| 1845–1958 | Germany [earth sciences] | German naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt lays the basis of modern geography with the publication of Kosmos/Cosmos, in which he arranges geographic knowledge in a systematic fashion. |
| 1894 | England [fiction] | The English writer Anthony Hope publishes his novel The Prisoner of Zenda, which becomes a classic adventure novel. |
| 1894 | England [fiction] | The English writer Rudyard Kipling publishes his collection of tales The Jungle Book. |
| 1894 | USA [food and drink] | US confectioner Milton Hershey produces his first chocolate bar, the Hershey Milk Chocolate Bar. |
| 1894 | USA [food and drink] | Coca-Cola is bottled for the first time in the USA: however, most Coca-Cola is sold to drug stores as a syrup, to which carbonated water is added. |
| 1894 | UK [communications] | At the annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, British physicist Oliver Joseph Lodge gives the first demonstration of wireless telegraphy, transmitting signals over a distance of 60 m/180 ft; he fails to realize its practical implications. |
| 1894 | France [music] | The French composer Claude Debussy completes his tone-poem Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune/Prelude to ‘The Afternoon of a Faun’, inspired by a poem by the French poet Stéhane Mallarmé. The Russian dancer Vaslav Nijinsky uses Debussy's music for a ballet of this name first performed in 1912. |
| 1894 | Netherlands East Indies [anthropology] | Dutch anatomist Marie Eugène Dubois announces the discovery, in Java, of the remains of the first specimen of Homo erectus (‘upright man’), which he calls Pithecanthropus erectus, and which has a cranial capacity of 900 cc and is 0.5 to 1 million years old. |
| 1894 | Norway [painting] | The Norwegian artist Edvard Munch paints Anguish. |
| 1894 | France [painting] | The French artist Claude Monet paints his Rouen Cathedral series. |
| 1894 | France [photography] | French chemists Auguste and Louis Lumière patent a prototype colour film procedure. |
| 10 February 1894 | England [births and deaths] | Harold Macmillan, British politician, Conservative prime minister 1957–63, born in London, England (–1986). |
| 5 March 1894 | UK [political parties] | The British prime minister William Ewart Gladstone resigns after having split the Liberal Party over Irish Home Rule, and Lord Rosebery, a Liberal Unionist, becomes prime minister, with William Harcourt as leader of the Commons. |
| 17 April 1894 | USSR, Ukraine [births and deaths] | Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev, first secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union 1953–64 and premier 1958–64, born in Kalinovka, Ukraine in the Russian Empire (–1971). |
| 26 April 1894 | Egypt, Germany [births and deaths] | Rudolf Hess, German Nazi leader and deputy of Adolf Hitler, born in Alexandria, Egypt (–1987). |
| 5 May 1894 | USA [legislation] | US president Grover Cleveland repeals the McKinley Tariff of October 1890. |
| 22 June 1894 | Dahomey, France [colonization] | The protectorate of Dahomey is proclaimed a French colony. |
| 23 June 1894 | England [births and deaths] | Edward VIII, king of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (January–December 1936) who abdicates to marry the US divorcée Wallis Simpson, born in Richmond, Surrey, England (–1972). |
| 24 June 1894 | France [terrorism] | President Marie-François-Sadi Carnot of France is assassinated at Lyon, France, by an Italian anarchist and is succeeded by Jean Casimir-Périer. |
| 23 July 1894 | Korea, Japan [colonization] | Japanese troops seize the royal palace in Seoul, Korea, and take control of the country, which has traditionally been a Chinese fiefdom. |
| 1 August 1894 | Korea, Japan, China [wars] | Japan declares war on China over the right of influence in Korea. |
| 27 August 1894 | USA [taxation] | The Wilson–Gorman Tariff Act, introducing a 2% income tax, becomes law in the USA, passed by Congress without receiving the assent of US president Grover Cleveland. It is the nation's first graduated income tax. |
| 1 September 1894 | USA [natural disasters] | In Hinckley, Minnesota, 480 people die as a result of a forest fire. |
| 28 September 1894 | UK [shops and shopping] | Michael Marks and Tom Spencer open their first Penny Bazaar, a stall selling a wide range of domestic products, in Manchester, England.Building on a network of stalls, they open their first Marks & Spencer shop in 1922: this will grow to become Britain's most successful chain of department stores. |
| 26 October 1894 | Germany [administration] | Prince Chlodwig von Hohenlohe succeeds Leo, Count von Caprivi, as German chancellor, the unpopularity of the February commercial treaty with Russia contributing to Caprivi's fall. |
| 26 November 1894 | Russian Empire [political events] | Nicolas II becomes tsar of Russia following the death of Alexander III. |
| 3 December 1894 | Scotland, Pacific [births and deaths] | Robert Louis Stevenson, Scottish novelist who wrote Kidnapped, Treasure Island, and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, dies in Vailima, Samoa (44). |
| 22 December 1894 | France, French Guiana [crime and punishment] | Major Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish French army officer, is convicted of treason by a court martial, and is imprisoned on Devil's Island, French Guiana. |
