Timeline from 1890 to 1900

The 1890s: Known for Lizzie Borden, an Economic Panic, and the U.S.S. Maine

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Updated on February 28, 2021

Decade By Decade: Timelines of the 1800s

1890

July 2, 1890: The Sherman Anti-Trust Act became law in the United States.
July 13, 1890: John C. Frémont, American explorer and political figure, died in New York City at the age of 77.
July 29, 1890: Artist Vincent Van Gogh died in France at the age of 37 after shooting himself two days earlier.
October 1, 1890: At the urging of John Muir, The U.S. Congress designated Yosemite a National Park.

December 15, 1890: Sitting Bull, legendary Teton Lakota leader, died at the age of 59 in South Dakota. He was killed while being arrested in the federal government's crackdown on the Ghost Dance movement.
December 29, 1890: The Wounded Knee Massacre took place in South Dakota when U.S. Cavalry troopers fired on Lakota people who had gathered. The killing of hundreds of unarmed men, women, and children essentially marked the end of Native American resistance to white rule in the West.

February 14, 1891: William Tecumseh Sherman, Civil War general, died in New York City at the age of 71.
March 17, 1891: The St. Patrick's Day parade in New York City began using the traditional route up Fifth Avenue.
April 7, 1891: American showman Phineas T. Barnum died in Bridgeport, Connecticut at the age of 80.
May 5, 1891: Carnegie Hall opened in New York City.

June 25, 1891: The character Sherlock Holmes, created by Arthur Conan Doyle, appeared in The Strand magazine for the first time.
September 28, 1891: Herman Melville, author of Moby Dick, died in New York City at the age of 72. At the time of his death he was not well remember for his classic novel about whaling, but more for earlier books set in the South Seas.
October 6, 1891: Irish political figure Charles Stewart Parnell died in Ireland at the age of 45.
December 4, 1891: One of the richest men in America, financier Russell Sage, was nearly blown to bits in a bizarre dynamite attack in his Manhattan office.

March 26, 1892: American poet Walt Whitman died in Camden, New Jersey at the age of 72.
May 28, 1892: Writer and naturalist John Muir founded the Sierra Club. Muir's campaigning for conservation would exert an influence on American life in the 20th century.
July 6, 1892: The Homestead Steel Strike in western Pennsylvania turned into a ferocious day-long battle between Pinkerton men and townspeople.
August 4, 1892: Andrew Borden and his wife were murdered in Fall River, Massachusetts and his daughter Lizzie Borden was accused of the gruesome crime.
November 8, 1892: Grover Cleveland won the U.S. presidential election, becoming the only president to serve two non-consecutive terms.

January 17, 1893: Rutherford B. Hayes, who became president following the disputed election of 1876, died in Ohio at the age of 70.
February 1893: Thomas A. Edison finished building his first motion picture studio.
March 4, 1893: Grover Cleveland was inaugurated as president of the United States for the second time.
May 1, 1893: The 1893 World's Fair, known as the Columbian Exposition, opened in Chicago.

May 1893: A decline in the New York stock market triggered the Panic of 1893, which led to an economic depression second only to the Great Depression of the 1930s.
June 20, 1893: Lizzie Borden was acquitted of murder.
December 1893: The British public was outraged when Arthur Conan Doyle published a story in which Sherlock Holmes apparently died.

March 25, 1894: Coxey's Army, a march to protest unemployment that was largely the result of the Panic of 1893, departed from Ohio on its way to Washington, D.C.
April 30, 1894: Coxey's Army reached Washington, D.C. and its leaders were arrested the next day. The demands of Jacob Coxey, which focused on great government intervention in the economy, would eventually move into the mainstream.
May 1894: The Pullman Strike began, and spread throughout the summer before being put down by federal troops.
June 22, 1894: Pierre de Coubertin organized a meeting which led to the creation of the International Olympic Committee.
September 1894: The U.S. Congress designated the first Monday of September as a legal holiday, Labor Day, to mark the contributions of labor, in part as a peace offering to the labor movement following the crackdown on the Pullman Strike.

February 20, 1895: Abolitionist author Frederick Douglass died in Washington, D.C. at the age of 77.
May 6, 1895: Future president Theodore Roosevelt became president of the New York City police board, effectively becoming the police commissioner. His efforts to reform the police department became legendary and heightened his public profile.
December 1895: President Grover Cleveland arranged for a White House Christmas tree lit with Edison electric bulbs.
Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, arranged in his will for his estate to fund the Nobel Prize.

January 15, 1896: Photographer Mathew Brady died in New York City.
April 1896: The first modern Olympic games, the idea of Pierre de Coubertin, are held in Athens, Greece.

May 18, 1896: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that the "separate but equal" principle of Jim Crow laws in the segregated American South is legal.
July 1, 1896: Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, died in Hartford, Connecticut at the age of 85.
November 3, 1896: William McKinley was elected president of the United States, defeating William Jennings Bryan.
December 10, 1896: Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite and benefactor of the Nobel Prize, died in Italy at the age of 63.

March 4, 1897: William McKinley was inaugurated as president of the United States.
July 1897: The Klondike Gold Rush began in Alaska.

February 15, 1898: The American battleship U.S.S. Maine exploded in the harbor at Havana, Cuba, a mysterious event that will lead to the United States going to war with Spain.
April 25, 1898: The United States declared war on Spain.
May 1, 1898: At the Battle of Manila Bay, an American fleet in the Philippines defeated a Spanish naval force.
May 19, 1898: William Ewart Gladstone, former prime minister of Britain, died in Wales at the age of 88.
July 1, 1898: At the Battle of San Juan Hill, Col. Theodore Roosevelt and his "Rough Riders" charged Spanish positions.

July 1899: Newsboys in New York City went on strike for several weeks in a significant action related to child labor.
July 18, 1899: Writer Horatio Alger died in Massachusetts at the age of 67.

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