1896

1896 (MDCCCXCVI) was a leap year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar and a leap year starting on Monday of the Julian calendar, the 1896th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 896th year of the 2nd millennium, the 96th year of the 19th century, and the 7th year of the 1890s decade. As of the start of 1896, the Gregorian calendar was 12 days ahead of the Julian calendar, which remained in localized use until 1923.

Quick facts

1896 in various calendars
Gregorian calendar	1896 MDCCCXCVI
Ab urbe condita	2649
Armenian calendar	1345 ԹՎ ՌՅԽԵ
Assyrian calendar	6646
Baháʼí calendar	52–53
Balinese saka calendar	1817–1818
Bengali calendar	1302–1303
Berber calendar	2846
British Regnal year	59 Vict. 1 – 60 Vict. 1
Buddhist calendar	2440
Burmese calendar	1258
Byzantine calendar	7404–7405
Chinese calendar	乙未年 (Wood Goat) 4593 or 4386 — to — 丙申年 (Fire Monkey) 4594 or 4387
Coptic calendar	1612–1613
Discordian calendar	3062
Ethiopian calendar	1888–1889
Hebrew calendar	5656–5657
Hindu calendars
- Vikram Samvat	1952–1953
- Shaka Samvat	1817–1818
- Kali Yuga	4996–4997
Holocene calendar	11896
Igbo calendar	896–897
Iranian calendar	1274–1275
Islamic calendar	1313–1314
Japanese calendar	Meiji 29 (明治２９年)
Javanese calendar	1825–1826
Julian calendar	Gregorian minus 12 days
Korean calendar	4229
Minguo calendar	16 before ROC 民前16年
Nanakshahi calendar	428
Thai solar calendar	2438–2439
Tibetan calendar	ཤིང་མོ་ལུག་ལོ་ (female Wood-Sheep) 2022 or 1641 or 869 — to — མེ་ཕོ་སྤྲེ་ལོ་ (male Fire-Monkey) 2023 or 1642 or 870

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Events

January

January 2 – The Jameson Raid comes to an end as Jameson surrenders to the Boers.^[1]
January 4 – Utah is admitted as the 45th U.S. state.^[2]
January 5 – An Austrian newspaper reports Wilhelm Röntgen's discovery, last November, of a type of electromagnetic radiation, later known as X-rays.
January 6 – Cecil Rhodes is forced to resign as Prime Minister of the Cape of Good Hope for his involvement in the Jameson Raid.
January 7 – American culinary expert Fannie Farmer publishes her first cookbook.
January 12 – H. L. Smith takes the first X-ray photograph.
January 16 – Devonport High School for Boys is founded in Plymouth (England).
January 17 – Fourth Anglo-Ashanti War: British redcoats enter the Ashanti capital, Kumasi, and Asantehene Agyeman Prempeh I is deposed.^[3]
January 28 – Walter Arnold, of East Peckham, Kent, England, is fined 1 shilling for speeding at 8 mph (13 km/h), exceeding the contemporary urban speed limit of 2 mph (3.2 km/h), the first speeding fine.

February

February 1 – Puccini's opera La bohème premieres in Turin, Italy.
February 11 – Oscar Wilde's play Salomé (1891) has its stage premiere (while Wilde is in prison) in its original French in Paris.
February 19 – Braamfontein Explosion: A train carrying 56 tons of dynamite explodes at Braamfontein, Johannesburg, killing more than 78 people.^[4]

March

March 1 – Battle of Adwa: Ethiopia defends its independence from Italy, ending the First Italo-Ethiopian War.
March 3 – Publication begins for Der Eigene, the world's first magazine with an orientation to male homosexuality, by Adolf Brand in Berlin.
March 9 – Responding to national outrage at the defeat at Adwa, Italian Prime Minister Francesco Crispi resigns.
March 29 – The Royal College of St Patrick, Maynooth in Ireland is granted the status of pontifical university by charter of the Holy See.^[5]

April

April 4 – The first known women's basketball game between two colleges is played between Stanford and California.

A picture of the restored Panathenaic Stadium, the site of the 1896 Summer Olympics

April 6 – The opening ceremonies of the 1896 Summer Olympics, the first modern Olympic Games, are held in Athens, Greece.
April 9 – The National Farm School (later Delaware Valley College) is chartered in Doylestown, Pennsylvania.
April 23 – Blackpool Pleasure Beach, a popular English theme park ("Britain's Biggest Tourist Attraction"), is founded by Alderman William George Bean.^[6]
April – Svante Arrhenius first publishes the "greenhouse law", becoming the first person to predict that emissions of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels and other combustion processes are large enough to cause global warming through the greenhouse effect.^[7]

May

May 8 – Cricket: Against Warwickshire, Yorkshire sets a still-standing County Championship record in England, when they accumulate an innings total of 887.
May 13 – The Franchise Bill is passed by the Colony of Natal's Legislative Assembly, disfranchising natives of other countries.
May 18 – Plessy v. Ferguson: The U.S. Supreme Court introduces the separate but equal doctrine, and upholds racial segregation.
May 26
- Coronation of Nicholas II and Alexandra Feodorovna in the Dormition Cathedral, Moscow; this will be the last coronation of the Russian monarch.^[8] The Qing dynasty is represented at the coronation by Chinese official Li Hongzhang who through September goes on to visit Germany, Britain, Canada and the United States.
- Eleven years after its foundation, a group of 12 purely industrial stocks are chosen to form the Dow Jones Industrial Average in the U.S. The index is composed entirely of industrial shares for the first time.^[9]
May 27 – St. Louis–East St. Louis tornado: The costliest and third deadliest tornado in U.S. history levels a mile wide swath of downtown St. Louis, Missouri, incurring US$2.9 billion (1997 USD) in normalized damages, killing more than 255 and injuring over 1,000 people.
May 30 – Khodynka Tragedy: a crowd crush at Khodynka Field in Moscow kills at least 1,200 of those marking the coronation year of Emperor Nicholas II of Russia.^[8]

June

June 4 – The Ford Quadricycle, the first vehicle developed by Henry Ford, is completed, eventually leading Ford to build the empire that "put America on wheels".
June 7 – Mahdist War: Battle of Ferkeh – British and Egyptian troops are victorious.
June 12 – J. T. Hearne sets a record for the earliest date of taking 100 wickets in cricket, in England (it is equalled by Charlie Parker in 1931).
June 15 – The 8.5 M_w Sanriku earthquake and tsunami kills 22,000 in northeastern Japan.^[10]
June 18 – The New York Telephone Company is formed, succeeding the Metropolitan Telephone and Telegraph Company, to control telephone service within New York City.^[11]
June 23 – Liberal leader Wilfrid Laurier defeats Charles Tupper during Canadian federal elections for the 8th Canadian Parliament, to become the first Francophone Prime Minister of Canada.
June 28 – Twin Shaft disaster: An explosion in the Newton Coal Company's Twin Shaft Mine in Pittston, Pennsylvania results in a massive cave-in that kills 58 miners.^[12]

July

July 9 – William Jennings Bryan delivers his Cross of Gold speech at the Democratic National Convention, which nominates him for president of the United States.
July 11 – Wilfrid Laurier becomes Canada's seventh prime minister, and the first French-speaker to hold that office.
July 21 – In Washington, D.C., in response to a "call to confer" issued by Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin to all women of color, the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs is organized.
July 26 – The International Socialist Workers and Trade Union Congress opens in London.
July 27 – A causeway is opened between the islands of Saaremaa and Muhu in Estonia.
July 30 – Atlantic City rail crash: Shortly after 6:30 pm, at a crossing just west of Atlantic City, New Jersey, two trains collide, crushing five loaded passenger coaches, killing 50 and seriously injuring approximately sixty.

August

August 1 – The Park Seung-jik shop, predecessor of South Korean conglomerate Doosan Group, is founded in Joseon (the kingdom of Korea).^[13]
August 14 – The Uganda Railway Act, 1896, is approved in the United Kingdom, for construction of a railway in Africa from Mombasa to Lake Victoria.^[14]
August 16 – Skookum Jim Mason, George Carmack and Dawson Charlie discover gold in the Klondike, Yukon.
August 17 – Bridget Driscoll is run over by a Benz car on the grounds of The Crystal Palace, London, the world's first motoring fatality.
August 23 – The Cry of Pugad Lawin initiates the Philippine Revolution.
August 27
- The shortest war in recorded history, the Anglo-Zanzibar War, starts at 9:00 in the morning, and lasts for 45 minutes of shelling.
- Britain establishes a Protectorate over the Ashanti people concluding the Fourth Anglo-Ashanti War.
August – The 1896 Eastern North America heat wave kills 1,500 people from Chicago, Illinois to Boston, Massachusetts.

September

September 2 – Clarkson University holds its first classes, with 17 students attending in Potsdam, New York.^[15]
September 15 – The Crash at Crush train wreck stunt is held in Texas.
September 22 – Queen Victoria surpasses her grandfather King George III as the longest-reigning monarch in British history up to this time.
September 28 – Pathé Frères, a French film company and one of the oldest film companies, is founded by the brothers Charles Pathé, Théophile Pathé, Émile Pathé and Jacques Pathé.
September 30 – Italy and France sign a treaty whereby Italy virtually recognizes Tunisia as a French dependency.^[16]

October

October 1 – Gottlieb Daimler builds the first gasoline truck.
October 4 – A locomotive in Bulawayo explodes and kills ten prisoners.^[17]
October 2 – The Victorian Football League is established as Australian rules football in Australia (a predecessor of the Australian Football League).
October 30 – The Augusta High School cornerstone is laid in Augusta, Kentucky, marking the end of the Augusta Methodist College.

November

November 3 – 1896 United States presidential election: Republican William McKinley defeats William Jennings Bryan. The event is viewed by some as a political realignment for the United States Republican Party.
November 21 - The Hamburg dockworkers' strike of 1896-97 is considered one of the largest labour disputes in the German Empire.
November 27 – Richard Strauss's orchestral tone poem Also sprach Zarathustra is first performed, in Frankfurt, conducted by the composer.
November 30
- Udinese Calcio Association football club is founded in Udine, Italy.
- "St. Augustine Monster": A large carcass, later postulated to be the remains of a gigantic octopus, is found washed ashore near St. Augustine, Florida.

December

December 1 – Archaeologist Alois Anton Führer, Nepalese General Khadga Samsher Rana and an expedition rediscover the great stone pillar of Ashoka at Lumbini, traditionally the spot of the birthplace of Gautama Buddha, after using Faxian's records.^[18]
December 10
- The New York Aquarium opens.
- The premiere of Alfred Jarry's absurdist play Ubu Roi in Paris causes a near-riot.
December 14 – The Glasgow Subway, the third-oldest underground metro system in the world, opens.
December 25 – John Philip Sousa composes The Stars and Stripes Forever which will become the national march of the United States.
December 30 – José Rizal, Filipino scholar and poet, is executed by Spanish authorities in the Philippines.

Date unknown

Visual tour of Italy: Milan, Venice and visit with Pope Leo XIII, Summer, 1896

France establishes an administrative post in Abengourou, Ivory Coast.
A school of mines opens in Kimberley and will form the core of the University of the Witwatersrand.
The pharmaceutical and healthcare company Hoffmann-La Roche in Switzerland comes wholly under the control of Fritz Hoffmann-La Roche.^[19]
Racing Club de Lyon, a football club in France, is officially founded and becomes a predecessor of Olympique Lyonnais.^{[citation needed]}
Pope Leo XIII is filmed, making him the first ever Pope to be filmed and the earliest-born person to be captured on film. (Note: to view the event in the video above, go to timestamp 3:07)

Births

January–February

January 2 – Dziga Vertov, Russian filmmaker (d. 1954)
January 4
- Everett Dirksen, American politician (d. 1969)
- André Masson, French artist (d. 1987)
January 8
- Arthur Ford, American psychic spiritual medium, clairaudient (d. 1971)
- Clifton Sprague, American admiral (d. 1955)
January 12 – Uberto De Morpurgo, Italian tennis player (d. 1961)^[20]
January 14 – John Dos Passos, American author (d. 1970)^[21]
January 20 – George Burns, American actor, comedian (d. 1996)
January 21 – J. Carrol Naish, American character actor (d. 1973)
January 23 – Charlotte, Grand Duchess of Luxembourg (d. 1985)^[22]
January 26 – József Kiss, Austro-Hungarian fighter pilot (d. 1918)
February 1 – Anastasio Somoza García, 21st President of Nicaragua (d. 1956)^[23]^[24]
February 2 – Ramón Franco, Spanish aviation pioneer (d. 1938)
February 4 – Friedrich Hund, German physicist (d. 1997)
February 11 – Claire Myers Owens, American author (d. 1983)^[25]
February 18 – Li Linsi, Chinese educator and diplomat (d. 1970)
February 19 – André Breton, French writer (d. 1966)^[26]
February 25 – Heinrich Gontermann, German World War I fighter ace (d. 1917)
February 28 – Philip Showalter Hench, American physician, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 1965)
February 29
- Morarji Desai, 4th Prime Minister of India (d. 1995)
- William A. Wellman, American motion picture director (d. 1975)

March–April

March 1 – Dimitri Mitropoulos, Greek conductor, pianist and composer (d. 1960)
March 13 – Field Eugene Kindley, American World War I fighter pilot (d. 1920)
March 20 – Wop May, Canadian World War I pilot (d. 1952)
March 22 – Joseph Schildkraut, Austrian-American actor (d. 1964)
March 29 – Wilhelm Ackermann, German mathematician (d. 1962)
April 13 – Ira C. Eaker, World War II United States Army Air Forces general (d. 1987)
April 15
- Gerhard Fieseler, German World War I flying ace, aerobatics champion, aircraft designer and manufacturer (d. 1987)
- Nikolay Semyonov, Russian chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1986)
April 17 – Señor Wences, Spanish ventriloquist (d. 1999)
April 21 – Geertruida Wijsmuller-Meijer, Dutch war hero, resistance fighter and humanitarian (d. 1978)
April 26 – Ernst Udet, German World War I fighter ace, Nazi Luftwaffe official (d. 1941)
April 27 – Rogers Hornsby, American baseball player (d. 1963)
April 30 – Reverend Gary Davis, American musician (d. 1972)

May–June

May 1
- Mark W. Clark, American general (d. 1984)
- J. Lawton Collins, American general (d. 1987)
May 2 – Helen of Greece and Denmark, Queen Mother of Romania (d. 1982)
May 3 – Karl Allmenröder, German World War I fighter pilot (d. 1917)
May 5 – Kaju Sugiura, Japanese admiral (d. 1945)
May 19 – Jorge Alessandri, 27th President of Chile (d. 1986)
May 23 – Andor Jaross, ethnic Hungarian politician (d. 1946)
May 29 – Luther W. Youngdahl, American politician, Governor of Minnesota from 1947 to 1951, and a United States district judge from 1951 to 1978 (d. 1978)
May 30 – Howard Hawks, American director (d. 1977)
May 31 – Ernest Haller, American cinematographer (d. 1974)
June 1 – Sydney Kyte, British bandleader (d. 1981)^[27]
June 2 – Nubar Gulbenkian, Ottoman-born Armenian-British oil trader, socialite and intelligence operative (d. 1972)
June 6
- Henry Allingham, British World War I veteran, world's oldest man (d. 2009)
- Italo Balbo, Italian Fascist leader, aviator (d. 1940)
June 7
- Robert S. Mulliken, American chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1986)
- Imre Nagy, 3-time prime minister of Hungary (d. 1958)
June 11 – Walter Cawthorn, Australian spymaster (d. 1970)
June 19 – Wallis Simpson, American-born Duchess of Windsor (d. 1986)
June 23 – Francisco Malabo Beosá, Equatoguinean royalty (d. 2001)
June 29 – Boris Podolsky, Russian-American physicist (d. 1966)

July–August

July 2 – Quirino Cristiani, Argentine animated film director (d. 1984)
July 4 – Mao Dun, Chinese novelist, cultural critic, and Minister of Culture (d. 1981)^[28]
July 5 – Thomas Playford IV, South Australian politician (d. 1981)
July 16
- Gertrude Welcker, German actress (d. 1988)
- Trygve Lie, Norwegian politician, 1st United Nations Secretary General (d. 1968)
July 17 – Dumitru Dămăceanu, Romanian general and politician (d. 1978)
July 18 – Patrick O'Boyle, American Roman Catholic prelate (d. 1987)
July 19 – Stafford L. Warren, American physician and radiologist; inventor of the mammogram (d. 1981)
July 28 – Barbara La Marr, American silent actress (d. 1926)
August 7 – Ernesto Lecuona, Cuban pianist, composer (d. 1963)^[29]
August 8 – Sivananda, Indian yoga teacher (unverified self-claimed date) (d. 2025)
August 9
- Erich Hückel, German physicist, physical chemist (d. 1980)
- Léonide Massine, Russian ballet dancer, choreographer (d. 1979)
- Jean Piaget, Swiss psychologist (d. 1980)
August 10 – Walter Lang, American film director (d. 1972)
August 13 – Rudolf Schmundt, German general (d. 1944)
August 14 – Albert Ball, British World War I fighter ace, Victoria Cross recipient (d. 1917)
August 15 – Gerty Cori, Austrian-born biochemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 1957)
August 17 – Leslie Groves, United States Army general, director of the Manhattan Project (d. 1970)^[30]
August 18 – Jack Pickford, Canadian-born American actor, film director, and producer (d. 1933)
August 27 – Léon Theremin, Russian inventor (d. 1993)
August 28 – Arthur Calwell, Australian politician (d. 1973)
August 30 – Raymond Massey, Canadian-born American actor (d. 1983)