This Year in History:
1909
Discover what happened in this year with HISTORY’s summaries of major events, anniversaries, famous births and notable deaths.
On January 20, 1909, newly formed automaker General Motors (GM) buys into the Oakland Motor Car Corporation, which later becomes GM’s long‑running Pontiac division. Oakland Motor Car was founded in…
On February 12, 1909, the 100th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth, a group that included African American leaders such as W.E.B. Du Bois and Ida B. Wells‑Barnett announced the formation of…
On April 6, 1909, American explorer Robert Peary accomplishes a long elusive dream, when he, assistant Matthew Henson and four Inuits reach what they determine to be the North Pole.…
Southern writer Eudora Welty is born in Jackson, Mississippi. Welty, whose father owned an insurance company, led a sheltered life. She graduated from the University of Wisconsin in 1929 and…
From the late 1920s all the way through the 1950s, she was a familiar presence on American radio and a powerful influence on the course of country music. First as…
Burl Icle Ivanhoe Ives, a prominent folk singer and Academy Award‑winning actor, is born on this day in 1909 near Hunt City, Illinois. To almost anyone born in the 1950s…
On July 29, 1909, the newly formed General Motors Corporation (GM) acquires the country’s leading luxury automaker, the Cadillac Automobile Company, for $4.5 million. Cadillac was founded out of the…
In front of some 12,000 spectators, automotive engineer Louis Schwitzer wins the two‑lap, five‑mile inaugural race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Indianapolis, Indiana, on August 19, 1909. Conceived by…
On August 19, 1909, the first race is held at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, now the home of the world’s most famous motor racing competition, the Indianapolis 500. Built on…
The Ballinger‑Pinchot scandal erupts when Colliers magazine accuses Secretary of the Interior Richard Ballinger of shady dealings in Alaskan coal lands. It is, in essence, a conflict rooted in contrasting…
On December 14, 1909, four months after tragedy struck at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, race car drivers test out its newly resurfaced—and presumably safer—track. Workers had just finished laying down…
