Directory

1898 CE

New York City annexes land from surrounding counties, creating the City of Greater New York as the world's second largest. The city is geographically divided into five boroughs: Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, The Bronx and Staten Island. In Melbourne the representatives of five colonies adopt a constitution which will become the basis of the Commonwealth of Australia. The American steam boat Walkatomica, which has made regular runs for travelers along the Gulf Coast of Florida since 1885, is destroyed by fire while in port in Tallahassee.

Geopolitics & Diplomacy

  • January 1 – New York City annexes land from surrounding counties, creating the City of Greater New York as the world's second largest. The city is geographically divided into five boroughs: Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, The Bronx and Staten Island.source
  • March 16 – In Melbourne the representatives of five colonies adopt a constitution which will become the basis of the Commonwealth of Australia.source
  • May 27 – The territory of Guangzhouwan is leased by China to France, according to the Treaty of 12 April 1892, as the Territoire de Kouang-Tchéou-Wan, forming part of French Indochina.source
  • June 12 – Philippine Declaration of Independence: After 333 years of Spanish dominance, General Emilio Aguinaldo declares the Philippines' independence from Spain.source
  • June 13 – Yukon Territory is formed in Canada, with Dawson chosen as its capital.source
  • June 21 – Spanish–American War: The United States captures Guam, making it the first overseas territory of the U.S.source
  • June 28 – Effective date of the Curtis Act of 1898 which will lead to the dissolution of tribal and communal lands in Indian Territory and ultimately the creation of the State of Oklahoma in 1907.source
  • July 7 – The United States annexes the Hawaiian Islands.source
  • August 24 – Chickasaw and Choctaw tribes sign the Atoka Agreement, a requirement of the Curtis Act of 1898.source
  • August 25 – 700 Greeks and 15 Englishmen are slaughtered by the Turks in Heraklion, Greece, leading to the establishment of the autonomous Cretan State.source
  • October 16 – The island of Puerto Rico is turned over by Spain to the United States. Ángel Rivero Méndez, the 149th and last Spanish governor of Puerto Rico, yields the office and turns over the keys to all military installations in the capital, San Juan to U.S. Army Captain Henry A. Reed, and General John R. Brooke becomes the new American military governor.source
  • October 28 – U.S. President William McKinley rejects a peace proposal that would result in Spain ceding the island of Luzon to the U.S., in return for Spanish control of the other Philippine Islands. McKinley's message to his five-man negotiating team in Paris is that "Cessation of Luzon alone, leaving the rest of the islands subject to Spanish rule, or to be the subject of future contention, cannot be justified on political, commercial, or humanitarian grounds. The cessation must be the whole archipelago or none."source
  • October 31 – Count Ōkuma Shigenobu, Japan's Prime Minister, announces his resignation along with that of his cabinet of ministers.source
  • November 1 – Charles Dupuy forms a new government as Prime Minister of France following the resignation of Henri Brisson.source
  • November 5 – Negros Revolution: Filipinos on the island of Negros revolt against Spanish rule and establish the short-lived Republic of Negros.source
  • November 7 – The final meeting of the Cuban Assembly of the República de Cuba en Armas, which had been founded in 1895 during the Cuban War of Independence, is called to order by General Calixto García in the city of Santa Cruz del Sur. Domingo Méndez Capote is elected as president of the assembly.source
  • November 8 – Count Yamagata Aritomo forms a new government as Prime Minister of Japan.source
  • November 10 – The new United Central American States, a merger of El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua, places its capital in the Nicaraguan city of Chinandega.source
  • November 10 – Bartolomé Masó, the President of the República de Cuba en Armas that had been founded during the Cuban War of Independence, resigns.source
  • November 12 – The Earl of Minto takes office as the new Governor General of Canada.source
  • November 26 – General Ramón Blanco resigns as the spanish Governor-General of Cuba and is replaced by General Adolfo Jiménez Castellanos.source
  • November 30 – The United Central American States, a merger of Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador, is formally dissolved after the government was unable to suppress a revolution in San Salvador.source
  • December 2 – The French Chamber of Deputies declines to endorse the policies of Prime Minister Charles Dupuy, with the vote failing 228 to 243.source
  • December 10 – The Treaty of Paris is signed, ending the Spanish–American War.source

Conflict & Security

  • April 5 – Annie Oakley promotes the service of women in combat situations, with the United States military. On this day, she writes a letter to President William McKinley "offering the government the services of a company of 50 'lady sharpshooters' who would provide their own arms and ammunition should war break out with Spain."source
  • April 21 – Spanish–American War: The United States Navy begins a blockade of Cuban ports and the captures a Spanish merchant ship.source
  • April 23 – Spanish–American War: A conference of senior Spanish Navy officers led by naval minister Segismundo Bermejo decide to send Admiral Pascual Cervera's squadron to Cuba and Puerto Rico.source
  • April 25 – Spanish–American War: The United States declares war on Spain; the U.S. Congress announces that a state of war has existed since April 21 (later backdating this one more day to April 20).source
  • May 1 – Spanish–American War: Battle of Manila Bay – Commodore Dewey destroys the Spanish squadron, in the first battle of the war, as well as the first battle in the Philippines Campaign.source
  • May 7–9 – Bava Beccaris massacre: Hundreds of demonstrators are killed, when General Fiorenzo Bava Beccaris orders troops to fire on a rally in Milan, Italy.source
  • May 12 – Spanish–American War: The Puerto Rican Campaign begins with the Bombardment of San Juan.source
  • July 1 – Spanish–American War: Battle of San Juan Hill – United States troops (including Buffalo Soldiers and Theodore Roosevelt's Rough Riders) take a strategic position close to Santiago de Cuba from the Spanish.source
  • July 3 – Spanish–American War: Battle of Santiago de Cuba – The United States Navy destroys the Spanish Navy's Caribbean Squadron.source
  • July 17 – Spanish–American War: Battle of Santiago Bay. Troops under United States General William R. Shafter take the city of Santiago de Cuba from the Spanish.source
  • July 25 – Spanish–American War: The United States invasion of Puerto Rico begins, with a landing at Guánica Bay.source
  • August 12 – Spanish–American War: Hostilities end between American and Spanish forces in Cuba.source
  • August 13 – Spanish–American War: Battle of Manila – By prior agreement, the Spanish commander surrenders the city of Manila in the Philippines to the United States, in order to keep it out of the hands of Filipino rebels, ending the war.source
  • September 2 – Battle of Omdurman (Mahdist War): British and Egyptian troops led by Horatio Kitchener defeat Sudanese tribesmen led by Khalifa Abdullah al-Taashi, thus establishing British dominance in the Sudan. 11,000 Sudanese are killed and 1,600 wounded in the battle.source
  • September 10 – Italian anarchist Luigi Lucheni assassinates Empress Elisabeth of Austria in Geneva, as an act of propaganda of the deed.source
  • September 18 – Fashoda Incident: A powerful flotilla of British gunboats arrives at the French-occupied fort of Fashoda on the White Nile, leading to a diplomatic stalemate, until French troops are ordered to withdraw on November 3.source
  • September 21 – Empress Dowager Cixi of China engineers a coup d'état, marking the end of the Hundred Days' Reform; the Guangxu Emperor is arrested.source
  • October 5 – At the Battle of Sugar Point in the Indian Wars, some Pillager Band of Chippewa Indians (a group of Ojibwe, referred to at the time as Chippewa) warriors, led by Bugonaygeshig, defeat U.S. Army infantry troops in northern Minnesota, with seven U.S. troops killed and 19 wounded. Bugonayegeshig, whom the American soldiers were sent to capture, escapes and is never apprehended.source
  • October 21 – General Leonard Wood, the U.S. military governor of Cuba, issues a proclamation guaranteeing personal rights to the Cuban people.source
  • October 28 – A general uprising by Filipinos, led by Adriano Hernández against the remaining Spanish authorities in the Philippines begins in the province of Iloilo on the island of Panay.source
  • November 3 – With increasing violence threatened by rebels in China, the Russian fleet at Port Arthur and the British warships at Wei-Hai-Wei are readied for battle.source
  • November 9 – In the U.S., the racial violence in Phoenix, South Carolina, comes to an end after 12 African-Americans have been lynched.source
  • November 10 – The Wilmington massacre of 1898 begins as a coup d'état by the white Democratic Party of the U.S. state of North Carolina against the Republican Mayor of Wilmington. On the first day, a building housing a negro newspaper is burned and eight African Americans are killed.source
  • November 26 – The U.S. Marines arrive on USS Boston at Tientsin in China in order to guard the American legation at Beijing.source

Exploration & Expansion

  • June 1 – The Trans-Mississippi Exposition World's Fair opens, in Omaha, Nebraska.source
  • June 9 – The British government arranges a 99-year rent of extended territories of Hong Kong from China.source
  • July 3 – American adventurer Joshua Slocum completes a 3-year solo circumnavigation of the world.source
  • August 23 – The Southern Cross Expedition, the first British venture of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration, sets sail from London.source
  • October 10 – A military expedition departs from France toward the French Equatorial Africa colony of Chad. Commanded by Lieutenant de vaisseau Henri Bretonnet and Lt. Solomon Braun, the force is sent to liberate areas dominated by the Muslim warlord Rabih az-Zubayr, with the help of troops sent by the envoys of the Muslim rulers Mohammed al-Senoussi and Gaourang II, sultan of Bagirmisource
  • October 20 – The first residents of the "cooperative socialist colony", created by the Cooperative Brotherhood, arrive at what is now Burley, Washington in Kitsap County, settling on 260 acre km2 of land purchased by the Brotherhood.source

Religion & Belief

  • October 9 – Ignatius Ephrem II Rahmani is elected as the new Patriarch of Antioch, leader of the Syriac Catholic Church, subject to the approval of Pope Leo XIII, which is made on November 28.source
  • October 31 – The Lutheran Church of the Redeemer, Jerusalem, is dedicated after the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire presents the area, said to be the site of the Virgin Mary's home, to Germany's Roman Catholics.source

Economy & Finance

  • June 19 – Food processing giant Nabisco is founded in Chicago by merger as the National Biscuit Company.source

Technology & Infrastructure

  • March 24 – Robert Allison of Port Carbon, Pennsylvania, becomes the first person to buy an American-built automobile, when he buys a Winton automobile that has been advertised in Scientific American.source
  • March 26 – The Sabie Game Reserve in South Africa is created, as the first officially designated game reserve.source
  • April 25 – In Essen, German company Rheinisch-Westfälisches Elektrizitätswerk RWE is founded.source
  • April 29 – The Paris Auto Show, the first large-scale commercial vehicle exhibition show, is held in Tuileries Garden.source
  • August 20 – The Gornergrat railway opens, connecting Zermatt to the Gornergrat in Switzerland.source
  • October 11 – The Kubok Obschestva Velosipednoy Ezdy (Bicycle Riders Society Cup) first Grand Prix in Russia is staged with seven cars near Saint Petersburg, on a route from Alexandrovskaya to Strelna and back again for a total distance of 25 mi, and is won by Pavel Belyaev.source
  • October 15 – In Canada, the "9 O'Clock Gun" is fired for the first time at Stanley Park in Vancouver, and goes on to become a daily tradition to serve as a time signal for ships in port and for local residents to set their timepieces at exactly 9:00 p.m. local time.source
  • October 16 – The American ferryboat Berkeley, the only means prior to 1937 for motor vehicles to travel directly across San Francisco Bay between San Francisco and Oakland, is launched. Its role will be superseded in 1937 by the opening of the Golden Gate Bridge.source
  • October 24 – Chinese soldiers attack a party of British engineers at the Marco Polo Bridge on the Beijing to Hankou railway.source
  • October 24 – Augustus Herring, hired by civil engineer Octave Chanute to design and help test heavier-than-air flying machines, reportedly makes a flight near St. Joseph, Michigan, traveling slightly above the ground for a level distance of more than 70 ft in 10 seconds.source
  • December 15 – The French Chamber of Deputies votes to extend a loan of 200,000,000 francs for the construction of railroads in French Indochina.source
  • December 18 – Gaston de Chasseloup-Laubat sets the first official land speed record in an automobile, averaging over in France.source
  • December 25 – Penny postage goes into effect throughout the British Empire, setting the cost of mailing a letter to most British colonies at one pence. Rates remain the same for mail to Australia, New Zealand and the Cape Colony.source

Science & Discovery

  • May 28 – Secondo Pia takes the first photographs of the Shroud of Turin and discovers that the image on the Shroud itself appears to be a photographic negative.source
  • June 7 – William Ramsay and Morris Travers discover neon at their laboratory at University College London, after extracting it from liquid nitrogen.source
  • July 18 – "The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont" first appear in The Wide World Magazine, as its August 1898 issue goes on sale.source
  • December 26 – Marie and Pierre Curie announce the discovery of an element that they name radium.source

Health & Medicine

  • August 28 – American pharmacist Caleb Bradham names his soft drink Pepsi-Cola.source
  • September 21 – Geert Adriaans Boomgaard of Groningen in the Netherlands becomes the world's first validated supercentenarian.source
  • November 24 – Italy sends an ultimatum to the Sultan of Morocco concerning treatment of Italian residents.source
  • December 1 – The French government decrees a ban on imports of fruit and plants from the United States.source

Crime & Justice

  • February 23 – Émile Zola is imprisoned in France, after writing J'Accuse…!.source
  • October 3 – U.S. Senator Matthew Quay of Pennsylvania is arrested for conspiracy to defraud the People's Bank of Philadelphia.source
  • October 23 – An anarchist, suspected of plotting the assassination of Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm II, is arrested in Egypt at Alexandria.source
  • December 9 – The first of the two Tsavo Man-Eaters is shot by John Henry Patterson; the second is killed 3 weeks later, after 135 railway construction workers have been killed by the lions.source
  • December 15 – A warrant issued in Paris for the arrest of Count Ferdinand Esterhazy in connection with the Dreyfus case.source
  • December 29 – King Umberto of Italy commutes the sentences of all prisoners who had been given the death penalty.source
  • December 31 – French serial killer Joseph Vacher is executed at Bourg-en-Bresse.source

Disasters & Accidents

  • February 12 – The automobile belonging to Henry Lindfield of Brighton rolls out of control down a hill in Purley, London, England, and hits a tree; thus he becomes the world's first fatality from an automobile accident on a public highway.source
  • February 15 – Spanish–American War: The explodes and sinks in Havana Harbor, Cuba, for reasons never fully established, killing 266 men. The event precipitates the United States' declaration of war on Spain, two months later.source
  • April 26 – An explosion in Santa Cruz, California, kills 13 workers, at the California Powder Works.source
  • June 10 – Tuone Udaina, the last known speaker of the Dalmatian language, is killed in an explosion.source
  • July 4 – En route from New York to Le Havre, the ocean liner collides with another ship and sinks with the loss of 549 lives. It is considered one of the worst maritime disasters in historysource
  • October 4 – The American steam boat Walkatomica, which has made regular runs for travelers along the Gulf Coast of Florida since 1885, is destroyed by fire while in port in Tallahassee.source
  • October 26 – A collision between two Japanese steamers at sea kills 60 Japanese sailors.source
  • November 5 – In the U.S., the collapse of a theater under construction in Detroit kills 11 workmen.source
  • November 5 – In China, an admiral of the Imperial Russian Navy and 40 sailors are denied permission by the Chinese government to proceed from Tientsin to Beijing.source
  • November 18 – The wreck of the ship Atalanta off the coast of the U.S. state of Oregon kills 28 of the 30 crew aboard.source
  • November 27 – All 115 people aboard the American steamer SS Portland are killed when the ship founders off of the coast of Cape Cod.source
  • December 4 – The wreck of the British steamer SS Clan Drummond in the Bay of Biscay kills 37 people on board.source
  • December 5 – A fire at a factory in the Russian city of Vilana (modern-day Vilnius in Lithuania) kills 15 women and girls, most of whom die after jumping from the windows.source

Climate & Environment

  • November 26 – A two-day blizzard known as the Portland Gale piles snow in Boston, severely impacting the Massachusetts fishing industry and several coastal New England towns.source
  • December 28 – The Swiss village of Airolo is buried in an avalanche.source

Culture & Society

  • January 13 – Novelist Émile Zola's open letter to the President of the French Republic on the Dreyfus affair, J'Accuse…!, is published on the front page of the Paris daily newspaper L'Aurore, accusing the government of wrongfully imprisoning Alfred Dreyfus and of antisemitism.source
  • March 13 – Vladimir Lenin creates the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in Minsk.source
  • March 14 – Association football and sports club BSC Young Boys is established in Bern, Switzerland, as the Fussballclub Young Boys.source
  • May 2 – Thousands of Chinese scholars and Beijing citizens seeking reforms protest in front of the capital control yuan.source
  • May 8 – The first games of the Italian Football Federation are played, in which Genoa play against Torino.source
  • May 22 – The German Federation football club SV Darmstadt 98 is formed.source
  • June 11 – The Guangxu Emperor announces the creation of what would later become Peking University.source
  • August 21 – Clube de Regatas Vasco da Gama is founded in Rio de Janeiro.source
  • October 1 – The Vienna University of Economics and Business is founded, under the name K.u.K. Exportakademie.source
  • October 6 – The Sinfonia Club, later to become the Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia fraternity, is founded at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston by Ossian Everett Mills.source
  • October 12 – The Michigan–Michigan State football rivalry begins in U.S. college football as Michigan University defeats Michigan Agricultural College, 39 to 0.source
  • October 14 – At the age of 16, Russian composer Igor Stravinsky creates his first composition, the unfinished piano fragment "Tarantella". The piece will remain undiscovered for 72 years and will first be performed in 2021, more than 120 years after it was composed.source
  • October 15 – The Fork Union Military Academy is founded, in Fork Union, Virginia.source
  • October 19 – The Universidad Literaria y Cientifica de Filipinas, the first Filipino operated university and the precursor to the University of the Philippines, is established shortly after the proclamation of the First Philippine Republic.source
  • October 25 – The Academia Militar, precursor to the Philippine Military Academy, is founded at Malolos by decree of Philippine Republic President Emilio Aguinaldo.source
  • November 19 – In U.S. college football, Harvard University defeats Yale University, 17 to 0, to close the season unbeaten.source
  • December 21 – Prince George of Greece arrives in Crete as its High Commissioner, and is escorted by the flagships of four nations.source
  • December 29 – The Moscow Art Theatre production of The Seagull by Anton Chekhov opens.source
  • The first volume of the Linguistic Survey of India is published in Calcutta.source

Births

  • January 13 – Kaj Munk, Danish playwright, Lutheran pastor and martyr (d. 1944)source
  • January 22 – Sergei Eisenstein, Russian and Soviet film director (d. 1948)source
  • February 18 – Luis Muñoz Marín, Puerto Rican poet, journalist and politician (d. 1980)source
  • April 9 – Paul Robeson, African-American actor, singer and political activist (d. 1976)source
  • May 19 – Julius Evola, Italian philosopher (d. 1974)source
  • May 21 – Armand Hammer, American entrepreneur, art collector (d. 1990)source
  • May 23 – Josef Terboven, German Nazi politician, Reichskommissar for Norway 1940–1945 (d. 1945)source
  • July 29 – Isidor Isaac Rabi, American physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1988)source
  • September 24 – Howard Florey, Australian-born pharmacologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 1968)source
  • October 16 – William O. Douglas, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States (d. 1980)source
  • November 14 – Benjamin Fondane, Romanian-French Symbolist poet, critic and existentialist philosopher (d. 1944)source
  • November 24 – Liu Shaoqi, President of China (d. 1969)source
  • November 26 – Karl Ziegler, German chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1973)source
  • December 20 – Irene Dunne, American actress (d. 1990)source

Deaths

  • January 3 – Lawrence Sullivan Ross, Confederate brigadier general, Texas governor, and president of Texas A&M University (b. 1838)source
  • January 16 – Charles Pelham Villiers, longest-serving MP in the British House of Commons (b. 1802)source
  • February 6 – Abdul Samad of Selangor, Malaysian ruler, 4th Sultan of Selangor (b. 1804)source
  • March 10 – George Müller, Prussian evangelist, founder of the Ashley Down orphanage (b. 1805)source
  • March 11 – William Rosecrans, California congressman, Register of the U.S. Treasury (b. 1819)source
  • March 27 – Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, Indian university founder (b. 1817)source
  • July 14 – Louis-François Richer Laflèche, Roman Catholic Bishop of Trois-Rivières, Native American missionary (b. 1818)source
  • August 23 – Félicien Rops, Belgian artist (b. 1833)source
  • September 2 – Wilford Woodruff, fourth president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (b. 1807)source
  • September 10 – Empress Elisabeth of Austria, empress consort of Austria, queen consort of Hungary (assassinated) (b. 1837)source
  • September 16 – Ramón Emeterio Betances, Puerto Rican politician, medical doctor and diplomat (b. 1827)source
  • September 19 – Sir George Grey, 11th Premier of New Zealand (b. 1812)source
  • September 29 – Louise of Hesse-Kassel, German princess, queen consort of Christian IX of Denmark (b. 1817)source
  • December 24 – Charbel Makhluf, Lebanese Maronite, Roman Catholic and Eastern Catholic monk, priest and saint (b. 1828)source