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The 1890s

2,122 sourced entries across 10 years, inside the 19th century. Each year below opens its own page; the lines under it are that year’s highest-ranked entries.

1890 CE191 entries

  • 31 May – The Teatro Massimo Bellini opera house in Catania, Sicily, named after the local-born composer Vincenzo Bellini, is inaugurated with a performance of the composer's masterwork, Norma.
  • June 1 – The United States Census Bureau begins using Herman Hollerith's tabulating machine to record census returns using punched card input, a landmark in the history of computing hardware. Hollerith's company eventually becomes IBM.
  • 4 November – London's City & South London Railway, the first deep-level underground railway in the world, opens. It runs a distance of 5.1 km between the City of London and Stockwell.

1891 CE202 entries

  • March 5 – 1st Prime Minister of Canada Sir John A. Macdonald wins a 4th consecutive parliamentary victory over the Liberal Party.
  • May 15 – Pope Leo XIII issued the Rerum novarum encyclical addressing the condition of the working classes and outlining the rights of workers to a fair wage, safe working conditions, and the formation of trade unions, while affirming the rights to property and free enterprise, opposing both socialism and laissez-faire capitalism.
  • September 15 – Garza Revolution: 60-80 followers of Catarino Garza crossed the Rio Grande from Texas into Mexico. Most are Mexican-Americans recruited locally.

1892 CE189 entries

  • March 13 – Ernest Louis, a grandson of Queen Victoria, becomes Grand Duke of Hesse and the Rhine on the death of his father, Grand Duke Louis IV.
  • June 26 – José Rizal arrives in the Philippines from Europe via Hong Kong.
  • July 4 – Samoa changes its time zone from 4 hours ahead of Japan to being 3 hours behind California, such that it crosses the International Date Line, and Monday, July 4 occurs twice.

1893 CE213 entries

  • January 17 – Overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii: Lorrin A. Thurston and the Citizen's Committee of Public Safety in Hawaii, with the intervention of the United States Marine Corps, overthrow the government of Queen Liliuokalani.
  • August 23 – Start of a three-day popular revolt in Naples incited by horse-cab drivers notoriously linked to the Camorra, who called for a strike against the agreement between the city administration and the Belgian tram company Société Anonyme des Tramways Provinciaux (it), which provides for the extension of the tramway line to other parts of the city. The coachmen created riots and wreak havoc on the streets of Naples together with thousands of other demonstrators descending from the working-class neighbourhoods. Carriages that did not participate in the strike were attacked and a tram was burnt down. The police fired on the demonstrators, injuring some of them and killing a boy. His corpse is carried in a tumultuous procession and continuous clashes with the police, from San Carlo all'Arena to the Prefecture. The riot spreads, shops are attacked, shop windows smashed. Devastations multiply, but do not result in looting.
  • October 13 – The Franco-Siamese Treaty of 1893 is signed, as the Kingdom of Siam cedes all of its territories east of the Mekong River to France, creating the territory of Laos.

1894 CE181 entries

  • 28 June - A Colonial Conference, held in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, resolves to lay a telegraph cable between Canada and Australia.
  • August 1 – War is declared between the Qing Empire of China and the Empire of Japan over their rival claims of influence on their common ally, the Joseon dynasty of Korea. The event marks the start of the First Sino-Japanese War.
  • November 26 – Wedding of Nicholas II of Russia and Alix of Hesse in the Grand Church of the Winter Palace at Saint Petersburg.

1895 CE196 entries

  • January 13 – Battle of Coatit between Italy and Ethiopian proxies led by Tigrian warlord Ras Mengesha Yohannes in what is now Eritrea. It was the opening battle of the First Italo–Ethiopian War, and was a significant victory for the Italians, as they rebuffed an invasion force.
  • March 3 – In Munich, Germany, bicyclists have to pass a test and display license plates.
  • May 5 – Prime Minister of Japan Ito Hirobumi announces withdrawal of Japanese troops from Liaodong Peninsula

1896 CE202 entries

  • January 28 – Walter Arnold, of East Peckham, Kent, England, is fined 1 shilling for speeding at 8 mph, exceeding the contemporary urban speed limit of 2 mph, the first speeding fine.
  • June 5 – Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi embarks from Durban for Calcutta en route to Bombay.
  • June 15 – Sanriku earthquake: One of the most destructive seismic events in Japanese history. The 8.5 magnitude earthquake occurred at 19:32 (local time), approximately 166 km off the coast of Iwate Prefecture, Honshu. It resulted in two tsunamis which destroyed about 9,000 homes and caused at least 22,000 deaths. The waves reached a record height of 38.2 m; more than a meter lower than those created after the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake which triggered the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster.

1897 CE193 entries

  • 2 February – Despite the guarantees given by the Great Powers on the Ottoman sovereignty over Crete, Colonel Timoleon Vassos unilaterally proclaimed the union of the island with Greece. The Powers reacted by demanding that the Greek Prime Minister Theodoros Deligiannis immediately withdraw Greek forces from the island in exchange for a statute of autonomy. The demand was rejected, and on 7 February the first full-scale battle between Greeks and Turks occurred, when the Greek expeditionary force in Crete defeated a 4,000-strong Ottoman force at the Battle of Livadeia, Crete. The bold action of the Greeks excites popular admiration in Italy and sympathy with the Cretan Christians.
  • 16 May – The Teatro Massimo in Palermo, Sicily, the third largest opera house—after the Palais Garnier in Paris and the K. K. Hof-Opernhaus in Vienna—was inaugurated with a performance of Verdi's Falstaff conducted by Leopoldo Mugnone.
  • 4 September - Essendon wins the first Victorian Football League premiership.

1898 CE240 entries

  • March 16 – In Melbourne the representatives of five colonies adopt a constitution which will become the basis of the Commonwealth of Australia.
  • October 4 – The American steam boat Walkatomica, which has made regular runs for travelers along the Gulf Coast of Florida since 1885, is destroyed by fire while in port in Tallahassee.
  • October 16 – The island of Puerto Rico is turned over by Spain to the United States. Ángel Rivero Méndez, the 149th and last Spanish governor of Puerto Rico, yields the office and turns over the keys to all military installations in the capital, San Juan to U.S. Army Captain Henry A. Reed, and General John R. Brooke becomes the new American military governor.

1899 CE315 entries

  • March 9 – Japan promulgates its commercial code, the Shōhō, to take effect on June 16.
  • March 21 – The Eden Theatre in La Ciotat, a commune in France near Marseille, lays a claim to being the first cinema as brothers Auguste Lumière and Louis Lumière present their short film, L'Arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat ("The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station") to 250 surprised spectators.
  • June 9 – American boxer James J. Jeffries wins the world heavyweight boxing championship when he knocks out Cornish-born Bob Fitzsimmons at Coney Island, New York.