1882: Information and Much More from Answers.com
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1881 1882 1883 1884 1885 1886 1887 1888 1889 1890
Charles Stewart Parnell comes to terms with Prime Minister Gladstone in March (the Kilmainham Treaty), and the British release him and his associates from Ireland's Kilmainham Prison May 2 after they agree to stop boycotting landowners, stop inciting Irishmen to intimidate tenant farmers from cooperating with landlords, and cooperate with the Liberal Party (see 1881). Parnell has since May 1880 been having a love affair with an Englishwoman, Katharine Wood O'Shea, now 37, while helping to advance her husband's political career (see 1889). Fenians murder the new chief secretary for Ireland and his permanent under-secretary in broad daylight May 6 in Dublin's Phoenix Park, and while Parnell repudiates the murder of Lord Frederick Cavendish and Thomas Burke it leads the British to suspend trial by jury and give the police unbridled power to search and arrest on suspicion. Parnell also disavows the campaign of terrorism that includes dynamiting of public buildings in England (see 1886).
A Triple Alliance signed May 20 pledges Germany, Austria, and Italy to come to each other's aid should any be attacked by France within the next 5 years (see 1887).
Italian independence leader Giuseppe Garibaldi dies in retirement at Caprera June 2 at age 74.
Egyptian army officials join with the educated classes and peasantry in a challenge to foreign control of budgetary matters in the Assembly (see Arabi, 1881). London and Paris send a joint communiqué in January designed to strengthen the khedive Tewfik, but a new, nationalist ministry is formed with Ahmad Arabi al-Misri as minister of war, Arabi agitates with the slogan, "Egypt for Egyptians" ("Misr li'l Misriyin") and becomes a national hero, the khedive asks for French and British assistance, French and British fleets arrive at Alexandria, riots break out in the city June 11, Sir Beauchamp Seymour bombards the city July 11, but the French refuse to participate. Arabi organizes resistance and proclaims Tewfik a traitor, the Ottoman Turks boycott an international conference held at Istanbul, nothing comes of the talks, the British land troops to protect the Suez Canal from nationalist forces, Sir Garnet Wolseley defeats the Egyptians September 13 at the Battle of Tel el-Kebir, and British forces occupy Cairo September 15. Arabi is captured, tried by a court martial, and sentenced to death, but the British intervene and arrange for him to go into exile in Ceylon; dual Anglo-French control of Egypt is abolished November 9 (see 1883).
France's premier Jules Ferry arranges in February to have diplomat (Pierre-) Paul Cambon, 29, appointed resident minister in Tunisia (see 1881). Cambon will organize the French protectorate.
The Ottoman statesman-scholar Ahmed Vefik is appointed grand vizier for a second time but is soon dismissed and confined to his house at Rumeli Hisar on the Bosphorus in December by order of the sultan Abdul Hamid. Given the governorship of Bursa 3 years ago, he sponsored significant reforms of education, sanitation, and agriculture while establishing the first Ottoman theater; his library is sold to pay his debts.
Russian general Konstantin Petrovich Kaufmann dies at Tashkent May 16 (May 14 Old Style) at age 64, having governed Turkistan efficiently since 1867; General Mikhail D. Skobelev dies of a heart ailment at Moscow July 7 (June 25 Old Style) at age 38, having played a prominent role in Russia's conquest of Turkistan but then angered authorities early this year by making speeches at Paris and Moscow predicting inevitable conflict between the German and Slavic peoples.
Italy takes over Ethiopia's northern town of Assab and will make it the basis of an Eritrean colony in 1890 (see 1885). Ethiopia's Johannes IV makes a pact with his vanquished rival Menelek of Shoa and designates Menelek as his successor.
The International Association of the Congo is created out of the 1878 Belgian Comité d'Etudes du Haut-Congo and several companies are organized to exploit the region.
France claims a protectorate over the entire northwestern portion of Madagascar. French warships blockade the island in May, troops occupy the port of Majunga, but Madagascar's prime minister Rainilaiarivony will not capitulate (see 1885).
Maori chief Wiremu Kingi dies at Kaingaru, New Zealand, January 13 at age 86 (approximate). The New Zealand government will now begin making annual grants to the Taranaki tribes in compensation for the confiscation of their lands, a practice that will continue until 1926.
An insurrection against the French in Indochina begins in Tonkin (northern Vietnam) following Captain Henri Rivière's seizure of Hanoi April 25 (see Garnier, 1873). The authorities at Saigon have sent a 250-man force to Hanoi under the command of Captain Rivière, who is killed in a skirmish as Paris tries to impose its rule by force over the entire Red River delta (see 1883).
Former Japanese finance minister Shigenobu Okuma, 44, founds the English Constitutional Reform Party (Rikken Kaishinto). He resigned from the government last year after 12 years in which he played the leading role in modernizing and reorganizing the nation's fiscal system; he now proposes that elections be held next year and that a parliament be formed, winning support from urban intellectuals, industrialists, merchants, and politicians who include former journalist Yukio Ozaki, 23. The new party will merge with some smaller parties in 1896 to create the nationalistic Progressive (Shimpō) Party.
Korea has anti-Japanese demonstrations organized by the former regent Taewon-gun (Yi Ha-ung), now 61, who expels Queen Min and her clique in July and burns down the Japanese legation (see 1876). He is regarded as a trouble maker, and the reforms he instituted as regent beginning in 1864 have proved short lived; China's Qing government sends an army to Korea, Taewon-gun is abducted and taken to China, and the Chinese will hold him there for 3 years while they urge the Korean king to sign a treaty with Japan (see 1884).
The world powers sign a Hague convention agreeing to a three-mile limit for territorial waters.
Canada creates the District of Saskatchewan; the town of Regina is founded on the route of the Canadian Pacific Railway being constructed by W. C. Van Horne (see 1881). Regina will be headquarters for the 9-year-old Northwest Mounted Police. Financier-shipowner Sir Hugh Allan dies at Edinburgh December 9 at age 72, having lost the company he organized to finance the Canadian Pacific (see politics, 1873).
The British Caribbean islands of Saint Kitts, Nevis, and Anguilla are united by act of Parliament (see 1967).
Anarchist Johann Most arrives at New York December 12, receives an enthusiastic welcome at a mass meeting of social revolutionists, and resumes publication of his weekly paper Die Freiheit that London authorities shut down last year. He will win converts to his ideas on U.S. lecture tours, and despite several confinements on Blackwell's Island in New York for inciting to violence will use his invective, sarcasm, and wit to promote his idea of "propaganda by deed," advocating violence against rulers and capitalists (see 1886).
Former French premier Léon Gambetta dies at Paris December 31 at age 44 from the effects of "an accidental wound in the hand from a revolver." He resigned January 16 after the Chamber of Deputies rejected a proposal that he had made, settled with his mistress Léonie Léon outside Paris with the aim of marrying her, and is given a state funeral.
Parliament passes a second Married Women's Property Act in August, enabling British married women to own property in their own right (see 1870). Passage of the measure follows efforts by women's rights champion Richard Marsden Pankhurst, who 3 years ago married Emmeline Goulden, now 25 (see 1903).
Parliament hears an address from Josephine Butler, now 54, who has been touring the country in a crusade against the Contagious Diseases Acts of 1864, 1866, and 1869, taking her case to working men whose daughters have been forced into prostitution. Parliament will repeal the Contagious Diseases Acts in 1886.
Arctic explorer Adolphus W. Greely reaches 83° 24' north in May (see 1881). He has discovered Lake Hazen and what will be called Greely Fjord on the western coast of Ellesmere Island, but supply and relief ships will not be able to reach him and by the time help arrives in June 1884 he will have lost all but six of his men, and one of them will die shortly thereafter. The journal of the late George W. De Long is discovered in Siberia (it will be published next year under the title The Voyage of the Jeanette), and wreckage from the Jeanette will be found next year on an ice floe off the southwest coast of Greenland, supporting his theory of trans-Arctic drift (see Nansen, 1893).
The Royal Geographical Society mounts a new expedition to East Africa, this time under the command of geologist-naturalist Joseph Thomson (see 1878). Instructed to find the shortest route between Zanzibar and Uganda, the party travels unarmed from Mombasa to Lake Victoria and reaches the lake December 10, having come by way of Mount Kilimanjaro, crossing twice through the previously hostile Masai people, and being the first Europeans to sight Lake Baringo. Thomson's gazelle (Gazella thomsoni) will be named for the expedition's leader.
Knights of Labor cofounder Uriah S. Stephens dies at Philadelphia February 3 at age 60.
Higher prices resulting from last year's poor crops touch off a a wave of strikes for higher wages in the United States. New York's first Labor Day parade September 5 brings out thousands of demonstrators; the local Central Labor Union organized in January to promote the interests of workers in the area has staged protest rallies, lobbied state legislators, organized strikes, and increased its membership to 80,000 in 56 unions, but anyone who takes the day off to march risks losing his job, so only a few dozen workers are at City Hall Park 1 hour before the march is scheduled to begin. By the time it steps off at 10 o'clock, however, some 400 men and a brass band have assembled, many wearing their Sunday best, others in work clothes, with wagons displaying their handwork. Policemen refuse to stop traffic for the parade at intersections, bystanders jeer the marchers as they go up Broadway, but they move up Fifth Avenue past the mansions of millionaires and by the time their procession has reached 42nd Street and Sixth Avenue it has grown to number at least 5,000. Women will join the New York march beginning in 1885 and it will become a national event in 1886, with 20,000 workers marching in Manhattan, 10,000 in Brooklyn, 25,000 in Chicago, 15,000 in Boston. New York and four other states will make Labor Day a state holiday in 1887 (see national Labor Day, 1894).
Financier Moses Taylor dies at New York May 23 at age 76, leaving an estate estimated at $40 million; utopian socialist Louis Blanc at Cannes December 6 at age 71, having lost most of his following.
The Standard Oil trust incorporated January 2 by John D. Rockefeller and his associates brings 90 percent of the U.S. petroleum industry under the control of a nine-man directorate. Pennsylvania lawyer Samuel C. T. (Calvin Tate) Dodd, 45, has shown Rockefeller how the idea of a trust employed in personal estate law can be applied to industry, circumventing state anti-monopoly laws, and the oil trust will soon be followed by other trusts. Standard Oil of New York is incorporated August 1 with Rockefeller's brother William as president; Standard Oil of New Jersey August 5 with John D. himself as president. The richest company of any kind in the world, the $70 million trust controls 14,000 miles of underground pipeline and all the oil cars of the Pennsylvania Railroad (see 1877; 1883).
Electricity illuminates parts of London beginning January 12 as power from the Edison Electric Light Company at 57 Holburn Viaduct turns on street lights between Holborn Circus and the Old Bailey; incandescent bulbs go on in at least 30 buildings.
A U.S. patent (No. 252,386) issued January 17 to engineer Lewis Latimer covers a process for making carbons.
The world's first electric fan is devised by the chief engineer of New York's Crocker and Curtis Electric Motor Company. The two-bladed desk fan is the work of Schuyler Skaats Wheeler, 22.
New York inventor Henry W. Seeley receives a patent June 6 for the world's first electric flatiron, but his device weighs nearly 15 pounds, heats up only when plugged into its stand, takes a long time to heat up, and quickly cools down when in use. Few homes have electricity anyway, and Seeley's iron is not a success (see 1906).
German electrical engineer Oskar von Miller, 27, demonstrates the transmission of electrical energy over a 57-kilometer (35-mile) wire at the Munich Electrical Exposition, the first such exposition in Germany (see German Edison Co., 1883).
The 25-year-old telegraph firm Siemens & Halske receives an order to install Berlin's first constant electric lighting in Potsdam Place.
Electricity illuminates parts of New York beginning September 4 as Thomas Edison throws a switch in the offices of financier J. P. Morgan to light the offices and inaugurate commercial transmission of electric power from the Morgan-financed Edison Illuminating Company power plant in Pearl Street. The company will soon supply current to all of Manhattan and it will develop into the Consolidated Edison Company, prototype of all central-station U.S. power companies (see 1899; Thomson, 1883).
The world's first hydroelectric power plant begins operating September 30 at Appleton, Wisconsin, where a local paper maker has rigged up a water-powered dynamo to run his factory and light his house.
The Electric Light Act passed by Parliament empowers local British authorities to take over privately run power stations in their areas after 21 years. British municipalities have invested heavily in gas lighting and will impose regulations to thwart competition from electric-light companies while Germany and the United States embrace electricity wholeheartedly. By making it virtually impossible for a private electric company to recoup its investment, the new law will discourage development of power stations (no private company will generate electricity for the next 6 years, and although the new law will be amended in 1888 to permit private ownership, such major cities as Manchester, Leeds, Edinburgh, and Nottingham will still have no power stations in 1890, and many places will not have electric lighting for 42 years).
Swan Glo-Lamps illuminate a draper's shop at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England, making it the world's first shop to be lighted by incandescent bulbs.
The world's first electrically lighted Christmas tree is installed in December in the rear parlor of Thomas Edison associate Edward H. Johnson's New York house. Its 80 hand-wired, hand-blown glass bulbs are wrapped in red, white, and blue crepe paper and twinkle as the tree revolves six times per minute in a little pine box. Tree lights will not be sold commercially until early in the next century, and most people will continue for years to feel safer with candles, but mass-production of strings of lights will begin in 1903 and by 1930 the use of candles for Christmas trees will be fading fast.
Swedish engineer Carl de Laval of 1877 centrifugal cream separator fame builds his first impulse steam turbine. His reaction turbine will receive a patent next year and attain a speed of 42,000 revolutions per minute. Laval will build and operate a reversible turbine for marine use in 1893 (see Parsons compound turbine, 1884).
German engineer Gottlieb Daimler, 48, invents an internal-combustion engine powered by gasoline (see Lenoir 1860; 1862); Daimler has worked with Eugen Langen, and beginning next year will work with engineer Wilhelm Maybach, 37, to develop a lighter, more efficient, four-stroke internal-combustion engine that will be patented in 1885 (see 1886; Otto, 1866).
Clipper ship architect John W. Griffiths dies at Brooklyn, New York, March 30 at age 72, having seen steamships mount a growing challenge to sailing vessels, although the latter remain more economical to operate since the wind (if it blows) is free, whereas coal can be costly.
Matson Navigation Company has its beginnings as Swedish-born sailing captain William Matson, 33, borrows money from California sugar magnate Claus Spreckels and buys shares in a ship that he names the Emma Claudine after Spreckels's sister. Matson will build a near-monopoly in San Francisco-Honolulu shipping as trade booms in Hawaiian sugar (see 1887; Dollar Line, 1901).
Drawing room car designer Webster Wagner is killed in a Hudson River Railroad collision at Spuyten Duyvil, New York, January 13 at age 64. One of its air brakes has given out and brought it to a stop, a commuter train has plowed into it, the resulting fire burns some passengers beyond recognition, and the dead on the train from Albany number about a dozen in addition to Sen. Wagner, who has been serving in the state legislature. The Pullman Palace Car Company lawsuit against the Vanderbilt interests remains unresolved but will be decided in Pullman's favor, and Pullman will have a virtual monopoly on the sleeping-car business; steel rail pioneer Alexander L. Holley dies at Brooklyn, New York, January 29 at age 49.
Union Switch and Signal Company is organized to manufacture railroad signals invented by George Westinghouse, who has made a fortune from his compressed air brake of 1868 even though some railroads continue to resist adopting it when brakemen can be hired for as little as $1.75 per day and are easily replaced (see 1893; energy [gas pipelines], 1883).
The St. Gotthard tunnel that opens through the Alps is the longest tunnel yet built (see 1201; Mont Cenis, 1871). It extends for 9.3 miles (15 kilometers), has taken 10 years to build at a cost of about 167 lives, connects the cantons of Uri and Ticino, competes with the trans-Alpine Mont Cenis and Brenner Pass rail links, and inaugurates a direct line between Zürich and Milan (see Orient Express, 1883).
"The public be damned," says railroad magnate William H. Vanderbilt to a Chicago Daily News reporter who has asked, "Don't you run it for the public benefit?" when told that the fast Chicago Limited extra-fare mail train was being eliminated. "The public be damned," says Vanderbilt October 8 to reporter Clarence Dresser. "I am working for my stockholders. If the public want the train, why don't they pay for it?"
Electric cable cars are installed in Chicago, where they travel 20 blocks along State Street in 31 minutes, averaging less than two miles per hour (see 1894; San Francisco, 1873).
A patent issued January 10 to Boston-born McKeesport, Pennsylvania, inventor Edmund C. (Cogswell) Converse, 32, covers a lock-joint for tubing that Converse will perfect for water and gas systems. The invention will make a fortune for the company founded by his father, James, and the younger Converse will go on to become a prominent capitalist and philanthropist.
English metallurgist Robert Abbott Hadfield, 23, invents manganese steel (see tungsten steel, 1868); the new alloy is extremely hardwearing and will prove ideal for railway lines. Hadfield will take over his family's 10-year-old Hecla Steel Works at Attercliffe next year, and he will specialize in steel castings that will come largely to replace forged steel for many uses (see nickel steel, 1888).
German laboratory assistant Walter Hesse and his wife, Angelina Fannie, pioneer the use of the algae-extract agar-agar in place of gelatin for culturing bacteria. Angelina has learned about agar-agar from friends who cook, and the Hesses find that it is clear, remains solid at temperatures of up to 100 degrees C., and resists being digested by bacterial enzymes (see Petri dish, 1887).
Ringer#39;s solution is introduced by physiologist Sidney Ringer, whose laboratory solution contains sodium chloride, potassium chloride, calcium chloride, and sodium bicarbonate in the same proportions in which they occur in nature; the solution prolongs the survival time of excised tissue from frogs#39; hearts.
Cell-Substance, Nucleus, and Cell-Division (Zellsubstanz, Kern und Zelltheilung) by anatomist Walther Flemming at Kiel describes the process of mitosis that he has studied since 1879.
Physiologist Theodor Schwann dies of a stroke at Cologne January 11 at age 71, having developed the cell theory of life; naturalist Charles Darwin dies at Down, Kent, April 19 at age 73. He has been in ill health since returning from his voyage aboard H.M.S. Beagle in 1836, and his theory of evolution will remain a subject of controversy for more than a century (see education, 1925); zoologist Francis Maitland Balfour falls to his death near Martigny-Ville, Switzerland, July 19 at age 30 while trying to scale Mont Blanc's unclimbed Aiguille Blanche; chemist Friedrich Wöhler dies at Göttingen September 23 at age 82.
Robert Koch announces March 24 that he has isolated the Mycobaterium tuberculosis bacillus from the tissues of an infected workman and has a cure for the communicable disease (see 1877; Villemin, 1867). Having stained the tissues with methylene blue and found blue-colored rods with bends and curves, he injects tissues from people who have died into test animals and then grows the bacilli into pure cultures, but Koch's "cure" proves worthless, and such bacteriological findings will lead physicians to believe that certain diseases such as beriberi are caused by bacteria rather than by dietary deficiencies (see Trudeau, 1884; Calmette, Guérin, 1908; Waksman, 1943; diphtheria, 1883).
Antiseptic Surgery: Its Principles, Practice, History and Results by British surgeon-bacteriologist William Watson Cheyne, 29, of King's College Hospital advocates methods pioneered by his mentor Joseph Lister.
Puerperal fever remains a problem in hospitals worldwide, especially for parturient women with wounded genitalia, although Louis Pasteur has recently demonstrated the major cause of the virulent infection to be microbial chains that he first discovered in 1860 and called streptococci. Hospitals will not generally use antiseptic practices until 1885, and physicians will continue to cover up puerperal fever deaths by ascribing them to other causes.
German obstetrician Max Sänger revives cesarean deliveries for women with deformed pelvises (often the result of rickets), using aseptic methods and suturing the uterine wall as well as the abdominal wall with silk thread. Sänger enjoys an 80 percent success rate (see 1894).
Viennese physician Josef Breuer, 40, discovers the value of hypnosis in treating a girl suffering from severe hysteria, pioneering psychoanalysis. Breuer induces the patient to relive certain scenes that occurred while she was nursing her sick father and succeeds thereby in relieving her permanently of her hysteria symptoms, a success he will communicate to his colleague Sigmund Freud (see 1895).
The Vatican restores diplomatic relations with Germany as Chancellor Bismarck compromises his differences with the Church (seeKulturkampf, 1872; 1873).
France inaugurates free, compulsory, secular education under a law put through by Premier Jules Ferry (see 1902).
Oscar Wilde arrives at New York in January saying, "I have nothing to declare but my genius." Now 27, Irish-born poet-essayist Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde has made himself the apostle of an art-for-art's-sake cult (Gilbert and Sullivan burlesqued his affectations last year in their opera Patience with its character Bunthorne). Wilde will tour North America for a year lecturing on such subjects as "The English Renaissance of Art."
Waseda University has its beginnings in a private college founded at Tokyo by former Japanese finance minister Shigenobu Okuma.
Japan's first girls' high school opens but teaches mostly sewing, housekeeping, and poise. The private school will become a government-operated public school in 1886 but will still put its emphasis on preparing girls to be good wives, teaching them how to relate to a husband and a mother-in-law, raise children, keep house, treat servants, and behave in polite society.
The University of Mississippi opens its doors to women, becoming the first Southern state institution of higher learning to do so.
Western Electric wins a contract February 6 to produce telephones for the Bell Company, which will acquire the firm (see 1872; 1876). Young women replace the boys who have worked as telephone operators but proved unmanageable (see 1878); strictly disciplined, the women are forbidden to listen in on conversations, cross their legs, or blow their noses or wipe their brows without permission (those who marry are often discharged).
Harrison Gray Otis, 45, acquires an interest in the Los Angeles Times (see 1881). A Union Army enlistee who rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel, the Ohio-born Otis moved to California in 1876 and ran the Santa Barbara Post until 1879. The Times has absorbed the Weekly Mirror but is still only a four-page paper with a circulation of just 12,000; Otis will gain full control of the Times-Mirror Co. by 1886 and make it a powerful voice of Republican opposition to labor unions (see commerce, 1910).
"When a dog bites a man that is not news, because it happens so often, but when a man bites a dog that is news," says New York Sun city editor John B. Bogart, 34, to a cub reporter.
The Milwaukee Journal begins publication as the Daily Journal November 16 in competition with the city's other six newspapers, notably the 45-year-old Sentinel. Sauk County, Wisconsin-born journalist Lucius W. (William) Nieman, 24, buys a controlling interest 22 days later and will edit the Journal until his death in 1935, making it a voice of liberalism in the Midwest.
Dow Jones & Company (initially Dow, Jones & Co.) is founded in November by Connecticut-born former Providence Journal reporter Charles H. Dow, 31, and Edward D. Jones, 26, who open offices in a small, unpainted room at the bottom of some wooden stairs at 15 Wall Street, where former Drexel, Morgan employee Charles Milford Bergstrasser helps them go into business distributing handwritten news bulletins reproduced with carbon paper and tissue (they will not get a hand-cranked printing press until 1884) (seeWall Street Journal, 1889; commerce [Dow Jones Average], 1884).
The newspaper Current Events (Jiji shimpō) begins publication at Tokyo under the direction of educator-author Yukichi Fukuzawa, now 47.
Nonfiction: Atlantis: The Antediluvian World by former congressman Ignatius Donnelly, now 50, who has been impressed by the archaeological findings of Heinrich Schliemann, studied the writings of Plato, and written a bestseller based on his theory that the legendary sunken continent actually existed (he argues that ancient cultures on both sides of the Atlantic share graphic symbols and other likenesses, suggesting a common origin but offers no scientific evidence); The Tribune Primer by St. Louis-born Denver Tribune columnist Eugene Field, 32; The Future of Islam by anti-imperialist English poet Wilfred Scawen Blunt, 42.
Essayist-philosopher-poet Ralph Waldo Emerson dies at Concord, Massachusetts, April 27 at age 78 and is buried near the grave of Henry David Thoreau; author-librarian-novelist Antoine Gérin-Lajoie dies at Ottawa August 4 at age 58; historian Antoine Dareste de la Chavanne at Lucenay-lès-Aix August 6 at age 61.
Fiction: The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain; Petit Bob by French novelist Gyp (the comtesse de Mirabeau de Martel), 33.
Novelist Richard Henry Dana dies at Rome January 8 at age 66; Anthony Trollope of a paralytic stroke at his native London December 6 at age 67.
Poetry: Canto novo by Italian poet Gabriele D'Annunzio, 19; The Teutons' Apprentice (Germanernes laerling) by Karl A. Gjellerup, who will become preoccupied with Buddhism and other Oriental religions; Specimen Days by Walt Whitman, who moved to Camden, New Jersey, after suffering a paralytic stroke 9 years ago.
Poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow dies at Cambridge, Massachusetts, March 24 at age 75.
Painting: a third exhibition of Impressionist works opens at Paris March 1 but Edgar Degas excludes Pierre-Auguste Renoir for prostituting his art by accepting portrait commissions and exhibiting at the Salon. He also bars Claude Monet.
Other paintings: Towpath at Pontoise by Camille Pissarro; Customs Officer's Cabin at Pourville and On the Cliff at Pourville, Clear Weather by Claude Monet; Bar at the Folies Bergère and Four Mandarin Oranges by Edouard Manet; A Country Outing by French painter-lithographer Henri (Marie Raymond) de Toulouse-Lautrec, 17, who has been physically deformed since his youth as a result of accidents and delicate health; Self-Portrait by Paul Cézanne; The Sulphur Match, The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit, and Mr. and Mrs. John W. Field by John Singer Sargent; Earth Mother and The Tree of Forgiveness by Edward Coley Burne-Jones; Floreat Etona! by Lady Elizabeth Butler; Mounts Adam and Eve—Haymaking by Jasper Francis Cropsey. Dante Gabriel Rossetti dies at Birchington April 10 at age 53 after making a desperate effort to give up his addiction to the soporific drug chloral hydrate; art patron-educator Sir Henry Cole dies at London April 18 at age 73.
Theater: La Belle Russe by David Belasco 5/8 at Wallack's Theater, New York; Ghosts (Gengangere) by Henrik Ibsen 5/20 at Chicago's Arrone Turner Hall (in Norwegian); An Unequal Match by the late English playwright Tom Taylor 11/6 at Wallack's Theater, New York, introduces U.S. audiences to the "Jersey Lilly" Lillie Langtry (Emily Charlotte Le Breton Langtry), 30, who made her London stage debut last year. Mrs. Langtry gained her soubriquet from the painting "The Jersey Lilly" by Sir John Everett Millais, for whom she posed; The Silver King by English playwright Henry Arthur Jones, 31, 11/16 at the Princess's Theatre, London; Fedora by French playwright Victorien Sardou, 51, 12/11 at the Théâtre du Vaudeville, Paris, with Sarah Bernhardt. Written especially for Bernhardt, the melodrama provides the name for a fashionable new soft felt hat with a high roll on its side brim and a lengthwise crease in its low crown.
Jumbo the elephant appears at New York's Madison Square Garden beginning April 10 in performances of Barnum & Bailey's Circus, which expands from two rings to three. P. T. Barnum has imported the "largest elephant in or out of captivity" (its name has introduced the word jumbo to the English language), the animal stands 11 feet tall at the shoulders and weighs 6½ tons. Barnum claims it stands 12 feet tall at the shoulders, measures 26 feet in length if the trunk is included, and weighs 10½ tons. Captured 20 years ago as a baby, Jumbo has been a prime attraction at London's 56-year-old Royal Zoological Gardens since 1865 when he was acquired from the Jardin des Plantes at Paris in exchange for a rhinoceros. The London zoo has sold him to Barnum for $10,000 because he has become difficult, his sale has raised a storm of protest in England, and there will be general mourning when Jumbo is killed by a freight train on the Grand Trunk Railway at St. Thomas, Ontario, in mid-September 1885.
Stage musical: The Vicar of Bray 7/22 at London's Globe Theatre, with book by Manchester-born writer Sydney Grundy, 34, music by Edward Solomon, 69 performances.
Opera: The Snow Maiden (Snyegurochka) 2/10 at St. Petersburg, with music by Nikolai Rimski-Korsakov; German soprano Rosa Sucher (née Hasselbeck), 33, makes her London debut in May at the Drury Lane Theatre singing the role of Elsa in the 1850 Wagner opera Lohengrin, appears 5/30 in the first London production of Wagner's 1868 opera Die Meisteringer von Nürnberg, and sings the role of Isolde 6/20 in the first London production of Wagner's 1865 opera Tristan und Isolde; Parsifal 7/26 at the Festpielhaus in Bayreuth, Germany, with music by Richard Wagner (Therese Malten has accepted Wagner's invitation to share a role in his new opera); The Devil's Wall (Centova stena) 10/29 at Prague, with music by Bedrich Smetana; Iolanthe (or The Peer and the Peri) 11/25 at London's new Savoy Theatre, with Gilbert and Sullivan arias that include "When Britain Really Ruled the Waves" and "Faint Heart Never Won Fair Lady," 400 performances.
The Royal College of Music founded at London by the Prince of Wales is a successor to the National Training School for Music and will open next year under the direction of engineer-turned music and biblical scholar George Grove, now 62, who will head the RCM until 1894, when it will move to a site near the Royal Albert Hall.
First performances: Serenade in C major for String Orchestra by Petr Ilich Tchaikovsky 1/28 at Moscow; First Modern Suite for Piano by New York-born composer Edward (Alexander) MacDowell, 20, 7/11 at Zürich (MacDowell has studied at New York under the Venezuelan prodigy Teresa Carreño, now 29); 1812 Overture by Petr Ilich Tchaikovsky 8/20 at Moscow with sound effects evocative of the Battle of Borodino; My Country (Ma Vlast) by Bedrich Smetana (now totally deaf) 11/5 at Prague (the symphonic cycle includes The Moldau) (see 1875); Song of the Fates (Gesang der Parzen) by Johannes Brahms 12/10 at Basel.
William Renshaw wins in singles tennis play at Wimbledon, Richard Sears at Newport.
Boston pugilist John L. (Lawrence) Sullivan, 23, knocks out world champion Paddy Ryan in a bareknuckle match at Mississippi City, Mississippi, to gain the heavyweight title that he will hold until 1892. A surly man when drunk, as he very often will be, the "Great John L." travels about the country offering $1,000 to any man who can beat him (see 1889).
Kobe-born Japanese martial arts student Jogoro Kano, 21, founds Kodokan Judo and establishes judo as a new system that will largely replace jujitsi in Japan.
London's Sporting Times carries an advertisement August 31 with a funereal black border: "In Affectionate Remembrance of English Cricket Which Died at the Oval on 29th of August, 1882; Deeply lamented by a large circle of sorrowing friends and acquaintances. R.I.P. N.B. The body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia" (see 1877). An English team sent to Australia next year with instructions to "bring back the ashes" will be presented with a five-inch earthenware urn filled with ashes, and this most hallowed cricket souvenir will be presented to the Marylebone Cricket Club in 1928.
The Andrew Jergens Company is founded at Cincinnati by Dutch-born entrepreneur Jergens, 30, in partnership with a local soapmaker to make a luxury toilet soap. A onetime lumberjack, Jergens will formulate a hand lotion whose popularity will make him rich.
Colorado silver king Horace Tabor and his blonde, blue-eyed divorcée mistress Elizabeth "Baby Doe" McCourt are secretly married by a justice of the peace at St. Louis in September (see 1880; 1883).
Kentucky-born Civil War blockade runner Roy Bean, 57, leaves San Antonio, moves west of the Pecos River, sets up a saloon that he names the Jersey Lily next to a railroad line through Dead Man's Canyon, names the site Langtry, and will establish himself as justice of the peace with the approval of the Texas Rangers. He knows little or nothing about law or court procedure but will call himself "law west of the Pecos" and gain a certain renown for his often eccentric rulings.
Jesse James dies April 3 at age 34 of a gunshot wound in the back of the head. A fugitive since the Northfield, Minnesota, bank robbery attempt of 1876, James has been living quietly at St. Joseph, Missouri, under the name Thomas Howard. The governor has offered a large reward for the capture of James dead or alive, James has befriended his cousin and fellow outlaw Robert Ford, who has shot him to get the reward, and his murder inspires a ballad that will make future generations regard James as a Robin Hood figure.
Western outlaw Johnny Ringo is found dead at Tombstone in Arizona Territory July 14, having either shot himself or been murdered, possibly by his drinking buddy Frank Leslie or by lawman Wyatt Earp. A loner who turned up in Texas 7 years ago and was arrested on charges of double murder, Ringo escaped from jail, was re-arrested, gained release, and developed a reputation for being quick on the draw and having no aversion to killing.
The Hatfield-McCoy feud that has simmered for years in the southern Appalachians of West Virginia and eastern Kentucky boils over in the election day shooting of Kentucky storekeeper Ellison Hatfield, brother of William Anderson "Devil Anse" Hatfield, 43, who mortally wounded Harmon McCoy of the Union Army while fighting with Confederate forces in the Civil War. Hatfield's son Johnse has precipitated the quarrel by attempting to elope with Randall McCoy's daughter Rosanna, and when Ellison Hatfield dies of his wounds three of McCoy's sons, captured earlier by an armed posse under Anse Hatfield, are murdered in retaliation, beginning a bloodbath that will continue for years as local influence is used to obtain quick release of any arrested participants. Kentucky authorities will invade West Virginia in 1888 and seize several Hatfields, ending open warfare between the clans. "Devil Anse" Hatfield will live until late 1921.
Only 2 percent of New York homes have water connections, and while tenements have some rudimentary plumbing facilities (because outdoor facilities take up valuable space), nearly every private house has a backyard privy.
Honolulu's Iolani Palace is completed with flared, cast-iron columns for the Hawaiian king David Kalakua, the "merry monarch" whose subjects live for the most part in thatched houses.
Diplomat-linguist-conservationist George Perkins Marsh dies at Vallombrosa, Italy, July 23 at age 81.
The loss of Chinese labor spurs development of machinery to clean and bone fish in California's salmon canneries (see 1866; 1895; Smith, 1903).
Drought continues on western U.S. ranch lands. Edinburgh's Prairie Cattle Company pays $350,000 to acquire the Quarter Circle T Ranch of Texas Panhandle rancher Thomas Bugbee, who 6 years ago drove a small herd from Kansas to the Canadian River and established the ranch (see 1881; 1884).
The Farmers' Alliance claims 100,000 members in eight state alliances and 200 local alliances. The Alliance is now headed by Milton George (see 1880; 1889).
German bacteriologist Friedrich (August Johannes) Löffler, 30, at Berlin's Friedrich Wilhelm Institute discovers the bacilli that produce swine fever (hog cholera), swine erysipelas, and glanders (another livestock disease) (see medicine, 1884).
Germany will assume leadership of European industry in the next two decades, but the Germans will attempt to maintain self-sufficiency in food production where the British have not. Germany will plant another 2 million acres to food crops and use high tariffs to protect her farmers from foreign competition, even though such a policy means keeping domestic food prices high.
U.S. hybridizer Thomas Volney Munson helps the French reestablish their vineyards in the wake of the grape phylloxera disaster (see 1881). French botanist Pierre-Marie-Alexis Millardet, 46, invents a fungicide based on a solution of copper sulfate, lime, and water he has used to discourage thieves from stealing his grapes (it stains everything that it touches a brilliant and unappetizing blue), but he notices in October that the thick mixture also seems to control downy mildew; his "Bordeaux mixture" will be the first fungicide to be used on a large scale worldwide, and it will be found effective not only in combatting the plant lice Phylloxera that attack French vineyards but also those that cause potato blight (see 1847). It will help revive the French wine industry.
"The evidence regarding the adulteration of food indicates that they are largely of the nature of frauds upon the consumer . . . and injure both the health and morals of the people," reports a U.S. congressional committee. The practice of fraudulent substitution "has become universal," the committee says, and it issues a list of people who have died from eating foods and using drugs adulterated with poisonous substances (see 1889).
Toronto baker's apprentice George Weston, 17, bakes his first loaf of bread in Phoebe Street, buys a bread route from his epmloyer for $200, and establishes an enterprise that will grow under his son Garfield's management to become an international food-processing and retailing empire.
Former miller, industrialist, and political leader Cadwallader C. Washburn of Washburn, Crosby Company dies at Eureka Springs, Arkansas, May 14 at age 64, having served as governor of Wisconsin before making a fortune in timber, milling, and railroads.
Kentucky wholesale grocery salesman Joel (Owsley) Cheek, 29, quits his firm to devote full time to developing a coffee blend. His rural customers buy green beans for roasting. He has been experimenting with different kinds of beans, and he will move his growing family next year to Nashville, Tennessee (see Maxwell House, 1893).
The wire "Lightning" seal patented by a U.S. inventor clamps down a glass lid (see Mason, 1858; Ball brothers, 1887).
Chinese restaurants are now to be found in virtually all major U.S. cities and many smaller cities, often being the best places in town to eat; the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1880 will have little effect on these restaurants (the new law excludes laborers but permits entry of merchants, students, teachers, and temporary visitors; see California agriculture, 1884).
The 1880 Chinese Exclusion Act takes effect, barring entry of Chinese laborers into the United States for a period of 10 years (see 1884). The first U.S. legislation designed to exclude a group of immigrants on the basis of race, it will remain in effect until its repeal in 1943. Congress passes the first U.S. act restricting general immigration (see 1875). It excludes convicts, paupers, and defectives and imposes a head tax on immigrants.
Crop failures in southern Japan bring widespread starvation. Recruiting agents sent by planters persuade peasants to emigrate to Hawaii's sugar fields; 100,000 Japanese workers and their families will move in the next 30 years.
U.S. immigration from Germany reaches its peak.
The world's first birth-control clinic opens at Amsterdam. Aletta Jacobs has been won over by neo-Malthusians on a visit to London (see medicine, 1878); now 33, she equips women with the Mensinga Pessary, which will come to be called the "Dutch cap," but because it requires medical fitting it will never be popular with working-class women (see 1880; Bradlaugh and Besant, 1877; Sanger, 1914).
1881 1882 1883 1884 1885 1886 1887 1888 1889 1890
Astronomy
Edward Charles Pickering [b. Boston, Massachusetts, July 19, 1846, d. Cambridge, Massachusetts, February 3, 1919] develops the method of photographing the spectra of several stars at a time by placing a large prism in front of the photographic plate. See also 1872 Astronomy.
David Gill [b. Aberdeen, Scotland, June 12, 1843, d. London, January 24, 1914] makes a classic photograph of the Great Comet of 1882 that shows so many stars that the idea of stellar cataloging by photography is born. Gill proceeds to map most of the stars visible in the Southern Hemisphere using his new method. See also 1750 Astronomy; 1885 Astronomy.
Biology
Eduard Strasburger coins the terms cytoplasm for the part of a cell within the membrane but outside the nucleus and nucleoplasm for the material within the nucleus. See also 1875 Biology.
Friedrich August Löffler [b. Frankfort an der Oder, Germany, June 24, 1852, d. Berlin, April 9, 1915] discovers the bacterium causing glanders, Burkholderia mallei, a disease that primarily affects horses but can be contracted by other animals and (rarely) humans.
Wilhelm Engelmann [b. Germany, 1843, d. 1909] shows that red light is the most effective in providing plants with energy (photosynthesis).
Chemistry
Viktor Meyer discovers thiophene, a pentagonal ring with sulfur replacing two of the carbon atoms in a benzene ring, when a common test for benzene fails to work on a pure sample of benzene. Careful work shows that all previous samples of benzene known had been contaminated with thiophene, which is what the test actually detects. See also 1865 Chemistry; 1889 Chemistry.
Communication
German physicist Ernst Abbe [b. Eisenbach, Germany, January 23, 1840, d. Jena, Germany, January 14, 1905] founds the Zeiss Laboratory for Optical Technology in Jena, Germany. See also 1887 Communication.
Lars Magnus Ericsson [b. Vármskog, Sweden, 1846, d. December 1926] introduces the telephone nicknamed the "dachshund," the first telephone for which the handset combines the microphone and earpiece and rests on a cradle. See also 1880 Communication; 1884 Communication.
Construction
The largest apartment complex to date is built in New York City, the first to be larger than Pueblo Bonito built by the Anasazi of western North America around 1100. See also 1100 Construction.
Earth science
Balfour Stewart [b. Edinburgh, Scotland, November 1, 1828, d. near Drogheda, Ireland, December 19, 1887] suggests the existence of the ionosphere to account for small daily changes in Earth's magnetic field. See also 1902 Earth science.
Energy
Physicist Marcel Deprez [b. Chatillon-sur-Loing, France, December 12, 1843, d. Vincennes, France, October 13, 1918] shows that electric energy can be transported over longer distances by increasing its voltage. In an experimental setup between Munich and Nielsbach, a distance of 57 km (35 mi), 38 percent of the electric energy reaches its destination, using a potential difference of 1343 volts. In subsequent experiments Deprez increases the voltage, thus initiating high-voltage transport of electrical energy over long distances. Deprez fails to patent his discovery. See also 1891 Energy.
The first hydroelectric power plant goes into operation in Appleton, Wisconsin, on September 30. A 107-cm (42-in.) water wheel powers two direct-current generators that together provide about 25 kW of power. See also 1869 Energy.
The Pearl Street power station in New York City, built by Edison, brings electric lighting to the United States on September 4. It consists of three 125-horsepower steam generators that supply enough current for 5000 lamps in 225 houses. Edison earlier in the year opens a similar station in London. See also 1885 Energy.
French engineer Abel Pifre and mathematician Augustin Mouchot demonstrate in Paris the use of solar energy for power. Solar radiation, captured by a 2.2-m (7-ft) parabolic mirror, heats water in a small boiler placed at its center, thus producing steam to drive a steam engine. This in turn powers a printing press that prints 500 copies per hour of Pifre's newspaper, named Soleil-Journal (Sun newspaper). See also 1891 Energy.
Materials
Joseph Swan produces artificial silk (rayon) from cellulose acetate. See also 1857 Materials; 1884 Materials.
Mathematics
Über die Zahl pi ("on the number π") by Carl Louis Ferdinand von Lindemann [b. Hanover, Germany, April 12, 1852, d. Munich, March 6, 1939] proves that π is a transcendental number, implying that the circle cannot be squared with straightedge and compass. See also 1768 Mathematics.
Vorlesungfen Über Neure Geometrie ("proposal for modern geometry") by Moritz Pasch [b. Breslau (Wrocl/aw, Poland), November 8, 1843, d. Bad Homburg, Germany, September 20, 1930] is the first modern attempt to reform Euclid's geometry by changing the undefined terms and postulates to produce a more secure logical foundation. See also 1889 Mathematics.
Felix Klein invents the surface in four-dimensional space that has one side, no edge, and no inside or outside, now called the Klein bottle. See also 1865 Mathematics; 1895 Mathematics.
Medicine & health
Robert Koch discovers the bacterium that causes tuberculosis, the first definite association of a germ with a specific human disease. See also 1880 Medicine & health; 1890 Medicine & health.
Paul Ehrlich introduces his diazo test for diagnosing typhoid fever from a chemical reaction with urine--still in use and accurate in more than 80 percent of patients.
The modern form of the saliva ejector for draining a patient's mouth while dental work progresses is introduced. See also 1864 Medicine & health.
French physician Phillipe Gaucher describes the genetic disorder now known as Gaucher disease.
Physics
Women began to be admitted to the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, England, on the same terms as men. See also 1874 Physics.
Henry Augustus Rowland [b. Honesdale, Pennsylvania, November 27, 1848, d. Baltimore, Maryland, April 16, 1901] constructs a machine that will make precision diffraction gratings for use in advanced spectroscopy.
John William Strutt, Lord Rayleigh [b. Terling Place, England, November 12, 1842, d. Witham, Essex, June 30, 1919] discovers that the ratio of the atomic mass of oxygen to that of hydrogen is not 16-to-1 exactly, as had been assumed, but 15.882-to-1.
Tools
Percival Everitt patents in Great Britain a machine that supplies goods when you put a coin in it.
Henry W. Seely invents the electric iron.
Transportation
The Saint-Gothard Tunnel is completed. The tunnel is 15 km (9.3 mi) long. The two excavation teams meet each other in the middle with an error of only 20 cm (8 in.) in the horizontal axis. See also 1870 Transportation.
The first attempt to build a tunnel beneath the English Channel is halted for political reasons, not technical ones. See also 1990 Transportation.