1908

1908 is a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will take you to calendar).

Years:
1905 1906 1907 – 1908 – 1909 1910 1911

Decades:
1870s 1880s 1890s – 1900s – 1910s 1920s 1930s

Centuries:
19th century – 20th century – 21st century

1908 in topic:
Arts
Architecture - Art - Film - Literature - Music - Television
Science and technology
Aviation - Rail transport - Science
Other topics
Canada – Ireland – South Africa – Sport

Lists of leaders:
State leaders - Religious leaders

1 Events
2 Births
3 Deaths
4 Nobel Prizes

Events

January-February

January 1 – A ball signifying New Year's Day drops in New York City's Times Square for the first time
January 8 – A train collision occurs in the Park Avenue Tunnel in New York City killing 17, injuring 38 and leading to increased demand for electric trains.
January 11 – Grand Canyon National Monument is created
January 12 – A long-distance radio message is sent from the Eiffel Tower for the first time.
January 21 – New York City passes a law, the Sullivan Ordinance, making it illegal for aliens to smoke in public only to be vetoed by the mayor.
January 24 – Robert Baden-Powell begins the Boy Scout movement
February 1 – King Carlos I of Portugal and Crown Prince Luis shot in Lisbon
February 11 – Australia regain The Ashes with a 308 run cricket victory over England.
February 18 – Japanese immigration to USA forbidden

April-June

April 7 – Herbert Henry Asquith takes office as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, from Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman
April 14 – In Denmark, suffrage of every tax-paying citizen
April 21 – Friedrich A Cook's claimed date to have reached North Pole
April 27 – The 1908 Summer Olympics open in London.
May 10 – Mother's Day is observed for the first time (Andrew's Methodist Church in Grafton, West Virgina).
May 26 – At Masjid-al-Salaman in southwest Persia, the first major commercial oil strike in the Middle East is made. The rights to the resource are quickly acquired by the United Kingdom.
June 30 – The Tunguska impact event, also known as the "Russian explosion" occurs in Siberia.

July-December

July 6 – Robert Peary sets sail for the Arctic North Pole.
July 11-12 night – Explosion of a ship Amalthea in the Malmö harbor in Sweden, housing 80 British strikebreakers. 1 dead, 20 injured.
July 22 – Albert Fisher establishes the Fisher Body Company to manufacture carriage and automobile bodies.
July 26 – United States Attorney General Charles Joseph Bonaparte issues an order to immediately staff the Office of the Chief Examiner (later renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation).
October 5 – Bulgaria declares its independence from the Ottoman Empire – Ferdinand I of Bulgaria becomes Tsar
December 28 – An 7 Richter scale earthquake destroys Messina, Sicily and rocks Calabria killing over 75,000.
November – William Howard Taft defeats William Jennings Bryan in the U.S. presidential election
November 13 – Andrew Fisher becomes the 5th Prime Minister of Australia.

unknown dates

First Zionist colony in Palestine
British suffragettes begin a campaign for female suffrage
Elizabeth Garrett Anderson is the first woman in England to be elected mayor (of Aldeburgh)
Due to the evidence collected by Roger Casement, Leopold II of Belgium is forced to make reforms in Congo, which is his personal colony
Danish minister of Justice, Alberti, is revealed to be an embezzler
The Children's Encyclopedia
Bureau of Investigation, forerunner of FBI, founded
Blackball coal miner strike in New Zealand lasts 11 weeks
Isak Saba, the first Sami in the Norwegian parliament
Henri Matisse open his own art academy
Serial killer Belle Guinness disappears in Laporte
Young Turks revolution in the Ottoman Empire
Change of Emperor of Qing Dynasty from Guangxu Emperor of China (1875-1908) to Henry Puyi (1909-1911)
Henry Ford produces its first Model T automobile.
A 40,000-year-old Neandertal boy skeleton is found at Le Moustier in southwest France.
The Child Labour Act of Ontario is passed.
The Irish Universities Act, 1908 is passed and creates the National University of Ireland at Dublin and the Queen's University of Belfast.
First Ideal Home Exhibition held.
De Meester's Dutch government resigns.
Discovery of oil deposits near the PPersian city of Abadan.
Abd al-Aziz IV, sultan of Morocco is deposed and is succeeded by his brother Abd al-Hafiz.
The Young Turks rebel and force sultan Abd al-Hamid II to adhere to the constitution of 1876.
The University of the Philippines was founded at Manila.
The University of Alberta was founded in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.

Births

January

January 9 – Simone de Beauvoir, French feminist writer (d. 1986)
January 12 – Jean Delannoy, French film director
January 14 – Rus Columbo, singer, bandleader, and composer
January 15 – Edward Teller, American physicist (d. 2003)
January 22 – Lev Davidovich Landau, Russian physicist (d. 1968)
January 26 – Stéphane Grappelli, French jazz violinist and composer (d. 1997)
January 27 – Oran "Hot Lips" Page, American jazz musician (d. 1954)

February

February 1 – George Pál, Hungarian-born animator (d. 1980)
February 5 – Daisy and Violet Hilton, English conjoined twin actresses (d. 1969)
February 8 – Emil Staiger, scientist of literature (d. 1987)
February 11 – Sutan Takdir Alishahbana, Indonesian linguist and writer
February 11 – Vivian Ernest Fuchs, English geologist and explorer (d. 1999)
February 11 – Josh White, musician
February 15 – HAP Grieshaber, artist (d. 1981)
February 17 – Red Barber, American baseball announcer and sports journalist (d. 1992)
February 22 – John Mills, English actor (d. 2005)
February 23 – William McMahon, twentieth Prime Minister of Australia, (d. 1988)
February 26 – Tex Avery, American cartoonist (d. 1980)
February 26 – Jean-Pierre Wimille, French race car driver (d. 1949)
February 29 – Balthus, Polish-French painter (d. 2001)
February 29 – Dee Brown, American writer and historian (d. 2002)

March

March 2 – Walter Bruch, German engineer (d. 1990)
March 5 – Rex Harrison, English actor (d. 1990)
March 7 – Anna Magnani, Italian actress (d. 1973)
March 13 – Walter Annenberg, American publisher and philanthropist (d. 2002)
March 17 – Brigitte Helm, German actress (d. 1996)
March 20 – Sir Michael Redgrave, English actor (d. 1985)
March 22 – Louis L'Amour, American author (d. 1988)
March 23 – Joan Crawford, American actor (d. 1977)
March 25 – Helmut Käutner, German actor and film director (d. 1980)
March 25 – David Lean, English film director (d. 1991)
March 29 – Arthur O'Connell, American actor (d. 1981)

April

April 1 – Abraham Maslow, American psychologist (d. 1970)
April 2 – Buddy Ebsen, American actor and dancer (d. 2003)
April 5 – Bette Davis, American actress (d. 1989)
April 5 – Herbert von Karajan, Austrian conductor (d. 1989)
April 7 – Percy Faith, Canadian-born composer, musician (d. 1976)
April 15 – Eden Ahbez, American hippie musician (d. 1995)
April 20 – Lionel Hampton, American jazz musician and bandleader (d. 2002)
April 25 – Edward R. Murrow, American journalist (d. 1965)

May

May 5 – Kurt Böhme, German bass (d. 1989)
May 7 – Max Grundig, industrialist (d. 1989)
May 8 – Cristian Vasile, Romanian tango singer (d. 1974)
May 19 – Percy Williams, Canadian athlete (d. 1982)
May 20 – Jimmy Stewart, American actor (d. 1997)
May 23 – John Bardeen, American physicist (d. 1991)
May 25 – Theodore Roethke, American poet (d. 1963)
May 28 – Ian Fleming, English writer (d. 1964)
May 30 – Mel Blanc, American voice actor (d. 1989)
May 31 – Don Ameche, American actor (d. 1993)

June-July

June 18 – Bud Collyer, American voice actor and game show host (d. 1969)
June 24 – Hugo Distler, German composer (d. 1942)
June 29 – Leroy Anderson, American composer (d. 1975)
July 12 – Milton Berle, American comedian (d. 2002)
July 25 – Bill Bowes, English cricketer (d. 1987)

August-September

August 4 – Kurt Eichhorn, German conductor (d. 1994)
August 5 – Harold Holt, seventeenth Prime Minister of Australia (d. 1967)
August 20 – Al Lopez, baseball player and manager
August 27 – Don Bradman, Australian cricketer (d. 2001)
August 27 – Lyndon Johnson, 36th President of the United States (d. 1973)
August 28 – Roger Tory Peterson, American naturalist, artist, and educator (d. 1996)
August 30 – Leonor Fini, Argentine-Italian artist (d. 1996)
September 3 – Lev Semenovich Pontryagin, Soviet mathematician (d. 1988)
September 6 – Louis Essen, English physicist (d. 1997)
September 6 – Korczak Ziolkowski, American sculptor (d. 1982)
September 7 – Paul Brown, American football coach (d. 1991)
September 7 – Michael E. DeBakey, American physician
September 29 – Eddie Tolan, American athlete (d. 1967)
September 30 – David Oistrakh, Ukrainian violinst (d. 1974)

October-December

October 14 – Allan Jones, American actor and singer (d. 1992)
October 16 – Enver Hoxha, dictator of Albania (d. 1985)
October 19 – Sydney MacEwan, Scottish singer (d. 1990)
October 19 – Geirr Tveitt, Norwegian composer (d. 1981)
November 2 – Fred Bakewell, English cricketer (d. 1983)
November 20 – Alistair Cooke, English-born journalist and broadcaster (d. 2004)
November 28 – Claude Lévi-Strauss, Belgian-born anthropologist
December 6 – Pierre Graber, member of the Swiss Federal Council (d. 2003)
December 10 – Olivier Messiaen, French composer (d. 1992)
December 11 – Elliot Carter, American composer
December 31 – Simon Wiesenthal, Austrian Nazi-hunter

Deaths

January 25 – Ouida, English writer (b. 1839)
February 1 – King Charles of Portugal (b. 1863)
April 20 – Henry Chadwick, English-born baseball writer and historian (b. 1824)
April 22 – Henry Campbell-Bannerman, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (b. 1836)
May 26 – Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, Punjabi founder of the Ahmadi sect (b. 1835)
June 21 – Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Russian composer (b. 1844)
July 5 – Jonas Lie, Norwegian author (b. 1833)
July 20 – Demetrius Vikelas, Greek International Olympic Committee president (b. 1835)
August 25 – Henri Becquerel, French physicist (b. 1852)
August 26 – Tony Pastor, American vaudeville and theater impresario (b. 1837)
September 20 – Pablo de Sarasate, Spanish violinist and composer (b. 1844)
October 30 – Caroline Astor, American socialite (b. 1830)
November 14 – Emperor Guangxu of China (b. 1871)
November 15 – Empress Cixi of China (b. 1835)

Nobel Prizes

Physics – Gabriel Lippmann
Chemistry – Ernest Rutherford
Medicine – Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov, Paul Ehrlich
Literature – Rudolf Christoph Eucken
Peace – Klas Pontus Arnoldson Fredrik Bajer

Categories: 1908