Births

January – June 
 January 1 – Charles Bickford, American actor (d. 1967)
 January 7 – Zora Neale Hurston, Harlem Renaissance writer (d. 1960)
 January 8 – Walther Bothe, German physicist, Nobel Prize in Physics (d. 1957)
 January 22 – Antonio Gramsci, Italian Communist writer and politician (d. 1937)
 January 27 – Ilya Ehrenburg, Russian writer (d. 1967)
 February 9 – Ronald Colman, English actor (d. 1958)
 February 11 – J.W. Hearne, English cricketer (d. 1965)
 February 21 – Sean Heuston, Irish rebel (d. 1916)
 February 27 – David Sarnoff, Russian-born American broadcasting pioneer (d. 1971)
 March 10 – Sam Jaffe, American actor (d. 1984)
 March 19 – Earl Warren, Chief Justice of the United States (d. 1974)
 March 29 – Yvan Goll, French lyricist and dramatist (d. 1950)
 April 2 – Max Ernst, German painter (d. 1976)
 April 7 – Ole Kirk Christiansen, founder of the Lego group (d. 1958)
 April 13 – Nella Larsen, American novelist (d. 1964)
 April 15 – Wallace Reid, American actor (d. 1923)
 April 17 – George Adamski, Polish-born alleged UFO traveler (d. 1965)
 April 23 – Sergei Prokofiev, Soviet composer (d. 1953)
 May 7 – Harry McShane, Scottish socialist (d. 1988)
 May 15
 Mikhail Bulgakov, Russian writer (d. 1940)
 Fritz Feigl, Austrian-born chemist (d. 1971)
 May 16 – Richard Tauber, Austrian tenor (d. 1948)
 May 18 – Rudolf Carnap, German philosopher (d. 1970)
 May 19 – Oswald Boelcke, German World War I pilot (d. 1916)
 May 22 – Eddie Edwards, American jazz trombonist (d. 1963)
 May 23 – Pär Lagerkvist, Swedish writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1974)
 May 24 – William F. Albright, American archeologist and Biblical scholar (d. 1971)
 June 9 – Cole Porter, American composer and songwriter (d. 1964)
 June 20 – John A. Costello, second President of Ireland (d. 1976)
 June 21 – Hermann Scherchen, German conductor (d. 1966)
 June 28 – Carl Panzram, serial killer (d. 1930)
 June 30 – Man Mountain Dean, American professional wrestler (d. 1953)

July - December  
    
 July 5 – John Howard Northrop, American chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1987)
 August 2 – Viktor Maksimovich Zhirmunsky, Russian literary historian, linguist (d. 1971)
 August 21 – Emiliano Mercado del Toro, Puerto Rican, longest-lived war veteran ever and last verified person born in 1891 (d. 2007)
 September 3 – Bessie Delany, African American physician and writer (d. 1995)
 September 12 – Pedro Albizu Campos, advocate of Puerto Rican independence (d. 1965)
 September 14 – William F. Friedman, American cryptographer (d. 1969)
 September 16
 Karl Dönitz, President of Germany (d. 1980)
 Stephanie von Hohenlohe, Austrian-born German World War II spy (d. 1972)
 Julie Winnefred Bertrand, Canadian supercentenarian (d. 2007)
 September 26 – Charles Munch, French conductor and violinist (d. 1968)
 September 28 – Myrtle Gonzalez, American movie and stage actress (d. 1918)
 October 12 – Fumimaro Konoe, Prime Minister of Japan (d. 1945)
 October 20 – James Chadwick, English physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1974)
 October 24 – Rafael Leónidas Trujillo, dictator of the Dominican Republic (d. 1961)
 November 14 – Frederick Banting, Canadian physician, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 1941)
 November 15
 Vincent Astor, American philanthropist (d. 1959)
 Erwin Rommel, German field marshal (d. 1944)
 November 28 – Gregorio Perfecto, Filipino jurist & politician (d. 1949)
 December 9 – Maksim Bahdanovič, Belarusian poet (d. 1917)
 December 10 – Nelly Sachs, German writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1970)
 December 26 – Henry Miller, American writer (d. 1980)

Deaths

January – June 
 January 5 – Emma Abbott, American opera singer (b. 1849)
 January 16 – Léo Delibes, French composer (b. 1836)
 January 21 – Calixa Lavallée, Canadian composer (b. 1842)
 February 14 – William Tecumseh Sherman, American Civil War General (b. 1820)
March 15
 Théodore de Banville, French writer (b. 1823)
 Sir Joseph Bazalgette, English civil engineer (b. 1819)
 March 29 – Georges Seurat, French painter (b. 1859)
 April 2 – Ahmed Vefik Pasha, Turkish statesman (b. 1823)
 April 7 – P. T. Barnum, American showman (b. 1810)
 April 24 – Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, Prussian field marshal (b. 1800)
 April 25 – Nathaniel Woodard, educationalist (b. 1811)
 May 8 – Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Russian-born writer and theosophist (b. 1831)
 June 6 – John A. MacDonald, first Prime Minister of Canada (b. 1815)

July – December 
 July 4 – Hannibal Hamlin, Vice President of the United States (b. 1809)
 August 12 – James Russell Lowell, American poet and essayist (b. 1819)
 August 14 – Sarah Childress Polk, First Lady of the United States (b. 1803)
 August 29 – Pierre Lallement, French inventor of the bicycle (b. 1843?)
 September 7 – Lorenzo Sawyer, 9th Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of California (b. 1820)
 September 11 – Antero de Quental, Portuguese poet (b. 1842)
 September 15 – Ivan Goncharov, Russian writer (b. 1812)
 September 28 – Herman Melville, American novelist (b. 1819)
 October 6
 Charles I of Württemberg (b. 1823)
 Charles Stewart Parnell, Irish nationalist leader (b. 1846)
 October 15 – Gilbert Arthur a Beckett, English writer (b. 1837)
 October 23 – Ambrosius of Optina, Russian Orthodox saint (b. 1812)
 November 6 – J. Gregory Smith, Vermont governor (b. 1818)
 November 10 – Arthur Rimbaud, French poet (b. 1854)
 December 5 – Pedro II, Brazilian deposed emperor (b. 1826)