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Top Song(s)
• Henry Burr - I Wonder Who's Kissing Her Now
• Ada Jones - I've Got Rings on My Fingers
• Haydn Quartet - Put on Your Old Gray Bonnet
• Harry Lauder - She is my Daisy
• Ada Jones - I Remember You
Top Film(s)
• The Devilish Tenant
• Custody of the Child
• The Sealed Room
• A Corner in Wheat
• The Country Doctor
Best Selling Book(s)
• Anne of Avonlea - L.M. Montgomery
• The Phantom of the Opera - Gaston Leroux
• The Road to Oz - L. Frank Baum
• The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies - Beatrix Potter
• A Girl of the Limberlost - Gene Stratton-Porter
Famous Deaths
• February 17 - Geronimo, Apache leader and resistance fighter.
• March 16 - George Thorndike Angell, American lawyer and advocate for the humane treatment of animals (ASPCA).
• April 28 – Frederick Holbrook, 27th Governor of Vermont.
• July 5 - Emil Bohn, German organist, choral director, composer, and musicologist.
• July 23 - Ernest F. Cambier, Belgian colonial official (built railway in the Congo).
• September 7 - Eugene Lefebvre, French aviator pioneer (1st stunt pilot and 1st pilot to die flying a plane).
• September 9 - Edward Henry Harriman, American leading railroad builder (Union Pacific Railroad Company).
• October 26 - Ito Hirobumi, Japanese samurai, 1st Prime Minister of Japan.
• November 14 - Joshua Slocum, Canadian-American seaman and adventurer (first man to sail around the world alone).
• December 17 - Leopold II of Belgium, King of the Belgians.
Medical/Science/Technology
• Dwarf planet Pluto is photographed for the first time, at the Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay, Wisconsin.
• Kinemacolor, the first commercial "natural color" system for movies is invented.
• Leo Baekeland announces the creation of the early plastic Bakelite.
• Danish plant physiologist Wilhelm Johannsen introduces the term "Gene".
• The concept of p[H] as a measure of the acidity or basicity of an aqueous solution is introduced.
• A team under German chemist Fritz Hofmann first synthesizes synthetic rubber.
• Ernest Shackleton's expedition locates the South Magnetic Pole.
• French otolaryngologist Etienne Lombard discovers the Lombard effect.
• Einar Dessau uses a shortwave radio transmitter in Denmark.
• General Electric applies to patent an electric toaster invented by Frank E. Shailor in the United States.
Political Events
• February 1 - US Assay Office in Salt Lake City, Utah, opens.
• February 9 - 1st US federal legislation on narcotics prohibits importation, possession, and use of "smoking opium".
• February 12 – The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is founded.
• March 4 – William Howard Taft is sworn in as the 27th president of the United States.
• March 4 - US prohibits interstate transportation of game birds.
• April 9 - The US Congress pass the Payne-Aldrich bill, raising certain tariffs on goods entering the United States.
• August 2 - The United States Army Signal Corp Division purchases the world's first military airplane.
• September 4 – Japan and China sign the Gando Convention.
• November 11 – The U.S. Navy founds a navy base in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
• December 23 – King Albert I of Belgium succeeds his uncle, Leopold II.
National Events
• January 4 – Explorer Aeneas Mackintosh of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition escapes death by fleeing across ice floes.
• January 28 – U.S. troops leave Cuba after being there since the Spanish–American War.
• February 13 – Superior National Forest is established.
• February 24 – The Hudson Motor Car Company is founded.
• March 23 – Theodore Roosevelt leaves New York for the Smithsonian-Roosevelt African Expedition.
• June 22 – Construction begins on the Cape Cod Canal, which will separate Cape Cod from mainland Massachusetts.
• August 12 – The first event is held at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
• October 11 – The 1909 Florida Keys hurricane makes landfall in the U.S.
• November – New York shirtwaist strike of 1909 begins.
• December 31 – The Manhattan Bridge opens.
Worldwide Events
• January 7 – Colombia recognizes the independence of Panama.
• March 2 - Great Britain, France, Germany & Italy asks Serbia to set no territorial demands.
• March 31 – Construction begins on the RMS Titanic, at the Harland and Wolff Shipyard in Belfast.
• April 11 – The city of Tel Aviv is founded by the Jewish community.
• April 14 – Adana massacre: Ottoman Turks kill 15,000–30,000 Armenian Christians, in the Adana Vilayet.
• April 18 - Joan of Arc receives beatification by the Roman Catholic Church at St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican.
• May 13 - Christian National Labor Workers (CNV) party begins in Netherlands.
• July 16 – A revolution forces Mohammad Ali Shah of the Qajar dynasty to abdicate in favor of his son Ahmad Shah Qajar.
• October 13 – An agreement by Germany, Italy and Switzerland gives the Germans and Italians access to the Gotthard Rail Tunnel.
• November 18 – In Nicaragua, 500 revolutionaries are executed by order of dictator José Santos Zelaya.