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Top Song(s)
• Sousa's Band - Stars & Stripes Forever
• Sousa's Band - American Patrol
• S H Dudley - When Reuben Comes to Town
• Cal Stewart - Uncle Josh's Huskin' Bee Dance
• Jack Morrison - Knocked 'Em in The Old Kent Road
Top Film(s)
• Bluebeard
• The India Rubber Head
• The Christmas Dream
• The Devil and the Statue
• Scrooge; or Marley's Ghost
Best Selling Book(s)
• The Tale of Peter Rabbit - Beatrix Potter
• Kim - Rudyard Kipling
• The First Men in the Moon - H.G. Wells
• My Brilliant Career - Miles Franklin
• The Violet Fairy Book - Andrew Lang
Famous Deaths
• January 6 – James W. Bradbury, United States Senator from Maine from 1847 to 1853.
• January 6 - Philip Danforth Armour, American industrialist (foundered meatpacking firm Armour Foods).
• January 16 - American clergyman, politician,1st African American in Congress.
• January 21 – Elisha Gray, inventor and co-founder of Western Electric Manufacturing Company.
• January 22 - Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom and Ireland.
• April 19 – Alfred Horatio Belo, newswriter and businessman, founder of The Dallas Morning News.
• July 4 - Julian Scott, artist and Civil War Medal of Honor recipient.
• November 8 – Mary Ann Bickerdyke, nurse and hospital administrator for Union soldiers.
• November 26 – John Denny, buffalo soldier and Medal of Honor recipient.
• November 27 – Clement Studebaker, automobile manufacturer.
Medical/Science/Technology
• Typhoid fever breaks out in a Seattle jail, the first of two typhoid outbreaks in the United States during the year.
• Karl Landsteiner discovers the existence of different human blood types.
• Alois Alzheimer identifies the first case of what becomes known as Alzheimer's disease.
• The worst heat wave in U.S. history until the 1930s, estimated to have killed over 9,500 people.
• The Bureau of Chemistry is established within the United States Department of Agriculture.
• The Edison Storage Battery Company is founded in New Jersey.
• Robert Falcon Scott sets sail on the RRS Discovery to explore the Ross Sea in Antarctica.
• Edith Humphrey becomes the first British woman to obtain a doctorate in chemistry, at the University of Zurich.
• Europium is discovered by Eugene-Anatole Demarcay.
• Eastman Kodak introduce the 120 film.
Political Events
• In Cuba, the constitutional delegates adopt a constitution much like that of the USA.
• Winston Churchill makes his maiden speech in the British House of Commons.
• William McKinley, 25th president of the United States died September 14.
• Vice President Theodore Roosevelt utters the famous phrase, "Speak softly and carry a big stick" at the Minnesota State Fair.
• The Hay–Pauncefote Treaty is signed by the United Kingdom and United States, ceding control of the Panama Canal to the United States.
• President William McKinley begins his second term; Theodore Roosevelt is sworn in as Vice President.
• The body of President Abraham Lincoln is exhumed and reinterred in concrete several feet thick.
• Benjamin Harrison, 23rd president of the United States died March 13.
• Edmund Barton is elected Prime Minister in Australia's first parliamentary election.
• Theodore Roosevelt is sworn in as the youngest man to serve as US President.
National Events
• The US Congress passes the Army Reorganization Act, placing the minimum number of men under arms at 58,000.
• Michigan schoolteacher Annie Taylor goes down Niagara Falls in a barrel and survives.
• U.S. Steel recognition strike of 1901.
• The U.S. stock market crashes for the first time.
• New York State becomes the first to require automobile license plates.
• Baseball's American League declares itself a Major League.
• In Evansville, Indiana, a fire burns through the business district, causing $175,000 of damage.
• Pentecostalism is born, at a prayer meeting at Bethel Bible College in Topeka, Kansas.
• In the first great Texas gusher, oil is discovered at Spindletop in Beaumont, Texas.
• Oil discovered at Spindletop, Beaumont, marking the start of the Texas oil boom.
Worldwide Events
• The Commonwealth of Australia is formed.
• In Bremen an assassin attempts to kill Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany.
• At a show in Paris, 71 Vincent van Gogh's paintings cause a sensation, 11 years after his death.
• Australian opera star Dame Nellie Melba reveals secret of her now famous toast.
• 1st British motorized burial.
• Pope Leo XIII issues an allocution deploring hostile actions against the Roman Catholic Church throughout Europe.
• Antisemitic riot in Budapest.
• A British appointed commission estimates today that some 1,250,000 Indians have died after a severe drought, lasting since 1899.
• Cook Islands annexed and proclaimed part of New Zealand.
• First exhibition by Pablo Picasso, aged 19, opens in Paris.