April 1911

• April 1, 1911 [Saturday]

  • Houston, TX - With other distinctions, Texas is the greatest Bee state of the Union and produced more than 15,000,000 pounds of honey, valued at $3,500,000. An estimated 600,000 swarms, mostly spanish bees are in the state and the number continues to grow annually.
  • issy Les Moulineaux, France - Pierre Vedrine, a new aviator in a new aeroplane, set a new record to-day on the second leg of his Paris to Pau flight, when he flew from Poitiers to this city, a distance of 208 miles, in 132 minutes, maintaining a speed of almost ninety-five miles per hour.

• April 2, 1911 [Sunday]

  • St. Louis, MO - By order of Postmaster Thomas J. Atkins all St. Louis post offices will be closed on Sunday's beginning April 9. Regular collections will continue but the offices will be closed.
  • Chicago, IL - The famous actress Lillian Russell will be featured in a new play at the Blackstone Theatre beginning next Tuesday. "The First Night", a new comedy is directed by George W. Hobart.
  • New York, NY - Dr. Booker T. Washington will spend his summers hereafter in Long Island, in a neighborhood where many wealthy New Yorker's have large country places. The property consists of two and one half acres with two hundred and fifty feet of shore front on the Sound.

• April 3, 1911 [Monday]

  • New York, NY - Owing to the death of Otto Ringling and the funeral today at Barboo, WI of the circus proprietor, there will be no performances of the Barnum and Bailey show at Madison Square Garden, owned by the Ringling Brothers.
  • Chicago, IL - After eighty years, Chicagoans did not receive Sunday mail. All workers were still required to work, but deliveries are suspended. Christian Endeavor Societies rejoiced in the ruling following their attempts to relieve postal workers from working Sunday nights.

• April 4, 1911 [Tuesday]

  • London, England - An abnormally high tide yesterday washed out a big chunk of the County of Suffolk, laying bare interesting relics of long ago. Included among the things uncovered by the caprice of the sea were hundred of gold, silver and copper coins, some of them dating as far back as the Saxon era.
  • Albany, NY - The sentries on duty at the sate capital to-day re-doubled their vigilance to prevent thievery which has been rampant since it became know that many valuable old coins are scattered among the debris in the burned state library. George Washington's famous sword, said to have been given to him by Frederick the Great, has been recovered. It was found undamaged under a heap of charred books.
  • Athens, Greece - Catherine Panagiotaton is the first woman to be made a member of the faculty at the University of Athens, Greece. Miss Panagiotaton is also the first woman doctor to practice in Greece.
  • 667 Patents, Design Patents and Re-Issues were granted today from the United States Patent Office.

• April 5, 1911 [Wednesday]

  • Chicago, IL - The North American Land and Colonization Company, Inc., has successfully negotiated 20 acre tracts in Mary's Colony, Baker County, Florida for development at the price of $600. Terms are $40 cash and $20 a month, no interest. A charter passage has been dealt and a round trip ticket to view all parcels, from Chicago is $33.90. To arrange a purchase or selection of your own fruit or truck farm, phone Randolph 1425.
  • Washington, DC - The post office department wants to buy 1,896,000,000 yards of jute twine and 1,500,000,000 paper facing slips to be used in making packages of letters en route in mail cars. The purchasing agent of the department is now preparing the specifications. They are the biggest single order in their respective classes in the world. The specifications will state that the department needs 3,000,000 pounds of jute twine of 23.7 pounds tensile strength. There are 632 yards to the pound. The twine is used in all the post offices in the country.
  • Rome, Italy - The attempt of a man who is undoubtedly insane, against the canons during the service in St. Peter's caused a great alarm for a time, particularly as it became known that he originally had designs against the pope himself. After he had been seized by the police, one of whom was wounded, the man subsequently identified as Pietro Pesanti, declared he hated the pope and the priests, whom had been his ruin.
  • Flint, MI - Flint got up and rubbed its eyes in disbelief, completely astounded at the news that a Socialist, John A.C. Menton, a cigarmaker, had been elected mayor of the city at Monday's election by a majority of 852.
  • Kansas City, MO - Mrs. S.B. Armour, the widow of the late Simeon B. Armour, who died in arch 1899, recently reported the theft of nearly $100,000 in stocks and bonds. The stolen bonds had been cashed but the thief who had gained access to the banks safety deposit box which held the documents remains a mystery.

• April 6, 1911 [Thursday]

  • Chicago, IL - Full equipment Ford Model T Torpedo Runabout is now on sale for $725. Contact the Ford Motor Company, Chicago Branch at Calumet 4600 or stop in at 1444 Michigan Ave.

• April 7, 1911 [Friday]

  • Philadelphia, PA - The report from London that Peter T.B. Widener of this city had purchased "The Mill" the celebrated painting by Rembrandt, was confirmed of Mr. Widener's office here to-day. The price paid it was said was slightly in excess of $500,000.
  • Kansas City, MO - A young women whom Mrs. S.B. Armour had entrusted to her daily affairs has been named as the thief of an estimated $105,000 in stocks and bonds. The young women having been named executor of Mrs. Armour's estate, has been removed from the position and the will.

• April 8, 1911 [Saturday]

  • Kansas City, MO - The value of the stocks and bonds stolen recently from Mrs. S.B. Armour was $150,000, instead of the $105,000 as originally reported. The additional $45,000 recovered were not yet cashed. The accused woman's friend said the theft occurred just weeks after she had recovered from typhoid fever. Mrs. Armour refuses to permit any actions be taken against the woman.

• April 9, 1911 [Sunday]

  • Stillwater, MN - To young lawyers: Don't go to New York City to grow up with the city. Already there are 16,000 lawyers endearing to secure a living in that city. Most of them are alive but mighty few of them have pie more than once a day.

• April 10, 1911 [Monday]

  • Nome, AK - Breaking all records for speed in dog races, Mrs. Mark Crimmins' team in the $100,000 All-Alaska Sweepstakes, driven by Frank Eastbagh dashed into First Chance yesterday afternoon, having covered the 160 miles from Nome in twenty-six hours.
  • Chicago, IL - President Comisky of the White Sox to-day offered President Noyes of the Washington American Club league $15,000 for the release of Walter Johnson, Washington's star pitcher, who is holding out for more salary. This is said to be the largest sum ever offered for a baseball player.
  • Brooklyn, NY - A committee has been formed to formulate the plans to work the new organization; Campfire Girls of America. The Campfire Girls of America is the latest organization for the physical training of the lassies, and it is said to perform for them what the Boy Scouts of America is doing for the lads.
  • Sparta, TN - In a fight between moonshiners of Van Buren County and a posse led by a federal revenue officer, one distiller was killed and two other men were badly hurt.

• April 11, 1911 [Tuesday]

  • New York, NY - Shipping news reports the Lusitania is scheduled to make port on Thursday. Having sailed from Liverpool April 8. 7 additional ships are due to make port the same day.
  • 614 Patents, Design Patents and Re-Issues were granted today from the United States Patent Office.
  • Louisville, KY - Mrs. Elizabeth Hersley Maxon Smith Baumgardner, Louisville's wealthiest widow, worth $1,000,000 this afternoon added Neumeyer to her name when she became the bride in Pittsburgh of Carl Neumeyer, a gauger in the government's service of Louisville, who earns $5 a day. Neumeyer is only 31 years old, while his bride, although she admits she is 49, is said to be much older.

• April 12, 1911 [Wednesday]

  • Mason City, IA - While walking home from his office Dr. J.P. Freeman was attacked by a mob of 30 men after the discovery of a recent petition of filing for divorce. The men upon chasing Dr. Freeman, was thrown to the ground and greased with the contents of a pail of tar. Then the mob rolled him in feathers and pelted him with eggs.

• April 13, 1911 [Thursday]

  • Kansas City, MO - A heavy wind, attaining the velocity of a tornado in some sections, and accompanied by rain, hail and lightning swept over western Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma. 13 are reported dead and 100 injured.

• April 14, 1911 [Friday]

  • Shanghai, China - Sixty girls were offered for sale at one small town without a purchaser, because the food the slaves eat was more valuable than their lives. Only death, therefore, awaits them.

• April 15, 1911 [Saturday]

  • Brooklyn, NY - The Red Cross Emergency Committee announces to-day that the total contributions to the Triangle Waist Company fire fund amounted to $90,229.41. 128 of the families, 12 of the victims families reside in Brooklyn. About 40 per cent of these were Italian, and the remainder Russian, Austrian, Hungarian, Polish and Romanian Jews.
  • Brooklyn, NY - Passages are now being booked for sea travel aboard the Luistania, scheduled for 9am April 19 and the Carpathia, scheduled for sailing April 27, June 15 and August 3, 1911.
  • Brooklyn, NY - To-morrow there will be a reunion at 682 Bedford Ave. of the survivors of Company A, Third New York Volunteers, credited as being the first company in the state to respond to Lincoln's call for 75,000 volunteers. What was then known as the City of Williamsburg, sent out 101 of its young men residents to make up the company.
  • New York, NY - The old Astor Library, in Lafayette Street, Manhattan, one of the wonders of the city in the day of Washington Irving closed its doors. The remaining 900,000 volumes will be sheltered in the new library of Fifth Ave and Forty-Second Street, to be opened on May 24th. The Astor Library built in 1854 from money bequeathed by John Jacob Astor, Washington Irving was the first president of the board of trustees.

• April 16, 1911 [Sunday]

  • Toledo, OH - Fire broke out on the third floor of the Toledo Blade building today. As tons of water was poured in the building, the priceless theatrical library has been totally ruined. The plant was one of the most up-to-date newspaper offices in the central west.
  • Harrisburg, PA - A new record was set in a taxicab this week as a local taxi registered 999,996 miles, telling it as a wonderful testament to the Ford Model T endurance. The automobile Model T #7,121 traveled the equivalent of traveling four times around the world.
  • Brooklyn, NY - There are not many residents alive to-day who can claim any personal recollections of Abraham Lincoln, and among these there is but one woman. She is Miss Adelaide W. Smith of 219 St. James Place, who was a volunteer nurse during the entire civil war. Miss Smith will soon reach her eightieth birthday. She has written a book giving her reminiscences of those day, and it will soon be published.

• April 17, 1911 [Monday]

  • Watertown, CT - Charlie Taft, son of the President, has started to learn baseball by acting as water carrier of the nine of the Taft School, of which his uncle Horace Taft is principal. He is too young to play on the school team, but is ambitious to become a manager which is often obtained through the water boy route.
  • San Francisco, CA - "Jack" Johnson, negro champion heavyweight pugilist, will have to serve the full term of the jail sentence imposed upon him for exceeding the speed limit in his automobile.
  • New York, NY - The theft of the roof of the McCarren Memorial Church in Williamsburg was the climax of thieveries in that section of the city. The thieves had already stolen all the lead pipe equipment of the plumbing. Not content with that, they went back and took the copper sheathing that covered the building and valued at $7,000. Trucks were used to cart it away.

• April 18, 1911 [Tuesday]

  • Boston, MA - Lobster prices on the Boston Markets are about half what they were twenty-four hours ago, as a result of a 50,000 pound shipment from Nova Scotia. Wholesale prices last week were 23 to 26 cents per pound. The prices asked to-day are 12 to 15 cents per pound.
  • Brooklyn, NY - Enrico Caruso, the Metropolitan's operatic tenor, left for Europe on the Kaiser Wilhelm II from Hoboken this morning. Declaring that his illness has cost him $100,000 this season, he will retire to Florence to his villa and rest his voice and recover from a severe attack of gripe.
  • Wakefield, MA - When John White, of this city was informed to-day that a daughter had been born to him, he experienced a thrill or parental pride for the twentieth time in his twenty-four years of married life. Mrs. White, the mother of twenty children, sixteen of whom are living, is about forty-five years old. Her children have included three sets of twins.
  • Atlantic City, NJ - The Follies Bergere Company, which is to occupy the stage at the new Follies Bergere Theatre, in Forty-Sixth Street, Manhattan, gave its first performance at the Apollo Theater last night before the largest first nights audience in the history of the house.
  • Long Island, NY - Mrs. Joan Newton Cuneo of Richmond Hill L.I. drove a half mile in 16.1 seconds. This is a rate of 112 miles per hour. The American Automobile Association does not allow women to compete, just the same, it is said this is the fastest any women has driven.
  • 671 Patents, Design Patents and Re-Issues were granted today from the United States Patent Office.
  • Versailles, France - Captain Carron of the French Army Aviation Corp fell with his aeroplane from a height of 250 feet to-day and was crushed to death.

• April 19, 1911 [Wednesday]

  • Cape Town, South Africa - Eight persons were drown during the transfer of the 800 passengers and crew from the wreck of the Portuguese mail steamer Luistania, which went on the rocks at Bellows Rock. The rescue was made by the British warship Forte and a government tug.
  • Boston, MA - The field of long distance runners that will start to-morrow noon at Ashland for the fifteenth American marathon run of the Boston Athletic Association will not be quite so large as las years record breaker, yet the books closed to-day, 137 names were on the pages. There were 193 entries last year, of whom 169 started, and more than forty covered the 25 miles of the course.

• April 20, 1911 [Thursday]

  • Boston, MA - Clarence DeMarr won the Great Boston Classic marathon to-day, with a record breaking time of 2:24:24.
  • Boston, MA - Young but experienced runner Clarence deMar wins the fifteenth Marathon race to-day. Breaking the record by nearly three minutes, his official time was 2:21:39 3-5 seconds.
    ::Authors Note: The two reports of the Boston Marathon winner were reported in different papers and as you see, reported the facts differently. The 2:21:39 was the real record.::
  • Denver, CO - An aviation meet will be held here April 21, 22 and 23, under the auspices of the Denver Press Club. Rene Simon, Rene Barrier, John J. Frisbe and Joseph Seymour will be the airmen to participate. They are in Denver on their way to the Pacific coast.
  • Fort Wayne, IN - At the rate of $10 per square inch, Henry Prough, a wealthy farmer of Lagrange, Ind., already spent $230 for live skin from his fellow men to replace cuticle he lost in an accident by fire a few days ago. Two neighbors have shared a total of twenty-three square inches and the Fort Wayne surgeon who is performing the skin grafting operations for Prough says, as much more will be needed for which the sufferer will pay the rate he has established.

• April 21, 1911 [Friday]

  • Stillwater, MN - The local newspaper quoted: The world is divided into two classes - those who go ahead and do something and those who sit still and inquire, "Why wasn't it done the other way?".
  • Stillwater, MN - It was noted in the Stillwater Daily Gazette: Milton Everett of Austin, Texas, who is interested in historical research, has unearthed some interesting facts relating to the annexation of Texas to the Union of 1845. He finds that an Indiana man was responsible for the wiping out of the Texas republic. Mr. Everett says: "The annexation of Texas was accomplished by a majority of one vote, in the United States Senate, cast by Senator Hannegan of Indiana by one vote in the Indiana House of Representatives, that vote being cast by Madison Marsh, a member of the legislature from Madison County, Ind. Marsh in turn was elected to the legislature by one vote.

• April 22, 1911 [Saturday]

  • Hot Springs, AR - After deliberating less than three hours, the jury trying the case against deposed sheriff Sid Houpt to-night returned a verdict of guilty, assessing a fine of $1.00 and a jail sentence of 1 hour. Neither the fine or jail time was served pending an appeal. Sheriff Houpt was charged with permitting killer John Rutherford to escape.

• April 23, 1911 [Sunday]

  • Washington, DC - Probably no other building in America is so well policed as the White House. It takes forty-two men to do it daily. If any mischievous stranger should seek entrance he would not get far. Twenty four guard the outside of the building and eighteen inside. Eight are in the executive offices. Every door to the building is also manned by police, not to mention those in the secret service who guard the person of the President.

• April 24, 1911 [Monday]

  • Providence, RI - A man is justified in slapping his wife for going through his pockets, in the opinion of Justice M.C. Lee, of the Superior Court. The court advised the couple to try to affect a reconciliation "and in the meantime" he advised the women, "don't go through your husbands pockets again. A man is justified in slapping his wife for this."
  • Pau, France - Pierre Vedrine, who left Paris in his monoplane on Saturday, arrived here today, having covered the circuitous course of 500 miles in six hours and 55 minutes actual flying time. He thus wins the prize of $4,000 offered by the Aero Club of Béarn for the fastest flight between the twin cities.

• April 25, 1911 [Tuesday]

  • London, England - The official figures on the ravages of the bubonic plague in the central provinces of India show the appalling total of 95,884 deaths from the disease in March. The fatalities during February were 43,508.
  • 628 Patents, Design Patents and Re-Issues were granted today from the United States Patent Office.

• April 26, 1911 [Wednesday]

  • Chicago, IL - The demand for rats in Chicago is great and the supply is far too small. Prices threaten to go up rapidly. The rats are used in pulling cables. A rat is loosed in a pipe through which a cable is to be pulled. Then a string is tied to a ferret, which is allowed to pursue the rat. In that way a small string is put through the pipe and later the cable is pulled after it.
  • Livingston, MT - More than three hundred dead elk which died from starvation during the winter have been removed from the Gardiner River, a tributary to the Yellowstone, according to a message from Fort Yellowstone. The work of removing the animals is far from complete and it is estimated there are more than 500 animals in the river.

• April 27, 1911 [Thursday]

  • Stillwater, MN - The paper of Stillwater reports that in a recent lecture before the British Institute of Electrical Engineers, Signor Ferranti said that the weather of the island of Great Britain could be controlled by means of electricity. The entire island would be girded with an electrical "defense" capable of warding off vapors of the sea and preventing them from precipitation of the land. The sunlight could thus be increased as desired.
  • Washington, DC - The world owes the United States $441,000,000 for food, clothing and raw materials sold abroad. Only once has the balance of the trade been higher in favor of this country, according to the government figures. That was in 1908, when it was more than $500,000,000.

• April 28, 1911 [Friday]

  • New York, NY - Plan were filed to-day by the Broadway Park Place Company for the construction of Broadway and Park Place. The 55 story building will soon be the tallest building in the world.
  • Cleveland, OH - Denton T. (Cy) Young, the veteran pitcher of the Cleveland Baseball Club, is ill at a hotel here with severe bronchitis. Young's condition is not serious. He probably will be able to leave his room in two weeks, but cannot play ball for a month.

• April 29, 1911 [Saturday]

  • Mineola, LI (New York) - Herrick Aiken, a young aviator from Lawrence Mass. met with a mishap at the Garden City aviation field this evening in his first trial flight in his biplane. He made three circuits of the field at a height of about forty feet, and was about to start on his fourth when his motor "went dead", and the machine dropped to the ground. The biplane was demolished but Aiken was fortunate enough to escape with scratches on the face and hands.
  • Kansas City, KS - Contending that shoe shining is a work morally unfit for women, the city officials refused to grant a license to a shoe shine parlor which advertises on a sign that "pretty girls will shine your shoes". In the meantime, a city ordinance is being prepared to prohibit women shining shoes.
  • Tarrytown, NY - More than 300 men, women and children jumped from their seats at a moving picture show here when a film caught fire and a panic was averted by the threat of Policeman Thomas Welch that he would shoot the first person who tried to rush.

• April 30, 1911 [Sunday]

  • New York, NY - Several years ago workmen were digging holes for some telegraph poles, and into one of them a poor little mouse fell. The tiny prisoner at first raced around the hole frantically; then he seemed to set his wits to work. The hole was several feet deep but he began to dig a spiral groove around it from the bottom, working night and day. When he got tired he built little landings to his staircase where he could rest. The workmen had become interested in him and gave him food, and when on the third day mousie reached the top all the men cheered him.