1891 Deaths

Events

January–March

* January 1
** Paying of old age pensions begins in Germany.
** A strike of 500 Hungarian steel workers occurs; 3,000 men are out of work as a consequence.
**Germany takes formal possession of its new African territories.
* January 2 – A. L. Drummond of New York is appointed Chief of the Treasury Secret Service.
* January 4 – The Earl of Zetland issues a declaration regarding the famine in the western counties of Ireland.
* January 5
**The Australian shearers' strike, that leads indirectly to the foundation of the Australian Labor Party, begins.
**A fight between the United States and Indians breaks out near Pine Ridge agency.
** Henry B. Brown, of Michigan, is sworn in as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.
**A fight between railway strikers and police breaks out at Motherwell, Scotland.
* January 6 – Encounters continue, between strikers and the authorities at Glasgow.
* January 7
** General Miles' forces surround the natives in the Pine Ridge Reservation.
** Secretary Tracy relieves Commander Reiter of his ship, on account of the Barrundia Affair.
** The International Monetary Conference meets in Washington DC.
* January 8 – Lieutenant Casey of the United States Army is killed by native Americans, at Pine Ridge.
* January 9 – The great shoe strike in Rochester, New York is called off.
* January 10 – in France, the Irish Nationalist leaders hold a conference at Boulogne. The French government promptly takes loan.
* January 11
**3,000 natives approach Pine Ridge with a view to surrender.
** Mahoning Valley, Ohio, sixteen blast furnaces shut down, putting 10,000 men out of work.
**Railroads and coke companies forced to lower prices.
* January 12
**Canada brings suit before the United States Supreme Court in re-seizures of vessels in the Bering Sea.
**St. Mary's Cathedral dedicated in San Francisco.
* January 13 – In California, Leland Stanford (Rep.) re-elected Senator.
* January 14 – Conference of Native American chiefs with General Miles at Pine Ridge Reservation, the natives agree to surrender.
* January 15 – Scottish railway strikers attempt to wreck a train near Greenock, Scotland.
* January 16 – The Chilean Civil War of 1891 breaks out.
* January 17 – George Bancroft dies at Washington DC at age 91, all government buildings flying flags lower to half mast until after the funeral.
* January 19
**General Miles officially announces the end of the native outbreak and congratulates his troops.
**A British squadron ordered to Chile.
* January 20 – Jim Hogg becomes the first native Texan to be governor of that state.
* January 27–May 2 – The Jamaica International Exhibition is held.
* January 29 – Liliuokalani is proclaimed Queen of Hawaii.
* January 31 – The Portuguese republican revolution breaks out, in the northern city of Porto.
* February – The Tobacco Protest begins in Iran.
* February 14 – In the FA Cup quarter final in English Association football, a goal is deliberately stopped by handball on the goal line. An indirect free kick is awarded, since the penalty kick, proposed the previous year by William McCrum, has not yet been implemented. This event probably changes public opinion on the penalty kick, seen previously as ''an Irishman's motion''.
* February 15 – Allmänna Idrottsklubben (AIK) sports club is founded in Stockholm, Sweden.
* February 21 – Springhill, Nova Scotia suffers a serious mining disaster.
* March 3 – The International Copyright Act of 1891 is passed, by the 51st United States Congress.
* March 9– 12 – The Great Blizzard of 1891 in the south and west of England leads to extensive snow drifts and powerful storms off the south coast, with 14 ships sunk, and approximately 220 deaths attributed to the weather conditions.
* March 12 – Djurgårdens IF (DIF) sports club is founded in Stockholm.
* March 14 – In New Orleans, a lynch mob storms the Old Parish Prison, and lynches 11 Italians arrested but found innocent of the murder of Police Chief David Hennessy.
* March 17 – The British steamship , carrying Italian migrants to New York, sinks in the inner harbor of Gibraltar after collision with the battleship HMS ''Anson'', killing 564.
* March 18 – The London–Paris telephone system officially opens.

April–June

* April 1
** The Wrigley Company is founded in Chicago.
** The London–Paris telephone system is opened to the general public.
* April 5 – Census in the United Kingdom: 15.6 million people live in cities of 20,000 or more in England and Wales, and cities of 20,000 or more account for 54% of the total English population.
* April 12 – The first official game in the Association football league of Argentina ( 1891 Argentine Primera División) is held in Caballito, Buenos Aires.
* April 23 – Chilean Civil War of 1891: Chilean ironclad ''Blanco Encalada'' is sunk at the Battle of Caldera Bay by torpedo boats. This is the first ironclad warship lost to a self-propelled torpedo.
* May – Mirza Ghulam Ahmad claims to be the Promised Messiah (the second coming of Jesus) and the Mahdi awaited in Islam.
* May 1
** Troops fire on a workers' May Day demonstration in support of the 8-hour workday in Fourmies, France, killing 9 and wounding 30.
** The first '' Fascio dei lavoratori'' (Workers League) is founded by Giuseppe De Felice Giuffrida in Catania, Sicily.
* May 5 – The Music Hall in New York (later known as Carnegie Hall) has its grand opening and first public performance, with Peter Tchaikovsky as guest conductor.
* May 11 – Ōtsu incident: Tsesarevich Nikolay Alexandrovich (the future Czar Nicholas II) of Russia survives an assassination attempt while visiting Japan.
* May 15 – Pope Leo XIII issues the encyclical ''Rerum novarum'', on the rights and duties of capital and labor, resulting in the creation of many Christian Democrat parties throughout Europe.
* May 20 – Thomas Edison's prototype kinetoscope is first displayed at Edison's Laboratory, for a convention of the National Federation of Women's Clubs.
* May 31 N.S. (May 19 O.S.) – In the Kuperovskaya district of Vladivostok, a grand ceremonial inauguration of construction work on the Trans-Siberian Railway is carried out by the Tsesarevich Nikolay Alexandrovich, and a religious service held.
* June 1 – The Johnstown Inclined Plane opens in Johnstown, Pennsylvania.
* June 15 – Minas Gerais was granted in 1891.
* June 16 – John Abbott becomes Canada's third prime minister.
* June 21 – The first long-distance transmission of alternating current is made, from the Ames power plant near Telluride, Colorado, by Lucien and Paul Nunn.
* June 25 – Arthur Conan Doyle's detective Sherlock Holmes appears in ''The Strand Magazine'' (London) for the first time, in the issue dated July.

July–September

* July 10 – Erik Gustaf Boström becomes Prime Minister of Sweden.
* July 30 – The Springboks rugby union team of South Africa play their first international test match against the Lions team of the British Isles, and win by 4–0.
* July 30 – Serbian inventor, Nikola Tesla