The sinking of SS Titanic, 14 April 1912. An artist’s impression of the ship going down. Operated by the White Star Line, on 14 April 1912 SS Titanic struck an iceberg in thick fog off Newfoundland. She was the largest and most luxurious ocean liner of her time, and thought to be unsinkable. In the collision five of her watertight compartments were compromised and she sank. Out of the 2228 people on board, only 705 survived. A major cause of the loss of life was the insufficient number of lifeboats she carried. (Photo by Ann Ronan Pictures/Print Collector/Getty Images)
1910
- Boy Scouts Established in U.S.
- Halley’s Comet Makes an Appearance
- The Tango Catches On
1911
- The Chinese Revolution
- Ernest Rutherford Discovers the Structure of an Atom
- The Incan City of Machu Picchu Discovered
- Mona Lisa Is Stolen
- Roald Amundsen Reaches the South Pole
- Standard Oil Company Broken Up
- Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Catches on Fire
1912
- Oreo Cookies First Introduced
- Parachutes Invented
- Piltdown Man, the “Missing Link,” Discovered (Fraud)
- The Titanic Sinks
1913
- First Crossword Puzzle
- New York’s Grand Central Terminal Opens
- Henry Ford Creates First Moving Assembly Line
- Los Angeles Owens Valley Aquaduct Opened
- Personal Income Tax Introduced in U.S.
1914
- World War I Begins
- Archduke Ferdinand Assassinated
- Babe Ruth Pitches His First Game and Hits His First Home Run With Red Sox
- Battle of Tannenberg
- The First Battle of the Marne Begins Trench Warfare in WWI
- Charlie Chaplin First Appeared as the Little Tramp
- Ernest Shackleton’s Voyage to Antarctica
- First Traffic Light
- Marcus Garvey Founds the Universal Negro Improvement Association in Jamaica
- Panama Canal Officially Opened
- Sakurajima Volcano in Japan Erupts
1915
- Armenian Genocide
- British Nurse Edith Cavell Executed by the Germans
- Czar Nicholas II Personally Takes Control of the Russian Army
- D.W. Griffith’s Controversial Film, The Birth of a Nation, Released
- Dardanelles Campaign
- First Transcontinental Telephone Call
- Germans First Use Poison Gas as a Weapon
- Klu Klux Klan Revived
- Lusitania Sunk by German U-Boat
- One Millionth Model T Rolls Off Assembly Line
- Second Battle of Ypres
- U.S. President Woodrow Wilson Marries Edith Galt
1916
- 10,000 Austrian and Italian Soldiers Die From an Avalanche in Tyrol
- Battle of the Somme
- Battle of Verdun
- Dadaism Founded by Tristan Tzara
- Easter Rising in Ireland
- First Self-Service Grocery Store, a Piggly Wiggly, Opens in U.S.
- First Use of Tanks in Warfare
- Great White Shark Attacks Five Times Off Jersey Shore
- Jeanette Rankin Becomes First Woman to Serve in U.S. Congress
- John D. Rockefeller Becomes America’s First Billionaire
- Last Emperor of China Abdicates
- Mad Monk Rasputin Is Murdered
- Margaret Sanger Opens First Birth Control Clinic
- WWI Flying Ace Manfred von Richtohofen (a.k.a. the Red Baron) Shoots Down His First Enemy
Gerrit Rietveld, Red & Blue Chair, 1917
1917
- First Pulitzer Prizes Awarded
- Mata Hari Executed for Being a Spy
- Russian Revolution
- U.S. Enters World War I
1918
- 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic
- Daylight Saving Time Introduced
- Russian Czar Nicholas II and His Family are Killed
El Lissitzky, Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge, 1919