1904

Events in 1904 59

• 1825 – 1904 Paul Kruger (1825-1904) Died 14 July 1904, aged 78 Paul Kruger, the president of the South African Republic (Transvaal), died in exile in Clarens, Switzerland. He led Boer resistance against British expansion and became an international symbol of Boer nationalism during the Second Boer War. He fled South Africa in 1900 after British forces occupied Pretoria.
• 1831 – 1904 Isabella Bird (1831-1904) Died 7 October 1904, aged 72 Isabella Bird, the English explorer and travel writer, died in Edinburgh. She traveled extensively through Asia, the Americas, and the Middle East, publishing popular accounts such as A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains and Unbeaten Tracks in Japan. In 1892 she became the first woman elected a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.
• 1834 – 1904 Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi (1834-1904) Died 4 October 1904, aged 70 Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, the French sculptor, died in Paris. He designed the Statue of Liberty, a gift from France to the United States dedicated in 1886 that became one of the most recognized monuments in the world. He also created numerous other public sculptures across France.
• 1841 – 1904 Henry Morton Stanley (1841-1904) Died 10 May 1904, aged 63 Sir Henry Morton Stanley, the Welsh-American journalist and explorer, died in London. He gained worldwide fame for locating the missionary David Livingstone in central Africa in 1871, reportedly greeting him with the words "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" His later expeditions helped open central Africa to European colonization, including work for King Leopold II of Belgium in the Congo.
• 1841 – 1904 Antonín Dvořák Czech Romantic composer Czech composer best known for his New World Symphony, Cello Concerto and Slavonic Dances. He drew on folk music to create a distinctly Czech voice.
• 1850 – 1904 Kate Chopin (1850-1904) Died 22 August 1904, aged 54 Kate Chopin, the American author, died in St. Louis, Missouri. Her 1899 novel The Awakening, initially condemned for its frank treatment of female desire and independence, was later recognized as an early feminist classic of American literature. She also wrote numerous short stories set in Louisiana Creole and Cajun communities.
• 1860 – 1904 Anton Chekhov (1860-1904) Died 15 July 1904, aged 44 Anton Chekhov, the Russian physician and writer, died of tuberculosis in Badenweiler, Germany. He is regarded as one of the greatest short story writers and playwrights in history, known for works including The Cherry Orchard and Uncle Vanya. His plays remain among the most widely performed in world theatre.
• 1860 – 1904 Theodor Herzl (1860-1904) Died 3 July 1904, aged 44 Theodor Herzl, the Austro-Hungarian journalist and founder of modern political Zionism, died of heart failure in Edlach, Austria. His pamphlet Der Judenstaat and organizing of the First Zionist Congress laid the ideological groundwork for the eventual establishment of the State of Israel. He is regarded as the father of the Zionist movement.
• 1904 – 1948 Arshile Gorky (1904-1948) Died 21 July 1948, aged 44 Arshile Gorky, the Armenian-American painter regarded as a key link between Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism, died by suicide on July 21, 1948, after a series of personal and physical setbacks. His fluid, biomorphic canvases influenced younger artists including Willem de Kooning. He is remembered as one of the founding figures of the New York School.
• 1904 – 1950 Charles R. Drew (1904-1950) Died 1 April 1950, aged 45 Charles R. Drew was an American surgeon and researcher whose work on blood storage and processing led to the development of large-scale blood banks. He organized the first major blood bank programs during World War II. He died from injuries sustained in a car accident in North Carolina.
• 1904 – 1943 Fats Waller (1904-1943) Died 15 December 1943, aged 39 Fats Waller was an American jazz pianist, composer and entertainer, and a master of stride piano. He wrote Ain't Misbehavin' and Honeysuckle Rose. He died of pneumonia on a train near Kansas City.
• 1904 – 1961 George Formby (1904-1961) Died 6 March 1961, aged 56 English singer, comedian, and ukulele player, one of the most popular entertainers in Britain during the 1930s and 1940s. He was known for songs such as "Leaning on a Lamp Post" and his cheerful working-class comic persona.
• 1904 – 1944 Glenn Miller (1904-1944) Died 15 December 1944, aged 40 American bandleader whose swing orchestra was the best-selling act of its era, with hits such as In the Mood and Moonlight Serenade. He led the Army Air Forces Band during the war. His aircraft disappeared over the English Channel on a flight to Paris and was never found.
• 1904 – 1967 J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967) Died 18 February 1967, aged 62 The physicist who led the Manhattan Project's Los Alamos Laboratory and is often called the "father of the atomic bomb" died of throat cancer in Princeton, New Jersey. He spent his later years advocating for international control of nuclear weapons after being stripped of his security clearance during the Red Scare.
• 1904 – 1961 Moss Hart (1904-1961) Died 20 December 1961, aged 57 American playwright and director known for collaborations with George S. Kaufman, including You Can't Take It with You, and for directing the original Broadway production of My Fair Lady. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1937.
• 1904 New York subway opens New York subway opens The first line of the New York City subway opened on 27 October 1904, running from City Hall to 145th Street under the Interborough Rapid Transit Company. More than 150,000 passengers rode it on the first day. The network grew into one of the largest rapid transit systems in the world and the only major one running around the clock.
• 1904 – 1936 Nikolai Ostrovsky (1904-1936) Died 22 December 1936, aged 32 Nikolai Ostrovsky was a Soviet writer. His novel How the Steel Was Tempered became a classic of socialist realism. He wrote it while blind and paralysed from injuries and illness.
• 1904 – 1973 Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) Died 23 September 1973, aged 69 Chilean poet and diplomat Pablo Neruda, winner of the 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature, died in Santiago days after the military coup that overthrew his close ally Salvador Allende. His work remains among the most widely translated poetry in the world.
• 1904 – 1964 Peter Lorre (1904-1964) Died 23 March 1964, aged 59 Lorre was a Hungarian-American actor known for his distinctive voice and appearances in films such as "M", "Casablanca" and "The Maltese Falcon". He became one of Hollywood's most recognisable character actors after fleeing Nazi Germany.
• 1904 – 1934 Pretty Boy Floyd (1904-1934) Died 22 October 1934, aged 30 American bank robber who was named Public Enemy Number One after Dillinger's death. FBI agents and local police shot him dead near East Liverpool, Ohio.
• 1904 – 1971 Ralph Bunche (1904-1971) Died 9 December 1971, aged 67 Ralph Bunche was an American diplomat and political scientist who won the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize for mediating the 1949 Armistice Agreements between Israel and its Arab neighbors. He was the first person of color to win a Nobel Prize. He held senior roles at the United Nations for over two decades.
• 1904 – 1942 Reinhard Heydrich (1904-1942) Died 4 June 1942, aged 38 Reinhard Heydrich was a senior SS officer, head of the Reich Security Main Office and Acting Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia. He was one of the main architects of the Holocaust and chaired the Wannsee Conference. He died of wounds from an attack by Czechoslovak parachutists in Prague.
• 1904 – 1905 Russo-Japanese War First modern defeat of a European power by an Asian one Japan's victory over Tsarist Russia in 1904–05 — culminating in the naval triumph at Tsushima — was the first time in the modern era that an Asian nation defeated a European great power. It confirmed Japan's status as a major military force and reshaped the balance of power in East Asia.
• 1904 – 1907 The 1905 Russian Revolution The dress rehearsal Defeat by Japan cracked the autocracy open. A peaceful procession to the Winter Palace was fired on, and within months the Russian Empire had general strikes, a naval mutiny, workers' councils and armed fighting in the streets of Moscow. Nicholas II conceded a constitution and a parliament, then spent the next two years taking most of it back. Lenin, watching from exile, called it the dress rehearsal — without it, he said, 1917 would have been impossible.
• 1904 The Trans-Siberian Railway Nine thousand kilometres The Circum-Baikal section closes the last gap and it becomes possible to travel by rail from Moscow to the Pacific without a ferry across Lake Baikal. Begun in 1891, the line is the longest in the world, and it is what makes Russian ambitions in Manchuria plausible in the first place. Its single track also explains why Russia loses the war with Japan: everything the army needs has to travel six thousand miles down one line. The route through Russian territory rather than Chinese is only finished in 1916.
• 1904 – 1983 George Balanchine (1904-1983) Died 30 April 1983, aged 79 George Balanchine was a Georgian-American choreographer who co-founded the New York City Ballet and is considered one of the most influential figures in twentieth-century ballet. He pioneered a neoclassical style that reshaped American dance. His works remain core repertoire for ballet companies worldwide.
• 1904 – 1987 Ray Bolger (1904-1987) American dancer and actor, the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz.
• 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.
• 1904 – 1986 Cary Grant (1904-1986) Died 29 November 1986, aged 82 English-born Hollywood actor known for his suave leading roles in films such as North by Northwest and Bringing Up Baby. He became one of the defining film stars of the twentieth century across a career spanning four decades. He suffered a stroke while on a speaking tour and died in Iowa.
• 1904 Madama Butterfly Premieres Puccini's opera debuts at La Scala Giacomo Puccini's opera Madama Butterfly premiered at Milan's La Scala on February 17, 1904, and was initially met with a hostile reception. Puccini revised the work, and the reworked version went on to become one of the most performed operas in the world. It tells the tragic story of a Japanese woman abandoned by an American naval officer.
• 1904 – 1991 Theodor Geisel "Dr. Seuss" (1904-1991) Died 24 September 1991, aged 87 Theodor Geisel, known worldwide as Dr. Seuss, died at his home in La Jolla, California. His illustrated children's books, including The Cat in the Hat and Green Eggs and Ham, sold hundreds of millions of copies and reshaped children's literacy education. His distinctive rhyming verse and artwork remain a fixture of childhood reading worldwide.
• 1904 – 1999 Forrest Mars Sr. (1904-1999) Died 1 July 1999, aged 95 Forrest Mars Sr. built Mars, Incorporated into one of the world's largest privately held food and confectionery companies, creating brands including M&M's and Milky Way. He was known for an intensely private and demanding management style. He died at his home in Virginia.
• 1904 British Expedition to Tibet Younghusband mission forces the Convention of Lhasa A British military expedition under Francis Younghusband invaded Tibet to counter perceived Russian influence, fighting through battles including Guru and Gyantse on the route to Lhasa. The campaign ended in September 1904 with the Dalai Lama's flight and the forced signing of the Convention of Lhasa. Thousands of poorly armed Tibetan soldiers were killed by modern British firepower.
• 1904 The Entente Cordiale Eight hundred years, set aside Britain and France settle their colonial quarrels — France gets a free hand in Morocco, Britain in Egypt, and Newfoundland fishing rights and Siam are tidied up. It is not an alliance and contains no military commitment, but it ends centuries of enmity and leaves Germany facing the possibility that its two western rivals will not fight each other. Everything about 1914 follows from which way the great powers had paired off, and this is where the pairing starts.
• 1904 – 2000 John Gielgud (1904-2000) English actor and director, one of the great Shakespearean actors of the 20th century, who won an Oscar at 77.
• 1904 – 2000 Sir John Gielgud (1904-2000) Died 21 May 2000, aged 96 John Gielgud was regarded as one of the great classical actors of the twentieth century, celebrated above all for his Hamlet and his verse speaking. His stage career spanned some seventy years, and late in life he won an Academy Award for the film Arthur. With Olivier and Richardson he dominated the British theatre.
• 1904 – 1997 Willem de Kooning Abstract Expressionism · Netherlands / USA Willem de Kooning (April 24, 1904 – March 19, 1997) was a Dutch-American painter and a leading figure of Abstract Expressionism. His Woman series provoked fierce debate about the relationship between abstraction and figuration.
• 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition Opens World's fair held in St. Louis The Louisiana Purchase Exposition opened in St. Louis, Missouri, on April 30, 1904, marking the centennial of the Louisiana Purchase. Attended by roughly 20 million visitors, the fair introduced or popularized foods such as the ice cream cone and hot dog to American audiences. It ran concurrently with the 1904 Summer Olympics held in the same city.
• 1904 Panama Canal Construction Begins United States takes control of the Canal Zone On May 4, 1904, the United States formally took over construction of the Panama Canal from the failed French effort. The project would eventually connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, reshaping global shipping. Chief engineer John Findley Wallace led the initial work amid ongoing battles with tropical disease.
• 1904 – present Rolls-Royce British luxury car manufacturer Rolls-Royce became synonymous with luxury, craftsmanship and engineering excellence. The company built some of the most prestigious automobiles in history and later became closely associated with royal and diplomatic transportation.
• 1904 – 1989 Salvador Dalí Surrealism · Spain Salvador Dalí (May 11, 1904 – January 23, 1989) was a Spanish Surrealist painter whose bizarre, meticulously rendered dreamscapes made him the most famous artist of the 20th century after Picasso. The Persistence of Memory is his most iconic work.
• 1904 – 1981 Robert Montgomery (1904-1981) American actor and director, an MGM star, war veteran and television pioneer.
• 1904 – 1984 Johnny Weissmuller (1904-1984) Died 20 January 1984, aged 79 Johnny Weissmuller, an Olympic swimming champion who went on to play Tarzan in a series of Hollywood films, died in Acapulco, Mexico.
• 1904 PS General Slocum Disaster Passenger steamboat fire kills over 1,000 in New York The steamboat General Slocum caught fire in New York's East River while carrying a church group on an excursion, killing more than 1,000 passengers, most of them women and children. It remained the deadliest disaster in New York City history until the September 11 attacks. The tragedy led to sweeping new safety regulations for passenger vessels.
• 1904 – 1991 Ralph Bellamy (1904-1991) American actor with a career of six decades, from The Awful Truth to Trading Places and Pretty Woman.
• 1904 – 1991 Keye Luke (1904-1991) Chinese-American actor, Charlie Chan's Number One Son and later Master Po in Kung Fu.
• 1904 1904 Summer Olympics III Olympiad - St. Louis The first Games held outside Europe. Winner: USA.
• 1904 – 1983 Dolores del Río (1904-1983) Mexican actress, a Hollywood star of the 1920s and 1930s and later the great lady of Mexican cinema.
• 1904 – 1984 Count Basie (1904-1984) Died 26 April 1984, aged 79 American jazz pianist and bandleader Count Basie, whose orchestra was one of the most influential big bands of the swing era, died in Hollywood, Florida.
• 1904 – 1997 Deng Xiaoping (1904-1997) Died 19 February 1997, aged 92 Deng Xiaoping was the paramount leader of China from the late 1970s, who launched the economic reforms that opened the country to market forces and foreign investment. He held no formal head-of-state title in his later years but remained China's most powerful figure. His policies transformed China into a major global economic power.
• 1904 – 1988 Frederick Ashton (1904-1988) Died 18 August 1988, aged 83 Frederick Ashton was a British choreographer and founding figure of the Royal Ballet, where he served as director for over a decade. He created dozens of ballets, including Cinderella and La Fille mal gardee. He is regarded as one of the most influential choreographers of 20th-century British ballet.
• 1904 – 1996 Greer Garson (1904-1996) British-born actress who became MGM's leading lady of the war years, winning the Oscar for Mrs. Miniver.
• 1904 – 1991 Graham Greene (1904-1991) Died 3 April 1991, aged 86 British novelist Graham Greene, author of works including The Third Man, Brighton Rock, and The Power and the Glory, died in Vevey, Switzerland. His fiction combined thriller plots with explorations of moral and religious conflict. He was repeatedly considered for but never awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
• 1904 – 1986 Anna Neagle (1904-1986) English actress, Britain's top film star of the 1940s, famous for her royal and wartime heroines.
• 1904 – 1965 Constance Bennett (1904-1965) American actress, the best-paid star of the early 1930s, known for What Price Hollywood? and Topper.
• 1904 Theodore Roosevelt Elected President Landslide re-election as U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt won a full term as President of the United States in a landslide over Democrat Alton B. Parker, having previously assumed office after McKinley's assassination. The victory affirmed Roosevelt's progressive domestic agenda and assertive foreign policy. He went on to expand the Panama Canal project and articulate the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine.
• 1904 – 1963 Dick Powell (1904-1963) American singer, actor, director and producer, from Warner musicals to Philip Marlowe and Four Star Television.
• 1904 – 1996 Nnamdi Azikiwe (1904-1996) Died 11 May 1996, aged 91 Nnamdi Azikiwe was a Nigerian statesman who served as the country's first President after independence and is regarded as a founding father of Nigerian nationalism. He was a leading pan-Africanist journalist and politician before assuming the presidency in 1963. He remained an influential elder statesman until his death.
• 1904 Peter Pan Premieres in London J.M. Barrie's play opens at the Duke of York's Theatre J.M. Barrie's play Peter, or the Boy Who Would Not Grow Up premiered in London on December 27, 1904. The story of the boy who never grows up became one of the most enduring works of children's literature and theatre. Barrie later adapted it into the novel Peter and Wendy.