1899

Spanish rule formally ends in Cuba with the cession of Spanish sovereignty to the U.S., concluding 400 years of the Spanish Empire in the Americas.

Mubarak Al-Sabah, the emir of Kuwait, signs the Anglo-Kuwaiti Agreement of 1899, a secret treaty with the British Empire to accept protectorate status for the Middle Eastern sheikdom in return for British protection of Kuwaiti territory.

By a vote of 57 to 27, a peace treaty between the United States and Spain is ratified by the United States Senate to end the Spanish–American War.

Because of distrubances at the funeral of the late President Faure, parliament members Paul Déroulède, Lucien Millevoye and Marcel Habert are arrested.

At Sing Sing prison in Ossining, New York, Martha M. Place becomes the first woman to be executed in an electric chair.

Seven people are shot and killed in a gun battle at the Springside Mine at Pana, Illinois, between striking white union coal miners and African-Americans hired as strikebreakers.

The natural gas companies of New York City cut prices by 60% from $1.25 to 50 cents per 1,000 cubic feet.

American boxer James J. Jeffries wins the world heavyweight boxing championship when he knocks out Cornish-born Bob Fitzsimmons at Coney Island, New York.

In Turin, Giovanni Agnelli and eight investors form the Italian automobile manufacturer F.I.A.T., producers of the Fiat motor vehicles.

At least 512 people are killed when a debris hill from the Sumitomo Besshi copper mine at Niihama, Shikoku, Japan, collapses.

The Thousand Days' War begins in Colombia as Colombian Liberal Party soldiers led by General Rafael Uribe Uribe, with support from Venezuela, begin a fight against the government of National Party president Manuel Antonio Sanclemente. The war will continue for 1,130 days.

The U.S. Supreme Court issues its decision in Brown v. New Jersey (175 U.S. 172) and upholds the constitutionality of the "struck jury" method of selecting jurors.