1911 is a common year starting on Sunday (click on link for calendar).

Events

January-June

• January 1 - Northern Territory is separated from South Australia
• January 3 - In London, in what becomes known as the Siege of Sidney Street, the Metropolitan Police and the Scots Guards engage in a shootout with a criminal gang of Latvian anarchists held up in a building in the East End.
• January 10 - Major Jimmie Erickson takes the first aerial photograph (over San Diego, California).
• January 18 - Eugene B. Ely lands on the deck of the USS Pennsylvania stationed in San Francisco harbor, marking the first time an aircraft landed on a ship
• January 21 - First Monte Carlo races
• January 26 - Glenn H. Curtiss flies the first successful seaplane.
• January 30 - The destroyer USS Terry makes the first airplane rescue at sea saving the life of James McCurdy 10 miles from Havana, Cuba.
• March 1 - Jose Ordonez is elected President of Uruguay.
• March 8 - International Women's Day is celebrated for the first time
• March 24 - Denmark abolishes death penalty and flogging
• March 25 - Fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City - 145 dead
• May 15 - The United States Supreme Court declares Standard Oil to be an "unreasonable" monopoly under the Sherman Antitrust Act and orders the company to be dissolved.
• May 23 - Dedication ceremony for the New York Public Library.
• May 30 - The first Indianapolis 500-mile auto race is run. The winner is Ray Harroun in the Marmon 'Wasp',
• June 14 - A national seamen's strike begins in Britain.
• June 15 - IBM incorporated as Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company in New York
• June 16 - A 772 gram stony meteorite struck earth in Columbia County, Wisconsin near the village of Kilbourn damaging a barn.
• June 22- Coronation of George V of the United Kingdom and Mary of Teck at Westminster Abbey, London.

July-October

• July 1 - German Warship Panther in the Moroccan port of Agadir triggers Agadir Crisis escalating pre-WW1 tensions. Subsequent climbdown rallies German militancy.
• July 24 - Hiram Bingham finds Machu Picchu
• August 8 - Public Law 62-5 sets the number of representatives in the United States House of Representatives at 435. The law will take effect in 1913.
• August 14 - Birth of Shri Vethathiri Maharishi, one of the great thinkers of the 21st century.
• August 22 - Theft of Mona Lisa discovered in Louvre (Vincenzo Peruggia is captured and the painting returned 1913)
• September 7 - French poet Guillaume Apollinaire is arrested and put in jail on suspicion of stealing the Mona Lisa from the Louvre museum. He is later released.
• September 20 - Liner Olympic collides with a cruiser HMS Haske with minimal damage
• September 29 - French navy ship Liberte explodes anchored in Toulon
• October 6 - The British Seafarers' Union was formed in Southampton in England.
• October 10 - Wuchang Uprising which led to the founding of the Republic of China.
• October 10 - Robert Laird Borden becomes Canada's eighth prime minister.
• October 28 - Foundation of The Rosicrucian Fellowship's international headquarters and Healing Temple, till today, at Mount Ecclesia, Oceanside (California); It had been preceeded by its formal constitution in August 8 1909 at Seattle (Washington).

November-December

• November 3 - Chevrolet officially enters the automobile market to compete with the Ford Model T.
• November 4 - Selandia launched in Denmark, the first ocean going diesel Ship.
• November 5 - After declaring war on Turkey on September 29, 1911, Italy annexes Tripoli and Cyrenaica (this act was confirmed by an act of the Italian Parliament on February 25, 1912).
• November 11 - A record cold snap hits the United States midwest. Many cities break record highs and lows on same day. (see The 11/11/11 cold wave).
• November 15 - Prince Louis Honoré Charles Antoine Grimaldi of Monaco, heir to the throne and later Reigning Prince Louis II of Monaco officially recognizes his illegitimate daughter Charlotte Louise Juliette Louvet as Princess Charlotte of Monaco.
• November 16 - Earthquake in Swab, South Germany
• December 11 - Coronation in New Delhi of George V of the United Kingdom and Mary of Teck as Emperor of India and Empress consort respectively
• December 14 - Roald Amundsen's expedition reaches the South Pole
• December 21 - First robbery of the Bonnot gang
• December 29 - Sun Yat-sen becomes the first President of the Republic of China

unknown dates

• First Solvay Congress - meeting of physicists
• University of Iceland founded
• University of Wales, Bangor moved to new buildings.
• 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica published.
• End of Qing Dynasty in China.
• Rutherford deduces the existence of a compact atomic nucleus from scattering experiments.
• Onnes discovers superconductivity.

Births

January-March

• January 1 - Hank Greenberg, Baseball Hall of Famer (d. 1986)
• January 3 - John Sturges, American film director (d. 1982)
• January 7 - Butterfly McQueen, actress (d. 1995)
• January 22 - Bruno Kreisky, Chancellor of Austria (d. 1990)
• January 29 - Peter von Siemens, industrialist (d. 1986)
• January 30 - Roy Eldridge, jazz musician (d. 1989)
• February 6 - Ronald Reagan, United States President, actor (d. 2004)
• February 8 - Elizabeth Bishop, poet, Pulitzer Prize winner (d. 1979)
• February 8 - Big Joe Turner, blues singer (d. 1985)
• February 11 - Alec Cairncross , chancellor of the University of Glasgow
• February 12 - Stephen H. Sholes, American recording executive (d. 1968)
• February 19 - Merle Oberon, actress (d. 1979)
• March 3 - Jean Harlow, actress (d. 1937)
• March 13 - L. Ron Hubbard, author (d. 1986)
• March 16 - Josef Mengele, Nazi war criminal (d. 1979)
• March 24 - Joseph Barbera, cartoonist
• March 25 - Jack Ruby, killer of Lee Harvey Oswald (d. 1967)
• March 26 - Tennessee Williams, American playwright (d. 1983)
• March 29 - Brigitte Horney , actress (d. 1988)
• March 31 - Elisabeth Grümmer, Alsatian soprano (d. 1986)

April-June

• April 5 - Jussi Björling, Swedish tenor (d. 1960)
• April 8 - Emil Cioran, Romanian-born French philosopher and essayist (d. 1995)
• April 11 - Stanislawa Walasiewicz, Polish-American sprinter (d. 1980)
• April 26 - Marianne Hoppe, actress
• May 8 - Robert Johnson, Blues guitarist and singer (d. 1938)
• May 11 - Phil Silvers, actor, comedian (d. 1985)
• May 15 - Max Frisch, Swiss author (d. 1991)
• May 17 - Maureen O'Sullivan, actress (d. 1998)
• May 18 - Big Joe Turner, blues singer (d. 1985)
• May 20 - Annie M. G. Schmidt , Dutch children books writer
• May 20 - Gardner Fox, writer (d. 1986)
• May 26 - Ben Alexander, American actor (d. 1969)
• May 27 - Hubert H. Humphrey, U.S. Vice President and Senator (d. 1978)
• May 27 - Teddy Kollek, mayor of Jerusalem
• May 27 - Vincent Price, actor (d. 1993)
• May 28 - Fritz Hochwälder, author (d. 1986)
• June 24 - Juan Manuel Fangio, Argentinian, race car driver (d. 1995)
• June 26 - Babe Didrikson Zaharias, American athlete and golfer (d. 1956)

July-September

• July 4 - Mitch Miller, singer, television personality
• July 9 - Mervyn Peake, British writer and illustrator (d. 1968)
• July 16 - Ginger Rogers, US actress (d. 1995)
• July 18 - Hume Cronyn, actor (d. 2003)
• June 29 - Bernard Herrmann, composer (d. 1975)
• June 30 - Czesław Miłosz, Polish poet, Nobel Prize in Literature in 1980 (d. August 14, 2004)
• July 21 - Marshall McLuhan , Canadian author (d. 1980)
• September 2 - Floyd Council, U.S. blues musician, Pink Floyd was named after him (d. 1976)
• September 6 - Harry Danning, MLB All-Star catcher (d. 2004)
• September 9 - John Gorton, nineteenth Prime Minister of Australia (d. 2002)
• September 23 - Frank Moss, U.S. Senator Utah (d. 2003)

October-December

• October 13 - Ashok Kumar, Indian actor (d. 2001)
• October 14 - Le Duc Tho, Nobel Peace Prize recipient (d. 1990)
• December 3 - Nino Rota, Italian composer (d. 1979)
• December 11 - Naguib Mahfouz, Nobel prize-winning Egyptian novelist
• December 13 - Kenneth Patchen, American poet and painter (d. 1972)

unknown dates

• Yolande Beekman, SOE agent, WW II heroine, executed by the Nazis (d. 1944)
• C. L. Moore - science fiction and fantasy writer

Deaths

• February 11 - Albert von Rothschild , Austrian baron and banker.
• March 1 - J. H. van 't Hoff, Dutch physical and organic chemist, the winner of the first Nobel Prize in Chemistry (b. 1852)
• May 18 - Gustav Mahler, Austrian composer (b. 1860)
• May 21 - Williamina Fleming, astronomer (b. 1857)
• May 29 - William S. Gilbert, English dramatist (b. 1836)
• June 9 - Carrie Nation, American advocate of temperance movement (b. 1846)
• August 1 - Edwin Austin Abbey, American painter (b. 1852)
• September 16 - Edward Whymper, British explorer (b. 1840)
• October 14 - John Marshall Harlan, Supreme Court justice (b. 1833)
• October 29 - Joseph Pulitzer, newspaper publisher and journalist (b. 1847)
• December 10 - Joseph Dalton Hooker, botanist (b. 1817)

Nobel Prizes

• Physics - Wilhelm Wien
• Chemistry - Marie Sklodowska-Curie
• Medicine - Allvar Gullstrand
• Literature - Count Maurice (Mooris) Polidore Marie Bernhard Maeterlinck
• Peace - Tobias Michael Carel Asser Alfred Hermann Fried

See also

• M1911