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Charles Fort: A Fortean Chronology, 1902.
"As late as November, 1902, in Nature Notes, 13-231, a member of the Selborne Society still argued that meteorites do not fall from the sky; that they are masses of iron upon the ground 'in the first place,' that attract lightning; that the lightning is seen, and is mistaken for a falling luminous object." - Charles Fort, The Book of the Damned.
January
- January 1: The first college football bowl game, the Rose Bowl between Michigan and Stanford, is held in Pasadena, California.
- January 8: A train collision in the New York Central Railroad's Park Avenue Tunnel kills 17, injures 38, and leads to increased demand for electric trains.
- January 23: A snowstorm at Mount Hakkoda, northern Honshu, Japan, kills 199 during a military training exercise.
- January 28: The Carnegie Institution is founded in Washington, DC with a $10 million gift from Andrew Carnegie.
February
- February 11: Police and universal suffrage demonstrators are involved in a physical altercation in Brussels.
- February 15: The Berlin U-Bahn underground is opened.
March
- March 7: Second Boer War, South African Boers win their last battle over British forces, with the capture of a British general and 200 of his men.
- March 10: A Circuit Court prevents Thomas Edison from having a monopoly on motion picture technology.
April
- April 2: Electric Theatre, the first movie theater in the United States, opens in Los Angeles, California.
- April 13: A new car speed record of 74 mph is set in Nice, France, by Leon Serpollet.
- April 19: A magnitude 7.5 earthquake rocks Guatemala, killing 2,000.
May
- May 8: In Martinique, Mount Pelée erupts, destroying the town of Saint-Pierre and killing over 30,000.
- May10: In the sky above South Devon was seen a large number of highly coloured objects like little suns or toy balloons. (Books487)
- May 13: Alfonso XIII of Spain begins his reign.
- May 15: It is claimed that in a field outside Grass Valley, California, Lyman Gilmore achieves flight in a powered airplane (a steam-powered glider). There is no surviving evidence to verify this claim.
- May 20: Cuba gains independence from the United States.
- May 29: Lord Rosebery opens London School of Economics.
- May 31: The Treaty of Vereeniging ends the Second Boer War.
June
- June 2: The Anthracite Coal Strike begins in the United States.
- June 16: Australia: Female British subjects (with the exception of Asians, Aborigines and Africans) win the vote with the Uniform Franchise Act.
July
- July 10: The Rolling Mill Mine disaster in Johnstown, PA kills 112 miners.
- July 11: Lord Salisbury retires as British prime minister.
- July 11: The Order of the Garter is conferred on Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria.
- July 14: St Mark's Campanile in Venice collapses.
August
- August 1: 100 miners die in a pit explosion in Wollongong, Australia.
- August 9: Edward VII is crowned King of the United Kingdom.
- August 22: Theodore Roosevelt becomes the first American President to ride in an automobile when he rides in a Columbia Electric Victoria through Hartford, Connecticut.
- August 24: A statue of Joan of Arc was unveiled in Saint-Pierre-le-Moûtier.
- August 30: In Martinique, Mount Pelée erupts again, destroying the town of Morne-Rouge causing 1000 deaths.
October
- October 21: In the United States, a five month strike by the United Mine Workers ends.
November
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November 12-13: Occured the greatest fall of matter in the history of Australia. (Books32)
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November 14: It "rained mud" in Tasmania. (Books32)
- November 30: The second-in-command of Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch gang, Kid Curry Logan, is sentenced to 20 years hard labor.
- November-December: The Venezuela Crisis occurs between the United States and Germany.
December
- December 10: The first Aswan Dam on The Nile is completed.
- December 31: Scott, Shackleton and Wilson reach the furthest southern point thus far by man at 82°17'S.