1893: Information and Much More from Answers.com
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1891 1892 1893 1894 1895 1896 1897 1898 1899 1900
Romania's diffident Crown Prince Ferdinand, 27, is married January 10 at Sigmaringen to Marie Alexandra Victoria, 17, a granddaughter of Britain's Queen Victoria and of the late Czar Aleksandr II. She had hoped to marry Victoria's grandson George, now duke of York, who is married at Buckingham Palace July 6 to his late brother's fiancée, Mary of Teck.
Britain's Labour Party is founded by socialists who include Scotsman James Keir Hardie, 37. A miner from age 10 to 22, Keir Hardie organized a labor union among his fellow miners, headed a new Scottish Labour Party in 1888, and was elected last year to Parliament. His secretary is Warwickshire-born socialist Tom Mann, also now 37, who came to prominence 4 years ago in the Great London Dock Strike.
Former French premier Jules Ferry is shot with a revolver by a madman at Paris and dies of his wound March 17 at age 60, having become president of the Senate. The ministry of Premier Alexandre Ribot falls in April as a consequence of scandalous revelations regarding the 1889 collapse of the Compagnie Universelle du Canal Interocéanique (Panama Canal Co.), whose directors have allegedly bribed members of the government and of parlement (former premier Henri Brisson has headed the investigating commission). Former president Marie-Edmé-Patrice-Maurice, comte de MacMahon, dies at Loiret October 17 at age 75, having long since been defeated in his hopes of restoring the monarchy.
Former Bulgarian prince Aleksandr I dies at Graz, Austria, November 17 at age 36.
Hawaiian annexationists overthrow Queen Liliuokalani with support from U.S. minister John Leavitt Stevens. Armed marines from the U.S.S. Boston are landed January 16 to "protect" U.S. interests, the queen abdicates under duress January 17 after reigning for less than 2 years, and the annexationists block U.S. efforts to restore the monarchy. "I yield to the superior forces of the United States of America, whose minister plenipotentiary . . . has caused United States troops to be landed in Honolulu and declared that he would support the . . . provisional government." Grover Cleveland begins a second term as president March 4 and opposes the annexation of Hawaii. An investigation shows that most Hawaiians have not supported the coup and that Hawaiians and Americans in the pineapple and sugar industries have played a leading role in opposing the queen. Cleveland tells Congress that he will try to restore her to her throne in return for clemency for those who organized the coup, but the queen and the provisional government refuse the deal and Cleveland abandons the idea (see 1894).
Former Union Army general Benjamin F. Butler dies at Washington D.C. January 11 at age 74; former Union Army general (and alleged baseball "creator") Abner Doubleday at Mendham, New Jersey, January 26 at age 73; former president Rutherford B. Hayes at Fremont, Ohio, January 17 at age 70, having spent his retirement years since 1881 working for education of black children in the South and for prison reform; former secretary of state (and 1884 presidential candidate) James G. Blaine dies at Washington, D.C., January 27 at age 62; former Confederate Army general Pierre G. T. de Beauregard at New Orleans February 20 at age 75; former secretary of state Hamilton Fish at Garrison, New York, September 6 at age 85, having retired from public life in 1877.
Nicaraguan politician José Santos Zelaya, 39, comes to power through a Liberal revolt that ends 30 years of Conservative Party dominance. Zelaya will rule as dictator until 1910, virtually monopolizing the country's economic resources as he resists U.S. influence and tries to unify Central America (see 1906).
France establishes French Guiana in South America as a formal colony. Its so-called "Devil's Island" has become an offshore penal colony (see religion [Dreyfus], 1894).
Former Mexican president Manuel González dies on his Hacienda de Chapingo, near Guanajuato, May 8 at age 59, having spent his final years as governor of Guanajuato.
Afghanistan's emir Abdor Rahman Khan holds talks near Kabul in November with a British delegation headed by Sir Mortimer Durand, 43, and accepts what will be called the Durand Line of demarcation in the Hindu Kush between his country and British India, relinquishing some hereditary rights over tribes on his eastern border. Now about 49, Abdor Rahman has ruled since 1880, crushed a revolt by Ghilzai tribesmen, pacified his country, brought in foreign experts, and imported machinery for making agricultural tools, consumer goods, and munitions (see 1919).
Laos becomes a French protectorate as France begins to develop a new colonial empire in Indochina. Col. Simon Gallieni, 44, and Louis-Hubert-Gonzalve Lyautey, 39, move to pacify a region as large as France herself, with 16 million inhabitants whose country will be securely in French control by 1895.
France establishes the Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) in Africa as a formal colony.
French colonial forces on the Niger River defeat Tuareg warriors and gain control of Dahomey along with the former slave- and palm-oil port of Ouidah (see 1892; Lugard, 1894).
Transvaal annexes Swaziland.
Natal gains self-government.
The king of the Matabele leads a revolt against Cecil Rhodes's British South Africa Company, but Leander Starr Jameson cuts the Matabele down with machine-gun fire October 23, suppresses the revolt, forces King Lobengula to give up his capital Bulawayo, and drives the king into exile, where he will die next year (see 1891; 1895).
New Zealand adopts woman suffrage September 19 and becomes the first country to do so. A petition signed by a third of New Zealand's women has persuaded the House of Representatives to pass the act, Women's Christian Temperance Union franchise department head Katharine Sheppard has petitioned for the reform three times in the last 3 years, the number of names on the petition has grown by 10,000 each time until it has reached 31,872, and former prime minister Sir John Hall, now 68, has guided the suffrage bill through the House (see 1898).
Colorado's male electorate votes for woman suffrage.
Chicago social worker Julia C. (Clifford) Lathrop, 35, wins appointment to the Illinois State Board of Charities, becoming its first female member. A Vassar graduate who joined Jane Addams's Hull-House settlement 3 years ago, Lathrop will contribute reforms that will include appointment of female physicians and nurses in state hospitals, the removal of insane people from poorhouses, and the establishment of America's first juvenile court.
Denison House opens in Boston's South End under the direction of social worker Helena Dudley and Indian-born Wellesley College English professor (Julia) Vita Scudder (née Dutton), 31, whose settlement house is the Boston branch of the College Settlements Association.
New York's Henry Street Settlement House has its beginnings in the Nurses' Settlement founded by trained nurse and social worker Lillian D. Wald, 26, to help immigrants on the city's Lower East Side, most of them poor Jews. She will soon add a nurses' training program, community educational programs, and youth clubs (see Chicago's Hull-House, 1889). Wald will develop a visiting nurse program that within 13 years will have 100 nurses making 227,000 house calls per year.
Reformer Lucy Stone delivers a lecture at Chicago's Columbian Exposition but dies at Dorchester, Massachusetts, October 18 at age 75.
Explorer Sven Anders Hedin sets out on a 5-year expedition that will take him across the Urals, through the Pamir range, Lop Nor (Lop Lake) in western China, and to Beijing (Peking) (see 1891; 1899).
Arctic explorer John Rae dies at London July 22 at age 79.
Norwegian Arctic explorer Fridtjof Nansen, 32, sets out in August with an expedition to reach the North Pole, operating on the theory that if wreckage can drift across the Arctic Ocean then so can a ship (see De Long, 1881; Greeley, 1882). Nansen led the first expedition to cross Greenland in 1888; his ship the Fram has been designed to withstand the crushing lateral pressure of the icepack, his party reaches the New Siberian Islands in September, and he then deliberately drives the Fram into the pack near where the late George W. De Long's ship the Jeanette was crushed in 1881, allowing the ship to become icebound as he tries deliberately to drift across the polar basin (see 1895).
"The Significance of the Frontier in American History" by Wisconsin-born University of Wisconsin historian Frederick Jackson Turner, 31, observes that the frontier has been the source of the individualism, self-reliance, inventiveness, and restless energy so characteristic of Americans but that it is now ending. He delivers his paper at a meeting of the American Historical Association held at Chicago during the Columbian Exposition.
A vast section of northern Oklahoma Territory opens to land-hungry settlers September 16 (see 1892). Thousands of "Boomers" jump at a signal from federal marshals and rush in by foot, on horseback, in buggies and wagons, and on bicycles to stake and claim quarter-section farms, but as in 1889 they find that "Sooners" have sneaked across the line earlier by cover of night and started building houses on the 165- by 58-mile Cherokee Strip—6 million acres purchased from the Cherokee in 1891 for $8.5 million.
English naturalist (botanist, entomologist, ichthyologist, ethnographer, linguist, and geographer Mary (Henrietta) Kingsley, 30, explores West Africa on the first of two journeys, spanning 17 months, in which she will go with Fang tribesmen down the Ogowe (or Ogooué) River through cannibal country that has been called "the white man's grave," photographing wildlife, and collecting for the British Museum beetles never before cataloged plus 18 species of reptiles and 65 fish. A niece of the late novelist-poet Charles Kingsley, she nursed her parents until they died within 6 weeks of each other last year and felt useless afterwards (her father, a footloose physician, married her mother, his cook, 4 days before Mary was born, and Mary, like her late mother, tends to drop her g's and h's when she speaks). Kingsley wears long black Victorian skirts at all times, remarking that "one would never want to go about in Africa in a way that would embarrass one to be seen in Piccadilly."
African explorer Sir Samuel W. Baker dies at Sanford Oreleigh, Devon, December 30 at age 72.
President Cleveland says in his inaugural address March 4, "Manifestly nothing is more vital in our supremacy as a nation and to the beneficent purposes of our Government than a sound and stable currency. Its exposure to degradation should at once arouse to activity the most enlightened statesmanship, and the danger of depreciation in the purchasing power of the wages paid to toil should furnish the strongest incentive to prompt and conservative precaution. In dealing with our present embarrassing situation as related to this subject we will be wise if we temper our confidence and faith in our national strength and resources with the frank concession that even these will not permit us to defy with impunity the inexorable laws of finance and trade."
The U.S. Treasury suspends its issue of gold certificates April 15 as gold reserves fall below the legal minimum of $100 million.
Wall Street stock prices take a sudden drop May 5; the market collapses in a panic June 27; 600 banks close their doors; more than 15,000 business firms fail; and 74 railroads go into receivership in a recession that will continue for 4 more years. Overbuilding of railroads and related bankruptcies have dragged down the market and the U.S. economy. Recession worsens as European investors withdraw funds. The average U.S. worker earns $9.42 per week, and immigrants often receive less than $1 per day. Millions of unemployed workers roam the streets, begging for help, and abandoned children are often left to live by their wits.
The World's Columbian Exposition opens in Chicago's Jackson Park in May to celebrate the discovery of America 400 years ago and attracts visitors from all over the world to see what material progress the city has made since the great fire of 1871. Some 2,000 people arrive in the rain on opening day to see the wonders that await them on the 700-acre lakefront fairgrounds, built on former marshland in the city's South Side. After the exposition closes at the end of October, San Francisco Chronicle publisher Michel de Young has many of its attractions moved to Golden Gate Park for a Midwinter Fair.
Economic conditions force U.S. railroads to reduce their orders for sleeping cars; the Pullman Palace Car Company reduces wages by one-fourth, obliging workers to labor for almost nothing while charging them full rents in company housing at Pullman, Illinois, and charging inflated prices at company food store (see 1881). George M. Pullman and his executives continue to draw full salaries (see strike, 1894).
The American Railway Union is founded by Terre Haute, Indiana-born socialist Eugene V. (Victor) Debs, 38, and others. Debs has been national secretary of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen (see 1894).
Kelly's Industrial Army sets off for Washington, D.C., to demand a program of public works to relieve the economic depression. Led by the diminutive "General" Charles T. Kelly, ridiculed by many as a bunch of shiftless tramps and a threat to public order, the 1,500-man "army" of unemployed workers from California travels for the most part via boxcar and receives some support from sympathizers along the way (see Coxey, 1894).
The newly elected governor of Illinois frees three of the men convicted of conspiracy in Chicago's 1886 Haymarket riot, saying that the anarchists were denied a fair trial. The first Democrat to be elected governor since the Civil War, German-born politician John Peter Altgeld, 45, is the author of an 1884 book on the penal system that argued that the poor have little equality before the law; he has acted at the urging of Chicago lawyer Clarence (Seward) Darrow, 35, and his action produces a storm of criticism (see Haywood case, 1907).
Lithuanian-born anarchist Emma Goldman, 24, makes a speech in New York's Union Square August 21 urging striking clockmakers to steal bread if they cannot afford to buy food for their families in the economic depression. There is little practical difference, she says, between the cruelties of a U.S. plutocracy and those of czarist Russia. Police arrest her for inciting to riot, and she is sentenced to 1 year's imprisonment (see 1901). Influenced by the writings and lectures of Johann Most, Goldman will define anarchism as "the philosophy of a new social order based on liberty unrestricted by man-made law; the theory that all forms of government rest on violence and are therefore wrong and harmful."
A trade agreement between Britain and China supplements the Sikkim-Tibet Convention of 1890, but the Tibetans will ignore the trade regulations and impose illegal tariffs on the small flow of goods entering their country from India (see politics, 1904).
A worker loading a cart in the De Beers mine at Jagersfontein, Orange Free State discovers a blue-white diamond weighing about 995 carats. The largest such gemstone found to date, it will be called the Excelsior and remain uncut until 1905 (see Cullinan Diamond, 1905).
Congress repeals the 1890 Sherman Silver Purchase Act October 31; the United States returns to the gold standard that will be retained until April 1933. New York banker J. P. Morgan has worked with President Cleveland to restore the gold standard and thereby encourage European investment in America following the June 27 Wall Street panic (see 1895). Silver prices collapse, bankrupting silver barons such as Colorado's Horace "Hod" Tabor (see everyday life, 1883).
Lake Superior Consolidated Iron Mines is created by oil magnate John D. Rockefeller, who has loaned the Merritt brothers $420,000 to develop the Mesabi iron mines of Minnesota and build a railroad to Duluth (see 1892). The sharp fall of prices on Wall Street has put financial pressure on Rockefeller, he has called the loan on short notice, Leonidas Merritt and his brothers have been obliged to forfeit their properties to Rockefeller for $500,000, and Leonidas will be unable in 1897 to give a congressional committee any clear statement of exactly how or when the transfer was made (his brother Louis will take advantage of Rockefeller's offer to let him buy back the holdings at the price paid plus interest, and Louis will become rich as the properties appreciate in value). Rockefeller's $29.4 million company leases the properties to Henry Clay Frick of the Carnegie-Phipps mill at Homestead, Pennsylvania (see 1892; Carnegie, Oliver, 1896).
Hugo Stinnes GmbH is founded by German industrialist Stinnes, 23, whose family has been operating coal mines since 1808, built a shipping line to carry coal up the Rhine, and created a trading house to sell the goods brought back by the ships. Enlarging on the empire started by his grandfather Mathias Stinnes, young Hugo will acquire interests in steel making and in the Ruhr Valley's power, gas, and water utilities, integrating his interests until he controls the entire cycle from raw materials to distribution (see 1916).
Philadelphia banker-philanthropist Anthony J. Drexel dies at Carlsbad, Bohemia, June 30 at age 66; utopian socialist Victor-Prosper Considérant at Paris December 27 at age 85.
Au Bon Marché at Paris has sales of 150 million gold francs, up from 20 million in 1870 (see 1876); it is the world's largest department store but the Samaritain started 6 years ago will become even larger.
Marshall Field and Company occupies nearly an entire city block on Chicago's State Street (see 1881); its wholesale store employs more than 3,000 on 13 acres of floor space.
Sears, Roebuck & Company uses that name for the first time as the Chicago mail-order firm racks up sales of $338,000 in baby carriages, clothing, furniture, musical instruments, sewing machines, and a wide range of other merchandise (see 1889). By next year its catalog will have more than 500 pages (see Rosenwald, 1895).
Charles Steinmetz announces a symbolic method of calculation that will bring the complex field of alternating current within the reach of the average practicing engineer (see 1892; Westinghouse, Stanley, 1885; Tesla, 1888). His method will make the use of alternating current commercially feasible and be largely responsible for the quick introduction of apparatus using alternating current on a wide scale. General Electric has acquired Steinmetz's employer.
The electromagnetic oscillograph invented by French physicist André-Eugène Blondel, 29, at the School of Mines in Paris allows researchers to observe the intensity of alternating currents. Blondel next year will propose the lumen and other new measurement units for use in photometry, and the International Electrical Congress will endorse his system in 1896.
The first free-flowing Los Angeles oil well comes in April 20 (see 1892). Edward L. Doheny and his friend Charles Canfield have obtained enough money to buy a drill and put up a derrick. Their hole at the corner of State and Patton streets produces oil from a depth of only about 200 feet, homeowners give up their yards, palm trees, and even houses to make way for oil rigs, and speculators rush in. The city will have more than 3,000 oil pumps operating by the end of the decade, and Edward L. Doheny will be one of the richest men in America (see 1922).
The Klondike oil well geysers up in a marshy field on East Toledo's Millard Avenue, beginning a rush to drill wells. The Ohio city will become a major oil refinery center.
A model of the diesel engine with a 10-foot iron cylinder and a flywheel at its base runs on its own power for the first time August 10 (see 1892). Rudolf Diesel will work with Fried Krupp of Essen and the Augsburg-Nuremberg machine factory to build a commercially successful engine (see 1896).
The Great Northern Railway drives home its final spike January 6 at Scenic, Washington, to link Seattle with the East Coast (see 1884; Hill, 1889). The road has been built without government subsidy (see Northern Pacific, 1901; Burlington Northern, 1970).
The Philadelphia and Reading Railroad goes into receivership February 20 with debts of $125 million; the Northern Pacific, Union Pacific, Erie, and Santa Fe soon follow suit. Foreclosures in this decade will affect 41,000 miles of U.S. railroad track—15 percent of the total.
The Railroad Safety Appliance Act adopted by Congress March 2 makes air brakes and automatic couplers mandatory on U.S. railroad trains (see Westinghouse, Janney, 1868). The air brakes can stop a train quickly and thereby allow locomotive engineers to reach higher rates of speed. Some 1,000 brakemen were killed in 1887 and 20,000 injured; many railroads have found it cheaper to replace brakemen killed or injured at work than to adopt the new technology, but public pressure has forced Congress to act, and the railroads will find the safety appliances actually save them money.
The New York Central's 2-year-old Empire State Express hits a speed of 112 miles per hour May 10. The 999 Locomotive that pulls it has been built for speed and is exhibited at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago.
The New York, New Haven and Hartford completes its Shore Line route between New York and Boston by leasing the 500-plus miles of the Old Colony Railroad. The Old Colony controls the Boston and Providence, whose 44 miles of track are needed by the New Haven (see 1872; Mellen, 1903).
Railroad builder and U.S. senator Leland Stanford dies at his Palo Alto, California, home June 21 at age 69. He was succeeded as president of the 9,600-mile Southern Pacific system 3 years ago by his erstwhile Central Pacific Railroad partner Collis P. Huntington, now 71.
The Erie Railroad that opened in 1851 is declared bankrupt in July, having gone bankrupt earlier (in 1877) but regained profitability.
Four-stroke combustion engine pioneer Alphonse Beau de Rochas dies at Vincennes March 27 at age 77.
German engineer William Maybach, 46, develops a float-feed carburetor for gasoline engines. He is an associate of Gottlieb Daimler (see 1892).
Detroit machinist Henry Ford, 30, road-tests his first motorcar in April. An employee of the Edison Illuminating Company, Ford has been working on his "gasoline buggy" since last year (see 1896).
Greece's 3.5-mile Corinth Ship Canal opens to link the Gulf of Corinth with the Gulf of Athens.
The Gleason Gear Planer perfected by Rochester, New York, inventor Kate Gleason, 27, with her father produces beveled gears faster and more cheaply than any comparable machine. Gleason began working at her father's 1000 University Avenue machine-tool factory on Saturdays at age 12 and has been secretary-treasurer since 1890; Detroit's fledgling auto industry will buy the Planer (see housing, 1919).
Industrial chemist Arthur D. Little demonstrates the Schultz process that will revolutionize the leather industry with chrome tanning (see Little, 1886; 1894).
Gunsmith Horace Smith dies at Chicopee, Massachusetts, January 15 at age 84, having sold his interest in Smith & Wesson Company to Daniel Wesson in July 1873; engineer-inventor Stephen Wilcox of Babcock & Wilcox dies at Brooklyn, New York, November 27 at age 63; George H. Babcock at Plainfield, New Jersey, December 16 at age 61.
Physicist Josef Stefan dies at Vienna January 7 at age 57. German physicist Wilhelm Wien, 29, expands on Stefan's 1879 work by observing that while radiation emitted from a blackbody is distributed over a wide range of wavelengths there is an intermediate wavelength at which it reaches a maximum, and this maximum is inversely proportional to the absolute temperature of the blackbody (see 1898).
Physicist John Tyndall dies of an accidental chloral hydrate overdose administered by his wife, Louisa, at their Hindhead home in Haslemere, Surrey, December 4 at age 73, having shown why the sky is blue and paved the way for fiber optics by inventing a "light pipe."
President Cleveland comes to New York for an operation to excise a tumor in his mouth caused by his cigar smoking. His old friend Dr. Joseph D. Bryant, now 48, was state health commissioner when Cleveland was governor and performs the procedure successfully July 1 aboard E. C. Benedict's yacht the Oneida in Long Island Sound, but the public will not learn of the event until 1917—9 years after Cleveland's death from another cause. Nitrous oxide is used to anesthetize the patient, five physicians and a dentist are in attendance, a large sarcoma is removed from Cleveland's left upper jaw, he is fitted with a rubber jaw, it is announced that he has had a tooth removed, and the 250-pound chief executive will lose 65 pounds during his recuperation, which will take several months.
Chicago surgeon Daniel Hale Williams performs the world's first open-heart surgery July 10, saving the life of a street fighter with a knife wound in an artery near his heart (see Williams, 1891; Lillehei, 1954).
The Johns Hopkins Medical School and Hospital are founded at the 17-year-old Baltimore university. Physician in chief is Canadian-born William Osler, 44, whose Principles and Practices of Medicine was published 2 years ago and who is the leading medical professor of his time. Surgery professor W. S. Halsted, pathologist W. H. Welch, and gynecological surgeon Howard Atwood Kelly, 35, will help Osler give the school a leadership unmatched in U.S. medicine (see Welch, 1878; Halsted, 1884)The new school admits women on the same basis as men—the first medical school to do so. Funds allocated to start the school have been invested in Baltimore & Ohio Railroad stock, which has fared poorly; Mary Garrett, daughter of the B&O's president, has donated $300,000 to the school on condition that women be admitted. But within 10 years all but three of the 17 U.S. medical schools now operating will have closed due in part to efforts to make them coeducational (see Flexner Report, 1910).
Louisiana's National Hansen's Disease Center has its beginnings as seven lepers are brought by coal barge to former slave cabins on an abandoned sugar plantation at Carville on the Mississippi River. Initially called the Louisiana Leper Home, the combination residence, hospital, and prison will continue to house victims of the disease for more than a century, with as many as 400 inmate-patients by the mid-1980s before aggressive, multiple-drug therapy and orthopedic management reduce the number by more than half.
Religious leader Phillips Brooks dies at Boston January 23 at age 57. He was consecrated bishop of Massachusetts 2 years ago after 22 years as rector of Trinity Church.
Anti-Semitism mounts in France as investors blame Jews for the collapse in 1889 of the Compagnie Universelle du Canal Interocéanique (Panama Canal Co.), whose bankruptcy has cost so many people their savings (see 1889). An international group of dubious character controlled the company; many of its directors were Jewish, including Baron de Reinach and Cornelius Herz; and although the elderly Ferdinand de Lesseps and his associates are sentenced to 5 years' imprisonment in February, only de Lesseps's son Charles, now 43, serves time, and an appeals court reverses its decision against him in June (see Dreyfus, 1894).
Calcutta-born Hindu monk Swami Vivekananda, 30, takes the podium at the World's Parliament of Religions outside Chicago September 11, addresses his "Sisters and brothers in America," and tells the interfaith gathering that the faith he follows emphasizes toleration and accepts all religions as true. Wearing a saffron turban and flowing coat, the handsome Vivekananda made a spiritual search in his 20s and was led to the late Sri Ramarkrishna, a mystic and a priest of the goddess Kali, who once had a vision of the Madonna and Child. Ramarkrishna died 7 years ago, having taught that all religions led to God, and his disciple Narendranath Datta changed his name to Swami Vivekananda, assumed leadership of Ramarkrishna's group, and wandered about India with a begging bowl, a staff, a water pot, and two books—the Bhagavad Gita and the 1424 work De Imitatione Christi (Imitation of Christ) by Thomas à Kempis. The swami makes a great impression at Chicago and receives invitations to lecture all over America (see 1895).
New York City's Woman Teachers' Association petitions the state legislature to place them "on an equal financial footing with men," who receive $3,000 per year as compared to $1,700 for the women.
A survey of Brooklyn, New York, schools reveals that 18 classes have 90 to 100 students each, while one classroom is jammed with 158 (see 1867).
The Field Museum is founded at Chicago with $1 million contributed by Marshall Field, who will add a second $1 million and leave the museum an additional $8 million in his will when he dies early in 1906.
Hampton Institute founder Samuel Chapman Andrews dies at Hampton, Virginia, May 11 at age 54; Notre Dame University founder Edward F. Sorin at South Bend, Indiana, October 31 at age 79.
The Financial Times that began publication 5 years ago appears beginning January 3 in a distinctive salmon pink paper that distinguishes it from its 9-year-old rival Financial News.
The Sketch begins publication at London February 1 and will continue daily until mid-June 1959.
A letter sent from England February 2 circles the globe and returns April 15.
U.S. Rural Free Delivery begins with five test postal routes in hilly West Virginia.
Rural U.S. telephone companies begin to proliferate as the Bell patents of 1876 expire.
Dun's Review begins publication at New York August 5 under the direction of Mercantile Agency founder R. G. Dun, who turns 67 August 7. His weekly report of business conditions will continue into the 21st century.
McClure's magazine begins publication at New York under the direction of Irish-born publisher S. S. (Samuel Sidney) McClure, 36, who created the first U.S. newspaper syndicate in 1884. His partner is Iowa-born editor John Sanborn Phillips, 32, and their 15¢ monthly will be one of the first mass-circulation magazines (most magazines sell for 25¢ or 35¢). Higher circulation will lead to higher advertising revenue, enabling publishers to sell magazines for less than their production costs.
The American Newspaper Publishers Association (ANPA) founded in 1886 adopts a resolution agreeing to pay commission in the form of discounts to recognized independent advertising agencies and to give no discounts on space sold directly to advertisers. The resolution establishes the modern advertising agency system (see Batten, 1891; Curtis, 1901).
Former Chicago Daily News editor Melville E. Stone takes over as general manager of the Associated Press that was started at New York in 1848. Now 45, Stone was named president of Chicago's Globe National Bank last year and will remain in that position until it merges with Continental Bank in 1898 while running the AP, whose affairs he will continue to manage until his retirement in 1921.
Joseph Pulitzer installs a four-color rotary press in hopes of reproducing great works of art in the Sunday supplement of his New York World (see 1883). Designed by New York's Hoe Company of 1875 folding apparatus fame, the new press will be used to produce the first colored cartoon (see 1894).
The Mongol pencil introduced by the Eberhard Faber Company contains high-quality Siberian graphite and is painted yellow, a color introduced by an Austro-Hungarian company at the Columbian Exposition at Chicago (see 1861). A fire destroyed Faber's East River Manhattan factory in 1872; Faber acquired three brick buildings in Brooklyn, and his son took over upon Faber's death in 1879.
The 5-year-old London publishing house J. M. Dent begins publication of pocket-sized Temple Classics (see Everyman's Library, 1904).
Nonfiction: The Division of Labor in Society (De la division de travail social) by French social scientist Emile Durkheim, 35; History of the Roman Empire from Its Foundation to the Death of Marcus Aurelius by J. B. Bury; Children of the Poor by Jacob Riis.
Cultural historian-biographer-poet John Addington Symonds dies at Davos-Platz, Switzerland, April 19 at age 52; classical scholar Benjamin Jowett at Headley Park, Hampshire, October 1 at age 76 (he has worked for 30 years on a translation of Plato's Republic that will appear next year and remain the classic English-language version); historian Francis Parkman dies at Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, November 8 at age 70.
Fiction: Maggie: A Girl of the Streets by Newark, New Jersey-born New York writer Stephen Crane, 21, who has the naturalistic portrayal of a slumdweller's descent into prostitution published under a pseudonym at his own expense (the slim, handsome, moustached author has himself been sleeping in dime-a-night Bowery flophouse beds, wearing filthy clothes, and reeking of garlic and nicotine); The Black Heavenly Body (L'Astre noir) by Paris journalist-novelist Léon Daudet, 25, a son of Alphonse Daudet.
Short-story writer Guy de Maupassant dies of syphilis at Paris July 6 at age 42, having been placed in a strait jacket (his younger brother died in an insane asylum of the same disease 4 years ago).
Poetry: Les Trophées by Cuban-born French poet José Maria de Hérédia, 50; Poems by English poet Francis Thompson, 33, includes "The Hound of Heaven."
Juvenile: Jill, a Flower Girl and A Young Mutineer; A Story for Girls by L. T. Meade; Beechcroft at Rockstone by Charlotte M. Yonge.
Painting: The Cry, The Voice, and Vampire by Norwegian postimpressionist Edvard Munch, 29, whose third work is initially entitled Love and Pain (Liebe und Schmerz). He will retitle it next year after a writer describes its subject as "a man broken in spirit; on his neck, the face of a biting vampire"; The Boating Party by Mary Cassatt; Rouen Cathedral by Claude Monet; Plane Trees, Place des Lices by Paul Signac; Hina Maruru and Ancestors of Tehamana by Paul Gauguin; Mother and Sister of the Artist and Interior with Worktable (The Suitor) by Edouard Vuillard; Landing of Columbus at San Salvador by Albert Bierstadt.
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec produces a color lithograph poster for the Divan Japonais, a Paris café at 75, Rue des Martyrs, whose waitresses wear kimonos. The Duran-Ruell Galleries uses it to advertise an exhibition of more than 300 ukiyoe prints by Hiroshige and Utamara. Toulouse-Lautrec produces another Japanese-style color lithograph to promote Aristide Bruant dans son cabaret (see 1863).
Photographs: The Terminal (New York) by Hoboken, New Jersey-born photographer Alfred Steiglitz, 29; The White House by West Virginia-born photographer Frances Benjamin Johnston, 29, who has photographed interiors of the executive mansion at Washington, D.C., and now photographs the "White City" of the World's Columbian Exposition at Chicago. Like most of her work, the pictures have been taken on commission (see 1900).
George Eastman hires Louisville, Ky., photographer William G. Stuber, 29, late in the year to solve his film emulsion problem (see 1891). The company is deep in debt, Stuber is not a chemist, but he works on finding a better film emulsion and by next year will have come up with emulsions so good that even professional photographers who have heretofore disdained Eastman film will begin using it (see Pocket Kodak, 1895).
Theater: Magda (Heimat) by Hermann Sudermann 1/7 at Berlin's Lessing theater; The Master Builder (Bygmester Solness) by Henrik Ibsen 1/19 at Trondheim; The Girl I Left Behind Me by David Belasco and New York Sun critic Franklin Fyler 1/25 at New York's Empire Theater, 208 perfs.; The Weavers (Die Weber) by Gerhart Hauptmann 2/26 at Berlin's Neues Theater; A Woman of No Importance by Oscar Wilde 4/14 at London's Haymarket Theatre, with London-born actor Herbert Beerbohm Tree, 39 (who has leased the Haymarket since 1887), his wife, Helen Maud Tree (née Holt), 29, Henry Kimble, 113 perfs. ("The English country gentleman galloping after the fox—the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable," I; "Men marry because they are tired; women because they are curious. Both are disappointed," III); Pelléas et Mélisande by Maurice Maeterlinck 5/17 at the Bouffe Parisienne, Paris (see 1898); The Second Mrs. Tanqueray by Arthur Wing Pinero 5/28 at the St. James's Theatre, London, with Mrs. Patrick Campbell (Beatrice Rose Stella Tanner), 28. The daughter of an Italian beauty who spoke no English when she met Tanner's father in Bombay and he no Italian, Tanner herself was married at age 20 to a man of 19; The Triumph of Death (Il trionfo della morte) by Gabriele D'Annunzio; A Parlor Match by Charles H. Hoyt 9/19 at New York's Bijou Theater, with incidental music by Percy Gaunt and others in a production staged by Chicago-born showman Florenz Ziegfeld Jr., 25, who has engaged orchestras and musical attractions for the Columbian Exposition and profited handsomely by exhibiting the German strong man and physical culture exponent Eugene Sandow, 26; The Beavercoat (Der Biberpelz) by Gerhart Hauptmann 9/21 at Berlin's Deutsches Theater; Hannele's Trip to Heaven (Hanneles Himmelfahrt) by Hauptmann 11/14 at Berlin's Königliches Schauspielhaus.
Fanny Kemble dies at London January 15 at age 83; playwright-poet José Zorilla y Moral at Madrid January 23 at age 75; actor Edwin Booth at New York June 7 at age 59. He gave his final performance as Hamlet 2 years ago at the Brooklyn Academy of Music; actor-turned-manager Charles R. Thorne dies at San Francisco December 13 at age 79.
Opera: The Magic Opal 1/19 at London's Lyric Theatre, with music by Spanish composer Isaac (Manuel Francisco) Albeniz, 32, who made his debut as a pianist at age 4, began running away from home at age 9, embarked for Puerto Rico at age 12 and wound up in Buenos Aires, was returned to Havana, where his father had been stationed as a tax collector, persuaded his father to let him travel alone to New York, and played throughout the United States before returning to Spain; Manon Lescaut 2/1 at Turin's Teatro Reggio, with music by Italian composer Giacomo Puccini, 34, to a libretto (by playwrights who include Giuseppe Giacosa, now 43) with the same title as the Massenet opera of 1884; Falstaff 2/9 at Milan's Teatro alla Scala, with music by Giuseppe Verdi based on the character in the 1597-1598 Shakespeare plays Henry IV, parts 1 and 2. Verdi is 80 but his last opera shows undiminished powers of wit and composition; Utopia, Limited (or The Flowers of Progress) 10/7 at London's Savoy Theatre, with Gilbert & Sullivan arias, 245 perfs. French soprano (Rosa-Noémie) Emma Calvé (originally Calvet de Roquier), 35, makes her Metropolitan Opera debut 11/29 in the 1875 Bizet opera Carmen; Nellie Melba makes her Metropolitan Opera debut 12/4 in the title role of Donizetti's 1835 opera Lucia di Lammermoor; Hansel und Gretel 12/23 at Weimar, with music by German composer Engelbert Humperdinck, 39.
Composer Charles Gounod dies at St. Cloud, outside Paris, October 17 at age 75.
Stage musicals: Morocco Bound 4/13 at London's Shaftesbury Theatre (to Trafalgar Square Theatre 1/8/1894), with Yorkshire-born beauty Marie Studholme (originally Marion Lupton), 17, George Grossmith Jr., music by Yorkshire-born composer F. (Frank) Osmond Carr, 34, lyrics by Lewisham-born writer Adrian Ross (originally Arthur Reed Ropes), 33, songs that include "Marguerite of Monte Carlo"; Little Christopher Columbus 10/10 at London's Lyric Theatre, with music by Liège-born composer Ivan Caryll (originally Felix Tilkin), 32, and Gustave Kerker, libretto by George R. Simon and Cecil Raleigh, 421 perfs.; A Gaiety Girl 10/14 at London's Prince of Wales Theatre, with a plot idea by London-born writer James T. (Tolman) Tanner, 34, music by London-born composer (James) Sidney Jones, 32, lyrics by Harry Greenback, 413 perfs. (the first musical comedy to be billed as such).
First performances: Hamlet and Ophelia by Edward McDowell 1/28 at Boston; Sonata Tragica by MacDowell 3/18 at Boston's Chickering Hall; Symphony No. 6 in B minor (Pathetique) by Petr Ilich Tchaikovsky 10/28 at St. Petersburg; Symphony No. 9 (From the New World) by Antonin Dvorák 12/15 at New York's Carnegie Hall in a performance by the New York Philharmonic, which has moved into the 2-year-old hall in West 57th Street, where it will remain until 1962. Dvorák has written the symphony with snatches from black spirituals and American folk music as a greeting to his friends in Europe.
Composer Petr Ilich Tchaikovsky dies of cholera (or possibly by his own hand) at St. Petersburg November 6 at age 53 (rumors will persist for more than a century that Tchaikovsky has taken poison for fear that his homosexual activities will be exposed); his erstwhile patroness, Nadezhda von Meck, broke off correspondence with him in 1890 and will die next year at age 62.
Popular songs: "Happy Birthday to You" ("Good Morning to All") by Louisville, Kentucky, private kindergarten teacher Mildred Hill, 34, lyrics by her sister Patty Smith Hill, 25; "See, Saw, Margery Daw" by Arthur West; "Two Little Girls in Blue" by Charles Graham. The deposed Hawaiian queen, Liliuokalani, now 55, has written a number of songs, including "Farewell to Thee" ("Aloha Oe").
Hymn: "When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder" by James M. Black.
Music publisher Gustav Schirmer dies at Eisenach Germany, August 6 at age 63. His New York firm is incorporated under the leadership of his sons Rudolph E. and Gustave.
The Stanley Cup ice hockey trophy has its beginnings in a silver cup presented by the governor general of Canada to the winner of an amateur Canadian hockey match. Frederick A. (Arthur) Stanley, 52, Lord Stanley of Preston, has purchased the cup for 10 guineas (about $50), he resigns his position and returns to England after succeeding his brother as (16th) earl of Derby, the cup will be replaced by a $14,000 silver bowl, and it will be the North American professional hockey trophy beginning in 1910 (see 1875; National Hockey League, 1917).
Joshua Pim, 24, (Ireland) wins in men's singles at Wimbledon, Lottie Dod in women's singles; Robert D. Wrenn, 19, wins in U.S. men's singles, Aline M. Terry in women's singles.
The British Ladies' Golf Union is formed under the direction of Lady Margaret Scott, 18, whose title helps give the game respectability for other women. She will be women's champion until her retirement from competitive play in 1895.
The Chicago Golf Club opens at Wheaton, Illinois, where Charles B. MacDonald has laid out the first 18-hole golf course in America (see White Sulphur Spring, Yonkers, 1888).
The distance from the pitcher's mound to home plate in baseball is fixed at 60 feet, six inches.
The U.S. racing yacht Vigilant defends the America's Cup by defeating Britain's Valkyrie 3 races to 0.
Paris students witness the world's first striptease February 9 at the Bal des Quatre Arts. Gendarmes seize the artist's model who has disrobed for the art students, a court fines her 100 francs, the ruling provokes a riot in the Latin Quarter, students besiege the Prefecture of Police, and military intervention is required to restore order.
The Ferris Wheel at the Chicago fair has been designed by Illinois-born, Nevada-raised Pittsburgh bridge engineer George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr., 34, whose Midway amusement ride is a vertical power-driven steel wheel 250 feet in diameter with 36 passenger cars balanced at its rim. Each car seats 40 people and riders pay 50¢ each (as much as they paid for entrance to the fairgrounds) to enjoy the ride and see the unparalleled views it provides; the most spectacular attraction at the fair, it returns handsome profits to its investors (see 1897).
The "Clasp Locker or Unlocker for Shoes" exhibited at the Chicago fair is the world's first slide fastener. Chicago inventor Whitcomb L. Judson patents the device and a machine to manufacture it August 29 (see Sundback, 1913).
Fels-Naphtha soap is introduced by Philadelphia soap maker Joseph Fels, 39, whose 17-year-old Fels & Company has just purchased a factory in which to apply the naphtha process to making laundry soap.
A new kind of floor mop patented by Kalamazoo, Michigan-born inventor Thomas Stewart can wring the water out of itself by means of a lever.
Japanese entrepreneur Kokichi Mikimoto, 35, pioneers cultured pearls. He has learned from a Tokyo University professor that if a foreign object enters a pearl oyster's shell and is not expelled the oyster will use it as the core of a pearl. Mikimoto 5 years ago established the first pearl farm in the Shinmei inlet, and when he pulls up a bamboo basket for routine inspection July 11 he finds a semispherical pearl, the world's first cultured pearl. The natural Oriental pearl business will fade in the next few decades, ruining the economies of some small countries such as Kuwait on the Persian Gulf (see energy, 1937).
Juicy Fruit chewing gum is introduced by William Wrigley Jr., who has been selling Lotta Gum and Vassar (see 1892). Wrigley's Spearmint chewing gum is introduced in the fall and will be the nation's leading brand by 1910 (see Wrigley Field, 1914).
Lizzie Borden makes headlines in June when she goes on trial at Fall River, Massachusetts. Spinster Lizzie Andrew Borden, 32, is charged with having killed her stepmother and then her father on the morning of August 4 last year. The sensational trial boosts newspaper circulation figures to new heights, the jury finally rules to acquit, but street urchins chant, "Lizzie Borden took an axe/ And gave her mother forty whacks./ And when she saw what she had done/ She gave her father forty-one."
Architect Frank Lloyd Wright loses his job as draftsman for the Chicago firm Adler and Sullivan, whose partner Louis H. Sullivan, now 36, has designed the Columbian Exposition's Transportation Building (the economic recession this year brings office-building construction almost to a stop, Adler and Sullivan will be dissolved in 1895, and Dankmar Adler will become a salesman for an elevator company). Now 26, Wright has been designing private houses in violation of his contract with the firm, notably a house in suburban River Forest for one William Winslow, whose firm supplies ornamental iron and bronze work for architects all over America. Inspired by the Turkish pavilion at the fair, the Winslow house has a hip roof that extends beyond its walls, and Wright's neighbors in suburban Oak Park have asked him to design basement-less, attic-less "prairie" houses for them with similar gently sloping roofs, single chimneys (for real fireplaces), low ceilings (to create a feeling of intimacy and comfort); waxed oak floors, oak window frames and furniture, casement windows, and broad terraces.
Chicago adopts an ordinance limiting the heights of buildings to 130 feet (about 11 stories). Real estate interests have persuaded the city's aldermen to support the measure, it will remain in effect for decades, and New York will now take the lead in skyscraper construction.
Architect Daniel H. Burnham, now 46, is the organizing force behind the Columbian Exposition, having designed classical buildings sheathed in plaster of paris to create a dazzling "white city."
The five-story Bradbury Building is completed at Los Angeles to designs by draftsman George Wyman, 32, for mining millionaire-turned-developer Lewis Bradbury, who has died a few months earlier. Built at a cost of about $500,000, the structure at 304 South Broadway, near Third Street (and close to Bradbury's mansion on Bunker Hill) has a central court of glazed brick surmounted by a huge skylight and will survive into the 21st century as a city landmark, but Wyman has had no architectural or engineering education and his only architectural commission will be his last.
Salt Lake City's Latter Day Saints Temple is completed for sacred rites. Designed in a combination of Romanesque and Gothic styles by architect Truan O. Angell and his assistant William Ward after a sketch by Brigham Young, it has been built on the site ordained for its construction by Young in 1847, using granite from a nearby canyon with walls eight feet thick that taper to six feet at the top, and its six-spire configuration gives it a distinctive look that complements the Tabernacle opened in 1867. It is open only to church members deemed worthy.
"The New York Tenement House Evil and Its Cure" by Brooklyn-born architect Ernest Flagg, 36, is published in Scribner's magazine and says that the city's tenement apartments are dark and airless because their buildings were put up on such small lots (see 1879). Strung end to end like railroad cars, the old six-story tenements have only tiny air shafts to provide light and air between their 90-foot ends, they crowd 10 families into 25- by 100-foot lots, and their minimal communal plumbing is indoors only because outhouses would consume land used for building. Flagg urges that lots be combined in future to allow for buildings at least 100 feet square (see 1850; tenement law, 1901).
London's Piccadilly Circus is graced with a new fountain erected as a memorial to the late Lord Shaftesbury, whose puritanical attitudes are belied by the fountain's sculptured Eros, made of aluminum.
New York's Waldorf Hotel opens March 14 on Fifth Avenue at 33rd Street, where the residence of William B. Astor has been torn down to make room for the 13-story hotel designed by architect Henry Janeway Hardenbergh with 530 rooms and 350 private baths (see Astor House, 1836; Waldorf-Astoria, 1897).
Chicago's Congress Hotel opens on Michigan Avenue. It is an annex to the Auditorium Hotel built in connection with the Auditorium Theater Building completed by Louis H. Sullivan in 1890.
Quebec City's Château Frontenac Hotel opens December 18 after 19 months of construction. Modeled on a Loire Valley château by New York architect Bruce Price and built by a group of Canadians headed by Canadian Pacific Railway president William Van Horne, the 170-bedroom horseshoe-shaped hotel has an exterior of Glenboig bricks imported from Scotland. A tower will be added in 1924.
America's buffalo (bison) herd falls to 1,090 as market hunters continue to exterminate what remain of the animals (see 1883; 1900).
Reid's Yellow Dent corn wins a prize at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Farmer James Reid's father created the strain, he has perfected and improved it, and it has become the basic commercial variety of America's Corn Belt (see hybrid corn, 1921).
American Cereal Company acquires Pettijohn's California Breakfast Food, which has promoted its wheat flakes with advertisements attacking oatmeal (see Johnson, Boswell, 1755). "My horse eats oats," one Pettijohn ad has said, and it has gone on to quote a college president to the effect that while horses and Scottish highlanders may be able to digest oats without difficulty, in most people oatmeal can produce colic, flatulence, biliousness, rash, "eruptions," and other troubles. American Cereal pays $12,340 for Pettijohn and its emblem—a brown bear bearing on its flank the words, "Bear in Mind Our Trade Mark"; it spends another $50,000 to improve the Pettijohn plant and promote the cereal in ways that do not disparage oatmeal (see Quaker Oats, 1901).
Shredded Wheat is pioneered by Nebraska lawyer Henry D. (Drushel) Perky, 50, who finds that boiled wheat helps his digestion. Having enlisted the help of Watertown, New York, designer Harry Ford to create a machine that will shred wheat, he travels to Denver, persuades his brother John to manufacture the patented machine, goes into business with John under the name Cereal Machine Company to produce hand machines that people can use to make their own wheat biscuits, and opens a Denver restaurant where all foods served contain Shredded Wheat (see 1894).
Cream of Wheat is introduced at Grand Forks, North Dakota, where Thomson S. Amidon, chief miller at the Diamond Mill, has persuaded the mill's owners George Ball, Emory Mapes, and George Clifford to produce a cereal made of "purified" wheat middlings (see LeCroix, 1865). It takes 15 minutes to cook (30 minutes for infants), and when New York flour brokers Lamont, Corliss & Company receive 10 cases they wire back within 3 hours for another 50. Some 550 cases are sold the first year, and although Cream of Wheat will not show a profit until 1900, the cereal will be so popular by 1897 that its makers will move their operations to Minneapolis (see 1902).
Aunt Jemima pancake mix gains notice at the Chicago fair. St. Joseph, Missouri, miller R. T. Davis has acquired C. L. Rutt's mix of 1889 and improved it by adding rice flour, corn sugar, and powdered milk so that it can be prepared by adding only water; he sets up a 24-foot high flour barrel, arranges displays inside the barrel, and engages former Kentucky slave Nancy Green, 59, to demonstrate the Aunt Jemima mix at a griddle outside the barrel (see 1910).
Baker Godfrey Keebler dies at Philadelphia September 9 at age 71. The company he started in 1853 will grow to be the second-largest U.S. producer of cookies and crackers.
The Columbian Exposition at Chicago features an entire electric kitchen. Each saucepan, broiler, etc. has its own electrical outlet, but the electrical appliances burn out easily, repairmen are hard to find, and such appliances will not come into wide use for another 30 years.
The first electric toaster is invented in Britain, but few homes are wired for electricity and demand is too small to warrant production (see GE, 1908).
Toronto entrepreneur William Neilson, 49, produces his first commercial batch of ice cream in a plant on Gladstone Avenue that will continue for nearly 100 years. Son of a Scottish-born farmer, Nelson studied to be a machinist, moved to Toronto 3 years ago to open a grocery store, went bankrupt earlier this year, rented a house at $4 per month to keep a roof over his family, worked on his brother's North Dakota farm at $4 per day, returned after the harvest, used all the money he could scrape up to buy seven cows plus some used, hand-cranked ice cream machines, and next summer will sell 3,750 gallons, netting $3,000. Neilson will buy a three-story house on Gladstone Avenue in 1904, use its attached factory to increase production, and launch a line of chocolates to keep his 25 employees occupied. By the time Neilson dies in 1915, his company will be turning out a million pounds of ice cream per year and 500,000 pounds of chocolates.
Caramel maker Milton S. Hershey visits the Chicago fair and sees chocolate-making machinery exhibited by J. M. Lehman Company, a Dresden firm. Now 36, Hershey buys the equipment, has it shipped to his Lancaster, Pennsylvania, plant along with additional equipment from Germany, and begins experiments with it (see 1891; 1894).
C. W. (Charles William) Post, 38, develops Postum—a nutritious beverage of wheat berries, molasses, and wheat bran designed to replace coffee. A Texas inventor, real estate developer, and farm-machinery salesman whose health and financial fortunes have declined, Post is an ulcer patient at the Western Health Reform Institute, operated since 1876 by John Harvey Kellogg, and has followed Kellogg's regimen of hot baths, exercise, and foods that include a Caramel Coffee made of bran, molasses, and burnt bread crusts (such imitation coffee drinks have been available for decades). After more than 10 months without apparent improvement, he has asked Kellogg to let him market the Caramel Coffee in lieu of paying his bill, but Kellogg has refused (see 1895).
Milwaukee's Pabst beer wins a blue ribbon at the World's Columbian Exposition and will hereafter be sold as Pabst Blue Ribbon (see 1889).
Mott's apple cider and vinegar win top honors for quality at the World's Columbian Exposition (see 1842; Duffy-Mott, 1900).
Poland Spring water wins the Medal of Excellence at the World's Columbian Exposition (see 1845; 1904).
Maxwell House Coffee gets its name. The 24-year-old hotel at Nashville, Tennessee, serves its guests coffee made from a blend perfected by Joel Cheek, who receives permission to market his blend under the name Maxwell House (see 1882). Now 40, Cheek goes into partnership with John Norton to start a wholesale grocery firm specializing in Maxwell House coffee; former Cheek salesman John Neal will join them in 1900, Norton will leave in 1901, and the Nashville Coffee and Manufacturing Company will later become Cheek-Neal Coffee Company (see Postum Co., 1928).
Thomas Lipton registers a new trademark for the tea he has been selling since 1890 (it is sold only in packages, never in bulk). Over the facsimile signature "Thomas J. Lipton, Tea Planter, Ceylon" are the words, "Nongenuine without this signature" (see 1909).
New York's new Waldorf Hotel engages Swiss chef Oscar Tschirky, 26, formerly in charge of private dining rooms at Delmonico's, as mâitre d'hôtel. Oscar of the Waldorf will be credited with creating the Waldorf salad, made from bits of apple, lettuce, and mayonnaise (see 1931). Respectable New York women can now eat in the public rooms of restaurants without causing gossip, but the only proper way for a gentleman to entertain a lady is to take her to dinner, to theater, and, afterwards, to supper, and the only way for a man to make a splash is to spend money on food. Escorts are judged by the quantity and quality of food that they supply.
Maxim's opens May 21 at 3, rue Royale, Paris, where Reynolds Bar waiter Maxime Gaillard has taken over a location operated until 3 years ago as an ice-cream parlor by an Italian named Imoda, who for some reason hung out a German flag on Bastille Day, causing such a furor that an outraged mob tore the building down. Having dropped the "e" at the end of his name to make it more English, Gaillard has borrowed the money to buy the place from a neighborhood butcher and wine dealer; he attracts only fiacre and hansom-cab drivers and coachmen at first, and Gaillard will be nearly bankrupt by next year (see 1894).
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