100th Post

This week in history 100 years ago...

May 8 -
*A fire at the General Explosives Company near Hull, Ontario set off a blast that killed fifteen people, and injured more than 100. Most were spectators who ignored warnings to leave the area. The blast shattered windows in neighboring Ottawa.
*In elections in Spain, Premier Canalejas retained his majority.
*For the first time in its history, the United States Supreme Court ordered the release of a convict from his sentence, on grounds that his punishment violated the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. Paul Weems, who had served at a lighthouse in the Philippines, had been held in heavy chains for malfeasance of office.

May 9 -
*Three days after his father's death, Prince George Frederick was formally proclaimed King George V worldwide throughout the British Empire, starting with the Duke of Norfolk's reading of the proclamation at St. James Palace that closed with, "God Save the King!"
*President Taft approved an act passed by Congress to remove the wreck of the battleship Maine, which had been destroyed 12 years earlier in Havana Harbor.

May 10 -
*Two hundred women from Peru, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Argentina convened in Buenos Aires for the first Congreso Femenino Interacional.
*The town of Powell, Wyoming was incorporated.
*What is recognized as of today as being the starting point of the aviation in Switzerland, happened on May 10, 1910: Ernest Failloubaz piloted the first aircraft built and flown by Swiss citizen.
*Died: Stanislao Cannizzaro, 83, Italian chemist.

May 11 -
*Glacier National Park (U.S.) was established in Montana by federal law. The park has an area of 1,584 square miles, and contains 653 lakes, 175 mountains, and 26 glaciers. After attracting 4,000 visitors in its first full year as a park (1911), the park had more than 2,000,000 visitors in 2009.
*Born: Johnnie Davis, American actor and singer (Hooray For Hollywood), in Brazil, Indiana.

May 12 -
*An explosion at the Wellington Coal Mine near Manchester killed 137 miners.
*USS Florida, the first of the all-steam turbine Florida class battleships of the United States Navy, was launched.
*Born: Johan Ferrier, Surinam President 1975-80, in Paramaribo, and Giulietta Simionato, Italian mezzo-soprano, in Forlì (both were still alive in 2009); and Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin, British chemist and 1964 Nobel Prize in Chemistry laureate, in Cairo, Egypt.

May 13 -
*Woolworth's became the first large retail chain to sell ice cream cones, test-marketing the treat at counters at several sites that had been supplied with modern refrigerator-freezers. The idea was successful enough that it would be introduced nationwide by the variety store, and then by other chain stores.
*French aviator Hauvette Michelin became only the seventh person in history to be killed in an airplane accident, crashing while attempting a takeoff at a show in Lyons.

May 14 -
*At Brussels, representatives of Belgium, Great Britain and Germany signed a border agreement regarding their central African colonies, respectively the Belgian Congo (now Democratic Republic of Congo), the British protectorate in Uganda, and part of German East Africa now in Tanzania