1. The Boer War ends.
2. Leon Trotsky flees Russia to London.
3. Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness,
4. The premiere of Claude Debussy’s opera Pelléas et Mélisande.
5. Cecil Rhodes, founder of the De Beers diamond cartel, the Rhodes Scholars program, and exploiter of Africa, dies.
6. French novelist Emile Zola dies.
7. Pragmatism is born with philosopher William JamesThe Varieties of Religious Experience.
8. The signing of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance.
9. Aswan Dam completed.
10. Mount Pelée erupts and destroys the town of St. Pierre on the island of Martinique.
11. Tenor Enrico Caruso's hit records ensure the popularity of discs over wax cylinder records.
12. Arthur Conan Doyle resurrects Sherlock Holmes in The Hound of the Baskervilles
13. Photographer Alfred Stieglitz curates the first major show of photographs as art.

- Our Times: The Illustrated History of the 20th century