1907 in the United States

Incumbents

Federal Government">Federal government of the United States">Federal Government

• President: Theodore Roosevelt
• Vice President: Charles W. Fairbanks
• Chief Justice: Melville Fuller
• Speaker of the House of Representatives: Joseph Gurney Cannon
• Congress: 59th, 60th

  Governors

Lieutenant Governors

Events

January–March

• January 1 - Daniel J. Tobin becomes president of the Teamsters, beginning a 45-year presidency.
• January 23 - Charles Curtis from Kansas becomes the first Native American U.S. Senator.
• February 6 – Nantahala National Forest is established.
• February 12 - The steamship Larchmont collides with the Harry Hamilton in Long Island Sound; 183 lives are lost.
• February 26 - President Theodore Roosevelt appoints Col. George Washington Goethals as chief engineer of the Panama Canal.
• March 1 – Colville National Forest is established.
• March 2 – Umpqua and Custer National Forest are established.
• March 9 - Reclamation Service within the Department of the Interior.

  April–June

• April - This month's issue of Good Housekeeping magazine displays the cover price One Dollar a Year.
• April 7 - Hersheypark opens in Hershey, Pennsylvania.
• April 15 - Triangle Fraternity, for engineering and related majors, is founded at Pennsylvania State University.
• April 17 - Today is the all-time busiest day of immigration through Ellis Island; this will be the busiest year ever seen here, with 1.1 million immigrants arriving.
• April 18 - The, a, is commissioned.
• May 25 – Inyo National Forest is established.

  July–September

• July 21 - The sinks after colliding with the lumber schooner San Pedro off Shelter Cove, California, resulting in 88 deaths.
• July 23 – Chugach National Forest is established.
• August 1 - Aeronautical Division established within the U.S. Army Signal Corps.
• August 15 - Ordination in Constantinople of Fr. Raphael Morgan, first African-American Orthodox priest, "Priest-Apostolic" to America and the West Indies.
• August 17 - Pike Place Market in Seattle, Washington officially opens for business.
• August 28 - UPS is founded by James E. Casey in Seattle, Washington.
• September 7 - The new passenger liner makes its maiden voyage from Liverpool, England to New York City.
• September 10 - The first Neiman Marcus luxury department store opens in Dallas, Texas.
• September 29 - A foundation stone is laid for the Washington National Cathedral; construction will not be fully completed until 1990.

  October–December

• October 1 - Office of the Superintendent of Prisons and Prisoners established within Department of Justice.
• October 22 - Panic of 1907: A bank run forces New York's Knickerbocker Trust Company to suspend operations.
• October 24 - A major American financial crisis is averted when J. P. Morgan, E. H. Harriman, James Stillman, Henry Clay Frick, and other Wall Street financiers create a $25,000,000 pool to invest in the shares on the plunging New York Stock Exchange, ending the bank panic of 1907, a move which ultimately leads to establishment of the Federal Reserve System.
• November 3 - President Roosevelt approves the takeover of the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company by J. P. Morgan's U.S. Steel company in the wake of the panic of 1907.
• November 7 - Delta Sigma Pi is founded at the School of Commerce, Accounts and Finance of New York University in New York City.
• November 16
• * Indian Territory and Oklahoma Territory become Oklahoma, which is admitted as the 46th U.S. state.
• * Passenger liner RMS Mauretania, the world's largest and fastest at this date, sets out on her maiden voyage from Liverpool to New York.
• November 28 - Johnny Hayes wins the inaugural Yonkers Marathon.
• December 6 - Monongah Mining Disaster: A coal mine explosion kills 362 workers in Monongah, West Virginia.
• December 16 - The Great White Fleet departs Hampton Roads, Virginia on a 14-month circumnavigation of the globe.
• December 18 – Ouachita National Forest is established.
• December 19 - An explosion in a coal mine in Jacobs Creek, Pennsylvania kills 239.
• December 31 - The first electric ball drops in Times Square.

Undated

• Indiana becomes the world's first legislature to place laws permitting compulsory sterilization for eugenic purposes on the statute book.
• The Lockport Powerhouse is built in Illinois.
• The Osage Nation retains mineral rights in reservation lands.

  Ongoing

• Progressive Era
• Lochner era
• Black Patch Tobacco Wars
• Great White Fleet voyage

  Sport

• November 23 - Yale Bulldogs win their first IAAUS College Football National Championship

  Births

• January 2 - Gordon L. Allott, U.S. Senator from Colorado from 1955 to 1973
• January 19 - Paul Fannin, U.S. Senator from Arizona from 1959 to 1965
• February 3 - James A. Michener, novelist
• February 15 - Cesar Romero, actor
• February 22
• * Sheldon Leonard, screen actor, writer, director and producer
• * Robert Young, actor
• February 25 - Kathryn Wasserman Davis, philanthropist
• February 26 - Dub Taylor, screen character actor
• February 27 - Mildred Bailey, Native American jazz singer
• February 28 - Milton Caniff, cartoonist
• March 12 - Dorrit Hoffleit, astronomer
• April 21 - Wade Mainer, singer and banjoist
• May 4 - Lincoln Kirstein, cultural figure
• May 11 - Kent Taylor, screen actor
• May 12 - Katharine Hepburn, screen actress
• May 15 - Thomas J. Dodd, U.S. Senator from Connecticut from 1959 to 1971
• May 26 - John Wayne, film actor and director
• May 27 - Rachel Carson, environmental writer
• June 6 - Nate Barragar, American football player and actor
• July 4
• * John Anderson, discus thrower
• * Gordon Griffith, actor, director and producer
• * Howard Taubman, author and critic
• July 7 - Robert A. Heinlein, science fiction author
• August 19 - Thruston Ballard Morton, U.S. Senator from Kentucky from 1957 to 1968
• August 21 - John G. Trump, electrical engineer, inventor and physicist
• August 29 - Lurene Tuttle, radio actress
• August 30 - John Mauchly, computer scientist
• August 31 - William Shawn, editor of The New Yorker
• September 17 - Warren E. Burger, 15th Chief Justice of the United States
• September 19 - Lewis F. Powell Jr., Associate Justice of the Supreme Court
• November 16 - Burgess Meredith, actor
• December 23 - James Roosevelt, businessman and politician
• December 25
• * Cab Calloway, African American jazz singer and bandleader
• * Glenn McCarthy, oil tycoon
• * Rufus P. Turner, African American electronic engineer

  Deaths

• January 2 - Henry R. Pease, U.S. Senator from Mississippi from 1874 to 1875
• January 24 - Russell A. Alger, U.S. Senator from Michigan from 1902 to 1907
• February 17 - Henry Steel Olcott, military officer and co-founder of the Theosophical Society
• March 9 - James L. Pugh, U.S. Senator from Alabama from 1880 to 1897
• April 14 - Frank Manly Thorn, lawyer, politician, government official, essayist, journalist, humorist, inventor and 6th Superintendent of the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey
• April 23 - Alferd Packer, cannibal
• May 1 - Melissa Elizabeth Riddle Banta, poet
• May 4 - John Watts de Peyster, author, philanthropist and soldier
• May 8 - Edmund G. Ross, U.S. Senator from Kansas from 1866 to 1871
• May 24 - John Patton, Jr., U.S. Senator from Michigan from 1894 to 1895
• May 26 - Ida Saxton McKinley, First Lady of the United States
• June 11 - John Tyler Morgan, U.S. Senator from Alabama from 1877 to 1907
• June 14 - William Le Baron Jenney, architect and civil engineer
• June 21 - Lucien Baker, U.S. Senator from Kansas from 1895 to 1901
• July 25 - Peter Anderson, Union Army Medal of Honor recipient
• July 27 - Edmund Pettus, U.S. Senator from Alabama from 1897 to 1907
• August 1 - Lucy Mabel Hall-Brown, physician and writer
• August 3 - Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Beaux-Arts sculptor
• October 3 - Jacob Nash Victor, railroad builder
• October 8 - Mary Cyrene Burch Breckinridge, Second Lady of the United States
• October 30 - Caroline Dana Howe, author
• November 22 - Asaph Hall, astronomer
• December 7 - Carrie Clark, model, notably of Muriel's Babies cigar box fame
• December 23 - Stephen Mallory II, U.S. Senator from Florida from 1897 to 1907
• Ellen Russell Emerson, ethnologist
• Sarah Gibson Humphreys, author and suffragist