Timeline November 1908

Events in November 1908 7

• 1835 – 1908 Empress Dowager Cixi (1835-1908) Died 15 November 1908, aged 73 Cixi effectively ruled Qing dynasty China as regent for nearly half a century, dominating the court during a period of foreign intervention and internal upheaval. She died one day after the Guangxu Emperor, whom she had kept confined for years. Her death was followed by the enthronement of the child emperor Puyi.
• 1871 – 1908 Guangxu Emperor (1871-1908) Died 14 November 1908, aged 37 Guangxu was the penultimate emperor of the Qing dynasty, whose attempt at the 1898 Hundred Days' Reform led to his confinement by Empress Dowager Cixi. He died under suspicious circumstances one day before Cixi's own death, with later forensic tests suggesting arsenic poisoning. He was succeeded by his nephew, Puyi.
• 1908 William Howard Taft elected President of the United States Republican wins to succeed Theodore Roosevelt William Howard Taft defeated Democrat William Jennings Bryan in the U.S. presidential election, continuing Republican control of the White House. Taft had been handpicked by outgoing President Theodore Roosevelt as his successor. He took office in March 1909.
• 1908 Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid killed in Bolivia American outlaws die in shootout with Bolivian soldiers Robert LeRoy Parker, known as Butch Cassidy, and Harry Longabaugh, the Sundance Kid, were killed following a shootout with the Bolivian army after a payroll robbery. The exact circumstances remain disputed, but the pair's deaths ended one of the American West's most famous outlaw partnerships. Their story was later popularized by the 1969 film "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid."
• 1908 Belgium annexes the Congo Free State Leopold II's personal colony becomes a Belgian state colony The Belgian parliament voted to annex the Congo Free State from King Leopold II, ending his brutal personal rule over the territory. The colony was renamed the Belgian Congo and placed under government administration. The annexation followed international outcry over atrocities committed under Leopold's regime.
• 1908 – 2009 Claude Levi-Strauss (1908-2009) Died 30 October 2009, aged 100 Levi-Strauss was a French anthropologist regarded as the founder of structural anthropology, whose work on kinship and myth reshaped the social sciences. His books, including Tristes Tropiques and The Savage Mind, influenced fields far beyond anthropology. He was elected to the Academie francaise in 1973.
• 1908 – 1992 Olivier Messiaen French mystic composer French composer and organist whose music was inspired by Catholic mysticism and birdsong. His Quartet for the End of Time was premiered in a Nazi prison camp.