Chicago cardiologist James Herrick publishes the first account of the cells causing sickle-cell anaemia

US geneticist Thomas Hunt Morgan establishes the chromosome theory of heredity through his study of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster

The US Congress passes the Mann White Slave Traffic Act, an attempt to control prostitution

Elizabeth Arden opens her first beauty salon on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan

Giacomo Puccini's opera Girl of the Golden West premieres in New York

Eugene B. Ely lands his Curtiss biplane on the US cruiser Pennsylvania, pointing the way to the future development of the aircraft carrier

Pennsylvania Station opens in New York, designed by McKim, Mead & White

Al Jolson makes his first recording, That Haunting Melody, for the Victor label

John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company of New Jersey is broken up by US antitrust legislation

US inventor Isaac Newton Lewis patents a lighter version of the machine gun

US driver Ray Harroun wins the first Indianapolis 500 motor race

Frank Lloyd Wright designs Taliesin, as his own home and studio, near Bear Run in Wisconsin

Scott Joplin completes a ragtime opera, Treemonisha

Frances Hodgson Burnett publishes The Secret Garden, which becomes a classic of children's literature

The Nestor Film Company opens the first film studio in Hollywood, on Sunset Boulevard

Rudolph Wurlitzer's company in the USA produces the first of its famous movie theatre organs

The US composer Irving Berlin writes 'Alexander's Ragtime Band'

Jelly Roll Morton plays in New York his Jelly Roll Blues

US aeroplane designer Glenn Curtis demonstrates the potential of the first successful flying boat, The Flying Fish

Former president Theodore Roosevelt campaigns against President Taft for the Republican nomination

Lillian and Dorothy Gish make their screen debut with the Biograph Company

William Howard Taft defeats Theodore Roosevelt at the Republican convention to win the nomination

Theodore Roosevelt's followers form a rival party to the Republicans, soon to be known as the Bull Moose party

Mack Sennett sets up the Keystone studio in California, soon to be famous for the knockabout farce of the Keystone Kops

Renascence is the title poem in college student Edna St Vincent Millay's first published collection