• The Panic of 1893, America's worst economic downturn ever up until this point, leads to the failure of approximately 15,000 companies and 500 banks, and the unemployment of 20% of the nation.
• A group of American businessmen and sugar planters, with the acquiesence of US Marines, overthrow the Hawaiian Monarchy, forcing Queen Liliuokalani to abdicate and briefly establishing the "Republic of Hawaii" before requesting and receiving status as a US protectorate a few months later.
• The World's Columbian Exposition, held in Chicago to mark the 400th anniversary of Columbus's discovery of the New World, is one of the most spectacular World's Fairs ever. Among many other wonders, the fair is remembered for these events...
  
  
  • The first-ever Ferris Wheel.
  • The first significant demonstration of electric power.
  • The grisly serial killings of H.H. Holmes.
  • Historian Frederick Jackson Turner presents his famous "Frontier Thesis" to the American Historical Association, arguing that the existence of the frontier was crucial to the development of the American character.
  • The World Parliament of Religions meets for 17 days and agrees on nothing.
  • F.W. Rueckheim introduces Cracker Jacks.
  • Milton Hershey observes German chocolate-making machines and is inspired to start Hershey's Chocolate.
  • Nabisco introduces cream of wheat.
  • Hamburgers are served in the US for the first time.
  • The US Postal Service introduces the first picture postcards.
  • Wrigley's introduces Juicy Fruit chewing gum.
  • Henry Perky introduces a machine to make "little whole wheat mattresses," better known today as shredded wheat.
  
  
• In the Oklahoma Land Rush, 100,000 "Sooners" race by horse, carriage, and foot to claim land in the Cherokee Strip, starting from its borders at noon on September 16.
• Charismatic Brazilian religious leader Antonio Conselheiro and about 25,000 peasant followers establish the settlement of Canudos in the Certao region of Bahia in Brazil. The settlement's stance in favor of the deposed Brazilian monarchy gave it the character of a rebellion, and it would eventually be wiped out by a government army in 1897.
• In the original "Trial of the Century," accused axe-murderess Lizzie Borden is acquitted of the double murder of her father and stepmother.
• New Zealand becomes the first nation to grant women the right to vote in national elections.
• German engineer Rudolf Diesel invents the diesel engine.
• Czech composer Antonín Dvorák's New World Symphony debuts.
• Edvard Munch paints The Scream.
• Kentucky schoolteachers Patty and Mildred Hill compose the song "Good Morning to All" as a classroom greeting song. The song would later be copyrighted in 1935 as "Happy Birthday to You" and is now owned by Time-Warner and worth millions of dollars annually.
• The Stanley Cup is presented for the first time, to the Montreal AAA, champions of Canada's Amateur Hockey Association.

These people were born in 1893:

• Mao Zedong.
• Nazi leader Hermann Göring.
• Louisiana statesman Huey Long.
• Indian mystic Paramahansa Yogananda.
• Spanish surrealist painter Joan Miró.
• American actress Mae West.
• American writer and poet Dorothy Parker.
• English poet Wilfred Owen.
• American entertainer Jimmy Durante.
• American Robert Leroy Ripley, creator of Ripley's Believe It or Not.
• American silent film star Mary Pickford.
• American statesman Dean Acheson.
• Legendary bluesman Big Bill Broonzy.
• Bluesman Mississippi John Hurt.
• Bluesman Blind Lemon Jefferson.
• American modern dance pioneer Martha Graham.
• American composer Cole Porter.
• French mathemetician Gaston Julia.
• American baseball great George Sisler.

These people died in 1893:

• Russian composer Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky.
• Rutherford B. Hayes, 19th President of the United States.
• Russian author Ivan Turgenev.
• French author Guy de Maupassant.
• British physicist John Tyndall.
• Rail baron Leland Stanford, founder of Stanford University.
• American general Abner Doubleday, falsely credited as the inventor of baseball.
• American feminist Lucy Stone.

1892 - 1893 - 1894

19th century