January
January 1: The Commonwealth of Australia forms as British colonies federate.
January 1
The world celebrates the beginning of the 20th century.
The British colonies of New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria and Western Australia federate as the Commonwealth of Australia. Edmund Barton becomes first Prime Minister of Australia.
Nigeria becomes a British protectorate.
The birth of Pentecostalism at a prayer meeting at Bethel Bible College in Topeka, Kansas.
January 5 – Typhoid fever breaks out in a Seattle jail, the first of two typhoid outbreaks in the USA during the year.
January 7 – Alferd Packer is released from prison after serving 18 years for cannibalism.
January 9 – Lord Kitchener reports that Christiaan de Wet has shot one of the "peace" envoys, and flogged two more, who had gone to his commando to ask the Burgher citizens of South Africa to halt fighting.[1]
January 10 – In the first great Texas gusher, oil is discovered at Spindletop in Beaumont, Texas.
January 22
Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom dies at age 81, after more than 63 years on the throne, and her son the Prince of Wales formally succeeds her as King Edward VII.
The Grand Opera House in Cincinnati is destroyed in a fire.
January 28 – Baseball's American League declares itself a Major League.
January 22: King Edward VII ascends the British throne and also becomes Emperor of India.
February
February 2 – Funeral of Queen Victoria at St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle.
February 5
Hay–Pauncefote Treaty signed by United Kingdom and United States, ceding control of the Panama Canal to the United States.
J. P. Morgan buys mines and steel mills in the United States, marking the first billion dollar business deal.
In Evansville, Indiana, a fire burns through the business district, causing $175,000 of damage.
February 6 – First public telephones at railway stations in Paris.
February 11 – Anti-Jesuit riots sweep across Spain.
February 12 – Viceroy of India Lord Curzon creates the new North-West Frontier Province in the north of the Punjab region, bordering Afghanistan.
February 14 – Edward VII opens his first parliament of the United Kingdom.
February 15 – The Alianza Lima Foundation is created in Peru.
February 20 – The Hawaii Territory Legislature convenes for the first time.
February 22 – The Pacific Mail Steamship Company's SS City of Rio de Janeiro sinks entering San Francisco Bay, killing 128.
February 23 – The United Kingdom and Germany agree the frontier between German East Africa and the British colony of Nyasaland.
February 25 – U.S. Steel is incorporated by industrialist J. P. Morgan as the first billion-dollar corporation.
February 26
Chi-hsui and Hsu-cheng-yu, Boxer Rebellion leaders, executed in Peking.
Middelburg peace conference fails in South Africa as Boers continue to demand autonomy.
February 27 – The Sultan of Turkey orders 50,000 troops to the Bulgarian frontier because of unrest in Macedonia
March
March 1 – The United Kingdom, Germany and Japan protest at the Sino-Russian agreement on Manchuria.
March 2 – The United States Congress passes the Platt Amendment, limiting the autonomy of Cuba as a condition for the withdrawal of American troops.
March 4 – President of the United States William McKinley begins his second term. Theodore Roosevelt becomes Vice President of the United States.
March 5 – Irish nationalist demonstrators are ejected by police from House of Commons of the United Kingdom in London.
March 6 – In Bremen, an assassination attempt is made on Wilhelm II, German Emperor.
March 11 – The United Kingdom rejects the amended Hay–Pauncefote Treaty.
March 13 – Benjamin Harrison, 23rd president of the United States, dies of pneumonia at age 67.
March 17 – A showing of 71 Vincent van Gogh paintings in Paris, 11 years after his death, creates a sensation.
March 17 – Student riots in Saint Petersburg and Moscow.
March 18 – Patrick Donahoe, businessman and publisher of the Boston Catholic newspaper The Pilot, dies aged 90.
March 31 – The United Kingdom Census 1901 is taken. The number of people employed in manufacturing is at its highest-ever level.
March 6: Wilhelm II, German Emperor, survives an assassination attempt.
April
April 25 – New York becomes the first US state to require automobile license plates.
April 29 – Anti-Jewish rioting breaks out in Budapest.
May
May 3 – The Great Fire of 1901 begins in Jacksonville, Florida.
May 5 – The Caste War of Yucatán in Mexico officially ends, although Mayan skirmishers continue sporadic fighting for another decade.
May 9 – The first Australian Parliament opens in Melbourne.
May 17 – The U.S. stock market crashes.
May 24 – 81 miners are killed in an accident at Universal Colliery, Senghenydd in South Wales.
May 25 – The Club Atlético River Plate is founded in Argentina.
May 27 – In New Jersey, the Edison Storage Battery Company is founded.
May 28 – Persia grants William Knox D'Arcy a concession, giving him the right to prospect for oil.
June
Emily Hobhouse reports on the genocide in the 45 British concentration camps for Boer women and children in South Africa in which, over an 18 month period, 26,370 people would die, 24,000 of them children under 16. Exact mortality figures in the 64 concentration camps for black displaced farm workers and their families are not known, but even worse.[2]
June 2 – Katsura Tarō becomes Prime Minister of Japan.
June 12 – Cuba becomes a United States protectorate.
July
July 1 – Bureau of Chemistry established within the United States Department of Agriculture.
July 4
The 1,282 foot (390 m) covered bridge crossing the Saint John River at Hartland, New Brunswick, Canada opens. It is the longest covered bridge in the world.
William Howard Taft becomes Governor-General of the Philippines.
July 24 – O. Henry is released from prison in Columbus, Ohio after serving three years for embezzlement from the First National Bank in Austin, Texas.
August
August 5 – Peter O'Connor sets the first International Association of Athletics Federations recognised long jump world record of 24 ft 11¾ins. The record will stand for 20 years.
August 6 – Discovery Expedition: Robert Falcon Scott sets sail on the RRS Discovery to explore the Ross Sea in Antarctica.
August 14 – The first claimed powered flight, by Gustave Whitehead in his Number 21.
August 28 – Silliman University is founded in the Philippines, the first American private school in the country. August 30 – Hubert Cecil Booth patents an electric vacuum cleaner in the United Kingdom.
September
September 2 – Vice President of the United States Theodore Roosevelt utters the famous phrase, "Speak softly and carry a big stick" at the Minnesota State Fair.
September 5 – The National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues (later renamed Minor League Baseball), is formed in Chicago.
September 6 – William McKinley assassination: American anarchist Leon Czolgosz shoots U.S. President William McKinley at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. McKinley dies 8 days later.
September 7 – The Boxer Rebellion in China officially ends with the signing of the Boxer Protocol.
September 14 – Theodore Roosevelt succeeds William McKinley as President of the United States.
September 26 – The body of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln is exhumed and reinterred in concrete several feet thick.
September 28 – Philippine–American War: Balangiga massacre: Filipino guerrillas kill more than forty United States soldiers in a surprise attack in the town of Balangiga on Samar Island.
October
October 2 – The British Royal Navy's first submarine, Holland 1, is launched at Barrow-in-Furness.
October 4 – The American yacht Columbia defeats the British Shamrock in the America's Cup yachting race.
October 16 – U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt invites African American leader Booker T. Washington to the White House. The American South reacts angrily to the visit, and racial violence increases in the region.
October 23 – Yale University celebrates its bicentennial.
October 24 – Michigan schoolteacher Annie Edson Taylor goes over Niagara Falls in a barrel and survives.
October 29 – In Amherst, New York, nurse Jane Toppan is arrested for murdering the Davis family of Boston with an overdose of morphine.
November
November 1 – Sigma Phi Epsilon is founded in Richmond, Virginia.
November 9 – The Prince George, Duke of Cornwall (later George V) becomes Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester.
November 15 – The Alpha Sigma Alpha Fraternity is founded at Longwood University in Farmville, Virginia.
November 25 – Auguste Deter is first examined by German psychiatrist Dr Alois Alzheimer, leading to a diagnosis of the condition that will carry Alzheimer's name. November 28 – The new Constitution of Alabama requires voters in the state to have passed literacy tests.
December
December 3 – U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt delivers a 20,000-word speech to the House of Representatives asking Congress to curb the power of trusts "within reasonable limits".
December 10 – The first Nobel Prize ceremony is held in Stockholm on the fifth anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death.
December 12 – Guglielmo Marconi receives the first trans-Atlantic radio signal, sent from Poldhu in England to Newfoundland, Canada; it is the letter "S" in Morse.[5]
December 20 – The final spike is driven into the Mombasa–Victoria–Uganda Railway in what is now Kisumu, Kenya.
December 22 – Peace Sunday and Charles Aked, a Baptist minister in Liverpool, says about the war in South Africa: "Great Britain cannot win the battles without resorting to the last despicable cowardice of the most loathsome cur on earth — the act of striking a brave man's heart through his wife's honour and his child's life. The cowardly war has been conducted by methods of barbarism... the concentration camps have been Murder Camps." A crowd follows him home and breaks the windows of his house.
January 1: The Commonwealth of Australia forms as British colonies federate.
January 1
The world celebrates the beginning of the 20th century.
The British colonies of New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria and Western Australia federate as the Commonwealth of Australia. Edmund Barton becomes first Prime Minister of Australia.
Nigeria becomes a British protectorate.
The birth of Pentecostalism at a prayer meeting at Bethel Bible College in Topeka, Kansas.
January 5 – Typhoid fever breaks out in a Seattle jail, the first of two typhoid outbreaks in the USA during the year.
January 7 – Alferd Packer is released from prison after serving 18 years for cannibalism.
January 9 – Lord Kitchener reports that Christiaan de Wet has shot one of the "peace" envoys, and flogged two more, who had gone to his commando to ask the Burgher citizens of South Africa to halt fighting.[1]
January 10 – In the first great Texas gusher, oil is discovered at Spindletop in Beaumont, Texas.
January 22
Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom dies at age 81, after more than 63 years on the throne, and her son the Prince of Wales formally succeeds her as King Edward VII.
The Grand Opera House in Cincinnati is destroyed in a fire.
January 28 – Baseball's American League declares itself a Major League.
January 22: King Edward VII ascends the British throne and also becomes Emperor of India.
February
February 2 – Funeral of Queen Victoria at St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle.
February 5
Hay–Pauncefote Treaty signed by United Kingdom and United States, ceding control of the Panama Canal to the United States.
J. P. Morgan buys mines and steel mills in the United States, marking the first billion dollar business deal.
In Evansville, Indiana, a fire burns through the business district, causing $175,000 of damage.
February 6 – First public telephones at railway stations in Paris.
February 11 – Anti-Jesuit riots sweep across Spain.
February 12 – Viceroy of India Lord Curzon creates the new North-West Frontier Province in the north of the Punjab region, bordering Afghanistan.
February 14 – Edward VII opens his first parliament of the United Kingdom.
February 15 – The Alianza Lima Foundation is created in Peru.
February 20 – The Hawaii Territory Legislature convenes for the first time.
February 22 – The Pacific Mail Steamship Company's SS City of Rio de Janeiro sinks entering San Francisco Bay, killing 128.
February 23 – The United Kingdom and Germany agree the frontier between German East Africa and the British colony of Nyasaland.
February 25 – U.S. Steel is incorporated by industrialist J. P. Morgan as the first billion-dollar corporation.
February 26
Chi-hsui and Hsu-cheng-yu, Boxer Rebellion leaders, executed in Peking.
Middelburg peace conference fails in South Africa as Boers continue to demand autonomy.
February 27 – The Sultan of Turkey orders 50,000 troops to the Bulgarian frontier because of unrest in Macedonia
March
March 1 – The United Kingdom, Germany and Japan protest at the Sino-Russian agreement on Manchuria.
March 2 – The United States Congress passes the Platt Amendment, limiting the autonomy of Cuba as a condition for the withdrawal of American troops.
March 4 – President of the United States William McKinley begins his second term. Theodore Roosevelt becomes Vice President of the United States.
March 5 – Irish nationalist demonstrators are ejected by police from House of Commons of the United Kingdom in London.
March 6 – In Bremen, an assassination attempt is made on Wilhelm II, German Emperor.
March 11 – The United Kingdom rejects the amended Hay–Pauncefote Treaty.
March 13 – Benjamin Harrison, 23rd president of the United States, dies of pneumonia at age 67.
March 17 – A showing of 71 Vincent van Gogh paintings in Paris, 11 years after his death, creates a sensation.
March 17 – Student riots in Saint Petersburg and Moscow.
March 18 – Patrick Donahoe, businessman and publisher of the Boston Catholic newspaper The Pilot, dies aged 90.
March 31 – The United Kingdom Census 1901 is taken. The number of people employed in manufacturing is at its highest-ever level.
March 6: Wilhelm II, German Emperor, survives an assassination attempt.
April
April 25 – New York becomes the first US state to require automobile license plates.
April 29 – Anti-Jewish rioting breaks out in Budapest.
May
May 3 – The Great Fire of 1901 begins in Jacksonville, Florida.
May 5 – The Caste War of Yucatán in Mexico officially ends, although Mayan skirmishers continue sporadic fighting for another decade.
May 9 – The first Australian Parliament opens in Melbourne.
May 17 – The U.S. stock market crashes.
May 24 – 81 miners are killed in an accident at Universal Colliery, Senghenydd in South Wales.
May 25 – The Club Atlético River Plate is founded in Argentina.
May 27 – In New Jersey, the Edison Storage Battery Company is founded.
May 28 – Persia grants William Knox D'Arcy a concession, giving him the right to prospect for oil.
June
Emily Hobhouse reports on the genocide in the 45 British concentration camps for Boer women and children in South Africa in which, over an 18 month period, 26,370 people would die, 24,000 of them children under 16. Exact mortality figures in the 64 concentration camps for black displaced farm workers and their families are not known, but even worse.[2]
June 2 – Katsura Tarō becomes Prime Minister of Japan.
June 12 – Cuba becomes a United States protectorate.
July
July 1 – Bureau of Chemistry established within the United States Department of Agriculture.
July 4
The 1,282 foot (390 m) covered bridge crossing the Saint John River at Hartland, New Brunswick, Canada opens. It is the longest covered bridge in the world.
William Howard Taft becomes Governor-General of the Philippines.
July 24 – O. Henry is released from prison in Columbus, Ohio after serving three years for embezzlement from the First National Bank in Austin, Texas.
August
August 5 – Peter O'Connor sets the first International Association of Athletics Federations recognised long jump world record of 24 ft 11¾ins. The record will stand for 20 years.
August 6 – Discovery Expedition: Robert Falcon Scott sets sail on the RRS Discovery to explore the Ross Sea in Antarctica.
August 14 – The first claimed powered flight, by Gustave Whitehead in his Number 21.
August 28 – Silliman University is founded in the Philippines, the first American private school in the country. August 30 – Hubert Cecil Booth patents an electric vacuum cleaner in the United Kingdom.
September
September 2 – Vice President of the United States Theodore Roosevelt utters the famous phrase, "Speak softly and carry a big stick" at the Minnesota State Fair.
September 5 – The National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues (later renamed Minor League Baseball), is formed in Chicago.
September 6 – William McKinley assassination: American anarchist Leon Czolgosz shoots U.S. President William McKinley at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. McKinley dies 8 days later.
September 7 – The Boxer Rebellion in China officially ends with the signing of the Boxer Protocol.
September 14 – Theodore Roosevelt succeeds William McKinley as President of the United States.
September 26 – The body of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln is exhumed and reinterred in concrete several feet thick.
September 28 – Philippine–American War: Balangiga massacre: Filipino guerrillas kill more than forty United States soldiers in a surprise attack in the town of Balangiga on Samar Island.
October
October 2 – The British Royal Navy's first submarine, Holland 1, is launched at Barrow-in-Furness.
October 4 – The American yacht Columbia defeats the British Shamrock in the America's Cup yachting race.
October 16 – U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt invites African American leader Booker T. Washington to the White House. The American South reacts angrily to the visit, and racial violence increases in the region.
October 23 – Yale University celebrates its bicentennial.
October 24 – Michigan schoolteacher Annie Edson Taylor goes over Niagara Falls in a barrel and survives.
October 29 – In Amherst, New York, nurse Jane Toppan is arrested for murdering the Davis family of Boston with an overdose of morphine.
November
November 1 – Sigma Phi Epsilon is founded in Richmond, Virginia.
November 9 – The Prince George, Duke of Cornwall (later George V) becomes Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester.
November 15 – The Alpha Sigma Alpha Fraternity is founded at Longwood University in Farmville, Virginia.
November 25 – Auguste Deter is first examined by German psychiatrist Dr Alois Alzheimer, leading to a diagnosis of the condition that will carry Alzheimer's name. November 28 – The new Constitution of Alabama requires voters in the state to have passed literacy tests.
December
December 3 – U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt delivers a 20,000-word speech to the House of Representatives asking Congress to curb the power of trusts "within reasonable limits".
December 10 – The first Nobel Prize ceremony is held in Stockholm on the fifth anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death.
December 12 – Guglielmo Marconi receives the first trans-Atlantic radio signal, sent from Poldhu in England to Newfoundland, Canada; it is the letter "S" in Morse.[5]
December 20 – The final spike is driven into the Mombasa–Victoria–Uganda Railway in what is now Kisumu, Kenya.
December 22 – Peace Sunday and Charles Aked, a Baptist minister in Liverpool, says about the war in South Africa: "Great Britain cannot win the battles without resorting to the last despicable cowardice of the most loathsome cur on earth — the act of striking a brave man's heart through his wife's honour and his child's life. The cowardly war has been conducted by methods of barbarism... the concentration camps have been Murder Camps." A crowd follows him home and breaks the windows of his house.