The World in 1901 the year the old queen died

Queen Victoria had been on the throne for 63 years when she died in January. In a country where the average person did not reach fifty, almost nobody alive had known another monarch.

Life back then

In any house with money to spare, the parlour held an upright piano, and sheet music was how a song reached you. Someone played, everyone else sang, and a popular number sold hundreds of thousands of printed copies. The other amusement on the table was a stereoscope, a handheld viewer that turned two nearly identical photographs into one scene with real depth. Cards came in sets: the Rockies, the pyramids, a Paris boulevard. After Victoria died the drapers of the British Empire sold out of black cloth within days.

The year in 8 events

• 🌏Jan 1 Six British colonies join together as the Commonwealth of Australia.
• 🛢️Jan 10 A well at Spindletop in Texas throws oil a hundred feet into the air and starts the Texas oil boom.
• 👑Jan 22 Queen Victoria dies at 81 after 63 years on Britain's throne. Her son becomes Edward VII.
• 👶Apr 29 A son is born to Japan's crown prince in Tokyo. He will rule as Emperor Hirohito from 1926 to 1989.
• 🕯️Sep 6 President William McKinley is shot at an exhibition in Buffalo, New York. He dies eight days later.
• 🕊️Sep 7 The Boxer Protocol is signed in Beijing. China must pay the foreign powers for years to come.
• 🏅Dec 10 The first Nobel Prizes are handed out in Stockholm in Sweden, five years after Alfred Nobel died.
• 📡Dec 12 Marconi hears the first radio signal sent across the Atlantic, three faint dots picked up on a hill above St John's in Newfoundland.

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