1891

1891 was a common year starting on Thursday (see link for calendar).

Events

• January 1 - Paying of old age pensions begins in Germany
• January 20 - James Hogg becomes the first native Texan to be governor of that state.
• January 29 - Liliuokalani proclaimed Queen of Hawaii
• March 9 - 12 - Powerful storm off England's south coast; 14 ships sink
• March 17 - The British steamship SS Utopia sinks off the coast of Gibraltar, killing 574.
• April 1 - The Wrigley Company is founded in Chicago.
• May 1 - Nine killed and thirty wounded when troops fire on workers' May Day demonstration in support of eight-hour workday in Fourmies , France.
• May 20 - First public display of Thomas Alva Edison's prototype kinetoscope (shown at Edison's Laboratory for a convention of the National Federation of Women's Clubs ).
• June 16 - John Abbott becomes Canada's third prime minister.
• June 21 - First long-distance transmission of Alternating current by the Ames power plant near Telluride, Colorado by Lucien and Paul Nunn.
• August 27 - France and Russia conclude defensive alliance.
• October 1 - In California, Stanford University opens its doors
• December 29 - Thomas Edison patents the radio

• Building of The Trans-Siberian Railroad begins (ends 1917)
• The Brahmin teacher and nationalist, Bal Bangadhar tilak , begins agitation for Indian home Rule
• Civil War in Chile
• Kicking Bear surrenders
• Earthquake in Japan kills 25.000
• Famine in Russia
• Maria Sklodowska enters Sorbonne University
• New Scotland Yard becomes the HQ of London Metropolitan Police
• Swiss Army Knife
• Winter - James Naismith invents Basketball
• The Tobacco Protest occurs in Iran

Births

• January 8 - Walther Bothe, physicist, winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1954 (d. 1957)
• February 9 - Ronald Colman, actor (d. 1958)
• February 11 - J.W. Hearne Middlesex and England all-rounder (d. 1965).
• February 27 - David Sarnoff, broadcasting pioneer (d. 1971)
• March 10 - Sam Jaffe, actor (d. 1984)
• March 19 - Earl Warren, Chief Justice of the United States (d. 1974)
• March 24 - John Knittel , dramatist (d. 1970)
• March 29 - Yvan Goll, lyricist and dramatist (d. 1950)
• April 2 - Max Ernst, painter (d. 1976)
• April 13 - Nella Larsen, African American novelist (d. 1964)
• April 17 - George Adamski, UFO traveler (d. 1965)
• April 23 - Sergei Prokofiev, Soviet composer (d. 1953)
• May 15 - Mikhail Bulgakov, writer (d. 1940)
• May 16 - Richard Tauber, tenor (d. 1948)
• May 18 - Rudolf Carnap, German philosopher (d. 1970)
• May 19 - Oswald Boelcke, World War I fighter ace (d. 1916)
• May 22 - Eddie Edwards, jazz musician (d. 1963)
• May 24 - William F. Albright, American archeologist and Biblical scholar
• June 9 - Cole Porter, American composer and songwriter
• June 20 - John A. Costello, second Taoiseach of Ireland (d. 1976)
• June 21 - Hermann Scherchen, German conductor (d. 1966)
• June 30 - Man Mountain Dean, professional wrestler (d. 1953)
• September 12 - Don Pedro Albizu Campos, advocate for Puerto Rican independence (d. 1965)
• September 14 - William F. Friedman, cryptanalyst
• September 16 - Karl Dönitz, President of Germany
• September 26 - Charles Munch), French conductor and violinist (d. 1968)
• October 24 - Rafael Leónidas Trujillo, dictator of the Dominican Republic
• November 14 - Frederick Banting, Canadian physician, recipient of the Nobel Prize in medicine, 1923
• November 15 - Vincent Astor, American philanthropist (d. 1959)
• November 15 - Erwin Rommel, German field marshal
• December 26 - Henry Miller, writer

Deaths

• January 5 - Emma Abbott, American opera singer
• January 21 - Calixa Lavallée, composer
• March 15 - Théodore de Banville, French writer (b. 1823)
• March 15 - Sir Joseph Bazalgette, British engineer
• April 7 - Phineas Taylor Barnum, American circus impresario
• May 8 - Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, author and theosophist
• July 4 - Hannibal Hamlin, U.S. politician
• August 12 - James Russell Lowell, American poet and essayist
• August 14 - Sarah Childress Polk, First Lady of the United States
• September 15 - Ivan Goncharov, Russian author
• September 28 - Herman Melville, American novelist
• October 6 - Charles Stewart Parnell, Irish nationalist leader
• October 15 - Gilbert Arthur a Beckett, writer
• November 10 - Arthur Rimbaud, French poet (b. 1854)

Fictional events of the year

Sherlock Holmes is believed to have died in the Reichenbach fall with the "Napoleon of crime", Professor James Moriarty.