Arts and literature

• Enrico Caruso makes his debut with the Metropolitan Opera Company in Rigoletto.
• Victor Herbert's operetta Babes in Toyland premieres.
• The Edison Corporation releases the seminal Western The Great Train Robbery.
• Pablo Picasso nears end of his blue period in Barcelona and is about to move to Paris.
• George Walker and Egbert Austin Williams, a vaudeville comedy team, open on Broadway in Dahomey, the first all-black musical on a major New York stage. They later participate in a royal command performance at Buckingham Palace for the Prince of Wales.
• French composer Maurice Ravel writes his song cycle "Sheherazade."
• William Edward Burghardt Du Bois publishes Souls of Black Folk, a collection of essays.
• Henry James writes The Ambassadors.
• George Bernard Shaw writes Man and Superman.
• Helen Keller publishes The Story of My Life.
• Jack London publishes The Call of the Wild.