• Attends school in Jeparit.

John ('Daddy') Livingston, the Head Teacher in their time, was not a forgettable man. A liberal wielder of strap and cane (even kind Frank Menzies remembered him as having been 'a bit sadistic'), his other memorable trait was an uncanny skill in catching flies from the swarms which came into the schoolroom from its ungauzed windows. 'Woe befall one that got between his face and forefinger. It would inevitably add to the semicircle of dead comrades in front of the Head Teacher's desk.'
A W Martin, Robert Menzies: A Life. Vol 1 1894-1943, 1993 p 11.

• May-June: The Commonwealth Constitution Bill passes through the British Parliament. Several amendments are made, the most contentious being the section on appeals to the Privy Council.
• June: At the last minute Western Australia joins the Federation after a successful referendum is held largely in response to pressure from gold fields settlers.
• July 9: Queen Victoria gives assent to an Act to Constitute the Commonwealth of Australia, the Royal Commission of Assent.
• Naval contingents from the colonies of Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia take part in the suppression of the Boxer Rebellion in China.
• The populations of Melbourne and Sydney reach half a million.

• Boxer Rebellion in China - Allied forces involving British, American, German and Japanese troops end the 56-day long siege of Europeans in Peking. The Boxers began as a patriotic society of discontented Chinese and became a popular movement against foreign, and especially Christian, influence. They were joined by renegade Chinese soldiers.
• Boer War in South Africa: Siege of Ladysmith is over when the garrison town and rail junction is relieved after 118 days.

"7 March 1900: ... Isn't the war news grand. The news of Ladysmith came through to Adelaide at about eleven on Thursday night and the row in town was something to remember I believe. The Town Hall bells were set pealing and the shindy was tremendous. All day Friday was a gala day, bands playing people processing through the town promiscuous like and everything gone mad. The enthusiasm here about everything is simply marvellous and everything is war-war-war." Maisie, Her life in her letters from 1989 to 1902, ed J Kyffin Willington, 1992 p 306-7.

• Speech is first transmitted by radio waves by Fessenden in the USA.
• First flight of Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin's air ship which is constructed from a wire-braced aluminium hull covered with a cotton cloth. It contains 16 gas cells each filled with hydrogen and is powered by two 16-horsepower engines.
• Freud writes Interpretation of Dreams.
• Viennese scientist Dr Karl Landsteiner, while investigating how blood agglutinates, identifies three different blood groups: A, B and C.