1900..........1910

1900

• Austrian physician Sigmund Freud brought a new idea into the new century with his 1900 book The Interpretation of Dreams. Though he'd coined the term "psychoanalysis" in 1896, here he explained his ideas of repression and resistance, theorizing that the unconscious mind masks painful memories from consciousness, but they can be revealed through dream analysis. Many of his theories have since been refined or rejected, but Freud will always be credited as the father of modern psychology.

• Chinese Rebels Slaughter Foreigners.
  The Boxer Rebellion catches Westerners off-guard as
  Chinese rebels attack Western trade concerns.

• When Henry Ford built his first car in 1893, skeptics dismissed it as a novelty. Ten years later, the car maker founded the Ford Motor Co. and revolutionized transportation.

• George Eastman, head of Eastman Kodak, wanted to make the experience of shooting pictures accessible to nearly everyone. In 1900 he did just that, when his company introduced the Brownie - a small camera made of cardboard and wood that cost only a dollar. A six-shot roll of film sold for 10 to 15 cents. The era of the family snapshot was about to change the way people recorded their memories.

• In 1900, more than 250,000 children under age 15 were working for low wages in factories, mines, and mills, some as many as 60 hours per week. Concern over child labor was a great cause of progressives of the era, including Florence Kelley, who helped form the National Child Labor Committee. Still, by 1916, about 13 percent of the textile work force was under 16 years old.

1901

• USA builds panama canal

• Queen Victoria Dies
  Monarchs from Europe arrive to bury the queen of the British Empire,the longest-serving monarch in
  British history.

• anti liquorcrusades...Surely the fiercest of temperance agitators, Carry Nation (1846-1911) wielded her trademark hatchet to break open beer kegs and liquor bottles in a crusade against depraved drinking. Like others in the anti-saloon movement, Nation preached and sang hymns outside bars - but she went further, and was arrested many times for her "hatchetations." In later days, Nation re-created her saloon-smashing escapades in vaudeville acts.

1902

• Boer War Ends in South Africa
  The British army overcomes savage guerrilla fighting to win the Boer War in South Africa.

1903

• In 1903, American writer Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) settled in Paris and opened a salon for leading modern writers and artists in her home at 27 rue de Fleurus. Although Stein was a noted writer herself, producing works such as Three Lives (1909), Tender Buttons (1914), and The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933), it is arguable that her greatest role in modernism was her influence on and patronage of writers such as Hemingway and painters such as Picasso and Matisse.

• He Can Fly!
  Wright brothers make the first powered flight when Flyer I lifts off the beach at Kitty Hawk, N.C. Orville Wright flies only 120 feet in 12 seconds but his brother Wilbur stays up for 59 seconds and covers 853 feet by the end of the day.

1905

• German-born Nobel physicist Albert Einstein (1879-1955) at the age of 26. Einstein was employed as a patent office clerk in 1905, the same year that he published five papers that forever changed people's view of the universe. The papers proved the existence of atoms and molecules, redefined concepts of space and time, introduced his now-famous special theory of relativity, and explained that light exhibits characteristics not only of waves, as previously thought, but also of particles.

1906

• Isadora Duncan (1877-1927), helped raise modern dance to the status of an art. Born in San Francisco, Duncan rejected the formalism of classic ballet in favor of more natural movements; she often performed barefoot, with her long hair unbound. Her first American appearances, in Chicago and New York City in 1899, were unsuccessful, but she was touted in Europe and eventually credited as one of the great innovators of modern dance.

1907

• Russians and British form an alliance, called an entente, as they maneuver for position against a
  resurgent Germany.
• Picasso Squares Off
  Spanish painter Pablo Picasso shocks the world when he ushers in cubism with Les Demoiselles d’Avignon.
• Congo Snatched From King

1908

• Henry Ford's Model T cost $850 when it was introduced in 1908. By the time it was discontinued, in 1927, the price had dropped to $290, and over 15 million had been manufactured in the United States alone. The "Tin Lizzie" was easy to repair and light enough to be lifted by a reasonably strong person. Simplicity ruled with the Model T: no changes were made to the original design throughout its years of popularity, and after 1914 it came in only one color: black.

1909

• Belgian-born, American chemist Leo Baekeland (1863-1944) has been called the father of plastics. At his lab in Yonkers, New York, Baekeland mixed the disinfectant carbolic acid (phenol) with the preservative formaldehyde to form what he called Bakelite. The plastics revolution had begun. A recent survey of journalists ranked the invention of plastic 46th among 100 history-shaping events of the 20th century.
• Turks Rebel Young Turks, nationalists who want to modernize their country, depose the Sultan
  of the Ottoman Empire.
• Russian Ballet Shocks French Sergei Diaghilev’s Les Ballets Russes debuts in Paris. The modernist approach and daring choreography cause consternation.