Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) is founded in the U.S. by Spanish–American War veteran James C. Putnam as the American Veterans of Foreign Service. September 30 – A tsunami kills 3,864 people on Seram Island (now part of the Maluku province of Indonesia) after a 7.8 magnitude earthquake strikes at 1:42 in the morning local time. According to a subsequent investigation, the villages of Paulohy-Samasuru and Mani, with a combined population of 2,400 people, are swept away by a wave. In Milwaukee, minor league baseball executive Harry Quinn announces an 8-team rival to baseball's 12-team National League, the "American Baseball Association" with an eastern division (New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington) and a western division (Chicago, St. Louis, Milwaukee and Detroit). October 1899 October 1 – Possession of the Mariana Islands in the South Pacific Ocean is formally transferred from Spain to Germany, which purchased the archipelago (with the exception of Guam) from Spain for 837,500 German gold marks (equivalent in 1899 to $4,100,000), and become part of German New Guinea until the end of World War One. Felipe Agoncillo, dispatched by the Philippine Revolutionary government to lobby for independence, meets in Washington with U.S. President McKinley and his attempt to be part of peace talks between the United States and Spain is rejected. October 2 – The Serbian government ends the state of siege in Belgrade that followed the attempted assassination of Serbia's former King Milan. October 3 – The boundary dispute between Venezuela and British Guiana (now Guyana) is resolved by a binding award from the International Tribunal of Arbitration of five neutral jurists agreed upon by the United Kingdom and the United Venezuelan States. October 4 – The South African Republic issues an order to "all White inhabitants" within its protectorate, the Kingdom of Swaziland, to evacuate the area, with the exception of property owners eligible for active military service. British subjects inside Swaziland are evicted and escorted to the border with the Portuguese East African colony of Mozambique October 5 – The 7,000 Zulu mineworkers in the Witwatersrand of the South African Republic are assembled by mine recruiter John Sidney Marwick at Johannesburg so that they can be transported home before war breaks out with Britain. October 6 – The War Office of the UK alerts the administrators of the 79,000-man British Army Reserve to prepare for drafting of soldiers in preparation for war in South