1908
Ford rolls out the Model T
At a Detroit factory Henry Ford introduced a homely black car any competent farmer could fix with baling wire and a wrench. Priced at eight hundred and fifty dollars, it was built to be affordable. He would build fifteen million of them. Within a generation the assembly line he perfected would reshape work, cities, childhood, courtship, and the American landscape itself.
Young Turks force Ottoman constitution
A cabal of reformist officers in Salonika forced Sultan Abdul Hamid II to restore the long-suspended constitution. Crowds danced in Istanbul streets and strangers embraced across ethnic lines. The multi-ethnic empire briefly believed it could remake itself as a modern constitutional nation. Within a decade that hope would burn away in war, genocide, and the empire's final dissolution.
Tunguska explodes over Siberia
At dawn above the taiga, something bright as a second sun streaked down and burst five miles up. The blast flattened eighty million trees over an area the size of London. Reindeer vanished. No crater was ever found. For decades scientists argued whether a meteor, a comet, or something stranger had briefly joined the earth.
Austria annexes Bosnia
Austria-Hungary formally annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina, which it had occupied since 1878, enraging Serbia and Russia. A Balkan crisis almost led to war. It was defused, but Serbian nationalism grew sharper and turned toward assassination as a tool. Six years later a Bosnian Serb student would squeeze a trigger in Sarajevo.
Oil discovered in Persia
After years of dry wells and nearly abandoned drilling, a British team struck oil at Masjed Soleyman in southwestern Persia. The Anglo-Persian Oil Company was founded the next year. A century of Middle Eastern oil politics, with its coups, wars, and fortunes, had begun with a geyser in a dusty foothill.
First fatal airplane crash
During a demonstration flight at Fort Myer, Virginia, Orville Wright's plane broke a propeller and plunged fifty feet, killing his passenger, Army Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge, who became the first person to die in a powered aircraft. Wright survived with broken bones. Aviation had begun paying its blood tax, which it would continue paying heavily throughout the century.