mposer, died in poverty in an asylum.
9/3/1917, Dante Fascell, American politician (U.S. House of Representatives from Florida) was born in Bridgehampton, New York (d. 1998).
8/3/1917. US marines landed in Cuba to help the civil authorities.
7/3/1917. The Dixie Band One-Step was the world’s first jazz record to be released. Ironically it was by the all-white Original Dixieland Jazz Band.
2/3/1917. The US Congress passed the Jones Act, making Puerto Rico a US territory.
26/2/1917. News of the sinking of the Cunard liner Laconia by German U-boats reached capitol Hill just as Congress was debating measures to protect US shipping from the growing menace of U boats in the Atrlantic. Earlier in February 1917 a US ship, the Housatonic was sunk, making a total of 134 neutral ships destroyed by the Germans in the last 3 weeks. The US navy was already mounting patrols to protect its ships in the Atlantic.
20/2/1917, The USA bought the Dutch West Indies.
7/2/1917. All US citizens in Germany were held as hostages.
3/2/1917. The USA broke off relations with Germany.
31/1/1917. Germany announced a policy of unrestricted naval warfare. All ships, passenger or cargo, found by Germans could now be sunk without warning. This was a calculated risk by Germany because it was bound to involve US shipping being sunk, and would therefore bring the USA in against Germany. But Germany reckoned on the inevitability of the USA entering the war against here soon anyway, and believed she could win the war before this happened. The German Chief of Naval Staff, Admiral Von Holtzendorff, presented a memo to the Kaiser saying that if 600,000 tons of Allied shipping could be sunk each month, within five months Britain would have to surrender. In fact, in the worst month, April 1917, German U-boats sank 869,103 tons of shipping, 373 ships. The British adopted a convoy system, despite fears that a convoy’s speed was limited to that of the slowest ship. The Navy had feared it had too few destroyers for this job but then realised that it had enough if only ocean-going ships, not cross-Channel traffic, was guarded.
Meanwhile the British navy deployed Q-ships, gunships disguised as merchant ships which lured U-boats to the surface then opened their gun hatches at the last moment. The first trial convoy ran from Gibraltar on 10/5/1917. The convoy system worked; of 26,604 vessels convoyed in 1917, only 147 were sunk. Meanwhile the Germans lost 65 of their 139 U-boats. Meanwhile Allied shipping blockaded German trade, creating shortages of tea and coffee, but more seriously, fertiliser shortages too. In the final German land offensive of 1918, advancing German troops discovered their privations were not being endured by the enemy, and German morale fell.
29/1/1917. Congress passed the Immigration Act (or, Asiatic Barred Zone Act), requiring all immigrants to know at least 30 words of English and banning all Asian migrants except Japanese. This followed on from the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, banning further immigration from China. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Act_of_1917 for further details.
10/1/1917, William ‘Buffalo Bill’ Cody died, aged 71. He was a pony express rider before the Civil War, in which he fought; after, he supplied meat to the workers of the Kansas Pacific Railroad, hence his name. As chief of scouts for the US military he fought in several battles against the Indians, which made him famous.
1916, The US introduced its first tax on inherited wealth, an ‘estate tax’.
14/12/1916, A referendum in Denmark agreed by 64.3% for to 35.7% against to agree to the sale of the Danish West Indies to the US, for the sum of US$ 25 million. These islands became the US Virgin Islands; they were of strategic importance to the US now that the Panama Canal had opened. The islands were formally handed over on 1/4/1917, just before the US declared war on Germany.
1/12/1916, The lights of the Statue of Liberty were turned on by President Wilson.
15/6/1916, In the US, the Democratic Convention nominated President Wilson as presidential candidate.
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