1911 in the United States

Incumbents

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

• President: William Howard Taft
• Vice President: James S. Sherman
• Chief Justice: Edward Douglass White
• Speaker of the House of Representatives:
• Congress: 61st, 62nd

  State governments

Governors

Lieutenant governors

Events

January–March

• January 5 - The Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity is founded at Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana.
• January 17 - Emmet O'Neal is sworn in as the 34th governor of Alabama replacing B. B. Comer.
• January 18 – Eugene Burton Ely lands on the deck of the USS Pennsylvania stationed in San Francisco Bay, marking the first time an aircraft lands on a ship.
• January 30 – The destroyer USS Terry makes the first aeroplane rescue at sea, saving the life of John McCurdy 10 miles from Havana, Cuba.
• January - The Masses socialist magazine begins publication.
• March – The first installment of a serialized version of Frederick Winslow Taylor's monograph, The Principles of Scientific Management, appears in The American Magazine. The complete series runs in the March, April, and May issues, giving a boost to the efficiency movement.
• March 10 – The Kansas legislature approves House Bill Number 906, effectively the first blue sky law in the United States, culminating an effort by Joseph Norman Dolley, Kansas' banking commissioner.
• March 25 – The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City kills 146.
• March 29 – The United States Army formally adopts the M1911 pistol as its standard sidearm, thus giving the gun its 1911 designation.

  April–June

• April 13 – Mexican Revolution: Rebels take Agua Prieta on the Sonora-Arizona border; government troops take the town back April 17 when the rebel leader "Red" López is drunk.
• April 17 – Southern Methodist University is chartered in Dallas, Texas.
• April 27 – Following the resignation and death of William P. Frye, a compromise is reached to rotate the office of President pro tempore of the United States Senate.
• April 30 – Sparks from a burning hayshed ignite the Great Fire of 1911, destroying much of downtown Bangor, Maine.
• May 15 – The U.S. Supreme Court declares Standard Oil to be an "unreasonable" monopoly under the Sherman Antitrust Act and orders the company to be dissolved.
• May 23 – The main branch of the New York Public Library is officially opened.
• May 24 – Colorado National Monument is established.
• May 30 – The first Indianapolis 500-mile auto race is run. The winner is Ray Harroun in the Marmon 'Wasp.'
• June 5 – Charles F. Kettering files US patent 1,150,523, for an electric Engine Starting Device.
• June 16
• * A 772-gram stony meteorite strikes earth in Columbia County, Wisconsin, near the village of Kilbourn, damaging a barn.
• * IBM is incorporated as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company in Endicott, New York.
• July 24 – Hiram Bingham rediscovers Machu Picchu.

  July–September

• August 8 – Public Law 62-5 sets the number of representatives in the United States House of Representatives at 435.
• August 29 – Ishi, last known member of the Yana people, leaves the California wilderness.
• September 11 – Middle Tennessee State University is founded in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, as Middle Tennessee Normal School.
• September 25 – Groundbreaking for Fenway Park in Boston, Massachusetts, begins.
• September 30 – Austin Dam breaks, wiping out the town of Austin, Pennsylvania, and continuing downstream about 8 miles into the village of Costello.

  October–December

• October 7 - Outlaw Elmer McCurdy and "associates" are chased after trying to rob a train in Oklahoma. McCurdy on the run is eventually hunted down and shot by authorities. His body is never claimed and later is chemically petrified. Afterwards his remains serve as sideshow attractions in carnivals until 1976 when they are diagnosed by forensic experts to be McCurdy. McCurdy's body is finally buried in 1976 after a 65-year odyssey to the grave.
• October 24 – Orville Wright remains in the air 9 minutes and 45 seconds in a glider at Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina, setting a new world record that stands for 10 years.
• October 28 – The Rosicrucian Fellowship's international headquarters opens at Mount Ecclesia, Oceanside, California.
• November 3 – Chevrolet officially enters the automobile market to compete with the Ford Model T.
• November 11
• * The Great Blue Norther of 11/11/11: A record cold snap hits the United States Midwest; many cities break record highs and lows on the same day.
• * The Upton Machine Company, now Whirlpool Corporation, was founded in St Joseph, MI.
• November 17 – The Omega Psi Phi fraternity is founded at Howard University.
• December 24 – The Lackawanna Cutoff, the first of two major cutoffs built by the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad, opens just 3 years after it was built.

  Ongoing

• Progressive Era
• Lochner era

  Births

• January 9 - Slim Gaillard, jazz musician
• February 6 - Ronald Reagan, film actor, 33rd governor of California from 1967 to 1975 and 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989
• March 9 - Ebby Halliday, American realtor
• March 13
• * L. Ron Hubbard, science fiction author, founder of Scientology
• * Marie Rudisill, American TV and radio personality
• March 24 - Joseph Barbera, cartoonist
• March 25 - Jack Ruby, assassin of Lee Harvey Oswald
• April 8 - Melvin Calvin, chemist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1961
• April 17 - Lester Rodney, journalist
• April 18 - Huntington Hartford, businessman
• May 8 - Robert Johnson, Mississippi blues guitar player and singer-songwriter
• May 11 - Doodles Weaver, actor and singer
• May 27 - Hubert Humphrey, 38th vice president of the United States from 1965 to 1969 and U.S. Senator from Minnesota from 1949 to 1964 and from 1971 to 1978
• June 5 - John C. Woods, US Army executioner
• June 11 - Norman Malcolm, philosopher
• June 13 - Luis Walter Alvarez, physicist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1968
• June 25 - William Howard Stein, chemist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1972
• June 26 - Babe Didrikson Zaharias, athlete and golfer
• July 4 - Frederick Seitz, solid-state physicist
• August 9 - William A. Fowler, physicist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1983
• August 24 - Durward Kirby, American television host and announcer
• September 21 - Clair Engle, U.S. Senator from California from 1959 to 1964
• September 23 - Jane Hadley Barkley, Second Lady of the United States
• September 30 - Ruth Gruber, journalist
• December 1 - Walter Alston, baseball player and manager

  Deaths

• January 7 - William Hall Sherwood, pianist and music educator
• January 9 - Edwin Arthur Jones, choral composer
• January 24 - David Graham Phillips, journalist and novelist, murdered
• February 1 - Charles Stillman Sperry, admiral
• February 7 - Hannah Whitall Smith, Quaker author
• February 22 - Frances Harper, African American abolitionist, poet and author
• March 4 - Ellen Maria Colfax, Second Lady of the United States
• March 18 - David Moffat, financier
• April 13 - William Keith, landscape painter
• April 14
• * George Cary Eggleston, memoirist
• * Addie Joss, baseball player
• * Denman Thompson, actor and playwright
• May 5
• * James A. Bland, African American musician and songwriter
• * Halsey Ives, art teacher and curator
• May 9 - Thomas Wentworth Higginson, writer, abolitionist and advocate of women's suffrage
• May 21 - Williamina Fleming, astronomer
• May 22 - Elizabeth Smith Miller, women's rights campaigner
• May 30 - Milton Bradley, game pioneer and businessman
• June 9 - Carrie Nation, temperance activist
• June 27 - Elizabeth Litchfield Cunnyngham, missionary and church worker
• July 2
• *Mary M. Cohen, American social economist and proto-feminist
• *Clement A. Evans, Confederate general
• July 24 - Thomas J. Latham, lawyer and businessman
• August 1 - Samuel Arza Davenport, politician
• August 7 - Elizabeth Akers Allen, author, journalist and poet
• August 8 - William P. Frye, U.S. Senator
• August 11 - Verner Clarges, silent film actor
• August 26 - Alfred Bayliss, English-American educator
• September 9 - Francis March, lexicographer and philologist
• October 2 - Winfield Scott Schley, admiral
• October 7 - Elmer McCurdy, robber, killed in shootout
• October 14 - John Marshall Harlan, U.S. Supreme Court Justice
• October 17 - Abram Williams, U.S. Senator from California from 1886 to 1887
• October 19 - Eugene Ely, aviation pioneer
• October 24 - Ida Lewis, lighthouse keeper
• October 29 - Joseph Pulitzer, newspaper publisher and journalist
• October 31 - John Joseph Montgomery, glider pioneer
• November 8 - Oscar Bielaski, Major League Baseball player
• November 15 - Philip Gengembre Hubert, architect
• December 2 - George Davidson, geodesist, astronomer, geographer, surveyor and engineer
• December 21 - Benjamin F. Jonas, U.S. Senator from Louisiana from 1879 to 1885
• December 20 - Rose Eytinge, actress
• December 25 - Arthur F. Griffith, calculating prodigy