Grand Canyon National Monument is created.
The Grand Canyon is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a national park. It is located in the state of Arizona, USA.
Grand Canyon National Park is renowned for its breathtaking and immense canyon, carved by the Colorado River over millions of years. The park covers over a million acres and offers stunning landscapes, diverse ecosystems, and a rich geological history.
Mother’s Day is observed for the first time in the United States, in Grafton, West Virginia.
Mother’s Day is a holiday that is celebrated in many countries around the world to honor mothers and motherhood. The day is typically observed on the second Sunday in May in the United States, but the date may vary in other countries.
The modern version of Mother’s Day originated in the United States in the early 20th century, when Anna Jarvis, a social activist and writer, campaigned for a national holiday to honor mothers. Jarvis was inspired to create the holiday by her own mother, who had worked to improve health and sanitation conditions in her community.
After years of lobbying and advocacy, Mother’s Day was officially recognized as a national holiday in the United States in 1914, and it has since spread to other countries around the world.
Today, Mother’s Day is a time for children and families to express their love and gratitude to their mothers and maternal figures. It is a day to honor the hard work, sacrifice, and dedication of mothers, and to celebrate the important role they play in shaping the lives of their children and families.
Opening day of competition in the New South Wales Rugby League
Rugby Union and Rugby League are two different forms of rugby football, which originated in England in the 19th century. While both sports share some similarities, there are several key differences between them:
Number of Players: Rugby Union is played with 15 players on each team, while Rugby League is played with 13 players on each team.
Scoring: In Rugby Union, a try is worth 5 points, and a conversion (kick after a try) is worth 2 points. Penalty kicks and drop goals are also worth points. In Rugby League, a try is worth 4 points, and a conversion is worth 2 points. Penalty goals and field goals are also worth points.
Tackling: In Rugby Union, players can contest for the ball on the ground after a tackle, and there are no limits on the number of tackles. In Rugby League, the tackled player must release the ball immediately, and there are limits on the number of tackles.
Scrums: In Rugby Union, scrums are used to restart play after a minor rule infringement or accidental stoppage. In Rugby League, scrums are only used to restart play after a major rule infringement or deliberate stoppage.
Lineouts: In Rugby Union, lineouts are used to restart play when the ball goes out of bounds. In Rugby League, the ball is simply handed over to the opposing team.
Field Size: Rugby Union fields are generally larger than Rugby League fields.
Substitutions: In Rugby Union, teams are allowed up to 8 substitutions per match, while in Rugby League, teams are only allowed 10 interchanges per match.
These are some of the main differences between Rugby Union and Rugby League, although there are other differences in rules and gameplay as well.
Puyi becomes Emperor of China at the age of two.
The first Boy Scout troop is organized in England by Robert Baden-Powell in 1908.
Harvard University votes to establish the Harvard Business School.
First day of competition in the New South Wales Rugby League.
Early in the 20th century in Sydney, the game of rugby football was contested in competitions that were affiliated with the Rugby Football Union based in England. In 1895 the breakaway Northern Rugby Football Union was formed and its own version of rugby football started to evolve. The reasons for this split were ultimately based around the fact that clubs had wanted to compensate their players for time away from work due to injuries and travelling. After the Rugby Football Union denied the clubs’ requests for compensation, many northern English clubs broke away and formed a new league, which implemented gradual rule changes to the football it played in an attempt to make a more attractive game for crowds. When crowd numbers started to rise, clubs were able to afford to pay players benefits as a direct result of increased gate takings.
In 1906 in Sydney, crowd numbers for football matches began to increase significantly following the emergence of a special player, Dally Messenger, whose skill was considered a pleasure to watch. It was around this time that the discontent of players with their clubs for continually failing to shift away from the amateur culture of the Rugby Football Union was starting to show. Even though bigger crowds had brought increased revenue to the game, footballers ended up failing to see any of the increased revenue going back to them. On 8 August 1907 a group of leading players and supporters met at Bateman’s Hotel, George Street, Sydney and resolved to form the New South Wales Rugby Football League. In the latter half of 1907, and unknown to the general public, Dally Messenger secretly agreed to sign on to play in a breakaway professional competition that would start the following year, run by the New South Wales Rugby Football League. It would turn out to be Messenger’s popularity that would ensure the success of the new competition.
Early in 1908, a number of Rugby Football Union clubs held meetings across Sydney and Newcastle to decide whether or not breakaway clubs should be formed in preparation for the new Rugby Football League’s premiership that was to start in the following months. The popularity amongst players in support of the new competition was overwhelming, with only some players deciding to continue playing in the traditional amateur Rugby Football Union competition. The Rugby Football League clubs that were formed were essentially breakaway clubs, and in most instances, teams continued the use of their team colours into the new competition. A key aspect of the new code was that players would be paid for playing the game. Adopting the playing rules of the rebel Northern Union of England, the new competition began in earnest in Australia on Easter Monday, 20 April 1908.
The Grand Canyon National Monument is created.
January 11, 1908 Grand Canyon National Monument is created
Declaring that “The ages had been at work on it, and man can only mar it,” President Theodore Roosevelt designates the mighty Grand Canyon a national monument.
Home to Native Americans for centuries, the first European to see the vast brightly colored spectacle of the Grand Canyon was Don Garcia Lopez de Cardenas, who traveled through northern Arizona in 1540 with the Spanish explorer Coronado. Subsequent explorers also marveled at the amazing view from the rim, but few dared to attempt the treacherous descent into the 5,000-foot-deep canyon and explore the miles of maze-like twists and turns.
Even as late as the 1860s, the Grand Canyon remained terra incognita to most non-natives. In 1869, though, the geologist John Wesley Powell made his first daring journey through the canyon via the Colorado River. Powell and nine men floated down Wyoming’s Green River in small wooden boats to its confluence with the Colorado River, and then into the “Great Unknown” of the Grand Canyon. Astonishingly, Powell and his men managed to guide their fragile wooden boats through a punishing series of rapids, whirlpools, and rocks. They emerged humbled but alive at the end of the canyon in late August. No one died on the river, though Indians killed three men who had abandoned the expedition and attempted to walk back to civilization, convinced their chances were better in the desert than on the treacherous Colorado.
By the late 19th century, the growing American fascination with nature and wilderness made the canyon an increasingly popular tourist destination. Entrepreneurs threw up several shoddily constructed hotels on the south rim in order to profit from the stunning view. The arrival of a spur line of the Santa Fe railroad in 1901 provided a far quicker and more comfortable means of reaching the canyon than the previous stagecoach route. By 1915, more than 100,000 visitors were arriving every year.
Puyi becomes Emperor of China at the age of two.
Chosen by Empress Dowager Cixi on her deathbed, Puyi became emperor at the age of 2 years and 10 months in December 1908 after the Guangxu Emperor died on 14 November. Titled the Xuantong Emperor, Puyi’s introduction to the life of an emperor began when palace officials arrived at his family residence to take him. On the evening of 13 November 1908, without any advance notice, a procession of eunuchs and guardsmen led by the palace chamberlain left the Forbidden City for the Northern Mansion to inform Prince Chun that they were taking away his three-year-old son Puyi to be the new emperor. The toddler Puyi screamed and resisted as the officials ordered the eunuch attendants to pick him up. Puyi’s parents said nothing when they learned that they were losing their son. As Puyi cried, screaming that he did not want to leave his parents, he was forced into a palanquin that took him back to the Forbidden City. Puyi’s wet nurse Wang Wen-Chao was the only person from the Northern Mansion allowed to go with him, and she calmed the very distraught Puyi down by allowing him to suckle one of her breasts; this was the only reason she was taken along. Upon arriving at the Forbidden City, Puyi was taken to see Cixi. Puyi later wrote:
I still have a dim recollection of this meeting, the shock of which left a deep impression on my memory. I remember suddenly finding myself surrounded by strangers, while before me was hung a drab curtain through which I could see an emaciated and terrifying hideous face. This was Cixi. It is said that I burst out into loud howls at the sight and started to tremble uncontrollably. Cixi told someone to give me some sweets, but I threw them on the floor and yelled “I want nanny, I want nanny”, to her great displeasure. “What a naughty child” she said. “Take him away to play.”
His father, Prince Chun, became Prince Regent. During Puyi’s coronation in the Hall of Supreme Harmony on 2 December 1908, the young emperor was carried onto the Dragon Throne by his father. Puyi was frightened by the scene before him and the deafening sounds of ceremonial drums and music, and started crying. His father could do nothing except quietly comfort him: “Don’t cry, it’ll be over soon.”
Puyi did not see his biological mother, Princess Consort Chun, for the next seven years. He developed a special bond with his wet nurse, Wen-Chao Wang, and credited her as the only person who could control him. She was sent away when he was eight years old. After Puyi married, he would occasionally bring her to the Forbidden City, and later Manchukuo, to visit him. After his special government pardon in 1959, he visited her adopted son and only then learned of her personal sacrifices to be his nurse.
Puyi’s upbringing was hardly conducive to the raising of a healthy, well-balanced child. Overnight, he was treated as an emperor and unable to behave as a child. The adults in his life, except for Wang Wen-Chao, were all strangers, remote, distant, and unable to discipline him. Wherever he went, grown men would kneel down in a ritual kowtow, averting their eyes until he passed. Soon he discovered the absolute power he wielded over the eunuchs, and he frequently had them beaten for small transgressions. As an emperor, Puyi’s every whim was catered to while no one ever said no to him, making him into a sadistic boy who loved to have his eunuchs flogged. The Anglo-French journalist Edward Behr wrote about Puyi’s powers as emperor of China, which allowed him to fire his air-gun at anyone he liked:
The Emperor was Divine. He could not be remonstrated with, or punished. He could only be deferentially advised against ill-treating innocent eunuchs, and if he chose to fire air-gun pellets at them, that was his prerogative.
—?Edward Behr
Puyi later said, “Flogging eunuchs was part of my daily routine. My cruelty and love of wielding power were already too firmly set for persuasion to have any effect on me.” The British historian Alex von Tunzelmann wrote that most people in the West know Puyi’s story only from the 1987 film The Last Emperor, which downplays Puyi’s cruelty considerably.
By age 7, Puyi had two sides to his personality: the sadistic emperor who loved to have his eunuchs flogged, expected everyone to kowtow to him and enjoyed puppet shows and dog fights, and the boy who slept at night with Wang, suckling her breasts and content to be loved for just once in the day. Wang was the only person capable of controlling Puyi; once, Puyi decided to “reward” a eunuch for a well done puppet show by having a cake baked for him with iron filings in it, saying, “I want to see what he looks like when he eats it”. With much difficulty, Wang talked Puyi out of this plan.
Every day Puyi had to visit five former imperial concubines, called his “mothers”, to report on his progress. He hated his “mothers”, not least because they prevented him from seeing his real mother until he was 13. Their leader was the autocratic Empress Dowager Longyu, who successfully conspired to have Puyi’s beloved wet nurse Wang expelled from the Forbidden City when he was 8 on the grounds that Puyi was too old to be breast-fed. Puyi especially hated Longyu for that. Puyi later wrote, “Although I had many mothers, I never knew any motherly love.”
Puyi noted that to travel from just one building to another in the Forbidden City or for a stroll in the gardens, he was always surrounded by “large retinue” of eunuchs and that:
In front went an eunuch whose function was roughly that of a motor horn; he walked twenty or thirty yards ahead of the party intoning the sound ‘… chir … chir …’ as a warning to anyone who might be waiting in the vicinity to go away at once. Next came two Chief Eunuchs advancing crabwise on either side of the path; ten paces behind them came the centre of the procession. If I was being carried in a chair there would be two junior eunuchs walking beside me to attend to my wants at any moment; if I was walking they would be supporting me. Next came an eunuch with a large silk canopy followed by a large group of eunuchs, some empty-handed, others holding all sorts of things: a seat in case I wanted to rest, changes of clothing, umbrellas and parasols. After these eunuchs of the Imperial Presence came eunuchs of the Imperial tea bureau with boxes of various kinds of cakes and delicacies … They were followed by eunuchs of the Imperial dispensary … at the end of the procession came the eunuchs who carried commodes and chamberpots. If I was walking, a sedan-chair, open or covered according to the season, would bring up the rear. This motley procession of several dozen people would proceed in perfect silence and order.
Puyi never had any privacy and had all his needs attended to at all times, having eunuchs open doors for him, dress him, wash him, and even blow air into his soup to cool it. Puyi delighted in humiliating his eunuchs, at one point saying that as the “Lord of Ten Thousand Years” it was his right to order a eunuch to eat dirt: “‘Eat that for me’ I ordered, and he knelt down and ate it”. At his meals, Puyi was always presented with a huge buffet containing every conceivable dish, the vast majority of which he did not eat, and every day he wore new clothing as Chinese emperors never reused their clothing. The eunuchs had their own reasons for presenting Puyi with buffet meals and new clothing every day, as Puyi’s used clothes made from the finest silk were sold on the black market, while the food he did not eat was either sold or eaten by the eunuchs themselves.
Puyi had a standard Confucian education, being taught the various Confucian classics and nothing else. He later wrote: “I learnt nothing of mathematics, let alone science, and for a long time I had no idea where Beijing was situated” When Puyi was 13, he met his parents and siblings, all of whom had to kowtow before him as he sat upon the Dragon Throne. By this time, he had forgotten what his mother looked like. Such was the awe in which the Emperor was held that his younger brother Pujie never heard his parents refer to Puyi as “your elder brother” but only as the Emperor. Pujie told Behr his image of Puyi prior to meeting him was that of “a venerable old man with a beard. I couldn’t believe it when I saw this boy in yellow robes sitting solemnly on the throne”. It was decided that Pujie would join Puyi in the Forbidden City to provide him with a playmate, but Puyi was notably angry when he discovered his brother was wearing yellow – the color of the Qing – as he believed that only Emperors had the right to wear yellow, and it had to be explained to him that all members of the Qing family could.
The Grand Canyon National Monument is created.
On January 11, 1908, U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt declares the massive Grand Canyon in northwestern Arizona a national monument.
Though Native Americans lived in the area as early as the 13th century, the first European sighting of the canyon wasn’t until 1540, by members of an expedition headed by the Spanish explorer Francisco Vasquez de Coronado. Because of its remote and inaccessible location, several centuries passed before North American settlers really explored the canyon. In 1869, geologist John Wesley Powell led a group of 10 men in the first difficult journey down the rapids of the Colorado River and along the length of the 277-mile gorge in four rowboats.
By the end of the 19th century, the Grand Canyon was attracting thousands of tourists each year. One famous visitor was President Theodore Roosevelt, a New Yorker with a particular affection for the American West.After becoming president in1901 after the assassination of President William McKinley, Roosevelt made environmental conservation a major part of his presidency. After establishing the National Wildlife Refuge to protect the country’s animals, fish and birds, Roosevelt turned his attention to federal regulation of public lands. Though a region could be given national park status–indicating that all private development on that land was illegal–only by an act of Congress, Roosevelt cut down on red tape by beginning a new presidential practice of granting a similar “national monument” designation to some of the West’s greatest treasures.
In January 1908, Roosevelt exercised this right to make more than 800,000 acres of the Grand Canyon area into a national monument. “Let this great wonder of nature remain as it now is,” he declared. “You cannot improve on it. But what you can do is keep it for your children, your children’s children, and all who come after you, as the one great sight which every American should see.”
Congress did not officially outlaw private development in the Grand Canyon until 1919, when President Woodrow Wilson signed the Grand Canyon National Park Act. Today, more than 5 million people visit the canyon each year. The canyon floor is accessible by foot, mule or boat, and whitewater rafting, hiking and running in the area are especially popular. Many choose to conserve their energies and simply take in the breathtaking view from the canyon’s South Rim–some 7,000 feet above sea level–and marvel at a vista virtually unchanged for over 400 years.