| 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. |
| 1901 | [fiction] | The Australian writer Miles Franklin publishes her novel My Brilliant Career, widely seen as one of the first wholly Australian novels. |
| 1901 | [fiction] | The English writer Rudyard Kipling publishes his novel Kim. |
| 1901 | USA [food and drink] | The Japanese-born US chemist Satori Kato creates the first soluble instant coffee. |
| 1901 | USA [motor vehicles] | The mass production of cars in Detroit, Michigan begins when US car manufacturer Ransom Eli Olds produces the three-horsepower Oldsmobile buggy. The first car with a curved dash, it is also the first to be made using assembly line techniques and the first commercially successful car in the USA. |
| 1901 | [painting] | The Norwegian artist Edvard Munch paints Girls on the Bridge. |
| 1901 | [philosophy] | German philosopher Edmund Husserl publishes Logische Untersuchungen/Logical Investigations. |
| 1901 | [plays] | The Irish writer George Bernard Shaw publishes his play Caesar and Cleopatra, which is first performed in 1906 in Berlin, Germany. |
| 1901 | USA [popular music] | ‘Ragtime’ music, an African-American musical style characterized by a syncopated beat, is popular in the USA, but the American Federation of Musicians condemns it because of its association with black Americans and ‘low dives’ and recommends that its members refrain from playing it. |
| 1901 | Germany [public health] | Dutch physician Gerrit Grijns demonstrates that beriberi is caused by a nutritional deficiency (later found to be of vitamin B1). |
| 1901 | Austria [biology] | Austrian immunologist Karl Landsteiner discovers the ABO blood group system. |
| 1901 | [solo and chamber music] | The Russian composer Sergey Rachmaninov completes his Piano Concerto No. 2. |
| 1901 | United Kingdom [statistics and demography] | A fall in the death rate in Britain leads to an increase in the population, to over 40 million people. Over 6.5 million people live in London. |
| 1 January 1901 | Australia [political events] | The Commonwealth of Australia comes into being, with the federalist and protectionist Edmund Barton as prime minister. |
| 22 January 1901 | United Kingdom [political events] | Following the death of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom after a brief illness, the prince of Wales accedes to the throne as Edward VII. |
| 22 January 1901 | [births and deaths] | Victoria, queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland 1837–1901, empress of India 1876–1901, dies in Osborne, near Cowes, Isle of Wight, with Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany at her side (80). |
| 27 January 1901 | [births and deaths] | Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi, Italian operatic composer, dies in Milan, Italy (87). |
| 22 July 1901 | United Kingdom [legislation] | The British House of Lords rules on the ‘Taff Vale Case’, and weakens the position of trade unions by ruling that a trade union may now be liable for damages caused by its members during a strike. This means that the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, who have been sued by the Taff Vale Railway Company, will have to pay a fine of £23,000. |
| 6 September 1901 | USA [political events] | The anarchist Leon Czolgosz shoots the US president William McKinley at a reception in Buffalo, New York. |
| 7 September 1901 | China [revolution] | The Peace of Beijing formally ends the Boxer Rising in China. Under the agreement, China is to pay an indemnity to the European powers, lower tariffs on imports, and accept a strengthening of European protection of its representatives and interests. |
| 9 September 1901 | [births and deaths] | Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, French artist who depicted the personalities of Parisian night life, dies in Malromé, France (36). |
| 5 December 1901 | [births and deaths] | Walt Disney, US motion-picture producer and creator of Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and other characters, born in Chicago, Illinois (–1966). |
| 5 December 1901 | [births and deaths] | Werner Heisenberg, German physicist and philosopher who introduced the uncertainty principle into quantum mechanics, born in Würzburg, Germany (–1976). |
| 10 December 1901 | Sweden [charities] | King Charles XV of Sweden awards the first Nobel prizes, funded by the legacy of the Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel. |
| 12 December 1901 | [communications] | Italian physicist Guglielmo Marconi, in St John's, Newfoundland, Canada, receives the letter ‘S’ in Morse code, from Poldhu, Cornwall, England. It is the first transmission of a radio signal across the Atlantic Ocean, a distance of 3,200 km/2,000 mi, and it inaugurates the development of radio communication. |
