Volume 11 , Issue 32

That's The Way It Was - 1904

The Peoples Chronology, edited by James Trager, mentions on page 699, "Helen Keller was graduated magna cum laude Radcliffe College and began to write about blindness, a subject taboo in women's magazines because so many cases were related to venereal disease.

Keller had learned to speak at Boston's Horace Mann School for the deaf by feeling the position of the tongue and lips of others, making sounds, and imitating the lip and tongue motions. She had learned to lip-read by placing her fingers on the lips and throat of the speaker while the words spoken were spelled out on the palm of her had.

Her book The Story of My Life appeared in 1902 and was followed last year by her book Optimism. Keller began lecturing in 1913 to raise money for the American Fondation for the Blind. Her teacher Anne Sullivan would remain with her until her death in 1936, and Keller would continue to work for the blind and deaf until her own death in 1968.

Bethune-Cookman College ... Bethune-Cookman College had its beginnings in a cabin rented at Daytona, Florida, by Mary McLeod Bethune, 29, who opened her Daytona Normal and Industrial Institute for Negro Girls with five students. Bethune made potato pies for workmen building the nearby Clarendon Hotel. She earned $5 for a down payment on some land, and she solicited funds to build Faith Hall.

1904 Olympic Games ... The Olympic Games were held at ST. Louis and attracted 1,505 contestants from seven countries. The games were held as part of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition that belatedly celebrated the centennial of the 1803 purchase of the Louisiana Territory from France, and French athletes took most of the medals.

An International Exposition opened a year late at St. Louis to commemorate the centennial of the 1803 Louisiana Purchase. The Ferris wheel from the 1893 Chicago Midway was moved to St. Louis.

1904 1st Major League Perfect Game Pitched ... The first Major League Perfect Game was pitched May 5, 1904, by Boston Red Sox pitcher Cy Young who faced 27 batters in nine innings and did not let one of them reach first base. After Young's death in 1955 the Cy Young Award would be established for the best pitcher in the Major leagues each year, and the award would later be given to the best in each league.

No World Series in 1904 ... No World Series was held in 1904 because John McGraw of the New York Giants refused to have his team play the Boston Red Sox.

1st Cement stadium built 1904 ... The first cement stadium was built at Harvard with a capacity of 40,000. A colonnade that added additional seats would be added in 1910 as college football grew to become a major spectator sport, and steel stands would be added in 1919 to turn the horseshoe-shaped stadium into an enclosed oval.

Colgate Ribbon Dental Cream was introduced by the 98-year-old William Colgate Company. The firm would be incorporated in 1908 under the name Colgate & Co., and its dental cream would become the leading U.S. dentifrice.

The Gillette razor was patented November 15, 1904, and sales soared to 90,844, up from just 51 year, blade sales reach 123,648, up from 168, and the figures would soon be multiplied a thousandfold. King C. Gillette paid $62,500 to buy out an investor who paid $250 for 500 shares in 1901.

Montgomery Ward distributed its first free catalogs after having sold catalogs for years at 15 cents each. The company mailed out more than 3 million of the 4-pound books.

Sear, Roebuck distributed more than a million copies of its Spring catalog. Sears had set up its own printing plant but still used woodcuts for more than half its illustrations and kept the art of wood engraving alive.

New York's Astor Hotel opened on Seventh Avenue between 44th and 45th Streets. John Jacob Astor IV of 1897 Waldorf-Astoria fame had the new 660-room hotel constructed in classic French style.

The New York Times moved into a new 25-story Times Tower at Broadway and 42nd Street, December 31, 1904 and Longacre Square became known as Times Square. The move was marked with a midnight fireworks display that would become, in modified form, a New Year's Eve tradition and would continue even after the Times moved to larger quarters in West 43rd Street and the Times Tower changes hands.

The Hamburger at St. Louis Fair ... The hamburger gained popularity at the St. Louis Exposition where the chopped beef specialty was fried and sold by German immigrants who lived in South St. Louis.

Ice Cream Cone ... The ice cream cone was introduced a the St. Louis fair by Syrian immigrant pastrymaker Ernest A. Hamwi concession, serving them with sugar and other sweets. When a neighboring ice cream stand ran out of dishes, Hamwi rolled some of his wafers into cornucopias, he let them cool, and he sold them to the ice cream concessionaire. But an ice cream cone mold patent had been issued earlier in the year to Italian immigrant Italo Marchiony who claimed he had been making ice cream cones since 1896 and who was joined by other claimants who challenged Hamwi's right to call himself the ice cream cone originator.

Iced tea was created at the St. Louis fair by English tea concessionaire Richard Blechynden when sweltering fairgoers passed him by, but as in the case of the ice cream cone, evidence would be produced of prior invention. Green tea and Formosan tea continue to outsell black tea 5 to 1 in the United States in 1904.

Tea bags were pioneered by New York tea and coffee shop merchant Thomas Sullivan who sent samples of his various tea blends to customers in small hand-sewn muslin bags. Finding that they can brew tea simply by poring boiling water over tea bag in a cup, the cutomers placed hundreds of orders for Sullivan's tea bags which would soon be packed by a specially developed machine.

  |  View or Add Comments (0 Comments)   |   Receive updates ( subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

---