1884: Information and Much More from Answers.com
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1881 1882 1883 1884 1885 1886 1887 1888 1889 1890
Egypt's khedive Mohammed Tewfik gives former Sudanese governor Charles "Chinese" Gordon executive powers, and Gordon moves out to rescue Egyptian garrisons in the Sudan from al-Mahdi (see 1883). Now 51, Gordon is refused in his requests to London for Zobeir and Turkish troops. He nevertheless manages to rescue some 2,500 women, children, and wounded men from Khartoum but is hemmed in there by the Mahdi beginning March 12 (see 1885).
Chancellor Bismarck cables Cape Town April 24 that South-West Africa (Namibia) is a German colony. The German consul at Tunis proclaims a protectorate over the coast of Togoland July 5 and a protectorate over the Cameroons Coast a week later. German explorer Carl Peters, 27, founds the Society for German Colonization and journeys later in the year to East Africa's Usambara Mountains, where several tribal chiefs surrender their territories to him (see German East Africa Company, 1885).
Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza returns to the Congo, founds a town that will be called Brazzaville, obtains official French financial backing, and begins to establish a colony three times the size of France that he will govern from 1886 to 1898 (see 1880; 1891).
France acquires Madagascar (see 1882), completes her conquest of the French Congo, and acquires Tonkin in southeast Asia (see 1882), but Premier Ferry is swept out of office in March in a burst of public outrage over the high cost of the hostilities in Tonkin. A new government headed by (Eugène-) Henri Brisson, 49, survives only until December 29 but Brisson will be premier once again in 1898.
Buganda's progressive but autocratic kabaka (ruler) Mutesa I (Mutea Walugembe Mukaabya) dies at Nabulgala in October at age 46 (approximate), having consolidated his East African kingdom, reformed its military system, expanded his fleet of war canoes on Lake Victoria, and welcomed Christian missionaries as a way to use European influence against what he has perceived as a threat from Egypt to the north. He is succeeded by Mwanga, who will reign until 1888 (and again from 1890 to 1897) but will soon become jealous of the Europeans' power and try to drive them out (see religion, 1885).
The Berlin West Africa Conference opens November 15 with delegates from 14 nations, including the United States, to decide questions related to Central Africa's Congo River basin. Portugal has proposed the conference as various European countries eye each other's colonial expansionism with growing apprehension (see 1885).
The Ilbert Bill enacted by the Indian Legislative Assembly January 25 allows Indian magistrates to preside over cases involving British subjects. First proposed last year and severely weakened by compromise (a British subject may demand a jury, half of whose members are Europeans), the measure creates a furor in Calcutta's business community, among Bengal indigo planters, and among other British colonials, exacerbating antagonisms between the raj and India's new westernized middle class. Former British governor-general of Canada Frederick Temple, earl of Dufferin, arrives at New Delhi as viceroy of India, succeeding G. F. S. Robinson, marquess of Ripon, whose reforms have antagonized the British community in the subcontinent (see Indian National Congress, 1885; Burma, 1886). Mansur Ali Khan Feradun Jah dies at Murshidabad November 5 at age 54; the last nabob of Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa, he retired in 1880.
French colonial authorities crown a 14-year-old nephew of the late emperor Tu Doc as emperor of Annam (later Vietnam) following the assassination or dethroning of some other qualified heirs. Ung Lich adopts the name Ham Nghi and will reign briefly under the regency of Nguyen van Tuong and Ton That Thuyet, who have conspired to make Ung Lich emperor as a means of undermining French control (see 1885).
Sino-French negotiations break down in August, a French fleet of eight warships and two torpedo boats opens fire August 22 on an 11-ship Chinese fleet at Fuzhou, all but two of the Chinese ships are of wood, and within an hour every one of them has been sunk or set afire after a skirmish that has left 521 Chinese dead or missing (French casualties total five dead). China declares war on France October 26 following French bombardment of Taiwan to punish the Chinese for not agreeing to France's protectorate of Indochina and refusal to pay indemnities (see 1885).
Pro-Japanese reformists in Korea attempt a coup d'état in December, but Chinese military forces in the country block the effort (see 1882), and although Korean trade with Japan in this decade will be far larger than Korean trade with China, the Chinese will strengthen their political influence and commercial privileges.
The War of the Pacific that began in 1879 between Chile and Peru ends April 4 with the Treaty of Valparaiso that deprives Bolivia of access to the sea (see 1883). Victorious Chile gained the Peruvian province of Tarapaca last year in the Treaty of Ancona and now gains nitrate-rich Bolivian territories (see Haber process, 1908; Grace, 1890).
Former Colombian president Rafael Nuñez wins election to a second 2-year term following a rebellion by Radicals and Liberals that has forced him to ally himself with the Conservatives (see 1880; constitution, 1886).
New York State assemblyman Theodore Roosevelt, 25, receives word at Albany February 13 that his wife, Alice Lee, 22, has been delivered of a baby girl in the family's town house at 6 West 57th Street, but a second telegram arrives within hours advising him that his mother is dying and Alice as well. Heavy fog slows his train back from Albany and by the time he reaches her side Alice is comatose with Bright's disease (chronic kidney failure); his mother, Martha Bulloch Roosevelt, dies of pneumonia in the small hours of February 14 at age 48, and Alice dies in his arms at 2 o'clock that afternoon, leaving Roosevelt in despair. The Assembly votes to adjourn in an unprecedented show of respect. Roosevelt's baby daughter is given the name Alice Lee after her mother's funeral, but Roosevelt pays the infant little heed, plunging himself into a frenzy of political activity, shuttling back and forth between New York and Albany by night train, speaking out for his Reform Charter Bill, inspecting the city's infamous Ludlow Street Jail, interviewing witnesses who come before his City Affairs Committee, and making speeches.
Former Confederate secretary of state Judah P. Benjamin dies at Paris May 6 at age 72. He has enjoyed such outstanding success in his legal career that he has been able to afford a mansion in the French capital; former U.S. Supreme Court justice Noah Swayne dies at New York June 8 at age 79.
The Republican convention at Chicago nominates Maine-born former secretary of state James G. (Gillespie) Blaine, now 54. New York-born Washington, D.C., lawyer and orator Robert Green Ingersoll, now 51, called him a "plumed knight" in an eloquent address to the 1876 convention, Sen. Roscoe Conkling opposed his nomination then, but Blaine has won the support of Tammany Hall boss Thomas C. Platt over opposition from New York reformers. Blaine has a record of corruption, and Democrats chant, "Blaine, Blaine, James G. Blaine,/ The Continental liar from the state of Maine."
Wall Street lawyer and financier William C. Whitney, 43, outsmarts older politicians at the Democratic National Convention and secures the presidential nomination for Governor Grover Cleveland, now 47. The political slogan "Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion" defeats James G. Blaine and helps elect Grover Cleveland to the presidency in the first Democratic Party national victory since James Buchanan won in 1856. A Buffalo newspaper has run a story in July alleging that Cleveland fathered an illegitimate child 10 years ago, and it is true that as sheriff of Buffalo he met widow Maria Halpin (née Crofts), a woman 2 years his junior with two grown children, who worked in a fancy dress shop and was musical and fluent in French. She had had affairs with some other men, and while Cleveland has expressed doubts in private that he was the father he has nevertheless supported the child; preachers denounce him for being a bachelor and living in sin, but Democrats capture the crucial Catholic vote as a result of remarks made October 29 at the Fifth Avenue Hotel by local clergyman Samuel D. Burchard ("We are Republicans, and don't propose to have our party identify ourselves with the party whose antecedents have been Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion"), New York City voters—many of them Irishmen—have taken exception, and they give Cleveland a narrow 1,149-vote edge in the state that gives him a plurality of 20,000 votes out of nearly 10 million total, 219 electoral votes to 189 for Blaine. When Republicans chant, "Ma, Ma, where's my Pa?" Democrats reply, "Gone to the White House, ha, ha, ha." New York State's electoral votes provide the margin of victory (Cleveland also carries New Jersey, Connecticut, and Indiana plus the Solid South), and President Cleveland will make William C. Whitney his secretary of the navy.
Woodstock, Tennessee, schoolteacher Ida Bell Wells, 22, boards a Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad train May 4, taking a seat in the first-class "Ladies' Car" for the short trip between Woodstock and Memphis (see Supreme Court decision, 1883). The C&O conductor orders Wells to vacate the Ladies' Car and take a seat in the second-class smokers' section. She refuses, bracing her feet against the seat in front of her, and when the conductor reaches for her she bites him. He gets help from two train workers, and they manage to push her off the train to a standing ovation from the white passengers. Born into slavery at Holly Springs, Mississippi, Wells was left an orphan after a yellow fever epidemic in 1878 and has had to raise her seven younger siblings. Humiliated, her dress torn in the struggle, she vows to take the railroad (and segregation) to court. The C&O tries to bribe her to drop the case but she refuses. The judge turns out to be an ex-Union soldier from Minnesota and rules in her favor, awarding her $500 in damages; the Memphis Daily Appeal reports the story under the headline, "A Darky Damsel Obtains a Verdict for Damages," but the railroad files an appeal (see 1887).
Delegates to the Berlin West Africa Conference agree to work for the suppression of slavery and the slave trade (see 1873; 1892).
France legalizes divorce July 27 following passage of a measure proposed in the Chamber of Deputies by Alfred Joseph Naquet, 49, that restores most of the freedoms granted in 1792 (see 1816), but a couple must be separated for 3 years before a final divorce decree may be issued.
London's Toynbee Hall is founded to attract well-to-do young people to "settle" in the city's slums and serve the poor; it is the world's first settlement house (see Coit, 1886).
Reformer Wendell Phillips dies at Boston February 2 at 72.
Public Relief and Private Charity by New York State Board of Charities commissioner Josephine Shaw Lowell, 40, advocates a state-administered philanthropy.
France legalizes trade unions under terms of the Loi Waldeck-Rousseau, sponsored by Minister of the Interior René Waldeck-Rousseau, 37, but the law imposes sharp restrictions on membership (see 1901).
Congress establishes a Bureau of Labor in the Department of the Interior as severe coal strikes occur in Pennsylvania and Ohio (see 1888).
The American Federation of Labor (AFL) has its beginnings in a resolution adopted by the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions stating that "8 hours shall constitute a legal day's work from and after May 1, 1886." English-born cigar maker Samuel Gompers, now 33, founded the union at Pittsburgh August 2, 1881; its members demonstrate in the streets to demand universal adoption of the 8-hour day (see AFL, 1886).
Chemist Lammot du Pont is killed at age 53 May 27 in a nitroglycerin explosion at the Repauno Chemical works in New Jersey. Second in command at the 82-year-old powder-making company, he has pioneered in the development of dynamite; his 14-year-old son Pierre Samuel, second oldest of his 11 children, becomes head of the family (his younger brothers and sisters call him "Dad"; see 1902).
A German accident insurance law passed in June extends to practically all wage-earner groups and is paid for entirely by employers. Injured workers are to receive half pay for 4 weeks and two-thirds pay for the remainder of the time that they are temporarily disabled. In cases of permanent disability, a worker is to be paid two-thirds of what he or she was paid in the year preceding the accident, and if the disability is only partial then a portion of the pension is to be paid. The measure continues efforts begun by Bismarck in last year's sickness insurance law to resist advocates of state socialism (see 1891).
Russia ends her poll tax, a relic of serfdom, but the beginning of industrialization in Russia is creating an industrial proletariat whose living and working conditions are no better than were those of rural serfs (see 1903; Plekhanov, 1883).
The first Dow Jones Average appears July 3 in the Afternoon News Letter published since 1882 by Charles H. Dow and Edward Jones. Activity on the New York Stock Exchange averages 250,000 shares per day, Dow's average is intended to provide an overall measure of how the active shares performed, and his list gives the closing prices of shares in two industrial companies (Pacific Mail, Western Union), plus nine railroads (Chicago & Northwestern, Delaware Lackwawanna & Western, Lake Shore, Louisville & Nashville, Missouri Pacific, New York Central, Northern Pacific preferred, St. Paul, Union Pacific). Beginning in mid-February of next year he will add the Central Pacific, the Central of New Jersey, and the Delaware & Hudson; the Dow Jones Industrial Average will become a measure of the stock market's performance (see 1896; communications [Wall Street Journal], 1889).
National Cash Register Company is founded at Dayton, Ohio, by local coal merchant John H. (Henry) Patterson, 40, who has bought a controlling interest in a company that has bought the Ritty cash register of 1879 and improved it by adding a cash drawer and a bell that rings every time the drawer is opened. Ridiculed for having invested $6,500 in a company that makes anything so useless, Patterson offers the seller $2,000 to let him out of the deal, is refused, changes the firm name, and goes to work improving the cash register. He will innovate the idea of exclusive sales territories, pay large commissions to salesmen, organize a force of well-trained service men to maintain the machines he sells, and make NCR prosper (see Watson, 1903).
Montgomery Ward issues a 240-page catalog offering nearly 10,000 items from cutlery, harnesses, and parasols to stereoscopes, trunks, and writing paper. Still describing itself on the catalog cover as "The Original Grange Supply House," the 12-year-old mail order firm assures customers that all goods are sent "subject to examination" and that unsatisfactory items may be returned with the company paying transportation both ways (see 1904; Sears, 1886).
A new Harrods store opens at London in September with displays of silver and brass, trunks and saddlery, cheap patent medicines, and with pay desks (see 1861). Now 43, Charles Digby Harrod more than doubles the volume of his old store, insists on "net cash before delivery," but beginning next year will extend limited credit to approved customers such as actresses Lillie Langtree and Ellen Terry and playwright Oscar Wilde. When Harrod sells out for £120,000 in 1889, the store will be doing an annual business of nearly £500,000.
The compound steam turbine invented by English engineer Charles A. (Algernon) Parsons, 26, exerts steam power first upon a large vane wheel and then (through slots in the casing) on another vane wheel and so on until the power of the steam is spent (see Laval, 1882). The turbine develops 10 horsepower at 18,000 rpm, but Parsons will add a condenser in 1891, adapt the turbine to maritime use in 1897, and be building 1,000-kilowatt turbines by 1900; his geared turbine will appear in 1910 (seeTurbinia, 1897; Curtis turbine, 1896).
John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Trust markets more than 80 percent of the petroleum from U.S. oil wells (see 1882; 1892; Sherman Act, 1890).
Oil driller George H. Bissell dies at New York November 19 at age 63, having amassed an immense fortune.
The Central Pacific Railroad is merged into the Southern Pacific by Charles Crocker and Collis P. Huntington, who amalgamate other California railroads to create a giant competitor to the Union Pacific (see 1881; Santa Fe, 1887).
Seattle gets its first rail link to the East. Still a small lumber town, it begins to grow (see 1851; Great Northern, 1893).
Cog railway pioneer Sylvester Marsh dies of pneumonia at Concord, New Hampshire, December 30 at age 81.
Electric streetcars employing overhead wires appear in Germany (see Daft's trolley, 1885).
The first true dirigible makes her maiden flight August 9 at France's Aérostation Militaire at Chalais-Meudon. Built by military engineer Charles Renard, 37, and his fellow army captain Arthur Krebs, La France can be steered in any direction, whatever way the wind is blowing; it can return to its point of departure under its own power, and the rigid-frame lighter-than-air craft completes a circular journey of seven or eight kilometers (four to five miles) (see Zeppelin, 1900).
Travel agent Thomas Cook, now 76, conveys General Charles "Chinese" Gordon to Khartoum (see 1866). John Mason Cook, 50, has been his father's partner since 1864 and extended Thomas Cook & Son service to America.
Studies in Chemical Dynamics (Etudes de Dynamique chimique) by Dutch chemist Jacobus H. van't Hoff describes a new method for determining the order of a reaction, applies the laws of thermodynamics to chemical equilibriums, and contains the principles of chemical kinetics. Now 32, Hoff has been professor of chemistry, mineralogy, and geology at the University of Amsterdam since 1878.
Danish bacteriologist Hans Christian (Joachim) Gram, 30, at Berlin develops a dye system for distinguishing between the two major classes of bacteria (the Gram stain). Those bacteria that retain the violet dye will be classified as gram-positive, and the distinctions revealed by Gram's staining will later be correlated with other biochemical and morphological differences.
Genetics pioneer Gregor Mendel dies at Brünn January 6 at age 61; chemist Hermann Kolbe at Leipzig November 25 at age 66.
F. A. J. Löffler at Berlin isolates and cultures the diphtheria bacillus and finds that it secretes a soluble substance that affects organs beyond the sites where there is physical evidence of its presence (see 1882; Klebs, 1883). It will become known as the Klebs-Löffler bacillus (see Roux and Yersin, 1889).
Leipzig gynecologist (Karl Sigismund) Franz Crede, 65, discovers that a few drops of silver nitrate solution in the eyes of newborn infants will prevent blindness from gonorrheal infection (see Howe Act, 1890).
Lithuanian-born physiologist-pathologist Oskar Minkowski, 26, at Strasbourg investigates the biochemical basis of diabetes and discovers that hydroxybutyric acid combined with a decrease in blood bicarbonate causes the acidification of blood known as diabetic acidosis. He will soon prove that diabetic coma is accompanied by a decrease in the amount of carbon dioxide dissolved in the blood and will introduce alkali therapy to treat such coma (see 1889; uric acid, 1885).
Robert Koch at Berlin publishes a set of postulates (standards of proof) involving the tubercle bacillus (see 1882). The Etiology of Tuberculosis includes a demonstration of three main facts: 1) presence of the tubercle bacillus (as proved by staining) in tubercular lesions of various organs, 2) cultivation of the organisms in pure culture on blood serum, and 3) production of TB at will by inoculating guinea pigs.
New York physician Edward Livingston Trudeau, 36, pioneers open-air treatment of tuberculosis in America. He developed consumption himself at age 25 and repaired to the Adirondack Mountains to regain his health. The Adirondack Cottage Sanatorium that he opens at Saranac, New York, will later be called the Trudeau Sanatorium.
New York surgeon William S. (Stewart) Halsted, 31, injects a patient with cocaine, pioneering the practice of local anesthesia. A stickler for hygiene who sends his shirts to Paris to be laundered, Halsted becomes addicted in the course of his experiments to the drug derived from leaves of the South American Andes shrub Erythroxylon coca (or E. truxillense), and although he will recover in 2 years he will require morphine in order to function (see 1803; 1859; mastectomy, 1889; Johns Hopkins, 1893).
New York ophthalmologist Carl Killer, 27, introduces cocaine as a local anesthetic for eye surgery.
Surgeon Samuel D. Gross dies at Philadelphia May 6 at age 78.
English surgeon Rickman John Godlee, 35, performs the first operation for the removal of a brain tumor November 25. Godlee is a nephew of Lord Lister.
Hindu philosopher and social reformer Keshab Chunder Sen dies at his native Calcutta January 8 at age 45, having revived many Vedic practices while sending out 12 disciples to preach under an ecumenical flag bearing a crescent, a cross, and a trident.
Charles Taze Russell founds the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society to publish his books, pamphlets, and periodicals (see 1878). Russell's 1881 book Food for Thinking warned true Christians against political and social allegiances; he preaches that the world is on the brink of annihilation in a monstrous battle of Armageddon after which 144,000 of all who have ever lived in the history of mankind will reappear in heaven (see Jehovah's Witnesses, 1931).
Spiritualist Helena Blavatsky is summoned to England to face challenges to her authority (see 1875; 1885).
The Fabian Society founded by young London intellectuals in January takes its name from the 3rd century B.C. Roman statesman Quintus Fabius Maximus, called "Cunctator" (delayer) because of his cautious delaying tactics against Hannibal. Recognizing that deciding what courses to pursue will require "long taking of counsel," they aim to reconstruct society "in accordance with the highest moral responsibilities." Critic George Bernard Shaw joins in May, London economist Sidney James Webb, 25, and writer Beatrice Potter, 26, will soon become members, Webb will marry Potter, and the Webbs will set up a socialist salon, attracting celebrated thinkers and writers (see London School of Economics, 1895).
Temple University is founded at Philadelphia by Baptist clergyman Russell H. Conwell, now 41, a former lawyer who has made a fortune with his inspirational lecture "Acres of Diamonds," encouraging his listeners to take advantage of the opportunities in their "own backyards." Conwell will deliver the lecture more than 6,000 times before his death in 1925 and donate all of the proceeds to his university.
The U.S. Naval War College established at Newport, Rhode Island, October 6 by the Navy Department under General Order 325 has been created at the urging of New York-born Commodore Stephen B. (Bleecker) Luce, 57, who will be its first president, making it (in his words) "a place of original research on all questions relating to war and to statesmanship connected with war, or the prevention of war." Luce has offered West Point, New York-born Annapolis graduate Alfred Thayer Mahan, 44, a faculty position in July, Mahan is at sea (he is prone to seasickness and generally hates the navy), Mahan will begin lecturing next year and succeed Luce as president in 1886, and he will establish the war college as a well-respected center of higher learning. Housed in a large white frame building erected in 1820, it will survive as the oldest institution of its kind.
The Bishop Estate trust is created under the terms of a will left by the late Bernice Pauahi Bishop, last direct descendant of Hawaii's Kamehameha I, who has died of cancer October 16 at age 52. Princess Pauahi married Charles Bishop, a businessman and banker from Glens Falls, New York, against her family's wishes, had no children, and left the great bulk of her estate, including some 400,000 acres of family lands, "to erect and maintain in the Hawaiian islands two schools, each for boarding and day scholars, one for boys and one for girls, to be known as, and called, the Kamehameha Schools." The schools will later be unified and made coeducational, but homeowners who lease land from the Bishop Estate will not be able to buy their property outright until the U.S. Supreme Court upholds a state law forcing such sales in the 1980s.
Le Matin begins publication at Paris February 26 and will continue until 1944, competing with La Presse, Le Siécle, Le Petit Journal, and Le Petit Parisienne.
Svenska Dagbladet begins publication December 18 at Stockholm. The conservative newspaper will not carry news on its front page until September 1, 1970.
The Linotype typesetting machine patented by German-born mechanic Ottmar Mergenthaler, 30, will revolutionize newspaper composing rooms. The Linotype compositor has a keyboard much like that of a typewriter (see Sholes, 1868), but unlike the Church Typesetting Machine of 1822 it casts type in a solid one-piece line, or slug. Depressing a key on the keyboard releases a matrix from a magazine, and this small rod with the die of a character on its vertical edge falls into a line-composing box, where little wedges automatically adjust the spaces between the words. When a line of matrices has been set, it is carried off to be cast in metal slugs made to the width of a newspaper column. The metal slugs are assembled in a form, compositors add hand-set headlines and line illustrations, and the form is ready for the press or for casting into a stereotype plate (see 1725; halftones, 1886; New York Tribune, 1886).
Former Chicago Times editor Wilbur F. Storey dies at Chicago October 27 at age 64, having been judged in the past year to be of unsound mind. The paper's value has increased to $1 million (seeSun-Times, 1947).
The Waterman pen is the first practical fountain pen with a capillary feed. New York insurance man Lewis E. (Edson) Waterman, 47, has lost a sale because his pen leaked on an important document. He has developed a revolutionary ink filling system, and he has 200 of the pens made by hand, but the end of the pen must be removed and ink squirted in with an eye dropper (the lever-fill pen will not be introduced until 1904).
The first volume of A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles is published by Oxford's Clarendon Press February 1 (see 1879; 1928).
Nonfiction: Theory of Governments and Parliamentary Government (Sulla teorica de governi e sul governo parlamentare) by Palermo-born political theorist Gaetano Mosca, 26, who applies a historical method to political ideas and institutions.
Fiction: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Tom Sawyer's Comrade) by Mark Twain, whose masterpiece is published February 18 by the publishing firm Charles Webster owned by Samuel L. Clemens (it was published in December of last year by the London house Chatto & Winder under the title The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and is written from the viewpoint and in the style of an uneducated Missouri boy who has been brought up to think that slavery is acceptable but finds that blacks have feelings. He writes a note to the owner of a runaway slave telling her where to find the man and then tears it up, saying to himself, "All right, then I'll go to hell;"); "The Lady or the Tiger" by Philadelphia-born novelist-short story writer Frank (Francis Richard) Stockton, 50; "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" ("Smeat'Ivana Il'icha") by Leo Tolstoy; With Fire and Sword (Ogniem i mieczem) by Polish novelist Henryk (Adam Aleksandr Pius) Sienkiewicz, 38, who co-edits the daily paper Slowo that has serialized his work; Against Nature (A Rebours) by Joris Karl Huysmans; Ramona by Helen Hunt Jackson, whose novel about the treatment of Native Americans is by some accounts based on the marriage of Scottish-born Pasadena rancher Hugo Reid with a beautiful native woman and has an even greater impact than did her 1881 nonfiction book.
Novelist-playwright Charles Reade dies at London April 11 at age 69.
Poetry: Poèmes tragiques by Charles Leconte de Lisle; Nerto by Frédéric Mistral.
Poet Charles Stuart Calverley dies at Folkestone, Kent, February 17 at age 52. He has been an invalid since sustaining an accident while skating in 1866.
Painting: Bathers at Asnières (Une Baignade, Asnières) by French painter Georges Seurat, 24, who joins with Paul Gauguin, Paul Cézanne, and Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh, 31, in supporting the exhibiting society Les Vingt founded at Brussels by Belgian painter James (Sydney) Ensor, 24, whose grotesque painting Scandalized Masks attracted some notice last year but who was rejected by the Brussels Salon; Children's Afternoon at Wargemont by Pierre-Auguste Renoir; Corniche of Monaco by Claude Monet; Madame X by John Singer Sargent, whose revealing portrait of New Orleans-born social climber Virginie Amélie (Mme. Pierre) Gautreau with one jeweled shoulder strap loosened to expose ash-white naked flesh causes a sensation at Paris, where it is shown May 1 at the Palais de l'Industrie on the Champs-Elysées (Gautreau is the paramour of society physician Samuel-Jean Pozzi). Sargent moves to London to escape the furor, he will describe Madame X as his finest work, but it will hang in his studio for more than 30 years before he agrees in 1916 (a year after the subject has died) to sell it to New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art for £1,000; King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid by Edward Coley Burne-Jones; Alexander J. Cassatt and his Son Robert Kelso Cassatt by Mary Cassatt, whose brother Alexander is a Pennsylvania Railroad executive; Toilers of the Sea by New Bedford, Mass.-born painter Albert Pinkham Ryder, 37.
Sculpture: Robert Gould Shaw Memorial by Augustus Saint-Gaudens for the Boston Common.
The Russian czar Aleksandr III commissions St. Petersburg goldsmith-jeweler-designer Peter Carl (originally Karl Gustavovich) Fabergé, 37, to produce a decorated Easter egg for his czarina. Fabergé's father started the family business in 1842. He inherited it 14 years ago after studying in Germany, Italy, France, and England, showed his works at Moscow's Pan-Russian Exhibition 2 years ago, and has established a reputation for exquisite objects of precious and semi-precious materials such as gold, silver, jade, lapis lazuli, malachite, and gemstones. Fabergé will continue to produce the elaborate Easter eggs and other pieces until 1917.
A photographic film roll system invented by British photography pioneer W. H. Walker uses paper coated with emulsion.
George Eastman invents a machine to coat photographic paper continuously in long rolls and will obtain a patent for the machine in 1895 (see 1880; Houston, 1881). Flexible roll film will permit development of cameras more convenient to use than large plate cameras, but Eastman is a high school dropout who never studied chemistry and cannot produce film that meets the needs of commercial photographers (see Kodak, 1888).
Playwright-actor H. J. Byron dies at London April 12 at age 49; playwright Antonio García Gutiérrez at Madrid August 26 at age 71.
The Playbill has its beginnings in the New York Dramatic Chronicle, a one-page flyer started by local printer Frank V. Strauss. It will evolve into a slick magazine with editions in every major U.S. city.
Opera: Princess Ida (or Castle Adamant) 1/5 at London's Savoy Theatre, with book, lyrics, and music by Gilbert and Sullivan, 246 performances; Manon 1/19 at the Opéra-Comique in Paris, with music by French composer Jules Massenet, 42, libretto by Philippe Gille and Henri Meilhac based on the Abbé Prevost story "Les Aventures du Chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut" of 1731 (see Puccini, 1893); Mazeppa in February at Moscow's Bolshoi Theater, with music by Petr Ilich Tchaikovsky, libretto from the poem by Lord Byron; Therese Malten appears as Leonore in the 1806 Beethoven opera Fidelio 11/10 at London's Drury Lane Theatre.
Former ballerina Marie Taglioni dies at Marseilles April 24 at age 80; Fanny Elssler at her native Vienna November 27 at age 74.
First performances: Piano Suite No. 2 by Edward MacDowell 3/8 at New York; Symphony No. 7 in E major by Anton Bruckner 12/30 at Leipzig.
Composer Bedrich Smetana dies at Prague May 12 at age 60.
Broadway musical: Adonis 9/24 at the Bijoux Theater, with Henry E. Dixey, music by Edward E. Rice, book and lyrics by William F. Gill and Henry Dixey, 603 performances.
Popular songs: "Love's Old Sweet Song" by Irish-born London composer James Lyman Molloy, 47, lyrics by C. Clifton Bingham, 25, beginning, "Just a song at twilight"; "The Fountain in the Park" by London composer Ed Haley, whose song will be given lyrics beginning, "While strolling through the park one day"; "Otchi Tchorniya" with music by an unknown Russian composer; "Clementine" by U.S. songwriter Percy Montross (based on the 1863 song "Down by the River Liv'd a Maiden" by H.S. Thompson; "Rock-a-bye Baby" by Logan, Utah-born composer I. Canning (Effie I. Crockett), 15, who uses lyrics from Mother Goose's Melodies (see 1765).
William Renshaw wins in men's singles at Wimbledon, Maud Watson, 21, in women's singles; Richard Sears wins at Newport. Watson takes the first women's singles title at Wimbledon, where men have competed each year since 1877. U.S. tournament competition is still for men only.
Overhand pitching gains acceptance for the first time in major league baseball, increasing demand by catchers and fielders for leather gloves (see 1875), Ohio-born New York Giants catcher William "Buck" Ewing, now 24, will use a pillow-type horsehide mitt beginning next year and become the first to do so, but a batter will be allowed until 1887 to call for a high pitch or a low pitch, and the number of balls required for a walk will not be established at four until 1889 (see Rawlings glove, 1912).
The "Louisville Slugger" baseball bat is introduced by the Kentucky firm Hillerich and Bradsby. German-born woodturner J. Frederick Hillerich, 50, has heretofore made bowling balls and pins, but Louisville Eclipse player Peter "the Gladiator" Browning, 26, has asked him to make an ashwood bat that will replace one that Browning has broken. Browning has made his own bats of seasoned timber aged in his attic; he has averaged three hits per game with his homemade bats but does even better with Hillerich's bat.
The National League's Providence, Rhode Island, team defeats the New York Metropolitans of the American Association 3 games to 0 in the first baseball playoff series (see National League, 1876; American League, 1901; World Series, 1902).
The National Horse Show opens in October at New York's Madison Square Garden in East 27th Street with 352 animals in 105 classes including hunters, jumpers, harness horses, ponies, Arabians, police and fire horses, mules, and donkeys; the event will be held annually in the first week of November.
Greenwich Mean Time is established by representatives of 25 world nations; the Meridian Conference establishes worldwide time zones, with the new year to begin when it is midnight at Greenwich, but local time at Paris remains 9 minutes, 21 seconds ahead of GMT and at St. Petersburg 2 hours, 1 minute, 18.7 seconds ahead (see 1910).
Former chess master Paul Morphy is found dead in his bathtub at his native New Orleans July 10 at age 47. He gave up the game in 1861.
Three survivors of the seagoing Australian yacht Mignonette are rescued by the German ship Moctezuma July 28 some 990 miles east of Rio de Janeiro. Refitted for Australian lawyer Jack Wan and manned by a hired four-man crew, the Mignonette left Southampton, England, in May and sank in a fierce storm July 5; the crew got off in a small boat that has drifted 1,050 miles in 24 days, with the men drinking urine and turtle blood to survive, and it soon emerges that the three survivors ate the fourth, an illiterate 17-year-old boy, shortly before being rescued. Survival cannibalism is accepted practice at sea.
The first pea whistle is introduced by Birmingham's J. Hudson & Company Ltd., whose brass Acme Thunderer has a wooden ball (later to be replaced by a cork ball); it produces a piercing trill that permits creation of a range of sounds.
The world's first roller coaster opens at Coney Island, New York. It has been put up by former Elkhart, Indiana, Sunday school teacher Lemarcus A. Thompson, who will soon be making improved models for amusement parks throughout America and Japan (see Steeplechase Park, 1897).
Gold Dust soap is introduced by Chicago's N. K. Fairbank & Company, with two black boys as the "Gold Dust Twins" trademark that will soon be used for Gold Dust washing powder and Gold Dust scouring cleanser as well.
Durham, North Carolina, tobacco-grower's son James Buchanan Duke, 27, arrives at New York in April with good financial resources and determines to become a dominant force in the growing tobacco business, by whatever means are necessary. He begins opening tobacco shops, some of them alongside existent shops whose prices he then undercuts, forcing the proprietors to sell him their businesses and hiring them as managers. Duke will distribute his cigarettes free to immigrants arriving from Europe and turn them into loyal customers (see 1888).
Detective (and strikebreaker) Allan Pinkerton dies of a massive stroke at Chicago July 1 at age 64. His 34-year-old detective agency will grow to become a worldwide organization employing some 13,000 people.
Chicago's Studebaker Building is completed to designs by architect S. S. Berman, whose structure will be renamed the Fine Arts building.
London's Brompton Oratory (Oratory of St. Philip Neri) opens south of Kensington Gardens and just east of the Victoria and Albert Museum. Designed by Herbert Gribble, the baroque Roman Catholic church has a nave that is richly ornamented, and the church will be used for choral and organ performances.
An organization for slum reconstruction and housing-project management is founded at Edinburgh by local reformer Elizabeth Sanderson Haldane, 22, who has been inspired by the work of Octavia Hill in England (see 1869).
New York's Dakota apartment house opens October 27 at 72nd Street and Central Park West (so called since 1882). Financed by the late Singer Sewing Machine magnate Edward Clark, designed by New Brunswick, New Jersey-born architect Henry Janeway Hardenbergh, 34, and built at a cost of $2 million, the nine-story building has a central court and nine hydraulic elevators to serve its marble-floored, mahogany-paneled apartments, some with 15-foot ceilings.
Tornadoes blow across Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Indiana February 19, leaving an estimated 800 dead and a path of devastation.
A federal judge orders California to outlaw the hydraulic mining that has been ruining the environment since 1852. Miners have used water blasting to dig up 12 billion tons of earth, and the reducing silt flow has reduced the depth of San Francisco Bay by three to six feet (the miners have also polluted the state's stream systems with thousands of pounds of mercury, taken from the mountains around San Jose and used to separate gold from rock).
Reaper magnate Cyrus McCormick dies at Chicago March 13 at age 75, leaving a fortune of $200 million to his widow, four sons, and three daughters. Nancy "Nettie" Fowler McCormick, 50, has served as his private secretary and business counsel; she takes over management of her late husband's McCormick Harvesting Machine Company, and although his son Cyrus Jr., 25, assumes the presidency it is Mrs. McCormick who will run the enterprise for the next 18 years (see International Harvester, 1902).
Frank Peavey moves his headquarters to Minneapolis, where electric lights were introduced last year (see 1874). The Minneapolis Millers Association has long been his biggest customer, and within a year the city will be the largest U.S. wheat-receiving market, taking in 33 million bushels annually (see 1886).
A congressional committee reports that a number of individuals, many of them "foreigners of large means," have acquired ownership of land tracts in Texas, some of them embracing more than 250,000 acres: "Certain of these foreigners are titled noblemen. Some of them have brought over from Europe, in considerable numbers, herdsmen and other employees who sustain to them a dependent relationship characteristic of the peasantry on the large landed estates of Europe." Two British syndicates hold 7.5 million acres of land (see 1888; Prairie Cattle Co., 1882).
Texas rancher John Simpson Chisum dies at Eureka Springs, Arkansas, December 23 at age 60. His herds have been estimated to total as many as 100,000 head, making him at one time the largest cattle owner in the country and probably in the world.
Chinese farm workers account for half of California's agricultural labor force, up from 10 percent in 1870. The Chinese have raised dikes at the mouths of the San Joaquin and Sacramento Rivers and are reclaiming millions of acres of rich farm lands.
Ceylon's coffee output falls to 150,000 bags, down from 700,000 in 1870 when the rust disease caused by Hamileia vastatrix began making deep inroads (see 1869). The last shipment of coffee beans will leave the island in 1899.
Beriberi continues to plague the Japanese Imperial Navy, but the director of the Naval Medical Bureau, Baron Kanehiro Takaki, sends two ships on a 287-day voyage during which the men on one ship are served a diet of meat, cooked fish, and vegetables, while the men on the other ship get the usual Japanese diet of polished white rice and raw fish. Some 160 men out of 360 come down with beriberi on the second ship and 75 die, while on the first ship nobody dies, and the 16 cases of beriberi on the first ship are found to have occurred only among men who refused to accept the prescribed diet. Takaki orders Western-style rations to be served aboard all Japanese naval vessels (see 1642; 1887; naval victory, 1905).
Scurvy reappears in the Royal Navy; the Admiralty orders a daily lemon ration aboard all British warships where the old 1795 order has lapsed or has been evaded by seamen who traded their ration of grog (containing lemon juice) for tobacco.
Quaker Oats becomes one of the first food commodities to be sold in packages. Put up in cardboard canisters, the cereal will be widely and aggressively advertised throughout the United States and Britain (see 1877).
Swiss miller Julius Michael Johannes Maggi, 38, introduces powdered pea and beet soups under the name Maggi & Companie. He will begin large-scale manufacture of powdered pea and bean soups in January of next year at Kempettal and by 1889 will be offering a wide variety of powdered soups (see Arome, 1889).
Black & White Scotch whisky is introduced by Glasgow distiller James Buchanan.
A second Chinese Exclusion Act passed by Congress July 5 tightens the provisions of the 1880 act (see 1888).
1881 1882 1883 1884 1885 1886 1887 1888 1889 1890
Astronomy
An international meeting in Washington, DC, sets the prime meridian through Greenwich, England.
Biology
Bacteriologist Hans Christian Joachim Gram [b. Copenhagen, Denmark, September 13, 1884, d. Copenhagen, November 14, 1938] develops the dye that is used to classify bacteria into two groups, the gram-positive that retain the dye and the gram-negative that do not retain it. In the 1940s it is discovered that the two types react differently to antibiotics. See also 1881 Biology.
Chemistry
Svante August Arrhenius [b. Vik, Sweden, February 19, 1859, d. Stockholm, October 2, 1927] proposes his dissociation theory, which says that electrolytes dissociate into positively and negatively charged ions when in solution. See also 1903 Chemistry.
Communication
Lewis E. Waterman [b. Decatur, New York, 1837, d. 1901] patents the modern type of fountain pen. See also 1938 Communication.
William Preece [b. Bryn Helen, Wales, February 15, 1834, d. Penrose, Wales, November 6, 1913] notices that overhead telegraph wires can pick up messages carried by underground wires. This observation leads him to collaborate with Guglielmo Marconi on wireless transmission. See also 1883 Communication; 1902 Communication. (See biography.)
Ottmar Mergenthaler [b. Hachtel, Germany, May 11 1854, d. Baltimore, Maryland, October 18, 1899] invents the Linotype typesetting machine. The machine is equipped with a keyboard like a typewriter and casts a single line of type at a time as a solid bar. See also 1840 Communication; 1887 Communication.
George Eastman and William H. Walker introduce the use of roll film into photography. The negative images, obtained on paper, have to be mounted on glass for reproduction. See also 1864 Communication; 1889 Communication.
Telephone wires connect Boston to New York. See also 1880 Communication.
Paul Nipkow [b. Liauenberg, Germany, August 22, 1860, d. Berlin, August 24, 1940] invents the scanning disk named after him, a precursor of television. The rotating disk has a hole through which a narrow beam of light from the object passes. Its intensity is measured by a selenium photocell which then modulates another source of light that passes through a hole in an identical rotating disk. The second source of light reproduces the image. See also 1926 Communication.
Construction
The Washington Monument is completed. See also 1450 bce Construction.
Ecology & the environment
California prohibits using water to extract ores because of the pollution of agricultural land the waste water causes.
Energy
Nikola Tesla invents the electric alternator, an electric generator that produces alternating current. In alternating current (a.c.), the electrons flow first in one direction and then in the other, unlike direct current (d.c.), with electron flow in a single direction. Many devices, including electric lights and motors, work as well or better with a.c. current, which, unlike d.c. current, can be transmitted long distances over wires with little loss of energy. (Some devices need d.c. current, but transformers easily change a.c. into d.c.). See also 1867 Energy; 1887 Energy. (See biography.)
Charles Algernon Parsons [b. London, June 13, 1854, d. on shipboard off Kingston, Jamaica, February 11, 1931] patents the first steam turbine generator for use in ships. The first turbine of the multicellular design will be built in 1885. It rotates at a satisfactory 18,000 revolutions per minute, although it produces only 7.5 kW (10 hp). See also 1880 Energy; 1888 Energy.
American carpenter Lester Allan Pelton [b. Vermillion, Ohio, September 5, 1829, d. Oakland, Ohio, March 14, 1908], as a result of observing a misplaced bucket on a water wheel at a California gold mine, invents the Pelton wheel, a type of water turbine with blades shaped like divided buckets so that the direction of a water jet directed on them is reversed entirely, thus using a maximum of the kinetic energy of the jet.
Materials
Louis-Marie-Hilaire Bernigaud, comte de Chardonnet [b. Besançon, France, March 1, 1839, d. Paris, March 25, 1924] begins to produce an artificial fiber made from cellulose, which comes to be known as rayon. See also 1855 Materials; 1889 Materials.
Carl Zeiss [b. Weimar, Germany, September 11 1816, d. Jena, Germany, December 3, 1888] develops a type of glass that resists heat. The resistance is conferred by adding boric acid to the silicon-dioxide mixture used to make glass. See also 1915 Materials.
P. Böttinger discovers the dye congo red (bis-azo), the first dye that can be used on cellulose fibers without preparing the fiber with treatment by another chemical. See also 1856 Materials; 1897 Chemistry.
German organic chemist Otto Wallach starts a long project of isolating terpenes from various essential oils, such as menthol and camphor. His work forms the basis for much of the perfume industry. See also 1879 Materials; 1910 Chemistry.
French chemist Paul Vielle [b. Paris, 1854, d. Paris, 1934] develops the first smokeless gunpowder that is reliable enough for military purposes. Previous smokeless gunpowders had been useful only in shotguns. See also 1889 Materials.
Mathematics
Gottlob Frege's Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik ("foundations of arithmetic") bases all of natural-number arithmetic on his definition of a natural number (natural numbers are simply the counting numbers, 1, 2, 3, etc.) as the class of all classes that can be put into one-to-one correspondence with a given class. For example, 5 would be defined as every class (or set) that exactly matches the number of fingers on the normal human hand. See also 1889 Mathematics.
Medicine & health
Russian-French bacteriologist Ilya Illich Mechnikov [b. Ivanovka, Ukraine, May 16, 1845, d. Paris, July 15, 1916] discovers phagocytes, moving white blood cells that attack and devour invading organisms in the body. See also 1908 Medicine & health.
Physiologist Max Rubner discovers that the body gets energy from carbohydrates, fats, and proteins (after stripping away the nitrogen from proteins for other uses). See also 1894 Biology.
Edwin Klebs [b. Prussia (Germany), February 6, 1834, d. Berne, Switzerland, October 23, 1913] and Friedrich Löffler discover the bacillus that causes diphtheria and that some animals are naturally immune to the disease. See also 1888 Medicine & health.
Charles Chamberland develops special porcelain filters for bacteria that help purify water and also lead to the discovery that toxins produced by bacteria cause such diseases as diphtheria and tetanus. Later his filters will lead to the discovery of viruses. See also 1892 Biology.
Czech-American surgeon Carl Koller [b. Schüttenhofen, Bohemia (Czech Republic), December 3, 1857, d. New York, March 21, 1944] uses cocaine as a local anesthetic. See also 1846 Medicine & health; 1890 Medicine & health.
Physics
Ludwig Boltzmann calculates the heat radiation emitted by a heated body and shows that nonblack bodies always radiate less light than black bodies (perfect absorbers). See also 1879 Physics; 1896 Physics.
Tools
Hiram Maxim develops the Maxim machine gun, a single-barrel, belt-fed, water-cooled weapon that fires 600 shots per minute. It is adopted by the British army in 1889 and thereafter by many other armies and navies. See also 1862 Tools; 1920 Tools.
John Patterson [b. 1844, d. 1922] buys the rights to Ritty's Incorruptible Cashier and forms the National Cash Register Company. An aggressive sales campaign results in sales of a million cash registers by 1911. See also 1879 Tools.
Transportation
Frank Julian Sprague [b. Milford, Connecticut, July 25, 1857, d. October 25, 1934] develops a direct-current motor for electric locomotives. See also 1881 Transportation.
The airship La France, designed, built, and piloted by Charles Renard [b. Damblain, France, 1847, d. Paris, 1905] and Arthur C. Krebs [b. 1847, d. 1935], on August 9 becomes the first dirigible, an airship capable of being steered well enough to return to its launch point after a flight of about 8 km (5 mi). La France is powered by an electric motor.