1909

• British fears grow as the German navy expands its fleet
• A Royal Commission on the poor laws in Britain condemns workhouses.
• The British Prime Minister Lloyd George introduces a Budget to raise taxes and fund pensions - the move meets with Tory fury and sparks a constitutional crisis.
• The Union of South Africa is proclaimed, uniting the British Cape Colony and Natal and the Boer Transvaal and Orange River colonies.
• Suffragettes on hunger strike in Birmingham are subjected to force feeding.
• Charles Rennie Mackintosh completes the Glasgow School of Art.
• An earthquake hits Messina in southern Italy, killing around 200,000 people.
• British explorer Ernest Shackleton almost reaches the South Pole.
• The prohibition movement closes many saloon bars in the United States.
• Robert E. Peary of the US reaches the North Pole, amid controversial claims by Dr Frederick Cook that he had reached the pole earlier.
• Young Turks topple Sultan Abdul Hamid in Constantinople.
• Louis Bleriot flies the English Channel for the first time.
• Georges Clemenceau and Bernhard von Bulow end their tenures as head of the French and German governments.
• 12-year-old Prince Sultan Ahmed Mirza of Persia replaces his ousted brother, Mohammad, as Shah.
• Paris is rocked by riots as a mob protest outside the Spanish embassy against a Spanish anarchist's execution in Barcelona.
• Guglielmo Marconi wins a Nobel prize for his contributions to radio.
• Filippo Marinetti publishes the "Futurist Manifesto of Poetry" in Le Figaro.
• Indian nationalists adopt terror tactics in a spate of killings.
• Japanese statesman Prince Ito Hirobumi, known as the "Japanese Bismarck", is assassinated by a Korean nationalist.
• The Ballets Russes, presented by Sergei Diaghilev, debuts in Paris.

• The Chinese Empress Dowager Ci Xi
• Chiricahua Apache chief Geronimo
• Irish playwright John Synge, who wrote "The Playboy of the Western World"
• British poet and literary critic Algernon Charles Swinburne
• British writer George Meredith
• US industrialist Edward H Harriman
• Japanese statesman Prince Ito Hirobumi (see above)
• Belgian King Leopold II
• Spanish pianist and composer Isaac Albeniz
• Louis Prang, "Father of the Christmas Card"

1908|1910