Rotary Milestones
About Our Club
- 1905 First Rotary club organized in Chicago, Illinois, USA
- 1908 Second club formed in San Francisco, California, USA
- 1910 First Rotary convention held in Chicago
- 1912 The Rotary Club of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, becomes the first club outside the United States to be officially chartered. (The club was formed in 1910.)
- 1917 Endowment fund, forerunner of The Rotary Foundation, established
- 1932 4-Way Test formulated by Chicago Rotarian Herbert J. Taylor
- 1945 Forty-nine Rotarians help draft United Nations Charter in San Francisco
- 1947 Rotary founder Paul Harris dies; first 18 Rotary Foundation scholarships granted
- 1962 First Interact club formed in Melbourne, Florida, USA
- 1965 Rotary Foundation launches Matching Grants and Group Study Exchange programs
- 1978 RI's largest convention, with 39,834 registrants, held in Tokyo
- 1985 Rotary announces PolioPlus program to immunize all the children of the world against polio
- 1985 Grand Prairie Metro Rotary Club established
- 1989 Council on Legislation opens Rotary membership to women worldwide; Rotary clubs chartered in Budapest, Hungary, and Warsaw, Poland, for first time in almost 50 years
- 1990 Rotary Club of Moscow chartered first club in Soviet Union
- 1990-91 Preserve Planet Earth program inspires some 2,000 Rotary-sponsored environmental projects
- 1994 Western Hemisphere declared polio-free
- 1999 Rotary Centers for International Studies in Peace and Conflict Resolution established
- 2000 Western Pacific declared polio-free
- 2001 30,000th Rotary club chartered
- 2002 Europe declared polio-free; first class of 70 Rotary Peace Scholars begin study
- 2003 Rotarians raise more than US$118 million to support the final stages of polio eradication
- 2004 RI's largest convention with 45,381 attandees, held in Osaka, Japan
- 2005 Rotary celebrates Centennial in Chicago, Illinois, USA