1901 in the United States

1901 in the United States
Years:	1898 1899 1900 – 1901 – 1902 1903 1904
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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 10: Oil in Texas.

January–March

• 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 USA during the year.
• January 10 – In the first great Texas gusher, oil is discovered at Spindletop in Beaumont, Texas.
• January 28 – Baseball's American League declares itself a Major League.
• 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, limiting the autonomy of Cuba as a condition for the withdrawal of American troops.
• March 4 – United States President William McKinley begins his 2nd term. Theodore Roosevelt is sworn in as Vice President of the United States.

April–June

May 3: The Great Fire of 1901 begins.

• April 25 – New York State becomes the first to require automobile license plates.
• May 3 – The Great Fire of 1901 begins in Jacksonville, Florida.
• May 17 – The U.S. stock market crashes for the first time.
• May 27 – In New Jersey, the Edison Storage Battery Company is founded.
• June 12 – Cuba becomes a U.S. protectorate.

July–September

September 6: President McKinley is shot.

September 14: "Teddy" Roosevelt succeeds McKinley.

• June 22 to July 31 – The worst heat wave in US history until the 1930s, affecting most areas east of the 100th meridian, is estimated to have killed over 9,500 people.
• July 24 – O. Henry is released from prison in Columbus, Ohio after serving 3 years for embezzlement from the First National Bank in Austin, Texas.
• September 2 – U.S. 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 U.S. President William McKinley at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. McKinley dies 8 days later.
• September 14 – Theodore Roosevelt succeeds William McKinley as President of the United States.
• September 26 – The body of U.S. 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 – U.S. 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 – U.S. 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.

Ongoing

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

Births

• January 4 – Raoul Berger, Ukrainian-born American attorney and law professor (d. 2000)
• May 8 – Turkey Stearnes, baseball player (d. 1979)
• July 22 – Pancho Barnes, pioneer aviator (died 1975)
• July 30 – John A. Carroll, United States Senator from Colorado from 1957 till 1963. (died 1983)
• August 3 – John C. Stennis, United States Senator from Mississippi from 1947 till 1989. (died 1995)
• August 4 – Louis Armstrong, 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, United States 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, business magnate, animator, producer, director, screenwriter and voice actor (died 1966)
• December 12 – Fred Barker, son of Ma Barker and a member of the Barker-Karpis gang (died 1935)

Deaths

• January 6 – James W. Bradbury, United States Senator from Maine from 1847 till 1853. (born 1802)
• March 13 – Benjamin Harrison, 23rd President of the United States from 1889 till 1893 and United States Senator from Indiana from 1881 to 1887. (born 1833)
• September 14 – William McKinley, 25th President of the United States from 1897 till 1901. (born 1843)
• October 29 – Leon Czolgosz, Assassin of President William McKinley (born 1873)
• November 26 – John Denny, buffalo soldier and Medal of Honor recipient (born 1846)

Further reading

• "Domestic Chronology", Statistician and Economist, San Francisco: Louis P. McCarty, 1905, pp. 227–347 – via HathiTrust . (Covers events May 1898-June 1905)

See also

• List of American films of 1901

External links

• Media related to 1901 in the United States at Wikimedia Commons