Timeline - 1895 - 1899

“Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.”

Lord William Thomson Kelvin

January 5 - French officer Alfred Dreyfus was stripped of his army rank, and sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil's Island, on trumped up charges, believed to be because he was Jewish.
January 6 – An attempt led by Robert Wilcox to overthrow the Republic of Hawaii and restore the Kingdom of Hawaii, began with royalist troops landing at Waikiki Beach in O'ahu and clashing with republican defenders. The rebellion ended after three days and the remaining 190 royalists are taken prisoners of war.
January 13 - First Italo-Ethiopian War: Battle of Coatit - Italian forces defeated the Ethiopians.
January 31 – The German ocean liner SS Elbe sank, killing 334 people on board, 20 minutes after the ship had collided with the British steamer SS Crathie in the North Sea.
February 20 - The gold reserve of the U.S. Treasury was saved, when J. P. Morgan and the Rothschilds loaned $65 million worth of gold to the United States government.
April 17 - The Treaty of Shimonoseki was signed between China and Japan. This marked the end of the First Sino-Japanese War.
25th June - Robert Gascoyne-Cecil (Conservative) became British Prime Minister, for the third time.
8th November - Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen discovered X-rays.

February 14th - Austro-Hungarian Zionist Theodor Herzl published "Der Judenstaat" (The Jewish State), encouraging Jews to purchase land in Palestine.
March 1st - Henri Becquerel discovered radioactivity.
Battle of Adwa - Ethiopia defended its independence from Italy, ending the First Italo-Ethiopian War.
April – Svante Arrhenius first published the "greenhouse law", becoming the first person to predict that emissions of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels and other combustion processes are large enough to cause global warming through the greenhouse effect.
May 26th - Coronation of Nicholas II and Alexandra Feodorovna in the Dormition Cathedral, Moscow, the the last coronation of a Russian monarch.
November 3rd – William McKinley became US President.

Marie Curie introduced the word 'radioactivity'.
Marie & Pierre Curie discovered Polonium and Radium.
February 27 – The French military governor of Madagascar, Joseph Gallieni, exiled Queen Ranavalona III to Réunion, abolishing the monarchy the next day.
April 18th – The Greco-Turkish War of 1897 broke out.
April 30th – J. J. Thomson of the Cavendish Laboratory announced his discovery of the first sub-atomic particle the electron.
September 20th – Greece and Turkey sign a peace treaty to end the Greco-Turkish War.
October 12th - The Korean Empire was proclaimed, marking the end of the Joseon dynasty after just over 500 years.

February 15th - The USS Maine exploded and sank in Havana Harbour, Cuba, for reasons never fully established, killing 266 men. The event precipitated the United States' declaration of war on Spain two months later.
1st March - Vladimir Lenin formed the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party.
April 21st – The American Spanish War - The United States Navy began a blockade of Cuban ports and the USS Nashville captured a Spanish merchant ship.
April 23rd – The American Spanish War - A conference of senior Spanish Navy officers led by naval minister Segismundo Bermejo decided to send Admiral Pascual Cervera's squadron to Cuba and Puerto Rico.
April 25th - The American Spanish War - The United States declared war on Spain.
May 7th–9th – Hundreds of demonstrators were killed, when General Fiorenzo Bava Beccaris ordered troops to fire on a rally in Milan, Italy.
June 21st – The American Spanish War - The United States captured Guam, making it the first overseas territory of the U.S.
July 25th – The American Spanish War - The United States invasion of Puerto Rico began, with a landing at Guánica Bay.

1st January - Cuba was liberated from Spanish rule by the US, American occupation continued until 1902
4th February -The Philippine-American War began with fighting between American and Philippine revolutionary forces.
6th February - The Spanish-American War ended, the peace treaty was ratified by the US Senate.
29th July - The first international Peace Conference ended, with the signing of the First Hague Convention.