Find Weird and Wonderful Books at AbeBooks

The Events that Shaped 1908

The twelve months of 1908 was notable for a variety of events. 1908 ended up being documented by NASA as the most cold documented year since 1880. The year started with Ernest Shackleton setting sail in the Nimrod from New Zealand for his investigation of the Antarctica. The aim of his scientific expedition was to reach the south pole, however Shackleton would not make it happen, but did get quite a few scientific findings on Antarctica done. Upon January 24, Baden-Powell’s guide, Scouting for Boys was published in London, UK. The book eventually sold well over one hundred million copies and ended up being the driver for beginning the international Boy Scout philosophy. The initial Scout troop outside the United Kingdom is put together in Gibraltar on March 27th and it develops from that point. From February, the 1908 New York to Paris automobile race took place. This car race would be a sizeable obstacle particularly given the state of car technology then and road facilities existing during the time. Just 3 of the six competitors completed the race with the victor to be the USA team. At the end of June, there was the so-called Tunguska occurrence or “Russian explosion” occurs close to the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in , Siberia, in Russia. It results in trees knocked over a very large area. The actual cause of this event is not well-known, leading fringe movement advocates to state it has been probably extraterrestrials. Essentially the most more than likely description in keeping with scientists, is it was a result of the air burst from a big meteoroid or comet fragment at the altitude of about 5-10 km’s over the Earth’s surface. The conspiracy theorists do not believe the most likely scientific explanation.

The 1908 Summer Olympic Games take place in London, UK from July 13 to 25. These Olympics had been originally scheduled to be in Rome in 1906, however had to be changed to London because of an eruption involving Mount Vesuvius leading to substantial damage and also the need to divert money away from the potential Olympics to repair the destruction of the eruption. Johnny Hayes coming from the United States sets the 1st world record for finishing the marathon distance having a time of 2:55:18.4. On October 1, Henry Ford’s Ford Model T auto is launched with the initial cost set at US$850. It had been in general thought to be the earliest reasonably priced automobile, that opened vehicle ownership to the middle classes. The comparatively affordable price was mostly because of Ford’s revolutionary efficient construction line manufacturing and fabrication rather than individual handcrafting technique of manufacturing cars used earlier. Construction of the model discontinued in 1927. There have been quite a few disasters in 1908 such as the Collinwood school fire near Cleveland, Ohio which killed 174 people. A rail catastrophe on April 20 in Melbourne, in Australia killed 44 people when there was a rear-end accident between a couple of trains. A hurricane in Hong Kong sunk the passenger steamer Ying King, causing 421 fatalities in July. On September 17th 1908 near Fort Myer in Virginia, USA, Thomas Selfridge becomes the first person to pass away in a aeroplane crash. The aircraft was piloted by Orville Wright who was badly injured in the accident but he did recover.