. May – Third plague pandemic: Bubonic plague breaks out in the Tai Ping Shan area of Hong Kong (by the end of the year, the death toll is 2,552 people); it also breaks out this year in Canton. May 1 Coxey's Army arrives in Washington; Coxey is arrested on the Capitol grounds. The May Day Riots (against unemployment) break out in Cleveland, Ohio. May 10 – Dimitri Tiomkin, Ukrainian-born composer (d. 1979) May 11 – Pullman Strike: Three thousand Pullman Palace Car Company factory workers go on a "wildcat" (without union approval) strike in Illinois. May 14 A meteor shower is seen in southern France. Blackpool Tower is opened in Blackpool, England, as a visitor attraction. May 21 – The Manchester Ship Canal and Docks are opened by Queen Victoria, linking the previously landlocked English industrial city of Manchester to the Irish Sea. June 22 – Dahomey becomes a French colony. June 23 – The International Olympic Committee is founded at the Sorbonne, Paris, at the initiative of Baron Pierre de Coubertin. June 24 – Marie François Sadi Carnot, president of France, is assassinated. June 30 – The Tower Bridge in London opens for traffic. July–September July 4 The short-lived Republic of Hawaii is proclaimed by Sanford B. Dole. The football club FC La Chaux-de-Fonds is founded in Switzerland. July 6 – A fire at the site of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago destroys most of the remaining buildings. July 16 – The United Kingdom and Japan sign the Anglo-Japanese Treaty, as the U.K. becomes the first of the Western nations to agree to give up its extraterritorial rights in Japan. July 22 – The Paris–Rouen Competition for Horseless Carriages, the first automobile competition, is held. August 1 – War is declared between the Qing Empire of China and the Empire of Japan, over their rival claims of influence on their common ally, the Joseon dynasty of Korea. The event marks the start of the First Sino-Japanese War. August 15 – Sante Geronimo Caserio is executed for the assassination of French President Carnot. August 31 – New Zealand enacts the world's first minimum wage law, to take effect on January 1, in the passage of the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act of 1894. September 1 – Great Hinckley Fire: A forest fire in Hinckley, Minnesota, kills more than 450 people. September 4 – In New York City,