- Jan 1 French troops occupy Nioro, West-Sudan, 3000 killed
- Jan 1 King Pakketvaart sails to Neth Indies
Event of Interest
Jan 26 Oscar Wilde's "Duchess of Padua" premieres in NYC
- Jan 27 Mine explosion kills 109 at Mount Pleasant Pennsylvania
- Jan 29 Liliuokalani is proclaimed Queen of Hawaii, its last monarch
- Jan 31 The first attempt of a Portuguese republican revolution breakes out in the northern city of Porto
- Feb 6 1st great train robbery by the Dalton Gang: Southern Pacific #17, near Alila (now Earlimart), California
- Feb 9 1st shipment of asparagus arrives in San Francisco from Sacramento
- Feb 15 AIK is founded at Biblioteksgatan 8 in Stockholm by Isidor Behrens.
- Feb 18 Capt Archinard's army fights with Nyamina of Niger in West-Sudan
- Feb 24 French troops under Captain Archinard occupy Diena West Sudan
- Feb 26 1st buffalo purchased for Golden Gate Park
Hedda Gabler
Feb 26 Henrik Ibsen's play "Hedda Gabler" premieres in Oslo
- Feb 28 Oscar Grundén skates world record 500m (50.8 sec)
- Mar 3 The Penalty Spot Kick rule in Association Football is conceived, but does not come into effect until the next season.
- Mar 3 US Congress creates Courts of Appeal
- Mar 3 US Congress creates Office of Superintendent of Immigration (Treasury Dept)
- Mar 3 US Congress establishes the Office of Immigration
Great Blizzard of 1891
Mar 9 Great Blizzard of 1891 begins in England and lasts until March 13; Kills 200 people and 6,000 animals
Event of Interest
Apr 1 French painter Paul Gauguin leaves Marseille for Tahiti
- Apr 1 London-Paris telephone connection opens
- Apr 1 The Wrigley Company is founded in Chicago, Illinois.
- Apr 7 Nebraska introduces 8 hour work day
- Apr 11 8-year old Jewish tailor's daughter disappears in Greece, rumor spreads that she was a Christian girl ritually killed by Jews
- Apr 23 Jews are expelled from Moscow, Russia
Event of Interest
Apr 25 US President Benjamin Harrison visits San Francisco
Assassination Attempt
May 11 The Otsu Scandal: While visiting Japan, Prince Nicholas (later Tsar Nicholas II) survives an assassination attempt
- May 16 George A. Hormel & Co establishes Geo. A.Hormel & Co. (Hormel Foods Corporation) in Austin, Minnesota
- May 19 Rice Institute, which became Rice University in Houston, Texas, is chartered
- May 31 Work on Trans-Siberian railway begins
- Jun 9 French painter Paul Gauguin arrives in Papeete, Tahiti
- Jun 11 Puerto Rican flag adopted
Event of Interest
Jun 16 John Abbott becomes Canada's third prime minister
- Jun 29 Street railway in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, commences operation
- Jun 29 US National Forest Service organized
- Jul 5 Hail kills 16 horses in Rapid City, South Dakota
- Jul 7 Marcellus F. Berry, an American Express employee is granted four copyrights for what he called "the travelers cheque"
- Jul 8 61°F, highest temperature for July 1891, in Baltimore and Philadelphia
- Jul 14 American John T. Smith patents corkboard
- Jul 26 France annexes Tahiti.
- Jul 26 Henry James' "American" premieres in London
- Jul 27 Titus van Wyck succeeds M de Savornin Lohman as governor of Suriname
- Aug 5 World's 1st traveler's cheques issued by American Express
- Aug 15 San Sebastian Church in Manila, the first all-steel church in Asia, is officially inaugurated and blessed
- Aug 16 President Benjamin Harrison attends the dedication of the Bennington Battle Monument in Bennington, Vermont
- Aug 17 1st public bathhouse with showers opens in NYC (People's Bath)
- Aug 17 Electric self-starter for automobile patented
- Aug 18 Hurricane hits Martinique, about 700 die
- Aug 19 William Huggins describes astronomical application of spectrum
- Aug 21 Dutch Mackay government resigns
Historic Invention
Aug 24 Thomas Edison patents motion picture camera
- Sep 3 Cotton pickers organize union & stage strike in Texas
- Sep 3 John Stephens Durham named US minister to Haiti
- Sep 7 Forces of British administrator Captain Frederick Lugard reache Kavalli, Equatoria
- Sep 11 The Jewish Colonization Association is established by Baron Maurice de Hirsch
- Sep 14 "Empire State Express" train goes from NYC to East Buffalo, a distance of 436 miles, in a record 7H6M
- Sep 18 Harriet Maxwell Converse is 1st white woman to become an Indian chief
- Sep 23 Vocational school Troop College, later California Institute of Technology (CalTech) established in Pasadena, California
Event of Interest
Oct 1 Stanford University, California opens its doors after being founded by Leland Stanford and his wife Jane with a $40M donation (1891 dollars), in memory of their son. Among its first graduation class, future US President Herbert Hoover.
- Oct 12 Astronomical Society of France is inaugurated
- Oct 20 1st International 6 day bike race at New York's Madison Square Garden begins
- Oct 25 1st International 6 day bike race (NY Madison Square Garden) ends
- Oct 28 Quake strikes Mino-Owari, Japan kills 7,300
- Nov 10 1st Women's Christian Temperance Union meeting held (in Boston)
- Nov 10 Granville T Woods patents electric railway
- Nov 30 Pope Leo XIII's encyclical "Rerum novarum" published
- Dec 2 52nd Congress (1891-93) convenes
- Dec 7 52nd US Congress (1st to appropriate $1 billion) holds 1st session
- Dec 19 1st Negro Catholic priest ordained in US, Charles Uncles, Baltimore
- Dec 20 Strongman Louis Cyr withstands pull of 4 horses
- Dec 29 Edison patents "transmission of signals electrically" (radio)