1912

1845–1958	Germany [earth sciences]	German naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt lays the basis of modern geography with the publication of Kosmos/Cosmos, in which he arranges geographic knowledge in a systematic fashion.
1911–1914	USA, Mexico [statistics and demography]	82,500 Mexicans emigrate to the USA.
1912	[religion]	German Protestant theologian Ernst Troeltsch publishes The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, an influential study of the relationship between church and the state. It is translated into English in 1931.
1912	USA [medicine]	Polish-born US biochemist Casimir Funk isolates vitamin B₁ (thiamine) and coins the name ‘vitamines’. This proves a vital discovery in the treatment of the disease beriberi, which is caused by a deficiency of the vitamin.
1912	Norway [motor vehicles]	Norway is the first country to introduce compulsory third-party insurance for car owners.
1912	USA [newspapers]	The Farm Journal holds the first national public opinion poll in the USA, to predict the presidential election result.
1912	Russian Empire [newspapers]	The socialist paper Pravda (‘Truth’) is founded in Russia.
1912	[orchestral music]	The English composer Frederick Delius completes his orchestral work On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring, one of his Two Mood Pictures.
1912	[painting]	The French artist Georges Braque creates the first papiers-collés (paintings that incorporate pieces of paper), exemplified by works such as Fruit Dish and Glass.
1912	United Kingdom [telephone services]	The first commercial automatic telephone exchange in Britain is opened in Epsom, Surrey.
1912	[physics]	Scottish physicist Charles Thomson Rees Wilson perfects the cloud chamber, which detects ion trails since water molecules condense on ions. It is used to study radioactivity, X-rays, cosmic rays, and other nuclear phenomena.
1912	[earth sciences]	The German geophysicist Alfred Wegener proposes that, 250 million years ago, a single land mass formed a supercontinent he calls ‘Pangea’. He argues that the supercontinent split into two components from which different portions broke free, forming the present continents which occupy their current positions through continental drift.
1912	[fiction]	The German writer Thomas Mann publishes his novella Der Tod in Venedig/Death in Venice.
1912	United Kingdom [health and medicine]	English biochemist Frederick Gowland Hopkins publishes the results of his experiments that prove that ‘accessory substances’ (vitamins) are essential for health and growth and that their absence leads to diseases such as scurvy or beriberi. In the same year, Polish-born US biochemist Casimir Funk discovers that pigeons fed on rice polishings can be cured of beriberi, and suggests that the absence of a vital nitrogen-containing substance known as an amine causes such diseases. He calls these substances ‘vitamines’.
1912	[biography]	The black American poet-historian James Weldon Johnson anonymously publishes The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man.
1912	United Kingdom, USA [cinema and film]	London, England, has 400 cinemas, up from 90 in 1909; in the USA, 5 million people visit the cinema daily.
1912	USA [cinema and film]	The Edison film studio produces the first film with sound. It is a 15 minute musical based on nursery rhymes in which the sound is roughly synchronized on a phonograph with the image.
1912	Italy [cinema and film]	The first film awards for feature-length films take place at the International Exhibition in Turin, Italy.
1912	[ballet]	The ballet L'Après-midi d'un faune/The Afternoon of a Faun, by the French composer Claude Debussy and the Russian dancer Vaslav Nijinsky, is first performed in Paris, France, under the Russian impresario Sergei Diaghilev. The sets and costumes are by the Russian artist Léon Bakst and Nijinsky dances the central role.
12 February 1912	China [law and government]	P'u-i, the last Manchu emperor of China, abdicates, and China becomes a republic under provisional president Sun Zhong Shan (Sun Yat-sen).
13 March 1912	Bulgaria, Serbia [treaties]	Bulgaria and Serbia sign a treaty of alliance in preparation for a war with the Ottoman Empire.
23 March 1912	[births and deaths]	Werner von Braun, German rocket engineer who was also involved in the exploration of space in Germany and the USA, born in Wirsitz, Germany (–1977).
14 April - 15 April 1912	[ships and shipping]	The British luxury liner Titanic, carrying 2,224 people on its maiden transatlantic voyage, hits an iceberg 640 km/400 mi off the coast of Newfoundland and sinks causing the deaths of 1,513. One of the largest ships afloat (269 m/882 ft) it has a double-hulled bottom and is considered unsinkable. The accident leads to the first international convention for safety at sea, held in London, England, the following year, which draws up safety standards.
15 April 1912	[births and deaths]	Kim Il Sung, Korean dictator 1948–94, born near Pyongyang, Korea (now North Korea) (–1994).
22 May 1912	Austria-Hungary [law and government]	Count Stephen Tisza, leader of the Hungarian National Party of Work, is elected president of the Hungarian chamber. Socialists call a strike in support of universal male suffrage and riots occur in Budapest, Austria-Hungary.
30 May 1912	[births and deaths]	Wilbur Wright, US pioneer of aviation, who, with his brother Orville, was the first to achieve sustained powered flight, dies in Dayton, Ohio (45).
June 1912	United Kingdom [anthropology]	English amateur archaeologist Charles Dawson discovers a human skull with an ape-like jaw, the fossil remains of Piltdown man Eoanthropus dawsoni, in a gravel pit in Piltdown, southeast England. In 1953 they are discovered to be a hoax.
23 June 1912	[births and deaths]	Alan Mathison Turing, English mathematician who pioneered computer theory and computer processes, born in London, England (–1954).
15 July 1912	United Kingdom [social legislation]	The first National Insurance payments are made in Britain.
17 July 1912	[athletics]	The International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF), the world governing body for track and field, is formed in Stockholm, Sweden, with 17 founder members.
August 1912	USA [political events]	For the third time in one year, President William Howard Taft dispatches US marines to a neighbouring country to protect US commercial interests from political tumult. This time the country is Nicaragua, where the marines will remain until 1933.
14 August 1912	Bulgaria, Serbia, Anatolia, Ottoman Empire [Balkan wars (1912–13)]	As a pretext for war, Bulgaria demands autonomy for Macedonia from the Ottoman Empire.
20 August 1912	[births and deaths]	William Booth, English preacher who founded the Salvation Army, dies in London, England (83).
8 October 1912	Montenegro, Anatolia, Ottoman Empire [Balkan wars (1912–13)]	Montenegro declares war on the Ottoman Empire.
18 October 1912	Anatolia, Ottoman Empire, Bulgaria, Serbia [Balkan wars (1912–13)]	The Ottoman Empire declares war on Bulgaria and Serbia.
18 October 1912	Italy, Anatolia, Ottoman Empire [treaties]	Italy and the Ottoman Empire sign a peace treaty at Lausanne, Switzerland, by which Tripoli and Cyrenaica are granted autonomy under Italian suzerainty, and Italy restores the Dodecanese Islands to the Ottoman Empire.
5 November 1912	USA [elections]	The Democrat Woodrow Wilson wins the US presidential election with 435 electoral votes, while the Progressive candidate, Theodore Roosevelt, wins 88 votes, and the residing Republican president, William Howard Taft, wins 8. In the popular vote Wilson receives 6,293,454 votes, Roosevelt 4,119,538, and Taft 3,484,980. Democrats attain majorities in both the House (2911–127) and Senate (51–44).