1906 in the United States

Incumbents

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

• President: Theodore Roosevelt
• Vice President: Charles W. Fairbanks
• Chief Justice: Melville Fuller
• Speaker of the House of Representatives: Joseph Gurney Cannon
• Congress: 59th

  Governors

Lieutenant Governors

Events

January–March

• January 8 - A landslide in Haverstraw, New York kills 21 people.
• February 26 - Upton Sinclair publishes The Jungle, a novel depicting the life of an immigrant family in Chicago during the early 1900s.
• March 17 - The Phi Kappa Tau fraternity is founded at Miami Universities, Oxford, Ohio.

  April–June

• April 5 - The Maryland General Assembly authorises the election of the Union Soldiers and Sailors Monument in Baltimore.
• April 14 - The first service is held at African Methodist Episcopal Church in Los Angeles by W. J. Seymour, in a series later known as the Azusa Street Revival, an event which launches the Pentecostal movement in Christianity.
• April 18 - The 1906 San Francisco earthquake on the San Andreas Fault destroys much of San Francisco, California, killing at least 3,000 people, with 225,000–300,000 left homeless, and $350,000,000 in damages.
• June 6 - Durham and Southern Railway operates its first revenue train, Bonsal to Durham, North Carolina.
• June 8 - Theodore Roosevelt signs the Antiquities Act into law, authorizing the President to restrict the use of certain parcels of public land with historical or conservation value.
• June 25 - Harry K. Thaw shoots architect Stanford White at the roof garden theatre of Madison Square Garden in New York City.
• June 28 - Osage Allotment Act allocates land to members of the Osage Nation in Oklahoma.
• June 29 - Mesa Verde is declared a National Park.
• June 30 - The United States Congress passes the Meat Inspection Act and Pure Food and Drug Act.

  July–September

• July 11 - Murder of Grace Brown, a factory worker whose killing caused a nationwide sensation.
• August 23 - Unable to control a rebellion in the newly formed Cuban Republic, President Tomás Estrada Palma requests U.S. intervention.
• September 5 - Bradbury Robinson of St. Louis University throws the first legal forward pass in an American football game.
• September 22 - Atlanta race riot: Race riots in Atlanta, Georgia result in 27 people killed and the Black-owned business district severely damaged.
• September 24 - U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt proclaims Devils Tower, Wyoming as the nation's first National Monument.
• September 26 - The first concert of the Telharmonium, the first music synthesizer, is presented at Telharmonic Hall, Broadway at 39th St., New York City.
• September 30 - The first Gordon Bennett Cup in ballooning is held, starting in Paris. The winning team, piloting the balloon United States, lands in Fylingdales, Yorkshire, England, UK.

  October–December

• October 1 – The Madeira School, a private boarding school for girls, opens with 28 students attending classes in two buildings on 19th Street, just off Dupont Circle in downtown Washington, D.C.
• October 11 - The San Francisco public school board sparks a United States diplomatic crisis with Japan, by ordering Japanese students to be taught in racially segregated schools.
• November 9 - U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt leaves for a trip to Panama to inspect the construction progress of the Panama Canal.
• December 4 - Alpha Phi Alpha, the first inter-collegiate Greek-letter Fraternity established for African Americans, is founded at Cornell University.
• December 8 - The Petrified Forest, Arizona is designated a National Monument.
• December 10 - U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in negotiating peace in the Russo-Japanese War.

  Undated

• The muffuletta sandwich is invented in New Orleans, Louisiana.

  Ongoing

• Progressive Era
• Lochner era
• Black Patch Tobacco Wars

  Sport

• October 14 – The Chicago White Sox win their First World Series by defeating their crosstown rival Chicago Cubs 4 games to 2 at South Side Park

  Births

January–February

• January 7
• *Red Allen, trumpet player
• *Bobbi Trout, pilot
• January 14 - William Bendix, actor
• January 22 - Robert E. Howard, author
• February 4 - Clyde Tombaugh, astronomer
• February 10
• *Lon Chaney Jr., actor
• *Erik Rhodes, actor
• February 17 - Elizabeth M. Ramsey research physician
• February 20 - John Kenley, theatrical producer
• February 28 - Bugsy Siegel, gangster

  March–April

• March 4 - Charles Rudolph Walgreen Jr., businessman
• March 6 - Lou Costello, actor and comedian, half of Abbott & Costello team
• March 20 - Ozzie Nelson, actor and band leader
• April 4 - John Cameron Swayze, journalist
• April 22 - Eddie Albert, actor
• April 24 - William Joyce, fascist propagandist
• April 25 - William J. Brennan, Supreme Court Justice

  May–June

• May 3 - Mary Astor, actress and writer
• May 11
• * Jacqueline Cochran, aviator
• * Ethel Weed, promoter of women's rights in Japan
• * Richard Arvin Overton, oldest surviving American war veteran and oldest living man in the U.S.
• May 12 - Maurice Ewing, geophysicist and oceanographer
• May 19 - Bruce Bennett, athlete and actor
• May 23 - Allan Scott, screenwriter
• May 28 - Phil Regan, actor
• June 3 - Josephine Baker, actress
• June 19 - Earl W. Bascom, rodeo pioneer, artist, inventor
• June 22 - Anne Morrow Lindbergh, author and aviator
• June 26 - Viktor Schreckengost, industrial designer

  July–August

• July 1 - Estée Lauder, cosmetics entrepreneur
• July 7 - Satchel Paige, baseball player
• July 18 - S. I. Hayakawa, Canadian-born American academic and politician, U.S. Senator from California from 1977 to 1983
• August 6 - Vic Dickenson, trombonist
• August 9 - Robert L. Surtees, cinematographer
• August 12 - Tedd Pierce, animator
• August 17 - Hazel Bishop, chemist and inventor of "no-smear" lipstick
• August 19 - Philo Farnsworth, American inventor and television pioneer
• August 27 - Ed Gein, serial killer

  September–October

• September 5 - Shimon Agranat, American-born president of the Supreme Court of Israel
• September 17
• * Raymond D. Mindlin, mechanician
• * Edgar Wayburn, environmentalist
• September 21 - Henry Beachell, plant breeder
• October 6 - Janet Gaynor, actress
• October 7 - James E. Webb, government administrator
• October 15
• * Hiram Fong, businessman and U.S. Senator from Hawaii from 1959 to 1977
• * Alicia Patterson, newspaper editor
• October 23 - Gertrude Ederle, swimmer
• October 27 - Earle Cabell, politician

  November–December

• November 1 - Johnny Indrisano, boxer and actor
• November 5 - Fred Lawrence Whipple, astronomer
• November 14 - Louise Brooks, actress
• November 15 - Curtis LeMay, U.S.A.F. general, vice-presidential candidate
• November 18 - George Wald, scientist, Nobel Prize laureate
• December 9 - Grace Hopper, computer scientist and naval officer
• December 11 - Herman Welker, U.S. Senator from Idaho from 1951 to 1957
• December 27 - Oscar Levant, pianist, composer, author, comedian and actor

  Deaths

• January 25
• *John S. Harris, United States Senator from Louisiana from 1868 till 1871
• *Joseph Wheeler, U.S. Army general and politician
• February 9 - Paul Laurence Dunbar, poet and publisher
• February 18 - John B. Stetson, hat manufacturer and inventor of the cowboy hat
• February 27 - Samuel Pierpont Langley, astronomer, physicist, and aeronautics pioneer
• March 4 - John Schofield, 28th United States Secretary of War and Commanding General of the United States Army
• March 13 - Susan B. Anthony, civil rights and women's suffrage activist
• April 11
• * James Anthony Bailey, circus ringmaster
• * Francis Pharcellus Church, editor and publisher
• April 24 - Mary Hunt, temperance activist
• April 25 - John Knowles Paine, composer
• May 12 - Gabriel C. Wharton, civil engineer and Confederate general
• May 14 - Carl Schurz, German-born statesman
• May 15 - John K. Bucklyn, Medal of Honor recipient
• June 17 - Harry Nelson Pillsbury, chess champion
• June 25 - Stanford White, architect
• September 20 - Robert R. Hitt, 13th Assistant Secretary of State
• September 21 - Samuel Arnold, conspirator involved in the plot to kidnap U.S. President Abraham Lincoln in 1865
• October 6 - Buck Ewing, American baseball player New York Giants and MLB Hall of Famer
• October 9 - Joseph Glidden, inventor of barbed wire
• October 16 - Varina Davis, wife of Jefferson Davis, First Lady of the Confederate States of America
• October 17 - James D. Walker, United States Senator from Arkansas from 1879 till 1885
• November 4 - John H. Ketcham, politician
• November 23 - Willard Warner, United States Senator from Alabama from 1868 till 1871
• December 12 - Arthur Brown, United States Senator from Utah from 1896 till 1897
• December 22 - Richard S. Rust, abolitionist
• December 30 - Thomas M. Bowen, United States Senator from Colorado from 1883 till 1889
• December 31 - Donelson Caffery, United States Senator from Louisiana from 1892 till 1901