1885: Information and Much More from Answers.com
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1881 1882 1883 1884 1885 1886 1887 1888 1889 1890
Britain's second Gladstone ministry ends June 9. Robert (Arthur Talbot Gascoyne) Cecil, 55, marquess of Salisbury, has headed the Tories since the death of Lord Beaconsfield in 1881, his party wins the first British election to be fought over the issue of home rule for Ireland, and he begins a brief ministry. Charles Stewart Parnell's Irish Paliamentary Party wins every seat in Ireland outside Ulster and Dublin University, a victory that persuades Gladstone to support the Home Rule Movement (see 1884; 1886).
The autonomous principality of Bulgaria unites with Eastern Rumelia despite opposition from Russia (see 1878). Bulgarian assembly (Sobranye) president Stefan Nikolov Stambolov, 31, has urged Prince Aleksandr I to take the action, and Serbia goes to war with Bulgaria November 14 in a conflict that will continue for more than 3 months (see 1886).
Spain's Alfonso XII dies of phthisis at his native Madrid November 24 at age 27 after a 15-year reign in which he has escaped two assassination attempts. The Spanish pretender Carlos Maria de Los Dolores de Borbón y Austria-este, duque de Madrid (Don Carlos), now 37, does not exercise his claim to the throne, and the prime minister Antonio Cánovas del Castillo arranges a peaceful transfer of power: Alfonso's Austrian-born widow, Maria Christina de Habsburgo-lorena, 27, becomes queen regent and will serve as such until her husband's posthumous son, who will be born next year, comes of age in 1902 and ascends the throne as Alfonso XIII. She makes Liberal Party leader Práxades Mateo Sagasta, now 60, her prime minister (his fourth ministry). Former prime minister and regent Francisco Serrano y Dominguez, duque de La Torre, dies at Madrid November 26 at age 74; he recognized the accession of Alfonso XII in 1881 and was appointed ambassador to France.
Khartoum falls January 26 to the forces of al-Mahdi, who massacre General Charles "Chinese" Gordon and his garrison just before a British relief expedition reaches the city (see 1884). The Mahdi has given express orders not to kill Gordon, but although he enters the city in triumph and leads prayers in its main mosque, he dies at Omdurman June 21 at age 40, possibly of typhus, and is succeeded by his disciple Abd Allah ibn Muhammad at-Tatishi, 38, whom he has appointed caliph (khalifa) and whose Dervishes gain control of all the Sudan except for the Red Sea fortresses (see 1896).
The Berlin West Africa Conference that began in November of last year ends February 26 with a general act declaring the Congo River basin to be neutral, with freedom of trade and shipping in the area guaranteed to all parties. Portugal's claims to the Congo estuary are denied, permitting establishment of an independent Congo Free State (to which Britain, France, and Germany have previously agreed in principle) (see 1890).
The king of the Belgians Leopold II assumes the title sovereign of the Congo Free State following French recognition of the Free State and conclusion of an agreement defining the boundary between the Free State and the French Congo. Another agreement has been concluded with Lisbon giving Portugal the Kabinda Enclave; large areas of the Congo Free State are assigned to concessionaires, but the central portion is set aside as state land and the king's private domain. Demand for pneumatic bicycle tires has created a huge market for rubber, demand for pianos has created a huge market for ivory, and Leopold's men will be ruthless in exploiting the Belgian Congo to enrich the king with profits from both of these valuable commodities.
Italian forces establish themselves at Massawa with British encouragement and begin to expand their holdings in the East African highlands.
The German East Africa Company established by explorer Carl Peters obtains an imperial charter (see 1884). Germany annexes Tanganyika and Zanzibar.
Britain establishes protectorates in the southern region of the Niger River, in north Bechuanaland, and in Guinea.
The Indian National Congress founded under the direction of British colonial administrator Allan Octavian Hume convenes for the first time at Bombay (Mumbai) December 28 with 73 delegates, 54 of them Hindus (mostly Brahmans), two Muslims, the rest Parsi or Jaina (there are also 10 unofficial delegates), representing every province in British India (see Ilbert Bill, 1884). All delegates speak English, more than half are lawyers, the others are businessmen, journalists, landowners, and professors.
British troops occupy Port Hamilton, Korea.
Qing troops attack French forces on the Vietnamese side of the Chinese border, killing General François de Negrier, but the Treaty of Tianjin (Tientsin) signed June 9 recognizes France's protectorate of Tonkin in return for a promise by the French to respect China's southern frontier (see 1884). British diplomat Robert Hart, 50, has negotiated the treaty; China's General Zuo Zong-tang (Tso Tsung-tang) dies at Foochow (Fu-chou) in Fukien Province September 5 at age 73, having worked to suppress the Taiping Rebellion and urged modernization of his country.
The 15-year-old emperor of Annam leads an insurrection against the French at Hue July 4. French colonial troops suppress the uprising, and young Ham Nghi takes flight with his regent Ton That Thuyet (see 1884). They are given refuge at Cam Lo, the mountain hideaway of tribal chief Deo Van Tri, 36, who heads a semiautonomous feudal kingdom of Tai peoples in Tonkin's Black River region. Ton That Thuyet tries to assassinate Deo Van Tri in order to keep their whereabouts secret (Deo Van Tri will henceforth wash his hands of involvement in Vietnamese resistance efforts), but the French will soon catch Ham Nghi and exile him to Algeria, where he will live until his death in 1947. They will replace Ham Nghi next year with the more compliant Dong Khanh, and Deo Van Tri will come to terms with the French in 1888 in order to protect his people's independence.
Former U.S. vice president Schuyler Colfax dies at Mankato, Minnesota, January 13 at age 61; former president Ulysses S. Grant dies in agony of throat cancer at his Mount McGregor retreat in the Adirondacks July 23 at age 63 a few days after completing the final pages of his Personal Memoirs (virtually penniless, he has assigned all rights to the book to his widow, Julia, in order to keep his creditors from laying claim to it). Grant has taken tea laced with cocaine to dull the excruciating pain of his cancer; former Union Army general (and 1864 presidential nominee) George B. McClellan dies at Orange, New Jersey, October 29 at age 58. He served as governor of New Jersey from 1878 to 1881.
Former Canadian joint premier Sir Francis Hincks dies at Montreal August 18 at age 77, having served also as governor of Barbados, the Windward Islands, and British Guiana.
Louis Riel leads another Cree rebellion against Dominion authorities to protest the indifference of the Ottawa government toward the grievances of western Canadians, particularly Catholics, Native Americans, and those of mixed blood, who have seen their way of life threatened by the destruction of the bison and the encroachment of Anglo farmers (see 1869). Canadian history books will call the uprising the "Northwest Rebellion," the Métis will call it the "Northwest Resistance." Riel has become a U.S. citizen, but a delegation went to him last year requesting that he give up his Montana school-teaching post and lead the protest. He has broken with the Roman Catholic Church, establishes a government of Métis, and engages in a skirmish March 26 at Duck Lake in which 12 police and volunteers are killed along with five Métis. Dominion troops are sent west on the partially completed Canadian Pacific Railway to deal with the uprising (see transportation, 1881). Riel is defeated at Batoche, apprehended in May, charged with treason, and convicted by an English-speaking jury in what is probably a rigged trial. There being no trees on the prairie, scaffolding is built beside the headquarters of the Northwest Mounted Police, a rope attached to the scaffolding is placed around Riel's neck, and he is forced out of the second-floor window of the guard room at Regina and hanged November 16 at age 41, leaving a legacy of bitterness in Canada's western provinces.
Former abolitionist Martin R. Delany dies at Xenia, Ohio, January 24 at age 72.
Anti-Chinese rioting breaks out in the Washington Territory. President Cleveland issues an order November 7 calling for the troublemakers to be dispersed (see 1877; Seattle, 1886).
The Bavarian state government at Munich imposes measures aimed at controlling the movements of gypsies (Roma) and begins gathering information about them (see 1911).
Banker Francis A. Drexel dies of a heart attack at his native Philadelphia February 15 at age 60, leaving an estate of more than $15 million—the largest yet to be filed in the city's history (he has bequeathed 10 percent of the money to charitable organizations).
M. A. Hanna & Co. is founded by Cleveland coal, iron, and street railway magnate Marcus Alonzo Hanna, 48, who has organized the Union National Bank and acquired the Cleveland Herald and Cleveland Opera House (see politics, 1896).
California pioneer James W. Marshall dies in the Coloma area August 10 at age 74. A bronze statue will be erected in his honor 5 years hence near the site of his 1848 gold strike.
Striking coal miners at Rock Springs in Wyoming Territory kill 28 Chinese laborers September 2 and chase hundreds out of town.
Canadian Copper Co. is founded by Ohio factory owner Samuel J. Ritchie, 47, to buy up claims in the Sudbury Basin of northern Ontario (see 1883). Ritchie has prospered in the lumber business; the copper ore turns out to be rich in nickel, which is used primarily for coins and nickel-plating but whose value for nickel-steel alloys will soon be recognized (see technology, 1888).
Broken Hill Proprietary Co., Ltd. is founded in Australia, where it will grow to monopolize the nation's iron and steel production. Mount Gipps sheep station manager George McCulloch, his German-born boundary rider Charles Rasp, and 12 other partners have staked claims to a tin deposit discovered by Rasp, then 27, in 1883, the mine has proved to be the world's largest silver-lead-zinc deposit, provides the basis for the new company, will gross more than £150 million before it closes in 1939, and will pay dividends of nearly £16 million.
Reformer Anthony Ashley Cooper, 7th earl of Shaftesbury, dies at Folkestone October 1 at age 84, having campaigned for better working conditions.
Westinghouse Electrical & Manufacturing Co. is founded by George Westinghouse, who buys up rights to the European Gaulard-Gibbs transformer. He will acquire patent rights to the Nikola Tesla induction motor and Tesla polyphase alternator that will make it economically feasible to transmit power over long distances (see 1883; Tesla, 1888). Westinghouse hires Brooklyn, N.Y.-born electrical engineer William Stanley, Jr., 26, as chief engineer and works with him to perfect a practical transformer for large electricity supply networks. They will give the first demonstration of a practical alternating-current system in March of next year at Great Barrington, Mass., where Stanley will use it to provide lighting for offices and shops on the town's Main Street, and while Thomas A. Edison has rejected the alternating-current system in favor of direct current, Westinghouse Co. will exploit the AC system and use it to send high-voltage current over long wires, employing transformers to step down the voltage for local distribution to houses, stores, factories, and the like (see 1888; Thomson, 1883).
The principle of the rotary magnetic field discovered by Italian physicist-electrical engineer Galileo Ferraris, 38, will lead to the development of polyphase motors (and of Italy's hydroelectric industry). Ferraris will devise transformers for alternating current.
Gas lighting receives a new lease on life from Austrian chemist Carl Auer von Welsbach, 27, who isolates the element praseodymium and patents a gas mantle of woven cotton mesh impregnated with thorium and cerium oxides—rare earths obtained from India's Travencore sands. Fitted over a gas jet, the Welsbach mantle increases the light's brilliance.
The world's first successful gasoline-driven motor vehicle reaches a speed of nine miles per hour early in the year at Mannheim. German mechanical engineer Karl (Friedrich) Benz, 40, invented the first two-stroke motor in 1879 and founded a company at Mannheim 2 years ago to build stationary internal-combustion engines. His single-cylinder, chain-drive three-wheeler will have many imitators (see 1886; Mercedes, 1901; Mercedes-Benz, 1926).
The "Bicyclette Moderne" designed by French engineer G. Juzan has two wheels of equal size with a chain-driven rear wheel employing a drive chain stronger than the one on the first rear drive "Bicyclette" designed by André Guilmet in 1868 and manufactured by Meyer et Cie. The Rover Company of Coventry, England, introduces the "safety" bicycle designed by John Kemp Starley, 31, whose vehicle has wheels of equal size, a departure from the "ordinary" whose front wheel is much larger than its rear wheel. Sewing machine inventor James Kemp Starley died in 1881 at age 51; his nephew John has designed a bicycle that has wheels 30 inches in diameter with solid rubber tires, a chain-driven rear wheel, and—like Juzan's modern "Bicyclette"—a close resemblance to a vehicle sketched in 1493 by Leonardo da Vinci or one of his associates. The new French and English models make the bicycle suitable for general use (see United States, 1889; pneumatic bicycle tire, 1888).
English-born electrical engineer Leo Daft, 41, installs the world's first electric trolley line at Baltimore, using double overhead wires from which the passenger cars draw electricity through a small carriage called a "troller" (see 1888).
Fifth Avenue Transportation Company, Ltd., is founded by New York entrepreneurs determined to forestall the introduction of trolley cars. The company's horsecars will remain in service until 1907.
The Congressional Limited Express goes into service on the Pennsylvania Railroad between New York and Washington, D.C.
The Missouri, Kansas, and Texas Railroad reaches the heart of the Texas cow country and ends the need to drive cattle long distances to railheads (see 1871); 437 million tons of goods move by rail in the United States, up from 72.5 million in 1870.
Union Pacific Railroad promoter Thomas C. Durant dies at North Creek, New York, October 5 at age 65.
The last spike of the Canadian Pacific Railway is driven at Eagle Pass outside Craigellachie, British Columbia, November 7 by Scottish-born fur trader-financier Donald A. (Alexander) Smith, now 65, whose financial support has been essential to the enterprise (see 1881). The two lines of the new transcontinental road join to connect Montreal with Port Moody, but the first trains to reach Vancouver will not arrive for another 20 months (see 1886).
Former New York Central president William H. Vanderbilt dies at New York December 8 at age 64, bequeathing a fortune of $200 million in securities to his eight children (his eldest son, Cornelius, 42, becomes chairman of the various Vanderbilt corporations).
Standard Oil Company cofounder Henry M. Flagler purchases the troubled Jacksonville, St. Augustine & Halifax Railroad December 31 and will turn it into the Florida East Coast Railway. Now 55, Flagler first came to Florida in 1878 with his ailing wife, Mary. She died 3 years later, Flagler married her nurse Ida Alice Shrouds 2 years ago, they came to St. Augustine on their wedding trip but were dismayed by the lack of decent accommodations. Flagler built a luxury hotel at St. Augustine, and he has determined to make Florida a winter resort for the rich (see 1888).
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries is founded at Nagasaki to build ships (see 1868; bank, 1880), but shipping magnate Yataro Iwasaki dies at Tokyo February 7 at age 50 (seeTenyo Maru, 1908).
Metallurgist Sidney Gilchrist Thomas dies at Paris February 1 at age 34, having pioneered the elimination of phosphorus from iron in steel furnaces.
The Model 1885 11-mm. rifle designed by Austrian engineer Ferdinand Mannlicher, 37, has a straight pull bolt action, will be standard issue in the Austrian Army, and come into wide use by other European armies (and by big-game hunters). Mannlicher also develops a cartridge clip that permits loading a box magazine in one motion and will be adopted almost universally for automatic-firing rifles and pistols.
Lausanne-born University of Basel mathematics teacher Johann Jakob Balmer, 60, publishes a formula for the wavelengths of the spectral lines in the hydrogen atom, but his chief interest is geometry and the significance of his discovery will not be understood until 1913.
German cytologist Theodor H. (Heinrich) Boveri, 22, at Munich's Zoological Institute publishes a paper describing the development of an unfertilized roundworm egg, including the formation of small cells (polar bodies) that result from the division of the egg. Boveri received his medical degree from the University of Munich 2 years ago and began a series of studies on chromosomes, working with roundworm eggs.
Chemist Benjamin Silliman Jr. dies at New Haven, Connecticut, January 14 at age 68; physicist and chemist Thomas Andrews at his native Belfast November 26 at age 72, having liquefied gases to establish concepts of critical temperature and pressure that will lead to the development of the household refrigerator. He has shown that ozone is a form of oxygen.
The first successful appendectomy is performed (by some accounts) January 4 at Davenport, Iowa, by physician William W. (West) Grant, 38, who has diagnosed a perforated appendix in his patient Mary Gartside, 22. Grant is the first physician in America or Europe deliberately to open the abdomen and sever the appendix from the cecum (see McBurney, 1894).
The first rabies vaccine is administered beginning July 6 to an Alsatian schoolboy of 9 who has been bitten on the hands and legs by a rabid dog. Louis Pasteur has developed the vaccine from weakened viruses that have aged on the dessicated spinal cords of rabbits that have died from rabies; the vaccine has worked with test animals but has never been tried with humans. It is based on work by Pasteur's assistant Pierre (Paul Emile) Roux, 31, and Roux opposes its use until the reason for its effectiveness is known, but Pasteur risks criticism by the medical fraternity and permits the vaccine to be administered to young Joseph Maister, saving the boy from an agonizing death, and while the treatment requires a series of painful injections in the stomach, victims of bites from rabid animals flock from all over the world to be treated. Moved by compassion to treat a young girl who was bitten 5 weeks earlier and has almost no chance of survival, Pasteur comes under attack when the girl dies; jealous physicians question his other successes, suggesting that perhaps Joseph Maister and the others were not really bitten by rabid animals, but Emile Roux defends Pasteur, and his critics are shamed (see 1886; Institut Pasteur, 1888).
Russian zoologist-bacteriologist Ilya (Ilich) Mechnikov, 40, discovers phagocytosis while conducting experiments with starfish larvae in Sicily, where he is recovering from a suicide attempt. Mechnikov has introduced carmine dye particles and splinters into the digestive organs of starfish larvae and noticed that certain cells unconnected with digestion surrounded and engulfed the foreign matter. He finds that white blood corpuscles (leukocytes) move to damaged areas of the body and destroy foreign microorganisms; he calls the cells phagocytes, from Greek words meaning devouring cells, and his work in what he calls the process of phagocytosis suggests the means by which vaccines create immunity (see 1892).
Romanian-born Polish surgeon Johannes von Mikulicz-Radecki, 35, at the University of Kraków sutures a perforated gastric ulcer, becoming the first to do so. Formerly an assistant to Theodor Billroth at Vienna, Mikulicz-Radecki produced an improved gastroscope for viewing the alimentary canal 4 years ago, has developed innovative surgical techniques, and is popularizing the antiseptic methods pioneered by Joseph Lister. He has also produced an improved esophagoscope and next year will become the first to restore part of a patient's esophagus (see 1903).
Oskar Minkowski at Strasbourg removes a bird's liver and demonstrates that it is the organ that manufactures uric acid, which produces gout when too much of it is in the blood (see diabetes research, 1884; 1889).
E. coli gets its name from German pediatrician Theodor Escherich, 27, who identifies a non-culturable, spiral-shaped bacterium in a child's stool and names it Vibrio coli, but its pathogenic strains will generally be called Escherichia coli, or E. coli. Indigenous to the human gut, it is in certain strains responsible for infant diarrhea and gastroenteritis; lacking proper hygiene and sanitation it can produce deadly epidemics (see science, 1974).
Johnson & Johnson is founded at New Brunswick, New Jersey, by Robert Wood Johnson with his brothers James Wood and Edward Mead Johnson to produce a full line of pharmaceutical plasters with an India rubber base (see 1874; 1886).
The London Society for Psychical Research issues a finding ("The Hodgson Report") that labels spiritualist Helena Blavatsky a fraud, describing her as "one of the most accomplished, ingenious, and interesting imposters in history" (see 1884); but by the time of her death in 1891 Blavatsky and her Theosophical Society will have 100,000 followers.
Philanthropist Sir Moses Montefiore dies near Ramsgate, Kent, July 28 at age 90 after a career in which he has played a leading role in the struggle to gain equal rights for Jews and improve the lot of his co-religionists in Poland.
The Anglican missionary bishop James Hannington, 38, arrives on the shore of Lake Victoria with six colleagues in late October and all seven are massacred October 29 by order of Buganda's kabaka (ruler) Mwanga, who launches a campaign against Christians (see 1879; politics, 1884). Mwanga's predecessor Mutesa I tolerated Christians, and Mwanga is reproached by his courtier Joseph not only for the massacre but also for his homosexual debaucheries. Mwanga has Joseph beheaded November 15 (see 1886).
Argentine liberals override objections from the Church and secure the enactment of legislation permitting only national universities; no private universities will be allowed until 1955.
Stanford University (Leland Stanford Junior University) is founded by Southern Pacific Railroad magnate Leland Stanford to memorialize his son Leland, Jr., who died of typhoid fever at Florence last year at age 15 after visiting with archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann (see science, 1871). Now 61, Stanford has given 9,000 acres of land and created an endowment of $21 million for the university, which will open near Palo Alto, outside San Francisco, in 1891.
Bryn Mawr College for Women opens outside Philadelphia. Founded by former Quaker minister Joseph Taylor, the new school employs the only four women PhDs in the United States and, along with Radcliffe (see 1894), will be the only college to prepare women for the PhD for more than 50 years. British mathematician Charlotte Scott Angas, 27, is invited to teach math at the new institution. Cornell alumna M. (Martha) Carey Thomas, 28, is professor of English and the first woman faculty member in America to have the title "dean," in which capacity she organizes the undergraduate studies program and the first graduate program at any women's school; she has done post-graduate work at Johns Hopkins, Liepzig, Zürich (where she received her PhD), and the Sorbonne (see 1895).
The first-class U.S. postal rate doubles to 2¢ after a century (see 1932). New postal regulations reduce the cost of second-class mail to 1¢ per pound, permitting an almost immediate increase in the number of subscriber-based periodicals.
Good Housekeeping magazine begins publication in May at Springfield, Mass. (see consumer protection, 1901).
The Japanese literary magazine Kenyusha begins publication at Tokyo.
The Houston Post begins publication April 5 under the name Houston Daily Post and will continue on a daily basis until 1995 (seeMorning Star, 1839). Condensed milk pioneer Gail Borden, Jr. cofounded the Telegraph and Texas Register at San Jacinto in 1835, it covered the Texas war of independence until Mexican forces dumped its presses into the bayou, and it finally folded 4 years ago; Borden's grandson Gail Borden Johnson started a Houston Evening Post in 1880, it failed in 1883, but the new paper will survive until 1995 (seeChronicle, 1901).
The Dallas Morning News begins publication October 1 with English-born journalist George Bannerman Dealey, 26, as business manager. Dealey went to work as an office boy at the Galveston News 11 years ago for North Carolina-born publisher Alfred H. (Horatio) Belo, now 46, a Confederate Army veteran who 2 years ago put up the first modern U.S. plant devoted exclusively to newspaper publishing and contracted with the Galveston, Houston & Henderson Railroad to run a special mail car that would carry papers out of the state 365 days per year. Col. Belo's new Dallas paper receives communications by wire from Galveston to create the first newspaper chain, enabling him to get out the news early to all parts of Texas (seeTimes-Herald, 1888).
Nonfiction: The Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant by the 18th president (first volume), whose exceptional work, published with help from Mark Twain, restores the Grant family's financial solvency (the second volume will appear next year); Words of a Rebel (Paroles d'un révolté) by exiled Russian anarchist geographer Petr Alekseevich Kropotkin, now 43, who was caught in a police dragnet in 1874, imprisoned, escaped 2 years later, reached Switzerland, was expelled following the assassination of Czar Aleksandr II in 1881, moved to France, and has been imprisoned on trumped-up charges of sedition (he will be released next year); The Roman Provinces by historian Theodor Mommsen, now 68, who 3 years ago was tried on a charge of slandering Chancellor Bismarck in an election speech but won acquittal.
Humorist Henry W. "Josh Billings" Shaw dies at Monterey, California, October 14 at age 67.
Fiction: Germinal by Emile Zola; Good Friend (Bel-Ami) and Contes et Nouvelles by Guy de Maupassant; Diana of the Crossways by George Meredith, who wins his first public acclaim at age 57 for his roman à clef about the granddaughter of playwright Richard Brindsley Sheridan; Marius the Epicurean by Oxford essayist-critic Walter H. Pater, who expresses his ideal of the aesthetic life in his romance set in the time of Marcus Aurelius in ancient Rome; A Mummer's Wife by Irish novelist George Moore, 33; KingSolomon's Mines by English novelist H. (Henry) Rider Haggard, 29, who went to Africa at age 19 as secretary to Henry Bulwer, a nephew of the late novelist E. G. E. L. Bulwer-Lytton; The Rise of Silas Lapham by Boston novelist-editor William Dean Howells, now 48, who edited the Atlantic Monthly from 1871 to 1881 and encouraged both Henry James and Mark Twain while writing some novels of his own.
Author Timothy Shay Arthur dies at Philadelphia March 6 at age 75 after a career dedicated to moralizing against the evils of alcohol; Helen Hunt Jackson dies at San Francisco August 12 at age 54, having worked to improve the lot of Native Americans.
Poetry: "The Betrothed" by Bombay-born English journalist-poet Rudyard Kipling, 20, whose satirical poem contains the lines, "A woman is only a woman, but a good Cigar is a Smoke." Educated in England, chauvinist Kipling went to India at age 15 and has worked since age 17 on the editorial staff of the Civil & Military Gazette and Pioneer at Lahore, where his father is curator of the Lahore Museum; Eros and Psyche by Robert Seymour Bridges, now 40, who last year married Mary Waterhouse and will spend the rest of his life in seclusion at Boar's Hill, Oxford; At the Sign of the Lyre by Austin Dobson, now 45, who will devote himself hereafter to writing biographies and critiques of 18th century actors, artists, authors, and playwrights; A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson, whose poem "Bed in Summer" begins, "In winter I get up at night/ And dress by yellow candle-light./ In summer, quite the other way,/ I have to go to bed by day." In "Happy Thought" Stevenson writes, "The world is so full of a number of things,/ I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings"; "Little Orphant Annie" by James Whitcomb Riley, who writes, "An the Gobble-uns 'at gits you/ Ef you/ Don't/ Watch/ Out!"
Juvenile: Within the Capes by Delaware-born New York author-illustrator Howard Pyle, 32.
Painting: The Potato Eaters, Peasant Woman with Red Bonnet, Parsonage: Garden in the Snow, and A Pair of Shoes by Vincent van Gogh, who has been painting since 1879 without having had any formal artistic training and has not yet sold a single work; Bather by Paul Cézanne; The Baleful Head by Edward Coley Burne-Jones; Lady at the Tea Table, Children on the Shore, and Alexander J. Cassatt by Mary Cassatt; Rainy Day, Columbus Avenue, Boston, by Dorchester, Mass.-born painter (Frederick) Childe Hassam, 25; October in Ramapo Valley by Jasper Francis Cropsey; The Fog Warning and Lost on the Grand Banks by Winslow Homer.
Amsterdam's Rijkmuseum, founded by Louis Bonaparte in 1808, moves into splendid new quarters.
The Detroit Institute of Arts is founded by local citizens; they will give it to the city in 1919 and it will move into a neoclassical building on Woodward Avenue in 1927.
Sculpture: The Puritan by Augustus Saint-Gaudens.
Theater: The Wild Duck (Vildauden) by Henrik Ibsen 1/11 at Kristiania's (Oslo's) Kristiania Theater; The Magistrate by English playwright Arthur Wing Pinero, 30, 3/21 at the Duke of York's Theatre, London; Brand by Ibsen 3/24 at Stockholm's New Theater.
Poet-playwright-novelist Victor Hugo dies at Paris May 22 at age 83 and is given a hero's burial. His coffin is hoisted onto a catafalque at the Arc de Triomphe, remains there overnight, and is escorted the next morning by a cavalry detachment to the Pantheon as 2 million mourners look on.
Keith & Batchelder's Dime Museum at Boston breaks up as Batchelder moves to Providence and Keith acquires the Bijou Theater next door to the Dime Museum in Washington Street (see 1883; Keith-Albee, 1886).
Sioux chieftain Sitting Bull joins Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, receives $50 per week for riding around the arena at each performance and signing autographs, but remains for only 4 months (see 1883). Ohio-born markswoman Annie Oakley (Phoebe Anne Oakley Mozee Butler), 25, also joins and amazes audiences with her accuracy—splitting a playing card held edge-on at 30 paces, hitting dimes tossed into the air, and so forth. Mozee married vaudeville marksman Frank E. Butler at age 15 after beating him in a shooting match, and she was able to pay off the mortgage on the family farm by shooting game and selling it in the Cincinnati market. Punched complimentary tickets will be called "Annie Oakleys" after the playing cards that she shoots full of holes before they touch the ground. "The Peerless Lady Wingshot" will be one of the Wild West Show's star attractions for 17 years (see 1922).
English music-hall entertainer Marie Lloyd (Matilda Alice Victoria Wood), 15, makes her debut at London's Royal Eagle Music Hall (later The Grecian). She will continue performing until shortly before her death in 1922, touring America, South Africa, and Australia with her off-color songs and skits.
Opera: The Mikado (or The Town of Titipu) 3/4 at London's Savoy Theatre, with book and lyrics by William S. Gilbert, music by Arthur S. Sullivan. Inspired by Commodore Perry's opening of Japan in 1853 and subsequent enthusiasm for things Japanese, the opera enjoys enormous success with arias that include "A Wand'ring Minstrel I," "Behold the Lord High Executioner," "I've Got a Little List," "Three Little Maids from School," "For He's Going to Marry Yum-Yum," "Here's a How-De-Do," "My Object All Sublime," "The Flowers That Bloom in the Spring," and "Tit-Willow," 672 performances; The Gypsy Baron (Zigeunerbaron) 10/24 at Vienna's Theater an der Wien, with music by Johann Strauss; German soprano Lillie Lehmann, now 37, makes her Metropolitan Opera debut 11/25 singing the title role in the 1875 Bizet opera Carmen and goes on to sing Brünnhilde in the 1870 Wagner opera Die Walküre and a variety of other roles.
First performances: Suite No. 3 in G by Petr Ilich Tchaikovsky 1/24 at St. Petersburg; Prelude, Chorale, and Fugue for Piano by César Franck 1/24 at the Société Nationale, Paris; Saugefleurie, Legend for Orchestra, after a Tale by Robert de Bonnières by Vincent d'Indy 1/25 at Paris; Les Djinns (symphonic poem) by César Franck 3/15 at the Société Nationale, Paris; Symphony No. 4 in E minor by Johannes Brahms 10/25 at Meiningen.
H. and A. Selmer Company has its beginnings in a reed and mouthpiece manufacturing operation started by Paris musical instrument maker Henri Selmer, 27, who will start making clarinets in 1898 with help from an employee. Selmer's brother Alexander, now 21, will join the Boston Symphony as a clarinetist in 1895, create a U.S. branch of the company in 1904, become solo clarinetist with the New York Philharmonic in 1909, and return to France in 1910 (see saxophones, 1921).
Piano and organ maker Emmons Hamlin of Mason & Hamlin dies at Boston April 8 at age 63.
The Boston Pops has its beginnings July 11 with a concert of light music by the 4-year-old Boston Symphony, whose German-born conductor Arthur Nikisch is making it the country's leading orchestra. Audiences enjoy liquid refreshments during the May-June series initially called the Promenade Concerts (see The Proms [London], 1895; Symphony Hall, 1900).
William Renshaw wins in men's singles at Wimbledon, Maud Watson in women's singles; Richard Sears wins at Newport.
The Browning single-shot rifle introduced by the Winchester Repeating Arms Company has been designed by Utah Territory gunsmith John M. Browning, 30, and will be enormously popular among hunters.
The first English effort to regain the America's Cup since 1871 ends in failure for Britain's Genesta; the U.S. defender Puritan defeats her 2 to 0.
Parker Brothers has its beginnings in a Salem, Mass., company founded by local inventor George Swinerton Parker, 18, who has devised a game that he calls Banking in which the player who amasses the most wealth is the winner. Parker will purchase another Salem company in 1887 to gain control of The Mansion of Happiness, America's first board game, which he will completely remodel; his brother Charles H. will become a partner in 1888 (see 1890).
Paris craftsman René Lalique, 25, establishes a firm under his own name, having trained at London as well as at the Paris School of Decorative Arts. He will gain a reputation for making Art Nouveau brooches, combs, and other jewelry before concentrating on glass (see Coty, 1907).
English eugenicist Francis Galton devises an identification system based on fingerprints. Now 63, he proves that fingerprints are permanent and that no two people ever have the same prints. Scotland Yard will gradually adopt Galton's methods for crime detection (see human rights, 1911).
Chicago's Home Insurance building is completed in the fall to designs by architect William LeBaron Jenney, 52. The 10-story marble structure at the corner of LaSalle and Monroe streets is the world's first skyscraper, its framework is made partly of steel, and it will be enlarged by two additional stories (see Otis, Siemens, 1861; Tacoma building, 1888; Wainwright building, 1890).
The 26-room gabled mansion Naumkeag is completed at Stockbridge, Massachusetts, for New York lawyer Joseph H. Choate to designs by Stanford White.
Sagamore Hill is completed for New York widower Theodore Roosevelt, 26, who retires to a ranch in the Dakota Territory. The 22-room, $16,975 house at Cove Neck, Long Island, will have no electricity until 1914.
Canada's National Parks system has its beginnings in a reserve of 10 square miles set aside by Queen Victoria in the Canadian Rockies where Canadian Pacific Railway surveyors discovered hot springs in 1883. A lake in the region has been named Lake Louise in honor of the queen's daughter, whose husband, the marquess of Lorne, was Canada's governor general from 1878 to 1883. The area set aside will become Banff National Park, and it begins a program that will respond to the promotion of Irish-Canadian trader and frontiersman John George "Kootenai" Brown. Waterton Lakes, Kootenay, Baner, Jasper, Yoho, Columbia Icefield, Glacier, and Mt. Revelstoke national parks will all be set aside as such in the system (see Waterton-Glacier, 1932).
The National Audubon Society has its beginnings in a group of U.S. bird lovers organized by Forest andStream editor George Bird Grinnell, 36, to protest commercial hunting of birds and indiscriminate slaughter of U.S. wildlife in general (see 1905; Boone & Crockett Club, 1887).
The North American lobster catch reaches an all-time high of 130 million pounds.
The Maryland oyster catch reaches nearly 15 million bushels.
The U.S. Fish Commission ships more shad fry to the Pacific Coast (see 1871). Another 910,000 fry will be planted in the Columbia River this year and next, and although the fish will be popular on the West Coast only for its roe (a spawning female typically contains 30,000 pinhead-sized eggs and may have as many as 156,000), it will grow so prolifically that in years when catches in Atlantic coastal streams are low, some shad will be shipped across the United States from west to east to supply demand.
"The Golden Age of the small farmer is over," writes Russian philosopher Petr Kropotkin in his Words of a Rebel (Paroles d'un révolté). "He is in debt to the cattle dealer, the land speculator, the usurer. Mortgages ruin whole communities, even more than taxes" (see 1861).
Congress prohibits barbed wire fencing of public lands in the U.S. West February 25 and President Cleveland issues a proclamation August 7 ordering removal of all unlawful enclosures (see 1877).
Texas rancher's wife Henrietta Maria Morse King (née Chamberlain), 53, and her daughter Alice Gertrudis King inherit the 600,000-acre King Ranch upon the death of its cofounder Richard King April 14 at age 59. Mrs. King will be instrumental in adding to her late husband's vast holdings and helping to develop a new breed of cattle—the Santa Gertrudis strain (a cross between a shorthorn and a Brahman). King's lawyer, Robert J. (Justus) Kleberg, now 30, will marry Alice next year and assume management of the ranch, which now employs 1,000 hands and grazes 100,000 head (he will also assume a $500,000 debt left by King, who borrowed money to buy more land). Kleberg will counter King Ranch drought problems by digging deep artesian wells; he will develop trench silos, bring in the first British breeds to run open on the western range, persuade the Missouri Pacific to run a rail line through the ranch, establish the town of Kingsville, and cultivate citrus, palm, and olive trees as he expands the property and its activities (see 1940).
The U.S. corn crop tops 2 billion bushels for the first time in history, double the 1870 crop (see 1906). Most goes into hog and cattle feed, but U.S. cattle are still fattened largely on grass.
The Orange Growers Protective Union of Southern California is organized as the Santa Fe Railroad extends its service in the Los Angeles area (see 1881; 1887; California Fruit Growers Exchange, 1895).
Salmonella bacteria get their name from a paper by New Jersey-born veterinarian Daniel E. (Elmer) Salmon, 35, who describes the micro-organisms that produce gastroenteritis with fever when ingested in infected food. Chief of the year-old Bureau of Animal Husbandry in the Department of Agriculture, Salmon has based his paper on work done by Albany, N.Y.-born researcher Theobald Smith, 26, but the bacteria that he describes will be called salmonellae.
United Fruit Co. has its beginnings in the Boston Fruit Co., established by Andrew Preston and nine partners (see 1871). They have been persuaded to set up an independent agency to import bananas by Dow Baker, now a prosperous shipper and a partner in Standard Steam Navigation, who has built the Jesse H. Freeman schooner with auxiliary steam engines that permit him to send 10,000 stem cargoes north to Boston in 10 to 12 days from his new base in Jamaica; the new company prospers as banana harvests increase (see 1899).
Morton's Salt is introduced by the new Joy Morton Co. firm that will be the only nationwide U.S. marketer of salt. Detroit-born entrepreneur Morton, 30, has spent 6 years with E. L. Wheeler & Co., a firm that grew out of the Alonzo Richards firm started as agents for Onandaga Salt at Chicago in 1848 to market salt from Syracuse that arrived via the Erie Canal and Great Lakes (see 1912).
The New York Condensed Milk Co. adds fresh milk in bottles to its line (see 1861; 1879). The milk bottle was invented last year by Hervey D. Thatcher of Potsdam, N.Y., and Borden boss John Gail Borden is quick to take advantage of it (see automatic filler and capper, 1886; evaporated milk, 1892).
Evaporated milk is produced commercially for the first time at Highland, Illinois. Swiss-born entrepreneur John B. Meyenberg, 37, has established the Helvetia Milk Condensing Co. with help from local Swiss-Americans. When fire devastates Galveston, Tex., in November and fresh milk is hard to obtain, Helvetia Milk donates 10 cases of its product (see Carnation milk, 1899).
New York's Exchange Buffet opens September 4 across from the Stock Exchange at 7 New Street; it is the world's first self-service restaurant (see Horn & Hardart, 1902).
India has a population of some 265 million, up from 203.4 million in 1850. British physicians in this century have introduced Western medicine into India to reduce the death rate, and moralists early in the century eliminated the slaughter of female children and other customs that once held India's population growth in check (see politics, 1835).
1881 1882 1883 1884 1885 1886 1887 1888 1889 1890
Astronomy
A supernova appears in M31, the Andromeda Galaxy. This will be the only recorded extragalactic supernova to reach the fringe of naked-eye visibility until the supernova of 1987. See also 1604 Astronomy; 1987 Astronomy.
Uranometria nova oxoniensis ("new Oxford Uranometria") by British astronomer Charles Pritchard [b. Alberbury, England, February 29, 1808, d. May 28, 1893] catalogs stars using his invention of the wedge photometer to measure their relative brightness. See also 1882 Astronomy.
Biology
Horace Darwin [b. Down House, England, 1851, d. 1928] (the youngest son of Charles Darwin, author of Origin of Species) designs the rocking microtome, an apparatus to make thin slices of specimen to be observed by the microscope. The first microtomes were invented by Robert Hooke although the name microtome was not used until 1839. Darwin's rocking microtome quickly replaces all earlier types and will remain popular.
Paul Ehrlich discovers the blood-brain barrier, which prevents many substances dissolved in blood from reaching the brain.
Camillo Golgi and others elucidate the asexual cycle of the malaria parasite. See also 1880 Medicine & health; 1892 Medicine & health.
Chemistry
Lehrbuch der allgemeinen Chemie ("textbook of universal chemistry") by Friedrich Wilhelm Ostwald [b. Riga (Latvia), September 2, 1853, d. Leipzig, Germany, April 4, 1932] is considered to mark the founding of physical chemistry.
Jacobus Van't Hoff develops his formula for osmotic pressure: The osmotic pressure of dilute solutions depends on the concentrations of the dissolved molecules. See also 1748 Physics; 1901 Chemistry.
Clemens Alexander Winkler [b. Freiberg, Germany, December 26, 1838, d. Dresden, Germany, October 8, 1904] discovers germanium (Ge), the third element predicted by Mendeléev on the basis of his periodic table. See also 1871 Chemistry.
Karl Auer, later Baron von Welsbach [b. Vienna, Austria, September 1, 1858, d. Welsbach Castle, Austria, August 8, 1929] discovers that one supposed element is actually two. He names one element neodymium ("new twin") (Nd) and the other praseodymium ("green twin," for the color of its spectrum) (Pr).
Communication
Charles S. Tainter [b. Watertown, Massachusetts, April 25, 1854, d. April 20, 1940] develops the Dictaphone, a machine for recording dictation. See also 1877 Communication.
Frederic E. Ives invents the modern method called halftone printing for screened photographs, a different and much improved method from the one he used earlier. Results of the two methods are alike, but the new method is much less complicated. See also 1881 Communication.
Computers
Dorr Felt [b. Beloit, Wisconsin, March 18, 1862, d. Chicago, August 7, 1930] develops the Comptometer, a key-driven adding and subtracting machine. See also 1889 Computers.
Earth science
Lord Rayleigh identifies the type of earthquake waves now called Rayleigh waves. These are surface waves as opposed to the S and P waves that propagate through the body of Earth. See also 1880 Earth science.
The first volume of Das Antlitz der Erde ("the face of the Earth") by Austrian geologist Eduard Suess [b. London, August 20, 1831, d. Marz, Austria, April 26, 1914] is published. This five-volume work, completed in 1909, attempts to explain such geological features as mountain changes in terms of Earth's contraction as it cools (no longer thought to be correct).
Ecology & the environment
The first U.S. garbage incinerator is installed on Governors Island in New York Harbor.
Energy
James Prescott Joule builds an internal combustion engine based on the incomplete ideal Carnot cycle that uses a porous piston through which the exhaust escapes. This engine is on the line of development that eventually leads to the diesel. See also 1890 Energy.
Leonart Jennett Todd patents a steam engine with a so-called "terminal exhaust" cylinder. It has two hot inlets and a common central cold exhaust. The cylinder acts as the exhaust valve. The engine is more efficient than previous steam engines because the cylinder is kept hot at both ends. This type of design later becomes known as the uniflow engine because steam flows in one direction through the cylinder. See also 1827 Energy.
Gottlieb Daimler patents his four-cycle internal combustion engine with compression, a surface carburetor, and a magneto for ignition. See also 1876 Energy; 1893 Energy.
Food & agriculture
John B. Meyenberg, a German immigrant living in Highland, Illinois, introduces canned evaporated milk.
Bordeaux mixture (a combination of copper sulfate and hydrated lime dissolved in water) is discovered by French horticulturist Pierre Marie Alexis Millardet [b. Monmerey-la-Ville, France, December 13, 1838, d. Bordeaux, France, December 15, 1902] to control a serious fungus disease of grapes. Invented by wheat farmers to prevent a fungus disease of seed, Bordeaux mixture is blue-green from the copper sulfate and had been applied to the grapes in Bordeaux to discourage grape thieves. Bordeaux mixture is quickly discovered to control other fungal diseases, such as late potato blight (the cause of the Irish famine of 1845-46). It is still used today. See also 1845 Food & agriculture; 1896 Food & agriculture.
Materials
French chemist Eugène Turpin discovers how to load artillery shells with picric acid, which explodes on impact (a "bursting charge"). See also 1871 Materials.
Medicine & health
Louis Pasteur develops a vaccine against hydrophobia (rabies) and uses it to save the life of a young boy, Joseph Meister, bitten by a rabid dog. See also 1881 Medicine & health; 1890 Medicine & health.
Swiss surgeon Emil Kocher develops surgical removal of the thyroid as a cure for goiter about this time. See also 1891 Medicine & health; 1909 Medicine & health.
Austrian psychiatrist Sigmund Freud [b. Freiberg, Germany, May 6, 1856, d. London, September 23, 1939] studies hypnotism with Jean Martin Charcot, the beginning of his path toward the development of psychoanalysis. See also 1880 Medicine & health.
Über das Gedächtnis ("on memory") by Hermann Ebbinghaus [b. Wuppertal, Germany, January 24, 1850, d. Halle, Germany, February 26, 1909] contains his "curve of forgetting," which reflects how much information is retained in human memory with time.
French neurologist Pierre Marie [b. Paris, September 9, 1853, d. April 13, 1940] describes acromegaly (sometimes called Marie's disease), a hormone disorder caused by overproduction after puberty of human growth hormone by the pituitary gland, resulting in excess growth of bones and other tissues. The hands, feet, and parts of the face grow out of proportion to the rest of the body. The most common cause is a tumor on the pituitary. See also 1855 Medicine & health; 1889 Medicine & health.
Physics
Johann Jakob Balmer [b. Lausen, Switzerland, May 1, 1825, d. Basel, March 12, 1898] discovers the formula for the hydrogen spectrum that will later inspire Niels Bohr to develop his model of the atom. See also 1871 Physics; 1890 Physics.
Transportation
The Rover Company, following the concepts of Harry Lawson, is the first to manufacture a vehicle that would be recognized today as an ordinary bicycle (except that it lacks air-filled rubber tires). See also 1876 Transportation; 1888 Transportation.
Gottlieb Daimler installs one of his internal combustion engines on a bicycle, creating the world's first motorbike. See also 1883 Transportation.
Karl Benz builds a three-wheel automobile powered by a gasoline engine. See also 1878 Energy; 1886 Transportation.