1908

1908 is a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will take you to calendar). {| align=right cellpadding=3 id=toc style="margin-left: 15px;"\n|- \n| align="center" colspan=2 | Years:
1905 1906 1907 - 1908 - 1909 1910 1911 \n|-\n| align="center" colspan=2 | Decades:
1870s 1880s 1890s - 1900s - 1910s 1920s 1930s \n|- \n| align="center" | Centuries:
19th century - 20th century - 21st century

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\n1908 in art
\n1908 in aviation
\n1908 in film
\n1908 in literature
\n1908 in music
\n1908 in science
\n1908 in sports
\n1908 in Canada\n----\nList of state leaders in 1908
\nList of religious leaders in 1908
\nList of international organization leaders in 1908\n|}

Table of contents

1 Events 2 Births 3 Deaths 4 Nobel Prizes

Events

\n* January 1 - A ball signifying New Year's Day drops in New York City's Times Square for the first time\n* 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.\n* January 11 - Grand Canyon National Monument is created\n* January 12 - A long-distance radio message is sent from the Eiffel Tower for the first time.\n* January 21 - New York City passes a law, the Sullivan Ordinance, making it illegal for women to smoke in public only to be vetoed by the mayor.\n* January 24 - Robert Baden-Powell begins the Boy Scout movement\n* February 1 - King Carlos I of Portugal and Crown Prince Luis shot in Lisbon\n* February 11 - Australia regain The Ashes with a 308 run cricket victory over England.\n* February 18 – Japanese immigration to USA forbidden\n* April 14 - In Denmark, suffrage of every tax-paying citizen\n* April 21 – Friedrich A Cook's claimed date to have reached North Pole\n* April 27 - The 1908 Summer Olympics open in London.\n* May 10 - Mother's Day is observed for the first time (Andrew's Methodist Church in Grafton, West Virgina).\n* 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.\n* June 30 - The Tunguska impact event occurs in Siberia.\n* July 6 - Robert Peary sets sail for the Arctic North Pole.\n* July 11-12 night - Explosion of a ship Amalthea in the Malmö harbor in Sweden, housing 80 British strikebreakers. 1 dead, 20 injured.\n* July 22 - Albert Fisher establishes the Fisher Body Company to manufacture carriage and automobile bodies.\n* 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).\n* December 28 - An 7 Richter scale earthquake destroys Messina, Sicily and rocks Calabria killing over 75,000.\n* November - William Howard Taft defeats William Jennings Bryan in the U.S. presidential election \n* First Zionist colony in Palestine\n* British suffragettes begin a campaign for female suffrage\n* Due to the evidence collected by Roger Casement, Leopold II of Belgium is forced to make reforms in Congo, which is his personal colony\n* Danish minister of Justice, Alberti, is revealed to be an embezzler\n* The Children's Encyclopedia\n* Bureau of Investigation, forerunner of FBI, founded\n* Blackball coal miner strike in New Zealand lasts 11 weeks\n* Isak Saba, the first Sami in the Norwegian parliament\n* Henri Matisse open his own art academy\n* Serial killer Belle Guinness disappears in Laporte\n* Young Turks revolution in the Ottoman Empire\n* Change of Emperor of Qing Dynasty from Guangxu Emperor of China (1875-1908) to Henry Puyi (1909-1911) \n*Henry Ford produces its first Model T automobile.\n*A 40,000-year-old Neanderthal boy skeleton is found at Le Moustier in southwest France.\n* The Child Labour Act of Ontario is passed.\n* The Irish Universities Act, 1908 is passed and creates the National University of Ireland at Dublin and the Queen's University of Belfast.\n* First Ideal Home Exhibition held.\n* De Meester's Dutch government resigns. \n

Births

\n* January 7 - Red Allen, jazz musician (d. 1967)\n* January 9 - Simone de Beauvoir, feminist philosopher\n* January 12 - Jean Delannoy, film director\n* January 14 - Rus Columbo, singer, bandleader, composer\n* January 15 - Edward Teller\n* January 26 - Stéphane Grappelli, musician, composer (d. 1997)\n* January 27 - Oran "Hot Lips" Page, jazz trumpet (d. 1954)\n* February 1 - George Pál, director, producer (d. 1980)\n* February 5 - Daisy and Violet Hilton, conjoined twins, actresses (d. 1969)\n* February 7 - Buster Crabbe, Olympic Games swimming gold medalist, actor\n* February 8 - Emil Staiger, scientist of literature (d. 1987)\n* February 11 - Sutan Takdir Alishahbana, Indonesian linguistic/author/novelist.\n* February 11 - Vivian Ernest Fuchs, geologist/explorer.\n* February 11 - Josh White, musician\n* February 15 - HAP Grieshaber, painter and graphic artist (d. 1981)\n* February 17 - Red Barber, baseball announcer, sports journalist (d. 1992)\n* February 22 - John Mills, actor\n* February 23 - William McMahon, twentieth Prime Minister of Australia, (d. 1988)\n* February 26 - Tex Avery, cartoonist (d. 1980)\n* February 26 - Jean-Pierre Wimille, race car driver (d. 1949)\n* February 29 - Balthus, painter (d. 2001)\n* February 29 - Dee Brown, writer, historian (d. 2002)\n* March 2 - Walter Bruch, engineer (d. 1990)\n* March 5 - Rex Harrison, actor (d. 1990)\n* March 8 - Claire Trevor, actress \n* March 7 - Anna Magnani, actress (d. 1973)\n* March 13 - Walter Annenberg, publisher, philanthropist (d. 2002)\n* March 17 - Brigitte Helm, actress (d. 1996)\n* March 20 - Sir Michael Redgrave, actor (d. 1985)\n* March 22 - Louis L'Amour, author (d. 1988)\n* March 23 - Joan Crawford, actor (d. 1977)\n* March 25 - Helmut Käutner, actor and film director (d. 1980)\n* March 25 - David Lean, film director (d. 1991)\n* March 29 - Arthur O'Connell, actor (d. 1981)\n* April 1 - Abraham Maslow, psychologist\n* April 2 - Buddy Ebsen, actor, dancer\n* April 5 - Bette Davis, US-american actress (d. 1989)\n* April 5 - Herbert von Karajan, Austrian conductor (d. 1989) \n* April 7 - Percy Faith, composer, musician (d. 1976)\n* April 15 - Eden Ahbez, hermit, musician\n* April 20 - Lionel Hampton, jazz musician, bandleader (d. 2002)\n* April 25 - Edward R. Murrow, journalist (d. 1965)\n* May 7 - Max Grundig, industrialist (d. 1989)\n* May 8 - Cristian Vasile, Romanian tango singer (d. 1974)\n* May 19 - Percy Williams, Canadian athlete (d. 1982)\n* May 20 - Jimmy Stewart, American actor\n* May 23 - John Bardeen, physicist (d. 1991)\n* May 25 - Theodore Roethke, American poet\n* May 28 - Ian Fleming, author of James Bond books (d. 1964)\n* May 30 - Mel Blanc, voice actor (d. 1989)\n* May 31 - Don Ameche (actor)\n* June 29 - Leroy Anderson, composer\n* August 4 - Kurt Eichhorn, conductor\n* August 5 - Harold Holt, seventeenth Prime Minister of Australia (d. 1967)\n* August 27 - Don Bradman, cricket player\n* August 27 - Lyndon Johnson, 36th president of the United States\n* August 28 - Roger Tory Peterson, naturalist, artist, and educator\n* August 30 – Leonor Fini, Argentinian/Italian artist (d. 1996)\n* September 6 - Louis Essen, physicist (d. 1997)\n* September 7 - Michael E. DeBakey, inventor of the MASH\n* September 29 - Eddie Tolan, American athlete\n* October 14 - Allan Jones, actor, singer (d. 1992)\n* October 16 - Enver Hoxha, dictator of Albania\n* November 20 - Alistair Cooke, television host (d. 2004)\n* November 28 - Claude Levi-Strauss\n* December 6 - Pierre Graber, member of the Swiss Federal Council (d. 2003)\n* December 10 - Olivier Messiaen, composer\n* December 31 - Simon Wiesenthal, Nazi hunter

Deaths

\n*January 25 - Ouida, writer\n*February 1 - King Charles of Portugal\n*April 20 - Henry Chadwick, baseball writer and historian\n*April 22 - Henry Campbell-Bannerman, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.\n*June 21 - Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, composer (b. 1844)\n*July 20 - Demetrius Vikelas, Greek IOC president\n*May 26 - Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, founder of the Ahmadi sect\n*August 25 - Henri Becquerel, French physicist\n*August 26 – Tony Pastor, vaudeville founder & theater impresario\n*September 20 - Pablo de Sarasate, violinist\n*October 30 – Caroline Astor, American socialite\n*November 14 5-7 pm - Guangxu Emperor of China\n*November 15 1-3 pm - Empress Dowager Cixi

Nobel Prizes

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