Frank Lloyd Wright designs low residential buildings, suitable for the plains around Chicago, and calls them Prairie Houses

The Texas oil industry is launched with the disovery of the 75,000-barrel-a-day Lucas Gusher near Beaumont

Frank Norris publishes The Octopus, the first of a projected trilogy of novels set in Southern California

President McKinley is assassinated by an anarchist when visiting the Pan-American exhibition in Buffalo

Vice President Theodore Roosevelt becomes US president on McKinley's death

Edith Wharton's publishes her first full-length novel, The Valley of Decision

US philosopher William James publishes his influential book The Varieties of Religious Experience

Alfred Stieglitz and other US photographers launch the Photo-Secession movement

Helen Keller's The Story of My Life begins publication in serial form

North Carolina pharmacist Caleb Bradham launches the Pepsi-Cola company in a back room of his shop

The US Congress makes the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 permanent, without the need for ten-year renewals

Hughie Cannon writes 'Bill Bailey Won't You Please Come Home' for a minstrel, John Queen

Brooklyn shopkeepers Morris and Rose Michtom have a huge success with their presidential 'Teddy's Bear'

The Wizard of Oz, based on the book by Frank Baum, opens on Broadway as a musical to huge success

US author Jack London publishes a novel, The Call of the Wild, in which a huge pet dog has alarming adventures

Edwin S. Porter directs The Great Train Robbery, providing a big commercial success for Thomas Edison's film company

William Harley and three Davidson brothers begin the commercial production in Milwaukee of motorcycles, but complete only three by the end of the year

US author W.E.B. Du Bois publishes his first collection of essays, The Souls of Black Folk

The Pit, the second volume of an uncompleted trilogy by US novelist Frank Norris, is published posthumously

The first World Series is played between nine leading baseball teams from the National League and the American League

Italian tenor Enrico Caruso makes his US debut at the New York Metropolitan Opera

Orville Wright travels 40 yards in the first successful powered flight, at Kitty Hawk in North Carolina

Helen Keller overcomes deafness and blindness to graduate cum laude at Radcliffe College in the USA

An observatory with a 100-inch reflecting telescope is set up by George Ellery Hale on Mount Wilson in California

Hughie Cannon writes the music and words for the song originally titled "He Done Me Wrong" in the US musical Frankie and Johnny