1892

Events

January

• January 1 – Ellis Island begins processing immigrants to the United States.

  February

• February 27 – Rudolf Diesel applies for a patent, on his compression ignition engine.
• February 29 – St. Petersburg, Florida is incorporated as a town.

  March

• March 1 – Theodoros Deligiannis ends his term as Prime Minister of Greece and Konstantinos Konstantopoulos takes office.
• March 6–8 – Exclusive Agreement: Rulers of six Trucial States and Bahrain sign an agreement, by which they become de facto British protectorates.
• March 11 – The first basketball game is played in public, between students and faculty at the Springfield YMCA before 200 spectators. The final score is 5–1 in favor of the students, with the only goal for the faculty being scored by Amos Alonzo Stagg.
• March 13 – Ernest Louis, a grandson of Queen Victoria, becomes Grand Duke of Hesse and the Rhine on the death of his father, Grand Duke Louis IV.
• March 15
• * The Liverpool Football Club is founded in England by John Houlding, the owner of Anfield; Houlding decides to form his own team after Everton leaves Anfield, in an argument over rent.
• * Jesse W. Reno patents the first escalator, installed at Coney Island.
• March 17 – The St. Patrick's Day Snowstorm besieges Tennessee with upwards of 26 inches of snow, establishing accumulation records that still stand.
• March 18 – Sir Frederick Stanley, Governor General of Canada, announces his intention to donate the Stanley Cup for ice hockey.
• March 20 – The first ever French rugby championship final takes place in Paris. Pierre de Coubertin referees the match, which Racing Club de France wins 4–3 over Stade Français.
• March 31 – The world's first fingerprinting bureau is formally opened by the Buenos Aires Chief of Police; it has been operating unofficially since the previous year.

April

• April 15 – The General Electric Company is established through the merger of the Thomson-Houston Electric Company and the Edison General Electric Company.
• April – The Johnson County War breaks out between small farmers and large ranchers in Wyoming.

  May

• May 19 – Battle of Yemoja River: British troops defeat Ijebu infantry in modern-day Nigeria, using a maxim gun.
• May 20 – The last broad gauge train runs from Paddington on the Great Western Railway of England.
• May 22 – The British conquest of Ijebu Ode marks a major extension of colonial power into the Nigerian interior.
• May 24 – Prince George becomes Duke of York.

  June

• June 5 – An oil fire in Oil City, Pennsylvania, United States, kills 130 people.
• June 6 – The Chicago "L" begins operation for the first time with the opening of the Chicago and South Side Rapid Transit Railroad.
• June 7 – Homer Plessy, a mixed-race man, is arrested for deliberately sitting in a whites-only railroad car in Louisiana, leading to the landmark United States Supreme Court decision Plessy v. Ferguson, which legitimized "separate but equal" racial segregation in the United States.
• June 11 – The Limelight Department, later one of the world's first film studios, is officially established in Melbourne, Australia.
• June 30 – The Homestead Strike begins in Homestead, Pennsylvania, culminating in a battle between striking workers and private security agents on July 6.

  July

• July 4 – Samoa changes its time zone from 4 hours ahead of Japan to being 3 hours behind California, such that it crosses the International Date Line, and Monday, July 4 occurs twice.
• July 4–26 – British general election: The Conservative and Liberal Unionist coalition government loses its majority in the House of Commons, eventually leading to Prime Minister Lord Salisbury's resignation on August 12.
• July 6
• * Dr. José Rizal, Filipino writer, philosopher and political activist, is arrested by Spanish authorities in connection with La Liga Filipina.
• * Homestead Strike: The arrival of a force of 300 Pinkerton detectives from New York and Chicago results in a fight in which about 10 men are killed.
• July 8 – The Great Fire of 1892 devastates the city of St. John's, Newfoundland.
• July 12 – A hidden lake bursts out of a glacier on the side of Mont Blanc, flooding the valley below and killing around 200 villagers and holidaymakers in Saint-Gervais-les-Bains.
• July 13 – The United International Bureau for the Protection of Intellectual Property is established in Bern, Switzerland.
• July 16 – Queen Victoria meets with Martha Ann Ricks.
• July 25 – The Community of the Resurrection, an Anglican religious community for men, is founded by Charles Gore and Walter Frere, initially in Oxford.

  August

• August 4
• * The father and stepmother of Lizzie Borden are found murdered in their Fall River, Massachusetts home; she will be acquitted of their murder.
• August 9 – Thomas Edison receives a patent for a two-way telegraph.
• August 15 – Valparaíso, Chile founds its first football team, Santiago Wanderers.
• August 18 – William Ewart Gladstone assumes the U.K. premiership, as head of the Liberal government, with Irish Nationalist Party support.

  September

• September 8 – The Pledge of Allegiance is first recited in the United States.
• September 9 – Amalthea, the fifth moon of Jupiter, is discovered by Edward Emerson Barnard.
• September 15 – Sergei Witte replaces Ivan Vyshnegradsky, as Russian finance minister.
• September 22 – The 'Little Pastry Chef', a French police informant among anarchists, is murdered in Saint-Denis.
• September – Women are first admitted to Yale University's graduate school.

  October

• October 1 – The University of Chicago holds its first classes.

• October 5
• * The Dalton Gang, attempting to rob two banks in Coffeyville, Kansas, is shot by the townspeople; only Emmett Dalton, with 23 wounds, survives, to spend 14 years in prison.
• * Master criminal Adam Worth is captured in Liège, Belgium, during an attempted robbery of a money delivery cart.
• October 12 – To mark the 400th anniversary Columbus Day holiday, the "Pledge of Allegiance" is first recited in unison by students in U.S. public schools.
• October 30 – The Historical American Exposition opens in Madrid.
• October 31 – The first collection of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories from The Strand Magazine, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, is published in London.

  November

• November 2 – The first football club in Bohemia, Slavia Praha is established, originally under name of Akademický cyklistický odbor Slavia, focusing on cycling.
• November 8
• * 1892 United States presidential election: Grover Cleveland is elected over Benjamin Harrison and James B. Weaver, to win the second of his non-consecutive terms.
• * An anarchist bomb kills six in a police station in Avenue de l'Opéra, Paris.
• * The four-day New Orleans General Strike begins.
• November 17 – French troops occupy Abomey, capital of the kingdom of Dahomey.
• November 24 – The Hotel Zinzendorf catches fire in the city of Winston-Salem, North Carolina; 45 people die.

  December

• December 5 – John Thompson becomes Canada's fourth prime minister.
• December 17 – First issue of Vogue is published in the United States.
• December 18 – The Nutcracker ballet, with music by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, is premiered at the Imperial Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg, Russia.
• December 22 – The Newcastle East End F.C. is renamed Newcastle United F.C., following the demise of the Newcastle West End F.C. and East End's move to St James' Park, formerly West End's home, in the north east of England.

  Date unknown

• Diplomat Henry Galway secures a treaty by which Ovonramwen, Oba of Benin, ostensibly accepts British protection for his kingdom.
• A cholera outbreak occurs in Hamburg, Germany.
• A 50-year-old tortoise called Timothy, previously serving as a naval mascot, is brought to the estate of Powderham Castle in England, where she lives until her death in 2004.
• Viruses are first described by Russian biologist Dmitri Ivanovsky.

  Births

January

• January 1
• * Artur RodziÅ„ski, Polish conductor
• * Manuel Roxas, 5th President of the Philippines
• January 3 – J. R. R. Tolkien, English professor and writer
• January 12 – Mikhail Kirponos, Soviet general
• January 13 – Mohammad-Ali Jamalzadeh, Iranian writer
• January 14
• * Martin Niemöller, German theologian and prisoner in the Nazi Holocaust
• * Hal Roach, American film, television producer
• * Franz Dahlem, German politician
• January 15
• * Rex Ingram, Irish film director
• * Hobey Baker, American athlete
• * William Beaudine, American film director
• January 18 – Oliver Hardy, American comedian, actor
• January 19 – Ólafur Thors, Icelandic politician, 5-times prime minister
• January 22
• * Marcel Dassault, French aircraft industrialist
• * Bahruz Kangarli, Azerbaijani artist
• January 25 – Takeo Takagi, Japanese admiral
• January 26 – Bessie Coleman, American aviator
• January 28
• *Ernst Lubitsch, German-born film director
• *Fyodor Raskolnikov, Soviet revolutionary, writer, journalist, naval commander and diplomat
• January 31 – Eddie Cantor, American actor, singer

  February

• February 3 – Juan Negrín, Spanish physician, politician and 67th Prime Minister of Spain
• February 5 – William Bostock, Australian senior army commander
• February 6 – William P. Murphy, American physician, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
• February 9 – Peggy Wood, American actress
• February 10 – Alan Hale Sr., American actor
• February 13 – Robert H. Jackson, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials
• February 14 – Radola Gajda, Czech commander and politician
• February 15 – James Forrestal, first United States Secretary of Defense
• February 18 – Wendell Willkie, U.S. Republican presidential candidate
• February 21 – Harry Stack Sullivan, American psychiatrist, psychoanalyst
• February 22
• * Edna St. Vincent Millay, American writer
• * David Dubinsky, Belarusian-American labor leader and politician
• February 23 – Kathleen Harrison, English actress
• February 27 – William Demarest, American actor
• February 29
• * Augusta Savage, American sculptor
• * Dietrich von Jagow, German naval officer, politician, SA-Obergruppenführer and diplomat