1900As of March 1 (O.S. February 17), when the Julian calendar acknowledged a leap day and the Gregorian calendar did not, the Julian calendar fell one day further behind, bringing the difference to 13 days until February 28 (O.S. February 15), 2100. The year 1900 also marked the Year of the Rat on the Chinese calendar. January 1900 January 2 – U.S. Secretary of State John Hay announces the Open Door Policy, to promote American trade with China. January 3 – The United States Census estimates the country's population to be about 70 million people.
1894January 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 12 French anarchist Émile Henry sets off a bomb in a Paris café, killing one person and wounding twenty.
1905As the second year of the massive Russo-Japanese War begins, more than 100,000 die in the largest world battles of that era, and the war chaos leads to the 1905 Russian Revolution against Nicholas II of Russia (Shostakovich's 11th Symphony is subtitled The Year 1905 to commemorate this) and the start of Revolution in the Kingdom of Poland. Canada and the U.S. expand west, with the Alberta and Saskatchewan provinces and the founding of Las Vegas.
1899January 1 Spanish rule ends in Cuba, concluding 400 years of the Spanish Empire in the Americas. Queens and Staten Island become administratively part of New York City. January 2 Bolivia sets up a customs office in Puerto Alonso, leading to the Brazilian settlers there to declare the Republic of Acre in a revolt against Bolivian authorities. The first part of the Jakarta Kota–Anyer Kidul railway on the island of Java is opened between Batavia Zuid (Jakarta Kota) and Tangerang.
1918This year is noted for the end of the First World War, on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, as well as for the Spanish flu pandemic that killed 50–100 million people worldwide. Below, the events of World War I have the "WWI" prefix. January 1918 January – 1918 flu pandemic: The "Spanish flu" (influenza) is first observed in Haskell County, Kansas. January 4 – The Finnish Declaration of Independence is recognized by Soviet Russia, Sweden, Germany and France. January 9 – Battle of Bear Valley: U.
1904January 1904 January 7 – The distress signal CQD is established, only to be replaced 2 years later by SOS. January 8 – The Blackstone Library is dedicated, marking the beginning of the Chicago Public Library system. January 12 – The Herero Wars in German South West Africa begin. January 17 – Anton Chekhov's last play, The Cherry Orchard («Вишнëвый сад», Vishnevyi sad), opens at the Moscow Art Theatre directed by Constantin Stanislavski, 6 month's before the author's death.
1898January 1 – New York City annexes land from surrounding counties, creating the City of Greater New York as the world's second largest. The city is geographically divided into five boroughs: Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, The Bronx and Staten Island. January 13 – Novelist Émile Zola's open letter to the President of the French Republic on the Dreyfus affair, J'Accuse...!, is published on the front page of the Paris daily newspaper L'Aurore, accusing the government of wrongfully imprisoning Alfred Dreyfus and of antisemitism.
1886January 1 – Upper Burma is formally annexed to British Burma, following its conquest in the Third Anglo-Burmese War of November 1885. January 5–9 – Robert Louis Stevenson's novella Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is published in New York and London. January 16 – A resolution is passed in the German Parliament to condemn the Prussian deportations, the politically motivated mass expulsion of ethnic Poles and Jews from Prussia, initiated by Otto von Bismarck.
1888In Germany, 1888 is known as the Year of the Three Emperors. Currently, it is the year that, when written in Roman numerals, has the most digits (13). The next year that also has 13 digits is the year 2388. The record will be surpassed as late as 2888, which has 14 digits. January 3 – The 91-centimeter telescope at Lick Observatory in California is first used. January 12 – The Schoolhouse Blizzard hits Dakota Territory, the states of Montana, Minnesota, Nebraska, Kansas, and Texas, leaving 235 dead, many of them children on their way home from school.
1901January 1901 January 1 The British colonies of New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria and Western Australia federate as the Commonwealth of Australia; Edmund Barton becomes the first Prime Minister of Australia. Nigeria becomes a British protectorate. January 9 – Lord Kitchener reports that Christiaan de Wet has shot one of the "peace" envoys, and flogged two more, who had gone to his commando to ask the Burgher citizens of South Africa to halt fighting.
