1902

Events from the year 1902 in the United States.
==Incumbents==
===Federal Government===
* President: Theodore Roosevelt (R-NY)
* Vice President: vacant
* Chief Justice: Melville Fuller (IL)
* Speaker of the House of Representatives: David B. Henderson (R-IA)
* Congress: 57th
==Events==
===January - March===
* January 3
** The first college football bowl 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. Both Tillman and McLaurin are censured by the Senate on February 28.
* February 28 – 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.
===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.
* April 14 – The first J. C. Penney department store opens in Kemmerer, Wyoming.
* 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.
* 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 2 – The Philippine–American War 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 9 – The Venezuela Crisis of 1902–1903 occurs (until February 19, 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.
==Memoriam==
* January 15 – Alpheus Hyatt, zoologist and paleontologist (aged 63; Cambridge, MA, USA)
* February 18 – Charles Lewis Tiffany, founder of Tiffany & Co. (aged 90; Yonkers, NY, USA)
* March 12 – John Peter Altgeld, 20th Governor of Illinois (aged 54; Joliet, IL, USA)
* March 14 – Daniel H. Reynolds, Confederate Brigadier General (aged 69; Lage Village, AR, USA)
* April 3 – Esther Hobart Morris, first women justice of the peace in the United States (aged 87; Cheyenne, WY, USA)
* April 23 – Jesse Harper, politician of Illinois (aged 78; Danville, IL, USA)
* April 27 – Julius Sterling Morton, 3rd United States Secretary of Agriculture (aged 70; Lake Forest, IL, USA)
* May 5 – Bret Harte, short-story writer and poet (aged 65; Camberley, England, UK)
* May 26 – Almon Brown Strowger, inventor (aged 63; St. Petersburg, FL, USA)
* May 30 – Sylvester Pennoyer, 8th Governor of Oregon (aged 70; Portland, OR, USA)
* June 5 – Louis J. Weichmann, chief witness for the prosecution in the trial of the assassins of Abraham Lincoln (aged 59; Anderson, IN, USA)
* July 27 – Packy Dillon, baseball player (aged 49; Mehlville, MO, USA)
* August 10 – James McMillan, Canadian-born U.S. Senator from Michigan from 1889 to 1902 (aged 64; Manchester, MA, USA)
* September 26 – Levi Strauss, founder of Levi Strauss & Co. (aged 73; San Francisco, CA, USA)
* October 26 – Elizabeth Cady Stanton, suffragist (aged 86; New York City, NY, USA)
* November 4 – Hale Johnson, attorney and politician (aged 55; Bogota, IL, USA)
* November 22 – Walter Reed, U.S. Army physician (aged 51; Washington, DC, USA)
* November 27 – George S. Cook, prominent early American photographer (aged 83; Charleston, SC, USA)
* November 29 – John Elliott Ward, politician and diplomat (aged 88; Dorchester, GA, USA)
* December 4 – Charles Dow, founder of Dow Jones & Company and The Wall Street Journal (aged 51; Brooklyn, NY, USA)
* December 7
** Thomas Nast, political cartoonist (aged 62; Guayaquil, Ecuador)
** Thomas Brackett Reed, politician (aged 63; Washington, DC, USA)
* December 14 – Julia Grant, First Lady of the United States as wife of Ulysses S. Grant (aged 76; Washington, DC, USA)
* December 22 – Dwight M. Sabin, U.S. Senator from Minnesota from 1883 to 1889 (aged 59; Chicago, IL, USA)
* December 26 – Mary Hartwell Catherwood, author and poet (aged 55; Chicago, IL, USA)
==External links==
* 1902 in the United States
Category:United States History: Volume 13