What Happened in 1891 — Events, Births & Deaths

Liliʻuokalani is proclaimed the last monarch and only queen regnant of the Kingdom of Hawaii.

Shoshone National Forest is established as the first national forest in the US and world.

Almon Strowger patents the Strowger switch, a device which led to the automation of telephone circuit switching.

SS Utopia collides with HMS Anson in the Bay of Gibraltar and sinks, killing 562 of the 880 passengers on board.

Chilean Civil War: The ironclad Blanco Encalada is sunk at Caldera Bay by torpedo boats.

The 1891 New Orleans Lynchings: 11 Italian immigrants are lynched by a mob in Louisiana, USA after the acquittal of several defendants in a murder case, the largest mass lynching in U.S. history.

On Labor Day in Catania, Sicily, workers establish the first successful Fascio Siciliano, launching a movement of peasants and laborers protesting poverty, landlordism, taxation, and economic hardship across Sicily.

The Music Hall in New York City (later known as Carnegie Hall) has its grand opening and first public performance, with Tchaikovsky as the guest conductor.

Pope Leo XIII defends workers' rights and property rights in the encyclical Rerum novarum, the beginning of modern Catholic social teaching.

The International Electrotechnical Exhibition opens in Frankfurt, Germany, featuring the world's first long-distance transmission of high-power, three-phase electric current (the most common form today).

History of cinema: The first public display of Thomas Edison's prototype kinetoscope.

A major hurricane strikes Martinique, leaving 700 dead.

The first hydropower plant of Finland is commissioned along the Tammerkoski rapids in Tampere, Pirkanmaa.

A diplomatic incident between the United States and Chile occurred after U.S. sailors were attacked in Valparaíso, nearly leading to war.

The Mino–Owari earthquake, the largest inland earthquake in Japan's history, occurs.