Blaise Diagne becomes first black African elected to the French Chamber of Deputies
The Senegalese-French political leader was the first black Africa to hold a position in the French government.
Europe
Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen leads the first expedition to reach the South Pole
He and four other crew members made it to the geographical south pole on 14 December 1911, which would prove to be five weeks ahead of the competitive British party led by Robert Falcon Scott as part of the Terra Nova Expedition. Amundsen and his team returned safely to their base, and about a year later heard that Scott and his four companions had perished on their return journey.
Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch invent the Haber-Bosch Process allowing for mass-scale production of ammonia-based fertilizer
The Haber-Bosch process, is an artificial nitrogen fixation process and is the main industrial procedure for the production of ammonia today.
19 Finnish women become the world’s first female parliamentarians
Lucina Hagman, Miina Sillanpää, Anni Huotari, Hilja Pärssinen, Hedvig Gebhard, Ida Aalle-Teljo, Mimmi Kanervo, Eveliina Ala-Kulju, Hilda Käkikoski, Liisi Kivioja, Sandra Lehtinen, Dagmar Neovius, Maria Raunio, Alexandra Gripenberg, Iida Vemmelpuu, Maria Laine, Jenny Upari and Hilma Räsänen became the first female MPs in the world after the Grand Principality of Finland became the first territory to give women full political rights.
The automobile is invented in France and Germany
Its thirty-five-horsepower engine weighed only fourteen pounds per horsepower, and it achieved a top speed of fifty-three miles per hour.
Vincent Van Gogh paints “The Starry Night”
Largely self-taught, van Gogh produced more than 2,000 oil paintings, watercolors, drawings, and sketches, which became in demand only after his death.
James Blyth of Scotland builds world’s first ever wind turbine used for electricity generation
Blyth’s 10-meter high, cloth-sailed wind turbine was installed in the garden of his holiday cottage at Marykirk in Kincardineshire and was used to charge accumulators developed by the Frenchman Camille Alphonse Faure, to power the lighting in the cottage, thus making it the first house in the world to have its electricity supplied by wind power. Blyth offered the surplus electricity to the people of Marykirk for lighting the main street, however, they turned down the offer as they thought electricity was “the work of the devil.”
Oxford English Dictionary debuts
The Oxford English Dictionary is now the principal historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press.
First ‘Impressionist’ art exhibition opens in Paris, featuring Monet, Degas, Renoir, and others
Impressionism is an art movement that took the French art world—and later the artistic spheres of other countries —by storm in the 19th century.
Fyodor Dostoevsky publishes Crime & Punishment
Crime and Punishment focuses on the mental anguish and moral dilemmas of Rodion Raskolnikov, an impoverished ex-student in Saint Petersburg who formulates a plan to kill an unscrupulous pawnbroker for her money.