Charles Fort: A Fortean Chronology, 1891.

The year of 1891 (MDCCCXCI) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar.

January

January 1: Paying of old age pensions begins in Germany.
January 16: The Chilean Civil War breakes out.
January 20: Over Italy a luminous object is seen, a fall of stones an an earthquake! (Books244)
January 20: Jim Hogg becomes the first native Texan to be governor of that state.
January 24: Snowflakes, the size of saucers are said to have fallen at Nashville, Tenn. (Books19)
January 29: Liliuokalani is proclaimed Queen of Hawaii.
January 31: The Portuguese republican revolution breaks out in the northern city of Porto.

Febrauary

March

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 for the murder of Police Chief David Hennessey.
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

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: 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

June 21: First long-distance transmission of alternating current by the Ames power plant near Telluride, Colorado by Lucien and Paul Nunn.

July

August

August 8: A great shower of fishes at Seymour, Ind. They were unknown fishes. (Books546)
August 27: France and Russia conclude a defensive alliance.

September

September 5: Something was seen in the sky at Crawfordsville, Indiana. A seemingly headless monster, about 20' long and 8' wide; propelled by fin-like attachments. (Books637)
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

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.

November

Mrs Annie Abbot presents a show at the Alhambra Music Hall, London. Weighing all of 98 pounds she is easily lifted into the air by a single man if she wills it. If she does not then even six men combining their efforts can not to raise her. (Books1034)

December

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