1891

### 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)

### 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)