1912

1912 in various calendars
Gregorian calendar	1912; MCMXII
Ab urbe condita	2665
Armenian calendar	1361; ԹՎ ՌՅԿԱ
Assyrian calendar	6662
Baháʼí calendar	68–69
Balinese saka calendar	1833–1834
Bengali calendar	1319
Berber calendar	2862
British Regnal year	2 Geo. 5 – 3 Geo. 5
Buddhist calendar	2456
Burmese calendar	1274
Byzantine calendar	7420–7421
Chinese calendar	辛亥年 (Metal Pig); 4609 or 4402; — to —; 壬子年 (Water Rat); 4610 or 4403
Coptic calendar	1628–1629
Discordian calendar	3078
Ethiopian calendar	1904–1905
Hebrew calendar	5672–5673
Hindu calendars
- Vikram Samvat	1968–1969
- Shaka Samvat	1833–1834
- Kali Yuga	5012–5013
Holocene calendar	11912
Igbo calendar	912–913
Iranian calendar	1290–1291
Islamic calendar	1330–1331
Japanese calendar	Meiji 45 / Taishō 1; (大正元年)
Javanese calendar	1841–1842
Juche calendar	1
Julian calendar	Gregorian minus 13 days
Korean calendar	4245
Minguo calendar	ROC 1; 民國1年
Nanakshahi calendar	444
Thai solar calendar	2454–2455
Tibetan calendar	阴金猪年; (female Iron-Pig); 2038 or 1657 or 885; — to —; 阳水鼠年; (male Water-Rat); 2039 or 1658 or 886

Millennium:	2nd millennium
Centuries:	19th century; 20th century ; 21st century;
Decades:	1890s; 1900s; 1910s ; 1920s; 1930s;
Years:	1909; 1910; 1911; 1912 ; 1913; 1914; 1915;

1912 (MCMXII) was a leap year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and a leap year starting on Sunday of the Julian calendar, the 1912th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 912th year of the 2nd millennium, the 12th year of the 20th century, and the 3rd year of the 1910s decade. As of the start of 1912, the Gregorian calendar was 13 days ahead of the Julian calendar, which remained in localized use until 1923.

Events

January

January 1 – The Republic of China is proclaimed.
January 4 – The Scout Association is incorporated throughout the British Commonwealth by Royal Charter.
January 5 – Moscow Art Theatre production of Hamlet opens.
January 6 – New Mexico becomes the 47th state of the United States.
January 6 – German geophysicist Alfred Wegener first presents his theory of continental drift.
January 8 – The African National Congress is founded as the South African Native National Congress at the Waaihoek Wesleyan Church in Bloemfontein to promote improved rights for black South Africans, with John Langalibalele Dube as its first president.
January 14 – Raymond Poincaré forms a coalition government in France, beginning his first term of office as Prime Minister on 21 January.
January 17 – British polar explorer Captain Robert Falcon Scott and a team of four become the second expeditionary group to reach the South Pole.
January 18 – (Old Style January 5) Prague Party Conference: Vladimir Lenin and the Bolshevik Party break away from the rest of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party.
January 22 – The Overseas Railroad opens and the first train arrives in Key West, Florida, with Henry M. Flagler, the railroad's creator and owner, aboard.
January 23 – The International Opium Convention is signed at The Hague.

February

February 12 – The Manchu Qing dynasty of China comes to an end after 268 years with the abdication of Emperor Puyi in favour of the Republic of China.
February 14 – Arizona becomes the 48th U.S. state and the last of the contiguous United States which pushed the American frontier to the brink.
February 24 – Battle of Beirut: Italy makes a surprise attack on the Ottoman port of Beirut, when the cruiser Giuseppe Garibaldi and the gunboat Volturno bombard the harbour, killing 97 sailors and civilians.
February 29 – Serbia and Bulgaria secretly sign a treaty of alliance for a term of eight years, with each pledging to come to the defense of the other during war.

March

March 1 – Albert Berry is reported to have made the first parachute jump from a flying airplane.
March 6 – Italian forces became the first to use airships in war, as two dirigibles dropped bombs on Turkish troops encamped at Janzur, from an altitude of 6,000 feet.^[1]
March 7 – Roald Amundsen in Hobart, Tasmania, announces his success in reaching the South Pole the previous December.
March 12 – The Girl Scouts is founded by Juliette Gordon Low in Savannah, Georgia.
March 16 – Lawrence Oates, dying member of Scott's South Pole expedition, leaves the tent saying, "I am just going outside and may be some time."
March 22 – State of Bihar is formed out of the ertswhile State of Bengal in British India.
March 27 – Mayor Yukio Ozaki of Tokyo gives 3,000 cherry trees to be planted in Washington, D.C., to symbolize the friendship between the two countries.
March 29 – The remaining members of Robert Falcon Scott's South Pole expedition die.
March 30 – The French Third Republic establishes the French protectorate in Morocco.

April

April 10 – White Star liner RMS Titanic departs from Southampton with 2225 passengers and crew on her maiden voyage bound for New York.
April 11 – RMS Titanic makes her last call, at Queenstown in Ireland.
April 14–15 – Sinking of the RMS Titanic: RMS Titanic strikes an iceberg in the northern Atlantic Ocean and sinks with the loss of 1517 lives. The wreck will not be discovered until 1985.^[2]
April 16 – Harriet Quimby becomes the first woman to fly across the English Channel.
April 17 – 500 striking gold miners in Siberia are killed or wounded by troops in the Lena massacre.
April 18 – Cunard Line vessel RMS Carpathia arrives in New York with the 708 RMS Titanic survivors.
April 20 – Fenway Park in Boston, Massachusetts, opens.
April 30 – Carl Laemmle founds Universal Studios as the Universal Film and Manufacturing Company in the United States.

May

May 1 – `Abdu'l-Bahá lays the cornerstone for the Bahá'í House of Worship in Wilmette, Illinois.
May 5 – The Olympic Games open in Stockholm, Sweden.
May 11 – Alaska becomes a territory of the United States.
May 13 – In the United Kingdom, the Royal Flying Corps (forerunner of the Royal Air Force) is established.
May 23 – The Hamburg America Line's SS Imperator is launched in Hamburg and is the world's largest ship.
May 30 – Wilbur Wright (of the Wright brothers) dies with a case of typhoid fever.

June

June 6 – The Novarupta volcano (290 miles (470 km) southwest of Anchorage) experiences a VEI 6 eruption; the largest eruption in the 20th century.

July

July 1 – Harriet Quimby, who set the record as the first woman to fly the English Channel only 2 months before, dies in Squantum, Massachusetts after her brand-new two-seat Bleriot monoplane crashes, killing both Quimby and her passenger.
July 12 – United States release of Sarah Bernhardt's film Les Amours de la reine Élisabeth is influential on the development of the movie feature. Adolph Zukor, who incorporates Paramount Pictures on May 8, 1914, launches his company as the distributor. Paramount celebrates its centennial in 2012.
July 30 – Emperor Meiji of Japan dies. He is succeeded by his son Yoshihito who becomes Emperor Taishō. In the history of Japan, the event marks the end of the Meiji period and the beginning of the Taishō period.

August

August 4 – United States occupation of Nicaragua: U.S. Marines land from the USS Annapolis in Nicaragua to support the conservative government at its request.^[3]
August 12 – Sultan Abd al-Hafid of Morocco abdicates.
August 21 – First Eagle Scout (Boy Scouts of America).
August 25 – The Kuomintang, the Chinese nationalist party, is founded.

September

September 4 – The government of the Ottoman Empire agrees to the demands put forward in the Albanian Revolt of 1912.
September 28 – W. C. Handy publishes "The Memphis Blues" in the United States.

October

October 8 – The First Balkan War begins: Montenegro declares war against the Ottoman Empire.
October 10 – The Maternity Allowance Act goes into effect in Australia, but excludes minorities.
October 14 – John Flammang Schrank attempts to assassinate Theodore Roosevelt.
October 16 – Bulgarian pilots Radul Minkov and Prodan Toprakchiev perform the first bombing with an airplane in history, at the railway station of Karaagac near Edirne against Turkey.
October 17 – Krupp engineers Benno Strauss and Eduard Maurer patent austenitic stainless steel.^[4]
October 18 – Italy and the Ottoman Empire sign a treaty in Ouchy near Lausanne ending the Italo-Turkish War.
October 24 – First Balkan War: Battle of Kumanovo: Serbian forces defeat the Ottoman army in Vardar Macedonia.
October
- Edgar Rice Burroughs' character Tarzan first appears in Tarzan of the Apes in American pulp magazine The All-Story.
- Sax Rohmer's character Fu Manchu first appears in the first story of The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu in English pulp magazine Story-Teller.

November

.

November 8 – Governor of New Jersey Woodrow Wilson wins U.S. presidential election.
November 11 – William Lawrence Bragg presents his derivation of Bragg's law for the angles for coherent and incoherent scattering from a crystal lattice, creating the field of x-ray crystallography, and making possible the eventual imaging of the double helix of DNA^[5]
November 28 – Albania declares independence from the Ottoman Empire.

December

December 18 – Piltdown Man, thought to be the fossilized skull of a hitherto unknown form of early human, presented to the Geological Society of London. It is revealed to be a hoax in 1953.
December 24 – Merck files patent applications in Germany for synthesis of the entactogenic drug MDMA (Ecstasy), developed by Anton Köllisch.^[6]
December 30 – The First Balkan War ends temporarily: Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro, and Serbia (the Balkan League countries) sign an armistice with Turkey, ending the two-month-long war.

Date unknown

1912 date-mark on the apex of a building at Springfield, Birmingham, England.

Casimir Funk identifies vitamins.
The Scoville Unit (used to measure the heat of peppers) is devised and tested by Wilbur Scoville.
Alfred Wegener proposes the theory of continental drift.
Wilfrid Voynich discovers the eponymous manuscript in the Villa Mondragone.
The Government College of Technology, Rasul was established.

Births

January–February

January 1 – Kim Philby, British spy (d. 1988)
January 2 – Hans Leussink, German politician (d. 2008)
January 3 – Armand Lohikoski, Finnish director (d. 2005)
January 5 – Gilbert Ralston, British-American screenwriter and television producer (d. 1999)
January 6
- Jacques Ellul, French philosopher (d. 1994)
- Danny Thomas, American actor and comedian (d. 1991)
January 7
- Charles Addams, American cartoonist (d. 1988)
- Ivan Yakubovsky, Marshal of Soviet Union (d. 1976)
January 8
- José Ferrer, Puerto Rican actor (d. 1992)
- Lawrence E. Walsh, American jurist (d. 2014)
January 9 – Basil Langton, English actor and authority on the stage works of George Bernard Shaw (d. 2003)
January 19 – Leonid Kantorovich, Russian economist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1986)
January 21 – Konrad Emil Bloch, German-born biochemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 2000)
January 23 – Susan French, American actess (d. 2003)
January 27
- Marc Daniels, American television director (d. 1989)
- Arne Næss, Norwegian philosopher (d. 2009)
- Francis Rogallo, American aeronautical engineer (d. 2009)
January 28 – Jackson Pollock, American painter (d. 1956)
January 30
- Werner Hartmann, German physicist (d. 1988)
- Barbara Tuchman, American historian (d. 1989)
- Francis Schaeffer, American Evangelical theologian, philosopher, and Presbyterian pastor (d. 1984)
February 2 – Millvina Dean, youngest passenger and survivor of the Sinking of the RMS Titanic (d. 2009)
February 4
- Erich Leinsdorf, Austrian conductor (d. 1993)
- Byron Nelson, American golfer (d. 2006)
February 6 – Eva Braun, Adolf Hitler's mistress (d. 1945)
February 7 – Roberta Wright McCain, wife of four-star Admiral John S. McCain, Jr. and mother of Senator John McCain (R-AZ)
February 11 – Roy Fuller, English poet and novelist (d. 1991)
February 14 – Juan Pujol García, Spanish Catalan double agent (d. 1988)
February 19 – Ursula Torday, British writer (d. 1997)
February 20 – Pierre Boulle, French author (d. 1994)
February 27 – Lawrence Durrell, British writer (d. 1990)
February 28 – Bertil, Swedish prince, Duke of Halland (d. 1997)

March–April

March 1 – Boris Chertok, Polish-born Russian rocket designer (d. 2011)
March 4
- Afro Basaldella, Italian painter (d. 1976)
- Judith Furse, British character actress (d. 1974)
- Carl Marzani, American documentarian (d. 1994)
March 5 – David Astor, British newspaper publisher (d. 2001)
March 6 – George Webb, British actor (d. 1998)
March 8
- Joachim Schepke, German submarine commander (d. 1941)
- Preston Smith, Governor of Texas (d. 2003)
March 12 – Irving Layton, Canadian poet (d. 2006)
March 13 – Charles Schepens, Belgian-American ophthalmologist (d. 2006)
March 14
- Les Brown, American band leader (d. 2001)
- W. Graham Claytor, Jr., American railroad executive (d. 1994)
- W. Willard Wirtz, American administrator (d. 2010)
March 15 – Lightnin' Hopkins, American musician (d. 1982)
March 16 – Pat Nixon, First Lady of the United States (d. 1993)
March 17 – Bayard Rustin, American civil rights activist (d. 1987)
March 18
- Lucien Laurin, Canadian horse trainer (d. 2000)
- Art Gilmore, American radio and television announcer (d. 2010)
March 19 – Adolf Galland, German general and World War II fighter ace (d. 1996)
March 22 – Karl Malden, American actor (d. 2009)
March 23 – Wernher von Braun, German-born American physicist and engineer (d. 1977)
March 24 – Dorothy Height, American activist (d. 2010)
March 25 – Jean Vilar, French stage actor (d. 1971)
March 27 – James Callaghan, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (d. 2005)
March 29 – Hanna Reitsch, German aviator (d. 1979)
March 31 – William Lederer, American writer (d. 2009)
April 2 – Herbert Mills, American singer, "Mills Brothers" tenor (d. 1989)
April 5 – John Le Mesurier, British actor (d. 1983)
April 7 – Jack Lawrence, American composer (d. 2009)
April 8
- Alois Brunner, Austrian captain (disappeared in 2001)
- Sonja Henie, Norwegian figure skater (d. 1969)
April 11 – Gusti Wolf, Austrian actress (d. 2007)
April 12 – Walt Gorney, American actor (d. 2004)
April 13 – William J. Tuttle, American makeup artist (d. 2007)
April 15 – Kim Il-sung, President of North Korea (d. 1994)
April 16
- David Langton, British actor, (d. 1994)
- Catherine Scorsese, Italian-American actress (d. 1997)
April 17 – Marta Eggerth, Hungarian-born actress and singer, naturalized citizen of the United States (d. 2013)
April 19 – Glenn T. Seaborg, American chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1999)
April 22
- Kathleen Ferrier, British contralto (d. 1953)
- Kaneto Shindō, Japanese film director (d. 2012)
April 26 – A. E. van Vogt, Canadian-born writer (d. 2000)
April 27 – Zohra Sehgal, Indian stage and film actress (d. 2014)
April 28 – Odette Sansom, French World War II heroine (d. 1995)

May–June

File:Alan Turing Aged 16.jpg

Alan Turing

May 1 – Otto Kretschmer, German submarine commander and Bundesmarine admiral (d. 1998)
May 2
- Axel Springer, German journalist and the founder and owner of Axel Springer AG (d. 1985)
- Marten Toonder, Dutch comic creator (d. 2005)
May 3
- Virgil Fox, American organist (d. 1980)
- John Bryan Ward-Perkins, British archaeologist (d. 1981)
May 6 – Bill Quinn, American actor (d. 1994)
May 9 – Pedro Armendáriz, Mexican actor (d. 1963)
May 11 – Foster Brooks, American actor and comedian (d. 2001)
May 12 – Mayavaram V. R. Govindaraja Pillai, Carnatic violinist from Tamil Nadu, Southern India (d. 1979)
May 16 – Studs Terkel, American writer and broadcaster (d. 2008)
May 17
- Archibald Cox, American Watergate special prosecutor (d. 2004)
- Ace Parker, American baseball and football player (d. 2013)
May 18
- Perry Como, American singer (d. 2001)
- Walter Sisulu, South African anti-apartheid activist (d. 2003)
May 21
- Monty Stratton, American baseball player (d. 1982)
- Akiva Vroman, Dutch-born Israeli geologist and Israel Prize recipient (d. 1989)
May 22 – Herbert C. Brown, English-born chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2004)
May 23
- Betty Astell, British actress (d. 2005)
- Jean Françaix, French composer (d. 1997)
- John Payne, American actor (d. 1989)
May 25 – Princess Deokhye of Korea (d. 1989)
May 26
- János Kádár, Hungarian Communist politician (d. 1989)
- Jay Silverheels, American actor (The Lone Ranger) (d. 1980)
May 27
- John Cheever, American novelist and short story writer (d. 1982)
- Cedric Phatudi, Chief Minister of Lebowa bantustan (d. 1987)
- Sam Snead, American golfer (d. 2002)
May 28
- Herman Johannes, Indonesian professor, scientist and politician (d. 1992)
- Patrick White, Australian writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1990)
May 29 – Pamela Hansford Johnson, English poet, novelist, playwright, literary and social critic (d. 1981)
May 30
- Julius Axelrod, American biochemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 2004)
- Joseph Stein, American librettist (d. 2010)
May 31
- Alfred Deller, English countertenor (d. 1979)
- Henry M. "Scoop" Jackson, American politician (d. 1983)
June 4 – Robert Jacobsen, Danish artist (d. 1993)
June 5 – Dean Amadon, American ornithologist (d. 2003)
June 6 – Maria Montez, Dominican actress (d. 1951)
June 8
- Harry Holtzman, American artist (d. 1987)
- Walter Kennedy, former NBA commissioner (d. 1977)
June 9 – Philip Simmons, American ornamental ironworker (d. 2009)
June 11 – Phạm Hùng, Vietnamese prime minister (d. 1988)
June 15 – Oscar Natzka, New Zealand singer (d. 1951)
June 16 – Enoch Powell, British politician (d. 1998)
June 21 – Kazimierz Leski, Polish engineer, fighter pilot, and intelligence and counter-intelligence officer (d. 2000)
June 23 – Alan Turing, British mathematician (d. 1954)
June 24 – Brian Johnston, British cricket commentator (d. 1994)
June 25 – William T. Cahill, American politician (d. 1996)
June 27
- E. R. Braithwaite, Guyanese novelist, writer, teacher, and diplomat
- Chen Kenmin, Japanese chef (d. 1990)
June 30 – Ludwig Bölkow, German aeronautical engineer (d. 2003)