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The 1900s

1,976 sourced entries across 10 years, inside the 20th century. Each year below opens its own page; the lines under it are that year’s highest-ranked entries.

1900 CE203 entries

  • 14 May – 28 October – The 1900 Summer Olympics takes place in Paris, France. Germany finishes seventh in the overall medal table with four gold medals, two silver and two bronze.
  • June 20 – August 14 — Siege of the International Legations
  • September 8 – The 1900 Galveston hurricane, killing around 8,000 people. It is the deadliest hurricane in U.S. history.

1901 CE202 entries

  • January 1 – Nigeria becomes a British protectorate.
  • January 22 – Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom dies at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight. She is 81 years old and, having ruled for nearly 64 years, will be the second longest-reigning monarch in British history. Her eldest son, Prince Albert Edward, "Bertie", the longest-serving Prince of Wales to this time, succeeds his mother at the age of 59, reigning as King Edward VII, of the United Kingdom and in innovation the British Dominions and also becoming Emperor of India.
  • March 4 – President William McKinley begins his second term; Theodore Roosevelt is sworn in as Vice President.

1902 CE193 entries

  • May 8 – Mount Pelée in Martinique erupts, destroying the town of Saint-Pierre and killing over 30,000.
  • May 31 – The Treaty of Vereeniging ends the Second Boer War, providing for the Transvaal Colony and Orange Free State to transition to self-governing British colonies.
  • 9 August – coronation of Edward VII and Alexandra at Westminster Abbey by Archbishop Frederick Temple.

1903 CE179 entries

  • October 1–13 – First modern World Series: The Boston Americans defeat the Pittsburgh Pirates in eight games.
  • December 17 – Orville Wright flies an aircraft with a petrol engine, the Wright Flyer, at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina in the first documented and successful powered and controlled heavier-than-air flight.
  • December 30 – The Iroquois Theatre fire in Chicago kills 600.

1904 CE209 entries

  • February 7 – The Great Baltimore Fire in Baltimore, Maryland, destroys over 1,500 buildings in 31 hours.
  • 8 February – The Russo-Japanese War begins with a surprise Japanese attack on Port Arthur.
  • July 1 – The third Modern Olympic Games open in St. Louis, Missouri, United States, as part of the World's Fair.

1905 CE250 entries

  • January 22 (January 9 O.S.) – The Bloody Sunday massacre of demonstrators led by Russian Orthodox priest Georgy Gapon trigger the abortive Revolution of 1905.
  • 31 March – during the First Moroccan Crisis, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany met with representatives of Sultan Abdelaziz of Morocco in Tangier
  • May 28 – Japanese victory in the Battle of Tsushima, the only decisive battle fought between fleets of battleships; Russian personnel losses were 216 officers and 4,614 men killed; with 278 officers and 5,629 men taken as prisoners of war (POWs). Interned in neutral ports were 79 officers and 1,783 men. Escaping to Vladivostok and Diego-Suarez were 62 officers and 1,165 men. Eight battleships and three coastal battleships were either sunk, scuttled or captured. The Japanese lost three torpedo boats and 117 officers and men killed, with 583 officers and men wounded.

1906 CE184 entries

  • March 10 – Courrières mine disaster: An explosion in a coal mine in France kills 1,060.
  • April 18 – The 1906 San Francisco earthquake (estimated magnitude 7.8) on the San Andreas Fault destroys much of San Francisco, California, killing at least 3,000 people, with 225,000–300,000 left homeless, and $350,000,000 in damages.
  • August 16 – 1906 Valparaíso earthquake: A magnitude 8.2 earthquake in Valparaíso, Chile leaves nearly 4,000 dead and approximately 20,000 injured.

1907 CE189 entries

  • June 26 – Tiflis bank robbery: Bolsheviks attack a cash-filled bank coach in the centre of Tiflis, Georgia, killing 40 people.
  • October 24 – A major American financial crisis is averted when J. P. Morgan, E. H. Harriman, James Stillman, Henry Clay Frick, and other Wall Street financiers create a $25,000,000 pool to invest in the shares on the plunging New York Stock Exchange, ending the bank panic of 1907, a move which ultimately leads to establishment of the Federal Reserve System.
  • December 21 – Santa María School massacre: In Chile, soldiers fire at striking mineworkers gathered in the Santa María School in Iquique; over 2,000 are killed.

1908 CE192 entries

  • June 30 (June 17 OS) – The Tunguska event near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in Krasnoyarsk Krai, Siberia, Russian Empire, is believed to have been caused by the air burst of a large meteoroid or comet fragment, at an altitude of 5 – 10 km above the Earth's surface.
  • July 13–25 – The 1908 Summer Olympics are held in London. (Originally scheduled to be in Rome, but changed due to the Mount Vesuvius eruption of 1906. Figure skating events are held in London from October 28–29.)
  • December 28 – A 7.1 magnitude earthquake hits in Sicily and Calabria, southern Italy. The cities of Messina and Reggio Calabria were almost completely destroyed and between 75,000 and 200,000 people died. Moments after the earthquake, a 12-meter (39-foot) tsunami struck nearby coasts, causing even more devastation.

1909 CE175 entries

  • 16 February – West Stanley Pit Disaster, a coal mining disaster in Stanley, County Durham, in which more than 160 miners are killed in an explosion.
  • April 6 – Robert Peary claims to have reached the North Pole.
  • April 14 – Adana massacre: Ottoman Turks kill 15,000–30,000 Armenian Christians, in the Adana Vilayet.