regulate monopolies. January 31 – "The greatest ball of the Gilded Age" is held by James Hazen Hyde, the 28-year-old heir to the fortune of the founder of the Equitable Life Assurance Association" at New York City's Sherry Hotel, spending $200,000 for a "Louis XV costume ball" for invited guests. February February 1 – U.S. Senator John H. Mitchell of Oregon is indicted by a federal grand jury on charges arising from a scandal involving land grants in the state and illegally using his influence for private clients. February 3 – The first performance of A Shropshire Lad, the setting to music of the 1896 set of 63 poems of A. E. Housman by Arthur Somervell as a song-cycle, takes place at Aeolian Hall in London. February 4 – A simultaneous uprising begins at six cities in Argentina against the government of President Manuel Quintana. February 5 – The French ship Anjou is wrecked off of the coast of the uninhabited Auckland Island, located from the nearest inhabited land in New Zealand. The castaways live on the isle for more than three months until being rescued on May 7. February 6 – Eliel Soisalon-Soininen, the Chancellor of Justice of the Grand Duchy of Finland (at this time part of the Russian Empire) is assassinated at Helsingfors (modern-day Helsinki). February 9 – Dr. Prince A. Morrow begins the movement in the U.S. for sex education, with the founding of the Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis. February 12 – The Switzerland national football team plays its first international game, losing to France, 1 to 0. February 16 – Six of the 11 crew of the British Royal Navy submarine HMS A5 are killed by a pair of explosions caused by gasoline fumes in Ireland. February 17 – Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich of Russia, the Governor-General of Moscow and uncle of Tsar Nicholas II, is assassinated. February 20 – In the Russo-Japanese War, the Battle of Mukden begins in Manchuria. February 21 – Sir Wilfrid Laurier introduces a resolution in the Canadian parliament proposing that two new provinces, Alberta and Saskatchewan, be created out of the Northwest Territories. February 23 – Rotary International is founded in Chicago in the U.S. February 26 – Russia sustains a severe defeat in Manchuria at Tsen-ho-Cheng. February 28 – Jane Stanford, the co-founder with her husband Leland of Stanford University, is fatally poisoned while visiting the