The battleship USS Maine explodes in Havana harbor, killing 266 sailors and igniting the fuse that led to the Spanish-American War.

Commodore George Dewey's American fleet destroyed the Spanish squadron in Manila Bay without losing a single ship, a decisive Spanish-American War victory.

Marie and Pierre Curie announced the discovery of radium, a glowing new element hundreds of times more radioactive than uranium.

General Emilio Aguinaldo declared Philippine independence from Spain at Kawit, ending 333 years of colonial rule, though the US soon claimed the archipelago.

Emilio Aguinaldo issues decrees organizing a revolutionary government in the Philippines amid the war against Spanish colonial rule.

American troops under General Nelson Miles landed at Guánica, Puerto Rico, opening the island campaign of the Spanish-American War.

Vasco da Gama's associate colonial claims aside, on this day the United States formally annexed Wake Island as a coaling and communications station in the Pacific.

The Hawaiian flag was formally lowered and the American flag raised over Iolani Palace, marking the official U.S. annexation of the Hawaiian Islands.

The American cruiser USS Charleston seized Guam from Spain without a fight, the island's Spanish garrison unaware war had even begun.

Empress Dowager Cixi's forces rounded up leaders of China's Hundred Days' Reform, ending a brief attempt to modernize the crumbling Qing state.

The Guangxu Emperor established the Imperial University of Peking, China's first modern national university, as part of the Hundred Days' Reform.

Clive Staples Lewis, future author of 'The Chronicles of Narnia' and Christian apologetics, was born in Belfast, Ireland.

The Curies, working with Gustave Bémont, announced the discovery of a new radioactive element they named radium in a paper to the French Academy of Sciences.

Pierre and Marie Curie announced the discovery of a new radioactive element, radium, to the French Academy of Sciences.

German engineer Karl Benz's patent-era company incorporates changes as automobile manufacturing accelerates into the new century's final countdown.