A Century Ago: The Year 1909

I receive an e-mail here at work about what life was like in the year 1909.  So, I fig­ured I’d leave you with some inter­est­ing and fun facts:

Busi­ness and Industry

• The Hud­son Motor Car Com­pany is founded.
• Drilling begins on the Lake­view Gusher.
• The Cadil­lac Model 30 is introduced.
• Queens­boro Bridge opens, con­nect­ing Man­hat­tan with Queens.

Gov­ern­ment and Military

• The U.S. Navy founds a navy base in Pearl Har­bor, Hawaii.
• Con­gress enacts the Payne-Aldrich Tar­iff.

Sports

• The Pitts­burgh Pirates win the World Series 4–3 over Detroit.
• The Ottawa Sen­a­tors win the Stan­ley Cup.
• “Win­ter­green” wins the Ken­tucky Derby.

Eco­nom­ics

• A loaf of bread costs $0.05.
• A first-class stamp costs $0.02.
• The aver­age price of a house is $4,500.
• The Gov­ern­ment Bud­get was a mea­ger $690 million.
• Unem­ploy­ment was %5.1.
• U.S. issues the first Lin­coln penny.

World Events

• Joan of Arc is beat­i­fied in Rome.
• Ernest Shackleton’s expe­di­tion finds the mag­netic South Pole.
• Amer­i­can explor­ers Robert E. Peary and Matthew Hen­son reach the North Pole.
• Ger­man bac­te­ri­ol­o­gist Paul Ehrlich finds a cure for syphilis.

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