Charles Fort: A Fortean Chronology, 1892.

Year 1892 (MDCCCXCII) was a leap year starting on Friday of the Gregorian Calendar.

January

  • A house in Peterborough, England, occupied by a family named Rimes, was repeatedly shaken as if bombed. Nobody was injured and no damage was done. (Books943)
  • January 1: Ellis Island begins accommodating immigrants to the United States.
  • January 5: A light in the sky over Lyons, N.Y. (Books451)
  • January 15: James Naismith publishes the rules for basketball.
  • January 17: A battle in the sky above Lewiston, Montana. A mirage of victorious natives and defeated hunters. (Books459)
  • January 20: At the YMCA in Springfield, Massachusetts, the first official basketball game is played.

 

February

  • February 2: A light in the sky over Lyons, N.Y. (Books451)
  • February 12: Former President Abraham Lincoln's birthday is declared a national holiday in the United States.
  • February 27: Rudolf Diesel applies for a patent on his compression ignition engine (the Diesel engine).
  • February 29: A light in the sky over Lyons, N.Y. (Books451)

 

March

  • March 13: Ernest Louis, a grandson of Queen Victoria, becomes Grand Duke of Hesse and the Rhine on the death of his father, Grand Duke Louis IV.
  • March 15: The Liverpool Football Club is founded by John Houlding, the owner of Anfield. Houlding decides to form his own team after Everton leaves Anfield in an argument over rent.
  • March 20: The first ever French rugby championship final takes place in Paris. Pierre de Coubertin referees the match, which Racing Club de France wins 4-3 over Stade Français.
  • March 27: A light in the sky over Lyons, N.Y. (Books451) 
  • March 31: The world's first fingerprinting bureau is formally opened by the Buenos Aires Chief of Police; it had been operating unofficially since the previous year.

 

April

  • The Johnson County War breaks out between small farmers and large ranchers in Wyoming.
  • April 1: The city of Maebashi is founded by the samurai Makuba Kawai.
  • April 15: The General Electric Company is established through the merger of the Thomson-Houston Company and the Edison General Electric Company.
  • April 23: A light in the sky over Lyons, N.Y. (Books451) 

 

May

  • May 7: The Cook Islands issue their first postage stamps.
  • May 19: Battle of Yemoja River: British troops defeat Ijebu infantry in modern-day Nigeria, using a maxim gun.
  • May 22: The British conquest of Ijebu-Ode marks a major extension of colonial power into the Nigerian interior.
  • May 24: Prince George of Wales becomes Duke of York.
  • May 28: In San Francisco, California, John Muir organizes the Sierra Club.
  • May 29: A shower of an enormous number of eels at Coalburg, Alabama. (Books546) 

 

June

  • June 4: Abercrombie & Fitch is established by David Abercrombie.
  • June 7: Homer Plessy (a black man) is arrested for sitting on the whites-only car in Louisiana, leading to the landmark Plessy v. Ferguson court case.
  • June 11: The Limelight Department, later one of the world's first film studios, is officially established in Melbourne, Australia.
  • June 30: A rain of small frogs near Birmingham, England. (Books83) 
  • June 30: The Homestead Strike begins in Homestead, Pennsylvania, culminating in a battle between striking workers and private security agents on July 6.

 

July

  • Near Bree, Belgium are heard detonations at regular intervals of about 12 seconds, repeated about 20 times. (Books472)
  • July 4 Samoa: Samoa changes its time zone to being 3 hours behind California, such that it crosses the international date line and July 4th occurs twice.
  • July 4-18: British general election, The Unionist government loses its majority.
  • July 6: Homestead Strike: The arrival of a force of 300 Pinkerton detectives from New York and Chicago results in a fight in which about 10 men are killed.
  • July 8: The Great Fire of 1892 devastates the city of St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador.
  • July 12: A hidden lake bursts out of a glacier on the side of Mont Blanc, flooding the valley below and killing around 200 villagers and holidaymakers in Saint Gervais.

 

August

  • August 4: The father and stepmother of Lizzie Borden are found murdered in their Fall River, Massachusetts home.
  • August 5: Near Dunkirk, France, four reports like the sounds of cannons are heard. (Books472)
  • August 9: Thomas Edison receives a patent for a two-way telegraph.
  • August 12: "Rapid flashes" seen in the sky above England, seen by many persons. (Books465) 
  • August 18: William Ewart Gladstone assumes British premiership at head of Liberal government, with Irish Nationalist Party support.

 

September

  • September 15: Sergei Witte replaces Ivan Vyshnegradsky as Russian finance minister.

 

October

  • During a drought, day after day, water was seen to be falling upon a large Cottonwood Tree, near Stillwater, Oklahoma. (Books560)
  • October 5: The Dalton Gang, attempting to rob 2 banks in Coffeyville, Kansas, is shot by the townspeople; only Emmett Dalton, with 23 wounds, survives to spend 14 years in prison.
  • October 5: Master criminal Adam Worth is captured in Liège, Belgium during an attempted robbery of a money delivery cart.
  • October 12: To mark the 400th anniversary Columbus Day holiday, the "Pledge of Allegiance" is first recited in unison by students in U.S. public schools.
  • October 31: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle publishes The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

 

November

  • November 8: U.S. presidential election, Grover Cleveland is elected over Benjamin Harrison and James B. Weaver to win the second of his non-consecutive terms.
  • November 8: An anarchist bomb kills 6 in a police station in Avenue de l'Opera, Paris.
  • November 17: French troops occupy Abomey, capital of the kingdom of Dahomey.

 

December

  • December 5: John Thompson becomes Canada's fourth prime minister.