January 30, 1902: Scott's Discovery Expedition reaches the Great Ice Barrier in AntarcticaThe Carnegie InstitutionJanuary 28, 1902: Andrew Carnegie endows the Carnegie Institution for Science
Miss Alice Roosevelt, the oldest daughter of U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, was "formally presented to Washington society" at a ball at the White House, a month before her 18th birthday.[3]
January 4, 1902 (Saturday)
Tzu Hsi, the Empress Dowager of China, issued an imperial edict directing her subjects to resume friendly relations with foreign diplomatic personnel in Beijing.[3]
Martial law was declared in Barcelona by the government of Spain after labor strikes began.[3]
Nineteen people were killed in a collision between a British ship and a Spanish ship off of the coast of Portugal.[3]
Died:Jan Gotlib Bloch (Ivan Stanislavovich Blokh), 67, Polish-Russian industrialist and political scientist who wrote about the future of warfare (b. 1836)
January 7, 1902 (Tuesday)
By a margin of only 394 votes, Republican Montague Lessler defeated Democrat Perry Belmont to fill a vacancy for the U.S. representative seat for the normally Democrat Seventh New York District.[3]
A train collision inside the New York Central Railroad's Park Avenue Tunnel killed 17 people and injured 38— mostly by scalding from a ruptured boiler[3] — leading to increased demand for electric-powered trains and to the banning of steam locomotives in New York City.
The German imperial government announced that Friedrich Alfred Krupp, the owner and operator of the Krupp Arms Manufacturing Company, was the wealthiest man in the German Empire, with an annual income of 20,000,000 marks (equivalent to USD $5,000,000 in 1902 and more than $150 million or €135 million per year in 2019).[3]
January 11, 1902 (Saturday)
The first issue of Popular Mechanics magazine was published.[10] Founded by Henry Haven Windsor, it initially had only five subscribers and sold only a few hundred copies on newsstands, but would continue to be published more than a century later.
Horace Scudder, 63, American journalist, historian and children's author, known for being editor of The Atlantic Monthly and for the standard American school textbook A History of the United States of America (b. 1838)
What one author describes as "the first wave of Korean immigration" to the United States[14] began with the arrival of the steamer S.S. Gaelic in the U.S. Hawaiian Territory, carrying 102 emigres from the Kingdom of Korea. Over the next three years, a total of 7,291 Korean laborers would arrive by ship to work in Hawaiian sugar plantations, until Japan's assumption of protectorate status over Korea and the closing off of emigration.
Died:William J. Parkinson, 57, Washington state senator and former President pro tempore of the Senate.
January 15, 1902 (Wednesday)
Fifteen of the 16 nations meeting at the Pan-American Conference in Mexico City, including the United States, signed their agreement to recognize the principles of compulsory arbitration of international disputes as outlined in the Hague Convention.[3]Chile announced earlier that it would withdraw from the conference if compulsory arbitration was adopted.
Died:Alpheus Hyatt, 63, American zoologist and paleontologist (b. 1838)
January 16, 1902 (Thursday)
A earthquake of magnitude 7.0 struck Chilpancingo, the capital of the Mexican state of Guerrero.[3] Despite the severity of the quake, only two people were killed and two injured.[16]
Almost two years before the first flight by the Wright brothers, German-American aviator Gustave Whitehead claimed to have made two notable flights over Long Island Sound in a heavier-than-air, 40 hp- 29.9-kW- engine-powered flying machine with wheels and an amphibious boat-shaped hull.[18]
Four adjacent commercial buildings, along Jefferson Avenue near the intersection with Shelby Street in Detroit, and each four stories tall, collapsed without warning at 8:30 in the evening. "It was fortunate that the wreck occurred on Sunday," a correspondent noted, adding "Had it happened during business hours, the loss of life would have been appalling, as there were about 200 persons employed by the various firms."[20]
Carlos Albán, Colombian inventor and that nation's Governor of the province of Panama, was killed when insurgents sank the ship that he was commanding, the Lautaro.[23]
Twenty coal miners were killed, and 14 seriously injured, in an explosion at the Lost Creek Fuel Company Number 2 mine in Mahaska County, Iowa.[23] Coal miners across the state went on strike in order to force the enactment of stricter safety laws.
General Manie Maritz of the South African Republic and his party of soldiers were attacked by a group of coloured residents of Leliefontein, in the north of Britain's Cape Colony, to ask questions of the Methodist missionaries there. Martiz retreated, then came back the next day and carried out the Leliefontein massacre, summarily shooting or bludgeoning at least 30 members of the population in retaliation for the offense.[30]
Born:Ed Gossett, U.S. congressman from Texas (d. 1990)
Eugene du Pont, 61, American businessman and President of the DuPont Company as the largest supplier of gunpowder to the United States Army (b. 1840). Following his death, his three nephews would build the company into a worldwide chemical conglomerate.
The birthday of William McKinley, the late U.S. President, was observed across the United States for the first time since his assassination in September.[31] For several decades, McKinley's birthday, though not a holiday, would be observed as "Carnation Day"[32] because the 25th U.S. President had traditionally worn a red carnation in his lapel.[33] Although the tradition would fade after McKinley's 100th birthday in 1943,[34] the event was informally observed as late as 2017.[35]
The British government announced that the casualties in the Second Boer War after more than two years of fighting were 100,701 soldiers and 5,240 officers who had been killed or wounded.[23]
^Danver, Steven L. (2010). Babylonian culture Popular Controversies in World History: Investigating History's Intriguing Questions [4 volumes]: Investigating History's Intriguing Questions. ABC-CLIO.
^Stone, Ellene (Kidnapping off); an article by Raymond Detrez (2014) in Historical Dictionary of Bulgaria, Edition 3; Rowman & Littlefield, 2014 p. 469, ISBN1442241802.
^Wessels, Andre (2010). The Anglo-Boer War 1889-1902: White Man's War, Black Man's War, Traumatic War. Sun Press. p. 125.
^"M'Kinley's Birthday— Chicago and Other large Cities Observe the Occasion in Fitting Manner— National Holiday Suggested". The Telegraph. Alton, Illinois. 30 January 1902. p. 1.
^"'Twas Carnation Day— Those Who Remembered McKinley's Birthday Caused a Demand for the Flower". Minneapolis Journal. 29 January 1903. p. 6.
^"This is Carnation Day— President McKinley's Birthday to Be Recognized by Flower". Brooklyn Daily Eagle. 29 January 1911. p. S-6.
^"House Members Honor McKinley On Birthday Eve". Baltimore Sun. 29 January 1943. p. 3.