February 22 – Senators Benjamin Tillman and John L. McLaurin, both Democrats of South Carolina, have a fist fight while Congress is in session.[1] Both Tillman and McLaurin are censured by the Senate on February 28.
February – A commission on yellow fever announces that the disease is carried by mosquitoes.
May 15 – It is claimed that in a field outside Grass Valley, California, Lyman Gilmore achieves flight in a powered airplane (asteam-powered glider). There is no surviving evidence to verify this claim.
May 20 – Cuba gains independence from the United States.
June 23 – Nurse Jane Toppan is convicted on 12 counts of murder (she admits to 31) in Massachusetts but is found not guilty by reason of insanity and committed for life.[7]
July 1 – The Philippine Organic Act becomes law, providing that the lower house of the Philippine legislature will be elected after the insurrection ends.
October 24 – Delta Zeta Sorority is founded at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.
November 16 – A newspaper cartoon depicting President "Teddy" Roosevelt refusing to shoot a bear cub inspires creation of the first teddy bearbyMorris Michtom in New York City.
November 30 – On the American frontier, the second-in-command of Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch, Harvey Logan ("Kid Curry"), is captured after a shootout with lawmen in Knoxville, Tennessee. He is sentenced to a $5,000 fine and 20 years hard labor for robbery but escapes custody in 1903.
December – The Venezuela Crisis of 1902–1903 occurs (until February 1903), in which Britain, Germany and Italy sustain a naval blockade on Venezuela in order to enforce collection of outstanding financial claims. This prompts the development of the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine.
^"Continued Legal Battles". Thomas A. Edison Papers. Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences. 2016-10-28. Retrieved 2019-10-24.
^Wilkins, Mira (1989). The history of foreign investment in the United States to 1914. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. p. 286. ISBN9780674396661.
^Cohen, Morris (1997). Manufacturing automation. Chicago: Irwin. p. 215. ISBN9780256146066.
^Krausman, Paul R.; Cain, James W. (2013). Wildlife Management and Conservation: Contemporary Principles and Practices. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 222. ISBN978-1-42140-987-0.
^Wynn, Linda T. (1996). "Arnaud Wendell Bontemps (1902-1973)". Profiles of African Americans in Tennessee. Annual Local Conference on Afro-American Culture and History, Tennessee State University. Archived from the original on June 2, 2010. Retrieved May 24, 2010.
^Robert, Price (1971). "Catherwood, Mary Hartwell". In James, Edward T. (ed.). Notable American Women, 1607-1950: A Biographical Dictionary. Vol. 1. p. 308. ISBN978-0-67462-734-5.
"Domestic Chronology", Statistician and Economist, San Francisco: Louis P. McCarty, 1905, pp. 227–347, hdl:2027/uc1.b3142275 – via HathiTrust. (Covers events May 1898-June 1905)
Media related to 1902 in the United States at Wikimedia Commons
