Charles Fort: A Fortean Chronology, 1896.

"I've been a tramp and an editor; reporter, joke-writer, fireman, cattleman, book agent, stoker, dishasher - and what of it?" - Charles Fort, the husband.

January

• January4: Utah is admitted as the 45th U.S. state.
• January 5: An Austrian newspaper reports that Wilhelm Röntgen has discovered a type of radiation later known as X-rays.
• January 12: H.L. Smith takes the first X-ray photograph.
• January 18: The X-ray machine is exhibited for the first time.

February

• February 1: The opera La bohème premieres in Turin, Italy.
• February 1: Walter Arnold, of Kent, England, is fined for speeding in excess of the contemporary speed limit of 2 mph.
• February 11: Oscar Wilde's play Salomé premieres in Paris.
• February 18: A series of more than 20 detonations at intervals of 2 or 3 minutes, heard at Ostend. (Books474) 

March

• March 1: Battle of Adwa: Ethiopia defends its independence from Italy.
• March 9: Responding to national outrage at the defeat at Adowa, Italian Prime Minister Francesco Crispi resigns.
• March 23: The New York State Legislature passes the Raines Law, restricting Sunday alcoholic beverage sales to hotels.

April

• April 3: The first edition of the Italian sports newspaper La Gazzetta dello Sport is published.
• April 6: The opening ceremonies of the 1896 Summer Olympics, the first modern Olympic Games, are held.

May

• May 8: Cricket, Against Warwickshire, Yorkshire sets a still-standing County Championship record when they accumulate an innings total of 887.
• May 18: Plessy v. Ferguson: The U.S. Supreme Court introduces the "separate but equal" doctrine and upholds segregation.
• May 26: Charles Dow publishes the first edition of the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
• May 27: The costliest and third deadliest tornado in U.S. history levels a mile wide swath of downtown St. Louis, Missouri, incurring $2.9 billion (1997 USD) in normalized damages, killing more than 255 and injuring over 1,000 people.

June

• June 4: The Ford Quadricycle, the first Ford vehicle ever developed, is completed, eventually leading Henry Ford to build the empire that "put America on wheels".
• June 12: J.T. Hearne sets a record for the earliest date of taking 100 wickets. It is equalled by Charlie Parker in 1931.
• June 15: An earthquake and tsunami in Sanriku, Japan, kills 27,000.
• June 27: A black object is seen to sail past, from west east, the moon, the transit taking 3 to 4 seconds. (Books211) 
• June 28: An explosion in the Newton Coal Company's Twin Shaft Mine in Pittston City, Pennsylvania resulted in a massive cave-in that killed 58 miners.
• July 26: International Socialist Workers and Trade Union Congress opens in London.

July

• July 13: A luminous object is seen moving near Saturn. (Books454)
• July 27: A causeway is opened between the islands of Saaremaa and Muhu in Estonia.
• July 30: Shortly after 6:30 pm, at a crossing just west of Atlantic City, New Jersey, two trains collide, crushing five loaded passenger coaches, killing 50 and seriously injuring approximately 60, in the 1896 Atlantic City rail crash.

August

• August 16: Skookum Jim Mason, George Carmack and Dawson Charlie discover gold in the Klondike.
• August 27: The shortest war in recorded history, the Anglo-Zanzibar War, starts at 9 in the morning and lasts for 45 minutes of shelling.

September

• September 22: Queen Victoria surpasses her grandfather King George III as the longest reigning monarch in British history.

October

• October 5: After a long siege, Brazilian government troops take Canudos in north Brazil, crushing Antonio Conselheiro and his followers.
• October 26: Charles Fort marries Anna Filing, an English girl he had known for many years; he was twenty-two and she was twenty-six. They honeymoon in Maine. 

November

• November 3: U.S. presidential election, Republican William McKinley defeats William Jennings Bryan.
• November 30: A large carcass, later postulated to be the remains of a gigantic octopus, is found washed ashore near St. Augustine, Florida.

December

• December 1: An unknown fleshy mass is washed upon the coast of Florida, 21 feet long, 7 feet wide and 4 1/2 feet high. (Books619)
• December 13: During an earthquake in the sky above Worcester, England, was seen "a strange meteoric light". (Books476)
• December 14: The Glasgow Subway, the third-oldest underground metro system in the world, opened.
• December 25: John Philip Sousa composes his magnum opus, the Stars and Stripes Forever, on Christmas Day.
• December 30: Jose Rizal, Filipino scholar and poet, is executed in the Philippines.