1908

Events in 1908 66

• 1832 – 1908 Wilhelm Busch (1832-1908) Died 9 January 1908, aged 75 Busch was a German humorist, poet, and illustrator whose illustrated verse tale "Max und Moritz" influenced the development of the comic strip. His darkly comic drawings and rhymes were hugely popular in Germany and inspired later cartoonists internationally. He spent his final years largely reclusive in Mechtshausen.
• 1835 – 1908 Empress Dowager Cixi (1835-1908) Died 15 November 1908, aged 73 Cixi effectively ruled Qing dynasty China as regent for nearly half a century, dominating the court during a period of foreign intervention and internal upheaval. She died one day after the Guangxu Emperor, whom she had kept confined for years. Her death was followed by the enthronement of the child emperor Puyi.
• 1837 – 1908 Grover Cleveland 22nd & 24th President — only non-consecutive terms Grover Cleveland (Mar 18, 1837 – Jun 24, 1908) was the 22nd and 24th President — the only US president to serve two non-consecutive terms (1885-1889 and 1893-1897). Known for his honesty and opposition to corruption.
• 1844 – 1908 Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908) Died 21 June 1908, aged 64 Rimsky-Korsakov was a Russian composer and a member of "The Five," known for orchestral works including "Scheherazade" and "Capriccio Espagnol." He also taught composition and orchestration, influencing generations of Russian composers including Stravinsky. He died at his estate near Luga, Russia.
• 1844 – 1908 Pablo de Sarasate Spanish violin virtuoso Spanish violinist and composer whose Carmen Fantasy and Zigeunerweisen remain showpieces for every great violinist.
• 1848 – 1908 Joel Chandler Harris (1848-1908) Died 3 July 1908, aged 59 Harris was an American journalist and author best known for the "Uncle Remus" collection of Southern folktales featuring Br'er Rabbit. His writing drew heavily on African American oral storytelling traditions from the Reconstruction-era South. He worked for decades at the Atlanta Constitution newspaper.
• 1871 – 1908 Guangxu Emperor (1871-1908) Died 14 November 1908, aged 37 Guangxu was the penultimate emperor of the Qing dynasty, whose attempt at the 1898 Hundred Days' Reform led to his confinement by Empress Dowager Cixi. He died under suspicious circumstances one day before Cixi's own death, with later forensic tests suggesting arsenic poisoning. He was succeeded by his nephew, Puyi.
• 1904 – 1908 The Herero and Nama genocide The first genocide of the twentieth century The Herero rise against German settlers in South-West Africa. After the battle at Waterberg, General Lothar von Trotha issues an extermination order: any Herero found within the German frontier, with or without a weapon, will be shot. Survivors are driven into the Omaheke desert and the waterholes are sealed. The Nama rise the following year and are treated the same way. Perhaps 65,000 of 80,000 Herero and 10,000 of 20,000 Nama die, many in camps on Shark Island. Germany formally recognised it as genocide in 2021.
• 1908 – 1973 Anna Magnani (1908-1973) Died 26 September 1973, aged 65 Italian actress Anna Magnani, known for her role in Roberto Rossellini's Rome, Open City and winner of the Academy Award for Best Actress for The Rose Tattoo, died in Rome.
• 1908 – 1934 Baby Face Nelson (1908-1934) Died 27 November 1934, aged 25 American bank robber and associate of John Dillinger. He died of his wounds after a gunfight with FBI agents near Barrington, Illinois, in which he killed two of them.
• 1908 – 1942 Carole Lombard (1908-1942) Died 16 January 1942, aged 33 Carole Lombard was an American actress and one of the leading stars of 1930s screwball comedy, known for My Man Godfrey and Nothing Sacred. She died when TWA Flight 3 crashed near Las Vegas while she was returning from a war bond rally. She was married to Clark Gable.
• 1908 – 1965 Edward R. Murrow (1908-1965) Died 27 April 1965, aged 57 Edward R. Murrow was an American broadcast journalist renowned for his radio reports from London during the Blitz and his later television criticism of Senator Joseph McCarthy. He is widely regarded as one of the founders of broadcast journalism. He died of lung cancer at his home in New York on 27 April 1965.
• 1908 Ford Model T Mass production begins The Ford Model T was the first affordable automobile for the middle class, transforming transport and pioneering mass production.
• 1908 Ford Model T introduced Ford Model T introduced Ford introduced the Model T on 1 October 1908 at $850, designed to be simple enough for an owner to repair and cheap enough for ordinary families to buy. Moving assembly line production from 1913 pushed the price below $300. Around fifteen million were built before production ended in 1927.
• 1908 – 1964 Ian Fleming (1908-1964) Died 12 August 1964, aged 56 Fleming was a British author best known for creating the James Bond spy series. He wrote twelve Bond novels and two short story collections, drawing on his own wartime naval intelligence experience.
• 1908 – 1957 Joseph McCarthy (1908-1957) Died 2 May 1957, aged 48 American senator whose unsubstantiated accusations of communist infiltration in government fueled the anti-communist hysteria known as McCarthyism in the early 1950s. He died of complications related to alcoholism.
• 1908 – 1974 Oskar Schindler (1908-1974) Died 9 October 1974, aged 66 Oskar Schindler was a German industrialist credited with saving over a thousand Jewish workers from the Holocaust by employing them in his factories. He was later recognized by Israel as Righteous Among the Nations.
• 1908 – 1960 Richard Wright (1908-1960) Died 28 November 1960, aged 52 American author of Native Son and Black Boy, whose work exposed the brutal realities of racism in the United States. He died in Paris, where he had lived as an expatriate since 1946.
• 1908 – 1973 Salvador Allende (1908-1973) Died 11 September 1973, aged 65 Salvador Allende, the democratically elected socialist president of Chile, died during the military coup led by General Augusto Pinochet that overthrew his government. His death marked the end of Chile's democratic period and the start of a 17-year dictatorship.
• 1908 – 1963 Simone de Beauvoir French philosopher and writer De Beauvoir wrote The Second Sex, a foundational feminist philosophical work examining gender and society.
• 1908 – 1986 Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986) Died 14 April 1986, aged 78 French philosopher and writer whose 1949 work The Second Sex became a foundational text of modern feminism. She was a lifelong companion of philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and a prominent public intellectual in postwar France. She died in Paris and was buried beside Sartre in Montparnasse Cemetery.
• 1908 – 1992 Paul Henreid (1908-1992) Austrian-American actor, Victor Laszlo in Casablanca, and later a television director.
• 1908 – 2003 Edward Teller (1908-2003) Died 9 September 2003, aged 95 Edward Teller was a Hungarian-born physicist often called the father of the hydrogen bomb, which he championed within the US weapons programme. His testimony against J. Robert Oppenheimer in 1954 alienated many colleagues. He remained an advocate of nuclear weapons and missile defence into old age.
• 1908 – 1984 Ethel Merman (1908-1984) Died 15 February 1984, aged 76 American singer and actress Ethel Merman, a leading star of Broadway musical theater known for shows including Gypsy and Annie Get Your Gun, died in New York City.
• 1908 Scouting for Boys published Robert Baden-Powell launches the worldwide Scouting movement British Army officer Robert Baden-Powell published "Scouting for Boys" in installments, distilling lessons from his Brownsea Island camp into a handbook for youth training. The book's popularity led to the rapid formation of Boy Scout troops across Britain and abroad. Scouting grew into one of the largest youth movements in the world.
• 1908 Regicide of 1908 The Fall of Monarchy The assassination of King Carlos I and Prince Luís Filipe in Lisbon, leading to the end of the monarchy.
• 1908 – 1983 Buster Crabbe (1908-1983) American Olympic swimmer turned actor, the screen's Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers.
• 1908 – 2001 Balthus (1908-2001) Died 18 February 2001, aged 92 Balthus, born Balthasar Kłossowski de Rola, was a figurative painter who worked against the grain of twentieth-century abstraction. His canvases of interiors and adolescent girls were admired for their composition and unsettling for their subject matter. He directed the French Academy in Rome for many years.
• 1908 – 1990 Rex Harrison (1908-1990) Died 2 June 1990, aged 82 Rex Harrison was an English actor best known for playing Professor Henry Higgins in "My Fair Lady" on stage and screen, winning an Academy Award for the film role. He had a long career on both the London and Broadway stage. He died in New York City on 2 June 1990.
• 1908 – 1988 Louis L'Amour (1908-1988) Died 10 June 1988, aged 80 Louis L'Amour was an American author famed for his prolific output of Western novels, with more than 100 books published in his lifetime. His work sold over 300 million copies worldwide. He received the Congressional Gold Medal and the Medal of Freedom for his contributions to American letters.
• 1908 – 1991 David Lean (1908-1991) Died 16 April 1991, aged 83 British film director David Lean died in London shortly after completing his final film project. He directed epic films including Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago, and The Bridge on the River Kwai, winning two Academy Awards for Best Director. His sweeping visual style influenced generations of filmmakers.
• 1908 – 2003 Buddy Ebsen (1908-2003) American dancer and actor, the first Tin Man and later Jed Clampett and Barnaby Jones.
• 1908 – 1989 Bette Davis (1908-1989) Died 6 October 1989, aged 81 Bette Davis was an American actress known for her commanding screen presence in films such as All About Eve and Jezebel. She won two Academy Awards and received ten nominations across her career. She was one of the founding figures of what became the American Film Institute's honors.
• 1908 – 1989 Herbert von Karajan (1908-1989) Died 16 July 1989, aged 81 Herbert von Karajan was an Austrian conductor who led the Berlin Philharmonic for over three decades. He was one of the best-selling classical recording artists of all time. His interpretations shaped orchestral performance standards worldwide.
• 1908 Frederick Cook claims to reach the North Pole Disputed expedition sparks a bitter priority controversy American explorer Frederick Cook announced that he had reached the North Pole with two Inuit companions, months before Robert Peary made the same claim. The rival assertions triggered a long public dispute over which explorer, if either, had actually reached the pole first. Cook's claim was later widely discredited by contemporaries and historians.
• 1908 1908 Summer Olympics IV Olympiad - London The longest Games in history (187 days). Winner: United Kingdom.
• 1908 – 1990 Eve Arden (1908-1990) American actress famous for wisecracking roles and as the teacher in Our Miss Brooks.
• 1908 – 1997 James Stewart (1908-1997) Died 2 July 1997, aged 89 James Stewart was an American actor known for films including It's a Wonderful Life, Vertigo, and Rear Window. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for The Philadelphia Story and received an honorary Oscar in 1985. He also served as a decorated bomber pilot during World War II.
• 1908 Oil at Masjed Soleyman The first Middle Eastern oilfield After seven years of drilling, a bankrupt concession and a telegram from London ordering him to stop, George Reynolds strikes oil in south-west Persia at fifty-one degrees before dawn. The Anglo-Persian Oil Company is formed the following year, becomes Anglo-Iranian, and eventually BP. The Royal Navy converts from coal to oil on the strength of it. Every subsequent argument about the Middle East runs through this well.
• 1908 – 1992 Robert Morley (1908-1992) Died 3 June 1992, aged 84 Robert Morley was an English actor known for character roles in films such as "The African Queen" and for his frequent appearances in British television advertisements. He was noted for his large, jovial screen presence and sharp wit. He worked in film and theater for over five decades.
• 1908 – 1989 Mel Blanc (1908-1989) Died 10 July 1989, aged 81 Mel Blanc was an American voice actor known as 'The Man of a Thousand Voices' for characters including Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and Porky Pig. He voiced the majority of Warner Bros. Looney Tunes characters for decades. His work established many conventions of cartoon voice acting.
• 1908 – 1993 Don Ameche (1908-1993) Died 6 December 1993, aged 85 Don Ameche was an American actor whose career spanned six decades, from 1930s radio and film through a career resurgence with "Trading Places" and an Oscar-winning role in "Cocoon." He was famously, if inaccurately, credited by the public with inventing the telephone due to his role in a 1939 biopic of Alexander Graham Bell. He died of prostate cancer in Scottsdale, Arizona.
• 1908 Bombardment of the Persian Majlis Shah Mohammad Ali suppresses Iran's constitutional parliament Persian Cossack Brigade forces loyal to Mohammad Ali Shah Qajar shelled the parliament building in Tehran, crushing the constitutionalist movement. Many constitutionalist leaders were arrested or executed in the aftermath. The event marked a setback for Iran's constitutional revolution, though it would be reversed in 1909.
• 1908 – 2000 Willard Van Orman Quine (1908-2000) Died 25 December 2000, aged 92 W. V. O. Quine was among the most influential analytic philosophers of the twentieth century, teaching at Harvard for most of his career. His essay "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" attacked the analytic-synthetic distinction, and his work on the indeterminacy of translation and on ontological commitment reshaped philosophy of language and logic.
• 1908 The Tunguska event Two thousand square kilometres, flattened Something explodes several kilometres above the Podkamennaya Tunguska river in Siberia with the force of a large hydrogen bomb, levelling an estimated eighty million trees. Windows break hundreds of kilometres away and the night sky over Europe stays light enough to read by for days. Nobody investigates on the ground until 1927, and no crater is ever found — the consensus is an asteroid or comet fragment that burst before impact. It is the largest impact event in recorded history, and it happened over one of the emptiest places on earth.
• 1908 – 1993 Thurgood Marshall (1908-1993) Died 24 January 1993, aged 84 Thurgood Marshall was the first African American justice of the US Supreme Court, serving from 1967 to 1991. As a lawyer, he had argued and won Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark case that outlawed racial segregation in public schools. He died in Bethesda, Maryland, of heart failure.
• 1908 Young Turk Revolution Ottoman constitution restored after military uprising Officers of the Committee of Union and Progress forced Sultan Abdul Hamid II to restore the 1876 constitution and reconvene parliament. The revolt began among army units in Macedonia and spread rapidly across the empire. It ended decades of autocratic rule and ushered in a period of parliamentary government.
• 1908 – 1979 Nelson Rockefeller (1908-1979) Died 26 January 1979, aged 70 Nelson Rockefeller, businessman and four-term Governor of New York who served as US Vice President under Gerald Ford, died of a heart attack in New York City. A grandson of oil magnate John D. Rockefeller, he was a major figure in liberal Republican politics for decades. He died on 26 January 1979.
• 1908 – 2002 Milton Berle (1908-2002) Died 27 March 2002, aged 93 Milton Berle was a vaudeville and radio comedian who became American television's first major star as host of the Texaco Star Theater from 1948. His broad, costume-heavy slapstick drew such large audiences that he was nicknamed Mr. Television and credited with helping sell sets. His career on stage and screen spanned some eight decades.
• 1908 Wilbur Wright's public flights at Le Mans First public demonstration of controlled powered flight in Europe Wilbur Wright flew before crowds of spectators and journalists near Le Mans, France, silencing doubts about the Wright brothers' earlier claims. His maneuverable, sustained flights astonished European aviators who had lagged behind in heavier-than-air flight. The demonstrations triggered a surge of aviation development across Europe.
• 1908 – 1973 Lyndon B. Johnson 36th President — Great Society, Vietnam War Lyndon B. Johnson (Aug 27, 1908 – Jan 22, 1973) was the 36th President 1963-1969. He passed landmark civil rights legislation and the Great Society programmes, but was consumed by the Vietnam War and chose not to seek re-election.
• 1908 – 1991 Fred MacMurray (1908-1991) American actor, the doomed insurance man in Double Indemnity and the dad in My Three Sons.
• 1908 General Motors founded William Durant incorporates a new automobile holding company William C. Durant incorporated General Motors in Flint, Michigan, initially combining Buick with other small manufacturers. The company grew rapidly through acquisitions and became one of the world's largest automakers. It would come to dominate the American auto industry for much of the twentieth century.
• 1908 First fatal airplane crash Orville Wright's Army test flight crashes at Fort Myer Orville Wright was demonstrating the Wright Flyer to the United States Army when a propeller failed and the aircraft crashed. Passenger Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge died from his injuries, becoming the first person killed in a powered airplane crash. Wright survived with serious injuries.
• 1908 Austria-Hungary annexes Bosnia The Bosnian Crisis Vienna converts thirty years of occupation into outright annexation without consulting anybody. Serbia, which had wanted the province, mobilises and then backs down when Russia — still broken by Japan and 1905 — cannot support it. Germany's open backing of Austria humiliates St Petersburg, which resolves never to be caught out again. Six years later a Bosnian Serb shoots the Archduke in Sarajevo and Russia does not back down.
• 1908 William Howard Taft elected President of the United States Republican wins to succeed Theodore Roosevelt William Howard Taft defeated Democrat William Jennings Bryan in the U.S. presidential election, continuing Republican control of the White House. Taft had been handpicked by outgoing President Theodore Roosevelt as his successor. He took office in March 1909.
• 1908 Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid killed in Bolivia American outlaws die in shootout with Bolivian soldiers Robert LeRoy Parker, known as Butch Cassidy, and Harry Longabaugh, the Sundance Kid, were killed following a shootout with the Bolivian army after a payroll robbery. The exact circumstances remain disputed, but the pair's deaths ended one of the American West's most famous outlaw partnerships. Their story was later popularized by the 1969 film "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid."
• 1908 Belgium annexes the Congo Free State Leopold II's personal colony becomes a Belgian state colony The Belgian parliament voted to annex the Congo Free State from King Leopold II, ending his brutal personal rule over the territory. The colony was renamed the Belgian Congo and placed under government administration. The annexation followed international outcry over atrocities committed under Leopold's regime.
• 1908 – 2009 Claude Levi-Strauss (1908-2009) Died 30 October 2009, aged 100 Levi-Strauss was a French anthropologist regarded as the founder of structural anthropology, whose work on kinship and myth reshaped the social sciences. His books, including Tristes Tropiques and The Savage Mind, influenced fields far beyond anthropology. He was elected to the Academie francaise in 1973.
• 1908 – 1992 Olivier Messiaen French mystic composer French composer and organist whose music was inspired by Catholic mysticism and birdsong. His Quartet for the End of Time was premiered in a Nazi prison camp.
• 1908 – 1912 Puyi becomes Emperor of China Two years old Puyi is placed on the throne days after the deaths of the Guangxu Emperor and Empress Dowager Cixi within twenty-four hours of each other. He screams through his own enthronement. He abdicates at six in 1912, ending two thousand years of imperial rule, and spends the rest of his life as a restored emperor for eleven days, a Japanese puppet in Manchukuo, a Soviet prisoner, a Chinese war criminal, a re-educated gardener and finally a citizen of the People's Republic.
• 1908 – 1971 Van Heflin (1908-1971) American actor, Oscar winner for Johnny Eager and the homesteader in Shane.
• 1908 – 2002 Yousuf Karsh (1908-2002) Died 13 July 2002, aged 93 Yousuf Karsh was an Armenian-Canadian photographer who became the leading portraitist of the mid-20th century. His 1941 portrait of a scowling Winston Churchill, taken just after he plucked away the statesman's cigar, became one of the most reproduced photographs ever. He photographed scores of world figures from his Ottawa studio over five decades.
• 1908 – 1996 Lew Ayres (1908-1996) American actor, star of All Quiet on the Western Front and Dr. Kildare, and a conscientious objector who served as a medic.
• 1908 Messina earthquake and tsunami Catastrophic quake devastates Sicily and Calabria A massive earthquake and accompanying tsunami struck the Strait of Messina, destroying the cities of Messina and Reggio Calabria. Tens of thousands of people died, making it one of the deadliest earthquakes in European history. International relief efforts, including from Russia, Britain, and the United States, aided survivors.
• 1908 – 2005 Simon Wiesenthal (1908-2005) Died 20 September 2005, aged 96 Simon Wiesenthal, the Holocaust survivor who devoted his life to tracking down Nazi war criminals, died on 20 September 2005. He helped bring more than a thousand perpetrators to justice through the documentation centre he founded in Vienna. Wiesenthal survived several concentration camps during the Second World War.