1901
1901 (
MCMI) was a
common year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar) of the
Gregorian calendar (or a
common year starting on Wednesday of the 13-day-slower
Julian calendar).
It was the first year and start of the
20th Century.
January-March
*
January 1 - World celebrates what is regarded as the start of the new century. (
Zero-ists' argument that new century should be celebrated in 1900 rejected worldwide).
*
January 1 - 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.
*
January 1 -
Nigeria becomes a
British protectorate
*
January 7 -
Alferd Packer is released from prison after serving 18 years for
cannibalism*
January 10 - The first great
Texas gusher,
oil discovered at
Spindletop in
Beaumont, Texas*
January 22 - After reigning for almost 64 years, longer than any other British monarch,
Queen Victoria died at the age of 81. Her eldest son, Prince Albert Edward, Prince of Wales becomes King, reigning as
King Edward VII until
1910. His son,
Prince George, Duke of York becomes
Duke of Cornwall.
*
February 13 - May be the day after a truncated
January 19,
2038 on
Unix and
Unix-like systems still suffering from the
year 2038 problem.
*
February 20 - The legislature of
Hawaii Territory convenes for the first time.
*
February 25 -
J.P. Morgan incorporates the
United States Steel Corporation.
*
March 2 - The
U.S. Congress passes the
Platt amendment, limiting the autonomy of
Cuba as a condition for the withdrawal of American troops.
*
March 6 - In
Bremen an
assassin attempts to kill
Wilhelm II of Germany.
*
March 17 - A showing of 71
Vincent van Gogh paintings in
Paris, 11 years after his death, creates a sensation.
*
March 31 -
United Kingdom Census 1901April-June
*
April 25 -
New York State becomes the first to require
automobile license plates.
*
May 3 -
Great Fire of 1901 begins in
Jacksonville, FL.
*
May 5 - Official end of the
Caste War of Yucatán, although
Mayan skirmishers will continue sporadic fighting for the next decade.
*
May 9 -
Australia opens its first
parliament in
Melbourne.
*
May 25 -
Club_Atl%C3%A9tico_River_Plate is founded in Argentina.
*
May 27 - In
New Jersey, the
Edison Storage Battery Company is founded.
*
June 2 -
Katsura Taro becomes
Prime Minister of Japan*
June 12 -
Cuba becomes US
protectorateJuly-September
*
July 4 - The 1,282 foot (390 meters) covered bridge crossing the St.John River at
Hartland,
New Brunswick,
Canada opens. It is the longest
covered bridge in the world.
*
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 5 -
Peter O'Connor sets the first
IAAF recognised
long jump world record of 24ft 11¾ins. The record will stand for 20 years.
*
August 21 - The
Cadillac Motor Company formed in
Detroit, Michigan, USA
*
September 2 -
Vice President 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, Illinois.
*
September 6 - American anarchist
Leon Czolgosz shoots and fatally wounds US President
William McKinley at the
Pan-American Exposition in
Buffalo, New York. McKinley dies there eight days later.
*
September 7 - The
Boxer Rebellion in
China officially ends with the signing of the
Boxer Protocol.
*
September 14 - With the death of
William McKinley,
Theodore Roosevelt succeeds him as
President of the United States.
*
September 26 - The 16th President,
Abraham Lincoln, was exhumed and reinterred in concrete several feet thick.
October-December
*
October 2 -
Royal Navy's first
submarine launched at Barrow.
*
October 4 - The American yacht
Columbia defeats the Irish
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 Taylor goes down
Niagara Falls in a barrel and survives.
*
October 29 - In
Amherst, Massachusetts, nurse
Jane Toppan is arrested for murdering the Davis family of Boston with an overdose of
morphine.
*
October 29 -
Capital punishment:
Leon Czolgosz, the assassin of US President
William McKinley, is executed by electrocution.
*
November 9 -
Prince George,
Duke of Cornwall becomes
Prince of Wales and
Earl of Chester.
*
November 15 -
Miller Reese Hutchinson patents
Acousticon, a heavy
Hearing aid prototype
*
November 27 -
U.S. Army War College is established.
*
November 28 - The
new state constitution of
Alabama disenfranchises black voters via
literacy tests and the
grandfather clause.
*
December 3 - US President
Theodore Roosevelt delivers a 20,000-word speech to the
House of Representatives asking Congress curb the power of
trusts "within reasonable limits".
*
December 10 -
Marie Curie receives doctorate. 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 in
Newfoundland,
Canada; it is
Morse code for the letter "S."
*
December 20 - The final spike is driven to complete the
Mombasa-Victoria-Uganda Railway in what is now
Kisumu,
Kenya.
Unknown dates
* In the
United Kingdom,
Factory Act forbids child labor under 12
* Two
typhoid outbreaks in USA
*
Winston Churchill enters the
House of Commons* In Germany,
Eugen Hollander makes the first known
facelift to a Polish noblewoman
*
Scotland Yard creates a
fingerprint archive
*
Cleveland Indians founded
*
Europium discovered by
Eugène-Antole Demarçay* First prototype
Harley-Davidson created
*
Okapi discovered (previously known only to local natives)
* Independent Maya of Eastern
Yucatán surrender to
Mexico*
American Standard Version Bible first published.
*
Intercollegiate Prohibition Association established in Chicago, Illinois.
*
Mordecai Ham, American evangelist enters ministry.
*
Pablo Picasso begins his
Blue Period.
* Sho Tai (Shang Tai), the last king of the
Ryukyu Kingdom in modern
Okinawa,
Japan, dies.
January-March
*
January 3 -
Ngo Dinh Diem, 1st President of South Vietnam (d.
1963)
*
January 4 -
CLR James, Trinidad-born writer and journalist (d.
1989)
*
January 14 -
Bebe Daniels, American actress (d.
1971) and Shayne Bunce, Student (d.
1992)
*
January 16 -
Fulgencio Batista, Cuban leader (d.
1973)
*
January 16 -
Frank Zamboni, American inventor (d.
1988)
*
January 26 -
Stuart Symington, American politician (d.
1988)
*
January 27 -
Art Rooney, American football team owner (d.
1988)
*
January 29 -
E. P. Taylor, Canadian business tycoon (d.
1989)
*
January 30 -
Rudolf Caracciola, German race car driver (d.
1959)
*
February 1 -
Clark Gable, American actor (d.
1960)
*
February 2 -
Jascha Heifetz, Lithuanian violinist (d.
1987)
*
February 10 -
Stella Adler, American actress (d.
1992)
*
February 25 -
Zeppo Marx, American comedian (d.
1979)
*
February 27 -
Horatio Luro, Argentine horse trainer (d.
1991)
*
February 28 -
Linus Pauling, American chemist, recipient of the
Nobel Prize in Chemistry and
Peace (d.
1994)
*
March 4 -
Charles Goren, American bridge player (d.
1991)
*
March 17 -
Alfred Newman, American film composer (d.
1970)
*
March 21 -
Karl Arnold, German politician (d.
1958)
*
March 22 -
Greta Kempton, American artist (d.
1991)
*
March 24 -
Ub Iwerks, American cartoonist (d.
1971)
*
March 27 -
Carl Barks, American cartoonist (d.
2000)
*
March 27 -
Erich Ollenhauer, German politician (d.
1963)
*
March 27 -
Eisaku Sato,
Prime Minister of Japan, recipient of the
Nobel Peace Prize (d.
1975)
*
March 27 -
Kenneth Slessor, Australian poet (d.
1971)
April-June
*
April 1 -
Whittaker Chambers, American spy (d.
1961)
*
April 29 -
Emperor Hirohito of Japan (d.
1989)
*
April 30 -
Simon Kuznets, Ukrainian-born economist,
Nobel Prize laureate (d.
1985)
*
May 5 -
Blind Willie McTell, American singer (d.
1959)
*
May 7 -
Gary Cooper, American actor (d.
1961)
*
May 17 -
Werner Egk, German composer (d.
1983)
*
May 18 -
Vincent du Vigneaud, American chemist,
Nobel Prize laureate (d.
1978)
*
May 20 -
Max Euwe, Dutch chess player (d.
1981)
*
May 21 -
Horace Heidt, American bandleader (d.
1986)
*
May 21 -
Sam Jaffe, American film producer (d.
2000)
*
June 3 -
Chang Hsüeh-liang, Chinese military leader (d.
2001)
*
June 6 -
Sukarno, first
President of Indonesia (d.
1970)
*
June 17 -
F. F. E. Yeo-Thomas, English World War II hero (d.
1964)
*
June 18 -
Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia (d.
1918)
*
June 24 -
Harry Partch, American composer (d.
1974)
*
June 29 -
Nelson Eddy, American singer and actor (d.
1967)
July-September
*
July 7 -
Eiji Tsuburaya, Japanese special effects designer (d.
1970)
*
July 9 -
Barbara Cartland, English novelist (d.
2000)
*
July 17 -
Bruno Jasieński, Polish poet (d.
1938)
*
July 20 -
Heinie Manush, baseball player (d.
1971)
*
July 31 -
Jean Dubuffet, French painter (d.
1985)
*
August 4 -
Louis Armstrong, American jazz musician (d.
1971)
*
August 8 -
Ernest Lawrence, American physicist,
Nobel Prize laureate (d.
1958)
*
August 10 -
Franco Dino Rasetti, Italian scientist (d.
2001)
*
August 18 -
Jean Guitton, French writer and philosopher (d.
1999)
*
August 20 -
Salvatore Quasimodo, Italian writer,
Nobel Prize laureate (d.
1968)
*
August 26 -
Maxwell Taylor, American general (d.
1987)
*
August 26 -
Chen Yi, Chinese military commander and politician (d.
1972)
*
September 9 -
James Blades, English percussionist (d.
1999)
*
September 9 -
Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd,
Prime Minister of South Africa (d.
1966)
*
September 12 -
Ben Blue, Canadian comedian and actor (d.
1975)
*
September 15 -
Sir Donald Bailey, British civil engineer (d.
1985)
*
September 22 -
Charles B. Huggins, Canadian-born cancer researcher, recipient of the
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d.
1997)
*
September 23 -
Jaroslav Seifert, Czech writer,
Nobel Prize laureate (d.
1986)
*
September 28 -
Ed Sullivan, American entertainer (d.
1974)
*
September 28 -
William S. Paley, American business man (d.
1990)
*
September 29 -
Enrico Fermi, Italian physicist,
Nobel Prize laureate (d.
1954)
*
September 29 -
Lanza del Vasto, Italian philosopher, poet, and activist (d.
1981)
October-December
*
October 2 -
Kiki, French singer (d.
1953)
*
October 10 -
Alberto Giacometti, Swiss sculptor (d.
1966)
*
October 24 -
Gilda Gray, Polish-born dancer and actress (d.
1959)
*
November 3 -
Léopold III of Belgium (d.
1983)
*
November 4 -
Yi, Bang-ja, Crown Princess of Korea (d.
1989)
*
November 7 -
Norah McGuinness, Irish painter and illustrator (d.
1980)
*
November 22 -
Joaquin Rodrigo, Spanish composer (d.
1999)
*
November 29 -
Mildred Harris, American actress (d.
1944)
*
December 5 -
Walt Disney, American animator and film producer (d.
1966)
*
December 5 -
Werner Heisenberg, German physicist,
Nobel Prize laureate (d.
1976)
*
December 16 -
Margaret Mead, American cultural anthropologist (d.
1978)
*
December 19 -
Rudolf Hell, German inventor (d.
2002)
*
December 25 -
Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester (d.
2004)
*
December 27 -
Marlene Dietrich, actress (d.
1992)
*
December 31 -
Karl-August Fagerholm,
Prime Minister of Finland (d.
1984)
*
Nadezhda Alliluyeva-Stalin, second wife of
Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin (d.
1932)
*
January 11 -
Vasily Kalinnikov, Russian composer (b.
1866)
*
January 16 -
Arnold Böcklin, Swiss artist (b.
1827)
*
January 21 -
Elisha Gray, American inventor and appliance manufacturer (b.
1835)
*
January 22 -
Queen Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom and Empress of India (b.
1819)
*
January 27 -
Giuseppe Verdi, Italian composer (b.
1813)
*
February 11 - King
Milan I of Serbia (b.
1854)
*
February 22 -
George Francis FitzGerald, Irish mathematician (b.
1851)
*
March 13 -
Benjamin Harrison, 23rd
President of the United States (b.
1833)
*
April 3 -
Richard D'Oyly Carte, English impresario (b.
1844)
*
May 22 -
Gaetano Bresci Italian assassin (b
1869)
*
June 2 -
George Leslie Mackay, Canadian missionary (b.
1844)
*
July 4 -
Johannes Schmidt, German linguist (b.
1843)
*
July 6 -
Prince Chlodwig zu Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst,
Chancellor of Germany (b.
1819)
*
August 5 -
Victoria, Empress of Germany (b.
1840)
*
August 24 -
Clara Maass, American nurse (d.
1876)
*
September 5 -
Ignacij Klemenčič, Slovenian physicist (b.
1853)
*
September 9 -
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, French painter (b.
1864)
*
September 14 -
William McKinley, 25th
President of the United States (assassinated) (b.
1843)
*
October 1 -
Abdur Rahman Khan, Amir of Afghanistan
*
October 10 -
Lorenzo Snow, president of
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (b.
1814)
*
October 19 -
Carl Frederik Tietgen, Danish financier and industrialist (b.
1829)
*
October 29 -
Leon Czolgosz assassin of U.S. President
William McKinley (b.
1873)
*
November 7 -
Li Hongzhang, Chinese general (b.
1823)
*
November 30 -
Edward John Eyre, English explorer (b.
1815)
*
December 1 -
George Lohmann, English cricketer (tuberculosis) (b.
1865)
*
Physics -
Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen*
Chemistry -
Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff*
Medicine -
Emil Adolf von Behring*
Literature -
Sully Prudhomme*
Peace -
Jean Henri Dunant,
Frédéric Passy
