1898

Year 1898 (MDCCCXCVIII) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Thursday of the 12-day-slower Julian calendar).

Events of 1898

January - March

January 1 - New York City annexes land from surrounding counties, creating the City of Greater New York. The city is geographically divided into five boroughs: Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, The Bronx, and Staten Island.
January 13 - Emile Zola's J'Accuse exposes the Dreyfus affair.''
February 7 - Emile Zola is brought to trial for libel for publishing J'Accuse
February 15 - Spanish-American War: The USS Maine explodes and sinks in Havana harbor, Cuba for then unknown reasons killing 266 men. This event helps lead the United States to declare war on Spain.
February 23 - Emile Zola is imprisoned in France after writing "J'accuse", a letter accusing the French government of anti-Semitism and wrongfully placing Alfred Dreyfus in jail.

March 24 - Robert Allison of Port Carbon, Pennsylvania becomes the first person to buy an American-built automobile when he buys a Winton automobile that had been advertised in Scientific American.
March 26 - The Sabi Game Reserve in South Africa, the first officially designated game reserve, is created.

April - June

April 5 - Annie Oakley promotes the service of women in combat situations with the United States military. On this day, she writes a letter to President McKinley "offering the government the services of a company of 50 'lady sharpshooters' who would provide their own arms and ammunition should war break out with Spain.. In the history of women in the military, there are records of female U.S. Revolutionary and Civil War soldiers who enlisted using male pseudonyms, but Oakley's letter represents possibly the earliest political move towards women's rights for combat service in the United States military.
April 22 - Spanish-American War: The United States Navy begins a blockade of Cuban ports and the USS Nashville captures a Spanish merchant ship.
April 25 - Spanish-American War: The United States declares war on Spain; the U.S. Congress announces that a state of war has existed since April 21 (later backdating this one more day to April 20).
May 1 - Battle of Manila Bay - Commodore Dewey destroys the Spanish squadron.
May 2 - Thousands of Chinese scholars and Beijing citizens protest in front of the Capital Control Yuan asking for reform.
May 7/9 - Bava-Beccaris massacre. Hundreds of demonstrators are killed when General Fiorenzo Bava-Beccaris orders troops to fire on a rally in Milan, Italy. (In 1900 King Umberto I will be killed in an act of vengeance for his praise of the shooting.)
May 8 - The first games of the Italian Football League are played.
May 28 - Secondo Pia takes the first photographs of the Shroud of Turin and discovers that the image on Shroud itself appears to be a photographic negative.

June 1 - The Trans-Mississippi Exposition World's Fair opens in Omaha, Nebraska.
June 12 - Philippine Declaration of Independence: General Emilio Aguinaldo declares the Philippines' independence from Spain.
June 13 - Yukon Territory is formed, with Dawson chosen as its capital.

July - September

July 3 - Joshua Slocum completes a 3-year solo circumnavigation
July 7 - The United States annexes the Hawaiian Islands.
July 17 - Spanish-American War: Battle of Santiago Bay - troops under United States General William R. Shafter take the city of Santiago de Cuba from the Spanish.
July 25 - Spanish-American War: The United States invasion of Puerto Rico begins with a landing at Guánica Bay.
August 12 - Spanish-American War: Hostilities end between American and Spanish forces in Cuba.
August 25 - 700 Greeks and 15 Englishmen are slaughtered by the Turks in Heraklion, Greece, leading to the establishment of the autonomous Cretan State.
August 28 - Caleb Bradham names his soft drink Pepsi-Cola.
September 2 - Battle of Omdurman - British and Egyptian troops led by Horatio Kitchener defeat Sudanese tribesmen led by Khalifa Abdullah al-Taashi, thus establishing British dominance in the Sudan.
September 10 - Luigi Lucheni assassinates Empress Elizabeth of Austria-Hungary.
September 18 - Fashoda incident -- diplomatic dispute between France and the United Kingdom.
September 21 - Empress Dowager Cixi of China engineers a coup d'etat, marking the end of the Hundred Days' Reform: Guangxu Emperor is arrested.

October - December

October 1 - The Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration is founded under the name k.u.k. Exportakademie.
October 3 - The Battle of Sugar Point in Northern Minnesota. Between Ojibwe & U.S. government.
October 6 - First meeting and founding of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia Fraternity, then called the Sinfonia Club, at the New England Conservatory in Boston.
October 12 - Establishment of the first town council in Mateur.

November 26 - A two-day blizzard known as the Portland Gale piles snow in Boston, MA and severely impacts the Massachusetts fishing industry and several coastal New England towns.
December 9 - The first of the two Tsavo maneaters is shot by John Henry Patterson; the second is killed three weeks later, after 135 workers had been killed.
December 10 - The Treaty of Paris ending the Spanish-American War is signed in Paris.
December 26 - Marie and Pierre Curie announce discovery of a substance they call radium.