1895 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 , Thomas Brackett Reed
• Congress: 53rd, 54th

  Governors

Lieutenant Governors

Events

• 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.
• 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
• Gay Nineties
• Progressive Era

  Births

• January 1
• * Bert Acosta, aviator
• * J. Edgar Hoover, 1st Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation
• January 4 - Leroy Grumman, aeronautical engineer, test pilot and industrialist
• January 11 - Laurens Hammond, inventor
• January 23 - Harry Darby, U.S. Senator from Kansas from 1949 to 1950
• February 2 - George Halas, football player
• February 6 - Babe Ruth, baseball player
• March 4
• * Milt Gross, comic book illustrator and animator
• * Shemp Howard, actor and comedian
• March 15 - Virgil Chapman, U.S. Senator from Kentucky from 1949 to 1951
• March 27 - Ruth Snyder, murderer
• March 28 - Spencer W. Kimball, president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
• May 2 - Lorenz Hart, lyricist
• May 11 - William Grant Still, "the Dean" of African American composers
• May 15 - Prescott Bush, U.S. Senator from Connecticut from 1952 to 1963
• May 25 - Dorothea Lange, documentary photographer and photojournalist
• May 28 - Samuel D. Jackson, U.S. Senator from Indiana in 1944
• June 10
• * William C. Feazel, U.S. Senator from Louisiana in 1948
• * Hattie McDaniel, African American film actress
• June 24 - Jack Dempsey, heavyweight boxer
• July 12 - Richard Buckminster Fuller, architect
• July 13 - Bradley Kincaid, folk singer
• July 26 - Gracie Allen, comic actress
• August 12 - Lynde D. McCormick, admiral
• September 22 - Elmer Austin Benson, U.S. Senator from Minnesota from 1935 to 1936 and 24th Governor of Minnesota from 1937 to 1939
• September 29 - Joseph Banks Rhine, parapsychologist
• October 4 - Buster Keaton, born Joseph Frank Keaton, silent film comedian
• October 6 - Caroline Gordon, writer and critic
• October 19 - Lewis Mumford, historian & philosopher of science
• October 23 - Clinton Presba Anderson, U.S. Senator from New Mexico from 1949 to 1973
• October 30 - Dickinson W. Richards, physician, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
• November 10 - John Knudsen Northrop, airplane manufacturer
• November 14 - Walter Freeman, neurologist
• November 29 - Busby Berkeley, film director and choreographer
• December 2 - W. Conway Pierce, chemist
• December 20 - Susanne Langer, philosopher
• December 24 - Marguerite Williams, African American geologist
• December 28 - Carol Ryrie Brink, author

  Deaths

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