1903: The first pages of SCMP revealed as we celebrate 110 years

November 1903: the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party splits into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks; a 68-year-old Sir Robert Hart is see-ing out his last years as inspector general of China's Imperial Maritime Customs Service (see page 34); what will one day become an iconic Bombay hotel, the Taj Mahal Palace, is readying for business (see page 82); and, on the sixth of the month, the South China Morning Post begins informing the English-speaking people of Hong Kong.

Earlier that year, Cuba had leased Guantanamo Bay to America "in perpetuity"; Italian-born Maurice Garin had won the inaugural Tour de France (he would be stripped of the title the following year for cheating - sound familiar?); the Ford Motor Company had produced its first car, the Model A; and the nation of Prussia had introduced the world's first driver's licence.

In the immediate future lay Orville Wright's first powered flight (December 17) and the Russo-Japanese war, which began with an attack by Japan on Port Arthur (Lushun, now part of Dalian, in Liaoning province) on February 8, 1904.

As readers at the time turned to the stories featured here and on the following pages - all taken from the very first edition of the South China Morning Post - they were being governed by Sir Henry Arthur Blake, although not for very much longer as he would step down on November 21, immediately after laying a foundation stone for the old Supreme Court building. Many readers would have been aware of construction work associated with the city's first tram track, from Kennedy Town to Causeway Bay, and some of them may have seen the seven boundary stones recently erected to mark out the city of Victoria. They would not have seen them in the paper, though, as the first editions of the SCMP carried no photographs.

We do not know what readers picking up that first newspaper thought or felt, of course, but we do know what they were told.