1901 in the United States

Events from the year 1901 in the United States.

Incumbents

Federal Government

* President: William McKinley ( R-Ohio) (until September 14), Theodore Roosevelt ( R- New York) (starting September 14)
* Vice President:
** until March 4: ''vacant''
** March 4–September 14: Theodore Roosevelt ( R- New York)
** starting September 14: ''vacant''
* Chief Justice: Melville Fuller (Illinois)
* Speaker of the House of Representatives: David B. Henderson ( R-Iowa)
* Congress: 56th (until March 4), 57th (starting March 4)

Events

January–March

* January 1 – Pentecostalism is born, at a prayer meeting at Bethel Bible College in Topeka, Kansas.
* January 3 – Census Commissioner predicts a US population of at least 300 million by 2001
* January 5 – Typhoid fever breaks out in a Seattle jail, the first of two typhoid outbreaks in the United States during the year.
* January 7 – Alferd Packer is released from prison in the United States after serving 18 years for cannibalism.
* January 10 – In the first great Texas gusher, oil is discovered at Spindletop in Beaumont, Texas.
* January 22 – The Grand Opera House in Cincinnati, Ohio, is destroyed in a fire.
* January 28 – Baseball's American League declares itself a Major League.
* February 4 – Puccini's ''Tosca'' makes its U.S. debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.
* February 5
**The Hay–Pauncefote Treaty is signed by the United Kingdom and United States, ceding control of the Panama Canal to the United States.
**J. P. Morgan buys mines and steel mills in the United States, marking the first billion-dollar business deal.
**In Evansville, Indiana, a fire burns through the business district, causing $175,000 of damage.
* February 20 – The Hawaii Territory Legislature convenes for the first time.
* February 25 – U.S. Steel, the first billion-dollar corporation and at some time the world's largest producer of steel, is incorporated by industrialist J. P. Morgan.
* March 2
** The U.S. Congress passes the Platt Amendment as a condition for the withdrawal of American troops.
** The Carnegie Steel Company with the Illinois Steel Company and The National Steel Company merge to form the United States Steel Corporation.
* March 4 – President William McKinley begins his second term; Theodore Roosevelt is sworn in as Vice President.
* March 9 – The Olds Motor Co. factory in Lansing, Michigan, burns to the ground; it is reconstructed with the world's first automobile assembly line for production of the Oldsmobile Curved Dash.

April–June

* April 25 – New York State becomes the first to require automobile license plates.
* May – Monte Ne health resort opens in the Ozarks.
* May 3 – The Great Fire of 1901 in Jacksonville, Florida, begins.
* May 17 – The U.S. stock market crashes for the first time.
* May 27 – The Edison Storage Battery Company is founded in New Jersey.
* May 28 – '' Cherry v. Des Moines Leader'' is decided in the Iowa Supreme Court, upholding the right to publish critical reviews.
* June 12 – Cuba becomes a U.S. protectorate.

July–September

* June 22 to July 31 – The worst heat wave in U.S. history until the 1930s, affecting most areas east of the 100th meridian, is estimated to have killed over 9,500 people.
* July 1 – The Bureau of Chemistry is established within the United States Department of Agriculture.
* July 24 – Author O. Henry is released from prison in Columbus, Ohio after serving 3 years for embezzlement from the First National Bank in Austin, Texas.
* August 10 – U.S. Steel recognition strike of 1901: Members of the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel, and Tin Workers begin a strike against United States Steel Corporation after failing to reach a settlement of their demands, and 14,000 employees walk off of the job.
* September 2 – Vice President Theodore Roosevelt utters the famous phrase, "Speak softly and carry a big stick" at the Minnesota State Fair.
* September 5 – The National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues (later renamed Minor League Baseball) is formed in Chicago.
* September 6 – American anarchist Leon Czolgosz shoots President William McKinley at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. McKinley dies 8 days later.
* September 7 – The Boxer Protocol is signed between the Qing Empire of China and the Eight-Nation Alliance.
* September 14 – Vice President Theodore Roosevelt becomes the 26th President of the United States, upon the death of President William McKinley.
* September 26 – The body of President Abraham Lincoln is exhumed and reinterred in concrete several feet thick.

October–December

* October 4 – The American yacht '' Columbia'' defeats the Irish '' Shamrock'' in the America's Cup yachting race.
* October 16 – President Theodore Roosevelt invites African American leader Booker T. Washington to the White House. The American South reacts angrily to the visit, and racial violence increases in the region.
* October 23 – Yale University celebrates its bicentennial.
* October 24 – Michigan schoolteacher Annie Taylor goes down Niagara Falls in a barrel and survives.
* October 29 – In Amherst, New Hampshire, nurse Jane Toppan is arrested for murdering the Davis family of Boston with an overdose of morphine.
* October 29 – Leon Czolgosz, the assassin of William McKinley, is executed by electrocution.
* November 1 – Sigma Phi Epsilon is founded in Richmond, Virginia.
* November 15 – The Alpha Sigma Alpha fraternity is founded at Longwood University.
* November 28 – The new state constitution of Alabama requires voters to have passed literacy tests.
* December 3 – President Theodore Roosevelt delivers a 20,000-word speech to the House of Representatives asking Congress to curb the power of trusts "within reasonable limits."

Undated

* The Intercollegiate Prohibition Association is established in Chicago.
* Force (cereal) first produced.

Ongoing

* Progressive Era (1890s–1920s)
* Lochner era (c. 1897–c. 1937)
* Philippine–American War (1899–1902)

Births

* January 2 – Bob Marshall, wilderness activist, founder of The Wilderness Society (died 1939)
* January 3 – Henrietta Bingham, journalist, newspaper executive, horse-breeder and anglophile (died 1968)
* January 4 – Raoul Berger, Ukrainian-born attorney and law professor (died 2000)
* January 9 – Chic Young, cartoonist (died 1973)
* February 1
** Howard I. Chapelle, naval architect, museum curator and author (died 1975)
** Clark Gable, actor (died 1960)
* February 8 – Virginius Dabney, teacher, journalist, writer and editor (died 1995)
* February 9 – Brian Donlevy, actor (died 1972)
* March 24 – Ub Iwerks, animator, cartoonist, character designer, inventor and special effects technician (died 1971)
* May 8 – Turkey Stearnes, baseball player (died 1979)
* July 3 – Ruth Crawford Seeger, modernist composer and folk music arranger (died 1953)
* July 9 – Jester Hairston, actor and composer (died 2000)
* July 14 – George Tobias, actor (died 1980)
* July 22 – Pancho Barnes, pioneer aviator (died 1975)
* July 30 – John A. Carroll, U.S. Senator from Colorado from 1957 to 1963 (died 1983)
* August 3 – John C. Stennis, U.S. Senator from Mississippi from 1947 to 1989 (died 1995)
* August 4 – Louis Armstrong, jazz trumpeter (died 1971)
* August 8 – Ernest Lawrence, nuclear physicist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1939 (died 1958)
* August 23 – John Sherman Cooper, U.S. Senator from Kentucky 1946-1949, 1952-1955 and 1956-1973 (died 1991)
* September 28 – Ed Sullivan, entertainment writer and television host (died 1974)
* December 5 – Walt Disney, animator, producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor and business magnate (died 1966)
* December 12 – Fred Barker, criminal member of the Barker-Karpis gang, son of Ma Barker (killed 1935)
* December 16 – Margaret Mead, cultural anthropologist and author (died 1978)
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Deaths

* January 6 – James W. Bradbury, United States Senator from Maine from 1847 to 1853 (born 1802)
* January 16
** Murray Hall, born Mary Anderson, bail bondsman and politician (born 1841 in Scotland)
** Hiram Rhodes Revels, first African American senator (born 1827)
* January 21 – Elisha Gray, inventor and co-founder of Western Electric Manufacturing Company (born 1835)
* January 29 – Alexander H. Jones, Congressional Representative from North Carolina (born 1822)
* February 7 – Rowena Granice Steele, first female novelist in California (born 1824)
* February 18 – Anna Gardner, abolitionist (born 1816)
* March 7 – Ruth Alice Armstrong, American social activist (born 1850)
* March 13 – Benjamin Harrison, 23rd President of the United States from 1889 to 1893 and U.S. Senator from Indiana from 1881 to 1887 (born 1833)
* March 18 – Patrick Donahoe, businessman, publisher of the Boston Catholic newspaper ''The Pilot'' (born 1811)
* April 10 – Harriet Newell Kneeland Goff, reformer (born 1828)
* April 19 – Alfred Horatio Belo, newswriter and businessman, founder of ''The Dallas Morning News'' (born 1839)
* April 26 – Harriett Ellen Grannis Arey, educator (born 1819)
* June 2 – James A. Herne, playwright and actor (born 1839)
* July 4
** John Fiske, historian and philosopher (born 1842)
** Julian Scott, artist and Civil War Medal of Honor recipient (born 1846)
* July 30 – Herbert Baxter Adams, educator and historian (born 1850)
* August 4 – Harriet Pritchard Arnold, author (born 1858)
* August 24 – Clara Maass, nurse (born 1876)Stanton E. Cope. 2011. Clara Maass: An American Heroine. ''Wing Beats'' 22(2): 16-19.
* September 14 – William McKinley, 25th President of the United States from 1897 to 1901 (born 1843)
* October 10 – Lorenzo Snow, 5th President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (born 1814)
* October 21 – James A. Walker, Confederate general and US Congressman (born 1832)
* October 29 – Leon Czolgosz, assassin of President William McKinley (born 1873)
* November 8 – Mary Ann Bickerdyke, nurse and hospital administrator for Union soldiers (born 1817)
* November 26 – John Denny, buffalo soldier and Medal of Honor recipient (born 1846)
* November 27 – Clement Studebaker, automobile manufacturer (born 1831)

See also

* List of American films of 1901
* Timeline of United States history (1900–1929)

References

Further reading

* . (Covers events May 1898-June 1905)

External links

*

{{Year in North America, 1901

1900s in the United States
United States
United States
Years of the 20th century in the United States