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Lieutenant Governor of Virginia: Edward Echols (Democratic) (until month and day unknown), Joseph Edward Willard (Democratic) (starting month and day unknown)
The first college footballbowl 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.[1] 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.[2]
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.[3]
April 14 – The first J. C. Penney department store opens in Kemmerer, Wyoming.[4]
May 15 – It is claimed that in a field outside Grass Valley, California, Lyman Gilmore achieves flight in a powered airplane (a steam-powered glider). 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 coal strike of 1902 begins in the anthracite coalfields of eastern Pennsylvania.
June 13 – Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing, predecessor of global consumer goods brand 3M, begins trading as a mining venture at Two Harbors in the United States.[5][6]
June 15 – The New York Central railroad inaugurates the 20th Century Limited passenger train between Chicago and Grand Central Terminal in New York City.
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 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 ("Kid Curry"), is involved in a shoot out in Knoxville, TN and escaped.
December – The Venezuela Crisis of 1902–1903 occurs (until February 1903), 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 a duck pond.[7]
The First Goodwill Industries Store is opened in Boston, Massachusetts by Rev. Edgar J. Helms of Morgan Methodist Chapel.
^"Continued Legal Battles". Thomas A. Edison Papers. Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences. 2016-10-28. Retrieved 2019-10-24.
^Wilkins, Mira (1989). The history of foreign investment in the United States to 1914. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. p. 286. ISBN9780674396661.
^Cohen, Morris (1997). Manufacturing automation. Chicago: Irwin. p. 215. ISBN9780256146066.
^Krausman, Paul R.; Cain, James W. (2013). Wildlife Management and Conservation: Contemporary Principles and Practices. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 222. ISBN978-1-42140-987-0.
^Wynn, Linda T. (1996). "Arnaud Wendell Bontemps (1902-1973)". Profiles of African Americans in Tennessee. Annual Local Conference on Afro-American Culture and History, Tennessee State University. Archived from the original on June 2, 2010. Retrieved May 24, 2010.
^Robert, Price (1971). "Catherwood, Mary Hartwell". In James, Edward T. (ed.). Notable American Women, 1607-1950: A Biographical Dictionary. Vol. 1. p. 308. ISBN978-0-67462-734-5.
"Domestic Chronology", Statistician and Economist, San Francisco: Louis P. McCarty, 1905, pp. 227–347 – via HathiTrust. (Covers events May 1898-June 1905)