December 1912

December 6, 1912: Authentic bust of Egypt's Queen Nefertiti discovered after 32 centuries

December 18, 1912: Fake prehistoric "missing link" Eoanthropus dawsoni presented to British scientists

The following events occurred in December 1912:

December 1, 1912 (Sunday)

• Mohandas K. Gandhi began the practice of wearing traditional clothing from India, after meeting with his mentor in the Indian Independence Movement, Gopal Krishna Gokhale in South Africa. To that point, Gandhi had been a lawyer in Pretoria during his adult life, and had worn traditional Western clothing.^[1][2]
• Hiram Bingham completed his first Peruvian expedition, during which he had discovered the Inca ruins at Machu Picchu, and departed Peru with 100 cases of artifacts and 700 photographs.^[3]

^[4]

December 2, 1912 (Monday)

• Pianist Mike Bernard made the first recording of a ragtime song, with Everybody Two Step for Columbia Records.^[5]
• General Uehara Yūsaku resigned as Japan's Minister of War after the rest of the cabinet refused to agree to increasing the army by an additional two divisions. Uyehera's departure preceded the resignation of the entire ministry.^[2][6]
• The Archbishop Adolfo Alejandro Nouel was made President of the Republic of Santo Domingo (now the Dominican Republic)^[2]
• German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg told the Reichstag in a speech that Germany would go to war if Austria-Hungary was attacked by any other nation as a matter of defending Germany's future and security.^[7]

December 3, 1912 (Tuesday)

• At Çatalca, Turkey signed an armistice with Bulgaria, Serbia and Montenegro, but Greece did not participate.^[8] The ceasefire took effect at 7:00 pm local time, temporarily halting the fighting.^[9] Part of the ceasefire was to hold a peace conference in London, but the discussions failed and hostilities would resume on February 3, 1913.^[10]
• The impeachment trial of U.S. District Judge Robert Wodrow Archbald began in the U.S. Senate.^[2]
• Fifteen people were killed in a train wreck near Dresden, Ohio.^[11]
• Died: Alice Bunker Stockham, M.D., 79, obstetrician, gynecologist and only the fifth American woman to become a physician.

December 4, 1912 (Wednesday)

• The Marquis Saionji Kinmochi resigned as Prime Minister of Japan, and the other cabinet followed suit, after the ministers were unable to find a replacement for War Minister Uyehera.^[12]
• Italy's Chamber of Deputies approved the peace treaty with Turkey, 335-24.^[13]
• African-American boxer Jack Johnson shocked much of America by marrying "outside his race" to white American Lucille Cameron. The two would divorce in 1924.^[14]
• Born: Gregory "Pappy" Boyington, American pilot, United States Marine Corps fighter ace who led the "Black Sheep Squadron" in World War II, in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho (d. 1988)
• Died: Archibald Gracie IV, 53, American author and Titanic survivor, after health damage sustained while awaiting rescue in a lifeboat.

December 5, 1912 (Thursday)

• The Triple Alliance agreement was renewed in Vienna between Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy.^[15]
• Persian religious leader `Abdu'l-Bahá completed the trip to the United States and Canada that had started with his arrival in New York City on April 11. Having introduced the Baha'i faith to North America, he departed from New York on the steamer Celtic, bound for Liverpool.^[16]
• The U.S. Department of Justice dropped further antitrust proceedings against the American Sugar Refining Company.^[2]
• Born: Kate Simon, Polish-American author and travel writer, as Kaila Grobsmith in Warsaw (d. 1990)
• Died: J. Scott Mason, Governor of North Borneo, after falling from a horse.

December 6, 1912 (Friday)

• In excavations at Tell al-Amarna in Egypt, the Nefertiti Bust was unearthed, intact, after a burial of 32 centuries. The team, led by a team led by German archaeologist Ludwig Borchardt, discovered the limestone statue of the head and shoulders of the wife of the Pharaoh Akhenaten (who reigned 1353 BC to 1336 BC), while sifting through the workshop o the sculptor Thutmose. Borchardt concluded that the statue had once set upon a wooden shelf, next to a similar bust of Akhenaten, until termite damage caused both objects to topple; and while the pharaoh's statue was shattered, Nefertiti's bust survived because it had happened to land, upside down, on its flat top.^[17]
• Count Terauchi Masatake, the Governor General of Korea, was asked by the Emperor to form a new government as Prime Minister of Japan.^[18]
• Vladimir, the Metropolitan of Moscow, was appointed President of the Russian Orthodox Synod and Metropolitan of St. Petersburg as well.^[2]

December 7, 1912 (Saturday)

• German-born American banker Paul Warburg presented the blueprint, for what would become the Federal Reserve System, for presentation to Congress and to President-Elect Woodrow Wilson. The original plan, with twenty reserve banks under control of a central board, would be altered to 12 federal reserve banks after Warburg modified the Federal Reserve Act to accommodate the wishes of Congressman Carter Glass.^[19]
• Hassan Riaz Pasha, the Turkish Governor of Scutari, refused to accept his nation's armistice and continued fighting the First Balkan War.^[2]
• Born: Lewis Samuel Feuer, American philosopher, in New York City (d. 2002)
• Died: George Darwin, 67, English astronomer and mathematician

December 8, 1912 (Sunday)

• Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany convened a "War Council" at Potsdam, with his military leaders, after receiving the news that the United Kingdom would join with France and Russia in the event of a European war. The outcome was to postpone plans for war with the Russian Empire until the near future, but to prepare the German public for an inevitable "racial war, the war of Slavdom against Germandom" in 1914 or 1915.^[20]
• Turkish cavalry and artillery withdrew from Tripoli, which had been ceded to Italy.^[2]
• Born: Jean Garrigue, American poet, in Evansville, Indiana (d. 1972)

December 9, 1912 (Monday)

• The Greek submarine Delfin made the first torpedo attack in modern warfare, after sighting the Turkish cruiser Medjidieh and five escort ships. Lt. Commander Paparrigopoulos ordered the firing of the underwater missile from a distance of 500 meters, but the torpedo "did not run properly and sank".^[21]
• General Moritz von Auffenberg resigned as the War Minister of Austria, and was succeeded the next day by Count Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf.^[22]
• Prince Louis of Battenberg, who would later anglicize his name to Louis Mountbatten, was appointed as the new British First Sea Lord.^[23]

December 10, 1912 (Tuesday)

• The Austro-Hungarian Empire issued a general mobilization to all of its military men and reservists all over the world in anticipation of war.^[24]
• The Turkish infantry departed Tripoli, completing its surrender of the Libyan territory to Italy.^[2]
• Born: Philip Hart, Democratic United States Senator from Michigan from 1959–1976 (d. 1976

December 11, 1912 (Wednesday)

• Roland Garros of France set a new altitude record of 18,670 feet at Tunis.^[2]
• Born: Carlo Ponti, Italian film producer (d. 2007)

December 12, 1912 (Thursday)

• U.S. Representative Charles C. Bowman of Pennsylvania was unseated by a 153-118 vote of his fellow House Congressmen, who concluded that he had used corrupt practices to be elected in 1910. Bowman still had almost three months left in his term, which would expire March 4. Bowman's Democratic opponent, George R. McLean, was also denied a seat by a 181-88 margin, because the majority concluded that he was guilty of the same practices as Bowman.^[25]
• Eduard Müller was elected President of the Swiss Confederation.^[2]
• Born: Henry Armstrong, American boxer (d. 1988)
• Died: Luitpold, Prince Regent of Bavaria, 91. Luitpold had been the de facto ruler since 1886 because of the mental illness of his nephew, King Ludwig II. Luitpold's son, Prince Ludwig of the House of Wittelsbach, succeeded to the regency and would later become King Ludwig III.
• Died: Susan Tolman Mills, 87, co-founder of Mills College, the first women's college west of the U.S. Rocky Mountains

December 13, 1912 (Friday)

• By executive order, outgoing U.S. President William H. Taft established National Petroleum Reserve No. 2 (NPR-2), at the Buena Vista Hills in Kern County, California, south of Reserve No. 1.^[26]
• Antitrust proceedings were filed in the U.S. against the "candy trust".^[2]

December 14, 1912 (Saturday)

• Lieutenant Belgrave Edward Sutton Ninnis died in Antarctica, after falling into a crevasse whilst on an expedition with explorer Douglas Mawson. Ninnis had been guiding six dogs who were pulling the sledge carrying much of the party's supplies, including most of their food, their tent, and spare clothing, when the ice gave way. Looking into the pit, the Mawson and Dr. Xavier Mertz saw a dog about 150 feet below, and an even deeper abyss beyond, but nothing else. Mawson and Mertz were left with a ten-day supply of food and still had 315 miles to cover at the time of the accident.^[27]
• General Louis Botha resigned as Prime Minister of South Africa.^[28]
• The U.S. Senate voted to approve the construction of a $2,000,000 memorial to Abraham Lincoln at West Potomac Park in Washington, DC.^[2]

December 15, 1912 (Sunday)

• Died: Whitelaw Reid, 75, U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom, in London at his residence at Dorchester House.

December 16, 1912 (Monday)

• The Balkan Peace Conference was opened at St. James's Palace in London by Secretary of Foreign Affairs Grey^[2][29] On the same day, the navies of Greece and Turkey fought a battle at the entrance of the Bosporus Strait. The Turkish fleet, with 4 battleships, 9 destroyers and 6 torpedo boats opened fire on a Greek battleship squadron which arrived from the island of Imbros. The Greek fleet retaliated ten minutes later, sending the Turkish ships in retreat, and the battle ended at 10:30 am, forty minutes after it began. The Greeks sustained 8 casualties and no major damage, while the Turks lost 58 killed and wounded.^[30]

December 17, 1912 (Tuesday)

• The Franco-Spanish treaty of Morocco was approved by the Spanish Chamber of Deputies, 216-22.^[2]
• Kamoun the self-described Sultan of Dar-al-Kuti in what is now the Central African Republic, was defeated by the French Army after nearly two years of defying France and its control of Ouanda Djallé^[31]
• Born: Edward Short, British politician (d. 2012)
• Died: "Common", 24, English racehorse who won the English Triple Crown in 1891

December 18, 1912 (Wednesday)

• Piltdown Man, thought to be the fossilized skull of a hitherto unknown form of early human, was presented to the Geological Society of London. Dr. A.S. Woodard told a reporter, "That this skull, representing a hitherto unknown species, is the missing link, I have no doubt." ^[32][33] In 1953, the Piltdown Man would be revealed to be a hoax.^[34]
• A mine explosion at Achenbach, near Dortmund in Germany, killed 25 people and injured 15.^[35]
• The U.S. House of Representatives passed the Burnett immigration bill, barring any immigrants who were over 16 and illiterate, 178-52.^[2] Although the bill would pass the U.S. Senate as well, President Taft would veto it and the House would fail to override it.
• Roland Garros became the first person to fly an airplane across the Mediterranean Sea, traveling 160 miles from Tunis to Sicily.^[4]
• Born: Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., who would become (in 1954) the first African-American General in the United States Air Force and who would retire at the four star rank in 1998; in Washington, DC (d. 2002). His father, then First Lt. Benjamin O. Davis, Sr., would (in 1940) become the first African-American General in the United States Army.
• Born: Otto Ernst Remer, who would be captured in 1945 as a Brigadier General in the Army of Nazi Germany, and would later be a leader of Neonazism in West Germany; in Neubrandenburg (d. 1997)
• Died: Will Carleton, 67, American poet; and J. Cheever Goodwin, 60, playwright of numerous musical comedies

December 19, 1912 (Thursday)

• The "Star Spangled Banner Flag", which had flown over Fort McHenry in September 1814 during the Battle of Baltimore, and which became the inspiration for, and the subject of, the American national anthem, was donated to the Smithsonian Institution. The descendants of Major George Armistead had loaned the flag to the Institution in 1907, before making a gift of it.^[36]
• Japanese Army Captains Yoshitoshi Tokugawa and Kumazo Hino became the first military pilots in Japan, with Hino flying a German Grade monoplane for 1,200 meters and Tokugawa flying for four minutes in a French Farman biplane.^[37]
• The United States warned rebel leaders in the Republic of Santo Domingo (now the Dominican Republic) not to take action against the new government, or the U.S. would intervene.^[2]
• President Taft, in his final three months in office, asked Congress to give seats, though not votes, to members of the presidential cabinet. Congress then adjourned without taking up the idea, and Taft departed for a visit to Panama.^[38]
• William H. Van Schaick, who had been the captain of the steamboat General Slocum when a fire on the ship killed over 1,000 passengers in 1904, was paroled from New York's Sing Sing prison after serving three and one half years. He would be pardoned on Christmas Day by President Taft.^[39]

December 20, 1912 (Friday)

• Twenty-two of the 27 people on the British steamer Florence were killed off of the coast of Cape Race, Newfoundland.^[40]
• General Botha returned as Prime Minister of South Africa and formed a new cabinet.^[2]
• Died: J. H. Logue, Chicago diamond merchant, was brutally murdered in his office in midday. Logue was stabbed 17 times, shot in his right shoulder, had his skull crushed, had part of his right thumb severed, had his mouth burned with acid, and was gagged. The killing was believed to have been revenge for Logue's prosecution of diamond thieves in 1905 and 1906.^[41] Five men and four women were arrested the next day in connection with the killing.^[42]

December 21, 1912 (Saturday)

• Norway, Sweden and Denmark jointly proclaimed their neutrality, refusing to favor either side in a European war.^[43]
• Prince Katsura Tarō was appointed as the new Prime Minister of Japan.^[44]
• Moroccan rebels attacked French Army forces at Dar-el-Kadi, near Mogador.^[2]
• President Taft departed the United States on board the new battleship USS Arkansas for a visit to the Panama Canal.^[4]

December 22, 1912 (Sunday)

• A group of 80 actors and actresses in New York's theaters gathered to form a labor union, the American Federation of Actors, which in 1913 would incorporate as the Actors' Equity Association.^[45]
• Born: Lady Bird Johnson, First Lady of the United States 1963-1969, as Claudia Alta Taylor in Karnack, Texas (d. 2007)

December 23, 1912 (Monday)

• Delhi conspiracy case: The Viceroy of India, Lord Hardinge, was wounded in an assassination attempt, when a bomb was thrown at him as he was arriving in Delhi. Hardinge's attendant was killed in the explosion.^[46] Hardinge was being brought to the capital on an elephant as part of the arrival ceremony, when a bomb was thrown at him from a housetop. Debris struck his right shoulder. Hardinge's attendant, Jamadar Mahabir Singh,^[47] was killed, and 20 people were injured. Four people (Amir Ali, Avadh Behari, Bal Mukund and Basant Kumar Biswas, who threw the bomb) were later executed for the attack,^[48] but the mastermind behind the plot, Rashbehari Bose, escaped to Japan where he would live the rest of his life, dying in 1945.
• The completion of the Aswan Dam was celebrated in a ceremony attended by Lord Kitchener and the Khedive of Egypt.^[2][49]
• Twenty-two people were killed when two British steamers collided in the Gulf of Mexico.^[2]
• Ohannes Bey Kouyoumjian, an Armenian Catholic, was appointed as the Turkish Governor of Lebanon.^[2]
• Born: Anna J. Harrison, American organic chemist, first woman to serve (1978) as President of the American Chemical Society; in Benton City, Missouri (d. 1998)
• Died: Otto Schoetensack, 62, German anthropologist; and Édouard Detaille, 64, French military artist

December 24, 1912 (Tuesday)

• An assassination attempt was made against Prince Yamagata Aritomo, the former Prime Minister of Japan.^[2]
• Merck filed patent applications in Germany for synthesis of the entactogenic drug MDMA (Ecstasy), developed by Anton Köllisch.^[50]
• Sunnyvale, California, was incorporated as a town in Santa Clara County. The future Silicon Valley home of technology companies, including Yahoo!, originally had 1,200 people, and would have over 140,000 a century later.^[51]
• Died: Lottie Moon, 72, American Southern Baptist missionary to China,

December 25, 1912 (Wednesday)

1912 Christmas card featuring a woolly mammoth, by Charles R. Knight

• Fifteen minutes after U.S. President Taft was driven down a street during his visit to Panama, a dynamite blast wrecked the street in Colon. No group claimed responsibility, but one report noted that "it is generally believed that the act was committed with a view to taking the life of the president and that the plot only failed because of some miscalculation in the arrangements." ^[52]
• The first pro-independence organization in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), the Indische Partij, was founded by Ernest Douwes Dekker, an "Indo" with "a Dutch father and a German-Javanese mother", and Indonesian physicians Tjipto Mangoenkoesoemo and Soewardi Soerjaningrat.^[53]
• After a vote of censure by the Peruvian Senate, Elías Malpartida resigned as Prime Minister of Peru.^[4]
• Born: Natalino Otto, Italian singer, as Natale Codognotto in Cogoleto (d. 1969)
• Died: Margaret Hatch, 40, nationally known vaudeville actress, suffered a heart attack on stage while performing at a theater in Stamford, Connecticut, and died minutes later.^[54]

December 26, 1912 (Thursday)

• Mexican revolutionary leader Pancho Villa was able to escape from the military prison of Santiago Tlatelolco, with the help of a sympathetic employee, and fled to the United States, hiding in El Paso, Texas.^[55]
• The Danish steamer Volmer encountered a gale in the English Channel, and waves killed 13 of the 15 crew after they escaped in lifeboats. The ship's captain and a sailor were the only survivors.^[56]
• U.S. Senator-elect William H. Thompson of Kansas suffered severe burns while "playing Santa for a houseful of children" in Garden City, Kansas.^[57]
• Raymond Poincaré declared his intention to run for President of France.^[2]

December 27, 1912 (Friday)

• George Washington Donaghey, the outgoing Governor of Arkansas, "accomplished through executive action what forty years of protests and duplicitous legislation had failed to do" ^[58] toward ending the practice of convict leasing in his state. Although Donaghey had not been able to persuade the state legislature to ban the system of the state prisons selling the use of inmates to private companies as unpaid workers, he had lobbied for the early parole of prisoners who had committed minor offenses, and in a single day, pardoned 360 other convicts of their crimes, freeing them prison and from slave labor. The legislature ended the practice the next year.^[59]
• Former Prime Minister Alexandre Ribot began his run for office as President of France.^[2]
• Born: Conroy Maddox, British painter, in Ledbury (d. 2005)

December 28, 1912 (Saturday)

• Rudolf Steiner founded the Anthroposophical Society in Cologne, Germany, breaking away from the Theosophical Society.^[60]

December 29, 1912 (Sunday)

• Alexander Alexandrovich Makarov resigned as Russia's Minister of the Internal Affairs.^[2]
• Died: Philip H. Cooper, 68, Rear Admiral of the U.S. Navy and former Commander of the U.S. Asiatic Fleet

December 30, 1912 (Monday)

• The town of Carnation, Washington, USA was officially incorporated with the name of "Tolt", which was later changed during 1917.
• Future U.S. presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson, 12 years old at the time, accidentally shot and killed a family friend, 16-year-old Ruth Merwin, during a party at his home in Bloomington, Illinois.^[61]
• The First Balkan War ended temporarily: Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro, and Serbia (the Balkan League countries) signed an armistice with Turkey.
• Born: Peggy Glanville-Hicks, Australian composer, in Melbourne (d. 1990)
• Died: Alfred von Kiderlen-Waechter, 50, German Foreign Minister, died suddenly while he was on vacation in Stuttgart, where he was visiting his sister during the Christmas holiday.^[62]

December 31, 1912 (Tuesday)

• China defaulted on its payment under the Boxer Indemnity Agreement, arising from damages to the eight powers during the Boxer Rebellion of 1900.^[2]
• Álvaro de Figueroa, 1st Count of Romanones became the new Prime Minister of Spain.^[2]
• Former Venezuelan President Cipriano Castro was detained at Ellis Island pending a ruling as to whether he was an undesirable alien.^[2]

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