With "Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze" (known to most people as "Fred Ott's Sneeze" or simply "The Sneeze") the year 1894 in film began in the United States. Now that the Black Maria studio had been completed last year and the first two commercially exhibited movies had been shown at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, the Edison company was ready to take off. Shot between January 2 and 7, the film is not only the first short to feature a sneeze but also the first copyrighted motion picture in the USA when submitted to the Library of Congress.
The film features Fred Ott, a factory worker at the Edison company, who has been known to star in at least two other movies: "Fred Ott Holding a Bird" (of the same year) and later in 1900, "The Kiss". In the four-second clip, Ott, (who ever made up that last name was a riot) is shown in medium closeup as he takes a pinch of snuff which causes him to sneeze in an admittedly fake manner. The mystery surrounding the short is clear: of all things, why would you film a sneeze? Either Edison had no better ideas, he wanted to make a random movie for the sake of submitting it to the Library of Congress, or it was just a good way to test motion by filming such a quick movement. Either way you look at it, the film served it's purpose and gets my vote for the best action movie of the 1800s.
On a side note, I think Fred Ott would have been pretty mad if he knew that he is now remembered just because he sneezed, held a bird and kissed a lady. Still, he does hold his place in history and could be called the first film comedian, preceeding Chaplin and Keaton by about twenty years.