Top News Stories from 1912

World Events

• The "unsinkable" oceanliner Titanic sinks on maiden voyage after colliding with an iceberg; over 1,500 drown (April 15).
• Balkan Wars begin, resulting from territorial disputes: Turkey defeated by alliance of Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece, and Montenegro (Oct.).

U.S. Events

• New Mexico and Arizona are admitted as states No. 47 and 48.
• Woodrow Wilson is elected president.
• William Randolph Hearst begins to acquire his media empire that will include 18 newspapers and nine magazines within two decades.
• Girl Scouts of America founded by Juliette Gordon Low.

Economics

Sports

World Series

Stanley Cup

Wimbledon

Kentucky Derby Champion

NCAA Football Champions

Entertainment

Events

• The Radio Act of 1912 assigns three- and four-letter codes to radio stations and limits broadcasting to the 360m wavelength, which jams signals.
• Photoplay debuts as the first magazine for movie fans.

Science

• American Astronomer Henrietta Leavitt discovers a correlation between Cepheids' periods and luminosity, a relationship that becomes important to the measurement of interstellar and intergalactic distances.
• German meteorologist and geophysicist Alfred Wegener proposes the idea of continental drift.
• Piltdown Man hoax perpetuated. Supposed fossils said to be "missing link" in evolution. In 1953 it was found that human and ape bones were fraudulently aged.

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