1894

Events

January

• January 4 - A military alliance is established between the French Third Republic and the Russian Empire.
• January 7 - William Kennedy Dickson receives a patent for motion picture film in the United States.
• January 9 - New England Telephone and Telegraph installs the first battery-operated telephone switchboard, in Lexington, Massachusetts.

  February

• February 12 - French anarchist Émile Henry sets off a bomb in a Paris café, killing one person and wounding twenty.
• February 15
• * In Korea, peasant unrest erupts in the Donghak Peasant Revolution, a massive revolt by followers of the Donghak movement. Both China and Japan send military forces, claiming to come to the ruling Joseon dynasty government's aid.
• * French anarchist Martial Bourdin dies of an accidental detonation of his own bomb, next to the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, in London, England.

  March

• March 2 - William Gladstone resigns as British Prime Minister.
• March 5 - The Local Government Act reforms local government in Britain, creating a system of urban and rural districts with elected councils, with elected civil parish councils in rural areas, and gives women, irrespective of marital status, the right to vote and stand in local elections.
• March 12 - Coca-Cola is sold in bottles for the first time.
• March 21 - A syzygy of planets occurs, as Mercury transits the Sun as seen from Venus, and Mercury and Venus both transit the Sun as seen from Saturn, but no two of the transits are simultaneous.
• March 25 - Coxey's Army, the first significant protest march in the United States, departs from Massillon, Ohio, for Washington, D.C.

  April

• April 16 - Manchester City Football Club is formed in north-west England under this name.
• April 21 - A bituminous coal miners' strike closes mines across the central United States.
• April 27 - Canada's largest known landslide occurs in Saint-Alban, Quebec, displacing of rock and dirt, and leaving a scar that covers.

  May

• May 1 - In protests by the unemployed in the United States:
• * Coxey's Army arrives in Washington; Coxey is arrested on the Capitol grounds.
• * May Day riots break out in Cleveland, Ohio.
• May 11 - Pullman Strike: Three thousand Pullman Palace Car Company factory workers go on a "wildcat" strike in Illinois.
• May 14 - Blackpool Tower is opened in Blackpool, in north-west England, as a visitor attraction.
• May 21 - The Manchester Ship Canal and Docks are officially opened by Queen Victoria, linking the previously landlocked industrial city of Manchester, in north-west England, to the Irish Sea.
• May - Third plague pandemic: Bubonic plague breaks out in the Tai Ping Shan area of Hong Kong ; it also breaks out this year in Canton.

  June

• June 18 - Britain establishes a protectorate over Uganda.
• June 22 - Dahomey becomes a French colony.
• June 23 - The International Olympic Committee is founded at the Sorbonne, Paris, at the initiative of Baron Pierre de Coubertin.
• June 24 - Sadi Carnot, president of France, is assassinated in Lyon.
• June 30 – Tower Bridge in London opens for traffic.

July

• July 4
• * The short-lived Republic of Hawaii is proclaimed by Sanford B. Dole.
• * The football club FC La Chaux-de-Fonds is founded in Switzerland.
• July 6 - A fire at the site of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago destroys most of the remaining buildings.
• July 16 - The United Kingdom and Japan sign the Anglo-Japanese Treaty of Commerce and Navigation, as the U.K. becomes the first of the Western nations to agree to give up its extraterritorial rights in Japan.
• July 22 - The Paris–Rouen Competition for Horseless Carriages, the first automobile competition, is held.

  August

• August 1 - War is declared between the Qing Empire of China and the Empire of Japan over their rival claims of influence on their common ally, the Joseon dynasty of Korea. The event marks the start of the First Sino-Japanese War.
• August 16 - Italian anarchist Sante Geronimo Caserio is executed by guillotine for the assassination of French President Carnot in Lyon.
• August 31 - New Zealand enacts the world's first minimum wage law, to take effect on January 1, in the passage of the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act of 1894.

  September

• September 1 - Great Hinckley Fire: A forest fire in Hinckley, Minnesota, kills more than 450 people.
• September 4 - In New York City, 12,000 tailors strike against sweatshop working conditions.
• September 10 - Richard Strauss marries Pauline De Ahna.
• September 26 - The and the schooner barge Ironton collide and sink in Lake Huron. While the crew of the Ohio is rescued, five of the other craft's seven-member crew, including the captain, are lost.

  October

• October 1 - Petrópolis becomes the capital of the Brazilian state of Rio de Janeiro, until 1902.
• October 15 - Dreyfus affair: French Army officer Alfred Dreyfus is arrested for spying.
• October 30 - Domenico Menegatti obtains a patent for a procedure to be applied in producing pandoro industrially.

  November

• November 1

• * Emperor Alexander III of Russia is succeeded by his son, Nicholas II.
• * The first issue of Billboard magazine is published in Cincinnati, Ohio by William Donaldson and James Hennegan. Initially, it covers the advertising and bill posting industry, and is at the time known as Billboard Advertising.
• November 6 - Republicans win by a landslide in the United States House of Representatives elections, which sets the stage for the decisive presidential election of 1896.
• November 7 - The Masonic Grande Loge de France is founded, splitting from the larger and older Grand Orient de France.
• November 21 - First Sino-Japanese War: Battle of Lushunkou - Japanese troops secure a decisive victory over the Chinese, capture the port city of Lüshunkou, and begin the Port Arthur massacre, in which more than 1,000 Chinese servicemen and civilians die.
• November 26 - Wedding of Nicholas II of Russia and Alix of Hesse in the Grand Church of the Winter Palace at Saint Petersburg.

  December

• December 6 - Kate Chopin's feminist short story "The Story of an Hour" is first published, in the American magazine Vogue.
• December 18 - Women in South Australia become the first in Australia to gain the right to vote and the first in the world with the right to be elected to Parliament, taking effect from 1895, after decades of activism.
• December 21 - Mackenzie Bowell becomes Canada's fifth prime minister.
• December 22 - Dreyfus affair: French Army officer Alfred Dreyfus is convicted of treason. It will be 12 years before his innocence is officially recognised.

  Date unknown

• The Society of Beaux-Arts Architects is founded in the United States.
• Oil is discovered on the Osage Indian reservation, making the Osage the "richest group of people in the world".
• Edward B. Marks and Joe Stern publish the waltz The Little Lost Child in the United States, promoting the playing of the waltz with slides projected by a magic lantern, the earliest version of music video known as the illustrated song.
• Spillers Records is founded in Cardiff, the world's oldest record shop still in operation.
• The Liga Femeilor Române, the first women's organisation in Romania, is founded.

  Births

January–February

• January 1 - Satyendra Nath Bose, Indian physicist
• January 3 - ZaSu Pitts, American actress
• January 8 - Maximilian Kolbe, Polish friar and martyr
• January 15 - José Bustamante y Rivero, Peruvian politician, diplomat and jurist, 78th President of Peru
• January 19 – Špelca Mladič, Slovenian painterand designer
• January 20 - Walter Piston, American composer
• January 21 - Geoffrey Street, Australian politician
• January 30
• * King Boris III of Bulgaria
• * René Dorme, French World War I fighter ace
• January 31
• * Isham Jones, American bandleader
• * Percy Helton, American film, television actor
• February 1
• * John Ford, American film director
• * Dick Merrill, American aviation pioneer
• February 3 - Norman Rockwell, American artist, illustrator
• February 8 - Billy Bishop, Canadian World War I fighter ace
• February 10
• * Harold Macmillan, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
• * Mãe Menininha do Gantois, Brazilian spiritual leader
• February 14 - Jack Benny, American actor, comedian
• February 25 - Meher Baba, Indian Avatar of the Age
• February 26
• * Wilhelm Bittrich, German Waffen SS general
• * Ernest N. Harmon, American general
• February 28 - Ben Hecht, American playwright, film writer

  March–April

• March 7 - Marcel Déat, French politician
• March 11 - Otto Grotewohl, East German Communist politician, 1st Prime Minister of the German Democratic Republic
• March 14 - Osa Johnson, American adventurer, documentary filmmaker
• March 16 - Stuart Buchanan, American actor
• March 17 - Paul Green, American novelist, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright
• March 19 - Moms Mabley, African-American comedian
• March 20
• * Hans Langsdorff, German naval officer
• * Amalie Sara Colquhoun, Australian painter
• March 26 - May Farquharson, Jamaican social worker, birth control advocate, philanthropist and reformer
• March 27 - René Fonck, French World War I flying ace
• April 5 - Chesney Allen, British entertainer
• April 10
• * G.D. Birla, Indian industrialist, Gandhian and educationalist
• * Ben Nicholson, English abstract artist
• * Archibald Roosevelt, American conservative political activist, son of President Theodore Roosevelt
• April 12 - Francisco Craveiro Lopes, 12th President of Portugal
• April 13 - Sir Arthur Fadden, 13th Prime Minister of Australia
• April 15 - Bessie Smith, African-American blues singer
• April 17 - Nikita Khrushchev, Soviet politician
• April 26 - Rudolf Hess, German Nazi official
• April 27 - Nicolas Slonimsky, Russian/American musicologist
• April 30 - H.V. Evatt, Australian politician, judge