Sir Henry Tate, 1st Baronet, 80, English sugar merchant and philanthropist, founder of the Tate Galleries[1]
December 6, 1899 (Wednesday)
A lynch mob in Maysville, Kentucky, forced its way into the county jail to seize an African-American indicted for murder, tortured him and then burned him to death.[1]
December 7, 1899 (Thursday)
In Reading, Pennsylvania, a fire at the Nolde Hoist Company's hosiery plant killed one woman and injured 57 women and girls.[3]
Major-General Andrew WauchopeCBCMG, 53, British Army officer, was killed in action at the Battle of Magersfontein.[1]
December 12, 1899 (Tuesday)
Dr. George Franklin Grant, an African-American dentist, received U.S. Patent No. 638,920, for the invention of the first golf tee. Prior to the creation of a device designed to hold a sphere in place above the ground, raising a golf ball to a position to hit it a long distance through the air required fashioning dirt into a cone.[10]
Battle of Colenso: Britain's General Redvers Buller lost 1,097 officers and men in a fight against the Boers in Natal, the third serious British reverse in South Africa in what would become known as the "Black Week".[1]
Frederick RobertsVC, 27, British Army officer, died of wounds received 2 days earlier at the Battle of Colenso.[1]
December 18, 1899 (Monday)
The British War Office sent Lord Roberts to South Africa to become the new commander of British forces in the Second Boer War, with Lord Kitchener to be second in command, and announced that 100,000 additional men would be sent[1] as the British death toll rose to 7630.[18]
Stock prices fell drastically at the New York exchanges and the Produce Exchange Trust Company failed.[1]
More than 40 schoolchildren from Belgium drowned in the capsizing of a boat near the French town of Frelinghien on the River Lys that serves as boundary between Belgium and France.[19]
The British Royal Navy cruiser HMS Magicienne seized the German steamer, Bundesroth, at Delagoa Bay in Portuguese East Africa (modern-day Mozambique), on grounds that German officers and men were being brought to supplement the Boer Army. The Bundesroth was then escorted to Durban in Britain's Natal Colony.[19]
General Wood completed the appointment of a cabinet of ministers composed of Cuban residents, with Diego Tamayo, Luis Esterez, Juan B. Hernandez, Enrique Varona, Jose R. Villaton and Ruiz Rivera taking office.[19]
According to an account first published in a Canadian newspaper in 1942, at midnight on 30 December the passenger and cargo liner SS Warrimoo positioned herself at the intersection of the Equator and the 180th meridian in such a manner that the ship was simultaneously located in the Northern, Southern, Eastern and Western Hemispheres, in both summer and winter, and in both the 19th and 20th centuries (counting 1900 as the first year of the 20th century). However, the navigation technology of that era would likely not have allowed the Warrimoo to position herself with such precision. Snopes rates this story as "Unproven".[24]
Died:
Eugène Bertrand, 65, French comedian, theatre managing director and opera house director[19]
The German government and Kaiser Wilhelm II declared that the 20th century would begin on January 1, 1900.[19] In most of the world, however, December 31, 1899, was not the last day of the 19th century, which also included the year 1900.
