January 1 – Ellis Island begins receiving immigrants to the United States.[1]
January 15 – James Naismith's rules for basketball are published for the first time in the Springfield YMCA International Training School's newspaper, in an article titled "A New Game".
April 15 – The General Electric Company is established through merger of the Thomson-Houston Company and the Edison General Electric Company.
April 19 – The 6.4 MLaVacaville–Winters earthquake shakes the North Bay are of California with a maximum Mercalli intensity of IX (Violent). This first event in a doublet earthquake results in one death and is followed two days later by a 6.2 MLa shock. Total damage from the events is $225,000–250,000.
May 11 – The 18th Kentucky Derby is run in Louisville, Kentucky; Azra finishes first, Huron second and Phil Dwyer third in a race with only three horses.
June 7 – Homer Plessy, who is one-eighth African heritage with light skin, is arrested for sitting (deliberately) on the whites-only car in Louisiana, leading to the landmark Plessy v. Ferguson court case.
August 13 – The Baltimore Afro-American newspaper, the country's longest-running African American family owned newspaper business, publishes its first issue (publisher, John H. Murphy, Sr.).
October 5 – The Dalton Gang, attempting to rob two banks in Coffeyville, Kansas, is shot by the townspeople; only Emmett Dalton, with 23 wounds, survives to spend 14 years in prison.
^Harlan D. Unrau (1984). Ellis Island, Statue of Liberty National Monument, New York-New Jersey. U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service. p. 208.
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