1891 (
MDCCCXCI) was a
common year that
started on Thursday (link
will display the full calendar) of the
Gregorian calendar (or a
common year starting on
Tuesday of the 12-day slower
Julian
calendar).
Events of 1891
January–March
April–June
July–September
October–December
Undated
Births
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 24 – Rudolf Berthold, German fighter pilot (d.
1920)
- 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
- 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 3 – Jim
Tully, vagabond, pugalist, noted American writer (d. 1947 heart disease)
- 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 – Esther Forbes, American Writer (d. 1967)
- June 30 – Man Mountain Dean, American professional
wrestler (d. 1953)
July–December
- July 2 – Karin Kock-Lindberg, Swedish politician
(d. 1976)
- 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
author (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
- September 26 – Charles Munch, French conductor and violinist
(d. 1968)
- September 28 – Myrtle Gonzalez, American film 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
- November 28 – Gregorio Perfecto, Filipino jurist &
politician (d. 1949)
- December 9 – Maksim Bahdanovič, Belarussian poet
(d. 1917)
- December 10 – Nelly Sachs, German writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1970)
- December 17 – Hu
Shi, Chinese liberal (d. 1962)
- December 26 – Henry Miller, American writer (d. 1980)
Deaths
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
- 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 author 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 author (b. 1812)
- September 28 – Herman Melville, American novelist (b.
1819)
- October 6
- 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)
- December 31 – Samuel Ajayi Crowther, 1st African
Anglican bishop; linguist and legendary missionary (b. 1809)