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I just came across something strange, block no 289791 which was mined on Mar 10, 2014 is empty of any transactions. Is it because the miner refused to accept any? Or something else?

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This is the previous block,

289790
Number Of Transactions  86
Height  289790 (Main Chain)
Timestamp   2014-03-09 23:24:02
Size    43.853 KB

This is the block you are talking about

Number Of Transactions  1
Height  289791 (Main Chain)
Timestamp   2014-03-09 23:30:23
Size    0.183 KB

As you can see by the size of the previous block, there was little activity in that time, only 43 KBs worth of transactions, you can also note that both blocks came less than 5 minutes apart, so perhaps the transaction pool was emptied by the previous block and there wasn't enough time for a new transaction to be broadcasted after that. Since every minute counts, miners won't wait for a new transaction to appear because they run the risk to lose the block reward.

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    I think this explanation is implausible. Block 289790 still had 86 transactions, and it is actually stamped before its predecessor 289789, so those 86 transactions must have come in a short time. It seems unlikely that in the following 6 minutes there would be no transactions at all. The Bitcoin network was much more active than that in 2014. Also note that block 289792, dated 10 minutes later, had 742 transactions.
    – Nate Eldredge
    Commented Jun 20, 2016 at 14:02
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    It seems far more likely that there were transactions pending, but the miner of 289791 intentionally omitted them from the block. There are other questions in the empty-blocks tag that explain why one might want to do that.
    – Nate Eldredge
    Commented Jun 20, 2016 at 14:03
  • Also, to confirm that these are not outliers: blockchain.info/charts/… shows that in early 2014 the network averaged around 300-400 transactions per block.
    – Nate Eldredge
    Commented Jun 20, 2016 at 14:05
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    Indeed, it seems that the miner excluded the transactions.
    – galileopy
    Commented Jun 21, 2016 at 0:08

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