1878: Information and Much More from Answers.com
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Ottoman forces capitulate at Shipka Pass and ask Russia for an armistice January 9 (see 1877). Russian forces under the command of General Mikhail D. Skobelev take Adrianople (Edirne) and formally annex Kars, Prime Minister Disraeli sends a British fleet headed by the powerful battleship H.M.S. Devastation in response to the sultan's request, but an armistice is concluded January 31. Conservative politician Gathorne Gathorne-Hardy, 63, Viscount Cranbrook of Hemsted, speaks out forcefully in the House of Lords to push for British intervention. A London music hall ditty introduces the word jingoism, a synonym for sabre-rattling chauvinism: "We don't want to fight, but by jingo if we do,/ We've got the men, we've got the ships, we've got the money, too."
A trial of 193 young Russian revolutionaries ends January 23 with the acquittal of a great many of the accused, but the police use special powers of "administrative exile" to pick up most of the men and women acquitted and send them off to Siberia or elsewhere. St. Petersburg's chief of police General F. F. Trepov is shot and wounded in late January by revolutionary Vera Zasulich, 26, as an act of protest against the flogging of a prisoner ordered by Trepov. Zasulich is clearly guilty, but a jury of her peers acquits her on the ground that her action was a legitimate form of political protest, a crowd cheers her as she leaves the courthouse, the authorities permit her to go abroad, and she will become an associate of Karl Marx. Another revolutionary stabs General N. V. Mezentsev with a sword August 4 in broad daylight, and systematic terrorism will begin next year (see 1887).
The British fleet arrives at Constantinople February 15 but is recalled. The Treaty of San Stefano negotiated by Nikolai, Graf Ignatiev and signed outside Constantinople March 3 ends hostilities with Russia, but its harsh terms anger Britain, Germany, Austria, and Italy. Imposed by Ignatiev against the wishes of his superior, Imperial Chancellor Aleksandr M. Gorchakov, it provides for Romanian independence (see 1881), Montenegrin and Serbian independence, reforms in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgarian autonomy (see 1877), a huge Turkish indemnity, and some Russian territorial gains.
The Congress of Berlin from June 13 to July 13 dismembers the Ottoman Empire but denies Russia most of the gains she received under the Treaty of San Stefano signed in March. Mediated by Bismarck and Disraeli, the Treaty of Berlin replaces the Treaty of San Stefano. It divides Bulgaria into three parts, gives southern Bessarabia, Batum, Kars, and Ardahan to Russia but the Dobrudja to Romania; grants Austria a mandate to occupy Bosnia and Herzegovina; reduces the size of Serbia and Montenegro; and leaves Russians, Austrians, and Slavs seething (Aleksandr M. Gorchakov considers it the worst failure of his career, and diplomat Nikolai, Graf Ignatiev is forced into retirement). The 21-year-old son of Prince Alexander of Hesse has been elected constitutional prince of the new, autonomous Bulgarian state April 29 and will reign until 1886 as Aleksandr I (see 1880).
Britain occupies Cyprus under terms of a secret June 4 agreement with the sultan to defend the Ottoman Empire against further attack. France occupies Tunis (see Tunisia, 1881).
Author Laurence Oliphant proposes a plan for the Jewish colonization of Palestine to Prime Minister Disraeli and Robert Cecil, 3rd marquess of Salisbury. The latter is receptive to the idea, as are some Christian officials and many eastern European Jews, but the Ottoman sultan rejects the plan, and there are suspicions in some quarters that it has been suggested either to strengthen Britain's Middle Eastern political position or to obtain a commercial advantage in the area (see religion [Herzl], 1894). Oliphant went to America in 1867, joined the Brotherhood of the New Life, signed over his fortune to the spiritualist "prophet" T. L. Harris, and will submit to Harris's rule until 1881; he and his wife are not Jewish but will settle at Haifa in 1882 and form a small community there.
Former French prime minister and military hero Charles-Guillaume-Marie-Apolinaire-Antoine Cousin-Montauban, comte de Palikao, dies at Versailles January 8 at age 82, having failed to prevent the catastrophic defeat of French forces at Sedan in 1870.
Italy's Victor Emmanuel II dies at Rome January 9 at age 57. He has ruled the country since its unification in 1861 and is succeeded by his 33-year-old son, who will reign until 1900 as Umberto I.
Italian irredentists begin agitating to obtain Trieste and the southern Tyrol from Austria.
Augsburg-born socialist Johann (Joseph) Most, 32, begins publication of the weekly journal Die Freiheit at London. He has edited socialist papers at Vienna, Chemnitz, and Berlin since 1868, been imprisoned for 2 years in Austria and 3 in Germany, but although he has been elected twice to the Reichstag he has been expelled from both Austria and Germany. His views will gradually become more anarchistic and the German socialist party will expel him in 1880 (see 1881).
Former British prime minister John Russell, 1st earl Russell, dies at Pembroke Lodge, Richmond Park, Surrey, May 28 at age 85; former Hanoverian king George V at Paris June 12 at age 69 (see 1866); former French republican leader Louis-Antoine Garnier-Pagès at Paris October 31 at age 75, having opposed the Franco-Prussian War.
Japanese samurai leader Toshimichi Okubo is assassinated by discontented samurai at Tokyo May 14 at age 47.
Burma's king Mindon dies at Mandalay October 1 at age 64 after a 25-year reign in which he has built Mandalay as a new capital, tried to make it a center of Buddhist learning, and promoted reforms that included assessment of land taxes and fixed salaries for government officials. He has built roads and a telegraph system, issued coinage, standardized weights and measures, and given generous economic concessions to the British in unoccupied parts of his country.
Cuba's Ten Years' Rebellion against Spain ends February 10 after some 200,000 lives have been lost (see 1876). General Arsenio Campos Martínez grants a general amnesty and some concessions to the Cubans under terms of the Pact of El Zanjón; they release provisional president Tomás Estrada Palma (he becomes principal of a boys' school in New York's Orange County), but revolutionaries who include José Martí and Máximo Gómez y Báez refuse to accept the accord and go into exile (see 1879).
Chile and Bolivia verge on war over the control of nitrate deposits, essential to world production of explosives and fertilizer. Bolivia boosts the export tax on nitrates being mined by Chilean Nitrate Company in Antofagasta. The company appeals to the Chilean government, and Bolivia temporarily rescinds Chilean Nitrate's contract (see 1879).
Paraguay obtains the vast Gran Chaco region from Argentina following a bitter dispute that has been mediated by President Hayes of the United States (see 1870). Hayes issues a terse, four-paragraph statement that rules in behalf of the underdog; he will remain a hero to the Paraguayans into the 21st century (but see Chaco War, 1928).
Former Colombian president Tomás Cipriano Mosquera dies at Cocnuco October 7 at age 80.
Dominican president Buenaventura Báez ends his fifth and final term (see 1865); now 68, he is exiled to Puerto Rico, where he will die in 1884.
Former U.S. diplomat Townsend Harris dies at New York February 25 at age 73; former U.S. senator Benjamin F. Wade (R. Ohio) at Jefferson, Ohio, March 2 at age 77; Brig. Gen. Benjamin L. E. de Bonneville, U.S. Army (ret.), at Fort Smith, Arkansas, June 12 at age 82.
A Posse Comitatus measure approved by Congress June 18 defines the role of the U.S. military (see Insurrection Act, 1807). Passed as a rider to an appropriations bill to prevent abuses at the end of Reconstruction in the South (where federal troops have been stationed at polling booths to keep out drunks, former Confederate officers, and others unqualified to vote) and in the western territories (where fort commanders have sometimes been acting arbitrarily to hunt down anyone believed to be threatening settlers), the legislation states that "it shall not be lawful to employ any part of the Army of the United States, as a posse comitatus, or otherwise, for the purpose of executing laws, except under such circumstances as such employment of said force may be expressly authorized by the Constitution or by act of Congress."
The U.S. Supreme Court rules that a Louisiana law barring racial segregation on trains and steamboats violates the Constitution (Hall v. DeCuir). Such segregation will continue in the former Confederate states as Jim Crow laws dictate (seePlessy v. Ferguson, 1896).
The Oglala Sioux leader Red Cloud moves with his people to the Pine Ridge Agency in South Dakota (see 1868). Now 56, he will remain at Pine Ridge until his death in 1909 apart from some visits to Washington, D.C., to publicize his views.
A Royal Geographical Society expedition into east-central Africa suffers a setback when its leader Alexander Keith Johnston dies in previously unexplored country; Scottish geologist-naturalist Joseph Thomson, 20, takes over and leads the party to the northern end of Lake Nyasa, proceeding thence to Lake Tanganyika. Hostile Warawa (Buye) tribesmen block the party from reaching the Congo, and Thomson leads it to the east African coast via Tabora, discovering Lake Rukwa en route. Described to the late John Hanning Speke as an impassable swamp in the 1860s, the brackish lake fluctuates in size depending on the inflow of streams. It sometimes covers an area of about 1,000 square miles, its wildlife include crocodile and hippopotamus, but Thomson has seen it only from a distance (see 1882).
The Bland-Allison Act passed by Congress February 28 restores the silver dollar as legal tender and requires that the U.S. Treasury buy $2 million to $4 million worth of silver each month (see 1873). Sponsored by Rep. Richard P. Bland (Mo.) and Rep. William B. Allison, 48 (Iowa), the new measure encourages prospecting for silver and will not be repealed until July 1890 (see Leadville, 1879).
Vermont-born Leadville, Colorado, storekeeper Horace (Austin Warner) "Hod" Tabor, 51, grubstakes two starving immigrant prospectors to $64.75 worth of provisions in April and by early next year will own a one-third interest in a silver mine. Tabor came west to Kansas Territory in 1855 with anti-slavery settlers organized by the New England Immigration Society, began farming, served for 2 years in the legislature at Topeka, returned east in 1857 to marry Augusta Pierce, then 24, took her back to Kansas, and walked with her in 1859 to Denver. He will soon be Leadville's mayor and the richest man in town (see everyday life, 1880).
Silver-mine baron William T. O'Brien dies a bachelor at San Rafael, California, May 2 at age 52, leaving a fortune estimated at between $12 and $15 million. The Sutro Tunnel is completed in October after 14 years of heroic effort to drain water from the Big Bonanza mine at the 1,650-foot level and ventilate its shafts (see Sutro, 1859). Ten feet high, 12 feet wide, 20,500 feet long, the tunnel has north and south branches that make its total length more than five miles, it has cost $4.5 million (plus $2 million in interest), the great bulk of the Big Bonanza's ore has been removed, but Adolph Sutro, now 48, will sell his interest in the tunnel next year for at least $5 million, use his knowledge of soil to buy supposedly worthless San Francisco shorefront property, and wind up owning about 8 percent of the city's acreage (see everyday life [Sutro Baths], 1895).
The Tiffany Diamond found in South Africa's Kimberly Mine (and purchased by New York's Tiffany & Co.) is the largest and finest yellow diamond ever discovered. It weighs 287.42 carats, cutters at Paris will study it for a year before touching it, and they will turn it into a 128.51-carat stone with 90 facets.
The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe cuts engineers' pay 10 percent April 4, most engineers and firemen strike, the railroad is closed down for 5 days, militia is called in at Emporia, Kansas, one militiaman kills an innocent bystander, and the death leads to the arrest of several strike leaders (see 1877).
Congress votes May 31 to reduce circulation of greenbacks; $346.7 million worth are in circulation, and by December 17 they have regained their face value for the first time since 1862.
The U.S. Life-Saving Service is established June 18 as a separate agency under the control of the Treasury Department, but the tiny, underfunded organization is part of the Revenue-Marine Service established in 1789 (see Coast Guard, 1915).
A British Factory and Workshop Act fixes a 56-hour work week and gives more protection to women.
The American Bar Association is founded to encourage improvements in the legal profession, ensure that all citizens have access to legal services, and improve the administration of justice. The voluntary group of lawyers and judges will grow to have some 375,000 members, with headquarters at Chicago.
Financier Thomas W. Ludlow dies at Yonkers, New York, July 17 at age 83; Wells, Fargo and American Express founder Henry Wells at Glasgow, Scotland, December 10 at age 72.
Greenbacks are quoted at par with gold December 17 for the first time since 1862 (see 1875).
Thomas Edison works out methods for cheap production and transmission of electrical current and succeeds in subdividing current to make it adaptable to household use. Gas company shares plummet as news of Edison's work reaches Wall Street. Johns Hopkins physics professor Henry A. Rowland, now 30, and Harvard professor John Trowbridge, 35, have helped Edison, who looks for a lamp filament that will burn for extended periods of time in a high vacuum; he experiments with molybdenum, nickel, and platinum filaments (see 1879).
Physicist Joseph Henry dies at Washington, D.C., May 13 at age 80: clergyman-inventor Robert Stirling of 1816 Stirling external-combustion engine fame at Galston, Ayrshire, June 6 at age 87. His engines are used to pump water on farms and will be used to generate electricity.
The Edison Electric Light Company is founded October 15 by New York investors who have raised $50,000 to support Thomas A. Edison's experiments. Edison receives half the stock in the company, which is incorporated later in the month with $300,000 in capital (see 1879).
The first carbon-filament incandescent light bulb of any value is demonstrated December 18 at a meeting of the Newcastle-on-Tyne Chemical Society (see 1841). English chemist Joseph W. (Wilson) Swan, 50, has produced the bulb with help from Charles H. Steam, but it does not achieve true incandescence, and Swan will not be able to perfect it or get his lamp into volume production until 1881 (see Edison, 1879).
Steamship mogul Edward Knight Collins dies at his New York town house January 22 at age 75.
The steamboat J. M. White launched on the Mississippi is the grandest ever seen on the river. Her smokestacks are 80 feet high, her roof bell weighs 2,880 pounds, it takes two pilots to handle her 11-foot wheel, and the $300,000 steamboat sets a new speed record by steaming from New Orleans upriver to St. Louis in 3 days, 23 hours, and 9 minutes. Riverboat traffic at St. Louis will reach more than 1.3 million tons in 1880 but will be only half that by 1885, and will fall to 347,000 tons in 1900, 43,090 tons in 1910, as railroads displace steamboats.
Central Pacific Railroad cofounder and treasurer Mark Hopkins dies at Yuma, Arizona, March 29 at age 64.
The Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad lays tracks through Raton Pass in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains 15 miles south of Trinidad, Colorado, into New Mexico Territory. Engineers bore a 2,000-foot tunnel through the pass at an elevation of 8,000 feet.
Former Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad president John Murray Forbes resumes the presidency of the company as financial distress continues in the wake of the 1873 panic (see 1854). Now 65, Forbes will use his energy and business judgment in the next 3 years to put the road on a sound footing (see Hill, 1901).
The Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad emerges from receivership July 1 and is renamed the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway.
The Great Northern Railway has its beginnings as Canadian-born entrepreneur James J. Hill, 40, and his associates buy the St. Paul and Pacific Railroad, reorganize it under the name St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Manitoba (see 1889; Canadian Pacific, 1881).
New York's Ninth Avenue Elevated begins running June 6 from Trinity Church to 58th Street. By next year it will be a double-track road extending 6½ miles from Morris Street up Sixth to 53rd Street, west to Ninth Avenue, and on to 155th Street; apartment houses will rise up quickly along its route (see 1940).
Inventor Samuel Cunliffe Lister perfects a velvet loom for making piled fabrics (date approximate; see silk, 1855).
Cleveland paint maker Francis H. (Harrington) Glidden, 42, develops a varnish that will make the Glidden Company world-famous.
Inventor Thomas A. Edison joins an expedition to the Rocky Mountains to witness a solar eclipse July 29 and devises a "microtasimeter" with a carbon button to measure minute temperature changes in the heat emitted from the sun's corona during the eclipse. The group includes New York physician and amateur astronomer Henry Draper, 41, and Roxbury, Massachusetts-born University of Pittsburgh astronomer-physicist Samuel Pierpont Langley, 43, who invents a radiant-heat detector (bolometer) that is sensitive to differences in temperature of as little as 100,000th of a degree, enabling him to study the solar spectrum far into its infrared region and measure the intensity of solar radition at various wavelengths.
Physiologist Claude Bernard dies at Paris February 10 at age 64; physicist Joseph Henry dies of nephritis at his Washington, D.C., home May 13 at age 80, having been president of the Smithsonian Institution since it was founded in 1846.
German physiologist Wilhelm Kuhne, 41, introduces the word enzyme to denote a complex organic substance whose catalytic action produces such chemical changes as digestion (see Payen and Persoz, 1833; Schwann, 1835; Hoppe-Seyler, 1869; coenzymes, 1911).
German psychologist Wilhelm Max Wundt, 46, establishes the first laboratory for experimental psychology, bringing the human mind into the realm of science (see Pavlov, 1879; Breuer, 1882).
Dutch suffragist leader Aletta Jacobs, 29, becomes the first woman physician to practice in Holland (see birth control clinic, 1882).
Norfolk, Connecticut-born New York physician William Henry Welch, 28, at Bellevue Hospital opens the first U.S. pathology laboratory (see Johns Hopkins, 1893).
Anesthesiology pioneer Crawford W. Long dies at Athens, Georgia, June 16 at age 62. His claims to have been the first to use ether in surgery have been generally recognized, but although the anesthetic will be used for another century it will then be discontinued because it poses a threat of explosions in operating rooms.
A yellow fever epidemic sweeps the U.S. Gulf Coast states and Tennessee, killing an estimated 14,000. Some 4,500 die at New Orleans alone, and 5,150 die up the Mississippi at Memphis (see Finlay, 1881).
A smallpox epidemic strikes Deadwood in the Black Hills of Dakota Territory. Frontier prostitute Martha Jane Cannary, 26, works heroically in men's clothing to nurse the ill and renders service that will help make her legendary as "Calamity Jane."
Newark, New Jersey, pharmacist Gerhard Mennen, 23, introduces Mennen's Sure Corn Killer in bottles, persuades other Newark druggists to stock the product, and begins advertising with a singing black banjo player driven about town in a horse and wagon. Mennen will introduce Mennen's Borated Talcum Infant Powder in 1889 and advertise it with a minstrel show to begin a business that will continue into the 21st century.
Pope Pius IX dies at Rome February 7 at age 85 after a 32-year reign that has seen the unification of Italy and increased centralization of Church authority. Having failed to adapt the Church to political and social change, he is succeeded by Vincenzo Gioacchino Cardinal Pecci, 68, who will reign until 1903 as Leo XIII. The new pope condemns socialism December 28 in his encyclical Quod Apostilici numeris.
Jehovah's Witnesses has its beginnings as Pittsburgh Congregationalist minister Charles T. Russell, now 26, becomes pastor of an independent church at which he will preach the doctrine that Christ's second coming came invisibly in 1874 (see 1872). The world has since then been in the "Millennial Age" that will end in 1914, says Russell, and will be followed by social revolution, chaos, resurrection of the dead, and—ultimately—by the establishment of Christ's kingdom on earth (see 1884).
The Salvation Army adopts that name (see 1865; Volunteers of America, 1896; Shaw drama, 1905).
The University of London receives permission March 28 to grant academic degrees to women.
The 513-year-old University of Vienna admits women to study the liberal arts, but only on a limited basis. Admission of women will be broadened in 1889; the medical school will become coeducational in 1900, the law school in 1919.
Berlitz Schools of Languages have their beginnings at Providence, Rhode Island, where German-born teacher Maximilian Delphinius Berlitz, 27, opens his own language school after 9 years of teaching French and German in a theological seminary. He goes out of town for a week, leaving his students in the care of a Frenchman who speaks no English; when he finds that the students have made amazing progress in his absence, he develops an easy-to-learn method using instructors who speak no English.
The first commercial telephone exchange opens January 28 at New Haven, Connecticut (see Glidden, 1877). The exchange initially has 21 subscribers, and after 6 weeks it operates at night as well as during the day (see 1883). The first telephone directory is issued February 21 by the New Haven Telephone Company; it lists 50 subscribers. Emma Nutt is hired September 1 as the first woman telephone switchboard operator (see switchboard, 1877; 1879). Women will prove more polite than men, who are more likely to become abusive (see 1882).
The Bell Company buys Emile Berliner's loose-contact telephone transmitter (see 1877). Berliner patents the use of an induction coil in a transmitter (see gramophone, 1887).
Remington Arms Company improves the Remington typewriter of 1876 by adding a shift key system that employs upper- and lower-case letters on the same type bar. Wyckoff, Seamens, and Benedict buy Remington's typewriter business and found Remington Typewriter Company (see Underwood, 1895).
The Yale Daily News begins publication January 28 at New Haven, Connecticut.
A yellow fever epidemic at Memphis reduces the Daily Appeal staff to just one editor and one pressman, but the paper continues to publish (see 1841; Commercial Appeal, 1894).
The Chattanooga Times begins publication under the direction of Cincinnati-born publisher Adolph Simon Ochs, 20 (see 1896).
The Cleveland Press has its beginnings in the Penny Press started by entrepreneurs who include Rushville, Indiana-born farmer-turned-newspaperman E. W. (Edward Wyllis) Scripps, 24, who came to Detroit 6 years ago with $80 in his pocket, got a job as a drugstore clerk before going to work for his half-brother James, and has helped James build circulation for the Evening News (see 1873). James loans Edward about $10,000 to help him buy a controlling interest in the new evening paper and will later join him in acquiring other midwestern papers. The younger Scripps assumes full editorial control and will keep the Press free of any political party affiliation, broadening circulation with articles aimed at working-class readers (see Cincinnati, 1883).
The Hindu begins weekly publication September 4 under the direction of six young Indian intellectuals who print 80 copies on a treadle-operated press. They make G. Subramania Aiyer editor, will publish three times per week beginning in 1883, have the second highest readership in southern India by 1885, and become an evening daily beginning in April 1889 as it breaks the monopoly of British-owned papers.
The St. Louis Dispatch begins publication December 12 and is acquired 2 days later for $2,500 by Hungarian-born journalist Joseph Pulitzer, 31, who will merge the Dispatch with the St. Louis Post next year to create Post-Dispatch and begin a newspaper empire. Pulitzer arrived in America in 1864, served with the First New York Cavalry in the Civil War, worked as a reporter for a St. Louis German-language newspaper, won election to the legislature in 1869, studied law, and was admitted to the bar 2 years ago (see 1883).
J. Walter Thompson pays $500 to acquire the 14-year-old advertising firm Carlton and Smith that he joined in 1868, renames it, and begins representing general magazines (see 1868). Commodore Thompson's first advertisement will be for Prudential Insurance Co. (see commerce, 1875), and in 15 years he will control the advertising in 30 publications, including The Century Illustrated and Scribner's but mostly women's magazines such as Godey's Lady's Book. He will open offices at Chicago, Boston, Cincinnati, and London (see 1916; Curtis, 1901).
Godey's Lady's Book founder Louis A. Godey dies at his Philadelphia home November 29 at age 74.
Scottish-born English schoolteacher-scholar James Murray, 41, comes to Oxford April 26 at the invitation of the London Philological Society. Murray's book The Dialect of the Southern Counties of Scotland was published 5 years ago; he was asked to write an essay on the history of the English language for the ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and the society's secretary Frederick Furnivall has suggested that Murray might be qualified to carry on the projected New English Dictionary on Historical Principles (see 1879).
Boston's Watch and Ward Society has its beginnings in the New England Society for the Suppression of Vice founded by Brahmins influenced by New York moralist Anthony Comstock. The puritanical organization will use its influence to have "obscene" or "sacrilegious" books (such as poet Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass) and magazines banned in Boston.
Nonfiction: Through the Dark Continent (two volumes) by Henry M. Stanley becomes an international bestseller and gives Africa the cognomen by which it will be known hereafter; an article by Massachusetts-born mathematician-logician-philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce, 37, in Popular Science Monthly expounds a philosophical system that departs from the realism of the medieval philosopher Duns Scotus. Peirce lectured on philosophy at Harvard in the 1869-1870 term, pioneered semiotics with his short-lived Metaphysical Club in January 1872, and calls his system "pragmatism" (see James, 1907).
Fiction: The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy; The Europeans by Henry James; The Queen of Sheba by Thomas Bailey Aldrich.
Humorist-painter Thomas B. Thorpe dies at New York September 20 at age 63.
Poetry: An Idealist: A Description of Epigonus (En Idealist Shildring af Epigonus) by Danish clergyman's son Karl Adolf Gjellerup, 21, who has studied Darwinism and breaks with Christianity; Barbaric Odes by Giosuè Carducci; "La justice" by Sully Prudhomme.
Poet-newspaper publisher William Cullen Bryant dies at New York June 12 at age 83.
Juvenile: Aunt Charlotte's Stories of German History for the Little Ones by Charlotte M. Yonge.
Author Anna Sewell dies at Old Catton, Norfolk, April 25 at age 58.
Painting: Chrysanthemums by Claude Monet; Young Girl Holding a Bouquet of Tulips and Mme. Charpentier and Her Children by Pierre-Auguste Renoir; Rehearsal on the Stage and Dancer, Taking Her Bow by Edgar Degas; Portrait of a Little Girl in a Blue Armchair and Mr. Robert S. Cassatt (father of the artist) by Mary Cassatt; Eye-Balloon by French artist Odilon Redon, 38, whose charcoal sketch depicts a floating balloon in the surrealistic form of a gigantic eye; Head of a Dog by Rosa Bonheur; Sierra Nevada by Albert Bierstadt. Charles François Daubigny dies at Auvers-sur-Oise February 19 at age 61.
Tiffany glass has its beginnings in a factory established by New York painter-craftsman Louis Comfort Tiffany, 30-year-old son of the jeweler, who has studied with Venetian glass maker Andrea Boldoni (see 1894).
Photographer Eadweard Muybridge takes a sequence of photographs that prove that all four feet of a trotter are off the ground at the same time at some point in its stride, thereby pioneering motion picture photography (see 1873). He has set up a line of 12 bulky cameras with electromagnetic shutters that are tripped by wires running across the track on Leland Stanford's estate. Artists have depicted horses leaping through the air with front and rear legs extended, but another sequence of Muybridge's pictures reveals that at the point where the horse loses contact with the ground all four of its legs come together beneath its body. The pictures are printed on the cover of Scientific American magazine in strips designed to be cut out and viewed in a new toy called a zoetrope, or wheel of life, which has a slitted cylinder that presents images to the eye in sequence when spun rapidly (see 1895).
Theater: actress Ellen Terry joins actor Henry Irving at London's Lyceum Theatre to create new productions of Shakespearean plays. She is now 31, he 40, and they will breathe new life into the canon; The Pillars of Society (Samfundets stotter) by Henrik Ibsen 11/6 at Kristiania's (Oslo's) Mollergaten Theater; The Girl with No Dowry (Bespridannitsa) by Aleksandr Ostrovsky 11/10 at Moscow's Maly Theater.
Ballet instructor Carlo Blasis dies at Cernobbio, Italy, January 15 at age 74, having been the first to publish an analysis of classic dance technique.
First performances: Symphony No.4 in F minor by Petr Ilich Tchaikovsky 2/10 at Moscow; Sonata in A major for Violin and Piano by French composer Gabriel Urbain Fauré, 33, at the Trocadero Hall built for the Paris Exposition.
Opera: H.M.S. Pinafore (or The Lass that Loved a Sailor) 5/25 at London's Opera Comique, with the Comedy Opera Company singing Gilbert and Sullivan arias that include "We Sail the Ocean Blue," "I Am the Captain of the Pinafore," "I Am the Monarch of the Sea," "When I Was a Lad," "Things Are Seldom What They Seem," "Carefully on Tiptoe Stealing," and "He Is an Englishman," 571 performances; The Secret (Tagernstvi) 9/18 at Prague, with music by Bedrich Smetana. German contralto Ernestine Schumann (née Rossler), 17, makes her debut at the Dresden Royal Opera singing the role of Cucena in the 1853 Verdi opera Il Trovatore. She will marry in 1882 and become famous as Mme. Schumann-Heink.
The Central City Opera House opens in the Colorado mining town.
The Cincinnati Music Hall opens on Elm Street with 3,600 seats for the May Festival held since 1873.
Popular songs: "Carry Me Back to Old Virginny" by pioneer black songwriter James A. Bland, 24.
Former U.S. heavyweight champion John "Old Smoke" Morrissey dies at Saratoga Springs, New York, at age 47, having served two terms in Congress following his retirement from the ring in 1859.
Herreshoff Manufacturing Company is formed by Bristol, Rhode Island, entrepreneur J. B. (John Brown) Herreshoff, 37, who has been blind since age 14 and goes into partnership with his engineer brother Nathanael (Greene), 30, who serves as the firm's naval architect. Their older brother James (Brown), 44, will invent a fin keel for racing yachts that Herreshoff Manufacturing will put to practical use in 1891 when it begins designing yachts for the defense of the America's Cup.
Frank Hadow, 23, returns to England on leave from his Ceylon tea plantation and wins in Wimbledon singles tennis play.
Manchester United has its beginnings in the Newton Heath amateur association football (soccer) teams that play on a field northeast of Manchester. Composed of carriage and wagon workers from Lancashire and Yorkshire, the teams wear gold or green shirts, they will combine to play against a Liverpool team in March 1884, and professional football will be legalized in Britain the following year (see 1902).
A new Monte Carlo gambling casino opens to replace the original 1862 structure. Designed by Charles Garnier of 1875 Paris Opéra fame, the new casino will be augmented in 1910 with an opera house (see 1913).
President Hayes and his wife, Lucy, invite the children of Washington, D.C., to an Easter egg roll on the White House lawn, beginning a tradition. Mrs. Hayes is the first president's wife to be called the first lady.
Will's Three Castles cigarettes are introduced at London (see 1892).
Bat Masterson captures the notorious outlaw Dave Rudabaugh in Dakota Territory and is appointed U.S. marshal (see human rights, 1874). Now 24, Masterson was elected last year as sheriff of Ford County, he hears later in the year that his brother Edward has been gunned down while acting as marshal of Dodge City, Kansas; he brings swift retribution to Edward's two killers, and although he will be defeated in his bid for reelection as sheriff next year he will remain in the west as a gambler until 1902, when he will go east to become a New York sportswriter as he continues his gambling.
Indiana-born Texas outlaw Sam Bass gathers a new gang at Denton 4 months after losing companions in a flight through Kansas and Missouri following a heist of $65,000 in gold and other valuables from a Union Pacific train at Big Springs, Nebraska. The Bass gang robs four trains near Dallas, but Bass is betrayed to the Texas Rangers, trapped while trying to rob a bank at Round Rock, and mortally wounded at age 26.
Bank robbers hold up the Manhattan Savings Institution at New York October 27 and make off with a record $3 million.
Architect Sir George Gilbert Scott dies at London March 27 at age 66, having built up the largest office of its kind in Britain.
Baedeker's London and its Environs lists Claridge's as the city's "first" hotel (see 1838). It has grown to encompass six houses and William Claridge will sell it for £60,000 in 1881 (see 1894).
The last mass nesting of passenger pigeons is seen at Petoskey, Michigan (see 1871; 1914).
Alaska gets its first salmon cannery (see 1890; 1930; politics, 1867).
"Report on the Lands of the Arid Region of the United States" by John Wesley Powell points out that land west of the 96th meridian is arid, with only a few areas of the Pacific Coast and the mountains receiving as much as 20 inches of rain per year (see 1869). An economy based on traditional patterns of farming is not possible under these circumstances, says Powell in the report he submits to Congress in April; dry-land farming depends on irrigation, water rights in the West are more valuable than land titles and should be tied by law to each tract of land, only a small fraction of the land is irrigable. The Homestead Act of 1862 must be revised if it is to apply to western lands. Western land policies must be geared to the region's climatic conditions, optimum irrigation will depend on large dams and canals financed and built under federal government leadership, and the best reservoir sites should be identified and reserved at the outset.
The San Francisco-based ranching and meatpacking enterprise Miller & Lux gains control October 11 of the West's largest irrigation canal company. Henry Miller and Charles Lux have been buying up stock in the company since 1876.
Scottish-born rancher George Grant dies at Victoria, Kansas, April 28 at age 56, having introduced the Aberdeen-Angus breed to America.
The Matador Ranch is established in the southern Texas Panhandle by Chicago promoter Henry H. Campbell, who will obtain backing from Scottish financiers and spread his holdings over most of the Panhandle and up into Montana Territory (see Prairie Cattle Co., 1881).
California rancher-land speculator James Irvine buys out his partners for $150,000 (see 1864; transportation [Southern Pacific], 1874). His Irvine Ranch has grown to embrace 110,000 acres extending for 23 miles from the Pacific Ocean to the Santa Ana River (see transportation, 1888).
A knotting device patented July 8 by John F. Appleby will be essential to perfecting the twine binder (see 1872). The firm of Gammon & Deering begins large-scale production 6 months later of Marsh harvesters equipped with the new twine binder (see 1879).
Onetime grain king Isaac Friedlander dies at San Francisco July 11 at age 65. He has "used his power with such a merciless hand," says the National Grange, "that farmers would receive no more for a large crop than for a small one. He had the wheat growers so completely under his control that even with larger crops, farmers were growing poorer, year by year."
The first commercial milking machines are produced at Auburn, New York, by Albert Durant, who introduces a machine invented by L. O. Colvin.
France's Parlement enacts legislation barring entry of foreign plants, roots, and leaves. U.S. plants are smuggled in, not only for grafting but also for planting in lieu of original grape vines, but grafting vines onto phylloxera-resistant U.S. rootstocks on a large scale becomes prohibitively expensive, and the new law (which will not be repealed until 1891) will lead to overproduction of low-quality wines in the south.
Grape phylloxerae are reported for the first time in Spain (they have reached Italy earlier) and Burgundy (at Meursault) (see 1872). The phylloxera will sharply reduce production of Palo Cortado grapes, and 85 percent of sherries will come to be made from Palomino grapes, which experts consider slightly inferior. Growers of Pinot Noir grapes can afford to fumigate and therefore resist grafting onto U.S. rootstocks, lest they compromise the flavor that has characterized their grapes, but growers of Gamay and other varieties graft without qualms (see 1901).
Downy mildew brought in on U.S. vine wood reduces the French wine-grape crop and weakens the wine produced.
The worst famine in history kills at least 10 million Chinese and possibly twice that number as drought continues in much of Asia as it has since 1876.
A Weights and Measures Act passed by Parliament institutes new standards for the weight of a loaf of bread sold in Britain (see 1836; 1916).
Beet sugar extraction mills are demonstrated at the Paris World Exhibition. Most European countries will be encouraged by the exhibit to plant sugar beets and build factories (see 1811; 1880).
The Silvertown Refinery owned by London sugar magnate Henry Tate, now 59, introduces the first sugar cubes (see 1872).
Charles A. Pillsbury at Minneapolis installs steel rollers to replace millstones and thus multiplies the output of his flour mills (see 1871; Washburn, 1874; A Mill, 1880).
The 4-year-old Washburn Mill at Minneapolis explodes, killing 18 men, wrecking six mills, and destroying a roundhouse, a machine shop, and a factory (see 1871; Washburn, 1874). Cadwallader C. Washburn rushes to the scene, calls in his advisers, paces off the dimensions of a new mill, and announces that it will be the most modern flour mill ever built in America (see A Mill, 1880).
W. D. Washburn & Company is founded at Minneapolis by Maine-born lawyer-turned-miller William Drew Washburn, 47, who followed his brothers Cadwallader and Elihu west in 1857 and has worked briefly for Washhburn, Crosby Company. The younger Washburn helped launch the Minneapolis Tribune in 1867, has prospered in lumbering and water power, and is elected later in the year to Congress, where he will champion the interests of millers against those of farmers.
Western Cold Storage Company opens an ice-cooled cold store at Chicago (see 1887).
Salt wells go into production in New York's Wyoming County as a high tariff encourages production.
The Hutchinson Bottle Stopper patented in April by Chicago bottler's son Charles G. "Doc" Hutchinson is made of wire with a rubber washer; it seals in the carbonation of effervescent drinks when pulled up tight, and when pushed in it permits a beverage to be poured or swallowed from the bottle, but the rubber imparts a taste to the beverage, and like other stoppers available to bottlers it is labor intensive (see Painter, 1892).
Anti-vice crusader Anthony Comstock of 1872 Comstock Law fame approaches a reputed New York abortionist who has a luxurious mansion at 657 Fifth Avenue (52nd Street). Hiding his identity, he says he is desperately poor and will be ruined if his wife has another child. English-born brothel-keeper Anna A. Trow Somers Lohman, 65, alias Mme. Restell, supplies Comstock with drugs and contraceptives; he has her indicted and refuses a $40,000 offer to drop his charges, Mme. Restell posts bail and returns to her house, newspaper stories convince her that she will be convicted, and she slits her throat in her bathtub April 1.
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