1896

Decades: 1840s 1850s 1860s 1870s 1880s - 1890s - 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s

Years: 1891 1892 1893 1894 1895 - 1896 - 1897 1898 1899 1900 1901

Events

• January 4 - Utah is admitted as the 45th U.S. state
• January 5 - An Austrian newspaper reports that Wilhelm Röntgen discovered a type of radiation later known as X-rays.
• January 12 - H.L. Smith takes the first X-ray photograph.
• January 18 - The X-ray machine is exhibited for the first time.
• February 1 - The opera La Bohème premieres (Turin).
• February 11 - Oscar Wilde's play Salomé premieres in Paris.
• March 1 - With the Battle of Adowa, Ethiopia defended its independence from Italy. Henri Becquerel discovers radioactivity.
• May 1 - Charles Tupper becomes Canada's sixth prime minister.
• May 14 - Tsar Nicholas II of Russia crowned in Moscow, in the first coronation ever filmed. One thousand spectators crushed to death in Khodynskoe Fields during coronation celebrations.
• May 18 - The U.S. Supreme Court announces its decision in the infamous case Plessy v. Ferguson.
• July 9 - William Jennings Bryan delivers his Cross of gold speech.
• July 11 - Wilfrid Laurier becomes Canada's seventh prime minister.
• August 16 - George Carmack discovers gold in the Klondike.
• November - William McKinley defeats William Jennings Bryan in the U.S. presidential election
• Nepalese archaeologists rediscover the great stone pillar of Ashoka at Lumbini, using Fa Xian's records.

Art, Culture & Fashion

• 1896 in film
• 1896 in literature
• 1896 in music
• 1896 in sports

Births

• January 2 - Dziga Vertov, filmmaker
• January 4 - Everett Dirksen, American politician (d. 1969)
• January 12 - Rex Ingram, director and actor (d. 1950)
• January 14 - Martin Niemöller, German theologian and pacifist (d. 1984)
• January 14 - John Dos Passos, author (d. 1970)
• January 23 - Grand Duchess Charlotte of Luxembourg
• February 11 - Else Lasker-Schuler, writer
• February 18 - André Breton, poet, principal theoretician of surrealism (d. 1966)
• March 12 - Sir John Abbott, third Prime Minister of Canada
• March 29 - Wilhelm Ackermann, mathematician
• April 30 - Gary Davis, reverend
• May 11 - Mari Sandoz, writer (d. 1966)
• May 30 - Howard Hawks, director (d. 1977)
• June 19 - Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor
• July 16 - Trygve Lie, the first United Nations Secretary General (d. 1968)
• August 18 - Jack Pickford, actor, Hollywood's first "bad boy", (d. 1933)
• August 30 - Raymond Massey, actor (d. 1983)
• October 1 - Liaquat Ali Khan, first Prime Minister of Pakistan, (d. 1951)
• October 28 - Howard Hanson, composer
• December 6 - Ira Gershwin, lyricist
• December 14 - George VI Windsor, father of Elizabeth II
• December 14 - Jimmy Doolittle, American World War II General.
• December 24 - F Scott Fitzgerald, American writer.

Deaths

• January 8 - Paul Verlaine, lyric poet
• May 20 - Clara Schumann, Austrian composer.
• August 10 - Otto Lilienthal, aviation pioneer.
• October 11 - Anton Bruckner, Austrian composer/
• December 10 - Alfred Nobel, Swedish inventor of dynamite and creator of the Nobel Prize.
• December 30 - José Rizal, national hero of the Philippines

Referenced By