It’s my Rotary Club’s 100-year anniversary, and each week, we’re treated to what was happening around the state 100 years ago. That got me to thinking about events from all over the world back in 1914, and here are a few of them.
The Diego Velazquez masterpiece “Rokeby Venus” was attacked with a meat cleaver when suffragette Mary Richardson of Canada got to the painting while it hung in the National Gallery in London.
This is Richardson’s reason for the attack: “I have tried to destroy the picture of the most beautiful woman in mythological history as a protest against the government for destroying Mrs. Pankhurst, who is the most beautiful character in modern history.”
She referred to Emmeline Pankhurst, likely the most famous suffragette of the time, who was in prison, and often in the throws of a hunger strike.
Sometimes, it’s hard to be a woman, and this was apparently one of those times. But the Women’s Social and Political Union and leaders like Pankhurst were determined to force change, by whatever means necessary. One member, for example, put a small hatchet into the Prime Minister’s carriage inscribed with the words: “Votes for Women,” and other suffragettes used acid to burn the same slogan into golf courses used by Members of Parliament. Radical measures indeed.
The “Rokeby Venus” was restored to its full and former beauty, and is back in the museum where it has hung, unhacked, for the last century.
In February of 1914, Charlie Chaplin made his film debut. His second film was released five days later, and moviegoers first met The Little Tramp.
In baseball, Pittsburgh Pirate Honus Wagner became the first baseball player in the 20th century with 3,000 career hits. But you might remember the famous shortstop more for the baseball card that held his image.
The T206 Honus Wagner baseball card is one of the rarest and most expensive baseball cards in the world, as only 57 copies are known to exist. The card was designed and issued by the American Tobacco Company (ATC) from 1909 to 1911 as part of its T206 series.
A near-mint-condition T206 Wagner card sold in 2007 for $2.8 million, the highest price ever for a baseball card. In 2010, a previously unknown copy of the card was donated to the School Sisters of Notre Dame in Baltimore by one of the nuns there. She had inherited the card from her brother. It was in poor condition, but still sold in November 2010 to a collector for $262,000. The card came with Sister Virginia Muller brother’s handwritten note: “Although damaged, the value of this baseball card should increase exponentially throughout the 21st century!”
On April 20, 2012, a New Jersey resident purchased a VG-3 graded T206 Wagner card for more than $1.2 million.
On April 6, 2013, a 1909–11 T206 baseball card featuring Honus Wagner sold at auction for $2.1 million.
So, if you find one in the attic next week during spring-cleaning, you’ll know what you have.
Also in baseball, the Boston Red Sox introduced a new pitcher on July 11, and George Herman Ruth won his first game over the Cleveland Cats, 4-3.
Two weeks earlier, 19-year-old Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife, Duchess Sophie, in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, triggering a diplomatic crisis among the major powers of Europe in the summer of 1914 that led to the First World War.
Four teams shared college football’s national championship - Army, Auburn, Illinois, and Texas.
Some famous folks who arrived in 1914 were Joe Louis, Hedy Lamarr (Hedley’s sister), Joe DiMaggio, Allen Funt, Jack LaLanne, and Clayton Moore, a.k.a. The Lone Ranger.