• January 1
  • The world celebrates the beginning of the 20th century.
  • The British colonies of New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria and Western Australia federate as the Commonwealth of Australia. Edmund Barton becomes first Prime Minister of Australia.
  • Nigeria becomes a British protectorate.
  • The birth of Pentecostalism at a prayer meeting at Bethel Bible College in Topeka, Kansas.
• January 5 – Typhoid fever breaks out in a Seattle jail, the first of two typhoid outbreaks in the USA during the year.
• January 7 – Alferd Packer is released from prison after serving 18 years for cannibalism.
• January 9 – Lord Kitchener reports that Christiaan de Wet has shot one of the "peace" envoys, and flogged two more, who had gone to his commando to ask the Burgher citizens of South Africa to halt fighting.
• January 10 – In the first great Texas gusher, oil is discovered at Spindletop in Beaumont, Texas.
• January 22
  • Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom dies at age 81, after more than 63 years on the throne, and her son the Prince of Wales formally succeeds her as King Edward VII.
  • The Grand Opera House in Cincinnati is destroyed in a fire.
• January 28 – Baseball's American League declares itself a Major League.

Das Jahr 1901 markiert den Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts. Es werden das erste Mal Nobelpreise vergeben. Zu den Preisträgern gehören Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen für die Entdeckung der Röntgenstrahlung und Emil von Behring für die Erforschung der Diphtherie. Henri Dunant erhält zusammen mit dem „Apostel des Friedens“ Frédéric Passy den Friedensnobelpreis.