Lenin and comrades launch in Munich a radical newspaper, Iskra ('the spark')

Joseph Conrad publishes his novel Lord Jim about a life of failure and redemption in the far East

Humbert I, the king of Italy, is assassinated by an Italian-American anarchist, Gaetano Bresci

The Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov keeps dogs alive almost indefinitely by severely curtailing their bodily functions

Queen Victoria dies at Osborne House, on the Isle of Wight, after 63 years on the throne

Daimler cars launch a new brand, the Mercedes 35 hp, named after the ten-year-old daughter of the investor and distributor Emil Jellinek

Vast crowds line the streets for the Milan funeral of a national hero, the 87-year-old composer Giuseppe Verdi

Rusalka, by the Czech composer Anton Dvorák, is performed in Prague

Thomas Mann's first novel, Buddenbrooks, brings him immediate success

Beatrix Potter publishes at her own expense The Tale of Peter Rabbit

Rudyard Kipling's experiences of India are put to good use in his novel Kim

A change of palette by Pablo Picasso takes him into what becomes known as his Blue Period

The British batsman C.B. Fry hits a record six consecutive centuries in first-class cricket

The Austrian biochemist Karl Landsteiner discovers that human blood is of varying types

The first of Edward Elgar's five Pomp and Circumstance marches has a trio section that becomes "Land of Hope and Glory"

Sergei Rachmaninov's Second Piano Concerto gives him renewed confidence after the disaster of his First Symphony in 1897

Frederick Delius completes his opera A Village Romeo and Juliet, but it is not performed until 1907 in Berlin

Charles Rennie Mackintosh designs the interior of Miss Cranston's Ingram Street Tea Rooms in Glasgow

Anton Chekhov's Three Sisters has its premiere at the Moscow Art Theatre, directed by Stanislavsky

Guglielmo Marconi transmits a radio message in Morse code 2100 miles, from Poldhu in Cornwall to St John's in Newfoundland

Robert Falcon Scott sets off in the Discovery on his first expedition to the Antarctic

Frank Hornby begins to market in Britain his immensely successful Meccano kits

Ebenezer Howard republishes his earlier book of 1898 as Garden Cities of Tomorrow

Rudyard Kipling publishes his Just So Stories for Little Children

In his pamphlet What is to be done? Lenin argues for early action to promote revolution