1902 in the United States

1902 in the United States
Years:	1899 1900 1901 – 1902 – 1903 1904 1905
Flag
45 stars (1896–1908)
Timeline of United States history History of the United States (1865–1918)

Events from the year 1902 in the United States.

Incumbents

Federal Government

• President: Theodore Roosevelt (R-New York)
• Vice President: vacant
• Chief Justice: Melville Fuller (Illinois)
• Speaker of the House of Representatives: David B. Henderson (R-Iowa)
• Congress: 57th

Events

January–March

• January 1 – The first college football bowl game, the Rose Bowl between Michigan and Stanford, is held in Pasadena, California.
• January 8 – A train collision in the New York Central Railroad's Park Avenue Tunnel kills 17, injures 38, and leads to increased demand for electric trains.
• January 28 – The Carnegie Institution is founded in Washington, DC with a $10 million gift from Andrew Carnegie.
• February 18 – U.S. President Roosevelt prosecutes the Northern Securities Company for violation of the Sherman Act.
• February 22 – Senators Benjamin Tillman and John L. McLaurin, both of South Carolina, have a fist fight while Congress is in session.^[1] Both Tillman and McLaurin are censured by the Senate on February 28.
• February - The Yellow Fever Commission announces that the disease is carried out by mosquitoes
• March 10 – A Circuit Court prevents Thomas Edison from having a monopoly on motion picture technology.

April–June

• April 2 – Electric Theatre, the first movie theater in the United States, opens in Los Angeles, California.
• April 7 - The Texas Oil Company Texaco is founded.
• May 15 – It is claimed that in a field outside Grass Valley, California, Lyman Gilmore achieves flight in a powered airplane (a steam-powered glider). There is no surviving evidence to verify this claim.
• May 20 – Cuba gains independence from the United States.
• June 2 – The Anthracite Coal Strike begins in the United States.
• June 15 – The New York Central railroad inaugurates the 20th Century Limited passenger train between Chicago and New York City, New York.
• June 17 – The Newlands Reclamation Act funds irrigation projects for the arid lands of 17 states in the American West.

July–September

• July 1 – The Philippine Organic Act becomes law. It provided that the lower house of the Philippine legislature would be elected after the insurrection ended.
• July 4 – The Philippine–American War ends.
• July 10 – The Rolling Mill Mine disaster in Johnstown, Pennsylvania kills 112 miners.
• August 22 – Theodore Roosevelt becomes the first American President to ride in an automobile when he rides in a Columbia Electric Victoria through Hartford, Connecticut.
• September 19 – Shiloh Baptist Church disaster: 119 people are killed during a stampede at the church in Birmingham, Alabama.

October–December

• October 21 – In the United States, a five-month strike by the United Mine Workers ends.
• October 24 – Delta Zeta Sorority is founded at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.
• November 30 – American Old West: The second-in-command of Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch gang, Kid Curry Logan, is sentenced to 20 years hard labor.
• December – The Venezuela Crisis of 1902–1903 occurs (until February 1903), in which Britain, Germany and Italy sustain a naval blockade on Venezuela in order to enforce collection of outstanding financial claims. This prompts the development of the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine.

Undated

• The Potawatomi Zoo (the oldest zoo in Indiana) opens in South Bend.

Ongoing

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

Births

• February 13 – Blair Moody, United States Senator from Michigan from 1951 till 1952. (died 1954)
• February 27 – John Steinbeck, author (died 1968)
• March 24 – Thomas E. Dewey, 47th Governor of New York, 1948 Republican presidential nominee (died 1971)
• April 2 – David Worth Clark, United States Senator from Idaho from 1939 till 1945. (died 1955)
• July 4 – George Murphy, United States Senator from California from 1965 till 1971. (died 1992)

Deaths

• February 18 – Charles Lewis Tiffany, founder of Tiffany & Co. (born 1812)
• August 10 – James McMillan, Canadian-born U.S. Senator from Michigan from 1889 to 1902 (born 1838)
• October 26 – Elizabeth Cady Stanton, suffragist (born 1815)
• November 27 – George S. Cook, prominent early American photographer (born 1819)
• November 29 – John Elliott Ward, politician and diplomat (born 1814)
• December 14 – Julia Grant, wife of President Ulysses Grant, First Lady of the United States (born 1826)
• December 22 – Dwight M. Sabin, U.S. Senator from Minnesota from 1883 to 1889 (born 1843)

See also

• List of American films of 1902

References

Further reading

• American Annual Cyclopaedia ... 1902, NY: D. Appleton & Co. – via HathiTrust 
• "Domestic Chronology", Statistician and Economist, San Francisco: Louis P. McCarty, 1905, pp. 227–347 – via HathiTrust . (Covers events May 1898-June 1905)

External links

• Media related to 1902 in the United States at Wikimedia Commons