* Andrew Ainslie Common ( 1841 – 1903 ), built his own very large reflecting telescopes and demonstrated that photography could record astronomical features invisible to the human eye.

* 1903 – The Kishinev pogrom in Kishinev ( Bessarabia ) begins, forcing tens of thousands of Jews to later seek refuge in Israel and the Western world.

* 1903 – Mickey Cochrane, American baseball player ( d. 1962 )

* 1903 – Harold Edgerton, American electrical engineer ( d. 1990 )

* 1903 – Jan Tinbergen, Dutch economist, recipient of the Bank of Sweden Prize ( d. 1994 )

* 1903 – Ferenc Keserű, Hungarian water polo player ( d. 1968 )

* 1819 – Sir George Stokes, 1st Baronet, Irish-English mathematician and physicist ( d. 1903 )

After what the MCC saw as the problems of the earlier professional and amateur series they decided to take control of organising tours themselves, and this led to the first MCC tour of Australia in 1903 – 04.

* 1903 – Fall of the Ottoman Empire: an unsuccessful uprising led by the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization against Ottoman Turkey, also known as the Ilinden – Preobrazhenie Uprising, takes place.

In Serbia Nikola Pašić ( 1845 – 1926 ) and his Radical Party dominated Serbian politics after 1903 ; they also monopolized power in Yugoslavia from 1918 to 1929 ; during the dictatorship of the 1930s, it furnished the prime minister.

* 1903 – Macedonian rebels in Kruševo proclaim the Kruševo Republic, which exists only for 10 days before Ottoman Turks lay waste to the town.

* 1903 – Habib Bourguiba, Tunisian politician ( d. 2000 )

* 1903 – Louis Leakey, Kenyan-English archaeologist ( d. 1972 )

* 1903 – A 30 million cubic-metre landslide kills 70 in Frank, Alberta, Canada.

* 1876 – Alexander I of Serbia ( d. 1903 )

* Adrian ( costume designer ) ( 1903 – 1959 ), born Adrian Adolph Greenberg, costume designer for over 250 films

* Adrian Rollini ( 1903 – 1956 ), American multi-instrumentalist best known for his jazz music

* 1903 – German engineer Karl Jatho allegedly flies his self-made, motored gliding airplane four months before the first flight of the Wright brothers.

* 1903 – James Gould Cozzens, American novelist ( d. 1978 )

* 1903 – Lewis Sargent, American actor ( d. 1970 )

* 1826 – Karl Gegenbaur, German anatomist ( d. 1903 )

* 1903 – Arpad Elo, American chess player, created the Elo rating system ( d. 1992 )

Alexander I or Aleksandar Obrenović ( Cyrillic: Александар Обреновић ; 14 August 1876 – 11 June 1903 ) was king of Serbia from 1889 to 1903 when he and his wife, Queen Draga, were assassinated by a group of Army officers, led by Colonel Dragutin Dimitrijević

* August 6 – Bix Beiderbecke, American jazz trumpeter ( b. 1903 )

Leon Bismark " Bix " Beiderbecke ( March 10, 1903 – August 6, 1931 ) was an American jazz cornetist, jazz pianist, and composer.

Bix Beiderbecke was born on March 10, 1903, in Davenport, Iowa, the son of Bismark Herman and Agatha Jane ( Hilton ) Beiderbecke.

* Bix Beiderbecke ( 1903 – 1931 ), cornetist

The single largest organization of Anthropologists is the American Anthropological Association ( AAA ), which was founded in 1903.

* 1903 – Bruno Bettelheim, American psychologist ( d. 1990 )

Carnegie contributed $ 1, 500, 000 in 1903 for the erection of the Peace Palace at The Hague ; and he donated $ 150, 000 for a Pan-American Palace in Washington as a home for the International Bureau of American Republics.

In addition to Triumphant Democracy ( 1886 ), and The Gospel of Wealth ( 1889 ), he also wrote An American Four-in-hand in Britain ( 1883 ), Round the World ( 1884 ), The Empire of Business ( 1902 ), The Secret of Business is the Management of Men ( 1903 ), James Watt ( 1905 ) in the Famous Scots Series, Problems of Today ( 1907 ), and his posthumously published autobiography Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie ( 1920 ).

* 1903 – Morgan Taylor, American hurdler ( d. 1975 )

* 1903 – Eliot Ness, American lawman ( d. 1957 )

* Calamity Jane Martha Jane Canary ( May 1, 1852 – August 1, 1903 ), better known as Calamity Jane, was an American frontierswoman, and professional scout best known for her claim of being an acquaintance of Wild Bill Hickok.

* 1903 – Ward Moore, American novelist ( d. 1978 )

* 1963 – Estes Kefauver, American politician ( b. 1903 )

* 1811 – Alson Sherman, American politician ( d. 1903 )

* 1903 – Edwin T. Layton, American Navy officer ( d. 1984 )

In 1901, Baltimore and McGraw were awarded an expansion franchise in the growing American League, but again the team was sacrificed in favor of a New York City franchise, as the team was transferred to New York in 1903.

* Mary Bruins Allison ( born 1903 ), American doctor and missionary

* Fairfax M. Cone ( 1903 – 1977 ), former director of the American Association of Advertising Agencies

American consul James W. Davidson described in his 1903 book, The Island of Formosa, how the Chinese in Taiwan ate and traded in the flesh of Taiwanese aboriginals.

Only after independence from Colombia in 1903 did some begin to regard Panama as a North or Central American entity.

Nap Lajoie, who won the 1903 American League Batting Championship with the Indians, and an MLB Hall of Fame r.

" On October 1, 1903 the first modern World Series between the American League champion Boston Pilgrims ( later known as the Red Sox ) and the National League champion Pittsburgh Pirates was played on this site.

Influenced like Pound by German social and legal thinkers, Ely in 1903 had ascribed " the coercion of economic forces " in American society " to the unequal strength of those who make a contract.