1912
The Newark Museum of Art held an exhibition of commercial products made
by the German Deutscher Werkbund.
An announcement was made by the New York Times that it would sponsor a contest
for American fashion designers.
Thurn of New York City admits to sewing in French labels on American-made
dresses.
Father’s Flirtation; A Feud in the Country Hills; A Girl
and Her Trust; Lena and the Geese, The Musketeers of Pig Alley;
The Old Actor; An Unseen Enemy were all films made and released
by D.W. Griffith.
Popular songs included “Be My Little Bumble Bee,” by Henry I. Marshall and
Stanley Murphy; “The Sweetheart of Sigma Chi,” by Dudley Vernor and Byron
D. Stokes; “That Demon Rag” by Russell Smith; “That Mysterious Rag,” by Irving
Berlin; “Waiting for the Robert E. Lee,” by Lewis F. Muir and L. Wolfe Gilbert;
and “When Irish Eyes are Smiling,” by Ernest R. Bill, Chauncey Olcott, and
George Graff Jr.
Popular fiction included Willa Cather’s Alexander Bridge, Theodore
Dreiser’s The Financier, Zane Grey’s Riders of the Purple Sage,
James Weldon Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, and
Edith Wharton’s The Reef.
Phenobarbital, a derivative of barbituric acid, went on sale under the name
Luminal.
The Little Theater in Chicago and the Toy Theater in Boston were the first
legitimate little theaters.
The Dramatists Guild was founded in New York City.
F.F. Woolworth Co. was incorporated.
March 12: The first Girl Guide troops
were founded by Juliet Gordon Lowe.
April 15: The Titanic sank during
it’s maiden voyage, killing 1, 517 passengers.
May 1: The Beverly Hills Hotel opened
in an ex-bean field.
August 15: Hellen Keller announced she
could sing.
October 9: The new electric bulletin in
Times Square watched the World Series score.
August: Camera World, Alfred Stieglitz’s
magazine, included Gertrude Stein’s “Word Portraits” of Henri Matisse and
Pablo Picasso.
September 1: The Walker Theater opened
in Los Angeles exclusively to show movies. It sat one thousand.
September 5: The film Queen Elizabeth
starring Sarah Bernhardt opened in New York.
September 23: Mac Sennett’s debuted his
first split reel Keystone Cops movies, Cohen Collects a Debt and The Water
Nymph.
Poetry; A Magazine of Verse was first published and edited by Harriet Monroe
and Ezra Pound.