The Caracas society was filled with grief, sadness and uneasiness on June 29th, when a car struck Dr. José Gregorio Hernández. He fell down and his head hit the edge of the sidewalk. A parked tram prevented him from seeing a car travelling at 30 kilometers per hour. He was on his way to visit an ill old woman. Death took him by surprise at Amadores corner, La Pastora neighborhood. Thirty-one years earlier, he had received his Doctor of Medicine Degree at the Central University of Venezuela (UCV).

The day after, a sympathy notice from Dr. Luis Razetti was released at El Universal. The notice had been drafted very early in advance, on June 1908, apropos Dr. Hernández's departure for Europe. Razetti depicted Hernández's departure as his "leaving from the world of the alive." Hernández opted to follow his religious vocation and joined the Cartuja de Farneta Saint Bruno's Order. He went there, "not to get mixed in the abyss of things, fatally wounded, but to be buried in the cell of a convent, where an iron vocation and the purest religious faith, as pure as all his deeds during his lifetime, took him."

The firstborn of Benigno María Hernández Manzaneda and Josefa Antonia Cisneros Mansilla brought science and reason in his chairs of Normal Histology and Pathology, Experimental Physiology and Bacteriology. But also, the servant of God paved the way of people's blind faith, placing him forever as a saint in the altar of Venezuelans' heart.

Fighting bulls for Caracas
The Nuevo Circo opened with a bullfight and a movie exhibition on January 26th. The work by Alejandro Chataing was made of reinforced concrete to host 12,000 spectators. The opening of this forum "on a par with the most complete venues in Europe," as stated by the National Health Office when authorizing its use, was highly significant, to such an extent that the Caracas Trams' Company laid a line up to it for an easier access.

While the huge theater was built in the capital city, the plans to link Caracas with western and eastern Venezuela took shape. The works on the Great Western Highway, which would provide access to Andean Táchira state, started. In addition, a decree to conduct a survey of the Great Eastern Highway, to arrive at southern Ciudad Bolívar, was initialed.

It seems that communications signaled the year. On October 16th, the national government put up to tender the building of a wireless station around the capital city in order to implement the telegraphic service.

Further, in Venezuela, Dr. Enrique Tejera found the tripanosoma cruzi, a parasite in the blood of assassin bugs, the vector of the Chagas' disease. The Chagas' disease was discovered by and named after Carlos Ribeiro Justiniano Das Chagas in 1919 in Brazil, following a research undertaken in 1909, in the state of Minas Gerais.