This Year in History:
1898
Discover what happened in this year with HISTORY’s summaries of major events, anniversaries, famous births and notable deaths.
A massive explosion of unknown origin sinks the battleship USS Maine in Cuba’s Havana harbor on February 15, 1898, killing 260 of the fewer than 400 American crew members aboard.…
President William McKinley asks Congress to declare war on Spain on April 20, 1898. In 1895, Cuba, located less than 100 miles south of the United States, attempted to overthrow…
At Manila Bay in the Philippines, the U.S. Asiatic Squadron destroys the Spanish Pacific fleet in the first battle of the Spanish‑American War. Nearly 400 Spanish sailors were killed and…
During the Spanish‑American War, Filipino rebels led by Emilio Aguinaldo proclaim the independence of the Philippines after 300 years of Spanish rule. By mid‑August, Filipino rebels and U.S. troops had…
On June 22, 1898, Erich Maria Remarque, the author of the great World War I novel All Quiet on the Western Front, is born in Osnabruck, Germany. A student at…
As part of their campaign to capture Spanish‑held Santiago de Cuba on the southern coast of Cuba, the U.S. Army Fifth Corps engages Spanish forces at El Caney and San…
A disgruntled city engineer in Skagway, Alaska, murders “Soapy” Smith, one of the most notorious con men in the history of the West. Born in Georgia in 1860, Jefferson Randolph…
During the Spanish‑American War, U.S. forces launch their invasion of Puerto Rico, the approximately 110‑mile‑long, 35‑mile‑wide island that was one of Spain’s two principal possessions in the Caribbean. With little resistance…
The brief and one‑sided Spanish‑American War comes to an end when Spain formally agrees to a peace protocol on U.S. terms: the cession of Cuba, Puerto Rico and Manila in the…
Only one year after Spain granted Puerto Rico self‑rule, American troops raise the U.S. flag over the Caribbean nation, formalizing U.S. authority over the island’s one million inhabitants. In July…
In France, the Treaty of Paris is signed, formally ending the Spanish‑American War and granting the United States its first overseas empire. The Spanish‑American War had its origins in the…
