1907 Fun Facts, Trivia and History

Firsts, Inventions and Wonders:
Morris Michtom, the inventor of the Teddy Bear in 1902, opened the Ideal Novelty and Toy Company

The Plaza Hotel opened in New York City (5th Ave& 59th St). Price for one night: $2.50.

Prior to 1907 a carat, the unit of measurement for gemstones and pearls, could be anywhere between 187 milligrams to 215.99 milligrams depending on what part of the world you were in. An agreement in Paris put it at 200 mg, and the United States started using that number in 1913.

UPS was originally called American Messenger Company and was started in 1907 by 2 teenagers, Claude Ryan and Jim Casey in Seattle.

The First AA Battery was invented.

The Bank of Italy (later Bank of America) opened at 3433 Mission Street, San Francisco.

United Press (International) was founded by E.W. Scripps.

The first Ziegfeld Follies was produced in 1907 at the roof theatre Jardin de Paris

The word “blurb” was invented in 1907 by humorist Gelett Burgess.

Scott introduced paper towels in 1907 for public bathroom use, and for kitchen use in 1931.

The world’s first fully synthetic plastic was Bakelite, invented in New York in 1907 by Leo Baekeland, who coined the term ‘plastics’.

The first trial to be called the “trial of the century” was in 1907 when Harry K. Thaw was tried for the murder of Stanford White.

Pop Culture News:
Until 1907 it was illegal in England to marry your dead wife’s sister.

Father’s Day was inspired, in part, by the 1907 Monongah Mining Disaster in West Virginia that killed 361 men, 250 of them fathers, leaving around a thousand fatherless children.

Joseph Stalin said at the funeral of his first wife: “This creature softened my heart of stone. She died and with her died my last warm feelings for humanity.”

Joseph Stalin, Vladimir Lenin and Maxim Litvinov were all involved in a 1907 armed robbery that resulted in the deaths of 40 people and injuring 50 others, stealing $3.4 in 2017 million dollars.

Ringling Brothers Greatest Show on Earth bought Barnum & Bailey Circus.

The phrase “Gentleman’s Agreement” refers to an actual informal agreement between the US and Japan in 1907.

Kellogg’s promoted their cornflakes with something called the Wink Day campaign. Women we’re encouraged to “wink at your grocer and see what you get”, what they got was a free box of cereal.

Ben-Hur (2016) was a remake of Ben-Hur (1959) which was a remake of a 1925 silent film, which was a remake of a 1907 silent film

The ball atop One Times Square started on December 31, 1907, as 100 incandescent light bulbs on a wood and iron structure hoisted with a rope. The ball drop tradition has been observed every year since, except in 1942 and 1943 in observance of wartime blackouts.

The Huia bird went extinct in 1907, but its song exists today because an elderly Maori man recorded them in 1949 from memories of his childhood.

The Irish Crown Jewels were stolen in 1907 and the crime has never been solved.

Australian swimmer Anette Kellerman was the first woman to wear a one-piece bathing suit and was arrested for indecency in 1907. She was also one of the first women to attempt to swim the English Channel.

During the Panic of 1907 John D. Rockefeller, the wealthiest man in America, pledge half of his wealth to maintain America’s credit and got other bankers to help as well. The Panic of 1907 led to the formation of The Federal Reserve Bank.

Polio has existed for all of written human history, but there was never a major epidemic of it until 1907 when 2,700 contracted polio in Vermont, by 1952 there were over 50,000 cases in just the United States.

John “Babbacombe” Lee (1864 – March 19, 1945) survived three attempts to hang him for murder in 1885 when the gallows malfunctioned and was subsequently released in 1907.

Interesting…
Dropping a bomb from a balloon is, to this day, a violation of the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, although there is no such prohibition for dropping a bomb from an aircraft.

Harvard’s Widener Library is named after a 1907 alum, Harry Elkins Widener, who died on the Titanic.

Researcher George Soper published the results of his investigation into recent typhoid outbreaks in the New York area and said that Mary Mallon (Typhoid Mary) was the likely source of the outbreak

“Uncle Fed” Messer lived from August 21, 1791, until February 8, 1907, in North Carolina, US.

In Nigeria, a local tribe worshiped the god of smallpox, Sopona. The priests secretly infected people they didn’t like. Based on this information, the British colonial rulers banned the worship of Sopona in 1907.

The phrase “the whole 9 yards” is not related to football or any sports. In fact, no one knows the actual origins, it is “the most prominent etymological riddle of our time.” It is based on an earlier phase of “whole 6 yards” traced to circa 1907.

From 1907 to 1922, U.S. citizen women lost their citizenship if they married foreigners.

Popular and Notable Books From 1907: