1892
1892 was a leap year starting on Friday (see link for calendar).
Events
January-June
January 1 - Ellis Island begins accepting immigrants to the United States .
January 14 - Death of Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence , second in line heir to the throne of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland . Next in line is his younger brother Prince George of Wales .
January 15 - James Naismith publishes the rules for basketball .
January 20 - At the YMCA in Springfield, Massachusetts , the first official basketball game is played.
February 12 - Former President Abraham Lincoln 's birthday is declared a national holiday in the United States .
March 1 - Theodoros Deligiannis ends his term as Prime Minister of Greece and Konstantinos Konstantopoulos takes office
March 13 - Ernest Louis, a grandson of Queen Victoria becomes Grand Duke of Hesse and the Rhine on the death of his father, Grand Duke Louis IV .
March 31 - The world's first fingerprinting bureau formally opened by the Buenos Aires Chief of Police; it had been operating unofficially since the previous year.
April 15 - The General Electric Company is established through the merger of the Thomson-Houston Company and the Edison General Electric Company.
May 7 - The Cook Islands issue their first postage stamps .
May 22 - British conquest of Ijebu-Ode marks major extension of colonial power into Nigerian interior.
May 24 - Prince George of Wales becomes Duke of York .
May 28 - In San Francisco, California , John Muir organizes the Sierra Club .
June 11 - The Limelight Department , one of the world's first film studios, is officially established in Melbourne , Australia .
July-December
unknown dates
Births
January-March
January 1 - Artur Rodzinski , Croatian conductor (d. 1958 )
January 3 - J. R. R. Tolkien , British author (d. 1973 )
January 14 - Hal Roach , film producer (d. 1992 )
January 15 - Rex Ingram , director, writer (d. 1950 )
January 18 - Oliver Hardy , comedian, actor (d. 1957 )
January 26 ? Bessie Coleman , first licensed African-American female pilot (d. 1926 )
January 28 - Ernst Lubitsch , film director (d. 1947 )
January 31 - Eddie Cantor , actor, singer (d. 1964 )
February 13 - Grant Wood , painter (d. 1942 )
February 15 - James Forrestal , first United States Secretary of Defense (d. 1949 )
February 18 - Wendell Wilkie , politician , Presidential candidate (d. 1944 )
February 22 - Edna St. Vincent Millay , writer (d. 1950 )
February 27 - William Demarest , actor (d. 1983 )
March 10 - Arthur Honegger , composer (d. 1955 )
March 10 - Gregory La Cava , director, producer, writer (d. 1952 )
March 30 - Stefan Banach , great Polish mathematician (d. 1945 )
March 11 - Raoul Walsh , film director (d. 1980 )
April-September
April 2 - Jack Warner , Hollywood studio founder (d. 1978 )
April 6 - Donald Wills Douglas , American industrialist (d. 1981 )
April 6 - Lowell Thomas , travel writer (d. 1981 )
April 8 - Mary Pickford , actress, studio founder (d. 1979 )
April 12 - Johnny Dodds , jazz musician (d. 1940 )
April 19 - Germaine Tailleferre , composer (d. 1983 )
May 7 - Archibald MacLeish , poet, Pulitzer Prize winner (d. 1982 )
May 7 - Josip Broz Tito , president of Yugoslavia (d. 1980 )
May 9 - Zita of Bourbon-Parma , empress of Austria-Hungary (d. 1989 )
May 11 - Margaret Rutherford , actress (d. 1972 )
May 12 - Fritz Kortner , director (d. 1970 )
May 18 - Pops Foster , jazz musician (assumed birthdate) (d. 1969 )
May 18 - Ezio Pinza , Italian bass (d. 1957 )
May 31 - Michel Kikoine , Belarus painter (d. 1968 )
June 21 - Reinhold Niebuhr , American theologist (d. 1971 )
July 12 - Bruno Schulz , Polish writer and painter (d. 1942 )
July 23 - Haile Selassie I , Ethiopian emperor (d. 1975 )
July 26 - Sad Sam Jones , Major League Baseball player (d. 1966 )
August 2 - Jack Warner , Canadian film producer (d. 1978 )
August 8 - Rafael Moreno Aranzadi , Spanish football player (d. 1922 )
September 4 - Darius Milhaud , composer
September 5 - Joseph Szigeti , Hungarian violinist (d. 1973 )
September 12 - Alfred A. Knopf , American publisher (d. 1984 )
October-December
October 9 - Ivo Andrić , Croatian novelist and recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature (d.1975 )
October 9 - Marina Tsvetaeva , Russian poet
October 23 - Gummo Marx , actor, comedian (d. 1977 )
October 28 - Dink Johnson , jazz musician (d. 1954 )
October 31 - Alexander Alekhine , chess champion
November 5 - J. B. S. Haldane , British geneticist
December 2 - Leo Ornstein , composer and pianist (d. 2002 )
December 4 - Francisco Franco , Spanish dictator (d. 1975 )
December 8 - Bert Hinkler , Australian pioneer aviator. (d. 1933 )
December 12 - Herman Potočnik Noordung , Slovene astronautic pioneer and rocket engineer (d. 1929 )
unknown date
Deaths
January 14 - Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence , second in line heir to the throne of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
January 21 - John Couch Adams , astronomer
January 31 - Charles Spurgeon
February 11 - Erik Anthon Valdemar Siboni , composer
March 13 - Grand Duke Louis IV of Hesse and the Rhine
March 26 - Walt Whitman , American poet
April 25 - William Backhouse Astor, Jr. , member of the Astor family
April 26 - Sir Provo William Perry Wallis , British Admiral and naval hero
May 29 - Persian prophet, Mírzá Husayn-'Alí (Bahá'u'lláh ), founder of the Bahá'í Faith
June 9 - William Stairs , Victorian explorer
October 12 - Ernest Renan , French philologist and historian.
October 23 - Emin Pasha , German doctor, naturalist to Africa
December 2 - Jay Gould , American financier
December 6 - Werner von Siemens , German inventor and industrialist
