1891

[change] Births

[change] January  – June

• January 1  – Charles Bickford, American actor (d. 1967)
• January 7  – Zora Neale Hurston, Harlem Renaissance writer (d. 1960)
• January 8  – Walther Bothe, German physicist, Nobel Prize in Physics (d. 1957)
• January 22  – Antonio Gramsci, Italian Communist writer and politician (d. 1937)
• January 27  – Ilya Ehrenburg, Russian writer (d. 1967)
• February 9  – Ronald Colman, English actor (d. 1958)
• February 11  – J.W. Hearne, English cricketer (d. 1965)
• February 21  – Sean Heuston, Irish rebel (d. 1916)
• February 27  – David Sarnoff, Russian-born American broadcasting pioneer (d. 1971)
• March 10  – Sam Jaffe, American actor (d. 1984)
• March 19  – Earl Warren, Chief Justice of the United States (d. 1974)
• March 29  – Yvan Goll, French lyricist and dramatist (d. 1950)
• April 2  – Max Ernst, German painter (d. 1976)
• April 7  – Ole Kirk Christiansen, founder of the Lego group (d. 1958)
• April 13  – Nella Larsen, American novelist (d. 1964)
• April 15  – Wallace Reid, American actor (d. 1923)
• April 17  – George Adamski, Polish-born alleged UFO traveler (d. 1965)
• April 23  – Sergei Prokofiev, Soviet composer (d. 1953)
• May 7  – Harry McShane, Scottish socialist (d. 1988)
• May 15
  • Mikhail Bulgakov, Russian writer (d. 1940)
  • Fritz Feigl, Austrian-born chemist (d. 1971)
• May 16  – Richard Tauber, Austrian tenor (d. 1948)
• May 18  – Rudolf Carnap, German philosopher (d. 1970)
• May 19  – Oswald Boelcke, German World War I pilot (d. 1916)
• May 22  – Eddie Edwards, American jazz trombonist (d. 1963)
• May 23  – Pär Lagerkvist, Swedish writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1974)
• May 24  – William F. Albright, American archeologist and Biblical scholar (d. 1971)
• June 9  – Cole Porter, American composer and songwriter (d. 1964)
• June 20  – John A. Costello, second President of Ireland (d. 1976)
• June 21  – Hermann Scherchen, German conductor (d. 1966)
• June 30  – Man Mountain Dean, American professional wrestler (d. 1953)

[change] July - December

• July 5  – John Howard Northrop, American chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1987)
• August 2  – Viktor Maksimovich Zhirmunsky, Russian literary historian, linguist (d. 1971)
• August 21  – Emiliano Mercado del Toro, Puerto Rican, longest-lived war veteran ever and last verified person born in 1891 (d. 2007)
• September 3  – Bessie Delany, African American physician and author (d. 1995)
• September 12  – Pedro Albizu Campos, advocate of Puerto Rican independence (d. 1965)
• September 14  – William F. Friedman, American cryptographer (d. 1969)
• September 16
  • Karl Dönitz, President of Germany (d. 1980)
  • Stephanie von Hohenlohe, Austrian-born German World War II spy (d. 1972)
  • Julie Winnefred Bertrand, Canadian supercentenarian (d. 2007)
• September 26  – Charles Munch, French conductor and violinist (d. 1968)
• September 28  – Myrtle Gonzalez, American film and stage actress (d. 1918)
• October 12  – Fumimaro Konoe, Prime Minister of Japan (d. 1945)
• October 20  – James Chadwick, English physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1974)
• October 24  – Rafael Leónidas Trujillo, dictator of the Dominican Republic (d. 1961)
• November 14  – Frederick Banting, Canadian physician, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 1941)
• November 15
  • Vincent Astor, American philanthropist (d. 1959)
  • Erwin Rommel, German field marshal (d. 1944)
• November 28  – Gregorio Perfecto, Filipino jurist & politician (d. 1949)
• December 9  – Maksim Bahdanovič, Belarussian poet (d. 1917)
• December 10  – Nelly Sachs, German writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1970)
• December 26  – Henry Miller, American writer (d. 1980)

[change] Deaths

[change] January  – June

• January 5  – Emma Abbott, American opera singer (b. 1849)
• January 16  – Léo Delibes, French composer (b. 1836)
• January 21  – Calixa Lavallée, Canadian composer (b. 1842)
• February 14  – William Tecumseh Sherman, American Civil War General (b. 1820)

March 15

• • Théodore de Banville, French writer (b. 1823)
  • Sir Joseph Bazalgette, English civil engineer (b. 1819)
• March 29  – Georges Seurat, French painter (b. 1859)
• April 2  – Ahmed Vefik Pasha, Turkish statesman (b. 1823)
• April 7  – P. T. Barnum, American showman (b. 1810)
• April 24  – Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, Prussian field marshal (b. 1800)
• April 25  – Nathaniel Woodard, educationalist (b. 1811)
• May 8  – Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Russian-born author and theosophist (b. 1831)
• June 6  – John A. MacDonald, first Prime Minister of Canada (b. 1815)

[change] July  – December

• July 4  – Hannibal Hamlin, Vice President of the United States (b. 1809)
• August 12  – James Russell Lowell, American poet and essayist (b. 1819)
• August 14  – Sarah Childress Polk, First Lady of the United States (b. 1803)
• August 29  – Pierre Lallement, French inventor of the bicycle (b. 1843?)
• September 7  – Lorenzo Sawyer, 9th Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of California (b. 1820)
• September 11  – Antero de Quental, Portuguese poet (b. 1842)
• September 15  – Ivan Goncharov, Russian author (b. 1812)
• September 28  – Herman Melville, American novelist (b. 1819)
• October 6
  • Charles I of Württemberg (b. 1823)
  • Charles Stewart Parnell, Irish nationalist leader (b. 1846)
• October 15  – Gilbert Arthur a Beckett, English writer (b. 1837)
• October 23  – Ambrosius of Optina, Russian Orthodox saint (b. 1812)
• November 6  – J. Gregory Smith, Vermont governor (b. 1818)
• November 10  – Arthur Rimbaud, French poet (b. 1854)
• December 5  – Pedro II, Brazilian deposed emperor (b. 1826)