- Jan 1 Ellis Island opens as a US immigration inspection station - it would go on to be the gateway to the US for more than 12 million people
- Jan 5 1st successful auroral photograph made
- Jan 7 Mine explosion kills 100 in Krebs, Oklahoma; blacks trying to help rescue white survivors, driven away with guns
- Jan 11 Hawaiian Historical Society is founded
- Jan 11 William D McCoy of Indiana appointed US minister to Liberia
Basketball Rules Published
Jan 15 Basketball rules first published in Triangle Magazine, written by James Naismith
- Jan 24 Battle of Mengo, Uganda: French missionaries attack British missionaries
- Jan 29 The Coca-Cola Company is incorporated in Atlanta, Georgia
- Jan 30 Bobby Abel carries his bat for 132* for England in SCG Test
- Jan 30 Capt Lugard occupies Uganda's King Mwanga's hide out
- Feb 1 Mrs William Astor invites 400 guests to a grand ball at her mansion thus beginning use of "400" to describe socially elite
- Feb 2 Bottle cap patented by William Painter
- Feb 2 Johnny Briggs takes a hat-trick, England v Australia at the SCG
- Feb 2 Longest boxing match under modern rules; 77 rounds in Nameoki, Illinois between Harry Sharpe & Frank Crosby
- Feb 3 Russia closes down the Volozhin Yeshiva, a Lithuanian talmudical college
Werther Premieres
Feb 16 Opera "Werther" by Jules Massenet premieres in Vienna
Lady Windermere's Fan
Feb 20 Comedy "Lady Windermere's Fan, A Play About a Good Woman" by Oscar Wilde premieres at St James Theatre, London
- Feb 22 Manitoba Rugby Football Union forms
- Feb 23 1st college student government forms at Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania
- Feb 25 James Barrie's "Walker London" premieres in London
- Feb 29 Britain & US sign treaty on seal hunting in Bering Sea
- Feb 29 St. Petersburg, Florida is incorporated
- Mar 3 1st cattle tuberculosis test in US made, Villa Nova, Penn
- Mar 11 1st public basketball game (Springfield, Massachusetts)
- Mar 15 1st escalator patented by inventor Jesse W Reno (NYC)
- Mar 15 New York State unveils automatic ballot booth (voting machine)
- Mar 18 Lord Stanley presents silver challenge cup for hockey (Stanley Cup)
- Mar 19 3 brothers Hearne play in same Test Cricket England v South Africa (Cape Town)
- Mar 20 54th Grand National: Capt. Roddy Owen wins aboard 20/1 chance Father O'Flynn
- Apr 12 George C Blickensderfer patents portable typewriter
Event of Interest
Apr 15 General Electric Company formed by merger of Thomas Edison's General Electric Company with Thomson-Houston Electric Company, arranged by J. P. Morgan and incorporated in NY
- Apr 17 1st Sunday NL baseball game, Reds beat Cards 5-1
- Apr 19 Charles Duryea takes the 1st American-made automotive for a test drive
- Apr 21 Black longshoremen strike for higher wages in St Louis, Missouri
- Apr 28 1st performance of Antonín Dvořák's overture "Carnival Overture"
- Apr 29 Charlie Reilly is baseball's 1st pinch hitter
- May 1 US Quarantine Station opens on Angel Island, San Francisco Bay
- May 11 18th Kentucky Derby: Lonnie Clayton aboard Azra wins in 2:41½
- May 19 Charles Brady King invents pneumatic hammer
- May 19 National Society of Colonial Dames of America founded
- May 20 George Sampson patents clothes dryer
- May 21 Ruggero Leoncavallo's opera "I Pagliacci" premieres in Milan
- May 22 Dr Washington Sheffield invents the toothpaste tube
- Jun 4 Oil City and Titusville, Pennsylvania, destroyed by oil tank explosion; 130 die
- Jun 6 Chicago South Side Elevated Railroad opens (1st 3.6 miles)
- Jun 7 Creole shoemaker Homer Plessy buys whites-only train ticket in New Orleans in act of civil disobedience - results in landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)
- Jun 7 John J. Doyle of Clev Spiders is 1st to pinch hit in a baseball game
- Jun 7 Republican convention in Minneapolis begins
- Jun 8 US shoemaker Homer A. Plessy refuses to go to in a segregated RR car (US Supreme Court Plessy v Ferguson)
- Jun 9 26th Belmont: W Hayward aboard Patron wins in 2:12
- Jun 10 Baltimore catcher Wilbert Robinson sets MLB record by going 7-for-7 in a 9-inning game; Orioles rout St. Louis Cardinals, 25-4 at Oriole Park
- Jun 11 The Limelight Department, one of the world's first film studios, is officially established in Melbourne, Australia
- Jun 12 Netherlands Society for Currency & Coin collecting forms
- Jun 18 Brothers Edward and Robert Jordan plant 1st Macadamia nuts in Oahu, Hawaii
- Jun 25 US National Championship Women's Tennis, Philadelphia Cricket Club: Defending champion Mabel Cahill beats Elisabeth Moore 5-7, 6-3, 6-4, 4-6, 6-2
- Jun 28 Phillies tie club record of 16 straight victories
- Jul 4 James Keir Hardie chosen 1st socialist in British Lower house
- Jul 4 Western Samoa changes the International Date Line, so that year there were 367 days in this country, with two occurrences of Monday, July 4
Wimbledon Men's Tennis
Jul 4 Wimbledon Men's Tennis: Defending champion Wilfred Baddeley beats Joshua Pim 4-6, 6-3, 6-3, 6-2
- Jul 6 Dadabhai Naoroji elected as first Indian Member of Parliament in Britain
Event of Interest
Jul 6 Jose Rizal forms La Liga Filipina in Manila
- Jul 6 Striking steel workers in Homestead, Pennsylvania, fire on scabs, killing 7
- Jul 7 Katipunan: the Revolutionary Philippine Brotherhood is established leading to the fall of the Spanish Empire in Asia
Wimbledon Women's Tennis
Jul 7 Wimbledon Women's Tennis: Lottie Dod beats Blanche Bingley-Hillyard for a 4th time in a Wimbledon final 6-1, 6-1
- Jul 8 American Psychological Association organized in Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts
- Jul 8 St. John's, Newfoundland is devastated in the Great Fire of 1892
Incandescent Lamp Controversy
Jul 11 US Patent Office says Joseph Swan rather than Thomas Edison, invented the electric light carbon for the incandescent lamp
Event of Interest
Aug 4 Queen Wilhelmina and Emma open Merwede Canal between Amsterdam and the Rhine
Murder of Interest
Aug 4 Sunday school teacher Lizzie Borden's father and stepmother are murdered with an axe in Fall River, Massachusetts; Borden is later arrested, tried and acquitted
- Aug 13 US black newspaper "Afro-American" begins publishing from Baltimore
Fourth Gladstone Ministry
Aug 15 4th & last British government of William Gladstone forms
David Beatty Promoted
Aug 25 British naval officer David Beatty is promoted to lieutenant
Corbett KOs Sullivan
Sep 7 James Corbett KOs 4 to 1 favourite and defending champion John L. Sullivan in 21 rounds at the Olympic Club, New Orleans for world heavyweight boxing title; Sullivan's only defeat and his last fight
- Sep 8 1st appearance of "Pledge of Allegiance" (Youth's Companion)
- Sep 9 Edward Emerson Barnard at Lick Observatory discovers Amalthea, Jupiter's 5th moon
- Sep 9 Manifesto of the Queensland Labour Party to the people of Queensland issued, detailing grievances of working class towards ruling class. Pivotal document in Australian labor and political history. [1]
- Sep 16 Amsterdam swimming club renamed "The Y"
- Sep 23 British Open Men's Golf, Muirfield: Harold Hilton wins by 3 shots from amateur John Ball, Sandy Herd & Hugh Kirkaldy
John Philip Sousa's New Marine Band
Sep 26 1st public appearance of John Philip Sousa's New Marine Band, at Stillman Music Hall in Plainfield, New Jersey
Music History
Oct 8 Sergei Rachmaninoff first performs "Prelude in C-sharp-Minor" in Moscow
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Oct 14 Arthur Conan Doyle publishes "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" collection of 12 stories originally published serially in "The Strand Magazine"
Southern Horrors
Oct 26 "Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases" first published by African American journalist Ida B. Wells in Memphis, Tennessee
- Nov 2 French poet Paul Verlaine visits Netherlands
Election of Interest
Nov 8 Grover Cleveland (D) elected 24th US President
- Nov 10 1st CRU championship game: Osgoode Hall defeats Montreal, 45-5
- Nov 12 Pudge Heffelfinger receives $500 to become first professional football player in the Allegheny Athletic Association's 4-0 win over the Pittsburgh Athletic Club
- Nov 23 Battle of Lomani Congo: Belgian unit beats Arabs, 1000-3000 killed
- Nov 23 Pierre de Coubertin launches plan for modern Olympic Games at the Union des Sociétés Françaises de Sports Athlétiques AGM
- Dec 5 Anti-semite Hermann Ahlwardt elected to Germany's Reichstag
Event of Interest
Dec 5 John Thompson becomes the 4th Prime Minister of Canada.
Music Premiere
Dec 18 Anton Bruckner's 8th Symphony premieres at the Vienna Musikverein, with Hans Richter leading the Vienna Philharmonic
The Nutcracker
Dec 18 Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's ballet "The Nutcracker" premieres in Saint Petersburg, Russia, now the world's most performed ballet; his final opera "Isolanta" also premieres
- Dec 20 Pneumatic automobile tire patented, Syracuse, NY
- Dec 26 Opera "Cristoforo Colombo" is produced (La Scala)
- Dec 27 Biddle University beats Livingstone College 5-0 in 1st black college football game, in Salisbury, North Carolina
- Dec 27 Foundation Stone of Cathedral of St John laid (NYC)
- Dec 30 Dr Miles V Lynk, physician, publishes 1st Black medical journal
Admirals
Aviators
Gangsters
Generals
Industrialists
Suffragists