1903 Archives | HISTORY

On January 13, 1903, the RMS Gaelic arrives in Honolulu, bringing with it the first Korean immigrants to the United States. The Hawaiian Star calls the 102 newcomers “a possible solution for the problem of labor on plantations,” foreshadowing the difficult lives that await them in the recently acquired U.S. territory.

On February 15, 1903, toy store owner and inventor Morris Michtom places two stuffed bears in his shop window, advertising them as Teddy bears. Michtom had earlier petitioned President Theodore Roosevelt for permission to use his nickname, Teddy. The president agreed and, before long, other toy manufacturers began turning out copies of Michtom’s stuffed bears, which soon became a national childhood institution.

On March 11, 1903, musician and entertainer Lawrence Welk is born.

On March 16, 1903, Roy Bean, the self-proclaimed “law west of the Pecos,” dies in Langtry, Texas.

On May 12, 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt’s trip to San Francisco is captured on moving-picture film, making him one of the first presidents to have an official activity recorded in that medium.

At 9:30 in the morning on June 16, 1903, Henry Ford and other prospective stockholders in the Ford Motor Company meet in Detroit to sign the official paperwork required to create a new corporation. Twelve stockholders were listed on the forms, which were signed, notarized and sent to the office of Michigan’s secretary of state. The company was officially incorporated the following day, when the secretary of state’s office received the articles of association.

On July 15, 1903, the newly formed Ford Motor Company takes its first order from Chicago dentist Ernst Pfenning: an $850 two-cylinder Model A automobile with a tonneau (or backseat). The car, produced at Ford’s plant on Mack Street (now Mack Avenue) in Detroit, was delivered to Dr. Pfenning just over a week later.

In Boston on October 1, 1903, the Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Boston Americans, 7-3, in the first professional baseball World Series game. Pirates right fielder Jimmy Sebring hits the first World Series home run—an inside-the-park shot to deep center field off Americans ace Cy Young—in the seventh inning to extend the Pirates' lead to 7-0. Sebring is the game's star, driving in four runs.

With the support of the U.S. government, Panama issues a declaration of independence from Colombia. The revolution was engineered by a Panamanian faction backed by the Panama Canal Company, a French-U.S. corporation that hoped to connect the Atlantic and Pacific oceans with a waterway across the Isthmus of Panama.

The patent office awards U.S. Patent No. 743,801 to a Birmingham, Alabama woman named Mary Anderson for her “window cleaning device for electric cars and other vehicles to remove snow, ice or sleet from the window.” When she received her patent, Anderson tried to sell it to a Canadian manufacturing firm, but the company refused: The device had no practical value, it said, and so was not worth any money. Though mechanical windshield wipers were standard equipment in passenger cars by around 1913, Anderson never profited from the invention.

On November 20, 1903, the infamous hired killer Tom Horn is hanged for having allegedly murdered Willie Nickell, the 14-year-old son of a southern Wyoming sheep rancher.

On December 10, 1903, Marie and Pierre Curie are awarded a Nobel Prize in Physics for their groundbreaking investigations of radioactivity, sharing the prize with French scientist A. Henri Becquerel. The year before, the couple had successfully isolated radioactive radium salts from the mineral pitchblende in their laboratory in Paris. In 1898, the Curies discovered the existence of the elements radium and polonium in their research of pitchblende.

Near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Orville and Wilbur Wright make the first successful flight in history of a self-propelled, heavier-than-air aircraft on December 17, 1903. Orville piloted the gasoline-powered, propeller-driven biplane, which stayed aloft for 12 seconds and covered 120 feet on its inaugural flight.

A fire in the Iroquois Theater in Chicago, Illinois, kills more than 600 people on December 30, 1903. It was the deadliest theater fire in U.S. history. Blocked fire exits and the lack of a fire-safety plan caused most of the deaths.