Decades: 1840s 1850s 1860s 1870s 1880s - 1890s - 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s
Years: 1886 1887 1888 1889 1890 - 1891 - 1892 1893 1894 1895 1896
Events January 20 - James Hogg becomes the first native Texan to be governor of that state. January 29 - Liliuokalani proclaimed Queen of Hawaii March 17 - The British steamship SS Utopia sinks off the coast of Gibraltar, killing 574. May 1 - Fourmies Massacre - Nine killed and thirty wounded when troops fire on workers' May Day demonstration in support of 8-hour day in Fourmies, France. May 20 - Film history: First public display of Thomas Alva Edison's prototype kinetoscope (shown at Edison's Laboratory for a convention of the National Federation of Women's Clubs). June 16 - John Abbott becomes Canada's third prime minister. June 21 - first long-distance transmission of Alternating current by the Ames power plant near Telluride, Colorado by Lucien and Paul Nunn. August 27 - France and Russia conclude defensive alliance. Winter James Naismith invents Basketball December 29 - Thomas Edison patents the radio Births January 8 - Walther Bothe, physicist, winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1954 (+ 1957) February 9 - Ronald Colman, actor (+ 1958) February 11 - J W Hearne English cricket player. February 27 - David Sarnoff, broadcasting pioneer (+ 1971) March 10 - Sam Jaffe, actor (+ 1984) March 19 - Earl Warren, Chief Justice of the United States (+ 1974) March 24 - John Knittel, dramatist (+ 1970) March 29 - Yvan Goll, lyricist and dramatist (+ 1950) April 2 - Max Ernst, painter (+ 1976) April 13 - Nella Larsen, African-American novelist. April 17 - George Adamski, UFO traveler April 23 - Sergei Prokofiev, Soviet composer May 15 - Mikhail Bulgakov, writer (+ 1940) May 16 - Richard Tauber, tenor (+ 1948) May 18 - Rudolf Carnap, German philosopher (+ 1970) May 19 - Oswald Boelcke, World War I fighter ace (+ 1916) May 24 - William F. Albright, American archeologist and Biblical scholar June 9 - Cole Porter, American composer and songwriter September 14 - William F. Friedman, cryptanalyst November 14 - Frederick Banting, Canadian physician, recipient of the Nobel Prize in medicine, 1923 November 15 - Erwin Rommel, German field marshal December 26 - Henry Miller, writer Deaths January 5 - Emma Abbott, american opera singer January 21 - Calixa Lavallée, composer April 7 - P. T. Barnum, circus impresario July 4 - Hannibal Hamlin, US politician. September 15 - Ivan Goncharov, Russian author of Oblomov. October 6 - Charles Stewart Parnell, Irish Nationalist leader. October 15 - Gilbert Arthur a Beckett, writer. November 10 - Arthur Rimbaud, poet\n