1907
Events
January
- January 14 - 1907 Kingston earthquake: A 6.5 Mw earthquake in Kingston, Jamaica, kills between 800 and 1,000.
February
- February 9 - The "Mud March", the first large procession organised by The National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, takes place in London.
- February 11 - The French warship Jean Bart sinks off the coast of Morocco.
- February 12 - The steamship Larchmont collides with the Harry Hamilton in Long Island Sound; 183 lives are lost.
- February 16 - SKF, a worldwide mechanical parts manufacturing brand is founded in Gothenburg, Sweden.
- February 21 - The English mail steamship Berlin is wrecked off the Hook of Holland; 142 lives are lost.
- February 24 - The Austrian Lloyd steamship Imperatrix, from Trieste to Bombay, is wrecked on Cape of Crete and sinks; 137 lives are lost.
- March
- * The steamship Congo collides at the mouth of the Ems River with the German steamship Nerissa; 7 lives are lost.
- * The 1907 Romanian Peasants' Revolt results in possibly as many as 11,000 deaths.
- * The Diamond Sūtra, a woodblock printed Buddhist scripture dated 868, is discovered by Aurel Stein in the Mogao Caves in China; it is "the earliest complete survival of a dated printed book".
- * Pablo Picasso completes his painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon.
- March 11 - The Prime Minister of Bulgaria, Dimitar Petkov, is assassinated by an anarchist in Sofia.
- March 15-16 - Elections to the new Parliament of Finland are the first in the world for a national assembly with woman candidates, as well as the first elections in Europe where universal suffrage is applied; 19 women are elected.
- March 22 - The first taxicabs with taximeters begin operating in London.
- March 25 - The first university sports federation in Europe is established in Hungary, with the participation or support of the associations of ten universities and colleges.
- c. March 28 - The volcano Ksudach erupts, in the Kamchatka Peninsula.
April
- April 7 - Hershey Park opens in Hershey, Pennsylvania.
- April 17 - The first Minas Geraes-class battleship is laid down for Brazil, by Armstrong Whitworth on the River Tyne, in England, triggering the South American dreadnought race.
- April 24 - Al Ahly SC is founded in Cairo by Omar Lotfi, as a gathering place for Egyptian students' unions in the struggle against colonization; it is the first association football club officially founded in Egypt or Africa.
May
- May 13 - The 5th Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party convenes in secret in London.
June
- June 5 - Shastri Yagnapurushdas consecrates the murtis of both Sahajanand Swami and Gunatitanand Swami in a single central shrine, thus establishing the Bochasanwasi Shri Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha, later a United Nations affiliate organization.
- June 6 - Persil laundry detergent is first marketed by Henkel of Düsseldorf, Germany, the first to combine bleach with detergent commercially.
- June 10-August 10 - The Peking to Paris motor race is won by Prince Scipione Borghese, driving a 7-litre 35/45 hp Itala.
- June 15 - The Second Hague Peace Conference opens at The Hague.
- June 22 - The London Underground's Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead Railway opens.
- June 26 - Tiflis bank robbery: Bolsheviks attack a cash-filled bank coach in the centre of Tiflis, Georgia, killing 40 people.
July
- July 1 - The Orange River Colony gains autonomy, as the Orange Free State.
- July 6 - Guardians of the Irish Crown Jewels notice that they have been stolen.
- July 15 - The London Electrobus Company starts running the first ever service of battery-electric buses between London's Victoria Station and Liverpool Street.
- July 21 - The sinks after colliding with the lumber schooner San Pedro, off Shelter Cove, California, resulting in 88 deaths.
- July 24 - The Japan–Korea Treaty of 1907 brings the government and military of the protectorate of Korea more firmly under Japanese control.
August
- August 24-31 - The International Anarchist Congress of Amsterdam meets in the Netherlands.
- August 28 - UPS is founded by James E. Casey in Seattle, Washington.
- August 29 - The partially completed superstructure of the Quebec Bridge collapses entirely, claiming the lives of 76 workers.
- August 31 - Count Alexander Izvolsky and Sir Arthur Nicolson sign the Anglo-Russian Entente in Saint Petersburg, bringing a pause in The Great Game in Central Asia, and establishing the Triple Entente.
September
- September 7 - British Cunard Line passenger liner sets out on her maiden voyage, from Liverpool to New York City.
- September 8 - Pope Pius X promulgates the encyclical Pascendi Dominici gregis, opposing modernism in the Catholic Church.
- September 22 – Uruguay abolishes capital punishment.
- September 26 - New Zealand and Newfoundland become dominions of the British Empire.
- October - A committee of the Delegation for the Adoption of an International Auxiliary Language, made up of academics including Otto Jespersen, Wilhelm Ostwald and Roland Eötvös, meet in Paris to select a language for international use. The committee ultimately decides to reform Esperanto.
- October 6 - The Deutscher Werkbund is founded in Germany.
- October 17 - Guglielmo Marconi initiates commercial transatlantic radio communications between his high power longwave wireless telegraphy stations in Clifden, Ireland, and Glace Bay, Nova Scotia.
- October 18 - The Hague Convention is revised by the Hague Peace Conference, focussing on naval warfare.
- October 24 - A major United States financial crisis is averted when J. P. Morgan, E. H. Harriman, James Stillman, Henry Clay Frick and other Wall Street financiers create a $25,000,000 pool to invest in the shares on the plunging New York Stock Exchange, ending the bank panic of 1907.
- October 27 - Černová massacre: Fifteen people are shot during the consecration of a Catholic church in Hungary.
November
- November 16
- * British Cunard Line passenger liner RMS Mauretania, the world's largest and fastest at this date, sets out on her maiden voyage from Liverpool to New York.
- * President Theodore Roosevelt proclaims that Oklahoma has become the 46th U.S. state.
December
- December 6 - Monongah Mining disaster: A coal mine explosion kills 362 workers in Monongah, West Virginia.
- December 14 - The largest sailing ship ever built, the 7-masted U.S.-owned Thomas W. Lawson, is wrecked in the Isles of Scilly.
- December 16 - The American Great White Fleet begins its circumnavigation of the world.
- December 17 - Ugyen Wangchuck becomes the first Druk Gyalpo.
- December 19 - An explosion in a coal mine in Jacobs Creek, Pennsylvania kills 239.
- December 21 - Santa María School massacre: In Chile, soldiers fire at striking mineworkers gathered in the Santa María School in Iquique; over 2,000 are killed.
Date unknown
- Indiana, in the United States, becomes the world's first legislature to place laws permitting compulsory sterilization for eugenic purposes on the statute book.
- The triode thermionic amplifier invented by Lee de Forest, starting the development of electronics as a practical technology.
- The Autochrome Lumière is the first commercial color photography process.
- James M. Spangler invents the first Hoover vacuum cleaner.
- The Moine Thrust Belt in Scotland is identified, one of the first to be discovered anywhere.
Births
January
- January 3 - Ray Milland, Welsh actor, film director
- January 5 - Volmari Iso-Hollo, Finnish athlete
- January 8 - Keizō Hayashi, Japanese civil servant, military official
- January 11 - Pierre Mendès France, French politician, 142nd Prime Minister of France
- January 12 - Sergei Korolev, Russian rocket scientist
- January 16 - Alexander Knox, Canadian actor, novelist
- January 20
- * Manfred von Ardenne, German research and applied physicist, inventor
- * Paula Wessely, Austrian actress
- January 22 - Dixie Dean, English football player
- January 23 - Hideki Yukawa, Japanese physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
- January 24
- * Maurice Couve de Murville, Prime Minister of France
- * Ismail Nasiruddin of Terengganu, King of Malaysia
- January 27 - Joyce Compton, American actress
February
- February 5
- * Pierre Pflimlin, French politician
- * Sergio Méndez Arceo, Roman Catholic bishop of Cuernavaca, Mexico 1953–1983
- February 9 - Trường Chinh, President of Vietnam
- February 15
- * Jean Langlais, French composer, organist
- * Cesar Romero, American actor
- February 18 - Oscar Brodney, American screenwriter
- February 21 - W. H. Auden, English poet
- February 22
- * Sheldon Leonard, American actor, writer, director, and producer
- * Robert Young, American actor
- February 25 - Kathryn Wasserman Davis, American philanthropist
- February 26 - Dub Taylor, American actor
- February 27 - Mildred Bailey, American singer
- February 28 - Milton Caniff, American cartoonist
March
- March 4 - Maria Branyas, American-born Spanish supercentenarian
- March 8 - Konstantinos Karamanlis, Greek politician
- March 9 - Mircea Eliade, Romanian religious historian, writer
- March 15 - Zarah Leander, Swedish actress, singer
- March 17
- * Takeo Miki, 41st Prime Minister of Japan
- * Jean Van Houtte, 38th Prime Minister of Belgium
- March 18 - John Zachary Young, English biologist
- March 23 - Daniel Bovet, Swiss-born Italian pharmacologist, Nobel Prize laureate
- March 26 - Mahadevi Varma, Indian Hindi-language poet, essayist
- March 28 - Sister Lúcia, Portuguese nun, visionary
- March 30 - Friedrich August Freiherr von der Heydte, German Luftwaffe officer