Anton Köllisch.source
  • Articulated trams are invented and first used by the Boston Elevated Railway.source

Science & Discovery

  • January 6 – German geophysicist Alfred Wegener first presents his theory of continental drift.source
  • April 1 – A partial lunar eclipse takes place, the first of two lunar eclipses this year. It is the 61st lunar eclipse of the 111th Saros cycle, which started with a penumbral lunar eclipse on June 10, 830 AD and will conclude with another penumbral lunar eclipse on July 19, 2092.source
  • April 10 – White Star liner departs from Southampton, England, with more than 2,200 passengers and crew on her maiden voyage, bound for New York.source
  • April 17 – A hybrid solar eclipse is the 30th solar eclipse of Solar Saros 137.source
  • May 23 – The Hamburg America Line's is launched in Hamburg and is the world's largest ship.source
  • September 28 – W. C. Handy publishes "The Memphis Blues" in the United States.source
  • Edgar Rice Burroughs' character Tarzan first appears in Tarzan of the Apes, in American pulp magazine The All-Story.source
  • Sax Rohmer's character Fu Manchu first appears in the first story of The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu in English pulp magazine The Story-Teller.source
  • November 11 – William Lawrence Bragg presents his derivation of Bragg's law for the angles for coherent and incoherent scattering from a crystal lattice, creating the field of x-ray crystallography, and making possible the eventual imaging of the double helix of DNA.source
  • December 18 – Piltdown Man, thought to be the fossilized skull of a hitherto unknown form of early human, is presented to the Geological Society of London (it is revealed to be a hoax in 1953).source
  • Casimir Funk identifies vitamins.source
  • The Scoville Unit (used to measure the heat of peppers) is devised and tested by Wilbur Scoville.source

Health & Medicine

  • January 23 – The First International Opium Convention is signed at The Hague to restrict exports.source

Disasters & Accidents

  • April 14–15 – Sinking of the RMS Titanic: strikes an iceberg in the northern Atlantic Ocean and sinks with the loss of more than 1,500 lives.source

Climate & Environment

  • June 6 – The Novarupta volcano is formed in Alaska by a VEI 6 eruption, the world's largest (in terms of matter emitted) in the 20th century.source
  • June 30 – Regina Cyclone: Canada's deadliest tornado strikes Regina, Saskatchewan, killing 28 people.source
  • August 29 – A typhoon strikes China, killing at least 50,000 people.source

Culture & Society

  • March 12 – The Girl Scouts of the USA is founded by Juliette Gordon Low, in Savannah, Georgia.source
  • April 14 – Santos FC, a Brazilian association football club, is founded in State of Sao Paulo.source
  • May 5 – The 1912 Summer Olympics open in Stockholm, Sweden. Modern Pentathlon is contested for the first time in these games.source
  • June 26 – Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 9 is premiered posthumously by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Bruno Walter.source
  • Ludwig von Mises publishes his foundational The Theory of Money and Credit.source

Births

  • February 2 – Millvina Dean, youngest passenger and last survivor of the Sinking of the RMS Titanic (d. 2009)source
  • February 7 – Roberta McCain, American socialite and oil heiress; mother of U.S. Senator John McCain (d. 2020)source
  • March 16 – Pat Nixon, First Lady of the United States (d. 1993)source
  • March 17 – Bayard Rustin, African-American civil rights activist (d. 1987)source
  • March 19 – Adolf Galland, German general, World War II fighter ace (d. 1996)source
  • April 19 – Glenn T. Seaborg, American chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1999)source
  • May 17 – Archibald Cox, American Watergate special prosecutor (d. 2004)source
  • May 28 – Patrick White, Australian writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1990)source
  • July 14 – Woody Guthrie, American folk musician (d. 1967)source
  • July 31 – Milton Friedman, American economist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2006)source
  • August 16 – Edward J. York, American air force colonel, participant of the Doolittle Raid (d. 1984)source
  • October 5 – João Marinho Neto, Brazilian supercentenarian, world's oldest verified living man (since 25 November 2024)source
  • December 1 – Minoru Yamasaki, Japanese-American architect of the World Trade Center (d. 1986)source
  • December 22 – Lady Bird Johnson, First Lady of the United States (d. 2007)source

Deaths

  • February 10 – Joseph Lister, English surgeon (b. 1827)source
  • April 20 – Bram Stoker, Irish writer (Dracula) (b. 1847)source
  • Isidor Straus, German American department store owner (Macy's) and member of United States House of Representatives (b. 1845)source
  • May 4 – Nettie Stevens, American geneticist credited with discovering sex chromosomes (b. 1861)source
  • May 30 – Wilbur Wright, American aviation pioneer, of typhoid (b. 1867)source
  • June 9 – Ion Luca Caragiale, Romanian writer (b. 1852)source
  • June 12 – Frédéric Passy, French economist, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (b. 1822)source
  • June 25 – Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Dutch-born British painter, died in Germany (b. 1836)source
  • July 1 – Harriet Quimby, who set the record as the first woman to fly the English Channel two months previously, dies in Squantum, Massachusetts, after her brand-new two-seat Bleriot monoplane crashes, killing both Quimby and her passenger.source
  • July 30 – Emperor Meiji of Japan dies; he is succeeded by his son Yoshihito, who becomes Emperor Taishō. In the history of Japan, the event marks the end of the Meiji period and the beginning of the Taishō period.source
  • July 31 – Allan Octavian Hume, British civil servant (b. 1829)source
  • August 20 – Walter Goodman, English painter, illustrator and author (b. 1838)source
  • September 1 – Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, African-British composer (b. 1875)source
  • October 6 – October 6 – Susie King Taylor, African-American army nurse. First nurse of the Black Army (b. 1848)source