What Happened in March 1911

My father has his 102nd birthday this month which is excuse enough to look back.

• The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire killed 146 garment workers because factory managers had locked the sweatshop doors. The tragedy led to the major reforms and the growth of the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union.
• The structure of the atom, electrons orbiting a nucleus, was first described by British physicist Ernest Rutherford.

Las Vegas in 1911.

• The city of Las Vegas, Nevada, population 800, was incorporated. Gambling was illegal.
• The US Supreme Court ruled that corporate income taxes were constitutional.

• Irving Berlin's first big hit, Alexander's Ragtime Band, was published.
• One quarter of the US armed forces (20,000 soldiers), the greatest troop movement since the Civil War, was dispatched to the US-Mexican border "on maneuvers." The real reason was to prevent the Mexican Revolution from spilling over the border.
• Congress failed to vote on statehood for New Mexico. It would not become the 47th state until next year.

In international news, the mayor of Jerusalem wrote to the sultan of the Ottoman Empire requesting he stop Jewish immigrants from entering Palestine.

The population of the United States was 93 million. The global population was 1.8 billion. The highest paid player in baseball was Ty Cobb, $9,000. The richest man in the world was John D. Rockefeller. President was Howard Taft.