1902 in the United States

Incumbents

Federal Government">Federal government of the United States">Federal Government

• President: Theodore Roosevelt
• Vice President: vacant
• Chief Justice: Melville Fuller
• Speaker of the House of Representatives: David B. Henderson
• Congress: 57th

  Governors

Lieutenant Governors

Events

January–March

• January 3
• * The first college football bowl game, the Rose Bowl between Michigan and Stanford, is held in Pasadena, California.
• * Nathan Stubblefield demonstrates his wireless telephone device in Kentucky.
• January 8 - A train collision in the New York Central Railroad's Park Avenue Tunnel kills 17, injures 38, and leads to increased demand for electric trains.
• January 28 - The Carnegie Institution is founded in Washington, D.C., to promote scientific research with a $10 million gift from Andrew Carnegie.
• February 9 - Fire levels 26 city blocks of Jersey City, New Jersey.
• February 18 - U.S. President Roosevelt prosecutes the Northern Securities Company for violation of the Sherman Act.
• February 22 - Senators Benjamin Tillman and John L. McLaurin, both of South Carolina, have a fist fight while Congress is in session. Both Tillman and McLaurin are censured by the Senate on February 28.
• February - A commission on yellow fever announces that the disease is carried by mosquitoes.
• March 10 - A Circuit Court decision ends Thomas Edison's monopoly on 35 mm movie film technology.

  April–June

• April 2 - The Electric Theatre, the first movie theater in the United States, opens in Los Angeles, California.
• April 7 - The Texas Oil Company Texaco is founded.
• May 15 - It is claimed that in a field outside Grass Valley, California, Lyman Gilmore achieves flight in a powered airplane. There is no surviving evidence to verify this claim.
• May 20 - Cuba gains independence from the United States.
• May 22 - Crater Lake National Park is established in Oregon.
• June 2 - The Anthracite Coal Strike begins in the United States.
• June 15 - The New York Central railroad inaugurates the 20th Century Limited passenger train between Chicago and New York City, New York.
• June 17 - The Newlands Reclamation Act funds irrigation projects for the arid lands of 17 states in the American West.
• June 24 - Target Corporation, the department store chain, is founded.

  July–September

• July 1 - The Philippine Organic Act becomes law, providing that the lower house of the Philippine legislature will be elected after the insurrection ends.
• July 2 - The Philippine–American War ends.
• July 8 - The United States Bureau of Reclamation is established within the U.S. Geological Survey.
• July 10 - The Rolling Mill Mine disaster in Johnstown, Pennsylvania kills 112 miners.
• July 17 - Willis Carrier devises air conditioning in New York City.
• August 22 - Theodore Roosevelt becomes the first American President to ride in an automobile, a Columbia Electric Victoria through Hartford, Connecticut.
• September 19 - Shiloh Baptist Church disaster: 115 people are killed during a stampede at the church in Birmingham, Alabama.

  October–December

• October 21 - A 5-month strike by the United Mine Workers ends.
• October 24 - Delta Zeta Sorority is founded at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.
• November 16 - A newspaper cartoon inspires creation of the first teddy bear by Morris Michtom in the U.S.
• November 30 - On the American frontier, the second-in-command of Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch, Harvey Logan, is involved in a shoot out in Knoxville, TN and escaped.
• December - The Venezuela Crisis of 1902–1903 occurs, in which Britain, Germany and Italy sustain a naval blockade on Venezuela in order to enforce collection of outstanding financial claims. This prompts the development of the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine.

  Undated

• The Potawatomi Zoo in South Bend, Indiana, begins as duck pond.

  Ongoing

• Progressive Era
• Lochner era
• Philippine–American War

  Births

• January 4 - John A. McCone, CIA Director from 1961 to 1965
• February 13 - Blair Moody, U.S. Senator from Michigan from 1951 to 1952
• February 27 - John Steinbeck, novelist
• March 24 - Thomas E. Dewey, 47th Governor of New York, 1948 Republican presidential nominee
• April 2 - David Worth Clark, U.S. Senator from Idaho from 1939 to 1945
• May 15 - Richard J. Daley, Mayor of Chicago from 1956
• July 4 - George Murphy, U.S. Senator from California from 1965 to 1971
• December 5 - Strom Thurmond, 103rd Governor of South Carolina

  Deaths

• January 15 - Alpheus Hyatt, zoologist and paleontologist
• February 18 - Charles Lewis Tiffany, founder of Tiffany & Co.
• March 12 - John Peter Altgeld, 20th Governor of Illinois
• March 14 - Daniel H. Reynolds, Confederate Brigadier General
• April 3 - Esther Hobart Morris, first women justice of the peace in the United States
• April 27 - Julius Sterling Morton, 3rd United States Secretary of Agriculture
• May 5 - Bret Harte, short-story writer and poet
• May 26 - Almon Brown Strowger, inventor
• June 5 - Louis J. Weichmann, chief witness for the prosecution in the trial of the assassins of Abraham Lincoln
• August 10 - James McMillan, Canadian-born U.S. Senator from Michigan from 1889 to 1902
• September 26 - Levi Strauss, founder of Levi Strauss & Co.
• October 26 - Elizabeth Cady Stanton, suffragist
• November 22 - Walter Reed, U.S. Army physician
• November 27 - George S. Cook, prominent early American photographer
• November 29 - John Elliott Ward, politician and diplomat
• December 4 - Charles Dow, founder of Dow Jones & Company and The Wall Street Journal
• December 7 - Thomas Nast, political cartoonist
• December 14 - Julia Grant, First Lady of the United States
• December 22 - Dwight M. Sabin, U.S. Senator from Minnesota from 1883 to 1889