The following events occurred in December 1900: Saturday, December 1, 1900 A census of the German Empire was taken. Data released on February 26, 1901, showed a population of 56,345,014 "of which number 27,731,067 were males". The growth rate of 7.70% in five years was the highest increase in 30 years. The President of Switzerland resolved a boundary dispute between French Guiana and Brazil, awarding most of the territory to Brazil. In Washington, D.C., the United States and Nicaragua signed a treaty, subject to approval, giving the U.S. exclusive rights to construct and operate the Nicaragua Canal (never built), and to use the San Juan River and Lake Managua, in return for five million dollars. Sunday, December 2, 1900 2,200 Filipino rebels took an oath of allegiance to the United States at Vigan; they were the largest group to do so to that time. John Hossack, a farmer near Indianola, Iowa, was killed with an axe while he slept in bed. His wife Margaret was charged with the murder and convicted on April 11, 1901, but the verdict was overturned and a second trial ended with a hung jury. Susan Glaspell, who covered the case for the Des Moines Daily News, later fictionalized it in her 1916 one-act play Trifles and a 1917 short story, "A Jury of Her Peers". Monday, December 3, 1900 The U.S. Supreme Court released its decision in Chesapeake & Ohio Railway Company v. Kentucky. By an 8–1 margin, the Court upheld a state law requiring racial segregation even on interstate transportation. Since Kentucky's law provided that non-white passengers had to move to cars separate from white passengers after a train entered the state, the ruling effectively made separate cars a requirement on all trains. The census was taken in Norway, at that time a part of a union with Sweden. Its population in 1900 was 2,221,477. Oscar L. Booz, 21, a first-year cadet at the U.S. Military Academy, died from internal injuries sustained four days earlier during hazing. Booz refused to name his tormentors, and the public outcry over his death resulted in a U.S. Congressional investigation that ultimately led to the cadets pledging to discontinue the long-time practice of hazing of newly admitted cadets. Born: Ulrich Inderbinen, Swiss mountain guide; in Zermatt, canton of Valais (d. 2004) Richard Kuhn, Austrian chemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1938; in Vienna (d. 1967)