of its members. The U.S. Senate refuses to seat him after evidence of the bribery is revealed. The League of Peja, organized by Haxhi Zeka to lobby for a Kosovar Albanian state within the Ottoman Empire, attracts 450 delegates to its first convention, held at the city of Peja, now in the Republic of Kosovo. January 29 – A lawyer for the estate of John W. Keely, an inventor who had persuaded investors in his Keely Motor Company that an automobile could be created that would operate from Keely's "induction resonance motion motor" that had achieved perpetual motion, reveals that the late Mr. Keely's motor had been a fraud, and that the widow knew nothing of it. January 30 – Dimitar Grekov is appointed as Prime Minister of Bulgaria by King Ferdinand I, but removed from office less than 10 months later on October 13. January 31 – Cherokee Nation voters in the Indian Territory (later the U.S. state of Oklahoma) approve a proposition to allot Cherokee lands and to dissolve the Cherokee government, but the U.S. Congress never ratifies the results. February 1899 February 1 – Ranavalona III, who had been the Queen of Madagascar until being deposed on February 28, 1897, is sent into exile by French colonial authorities, along with the rest of the royal family. She departs on the ship Yang-Tse on a 28-day trip to Marseilles. The Suntory whisky distiller in Japan is opened by Shinjiro Torii in Osaka as a store selling imported wines. February 2 – The participants in the Australian Premiers' Conference, held in Melbourne, agree that Australia's capital (Canberra) should be located between Sydney and Melbourne. February 3 – Kansas University's new college basketball team, coached by the game's inventor, Dr. James Naismith, plays its first game, and is defeated by the YMCA team of Kansas City, Kansas, 16 to 5. February 4 – The Philippine–American War begins as hostilities break out in Manila. Rudyard Kipling's poem "The White Man's Burden" is first published, appearing in The Times of London. A response to the United States occupation of the Philippine Islands, and exhorting members of the White race to be responsible for benevolent civilizing of the world's "non-white" people, the poem is reprinted in The New York Sun the next day. February 5 – The first major battle of the Philippine–American War concludes with the capture by the U.S. of the