Referred to as the "Ellis Island of the West," Angel Island in California's San Francisco Bay opens January 21, 1910, as America's major port of entry for Asian immigrants. Over the next 30 years, an estimated 100,000 Chinese and 70,000 Japanese are processed through the station.

Two trains are swept into a canyon by an avalanche in Wellington, Washington, on March 1, 1910, killing 96 people. Due to the remote location of the disaster and the risk of further avalanches, efforts to rescue survivors and find the bodies of the dead were not completed until several days later.

On April 14, 1910, President William Howard Taft becomes the first president to throw out the ceremonial first pitch at a Major League Baseball game. The historic toss on opening day is to star Walter Johnson, the Washington Senators' starting pitcher against the Philadelphia Athletics at National Park in the nation's capital.

Robert Falcon Scott’s ship, the Terra Nova, sets sail from Cardiff, Wales on June 15, 1910, bound for Antarctica. Though it will succeed in reaching its objective, the expedition will end in tragedy as Scott and his companions give up their lives in order to become the second party to reach the South Pole.

Congress passes the Mann Act, which was ostensibly aimed at keeping young women from being lured into prostitution, but really offered a way to make a crime out of many kinds of consensual sexual activity.

On October 1, 1910, a massive explosion destroys the Los Angeles Times building in the city’s downtown area, killing 21 and injuring many more. Since Los Angeles Times publisher Harrison Otis, a virulent opponent of unions, believed that the bomb was directed at him, he hired the nation’s premier private detective, William J. Burns, to crack the case. In addition to printing numerous editorials against unions, Otis was the leader of the Merchants and Manufacturing Association, a powerful group of business owners with extensive political connections.