1895 in the United States

Incumbents

[[Federal government of the United States|Federal government]]

• President: Grover Cleveland (D-New York)
• Vice President: Adlai E. Stevenson I (D-Illinois)
• Chief Justice: Melville Fuller (Illinois)
• Speaker of the House of Representatives:

• Congress: 53rd (until March 4), 54th (starting March 4)

State governments

Events

• January 6-9 – Robert William Wilcox leads a rebellion in Hawai'i
• February 9 – Mintonette, later known as volleyball, is created by William G. Morgan at Holyoke, Massachusetts.
• March 1 – William Lyne Wilson is appointed United States Postmaster General.
• May 27 – In re Debs: The Supreme Court of the United States decides that the federal government has the right to regulate interstate commerce, legalizing the military suppression of the Pullman Strike.
• June 28 – The United States Court of Private Land Claims rules that James Reavis's claim to Barony of Arizona is "wholly fictitious and fraudulent".
• July 4 – Katharine Lee Bates' lyrics for "America the Beautiful" are first published.
• July 6 – Van Cortlandt Golf Course opens in The Bronx as the country's first and oldest public golf course.
• August 19 – American frontier murderer and outlaw John Wesley Hardin is killed by an off-duty policeman in a saloon in El Paso, Texas.
• September 3 – The first professional American football game is played, in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, between the Latrobe YMCA and the Jeannette Athletic Club (Latrobe wins 12–0).
• September 18 – Booker T. Washington delivers the Atlanta Compromise speech.
• November 5 – George B. Selden is granted the first U.S. patent for an automobile.
• November 20 – USS Indiana, the first battleship in the United States Navy comparable to foreign battleships of this time, is commissioned.
• November 25 – Oscar Hammerstein opens the Olympia Theatre, the first theatre to be built in New York City's Times Square district.
• November 28 – Chicago Times-Herald race: The first American automobile race in history is sponsored by the Chicago Times-Herald. Press coverage first arouses significant U.S. interest in the automobile.
• December 24 – George Washington Vanderbilt II officially opens his Biltmore Estate on Christmas Eve, inviting his family and guests to celebrate his new home in Asheville, North Carolina.

Undated

• W. E. B. Du Bois becomes the first African American to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard University.
• The gold reserve of the U.S. Treasury is saved when J. P. Morgan and the Rothschilds loan $65 million worth of gold to the United States government.
• Temple Cup: Cleveland Spiders defeat Baltimore Orioles, 4 games to 1

Ongoing

• Gilded Age (1869–c. 1896)
• Gay Nineties (1890–1899)
• Progressive Era (1890s–1920s)

Births

• January 1
  • Bert Acosta, aviator (died 1954)
  • J. Edgar Hoover, 1st Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (died 1972)
• January 4 – Leroy Grumman, aeronautical engineer, test pilot and industrialist (died 1982)
• January 11 – Laurens Hammond, inventor (died 1973)
• January 23 – Harry Darby, U.S. Senator from Kansas from 1949 to 1950 (died 1987)
• February 2 – George Halas, football player (died 1983)
• February 6 – Babe Ruth, baseball player (died 1948)
• February 25 – Lew Andreas, basketball coach (died 1984)
• March 4
  • Milt Gross, comic book illustrator and animator (died 1953)
  • Shemp Howard, actor and comedian (The Three Stooges) (died 1955)
• March 12 – William C. Lee, general (died 1948)
• March 15 – Virgil Chapman, U.S. Senator from Kentucky from 1949 to 1951 (died 1951)
• March 27 – Ruth Snyder, murderer (electrocuted 1928)
• March 28
  • Donald Barnhouse, theologian, pastor, author, and radio pioneer (died 1960)
  • Spencer W. Kimball, president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (died 1985)
• April 20 – Emile Christian, musician (died 1973)
• May 2 – Lorenz Hart, lyricist (died 1943)
• May 11 – William Grant Still, "the Dean" of African American composers (died 1978)
• May 15 – Prescott Bush, U.S. Senator from Connecticut from 1952 to 1963 (died 1972)
• May 25 – Dorothea Lange, documentary photographer and photojournalist (died 1965 in the United States)
• May 28 – Samuel D. Jackson, U.S. Senator from Indiana in 1944 (died 1951)
• June 10
  • William C. Feazel, U.S. Senator from Louisiana in 1948 (died 1965)
  • Hattie McDaniel, African American film actress (died 1952)
• June 21 – John Wesley Snyder, businessman and Secretary of the Treasury (died 1985)
• June 24 – Jack Dempsey, heavyweight boxer (died 1983)
• July 1 – Lucy Somerville Howorth, lawyer, feminist and politician (died 1997)
• July 3 – Jean Paige, actress (died 1990)
• July 4 – Irving Caesar, lyricist and theater composer (died 1996)
• July 9 – Joe Gleason, baseball pitcher (died 1990)
• July 10 – Andrew Earl Weatherly, philatelist (died 1981)
• July 12 – Richard Buckminster Fuller, architect (died 1983)
• July 13 – Bradley Kincaid, folk singer (died 1989)
• July 19 – Snake Henry, baseball player (died 1987)
• July 20 – Chapman Revercomb, politician and lawyer (died 1979)
• July 26
  • Gracie Allen, comic actress (died 1964)
  • Kenneth Harlan, actor (died 1967)
• July 30 – Joseph DuMoe, football coach (died 1959)
• August 10 – Harry Richman, entertainer (died 1972)
• August 12 – Lynde D. McCormick, admiral (died 1956)
• September 20 – Lloyd W. Bertaud, aviator (died 1927)
• September 22 – Elmer Austin Benson, U.S. Senator from Minnesota from 1935 to 1936 and 24th Governor of Minnesota from 1937 to 1939 (died 1985)
• September 29 – Joseph Banks Rhine, parapsychologist (died 1980)
• October 4 – Buster Keaton, born Joseph Frank Keaton, silent film comedian (died 1966)
• October 6 – Caroline Gordon, writer and critic (died 1981)
• October 13 – Mike Gazella, baseball player (died 1978)
• October 14 – Silas Simmons, Pre-Negro league baseball player, longest-lived professional baseball player (died 2006)
• October 19 – Lewis Mumford, historian & philosopher of science (died 1990)
• October 22 – Johnny Morrison, baseball player (died 1966)
• October 23 – Clinton Presba Anderson, U.S. Senator from New Mexico from 1949 to 1973 (died 1975)
• October 30 – Dickinson W. Richards, physician, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (died 1973)
• November 10 – John Knudsen Northrop, airplane manufacturer (died 1981)
• November 14 – Walter Freeman, neurologist (died 1972)
• November 29 – Busby Berkeley, film director and choreographer (died 1976)
• December 2 – W. Conway Pierce, chemist (died 1974)
• December 20 – Susanne Langer, philosopher (died 1985)
• December 24 – Marguerite Williams, African American geologist (died 1991)
• December 28 – Carol Ryrie Brink, author (died 1981)

Deaths

• January 9 – Aaron Lufkin Dennison, watchmaker (born 1812)
• February 20 – Frederick Douglass, African American rights activist and former slave (born 1817)
• March 22 – Henry Coppée, historian and biographer (born 1821)
• April 22 – James F. Wilson, U.S. Senator from Iowa from 1883 to 1895. (born 1828)
• May 28 – Walter Q. Gresham, politician (born 1832)
• June 23
  • Thomas Shaw, buffalo soldier and Medal of Honor recipient (born 1846)
  • James Renwick Jr., architect (born 1818)
• June 29 – Green Clay Smith, politician (born 1826)
• July 28 – Edward Beecher, theologian (born 1803)
• August 1 – Hugh O'Brien, 31st Mayor of Boston, Massachusetts (born 1827)
• August 6 – George Frederick Root, composer (born 1820)
• August 22 – Luzon B. Morris, politician (born 1827)
• October 2 – Robert Crozier, U.S. Senator from Kansas from 1873 to 1874 (born 1827)
• October 6 – L. L. Langstroth, beekeeper (born 1810)
• October 8 – William Mahone, civil engineer and Confederate Army major general (born 1826)
• October 14 – Clara Doty Bates, poet and children's literature author (born 1838)
• November 4 – Eugene Field, children's author (born 1850)
• Full date unknown – John Miley, Methodist theologian (born 1813)

References

References

1. "Van Cortlandt Park Highlights – Van Cortlandt Golf Course". NYC Parks.
2. (2004). "Ripples of Hope: Great American Civil Rights Speeches".
3. Berger, Michael L.. "The Automobile in American History and Culture: a reference guide".