1909 in the United States

Events from the year 1909 in the United States.

Incumbents

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

Events

January–March

January 1–31 – Torrential rain in California sees Helena Mine record of precipitation for the month, the highest official monthly total in the contiguous United States.
January 1 – Drilling begins on the Lakeview Gusher.
January 28 – U.S. troops leave Cuba after being there since the Spanish–American War.
February 2 – Centennial anniversary of the foundation of Miami University, which is celebrated.
February 12 – The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is founded, commemorating the hundredth anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth.
February 13 – Superior National Forest is established
February 22 – The Great White Fleet returns to Hampton Roads, Virginia having circumnavigated the globe.
February 24 – The Hudson Motor Car Company is founded.
March 4 – William Howard Taft is sworn in as the 27th president of the United States, and James S. Sherman is sworn in as the 27th vice president of the United States.
March 23 – Theodore Roosevelt leaves New York for the Smithsonian-Roosevelt African Expedition, sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution and National Geographic Society.
March 30 – Queensboro Bridge opens.

April–June

April 9 - Payne–Aldrich Tariff Act passed in Congress.
April 30 - Palm Beach County is founded, separating from Dade County.
June 1 - The Alaska–Yukon–Pacific Exposition opens in Seattle.
June 9-August 7 - Alice Huyler Ramsey, a 22-year-old housewife and mother from Hackensack, New Jersey, becomes the first woman to drive across the United States. In 59 days, she drives a Maxwell automobile 3,800 miles from Manhattan, New York to San Francisco, California with three non-driving female companions.
June 18 - The strangled body of missionary Elsie Sigel is discovered in a trunk in New York City's Chinatown.
June 22 - Construction begins on the Cape Cod Canal, which will separate Cape Cod from mainland Massachusetts.

July–September

August 2
* The United States Army Signal Corp Division purchases the world's first military airplane. They buy the Wright Military Flyer from the Wright Brothers.
* The US Mint releases the 1909-S VDB Lincoln Cent, discontinuing it on August 5 because it shows the initials of engraver Victor David Brenner.
August 8 - The Rosicrucian Fellowship is launched at Seattle, Washington.
August 12 - The first event is held at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
September - Sigmund Freud, having arrived on August 29 in New York, delivers his only lectures in the United States, on psychoanalysis, at Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts, giving public recognition to the subject in the anglophone world.
September 27 - The 5.1 Wabash River earthquake shook western Indiana with a maximum Mercalli intensity of VII, causing light damage.

October–December

October 11 - The 1909 Florida Keys hurricane makes landfall in the U.S.
October 16 - The Pittsburgh Pirates defeat the Detroit Tigers to win the 1909 World Series.
November - New York shirtwaist strike of 1909 begins.
November 2 - The Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity is founded at Boston University.
November 6 - The Union Soldiers and Sailors Monument is dedicated in Baltimore.
November 8 - Fire at Robert Morrison fibroid comb factory in New York City kills 9.
November 11 - The U.S. Navy founds a navy base in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
November 13 - Ballinger–Pinchot scandal begins: Collier's Magazine accuses U.S. Secretary of the Interior Richard Ballinger of questionable dealings in Alaskan coal fields.
November 18 - Two United States Navy ships are sent to Nicaragua after 500 revolutionaries are executed by order of dictator José Santos Zelaya.
December 31 - The Manhattan Bridge opens.

Undated

The American Issue Publishing House of the Anti-Saloon League is incorporated.

Ongoing

Births

January 1 - Dana Andrews, film actor
January 2 - Barry Goldwater, U.S. Senator from Arizona from 1953 to 1965 and from 1969 to 1987
January 4 - J. R. Simplot, businessman, founded the Simplot Company
January 5 - Stephen Cole Kleene, mathematician
January 16 - Clement Greenberg, art critic
February 11
* Max Baer, boxer
* Joseph L. Mankiewicz, filmmaker
January 30 - Saul Alinsky, community organizer
February 9 - Dean Rusk, politician
February 18 - Warren Elliot Henry, African American physicist
February 24 - August Derleth, writer and anthologist
March 4 - Harry Helmsley, real estate entrepreneur
March 7 - Roger Revelle, scientist
March 10 - Henrietta Buckmaster, activist, journalist, and author
March 12 - Virginia McLaurin, community worker and supercentenarian
March 21 - Edmund Berkeley, computer scientist
March 22 - Milt Kahl, animator
March 24 - Clyde Barrow, outlaw
March 29 - Moon Mullican, country music singer
April 13 - Eudora Welty, fiction writer
April 25 - William Pereira, architect
April 27 - Tom Ewell, actor and producer
May 6 - Loyd Sigmon, amateur radio broadcaster
May 7 - Edwin H. Land, camera inventor
May 15 - J. Caleb Boggs, U.S. Senator from Delaware from 1961 to 1973
May 26 - Papa Charlie McCoy, Delta blues musician and songwriter
May 27
* Dolores Hope, singer and philanthropist
* Donald Trumbull, special effects artist
May 30 - Benny Goodman, jazz clarinetist and bandleader
June 3 - Ira D. Wallach, businessman and philanthropist
June 10 - Mary Field, actress
June 12 - Archie Bleyer, song arranger and bandleader
June 14 - Burl Ives, folk singer
June 20 - Robb White, writer
July 2 - Gil English, baseball player
July 5 - Douglas MacArthur II, diplomat
July 8 - Ike Petersen, American football player
July 11 - Irene Hervey, actress
July 12 - Joe DeRita, comedian
July 15 - Vera Shlakman, economist
July 16 - Teddy Buckner, jazz trumpeter
July 18 - Harriet Nelson, singer and actress
July 20 - Clyde Roberts, college football player
July 23 - Helen Martin, actress
July 25 - Elizabeth Francis, supercentenarian
July 29 - Chester Himes, fiction writer
August 1 - Sibyl M. Rock, mathematician
August 10
* Leo Fender, guitar inventor and manufacturer
* Richard J. Hughes, 45th Governor of New Jersey, and Chief Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court
September 6 - Michael Gordon, actor and director
September 12 - Lawrence Brooks, army veteran and supercentenarian
September 15 - Phil Arnold, actor
September 24 - Carl Sigman, songwriter
September 26 - Bill France, Sr., race car driver and businessman, co-founder of NASCAR
September 28 - Al Capp, cartoonist
October 1 - Everett Sloane, character actor
October 7 - Tony Malinosky, baseball player
October 10 - Max Ehrlich, writer
October 13 - Herblock, editorial cartoonist
October 14 - Dorothy Kingsley, screenwriter and producer
October 15
* Margie Hines, voice actress
* Robert Trout, journalist
October 17 - Cozy Cole, jazz drummer
October 20 - Carla Laemmle, actress
October 27 - Henry Townsend, blues musician
November 7 - Ruby Hurley, civil rights activist
November 25 - P. D. Eastman, author and illustrator
November 18 - Johnny Mercer, songwriter
November 20 - Alan Bible, U.S. Senator from Nevada from 1954 to 1974
November 27 - James Agee, writer
December 9 - Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., film actor
December 14 - Edward Lawrie Tatum, geneticist, Nobel Prize laureate

Deaths

January 10
* John Conness, Ireland-born U.S. Senator from California from 1863 to 1869
* Charles Vernon Culver, politician
April 9 - Francis Marion Crawford, novelist
April 21 - David Turpie, U.S. Senator from Indiana in 1863 and from 1887 to 1899
April 23 - Franklin Bartlett, Representative from New York
April 28 - Frederick Holbrook, 27th Governor of Vermont from 1861 to 1863
May 17 - Helge Alexander Haugan, Norwegian-born banking executive
June 10 - Gideon T. Stewart, educator and politician
June 24 - Sarah Orne Jewett, writer
June 29 - George B. Cosby, Confederate general in the American Civil War
August 21 - George Cabot Lodge, poet
September 4 - Clyde Fitch, dramatist
October 15 - William Lindsay, U.S. Senator from Kentucky from 1893 to 1901
October 26 - Oliver Otis Howard, Union general and United States Army officer
December 10 - Red Cloud, Oglala Lakota Chief
December 20 - William Alexander Harris, U.S. Senator from Kansas from 1897 to 1903
December 24 - Jean Clemens, youngest child of Mark Twain
December 26
* Frederic Remington, cowboy artist and sculptor
* Mary Jane Richardson Jones, abolitionist