January–June
- January 5 – James Stuart Blackton, American film producer (d. 1941)
- January 7 – Thomas Hicks, American runner (d. 1963)
- January 9 – Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, American sculptor and socialite (d. 1942)
- January 11 – Reinhold Glière, Russian composer (d. 1956)
- January 14 – Albert Schweitzer, Alsatian physician, philosopher, and musician, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (d. 1965)
- January 15 – Thomas Burke, American sprinter (d. 1929)
- January 22 – D. W. Griffith, American film director (The Birth Of A Nation) (d. 1948)
- February 2
- Fritz Kreisler, Austrian violinist (d. 1962)
- Erkki Melartin, Finnish composer (d. 1937)
- February 4 – Ludwig Prandtl, German physicist (d. 1953)
- February 8 – Valentine O'Hara, Irish author and authority on Russia and the Baltic States (d. 1945)
- February 21 – Jeanne Calment, World's Longest Lived Person (d. 1997)
- February 15 – Grigore Constantinescu, Romanian priest and journalist (d. 1932)
- March 4 – Mihály Károlyi, former Prime Minister of Hungary and President of Hungary (d. 1955)
- March 7 – Maurice Ravel, French composer (d. 1937)
- March 26 – Syngman Rhee, President of South Korea (d. 1965)
- March 28 – Helen Westley, stage & film character actress (d. 1942)
- March 30 – Jonathan Campbell, American film pioneer (d. 1942)
- April 1 – Edgar Wallace, English writer (d. 1932)
- April 2 – Walter Chrysler, American automobile pioneer (d. 1940)
- April 4
- Samuel S. Hinds, American actor (d. 1948)
- Pierre Monteux, French conductor (d. 1964)
- April 5 – Mistinguett, French singer (d. 1956)
- April 8 – King Albert I of Belgium (d. 1934)
- April 15 – James J. Jeffries, American boxer (d. 1953)
- April 18 – Oskar Ernst Bernhardt (Abdruschin), German author (d. 1941)
- May 2 – George Ranetti (Romanian poet and publicist, d. 1928)
- May 11 – Harriet Quimby, American pilot (d. 1912)
- May 12 – Krishna Chandra Bhattacharya, Indian philosopher (d. 1949)
- May 23 – Alfred Pritchard Sloan, Jr., American automobile industrialist (d. 1966)
- June 6 – Thomas Mann, German writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1955)
- June 12 – Sam De Grasse, Canadian actor (d. 1953)
- June 24 – Diedrich Westermann, German linguist (d. 1956)
- June 28 – Henri Lebesgue, French mathematician (d. 1941)