1898

Events

January January 1 – New York City annexes land from surrounding counties, creating the world's second most populated city. The city, initially called the City of Greater New York, is geographically divided into five boroughs: Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, The Bronx and Staten Island. Robert Anderson Van Wyck, from Manhattan borough, becomes the new city's first Mayor. The provisional government of the Republic of Chile is inaugurated. January 2 – The flooding of an underground mine at San Puerta, near Guanajuta in Mexico kills 35 miners. January 3 – Several people are killed in the Canadian city of London, Ontario when the floor collapses in a gallery. January 4 – The Paul M. Potter theater production The Conquerors premieres on Broadway at the Empire Theatre, but its initial showing is unpopular and described in one newspaper as "a deliberate endeavor to pander to debased tastes." Two horse-drawn streetcar lines in Ghent, Belgium, are merged to for SA des Tramways Electriques de Gand in a switch to trams with electric motors. January 5 – China and Germany come to an agreement on the cession of Chinese territory at Kiao-Chau Bay to German control. January 6 – In the Moluccas, the town of Ambon is destroyed by an earthquake that kills 126 people. January 7 – The six leading U.S. manufacturers of steel agree publicly to an increase, by one dollar per ton, for steel beams. January 8 – Near Maud, Oklahoma, two Seminole Indian men, Lincoln McGeisey and Palmer Sampson, are burned alive by a lynch mob after being accused of murdering a white woman, Mary Leard, on December 30. January 9 – In Malaysia, the British North Borneo Chartered Company successfully attacks a fort at Ranau with a mission of ending the Mat Salleh Rebellion by capturing Mat Salleh and his followers, but finds that the rebels had abandoned the fort and moved to a more secure location in the interior of Tamburan. January 10 – The trial begins for Ferdinand Esterhazy, an officer in the French Army accused of spying for the German Empire and for committing treason for which Captain Alfred Dreyfus was wrongfully convicted in 1894. Esterhazy is acquitted the next day in proceedings closed to the public. January 11 – Li Hongzhang (Li Hung Chang) returns to office as the Grand Secretary of China, similar to a Prime Minister of China. Voters in the U.S. state of Louisiana approve a constitutional convention to debate the disenfranchising of illiterate African-Americans, without affecting the rights of illiterate White voters. January 12 – An official investigation implicates Vice-President Pereira of Brazil, and 20 other people from the military and the congress, in a conspiraccy to assassinate President Prudente de Morais. The Marquis Itō Hirobumi organizes a new government as Prime Minister of Japan, succeeding Matsukata Masayoshi. January 13 – Novelist Émile Zola's open letter to the President of the French Republic on the Dreyfus affair, , is published on the front page of the Paris daily newspaper , accusing the government of wrongfully imprisoning Alfred Dreyfus and of antisemitism. January 14 – U.S. Senator Samuel Hoar of Massachusetts introduces a bill proposing an amendment to postpone the presidential inauguration day from March 4 to April 30. January 15 – Ugandan monarch and rebel Mwanga II of Buganda is defeated by British colonial authorities after having made an attempt to regain the throne which he lost on August 9, 1897. Walter Eli Clark is appointed as the Governor of the U.S. District of Alaska by President McKinley. January 16 – Charles Pelham Villiers, who represented Wolverhampton in the British House of Commons since 1835, dies in office 10 days after having celebrated 63 consecutive years as Member of Parliament, a record that continues to stand more than 130 years later.A. C. Howe, "Villiers, Charles Pelham (1802–1898)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography 2004 ; online edn, Oct 2009 retrieved 8 Nov 2017. January 17 – President Sanford B. Dole of the Republic of Hawaii arrives in the U.S. on an official tour and to meet with Congressional officials about U.S. annexation of the Republic January 18 – British colonial engineer and estate manager William Claxton Peppé discovers the Buddha's remains in Piprahwa, Uttar Pradesh, India. January 19 – An expedition led by French officer Marius Gabriel Cazemajou in Africa accomplishes the securing of a French protectorate over the Kebbi Emirate in Niger, as well as Kebbi's tributary chiefdoms of the Dendi, Maouri and Djerma people. The longest running college ice hockey rivalry, between Harvard University and Brown University, begins as Brown defeats Harvard, 6 goals to 0. January 20 – Delegations from multiple British colonies in Australia being a convention to discuss a federation of the governments into a single British Commonwealth. January 21 – Joseph McKenna is confirmed as an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court by a voice vote in the U.S. Senate, and takes his seat on the bench five days later. January 22 – A total eclipse of the Sun is observed throughout British India. Fighting between members of the French Chamber of Deputies breaks out during a debate on the Alfred Dreyfus case. January 23 – Violent anti-Jewish riots break out in the French Algerian capital, Algiers. January 24 – Two days after suspending operations because of rioting in Paris out of the Dreyfus case, the French Chamber of Deputies votes confidence in the French government by a margin of 376 to 133. January 25 – The editor of the German humor magazine Kladderadatsch is sentenced to two months in prison for publishing a cartoon that insulted Kaiser Wilhelm II. January 26 – The United Mine Workers of America labor union and representatives of U.S. bituminious coal companies in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana, agree to a uniform eight-hour workday, effective April 1, 1898, with a 10 cent per ton increase in wages. President Dole of Hawaii is welcomed in Washington D.C. as a guest of U.S. President William McKinley. January 27 – Nineeteen days fbefore the destruction of the battleship USS Maine, an investigative report to the U.S. Secretary of the Navy warns that in ships where the coal bunker is stored next to the artillery magazines, there is a danger that if the coal is overheated and spontaneously catches fire, the magazines are at a risk of exxploding. The Banca per il Trentino-Alto Adige, now the main component of Italy's Gruppo Cassa Centrale Banca, is founded in the Italian city of Trento. January 28 – The Fire Department of the City of New York (FDNY) is expanded with the merger of the existing department with the Brooklyn Fire Department and the Long Island City Fire Department Indian independence activist and self-proclaimed prophet Birsa Munda is released from prison in British India after two years and returns to the Bengal Province to reorganize his followers. The only known bones of the dinosaur species "Capitalsaurus", originally referred to as "Creosaurus" and "Dryptosaurus", are discovered by construction workers excavating a sewer at the intersection of Washington, D.C.'s First Street and F Street SE. January 29 – The Deutscher Leichtathletik-Verband (DLV), Germany's governing body for the sport of track and field (athletics), is established in Darmstadt. A 7.0 magnitude earthquake strikes the city of Balıkesir in the Ottoman Empire (now Turkey) and kills around 500 people. Frank Childs knocks out Bob Armstrong to become the new World Colored Heavyweight boxing champion. January 30 – The first complete organized baseball game in Puerto Rico (at the time, a colony of Spain) is played, as the Puerto Rican team Borinquen defeats Alemendares, a team of Cuban and Puerto Rican players, 9 to 3 in a game at Santurce. The two teams had played an incomplete game on January 11 with Borinquen ahead 3 to 0 before the game ended. The elliptical galaxy IC 3370, located at least 156 million light years from Earth, is discovered by American astronomer Lewis A. Swift in the area of the sky occupied by the constellation Centaurus. January 31 – Nineteen people are drowned when the British mail packet ship Channel Queen is wrecked off of the British island of Guernsey.

February

February 1 – The Red Tuesday bushfires break out in the Australian town of Gippsland, Victoria, desstroying 2,000 buildings, killing 12 people and leaving 2,500 others homeless. The electoral college of Colombia meets to select a new president, after voters had selected the electors on December 5. Of the 2,045 members, 1,606 or more than 78% vote for Manuel Antonio Sanclemente of the Partido Nacional. The Passion Play of Oberammergau, the first motion picture licensed under Thomas Edison's system, premieres at the Eden Musee theater in New York City. While the promoters claim that the 19-minute film had been made in Oberammergau in Germany, investigative reporters later find that the film had been made on the rooftop of the Grand Central Palace in New York City. February 2 – The Kingdom of Prussia forbids the importation of fruit from the United States because of sanitary concerns. February 4 – The office of the U.S. Ambssador to Russia is created as the existing Minister to Russia has his position upgraded. The Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway is acquired by the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad. In a battle in the Spanish colony of the Philippines, three Spanish Navy gunboats shell and destroy the Moro rebels' villages of Bonto, Buaya, Ragayan, Minbalay and Macro, and 32 Moros are killed. The city of San Martín de los Andes is founded in Argentina as part of a claim over Chilean territory, and later becomes an Argentine tourist destination. February 5 – The sinking of the passenger steamer Clara Nevada in Lynn Canal of Alaska kills all 33 people (12 passengers and 21 crew) on board. A relief expedition for gold prospectors stranded in the Klondike in Canada departs from Portland, Oregon. February 6 – In the All-Ireland Football Championship of Gaelic football, Limerick defeats Dublin, 1-5 to 0-7, equivalent to an 8 to 7 win, in a match at Dublin before 3,500 people. February 7 – The trial of Emile Zola by the French government begins in Paris. February 8 – José María Reina Barrios, President of Guatemala, is assassinated by Edgar Zollinger, a British businessman who shoots Reina Barrios with a .38 caliber revolver. Vice President Manuel Estrada Cabrera then takes office as president. Enrique Dupuy de Lôme, Spain's minister to the United States, resigns after his letter criticizing President McKinley is published. Luis Polo de Bernabé is appointed to succeed Dupuy de Lome. The United Kingdom's Parliament is opened with the reading of a speech approved by Queen Victoria. Paul Kruger is re-elected as President of the South African Republic. February 9 – A warehouse fire in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania kills 18 people. February 10 – The Autonomy Charter of Puerto Rico, approved on November 25, 1897, goes into effect, with Spain granting limited self-government to its colony at the island of Puerto Rico. February 11 – The first U.S. Embassy in Russia is established in Saint Petersburg with Ethan Hitchcock as ambassador to the Russian Empire. The spiral galaxy IC 2163, which is in collision with NGC 2207 as part of the "Cosmic Owl" pairing and which is 80 million light-years from Earth is discovered by British astronomer Herbert Alonzo Howe in the region of the constellation Canis Major February 12 – An automobile belonging to Henry Lindfield of Brighton rolls out of control down a hill in Purley, London, England, and hits a tree, killing Lindfield and making him the world's first fatality from an automobile accident on a public highway. Francis Hagerup, the Prime Minister of Norway resigns along with his cabinet. February 13 –