Events of 1893

January - March

• January 2 - Introduction by Webb C. Ball of the General Railroad Timepiece Standards in North America: railroad chronometers.
• January 13 - The Independent Labour Party of the UK has its first meeting.
• January 17 - Intervention by the U.S. Marines in Hawaii, resulting in overthrow of the government of Queen Liliuokalani of Hawaii.
• January 21 - First performance of the Cherry Sisters in Marion, Iowa.

• February 1 - Thomas A. Edison finishes construction of the first motion picture studio (West Orange, New Jersey).
• February 23 - Rudolf Diesel receives a patent for the diesel engine.

• March 4 - End of term for President of the United States Benjamin Harrison. He is succeeded by President Stephen Grover Cleveland.
• March 10 - Côte d'Ivoire becomes a French colony.
• March 20 - In Belgium, Adam Worth is sentenced to 7 years for robbery (he is released in 1897).

April - June

• April 1 - The rank of Chief Petty Officer is established in the United States Navy.
• April 8 - First recorded college basketball game occurs in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania between the Geneva College Covenanters and the New Brighton YMCA.

• May 1 - The 1893 World's Fair, also known as the World's Columbian Exposition, opens to the public in Chicago, USA. The first United States commemorative postage stamps are issued for the Exposition.
• May 5 - Panic of 1893: Crash on the New York Stock Exchange starts a depression.
• May 9 - First public demonstration of Edison's 1½ inch system of Kinetoscope at the Brooklyn Institute.
• May 10 - The United States Supreme Court legally declares the tomato to be a vegetable.
• May - Formation of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland.

• June 6 - Marriage of Prince George, Duke of York and Mary of Teck.
• June 7 - Gandhi's first act of civil disobedience.
• June 17 - Gold found in Kalgoorlie Western Australia.
• June 20 - The Wengernalpbahn railway in Wengen, Switzerland (Canton of Bern) is opened.
• June 22 - Flagship Victoria of the British Mediterranean Fleet collides with Camperdown and sinks in 10 minutes - Vice-admiral Sir George Tryon goes down with his ship.

July - September

• July 6 - The small town of Pomeroy, Iowa is nearly destroyed by a tornado: 71 people are killed and 200 injured.
• July 11 - Kokichi Mikimoto, in Japan, develops the method to seed and grow cultured pearls.
• July 12
• Frederick Jackson Turner gives lecture titled "The Significance of the Frontier in American History" before the American Historical Association in Chicago.
• The Dundee FC, Scottish football club, is formed.

• August 27 - The Sea Islands Hurricane hits Savannah, Charleston, and the Sea Islands: 1000-2000 dead.

• September 7 - The Genoa Cricket & Athletic Club, the oldest Italian football club, is formed.
• September 11 - Opening meeting of the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago.
• September 19
• Swami Vivekananda delivers an inspiring speech on his paper at World Parliament of Religions in Chicago.
• New Zealand becomes the first country in the world to grant women the right to vote.
• Russian ironclad Rusalka disappears in a storm en route from Tallinn to Helsinki. Her hulk is eventually discovered in July 2003, off Helsinki.
• September 21 - Brothers Charles and Frank Duryea drive the first gasoline powered motorcar in America on public roads in Springfield, Massachusetts.
• September 23 - First public mention of the Bahá'í Faith in the United States at the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago.
• September 27 - Closing meeting of the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago.
• September 28 - Portuguese sports club Futebol Clube do Porto is founded.

October - December

• October 10 - First car number plates, in Paris, France.
• October 30 - The 1893 World's Fair, also known as the World's Columbian Exposition, closes.

• November - In the United Kingdom: Second reading of Local Government Act 1894 in House of Commons.
• November 7 - Colorado women are granted the right to vote.
• November 15 - FC Basel is founded.

• December 5 - Plural voting abolished in New South Wales.

Undated

• American Council on Alcohol Problems is established, along with the Anti-Saloon League and the Committee of Fifty for the Study of the Liquor Problem.
• Governor John Y. Brown welcomes the Southern Cherokee Nation to Kentucky and recognized them as an Indian tribe.
• Physicist Wilhelm Wien formulates Wien's displacement law.
• France conquers Laos.
• General strike occurs in Belgium.
• American Temperance University is opened.
• Millbank Prison in London is demolished.
• US President Cleveland is operated on in secret.
• In the U.S., the National Sculpture Society (NSS) is founded.
• The Football Club Dulwich Hamlet is founded.
• Athletic Club Královské Vinohrady, later Sparta Prague, is founded.
• T.M.I.: The Episcopal School of Texas is founded.
• Colored High becomes the first African American high school in Houston, TX, its name is later changed to Booker T. Washington High School.
• The Ardabil Carpet is brought to London.
• Evergreen Park, Illinois is founded.
• Sudbury, Ontario, Canada is incorporated as a town.
• St. Hilda's College, Oxford is founded.
• William Gladstone introduces a bill to give Ireland self-government but it fails to pass.
• Small anti-Semitic parties secure 2.9% of votes in Germany.

Births

January - June

• January 5 - Paramahansa Yogananda, Indian guru (d. 1952)
• January 12
• Hermann Göring, Nazi official (d. 1946)
• Alfred Rosenberg, Nazi official (d. 1946)
• January 15 - Ivor Novello, Welsh actor and musician (d. 1951)
• January 22 - Conrad Veidt, German actor (d. 1943)
• January 27 - Soong Ching-ling(宋慶齡), one of the Soong sisters, wife of Sun Yat-sen(孫逸仙, 孫文) (d. 1981)
• February 3 - Gaston Julia, French mathematician (d. 1978)
• February 10 - Jimmy Durante, American actor, singer, and comedian (d. 1980)
• February 12 - Omar Bradley, American general (d. 1981)
• February 13 - Ana Pauker, Romanian communist politician (d. 1960)
• February 16 - Katharine Cornell, American actress (d. 1974)
• February 19 - Sir Cedric Hardwicke - English actor (d. 1964)
• February 21 - Andrés Segovia, Spanish guitarist (d. 1987)
• March 1 - Mercedes de Acosta, American poet, playwright, costume designer, and socialite (d. 1968)
• March 3
• Beatrice Wood, American artist and ceramicist (d. 1998)
• Ivon Hitchens, English painter (d. 1979)
• May 8 - Teddy Wakelam, English sports broadcaster and rugby union player (d. 1963)
• March 11 - Wanda Gag, children's author and artist (d. 1946)
• March 18 - Wilfred Owen, English soldier and poet (d. 1918)
• March 26 - Palmiro Togliatti, Italian communist leader (d. 1964)
• April 3 - Leslie Howard, English actor (d. 1943)
• April 9 - Victor Gollancz, British publisher (d. 1967)
• April 12 - Robert Harron, American actor (d. 1920)
• April 18 - Georges Boulanger, Romanian violinist (d. 1958)
• April 20 - Harold Lloyd, American actor (d. 1971)
• April 20 - Edna Parker, world's oldest person (from Aug 15 2007)
• April 23 - Allen Dulles, American Central Intelligence Agency director (d. 1969)
• April 29 - Harold C. Urey, American chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1981)
• May 3 - Konstantine Gamsakhurdia, Georgian writer and public benefactor (d. 1975)
• May 26 - Norma Talmadge, American actress (d. 1957)
• May 23 - Ulysses S. Grant IV, American geologist and paleontologist (d. 1977)
• June 14 - Siggie Nordstrom, model, actress, entertainer, socialite and singer (d. 1980)
• June 24 - Roy Oliver Disney, brother and business partner of Walter Elias Disney (d. 1971)
• June 26 - Big Bill Broonzy, American blues singer and composer (d. 1958)

July - December

• July 3 - Mississippi John Hurt, American musician (d. 1966)
• July 4 - Norman Washington Manley, Jamaican statesman (d. 1969)
• July 9 - George Geary, English cricketer (d. 1981)
• July 20 - George Llewelyn Davies, inspiration for Peter Pan (d. 1915)
• July 25 - Dorothy Dickson, American-born actress and socialite (d. 1995)
• July 30 - Fatima Jinnah, Pakistani Mother of the Nation (d. 1967)
• August 6 - Wright Patman, American politician (d. 1976)
• August 15 - Leslie Comrie, New Zealand astronomer and computing pioneer (d. 1950)
• August 17 - Mae West, American actress, playwright, screenwriter, and sex symbol (d. 1980)
• August 22
• Dorothy Parker, American writer (d. 1967)
• Wilfred Kitching, the 7th General of The Salvation Army (d. 1977)
• August 25 - Henry Trendley Dean, American dental researcher (d. 1962)
• August 30 - Huey Long, Louisiana governor and senator (d. 1935)
• September 12 - Frederick William Franz, President of Jehovah's Witnesses (d. 1992)
• September 13 - Larry Shields, American musician (d. 1953)
• September 16 - Albert Szent-Györgyi, Hungarian physiologist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1986)
• September 18 - William March, American writer and soldier (d. 1954)
• September 30 - Lansdale Sasscer, U.S. Congressman (d. 1964)
• October 1 - Marianne Brandt, German industrial designer (d. 1983)
• October 9 - Mário de Andrade, Brazilian writer and photographer (d. 1945)
• October 14 - Lillian Gish, American actress (d. 1993)
• October 15 - King Carol II of Romania (d. 1953)
• October 16 - Harry Donenfeld, American publisher (d. 1965)
• October 18 - Georges Ohsawa, Japanese founder of Macrobiotics (d. 1966)
• October 23 - Gummo Marx, American comedian and actor (d. 1977)
• November 3 - Edward Adelbert Doisy, American biochemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 1986)
• November 8 - Clarence Williams, American jazz musician (d. 1965)
• November 8 - Prajadhipok, Rama VII, king of Thailand (d. 1941)
• November 10 - John P. Marquand, American novelist (d. 1960)
• December 8 - Pierre Etchebaster, French real tennis player (d. 1980)
• December 24 - Ruth Chatterton, American actress (d. 1961)
• December 26 - Mao Zedong, Chinese leader (d. 1976)
• December 29 - Berthold Bartosch, Bohemian animator (d. 1968)
• date unknown - Clement Martyn Doke, South African linguist (d. 1980)

Deaths

January - June

• January 2 - John Obadiah Westwood, British entomologist (b. 1805)
• January 7 - Jožef Stefan, Slovenian physicist, mathematician, and poet (b. 1835)
• January 17 - Rutherford B. Hayes, 19th President of the United States (b. 1822)
• January 23 - Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar, U.S. Supreme Court justice (b. 1825)
• February 1 - George Henry Sanderson, Mayor of San Francisco (b. 1824)
• February 18 - King George Tupou I of Tonga (b. 1797)
• February 18 - Serranus Clinton Hastings, American politician (b. 1814)
• February 20 - P.G.T. Beauregard, American Confederate general (b. 1818)
• March 16 - William H. Illingworth, American photographer (b. 1844)
• March 30 - Jane Sym-Mackenzie, second wife of Canada's second prime minister (b. 1825)
• April 8 - August Czartoryski, Polish prince (b. 1858)
• June 14 - Jakob Frohschammer, theologian and philosopher (b. 1821)
• June 19 - William Starke Rosecrans, California congressman and Register of the U.S. Treasury (b. 1819)
• June 21 - Amasa Leland Stanford, Governor of California (b. 1824)
• June 23 - Sir Theophilus Shepstone, South African statesman (b. 1817)

July - December

• July 2 - Georgiana Drew Barrymore, actress-comedienne (b. 1856)
• July 16 - Antonio Ghislanzoni, poet and novelist (b. 1824)
• July 17 - Frederick A. Johnson, American politician (b. 1833)
• August 6 - Jean-Jacques Challet-Venel, member of the Swiss Federal Council (b. 1811)
• August 7 - Alfredo Catalani, composer (b. 1854)
• October 6 - Ford Madox Brown, painter (b. 1821)
• October 8 - John Willis Menard, African-American politician (b. 1838)
• October 10 - Lip Pike, baseball player (b. 1845)
• October 18 - Charles Gounod, French composer (b. 1818)
• October 22 - Duleep Singh, ruler of Punjab (b. 1838)
• October 30 - Sir John Joseph Caldwell Abbott, Canadian politician (b. 1821)
• November 6 - Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Russian composer (b. 1840)
• November 22 - James Calder, 5th President of the Pennsylvania State University (b. 1826)