Charles Fort: A Fortean Chronology, 1891.

The year of 1891 (MDCCCXCI) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar.

January

  • January 1: Paying of old age pensions begins in Germany.
  • January 16: The Chilean Civil War breakes out.
  • January 20: Over Italy a luminous object is seen, a fall of stones an an earthquake! (Books244)
  • January 20: Jim Hogg becomes the first native Texan to be governor of that state.
  • January 24: Snowflakes, the size of saucers are said to have fallen at Nashville, Tenn. (Books19)
  • January 29: Liliuokalani is proclaimed Queen of Hawaii.
  • January 31: The Portuguese republican revolution breaks out in the northern city of Porto.

 

Febrauary

  • February 21: Springhill, Nova Scotia suffers a serious mining disaster.

 

March

  • March 3: The International Copyright Act of 1891 is passed by the Fifty-first United States Congress.
  • March 9-12: A powerful storm off England's south coast sinks 14 ships.
  • March 14: In New Orleans, a lynch mob storms the Old Parish Prison and lynches 11 Italians arrested but found innocent for the murder of Police Chief David Hennessey.
  • March 15: Jesse W. Reno patents the first escalator at Coney Beach.
  • March 17: The British steamship SS Utopia sinks off the coast of Gibraltar, killing 574.

 

April

  • April 1: The Wrigley Company is founded in Chicago.
Kinetoscope, 1891.
Kinetoscope, 1891.

May

  • Mirza Ghulam Ahmad claims to be the Promised Messiah (The second coming of Jesus) and the Mahdi awaited in Islam.
  • May 1: Troops fire on a workers' May Day demonstration in support of the 8-hour workday in Fourmies, France, killing 9 and wounding 30.
  • May 5: The Music Hall in New York (now known as Carnegie Hall) has its grand opening and first public performance, with maestro Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky as the guest conductor.
  • May 11: Otsu Incident: Czarevich Nikolai Alexandrovich of Russia survives an assassination attempt while visiting Japan.
  • May 15: Pope Leo XIII issues the encyclical Rerum Novarum, resulting in the creation of many Christian Democrat Parties throughout Europe.
  • May 20: Thomas Alva Edison's prototype kinetoscope is first displayed at Edison's Laboratory, for a convention of the National Federation of Women's Clubs.
  • May 31: In the area of Kuperovskaya fold in Vladivostok, a ceremony marking the grand laying of the Trans-Siberian Railroad is carried out and a service on this occasion is held. Czarevich Nikolai Alexandrovich (future emperor Nikolai II) takes part in this ceremony.

 

June

  • June 21: First long-distance transmission of alternating current by the Ames power plant near Telluride, Colorado by Lucien and Paul Nunn.

 

July

 

August

  • August 8: A great shower of fishes at Seymour, Ind. They were unknown fishes. (Books546)
  • August 27: France and Russia conclude a defensive alliance.

 

September

  • September 5: Something was seen in the sky at Crawfordsville, Indiana. A seemingly headless monster, about 20' long and 8' wide; propelled by fin-like attachments. (Books637)
  • September 14: The first penalty kick is awarded in a football (soccer) match; John Heath scores it for the Wolverhampton Wanderers.
  • September 28: The C.A. Peñarol is founded in Montevideo under the name of the CURCC (Central Uruguay Railway Cricket Club).

 

October

  • October 1: In California, Stanford University opens its doors.
  • October 27: An 8.0 earthquake strikes the village of Utsuzumi in rural Gifu, Japan, killing over 7,000 across the region and creating a 3-meter-tall surface fault that is still visible.

 

November

  • Mrs Annie Abbot presents a show at the Alhambra Music Hall, London. Weighing all of 98 pounds she is easily lifted into the air by a single man if she wills it. If she does not then even six men combining their efforts can not to raise her. (Books1034)

 

December

  • December 9: A light in the sky at Lyons, N.Y. (Books451)