The Seattle Star, on a crowded front page of its Saturday, Jan. 1, 1910, edition, reported that one Charles W. Peterson had been robbed of $150 and a watch while celebrating the advent of 1910 “in hilarious fashion.” Following the attack, Peterson “made a bee line for police headquarters … but no trace of the highwaymen could be found.”

The report appeared among an eclectic array of local and national news that included one murder; two suicides; an amputation “curiously” observed by the amputee, thanks to a new anesthetic; a drug store robbery; the testimony of Dr. Percival Lowell to evidence of life on Mars; a lawsuit involving the “almost forgotten” stunt reporter Nellie Bly; a fictional “first speech” of a baby “1910”; the long-awaited new home for an unloved statue of William Seward; a bachelor named “Max” — pictured comically with a hat, mustache and gun — in search of a wife; miscellaneous additional “odd bits of news”; and, at the bottom, a summary of local New Year’s celebrations, titled, “Seattle — Drunk Again Last Night.”

Welcome to the 1910s.

Like that lively, unpredictable and at times distressing page of news, the decade would bring a striking mix of technological advancements, changes for business and labor, and a devastating global conflict that would propel the world into a new era of uncertainty.

With increasing mechanization in workplaces, homes and communities, it may have seemed like life could only get better, easier. Inventions like the zipper (1913), the electric pop-up toaster (1919) and the Oreo cookie (1912) certainly made things more pleasant.

Then, consider the telephone. By 1919, 12.7 million were in use in drug stores, train stations and living rooms — one for every eight people — handling nearly 49,000 daily calls, according to U.S. Census Bureau and FCC data. Alexander Graham Bell himself made the first transcontinental phone call from New York City to San Francisco in January 1915.

Entertainment flourished and changed. Vaudeville was still popular but faced competition from the growing movie industry. A flourishing Broadway and Tin Pan Alley scene redefined musical theater and popular songwriting, with hits such as the annual “Ziegfeld Follies” show and “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” (1911).

Tapping into the nation’s fascination with the automobile, a checkered flag was flown at the first Indianapolis 500, on May 30, 1911. And scouting movements — including the brand-new Girl Scouts, founded by Juliette Gordon Low in 1912 — fostered outdoor recreation for both boys and girls.

Yet Americans were faced with the realization that the same mechanization that brought electric light to their homes could also lead to destruction. Machine guns, bombers and other new weapons of war produced unprecedented carnage on the battlefields of Europe, raising existential questions about the relationship of man vs. machine.

United Press reporter William Sheppard stood by helplessly as dozens of people, trapped by a fire on the upper floors of their Manhattan factory, jumped to their deaths on the sidewalk below.

The ill-fated workers, mostly young Italian and Jewish women and girls, were garment industry workers at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York.

The supervisor had locked the doors to keep them focused on their work, sewing women’s blouses, but the decision proved fatal when a spark ignited shards of fabric, launching a blazing fire in the eighth-floor sewing room on Saturday, March 25, 1911.

Without access to the elevators or stairs, 62 women and men chose to jump from the windows rather than die in the flames. The rest of the 146 victims were burned to death or died from smoke inhalation in the deadliest industrial disaster in the city’s history.

Sheppard detailed scenes of “indescribable horror” in a disturbing story reprinted from New York to California, noting the sound of the bodies as they hit the pavement 80 feet below.

Exposing the dangerous working conditions in the nation’s factories, the tragedy sparked outrage, boosted support for labor organizations and fueled efforts to pass legislation that hoped to ensure better fire safety measures and workplace protections.

In a long-awaited decision released May 15, 1911, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the dissolution of John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil corporation, allowing just six months for the order to be carried out. The bitterly contested case was first brought in 1906.

The court believed the monopoly, founded in 1882 by Rockefeller and several partners, “conspired” to create “unreasonable restraint” of trade in the petroleum industry, from production to refining to distribution, in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890.

Though some argued that the company had created efficiencies that benefitted consumers, the decision led to the creation of at least 39 companies in the U.S. and abroad, including People’s Natural Gas Company and South Penn Oil Company, which later became Pennzoil.

Ironically, perhaps, the eventual recombination of some of these entities created modern-day behemoths ExxonMobil, British Petroleum and Chevron. But the action was celebrated at the time and reinforced the government’s commitment to trust-busting and regulatory oversight, culminating in part with the passage of the Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914.

The headlines of April 15, 1912, were dramatic … and perhaps unbelievable. But the event they described has proven to be unforgettable.

“Under Waves, 1400 Sleeping,” one newspaper bellowed in a giant headline. “Whole World is Appalled in Face of the Greatest Sea Horror of Modern Times,” another headline declared, after the world’s largest ship had “Crumpled Up Like [a] Toy in Nighttime,” another explained.

The RMS Titanic, on its maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York City, had struck an iceberg, and in just two hours and 40 minutes, it sank. Approximately 1,500 of its more than 2,000 passengers died that night in the icy waters of the North Atlantic.

The ship’s captain, Cmdr. Edward John Smith, went down with his ship.

The list of victims has been dubbed a “who’s who” of high society.

They included members of British aristocracy and prominent Americans like real estate magnate John Jacob Astor IV, who perished, and his pregnant wife, Madeleine Talmage Astor, who survived; industrialist Benjamin Guggenheim, who died; and Macy’s co-owner Isador Straus and his wife, Ida Straus, both of whom died.

Chocolatier Milton S. Hershey and financier J.P. Morgan famously canceled their plans to make the voyage.

Passenger Dorothy Gibson, a popular silent film actress, survived — and starred as herself in a film, “Saved from the Titanic,” later that year.

After a decisive pentathlon victory in the July 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm, the press called U.S. track-and-field gold medalist James Thorpe the “ideal all round athlete.”

Indeed, the pentathlon required wide-ranging skills to win the running broad jump, the javelin and discus throws, and the 1,500- and 200-meter races. That versatility would also earn the 25-year-old a gold in the decathlon, a similar collection of running, throwing and field events.

Also known as Wa-Tho-Huk, Thorpe was a member of the Sac and Fox Nations, who grew up in Oklahoma Territory. Educated at the Carlisle (Pa.) Indian Industrial School, the two-time All-American was the first Native American to win an Olympic medal for the U.S. — doing so before Native Americans were declared legal citizens.

Thorpe was stripped of his medals in 1913 after it was revealed that he had briefly received $25 a week to play semiprofessional baseball, according to the New York Times. Those medals were reinstated by the International Olympic Committee in 2022.

Thorpe’s career wasn’t over, however. He went on to play professional baseball, football and basketball, while also coaching early professional football teams. In 1920, he was chosen as the first president of the American Professional Football Association, later known as the NFL.

After a Nov. 5, 1912, landslide victory over incumbent President Howard Taft — a defeat fueled in part by third-party candidate and former President Theodore Roosevelt — New Jersey Gov. Woodrow Wilson and his running mate, Indiana Gov. Thomas R. Marshall, were on their way to Washington.

The first Democrat to be elected since 1892, Wilson ran on a progressive “New Freedom” platform, emphasizing economic and antitrust reforms.

His two administrations would establish a complicated legacy of interventionist policies in Latin America, agencies like the Federal Reserve and the 1913 ratification of the 16th Amendment, establishing a permanent federal income tax.

Wilson’s second administration was fraught with global tensions and discontent at home, as wartime policies strained civil liberties and the economy.

After the president suffered a debilitating stroke in October 1919, first lady Edith Wilson shielded his condition from the public and even his closest advisers. She managed his daily affairs, exerting unprecedented influence over key decisions until the end of his term, in 1921.

The rise of Progressive Era ideals, particularly the expanding role of government in managing the nation’s commercial and economic systems, led to a growing sense that government could take on management of another national asset: the country’s precious landscapes and public lands.

Congress protected five National Parks and 10 National Monuments during the 1910s. Americans could now marvel at towering glaciers in Montana’s Glacier National Park (1910), scramble up mountains in Rocky Mountain National Park (1915), envision ancient societies in Arizona’s Walnut Canyon National Monument (1915), walk with the dinosaurs at Dinosaur National Monument (1915), and more.

Congress created the National Park Service in 1916 to manage this growing inventory, ensuring preservation for future generations amid increasing public interest and commercial pressures.

Maritime tragedies of the 1910s were not limited to the waters of the Atlantic.

“Never in the history of navigation,” one newspaper declared in a front-page story on Nov. 13, 1913, “has a storm claimed such a toll of human life … as the terrific blizzard which swept over four of the big fresh water bodies (earlier) this week.”

Hurricane-force winds in excess of 90 mph drove blinding sleet and snow in subfreezing temperatures across the Great Lakes region over three days, Nov. 7-10, 1913. Towering 35-foot waves pummeled ocean-worthy vessels, sweeping cargo, cabins, rigging and human beings into the sea.

An estimated 250 sailors lost their lives when dozens of ships sank or were wrecked along the shores of Lakes Huron, Superior, Michigan and Erie, according to the National Weather Service.

While officials attempted to locate missing vessels, Clevelanders were digging out of 2 feet of snow, and looters were seen searching for valuables among the wreckage and bodies that had washed ashore.

After more than nine months of war in Europe, the German Embassy published an advertisement in U.S. newspapers on May 1, 1915. It carried a stark warning: if any Americans were to sail on a British vessel, they did so at their own peril.

Yet 159 Americans set sail aboard the British steamer Lusitania that very day.

Six days later, a German submarine torpedoed the ship off the coast of Ireland, killing nearly 1,200 people, including 128 Americans.

Still, it took nearly two years for an angry but divided America to join Europe in its war against Germany, on April 6, 1917.

The U.S. mobilized 4.7 million military personnel, roughly half of whom would see combat under Gen. John Joseph “Black Jack” Pershing, the supreme commander of American forces in France, according to the Library of Congress.

On the home front, the nation shifted to wartime production and sent financial assistance overseas. Orchestras played patriotic anthems like “Over There” (1917) and “Keep the Home Fires Burning” (1914), Women stepped into the workforce, just as their daughters would during the Second World War. Citizens conserved food and complied with restrictions to freedom of speech.

Germany signed the Armistice on Nov. 11, 1918, now commemorated as Veterans Day. The U.S. suffered more than 320,000 casualties, including more than 53,000 killed in action. Another 63,000 died from other factors, including the influenza pandemic of 1918.

Some might argue that the U.S., fighting on far-off battlefields, escaped the worst of it. All told, the war claimed more than 20 million lives worldwide, with civilians accounting for about half of the casualties.

Army cook Albert Gitchell wasn’t the first to fall ill from an unusually virulent form of influenza at his base near Fort Riley, Kansas. But within a week, more than 500 soldiers at Camp Funston were sick.

The March 1918 cases were among the first of a global scourge that would become the deadliest pandemic of the 20th century, often called the Spanish flu.

Fueled by the increasing mobility of everyday citizens and military personnel, the disease reached a devastating peak between September and November 1918, with an estimated 195,000 U.S. deaths in October alone, according to the CDC.

Newspapers ran lists of individuals suffering, confined or recovering from the disease, or — like 22-year-old New Jersey teacher Marian Dufford and 31-year-old screen idol Harold Lockwood — those who died. The press also carried notices about school and church closures alongside urgent appeals for volunteer nurses.

With neither antibiotics nor effective vaccines, advertising campaigns urged citizens to fight the spread with isolation, disinfectants and personal hygiene, including masks.

By mid-1920, the crisis had largely passed, leaving a devastating toll: one-third of the global population infected, 675,000 deaths in the U.S., including many young, healthy individuals, and at least 50 million worldwide, according to the CDC. The outbreak set a sad record that stood until the COVID-19 outbreak of 2020, which killed an estimated 1.1 million in the U.S. and more than 7 million worldwide.

Katrina Jesick Quinn is a faculty member at Slippery Rock University. She is an editor of “From the Arctic to the Orient: Adventure Journalism in the Gilded Age” (McFarland) and “The Civil War Soldier and the Press” (Routledge).