fate of the British freighter Pelican, which disappeared in October 1897 along with 40 crew, is found in a message in a bottle that washes ashore at Portage Bay, Alaska. May 16 – British troops in the leased Chinese territory of Hong Kong take control of the city of Kowloon. The last Spaniards remaining in the Philippine Islands, after the cession to the U.S., depart from the island of Basilan. May 17 – In the Philippines, U.S. Army troops capture the city of San Isidro, Nueva Ecija, where Philippine Republic president Aguinaldo had moved his capital, but find that the insurgents had already left. May 18 – The First Hague Peace Conference is opened in The Hague by Willem de Beaufort, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands. May 19 – The U.S. Army captures Tawi-Tawi, the southernmost island in the Philippines. May 20 – Jacob German, a New York City cab driver, becomes the first motor vehicle operator in the U.S. to be arrested for speeding when he is caught driving his electric taxi , more than twice the speed limit on Lexington Avenue. The American Physical Society is founded at a meeting at Columbia University in New York by 36 physicists, with a mission ""to advance and diffuse the knowledge of physics." May 21 – The crew of the Royal Navy ship HMS Narcissus sights a large sea creature estimated to be long in the Mediterranean Sea near Algeria and reports that it propels itself by means of "an immense number of fins", as well as being able to spout water from several points on its body. The creature is not seen again after the lone encounter. The town of Porosow in Poland (now Porazava in Belarus) is destroyed by fire. May 22 – The unrecognized República Selvática— the "Jungle Republic" is proclaimed by Peruvian Army Colonel Emilio Vizcarra in three provinces in Northern Peru located within the Amazon rainforest, Loreto, San Martín and Ucayali. The "republic" is reincorporated into Peru after Vizcarra's death on February 27, 1900. May 23 – Major General Henry W. Lawton and his troops arrive in Manolos, capital of the First Philippine Republic, after a 120-mile march in 20 days that had captured 28 towns with a loss of only six men. May 24 – Jules Massenet's Cendrillon, the first opera based on the fairy tale of Cinderella, premieres in Paris at the