to US$ 5 for an 8 hour day. Productivity improvements meant Ford could reduce the car’s price to US$ 300. Over 15 million Model Ts were built and by the time production ceased in 1927 half the cars in the US were Fords.
26/7/1908. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, or FBI, was established in Washington DC. Before this date the US Department of Justice often called on Secret Service ‘operatives’ to help in its investigations. These operatives were well trained and dedicated but expensive. They reported not to the Attorney General but to the chief of the Secret Service. Bonaparte created a special agents force, to report not to the chief of the Secret Service but to the Chief Examiner, Stanley Finch, later head of the FBI. This force of 34 agents later became a permanent part of the Department of Justice.
2/7/1908, Thurgood Marshall, US lawyer, was born (died 1993)
10/5/1908. Mothers Day was first celebrated in the USA.
21/3/1908, Abraham Maslow, US psychologist, was born (died 1970).
24/2/1908. Japan and the USA agreed to limit Japanese migration to the US. President Roosevelt was concerned at working-class migration into the US following an influx of Chinese coolies. Chinese migration began to fall from its peak of 107,000 a year; Japanese migration only began more recently and in 1900 there were only 25,000 Japanese in the whole of the USA.
16/12/1907, The US sent a fleet of 16 battleships on a round-the-world tour, to demonstrate the military might of the USA.
6/12/1907, The USA suffered its worst mine disaster. 361 died at Monongah, West Virginia.
16/11/1907. Oklahoma was admitted as the 46th State of the USA.
17/4/1907, A record all time high of 11,747 immigrants arrived at Ellis Island, New York, this day.
26/2/1907. President Roosevelt put the US army in charge of building the Panama Canal.
26/11/1906, US President Theodore Roosevelt returned to the USA from Central America, becoming the first American President to travel abroad whilst in office. On his 17-day trip aboard the US battleship Louisiana he visited Puerto Rico then went on to Panama to see how the construction of the Panama Canal was progressing.
9/10/1906. Death of Joseph Glidden in the USA; he invented barbed wire.
29/6/1906, US Congress passed a Bill creating the Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado.
22/6/1906, US President Roosevelt sued John D Rockerfeller’s Standard Oil Company for operating a monopoly.
24/12/1905. The US industrialist Howard Hughes was born.
19/6/1905. The world’s first all motion picture cinema opened in Pittsburgh. For 10 cents admission there was a film, Poor But Honest, followed by The Baffled Burglar, accompanied by a melody on the harp by Madame Durocher.
23/2/1905, The Rotary Club was founded by Paul Harris and others, in offices in Dearborn, Chicago.
18/2/1905, Jay Cooke, US financier, died (born 10/8/1821).
10/2/1905. The state of Wisconsin passed a tax on bachelors aged over 30.
1904, The US Forestry Service was created, out of the Department of Agriculture, by President Roosevelt.
1/12/1904, The Great World Fair, at St Louis, USA, closed, having had millions of visitors from all over the world.
4/10/1904, Death of French sculptor Frederic Auguste Bartholdi, designer of the Statue of Liberty.
1/8/1904. Birth of American jazzman Count Basie.
4/7/1904. Work began on the 40 mile-long Panama Canal. It opened on 15/8/1914.
2/5/1904. Bing Crosby was born in Tacoma, Washington, as Harry Lillis Crosby.
30/4/1904, The St Louis Exhibition opened.
22/4/1904. Robert Oppenheimer, American scientist who developed the US atomic bomb at Los Alamos, was born in New York City.
22/3/1904. In the USA, the Daily Illustrated Mirror carried the world’s first colour picture in a newspaper.
1/3/1904, Glenn Miller, American trombonist, was born in Clarinda, Indiana.
7/2/1904. A major fire destroyed much of the centre of Baltimore, Maryland, USA.
18/11/1903, Panama granted the canal strip to US, by treaty ratified on 26/2/1904.
3/11/1903. Panama revolted and declared itself independent from Colombia. On 6/11/1903 the US recognised Panamanian inde