General
Population: 1.67 Billion*
- Archaeology: Byzantine silver plates created 629 AD discovered
- Entertainment: Music includes Sibelius, Delius, Blech, Lehar, Massenet, Debussy, Jazz Pianist Jelly Roll Morton performs, Elgar composes first Pomp and Circumstance march
Top songs include The Entertainer, The Glow-Worm, Bill Bailey Won't You Please Come Home, Because,
On A Sunday Afternoon, In the Good Old Summer Time
Enrico Caruso makes first phonograph recording
Art includes Monet, Gauguin, JS Sargent, Ridin, Olaf Gulbransson (political cartoons, Slevogt, Max Klinger sculpts Nietzsche
Writers include Hilaire Belloc, Joseph Conrad, Arthur Canon Doyle (Hound of the Baskervilles), Andre Gide, Kipling, Maxim Gorki,
John Masefield, D'Annunzio, JM Barrie, Chekhov, Arnold Bennett, Maeterlinck, Merezhkobski, AEW Mason, Beatrix Potter (Peter Rabbit),
JA Hobson, William James, Paul Hoensbroich, Benedetto Croce, Pauli and Herbig, Werner Sombart, Yeats writes play Cathleen ni Houlihan
Film includes Salome
Popular Mechanics premiers
- Politics: Anglo-Japanese Alliance reached
Treaties between China, Britain, US and Japan
- Science: Mercalli invents earthquake scale
Heaviside the English physicist states atmospheric layers which aid radio waves
Cushing begins study of pituitary
Poulsen invents the arc generator
Bayliss and Starling discover the hormone secretin
Richet discovers anaphylaxis
Sutton at Columbia University proposes that genes are found on chromosomes
T-rex discovered
Sutton deduces that chromosomes separate for reproduction
- Technology: Miethe invents panchromatic plate
Browning develops Browning automatic pistol
- Deaths: German surgeon Rudolf Virchow, Historian Lord Acton, Novelist Samuel Butler, Painter James Tissot, Writer Edward Eggleston, Novelist Bret Harte,
Sculptor Jules Dalou, Novelist Emile Zola, Cartoonist Thomas Nast, Adventurer Cecil John Rhodes,
Africa
- General: Only remaining independent African countries are Ethiopia and Liberia
End of Africa's Aro Confederacy as it is taken to the UK
- Egypt: First Aswan Dam
Cholera outbreak
- Orange Free State: Becomes British Crown Colony
- South Africa: Second Boer War ends with Peace of 1902/Treaty of Vereeniging - South Africa surrenders to British - 5774 British and 4000 Boers as casualties
- Transvaal Republic: Adopted as British Empire
Americas
- Argentina: Proposed Drago Doctrine announced inconjunction to Monroe Doctrine
- Colombia: US gains control over Panama Canal region
- Cuba: American forces withdraw from Cuba
Platt Amendment shapes US policy
Republic declared
- Guatemala: Earthquake and Santa Maria volcano (Tacona) in Guatemala City erupts killing 1680
- Martinique: (Virgin Islands) St. Pierre Snake Invasion kills 50 then Pelee erupts killing 26,000-36,000
- St. Vincent: (Caribbean) Soufriere Volcano erupts killing 1680
- Venezuela: Britain, Germany, and Italy form blockade of ports to force repayment of debts
Asia
- General: Anglo-Japanese treaty recognizes the independence of China and Korea
- India: Famine kills 19 million from 1896
Hindu fakir Agastiya starts keeping arm above his head to defy pain – kept up for ten years when he died – bird makes nest in open palm
- Japan: Greater freedom of action in East Asia from Anglo-Japanese Alliance
Hakkoda blizzard kills 199 during military training exercise
- Philippines: US defeats rebels and República Filipina
Partail self-rule granted - fully by 1907
Katagalugan declares independence after failure of first Philippine Republic
Europe
- General: Triple Alliance between Germany Austria and Italy renewed for six years
- Austria: Collapse of Campanile of St. Mark's in Venice after 1000 years
- France: Syndicalism forms - violent unions
Laws improve working conditions
- Great Britain: Arthur Balfour elected Prime Minister
Edward VII institutes Order of Merit
Colonial conference meets in London
Empire Day celebrated
First meeting of Committee of Imperial Defence
Bacon becomes the first man to cross the Irish Channel in a balloon
Metropolitan Water Board in London founded
- Italy: Secret entente with France
- Portugal: National bankruptcy declared
- Russia: arthquake in Ubekistan
Leon Trotsky escapes from a Siberian prison and settles in London
- Spain: End of regency of Queen, Alfonso XIII rules
Middle East
- Ottoman Empire: Turks agree to Germans' building Baghdad Railroad linking Germany to Persian Gulf
- Saudi Arabia: Ibn Saud captures Riyadh – beginning of Saudi Arabia
Pacific
- Australia: Start of White Australia policy - non-European immigrants excluded
Votes for women introduced