Contents

1899

Wikimedia Commons has media related to 1899.

1899 (MDCCCXCIX) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar and a common year starting on Friday of the Julian calendar, the 1899th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 899th year of the 2nd millennium, the 99th year of the 19th century, and the 10th and last year of the 1890s decade. As of the start of 1899, the Gregorian calendar was 12 days ahead of the Julian calendar, which remained in localized use until 1923.

Events[edit]

January 1899[edit]

• January 1
  • Spanish rule ends in Cuba, concluding 400 years of the Spanish Empire in the Americas.
  • Queens and Staten Island become administratively part of New York City.
• January 2
  • Bolivia sets up a customs office in Puerto Alonso, leading to the Brazilian settlers there to declare the Republic of Acre in a revolt against Bolivian authorities.
  • The first part of the Jakarta Kota–Anyer Kidul railway on the island of Java is opened between Batavia Zuid (Jakarta Kota) and Tangerang.
• January 3 – Hungarian Prime Minister Dezső Bánffy fights an inconclusive duel with his bitter enemy in parliament, Horánszky Nándor.
• January 4
  • U.S. President William McKinley's declaration of December 21, 1898, proclaiming a policy of benevolent assimilation of the Philippines as a United States territory, is announced in Manila by the U.S. commander, General Elwell Otis, and angers independence activists who had fought against Spanish rule.
  • The American Society of Landscape Architects, still in existence 124 years later, is founded.
• January 5 – A fierce battle is fought between American troops and Filipino defenders at the town of Pililla on the island of Luzon. The Filipinos retreat to the mountains at Tanay.
• January 6 – Lord Curzon becomes Viceroy of India.
• January 7 – The Lucky Star, an English comic opera composed by Ivan Caryll and produced by the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company premieres at the Savoy Theatre in London for the first of 143 performances.
• January 8 – The Association football club SK Rapid Wien is founded in Vienna.
• January 9
  • After a successful revolt against the Ottoman Empire by the inhabitants of the island of Crete, the area, which joins Greece, gets its first constitution, with provisions for a provincial legislature with 138 Christian deputies and 50 Muslim deputies.
  • George F. Hoar, a U.S. Senator for Massachusetts, speaks out in the Senate against American expansion into the Philippines. The text of Hoar's speech is sent by cable to Hong Kong at a cost of $4,000 and is later cited by Ambassador John Barrett on January 13, 1900, as an incitement to Filipino attacks on U.S. troops.^[1]
• January 10 – The Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity is founded, at Illinois Wesleyan UniversityinBloomington, Illinois.
• January 11 – The Steel Plate Transferrers' Association, the first labor union for workers skilled in siderography (the engraving and mass reproduction of steel plates for newspaper printing) is established. After changing its name to the International Association of Siderographers, it will have 80 members at its peak. It dissolves in 1991, with only eight members left.^[2]
• January 12–13 – In the south-west of England, the Lynmouth life-boat Louisa is launched from Porlock Weir, entailing being hauled overland for 15 miles (24 km) with a climb of 1,423 feet (434 m) using 100 volunteers, to save all 18 crew of the Forrest Hall in the Bristol Channel.^[3][4]
• January 13 – The Canadian Northern Railway is established.^[5]
• January 14
  • The White Star Line's transatlantic ocean liner RMS Oceanic is launched from the Belfast shipyards in Ireland in front of over 50,000 people. At 17,272 gross register tons and 704 ft (215 m), she is the largest ship afloat at this time, following scrapping of the SS Great Eastern a decade earlier.^[6] On August 26 she is delivered to Liverpool to begin her maiden voyage on September 6.^[7]
  • The British four-masted sailing ship Andelana capsizes during a storm in Commencement Bay off the coast of the U.S. state of Washington, with the loss of all 17 of her crew.^[8]
• January 15 – The name of Puerto Rico is changed by the new U.S. military government to "Porto Rico".^[9] It will not be changed back until May 17, 1932.
• January 16 – Eduardo Calceta is appointed as Chief of the Army (Jefe General) of the rebel Philippine Republic army by Emilio Aguinaldo.^[10]
• January 17 – The United States takes possession of Wake Island in the Pacific Ocean.
• January 18 – The General Assembly of the U.S. state of Pennsylvania begins the task of filling the U.S. Senate seat of Matthew Quay, who has recently resigned after being indicted on criminal charges. After 79 ballots and three months, no candidate has a majority, and the General Assembly refuses to approve the governor's appointment of a successor, so the seat remains vacant for more than two years. The Pennsylvania experience later leads to the 17th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to provide for U.S. Senators to be directly elected by popular vote, rather than by the state legislatures.
• January 19
  • The Anglo-Egyptian Sudan is formed (it is disbanded in 1956).
  • Future film producer Samuel Goldwyn, born in Poland and later a resident of Germany and England, arrives in the United States at the age of sixteen as Szmuel Gelbfisz.
• January 20 – The Schurman Commission is created by U.S. President William McKinley to study the issue of the American approach to the sovereignty of the Philippines, ceded to the U.S. on December 10 by Spain. The five-man group, chaired by Cornell University President Jacob Schurman, later concludes that the Philippines will need to become financially independent before a republic can be created.
• January 21
  • Opel Motors opens for business in Germany.
  • The Malolos Constitution is ratified in the Province of Bulacan by the Revolutionary Government of the Philippines.

• January 22 – The leaders of six Australian colonies meet in Melbourne, to discuss the confederation of Australia as a whole.
• January 23
  • Emilio Aguinaldo is sworn in as President of the First Philippine Republic.
  • Mubarak Al-Sabah, the emir of Kuwait, signs the Anglo-Kuwaiti Agreement of 1899, a secret treaty with the British Empire to accept protectorate status for the Middle Eastern sheikdom in return for British protection of Kuwaiti territory.
  • The British Southern Cross Expedition crosses the Antarctic Circle.
• January 24 – The Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, one of the oldest medical schools in the United States, is founded.
• January 25 – The city of Ponce, Puerto Rico is saved from disaster by seven firemen and one volunteer civilian who disobey orders and stop "El Polverin", a fire near the U.S. Army's store of explosive artillery. A "Monument to the Heroes of El Poverin" is later erected in their honor.
• January 26
  • U.S. Representative George Henry WhiteofNorth Carolina, the only African-American in Congress at this time, delivers his first major speech, speaking out against disenfranchisement of black voters and proposing that the number of representatives from a U.S. state should be based on the number of persons of voting age who actually cast ballots, rather than population.^[11]
  • German inventor Karl Ferdinand Braun, who will later share the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics with Guglielmo Marconi, receives British Patent No. 1899-1862 for his wireless radio invention "Telegraphy without directly connected wire".^[12]
• January 27 – Camille Jenatzy of France becomes the first man to drive an automobile more than 80 kilometers per hour, almost breaking the 50 mph barrier when he reaches an unprecedented speed of 80.35 kilometres per hour (49.93 mph) in his CGA Dogcart racecar. Jenatzy's speed is more than 20% faster than the January 17 mark of 66.65 kilometres per hour (41.41 mph) set by Gaston de Chasseloup-Laubat.
• January 28
  • At a time when U.S. Senators are elected by the state legislature rather than by ballot, wealthy businessman William A. Clark is elected senator by the Montana state legislature after offering bribes to most of its members. The U.S. Senate refuses to seat him after evidence of the bribery is revealed.^[13]
  • The League of Peja, organized by Haxhi Zeka to lobby for a Kosovar Albanian state within the Ottoman Empire, attracts 450 delegates to its first convention, held at the city of Peja, in the modern-day Republic of Kosovo.^[14]
• January 29 – A lawyer for the estate of John W. Keely, an inventor who had persuaded investors in his Keely Motor Company that an automobile could be created that would operate from Keely's "induction resonance motion motor" which had achieved perpetual motion, reveals that the late Mr. Keely's motor has been a fraud, and that the widow knew nothing of it.^[15]
• January 30 – Dimitar Grekov is appointed as Prime Minister of BulgariabyKing Ferdinand I, but removed from office less than 10 months later on October 13.
• January 31 – Cherokee Nation voters in the Indian Territory (later the U.S. state of Oklahoma) approve a proposition to allot Cherokee lands and to dissolve the Cherokee government, but the U.S. Congress never ratifies the results.

February 1899[edit]

• February 1
  • Ranavalona III, who had been the Queen of Madagascar until being deposed on February 28, 1897, is sent into exile by English colonial authorities, along with the rest of the royal family. She departs on the ship Yang-Tse on a 28-day trip to Marseilles.^[16]
  • The Suntory whisky distiller and worldwide alcoholic and soft drink brand of Japan is established by Shinjiro Torii in Osaka as a store selling imported wines.^[17][18]
• February 2 – The participants in the Australian Premiers' Conference, held in Melbourne, agree that Australia's capital (Canberra) should be located between Sydney and Melbourne.
• February 3 – Kansas University's new college basketball team, coached by the game's inventor, Dr. James Naismith, plays its first game, and is defeated by the YMCA team of Kansas City, Kansas, 16 to 5.^[19]
• February 4
  • The Philippine–American War begins as hostilities break out in Manila.
  • Rudyard Kipling's poem "The White Man's Burden" is first published, appearing in The Times of London. A response to the United States occupation of the Philippine Islands, and exhorting members of the White race to be responsible for benevolent civilizing of the world's "non-white" people, the poem is reprinted in The New York Sun the next day.^[20]
• February 5 – The first major battle of the Philippine–American War concludes with the capture by the U.S. of the San Juan River Bridge that connects Manila and San Juan. U.S. Army General Arthur MacArthur Jr. directs troops of the U.S. Army Eighth Corps to victory over Filipino troops commanded by General Antonio Luna. In the two-day battle, 55 U.S. soldiers and 238 Filipino soldiers are killed.^[21]
• February 6 – A peace treaty between the United States and Spain is ratified by the United States Senate by a vote of 57 to 27 to end the Spanish–American War.
• February 7 – Elections are held in Greece for the 235 seats of the Hellenic Parliament. Supporters of the late Charilaos Trikoupis win 110 seats, 8 short of a majority, and Trikoupis's successor, Georgios Theotokis forms a government as Prime Minister.
• February 8 – Protests against the government of Russia breaks out at Saint Petersburg University and mounted police respond violently, causing a riot.^[22]
• February 9 – The Dodge Commission exonerates the U.S. Department of War from responsibility in the United States Army beef scandal, where meatpacking companies supplied low-grade, putrefied beef to American soldiers during the Spanish American War and caused an unquantified number of cases of food poisoning. While War Secretary Russell Alger is not accused of criminal negligence, the Commission implies that he was incompetent and he is later forced to resign.^[23]
• February 10
  • U.S. Army troops, supported by bombardment from the warships Charleston and Monadnock, defeat Filipino forces in the Battle of Caloocan and get control of the Manila to Dagupan railway. Colonel W. S. Metcalfe is later accused by some of his men of having ordered the shooting of Filipino soldiers taken prisoner.^[24]
  • Future U.S. President Herbert Hoover and his fiancée Lou Henry, both 24, are married at her parents' home in Monterey, California, and depart the next day for a 14-month stay in China, where Hoover works as a mining engineer.
• February 11 – The coldest temperature recorded up to this time in the continental United States is set as Fort Logan, Montana, records a low of −61 °F (−52 °C).^[25]
• February 12 – The Great Blizzard of 1899 strikes the east coast of the United States, causing subzero temperatures as far south as southern Florida for two days and destroying the citrus fruit crop that year.
• February 13
  • Cipriano Castro starts the Restorative Liberal Revolution by leading 60 people from the exile to cross the Colombia–Venezuela border to defeat Ignacio Andrade government.
  • In New York, the White Star ocean liner SSGermanic, already laden with ice and snow during its voyage from Liverpool, becomes even more weighed down after disembarking its passengers when the New York City blizzard strikes. With 3,600,000 pounds (1,600,000 kg) of added weight, the ship begins to list sideways and additional weight enters cargo doors that have been opened for refuelling. Germanic remains on the bottom of New York Harbor for more than a week while salvaging goes on, then requires refurbishing for three months, but becomes operational again.^[26]
• February 14 – Voting machines are approved by the U.S. Congress for use in federal elections.
• February 15 – The February Manifesto is issued by the Emperor of Russia, decreeing that a veto by the Diet of Finland may be overruled in legislative matters concerning the interest of all Russia, including autonomous Finland. The manifesto is viewed as unconstitutional and a coup d'état by many Finns, who have come to consider their country a separate constitutional state in its own right, in union with the Russian Empire. Furthermore, the manifesto also fails to elaborate the criteria that a law has to meet in order to be considered to concern Russian imperial interests, and not an internal affair of Finland (affairs over which the Diet's authority is supposed have remained unaltered), leaving it to be decided by the autocratic Emperor. This results in Finnish fears that the Diet of Finland may be overruled arbitrarily.
• February 16
  • Félix Faure, the President of France since 1895, dies of a stroke in his office while engaged in sexual activity with his mistress, Marguerite Steinheil.
  • Knattspyrnufélag Reykjavíkur, the first Association football club in Iceland, is established in the island's capital, Reykjavík.
• February 17 – The research vessel SSSouthern Cross, on an Antarctic expedition led by Carsten Borchgrevink, arrives at Cape Adare and begins unloading 90 sledge dogs – the first ever on the continent – and two Norwegian Sámi crewmen, Per Savio and Ole Must, who become the first humans to spend the night in Antarctica. Over the next 12 days, the rest of the 31-man crew bring in supplies and build a temporary settlement.
• February 18 – The National Assembly of France elects a new President to fill out the remainder of the late President Faure's term. Senate President Émile Loubet wins the vote, 483 to 278, against Prime Minister Jules Méline.^[27]
• February 19 – In Venezuela, the former Minister of War, Major General Ramón Guerra, angry with the reforms of President Ignacio Andrade, proclaims the state of Guárico as an independent territory. President Andrade orders General Augusto Lutowsky to crush the rebellion and Guerra flees to Colombia, but later comes back as Minister of War.^[28]
• February 20 – Discussions among members of a joint Anglo-American commission, set up by U.S. President William McKinley and Canadian Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier to resolve the Alaska boundary dispute, end abruptly after it is clear that the U.S. will not make any concessions. In response, Laurier makes clear that there will be no further concessions with the U.S. in trade.^[29]
• February 21
  • Gdadebo II, the Alake of Egba in modern-day southeast Nigeria, signs an agreement with the British Governor of Lagos Colony to lease lands for construction of a new railway from Aro to Abeokuta.
  • The British freighter SSJumna, with the capacity to carry more than 500 people, but shipping a load of coal with minimal crew, is last seen passing Rathlin Island off Northern Ireland. Bound from Scotland to deliver the shipment to Uruguay, it never arrives and is never seen again.^[30]
  • The Vicksburg National Military Park is established in Mississippi to preserve the battlefield of the Battle of Vicksburg that was fought in 1863 during the American Civil War.
• February 22 – Convention Hall, which later hosts two national political conventions, opens in Kansas City, Missouri, with a concert by the band of John Philip Sousa. The building burns down less than 14 months later.
• February 23 – In France, Paul Déroulède and Jules Guérin of the right-wing Ligue des Patriotes attempt to persuade General Georges-Gabriel de Pellieux to lead a coup d'état during the funeral of the late president Félix Faure in order to overthrow President Loubet. General Pellieux refuses to participate. Later in the year, Déroulède and Guérin are indicted for conspiracy against the government and banished from France.
• February 24 – The works of Catholic priest and theologian Herman Schell, including the recently published Der Katholicismus als Princip des Fortschritts and Die neue Zeit und der alte Glaubeare placed by the Roman Catholic Church on its Index Librorum Prohibitorum, the list of banned books.
• February 25 – In an accident at Grove Hill, Harrow, London, England, Edwin Sewell becomes the world's first driver of a petrol-driven vehicle to be killed; his passenger, Maj. James Richer, dies of injuries three days later.^[31]
• February 26 – Dezső Bánffy resigns as Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Hungary, at this time a partner in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and is succeeded by Kálmán Széll.
• February 27 – Japanese immigration to South America, primarily the nation of Peru, begins as the ship Sakura Maru departs from Yokohama with 790 men employed by the Morioka-shokai Sugar Company. The group arrives in Callao on April 3.^[32]
• February 28 – U.S. President William McKinley approves a law increasing the pension to American Civil War veterans, both Union and Confederate, to $25.00 per month.^[33]

March 1899[edit]

• March 1 – In Afghanistan, Capt. George Roos-Keppel makes a sudden attack on a predatory band of Chamkannis that have been raiding in the Kurram Valley, and captures 100 prisoners with 3,000 head of cattle.
• March 2 – Mount Rainier National Park is established in the U.S. state of Washington.
• March 3 – Guglielmo Marconi conducts radio beacon experiments on Salisbury Plain in England and notices that radio waves are being reflected back to the transmitter by objects they encounter, one of the early steps in the potential for developing radar.^[34]
• March 4 – Cyclone Mahina strikes Bathurst Bay, Queensland. A 12 meter high wave reaches up to 5 km inland, leaving over 400 dead (the deadliest natural disaster in Australia's history).
• March 5 – George B. Selden sells the rights to his patent for an internal combustion engine to the Electric Vehicle Company, and he and the company then claim a royalty on all automobiles using such an engine.^[35]

• March 6 – In Berlin, Felix Hoffmann patents Aspirin and Bayer registers its name as a trademark.^[36]
• March 7 – The Provisional Law on the Judiciary is issued in the Philippines to provide for the selection of a Chief Justice.
• March 8 – The Frankfurter Fußball-Club Victoria von 1899 (predecessor of Eintracht Frankfurt Association football club) is founded.
• March 9 – Japan promulgates its commercial code, the Shōhō, to take effect on June 16. The Shōhō replaces the Kyu-shoho that had come into force on July 1, 1893, and, as amended, applies to Japanese business into the 21st century.^[37]
• March 10
  • The U.S. state of Delaware enacts its general corporation act that makes it the most important jurisdiction in United States corporate law.
  • At the Battle of Balantang, the U.S. Army sustains 400 casualties in an attack by Philippine troops under the command of Pascual Magbanua.
• March 11
  • The world's first wireless distress signal is sent by wireless telegraphy (in Morse code) to the East Goodwin light vessel when German cargo-carrying barquentine Elbe runs aground in fog on Goodwin Sands in the English Channel, bringing assistance from Ramsgate Lifeboat Station.^[38]
  • Waldemar Jungner files the patent application for the first alkaline battery and receives Swedish patent number 11132.^[39]
• March 12 – Encinal County, Texas, created on February 1, 1856, near the U.S. city of Laredo on the condition that it would create a county seat, is discontinued and annexed into neighboring Webb County.^[40] The largest town in the area, Bruni, has less than 400 people.
• March 13 – Chelan County, Washington is created from Okanogan and Kittitas counties for the area around Wenatchee.
• March 14
  • After a civil war breaks out in Samoa between Malietoa Tanumafili I (recognized by Germany, the U.K. and the U.S.) and rebels who recognize Mata'afa Iosefo as the island's king, the USS Philadelphia takes control of the capital at Apia.
  • Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm II takes direct command of the Imperial Navy.
• March 15 – Santa Cruz County is established in the southeast corner of Pima County around the city of Nogales (built across from the border of the larger Mexican city of Nogales, Sonora) in the U.S. territory of Arizona.
• March 16 – Memorial ceremonies are held for the burial of the late German hero Otto von Bismarck and his wife, Johanna von Puttkamer with their re-interment at the Bismarck Mausoleum, a modern-day tourist attraction at FriedrichsruhinAumühle. Bismarck, who had died on July 30 last, had been buried along with his wife at the estate of his home in Varzin, the modern-day city of WarcinoinPoland.
• March 17 – A fire kills 86 people at the Windsor Hotel in New York City.^[41][42]
• March 18 – Phoebe, the ninth-known moon of the planet Saturn is discovered by U.S. astronomer William Pickering from analysis of photographic plates made by a Peruvian observatory seven months earlier, the first discovery of a satellite photographically.
• March 19
  • One of the first labor unions for government employees is formed with the organization in Denmark of the Copenhagen Municipal Workers' Union
  • The Battle of Taguig takes place in the Philippines as the USS Laguna de Bay bombards the Katipunan stronghold.
• March 20 – At Sing Sing prison in Ossining, New York, Martha M. Place becomes the first woman to be executed in an electric chair.
• March 21 – The Eden TheatreinLa Ciotat, a small city in France near Marseilles, lays a claim to being the first cinema as brothers Auguste Lumière and Louis Lumière present their short film, L'Arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat ("The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station") to 250 surprised spectators. The action film shows a steam train pulling into La Ciotat station, passengers coming out of the cars, and departing passengers climbing on.^[43]
• March 22 – The coronation of Malietoa Tanumafili I as King of Samoa takes place. He had become the Malieota of the South Pacific island when his father died on August 22.^[44]
• March 23 – The U.S. cruiser USS Philadelphia and the Royal Navy cruisers HMS Porpoise and HMS Royalist bombard rebel-held villages in Samoa after an attack on Apia.^[44]
• March 24
  • The U.S. Ambassador to Argentina, acting as arbitrator of a boundary dispute between Argentina and Chile, awards the disputed territory to Chile.^[44]
  • George Dewey is made Admiral of the U.S. Navy.
• March 25 – The rowing crew of Cambridge University wins the annual boat race against Oxford University for the first time in a decade, finishing ahead of Oxford by 31⁄4 lengths on the Thames. Oxford had won the race nine times in a row from 1890 to 1898.
• March 26 – In the first major action in the Malolos Campaign in the Philippine–American War, 90 Filipino soldiers are killed in the Battle of the Meycauayan bridge.
• March 27
  • Guglielmo Marconi successfully transmits a radio signal across the English Channel.^[45]
  • In the Battle of Marilao River, Filipino forces under the personal command of Emilio Aguinaldo, President of the Philippines, fail to prevent troops of the United States Army crossing the river.
• March 28 – Alfred Martineau becomes the new French colonial governorofFrench Somaliland in northeast Africa, the modern-day Republic of Djibouti.
• March 29 – The First Philippine Republic relocates its capital from MalolostoSan Isidro, Nueva Ecija as the government flees an invasion of U.S. forces.
• March 30 – The British steamer Stella sinks in the English Channel with the loss of 80 people after wrecking against Les Casquets, a group of rocks near the Channel Islands.^[44]
• March 31
  • The United Kingdom announces that it has completed the purchase of rights to occupy the Kingdom of Tonga.^[44]
  • In the Philippine–American War, Malolos, capital of the First Philippine Republic, is captured by American forces.

April 1899[edit]

• April 1 – The Second Battle of Vailele takes place in Samoa as rebels loyal to King Mata'afa Iosefo force the retreat of American and British troops assisting Samoans loyal to Prince Tanumafili.
• April 2 – The Hamburg America Line cruise ship SS Graf Waldersee begins its maiden voyage.
• April 3 – The ship Sakura Maru brings 790 Japanese immigrants to the Peruvian port of Callao as the first persons from Japan to be accepted to live in South America.
• April 4
  • Cuba's General Assembly votes to disband the Cuban army and to dissolve to accept U.S. sovereignty.^[44]
  • The German Imperial Navy warship SMS Jaguar, which will be scuttled after losing the 1914 Siege of Tsingtao, begins service.
• April 5 – A team of five European geologists and 30 African laborers sets out from Northern Rhodesia to explore the minerals of central Africa for the British company Tanganyika Concessions, Ltd. (TCL). Discovering that the most valuable copper deposits are in the Congo Free State, TCL makes an unsuccessful attempt to purchase full rights from King Leopold of Belgium.
• April 6 – In an elaborate military ceremony, 336 of the 385 American soldiers killed in the Spanish–American War are interred at the Arlington National Cemetery.^[44]
• April 7 – The Shootout at Wilson Ranch, the last major gunfight of the Wild West era in the U.S., takes place in Tombstone, Arizona. Brothers William Halderman and Thomas Halderman, kill two lawmen. They will be hanged on November 16, 1900.
• April 8 – The Victors, the famous fight song for University of Michigan sports, is premiered at Ann Arbor, MichiganbyJohn Philip Sousa and his band. A student orchestra had played the music three days earlier for a smaller student audience.
• April 9
  • InUganda, King Chwa II Kabalega of the Bunyoro kingdom, a leader of the fight against British colonial occupation, is taken prisoner after being shot in a battle near Hoima. Kabalega is exiled to the Seychelles in the South Pacific ocean and remains there until 1923.
  • The Greek ship Maria sinks after a collision with the British steamer Kingswell in the Mediterranean and 45 people drown.^[44]
  • The Battle of Santa Cruz begins in the Philippines between U.S. Army troops and nationalists of the First Philippine Republic. After a two day battle, 93 Filipino fighters and one American soldier are dead.
• April 10 – Seven people are shot and killed in a gun battle at the Springside Mine at Pana, Illinois, between striking white union coal miners, and African-Americans hired as strikebreakers by the company.^[44] Five of the dead are black, including the wife of one of the non-union miners, along with one white miner and a white sheriff's deputy.
• April 11 – U.S. President William McKinley declares the Spanish-American War to be at an end as the Treaty of Paris between the U.S. and Spain goes into effect. Ratifications are exchanged between McKinley and French Ambassador Jules Cambon on behalf of Spain. Puerto Rico, the Philippines and Guam are ceded to the U.S. and Cuba becomes an American protectorate.^[44]
• April 12 – Bolivia's President Severo Fernández is overthrown in a military coup d'état led by General José Manuel Pando.
• April 13 – The British freighter City of York departs from the U.S. port of San Francisco with a crew of 27 and a cargo of Oregon timber bound for Fremantle in Australia, but never reaches its destination, wrecking on the reefs at Rottnest Island on July 12.
• April 14 – British Army troops in Hong Kong attack the Walled City of Kowloon on orders of colonial Governor Henry Blake, based on intelligence that Chinese Imperial Army troops have been stationed behind the walls to subvert Britain's 1898 lease. By April 19, the British commander discovers that the Chinese troops had already departed and that only 150 civilians remain.
• April 15 – Students at the University of California, Berkeley steal the Stanford Axe from Stanford University, yelling at leaders following a baseball game, thus establishing the Axe as a symbol of the rivalry between the schools.
• April 16
  • Voting is held in Spain for the 402 seats of the Congreso de los Diputados, and the Conservative Union wins a majority with 233 members.^[44] Voting for the Senate of Spain takes place on April 30.
  • Britain formally claims possession of the "New Territories" as an extension of its lease of Hong Kong to cover the area south of the Sham Chun River and 230 island in Kowloon Bay.
• April 17 – The first elections for the 10-member Legislative Council of the British colony of Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), limited to European candidates and voters.
• April 18 – The Local Government (Ireland) Act 1898 goes into effect, creating 32 counties of Ireland (six which would become Northern Ireland) and abolishes the counties corporateofCarrickfergus and Drogheda.
• April 19 – France adds the Kingdom of Laos, a protectorate since 1893, to the existing colony of French Indochina.
• April 20 – The controversial ballet Le Cygne, choreographed by Madame Mariquita and written by Catulle Mendès, premieres at the Opéra-ComiqueinParis, but is considered by critics to be too sexually explicit.
• April 21 – The nova V606 Aquilae is first observed from Earth as seen within the constellation Aquila. It fades within six months.
• April 22 – In aid of the Royal Niger Company, the British Army begins an invasion of Esanland, in southwestern Nigeria, to halt the resistance of the Esan chiefs still resistant to European rule. After Benin King Ologbosere is overcome, the British attack the kingdom at Ekpoma.
• April 23 – The steamship General Whitney sinks off the coast of St. Augustine, Florida. While everyone on board escapes in lifeboats, one of the boats capsizes, drowning the captain and 16 other crew.
• April 24 – The Scottish ship Loch Sloy is wrecked off the coast of Australia's Kangaroo Island, drowning 32 of the 35 people on board.
• April 25 – Voting is held for the 169-seat National AssemblyinBulgaria, and the Radoslava Party wins a majority.
• April 26 – Jean Sibelius conducts the world première of his Symphony No. 1inHelsinki (Finland).
• April 27 – In Australia, the Apostolic Church of Queensland receives formal recognition as a religious denomination.
• April 28 – The United Kingdom and the Russian Empire sign the Anglo-Russian Agreement formalizing their spheres of influence in China, essentially agreeing that Britain will not seek railway concessions north of the Great Wall of China, and Russia will avoid doing the same in the Yangtze River valley in southern China.^[46]
• April 29 – Camille Jenatzy of Belgium becomes the first person to drive faster than 100 kilometers per hour, powering his electric CITA Number 25 racecar, La Jamais Contente at 105.88 kilometres per hour (65.79 mph) at a track at Achères, near Paris.
• April 30 – In the Philippines, the U.S. establishes a protectorate over the Republic of Negros, a semi-independent government for Negros Island, separate from the rest of the Philippine Islands. The Republic exists until its annexation to the rest of the U.S. territory on April 20, 1901.

May 1899[edit]

• May 1 – U.S. Navy Admiral George Dewey reports that 10 officers and crew of the ship USS Yorktown have been taken prisoner by the Philippine republic.^[47]
• May 2 – The Kingdom of Siam (modern-day Thailand) cedes its province of Luang Prabang (now Laos) to France.^[47]
• May 3
  • Francisco Silvela becomes the new Prime Minister of Spain after the resignation on March 7 of Práxedes Sagasta in the wake of Spain's loss of its overseas territories during the Spanish-American War.
  • The Ferencvárosi TC Association football club is founded in Budapest.
• May 4
  • The thoroughbred horse Manuel, ridden by Fred Taral, wins the 25th running of the Kentucky Derby.
  • Inventor John Matthias Stroh applies for the patent for his new invention, the "Stroh violin", a stringed musical instrument with an amplifying horn attached. British Patent No. GB9418 is granted on March 24, 1900.
• May 5 – The village of Stirling, Alberta is founded in Canada as a Mormon colony of 30 American settlers from Richfield, Utah, led by Theodore Brandley
• May 6 – The first democratic elections in Philippine history are held in for a municipal government for Baliuag in the province of Bulacan.
• May 7 – The capital of the First Philippine Republic is moved by President Emilio Aguinaldo from ManolostoAngeles City
• May 8 – In the French West African colony of Niger, French Army Captain Paul Voulet carries out the massacre of the Hausa inhabitants of the village of Birni-N'Konni in retaliation for the continued resistance of Queen Sarraounia.
• May 9 – The first KNVB Cup of the Royal Dutch Football Association is won by RAP Amsterdam in extra time, 1 to 0, over HVV Den Haag.
• May 10 – Finnish farmworker Karl Emil Malmelin kills seven people with an axe at the Simola croft in the village of Klaukkala.^[48][49]
• May 11 – Alberto Santos-Dumont attempts the first test flight of his Airship No. 2, but rain cools the hydrogen during the ship's inflation and a gust of wind blows it into nearby trees, where it is destroyed.^[50]
• May 12 – The first trade union for railway employees in Sweden, the Svenska Järnvägsmannaförbundet (Sweden Railworkers' League) is founded. It lasts until 1970, when it merges into a labor union of Swedish government employees.
• May 13
  • A train wreck near Reading, Pennsylvania kills 28 people and injures 50.^[47]
  • The Esporte Clube Vitória Association football club is founded in Salvador, Brazil.
• May 14 – The three time world champion Club Nacional de Football is founded in Montevideo, Uruguay.
• May 15 – A clue to the fate of the British freighter Pelican, which disappeared in October 1897 along with 40 crew, is found in a message in a bottle that washes ashore at Portage Bay, Alaska.
• May 16
  • British troops in the leased Chinese territory of Hong Kong take control of the city of Kowloon.^[47]
  • The last Spaniards remaining in the Philippine Islands, after the cession to the U.S., depart from the island of Basilan.
• May 17 – In the Philippines, U.S. Army troops capture the city of San Isidro, Nueva Ecija, where Philippine Republic president Aguinaldo had moved his capital, but find that the insurgents have already left.
• May 18 – The First Hague Peace Conference, initiated by Emperor Nicholas II of Russia, is opened in The Hague by Willem de Beaufort, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands.
• May 19 – The U.S. Army captures Tawi-Tawi, the southernmost island in the Philippines.^[51]
• May 20 – In New York City:
  • Jacob German, a cab driver, becomes the first motor vehicle operator in the U.S. to be arrested for speeding when he is caught driving his electric taxi 12 miles per hour (19 km/h), more than twice the speed limit on Lexington Avenue.^[52]
  • The American Physical Society is founded at a meeting at Columbia University by 36 physicists, with a mission ""to advance and diffuse the knowledge of physics."
• May 21
  • The crew of the Royal Navy ship HMS Narcissus sights a large sea creature estimated to be 150 feet (46 m) long in the Mediterranean Sea near Algeria and reports that it propels itself by means of "an immense number of fins", as well as being able to spout water from several points on its body. The creature is not seen again after the lone encounter.^[53]
  • The town of PorosowinPoland (modern-day Porazava in Belarus) is destroyed by fire.^[51]
• May 22 – The unrecognized República Selvática – the "Jungle Republic" – is proclaimed by Peruvian Army Colonel Emilio Vizcarra in three provinces in Northern Peru located within the Amazon rainforest, Loreto, San Martín and Ucayali.^[54] The "republic" is reincorporated into Peru after Vizcarra's death on February 27, 1900.
• May 23 – Major General Henry W. Lawton and his troops arrive in Manolos, capital of the First Philippine Republic, after a 120-mile march in 20 days that has captured 28 towns with a loss of only six men.^[51]
• May 24
  • Jules Massenet's Cendrillon, the first opera based on the fairy tale of Cinderella, premieres in Paris at the theater of the Opéra-Comique.
  • The 80th birthday of Queen Victoria is celebrated throughout the British Empire.^[51]
• May 25
  • Pope Leo XIII issues the encyclical Annum sacrum, declaring 1900 to be a Holy Year and directing Roman Catholic churches worldwide to carry out the consecration of all human beings to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
  • A fire in the Canadian city of Saint John, New Brunswick, destroys 150 buildings and renders over 1,000 people homeless.^[51]
• May 26 – The guns of the British warship HMS Scylla, commanded by Captain Percy Scott, hit their targets 56 out of 70 times after Percy and his crew solve the problem of aiming a ship cannon on rolling seas.^[55]
• May 27
  • Rangers F.C., also known as Glasgow Rangers and one of the most successful soccer teams in the Scottish Football League, is incorporated.
  • Maurice Ravel conducts the first public performance of his Shéhérazade, ouverture de féerie in Paris; it receives a critical reception.^[56]
• May 28 – General Vicente Álvarez forms the short-lived Republic of Zamboanga in the Philippines on a peninsula on the island of Mindanao. The nation exists until 1903 when it is consolidated by the U.S. to the rest of the Philippine territory.
• May 29 – The Spanish system of courts in the Philippines, closed since the American occupation began, is revived under U.S. sovereignty and regulation.^[51]
• May 30 – Female outlaw Pearl Hart robs a stage coach 30 miles (48 km) southeast of Globe, Arizona.
• May 31
  • The Harriman Alaska Expedition is launched.
  • The Bloemfontein Conference commences between Paul Kruger and Sir Alfred Milner in the Orange Free State, but ends in failure after six days.^[51]

June 1899[edit]

• June 2 – American outlaws Robert L. Parker (Butch Cassidy) and Harry A. Longabaugh ("The Sundance Kid") commit their first armed robbery as "The Wild Bunch", stopping a Union Pacific train near Wilcox, Wyoming, with accomplices Harvey Logan and Elzy Lay, and steal more than $30,000 worth of cargo.
• June 3
  • France's Court of Cassation orders a reopening of the 1894 conviction for treason of French Army Captain Alfred Dreyfus after evidence of a wrongful conviction is made public, and directs that Dreyfus be returned to France after five years of imprisonment on Devil's Island off of the coast of South America.^[51]
  • The United States and Spain resume diplomatic relations, as U.S. President McKinley receives the Duke of Arcos as the new Minister for Spain.^[51]
• June 4 – The President of France, Émile Loubet, is assaulted at the Longchamp Racecourse while watching the annual Grand Steeplechase. His attacker, Fernand de Christiani, beats him with a cane while Loubet is sitting in the grandstand. De Christiani receives a four-year prison sentence nine days later.
• June 5 – General Antonio Luna, Commander of the Philippine Revolutionary Army, is assassinated along with his chief aide, Colonel Paco Román, after being lured to Cabanatuan by President Emilio Aguinaldo.
• June 6 – The U.S. military government of the Philippines directs that the 1885 Alien Contract Labor Law, which prohibits the importation of foreign workers into the United States, be applied to bringing persons other than Americans into the Philippines.
• June 7 – The Automobile Club of America, the first automobile owners' association in the U.S., is founded by a group of racers attending a meeting at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City, with a purpose of promoting "the sport of automobilism". It is incorporated on August 15.
• June 8
  • The Frederick Douglass Monument, the first statue in the U.S. to memorialize a specific African-American person, in unveiled in Douglass's hometown of Rochester, New York.
  • Italian Saint Gemma Galgani experiences stigmata in the form of wounds corresponding to those sustained by Jesus Christ during his crucifixion; her family physician concludes that Galgani's stigmata were actually self-inflicted wounds from a sewing needle.^[57]
• June 9 – American boxer James J. Jeffries wins the world heavyweight boxing championship when he knocks out Cornish-born Bob Fitzsimmons in the 11th round of a bout at Coney Island at Brooklyn, New York.^[58]
• June 10
  • Under the terms of the Samoa Tripartite Convention, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States form a colonial government to administer a protectorate over the islands of Samoa, with each nation providing an administrative consul to decide on the island's relations with foreign powers. The government lasts less than nine months, and Germany annexes the western part of Samoa on March 1, 1900, leaving the U.S. to control what is now American Samoa.
  • French classical composer Ernest Chausson dies at the age of 44, not long after his career begins to flourish, when his bicycle crashes into a brick wall as he is riding down a hill. The death is ruled to be an accident, although later biographers speculate that Chausson committed suicide.
• June 11 – Pope Leo XIII issues a declaration of the consecration of the entire human race, whether Christian or non-Christian, to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The consecration follows the issuance of his papal encyclical Annum sacrum, declaring 1900 to be a Holy Year and directing all Roman Catholic churches in the world to implement the Prayer of Consecration to the Sacred Heart during the period of June 9 to June 11, 1899. At this time, an estimated 1.6 billion people are on Earth.
• June 12
  • The New Richmond tornado completely destroys the town of New Richmond, Wisconsin, killing 117 and injuring more than 200.
  • France's Prime Minister Charles Dupuy and his cabinet announce their resignations after losing a vote of confidence in the Chamber of Deputies.^[51]
• June 13 – The village of Herman, Nebraska, with a population of 319, is destroyed by a tornado and 40 people are killed.^[51][59]
• June 14 – Hiram M. Hiller Jr., William Henry Furness III and Alfred Craven Harrison Jr. set off on their third research expedition to gather archeological, cultural, zoological, and botanical specimens for museums, with a focus on South Asia and Australia.
• June 15
  • Sweden's Department of Foreign Affairs hosts a conference for delegates from Germany, Denmark, Norway, the UK, the Netherlands, Russia and Sweden to make agreements on fishing in the Arctic Ocean, the Baltic Sea and the North Sea.^[60]
  • Cycle & Carriage, one of the largest companies in Singapore, is founded.
• June 16 – The United States and Barbados sign a trade treaty.^[51]
• June 17 – David Hilbert creates the modern concept of geometry, with the publication of his book Grundlagen der Geometrie, released on this date at Göttingen.^[61]
• June 18 – The Federación Libre de Trabajadores is created in Puerto Rico by anarchists Santiago Iglesias, Ramón Romero Rosa and Eduardo Conde as a resistance movement against the United States.
• June 19
  • The Anglo-Egyptian Sudan is created in northeast Africa to be as a territory to be administered jointly by Egypt and the United Kingdom, through an Egyptian governor-general appointed with consent of the UK, although in practice it becomes administered as part of the British Empire. The arrangement will continue for more than 50 years until the overthrow of the Egyptian monarchy in 1952 and the granting of independence to the Republic of Sudan in 1956.
  • Edward Elgar's Enigma Variations (Variations on an Original Theme, Op. 36) are premiered at St James's Hall in London conducted by Hans Richter; the work rapidly attracts international acclaim.^[62]
• June 20
  • Voters in the British colony of New South Wales overwhelmingly approve a resolution to join the proposed Federation of Australia.^[63]
  • The right-wing nationalist movement Action Française is formed in France
• June 21 – "Treaty 8", the most comprehensive of the eleven Numbered Treaties, is signed between the British Crown on behalf of Canada, with various Cree groups of the First Nations (Kapawe'no, Sucker Creek Cree, Driftpile, Swan River), ceding 320,000 square miles (830,000 km²) of land in the northern parts of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and British Columbia, as well as a portion of the Northwest Territories, to the Canadian government.
• June 22 – Pierre Waldeck-Rousseau forms a new government to become Prime Minister of France.^[63]
• June 23
  • William H. Thompkins, Dennis Bell, Fitz Lee and George H. Wanton are awarded the Medal of Honor for their heroism in the Spanish–American War during the rescue of a stranded landing party while under enemy fire. The four men, all members of the Buffalo Soldiers of the U.S. Army, become the last African-Americans to be selected for the Medal of Honor for more than half a century.^[64]
  • The Kingdom of Siam (modern-day Thailand) and the Russian Empire sign a Declaration of Jurisdiction, Trade and Navigation at Bangkok.^[65]
• June 24
  • Spain cedes its last Pacific Ocean colonies, the Caroline Islands (now part of the Federated States of Micronesia, the Ladrone islands of Ladrone (now part of the Mariana Islands), and Palau, to Germany.^[63]
  • The Australia national rugby union team plays its first game, a 13-3 loss to at team representing Great Britain.
• June 25 – Three Denver newspapers publish a story (later proved to be a fabrication) that the Chinese government under the Guangxu Emperor is going to demolish the Great Wall of China.
• June 26 – Joseph Chamberlain, the British Secretary of State for the Colonies, sets into motion the Second Boer War after receiving an appeal from the British Cape Colony in South Africa to help British subjects oppressed in the Transvaal Republic. Chamberlain declares "We have reached a critical point in the history of the Empire," and war begins on October 11.^[66]
• June 27
  • The paperclip is patented by Johan Vaaler, a Norwegian inventor.^[67]
  • A. E. J. Collins, a 13-year-old schoolboy, completes four afternoons of cricket with the highest-ever recorded individual score, 628 not outs. Collins never plays first-class cricket and is killed in action in 1914 during World War One, but his record will stand for 117 years until a 15-year old boy in India, Pranav Dhanawade scores 1,009 not out in 2016.
• June 28 – In Nigeria, British authorities publicly hang King Ologbosere Irabor outside of the courthouse at Benin City, days after he was captured and convicted of ordering the massacre of a party dispatched by the British consul.^[68]
• June 29 – The mayor of Muskegon, Michigan, James Balbirnie, is assassinated by a disappointed office-seeker, J. W. Tayer, who then kills himself.^[63]
• June 30 – 'Mile-a-Minute Murphy' earns his nickname after he becomes the first man to ride a bicycle for one-mile (1.6 km) in under a minute, on Long Island while being paced by a Long Island Railroad engine. Murphy pedals his bike one mile in 57.8 seconds for an average speed of 62.28 miles per hour.^[63]

July 1899[edit]

• July 1
  • The International Council of Nurses is founded in London, at a meeting of the Matron's Council of Great Britain and Ireland.^[69]
  • The German domestic appliance company Miele is founded.
• July 2 – Pope Leo XIII venerates four missionaries who were executed in Asia as martyrs of the Roman Catholic Church. Jean-Charles Cornay will be canonized as a saint in 1988, while Paul Liu Hanzuo, Peter Lieou and Louis Gabriel Taurin Dufresse will be canonized 100 years after their veneration by Pope John Paul II on October 1, 2000.
• July 3 – Swiss-born American boxer Frank Erne wins the world lightweight championship by defeating champion George "Kid" Lavigne in a decision after 20 rounds in Buffalo, New York.
• July 4 – The most famous skeleton of a dinosaur ever found intact, a Diplodicus, is discovered at the Sheep Creek Quarry in the western United States near Medicine Bow, Wyoming. The expedition team, financed by Andrew Carnegie for the Carnegie Museum of Natural HistoryinPittsburgh and led by William Harlow Reed, bestows the name "Dippy" on the Diplodicus carnegii, which becomes well known after Carnegie has plaster cast replicas made for donation to museums all over the world. The diplodicus dinosaurs are estimated to have roamed in North America more than 152,000,000 years ago.^[70]
• July 5
  • InChicago, the first juvenile court in the United States, the Cook County Circuit Court Juvenile Justice Division, hears its first cases with R. S. Tuthill as its judge.^[71]
  • The 1895 Trade and Navigation agreement between the Japanese and Russian empires goes into effect, with each country was given "a full freedom of ship and cargo entrance to all places, ports, and rivers on the other country's territory."^[72]
• July 6 – An assassin attempts to kill Milan Obrenović, who had been King of Serbia before abdicating in 1889, and had more recently been appointed by his son, King Alexander, as Commander-in-chief of the Serbian Army. General Obrenović is uninjured, but begins a campaign to seek out and arrest the radicals in Serbia.
• July 7 – The Great Lakes Towing Company (GLT), later part of The Great Lakes Group, is incorporated by John D. Rockefeller and William G. Mather to acquire more than 150 tugboats to control shipping in four of the North American Great Lakes (Lake Huron, Lake Michigan, Lake Erie and Lake Superior) and quickly builds a monopoly on Great Lakes traffic.
• July 8 – The Lorelei Fountain, sculpted by Ernst Herter from white marble, is unveiled in The Bronx in New York City across from the Bronx County Courthouse.
• July 9 – The Latin American Plenary Council, called by Pope Leo XIII on December 25 for the Roman Catholic bishops of lands in Central America and South America to address the question of "how to guard the interests of the Latin race", closes in Rome after six weeks. The bishops agree that Catholics should not "to celebrate with heretics" (specifically, non-Catholics) in religious ceremonies or to attend heretic church services, on pain of excommunication; that every republic in Latin America should have "a truly Catholic University" for education in the "sciences, literature and the good arts"; that missionary work to the Indian populations is "the grave duty of the ecclesiastical as well as civil authority to carry civilization to the tribes that remain faithless"; and that priests should be encouraged to study at the Pius Latin American Seminary in Rome.^[73]
• July 10
  • British colonial authorities in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan give control of the Red Sea port of SuakintoSudan, after having agreed on January 19 that Egypt would have the right to administer commerce there.
  • The Allegan meteorite, a 50 lb (23 kg) H chondrite crashes to Earth and lands in southwestern Michigan's Allegan County in the U.S.
• July 11 – In TurininItaly, Giovanni Agnelli and eight investors form the Italian automobile manufacturer F.I.A.T. (Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino, the Italian Automobile Manufacturers of Turin), producers of the Fiat motor vehicles.
• July 12 – The British freight ship City of York sinks after striking reefs at Rottnest Island, off the coast of Western Australia, due to a misunderstanding of signal flare fired from the island's lighthouse. The ship, which was nearing the end of a 90-day voyage from the U.S. (San Francisco) to Fremantle, Western Australia, evacuates its 26 crew in two lifeboats, but one of the boats overturns and 11 men, including Captain Phillip Jones, drown.
• July 13 – A tornado kills 13 people in the U.S. village of Herman, Nebraska.
• July 14 – The first Republic of Acre is declared by former Spanish journalist Luis Gálvez Rodríguez de Arias in the Amazon jungle in South America, and lasts for nine months.
• July 15
  • Japan's first comprehensive copyright law takes effect and, on the same day, Japan agrees to join the Berne Convention on respect of copyright laws of other nations.
  • General Emilio Aguinaldo, who has commanded the Filipino resistance against the Spanish government, informs the U.S. Army General Thomas M. Anderson that he intends to assume authority for the Philippine Islands in areas conquered by the Filipinos from the Spaniards.^[74]
• July 16 – The first soccer football game in El Salvador between two organized teams takes place at the Campo Marte field in Santa Ana, where a local team hosts a team of players from San Salvador. The Santa Ana team wins, 2 to 0.^[75]
• July 17
  • NEC Corporation is organized as the first Japanese joint venture with foreign capital.
  • In the Battle of Togbao, the French Bretonnet–Braun mission is destroyed, in the North African kingdom of Chad, by the warlord Rabih az-Zubayr.
  • The Anglo-Japanese Treaty of Commerce and Navigation takes effect, ending extraterritoriality and the unequal status of Japan in foreign commerce.^[76]
• July 18 – The patent for the first sofa bed (a foldable bed frame that can be stored under the cushions of a couch) is taken out by African-American inventor Leonard C. Bailey. He receives U.S. Patent No. 629,286 on June 2, 1900.
• July 19 – U.S. Secretary of War Russell A. Alger submits his resignation at the request of U.S. President McKinley, following public outrage over the United States Army beef scandal, in which the War Department purchased tainted beef for soldiers during the Spanish-American War.
• July 20
  • A white lynch mob in Tallulah, Louisiana carries out the killing of five white Italian shopkeepers from Sicily who have opened stores in the town to sell produce and meat, after accusations that the Sicilians were driving the American stores out of business. None of the suspects in the lynching are prosecuted.^[77]
  • Park Row BuildinginNew York City is completed and becomes the world's tallest building, a title it holds until 1908.
• July 21 – The Newsboys' strike takes place, when the Newsies of New York go on strike (until August 2).^[78]
• July 22 – The torture and lynching of Frank Embree takes place in the town of Fayette, Missouri, after Embree, a black 19-year-old man, is accused by a mob of raping a white 14-year-old girl. Shortly after Embree has received 100 lashes from a whip, a photographer takes Embree's photo, followed by another one after Embree's hanging.^[79]
• July 23 – The U.S. capital of Washington, D.C. retires its short-lived cable car system, the day after Columbia Railway Company converts exclusively to electric powered cars
• July 24 – In the first trade treaty signed by the U.S. after the passage of the Dingley Act, which authorizes the U.S. President to negotiate reductions of tariffs up to 20% if the other side does the same, France and the United States sign an agreement for a 20% reduction of France's existing tariffs on 635 of 654 specific items, in return for the U.S. reduction between 5% and 20% of duty fees on 126 items.^[80]
• July 25 – France's Minister of War levies out punishments against officers who participated in the Dreyfus affair, removing General Georges-Gabriel de Pellieux from his duties as Military Governor of Paris, and removing General Oscar de Négrier from the War Council.^[81]
• July 26 – The President of the Dominican Republic, dictator Ulises Heureaux, is assassinated during a visit to the city of Moca. Vice President Wenceslao Figuereo succeeds to the office.^[78]
• July 27 – Gold is discovered in Nome, Alaska, leading to the Nome Gold Rush.^[82]
• July 28 – The All Cubans, a team of professional baseball players from Cuba, begins a barnstorming tour of the U.S. with games against white and black teams, starting with a 12-4 win over a local team at Weehawken, New Jersey
• July 29 – The first international Peace Conference ends, with the signing of the First Hague Convention.
• July 30 – The Harriman Alaska Expedition ends successfully.
• July 31 – Duke of York Island, off Antarctica, is discovered by explorer Carsten Borchgrevink and the British Southern Cross Expedition.^[83]

August 1899[edit]

• August 1 – A hurricane destroys all but nine homes in the small U.S. town of Carrabelle, Florida
• August 2 – The first attack on an offshore oil installation in the United States takes place off the coast of Santa Barbara, California near Montecito, when a mob of outraged citizens demolishes an oil rig.^[84]
• August 3 – The John Marshall Law School is founded in Chicago.
• August 4 – Japan rescinds its policy of extraterritoriality privileges to western nations that had operated consular courts to try cases against western nationals under western law.^[85] The British Court for Japan closes at the end of the year.
• August 5 – Automotive mechanic Henry Ford, with the help of 12 investors, incorporates the Detroit Automobile Company. While the company will fail after 17 months, it establishes Detroit, Michigan, as the site for U.S. car manufacturing and the mistakes learned help Ford have more success with the Ford Motor Company.^[86]
• August 6 – Near Stratford, Connecticut, 36 people are killed when a trolley falls off of a trestle and lands upside down in a pond 40 feet below.^[87] On the same day, the collapse of a ferry dock in Mount Desert Island, Maine, drowns 20-people.
• August 7
  • The retrial of French Army Captain Alfred Dreyfus opens at Rennes.
  • Governance of the island of Guam, under the administration of the United States Department of the Navy, begins with Admiral Richard P. Leary as the first U.S. Naval Governor.^[88]
• August 8 – The San Ciriaco hurricane strikes Puerto Rico, recently annexed by the United States, and leaves 250,000 people homeless.^[89] The official death toll is later listed as 3,369 people.^[90]
• August 9 – The Seats for Shop Assistants Act 1899 is given royal assent in the United Kingdom, providing, for the first time, a respite for workers required to remain standing for long periods of time.
• August 10 – Marshall "Major" Taylor wins the world 1-mile (1.6 km) professional cycling championship in Montreal, securing his place as the first African American world champion in any sport.^[91]
• August 11 – The "Black Heavyweight Championship" of boxing is won by Frank Childs in a six-round win over Klondike Haynes.
• August 12 – South African Republic General Jan Smuts makes a final initiative to avert the outbreak of what will become the Second Boer War with Britain, meeting in Pretoria with the British charge d'affaires, Conyngham Greene.^[92]
• August 13 – The battle for the Philippine city of Angeles begins when the U.S. Army's VIII Corps, led by Major General Arthur MacArthur Jr., fights Philippine forces led by Brigadier General Maximino Hizon. The U.S. captures the area, the future site of Clark Air Force Base, by August 16.^[93]
• August 14 – French attorney Fernand Labori is wounded in an assassination attempt while serving as the defense lawyer for in the retrial of Captain Alfred Dreyfus.
• August 16
  • Hobson City, Alabama, the oldest exclusively African American municipality in the United States, is incorporated in Calhoun County with a population of 400 black residents.^[94] As of 2020, the town remains 92% African American. At the time, only two other "all black" towns exist in the U.S., Lincolnville, South Carolina and Princeton, North Carolina.^[95]
  • Western outlaw Tom "Black Jack" Ketchum is badly wounded in a poorly-planned attempt to commit a train robbery by himself. He is captured the next day, has an arm amputated, and is executed in a poorly-planned hanging in 1901.^[96]
• August 17
  • Emperor Gojong of Korea issues the 9-article International Declaration declaring that, as "the great emperor of Korea", he has "infinite military authority" as well as absolute power to enact laws.^[97]
  • The San Ciriaco hurricane makes landfall in North Carolina's Outer Banks, completely destroying the town of Diamond City.
• August 18
  • Llest Colliery explosion at Pontyrhyl in the South Wales coalfield of the U.K. kills 19 miners.^[98]
  • Rasmus Midgett of the United States Life-Saving Service single-handedly saves the 10 surviving crew of the freighter SS Priscilla
• August 19 – A bill to construct the proposed Dortmund-Rhine Canal in Germany, supported by Kaiser Wilhelm II, failed overwhelmingly in the lower house of parliament, with 225 against and only 147 in favor.^[99]
• August 20 – The Kiram–Bates Treaty is signed in the PhilippinesbyJamalul Kiram II, Sultan of Sulu, and U.S. Army Brigadier General John C. Bates, with U.S. forces recognizing the autonomy of local governments in the Sulu Archipelago (within the Mindanao island group) in return for the Sultan's assistance in suppressing attacks on U.S. forces.
• August 21 – Sir Edmund Antrobus, owner of the land on Salisbury Plain upon which Stonehenge stands in England, offers to sell the land to the British government for £125,000.^[100] After Sir Edmund's death in 1915, his brother Cosmo will have the land auctioned for £6,600.^[101][102]
• August 22 – The earliest major motorcycle race in the U.S. takes place at the Harford Avenue Colosseum in Baltimore, Maryland, with three teams of motor-powered tandem bicycles competing. The team of Henri Fournier and Charles Henshaw wins the race.^[103]
• August 23
  • InDarien, Georgia, the "Delegal riot" takes place when hundreds of armed African-American residents surround the McIntosh County Jail to prevent the transfer of Henry Delegal, a black man charged with rape, to prevent the possibility of Delegal being lynched.^[104] The Georgia State militia is sent in to disband the rioters (21 of whom are convicted of inciting a riot) and to oversee Delegal's safe transfer. Delegal is later acquitted of the rape charge.^{[105][106][107]}
  • The first ship-to-shore test of a wireless radio transmission is made from the U.S. lightship LV 70 with the sending of Morse code signals to a receiving station near San Francisco. The tests are made over 17 days with the ship also sending carrier pigeons to carry the message transmitted in order to verify the accuracy of the transmission.^[108]
• August 24 – France's Minister of Commerce, Alexandre Millerand, decrees a change in regulations to extend the right to workers' compensation to cover all profit-making establishments.^[109]
• August 25 – Two convicted murderers, Cyrus A. Brown and Matthew Craig, become the first white men to be legally executed in the modern-day U.S. state of Oklahoma. The two are hanged together at Muskogee in the Creek Nation section of the U.S. Indian Territory.^[110]
• August 27 – U.S. engineers, aided by local Sudanese workers, complete the installation of the prefabricated Atbara railroad bridge over the Nile River near Khartoum after outbidding British construction companies, marking a turning point in British leadership worldwide in construction. Lord Kitchener, commander of the British Army force in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, remarks at the ceremony, "... as Englishmen failed, I am delighted that our cousins across the Atlantic stepped in. This bridge is due to their energy, ability and power to turn out work of magnitude in less time than anybody else. I congratulate the Americans on their success in the erection of a bridge in the heart to Africa."^[111]
• August 28 – At least 512 people are killed when a debris hill from the Sumitomo Besshi copper mineatNiihama, Shikoku, Japan, collapses after heavy rain; 122 houses, a smelting factory, hospital and many other facilities are destroyed.^[112]
• August 29 – General Juan Isidro Jimenes, whose ship had stopped in Cuba while he was on his way to Santo Domingo to become the new President of the Dominican Republic, is arrested by order of U.S. Military Governor Leonard Wood after coming ashore at Santiago de Cuba.^[113] Jimenes would soon be released and would become the President on November 15, 1899.
• August 30 – After taking over the second-largest city in the Dominican Republic, Santiago de los Caballeros, revolutionists proclaim Horacio Vásquez as the Central American nation's President in rebel-controlled territory. At the same time in the capital at Santo Domingo, President Wenceslao Figuereo steps down after only five weeks in office and prepares to leave the city as the rebels approach.^[114]
• August 31 – The Olympique de Marseille association football club is founded in France.^[115]

September 1899[edit]

• September 1 – The Nationaltheatret, Norway's national theater, is inaugurated
• September 2 – In the Battle of Karari at Sudan between the British Army, led by Lord Kitchener, and Sudanese troops commanded by the Mahdi Khalifa Abdullah, 11,000 Sudanese are killed and 1,600 wounded.^[116]
• September 3 – An 8.2 magnitude earthquake shakes the area around Yakutat BayinAlaska.
• September 4 – Thomas B. Reed, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, resigns his seat in Congress and the Speaker's office in protest over U.S. President McKinley's support of war with Spain.
• September 5
  • The first labor and management agreement in Denmark is reached between the Danish Federation of Trade Unions and the Danish Employers' Confederation.^[117]
  • General Horacio Vasquez, leader of a revolution against the Dominican Republic's President Wenceslao Figuereo, arrives at the capital, Santo Domingo and forms a provisional government.
• September 7 – The first parade of automobiles in U.S. history takes place at Newport, Rhode Island.^[118]
• September 8 – Eduardo López de Romaña is inaugurated as the President of Peru.^[102]
• September 9 – In the retrial of his court-martial, French Army Captain Alfred Dreyfus is again found guilty of treason and sentenced to serve the remaining 10 years of his prison sentence on Devils Island.^[102]
• September 10 – A week after an 8.2 magnitude quake strikes Alaska, a stronger, 8.5 magnitude earthquake shakes Yakutat Bay.
• September 11 – Northern Arizona University is founded in Flagstaff in the Arizona Territory of the United States, as Northern Arizona Normal School, with 23 students and two professors. More than a century later, the university will have almost 30,000 students and 1,100 full time faculty.
• September 12 – American boxer Terry McGovern wins the world bantamweight title by knocking out British boxer Pedlar Palmer in the first round at the Westchester Athletic Club in New York.
• September 13
  • Halford Mackinder, Cesar Ollier and Josef Brocherel make the first ascent of Batian, at (5,199 m or 17,057 ft), the highest peak of Mount Kenya.^[119]
  • The French Army invades the Sultanate of Zinder in Niger and kills the ruler, Amadou Kouran Daga.^[120]
• September 14
  • General Cipriano Castro defeats the Venezuelan Army at the battle of Tocuyito and prepares to march to Caracas to overthrow President Ignacio Andrade.
  • Real estate agent Henry Bliss is struck by an electric-powered taxicab and fatally injured after stepping off of a trolley at the intersection of West 74th Street and Central Park West in New York City, becoming the first person in the U.S. to killed by an automobile.
• September 15 – Preparing for an attack on Britain's Cape ColonyinSouth Africa from the neighboring Transvaal Republic, British Army Colonel Robert Baden-Powell arrives at the border town of Mafeking and begins recruiting volunteers and stockpiling munitions to prepare for an attack and siege.^[121]
• September 16 – In the second annual 1899 VFL Grand Final championship game of the Victorian Football League, defending champ Fitzroy narrowly retains the title over South Melbourne, 27 to 26.
• September 17 – The strange career of Australian bandit John Francis Peggotty, a diminutive holdup man said to have ridden on an ostrich, ends in the town of Meningie, South Australia when Peggotty's intended victim shoots both the bandit and the ostrich. The body of the ostrich is found, but Peggotty is never seen again.^[122]
• September 18
  • Rail transport is inaugurated in Korea with the opening of the Gyeongin Railway from Incheon (at the time called Chemulp'o) to Yeongdeungpo (a town located across the Han River from Seoul).^[123]
  • Scott Joplin's Maple Leaf Rag is registered for copyright, as ragtime music enjoys mainstream popularity in the United States.
• September 19
  • Captain Alfred Dreyfus is pardoned in France by the Ministry of War.^[102] He will be released from prison at Rennes the following day^[102] but not fully exonerated until 1906.
  • The patent for the first water meter is granted to Edwin Ford, the water superintendent for Hartford City, Indiana.
• September 21
  • A special session of the Orange Free State's parliament, the Volksraad, meets at Bloemfontein in South Africa to discuss war with the British Empire. At the same time, three British transports depart from Bombay in India with troops to the Cape Colony in South Africa.^[124]
  • The Dominion Line steamer Scotsman sinks in the Strait of Belle Isle in Canada, killing 15 women and children.
• September 22
  • Elections are held in Sweden for the 230-seats of the Riksdag (formerly 182 seats). The Lantmanna Party retains majority control.^[124]
  • Following a court-martial in Spain, Admiral Patricio Montojo, who had surrendered the Philippines to U.S. Admiral George Dewey to end the Spanish–American War, is relieved of all commands and placed on the reserve list.^[124]
• September 23 – Austria's Chancellor, Prince Franz von Thun, and his cabinet of ministers all resign.^[124]
• September 24 – A crowd of several thousand men in London disrupts an anti-war demonstration in Trafalgar Square and shouts down the Peace Association speakers as well as hurling "decayed apples and eggs and other missiles."^[125]
• September 25 – A Serbian court sentences 30 people convicted for conspiracy to attempt to assassinate the former King Milan, with the two main leaders being sentenced to death and 10 others getting 20 year prison sentences.^[124]
• September 26 – General Manuel Guzman Alvarez of the Venezuelan state of Sucre joins with General Cipriano Castro in a revolt against the Venezuelan government.^[124]
• September 27 – Former U.S. President Benjamin Harrison concludes his special assignment of arguing in favor of Britain before the Anglo-Venezuelan arbitration tribunal.^[124]
• September 28
  • Austrian auto designer Ferdinand Porsche attracts worldwide attention when his first car, the Porsche P1, wins the Berlin Road Race with such speed that he crosses the finish line 18 minutes ahead of the second-place finisher.
  • New Zealand's parliament approves a proposal to send troops to support Britain's Cape Colony in South Africa, while the Orange Free State parliament votes to support the South African Republic (the Transvaal), as war between the British and the Dutch appears imminent.^[124]
• September 29 – The Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) is founded in the U.S. by Spanish–American War veteran James C. Putnam as the American Veterans of Foreign Service.^[126]
• September 30
  • The 1899 Ceram earthquake kills 3,864 people on Seram Island (part of the modern-day Maluku province of Indonesia) through a tsunami after a 7.8 magnitude earthquake strikes at 1:42 in the morning local time. According to a subsequent investigation, the villages of Paulohy-Samasuru and Mani, with a combined population of 2,400 people, are swept away by a 29 foot (8.8 m) wave.^[127]
  • InMilwaukee, minor league baseball executive Harry Quinn announces an 8-team rival to baseball's 12-team National League, the "American Baseball Association" with an eastern division (New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington) and a western division (Chicago, St. Louis, Milwaukee and Detroit).^[128]

October 1899[edit]

• October 1
  • Possession of the Mariana Islands in the South Pacific Ocean is formally transferred from Spain to Germany, which purchased the archipelago (with the exception of Guam) from Spain for 837,500 German gold marks (equivalent at this time to $4,100,000) and become part of German New Guinea until the end of World War One.^[129]
  • Felipe Agoncillo, dispatched by the Philippine Revolutionary government to lobby for independence, meets in Washington with U.S. President McKinley and his attempt to be part of peace talks between the United States and Spain is rejected.^[130]
• October 2 – The Serbian government ends the state of siege in Belgrade that followed the attempted assassination of Serbia's former King Milan.^[124]
• October 3 – The boundary dispute between Venezuela and British Guiana (modern-day Guyana) is resolved by a binding award from the International Tribunal of Arbitration of five neutral jurists agreed upon by the United Kingdom and the United Venezuelan States.^[131]
• October 4 – The South African Republic issues an order to "all White inhabitants" within its protectorate, the Kingdom of Swaziland, to evacuate the area, with the exception of property owners eligible for active military service. British subjects inside Swaziland are evicted and escorted to the border with the Portuguese East African colony of Mozambique.
• October 5 – The 7,000 Zulu mineworkers in the Witwatersrand of the South African Republic are assembled by mine recruiter John Sidney Marwick at Johannesburg so that they can be transported home before war breaks out with Britain.^[132]
• October 6 – The War Office of the UK alerts the administrators of the 79,000-man British Army Reserve to prepare for drafting of soldiers in preparation for war in South Africa.^[133]
• October 7 – U.S. President William McKinley, Canada's Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier and Mexico's Foreign Minister Ignacio Mariscal are hosted at the U.S. city of Chicago for its Autumn Festival.^[134]
• October 8 – The South African Republic (ZAR) telegraphs a three-day ultimatum to the U.K., demanding an arbitration of issues and a pullback of troops from the borders between the ZAR and the adjoining Cape Colony, Natal and Bechuanaland by October 11.^[135]
• October 9 – The Hanover Congress of the Social Democratic Party of Germany begins in Hanover and lasts until October 14.
• October 10 – The French Sudan in west Africa is divided into two smaller administrative units, Middle Niger (which later becomes the nations of Niger and Gambia) and Upper Senegal (which becomes the nations of Senegal and Mali)
• October 11 – In South Africa, the Second Boer War between the United Kingdom and the Boers of the Transvaal and Orange Free State begins as the Boers invade the British colony of Natal.
• October 12 – The Sultan of Turkey issues a decree promising reforms to the persecution of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire.^[124]
• October 13 – The Second Boer War extends into the British Bechuanaland Protectorate (modern-day Botswana) as the siege of Mafeking begins.
• October 14 – The Boer invasion of the Cape Colony begins with the siegeofKimberley.
• October 15 – French Army officer Ferdinand de Béhagle is put to death by Sudanese warlord Rabih az-Zubayr, prompting a French expedition to be led against Rabih.
• October 16 – A Chinese Honeymoon, the first musical to run for more than 1,000 performances, is performed for the first time, making its debut at the Theatre Royal in Hanley, Staffordshire before moving to London.
• October 17 – The Thousand Days' War (La Guerra de los Mil Días) begins in the South American nation in ColombiaasColombian Liberal Party soldiers led by General Rafael Uribe Uribe, with the support of aid from Venezuela, begin a fight against the government of National Party president Manuel Antonio Sanclemente. The war will continue for 1,130 days until November 21, 1902.
• October 18 – The Boxer Rebellion begins in China as the Battle of Senluo Temple is fought in China's Shandong province between more than 4,000 Imperial Chinese Army troops and at least 1,000 rebels from the Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists.^[136]
• October 19
  • In Worcester, Massachusetts, 17-year-old Robert H. Goddard receives his inspiration to develop the first rocket capable of reaching outer space, after viewing his yard from high in a tree and imagining "how wonderful it would be to make some device which had even the possibility of ascending to Mars, and how it would look on a small scale, if sent up from the meadow at my feet."^[137]
  • Boer troops commanded by Johannes Kock capture the railway station in the British Natal colony town of Elandslaagte and cut the telegraph line between the British Army headquarters at Ladysmith and the British station at Dundee.
• October 20 – In the first major clash of the Second Boer War, the Battle of Talana Hill (near Dundee, Natal), the British Army drives the Boers from a hilltop position, but with heavy casualties, including their commanding general Sir Penn Symons.
• October 21 – The Battle of Elandslaagte is fought in Britain's Natal colony as the British Army recaptures the railway station from Boers, then proceeds toward the fortress of Ladysmith. South African General Jan Kock is fatally wounded in the battle and dies 10 later while imprisoned at Ladysmith.^[138]
• October 22 – In Spain, an advertisement runs in the sports magazine Los Deportes, paid for by Swiss immigrant Hans Gamper, announces that Gamper is seeking to create a soccer football team for Barcelona.^[139] The organizational meeting takes place at the Sociedad Los Deportes on November 29, attracting 11 players who form Futbol Club Barcelona.
• October 23
  • The Philippine Independent Church is formed at a conference in Paniqui for the purpose of separating from the Roman Catholic Church.
  • The Empire of Austria holds its first automobile race. It is won in Vienna by Baron Theodor von Liebig, driving an NW Rennzweier car.
• October 24
  • The sinking of the ship Cisneros by the Colombian Navy warship Hércules drowns more than 200 Liberal rebels during the Battle of Magdalena River in northern Colombia.^[140]
  • President Steyn of the South African Republic proclaims the annexation of the northern portion of the Cape Colony above the Vaal River.^[138]
• October 25
  • José Manuel Pando, a member of the three-member junta that has governed Bolivia since April 12, becomes the new president.
  • Elisara Alaalamua is installed as the new Tui Manuʻa or Paramount Chief of the Samoan islandofTaʻū.
• October 26
  • Indirect fire, a shooting technique based on calculating azimuth and inclination to aim a weapon at an enemy that cannot be hit by direct fire, is used for the first time in battle.^[141] British gunners in the Second Boer War, using the techniques developed by Russian Lieutenant Colonel K. G. Guk, fire a cannon on a high trajectory toward the Boer Army, with the objective of having the shell coming down on the enemy.
  • Voting takes place in Switzerland for the 147-member National Council.
  • The foundering of the British steamer Zurich off of the coast of Norway kills 16 of the 17 crew aboard, with only the captain surviving.^[138]
• October 27 – Louise Masset, an unmarried mother, murders her 3-year old son in a bathroom at the Dalston Junction railway stationinLondon. She will be found guilty on December 18 and hanged at Newgate Prison three weeks later on January 9.^[142]
• October 28 – The Swaziland Commando unit of the South African Republic Army, with 200 burghers, attacks and burns the British police post at Kwaliweni during the Second Boer War. Warned by Swaziland's King Ngwane V, the 20 policemen are able to evacuate the post office and flee to Ingwavuma, which the Commandos attack next.^[143]
• October 29 – The Battle of Kouno ends after two days in French Equatorial Africa at the village of Kouno, near Fort-Archambault in what is now Chad, as French Army Captain Émile Gentil leads a force of 344 troops against a much larger force of 2,700 Sudanese Arabs, led by the warlord Rabih az-Zubayr. Gentil routs the Sudanese, but at the cost of 46 deaths and more than 100 wounded.^[144]
• October 30 – In a key engagement in the Second Boer War, the Battle of Ladysmith begins as British troops at the Ladysmith fort in the colony of Natal attempt to make a preemptive strike against a larger force of South African Republic and Orange Free State troops that is gradually surrounding the fort. After sustaining 400 casualties and having 800 men captured, the British retreat back to the fort where a 118-day siege begins on November 2.
• October 31 – The House of Commons of the United Kingdom unveils the statueofOliver Cromwell, commissioned in honor of the former Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland.

November 1899[edit]