A magnitude 7.9 earthquake struck San Francisco at dawn, igniting fires that burned for three days and killed roughly 3,000 people.

The RMS Lusitania, then the largest ship in the world, slid into the River Clyde in Scotland, cheered by 300,000 spectators.

Several Southern U.S. states began observing June 3 as a holiday honoring Confederate President Jefferson Davis's birth, a tradition still legally recognized in parts of the South.

Thaddeus Cahill's Telharmonium, a 200-ton electromechanical synthesizer, piped music over telephone lines to diners in New York, an early ancestor of electronic music.

A massive earthquake struck the Chilean coast near Valparaíso, killing thousands and destroying much of the port city just before the country's independence celebrations.

Reginald Fessenden transmitted the first known radio broadcast of voice and music, startling ship wireless operators along the Atlantic coast.