The date and location of Maxwell's last act, April 17, 1906, coincides with the real life 1906 San Francisco Earthquake.
The 1910 Exposition Universelle et Internationale was held in real life in Brussels, Belgium. Notably, it suffered a large fire that gutted several pavillions.
The library fire in New York City that is seen on a newspaper headline in Next of Kin may be a reference to the real life fire that broke out in the library of the New York State Capitol on the same date, March 29, 1911.