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Pilot Eugene Ely makes the first landing of an aircraft onto a ship, maneuvering his biplane onto a wooden landing platform aboard the cruiser USS Pennsylvania in the Bay. — Jan. 19
A Western Pacific train stalls in the Sierra Nevada, leaving 100 passengers trapped in the snow for five days. They pass the time with impromptu vaudeville entertainments, church services and a funeral for a laborer killed in an avalanche, eventually making it to civilization on foot and via railroad hand cars. — Feb. 4
In Cholly Francisco's society column, "Among the Swells and Belles," we learn that "Our Mrs. Francis Carolan, tempered to a suppleness and a sharpness like Damascus steel, with a smile as if life were a snowball jest, has finally achieved the summum nonum of her highest hopes" — in other words, she successfully hosted a salon in Paris. Her coup? Presenting naturalist Charles Kellogg, who always dresses like Kit Carson and "came among the Parisians like a breeze from our own high Sierra." — May 10
University of California scientists introduce Ishi, a native American man captured hunting in a rancher's corral near Oroville, to the press. The last of his tribe, "Ishi is no fairy story — no dream of the dime museum press agent. He is a man "unspotted by the world." Handed a bow from UC's collection, he fires it 100 feet through the hat of a news photographer as it rests on the end of stick. — Sept. 6
By a narrow margin, the men of the state elect to grant the women of California the right to vote. San Franciscans come out 35,644 to 21,912 against letting females take part in democracy. — Oct. 13.