1905

Events

January

• January 1 - In a major defeat in the Russo-Japanese War, Russian General Anatoly Stessel surrenders Port Arthur, located on mainland China, to the Japanese.
• January 3 - Japan formally repossesses Port Arthur, and renames it Ryojun, holding it for the next 40 years. The area will revert in 1945 to China, and become the Lushunkou District.
• January 4
• *Gheorghe Grigore Cantacuzino becomes Prime Minister of Romania for the second time, having previously served from 1899 to 1900, and remains in office for more than two years.
• *The city of Bend, Oregon, plotted out in 1900 by Alexander Drake, is incorporated as a town for local logging companies, and will have a population of 536 in 1910. By the year 2020, it will have almost 100,000 residents.
• January 5 - Baroness Emma Orczy's play The Scarlet Pimpernel, the forerunner of her novel, opens at the New Theatre in London, beginning a run of 122 performances and numerous revivals.
• January 6 - The Lick Observatory announces the discovery on 3 December 1904 of a sixth moon of Jupiter, made by their astronomer Charles D. Perrine.
• January 11 - Under the supervision of five editors, work begins on the comprehensive Catholic Encyclopedia, subtitled "An International Work of Reference on the Constitution, Doctrine, Discipline, and History of the Catholic Church." The first volume will appear in 1907.
• January 15 - A series of three high tsunamis kill 61 people in Norway, after a rockslide sweeps down Mount Ramnefjell and crashes into Lake Lovatnet.
• January 17 - In France, Prime Minister Émile Combes and his cabinet announce their resignations after being implicated in the Affair of the Cards, a system set up by the War Ministry to purge the French Army officers corps of Jesuits.
• January 21 - The Dominican Republic signs an agreement with the United States to allow the U.S. to administer the collection of customs taxes for Santo Domingo for 50 years, with the U.S. to assume responsibility for payment of the Republic's debts to foreign nations from Dominican income. The agreement is done as an exercise of the "Roosevelt Corollary" to the Monroe Doctrine.
• January 22 - The Bloody Sunday massacre of peaceful Russian demonstrators at the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg takes place, leading to an unsuccessful uprising.
• January 26 -
• *Russian Revolution of 1905: The Imperial Russian Army opens fire on demonstrators in Riga, Governorate of Livonia, killing 73 people and injuring 200.
• *Elections are held in Hungary for the Országgyűlés, the Kingdom's parliament within Austria-Hungary. Voters overwhelmingly reject the Liberal Party, led by Prime Minister István Tisza, that has ruled Hungary since 1875. The Liberals lose 118 of their 277 seats, but Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria-Hungary ignores the results and keeps Tisza in power.
• January 27 - The Nelson Act is passed into law in the United States, providing for racial segregation of schools in the Alaska Territory.
• January 29 - Rioting breaks out in Warsaw, at this time under Russian Imperial rule with a Russian Governor-General.
• January 30 - The U.S. Supreme Court renders its unanimous decision in the landmark case of Swift & Co. v. United States, allowing the federal government to regulate monopolies.
• January 31 - "The greatest ball of the Gilded Age" is held by James Hazen Hyde, the heir to the fortune of the founder of the Equitable Life Assurance Association, at New York City's Sherry Hotel, spending $200,000 for a "Louis XV costume ball."

  February

• February 1 - U.S. Senator John H. Mitchell of Oregon is indicted by a federal grand jury on charges arising from a scandal involving land grants in the state and illegally using his influence for private clients.
• February 3 - The first performance of A Shropshire Lad, the setting to music of the 1896 set of 63 poems of A. E. Housman by Arthur Somervell as a song-cycle, takes place at Aeolian Hall in London.
• February 4 - A simultaneous uprising begins at six cities in Argentina against the government of President Manuel Quintana.
• February 5 - The French ship Anjou is wrecked off of the coast of the uninhabited Auckland Island, located from the nearest inhabited land in New Zealand. The castaways live on the isle for more than three months until being rescued on May 7.
• February 6 - Eliel Soisalon-Soininen, the Chancellor of Justice of the Grand Duchy of Finland is assassinated at Helsingfors.
• February 9 - Prince A. Morrow begins the movement in the U.S. for sex education, with the founding of the Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis.
• February 12 - The Switzerland national football team plays its first international game, losing to France, 1 to 0.
• February 16 - Six of the 11 crew of the British Royal Navy submarine HMS A5 are killed by a pair of explosions caused by gasoline fumes in port in Ireland.
• February 17 - Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich of Russia, the Governor-General of Moscow and uncle of Tsar Nicholas II, is assassinated.
• February 20 - In the Russo-Japanese War, the Battle of Mukden begins in Manchuria.
• February 21 - Sir Wilfrid Laurier introduces a resolution in the Canadian parliament proposing that two new provinces, Alberta and Saskatchewan, be created out of the Northwest Territories.
• February 23 - Rotary International is founded in Chicago in the U.S.
• February 26 - Russia sustains a severe defeat in Manchuria at Tsen-ho-Cheng.
• February 28 - Jane Stanford, the co-founder with her husband Leland of Stanford University, is fatally poisoned while visiting the Moana Hotel in Hawaii.

  March

• March 2 - Russia's Committee of Ministers votes to grant religious freedom to the subjects of the Russian Empire.
• March 3 - Tsar Nicholas II of Russia announces the creation of an elected assembly, the Duma, to represent the people of the Russian Empire in an advisory capacity, although the real power to make laws will remain with the Tsar and the cabinet of ministers.
• March 10 - Russo-Japanese War: The Japanese capture of Mukden completes the rout of Russian armies in Manchuria.
• March 13 - Mata Hari introduces her exotic dance act in the Musée Guimet, Paris.
• March 14 - 23 of the 26 crew of the British barque Kyber die when the ship is wrecked off England's Land's End.
• March 18 - Albert Einstein submits his paper "On a heuristic viewpoint concerning the production and transformation of light", in which he explains the photoelectric effect using the notion of light quanta, for publication.
• March 20
• * The Grover Shoe Factory disaster kills 58 employees in Brockton, Massachusetts, when a boiler explodes and the factory building collapses.
• * The title Prime Minister of the United Kingdom is officially recognised by King Edward VII by a royal warrant.
• March 23 - The Theriso revolt begins in Crete as about 1,500 people led by Eleftherios Venizelos demand unification with Greece.
• March 29 - Jimmy Walsh knocks out Monte Attell, in a controversial six-round bout in Philadelphia, to win recognition of the World Bantamweight Championship by the National Boxing Association, despite being disqualified by the referee.

  April

• April 1 - The British Imperial Penny Post is extended to include Australia.
• April 2 - The Simplon Tunnel through the Alps is opened to railway traffic.
• April 3 - A coal mine explosion at Zeigler, Illinois, kills 50 miners.
• April 4 - In India, the 1905 Kangra earthquake hits the Kangra Valley, kills 20,000 and destroys most buildings in Kangra, McLeod Ganj and Dharamshala.
• April 5 - The body of John Paul Jones, "Father of the American Navy", is located in Paris almost 113 years after his death.
• April 6 - A violent strike by the Teamsters' Union begins in Chicago.
• April 8 - Hundreds of people are killed in Spain in the collapse of a dam holding back a reservoir near Madrid.
• April 20 - The largest ocean liner in the world at this time, the German SS Amerika is launched.
• April 23 - German General Lothar von Trotha commander of troops in Germany's colony of Südwestafrika, orders the extermination of the Nama people within the colony's borders, ultimately killing 10,000. Von Trotha's proclamation Aan de oorlogvorende Namastamme, proclaims that "The Nama who chooses not to surrender and lets himself be seen in German territory will be shot, until all are exterminated."
• April 24 - China's Empress Regent Cixi abolishes further use in executions of the nation's three most cruel torture execution methods, lingchi, gibbeting, and desecration of a dying person.
• April 28 - A tornado strikes Laredo, Texas and kills 100.
• April 30 - Albert Einstein completes his doctoral dissertation, A New Determination of Molecular Dimensions.

  May

• May 4 -The first world championship of professional wrestling takes place at Madison Square Garden in New York City.
• May 9 - Upon the death of U.S. social activist Ann Reeves Jarvis In West Virginia, her daughter Anna Jarvis resolves to campaign across the United States for a proposed "Mother's Day".
• May 10 - The 1905 Snyder tornado destroys the town of Snyder, Oklahoma, killing 97.
• May 11 - Albert Einstein submits for publication his paper "Über die von der molekularkinetischen Theorie der Wärme geforderte Bewegung von in ruhenden Flüssigkeiten suspendierten Teilchen", based on his doctoral research, delineating a stochastic model of Brownian motion.
• May 15 - Las Vegas, Nevada, is founded when of land adjacent to the Union Pacific Railroad tracks are auctioned to form what becomes Downtown Las Vegas.
• May 22 - Abdul Hamid II, the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire establishes the Ullah millet for the Aromanians of the empire. For this reason, the Aromanian National Day is sometimes celebrated on this day. The decision is publicly announced the next day, which is more commonly celebrated.
• May 28 - At the end of two days in fighting in the Battle of Tsushima, the Russian Imperial Navy has suffered the deaths of more than 14,000 of the 18,000 sailors and officers it had brought to the battle, and all but four of its Pacific ships. The Japanese loss is three torpedo boats and 800 men.
• May 30 - Japan's Prime Minister Katsura Tarō asks U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt to moderate peace discussions to end the Russo-Japanese War.