1894 in the United States

Incumbents

Federal Government">Federal government of the United States">Federal Government

• President: Grover Cleveland
• Vice President: Adlai E. Stevenson I
• Chief Justice: Melville Fuller
• Speaker of the House of Representatives: Charles Frederick Crisp
• Congress: 53rd

  Governors

Lieutenant Governors

Events

• January 7 - William Kennedy Dickson receives a patent for motion picture film.
• January 9 - New England Telephone and Telegraph installs the first battery-operated telephone switchboard, in Lexington, Massachusetts.
• February 7 - 5-month Cripple Creek miners' strike of 1894 begins.
• February 9 - Milton S. Hershey establishes the Hershey Chocolate Company in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
• February 17 - Outlaw John Wesley Hardin is released from prison.
• March 12 - Coca-Cola is sold in bottles for the first time.
• March 25 - Coxey's Army, the first significant American protest march, departs from Massillon, Ohio for Washington, D.C.
• April 21 - A bituminous coal miners' strike closes mines across the central US.
• May 1
• *Coxey's Army arrives in Washington, D.C.
• *The May Day Riots of 1894 break out in Cleveland, Ohio.
• May 11 - Pullman Strike: Three thousand Pullman Palace Car Company workers go on a "wildcat" strike to protest lowered wages without an equivalent reduction in expenses charged in the company town of Pullman, Chicago.
• July - A fire at the site of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago destroys most of the remaining buildings.
• July 4 - The short-lived Republic of Hawaii is proclaimed by Sanford B. Dole.
• September 1 - Great Hinckley Fire: A forest fire in Hinckley, Minnesota kills more than 450 people.
• September 4 - In New York City, 12,000 tailors strike against sweatshop working conditions.
• October 3 - Pomfret School is founded in Connecticut.
• November 1 - The first issue of Billboard magazine is published in Cincinnati, Ohio by William Donaldson and James Hennegan. Initially, it covers the advertising and bill posting industry, and is at the time known as Billboard Advertising.
• November 5 - West Palm Beach, Florida is incorporated as a city.
• November 6 - Republican win by a landslide in the House of Representatives elections, which sets the stage for the decisive 1896 presidential election.
• December 6 - Kate Chopin's feminist short story "The Story of an Hour" is first published, in the magazine Vogue.

  Undated

• Oil is discovered on the Osage Indian reservation, making the Osage the "richest group of people in the world".
• The Society of Beaux-Arts Architects is founded.
• The National Society of Pershing Rifles is founded at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
• Chatham Episcopal Institute is founded as a girls' college-preparatory boarding school in Chatham, Virginia.
• Frederick W. Tamblyn founds Tamblyn Studio & School of Penmanship which later becomes Ziller of Kansas City, the oldest calligraphy studio in the U.S.
• National Civic League established.
• New York Giants defeat Baltimore Orioles 4 games to 0 to win the First Temple Cup in the National League of Professional Baseball Clubs.

  Ongoing

• Gilded Age
• Gay Nineties
• Progressive Era
• Panic of 1893

  Births

• January 2 - Robert Nathan, poet and novelist
• January 20 - Walter Piston, composer
• January 31
• * Percy Helton, screen actor
• * Isham Jones, bandleader and composer
• February 1
• * John Ford, film director
• * Dick Merrill, aviation pioneer
• February 3 - Norman Rockwell, painter and illustrator
• February 14 - Jack Benny, actor and comedian
• February 18 - Paul Williams, architect
• February 22 - Enid Markey, actress
• February 25 - Frank P. Briggs, U.S. Senator from Missouri from 1945 to 1947
• February 28 - Ben Hecht, playwright and film writer
• March 14 - Osa Johnson, adventurer and filmmaker, wife of Martin Johnson
• March 17 - Paul Green, playwright
• March 19 - Moms Mabley, African American comedian
• March 31 - Francis T. Maloney, U.S. Senator from Connecticut from 1935 to 1945
• April 3 - Dooley Wilson, African American pianist and singer
• April 15 - Bessie Smith, African American blues singer
• April 19 - Elizabeth Dilling, right-wing political activist
• May 2 - Norma Talmadge, silent film actress
• May 5 - August Dvorak, educational psychologist
• May 11 - Martha Graham, dancer and choreographer
• May 15 - Eddie Stumpf, baseball player
• May 16 - Walter Yust, encyclopædia editor
• May 27 - Dashiell Hammett, detective fiction writer
• May 31 - Fred Allen, comedian
• June 5 - James Glenn Beall, U.S. Senator from Maryland from 1953 to 1965
• June 23 - Alfred Kinsey, biologist, professor of entomology and zoology and sexologist, founder of the Institute for Sex Research at Indiana University in 1947
• June 28 - Arthur Dewey Struble, admiral
• July 9 - Phelps Putnam, poet
• August 3 - Harry Heilmann, baseball player
• August 16 - George Meany, labor leader
• August 29 - Henry Dworshak, U.S. Senator from Idaho from 1946 to 1949 and from 1949 to 1962
• September 6 - Howard Pease, adventure novelist
• September 7 - George Waggner, film director, producer and actor
• September 12 - Billy Gilbert, comedian and actor
• September 24 - Harry B. Liversedge, general
• September 25 - J. Mayo Williams, African American blues music producer
• September 26 - Vaughn De Leath, crooner, "The Original Radio Girl"
• October 2 - Thomas L. Sprague, admiral
• October 4 - Patrick V. McNamara, U.S. Senator from Michigan from 1955 to 1966
• October 7 - Del Lord, film director
• October 9 - Ernest McFarland, U.S. Senator from Arizona from 1941 to 1953
• October 14 - E. E. Cummings, poet and painter
• October 18 - H. L. Davis, fiction writer
• November 23 - Andrew Frank Schoeppel, U.S. Senator from Kansas from 1949 to 1962
• November 26 - Norbert Wiener, mathematician
• November 28 - Henry Hazlitt, journalist and economist
• December 5 - Philip K. Wrigley, business and sports executive
• December 8
• * E. C. Segar, cartoonist, creator of Popeye
• * James Thurber, cartoonist and humorous writer
• December 15 - Felix Stump, admiral
• December 17 - Arthur Fiedler, orchestral conductor
• December 26 - Jean Toomer, African American poet and novelist
• December 29 - J. Lister Hill, U.S. Senator from Alabama from 1938 to 1969

  Deaths

• January 15 - Henry Mower Rice, U.S. Senator from Minnesota from 1858 to 1863
• February 4 - Morton S. Wilkinson, U.S. Senator from Minnesota from 1859 to 1865
• February 28 - James W. McDill, U.S. Senator from Iowa from 1881 to 1883
• March 2
• * Jubal Early, Confederate general
• * William H. Osborn, railroad tycoon
• March 3 - Ned Williamson, baseball player
• March 26 - Alfred H. Colquitt, U.S. Senator from Georgia from 1883 to 1894
• March 28 - George Ticknor Curtis, author, lawyer and historian
• April 7 - Benjamin Franklin King, Jr., poet and humorist
• April 14 - Zebulon Baird Vance, Confederate military officer in the American Civil War, the 37th and 43rd Governor of North Carolina, U.S. Senator
• April 15 - James Harvey, U.S. Senator from Kansas from 1874 to 1877
• April 30 - Francis B. Stockbridge, U.S. Senator from Michigan from 1887 to 1894
• June 17 - William Hart, landscape painter
• June 20 - Bishop W. Perkins, U.S. Senator from Kansas from 1892 to 1893
• June 24 - George Peter Alexander Healy, American portrait painter
• July 19 - William B. Avery, Union Army soldier and Medal of Honor recipient
• August 15 - Arthur Rotch, architect
• October 7 - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., physician and writer
• October 18 - William F. Raynolds, military engineer
• September 1
• * Boston Corbett, England-born Union Army soldier who shot and killed Abraham Lincoln's assassin, John Wilkes Booth
• * Samuel J. Kirkwood, U.S. Senator from Iowa from 1881 to 1882
• November 30 - Joseph E. Brown, U.S. Senator from Georgia from 1880 to 1891
• December 19 - James L. Alcorn, U.S. Senator from Mississippi from 1871 to 1877