Decades: 1840s 1850s 1860s 1870s 1880s - 1890s - 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s
Years: 1887 1888 1889 1890 1891 - 1892 - 1893 1894 1895 1896 1897
January 1 - Ellis Island begins accepting immigrants to the United States.
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 13 - Ernest Louis, a grandson of Queen Victoria becames Grand Duke of Hesse and the Rhine on the death of his father, Grand Duke Louis IV.
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 28 - In San Francisco, California, John Muir organizes the Sierra Club.
July 4-18 British general election: Unionist government loses its majority.
August 4 - The family of Lizzie Borden is found murdered in their Fall River, Massachusetts home.
August 9 - Thomas Edison receives a patent for a two-way telegraph.
August 18 William Ewart Gladstone assumes British premiership at head of Liberal government with Irish Nationalist Party support.
September 15 - Sergei Witte replaces Ivan Vishnegradksy as Russian finance minister.
October 12 - To mark 400 anniversary Columbus Day holiday, the "Pledge of Allegiance" was first recited in unison by students in US public schools.
October 31 - Arthur Conan Doyle publishes The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.
November 8 - U.S. presidential election, 1892: Grover Cleveland is elected over Benjamin Harrison and James B. Weaver to win the second of his non-consecutive terms.
November 17 - French troops occupy Abomey, capital of kingdom of Dahomey.
December 5 - John Thompson becomes Canada's fourth prime minister.
Last open land rush is held in Oklahoma.
The Stanley Cup is donated by Sir Frederick Arthur.
Pennsauken is incorporated.
January 3 - J. R. R. Tolkien, British author (+ 1973)
January 14 - Hal Roach, film producer (+ 1992)
January 15 - Rex Ingram, director, writer (+ 1950)
January 18 - Oliver Hardy, comedian, actor (+ 1957)
January 28 - Ernst Lubitsch, film director (+ 1947)
January 31 - Eddie Cantor, actor, singer (+ 1964)
February 13 - Grant Wood, painter (+ 1942)
February 15 - James Forrestal, first United States Secretary of Defense (+ 1949)
February 18 - Wendell Wilkie, politican, Presidential candidate (+ 1944)
February 22 - Edna St. Vincent Millay, writer (+ 1950)
February 27 - William Demarest, actor (+ 1983)
March 10 - Arthur Honegger, composer (+1955)
March 10 - Gregory La Cava, director, producer, writer (+ 1952)
March 30 - Stefan Banach, great Polish mathematician (+1945)
March 11 - Raoul Walsh, film director (+ 1980)
April 2 - Jack Warner, Hollywood studio founder (+ 1978)
April 6 - Donald Wills Douglas, American industrialist (+ 1981)
April 6 - Lowell Thomas, travel writer (+ 1981)
April 8 - Mary Pickford, actress, studio founder (+ 1979)
April 19 - Germaine Tailleferre, composer
May 7 - Archibald MacLeish, poet, Pulitzer Prize winner (+ 1982)
May 7 - Josip Broz Tito, president of Yugoslavia (+ 1980)
May 8 - Ezio Pinza, opera singer (+ 1957)
May 9 - Zita of Bourbon-Parma, empress of Austria-Hungary (+ 1989)
May 11 - Margaret Rutherford, actress (+ 1972)
May 12 - Fritz Kortner, director
May 31 - Michel Kikoine, Belarus painter (+ 1968)
July 23 - Haile Selassie I, Ethiopian emperor (+ 1975)
September 4 - Darius Milhaud, composer
October 9 - Marina Tsvetaeva, Russian poet
October 31 - Alexander Alekhine, chess champion
November 5 - J. B. S. Haldane, British geneticist
December 2 - Leo Ornstein, composer and pianist (+ 2002)
December 4 - Francisco Franco, Spanish dictator, 1939 - 1975
December 12 - Herman Potočnik Noordung, Slovene astronautic pioneer and rocket engineer (+ 1929)
Ernest Brastins born in Latvia, religious leader (Dievturiba)
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 26 - Sir Provo William Perry Wallis, British Admiral and naval hero
May 29 - Bahaullah, Prophet-Founder of the Bahai Faith.
June 9 - William Stairs, Victorian explorer
October 23 - Emin Pasha, German doctor, naturalist to Africa
December 2 - Jay Gould, American financier
December 6 - Werner von Siemens, German inventor and industrialist.
Ernest Renan, French philologist and historian.