1901

Summary

Political and military

Events

January

• January 1
• * The British colonies of New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria and Western Australia federate as the Commonwealth of Australia; Edmund Barton becomes the first Prime Minister of Australia.
• * Nigeria becomes a British protectorate.
• January 9 - Lord Kitchener reports that Christiaan de Wet has shot one of the "peace" envoys, and flogged two more, who had gone to his commando to ask the Burgher citizens of South Africa to halt fighting.
• January 22 - Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom dies at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight. She is 81 years old and, having ruled for nearly 64 years, will be the second longest-reigning monarch in British history. Her eldest son, Prince Albert Edward, "Bertie", the longest-serving Prince of Wales to this time, succeeds his mother at the age of 59, reigning as King Edward VII, of the United Kingdom and in innovation the British Dominions and also becoming Emperor of India.
• January 31 - Anton Chekhov's play Three Sisters is premiered at the Moscow Art Theatre.

  February

• February 2 - The State funeral of Queen Victoria, held at St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, UK, is attended by many European royals, including Kaiser Wilhelm II and Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria.
• February 12 - Viceroy of India Lord Curzon creates the new North-West Frontier Province in the north of the Punjab region, bordering Afghanistan.
• February 14 - Edward VII opens his first parliament of the United Kingdom.
• February 20 - The Hawaii Territory Legislature convenes for the first time.
• February 22 - The Pacific Mail Steamship Company's sinks entering San Francisco Bay, killing 128.
• February 23 - The United Kingdom and Germany agree on the frontier between German East Africa and Nyasaland.
• February 25 - U.S. Steel is incorporated by industrialist J. P. Morgan, as the first billion-dollar corporation.
• February 26
• * Chi-hsui and Hsu-cheng-yu, Boxer Rebellion leaders, are executed in Peking.
• * The Middelburg peace conference fails in South Africa, as Boers continue to demand autonomy.
• February 27 - The Sultan of Turkey orders 50,000 troops to the Bulgarian frontier because of unrest in Macedonia.

  March

• March 1
• * The United Kingdom, Germany and Japan protest the Sino-Russian agreement on Manchuria.
• * The 1901 Census of India is taken, the fourth, and first reliable, census of the British Raj.
• March 2 - The United States Congress passes the Platt Amendment, limiting the autonomy of Cuba as a condition for the withdrawal of American troops.
• March 5 - Irish nationalist demonstrators are ejected by police from the House of Commons of the United Kingdom in London.
• March 6 - In Bremen, an assassination attempt is made on Wilhelm II, German Emperor.
• March 17 - The first large-scale showing of Van Gogh's paintings takes place in Paris, as 71 are shown at the Bernheim-Jeune gallery, 11 years after his death.
• March 31
• * A 7.2 Black Sea earthquake occurs off the northeast coast of Bulgaria, with a maximum intensity of X. A destructive tsunami affects the province of Dobrich.
• * The United Kingdom Census 1901 is taken. The number of people employed in manufacturing is at its highest-ever level.

  April

• April 19 - The First Philippine Republic is formally dissolved, after president Emilio Aguinaldo calls all Filipino forces to lay down arms and cease hostilities.
• April 29 - Anti-Semitic rioting breaks out in Budapest.

  May

• May 5 - The Caste War of Yucatán in Mexico officially ends, although Mayan skirmishers continue sporadic fighting for another decade.
• May 9 - The first Australian Parliament opens in Melbourne.
• May 17 - Panic of 1901: The New York Stock Exchange crashes.
• May 24 - 81 miners are killed in an accident at Universal Colliery, Senghenydd in South Wales.
• May 25 - The Club Atlético River Plate is founded in Argentina.
• May 28 - D'Arcy Concession: Mozaffar ad-Din Shah Qajar of Persia grants British businessman William Knox D'Arcy a concession giving him an exclusive right to prospect for oil.

  June

• June 12 - Cuba becomes a United States protectorate.
• June 15 - is the first Cunard Line ship to receive a wireless radio set.
• June 18 - British peace campaigner Emily Hobhouse reports on the high mortality and cruel conditions in the Second Boer War concentration camps.
• June 24
• * The first showing of Picasso's paintings in Paris as the 19-year-old Spanish artist exhibits his work at Ambroise Vollard's gallery.
• * English Association Football Club Brighton & Hove Albion is formed by John Jackson to replace the amateur Brighton and Hove Rangers, following a meeting at the Seven Stars Hotel on Ship Street, Brighton.

  July–August

• July 1 - The first United Kingdom Fingerprint Bureau is established at Scotland Yard, the Metropolitan Police headquarters in London, by Edward Henry.
• July 4
• * The 1,282 foot covered bridge crossing the Saint John River at Hartland, New Brunswick, Canada opens. It is the longest covered bridge in the world.
• * William Howard Taft becomes Governor-General of the Philippines.
• July 10 - The world's first passenger-carrying trolleybus in regular service operates on the Biela Valley Trolleybus route at Königstein, Germany.
• August 5 - Peter O'Connor sets the first International Association of Athletics Federations recognised long jump world record, of 24 ft 11¾ ins. The record will stand for 20 years.
• August 6 - Discovery Expedition: Robert Falcon Scott sets sail from Britain on the RRS Discovery to explore the Ross Sea in Antarctica.
• August 14 - The first claimed powered flight is made, by German-born American aviator Gustave Whitehead, in his Number 21, in Connecticut.
• August 21 - The International Secretariat of National Trade Union Centres is founded in Copenhagen.
• August 30 - Hubert Cecil Booth patents an electric vacuum cleaner, in the United Kingdom.

  September

• September 5 - The National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues, is formed in Chicago.
• September 6 - William McKinley assassination: American anarchist Leon Czolgosz shoots U.S. President William McKinley at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. McKinley dies 8 days later.
• September 7 - The Boxer Rebellion in Qing dynasty China officially ends with the signing of the Boxer Protocol.
• September 14 - Vice President Theodore Roosevelt becomes the 26th president of the United States, upon President William McKinley's death.
• September 28 - Philippine–American War: Balangiga massacre: Filipino guerrillas kill more than forty United States soldiers in a surprise attack in the town of Balangiga.

  October

• October 2 - The British Royal Navy's first submarine, Holland 1, is launched at Barrow-in-Furness.
• October 4 - The American yacht Columbia defeats the British Shamrock in the America's Cup yachting race in New York.
• October 24 - Michigan schoolteacher Annie Edson Taylor goes over Niagara Falls in a barrel and survives.
• October 29
• *Leon Czolgosz is executed in the electric chair for the assassination of William McKinley in Buffalo, New York on September 6.
• *In Amherst, New York, nurse Jane Toppan is arrested for murdering the Davis family of Boston with an overdose of morphine; she will confess to at least 31 killings.

  November

• November 1 - The Sigma Phi Epsilon college fraternity is founded in Richmond, Virginia.
• November 9 - Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2 is premiered in Moscow with the composer playing the solo part.
• November 14 - 1901 Caister lifeboat disaster: a life-boat capsizes on service on the east coast of England during a great storm; nine of the twelve crew on board are killed. This gives ride to the lifeboatmen's motto "Never turn back."
• November 15 - The Alpha Sigma Alpha fraternity is founded at Longwood University in Farmville, Virginia.
• November 18 - The Hay–Pauncefote Treaty is signed by the United Kingdom and United States, allowing the U.S. to build the Panama Canal under its sole control.
• November 25 - Auguste Deter is first examined by German psychiatrist Dr. Alois Alzheimer, leading to a diagnosis of the condition that will carry Alzheimer's name.

  December

• December 3
• * U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt delivers a 20,000-word speech to the United States House of Representatives asking Congress to curb the power of trusts "within reasonable limits".
• * The Immigration Restriction Act 1901 is passed by the new Parliament of Australia as the basis of a White Australia policy.
• December 10 - The first Nobel Prize ceremony is held in Stockholm, on the fifth anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death.
• December 12 - Guglielmo Marconi receives the first trans-Atlantic radio signal, sent from Poldhu, England, to St. John's, Newfoundland; it is the letter "S" in Morse code.
• December 20 - The final spike is driven into the Mombasa–Victoria–Uganda Railway, in modern-day Kisumu, Kenya.