1908 is a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will take you to calendar).

Events

January-February

• January 1 - A ball signifying New Year's Day drops in New York City's Times Square for the first time
• January 8 - A train collision occurs in the Park Avenue Tunnel in New York City killing 17, injuring 38 and leading to increased demand for electric trains.
• January 11 - Grand Canyon National Monument is created
• January 12 - A long-distance radio message is sent from the Eiffel Tower for the first time.
• January 21 - New York City passes a law, the Sullivan Ordinance , making it illegal for aliens to smoke in public only to be vetoed by the mayor.
• January 24 - Robert Baden-Powell begins the Boy Scout movement
• February 1 - King Carlos I of Portugal and Crown Prince Luis shot in Lisbon
• February 11 - Australia regain The Ashes with a 308 run cricket victory over England.
• February 18 - Japanese immigration to USA forbidden

April-June

• April 7 - Herbert Henry Asquith takes office as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, from Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman
• April 14 - In Denmark, suffrage of every tax-paying citizen
• April 21 - Friedrich A Cook's claimed date to have reached North Pole
• April 27 - The 1908 Summer Olympics open in London.
• May 10 - Mother's Day is observed for the first time (Andrew's Methodist Church in Grafton, West Virgina ).
• May 26 - At Masjid-al-Salaman in southwest Persia, the first major commercial oil strike in the Middle East is made. The rights to the resource are quickly acquired by the United Kingdom.
• June 30 - The Tunguska impact event, also known as the "Russian explosion" occurs in Siberia.

July-December

• July 6 - Robert Peary sets sail for the Arctic North Pole.
• July 11-12 night - Explosion of a ship Amalthea in the Malmö harbor in Sweden, housing 80 British strikebreakers . 1 dead, 20 injured.
• July 22 - Albert Fisher establishes the Fisher Body Company to manufacture carriage and automobile bodies.
• July 26 - United States Attorney General Charles Joseph Bonaparte issues an order to immediately staff the Office of the Chief Examiner (later renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation).
• October 5 - Bulgaria declares its independence from the Ottoman Empire - Ferdinand I of Bulgaria becomes Tsar
• December 28 - An 7 Richter scale earthquake destroys Messina, Sicily and rocks Calabria killing over 75,000.
• November - William Howard Taft defeats William Jennings Bryan in the U.S. presidential election
• November 13 - Andrew Fisher becomes the 5th Prime Minister of Australia.

unknown dates

• First Zionist colony in Palestine
• British suffragettes begin a campaign for female suffrage
• Due to the evidence collected by Roger Casement, Leopold II of Belgium is forced to make reforms in Congo, which is his personal colony
• Danish minister of Justice, Alberti, is revealed to be an embezzler
• The Children's Encyclopedia
• Bureau of Investigation, forerunner of FBI, founded
• Blackball coal miner strike in New Zealand lasts 11 weeks
• Isak Saba , the first Sami in the Norwegian parliament
• Henri Matisse open his own art academy
• Serial killer Belle Guinness disappears in Laporte
• Young Turks revolution in the Ottoman Empire
• Change of Emperor of Qing Dynasty from Guangxu Emperor of China (1875-1908) to Henry Puyi (1909-1911)
• Henry Ford produces its first Model T automobile.
• A 40,000-year-old Neandertal boy skeleton is found at Le Moustier in southwest France.
• The Child Labour Act of Ontario is passed.
• The Irish Universities Act, 1908 is passed and creates the National University of Ireland at Dublin and the Queen's University of Belfast.
• First Ideal Home Exhibition held.
• De Meester's Dutch government resigns.
• Discovery of oil deposits near the PPersian city of Abadan.
• Abd al-Aziz IV, sultan of Morocco is deposed and is succeeded by his brother Abd al-Hafiz.
• The Young Turks rebel and force sultan Abd al-Hamid II to adhere to the constitution of 1876.
• The University of the Philippines was founded at Manila.
• The University of Alberta was founded in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.

Births

January

• January 7 - Red Allen, jazz musician (d. 1967)
• January 9 - Simone de Beauvoir, French feminist writer (d. 1986)
• January 12 - Jean Delannoy, film director
• January 14 - Rus Columbo , singer, bandleader, and composer
• January 15 - Edward Teller, American physicist (d. 2003)
• January 22 - Lev Davidovich Landau, Russian physicist (d. 1968)
• January 26 - Stéphane Grappelli, musician, composer (d. 1997)
• January 27 - Oran "Hot Lips" Page, jazz trumpeter (d. 1954)

February

• February 1 - George Pál, director, producer (d. 1980)
• February 5 - Daisy and Violet Hilton, conjoined twins, actresses (d. 1969)
• February 7 - Buster Crabbe, Olympic Games swimming gold medalist, actor
• February 8 - Emil Staiger , scientist of literature (d. 1987)
• February 11 - Sutan Takdir Alishahbana , Indonesian linguistic/author/novelist.
• February 11 - Vivian Ernest Fuchs, geologist/explorer.
• February 11 - Josh White , musician
• February 15 - HAP Grieshaber , painter and graphic artist (d. 1981)
• February 17 - Red Barber, baseball announcer, sports journalist (d. 1992)
• February 22 - John Mills, actor
• February 23 - William McMahon, twentieth Prime Minister of Australia, (d. 1988)
• February 26 - Tex Avery, cartoonist (d. 1980)
• February 26 - Jean-Pierre Wimille, race car driver (d. 1949)
• February 29 - Balthus, painter (d. 2001)
• February 29 - Dee Brown, writer, historian (d. 2002)

March

• March 2 - Walter Bruch, engineer (d. 1990)
• March 5 - Rex Harrison, actor (d. 1990)
• March 7 - Anna Magnani, actress (d. 1973)
• March 8 - Claire Trevor, actress
• March 13 - Walter Annenberg, publisher, philanthropist (d. 2002)
• March 17 - Brigitte Helm, actress (d. 1996)
• March 20 - Sir Michael Redgrave, actor (d. 1985)
• March 22 - Louis L'Amour, author (d. 1988)
• March 23 - Joan Crawford, actor (d. 1977)
• March 25 - Helmut Käutner, actor and film director (d. 1980)
• March 25 - David Lean, film director (d. 1991)
• March 29 - Arthur O'Connell, actor (d. 1981)

April

• April 1 - Abraham Maslow, psychologist
• April 2 - Buddy Ebsen, actor, dancer
• April 5 - Bette Davis, US-American actress (d. 1989)
• April 5 - Herbert von Karajan, Austrian conductor (d. 1989)
• April 7 - Percy Faith, composer, musician (d. 1976)
• April 15 - Eden Ahbez, hermit, musician
• April 20 - Lionel Hampton, jazz musician, bandleader (d. 2002)
• April 25 - Edward R. Murrow, journalist (d. 1965)

May

• May 5 - Kurt Böhme, German bass (d. 1989)
• May 7 - Max Grundig , industrialist (d. 1989)
• May 8 - Cristian Vasile, Romanian tango singer (d. 1974)
• May 19 - Percy Williams, Canadian athlete (d. 1982)
• May 20 - Jimmy Stewart, American actor
• May 23 - John Bardeen, physicist (d. 1991)
• May 25 - Theodore Roethke, American poet
• May 28 - Ian Fleming, author of James Bond books (d. 1964)
• May 30 - Mel Blanc, voice actor (d. 1989)
• May 31 - Don Ameche (actor)

June-July

• June 18 - Bud Collyer, voice actor, game show host (d. 1969)
• June 29 - Leroy Anderson, American composer (d. 1975)
• July 12 - Milton Berle, comedian (d. 2002)
• July 25 - Bill Bowes, champion Yorkshire and England bowler (d. 1987)

August-September

• August 4 - Kurt Eichhorn, conductor
• August 5 - Harold Holt, seventeenth Prime Minister of Australia (d. 1967)
• August 27 - Don Bradman, cricket player
• August 27 - Lyndon Johnson, 36th president of the United States
• August 28 - Roger Tory Peterson, naturalist, artist, and educator
• August 30 - Leonor Fini, Argentinian/Italian artist (d. 1996)
• September 3 - Lev Semenovich Pontryagin, Soviet mathematician
• September 6 - Louis Essen, physicist (d. 1997)
• September 7 - Paul Brown, Pro Football Hall of Fame coach (d. 1991)
• September 7 - Michael E. DeBakey, inventor of the MASH
• September 29 - Eddie Tolan, American athlete
• September 30 - David Oistrakh, Ukrainian violinst (d. 1974)

October-December

• October 14 - Allan Jones, actor, singer (d. 1992)
• October 16 - Enver Hoxha, dictator of Albania (d. 1985)
• October 19 - Sydney MacEwan, Scottish singer
• October 19 - Geirr Tveitt, Norwegian composer
• November 2 - Fred Bakewell, exciting and unorthodox Northamptonshire and England batsman (d. 1983)
• November 20 - Alistair Cooke, television host (d. 2004)
• November 28 - Claude Lévi-Strauss
• December 6 - Pierre Graber, member of the Swiss Federal Council (d. 2003)
• December 10 - Olivier Messiaen, composer (d. 1992)
• December 31 - Simon Wiesenthal, Nazi hunter

Deaths

• January 25 - Ouida, writer
• February 1 - King Charles of Portugal
• April 20 - Henry Chadwick, baseball writer and historian
• April 22 - Henry Campbell-Bannerman, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
• May 26 - Mirza Ghulam Ahmad Who claimed to be the Messiah and Mahdi died.(b. 1835)
• June 21 - Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, composer (b. 1844)
• July 5 - Jonas Lie, Norwegian author
• July 20 - Demetrius Vikelas, Greek IOC president
• May 26 - Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, founder of the Ahmadi sect
• August 25 - Henri Becquerel, French physicist
• August 26 Tony Pastor, vaudeville founder & theater impresario
• September 20 - Pablo de Sarasate, violinist
• October 30 Caroline Astor, American socialite
• November 14 5-7 pm - Guangxu Emperor of China
• November 15 1-3 pm - Empress Dowager Cixi

Nobel Prizes

• Physics - Gabriel Lippmann
• Chemistry - Ernest Rutherford
• Medicine - Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov, Paul Ehrlich
• Literature - Rudolf Christoph Eucken
• Peace - Klas Pontus Arnoldson Fredrik Bajer