Events of 1891

January–March

• January 1 – Paying of old age pensions begins in Germany.
• January 16 The Chilean Civil War breakes out.
• January 20 – Jim Hogg becomes the first native Texan to be governor of that state.
• January 29 – Liliuokalani is proclaimed Queen of Hawaii.
• January 31 – The Portuguese republican revolution breaks out in the northern city of Porto.
• February 14 – In the FA Cup Quarter Final, a goal is deliberately stopped by handball on the goal line. An Indirect free kick is awarded, since the Penalty kick was proposed that year but not implemented. This event probably changes public opinion on the penalty kick, which was seen as 'an Irishman's motion' before (see William McCrum).
• February 15 – AIK is founded.
• February 21 – Springhill, Nova Scotia suffers a serious mining disaster.
• March 3 – The International Copyright Act of 1891 is passed by the Fifty-first United States Congress.
• March 9–12 – A powerful storm off England's south coast sinks 14 ships.
• March 14 – In New Orleans, a lynch mob storms the Old Parish Prison and lynches 11 Italians arrested but found innocent of the murder of Police Chief David Hennessy.
• March 15 – Jesse W. Reno patents the first escalator at Coney Beach.
• March 17 – The British steamship SS Utopia sinks off the coast of Gibraltar, killing 574.

April–June

• April 1 – The Wrigley Company is founded in Chicago.
• May – Mirza Ghulam Ahmad claims to be the Promised Messiah (The second coming of Jesus) and the Mahdi awaited in Islam.
• May 1 – Troops fire on a workers' May Day demonstration in support of the 8-hour workday in Fourmies, France, killing 9 and wounding 30.
• May 5 – The Music Hall in New York (now known as Carnegie Hall) has its grand opening and first public performance, with maestro Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky as the guest conductor.
• May 11 – Otsu Incident: Czarevich Nikolai Alexandrovich of Russia survives an assassination attempt while visiting Japan.
• May 15 – Pope Leo XIII issues the encyclical Rerum Novarum, resulting in the creation of many Christian Democrat Parties throughout Europe.
• May 20 – Thomas Alva Edison's prototype kinetoscope is first displayed at Edison's Laboratory, for a convention of the National Federation of Women's Clubs.
• May 31 N.S. (May 19 O.S.) – In the area of Kuperovskaya fold in Vladivostok, a ceremony marking the grand laying of the Trans-Siberian Railroad is carried out and a service on this occasion is held. Czarevich Nikolai Alexandrovich (future emperor Nikolai II) takes part in this ceremony.
• June 16 – John Abbott becomes Canada's third prime minister.
• June 21 – First long-distance transmission of alternating current by the Ames power plant near Telluride, Colorado by Lucien and Paul Nunn.

July–September

• August 27 – France and Russia conclude a defensive alliance.
• September 14 – The first penalty kick is awarded in a football (soccer) match; John Heath scores it for the Wolverhampton Wanderers.
• September 28 – The C.A. Peñarol is founded in Montevideo under the name of the CURCC (Central Uruguay Railway Cricket Club).

October–December

• October 1 – In California, Stanford University opens its doors.
• October 27 – An 8.0 earthquake strikes the village of Utsuzumi in rural Gifu, Japan, killing over 7,000 across the region and creating a 3-meter-tall surface fault that is still visible.

Undated

• The Brahmin teacher and nationalist, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, begins agitation for Indian home Rule.
• Maria Skłodowska (later Marie Curie) enters Sorbonne University.
• New Scotland Yard becomes the HQ of the London Metropolitan Police.
• Eugène Dubois makes the first discovery of Homo erectus fossils in the Dutch colony of Java.
• James Naismith invents basketball.
• The Tobacco Protest occurs in Iran.
• Oba Ovonramwen seizes the throne of Benin.
• The Auckland University Students' Association is founded.
• Seattle University is established.
• The Australian Labor Party is founded.
• Nikola Tesla invents the Tesla coil.
• 15.6 million people live in cities of 20,000 or more in England and Wales. Cities of 20,000 or more account for 54% of the total English population.
• Drexel University is founded as the Drexel Institute of Art, Science and Industry.

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
  • Mikhail Bulgakov, Russian writer (d. 1940)
  • Fritz Feigl, Austrian-born chemist (d. 1971)
• 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
  • Karl Dönitz, President of Germany (d. 1980)
  • Stephanie von Hohenlohe, Austrian-born German World War II spy (d. 1972)
  • Julie Winnefred Bertrand, Canadian supercentenarian (d. 2007)
• 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
  • Vincent Astor, American philanthropist (d. 1959)
  • Erwin Rommel, German field marshal (d. 1944)
• 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
  • Théodore de Banville, French writer (b. 1823)
  • Sir Joseph Bazalgette, English civil engineer (b. 1819)
• 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
  • Charles I of Württemberg (b. 1823)
  • Charles Stewart Parnell, Irish nationalist leader (b. 1846)
• 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)