1894

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Events

January

January 4 – A military alliance is established between the French Third Republic and the Russian Empire.
January 7 – William Kennedy Dickson receives a patent for motion picture film in the United States.
January 9 – New England Telephone and Telegraph installs the first battery-operated telephone switchboard, in Lexington, Massachusetts.

February

February 12 – French anarchist Émile Henry sets off a bomb in a Paris café, killing one person and wounding twenty.
February 15
- In Korea, peasant unrest erupts in the Donghak Peasant Revolution, a massive revolt of followers of the Donghak movement.<ref>A New Modern History of East Asia, ed. by Eckhardt Fuchs, et al. (Gottingen: V&R unipress, 2017) p106</ref> Both China and Japan send military forces, claiming to come to the ruling Joseon dynasty government's aid.
- French anarchist Martial Bourdin dies of an accidental detonation of his own bomb, next to the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, in London, England.

March

March 2 – William Gladstone resigns as British Prime Minister.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
March 5 – The Local Government Act (coming into effect December 1894–January 1895) reforms local government in Britain, creating a system of urban and rural districts with elected councils, with elected civil parish councils in rural areas, and gives women, irrespective of marital status, the right to vote and stand in local (but not national) elections.<ref name=CBH>Template:Cite book</ref>
March 12 – Coca-Cola is sold in bottles for the first time.
March 21 – A syzygy of planets occurs, as Mercury transits the Sun as seen from Venus, and Mercury and Venus both transit the Sun as seen from Saturn, but no two of the transits are simultaneous.
March 25 – Coxey's Army (of the unemployed), the first significant protest march in the United States, departs from Massillon, Ohio, for Washington, D.C.

April

April 16 – Manchester City Football Club is formed in north-west England under this name.
April 21 – A bituminous coal miners' strike closes mines across the central United States.
April 27 – Canada's largest known landslide occurs in Saint-Alban, Quebec, displacing Template:Convert of rock and dirt, and leaving a Template:Convert scar that covers Template:Convert.<ref name="1894landslide">Template:Cite web</ref>

May

May 1 – In the United States:
- Coxey's Army arrives in Washington; Coxey is arrested on the Capitol grounds.
- The May Day Riots (against unemployment) break out in Cleveland, Ohio.
May 11 – Pullman Strike: Three thousand Pullman Palace Car Company factory workers go on a "wildcat" (without union approval) strike in Illinois.
May 14 – Blackpool Tower is opened in Blackpool, in north-west England, as a visitor attraction.
May 21 – The Manchester Ship Canal and Docks are officially opened by Queen Victoria, linking the previously landlocked industrial city of Manchester, in north-west England, to the Irish Sea.
May – Third plague pandemic: Bubonic plague breaks out in the Tai Ping Shan area of Hong Kong (by the end of the year, the death toll is 2,552 people); it also breaks out this year in Canton.

June

June 18 – Britain establishes a protectorate over Uganda.<ref name=CBH/>
June 22 – Dahomey becomes a French colony.
June 23 – The International Olympic Committee is founded at the Sorbonne, Paris, at the initiative of Baron Pierre de Coubertin.
June 24 – Sadi Carnot, president of France, is assassinated in Lyon.
June 30 – Tower Bridge in London opens for traffic.

File:BlackpoolTower OwlofDoom.jpg

May 14: Blackpool Tower.

July

July 4
- The short-lived Republic of Hawaii is proclaimed by Sanford B. Dole.
- The football club FC La Chaux-de-Fonds is founded in Switzerland.
July 6 – A fire at the site of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago destroys most of the remaining buildings.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
July 16 – The United Kingdom and Japan sign the Anglo-Japanese Treaty of Commerce and Navigation, as the U.K. becomes the first of the Western nations to agree to give up its extraterritorial rights in Japan.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
July 22 – The Paris–Rouen Competition for Horseless Carriages, the first automobile competition, is held.

August

August 1 – War is declared between the Qing Empire of China and the Empire of Japan over their rival claims of influence on their common ally, the Joseon dynasty of Korea. The event marks the start of the First Sino-Japanese War.
August 16 – Italian anarchist Sante Geronimo Caserio is executed by guillotine for the assassination of French President Carnot in Lyon.
August 31 – New Zealand enacts the world's first minimum wage law, to take effect on January 1, in the passage of the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act of 1894.<ref>Minimum-wage Legislation in the United States and Foreign Countries, ed. by Charles Henry Verrill (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1915) p168</ref>

September

September 1 – Great Hinckley Fire: A forest fire in Hinckley, Minnesota, kills more than 450 people.
September 4 – In New York City, 12,000 tailors strike against sweatshop working conditions.
September 10 – Richard Strauss marries Pauline De Ahna.
September 26 – The Template:SS and the schooner barge Ironton collide and sink in Lake Huron. While the crew of the Ohio is rescued, five of the other craft's seven-member crew, including the captain, are lost.

October

October 1 – Petrópolis becomes the capital of the Brazilian state of Rio de Janeiro, until 1902.<ref>Revista do Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brazileiro (Imprensa Nacional, 1906) p348</ref>
October 15 – Dreyfus affair: French Army officer Alfred Dreyfus is arrested for spying.
October 30 – Domenico Menegatti obtains a patent for a procedure to be applied in producing pandoro industrially.

November

November 1

File:Tsar Nicholas II -1898.jpg

November 1: Nicholas II becomes Tsar of Russia.

- Emperor Alexander III of Russia is succeeded by his son, Nicholas II.
- The first issue of Billboard magazine is published in Cincinnati, Ohio by William Donaldson and James Hennegan. Initially, it covers the advertising and bill posting industry, and is at the time known as Billboard Advertising.
November 6 – Republicans win by a landslide in the United States House of Representatives elections, which sets the stage for the decisive presidential election of 1896.
November 7 – The Masonic Grande Loge de France is founded, splitting from the larger and older Grand Orient de France.
November 21 – First Sino-Japanese War: Battle of Lushunkou – Japanese troops secure a decisive victory over the Chinese, capture the port city of Lüshunkou, and begin the Port Arthur massacre, in which more than 1,000 Chinese servicemen and civilians die.
November 26 – Wedding of Nicholas II of Russia and Alix of Hesse in the Grand Church of the Winter Palace at Saint Petersburg.

December

December 6 – Kate Chopin's feminist short story "The Story of an Hour" is first published, in the American magazine Vogue.
December 18 – Women in South Australia become the first in Australia to gain the right to vote and the first in the world with the right to be elected to Parliament, taking effect from 1895, after decades of activism.
December 21 – Mackenzie Bowell becomes Canada's fifth prime minister.
December 22 – Dreyfus affair: French Army officer Alfred Dreyfus is convicted of treason.

Date unknown

The Society of Beaux-Arts Architects is founded in the United States.
Oil is discovered on the Osage Indian reservation, making the Osage the "richest group of people in the world".
Edward B. Marks and Joe Stern publish the waltz The Little Lost Child in the United States, promoting the playing of the waltz with slides projected by a magic lantern, the earliest version of music video known as the illustrated song.
Spillers Records is founded in Cardiff (Wales), the world's oldest record shop still in operation.
The Liga Femeilor Române, the first women's organisation in Romania, is founded.