1898
George Bernard Shaw’s plays Arms and the Man, Candida and Mrs Warren’s Profession were published. H.G. Well’s classic The War of the Worlds published.
Births:
Frank Aiken (anti-Treaty nationalist, Fianna Fáil Minister) in Co. Armagh (13/2)
Emmet Dalton (revolutionary) in Dublin (4/3)
(Dame) Ninette de Valois (real name Edris Stannus; ballerina, choreographer, director of the Royal Ballet) in Blessington, Co. Wicklow (6/6)
Eric Dorman O'Gowan (originally Eric Dorman Smith; general in British army) in Co. Cavan
Tom Dreaper (racehorse trainer) in Killsallaghan, Co. Dublin (28/9)
Gabriel Fallon (theatre critic and actor) in Dublin
James C. Fitzmaurice (soldier and aviator; co-pilot on first east-west transatlantic flight) (6/1)
Frank Gallagher (author, journalist, republican propagandist; pseudonym David Hogan) in Cork
George Gilmore (socialist and republican) in Belfast
Norah Hoult (novelist) in Dublin
C. S. Lewis (academic and writer) in Belfast (29/11)
Hugh O'Flaherty (priest; papal diplomat who saved thousands from Nazis) in Kiskeam, Co. Cork
Ernie O'Malley (revolutionary and writer) in Co. Mayo
January
8: Fainne an Lae (Dawn) – the Gaelic League newspaper began publication as the first Irish language newspaper to carry foreign and domestic news. Later incorporated into An Claidheamh Soluis.
14: Author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson -- better known as "Alice in Wonderland" creator Lewis Carroll -- died in Guildford, England.
23: Famine conditions in the west of Ireland prompted William O’Brien to launch the United Irish League in Westport, Co. Mayo. It’s slogan ‘Land for the people’. While it started initially as a union of tenant farmers in the West, opposing land grabbers and lobbying for the return of land from graziers to tillage farmers. It quickly grew into a national movement with over 100,000 members by 1901with the mission of trying to save the cause of Irish unity. Published it’s own newspaper ‘The Irish People’ Members of the IRB quickly became associated with the League.
The novelist Émile Zola wrote an impassioned letter, printed in the Paris newspaper L'Aurore in January 1898, under the heading J'accuse (“I accuse”). Zola's courageous denunciation of both military and civil authorities, whom he accused of lying, resulted in his being tried for libel and sentenced to a fine and a year in prison. Zola fled to England, however, and during his brief, self-imposed exile there, his trial and his widely publicized polemic made the Dreyfus case a subject of worldwide concern. In France, public demand for a retrial of Dreyfus quickly became omnipresent and vociferous.
The Crank, introduced in the 1850’s was banned from all British and Irish prisons. The Victorians had implemented the principle that convicts needed the moral uplift of work by making them thurn a heavy handle attached to a drum shaped container known as a crank, installed in their cells. The bottom of the machine was filled with sand and the handle rotated a series of scoops. These raised the sand to the top of the drum, falling back to the bottom with each movement. The crank’s pressure was adjustable with a normal setting of around 12 pounds and a dial facing the cell corridor, registered the number of rotations. Any convict failing to reach the target rotations, was liable to further punishment. A standard quota was 10,000 turns in a 9 hours.
At the start of 1898, 15yo James A Joyce (JAJ) was just coming down from a year of intense Catholic religious fervor, and turning just as passionately against the Church. He was probably working on a (lost) notebook of poems, titled Moods, and feeling very fin de siècle: "The spectacle of the world... filled him with such sudden despair as could be assuaged only by melancholy versifying":
I have consorted with vulgarity
And am indelibly marked with its fell kiss,
Meanly I lived upon casual charity
Eagerly drinking of the dregs of bliss.
Dublin literary gossip of 1898-1904 – John Barger
February
On the night of February 15, 1898, the US battleship Maine stationed in Havana harbour, was mysteriously blown up, and 260 officers and men killed out of the 355 aboard. Initial reports pointed to sabotage, but research conducted in 1969 determined that the explosion had been caused by a defective boiler. In the wake of this disaster, Senator Redfield Proctor of Vermont made a speech in the Senate in March 1898, in which he described the inhumane conditions he had observed in Cuba.
America and particularly the Hearst syndicate concuded it was Spanish sabotage and voiceferously called for war.
March
20: First Feis under the Gaelic League
Diarmuid was busy making preparations to leave for Chihuahua in north-west Mexico when ‘word came to postpone my departure. Next, I was offered a position on one of W.R.Grace and Co’s houses in Peru but my preference was to remain in New York where by that time activities in the Irish language movement were all absorbing.’
Diarmuid Lynch ‘The I.R.B and the 1916 Rising’. Edited by Florence O’Donoghue. Mercier Press. Cork, 1957. P5
21: France formally abandoned all claims to Egypt and the Nile Valley in return for additional portions of the Sahara Desert. The Sudan was placed under the joint control of Britain and Egypt.
28: The building of a modern Germany navy began.
29: The Registration (Ireland) Act allows women to vote in local Government elections.
Nationwide commemorations of the 100th anniversary of the United Irishmen rising along with commemorations in US, Australia and South Africa.
April
On April 20 President McKinley approved a congressional resolution that called for immediate Spanish withdrawal from Cuba, and on April 24 war was declared by the Spanish government. Congressional resolutions affirmed Cuban independence and stated that the United States was not acting to secure an empire.
The US Navy was strong and present on both oceans and the Assistant Secretary of the Navy was Theodore Roosevelt. Temporaily in charge of the Navy during the Secretary’s absence, he ordered six warships in the Pacific under Amdmiral Devewy to Hong Kong and be ready to act against the Spanish held, Phillipine islands.
May
On May 1, 1898, the Spanish fleet anchored in Manila Bay, in the Philippines, was attacked and destroyed by the US naval forces under Commander George Dewey. However lacking ground troops to take Manilla, he had to wait for reinforcements while fending off warships from Britian, France and Germany who were nosing around for anything they could get out of the Phillipines. The German warships became aggressive to the extent that Dewey threatened military action unless they left the area, which they did.
14: John Daly returned from his succesful lecture tour in the US and later in the summer opened a bakery. ‘a sensation was caused by his name appearing over the shop and on the vans in Gaelic’
Kathleen Clark ‘Revoloutionary Woman’ O’Brien Press, Dublin 1991. P22
19:
Gladstone died of cancer at Hawarden in Flintshire on May 19, 1898, at the age of 88. He was buried in Westminster Abbey.
Elizabeth Mathew Dillon, wife of the Irish parliamentary leader, recorded Gladstone’s death - Ascension Day - in her diary: "An end full of faith and calm and dignity." During a long career, Gladstone illustrated his own precept: "Be inspired with the belief that life is a great and noble calling; not a mean and grovelling thing, that we are to shuffle through as we can, but an elevated and lofty destiny".
Gladstone's importance rests in part on his reforms, which attempted to free the individual from all unnecessary restrictions—a fundamental belief of 19th-century liberalism. More than any other statesman of his age, he was able to mobilize the idealism of the British public. He succeeded in part because of his strong religious convictions. A daily reader of the Bible and the author of numerous books on religion, he believed that, through politics, religion could be reflected and made practical. His personal life supported his public life. Gladstone was a devoted husband to his wife, Catherine Glynne, whom he married in 1839; they had eight children. His family and his home at Hawarden, where he spent six months each year, were sources of rest and inspiration. Despite Gladstone's many achievements and his idealism, most historians today argue that he never really understood the needs and aspirations of the lower classes. His insistence on economy in government, his distrust of imperialism and foreign adventure, his hatred of socialism, and his disbelief in the ability of government to solve social problems made him reluctant to accept the implications of democracy. Gladstone remains what some historians term - the greatest liberal of the Victorian Age.
July
1: US troops arrived in the Phillipine to take Manilla.
Irish American Buckley O’Neill was killed in the Spanish American War. However, it was as Sheriff of Prescott, Arizona, that Buckey earned lasting fame throughout the west. Teddy Roosevelt wrote that O'Neill was, "a by-word of terror to every wrong-doer, white or red, .... with unmoved face he would stake and lose every dollar he had in the world." His most famous exploit as Sheriff was the tracking down and capture of three men who had robbed an Atlantic and Pacific train in Canyon del Diablo, northwest of Prescott. His fame was such that he was able to overcome the enmity of Arizona's Governor McCord to win his election as Mayor in 1897. When the war with Spain came in 1898, like his father before him, Buckey raised a company of volunteers and became their Captain. They were mustered in as company A, 1st US Volunteer Cavalry, a regiment better known to history as, "The Rough Riders."
Roosevelt gives an insight into O'Neill's character in his description of the Rough Riders' arrival in Daiquiri, Cuba. When a boatload of black troops capsized and two of them sank below the ocean water, O'Neill plunged into the water in full uniform in a vain attempt to save their lives. This, of course, was at a time when most Americans would never have thought of risking their lives to save a black man.
On July 1, US troops penetrated the outer defences of the city of Santiago de Cuba, Cuba, and on July 3 a Spanish naval squadron commanded by Admiral Pascual Cervera y Topete was destroyed while attempting to cross the US blockade of Santiago harbour. Santiago then surrendered to US forces under General William Rufus Shafter. Another American force, commanded by General Nelson Miles, occupied Puerto Rico, and on July 18 the Spanish government requested a settlement with the United States.
On July 1, 1898, just before the famous assault of the Rough Riders up Kettle Hill (not San Juan), O'Neill was walking up and down his company line smoking a cigarette - Roosevelt called him inveterately addicted to the habit - as they received rifle fire from the Spanish; his men begged him to take cover. But Buckey had a theory that an officer ought never to take cover, that his disdain for enemy fire had a calming effect on the men. A sergeant called out to him, "Captain, a bullet is sure to hit you!" ( In 1864, at Spotsylvania Court House, VA, Union General John Sedgwick had been in a similar spot and said, "They couldn't hit an elephant from this distance." The Conferederates did. ) In 1898, Capt. Buckey O'Neill laughed and said, "Sergeant, the Spanish bullet isn't made that will kill me!" O'Neill and Sedgwick were both wrong.
Sergeant Greenwood, of Co. A heard a thump, and O'Neill slowly buckled and fell to the ground without a sound. That Spanish bullet which Buckey O'Neill was sure had not been manufactured yet had hit him in the mouth and come out the back of his head. By the time Greenwood reached him he was probably already dead; heads were bowed up and down the line as the news was passed to his shocked company. Greenwood recalled having tears in his eyes for his commmanding officer; no doubt many more up and down the line had the same. Roosevelt called it, "the most serious loss I and the regiment could have suffered."
Within minutes the Rough Riders had to put their grieving for Capt. O'Neill behind them as they stormed up Kettle Hill. But they didn't forget him, as many of them called out, "One for Buckey O'Neill," as they fired on the Spanish while taking the hill. The turning of grief into hatred probably helped them win that fight, as it had millions of soldiers in similar situations throughout history. Buckey O'Neill helped his men through one last fight, even in death.
Nine years later, the town of Prescott, AZ, unveiled an equestrian statue of Buckey O'Neill, sculpted by Solon Borglum, also known for his equestrian statue of Confederate Gen. John B. Gordon in Atlanta. Solon was the brother of Mt. Rushmore sculptor Gutzon. It was a testament to the respect of the people of Arizona for O'Neill that even many of his political enemies of the past worked at making the monument to him a reality. Chief Justice H.D. Ross, an old political opponent of O'Neill's said, "Had Buckey returned from Cuba, he could have had any political office that Arizona could offer."
25: American forces landed and annexed the Spanish island of Puerto Rico.
29: Roger Casement appointed British Consul for Portegeuse Poessions in West Africa in Luanda in addition to Consul to Gaboon and Congo.
The 20 year old Oliver StJohn 'Baywatch' Gogarty got yet another medal for one of his many successful rescues of drowning Dubliners. He had flunked two straight years at University College, preferring to race bikes, so his despairing mother had him transfered to Trinity just before Joyce entered Univesity College Dublin.
August
12: The Conservatives passed the Local Government Act which gave Ireland a measure of Home Rule. It vested all local government in popularly elected bodies i.e. Urban Councils, Rural Councils & County Councils. This system put an end to Grand Juries and removed the landed gentry from control and abolished the hated Poor Law system. In addition, women were now allowed to sit on district councils and town commisioners although not yet on county or borough councils.
“The Act stirred the waters of Irish social and political life and provided an added incentive for seeking complete self-government”
Mark Tierney. “Modern Ireland” Gill & McMillan, Dublin 1972. p.52
Half a world away, the Republic of Hawaii was formally annexed by the United States and became US territory.
13: James Connolly begins publishing “The Worker’s Republic” and founds “The Irish Socialist Republican Party”. Influenced by the ‘new unionism’ – the organisation of unskilled workers into trade unions then cutting a swathe through industrialised countries as well as by Marx, Engels and Irish Republicanism. He preached separatism and proposed an ambitious programme for late Victorian Ireland, ranging from nationalisation of railways, canals, to graduated income tax, pensions, free education and universal suffrage. He believed that political action would be necessary to bring about these reforms.
“ The Irish question is not simply a national question. Ruin or revolution is the watchword..the private ownership by a class of the land and instruments of production, distribution and exchange is opposed to this vital principle of justice and is the fundamental basis of all oppression, national, political and social.”
In an article of “Nationalism and Socialism”, Connolly warns:
“ If you remove the English flag tomorrow and hoist the green flag over Dublin castle, unless you set about the organisation of the socialist republic, your efforts would be in vain. England would still rule you. She would rule you through her capitalists, through her landlords, through her financiers, through the whole array of commercial and industrial institutions she has planted in this country and watered with the tears of our mothers and the blood of our martyrs. England would still rule you to your ruin, even while your lips offered hypocritical homage at the shrine of that Freedom whose cause you betrayed..” and facing reality questioned the growing Gaelic revival and cultural nationalism with ‘You cannot teach starving men Gaelic’
Like both Lenin and Trotsky, Connolly was an active member of the Second Internationalist. Connolly also took part in the centenary of the 1798 rising, organises opposition to the Boer war and campaigns against the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria.
Joyce went to see a play called "Sweet Briar" and afterwards engaged the services of his first prostitute.
15: Climax of the 1798 commemroations in Dublin was a huge demonstation to mark the laying of a foundation stone for a Wolfe Tone monument. A French deputation arrived but while the foundation stone was laid, the monument was never built.
Some 100,000 people viewed a parade, followed by speeches including one by Yeats (Gonne was also on the platform but had not been invited to speak). Joyce and his father Jack were in the crowds.
30: Dreyfus case: Lieutenant Colonel Hubert Joseph Henry confessed that as Picquart's successor as head of intelligence he had forged documents implicating Dreyfus; he was arrested, tried and imprisoned on 30 August but committed suicide in his cell the following day. The Chief of the General Staff resigned and Esterhazy was dismissed from the army, left France, settling in England.
September
Queen Victoria visits Ireland (3-26 September)
10: The Austrian-Hungarian Empress Elizabeth, who had taken to journeying through Europe since the death of the Crown Prince, was assasinated by an Italian anarchist in Switzerland.
16: Back in his crashpad in London, Yeats took a few miligrams of mescaline-- supplied by 38 year old Havelock Ellis, and experimented with astral communication trying to communicate with Maud Gonne in Paris.
Ellis
It was around this time that Yeats wrote:
Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams
22: China – the Empres Dowager Tzu His seized control of the nation. Little more than stupid and malignant, she refused all reforms and an unyeilding hostility towards the colonial nations while doing nothing to strenghten China. This was a recipe for disaster.
29: Thomas Clarke released on amnesty, after spending 15 years in prison on a Treason Felony charge. He stayed for a time with his fellow prisoner, John Daly in Limerick where he met his future wife, Daly’s niece, Kathleen. She described her first meeting with him: ‘ I was keenly disapointed. His appearnce gave no indication of the kingly heroic qualities which Uncle John had told us about; there was none of the conquering hero which I had visioned. He was emaciated and stooped from the long imprisonment and hardship. In his prison cell he had for a table a tree stump, fastened to the ground, and for a chair, another smaller stump, also fastened to the ground at such a distance from the table that it was hard to reach; for a time he found diffuclty in sitting at an ordinary table….’
Kathleen Clark ‘Revoloutionary Woman’ O’Brien Press, Dublin 1991. P25
Rioting in Ulster.
Another supporter of Douglas Hyde was David P. Moran, who believed that Irish nationalism could be strenghtened with the establishment of a system of Irish industries. He published over the next 2 years in the New Ireland Review as eries of articles in which he expressed a deep anxiety that Irish nationalism was about to expire.
“The Fenian movement as a whole became afflicted with the ‘Morbus Hibernicus’; Heroic Nostalgia. They still administered the Fenian oath to their children, but their zeal was retrospective, not active.”
T.P.Coogan - “Ireland since the Rising” Pall Mall Press. 1966. p9.
James Joyce enrolled in the small but developing University College Dublin at 86 St Stephen’s Green.
The world’s first sporting event reported on radio was a Dun Laoghaire yacht race in 1898. Marconi sent messages from the tug Flying Huntress to the Kingstown harbour masters house.
The Ballad of Reading Gaol by Oscar Wilde published.
October
25: Michael Davitt withdraws from Parliament in protest against the Boer situation
Arthur Griffith
26 year old Arthur Griffith returned to Dublin from two years in South Africa fighting for the Boers, and by the following March had begun publishing the United Irishman, with Maud Gonne. (on whom he probably had a hopeless crush-- he was short and had a foot deformity) paying his salary of 25 shillings per week while he continued to live with his mother.
November
17: Germany began to plan a railroad from Berlin to Baghdad in Iraq, then part of the Ottoman Empire. This overt move to increase Berlin’s influence in the Middle East caused consternation in London and Moscow.
In late November Yeats returned to Dublin and apparently stayed at the same hotel as Maud (the Crown-- usually he was more discreet) while they spent their days researching Irish mythology in the National Library (not in the Reading Room with Joyce, though-- by now they had privacy-privileges). They were creating a magical "Order of Celtic Mysteries" which Yeats hoped would eventually rival Christianity, that included a tarot whose suits were Cauldron, Stone, Sword and Spear.
Joyce would occasionally have seen them in passing. Yeats had made no secret that Maud was his muse-- someone described the spectacle they presented on the street: "It is Maud Gonne and the Poet. She has a radiance as of sunlight. Yeats, that leopard of the moon, holds back in a leash a huge lion-colored Great Dane-- Maud Gonne's dog, Dagda."
December
US-Spanish Peace Treaty: By the terms of the peace treaty, signed in Paris on December 10, 1898, Spain relinquished Cuba and ceded sovereignty of Puerto Rico, and the island of Guam, in the Ladrones (now the Mariana Islands), to the United States, while the Philippines were bought by the United States for the sum of $20,000,000. The war signalled the emergence of the United States as a world power with colonies overseas and a role in European politics. As a result of their defeat, the Spanish concentrated less on overseas possessions and more on domestic affairs. 385 US soldiers died through military action, but 2,000 were lost to disease.
8: After acknowledging their 'spiritual marriage' (and kissing him for the first time) Maud Gonne somewhat traumatized Yeats by finally telling him about her eight-year relationship with Millevoye, and of their two children (an infant son had died in 1891).
18: Yeats, unrelenting in his pursuit of Maud, proposed to her, again, but she refused…. again: "I have a horror and terror of physical love." says she. Maud then returned to Paris, and WB slunk off to Sligo, taking the hashish pills he relied on, to finish his new book of poems, The Wind Among the Reeds.
At Christmas, 38 year old Gaelic-League founder Douglas Hyde visited Coole and performed a puppetshow in Gaelic for the local children.
And somewhere around this time, Joyce discovered Ibsen...
1898
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 12 - Henry Lindfield, dies in England. Lindfield was the first fatality from an autobile accident.
February 15 - Spanish-American War: The USS Maine explodes and sinks in Havana Harbor, Cuba for then unknown reasons killing more than 260. This event helped lead the United States to declare war on Spain.
February 23 - Emile Zola is imprisoned in France after writing "J'accuse" which was 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 was advertised in Scientific American.
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 United States Congress announces that a state of war has existed since April 21.
June 12 - Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo declares Philippines' independence from Spain.
Fashoda incident -- diplomatic dispute between France and the United Kingdom
The Treaty of Peace ending the Spanish-American War is signed in Paris on December 10, 1898.
Births
January 7 - Rudolf Fernau, actor (+ 1985)
January 16 - Margaret Booth, film editor
January 23 - Sergei Eisenstein, director
February 10 - Bertolt Brecht - playwright, writer and poet
February 14 - Fritz Zwicky, physicist and astronomer (+ 1974)
February 18 - Enzo Ferrari, auto racer, manufacturer (+ 1988)
March 6 - Therese Giehse, actress (+ 1975)
March 11 - Dorothy Gish, actress (+ 1968)
April 3 - George Jessel, comedian (+ 1981)
May 3 - Golda Meir - Israeli Prime Minister
May 15 - Arletty, model, actress (+ 1992)
May 17 - Alfred Joseph Casson painter (+ 1992)
May 31 - Dr. Norman Vincent Peale (clergyman)
June 17 - M. C. Escher - Dutch graphic artist
July 30 - Henry Moore - sculptor
August 26 - Peggy Guggenheim, art collector
November 18 - Joris Ivens, director
September 26 - George Gershwin - composer
November 8 - Marie Prevost, actress (+ 1937)
November 21 - Rene Magritte - surrealist artist
November 29 - C. S. Lewis - British author
Deaths
January 14 - Lewis Carroll, writer, mathematician
May 19 - William Ewart Gladstone, British prime minister
July 30 - Otto von Bismarck - German Statesman
October 24 - Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, painter
* The centenary of the 1798 rebellion leads to the foundation of separatist '98 clubs'
* William O'Brien founds the United Irish League at Westport (23 January), to agitate for land reform
* The Ancient Order of Hibernians is revived and strengthened in the USA (27 June-1 July)
* The Irish Local Government Act (12 August) sets up elective county and district councils, and relieves grand juries of their administrative functions; women gain the right to stand for election to district councils
* Connolly's Workers' Republic (first Irish socialist newspaper) appears (13 August)
* Queen Victoria visits Ireland (3-26 September)
* Thomas Clarke is released from Portland prison (29 September) and emigrates to the USA
* Michael Davitt withdraws from Parliament in protest against the Boer situation (25 October)
* The Incorporated Law Society is given disciplinary functions and control of solicitors' education
* Wilde's The Ballad of Reading Gaol is published (anonymously, over his prison number - C33)
* Marconi tests his radio invention between Rathlin Island and the mainland
* The Dun Laoghaire yacht race becomes the first sporting event ever reported on radio: Marconi sends messages from a tug to the harbourmaster's house
Frank Aiken (anti-Treaty nationalist, Fianna Fáil Minister) in Co. Armagh (13/2)
* Emmet Dalton (revolutionary) in Dublin (4/3)
* (Dame) Ninette de Valois (real name Edris Stannus; ballerina, choreographer, director of the Royal Ballet) in Blessington, Co. Wicklow (6/6)
* Eric Dorman O'Gowan (originally Eric Dorman Smith; general in British army) in Co. Cavan
* Tom Dreaper (racehorse trainer) in Killsallaghan, Co. Dublin (28/9)
* Gabriel Fallon (theatre critic and actor) in Dublin
* James C. Fitzmaurice (soldier and aviator; co-pilot on first east-west transatlantic flight) (6/1)
* Frank Gallagher (author, journalist, republican propagandist; pseudonym David Hogan) in Cork
* George Gilmore (socialist and republican) in Belfast
* Norah Hoult (novelist) in Dublin
* C. S. Lewis (academic and writer) in Belfast (29/11)
* Hugh O'Flaherty (priest; papal diplomat who saved thousands from Nazis) in Kiskeam, Co. Cork
* Ernie O'Malley (revolutionary and writer) in Co. Mayo
pr 21 - The Spanish-American War begins.
jul 25 - The American army invades Puerto Rico. For the next two years Puerto Rico is governed by a US military occupation.
sep 15 - The National Afro-American Council. It elects Bishop Alexander Walters its first president.
nov 10 - |N. CAROLINA| In Wilmington eight black Americans were killed during white rioting.
x - |CHINA| Guang Xu emporer adopts the reforms of Kang Youwei [b.mar 19 1858- d.[1927c0331_[-D]]. The reforms are repeeled soon after.
x - Photographs taken by artificial light.
x - New York State passes a law against misleading advertising.
x - |CHINA| Manchu emperor tries 100 day reforms.
x - Fashoda incident.
x - Russian Social Democratic Labour Party founded after Marxist principles.
x - Italian physician Camillo Golgi first describes the Golgi apparatus.
x - America helps Cuba become "independent" from Spain - in exchange American troops run the Cuban government for the next four years.
x - 101 black Americans are known to have been lynched.
x - The J.P. Holland torpedo boat company launches the first practical submarine ?+, commissioned by the U.S. Navy. The test is successful. Holland gets orders for six more.
x - The Curies discover radiation.
x - |ENGLAND| Wireless Telegraph and Signal Company Limited which opens the world's first radio factory at Chelmsford.
1898
- Bismarck and Gladstone die. Zeppelin builds first airship.
George Bernard Shaw’s plays Arms and the Man, Candida and Mrs Warren’s Profession were published. H.G. Well’s classic The War of the Worlds published.
Births:
Frank Aiken (anti-Treaty nationalist, Fianna Fáil Minister) in Co. Armagh (13/2)
Emmet Dalton (revolutionary) in Dublin (4/3)
(Dame) Ninette de Valois (real name Edris Stannus; ballerina, choreographer, director of the Royal Ballet) in Blessington, Co. Wicklow (6/6)
Eric Dorman O'Gowan (originally Eric Dorman Smith; general in British army) in Co. Cavan
Tom Dreaper (racehorse trainer) in Killsallaghan, Co. Dublin (28/9)
Gabriel Fallon (theatre critic and actor) in Dublin
James C. Fitzmaurice (soldier and aviator; co-pilot on first east-west transatlantic flight) (6/1)
Frank Gallagher (author, journalist, republican propagandist; pseudonym David Hogan) in Cork
George Gilmore (socialist and republican) in Belfast
Norah Hoult (novelist) in Dublin
C. S. Lewis (academic and writer) in Belfast (29/11)
Hugh O'Flaherty (priest; papal diplomat who saved thousands from Nazis) in Kiskeam, Co. Cork
Ernie O'Malley (revolutionary and writer) in Co. Mayo
January
8: Fainne an Lae (Dawn) – the Gaelic League newspaper began publication as the first Irish language newspaper to carry foreign and domestic news. Later incorporated into An Claidheamh Soluis.
14: Author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson -- better known as "Alice in Wonderland" creator Lewis Carroll -- died in Guildford, England.
23: Famine conditions in the west of Ireland prompted William O’Brien to launch the United Irish League in Westport, Co. Mayo. It’s slogan ‘Land for the people’. While it started initially as a union of tenant farmers in the West, opposing land grabbers and lobbying for the return of land from graziers to tillage farmers. It quickly grew into a national movement with over 100,000 members by 1901with the mission of trying to save the cause of Irish unity. Published it’s own newspaper ‘The Irish People’ Members of the IRB quickly became associated with the League.
The novelist Émile Zola wrote an impassioned letter, printed in the Paris newspaper L'Aurore in January 1898, under the heading J'accuse (“I accuse”). Zola's courageous denunciation of both military and civil authorities, whom he accused of lying, resulted in his being tried for libel and sentenced to a fine and a year in prison. Zola fled to England, however, and during his brief, self-imposed exile there, his trial and his widely publicized polemic made the Dreyfus case a subject of worldwide concern. In France, public demand for a retrial of Dreyfus quickly became omnipresent and vociferous.
The Crank, introduced in the 1850’s was banned from all British and Irish prisons. The Victorians had implemented the principle that convicts needed the moral uplift of work by making them thurn a heavy handle attached to a drum shaped container known as a crank, installed in their cells. The bottom of the machine was filled with sand and the handle rotated a series of scoops. These raised the sand to the top of the drum, falling back to the bottom with each movement. The crank’s pressure was adjustable with a normal setting of around 12 pounds and a dial facing the cell corridor, registered the number of rotations. Any convict failing to reach the target rotations, was liable to further punishment. A standard quota was 10,000 turns in a 9 hours.
At the start of 1898, 15yo James A Joyce (JAJ) was just coming down from a year of intense Catholic religious fervor, and turning just as passionately against the Church. He was probably working on a (lost) notebook of poems, titled Moods, and feeling very fin de siècle: "The spectacle of the world... filled him with such sudden despair as could be assuaged only by melancholy versifying":
I have consorted with vulgarity
And am indelibly marked with its fell kiss,
Meanly I lived upon casual charity
Eagerly drinking of the dregs of bliss.
Dublin literary gossip of 1898-1904 – John Barger
February
On the night of February 15, 1898, the US battleship Maine stationed in Havana harbour, was mysteriously blown up, and 260 officers and men killed out of the 355 aboard. Initial reports pointed to sabotage, but research conducted in 1969 determined that the explosion had been caused by a defective boiler. In the wake of this disaster, Senator Redfield Proctor of Vermont made a speech in the Senate in March 1898, in which he described the inhumane conditions he had observed in Cuba.
America and particularly the Hearst syndicate concuded it was Spanish sabotage and voiceferously called for war.
March
20: First Feis under the Gaelic League
Diarmuid was busy making preparations to leave for Chihuahua in north-west Mexico when ‘word came to postpone my departure. Next, I was offered a position on one of W.R.Grace and Co’s houses in Peru but my preference was to remain in New York where by that time activities in the Irish language movement were all absorbing.’
Diarmuid Lynch ‘The I.R.B and the 1916 Rising’. Edited by Florence O’Donoghue. Mercier Press. Cork, 1957. P5
21: France formally abandoned all claims to Egypt and the Nile Valley in return for additional portions of the Sahara Desert. The Sudan was placed under the joint control of Britain and Egypt.
28: The building of a modern Germany navy began.
29: The Registration (Ireland) Act allows women to vote in local Government elections.
Nationwide commemorations of the 100th anniversary of the United Irishmen rising along with commemorations in US, Australia and South Africa.
April
On April 20 President McKinley approved a congressional resolution that called for immediate Spanish withdrawal from Cuba, and on April 24 war was declared by the Spanish government. Congressional resolutions affirmed Cuban independence and stated that the United States was not acting to secure an empire.
The US Navy was strong and present on both oceans and the Assistant Secretary of the Navy was Theodore Roosevelt. Temporaily in charge of the Navy during the Secretary’s absence, he ordered six warships in the Pacific under Amdmiral Devewy to Hong Kong and be ready to act against the Spanish held, Phillipine islands.
May
On May 1, 1898, the Spanish fleet anchored in Manila Bay, in the Philippines, was attacked and destroyed by the US naval forces under Commander George Dewey. However lacking ground troops to take Manilla, he had to wait for reinforcements while fending off warships from Britian, France and Germany who were nosing around for anything they could get out of the Phillipines. The German warships became aggressive to the extent that Dewey threatened military action unless they left the area, which they did.
14: John Daly returned from his succesful lecture tour in the US and later in the summer opened a bakery. ‘a sensation was caused by his name appearing over the shop and on the vans in Gaelic’
Kathleen Clark ‘Revoloutionary Woman’ O’Brien Press, Dublin 1991. P22
19:
Gladstone died of cancer at Hawarden in Flintshire on May 19, 1898, at the age of 88. He was buried in Westminster Abbey.
Elizabeth Mathew Dillon, wife of the Irish parliamentary leader, recorded Gladstone’s death - Ascension Day - in her diary: "An end full of faith and calm and dignity." During a long career, Gladstone illustrated his own precept: "Be inspired with the belief that life is a great and noble calling; not a mean and grovelling thing, that we are to shuffle through as we can, but an elevated and lofty destiny".
Gladstone's importance rests in part on his reforms, which attempted to free the individual from all unnecessary restrictions—a fundamental belief of 19th-century liberalism. More than any other statesman of his age, he was able to mobilize the idealism of the British public. He succeeded in part because of his strong religious convictions. A daily reader of the Bible and the author of numerous books on religion, he believed that, through politics, religion could be reflected and made practical. His personal life supported his public life. Gladstone was a devoted husband to his wife, Catherine Glynne, whom he married in 1839; they had eight children. His family and his home at Hawarden, where he spent six months each year, were sources of rest and inspiration. Despite Gladstone's many achievements and his idealism, most historians today argue that he never really understood the needs and aspirations of the lower classes. His insistence on economy in government, his distrust of imperialism and foreign adventure, his hatred of socialism, and his disbelief in the ability of government to solve social problems made him reluctant to accept the implications of democracy. Gladstone remains what some historians term - the greatest liberal of the Victorian Age.
July
1: US troops arrived in the Phillipine to take Manilla.
Irish American Buckley O’Neill was killed in the Spanish American War. However, it was as Sheriff of Prescott, Arizona, that Buckey earned lasting fame throughout the west. Teddy Roosevelt wrote that O'Neill was, "a by-word of terror to every wrong-doer, white or red, .... with unmoved face he would stake and lose every dollar he had in the world." His most famous exploit as Sheriff was the tracking down and capture of three men who had robbed an Atlantic and Pacific train in Canyon del Diablo, northwest of Prescott. His fame was such that he was able to overcome the enmity of Arizona's Governor McCord to win his election as Mayor in 1897. When the war with Spain came in 1898, like his father before him, Buckey raised a company of volunteers and became their Captain. They were mustered in as company A, 1st US Volunteer Cavalry, a regiment better known to history as, "The Rough Riders."
Roosevelt gives an insight into O'Neill's character in his description of the Rough Riders' arrival in Daiquiri, Cuba. When a boatload of black troops capsized and two of them sank below the ocean water, O'Neill plunged into the water in full uniform in a vain attempt to save their lives. This, of course, was at a time when most Americans would never have thought of risking their lives to save a black man.
On July 1, US troops penetrated the outer defences of the city of Santiago de Cuba, Cuba, and on July 3 a Spanish naval squadron commanded by Admiral Pascual Cervera y Topete was destroyed while attempting to cross the US blockade of Santiago harbour. Santiago then surrendered to US forces under General William Rufus Shafter. Another American force, commanded by General Nelson Miles, occupied Puerto Rico, and on July 18 the Spanish government requested a settlement with the United States.
On July 1, 1898, just before the famous assault of the Rough Riders up Kettle Hill (not San Juan), O'Neill was walking up and down his company line smoking a cigarette - Roosevelt called him inveterately addicted to the habit - as they received rifle fire from the Spanish; his men begged him to take cover. But Buckey had a theory that an officer ought never to take cover, that his disdain for enemy fire had a calming effect on the men. A sergeant called out to him, "Captain, a bullet is sure to hit you!" ( In 1864, at Spotsylvania Court House, VA, Union General John Sedgwick had been in a similar spot and said, "They couldn't hit an elephant from this distance." The Conferederates did. ) In 1898, Capt. Buckey O'Neill laughed and said, "Sergeant, the Spanish bullet isn't made that will kill me!" O'Neill and Sedgwick were both wrong.
Sergeant Greenwood, of Co. A heard a thump, and O'Neill slowly buckled and fell to the ground without a sound. That Spanish bullet which Buckey O'Neill was sure had not been manufactured yet had hit him in the mouth and come out the back of his head. By the time Greenwood reached him he was probably already dead; heads were bowed up and down the line as the news was passed to his shocked company. Greenwood recalled having tears in his eyes for his commmanding officer; no doubt many more up and down the line had the same. Roosevelt called it, "the most serious loss I and the regiment could have suffered."
Within minutes the Rough Riders had to put their grieving for Capt. O'Neill behind them as they stormed up Kettle Hill. But they didn't forget him, as many of them called out, "One for Buckey O'Neill," as they fired on the Spanish while taking the hill. The turning of grief into hatred probably helped them win that fight, as it had millions of soldiers in similar situations throughout history. Buckey O'Neill helped his men through one last fight, even in death.
Nine years later, the town of Prescott, AZ, unveiled an equestrian statue of Buckey O'Neill, sculpted by Solon Borglum, also known for his equestrian statue of Confederate Gen. John B. Gordon in Atlanta. Solon was the brother of Mt. Rushmore sculptor Gutzon. It was a testament to the respect of the people of Arizona for O'Neill that even many of his political enemies of the past worked at making the monument to him a reality. Chief Justice H.D. Ross, an old political opponent of O'Neill's said, "Had Buckey returned from Cuba, he could have had any political office that Arizona could offer."
25: American forces landed and annexed the Spanish island of Puerto Rico.
29: Roger Casement appointed British Consul for Portegeuse Poessions in West Africa in Luanda in addition to Consul to Gaboon and Congo.
The 20 year old Oliver StJohn 'Baywatch' Gogarty got yet another medal for one of his many successful rescues of drowning Dubliners. He had flunked two straight years at University College, preferring to race bikes, so his despairing mother had him transfered to Trinity just before Joyce entered Univesity College Dublin.
August
12: The Conservatives passed the Local Government Act which gave Ireland a measure of Home Rule. It vested all local government in popularly elected bodies i.e. Urban Councils, Rural Councils & County Councils. This system put an end to Grand Juries and removed the landed gentry from control and abolished the hated Poor Law system. In addition, women were now allowed to sit on district councils and town commisioners although not yet on county or borough councils.
“The Act stirred the waters of Irish social and political life and provided an added incentive for seeking complete self-government”
Mark Tierney. “Modern Ireland” Gill & McMillan, Dublin 1972. p.52
Half a world away, the Republic of Hawaii was formally annexed by the United States and became US territory.
13: James Connolly begins publishing “The Worker’s Republic” and founds “The Irish Socialist Republican Party”. Influenced by the ‘new unionism’ – the organisation of unskilled workers into trade unions then cutting a swathe through industrialised countries as well as by Marx, Engels and Irish Republicanism. He preached separatism and proposed an ambitious programme for late Victorian Ireland, ranging from nationalisation of railways, canals, to graduated income tax, pensions, free education and universal suffrage. He believed that political action would be necessary to bring about these reforms.
“ The Irish question is not simply a national question. Ruin or revolution is the watchword..the private ownership by a class of the land and instruments of production, distribution and exchange is opposed to this vital principle of justice and is the fundamental basis of all oppression, national, political and social.”
In an article of “Nationalism and Socialism”, Connolly warns:
“ If you remove the English flag tomorrow and hoist the green flag over Dublin castle, unless you set about the organisation of the socialist republic, your efforts would be in vain. England would still rule you. She would rule you through her capitalists, through her landlords, through her financiers, through the whole array of commercial and industrial institutions she has planted in this country and watered with the tears of our mothers and the blood of our martyrs. England would still rule you to your ruin, even while your lips offered hypocritical homage at the shrine of that Freedom whose cause you betrayed..” and facing reality questioned the growing Gaelic revival and cultural nationalism with ‘You cannot teach starving men Gaelic’
Like both Lenin and Trotsky, Connolly was an active member of the Second Internationalist. Connolly also took part in the centenary of the 1798 rising, organises opposition to the Boer war and campaigns against the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria.
Joyce went to see a play called "Sweet Briar" and afterwards engaged the services of his first prostitute.
15: Climax of the 1798 commemroations in Dublin was a huge demonstation to mark the laying of a foundation stone for a Wolfe Tone monument. A French deputation arrived but while the foundation stone was laid, the monument was never built.
Some 100,000 people viewed a parade, followed by speeches including one by Yeats (Gonne was also on the platform but had not been invited to speak). Joyce and his father Jack were in the crowds.
30: Dreyfus case: Lieutenant Colonel Hubert Joseph Henry confessed that as Picquart's successor as head of intelligence he had forged documents implicating Dreyfus; he was arrested, tried and imprisoned on 30 August but committed suicide in his cell the following day. The Chief of the General Staff resigned and Esterhazy was dismissed from the army, left France, settling in England.
September
Queen Victoria visits Ireland (3-26 September)
10: The Austrian-Hungarian Empress Elizabeth, who had taken to journeying through Europe since the death of the Crown Prince, was assasinated by an Italian anarchist in Switzerland.
16: Back in his crashpad in London, Yeats took a few miligrams of mescaline-- supplied by 38 year old Havelock Ellis, and experimented with astral communication trying to communicate with Maud Gonne in Paris.
Ellis
It was around this time that Yeats wrote:
Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams
22: China – the Empres Dowager Tzu His seized control of the nation. Little more than stupid and malignant, she refused all reforms and an unyeilding hostility towards the colonial nations while doing nothing to strenghten China. This was a recipe for disaster.
29: Thomas Clarke released on amnesty, after spending 15 years in prison on a Treason Felony charge. He stayed for a time with his fellow prisoner, John Daly in Limerick where he met his future wife, Daly’s niece, Kathleen. She described her first meeting with him: ‘ I was keenly disapointed. His appearnce gave no indication of the kingly heroic qualities which Uncle John had told us about; there was none of the conquering hero which I had visioned. He was emaciated and stooped from the long imprisonment and hardship. In his prison cell he had for a table a tree stump, fastened to the ground, and for a chair, another smaller stump, also fastened to the ground at such a distance from the table that it was hard to reach; for a time he found diffuclty in sitting at an ordinary table….’
Kathleen Clark ‘Revoloutionary Woman’ O’Brien Press, Dublin 1991. P25
Rioting in Ulster.
Another supporter of Douglas Hyde was David P. Moran, who believed that Irish nationalism could be strenghtened with the establishment of a system of Irish industries. He published over the next 2 years in the New Ireland Review as eries of articles in which he expressed a deep anxiety that Irish nationalism was about to expire.
“The Fenian movement as a whole became afflicted with the ‘Morbus Hibernicus’; Heroic Nostalgia. They still administered the Fenian oath to their children, but their zeal was retrospective, not active.”
T.P.Coogan - “Ireland since the Rising” Pall Mall Press. 1966. p9.
James Joyce enrolled in the small but developing University College Dublin at 86 St Stephen’s Green.
The world’s first sporting event reported on radio was a Dun Laoghaire yacht race in 1898. Marconi sent messages from the tug Flying Huntress to the Kingstown harbour masters house.
The Ballad of Reading Gaol by Oscar Wilde published.
October
25: Michael Davitt withdraws from Parliament in protest against the Boer situation
Arthur Griffith
26 year old Arthur Griffith returned to Dublin from two years in South Africa fighting for the Boers, and by the following March had begun publishing the United Irishman, with Maud Gonne. (on whom he probably had a hopeless crush-- he was short and had a foot deformity) paying his salary of 25 shillings per week while he continued to live with his mother.
November
17: Germany began to plan a railroad from Berlin to Baghdad in Iraq, then part of the Ottoman Empire. This overt move to increase Berlin’s influence in the Middle East caused consternation in London and Moscow.
In late November Yeats returned to Dublin and apparently stayed at the same hotel as Maud (the Crown-- usually he was more discreet) while they spent their days researching Irish mythology in the National Library (not in the Reading Room with Joyce, though-- by now they had privacy-privileges). They were creating a magical "Order of Celtic Mysteries" which Yeats hoped would eventually rival Christianity, that included a tarot whose suits were Cauldron, Stone, Sword and Spear.
Joyce would occasionally have seen them in passing. Yeats had made no secret that Maud was his muse-- someone described the spectacle they presented on the street: "It is Maud Gonne and the Poet. She has a radiance as of sunlight. Yeats, that leopard of the moon, holds back in a leash a huge lion-colored Great Dane-- Maud Gonne's dog, Dagda."
December
US-Spanish Peace Treaty: By the terms of the peace treaty, signed in Paris on December 10, 1898, Spain relinquished Cuba and ceded sovereignty of Puerto Rico, and the island of Guam, in the Ladrones (now the Mariana Islands), to the United States, while the Philippines were bought by the United States for the sum of $20,000,000. The war signalled the emergence of the United States as a world power with colonies overseas and a role in European politics. As a result of their defeat, the Spanish concentrated less on overseas possessions and more on domestic affairs. 385 US soldiers died through military action, but 2,000 were lost to disease.
8: After acknowledging their 'spiritual marriage' (and kissing him for the first time) Maud Gonne somewhat traumatized Yeats by finally telling him about her eight-year relationship with Millevoye, and of their two children (an infant son had died in 1891).
18: Yeats, unrelenting in his pursuit of Maud, proposed to her, again, but she refused…. again: "I have a horror and terror of physical love." says she. Maud then returned to Paris, and WB slunk off to Sligo, taking the hashish pills he relied on, to finish his new book of poems, The Wind Among the Reeds.
At Christmas, 38 year old Gaelic-League founder Douglas Hyde visited Coole and performed a puppetshow in Gaelic for the local children.
And somewhere around this time, Joyce discovered Ibsen...
1898
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 12 - Henry Lindfield, dies in England. Lindfield was the first fatality from an autobile accident.
February 15 - Spanish-American War: The USS Maine explodes and sinks in Havana Harbor, Cuba for then unknown reasons killing more than 260. This event helped lead the United States to declare war on Spain.
February 23 - Emile Zola is imprisoned in France after writing "J'accuse" which was 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 was advertised in Scientific American.
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 United States Congress announces that a state of war has existed since April 21.
June 12 - Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo declares Philippines' independence from Spain.
Fashoda incident -- diplomatic dispute between France and the United Kingdom
The Treaty of Peace ending the Spanish-American War is signed in Paris on December 10, 1898.
Births
January 7 - Rudolf Fernau, actor (+ 1985)
January 16 - Margaret Booth, film editor
January 23 - Sergei Eisenstein, director
February 10 - Bertolt Brecht - playwright, writer and poet
February 14 - Fritz Zwicky, physicist and astronomer (+ 1974)
February 18 - Enzo Ferrari, auto racer, manufacturer (+ 1988)
March 6 - Therese Giehse, actress (+ 1975)
March 11 - Dorothy Gish, actress (+ 1968)
April 3 - George Jessel, comedian (+ 1981)
May 3 - Golda Meir - Israeli Prime Minister
May 15 - Arletty, model, actress (+ 1992)
May 17 - Alfred Joseph Casson painter (+ 1992)
May 31 - Dr. Norman Vincent Peale (clergyman)
June 17 - M. C. Escher - Dutch graphic artist
July 30 - Henry Moore - sculptor
August 26 - Peggy Guggenheim, art collector
November 18 - Joris Ivens, director
September 26 - George Gershwin - composer
November 8 - Marie Prevost, actress (+ 1937)
November 21 - Rene Magritte - surrealist artist
November 29 - C. S. Lewis - British author
Deaths
January 14 - Lewis Carroll, writer, mathematician
May 19 - William Ewart Gladstone, British prime minister
July 30 - Otto von Bismarck - German Statesman
October 24 - Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, painter
* The centenary of the 1798 rebellion leads to the foundation of separatist '98 clubs'
* William O'Brien founds the United Irish League at Westport (23 January), to agitate for land reform
* The Ancient Order of Hibernians is revived and strengthened in the USA (27 June-1 July)
* The Irish Local Government Act (12 August) sets up elective county and district councils, and relieves grand juries of their administrative functions; women gain the right to stand for election to district councils
* Connolly's Workers' Republic (first Irish socialist newspaper) appears (13 August)
* Queen Victoria visits Ireland (3-26 September)
* Thomas Clarke is released from Portland prison (29 September) and emigrates to the USA
* Michael Davitt withdraws from Parliament in protest against the Boer situation (25 October)
* The Incorporated Law Society is given disciplinary functions and control of solicitors' education
* Wilde's The Ballad of Reading Gaol is published (anonymously, over his prison number - C33)
* Marconi tests his radio invention between Rathlin Island and the mainland
* The Dun Laoghaire yacht race becomes the first sporting event ever reported on radio: Marconi sends messages from a tug to the harbourmaster's house
Frank Aiken (anti-Treaty nationalist, Fianna Fáil Minister) in Co. Armagh (13/2)
* Emmet Dalton (revolutionary) in Dublin (4/3)
* (Dame) Ninette de Valois (real name Edris Stannus; ballerina, choreographer, director of the Royal Ballet) in Blessington, Co. Wicklow (6/6)
* Eric Dorman O'Gowan (originally Eric Dorman Smith; general in British army) in Co. Cavan
* Tom Dreaper (racehorse trainer) in Killsallaghan, Co. Dublin (28/9)
* Gabriel Fallon (theatre critic and actor) in Dublin
* James C. Fitzmaurice (soldier and aviator; co-pilot on first east-west transatlantic flight) (6/1)
* Frank Gallagher (author, journalist, republican propagandist; pseudonym David Hogan) in Cork
* George Gilmore (socialist and republican) in Belfast
* Norah Hoult (novelist) in Dublin
* C. S. Lewis (academic and writer) in Belfast (29/11)
* Hugh O'Flaherty (priest; papal diplomat who saved thousands from Nazis) in Kiskeam, Co. Cork
* Ernie O'Malley (revolutionary and writer) in Co. Mayo
pr 21 - The Spanish-American War begins.
jul 25 - The American army invades Puerto Rico. For the next two years Puerto Rico is governed by a US military occupation.
sep 15 - The National Afro-American Council. It elects Bishop Alexander Walters its first president.
nov 10 - |N. CAROLINA| In Wilmington eight black Americans were killed during white rioting.
x - |CHINA| Guang Xu emporer adopts the reforms of Kang Youwei [b.mar 19 1858- d.[1927c0331_[-D]]. The reforms are repeeled soon after.
x - Photographs taken by artificial light.
x - New York State passes a law against misleading advertising.
x - |CHINA| Manchu emperor tries 100 day reforms.
x - Fashoda incident.
x - Russian Social Democratic Labour Party founded after Marxist principles.
x - Italian physician Camillo Golgi first describes the Golgi apparatus.
x - America helps Cuba become "independent" from Spain - in exchange American troops run the Cuban government for the next four years.
x - 101 black Americans are known to have been lynched.
x - The J.P. Holland torpedo boat company launches the first practical submarine ?+, commissioned by the U.S. Navy. The test is successful. Holland gets orders for six more.
x - The Curies discover radiation.
x - |ENGLAND| Wireless Telegraph and Signal Company Limited which opens the world's first radio factory at Chelmsford.