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Top Song(s)
• Lucy Isabelle Marsh - The Glow-Worm
• Elise Stevenson - Are You Sincere?
• Nat Wills - No News, Or What Killed the Dog
• Edward Meeker - Take Me Out To The Ball Game
• Emilio DeGogorza - O Sole Mio
Top Film(s)
• The Electric Hotel
• The Thieving Hand
• The Frog
• French Interpreter Policeman
• A Tricky Painter's Fate
Best Selling Book(s)
• Anne of Green Gables - L.M. Montgomery
• The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
• A Room with a View - E.M. Forster
• Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz - L. Frank Baum
• The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck - by Beatrix Potter
Famous Deaths
• January 17 – Ferdinand IV, Grand Duke of Tuscany.
• February 1 - King Carlos I of Portugal.
• April 22 - Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
• May 26 – Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, Sikh Empire-born founder of the Ahmadiyya movement in Islam.
• June 14 – Frederick Stanley, Governor-General of Canada, founder of the Stanley Cup.
• July 20 – Demetrius Vikelas, 1st President of the International Olympic Committee.
• September 17 – Thomas Selfridge, United States Army officer, first person killed in an airplane crash.
• September 25 – Frank Robison, American baseball executive, early owner of the St. Louis Cardinals.
• November 1 – Mary F. Eastman, American educator, lecturer, writer and suffragist.
• December 22 – Jacob Parrott, the first person to receive the American Medal of Honor.
Medical/Science/Technology
• A 40,000-year-old Neanderthal boy skeleton is found at Le Moustier in southwest France.
• George Ellery Hale publishes his observation that sunspots have a magnetic field.
• Tunguska event in Siberia, an explosion believed to have been caused by the air burst of a large meteoroid or comet.
• Kikunae Ikeda discovers monosodium glutamate, the chemical behind the taste of umami.
• Heike Kamerlingh Onnes liquefies helium.
• Hans Geiger and Ernest Rutherford invent the Geiger counter.
• First Congress for Freudian Psychology, held in Salzburg.
• Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler introduces the term schizophrenia.
• The paper coffee filter, created by German housewife Melitta Bentz, is patented.
• James M. Spangler patents the upright portable vacuum cleaner in the United States.
Political Events
• January 22 - Katie Mulcahey is arrested for lighting a cigarette, violating the 1-day old "Sullivan Ordinance".
• February 1 – Lisbon Regicide: King Carlos I of Portugal and Prince Luis Filipe are shot dead in Lisbon.
• February 3 - Supreme Court rules a union boycott violates Sherman Antitrust Act.
• February 18 – Japanese emigration to the United States is forbidden, under terms of the Gentlemen's Agreement of 1907.
• March 23 – American diplomat Durham Stevens, an employee of Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, is assassinated.
• May 30 - 1st federal workmen's compensation law approved.
• October 1 - Penny Post is established between the United Kingdom and United States.
• October 5 - Bulgaria declares its independence from the Ottoman Empire; Ferdinand I of Bulgaria becomes Tsar.
• November 3 – Republican candidate William Howard Taft defeats William Jennings Bryan, 321 electoral votes to 162.
• November 15 – King Leopold II of Belgium formally relinquishes his personal control of the Congo Free State.
National Events
• January 13 – A fire breaks out at the Rhoads Opera House in Boyertown, Pennsylvania, killing 171 people.
• February 18 – First US postage stamps in rolls issued.
• March 4 - The Collinwood school fire near Cleveland, Ohio kills 174.
• April 21 – Frederick Cook claims to have reached the North Pole on this date.
• July 6 – Robert Peary sets sail for the North Pole.
• July 11 – The Western University of Pennsylvania is renamed the University of Pittsburgh.
• August 8 - The Hoover Company of Canton, Ohio, acquires rights to the upright portable vacuum cleaner.
• August 28 – American Messenger Company, predecessor of United Parcel Service, is founded in Washington state.
• September 28 – Classes begin at Benjamin Franklin Institute of Technology in Boston, Massachusetts.
• October 1 - Official launch of Henry Ford's Ford Model T automobile.
Worldwide Events
• January 1 – The British Nimrod Expedition led by Ernest Shackleton sets sail from New Zealand on the Nimrod for Antarctica.
• January 24 – Robert Baden-Powell's Scouting for Boys begins publication in London.
• March 27 – The first Scout troop outside the U.K. is formed in Gibraltar.
• April 20 – A rear-end collision of two trains in Melbourne, Australia kills 44 people and injures more than 400.
• May 26 – At Masjed Soleyman in southwest Persia, the first major commercial oil discovery in the Middle East is made.
• July 27–28 – The 1908 Hong Kong typhoon sinks the passenger steamer Ying King, causing 421 deaths.
• August 8 - Wilbur Wright flies in France for the first time, demonstrating true controlled powered flight in Europe.
• August 31 – The Great Storm of 1908 starts to pound the Bristol Channel, lasting into the morning of September 2.
• October 29 – Olivetti, the well-known typewriter and business equipment company, is founded in Italy.
• December 2 – Young Emperor Puyi ascends the Chinese throne at age 2.