Charles Rolls and Henry Royce founded ‘Rolls-Royce Limited’ this year and unveiled their newest automobile, the elegant six-cylinder ‘Silver Ghost’.
The name was originally a marketing term for a promotional model of a new 40/50hp model, shown at the Olympia Car Show in November. The company’s Commercial Managing Director, Claude Johnson, ordered the car to be painted silver with silver-plated fittings. A plaque with the words ‘Silver Ghost’ adorned the bulkhead. The aim was to raise public awareness of the new company and to show the reliability and quietness of their new car.
The Silver Ghost title was taken up by the press and soon all 40/50s were called by that name.
The quality of the car and the utmost attention to detail secured the company’s early reputation. Deliveries commenced the following year.
A new stretch of underground railway opened in London on March 10, from Baker Street to Waterloo.
Originally known as the Baker Street and Waterloo Railway, the name was officially changed in July 1906 to the Bakerloo Railway reflecting the nickname coined by the Evening News newspaper. Over 36,000 passengers used it on the day of opening. The Elephant & Castle station opened in August.
The popularity of motorised transport was starting to make London a much noisier place. In August, Winston Churchill and 100 other eminent people protested at street noise caused by vehicles.
The police started to apply the licensing law requiring no ‘undue noise’ with some vigour and by November many London buses were off the road, banned for being too noisy.
London bus companies complained that they were being driven out of business and pointed fingers at powerful lobbyists, not least London County Council, which ran the trams.
A report for the year showed that London buses were involved in 2,448 accidents, many of them attributed to mechanical failure.
The roaring success of the teddy bear led to the first British bear being made by J.K. Farnell.
Other early bears were made by W.J. Terry, Dean’s Rag Book Co Ltd, Chad Valley and Chiltern.
While early British bears copied the German look, they later began to change – their bodies became fatter, their faces flatter and their arms and legs shorter. British makers also experimented with different materials.
J. K. Farnell was based in Notting Hill, in London. A silk merchant by trade, Farnell originally set up the company in 1840 to make small household items such as pincushions and tea cosies.
After Farnell’s death his children, Henry and Agnes, continued the family business and moved to Acton in West London. Here they started to make soft toys using materials such as rabbit skin. They were soon using the more usual mohair and the company eventually produced the first British teddy bear. Such was its success that Farnell quickly established itself as one of the leading manufacturers of teddy bears.
After the disappointing lack of interest in the Paris and St Louis Games, the Olympics returned to Athens with an ‘Interim Games’ on April 27, to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the start of the modern era.
King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra joined the Greek Royal Family for the opening ceremony.
The Games were dominated by the French athletes, with the Americans also successful. They attracted huge crowds, who also enjoyed the spectacular shows which included illuminating the Acropolis.
These were the first games at which the British Olympic Association was responsible for financing a Great Britain team. The Association received no government assistance, but in common with other competing nations, they were offered a contribution by the Greek organisers.
The British team, 40 strong, performed well. Lieutenant Henry Hawtrey won gold in the five-mile race. Other golds came from the Irishmen Con Leahy in the High Jump and Peter O’Connor in the Triple Jump.
After the sparse attendances in 1900 and 1904, Athens rekindled the enthusiasm that had launched the Games in 1896.
The eruption of Mount Vesuvius meant that the Italian government asked that the 1908 Games, due to be staged in Rome, be given to another city. London put in a bid which proved to be successful.
The town of Le Mans in France was the home of the first major Grand Prix race on June 27.
The track was laid out on public roads to the east of the city, linking Le Mans with the towns of St Calais and La Ferte Bernard. It was 65 miles in length.
The race, organised by the Automobile Club de France, was held over two days and was won by Ferenc Szisz, a Franco-Hungarian driving a Renault.
Dorothea Douglass exacted revenge over May Sutton when she regained her Wimbledon crown in the Ladies’ Single championships, which she had lost to Sutton the previous year. In a hard fought match, in front of a cheering crowd, Douglass won 6–3, 9–7.
In the men’s singles, Lawrence Doherty from the UK won for the fifth time in succession, beating fellow Briton Frank Riseley 6–4, 4–6, 6–2, 6–3.
Afterwards ‘Laurie’ and his elder brother Reginald, known as ‘Reggie’, announced their retirement from competitive tennis after dominating the game for a decade.
Reggie won Wimbledon in four successive years from 1897, while Laurie, who lost to his brother in the 1898 final, won every year since 1902. Between them, they won the doubles eight times, and four times secured the Davis Cup for Great Britain.
The first hot-air balloon race took place in Paris on September 30. The event was sponsored by James Gordon Bennett Jr., the millionaire sportsman and owner of the New York Herald newspaper. It was named the Gordon Bennett Cup.
The goal of the race – which still continues today – was and is simple: to fly the furthest distance from the launch site.
Sixteen balloons launched from the Tuileries Gardens in Paris, and a huge crowd of 200,000 watched the graceful flights. The race was won by US Army Lieutenant Frank Lahm and his co-pilot Henry Hersey, who flew 402.09 miles, landing in Whitby, Yorkshire.