1896 (MDCCCXCVI) was a leap year starting on Wednesday (see link for calendar).

Events

January - April

• January 4 - Utah is admitted as the 45th U.S. state.
• January 5 - An Austrian newspaper reports that Wilhelm Röntgen discovered a type of radiation later known as X-rays.
• January 12 - H.L. Smith takes the first X-ray photograph.
• January 18 - The X-ray machine is exhibited for the first time.
• February 1 - The opera La bohème premieres (Turin).
• February 1 - Walter Arnold, of Kent, England, is fined for speeding in excess of the contemporary speed limit of 2 mph
• February 11 - Oscar Wilde's play Salomé premieres in Paris.
• March 1 - With the Battle of Adowa, Ethiopia defends its independence from Italy.
• April 3 - First edition of Italian sports newspaper La Gazzetta dello Sport is published.
• April 6 - Opening ceremonies of the 1896 Summer Olympics, the first modern Olympic Games.

May - August

• May 8 - Cricket: Against Warwickshire, Yorkshire sets a still-standing County Championship record when they accumulate an innings total of 887.
• May 18 - The U.S. Supreme Court rules in Plessy v. Ferguson, introducing the "separate but equal" doctrine.
• May 26 - Charles Dow publishes the first edition of the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
• May 27 - The costliest and third deadliest tornado in U.S. history levels a mile wide swath of downtown St. Louis, Missouri, incurring $2.9 billion (1997 USD) in damages, killing more than 255 and injuring over 1,000 people.
• June 12 - J.T. Hearne sets a record for the earliest date of taking 100 wickets. It is equalled by Charlie Parker in 1931.
• June 15 - ? Earthquake and tsunami in Sanriku, Japan, kills 27.000
• June 30 - David Rose dies after being poisoned by his daughter Celia, she would also poison her brother and mother.
• July 9 - William Jennings Bryan delivers his Cross of gold speech.
• July 11 - Wilfrid Laurier becomes Canada's seventh prime minister.
• August 16 - Skookum Jim Mason, George Carmack and Dawson Charlie discover gold in the Klondike.
• August 27 - The shortest war in recorded history, the Anglo-Zanzibar War, starts at 9 in the morning and lasts for 45 mintues of shelling.