The 1910’s: Ragtime, Wilson, and World War I

 The 1910s was an era of Ragtime music, technological and political innovations, and war. The Boy Scouts of America and The American Girl Guides, later to be renamed the Girl Scouts, are both founded a year apart. The Indianapolis 500 Auto Race takes place for the first time and the first transcontinental airline flight was established. In 1911, a patent for the first automotive transmission is made by Henry Ford. Disaster, destruction, and devastation are also very prevalent in the 1910s, with Mount Katmai in Alaska erupting as one of the largest volcanic explosions the world has seen. The Colorado Coalfield Massacre later occurs, killing 24 miners. Over 120 American lives were also lost in 1915 when the Lusitania ship is sunk by a German U-boat submarine. One year prior, in 1914, after the assassination of Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie of Austria, President Woodrow Wilson announces the United States will remain neutral in the conflict. This changes in 1917 when the United States declares war on Germany, entering America into World War I. Historian Jim Gibbons will take you back in time to an era of great inventions, such as the first telephone conversation in 1915 by Alexander Graham Bell. Gibbons will also discuss the great devastation of the time with the famous sinking of the Titanic, the Romanov family murders, World War I, and the 1918 Influenza which killed over 20 million people worldwide.