1902 in the United States

Events from the year 1902 in the United States.

Incumbents

Federal government">Federal government of the United States">Federal government

President: Theodore Roosevelt
[Vice President of the United States|President of the United States|Vice President]: vacant
Chief Justice: Melville Fuller
Speaker of the House of Representatives: David B. Henderson
Congress: 57th

Events

January–March

January 3
* The first college football bowl game, the Rose Bowl between Michigan and Stanford, is held in Pasadena, California.
* Nathan Stubblefield demonstrates his wireless telephone device in Kentucky.
January 8 - A train collision in the New York Central Railroad's Park Avenue Tunnel kills 17, injures 38, and leads to increased demand for electric trains.
January 28 - The Carnegie Institution is founded in Washington, D.C., to promote scientific research with a $10 million gift from Andrew Carnegie.
February 9 - Fire levels 26 city blocks of Jersey City, New Jersey.
February 18 - U.S. President Roosevelt prosecutes the Northern Securities Company for violation of the antitrust Sherman Act.
February 22 - Senators Benjamin Tillman and John L. McLaurin, both Democrats of South Carolina, have a fist fight while Congress is in session. 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.
March 10 - A Circuit Court decision ends Thomas Edison's monopoly on 35 mm movie film technology.
March 22 - International Harvester formed by merger of the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company, Deering Harvester Company and other companies.

April–June

April 2 - The Electric Theatre, the first movie theater in the United States, opens in Los Angeles, California.
April 7 - The Texas Oil Company Texaco is founded.
April 14 - The first J. C. Penney department store opens in Kemmerer, Wyoming.
May 15 - It is claimed that in a field outside Grass Valley, California, Lyman Gilmore achieves flight in a powered airplane. There is no surviving evidence to verify this claim.
May 20 - Cuba gains independence from the United States.
May 22 - Crater Lake National Park is established in Oregon.
June 2 - The coal strike of 1902 begins in the anthracite coalfields of eastern Pennsylvania.
June 13 - Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing, predecessor of global consumer goods brand 3M, begins trading as a mining venture at Two Harbors.
June 15 - The New York Central railroad inaugurates the 20th Century Limited passenger train between Chicago and Grand Central Terminal in New York City.
June 17 - The Newlands Reclamation Act funds irrigation projects for the arid lands of 17 states in the American West.
June 23 - Nurse Jane Toppan is convicted on 12 counts of murder in Massachusetts but is found not guilty by reason of insanity and committed for life.
June 24 - Target Corporation, the department store chain, is founded.

July–September

July 1 - The Philippine Organic Act becomes law, providing that the lower house of the Philippine legislature will be elected after the insurrection ends.
July 2 - The Philippine–American War ends.
July 8 - The United States Bureau of Reclamation is established within the U.S. Geological Survey.
July 10 - The Rolling Mill Mine disaster in Johnstown, Pennsylvania kills 112 miners.
July 17 - Willis Carrier devises air conditioning in New York City.
July 22 - Felix Pedro discovers gold in modern-day Fairbanks, Alaska.
August 22 - Theodore Roosevelt becomes the first American president to ride in an automobile, a Columbia Electric Victoria through Hartford, Connecticut.
September 19 - Shiloh Baptist Church stampede: 115 people are killed in a crush at a black church in Birmingham, Alabama, following a mistaken alarm of fire after an address by Booker T. Washington.

October–December

October 21 - A 5-month strike by the United Mine Workers ends.
October 24 - Delta Zeta sorority is founded at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.
November 2 - William D. Jelks is elected the 32nd governor of Alabama defeating John A. W. Smith.
November 16 - A newspaper cartoon depicting President "Teddy" Roosevelt refusing to shoot a bear cub inspires creation of the first teddy bear by Morris Michtom in New York City.
November 30 - On the American frontier, the second-in-command of Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch, Harvey Logan, 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, 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.

Undated

The Potawatomi Zoo in South Bend, Indiana, begins as a duck pond.
The First Goodwill Industries Store is opened in Boston, Massachusetts by Rev. Edgar J. Helms of Morgan Methodist Chapel.

Ongoing

Births

January 4 - John A. McCone, CIA Director from 1961 to 1965
January 9 - Ann Nixon Cooper, African-American civil rights activist
January 19 - Marjorie Daw, actress
January 24 - E. A. Speiser, biblical scholar
February 6 - George Brunies, jazz trombonist
February 13 - Blair Moody, U.S. Senator from Michigan from 1951 to 1952
February 19
* Kay Boyle, writer
* Eddie Peabody, musician
February 27
* Ethelda Bleibtrey, Olympic swimmer
* John Steinbeck, novelist
March 4 - Russell Reeder, soldier and author
March 16 - Leon Roppolo, jazz clarinetist
March 17 - Bobby Jones, amateur golfer
March 21 - Al Smith, cartoonist
March 23 - Philip Ober, actor
March 24 - Thomas E. Dewey, 47th Governor of New York, 1948 Republican presidential nominee
April 11 - Quentin Reynolds, journalist
April 2 - David Worth Clark, U.S. Senator from Idaho from 1939 to 1945
April 27 - Harry Stockwell, actor and singer
May 6 - Harry Golden, Ukrainian-born American journalist
May 11 - Dick Curtis, actor
May 15 - Richard J. Daley, Mayor of Chicago from 1956
May 21 - Earl Averill, baseball player
May 24 - Wilbur Hatch, composer
May 27 - Gladys Pearl Baker, née Monroe, film editor and mother of actress Marilyn Monroe
June 2
* James T. Berryman, political cartoonist
* Rosa Rio, organist and composer
June 7 - Hope Summers, screen character actress
June 25 - Ralph Erickson, baseball pitcher
July 4
* Vince Barnett, actor
* George Murphy, U.S. Senator from California from 1965 to 1971
July 7
* Richard Barrett Lowe, governor of Guam and American Samoa
* Ted Radcliffe, baseball player
July 16 - Andrew L. Stone, screenwriter, director and producer
July 21 - Joseph Kesselring, playwright
July 31 - Randolph Edgar Haugan, author, editor and publisher
August 1 - Harold D. Schuster, film director
August 4 - Clara Peller, actress
August 18 - Margaret Murie, environmentalist and author
August 22 - Omer Poos, United States district judge from 1958 to 1976
September 7 - Roy Barcroft, actor
October 3 - Waldo McBurney, America's oldest worker
October 5 - Ray Kroc, businessman, founder of McDonald's
October 13 - Arna Wendell Bontemps, writer
October 21 - Eddy Hamel, soccer player
October 25 - Henry Steele Commager, historian
November 14 - Pua Kealoha, Olympic swimmer
November 19 - Trevor Bardette, actor
November 23 - Aaron Bank, colonel
December 5 - Strom Thurmond, 103rd Governor of South Carolina
December 8 - Oswald Jacoby, bridge player
December 9 - Margaret Hamilton, actress
December 14 - Frances Bavier, stage and television actress
December 15 - Bernard L. Austin, admiral
December 23 - Norman Maclean, author
December 27 - Carman Maxwell, animator and voice actor
December 28 - Mortimer Adler, philosopher

Deaths

January 15 - Alpheus Hyatt, zoologist and paleontologist
February 18 - Charles Lewis Tiffany, founder of Tiffany & Co.
March 12 - John Peter Altgeld, 20th Governor of Illinois
March 14 - Daniel H. Reynolds, Confederate Brigadier General
April 3 - Esther Hobart Morris, first women justice of the peace in the United States
April 27 - Julius Sterling Morton, 3rd United States Secretary of Agriculture
May 5 - Bret Harte, short-story writer and poet
May 26 - Almon Brown Strowger, inventor
June 5 - Louis J. Weichmann, chief witness for the prosecution in the trial of the assassins of Abraham Lincoln
July 27 - Packy Dillon, baseball player
August 10 - James McMillan, Canadian-born U.S. Senator from Michigan from 1889 to 1902
September 26 - Levi Strauss, founder of Levi Strauss & Co.
October 26 - Elizabeth Cady Stanton, suffragist
November 22 - Walter Reed, Army physician
November 27 - George S. Cook, prominent early American photographer
November 29 - John Elliott Ward, politician and diplomat
December 4 - Charles Dow, founder of Dow Jones & Company and The Wall Street Journal
December 7 - Thomas Nast, political cartoonist
December 14 - Julia Grant, First Lady of the United States
December 22 - Dwight M. Sabin, U.S. Senator from Minnesota from 1883 to 1889
December 26 - Mary Hartwell Catherwood, author and poet