May 8, 1902: Mount Pelee erupts, kills the 30,000 residents of Saint-PierreMay 20, 1902: Republic of Cuba granted limited independenceSaint-Pierre after the eruptionMay 6, 1902: The SS Camorta sinks with 737 people onboardMay 31, 1902: The Treaty of Vereeniging ends the Second Boer War
The town of Maharg, Oklahoma, located on Turkey Creek of Washita County, was destroyed by a flash flood. The survivors relocated to higher ground and incorporated it as "Foss".
A violent eruption of Mount Pelée terrified many of the residents of most of the residents of the island of Martinique, although most chose not to evacuate.[1]
Died:Bret Harte, 65, American writer, died from throat cancer (born 1836)[14]
May 6, 1902 (Tuesday)
All 737 passengers and crew on the British passenger ship SS Camorta were killed when the ship sank in a cyclone while en route from Madras in India, to Rangoon in Burma, after being hit by a cyclone. The ship was traversing the Irrawaddy Delta when it was struck.[15]
Two thousand people on the island of Saint Vincent were killed when the volcano La Soufrière erupted, devastating the northern portion of the island.[16]
Died: Paul Leicester Ford, 37, American novelist, was shot and killed by his older brother, Malcolm Webster Ford, 40, American amateur athlete, in a murder-suicide (born 1865)
Multiple explosions of naphtha killed 28 people at Sheraden, Pennsylvania, at the time an unincorporated community outside of the city limits of Pittsburgh, and injured 200 others.[1]
Died:Walter N. Haldeman, 81, American newspaper editor who founded the Louisville Courier as a pro-secessionist newspaper in 1844, then later merged it with a pro-Union newspaper in 1868 to form the Louisville Courier-Journal. Haldeman was also the a major league baseball team owner and a charter member of the National League with the Louisville Grays who played in 1876 and 1877. (born 1821)
Died:Edwin Lawrence Godkin, 70, Irish-American journalist and editor who founded (in 1865), The Nation, the oldest continuously published U.S. weekly news magazine (born 1831)
May 22, 1902 (Thursday)
By a nearly unanimous vote, the American Presbyterian Church adopted its revised creed at its 1902 general assembly.[27]
Died: Benjamin M. Palmer, 84, American Presbyterian minister and secessionist known for rallying legislators in Louisiana to secede from the United States "to conserve and to perpetuate the institution of domestic slavery as now existing", died from injuries sustained after being struck by a streetcar while crossing the street in New Orleans.
The Pacts of May were signed by representatives of Chile and Argentina in an attempt to resolve territorial disputes by submitting them to binding arbitration.[32]
Paul J. Sorg, 61, American tobacco entrepreneur and former U.S. Congressman for Ohio (born 1840)
May 29, 1902 (Thursday)
A major breakthrough was achieved in the construction of the Albula Tunnel in Switzerland — at 19,242 feet (5,865 m) — more than 3.6 miles and almost six kilometers — as the two construction crews from the north side and south side of one of the mountains of the Swiss Alps connected 13 years after drilling began. The railway tunnel opened the following year.
Radio engineer Greenleaf Whittier Pickard of Wireless Telephone and Telegraph Company inadvertently discovered that the recently-invented crystal detector that could maintain the quality of radio sound regardless of the change of volume.[33]
U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt delivered the keynote speech on Decoration Day at the Arlington National Cemetery and used the occasion of the almost-concluded war in the Philippines, and the courts-martial of U.S. Army officers for atrocities, to denounce racist violence in the United States. "Is it only in the army in the Philippines that Americans sometimes commit deeds that cause all other Americans regret?" he asked and then answered "No! From time to time there occur in our country, to the deep and lasting shame of our people, lynchings carried on under circumstances of inhuman cruelty and barbarity infinitely worse than any that has ever been committed by our troops in the Philippines ... The men who fail to condemn these lynchings, and yet clamor about what has been done in the Philippines, are indeed guilty of neglecting the beam in their own eye while taunting their brother about the mote in his."[34]
Born: Stepin Fetchit (stage name for Lincoln Perry), African-American film actor and comedian and the first black actor to have successful movie career; in Key West, Florida (died 1985)
^Rene R. Escalante, The Bearer of Pax Americana: The Philippine Career of William H. Taft,1900–1903 (New Day Publishers, 2007) p. 184
^Affairs in the Philippine Islands: Hearings Before the Committee on the Philippines, Jan. 31 – June 28, 1902 (United States Senate, 1902) pp. 2233–2234
^Frederick Albion Ober, Our West Indian Neighbors: The Islands of the Caribbean Sea, " America's Mediterranean", 2010 republish of 1908 book by Nabu Press ISBN978-1-145-31194-7book
^Katherine Wilcox Thompson, "Penfield's Past", 1960, pub. by the Town of Penfield, NY, pp. 178–179
^"Canal de Beagle: El Laudo arbitral de la corona británica" by José Enrique Greño Velasco in Universidad de La Rioja:La Convención sobre limitación de armamentos comprende cinco artículos, y tiene el privilegio de ser—de acuerdo a Rizzo Romano—el primer convenio en su tipo ajustado entre naciones. (p. 70)
^Douglas, Alan (April 1981). "The Crystal Detector". IEEE Spectrum. Vol. 18, no. 4. pp. 64–69.
^Murphy, Erin L. (2019). No Middle Ground Anti-Imperialists and Ethical Witnessing During the Philippine-American War. Lexington Books. p. 130.
^Meredith, Martin (2007). Diamonds, Gold and War. The Making of South Africa. London, Great Britain: Simon & Schuster. pp. 462–3. ISBN978-0-7432-8614-5.
