1891

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1891 (MDCCCXCI) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar and a common year starting on Tuesday of the Julian calendar, the 1891st year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 891st year of the 2nd millennium, the 91st year of the 19th century, and the 2nd year of the 1890s decade. As of the start of 1891, the Gregorian calendar was 12 days ahead of the Julian calendar, which remained in localized use until 1923.

Events

January–March

January 21: Hawaii, Queen Lili'Uokalani.

• January 1 – Paying of old age pensions begins in Germany.
• January 5 – The Australian shearers' strike, that leads indirectly to the foundation of the Australian Labor Party, begins.
• January 16 – The Chilean Civil War of 1891 breaks out.
• January 20 – Jim Hogg becomes the first native Texan to be governor of that state.
• January 27–May 2 – The Jamaica International Exhibition is held.
• January 29 – Liliuokalani is proclaimed Queen of Hawaii.
• January 31 – The Portuguese republican revolution breaks out, in the northern city of Porto.
• February – The Tobacco Protest begins in Iran.
• February 14 – In the FA Cup quarter final in English Association football, a goal is deliberately stopped by handball on the goal line. An indirect free kick is awarded, since the penalty kick, proposed the previous year by William McCrum, has not yet been implemented. This event probably changes public opinion on the penalty kick, seen previously as an Irishman's motion.
• February 15 – Allmänna Idrottsklubben (AIK) sports club is founded in Stockholm, Sweden.
• February 21 – Springhill, Nova Scotia suffers a serious mining disaster.
• March 3 – The International Copyright Act of 1891 is passed, by the 51st United States Congress.
• March 9–12 – The Great Blizzard of 1891 in the south and west of England leads to extensive snow drifts and powerful storms off the south coast, with 14 ships sunk, and approximately 220 deaths attributed to the weather conditions.^[1][2]
• March 12 – Djurgårdens IF (DIF) sports club is founded in Stockholm.
• March 14 – In New Orleans, a lynch mob storms the Old Parish Prison, and lynches 11 Italians arrested but found innocent of the murder of Police Chief David Hennessy.
• March 15 – Jesse W. Reno patents the first escalator at Coney Beach.
• March 17 – The British steamship SS Utopia, carrying Italian migrants to New York, sinks in the inner harbor of Gibraltar after collision with the battleship HMS Anson, killing 564.^[3]
• March 18 – The London–Paris telephone system officially opens.^[4]

April–June

May 5: Tchaikovsky opens Carnegie Hall

• April 1
  • The Wrigley Company is founded in Chicago.
  • The London–Paris telephone system is opened to the general public.^[4]
• April 5 – Census in the United Kingdom: 15.6 million people live in cities of 20,000 or more in England and Wales, and cities of 20,000 or more account for 54% of the total English population.
• May – Mirza Ghulam Ahmad claims to be the Promised Messiah (the second coming of Jesus) and the Mahdi awaited in Islam.
• May 1
  • Troops fire on a workers' May Day demonstration in support of the 8-hour workday in Fourmies, France, killing 9 and wounding 30.
  • The first Fascio dei lavoratori (Workers League) is founded by Giuseppe De Felice Giuffrida in Catania, Sicily.
• May 5 – The Music Hall in New York (later known as Carnegie Hall) has its grand opening and first public performance, with Peter Tchaikovsky as guest conductor.
• May 11 – Ōtsu incident: Tsesarevich Nikolay Alexandrovich (the future Czar Nicholas II) of Russia survives an assassination attempt, while visiting Japan.
• May 15 – Pope Leo XIII issues the encyclical Rerum novarum, on the rights and duties of capital and labor, resulting in the creation of many Christian Democrat parties throughout Europe.
• May 20 – Thomas Edison's prototype kinetoscope is first displayed at Edison's Laboratory, for a convention of the National Federation of Women's Clubs.
• May 31 N.S. (May 19 O.S.) – In the Kuperovskaya district of Vladivostok, a grand ceremonial inauguration of construction work on the Trans-Siberian Railway is carried out by the Tsesarevich Nikolay Alexandrovich, and a religious service held.
• June 1 – The Johnstown Inclined Plane opens in Johnstown, Pennsylvania.
• June 16 – John Abbott becomes Canada's third prime minister.
• June 21 – The first long-distance transmission of alternating current is made, by the Ames power plant near Telluride, Colorado, by Lucien and Paul Nunn.
• June 25 – Arthur Conan Doyle's detective Sherlock Holmes appears in The Strand Magazine (London) for the first time, in the issue dated July.^[4]

May 20: Edison's kinetoscope.

Births

January–March

Zora Neale Hurston

Walther Bothe

Antonio Segni

José P. Laurel

Earl Warren

• January 1 – Charles Bickford, American actor (d. 1967)
• January 2 – Charles P. Thompson, American actor (d. 1979)
• January 7 – Zora Neale Hurston, African-American writer, anthropologist, ethnographer (d. 1960)
• January 8 – Walther Bothe, German physicist, Nobel Prize in Physics (d. 1957)
• January 22
  • Antonio Gramsci, Italian Communist writer, politician (d. 1937)
  • Bruno Loerzer, German aviator, air force general (d. 1960)
• January 24 – Walter Model, German field marshal (d. 1945)
• January 27 – Ilya Ehrenburg, Russian writer (d. 1967)
• January 30 – Walter Beech, American pioneering aviator, aircraft manufacturer (d. 1950)
• February 2 – Antonio Segni, Italian politician, 34th Prime Minister of Italy (1955–1957, 1959–1960), 4th President of the Italian Republic (d. 1972)
• February 5 – Renato Petronio, Italian rower (d. 1976)
• February 9 – Ronald Colman, English actor (d. 1958)
• February 11 – J. W. Hearne, English cricketer (d. 1965)
• February 13 – Grant Wood, American painter (d. 1942)
• February 15 – Henry J. Knauf, American politician (d. 1950)
• February 17 – Abraham Fraenkel, German-born Israeli mathematician, recipient of the Israel Prize (d. 1965)
• February 21 – Seán Heuston, Irish rebel (d. 1916)
• February 27 – David Sarnoff, Russian-born American broadcasting pioneer (d. 1971)
• March 3 – Fritz Rumey, German World War I fighter ace (d. 1918)
• March 9 – José P. Laurel, 3rd President of the Philippines (d. 1959)
• March 10 – Sam Jaffe, American actor (d. 1984)
• March 16 - Patsy Gallacher, Irish footballer (d. 1953)
• March 19 – Earl Warren, American politician and Chief Justice of the United States (d. 1974)
• March 24 – Rudolf Berthold, German fighter pilot (d. 1920)
• March 26 – Will Wright, American actor (d. 1962)
• March 29 – Yvan Goll, French lyricist, dramatist (d. 1950)

April–June

Ahmad bin Yahya

John A. Costello

• April 2 – Max Ernst, German painter (d. 1976)
• April 5 – Laura Vicuña, Chilean Roman Catholic holy figure and blessed (d. 1904)
• April 7
  • Ole Kirk Christiansen, Danish founder of The Lego Group (d. 1958)
  • Minoru Ōta, Japanese admiral (d. 1945)
• April 13 – Nella Larsen, American novelist (d. 1964)
• April 14 – B. R. Ambedkar, one of the founding fathers of modern India and the architect of its constitution (d. 1956)
• April 15
  • Väinö Raitio, Finnish composer (d. 1945)
  • Wallace Reid, American actor (d. 1923)
• April 17 – George Adamski, Polish-born alleged UFO traveler (d. 1965)
• April 19 – W. Alton Jones, American industrialist, philanthropist (d. 1962)
• April 20 – Aldo Finzi, Italian politician (d. 1944)
• April 23 – Sergei Prokofiev, Soviet composer (d. 1953)
• April 29 – Bharathidasan, 20th-century Tamil poet, rationalist (d. 1964)
• May 7 – Harry McShane, Scottish socialist (d. 1988)
• May 10
  • Anton Dostler, German general (d. 1945)
  • Mahmoud Mokhtar, Egyptian sculptor (d. 1934)
• May 15
  • Mikhail Bulgakov, Russian writer (d. 1940)
  • Fritz Feigl, Austrian-born chemist (d. 1971)
• May 16
  • Richard Tauber, Austrian tenor (d. 1948)
  • Adolf Ritter von Tutschek, German fighter ace (d. 1918)
• May 18 – Rudolf Carnap, German philosopher (d. 1970)
• May 19 – Oswald Boelcke, German World War I fighter ace (d. 1916)
• May 22 – Eddie Edwards, American jazz trombonist (d. 1963)
• May 23 – Pär Lagerkvist, Swedish writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1974)
• May 24 – William F. Albright, American archeologist, Biblical scholar (d. 1971)
• May 26 – Paul Lukas, Hungarian-born American actor (d. 1971)
• June 2 – Takijirō Ōnishi, Japanese admiral (d. 1945)
• June 3 – Jim Tully, American vagabond, pugilist, and writer (d. 1947)
• June 9 – Cole Porter, American composer, songwriter (d. 1964)
• June 18 – Ahmad bin Yahya, King of Yemen (d. 1962)
• June 20 – John A. Costello, second President of Ireland (d. 1976)
• June 21 – Hermann Scherchen, German conductor (d. 1966)
• June 23 – Valērija Seile, Latvian politician (d. 1970)
• June 27 – Mina Wylie, Australian swimmer (d. 1984)
• June 28
  • Esther Forbes, American writer (d. 1967)
  • Carl Andrew Spaatz, American general (d. 1974)
• June 30 – Man Mountain Dean, American professional wrestler (d. 1953)

July–September

Karl Kobelt

Ethel Roosevelt Derby

Karl Dönitz

William McKell

• July 2 – Karin Kock-Lindberg, Swedish politician (d. 1976)
• July 5 – John Howard Northrop, American chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1987)
• July 7 – Tadamichi Kuribayashi, Imperial Japanese Army general (d. 1945)
• July 10 – Edith Quimby, American medical researcher, physicist (d. 1982)
• July 11 – Joseph Sadi-Lecointe, French aviator (d. 1944)
• July 18 – Gene Lockhart, Canadian-American actor, singer, and playwright (d. 1957)
• July 21 – Elmer Ripley, American basketball coach (d. 1982)
• July 26 – William J. Connors, American politician (d. 1961)
• July 27 – Jacob van der Hoeden, Dutch-Israeli veterinary scientist (d. 1968)
• July 28 – Joe E. Brown, American actor, comedian (d. 1973)
• July 29 – Bernhard Zondek German-born Israeli gynecologist, developer of first reliable pregnancy test (d. 1966)
• July 30 – Roderic Dallas, Australian World War I fighter ace (d. 1918)
• August 1
  • Karl Kobelt, 2-time President of the Swiss Confederation (d. 1968)
  • Charles Ritz, French hotelier, fly fisherman (d. 1976)
• August 2 – Viktor Maksimovich Zhirmunsky, Russian literary historian, linguist (d. 1971)
• August 11 – Stancho Belkovski, Bulgarian architect, lecturer (d. 1962)
• August 13 – Ethel Roosevelt Derby, youngest daughter of Theodore Roosevelt (d. 1977)
• August 14 – Ralph Barton, American artist (d. 1931)
• August 21 – Emiliano Mercado del Toro, Puerto Rican, longest-lived war veteran ever and last verified person born in 1891 (d. 2007)
• August 25 – David Shimoni, Russian-born Israeli poet, writer (d. 1956)
• August 29 – Michael Chekhov, Russian-American actor, theatre director (d. 1955)
• September 3 – Bessie Delany, African-American physician, author (d. 1995)
• September 5 – Edward Molyneux, English fashion designer (d. 1974)
• September 12 – Pedro Albizu Campos, advocate of Puerto Rican independence (d. 1965)
• September 14 – William F. Friedman, American cryptographer (d. 1969)
• September 16
  • Teruo Akiyama, Japanese admiral (d. 1943)
  • Karl Dönitz, German admiral, briefly President of Germany (d. 1980)
  • Stephanie von Hohenlohe, Austrian-born German World War II spy (d. 1972)
  • Julie Winnefred Bertrand, Canadian supercentenarian (d. 2007)
• September 18 – Rafael Pérez y Pérez, Spanish writer (d. 1984)
• September 22 – Hans Albers, German actor, singer (d. 1960)
• September 25 – Godfrey Ince, British civil servant (d. 1960)
• September 26
  • Charles Munch, French conductor, violinist (d. 1968)
  • William McKell, 12th Governor-General of Australia (d. 1985)
• September 28 – Myrtle Gonzalez, American film, stage actress (d. 1918)

October–December

James Chadwick

Frederick Banting

Mariano Ospina Pérez

Julius Raab

Nelly Sachs

Hu Shih

• October 12 – Fumimaro Konoe, Prime Minister of Japan (d. 1945)
• October 13 – Irene Rich, American actress (d. 1988)
• October 17 – Yasuyo Yamasaki, Imperial Japanese Army officer (d. 1943)
• October 20 – James Chadwick, English physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1974)
• October 24 – Rafael Trujillo, dictator of the Dominican Republic (d. 1961)
• October 25 – Charles Coughlin, American Catholic priest, anti-Semitic radio host (d. 1979)
• October 28 – Ormer Locklear, American stunt pilot, film actor (d. 1920)
• October 28 - Maria José de Castro Rebello Mendes, Brazilian diplomat
• November 2 – David Townsend, American art director (d. 1935)
• November 4 – Orlando Ward, American general (d. 1972)
• November 7 – Miriam Cooper, American silent film actress (d. 1976)
• November 10 – Carl Stalling, American musician (d. 1972)
• November 14 – Frederick Banting, Canadian physician, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 1941)
• November 15
  • Vincent Astor, American philanthropist (d. 1959)
  • Erwin Rommel, German field marshal (d. 1944)
• November 24 – Mariano Ospina Pérez, Colombian politician, 17th President of Colombia (d. 1976)
• November 28 – Gregorio Perfecto, Filipino jurist, politician (d. 1949)
• November 29 – Julius Raab, former Chancellor of Austria (d. 1964)
• December 4 – T. V. Soong, Taiwanese businessman, politician (d. 1971)
• December 6
  • Masatomi Kimura, Japanese admiral (d. 1960)
  • Gotthard Sachsenberg, German World War I naval aviator, fighter ace (d. 1961)
• December 9 – Maksim Bahdanovič, Belarusian poet (d. 1917)
• December 10
  • Harold Alexander, 1st Earl Alexander of Tunis, British field marshal (d. 1969)
  • Nelly Sachs, German writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1970)
• December 14
  • Katherine MacDonald, American silent screen actress (d. 1956)
  • Lester Melrose, American record producer, known primarily for promoting the Chicago blues genre (d. 1968)
• December 17
  • Karl Emil Schäfer, German World War I fighter ace (d. 1917)
  • Hu Shih, Chinese liberal (d. 1962)
• December 19 – Edward Bernard Raczynski, former President of Poland (d. 1993)
• December 24 – Feodor Stepanovich Rojankovsky, Russian illustrator (d. 1970)
• December 25
  • Kenneth Arthur Noel Anderson, British general (d. 1959)
  • Clarrie Grimmett, New Zealand-Australian cricketer (d. 1980)
• December 26 – Henry Miller, American writer (d. 1980)
• December 29 – Béla Imrédy, 32nd Prime Minister of Hungary (d. 1946)

Deaths

January–June

Nikolaus Otto

John A. Macdonald

Wilhelm Eduard Weber

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

• January 5 – Emma Abbott, American opera singer (b. 1849)
• January 11 – Carl Johan Thyselius, 3rd Prime Minister of Sweden (b. 1811)
• January 16 – Léo Delibes, French composer (b. 1836)
• January 20 – Kalākaua, last reigning King of Hawaii (b. 1836)
• January 21
  • Calixa Lavallée, Canadian composer (b. 1842)
  • James Timberlake, American lawman (b. 1846)
• January 26 – Nikolaus Otto, German engineer (b. 1832)
• February 6 – Marie Louise Andrews, American editor (b. 1849)
• February 13
  • David Dixon Porter, American admiral (b. 1813)
  • Mary Tiernan, American writer (b. 1835)
• February 14 – William Tecumseh Sherman, American general (b. 1820)
• March 15
  • Théodore de Banville, French writer (b. 1823)
  • Sir Joseph Bazalgette, English civil engineer (b. 1819)
• March 29 – Georges Seurat, French painter (b. 1859)
• April 2 – Ahmed Vefik Pasha, Turkish statesman (b. 1823)
• April 7 – P. T. Barnum, American showman (b. 1810)
• April 9 – George Cavendish-Bentinck, British Conservative politician (b. 1821)
• April 24 – Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, Prussian field marshal (b. 1800)
• April 25 – Nathaniel Woodard, English educationalist (b. 1811)
• April 27 – Joachim Oppenheim, Czech rabbi, author (b. 1832)
• May 2 – Albany James Christie, British Jesuit priest and academic (b. 1817)
• May 8
  • Helena Blavatsky, Russian-born author, theosophist (b. 1831)
  • Sir John Robertson, Australian politician, Premier of New South Wales (b. 1816)
• May 16 – Ion C. Brătianu, 2-Time Prime Minister of Romania (b. 1821)
• June 6 – Sir John Macdonald, 1st Prime Minister of Canada, Father of Confederation (b. 1815)
• June 19 – David Settle Reid, American politician (b. 1813)
• June 23 – Samuel Newitt Wood, American politician (b. 1825)
• June 24 – Wilhelm Eduard Weber, German physicist (b. 1804)

July–December

Herman Melville

Prince Kuni Asahiko

Arthur Rimbaud

• July 1 – Mihail Kogălniceanu, 3rd Prime Minister of Romania (b. 1817)
• July 4 – Hannibal Hamlin, 15th Vice President of the United States (b. 1809)
• July 20 – Sir Frederick Weld, 6th Prime Minister of New Zealand (b. 1823)
• July 24 – Hermann Raster, German-born Forty-Eighter, editor-in-chief of the Illinois Staats-Zeitung (b. 1827)
• August 12 – James Russell Lowell, American poet, essayist (b. 1819)
• August 14 – Sarah Childress Polk, First Lady of the United States (b. 1803)
• August 27 – Samuel C. Pomeroy, American politician, railroad executive (b. 1816)
• August 29 – Pierre Lallement, French inventor of the bicycle (b. 1843?)
• September 4 – José María Urvina, 5th President of Ecuador (b. 1808)
• September 7 – Lorenzo Sawyer, 9th Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of California (b. 1820)
• September 11 – Antero de Quental, Portuguese poet (b. 1842)
• September 15 – Ivan Goncharov, Russian author (b. 1812)
• September 28 – Herman Melville, American novelist (b. 1819)
• September 30 – Georges Ernest Boulanger, French general, politician (b. 1837)
• October 6
  • Charles I of Württemberg (b. 1823)
  • Charles Stewart Parnell, Irish nationalist leader (b. 1846)
• October 15 – Gilbert Arthur à Beckett, English writer (b. 1837)
• October 23 – Ambrose of Optina, Russian Orthodox saint (b. 1812)
• October 25 – Prince Kuni Asahiko of Japan (b. 1824)
• October 29 – Prince Yamashina Akira of Japan (b. 1816)
• November 6 – J. Gregory Smith, Vermont governor (b. 1818)
• November 10 – Arthur Rimbaud, French poet (b. 1854)
• November 17 – George H. Cooper, United States Navy admiral (b. 1821)
• November 28 – Sir James Corry, 1st Baronet, British politician (b. 1826)
• December 4 – Frederick Whitaker, English-New Zealand lawyer, politician and 5th Prime Minister of New Zealand (b. 1812)
• December 5 – Pedro II, 2nd and last Emperor of Brazil (b. 1825)
• December 7 –
  • Mary Crane, American activist; mother of the writer, Stephen Crane (b. 1827)
  • Douglas Paramounte, French American historian (b. 1789)
• December 12 – Julia A. Ames, American reformer (b. 1861)
• December 20 – William Robert Woodman, British co-founder of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (b. 1828)
• December 29 – Leopold Kronecker, Polish-German mathematician, academic (b. 1823)
• December 31 – Samuel Ajayi Crowther, 1st African Anglican bishop, linguist and legendary missionary (b. 1809)

In Fiction

• May 4 – Professor James Moriarty, fictional criminal mastermind of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes short story The Final Problem (b. unknown)

References

Sources

• Appletons' Annual Cyclopaedia and Register of Important Events of the Year 1891: Embracing Political, Military, and Ecclesiastical Affairs; Public Documents; Biography, Statistics, Commerce, Finance, Literature, Science, Agriculture, and Mechanical Industry (1892); highly detailed compilation of facts and primary documents; worldwide coverage. not online.