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Top Song(s)
• Haydn Quartet - In the Good Old Summer Time
• Arthur Collins - Any Rags?
• Cal Stewart - Uncle Josh On an Automobile
• Henry Burr - Come Down, Ma Ev'ning Star
• Byron G Harlan - Always in the Way
Top Film(s)
• The Great Train Robbery
• Fairyland: A Kingdom of Fairies
• The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ
• The Infernal Caldron
• The Oracle of Delphi
Best Selling Book(s)
• The Call of the Wild - Jack London
• The Riddle of the Sands - Erskine Childers
• Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm - Kate Douglas Wiggin
• The Tailor of Gloucester - Beatrix Potter
• The Ambassadors - Henry James
Famous Deaths
• January 7 – Robert Atkinson Davis, businessman, politician and 4th Premier of Manitoba.
• February 18 - Prince Komatsu Akihito, Field Marshal, Chief of the General Staff.
• February 26 – Richard Jordan Gatling, American inventor.
• March 16 – Roy Bean, American justice of the peace.
• April 11 - Gemma Galgani, Italian mystic, Catholic saint.
• April 27 – William Travers, lawyer, politician, explorer, and naturalist in New Zealand.
• April 30 – Emily Stowe, first female doctor to practice in Canada and women's rights and suffrage activist.
• July 20 – Pope Leo XIII, Italian Roman Catholic Pope.
• August 1 – Calamity Jane, American frontierswoman.
• August 27 – Kusumoto Ine, physician, first female doctor of Western medicine in Japan.
Medical/Science/Technology
• First patent for adrenaline (epinephrine) granted to Japanese-American chemist Jokichi Takamine.
• Nobel Prize for physics awarded to Pierre and Marie Curie for their study of spontaneous radiation.
• First documented, successful, controlled, powered flight of a heavier-than-air aircraft with a petrol engine by Orville Wright.
• Fauna and Flora International is founded as the Society for the Preservation of the Wild Fauna of the Empire.
• Peter Cooper Hewitt demonstrates the mercury-vapour lamp.
• Mikhail Semyonovich Tsvet invents chromatography, an important analytic technique.
• Baker valve gear for steam locomotives is first patented in the United States.
• Willem Einthoven discovers electrocardiography (ECG/EKG).
• Percy Furnivall carries out the first known case of cardiac surgery in Britain.
• Windscreen wiper for automobiles is first patented by Mary Anderson in the United States.
Political Events
• January 2 - US President Theodore Roosevelt shuts down post office in Indianola, Mississippi, for refusing to accept its appointed postmistress because she was black.
• January 22 - The Hay-Herran Treaty concerning the USA's right to the Panama Canal is signed in Washington, D.C.
• February 11 - US Congress adopts the Expedition Act, which authorizes the Attorney General to 'expedite' anti-trust cases through the courts.
• February 14 - President Theodore Roosevelt signs bill into law establishing US Department of Commerce & Labor.
• February 18 - Dutch government of Abraham Kuyper launches anti-strike laws.
• May 23 - 1st direct primary election law in US adopted, by Wisconsin.
• June 16 - Reichstag elections with gains for the Social Democratic Party of Germany.
• October 5 - Samuel Griffith is appointed the first Chief Justice of Australia.
• October 10 - The Women's Social and Political Union is formed by Emmeline Pankhurst to fight for women's rights in Britain.
• October 20 - US wins disputed boundary between District of Alaska & Canada.
National Events
• January 4 - Topsy the elephant is electrocuted by her owners at Luna Park, Coney Island and filmed by Edison Manufacturing movie company.
• January 1 - President Theodore Roosevelt and Edith Roosevelt unveil new renovations to The White House, including a new West Wing
• January 5 - SF-Hawaii telegraph cable opens for public use.
• January 13 - Rhodes Opera House burns in Boyertown, Pennsylvania killing 170.
• January 18 - The first transatlantic radio transmission to originate in the U.S is sent by a transmitter in Massachusetts.
• March 3 - North Carolina becomes 1st state requiring registration of nurses.
• March 23 - The Wright brothers 1st file a patent for a flying machine, which is granted 3 years later.
• May 23 - 1st automobile trip across US leaves San Francisco for New York, (arrives July 26).
• June 16 - Ford Motors under Henry Ford incorporates.
• August 17 - Joseph Pulitzer donates $1 million to Columbia University and begins the Pulitzer Prizes in America.
Worldwide Events
• January 6 - Dutch Press museum opens in Amsterdam.
• March 26 - American Hotel opens in Amsterdam
• April 6 - The Kishinev pogrom in Bessarabia begins, forcing tens of thousands of Jews to later seek refuge.
• May 1 - King Edward VII of Great Britain visits Paris, in a first step toward improving Anglo-French relations.
• June 16 - Roald Amundsen commences the first east-west navigation of the Northwest Passage by leaving Oslo, Norway.
• June 29 - British government protests against abuses in Belgian Congo.
• August 2 - Unsuccessful uprising of Macedonians against the Ottoman Empire.
• October 6 - The High Court of Australia sits for the first time.
• November 2 - British newspaper "Daily Mirror" begins publishing.
• December 9 - Norwegian parliament votes unanimously for female suffrage.