1892: Information and Much More from Answers.com
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1891 1892 1893 1894 1895 1896 1897 1898 1899 1900
Queen Victoria's unsavory grandson Prince Eddy (Albert Victor, duke of Clarence) dies of pneumonia (compounded by syphilis) January 14 at age 28—less than 6 weeks after becoming affianced to Princess May (Mary of Teck), 26, who will marry the prince's younger brother George next year.
Former New Zealand prime minister Sir Harry Atkinson dies at Wellington June 28 at age 60.
Britain's second Salisbury ministry falls in the general election August 13 after 6 years in power; a fourth Gladstone government takes office August 18.
A new French government takes power December 6 with foreign minister Alexandre (-Félix-Joseph) Ribot, 49, as prime minister (but see 1893).
Egypt's khedive Mohammed Tewfik dies at Hulwan January 7 at age 39 after a 12-year reign in which he has been content to let the British establish a virtual protectorate and permit the Mahdi to take the Sudan (see 1885). Tewfik is succeeded by his headstrong 17-year-old son, who will reign until 1914 as Abbas II and retake the Sudan. The new khedive encourages a fledgling nationalist movement and works to rid himself of the "Veiled Protectorate" that has governed the country since 1883 through the offices of Evelyn Baring, now nearly 51, who has been raised to the peerage as 1st earl of Cromer. The viceroy makes no effort to learn Arabic (he does speak Turkish, the language of the elite), and although he claims to have an intimate understanding of the people he has become increasingly distant (see 1907; Kitchener, 1894).
French forces under the command of General Alfred-Amédée Dodds, 50, defeat Dahomey forces at the Battle of Abomey, depose Dahomey's king Behanzin, but encounter resistance in the form of native uprisings against imperialism.
French forces under Colonel Louis Archinard defeat Fulani tribesmen on the Upper Niger and take Segu (see 1893).
British consular official Harry H. (Hamilton) Johnston, 34, subdues Angoni and Arab uprisings in Nyasaland. Having gone out to Africa in the early 1880s as a painter, botanist, and freelance journalist, Johnston obtained a land concession that helped draw the frontiers between British and German territories in the area of Mount Kiliminjaro and subsequently joined the consular service, administering a British protectorate in eastern Nigeria.
British East Africa Company agent Captain F. D. Lugard imposes peace on Buganda after an 18-month effort in which he has had occasion to use his Maxim gun (see 1890). French and British missionaries arrived at Kampala before he did last year, having taken a southern route, and he has found Protestants, Roman Catholics, Muslims, and animists struggling with the kabaka (ruler) Mwanga, who has given him his allegiance after Lugard completed a strenuous march to the west. Hearing that the company plans to abandon Uganda because of growing expenses, Lugard returns hurriedly to England, finds that he has been accused of harshness and injustice, mounts a successful defense of his reputation, and succeeds also in persuading the company to retain control of Uganda and have the country annexed.
Canada's first Liberal prime minister Alexander Mackenzie dies at Toronto April 17 at age 70; ailing Prime Minister Sir John Abbott resigns after a brief ministry and is succeeded by Sir John (Sparrow David) Thompson, 47, who will serve until his death in 1894.
A Venezuelan coup d'état overthrows the government at Caracas (see 1899).
General John Pope, U.S. Army (ret.), dies of nervous prostration at Sandusky, Ohio, September 23 at age 70.
President Harrison loses his bid for reelection as the Democrats campaign on a platform opposing the McKinley Tariff Act of 1890 and reelect Grover Cleveland with 277 electoral votes to Harrison's 145. (Harrison's wife has nursed Cleveland's tubercular wife instead of campaigning and the First Lady has died 2 weeks before the election.) Cleveland wins 46 percent of the popular vote, Harrison 43 percent, the Populist candidate 11 percent.
The "Myers Automatic Booth" employed by voters at Lockport, New York, is the first lever-type voting machine to have official approval (see Australian ballot, 1889). Such machines will be employed on a large scale at Rochester, New York, in 1896, and by 1930 they will have been installed at voting places in virtually every major U.S. city, but they provide no paper trail in case of malfunction, and most precincts will continue to use cheaper punchcard systems or other paper-ballot systems.
Ida B. Wells hears at Natchez March 10 that her friend Thomas Moss and two of his business partners were taken from their jail cells the day before, put onto a train, and lynched one mile outside Memphis (see 1887). They had owned a grocery store that was taking business away from a white competitor and had shot three whites who wanted to raze the store. Wells returns to Memphis and launches an anti-lynching campaign, urging blacks to arm themselves in self-defense; she herself begins wearing a pistol, and, quoting her friend's last words, urges Memphis blacks to emigrate west. Wells travels to the newly-opened Oklahoma Territory so that she can report back on conditions there, and in 2 months some 6,000 blacks have followed her advice, some ministers leading their entire congregations to Oklahoma. The white business community of Memphis watches in alarm as its black customers abandon the city, departing by wagon if they cannot afford train fare, and Wells urges those who remain to boycott the local trolley-car system. The boycott is so effective that owners of the traction company come to visit with her and beg that she call off the action. Wells follows newspaper reports and visits scenes of lynchings, interviews eye witnesses to document the circumstances of the 728 lynchings over the preceding decade, and finds that only one third of the victims were even accused of rape. Wells receives death threats, moves to Philadelphia, and proceeds to New York (see 1895).
Italy raises to 12 the minimum age for marriage for girls.
A presidential proclamation April 19 opens some 3 million acres of former Arapaho and Cheyenne lands in Oklahoma to white settlement (see 1891; 1893).
Arab slaveholders in the Belgian Congo rebel beginning in mid-May; Belgian forces under Baron François Dhanis, 31, defeat them November 22. Forced labor is introduced December 5 in the guise of taxes to be paid in labor.
African explorer James A. Grant dies at his native Nairn, Scotland, February 11 at age 64; explorer-physician Mehmed Emin has trouble with German authorities in Tanganyika, crosses into the Congo Free State in May, and is murdered by Arab slave traders at Kanema October 23 at age 52, having served as governor of Equatoria, written important papers on Africa for German journals, and sent collections of African plants and animals to Europe.
A coal mine explosion January 8 at McAlister, Oklahoma, kills 100 workers.
Pittsburgh iron and steel magnate Henry W. Oliver hears about the iron-ore discoveries north of Duluth in Minnesota's Mesabi range 2 years ago (see Oliver, 1888). He rushes to inspect the diggings, Leonidas Merritt shows him specimens of high-grade ore lying almost on the surface, says the iron can be scooped up with a steam shovel at 5¢ per ton in labor cost, and has no trouble persuading Oliver to lease a vast tract. Organizing the Oliver Mining Company with a $600,000 cash investment, Oliver builds a railroad to Lake Superior and begins shipping the ore from lake ports to Pittsburgh. Andrew Carnegie is skeptical, but Carnegie Steel Company head Henry Clay Frick flouts Carnegie's orders and joins forces with Oliver to exploit the Mesabi deposits (see Rockefeller, 1893; United States Steel, 1901).
Idaho mineowners reduce wages for unskilled workers, even after railroads reduce freight rates for ores March 15 (see 1891). Unionized workers strike, the owners lock them out in an effort to break the union, and some 800 non-union miners arrive by June, enabling the mines to reopen. One union discovers in July that one of its most trusted men is working undercover for the Pinkerton agency, strikers dynamite the Frisco Mill at Coeur d'Alene July 11, union and non-union miners exchange gunfire July 12, a non-union guard and three union men are killed, the state's governor orders in six companies of the National Guard, federal troops augment the guard, and 600 union men are arrested (see 1899).
Homestead, Pennsylvania, steel workers strike the Carnegie-Phipps mill in June while Carnegie is in Scotland and are refused a union contract by managing head Henry Clay Frick, who hire 300 Pinkerton guards to suppress the strike (see 1888). Barges bring the Pinkerton men 10 miles up the Monongahela River, where they encounter armed strikers, both sides open fire, 10 men are killed and 60 wounded before the governor can obtain an order declaring martial law; Frick himself is shot and stabbed by Vilna-born anarchist Alexander Berkman (originally Ovsei Osipovich Berkkan), 21, who gets into his office, shoots Frick three times, and stabs him twice with a poisoned knife (he will be convicted of attempted murder, draw a 22-year prison sentence, and serve 14, many of them in solitary confinement). Frick writes a note before being given medical attention to reiterate his position that the union will not be recognized even if he dies, but he recovers. Union organizers are dismissed, and the men go back to their 12-hour shifts November 20 after nearly 5 months of work stoppage. At a time when a middle-class family can live comfortably with servants on $2,000 per year, when a factory worker earns about $446 per year, a clerk about $885, a railroad worker $563, a miner $393, and a schoolteacher $273, Andrew Carnegie's income for the year is $4 million, down only $300,000 from 1891 (see 1888; Carnegie Steel, 1899).
Idaho declares martial law July 14 as silver miners strike.
"American workmen are subjected to peril of life and limb as great as a soldier in time of war," says President Harrison.
Australia has a bitter strike that closes down ports, mines, and sheep-shearing stations and is ended only by military intervention. The 7-year-old Broken Hill Proprietary Company and other mining companies will not make peace with the unions until 1923.
United States Rubber Company is created by an amalgamation of four major companies under the direction of Maine-born importer Charles R. (Ranlett) Flint, 42, who 6 years ago arranged to import Brazilian rubber and will put together trusts in other kinds of businesses.
Economic depression begins in the United States, but the New York Tribune publishes a list of the country's 4,047 millionaires, a number that has grown from fewer than 20 in 1840.
Financier Cyrus W. Field dies at New York July 12 at age 72, having lost most of his fortune; financier Jay Gould dies at New York December 2 at age 56, leaving an estate valued officially at nearly $73.225 million but generally thought to be more like $145 million. His eldest son, George, 28, takes over Gould's business interests.
May Company founder David May and his three brothers-in-law pay $150,000 in cash to acquire the St. Louis store Famous Company (see Denver, 1888). They will buy a Cleveland store in 1898 (see Cleveland, 1914).
Abercrombie & Fitch has its beginnings in the small, waterfront sporting-goods shop and factory opened in New York's South Street by Baltimore-born merchant-inventor David T. Abercrombie, who has worked as a trapper, prospector, and railroad surveyor. Most of the customers for his camping, fishing, and hunting gear are professional hunters, explorers, and trappers, but they will soon include Kingston, New York, lawyer and outdoorsman Ezra Fitch.
An improved carburetor invented by Gottlieb Daimler mixes vaporized fuel with air to create a combustible or explosive gas (see 1890; Lenoir, 1860; Maybach, 1893).
Shell Oil has its beginnings as English entrepreneur Marcus Samuel, 39, sends his first tanker through the Suez Canal with oil for Singapore, Bangkok, and other destinations to break the Standard Oil monopoly in the Far East (see Royal Dutch, 1890). Samuel and his brother control the trading company M. Samuel & Company, begun in 1830 by their late father, Marcus's namesake, as a Houndsditch, London, shop dealing in seashells. The younger Marcus Samuel first became interested in petroleum on a visit to Japan, he ships Russian oil to the Orient, and he will establish such a reputation for probity that the Japanese government will entrust him with the issue of its first gold bonds in the amount of £4.5 million (see Royal Dutch-Shell, 1907).
Wisconsin-born entrepreneur Edward L. (Lawrence) Doheny, 37, finds oil at Los Angeles in the spring (see Union Oil, 1889). Unemployed and unable to pay his hotel bill, he has been living with his wife and young daughter in a downtown boarding house, seen a wagon hauling chunks of a dark, greasy substance, and asked the driver what it was; told that it was brea (Spanish for pitch), he inquired about its source, took a streetcar out to Westlake Park, and saw the tarry substance oozing out of a large hole. An ice factory has been using the stuff for fuel, and Doheny persuades his friend Charles Canfield to lease a three-lot parcel of land for $400, but although they make some progress digging a well through the oil-soaked soil with picks and shovels they are stopped by gas fumes (see 1893)
The Ohio Supreme Court outlaws John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Trust under the 1890 Sherman Act, but Rockefeller retains control of the trust properties through Standard Oil of New Jersey, a new company incorporated under a recent New Jersey holding-company law that permits companies chartered at Trenton to hold stock in other corporations (see 1884; Lake Superior Consolidated Iron Mines, 1893; Supreme Court decision, 1911).
The diesel engine invented by Paris-born German engineer Rudolf Diesel, 33, operates on a fuel that is less highly refined than gasoline and less costly; instead of using an air-fuel mixture as in internal combustion engines, it employs a piston to compress air to a very high pressure, making it so hot that when fuel is injected it ignites without an electrical ignition system. Its higher compression rates give it higher theoretical cycle efficiencies, and because it is simpler than a gasoline engine it is more trouble-free, but it is also noisier and emits more pollutants. Diesel files for a German patent February 28 (see 1893).
N.V. Philips Gloeilampenfabrieken has its beginnings at Eindhoven, the Netherlands, where mechanical engineer Gerard (Leonard Frederik) Philips, 33, begins production of incandescent electric lamps. Gerard's youngest brother Anton Frederik, now 18, will join the firm in 1895 and obtain a contract to supply the Russian court with 50,000 lightbulbs per year; by the turn of the century Philips will be Europe's third-largest lamp producer.
General Electric Company is created through a merger engineered by New York financier J. P. Morgan, who combines Henry Villard's Edison General Electric with Charles A. Coffin's Thomson-Houston (see 1883), eliminating the Edison name because it has lost prestige since the electric chair fiasco 2 years ago and because Thomas Edison still favors direct current, not AC (see Langmuir, 1912). Edison General Electric absorbed engineer Frank J. Sprague's Electric Railway & Motor Company in 1890, and Sprague now goes into competition with Otis Elevator Company; his Sprague Electric Elevator Company will produce about 600 elevators before selling out to Otis (see transportation, 1897).
Commonwealth Edison Company is founded at Chicago by Samuel Insull, who quits his $36,000-per-year vice presidency at Edison General Electric to head Chicago Edison Company at $12,000 per year. Now 32, the London-born Insull has become convinced that electricity's real future is not in manufacturing equipment but rather in developing central generating stations, recognizing that utilities have a "natural monopoly." He promptly borrows $250,000 from retail merchant Marshall Field and uses that and his own savings to buy stock in the small utility, which has less than $1 million in assets but will have 50 times that much by 1907 as it takes over all of Chicago's electric-power production, generating more than the utilities of New York, Brooklyn, and Boston combined, with annual revenues of $8 million (see Middle West Utilities, 1912).
The law of hysteresis discovered by German-born U.S. engineer Charles Proteus Steinmetz, 27, will improve the efficiency of electric motors, generators, and transformers. Steinmetz fled Berlin 4 years ago to escape prosecution in connection with a socialist newspaper he was editing and came to the United States a year later. A hunchbacked wizard, he changed his name from Karl August Rudolf to Charles Proteus, using the nickname Proteus given him as a student at the University of Breslau. The Steinmetz discovery permits engineers to forecast accurately how much electric power will be lost as a result of residual magnetism in electromagnets and will result in generators and motors designed to minimize such loss (see 1893).
The Viktoria motorcar introduced by Karl Benz is his first four-wheeled vehicle and enjoys respectable sales (see 1888; 1895).
The Haynes-Duryea motorcar introduced at Springfield, Massachusetts, is one of the first U.S. motorcars to be offered for public sale (see 1891; Lambert, 1891). Designed by Indiana inventor Elwood Haynes, 38, who created tungsten steel chrome in 1881, it has a four-cycle water-cooled engine and a rubber and leather transmission. Haynes has approached John W. Lambert, who has promised to let him promote the Haynes-Duryea with the claim that it is indeed the first. Total U.S. motorcar production is 25 (see 1895; 1897; Chicago-Milwaukee race, 1895).
French automakers René Panhard and E. C. Levassor produce the first motorcar to be equipped with pneumatic tires (see 1889).
Internal combustion engine pioneer George Brayton dies at London December 17 at age 62.
Chicago's first elevated railway goes into operation to augment the cable cars and trolley lines of the "Loop" that circles the city's downtown area. The "Alley L" line on the South Side will expand to serve much of the city (see 1897).
The Pecos River Bridge completed for the Southern Pacific Railroad in Arizona Territory is the highest railroad bridge in North America and third highest in world. Built by a Pennsylvania firm, it is 2,180 feet long and stands 321 feet above the river.
South Africa's first trains from Cape Town reach Johannesburg in September and begin to generate income that will be important to the Cape Colony's finances.
Huffy bicycles have their beginnings at Dayton, Ohio, where Davis Sewing Machine Company owner George P. Huffman oversees production of the company's first cycle (see 1899).
A new method for producing viscose rayon patented by English chemists Charles F. (Frederick) Cross, 37, and Edward J. (John) Bevan, 36, is safer than the Chardonnet nitrocellulose process of 1883 and cheaper than the cuprammonium process. Cross and Bevan dissolve cellulose in a mixture of carbon disulfide and sodium xanthate, and they squirt the viscous solution through fine holes to produce spinnable fibers (see Little, 1894; Viscose Co., 1910).
Union Carbide has its beginnings at Spray, North Carolina, where Ontario-born inventor Thomas L. (Leopold) Wilson, 32, and Major James T. Morehead have accidentally produced calcium carbide while trying either to make aluminum in an electric furnace or to make metallic calcium by fusing lime and coal tar. Molten slag from their operation is dumped into a nearby stream, liberating a gas, and they discover that the gas is acetylene (carbide gas) that can be used in lighting. They will establish the first commercial carbide factory at Spray in 1894, open a works at Merritton, Ontario, in 1896, and found National Carbide Sales to market acetylene (which will soon be found effective for cutting metal; see torch, 1895) (see 1911; Claude, ferrochrome, 1897).
Chemist Henri Moissan at Paris devises a commercially profitable method of producing acetylene (carbide gas) and an electric-arc furnace that enables him to prepare a number of new compounds and vaporize substances heretofore believed infusible (see fluorine gas, 1886).
The Germ-Plasm: A Theory of Heredity (Das Keimplasma) by biologist August Weismann at the University of Freiburg advances a novel concept of the physical basis of heredity (see 1865; DNA, 1870). Unaware of Gregor Mendel's studies or the existence of DNA, Weismann suggests that somatoplasm is the essential element of eggs and sperm, which are independent of all other bodily cells, and carry from one generation to the next all of the hereditary physical characteristics involved in determining the progeny's race, gender, and appearance. Now 58, Weismann first proposed the theory 9 years ago after working on hydrozoa and finding that the germ cells of animals contain "something essential for the species, something which must be carefully preserved and passed on from one generation to another"; his ideas challenge the prevailing Lamarckian theory of heredity (see DeVries, 1900).
Irish physicist George F. (Francis) FitzGerald, 41, at Dublin's Trinity College suggests that a body is shorter (along its line of motion) when in motion than when at rest, and that this contraction affects the instruments used in the experiment. FitzGerald has studied the results reported by Albert A. Michelson and Edward Morley in 1887 (see Lorentz, 1895).
The Dewar flask invented by chemist Sir James Dewar at Cambridge University is a vacuum vessel that permits low temperature laboratory work (see Dewar, 1873). Now 50, he suggests that scientists buy liquid nitrogen, use it to fill multi-gallon metal vacuum containers, and then pour it into smaller Dewar flasks, or beakers, that would be made of double-walled glass, silvered on the inside to prevent radiant heat transfer and then evacuated (see food [Thermos bottle], 1903).
Archaeologist and educational reformer Sir Daniel Wilson dies at Toronto August 6 at age 76, having been president of the University of Toronto since 1881; anatomist and paleontologist Sir Richard Owen dies at London December 18 at age 88, having opposed Darwinian doctrine to the end.
The Comparative Pathology of Inflammation by zoologist-microbiologist Elie Metchnikoff (originally Ilya Ilich Mechnikov), now 47, establishes that the white blood cells (phagocytes, or, in humans, leukocytes) constitute the first line of defense against acute infections, devouring infectious organisms (see 1885).
Russian botanist Dmitri Iosifovich Ivanovski, 28, discovers filterable viruses, pioneering the science of virology (although he believes the pathogenic agents to be minuscule bacteria). Ivanovski was asked 5 years ago to investigate "wildfire," a disease that was ruining tobacco farms in the Ukraine and Bessarabia. His article "On Two Diseases of Tobacco" is based on his study of mosaic disease in the tobacco plants and reports that filtered sap from diseased plants can transfer the infection to healthy plants (see Beijerinck, 1895).
Austrian surgeon Anton Eiselsberg, 32, removes the parathyroid glands in an experiment and produces the cramps of tetany—a nervous affection characterized by intermittent paroxysms of the extremities that he noted 2 years ago during goiter operations. A former student of Theodor Billroth, Eiselsberg will teach surgery at Utrecht beginning next year, move on to Königsberg and Vienna, do important research in pituitary surgery, and help found modern gastrointestinal surgery, becoming the first surgeon in Europe to remove a spinal column tumor, pioneering brain surgery, and performing studies on streptococcal infections.
Pathologist William H. Welch and San Francisco-born biologist-physician George (Henry Falkiner) Nuttall, 30, at Baltimore's Johns Hopkins University identify the gangrene-causing microorganism Clostridium perfringens.
English medical missionary Wilfred (Thomason) Grenfell, 27, inaugurates a service to Labrador fishermen. A follower of the U.S. evangelist Dwight L. Moody, Grenfell has worked since 1887 as a surgeon for the Royal National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen aboard the first hospital ship serving the North Sea fisheries (see 1912).
Cholera arrives in the United States August 30 with steerage passengers from the Hamburg-Amerika line ship S.S. Moravia.
The American School of Osteopathy is founded at Kirksville, Missouri, by Andrew T. Still (see 1875). His practice eschews use of drugs, it will spread quickly, and most states will eventually accord it legal recognition equivalent to that of orthodox medical practice.
The Ladies' Home Journal announces that it will accept no more patent medicine advertisements (see 1883). Edited since 1889 by Edward W. Bok, now 29, the magazine will campaign against such products (see 1904; Food and Drug Act, 1906).
Physician Sir Morell Mackenzie dies at London February 3 at age 54; physician Jean Antoine Villemin at his native Paris October 6 at age 65, having been vindicated in his belief that tuberculosis is contagious.
Newnham College principal and feminist (Anne) Jemima Clough dies at Cambridge February 27 at age 72. British women gain entry to more institutions of higher education, but most colleges continue to limit their enrollment to men; Freemasonry opponent and former Wheaton College president Jonathan Blanchard dies at Wheaton, Illinois, May 14 at age 81, having been succeeded as head of Wheaton by his son Charles Albert, now 42, who will head the school until 1925, increasing enrollment as he pushes its emphasis on Christian fundamentalism.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology's graduating class includes MIT's first black graduate. Grandson of a white slaveowner, Wilmington, North Carolina-born student Robert Robinson Taylor, nearly 24, has been helped by a scholarship and studied architecture with a view to helping his father in the building business.
Constantinople's Topkapi Palace Museum opens in the former seraglio (Topkap Saray) of the sultan. The museum will expand its collection of classical antiquities, manuscripts, and archival documents to include ceramics, armor, textiles, and other artifacts.
The University of Chicago opens October 1 with women admitted on the same basis as men. John D. Rockefeller gives another $1.35 million to help get the new school up and running; five major buildings have been completed, and another five will be finished next year.
A "pledge of allegiance" for U.S. schoolchildren to recite October 12 in commemoration of the discovery of America 400 years ago says simply, "I pledge allegiance to my flag, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." Socialist and former clergyman Francis Bellamy, 36, has composed the pledge, and it appears in The Youth's Companion at Boston September 8. The family magazine has the largest circulation (about 500,000) of any in America. Businessman Daniel Ford and his nephew James Upham own it, they began a campaign 4 years ago to sell flags to public schools, and about 26,000 schools have bought them (most schools up to now have displayed only state flags). Upham last year hired Bellamy (a first cousin of author Edward Bellamy) to help him in his public-relations effort, "my flag" will be changed in 1924 to "the flag of the United States of America," and generations of schoolchildren will mumble "for Richard Sands" instead of "for which it stands" (see religion, 1943; 1954).
The Hall Braille writer invented by Illinois School for the Blind superintendent Frank H. Hall is the first writing machine for braille (see 1834; 1852). The late Louis Braille produced special machines with six keys, one for each dot in his Braille cell, or matrix, but Hall's machine and modifications of it will come into universal use (see Kurzweil Reading Machine, 1976).
Chinese-English Dictionary by H. A. Giles firmly establishes the Wade-Giles style of romanizing Chinese characters (see 1872). A second edition will appear in 1912 with some modifications (see Pinyin, 1978).
Papermaking pioneer Hugh Burgess dies at Atlantic City, New Jersey, February 23 at age 66. The American Wood-Paper Company that he has served as manager since its founding in 1863 will go bankrupt (see 1854), but the soda process of turning wood pulp into paper will survive; pulp paper pioneer Charles Fenerty dies at Lower Sackville, Nova Scotia, June 10 at age 71, having lived to see two pulp-producing mills built at Sackville.
The Toronto Star begins publication under the name Evening Star. A labor dispute has cost 25 printers their jobs, their first issue has only four pages, some leading citizens will acquire ownership in 1899 and rename it the Toronto Morning Star, and by 1904 its circulation will have risen from 7,000 to 40,000.
The Ridder newspaper chain that will grow to include 19 daily newspapers, most of them in the West and Midwest, has its beginnings as German-born publisher Herman Ridder, 41, acquires the New York German-language newspaper Staats-Zeitung und Herolt (see Knight, 1903).
Baltimore's Afro-American begins publication on a semiweekly basis with John Murphy as editor.
The Addressograph invented by Sioux City, Iowa, engineer Joseph Smith Duncan prints addresses automatically and will soon be used by women in offices all over America. Duncan's first model employs a revolving, hexagonal block of wood to which he has glued rubber type torn from rubber stamps; a new name and address advance to the printing point each time the block is turned, and the process of turning the block re-inks the type. Duncan will put a more refined model into production in July of next year from a back office in Chicago.
Vogue magazine begins publication late in the year at New York as a society weekly, devoting its first issues largely to coming-out parties, galas, betrothals, marriages, travel itineraries, golf, theater, concerts, and art. Founders Arthur Turnure and Harry McVickar have engaged editor Josephine Redding, who is never without a hat but does not wear corsets (see Condé Nast, 1909).
Electrical Papers by London-born physicist Oliver Heaviside, 42, uses operational calculus (Laplace transforms) to study theoretical aspects of problems in telegraphic, telephonic, and electrical transmission. Himself a onetime telegrapher, Heaviside went increasingly deaf, had to retire in 1874, and turned his attention to studying electricity. The proliferation of telephone wires in Britain and abroad has created problems such as interference (cross talk) from adjacent lines on the same crossarm of a telephone pole; two-wire copper circuits based on Heaviside's theories solve some of the problems, and transposing the wires by twisting them at specified intervals cancel cross talk, but on long-distance lines even two-wire circuits attenuate telephone signals appreciably. Heaviside's theories attract the attention of Columbia University physicist Michael I. Pupin and AT&T engineer George A. Campbell, who realize that introducing inductive coils (loading coils) at regular intervals along the length of a long-distance telephone wire could make a significant reduction in the attentuation of signals at frequencies of less than 3.5 kilohertz (within the voice band). Pupin and Campbell both file for patents on the concept of loading coils (see 1900).
Telegraph pioneer Frederic N. Gisborne dies at Ottawa August 30 at age 68, having ended the isolation of Canada's maritime provinces and of many communities in the western provinces but derived little financial benefit from his work.
Telephone service between New York and Chicago begins October 18.
German electrical equipment manufacturer Werner von Siemens dies at Charlottenburg, Berlin, December 6 at age 75, having invented (among other things) a printing and needle telegraph and a cable insulated with gutta-percha. He turned his company over to his younger brother Carl 2 years ago.
Nonfiction: The Spirit of Modern Philosophy by Josiah Royce; Contributions to Modern Psychology (Beiträge zur experimentellen Psychologie) by University of Freiburg pschologist-philosopher Hugo Münsterberg, now 29. His German colleagues criticize the work, but he receives an invitation from William James to come to Cambridge, Massachusetts, as a visiting professor at Harvard.
Fiction: "The Yellow Wall-Paper" by Boston feminist writer Charlotte Anna Stetson (née Perkins), 32, appears in the January issue of The New England Newspaper (a niece of the late Harriet Beecher Stowe, Stetson was treated for neurasthenia shortly after her marriage in 1885, her depression became intolerable after the birth of her child, a specialist in nervous disorders forbade her to write or engage in any intellectual pursuit, but she divorced her husband, resumed her writing career, and has written a story about the helpless frustration of a female patient, a would-be writer whose madness has been brought on by the patronizing attitude of her doctor-husband and who secretly keeps a diary in the attic where she is confined); The Children of the Ghetto: A Study of a Peculiar People by London-born novelist and playwright Israel Zangwill, 28, whose Russian Jewish parents came to England as refugees in 1848; The Soul of Lillith by Marie Corelli; A Life (Una vita) by Trieste novelist Italo Svevo (Aron Hector [Ettore] Schmitz), 30, whose book is privately printed and receives almost no attention; The Intruder (L'Innocente) by Gabriele D'Annunzio; The American Claimant by Mark Twain; The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by A. Conan Doyle.
Short-story writer Guy de Maupassant cuts his throat in a suicide attempt January 2 while staying near his mother at Paris; physicians are called and his mother agrees reluctantly to have him confined to a local nursing home.
Poetry: Barrack-Room Ballads by Rudyard Kipling includes "Gunga Din," "If," and "The Road to Mandalay"; London Voluntaries by William Ernest Henley includes "The Song of the Sword," "England, My England," and his 1891 poem "Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonae Sub Regno Cynarae" with the line "I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion." Now 43, Henley has gathered about him a group of young writers, including Kipling, whose imperialist sentiments jibe with his own, and collaborates with his friend Robert Louis Stevenson on three plays; Fate and Other Poems (Fatalità) by Italian poet Ada Negri, 22, who since age 18 has been teaching school in the small Pavian village of Motta-Visconti. Her poems about the virtues of the hard-working, long-suffering proletariat as compared with the parasitic bourgeoisie make her an instant celebrity, and the government makes her professor of Italian literature at the normal school (teachers' college) in Milan.
Poet Walt Whitman dies at Camden, New Jersey, March 26 at age 72; John Greenleaf Whittier at Hampton Falls, New Hampshire, September 7 at age 84; Alfred Lord Tennyson at his summer home near Haslemere, Surrey, October 6 at age 81.
Juvenile: Bashful Fifteen by L. T. Meade; Men of Iron, a Romance of Chivalry by Howard Pyle; Five Little Peppers Grown Up by Margaret Sidney (Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop).
Painting: Woman with a Mango, The Spirit of the Dead Watching, and Aha oe feii (Why, you are jealous) by Paul Gauguin; At the Moulin Rouge and Au Lit, Le Baiser by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec; Woman Sweeping by French painter (Jean) Edouard Vuillard, 23, who joined the Nabi group in 1890 after his work was rejected by the Salon and has been creating programs for the Théâtre Libre. Irish-born trompe l'oeil painter William Michael Harnett dies at New York October 29 at age 44.
Sculpture: Diana by Augustus Saint-Gaudens for New York's Madison Square Garden.
Theater: Lady Windermere's Fan by Oscar Wilde 2/20 at St. James's Theatre, London, with Lillie Langtry, George Alexander, Ben Webster, Lily Hanbury, 197 perfs. Wilde has written the play especially for "The Jersey Lily" and says, "History is merely gossip" (II). "Anybody can make history," he wrote last year. "Only a great man can write it." He calls a cynic "a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing" (III); Walker, London by James M. Barrie 2/25 at Toole's Theatre, London, with Irene Vanbrugh as Bell Golightly, 497 perfs.; Monsieur Goes Hunting! (Monsieur chasse) by Georges Feydeau 4/23 at the Théâtre du Palais Royal, Paris; The Masked Ball by Clyde Fitch (who has adapted a French play) 10/3 at Palmer's Theater, New York, with Philadelphia-born actor John Drew (Jr.), 38, Salt Lake City-born actress Maude Adams (originally Maude Ewing Adams Kiskadden), 19, who has adopted her mother's maiden name; Champignol in Spite of Himself (Champignol malgré lui) by Feydeau and a collaborator 11/5 at the Théâtre des Nouveautés, Paris; Widowers' Houses by George Bernard Shaw 12/9 at London's Royalty Theatre, with Wick Robertson, Florence Farr, 2 matinée perfs.; Charley's Aunt by English actor-playwright Brandon Thomas, 36, 12/21 at London's Royalty Theatre, with Henry Farmer as Charley Wykeham, Brandon Thomas, Nina Boucicault as Kitty Verdun, 1,466 perfs.
Stage musicals: The Mountebanks 1/4 at London's Lyric Theater, 228 perfs.; Haddon Hall 9/24 at London's Savoy Theatre, with Courtice Pounds, book by Sydney Grundy, music by Arthur S. Sullivan, 204 perfs.
Opera: Pagliacci 5/21 at Milan's Teatro dal Verme, with music by Italian composer Ruggiero Leoncavallo, 34, who delights audiences with his aria "Vesti la Giubba;" Mlada 10/20 at St. Petersburg's Mariinsky Theater, with music by Nikolai Rimski-Korsakov that includes "Night on Mount Triglov"; Iolanta 12/18 at St. Petersburg's Mariinsky Theater, with music by Petr Ilich Tchaikovsky.
Ballet: The Nutcracker Suite (Casse-Noisette) 12/17 at St. Petersburg's Mariinsky Theater, with the Imperial Ballet, choreography by Marius Petipa's assistant Lev Ivanov, music by Petr Ilich Tchaikovsky. Its libretto is based on the 1816 E. T. A. Hoffman tale "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King" as retold by Alexandre Dumas père, but its abrupt shift to fantasy makes no sense, and the work does not catch on with European audiences. It will become popular only in America, and not even there until the 1940s and 1950s.
Dancer-choreographer Jules Perrot dies at Paramé, France, August 24 at age 82.
First performances: Carneval Overture by Antonin Dvorák 4/28 at Prague on the eve of the composer's departure for New York; Prelude in C sharp minor by Sergei Rachmaninoff 9/24 at Moscow; Symphony No. 8 in C minor by Anton Bruckner 12/18 at Vienna.
Composer Edouard Lalo dies at Paris April 22 at age 70.
Popular songs: "Daisy Bell (A Bicycle Built for Two)" by English songwriter Harry Dacre, 32 (possibly a pen name for Frank Dean), who is visiting America.
Bandmaster-composer Patrick Sarsfield Gilmore dies suddenly while conducting his band at St. Louis September 24 at age 62; lieder composer Robert Franz dies at his native Halle, Saxony, October 24 at age 77, having written more than 350 songs, many of them to texts by Heinrich Heine.
Wilfred Baddely wins in men's singles at Wimbledon, Lottie Dod in women's singles; Oliver Campbell wins in U.S. men's singles, Mabel Cahill in women's singles.
San Francisco-born prizefighter James John "Gentleman Jim" Corbett, 26, takes the heavyweight title from the "Boston Strong Boy" John L. Sullivan—the "Great John L."—in the first title-match prizefight to be fought with padded gloves according to the 25-year-old marquess of Queensberry rules (Sullivan has insisted on those rules); Corbett scores a knockout in the 21st round of the match September 7 at New Orleans.
Chicago's 16-year-old A. G. Spalding Company acquires Wright & Ditson, started by cricketer-baseball player George Wright, and becomes a major factor in tennis balls and rackets. Spalding also begins making golf clubs and balls that will so improve the game that golf will gain new popularity in the United States and in Britain.
Notre Dame invites Yale football coach Walter Camp to help it develop a team that will be as good as eastern teams. The new University of Chicago appoints former Yale player Amos Alonzo Stagg as the first professional football coach, paying him $2,500 per year. Yale beats Harvard in their annual football match despite Harvard's use of a "flying wedge" that will be banned next year because it is too dangerous.
Luggage maker Louis Vuitton dies at Paris February 17 at age 70; his son Georges takes over the firm the Vuitton began in 1854 (see 1898).
Chicago salesman William Wrigley, Jr., 30, starts selling chewing gum, now being made by at least 12 companies (see Adams, 1872). Wrigley started as a soap salesman, offered baking powder as a premium to his wholesale soap customers, switched to selling baking powder, has offered two packages of chewing gum with each can of powder, and has been so encouraged by the response that he turns all his efforts to selling gum (see 1893).
The $1 Ingersoll pocket watch is introduced by Michigan-born New York novelty promoter Robert Hawley Ingersoll, 33, who has built up a business selling by mail order and to chain stores. He has bought 1,000 "clock-watches" from the Connecticut-based Waterbury Clock Company, devises a selling plan based on common terms, common prices, a guarantee, and the Ingersoll name (to combat unscrupulous competitors). "The watch that made the dollar famous" is a huge success, more than 70 million will be sold by 1919, but Ingersoll's company will be insolvent by 1921 and he will sell its assets to Waterbury in 1922 (see Timex, 1946).
Hamilton Watch Company is founded at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, by entrepreneur James Hamilton and 17 subscribers who take over the 18-year-old Adams and Perry watch factory that has been forced to suspend operations. Hamilton adds a new wing to the plant and introduces a "turnip" pocket watch designed by Harry J. Cain: it is the first Hamilton watch to meet the Time Inspection Rules established by U.S. railroads last year after a bad accident. The "watch of railroad accuracy" will remain in production for 33 years.
Cold cream is introduced by New York apothecaries V. Chapin Daggett and Clifford Ramsdell, who substitute white mineral oil for the perishable vegetable oils that have been used until now and create a product that does not turn rancid.
New York's first Columbus Day parade steps off October 12; Il Progresso Italo-Americano publisher Carlo Barsotti started his paper 11 years ago and has run editorials urging that the 400th anniversary of the discovery of America be celebrated, although not all historians agree that Christopher Columbus was Genoese.
Book matches are patented by Philadelphia lawyer Joshua Pusey, who licenses the Diamond Match Company of Barberton, Ohio, to produce them (see Lundstrom, 1853). Diamond Match will sell advertising on its matchbook covers beginning in 1898 (the Mendelson Opera Co. will be the first to use matchbook ads), but the matches contain poisonous white phosphorus (it will be replaced by safer chemicals in 1911).
Player's Navy Cut cigarettes are introduced at London.
Wills' Three Castle cigarettes are packed in the first push-up cardboard cigarette packets (see 1878; Imperial Tobacco, 1901).
The Dalton gang from Oklahoma Territory arrives at Coffeyville, Kansas, on the morning of October 5, intending to rob two banks, but the aroused townspeople meet the gang with heavy gunfire. Former train robbers Robert Dalton, 25, and his brother Grattan fall dead along with two others; the Daltons have become folk heroes among farmers and others angry at the railroads for charging high freight rates.
Engineer-architect Montgomery C. Meigs of Pension Office Building fame dies at Washington, D.C., January 2 at age 75.
British judges at Madras move into a new High Court building, a red brick structure exceeded in size among judicial buildings only by the courts of London.
Brooklyn's Grand Army Plaza is graced with a Soldiers' and Sailors' Memorial Arch dedicated to the Civil War dead. The arch serves as an entrance to Prospect Park.
Marble House is completed at Newport, Rhode Island, by architect Richard Morris Hunt for railroad heir William K. Vanderbilt, now 42. The summer "cottage" on Bellevue Avenue has lines derived from those of the Grand Trianon and Petit Trianon at Versailles and will be augmented in 1913 by a lacquered Chinese teahouse on Cliff Walk.
The Reno Inclined Elevator patented March 15 by New York mining engineer Jesse W. (Wilford) Reno, 30, is the world's first escalator. It will be installed in the fall of 1896 at Coney Island's Old Iron Pier. The flat-step moving staircase patented by U.S. inventor Charles A. Wheeler August 2 is the first practical escalator, although it will never be built; inventor Charles D. Seeberger will buy Wheeler's patent, incorporate its basic feature in his own improved design, coin the brand name Escalator, and have Otis Elevator produce it; the Seeberger Escalator will be used at the Paris Exposition of 1900 and in Gimbels department store at Philadelphia in 1901.
The cornerstone of New York's St. John the Divine is laid December 27 on an 11½-acre site acquired last year on Morningside Heights by the Episcopal diocese of New York for $850,000. Planned as the world's largest cathedral, it has been designed by George Lewis Heins, 32, and Christopher Grant La Farge, 30, who will be succeeded in 1911 by Ralph Adams Cram, now 28, and Frank William Ferguson, now 30, who will change its design from Romanesque to Gothic.
Denver's Brown Palace Hotel opens in August as prospectors crowd into Cripple Creek to make their fortunes in the goldfields. Pioneer Henry Cordis Brown, now 70, arrived by oxcart at Cherry Creek in 1860 and by 1888 owned much of the miners' encampment that became Denver. Located in what heretofore was Brown's pasture, the hotel has a ship's tavern whose head waiter is dressed in nautical garb with four stripes on his sleeve; its breakfast menu includes creamed chipped beef, chicken hash and cream, broiled Rocky Mountain trout, liver and bacon, and double-thick lamb chops.
The Sierra Club founded by John Muir and others will work to protect America's natural environment (see 1876; Muir Woods, 1908).
A concealed lake on Mont Blanc in the French Alps suddenly empties July 12, sending a wave of water down a narrow gorge; 200 residents and vacationers in the town of St. Gervais are killed in their sleep.
The New York State legislature creates Adirondack Park, setting aside the nation's largest forest reserve after years of uncontrolled logging: "The Forest Preserve shall be forever kept as wild forest lands." The initial reserve of some 2 million acres will grow to extend over nearly 6 million (2.6 million state owned)—an area larger than Yellowstone, Yosemite, Grand Canyon, and Glacier national parks combined.
New York City gets new torrents of clean drinking water as the $24 million New Croton Aqueduct is completed after 7 years of construction (see 1842; 1848; Catskill system, 1917).
Chicago breaks ground September 3 for construction of a sanitary canal that will reverse the flow of the Chicago River, which has been emptying sewage into Lake Michigan and contaminating the city's drinking water, producing epidemics of cholera and other diseases (see 1900).
Wyoming's Johnson County has a cattle war beginning in April as angry homesteaders, rustlers, and townspeople lay siege to the 8-year-old TA Ranch (named for Tom Alsop) just south of Buffalo, where local cattle barons and their hired guns from Texas have taken refuge after trying for years to drive out smaller, independent ranchers and gain control of the Powder River country. Federal troops from Fort McKinney move in after 3 days on orders from President Harrison at Washington, D.C., the cattlemen surrender to them, the entire population of the county is less than 2,360, but hostilities continue, with cowboys pitted against other cowboys, neighbors against neighbors.
The Union Stockyards that opened at Chicago late in 1865 butcher 2½ million head of cattle and 4 million hogs.
The Corn Belt Real Estate Association of Mitchell, South Dakota, opens a Corn Palace September 28 to promote the abundance of corn and wheat and lure settlers to the state (nothing is said about droughts and bitter-cold winters). Decorated with onion-shaped domes and murals made from more more than 250,000 ears of corn, its façade will be redecorated each August for more than a century and serve as a civic auditorium.
Canadian druggist William Saunders, 56, crosses Red Fife wheat with an early ripening variety obtained from India and produces the hardy Markham wheat strain on a farm in British Columbia (see Mackay, 1886). Saunders heads Dominion Experimental Farms.
The Populist Party polls more than a million votes in the U.S. presidential election as farmers register their protest against railroad companies and farm machine makers.
The first successful U.S. gasoline tractor is produced by Waterloo, Iowa, by farmer John Froelich, who will organize Waterloo Gasoline Traction Engine Company early next year. John Deere Plow will acquire it (see 1902).
Cheap grain from America and Russia depresses French farm prices. Only one French farm holding in 15 has a horse-drawn cultivator, one in 150 a mechanical reaper, and French farmers demand higher import duties to protect them from more efficient overseas competitors.
Famine continues to cripple Russia (see 1891), but by late January some 3 million barrels of U.S. flour are en route to relieve the starvation that is killing millions.
London children in Bethnal Green live almost entirely on bread; 83 percent of them have no other solid food for 17 out of 21 meals each week. Black treacle (molasses) and cheap jam make the bread palatable, but scurvy, rickets, and tuberculosis are widespread in such districts, as they are in many British and European industrial centers.
Danish veterinarian Bernhard Laurits Frederik Bang, 44, develops a method for eradicating tuberculosis from dairy herds (see agriculture [Bang's disease], 1896). The first U.S. cattle tuberculosis test is made March 3 on a herd at Villa Nova, Pennsylvania, with tuberculin brought from Europe by the dean of the University of Pennsylvania veterinary department.
R. H. Macy partner Nathan Straus launches a campaign for pasteurized milk; he will establish milk stations in New York and other large cities.
Advocates of pure food laws petition Congress to hold hearings (see 1889; Wiley, 1902).
Asa Candler incorporates the Coca-Cola Company at Atlanta January 25 (see 1891). He budgets $11,401 for advertising and broadens distribution of the beverage, whose name will be registered with the U.S. Patent Office in January of next year (see 1895).
Baltimore machine-shop foreman William Painter, 54, patents a clamp-on tin-plated steel bottle cap with an inner seal disk of natural cork and a flanged edge; he also patents a capping machine for beer and soft drink bottles. The new bottle cap will replace the unsanitary and labor intensive Miller Plunger patented in 1874 and the 1878 Hutchinson Bottle Stopper, both widely used, and mass production of soft drinks and beer. Painter will design an automatic filler and capper with a capacity of 60 to 100 bottles per minute and establish Crown Cork and Seal at Baltimore to market his bottle caps and machines (see 1910; everyday life [Gillette], 1895).
Fabrique de Produits Maggi introduces bouillon concentrate in granulated form (see 1890). The concentrate will be marketed in bouillon cubes beginning in 1906.
Campari aperitif is introduced by Italian entrepreneur Davide Campari, whose father, Gaspare, opened a café at Milan in 1867. The younger Campari acquires a factory at Sesto Giovanni to produce the aperitif after having studied the distilling art in France.
American Sugar Refining controls 98 percent of the U.S. sugar industry (see 1891); H. O. Havemeyer's Sugar Trust uses political influence to suppress foreign competition with tariff walls, and the company saves itself millions of dollars per year in duties by having its raw sugar imports shortweighted (see Spreckels, 1897).
The first Hawaiian pineapple cannery opens (see 1790). English-born horticulturist Captain John Kidwell arrived at Honolulu in 1880 and has built the cannery after a decade of patient, scientific efforts to develop quality pineapples and grow them commercially in the Manoa Valley of Honolulu, where previously the plants have been torn up as an agricultural nuisance. After failing in an effort to grow the Kona variety, Captain Kidwell imported 1,000 crowns of the smooth Cayenne variety with a view to supplying the market for fresh fruit in San Francisco but found, like others before him, that pineapples do not travel well. He processes the fruit of 1,000 plants in partnership with John Emmeleuth but finds the high U.S. tariffs on canned fruits an impossible obstacle and the partners will ship only a few thousand cases before finally giving up (see Dole, 1902).
George A. Hormel Company is founded by Austin, Minnesota, butcher-meat packer George Albert Hormel, 31 (who pronounces his name with emphasis on the first syllable). He converted an abandoned creamery on the Cedar River into an abbatoir last year, slaughters 610 hogs by year's end, and will personally split 100,000 carcasses before letting anyone else do the job as he builds a business in ham, bacon, sausage, and fresh pork (see 1926).
The hamburger sandwich is invented by some accounts at Akron, Ohio, by Akron County Fair concessionaire Frank Menches, 27, who has nearly run out of sausage. He grinds up the meat he has left and serves it as a meat patty.
H. J. Heinz adopts "57 Varieties" as an advertising slogan (the firm produces well over that number of products) (see 1888). While riding on a New York elevated train, Henry J. Heinz has seen a card advertising 21 shoe styles and adapts the idea (see baked beans, 1905).
Fig Newtons are introduced by the 87-year-old Kennedy Biscuit Works of the 2-year-old New York Biscuit Company. Kennedy bakery manager James Hazen has been persuaded to try out a new machine to make preserve-filled cookies invented by James Henry Mitchell of Philadelphia; he calls the cookies "Newtons," having named a series of earlier cookies "Beacon Hill," "Brighton," and "Melrose" (like Newton, all are names of Boston suburbs). Since fig is the preserve most often used to fill the cookies, those made by other New York Biscuit bakeries to fill a rising demand will be Fig Newtons (see National Biscuit Co., 1898).
Caramel maker Milton S. Hershey visits England and finds that his biggest customer there is cutting up slabs of imported Hershey caramel into bite-sized pieces and dipping them in chocolate (see 1891). The "Caramel King," as he will soon be called, suspects that caramels may be a passing fad, whereas chocolate is food. He uses chocolate to flavor some of his caramels and becomes interested in the manufacture of chocolate (see 1893).
Homogenized milk has its beginnings in patents granted to French inventor Paul Marix for the manufacture of margarine. Marix has forced a liquid mixture through a small hole to obtain an emulsion; he is granted his third patent April 4 for a complex system in which emulsification is obtained by centrifugally forcing a liquid mixture against a fixed surface by means of a turbine (see Gaulin, 1899).
New York Condensed Milk Company adds evaporated milk to its Borden product line (see 1885; Meyenberg, 1885).
New York's immigrant receiving station moves after 37 years at Castle Garden in Battery Park to Ellis Island in the Upper Bay of New York Harbor (see 1889). (Castle Garden will become the city's aquarium in 1896.) Known since late in the 18th century as Ellis Island after a butcher, Samuel Ellis, who was one of several people to own it, the island was deeded to the federal government by Governor Daniel Tompkins earlier in this century. A powder magazine was removed in April 1890 after safety concerns were raised, construction of the new 12-building facility began shortly thereafter, and the island is being enlarged to 27½ acres. Its buildings have cost about $500,000 (nearly twice the original estimate), it opens in early January, and the first immigrant processed is one Annie Moore of Cork, Ireland (see 1897). Some 7 million people have passed through Castle Garden since its opening in 1855; Ellis Island will process immigrants until 1932.
The padrone system that prevails in Italian immigration to the United States encounters resistance from Roman Catholic missionaries who open the Church of Our Lady of Pompeii in a storefront at 113 Waverly Place, New York, to help immigrants whose passage has been paid by padrones to whom the immigrants are bound almost as indentured servants. Most of the newcomers are working-class people from southern Italy who could easily find jobs at Genoa, Milan, or Turin but have opted to emigrate because their dialects, food preferences, and customs make them feel out of place in northern Italy.
The Geary Chinese Exclusion Act passed by Congress May 5 extends for another 10 years all existing Chinese exclusion laws and requires all Chinese residing in the United States to register within a year or face deportation (see 1902).
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