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A massive explosion of unknown origin sinks the battleship USS Maine in Cuba's Havana harbor, killing 260 of the fewer than 400 American crew members aboard.
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The Teller Amendment ensured that the United States could not permanently acquire Cuba.
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Spain renounced all claim to Cuba, ceded Guam and Puerto Rico to the United States, and transferred sovereignty over the Philippines to the United States for $20 million.
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Theodore Roosevelt led his “Rough Riders” up the San Juan Heights against heavy artillery fire to help end the Spanish-American War.
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The planters' belief that a coup and annexation by the United States would remove the threat of a devastating tariff on their sugar also spurred them to action.
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Spain ceded its longstanding colony of the Philippines to the United States in the Treaty of Paris.
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A chinese secret organization called the Society of the Righteous and Harmonious Fists led an uprising in northern China against the spread of Western and Japanese influence there.
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The Monroe Doctrine had been sought to prevent European intervention in the Western Hemisphere, but now the Roosevelt Corollary justified American intervention throughout the Western Hemisphere.
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The Panama Canal was built to reduce the distance that ships had to travel to pass between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.