Wassily Kandinsky's paintings entitled Compositions are the first examples of purely abstract art

The Steiner House, designed by the Austrian architect Adolf Loos, is completed in Vienna

The Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, wandering from home in midwinter, dies of pneumonia in the stationmaster's house at Astapovo

Ferdinand Zeppelin's dirigible Deutschland provides the first commercial air service for passengers

The Liberals win another general election called on the House of Lords issue, becoming the first British political party since 1832 to win three successive victories

E.M. Forster publishes Howard's End, his novel about the Schlegel sisters and the Wilcox family

The part-time English painter L.S. Lowry begins a lifetime career in a Manchester property company

Charles Wilson, using his cloud chamber to detect the passage of charged particles, obtains his first photographs of alpha and beta rays

Ernest Rutherford proposes the concept of the nucleus as a positively charged mass at the centre of an atom

Richard Strauss changes musical direction with his opera Der Rosenkavalier, once again with libretto by Hugo von Hoffmannsthal

Ethel Smyth's The March of Women has its premiere at a suffragette event in London's Albert Hall

D.H. Lawrence's career as a writer is launched with the publication of his first novel, The White Peacock

Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova settles in London and forms her own touring company

Rupert Brooke publishes Poems, the only collection to appear before his early death in World War I

Le Spectre de la Rose, with choreography by Fokine, music by Weber and designs by Bakst, is premiered by the Ballets Russes in Monte Carlo

G.K. Chesterton's clerical detective makes his first appearance in The Innocence of Father Brown

The Titanic is launched at the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast

Spanish composer Enrique Granados completes his Goyescas, seven pieces for piano

Italy finds a reason to invade Libya, a province of the Turkish empire.

The ballet Petrushka brings together Fokine (choreography), Stravinsky (music) and Benois (sets and costumes)

Walter Sickert and other painters, sharing his preference for everyday subjects, adopt the name Camden Town Group

Germany causes international alarm by sending a warship to Agadir, a port in French-controlled Morocco

Hugo von Hofmannsthal adapts the English medieval morality play Everyman ('Jedermann') for performance in Salzburg

Asquith's Parliament Bill proposes to end the constitutional crisis in the UK by restricting the power of the House of Lords

Confronted with the threat of 300 newly created peerages, the House of Lords narrowly passes Asquith's Parliament Bill (by 17 votes)