March 1900 - March 15, 1900 (Thursday)

March 15, 1900 (Thursday)

• In Louisburg and Morrisville, North Carolina, an unusual weather phenomenon appeared in the form of black rain that fell from an intensely dark cloud. Professor M.S. Davis of Louisburg College collected a sample of the black rainwater and had it analyzed by chemists at the University of North Carolina. Drs. Baskerville and Weller concluded, in an article in Science magazine, that the rain had a high, and unexplained, concentration of soot.*Elsewhere in the nation, 6 ½ inches of snow fell in New York; 8 inches in Washington, and snow fell in the South in Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, and North Texas
• The Standard Oil Company paid the largest dividend ever distributed up to that time, disbursing to shareholders a total of twenty million dollars ($20,000,000) in cash based on $20 a share. The dividend had been declared on February 6, and broke a record of a stock dividend paid by the Pullman car company.