1903
Wright brothers fly at Kitty Hawk
On a cold Carolina beach, a bicycle mechanic lay flat on a wood-and-muslin contraption while his brother ran alongside. Twelve seconds and one hundred twenty feet later, humanity flew. Only five witnesses saw it, and most newspapers ignored the story. The next decade would fill the skies with engines and rivalry.
Panama breaks from Colombia
With American warships conveniently offshore, Panama declared independence from Colombia. Within days the new nation signed over a strip of jungle for Washington to carve a canal through. Roosevelt later joked, I took the canal, and let Congress debate. Bogota never forgave the theft, and the episode became a founding grievance of Latin American distrust toward the colossus to the north.
Pogroms in Kishinev
At Easter, mobs in the Bessarabian city of Kishinev beat and murdered forty-nine Jews and raped, mutilated, and pillaged for two days while police looked on. News of the pogrom traveled the world and accelerated Jewish emigration to America and the first Zionist waves to Palestine. A new century's anti-Semitism had shown its face.
Serbian king murdered in palace coup
Serbian army officers burst into the royal palace in Belgrade and hacked King Alexander and Queen Draga to death, throwing their bodies out a window. The coup installed a new dynasty under Petar Karadjordjevic. Serbia pivoted from Austrian orbit toward Russia, one of the slow turns that would lead to Sarajevo in 1914.
Women's Social and Political Union founded
Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters founded the WSPU in Manchester under the motto Deeds, Not Words. The suffragettes would chain themselves to railings, break shop windows, and go on hunger strikes, dragging Britain toward granting women the vote. The word suffragette was meant as a slur; they took it as a banner.