1909 in the United States

Incumbents

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

• President: Theodore Roosevelt , William Howard Taft
• Vice President: Charles W. Fairbanks , James S. Sherman
• Chief Justice: Melville Fuller
• Speaker of the House of Representatives: Joseph Gurney Cannon
• Congress: 60th, 61st

  Governors

Lieutenant Governors

Events

January–March

• January 1–31 – Torrential rain in California sees Helena Mine record of precipitation for the month, the highest official monthly total in the contiguous United States.
• January 1 – Drilling begins on the Lakeview Gusher.
• January 28 – U.S. troops leave Cuba after being there since the Spanish–American War.
• February 2 – Centennial anniversary of the foundation of Miami University, which is celebrated.
• February 12 – The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is founded, commemorating the hundredth anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth.
• February 13 – Superior National Forest is established
• February 22 – The Great White Fleet returns to Hampton Roads, Virginia having circumnavigated the globe.
• February 24 – The Hudson Motor Car Company is founded.
• March 4 – William Howard Taft is sworn in as the 27th President of the United States.
• March 23 – Theodore Roosevelt leaves New York for the Smithsonian-Roosevelt African Expedition, sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution and National Geographic Society.

  April–June

• April 30 - Palm Beach County was founded, separating from Dade County.
• June 1 - The Alaska–Yukon–Pacific Exposition opens in Seattle.
• June 9-August 7 - Alice Huyler Ramsey, a 22-year-old housewife and mother from Hackensack, New Jersey, becomes the first woman to drive across the United States. In 59 days, she drives a Maxwell automobile 3,800 miles from Manhattan, New York to San Francisco, California with three non-driving female companions.
• June 18 - The strangled body of missionary Elsie Sigel is discovered in a trunk in New York City's Chinatown.
• June 22 - Construction begins on the Cape Cod Canal, which will separate Cape Cod from mainland Massachusetts.

  July–September

• August 2 - The United States Army Signal Corp Division purchases the world's first military airplane. They buy the Wright Military Flyer from the Wright Brothers.
• August 8 - The Rosicrucian Fellowship is launched at Seattle, Washington.
• August 12 - The first event is held at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
• September - Sigmund Freud, having arrived on August 29 in New York, delivers his only lectures in the United States, on psychoanalysis, at Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts, giving public recognition to the subject in the anglophone world.
• September 27 - The 5.1 Wabash River earthquake shook western Indiana with a maximum Mercalli intensity of VII, causing light damage.

  October–December

• October 11 - The 1909 Florida Keys hurricane makes landfall in the U.S.
• November - Triangle Shirtwaist Factory strike in New York City.
• November 2 - The Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity is founded at Boston University.
• November 6 - The Union Soldiers and Sailors Monument is dedicated in Baltimore.
• November 8 - Fire at Robert Morrison fibroid comb factory in New York City kills 9.
• November 11 - The U.S. Navy founds a navy base in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
• November 13 - Ballinger–Pinchot scandal begins: Collier's Magazine accuses U.S. Secretary of the Interior Richard Ballinger of questionable dealings in Alaskan coal fields.
• November 18 - Two United States Navy ships are sent to Nicaragua after 500 revolutionaries are executed by order of dictator José Santos Zelaya.
• December 31 - The Manhattan Bridge opens.

  Undated

• The American Issue Publishing House of the Anti-Saloon League is epic games.

  Ongoing

• Progressive Era
• Lochner era
• Great White Fleet voyage

  Births

• January 1 - Dana Andrews, film actor
• January 2 - Barry Goldwater, U.S. Senator from Arizona from 1953 to 1965 and from 1969 to 1987
• January 2 - J. R. Simplot, businessman, founded the Simplot Company
• January 5 - Stephen Cole Kleene, mathematician
• February 11
• * Max Baer, boxer
• * Joseph L. Mankiewicz, filmmaker
• January 30 - Saul Alinsky, community organizer
• February 9 - Dean Rusk, politician
• February 18 - Warren Elliot Henry, African American physicist
• February 24 - August Derleth, writer and anthologist
• March 4 - Harry Helmsley, real estate entrepreneur
• March 24 - Clyde Barrow, outlaw
• April 13 - Eudora Welty, fiction writer
• May 7 - Edwin H. Land, camera inventor
• May 15 - J. Caleb Boggs, U.S. Senator from Delaware from 1961 to 1973
• May 27 - Dolores Hope, born Dolores L. DeFina, singer and philanthropist
• May 30 - Benny Goodman, jazz clarinetist and bandleader
• June 3 - Ira D. Wallach, businessman and philanthropist
• June 12 - Archie Bleyer, song arranger and bandleader
• June 14 - Burl Ives, folk singer
• July 29 - Chester Himes, fiction writer
• August 1 - Sibyl M. Rock, mathematician
• August 10 - Leo Fender, guitar inventor and manufacturer
• September 28 - Al Capp, cartoonist
• October 1 - Everett Sloane, character actor
• October 13 - Herblock, editorial cartoonist
• November 18 - Johnny Mercer, songwriter
• November 20 - Alan Bible, U.S. Senator from Nevada from 1954 to 1974
• November 27 - James Agee, writer
• December 9 - Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., film actor
• December 14 - Edward Lawrie Tatum, geneticist, Nobel Prize laureate

  Deaths

• January 10
• * John Conness, Ireland-born U.S. Senator from California from 1863 to 1869
• * Charles Vernon Culver, politician
• April 9 - Francis Marion Crawford, novelist
• April 21 - David Turpie, U.S. Senator from Indiana in 1863 and from 1887 to 1899
• April 23 - Franklin Bartlett, Representative fron New York
• April 28 - Frederick Holbrook, 27th Governor of Vermont from 1861 to 1863
• May 17 - Helge Alexander Haugan, Norwegian-born banking executive
• June 24 - Sarah Orne Jewett, writer
• June 29 - George B. Cosby, Confederate general in the American Civil War
• August 21 - George Cabot Lodge, poet
• September 4 - Clyde Fitch, dramatist
• October 15 - William Lindsay, U.S. Senator from Kentucky from 1893 to 1901
• December 10 - Red Cloud, Oglala Lakota Chief
• December 20 - William Alexander Harris, U.S. Senator from Kansas from 1897 to 1903
• December 26 - Frederic Remington, cowboy artist and sculptor
• Date unknown - Gideon T. Stewart, educator and politician