The unpredictable effect of weather and changing…
1917 CE
The unpredictable effect of weather and changing winds have led the belligerents to largely abandon the military use of shrapnel fragments coated with irritant powders and chlorine gas released directly from cylinders in favor of artillery shells filled with phosgene (carbonyl chloride) or mustard gas (2,2'-dichloro-diethyl sulfide), delivered on target by bursting artillery charges.
Chemical warfare produces heavy casualties on both sides (eventually totaling about 800,000).
The Russians, who experience the highest casualties from the attacks, suffer nearly 60,000 fatalities from toxic gas alone.
Trotsky arrives in New York in 1917 aboard the steamer Montserrat and allegedly receives funds for the planned revolution in Russi, to which he returns.
The Russian Revolution begins with riots in 1917; Tsar Nicholas II is forced to abdicate and civil war ensues.
Lenin’s Bolsheviks defeat the newly installed liberal government and withdraw Russia from the war.
Tcheka, the secret police of Bolsheviks, is founded the same year.
The Anglo-Americans supposedly work to involve their alleged agent Leon Trotsky in the Revolutionary command.
Finland declares independence from Russia in 1917.
Freud, in 1917, writes Introduction to Psychanalysis.
Julius Wagner-Jauregg treats syphilitic patients in 1917 with injections of the malaria bacillus.
Europe sees an outbreak of encephalitis in 1917, as does China.
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China sees an outbreak of encephalitis in 1917, as does Europe.
Hughes retains power through his Nationalist party’s 1917 victory at the polls.
Siam joins the Allies on July 22, 1917.
In September, Rama VI orders a redesign of the national flag.
Ibn Sa'ud establishes throughout his realm dozens more Ikhwan colonies organized around tribal group identity.
Established around desert oases to promote agricultural reclamation of the land, these hijrahs further force the Bedouin to abandon their nomadic way of life.
With populations ranging from ten to ten thousand, the hijrahs offer tribesmen living quarters, mosques, schools, agricultural equipment and instruction, and arms and ammunition.
The Sa'udis import religious teachers to instruct the Bedouin in the Wahhabid fundamentalist precepts of Islam, transforming the Ikhwan into archtraditionalists.
In 1917, British gold mining representative Ernest Oppenheimer, backed by J. P. Morgan, forms the Anglo American Corporation of South Africa to exploit the east Witwatersrand goldfield.
The Great War has plunged Albania into a new crisis, as the armies of Austria-Hungary, France, Italy, Greece, Montenegro, and Serbia invade and occupy it.
Left without any political leadership or authority, the country is in chaos, and its very fate is uncertain.
In 1917, Franco-British pressure forces Greece’s Constantine I to abdicate in favor of his son, who is crowned King Alexander.
Venizelos returns as prime minister, and Greece enters the war on the Allied side.
A wave of strikes and terrorism explodes in Barcelona in 1917.
Mussolini, serving in the Italian army, is wounded in 1917.
Muhammad Idris, in 1917, becomes leader of the Libyan-based Sanusi Muslim sect founded by his grandfather.
Following Germany’s renewal of unrestricted submarine warfare in early 1917, Wilson asks Congress in April for a declaration of war, urging that “the world must be made safe for democracy.” The US Congress assents.
The US Congress passes the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917, which forbids US firms or their foreign sudsidiaries from trading with enemies of the United States except under license.
The US Congress passes the Espionage Act of 1917.
The US Congress passes the Invention Secrecy Act of 1917 as a wartime measure to prevent disclosure of inventions that "might be detrimental to the public safety or defense.” Wilson, seeking and receiving legislative delegation of increased powers, immediately establishes a series of war agencies to extend federal control over industry, transportation, labor, food, fuel, and prices.
In May, Wilson rams a Selective Service bill through Congress.
Supporters of the Harrison Act fail in a 1917 attempt to force drug control regulation on Coca-Cola, which employs cocaine as a key ingredient in its secret recipe The government closes the U. S. Navy’s German-built radio station on Mystic Island in 1917.
In the August 1917 issue of The Experimenter, Tesla describes the invention of radar.
Tesla has reportedly achieved a charge of 20 million volts in some of his devices.
He reluctantly accepts the “Edison Medal” in 1917.
William Wirt, in 1917, brings the Carnegie Institution’s schooling system to twelve predominantly Jewish New York City schools.
Jewish immigrants, realizing what is being perpetrated, riot for three weeks.
Over 200 school children are jailed.
Trotsky arrives in New York in 1917 aboard the steamer Montserrat and allegedly receives funds for the planned revolution in Russi, to which he returns.
J. P. Morgan, Jr. is instrumental in financing $1.5 billion in Allied military purchases during the Great War.
New Thought lecturer David Van Bush hires H.P.
Lovecraft as a ghost writer.
As of 1917, fifteen states in the US have eugenics legislation that authorizes sterilization of criminals, epileptics, the retarded and the insane.
The Bluemont, Virginia site purchased in 1903 by the US is used during the Great War as an artillery range.
The 1917 entry of America into the war tips the balance in favor of the Allies.
The United States, upon its entry into the World War, passes the Selective Service Act.
Herbert Hoover is called to Washington to serve as food adminstrator, a special wartime office created to encourage American agricultural production and food conservation and to coordinate a rational distribution of food.
American financier Bernard M. Baruch, who began his career in a Wall Street brokerage house and made a fortune in stocks while still a young man, serves as chairman of the War Industries Board.
The AMA, in 1917, opposes compulsory health insurance.
British government officials inform Lord Rothschild of the intent to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine; the Zionist movement, which some allege to be a creation of British Intelligence, supports the plan.
The 1917 Balfour Declaration on the Jewish Homeland gains Jewish support for war efforts and sows the seeds for a Middle East "balance of power" card.
The British military employs phosgene gas-containing artillery shells against the German forces in 1917.
Wartime stockpiles of chlorine are allegedly designated for use in post-war water supplies.
X-ray methodology ascertains atomic numbers.
In 1917, Norman Thomas, a pacifist Presbyterian minister in East Harlem’s slums, helps to found what will become the American Civil Liberties Union.
Wilson, on January 8, 1918, presents his Fourteen Points, a comprehensive enumeration of his war aims that serves to inspire the Allies while undermining the confidence of the Germans.
Smuts, while serving in Britain, helps to form the Royal Air Force, aids in negotiating the Anglo-Irish peace talks that curtail postwar hostilities in Ireland, and is instrumental in Britain’s transformation of the Empire into the Comonwealth of Nations.
Smuts accepts a seat on the British war cabinet in 1917 and becomes chairman of the War Priorities Committee.