Top News Stories from 1912

World Events

World Statistics

Population: 4.378 billion
population by decade
Nobel Peace Prize: Elihu Root (US)
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U.S. Events

U.S. Statistics

President: William H. Taft
Vice President: James S. Sherman
Population: 95,335,000
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Economics

Federal spending: $0.69 billion
Unemployment: 4.6%
Cost of a first-class stamp: $0.02

Sports

World Series
Boston Red Sox d. NY Giants (4-3-1)
Stanley Cup
Quebec Bulldogs
Wimbledon
Women: Ethel Larcombe d. C. Sterry (6-3 6-1)
Men: Tony Wilding d. A. Gore (6-4 6-4 4-6 6-4)
Kentucky Derby Champion
Worth
NCAA Football Champions
Harvard (CFRA, HF) (9-0-0) & Penn St. (NCF) (8-0-0) 1912 Summer Olympics

Entertainment

Entertainment Awards

Nobel Prize for Literature: Gerhart Hauptmann (Germany)
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Events

  • The Radio Act of 1912 assigns three- and four-letter codes to radio stations and limits broadcasting to the 360m wavelength, which jams signals.
  • Photoplay debuts as the first magazine for movie fans.

Science

Nobel Prizes in Science

Chemistry: Victor Grignard (France), for reagent discovered by him; and Paul Sabatier (France), for methods of hydrogenating organic compounds
Physics: Gustaf Dalén (Sweden), for discovery of automatic regulators used in lighting lighthouses and light buoys
Physiology or Medicine: Alexis Carrel (France), for work on vascular ligature and grafting of blood vessels and organs
More Nobel Prizes in 1998...
  • American Astronomer Henrietta Leavitt discovers a correlation between Cepheids' periods and luminosity, a relationship that becomes important to the measurement of interstellar and intergalactic distances.
  • German meteorologist and geophysicist Alfred Wegener proposes the idea of continental drift.
  • Piltdown Man hoax perpetuated. Supposed fossils said to be "missing link" in evolution. In 1953 it was found that human and ape bones were fraudulently aged.
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