1911
Wuchang uprising ends the Qing
An accidental bomb explosion in a rented Wuhan room forced revolutionary soldiers to move early. They seized the arsenal, then the city. Province after province declared independence. Within months two thousand years of imperial China ended, and a fragile republic under Sun Yat-sen took its place, soon to fracture into warlord fiefs.
Amundsen reaches the South Pole
With sledges, skis, and fifty-two dogs he planned to eat along the way, Norwegian Roald Amundsen reached ninety south and planted his flag in the ice. Robert Falcon Scott's British party arrived a month later, found the Norwegian tent, and died walking home. Earth's last empty point had been filled in.
Triangle Shirtwaist fire
In a New York loft, sewing-machine operators, mostly young immigrant women, burned or leapt when a scrap bin ignited. The exit doors had been locked to prevent theft. One hundred forty-six died on the sidewalk and inside. The outrage birthed modern American workplace safety laws and a militant labor movement.
Rutherford's gold foil experiment
At Manchester, Ernest Rutherford's students fired alpha particles at thin gold foil. Most went straight through, but a few bounced wildly back. It was, Rutherford said, as if you fired artillery at tissue paper and it came back at you. He concluded that atoms had tiny, dense, positively charged nuclei surrounded by mostly empty space. The plum pudding model was dead. Modern atomic physics had its foundation.
Machu Picchu rediscovered
An American historian named Hiram Bingham, hunting through the Peruvian Andes for a lost Inca stronghold, was led by a local farmer up a steep ridge and found the ruins of Machu Picchu overgrown with jungle. The fifteenth-century stone citadel had been visible only to a few farmers for four centuries. The world now had a new wonder.
Monet's water lilies series
In his Giverny garden, a seventy-one-year-old Claude Monet began painting the water-lily pond as an immersive environment, not a view, working on canvases so large they wrapped around the viewer. The series would grow to dozens of enormous paintings destined for the Orangerie in Paris. Impressionism had reached the edge of abstraction, a decade before abstraction had a name.
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Frequently asked
What happened in the year 1911?
Saeculum lists 6 curated events from 1911. The most significant is Wuchang uprising ends the Qing: An accidental bomb explosion in a rented Wuhan room forced revolutionary soldiers to move early. They seized the arsenal, then the city.
What era was 1911 part of?
1911 falls within the Modern Era (1901-2000). World wars, cold war, and the splitting of the atom.
Which regions saw notable events in 1911?
The curated events from 1911 span East Asia, Oceania, North America, Europe and South America.