What Was Happening in the World 100 Years Ago in 1912?

Many things that happened in 1912 shaped the lives of generations to come.

Significantly, as in 2012, the end of the world scenario was already there. There were persistent rumours in Novgorod, Russia that the anti-Christ had already been born and the world would soon end.

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• People lived much shorter lives in 1912. Average life expectancy in USA was 51,5 in 1912 (now 78,3)
• The car began to change the way people live. Ford's Model T was being mass-produced in USA.
• The first electric self-starter for automobiles introduced – you didn’t need to go out and crank the car to start by turning a heavy handle.
• In most “developed” countries women were not allowed to vote.

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• Zeppelins were seen as the future of air travel, but airplanes were becoming more common. Women (at least one) were allowed to fly in the UK, but not vote until 1928.
• The first air force in the world, the Royal Flying Corps (Royal Air Force nowadays) formed in 1912. Dropping bombs from the sky became a common practice from then on.
• The Radio started becoming a major communication tool. The Titanic would be the first ship to send a radio SOS before it sank on April 14^th 1912.
• Unions and progressive legislation started making the life of the workingman more comfortable and safer. Purer food and safer drug laws began making life healthier for everybody.

Wars going on in 1912:

• Serbia, Montenegro and Greece declared war on Turkey.
• Turkey attacked Bulgaria.
• Italians at war with Turkey and took over Libya.
• US Marines invaded Nicaragua (leaving finally in 1925) and Honduras
• US forces land in Cuba to quell anti-discrimination protests by Afro-Cubans

Italian Dirigibles bombing Turkish troops. The first aerial bombing in history! Photo source:

Now let’s take a look at what was happening around the world in 1912:

Australia

• First air crash in Australia, between Mount Druitt and Rooty Hill
• The Maternity Allowance Act 1912 granted a “Baby Bonus” of five pounds (325 GBP today) to the mother of every child born in Australia. No one even thinks of including indigenous and non-citizens. 

China

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• Bad things begin to get worse for China. Empress Dowager Longyu endorses the Imperial Edict of the Abdication of the Qing Emperor on 12.2.1912. This ends 2000 years of imperial rule in China.
• The Republic of China is established on 1^st January 1912 on mainland China (now they govern only Taiwan). Sun Yat Sen loses his presidency to Yuan Shikai (General who wanted to have himself crowned as the emperor during his presidency after Sun Yat Sen’s death).
• Republic of China adopts the Gregorian calendar

France

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• First non-stop Paris to London flight by aviator Henri Seimet in 3 hour
• 3 year military service chosen unanimously by the French council of war
• Morocco becomes a protectorate of France  
• The Archbishop of Paris decreed that "Christians must not tango." 

India

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• India’s first Indian Anglican bishop Vedanayakam Samuel Azariah appointed
• In 1912 India introduced compulsory registration of motor vehicles.
• Muslim Indian doctors and nurses join the Red Crescent organization established in 1912 to help Turkish troops in the Balkan war of 1912.
• Decision taken to move capital of India from Calcutta to Delhi
• Rabindranath Tagore, on his way to England by boat from India translates his poem Gitanjali into English. His son loses the poem in his father’s briefcase on the London Tube. An honest man tracks them down and returns the papers. Tagore’s friend Sir William Rothenstein hears about the poem, contacts W. B. Yeats. Eventually Tagore becomes the first non-Westerner to get the Nobel Prize in 1913.

Russia

Familiar? No, not Saddam or Gaddafi but Rasputin of Russia.

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• Bolshevik Conference in Prague ‘expels’ the Mensheviks - the Bolsheviks are formally established as a separate party
• Lenin engineers Stalin, Zinoviev, and Ordzhonikidze on the Central Committee, to control Malinovsky 
• Pravda, the Soviet communist party newspaper begins publishing 
• Rasputin’s enemies publish the Czarinna’s adoring letters to Rasputin. Public outrage causes him to flee St.Petersburg. Rasputin returns at the Czarinna’s request and the young Czarevich’s health improves
• Strikes begin in the Lena goldfields in Siberia as the company forces workers to eat meat from horses’ penises. Troops fire and kill 200 peaceful marchers.
• Worker’s health insurance act passed by the Russian parliament, the Duma.
• The Rothschilds sell all their Russian oil interests to Royal Dutch (Shell)

Thailand/Siam

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• Failed uprising against the absolute monarchy. The new king Vajiravudh, who considered himself an Edwardian gentleman, began his plans to westernize Siam. He spent his time translating Shakespeare into Thai, establishing a Wild Tiger Corps personally answerable to him alone and running up huge state debts. Emboldened by the successful overthrow of the Qing dynasty in China some army officers unsuccessfully plotted to overthrow the absolute monarchy (achieved in 1932).

UK

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• Literacy rate in UK is 40% in 1912 (now 99%)
• Minimum wages for miners introduced after strike threats
• Suffragettes smash shop windows in Oxford Street and destroy Pillar boxes. They were often jailed, force-fed when they went on a hunger strike and released so they didn’t die in prison.
• Harriet Quimby, is the first woman pilot to fly across the English Channel.
• Piltdown man, posed as the missing link between apes and humans. (It took 40 years to debunk the hoax).
• A courier driving a horse-drawn delivery truck earned enough to buy 34 pounds of bread on his daily wages - exactly the same as a carpenter or mason in 1450. 

USA

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• U.S. Public Health Service is established
• New Mexico is the 47^th state and Arizona becomes the 48^th state
• First use of zippers in clothing
• Tokyo mayor Yukio Ozaki gives 3000 cherry blossom trees to Washington, D.C. to symbolise the warm friendship between the countries.
• A 190 kg meteorite explodes over the town of Holbrook, Arizona. No deaths.
• Salonkeeper John Schrank shoots President Theodore Roosevelt. With a gaping wound and the bullet still in him, Roosevelt delivers the speech. The 50 page written speech and a steel spectacle case in his breast pocket had stopped the bullet from going too far and saved his life.
• Average yearly income is $1,033 (for 2011 it is $ 42, 979.61)
• A gallon of gas is 7 cents (now $ 4.50)
• A loaf of bread is 5 cents (now $ 5)
• A medium priced home was $ 2750 (now $ 300 000 - $ 500 000)

The Vatican

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• Pope Pius x (St. Pius) issued his Encyclical letter Lacrimabili Statu and writes 

“When so many abhor the faith or fall away from it, the zeal for spreading the Gospel among the barbarous nations is still strong in the clergy.”

Predictions Made in 1912

The coming of the wireless era will make war impossible, because it will make war ridiculous. - 

Guglielmo Marconi, pioneer of radio, Technical World Magazine, October, 1912, page 145.

This has obviously not materialised. Currently, there are 37 ongoing wars, civil-wars and insurgencies, which demand more than 1000 deaths per year according to the Uppsala Conflict Data Programme.

If you are wondering what in the world happened 100 years ago, you might be tempted to worry if 2012 is really the end of the world as so many are clamouring. 

No, rest assured, one thing is sure - The world is not going to end in 2012!

100 Years Ago – What Was Happening in 1909?

What kind of a place was the world 100 years ago, in 1909? 
It was surely very different from our familiar world of today.

• Capital punishment was regular practice in almost 99% of human societies.
• Cannibalism was practised in Melanesia and the Pacific Islands.
• 90% of doctors in the USA had no college education
• Syphilis, which drove people crazy and killed them, was still incurable.
• The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower.

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A selection of “snapshots” from around the world shows that many things have remained surprisingly unchanged from 100 years ago.

Belgium

Massive genocide in Africa ends as King Leopold II dies. 

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• The Encyclopædia Britannica estimates that between 8 and 30 million people die in Belgian Congo through his private colonialism. 
• Auguste Marie François Beernaert gets the Nobel peace prize for contributing to the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague.

Canada

Canada was creating the Immigration Act, 1910, which made everyone except British subjects domiciled in Canada needing permission to land in Canada.

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China

• Famine in Anhui province kills about 4 million.
• Confucius is raised to the same rank as Heaven and Earth, which are worshipped by the Emperor alone.

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Cuba

US troops finally leave Cuba, 11 years after the Spanish American war finished.

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England

• The first World Vegetarian Congress founded in Manchester.
• The Secret Service Bureau, the first incarnation of MI5, was established in 1909 to combat Imperial Germany's espionage operations in the United Kingdom.
• Britain starts arms race in response to Germany’s plans to build four Dreadnought battleships.
• Construction of the world’s then largest passenger ship RMS Titanic begins in Belfast.

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France

• Joan of Arc is beatified, 4 years after the 1905 French law on the Separation of the Churches and State.
• Louis Blériot is the first man to fly across the English Channel.

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Germany

Paul Ehrlich discovers Salvarsan as a treatment for Syphilis, which was called: 

• the French disease in Italy and Germany, 
• Italian disease in France 
• Spanish disease by the Dutch 
• Christian disease by the Turks 
• British disease by the Tahitians

“War is one of the elements of order in the world established by God. The noblest virtues of men are developed therein. Without war the world would degenerate and disappear in a morass of materialism” says General Count Kuno von Moltke, a friend of Kaiser Wilhelm II. He is soon implicated in the Eulenberg homosexual scandal and beaten up by his wife Lilly.

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India

Indians could be elected to legislative councils for the first time by virtue of the Indian Councils Act of 1909, commonly known as the Morley-Minto Reforms.

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Italy

Gugliemo Marconi gets the Nobel Prize for discovering wireless telegraphy (radio).

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Japan

• Vaccination is compulsory in Japan.
• Census reveals that 5,6 persons live in each Japanese household and 11% live in cities.
• Prince Hirobumi Ito, former Prime Minister, the first resident-general of Korea, who opposed annexation, is assasinated by independence activist Ahn Jung-Geun and Korea is annexed by the Japanese Empire.

Ottoman Empire

30 000 Armenian Christians slaughtered in the Adana Massacre.

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Russia

• Okhrana General Gerasimov reports to Czar Nikolai II that not a single revolutionary organization is still functioning in the Russian Empire. 
• A bloody Bolshevik train robbery at Miass in the Urals nets 60,000 rubles and 24 kilograms of gold.
• Pyotr Stolypin, Prime Minister of Russia begins a campaign of repression of national minorities.

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Sweden

Selma Lagerlöf wins Nobel Prize for literature. During WWII, she sends her gold medal and the gold medal from the Swedish Academy to the Government of Finland to help in the war with Soviet Union. The government of Finland is touched, raises money by other means and returns the medals to her with gratitude.

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USA

• The USA has its heaviest (136 kgs) white Republican president (William Howard Taft). His pursuit of world peace through his self-founded League to Enforce Peace and “Dollar diplomacy” was a disaster for him.
• Plastic, then called Bakelite, is invented from phenol and formaldehyde by Leo Hendrik Baekeland.
• National Association for the Advancement of Colored People founded to end segregation and oppose lynching
• 95% of American babies were born at home.
• 90% of doctors in the USA had no college education as doctors went to medical school (many were attacked in the press as sub-standard). In Texas, a doctor coming to town only had to say he was a doctor, register with the health officer and start practising.
• Most American women only washed their hair about once a month using borax or egg yolks.
• Marijuana, heroin, and morphine were all available over the counter at the local corner drugstores. "Heroin clears the complexion, gives buoyancy to the mind, regulates the stomach and bowels, and is, in fact, a perfect guardian of health." - They advertised then.
• First woman drives motorcar across the USA. Alice Huyler Ramsey from Hackensack, New Jersey, with 3 non-driving companions drives 3800 miles from Manhattan to San Francisco in 59 days.

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Poor or rich enough - Is Your Income Enough for You?

Is the money you earn enough for you? – Somewhat quasi-scientifically, I’ve been asking this question from people I meet. They don’t have to disclose the income, but just answer if they are satisfied with their income. The hundreds (over 500) of people I’ve talked to, from all income levels, age groups, professions and ethnicities, both men and women; have generally said “It’s never enough. I could do with more.” What does this tell about humans?

Just a few (5%) have said that “Yes, I earn more than I need. Actually I don’t need all this.”

Now I wonder which is more surprising - the shortage of people happy with what they earn or that there are even this many?

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How High is Your Income?

The median annual family income in USA is around 46 000 US $. This is only 5,02 cms of US $ 100 bills.

The richest American, Bill Gates, with around $ 50 Billion (now that he’s poorer due to the recession) would reach a height of over 50 km if he piled his wealth in 100$ bills. It is impossible for him to convert his wealth into banknotes as there are only 2 billion US$ bills in circulation. The US Treasury wouldn’t be too eager to print more for him as printing a new $ bill costs $8.02.

Mr Bill Gates could probably reach the moon if he piled his wealth using Zimbabwean dollars.

You can calculate the height of your annual income easily.

• First convert your annual income to US dollars. One US dollar bill is 0.010922 cm thick. 
• Then calculate how many 100 US dollar bills (use 1 US dollar bills if you are in teaching, taking care of the sick and the old or are a writer in India or Namibia) you get per year 
• Multiply that amount by 0.010922 cm to get your annual income height in cms.

Earning More than Others is Important

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Rather than the actual earning, the relative earning or comparative spending power is more important for many people, especially younger and ambitious men. In societies like the USA, raw money power is measured by conspicuous consumption. This trend has spread to former Eastern Block countries including China.

In societies, like the Scandinavian welfare societies, where incomes are more evenly distributed, people compare their incomes less with their neighbours. But they compare instead with history.

“I earn much more than my father.” or “My grandfather could never have afforded what I can.” are often typical sentiments.

Economists measure inequality among people in societies with measures like the Gini, Theil and Hoover Index (also called the Robin Hood index). Hoover Index measures the total community income that would have to be taken from the richer half of the population and given to the poorer half so that perfect equality is achieved.


Women Complain About Earning Less

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Women in Western democracies persistently complain that they earn less than men.

Is that a fact?

The research findings of the Institute of Economic Affairs, a UK free market think tank since 1955, are startling:

• Women’s mean part-time earnings are now higher than those of male part-timers.
• 22-29 year old women earn only 1% less than men
• Men tend to work longer hours and put in more overtime, with twice as many male as female managers working more than 48 hours a week.
• Typically men seek higher pay and career success and women seek job satisfaction.
• 75% of women plan to take a career break against 12% of men.
• Men lose their jobs more often and get injured more often at work.

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Yet another research finding discloses that in USA, female graduates earn $8,000 less than men per year a year after graduating. Men earned $42,918, women earned $35,296 in 2009.

Famous Quotes About Income

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“When there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of income.” Plato, Greek Philosopher (428 – 348 B.C.)

“Expenditure rises to meet income.” C. Northcote Parkinson (English writer 1909-1993)

“Good management is better than good income.” Portuguese proverb. 

“Between persons of equal income there is no social distinction except the distinction of merit. Money is nothing: character, conduct, and capacity are everything. There would be great people and ordinary people and little people, but the great would always be those who had done great things, and never the idiots whose mothers had spoiled them and whose fathers had left them a hundred thousand a year; and the little would be persons of small minds and mean characters, and not poor persons who had never had a chance. That is why idiots are always in favour of inequality of income (their only chance of eminence), and the really great in favour of equality.” George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950). Irish playwright and 1925 Nobelist.