1901 in the United States

Events from the year 1901 in the United States.

• President:

William McKinley (R-Ohio) (until September 14)

Theodore Roosevelt (R-New York) (starting September 14)

• Vice President:

vacant (until March 4)

Theodore Roosevelt (R-New York) (March 4 – September 14)

vacant (starting September 14)

• 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)

• January 1 – Pentecostalism is born, at a prayer meeting at Bethel Bible College in Topeka, Kansas.
• 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 United States during the year.
• January 7 – Alfred Packer is released from prison in Colorado after serving 18 years for cannibalism.
• January 10 – In the first great Texas gusher, oil is discovered at Spindletop in Beaumont, Texas.
• January 22 – The Grand Opera House in Cincinnati, Ohio, is destroyed in a fire.
• January 28 – Baseball's American League declares itself a Major League.
• February 4 – Puccini's Tosca makes its U.S. debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.^[1]
• February 5
  • The Hay–Pauncefote Treaty is signed by the United Kingdom and United States, ceding control of the Panama Canal to the United States.
  • J. P. Morgan buys mines and steel mills in the United States, marking the first billion-dollar business deal.
  • In Evansville, Indiana, a fire burns through the business district, causing $175,000 of damage.
• 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.
  • The Carnegie Steel Company with the Illinois Steel Company and The National Steel Company merge to form the United States Steel Corporation.
• March 4 – President William McKinley begins his second term; Theodore Roosevelt is sworn in as Vice President.
• March 9 – The Olds Motor Co. factory in Lansing, Michigan, burns to the ground; it is reconstructed with the world's first automobile assembly line for production of the Oldsmobile Curved Dash.^[2]

• April 25 – New York State becomes the first to require automobile license plates.
• May – Monte Ne health resort opens in the Ozarks.
• May 3 – The Great Fire of 1901 in Jacksonville, Florida, begins.
• May 17 – The U.S. stock market crashes for the first time.
• May 27 – The Edison Storage Battery Company is founded in New Jersey.
• May 28 – Cherry v. Des Moines Leader is decided in the Iowa Supreme Court, upholding the right to publish critical reviews.
• June 11 – William D. Jelks is sworn in as the 32nd governor of Alabama following the death of William J. Samford.^[3]
• June 12 – Cuba becomes a U.S. protectorate.

• June 22–July 31 – The worst heat wave in U.S. history until the 1930s, affecting most areas east of the 100th meridian, is estimated to have killed over 9,500 people.
• July 1 – The Bureau of Chemistry is established within the United States Department of Agriculture.
• July 24 – Author O. Henry is released from prison in Columbus, Ohio after serving 3 years for embezzlement from the First National Bank in Austin, Texas.
• August 10 – U.S. Steel recognition strike of 1901: Members of the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel, and Tin Workers begin a strike against United States Steel Corporation after failing to reach a settlement of their demands, and 14,000 employees walk off of the job.^[4][5]
• September 2 – 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 President William McKinley at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. McKinley dies 8 days later.
• September 7 – The Boxer Protocol is signed between the Qing Empire of China and the Eight-Nation Alliance.
• September 14 – Vice President Theodore Roosevelt becomes the 26th president of the United States, upon the death of President William McKinley.
• September 26 – The body of President Abraham Lincoln is exhumed and reinterred in concrete several feet thick.

• October 4 – The American yacht Columbia defeats the Irish Shamrock in the America's Cup yachting race in New York.
• October 16 – 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; she will confess to at least 31 killings.
  • Leon Czolgosz, the assassin of William McKinley, is executed in the electric chair at Auburn state prison.
• November 1 – The Sigma Phi Epsilon college fraternity is founded in Richmond, Virginia.
• November 15 – The Alpha Sigma Alpha college fraternity is founded at Longwood University in Farmville, Virginia.
• November 28 – The new state constitution of Alabama requires voters to have passed literacy tests.
• December 3 – 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."

• The Intercollegiate Prohibition Association is established in Chicago.
• Force (cereal) first produced.

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

• January 2
  • Lew Landers, film and television director (died 1962)
  • Bob Marshall, wilderness activist, founder of The Wilderness Society (died 1939)
• January 3 – Henrietta Bingham, journalist, newspaper executive, horse-breeder and anglophile (died 1968)
• January 4 – Raoul Berger, Ukrainian-born attorney and law professor (died 2000)
• January 9 – Chic Young, cartoonist (died 1973)
• January 16 – Frank Zamboni, inventor (died 1988)
• January 21 – Marcellus Boss, politician, lawyer, member of Kansas Senate and 5th Civilian Governor of Guam (died 1967)
• February 1
  • Howard I. Chapelle, naval architect, museum curator and author (died 1975)
  • Clark Gable, actor (died 1960)^[6]
• February 8 – Virginius Dabney, teacher, journalist, writer and editor (died 1995)
• February 9 – Brian Donlevy, actor (died 1972)
• February 10
  • Stella Adler, actress and teacher (died 1992)^[7]
  • Anthony Prusinski, politician (died 1950)
• February 22
  • Mildred Davis, actress (died 1969)
  • Charles Evans Whittaker, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States (died 1973)
• March 21 – Carmelita Geraghty, actress (died 1966)
• March 24 – Ub Iwerks, animator, cartoonist, character designer, inventor and special effects technician (died 1971)
• March 28 – Jack Weil, entrepreneur (died 2008)
• April 18 – Al Lewis, songwriter (died 1967)
• May 8 – Turkey Stearnes, baseball player (died 1979)^[8]
• May 21 – Sam Jaffe, film producer (died 2000)
• June 12 – Arnold Kirkeby, hotelier, art collector, and real estate investor (died 1962)
• July 3 – Ruth Crawford Seeger, modernist composer and folk music arranger (died 1953)
• July 9 – Jester Hairston, actor and composer (died 2000)^[9]
• July 10 – Daniel V. Gallery, admiral and author (died 1977)
• July 14
  • Lucien Prival, actor (died 1994)
  • George Tobias, actor (died 1980)
• July 20 – Heinie Manush, baseball player (died [1971)
• July 21 – Albert Hamilton Gordon, businessman and philanthropist (died 2009)
• July 22 – Pancho Barnes, pioneer aviator (died 1975)
• July 30 – John A. Carroll, U.S. Senator from Colorado from 1957 to 1963 (died 1983)
• August 3 – John C. Stennis, U.S. Senator from Mississippi from 1947 to 1989 (died 1995)
• August 4 – Louis Armstrong, jazz trumpeter (died 1971)
• August 5 – Thomas J. Ryan, admiral (died 1970)
• August 8 – Ernest Lawrence, nuclear physicist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1939 (died 1958)
• August 23 – John Sherman Cooper, U.S. Senator from Kentucky 1946-1949, 1952-1955 and 1956-1973 (died 1991)
• August 28 – Babe London, actress and comedian (died 1980)
• September 5 – Florence Eldridge, actress (died 1988)
• September 24 – Gerald Warner Brace, writer, educator, sailor and boat builder (died 1978)
• September 28 – Ed Sullivan, entertainment writer and television host (died 1974)
• October 20 – Adelaide Hall, jazz singer and entertainer (died 1993 in the United Kingdom)
• October 28 – Hilo Hattie, native Hawaiian singer and actress (died 1979)
• November 28 – Walter Havighurst, critic, novelist, literary and social historian (died 1994)
• December 5 – Walt Disney, animator, producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor and business magnate (died 1966)^[10]
• December 7 – Troy Sanders, film score composer (died 1959)
• December 12 – Fred Barker, criminal member of the Barker-Karpis gang, son of Ma Barker (killed 1935)
• December 16 – Margaret Mead, cultural anthropologist and author (died 1978)^[11]

• January 6 – James W. Bradbury, United States Senator from Maine from 1847 to 1853 (born 1802)
• January 16
  • Murray Hall, born Mary Anderson, bail bondsman and politician (born 1841 in Scotland)
  • Hiram Rhodes Revels, first African American senator (born 1827)
• January 21 – Elisha Gray, inventor and co-founder of Western Electric Manufacturing Company (born 1835)
• January 29 – Alexander H. Jones, Congressional Representative from North Carolina (born 1822)
• February 7 – Rowena Granice Steele, first female novelist in California (born 1824)
• February 18 – Anna Gardner, abolitionist (born 1816)
• March 7 – Ruth Alice Armstrong, American social activist (born 1850)
• March 13 – Benjamin Harrison, 23rd president of the United States from 1889 to 1893 and U.S. Senator from Indiana from 1881 to 1887 (born 1833)
• March 18 – Patrick Donahoe, businessman, publisher of the Boston Catholic newspaper The Pilot (born 1811)
• April 10 – Harriet Newell Kneeland Goff, reformer (born 1828)
• April 19 – Alfred Horatio Belo, newswriter and businessman, founder of The Dallas Morning News (born 1839)
• April 26 – Harriett Ellen Grannis Arey, educator (born 1819)
• June 2 – James A. Herne, playwright and actor (born 1839)
• July 4
  • John Fiske, historian and philosopher (born 1842)
  • Julian Scott, artist and Civil War Medal of Honor recipient (born 1846)
• July 7 – Eva M. Reed, botanist (born ?)^[12]
• July 30 – Herbert Baxter Adams, educator and historian (born 1850)
• August 4 – Harriet Pritchard Arnold, author (born 1858)
• August 24 – Clara Maass, nurse (born 1876)^[13]
• September 14 – William McKinley, 25th president of the United States from 1897 to 1901 (born 1843)
• October 10 – Lorenzo Snow, 5th president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (born 1814)
• October 21 – James A. Walker, Confederate general and US Congressman (born 1832)
• October 29 – Leon Czolgosz, assassin of President William McKinley (born 1873)
• November 8 – Mary Ann Bickerdyke, nurse and hospital administrator for Union soldiers (born 1817)
• November 26 – John Denny, buffalo soldier and Medal of Honor recipient (born 1846)
• November 27 – Clement Studebaker, automobile manufacturer (born 1831)

• List of American films of 1901
• Timeline of United States history (1900–1929)

• "Domestic Chronology", Statistician and Economist, San Francisco: Louis P. McCarty, 1905, pp. 227–347, hdl:2027/uc1.b3142275 – via HathiTrust. (Covers events May 1898-June 1905)

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