1901: Nobody Was Ready — a Queen Dies, a President Is Shot, a Signal Crosses the Atlantic

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:00]1901, a new century. Nobody knows what's in it  yet. Scientific breakthroughs, wars that will kill more people than any before them. But that's  later. Right now, it's January 1st, 1901. Six British colonies become one country. They had been  arguing about it for 10 years. Different laws, different customs, different railway gauges.  Trains literally couldn't cross from one colony to the next. In the end, they voted. The  Commonwealth of Australia. One year later, Australian women get the right to vote and stand  for parliament. Britain will catch up in 1918.

[00:00:49]The new country also introduces a dictation test  for unwanted immigrants. 50 words in any European language the officer chooses. Speak perfect  English. The officer picks French. This test will only be abolished in 1958. January 22nd. Queen  Victoria dies at Osborne House on the aisle of white. She is 81. She has been on the throne for  63 years. A quarter of the world's population, British subjects. Her family refuses to accept  she is dying. Her doctor secretly telegraphs her grandson, Kaiser Wilhelm II. In 1914, he will go  to war with Britain. Now he sits beside her bed.

[00:01:43]No one alive knows how to bury a monarch.  The last royal funeral was 64 years ago.

[00:01:52]Her final instructions are carried  out in secret. Inside the coffin, her husband's dressing gown, a cast of his  hand. She has slept with it every night for 40 years. And hidden beneath the flowers, a  photograph of John Brown, her personal servant.

[00:02:12]a lock of his hair. The funeral is assembled in  a rush. Then on the day, something goes wrong.

[00:02:22]The horses panic. The harness breaks. The coffin  almost falls. For a moment, no one knows what to do. Then the sailors step in. They take the  ropes and pull the gun carriage themselves.

[00:02:39]Since then, sailors have pulled the  gun carriage at every royal funeral.

[00:02:47]January 10th, Spindletop near Bowmont,  Texas. A drilling crew hits oil. Not a leak, not a trickle. The ground explodes  upward. Oil shoots 50 m into the air.

[00:03:06]Mud, gas, black rain. The roar can be  heard for kilometers. Men run toward it, then away from it. The well keeps flowing for  9 days before anyone gets it under control.

[00:03:23]One hole in the ground produces more oil  than every other American well combined.

[00:03:30]Nobody standing there is thinking about highways  or suburbs or traffic. Nobody is thinking about tanks or plastics or the atmosphere. They're  just trying not to get covered in oil. Springgot Vilhelm Maybach finishes a new car. It doesn't  look like a carriage with an engine bolted on.

[00:03:58]lower, longer. The engine in the front, the  driver sitting behind it. The man who ordered it is Emil Yeleneck, businessman, diplomat,  racing enthusiast. When the car is ready, Yeleneck gives it a name. Mercedes, his  daughter's name. Manufacturers across Europe and the United States are copying the  layout. The word car starts meaning something different. Not a motorized carriage, a new  kind of machine built from the ground up.

[00:04:40]Spring, Vienna. Carl Lansteiner, a physician,  publishes a short paper. He has discovered that human blood comes in four types. Before  this, a blood transfusion was a gamble.

[00:04:55]Doctors had no idea why the same procedure  saved one patient and killed the next. Lan Steiner figured it out and he didn't make a  fuss about it. The paper is only a few pages long. Nobody pays much attention. In 1930, Lan  Steiner receives the Nobel Prize for it. By then, his discovery has already saved  an uncountable number of lives.

[00:05:25]Summer, Boston. King Camp Gillette, a traveling  salesman, files a patent application for a razor with a disposable blade. 3 years later, on  November 15th, 1904, the patent is granted.

[00:05:41]A razor with a disposable blade. The idea, you  buy the handle once, the blade, you keep buying.

[00:05:51]First year on sale, 51 razors, 168 blades. He is  not discouraged. He has understood something most businesses haven't yet. The money is not in the  thing. The money is in the next one. September 6th, Buffalo, New York. President William  McKinley is visiting the Pan-American Exposition.

[00:06:18]He is shaking hands with the public. A man  named Leon Cholgosh steps forward. A pistol hidden beneath a handkerchief. Two shots.  One misses. One hits the president. McKinley survives the attack. For 8 days, doctors try  to save him. On September 14th, they fail.

[00:06:43]Theodore Roosevelt is 42 years old,  the youngest president in American history. He doesn't wait to learn the job. He  already has plans. December 10th, Stockholm, Sweden. The Nobel Prize is awarded for the  first time. Alfred Nobel, inventor of dynamite, left his fortune behind to reward work that  benefits humanity. Physics. Wilhelm Reken.

[00:07:14]X-rays. Medicine. Emil vonbearing. A treatment for  dtheria. Peace. Orio. Founder of the Red Cross. An unusual idea. Reward knowledge not power. December  12th. Newfoundland. Gulmo Maronei is standing on a headland in Newfoundland. His team in southwestern  England is sending a radio signal across the Atlantic. Many physicists doubt it can work. The  Earth curves. The signal should disappear into space. Maronei listens. Three clicks. Dot dot  dot. The letter S. 3,500 km. He writes it down, then asks for the signal again. 1901. At the  time, it does not feel like the beginning of anything. It just feels like the world getting  louder, faster, more connected, more dangerous.

[00:08:27]No one can see the full shape yet. That only comes  later. For now, it is just the world changing.