* 1909 – Robert Peary and Matthew Henson reach the North Pole.

* 1909 – William M. Branham, American evangelist ( d. 1965 )

* 1909 – Hermann Lang, German race car driver ( d. 1987 )

* 1909 – Juliana of the Netherlands ( d. 2004 )

* 1909 – F. E. McWilliam, Irish sculptor ( d. 1992 )

* 1909 – Sylvère Maes, Belgian cyclist ( d. 1966 )

* 1909 – Lester Young, American saxophonist ( d. 1959 )

* 1909 – V. K. Gokak, Indian writer ( d. 1992 )

* 1909 – Adam von Trott zu Solz, German diplomat ( d. 1944 )

Monty Noble led Australia to victory in both 1907 – 08 and 1909.

* 1909 – Walter Van Tilburg Clark, American novelist ( d. 1971 )

* 1909 – Alice Huyler Ramsey and three friends become the first women to complete a transcontinental auto trip, taking 59 days to travel from New York, New York to San Francisco, California.

* 1909 – Bill Voce, England cricketer ( d. 1984 )

* 1871 – John Millington Synge, Irish writer ( d. 1909 )

* 1909 – Hugo Winterhalter, American composer and bandleader ( d. 1973 )

* 1909 – Paul Callaway, American organist and conductor ( d. 1995 )

* 1909 – Bruce Matthews, Canadian army officer and businessman ( d. 1991 )

* 1909 – First automobile race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway takes place.

* 1909 – Nikolay Bogolyubov, Russian mathematician ( d. 1992 )

* 1829 – Carlo Acton, Italian composer and pianist ( d. 1909 )

* 1909 – Michael Rennie, English actor ( d. 1971 )

* 1909 – The Turkish military reverses the Ottoman countercoup of 1909 to force the overthrow of Sultan Abdul Hamid II.

* 1909 – Syd Buller, English cricketer ( d. 1970 )

* 1909 – Leila Danette, American actress

In February 1909, two orchestral works, the and ( Fireworks ) were performed at a concert in Saint Petersburg, where they were heard by Sergei Diaghilev, who was at that time involved in planning to present Russian opera and ballet in Paris.

Other notable premieres were given in Prague in 1899, and in Paris in 1909, with a Sergei Diaghilev production featuring Feodor Chaliapin as Galitsky and Maria Kuznetsova as Yaroslavna.

Ravel began work with impresario Sergei Diaghilev during 1909 for the ballet Daphnis et Chloé commissioned by Diaghilev with the lead danced by the famous ballet dancer and choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky.

Among later Russian symphonic poems, Sergei Rachmaninoff's The Rock shows as much the influence of Tchaikovsky's work as Isle of the Dead ( 1909 ) does its independence from it.

Ravel began work on the score in 1909 after a commission from Sergei Diaghilev.

30, composed in 1909 by Sergei Rachmaninoff ( colloquially known as " Rach 3 ") is famous for its technical and musical demands on the performer.

A 1912 color photograph of Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii, who documented the Russian Empire with a color camera from 1909 to 1915.

In 1909, Sergei Diaghilev invited Fokine to become the choreographer of his Ballets Russes in Paris.

Sergei Diaghilev, in a 1909 portrait by Valentin Aleksandrovich Serov

As Les Sylphides, what we consider the work was premiered by Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes on 2 June 1909 at Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris.

When Fokine's ballet premiered in Paris as part of Diaghilev's " Saison Russe " in 1909, Diaghilev commissioned re-orchestrations of all the dances, except for the Glazunov-orchestrated Waltz, by Anatoly Lyadov, Sergei Taneyev, Nikolai Tcherepnin and Igor Stravinsky.

In 1909 Sergei Diaghilev commissioned Lyadov to orchestrate a number for the Chopin-based ballet Les Sylphides, and on 4 September that year wrote to the composer asking for a new ballet score for the 1910 season of his Ballets Russes ; however, despite the much-repeated story that Lyadov was slow to start composing the work which eventually became The Firebird ( famously fulfilled by the then relatively inexperienced Igor Stravinsky ), there is no evidence that Lyadov ever accepted the commission.

Sergei Golitsyn ( 1909 – 1989 ) wrote Memoirs of a Survivor: The Golitsyn Family in Stalin's Russia, a memoir of his experiences of the period from the start of the Revolution in 1917 to Russia's entry into World War II in 1941.

In 1909, in celebration of Chopin's centenary, Russian composer Sergei Lyapunov wrote the symphonic poem, Zhelazova Vola ( Żelazowa Wola ), Op.

Another Russian Private Opera production in 1898 was conducted by Sergei Rachmaninoff, while the Bolshoi Theatre presented the opera in 1909 conducted by Vyacheslav Suk.

* Sergei Makovskii, Stranitsy khudozhestvennoi kritiki – Kniga vtoraia: Sovremennye Russkie khudozhniki ( St. Petersburg, 1909 ).

Sergei Diaghilev took her with the Ballets Russes and she danced the title role of Cléopâtre in the Paris season of 1909, and Zobéide in Scherezade in 1910.