Beginnings
The first battery-operated telephone switchboard in Lexington, Massachusetts.
Blackpool Tower
The Manchester Ship Canal
Tower Bridge in London
Paris—Rouen Competition for Horseless Carriages, the first automobile competition.
New Zealand enacts the world’s first minimum wage law.
The National College of Music, London.
Sir William Ramsay and Lord Rayleigh discover the first noble gas, argon.
Discord
The Donghak Peasant Revolution in Korea.
Coxey’s Army (of the unemployed) marches from Massillon, Ohio, to Washington, D.C.
The May Day Riots (against unemployment) in Cleveland, Ohio.
In New York 12,000 tailors strike against sweatshop working conditions.
Late-period colonial geopolitics
Britain establishes a Protectorate over Uganda.
Japanese capture the port city of Lüshunkou and begin the “Port Arthur massacre” killing more than 1,000 Chinese servicemen and civilians.
Disaster and disgrace
Bubonic plague breaks out in the Hong Kong, killing 2,552 people.
A fire at the site of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago destroys most of the remaining buildings.
French Army officer Alfred Dreyfus is arrested for spying.
Births
Chesney Allen, British entertainer and comedian (d. 1982)
Fred Allen, American comedian (d. 1956)
Meher Baba, Indian Avatar of the Age (d. 1969)
Isaac Babel, Ukrainian writer (d. 1940)
Jack Benny, American actor and comedian (d. 1974)
King Boris III of Bulgaria (d. 1943)
Satyendra Nath Bose, Indian physicist (d. 1974)
Walter Brennan, American actor (d. 1974)
Louis-Ferdinand Céline, French writer (d. 1961)
e. e. cummings, American poet (d. 1962)
King Edward VIII of the United Kingdom, afterwards The Duke of Windsor (d. 1972)
René Fonck, French World War I flying ace (d. 1953)
John Ford, American film director (d. 1973)
V. V. Giri, Indian politician and 4th President of India (d. 1980)
Martha Graham, American dancer and choreographer (d. 1991)
Corinne Griffith, American actress and author (d. 1979)
Dashiell Hammett, American detective fiction writer (d. 1961)
Rudolf Hess, German Nazi official (d. 1987)
Aldous Huxley, English novelist (d. 1963)
Isham Jones, American bandleader (d. 1956)
Nikita Khrushchev, Soviet politician (d. 1971)
Alfred Kinsey, American sexologist (d. 1956)
Harold Macmillan, British Prime Minister (d. 1986)
Moms Mabley, African American comedian (d. 1975)
Konosuke Matsushita, Japanese industrialist (d. 1989)
Robert Menzies, Australian Prime Minister (d. 1978)
Dick Merrill, American aviation pioneer (d. 1982)
Khawaja Nazimuddin, Pakistani Prime Minister (d. 1964)
Pola Negri, Polish actress (d. 1987)
J. B. Priestley, English novelist and playwright (d. 1984)
Jean Renoir, French film director (d. 1979)
Norman Rockwell, American artist and illustrator (d. 1978)
Joseph Roth, Austrian writer (d. 1939)
E. C. Segar, American cartoonist, creator of Popeye (d. 1938)
Bessie Smith, American blues singer (d. 1937)
James Thurber, American cartoonist and writer (d. 1961)
Philip K. Wrigley, American business and sports executive (d. 1977)
Deaths
Marietta Alboni, Italian opera singer (b. 1826)
Emperor Alexander III of Russia (b. 1845)
Robert Michael Ballantyne, Scottish novelist (b. 1825)
Gustave Caillebotte, French painter (b. 1848)
Emmanuel Chabrier, French composer (b. 1841)
Marie François Sadi Carnot, French statesman (assassinated) (b. 1837)
Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, Bengali poet (b. 1838)
Hermann von Helmholtz, German physician and physicist (b. 1821)
Heinrich Hertz, German physicist (b. 1857)
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., American author (b. 1809)
Lajos Kossuth, Hungarian politician (b. 1802)
Anton Rubinstein, Russian pianist and composer (b. 1829)
Adolphe Sax, Belgian instrument maker, inventor of the saxophone (b. 1814)
Robert Louis Stevenson, Scottish author (b. 1850)
Ned Williamson, American baseball player (b. 1857)
Charles Romley Alder Wright, British chemist synthesized Heroin (b. 1844)