THE GOOD QUEEN IS DEAD (Jan. 22): At age 82, Queen Victoria, who has been on the British throne since 1837, dies at Cowes on the Isle of Wight. When she dies, the British Empire is at its height, with outposts on five continents and an enormous navy to protect its trade routes. Most of her subjects around the world have known no other monarch. Victoria is succeeded by her 59-year-old son, Albert Edward, the Prince of Wales, who ushers in the nine-year Edwardian period as Edward VII.

	William McKinley

CORPORATE TAKEOVER (Feb. 25): J.P. Morgan and other investors buy out the industrial empire of Andrew Carnegie. They combine his business with some of theirs to create U.S. Steel Corp. The new company, capitalized at more than $1.4 billion, produces 7.7 million tons of finished steel per year. This is the largest business deal to date in U.S. history.

FIELD HOCKEY DEBUT (Aug. 1): The sport is introduced in the United States by Constance M.K. Applebee, representing the British College of Physical Education.

PRESIDENT ASSASSINATED (Sept. 6): President McKinley is shot twice in the abdomen at point-blank range by anarchist Leon Czolgosz as the president stands in a receiving line at the Pan-American exposition in Buffalo, N.Y. McKinley seems on the road to recovery, but he dies on Sept. 14 of gangrene, whispering the words of his favorite hymn, "Nearer, my God, to thee, Nearer to thee." Vice President Theodore Roosevelt becomes president at age 42.

GUESS WHO CAME TO DINNER (Oct. 16): Dr. Booker T. Washington (left) becomes the first African American to dine at the White House with a president. By extending the invitation, editorializes the Memphis Scimitar, President Theodore Roosevelt committed "the most damnable outrage ever perpetrated by any citizen of the United States." Roosevelt defends his action and continues to seek the advice of Washington, who wins fame in 1901 with his best-selling book "Up From Slavery." But Roosevelt never invites him back.

PANAMA CANAL PROVISION (Nov. 18): The Hay-Pauncefort Treaty between Britain and the United States provides for a Panama Canal under U.S. jurisdiction.

FIRST NOBEL PRIZES (Dec. 10): The king of Sweden and the Norwegian Nobel Committee award the first Nobel Prizes. The awards, according to the will of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, who invented dynamite and made a fortune in explosives, "should be annually made to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind." Among the first winners is Wilhelm Roentgen of Germany for his discovery of X-rays.

	Guglielmo Marconi

LOOK, MA, NO WIRES (Dec. 12): Guglielmo Marconi receives the first trans-Atlantic wireless message as he sits in a hut on the cliffs at St. John's, Newfoundland. An English telegrapher 1,700 miles away at Poldhu, Cornwall, taps out the letter "S," and Marconi picks it up on a crude receiver with a kite antenna. "I now felt for the first time absolutely certain that the day would come," Marconi writes at the time, "when mankind would be able to send messages without wires not only across the Atlantic but between the farthermost ends of the earth."