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.

Events

January 1: Commonwealth of Australia forms as British colonies federate.

January 22: King Edward VII ascends the British throne and becomes Emperor of India on the death of his mother Queen Victoria.

March 6: Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany survives assassination attempt.

June 12: Cuba becomes a United States protectorate.

September 7: Boxer Rebellion in China ends with the signing of the Peking Protocol.

September 14: Theodore Roosevelt becomes President of the United States on the death of William McKinley.

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^{[citation needed]}).
• 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 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 4 - US. President William McKinley begins second term.
• 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 1901

April-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 Atlético 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 protectorate

July-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 International Association of Athletics Federations 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.
• 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 1 - Sigma Phi Epsilon was founded in Richmond, VA
• 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 labour under 12
• Two typhoid outbreaks in USA
• Winston Churchill enters the British 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.
• Mordecai Ham, American evangelist enters ministry.
• Pablo Picasso begins his Blue Period.
• Shō Tai (Shang Tai), the last king of the Ryūkyū Kingdom in modern Okinawa, Japan, dies.

Births

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 15 - Joe Davis, English snooker and billiards player (d. 1978)
• 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 21 - Albert Hamilton Gordon, American Businessman and Philanthropist
• 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)
• August 30 - John Gunther, American writer (d. 1970)
• 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 18 - George Gallup, American statistician and opinion pollster (d. 1984)
• 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)

Deaths

• 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)
• June 9 - Walter Besant, English writer (b. 1836)
• 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)

Fictional Events

• June 3, 1901: The German invasion of the United States takes place on this day in the book 1901: A Novel

Nobel Prize

• Physics - Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen
• Chemistry - Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff
• Medicine - Emil Adolf von Behring
• Literature - Sully Prudhomme
• Peace - Jean Henri Dunant, Frédéric Passy

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