1895: Information and Much More from Answers.com
- ️Fri Nov 16 4592
1891 1892 1893 1894 1895 1896 1897 1898 1899 1900
Former Spanish general Manuel Pavía y Rodríguez de Alburquerque dies at Madrid January 4 at age 67, having ended Spain's first republic by his coup d'etat of January 1874.
France's President Casimir-Perier resigns in disgust January 17 and is succeeded by Félix Faure, 53. A new government takes office January 26, with former premier Alexandre Ribot reassuming that position while retaining his portfolio as minister of finance, but a financial scandal will force his resignation once again.
Former Russian minister Nikolai Karlovich Giers dies at St. Petersburg January 26 at age 74, having allied his country with France.
Russian Marxist Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov, 25, travels in late April to Geneva, meets with Georgi Plekhanov, goes on to Zürich, Berlin, and Paris, returns with illegal literature in a false-bottomed trunk, organizes strikes and prints antigovernment leaflets and manifestoes, is arrested in December, and will be exiled to Siberia for 3 years in 1897 after a year in prison. His older brother Aleksandr was executed in 1887 for plotting against Czar Aleksandr II. The younger Ulyanov will adopt the pseudonym Lenin (see 1900; Plekhanov, 1883).
Friedrich Engels dies at London August 5 at age 74; he has spent his final years editing and translating Karl Marx's Das Kapital and other works establishing the materialist interpretation of history.
Britain's Tories regain power in the general elections, and a third Salisbury ministry begins June 25. It will continue until 1902.
Former Bulgarian prime minister Stefan N. Stambolov dies at Sofia July 19 at age 41, having been brutally assaulted in the streets of the city and received mortal wounds.
The Treaty of Shimonoseki April 17 ends the brief Sino-Japanese war that has destroyed the Chinese Army and Navy (see 1894). Gen. Iwao Oyama, now 52, is made a marquis for his role in capturing Port Arthur. Diplomat Count Tadasu Hayashi, 45, has played an active role in negotiating the treaty and becomes ambassador to China, whose government recognizes the independence of Korea, and cedes Taiwan (Formosa), 90 miles off the Chinese coast, to Japan, which also receives the Pescadores Islands and the Liaotung Peninsula; China agrees to pay 200 million taels in indemnities and open four more ports to foreign commerce. Russia, Germany, and France force Japan to return the Liaotung Peninsula, but Tokyo agrees May 5 only on condition that it receive another 30 million taels (see 1898). France obtains territorial and commercial concessions in China's southern provinces, while Britain, France, Germany, and Russia all make huge loans to China with customs revenues as security (see commerce, 1896; Boxer Rebellion, 1900).
Tokyo appoints German-educated physician Hakushaku Goto Shimpei, 37, director of civil administration on Taiwan; he quickly restores order by establishing a modern police force and integrating it with a reestablished Chinese baojia (pao-chia) system of mutual responsibility. The Japanese will occupy Taiwan for 50 years, forcing the island's inhabitants to learn Japanese and strictly regulating all phases of the people's lives, but Goto Shimpei will reorganize the colony's taxation system, introduce a unified currency and measurement system, introduce public health measures, sponsor construction of railways, roads, and seaports, help to develop sugar mills and other light industry, and reorganize land ownership.
The name Rhodesia is given to the territory of the South Africa Co. south of the Zambezi River to honor the prime minister of the Cape Colony, Cecil Rhodes. Southern Rhodesia will become a British crown colony in 1923 (see 1965).
A runner sent by British colonial secretary Joseph Chamberlain tracks down colonial administrator F. D. Lugard in the semidesert of the Bechuanaland Protectorate, where Lugard has gone at the behest of the private British West Charterland Co. that is prospecting for diamonds. Chamberlain offers Lugard his first official government appointment, charging him with the creation of a British-officered African regiment that is to protect British rights from the Niger to the Nile from French designs on the territory (see 1894).
Britain annexes Tongaland June 11 to block any possible access of the Transvaal to the sea via Swaziland, and Bechuanaland is attached to the Cape Colony in November.
The Jameson raid that begins December 29 is an attempt to foment rebellion against the Boer government of the Transvaal's president Paul Kruger, now 70, whose major political opponent is Piet (Petrus Jacobus) Joubert, 64 (see 1893). Leander Starr Jameson leads 600 men in a 140-mile dash across the Transvaal (see 1896).
Argentina's president Luis Sáenz Peña resigns in January after 3 years in office and is succeeded by his vice president José Evaristo Uriburu, now 63, whose diplomacy helped in 1884 to end the War of the Pacific between Chile and the combined forces of Bolivia and Peru. Uriburu will serve until his retirement in 1898, reorganizing the armed forces and reforming public finance so that the country may resume payments on its national debt.
Cuban insurgents begin a revolution against Spanish rule February 24 in the eastern part of the island (see 1894; human rights, 1886). Spain has imposed more taxes and trade restrictions, increasing economic distress on the world's richest colony, and the rebels have obtained a steady flow of arms and money from sympathizers at New York. Havana-born poet and independence leader José (Julián) Martí (y Pérez), 42, has left for the Caribbean January 31 (he moved to New York in January 1880 after escaping from prison in Spain, has been working from an office at 120 Front Street to end slavery and Spanish rule on the island, editing a weekly newspaper, Patria). Former rebel commander-in-chief Máximo Gómez y Báez, now 58, returns to reassume command of rebel forces, and Cosmopolitan publisher John Brisben Walker uses his magazine to offer Spain $100 million for Cuban independence, but Martí invades Cuba with a small expeditionary force April 11 and is killed while fighting the Spaniards May 19 at Dos Rios. Former provisional president Tomás Estrada Palma, now 59, has headed the rebel junta at New York and becomes the leader of the revolt, ragged guerrilla forces under the command of Gómez and Antonio Maceo gain control of the eastern region and proclaim the Republic of Cuba in September. Maceo invades the western provinces, and Madrid dispatches Arsenio Martínez Campos to deal the rebels as he did in 1878, but he fails to win them over, forces most of the rural population into "reconcentration camps," and employs brutal measures to suppress the revolution, leaving the island in turmoil. Some Americans have substantial financial holdings in Cuba, and Cuban émigré societies spring up in Florida (there will soon be 61 in Key West alone) (see 1896).
The National American Woman Suffrage Association holds its annual meeting early in the year at Atlanta, but no black women are admitted. The organization's president Susan B. Anthony, now 75, is not a racist but feels that she cannot afford to alienate Southern white women or the white Southern men who control Congress.
Reformer Theodore Dwight Weld dies at Hyde Park outside Boston February 3 at age 91; abolitionist Frederick Douglass at Anacostia Heights in Washington, D.C., February 20 at age 78.
Ida B. Wells writes in her pamphlet "A Red Record," "True chivalry respects all womanhood, and no one who reads the record, as it is written in the faces of the million mulattoes in the South, will for a minute conceive that the southern white man had a very chivalrous regard for the honor due the women of his race or respect for the womanhood which circumstances placed in his power" (see 1892). Wells does not say so, but most of the 10,000 lynchings that she calculates to have taken place since 1865 have been justified on the grounds of trumped-up charges of black-on-white rape; now 33, she marries Chicago publisher Ferdinand Barnett and becomes Ida Wells-Barnett.
Booker T. Washington gives a speech September 18 agreeing to the withdrawal of blacks from politics in return for a guarantee of education and technical training (see education, 1881). More than 100 blacks per year are being lynched in the South, blacks are barred from public office and denied voting rights, they are segregated in public transportation, schools, and other public accommodations, denied the right to a fair trial, and live in fear of violence by hate groups. Inviting a black man to speak at Atlanta's Cotton States Exposition has sparked so much controversy that Washington will later say about his feelings en route to Atlanta, "I felt a good deal as I suppose a man feels when he is on his way to the gallows." The fair in Piedmont Park attracts 800,000 visitors, who come to see the Liberty Bell from Philadelphia, William F. "Buffalo Bill" Cody, and some 6,000 exhibits (and to hear concerts by Victor Herbert and John Philip Sousa), but Washington's speech alienates some blacks.
South Australia gives women full electoral rights on an equal basis with men under a law that takes effect in March.
The word feminist appears for the first time in the April 27 issue of the Athenaeum, an English literary weekly, in describing a woman who "has in her the capacity of fighting her way back to independence" (see West, 1913).
Utah adopts a constitution granting women suffrage after a campaign by the Woman's Exponent, a Mormon journal edited since 1877 by Blanche Woodward Wells, 67 (see politics [statehood], 1896).
Arctic explorer Fridtjof Nansen reaches 86°04' north March 3 after drifting for 18 months on the icebound ship Fram (see 1893). He then sets out with a companion, Hjalmar Johansen, proceeds by sledge and skis across the ice, and on April 7 reaches 86°14' north—the northernmost point yet reached by any explorer. His expedition winters in Franz Josef Land (see 1896; Abruzzi, 1899).
Geologist-naturalist-explorer Joseph Thomson dies at London August 2 at age 37.
The U.S. Supreme Court emasculates the 1890 Sherman Anti-Trust Act, voting 8 to 1 January 21 in the case of United States v. E. C. Knight Co. With Justice Harlan dissenting, the court upholds H. O. Havemeyer's 3-year-old Sugar Trust, dismissing an antitrust case on the ground that control of the manufacturing process affects interstate commerce only incidentally and indirectly (see Clayton Act, 1914).
U.S. Treasury gold reserves fall to $41,393,000 in February as economic recession continues, but President Cleveland resists demands by Populists and his fellow Democrats that the country go off the gold standard (see 1893). Anticipating a crisis in the event that the gold reserves disappear, New York banker J. Pierpont Morgan travels in his private railcar to Washington, D.C., and says, "I have come to see the president, and I am going to stay here until I see him." Morgan has made a fortune reorganizing and consolidating railroads (see 1877); Cleveland sees him the next day, Morgan offers to form a syndicate that will buy Treasury bonds in exchange for $62 million in gold from Europe, Cleveland sees no alternative, and Morgan works with the banking house of the late August Belmont and with the Rothschild family to obtain the gold. The dollar regains some of its value, Morgan's syndicate resells the bonds at a handsome profit, and the president comes under attack from Populists, William Jennings Bryan, and others for letting foreigners profit at the expense of Americans.
The New York Stock Exchange orders companies to issue annual reports as a condition for being listed on the exchange.
The Supreme Court rules May 20 that the income tax provision in last year's Wilson-Gorman Tariff Act was unconstitutional. New York lawyer Joseph H. Choate and his associates have argued tax-related cases in March and earlier in the month, the eloquence of the arguments has been compared to those made by Daniel Webster in the Dartmouth College case of 1818, and the court hands down its 5-to-4 decision in the case of Pollock v. Farmers' Loan and Trust Co. (see 1913).
A Chicago court finds Eugene V. Debs and other American Railway Union leaders guilty of contempt of court in connection with last year's Pullman strike. They go to prison at Woodstock, Illinois, in May, and gain their release November 22. A crowd of thousands gives Debs a triumphal reception on his return to Chicago (see politics, 1900).
Sherwin-Williams Company adopts the trademark and slogan, "It Covers the Earth," designed by the firm's publicity manager George Ford (see 1872), but foreign paint sales will never account for more than a negligible part of the company's business.
Sears, Roebuck has sales of $750,000, up from $338,000 in 1893, and A. C. Roebuck sells his interest in the firm for $2,000 to Chicago merchant Julius Rosenwald, 33, who hires his brother-in-law Aaron Nusbaum to serve as treasurer and general manager of the mail-order house (see 1904).
The Galeries Lafayette opened at Paris by merchant Théophile Bader competes with the Bon Marché, Printemps, Samaritaine, and other department stores.
Steam-engine cut-off system inventor Frederick E. Sickels dies at Kansas City March 8 at age 75, having done as much as James Watt or George H. Corliss to establish the modern stationary engine.
The Niagara Falls Power Company incorporated in 1889 transmits the first commercial electric power from the falls August 26, employing three 5,000-horsepower Westinghouse Electric generators that deliver two-phase currents at 2,200 volts, 25 cycles. Philadelphia-born mechanical engineer Coleman Sellers, now 68, has designed the power plant's first large dynamos; Pittsburgh Reduction Company uses the power to reduce aluminum ore (see Mellon, 1891).
Industrial chemist Arthur D. Little patents a process for making cellulose acetate filters for incandescent lamps (see Little, 1893).
A strike by New York trolley employees January 14 produces a riot that continues until New York and Brooklyn militia restore order.
The Delagoa Bay Railway opens July 8, giving Johannesburg and Pretoria an economic outlet to the sea independent of British control.
Former railroad operator (and Confederate Army war hero) William Mahone dies at Washington, D.C., October 8 at age 68.
Germany's 53.2-mile Kiel (Nord-Ostsee) Ship Canal opens to connect the North Sea with the Rhine.
The Ohio Valley Improvement Association organized October 8 at Cincinnati works to make the Ohio River a navigable channel for commerce. The U.S Army Corps of Engineers will build 49 locks and movable dams on 980 miles of river between Pittsburgh and Cairo, Illinois.
Wilshire Boulevard opens between Los Angeles and Santa Monica on the Pacific. Local gold-mine promoter, medical faddist, and socialist H. (Henry) Gaylord Wilshire, 34, has built the thoroughfare.
A motorcar designed by Indiana publicist-inventor Elwood Haynes, 36, is tested successfully on the Pumpkinville Pike July 4 on the outskirts of Kokomo, Indiana, where it has been built by Elmer and Edgar Apperson, owners of the town's Riverside Machine Shop (see Haynes-Duryea, 1896).
The Wolesley motorcar introduced in England by the Wolesley Sheep-Shearing Machine Co. has a two-cylinder opposed air-cooled engine. Australian-born engineer Herbert Austin, 29, has designed the car, and Wolesleys will remain in production until 1975 (see Austin car, 1905).
The two-seat Velo motorcar introduced by Karl Benz is lighter and cheaper than the Viktoria he introduced 2 years ago and gives him his first real success. The first Benz "Omnibus" goes into service in Germany with a one-cylinder rear engine that develops between four and six horsepower and holds eight passengers.
Internal combustion engine pioneer Eugen Langen dies at his native Cologne October 2 at age 61, having come up with the idea of an overhead-suspension monorail that will be implemented at Wuppertal in 1901.
Lawyer George B. Selden receives a patent November 5 for a "road locomotive" powered by a "liquid hydrocarbon engine" of the compression type (see 1879). Now 49, he will never produce a workable motorcar, but his is the first such U.S. patent and licensing it to others will make him a fortune (see 1899).
Edouard Michelin and his brother André produce their first pneumatic tires for motorcars (see 1891; Panhard and Lavassor, 1892). Michelin et Cie. produced the first pneumatic tires for the horsedrawn carriages of Paris last year (Parisians welcome the quiet after so many years of iron-bound wheels); the company will be Europe's largest tire producer.
The first U.S. pneumatic tires are produced by the Hartford Rubber Works at Hartford, Conn., owned by bicycle maker Pope Manufacturing Co. (see Kelly-Springfield, 1899).
The first organized U.S. automobile race takes place Thanksgiving Day on a 53½-mile course between Chicago and Milwaukee. Herman Kohlsaat's Chicago Times-Herald has offered a $2,000 first prize, some 80 contestants enter, only six are able to start, average speed over the snowy roads is 5.25 miles per hour, and the winner is James Franklin Duryea, driving the only American-made gasoline-powered entry—a vehicle with a rigid front axle, water-cooled engine, and steering tiller, whose up-and-down motion controls the speed (see 1892). The car has Hartford tires, purchased by Duryea's brother Charles, who joins with James to found the Duryea Motor Wagon Co. at Springfield, Mass. (see 1896).
Schwinn bicycles have their beginnings as German-born Chicago engineer Ignaz Schwinn, 35, goes into partnership with Adolph Arnold to open a bike factory on the city's west side. Bicycles weigh between 19 and 24 pounds and have price-tags ranging from $100 to $125, but Arnold, Schwinn & Co. (later Schwinn Bicycle Co.) gains success with a ladies' model, will bring down the weight and price, and will grow to be the largest U.S. bicycle maker (see 1933).
"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible," says Royal Society president William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, now 71, who was given a baronetcy and raised to the permanent peerage 3 years ago.
The Lee-Enfield rifle introduced by Britain's Enfield works under license from James Paris Lee, now 64, will come into use worldwide (see Lee, 1864).
The oxyacetylene torch for cutting metals is developed at the suggestion of French chemist Henry-Louis Le Chatelier (see 1892; 1903; Claude, 1897).
Chemist Herman Frasch uses his hot-water melting process in October to extract sulfur from a huge salt dome discovered 26 years ago in Louisiana (see 1891). His Union Sulfur Company will become the world's leading sulfur-mining firm, and Frasch will also patent processes for manufacturing white lead, sodium carbonate, and carbon for the filaments in electric light bulbs (see Texas Gulf Sulphur, 1909).
Dutch physicist Hendrik A. (Antoon) Lorentz, 42, at the University of Leyden introduces the idea that moving bodies contract in the direction of their motion when approaching the speed of light, that time moves at different rates in different locations (local time) (see FitzGerald, 1892). Struggling to construct a single theory that would explain the relationship between electricity, magnetisim, and light, Lorentz has theorized that the atoms of matter might consist of charged particles, and that the oscillations of these particles might be the source of light, but he has not been able to reconcile this theory with the negative results obtained in 1887 by Michelson and Morley (see Zeeman, 1896).
French physicist Jean (-Baptiste) Perrin, 24, establishes that cathode rays are negatively charged particles (electrons); (see Thomson, 1897).
German physicist Heinrich (Gustav Johannes) Kayser, 42, finds helium in the atmosphere by using newly developed techniques for spectral analysis (see 1868; Fraunhofer, 1814). The element has heretofore been known to exist only in the sun and in certain minerals.
Algebraist Arthur Cayley dies at Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, January 26 at age 73, having created the theory of matrices and helped found the modern British school of pure mathematics; diplomat and assyriologist Sir Henry C. Rawlinson dies at London March 5 at age 84, having deciphered cuneiform inscriptions; physiologist Carl F. W. Ludwig dies at Leipzig April 23 at age 78; biologist-essayist T. H. Huxley of bronchitis and influenza at Eastbourne, Sussex, June 29 at age 70; nucleic acid discoverer Johann Friedrich Miescher at Davos August 26 at age 51; chemist Louis Pasteur at Château Villeneuve-l'Etang, outside Paris, September 28 at age 72.
Studies in Hysteria (Studien giber Hysteric) by Viennese physician Sigmund (originally Sigismund Schlomo) Freud, 39, is published in collaboration with Josef Breuer (see 1882). Working with Breuer, Freud has used hypnosis to treat hysteria, but he begins now to develop a new treatment that will be the basis of scientific psychoanalysis. "No neurosis is possible with a normal sex life," Freud will say, but he will give up sex himself at age 42 and will suffer much of his life from stomach upsets, migraine headaches, and nasal catarrh that he will treat with cocaine (see 1900).
Dutch botanist M. W. (Martinus Willem) Beijerinck, 44, discovers filterable viruses and gives them their name. Beijerinck obtained a pure root culture of the module bacterium Rhizobium in 1888 by using an enrichment culture minus nitrogenous compounds. He is not familiar with Dmitri Ivanovski's 1892 discovery.
X-ray (or roentgen ray) begins a revolution in diagnostic medicine by making it possible to photograph the inner organs and bone structures of animals and humans. Professor of physics since 1888 at Würzburg's Physical Institute, Bavarian physicist Wilhelm C. (Conrad) Roentgen, 50, notices a phenomenon November 8 while working with the cathode-ray ultra-vacuum tube recently invented by physicist William Crookes, now 63: when a current is passed through the tube, a nearby piece of paper that has been painted with barium platinocyamide appears to fluoresce brightly. The phenomenon occurs even when the tube is covered with black cardboard, and Roentgen proves that the effect is caused by an invisible ray. He announces his discovery to the Würzburg Physical-Medical Society December 28 in his paper "Eine neue Art voli Strahlen" (see Nobel, 1901; use in treating cancer, 1903).
Pope Leo XIII divides the 5,000-member Coptic Catholic Church into three dioceses whose director will be appointed patriarch of Alexandria in 1899 and establish residence at Cairo (see 1741). Franciscans in Egypt gave 10 churches to the Copts in 1893.
The Hindu Swami Vivekananda teaches the first yoga classes in America at a New York apartment in West 33rd Street (see 1893). He will return to his native India in 1897, come back to the United States in December 1899 for a 6-month stay at Los Angeles and New York, but die in 1902 at age 39.
The London School of Economics is founded in Westminster by Fabian socialists led by Sidney and Beatrice Webb with support from George Bernard Shaw (see Fabian Society, 1884). Sidney Webb is a trustee of the estate of the late Henry Hunt Hutchinson, who wanted the residue of his estate to be spent on socially constructive purposes, but although they are socialists the founders pledge the new institution to disseminate knowledge without dogma.
The University of Texas at Arlington is founded.
Underwood Typewriter Company is founded by New York ribbon and carbon merchant John T. (Thomas) Underwood, 38, to develop and market a machine patented 2 years ago by Brooklyn inventors Franz X. and Herman L. Wagner; unlike earlier machines, their typewriter permits the typist to see what is being typed and has other features that make it the first really practical typing machine. Like the telephone, it will open employment for millions of women, who will be hired in great numbers because they have few other career opportunities (outside nursing and teaching) and can be paid less than men.
Collier's: The National Weekly magazine begins publication at New York (see 1888). Publisher Peter F. Collier, now 49, has changed the name of his Once a Week magazine and challenges the Saturday Evening Post with a periodical that will have a circulation of 200,000 by 1900 and continue until mid-December 1956 (see Chenery, 1925).
Field and Stream magazine begins publication as a monthly for U.S. sportsmen.
Diplomat-Sinologist Sir Thomas Francis Wade of Wade-Giles Chinese transliteration system fame dies at Cambridge July 31 at age 76, leaving his library of Chinese books to the university.
William Randolph Hearst acquires the New York Morning Journal from John R. McLean for $180,000 (see 1890). Hearst will call the paper's morning edition the New York American beginning in 1902 after acquiring the Boston American, Chicago American, and other papers, and he will go on to publish magazines that will include Good Housekeeping (see 1885), Harper's Bazaar, Town and Country, and Hearst's International-Cosmopolitan (see 1905; "The Yellow Kid," 1896).
The 3-year old Denver Evening Post changes hands October 28, becomes simply the Denver Post., and will use sensationalist techniques to multiply circulation 20-fold in the next 12 years. Missouri-born Oklahoma promoter Frederick Gilmer Bonfils, 35, has been running the Little Louisiana Lottery at Kansas City, Baltimore-born curio shop owner Harry Heye Tamman, 39, has persuaded him to buy the paper for $12,500 and challenge the 36½-year-old Denver News, but their crusades in the name of justice and public good will sometimes be notable more for flamboyance than integrity.
The San Diego Evening Tribune begins publication December 2 to compete with the San Diego Union that has appeared since 1868.
Harris Corp. has its beginnings in the Harris Automatic Press Company incorporated December 23 at Niles, Ohio, by local jewelers and inventors Alfred and Charles G. Harris, who have developed a revolutionary printing press that can handle sheets from the automatic paper feeder they have invented earlier to eliminate the laborious job of hand-feeding. It can deliver 10 times what a pressman can feed by hand, and the brothers start business in two rooms of the house in which Governor William McKinley was born (see offset press, 1898).
La Stampa (The Press) begins publication at Turin under the direction of Italian journalists Luigi Roux and Alfredo Frassati, who have acquired the 28-year-old Gazetta Piedmontese and changed its name.
Russian physicist Aleksandr (Stepanovich) Popov, 35, pioneers wireless telegraphy with a demonstration of electromagnetic wave reception in a public lecture that he delivers May 7 (see 1896; Hertz, 1887).
Guglielmo Marconi, 21, pioneers wireless telegraphy (see Loomis, 1872). The Italian inventor has studied the Hertz discovery of 1887, set up a laboratory at his family's country house outside Bologna, and in September transmits a message to his brother, who is out of sight beyond a hill, using the Ruhmkorff induction coil of 1851 for power. Marconi's mother is British, and he will apply in June of next year for a British patent on his wireless (see 1896).
The New York Public Library created May 23 with the signing of a consolidation agreement merges the 41-year-old Astor Library, the 25-year-old Lenox Library, and the Tilden Library to "establish and maintain a free public library and reading-room in the City of New York." Medical bibliographer John Shaw Billings, 57, is named director December 11 (see 1911; Carnegie, 1901).
A new Boston Public Library opens on Copley Square in a Renaissance building designed by Charles F. McKim of McKim, Mead & White (see 1877).
Nonfiction: The Rules of Sociological Method (Les Règles de la méthode sociologique) by Emile Durkheim; In Memory of the Communist Manifesto (In memoria del Manifesto dei Communisti) by University of Rome philosophy professor Antonio Labriola, 52, who has grown increasingly disturbed by political corruption and 6 years ago gave the first lectures on Marxism in Italy while presenting a course on the philosophy of history; The Law of Civilization and Decay by Brooks Adams suggests that a predetermined pattern of industrial and commercial growth and decline underlies the rise and fall of civilizations.
Fiction: Almayer's Folly by Polish-born British novelist Joseph Conrad, 37, who emigrated from the Ukraine, changed his name (from Joez Teodor Jozef Konrad Nalecz Korzeniowski), served for 4 years in the French merchant marine and then for 16 in the British merchant marine, and has been writing for just over a year, making himself a master prose stylist in his adopted language; Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy; The Time Machine by English journalist H. G. (Herbert George) Wells, 28, who 2 years ago published a biology textbook and gains wide success with his science-fiction novel; Esther Waters and Celibates (stories) by George Moore; Imprint (L'Empreinte) by French engineer-novelist Edouard Estaunié, 33; Bewilderments (or Aberrations) (Forvillelser: Berättelse) by Swedish novelist Hjalmar Soderberg, 26; Land of Promise (Det Forjaettede Land), a trilogy by Danish novelist Henrik Pontoppidan, 38; The Red Badge of Courage (novelette) by Stephen Crane, whose impressionistic study of a Civil War soldier overcoming his cowardice and subsequent vainglory gains worldwide fame for its author, who has never experienced combat but is praised for his perception by men who have; The Sorrows of Satan by Marie Corelli; From a Good Family (Aus guter Familie) by German novelist Clara Viebig, 35; Le Chemin de paradis (stories) by French writer and political theorist Charles (-Marie-Photius) Maurras, 27; "Chelkash" by Russian writer Maksim Gorky (Aleksei Maximovich Pyeshkov), 27, who gains prominence when his story is published in a prominent St. Petersburg journal; Professor Hieronymus by Amalie Skram arouses controversy by showing how the mentally ill are treated.
Novelist-playwright Gustav Freytag dies at Wiesbaden April 30 at age 78.
Poetry: The Tentacular Cities (Les Villes Tentaculaires) by Emile Verhaeren; Derniers Poèmes by the late Charles-Marie-René Leconte de Lisle; Verses and Sonnets by French-born Oxford student (Joseph-Pierre) Hilaire Belloc, 25; Majors and Minors by Dayton, Ohio-born poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, 23, whose first poetry collection was privately printed under the title Oak and Ivory late in 1893. Dunbar is the son of escaped slaves, and William Dean Howells warmly praises his work in Harper's magazine; The Black Riders by Stephen Crane, who has been befriended by William Dean Howells; The Man from Snowy River and Other Verses by Australian poet-lawyer A. (Andrew) B. (Barton) "Banjo" Paterson, 31; "I never saw a Purple Cow,/ I never hope to see one;/ But I can tell you, anyhow,/ I'd rather see than be one," writes San Francisco Lark editor Frank Gelett Burgess, 29, whose jingle gains immediate currency.
Poet-journalist Eugene Field dies at Chicago November 4 at age 45. His collected works will be published in 10 volumes next year and include such verses as "Little Boy Blue" and "Dutch Lullaby" ("Wynken, Blynken, and Nod").
Juvenile: Jack Ballister's Fortune, Twilight Land, and The Garden Behind the Moon by Howard Pyle.
Painting: Girl with Bare Feet by Spanish painter Pablo Ruiz y Picasso, 14; Still Life with Fruits and a Ginger Pot by Paul Cézanne; The Storm—Saint Tropez by Paul Signac; Northeaster by Winslow Homer. Lithographer James M. Ives of Currier & Ives dies at Rye, New York, January 3 at age 70. His son Chauncey will buy out the late Nathaniel Currier's son Edward in 1902 and the firm will continue until 1907; Berthe Morisot dies at Paris March 2 at age 54; painter Thomas Hovanden is killed by a train near Trenton, New Jersey, August 14 at age 54 while trying to save a child.
The Venice Biennale opens. The first international show of contemporary art, it begins a tradition that will be continued for more than a century.
Sculpture: The Burghers of Calais by Auguste Rodin breaks with tradition by showing the burghers walking in file rather than grouped in a circle or square (see politics, 1347). Commissioned by the city of Calais, the work has taken Rodin 11 years.
A $5 Pocket Kodak introduced by Eastman Kodak gains immediate success (see emulsions, 1893; Brownie, 1900).
Theater: An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde 1/3 at London's Haymarket Theatre, with Alfred Bishop, Charles H. Hawtry, Fanny Brough, 124 perfs.; Guy Domville by Henry James 1/5 at the St. James's Theatre, London, with George Alexander, 32 perfs.; The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde 2/14 at St. James's Theatre, London, with George Alexander, E. Allan Aynesworth (as Algernon Moncrieffe), Rose Leclercq (as Lady Bracknell), Irene Vanbrugh as Gwendolen Fairfax, 83 perfs. ("In married life three is company and two none," I). Wilde has been having an intimate relationship for several years with Lord Alfred "Bosie" Douglas, a son of Sir John Sholto Douglas, marquess of Queensberry, who has introduced him to the world of "rent boys" (male prostitutes). The marquess has begun a campaign against Wilde, drops in at Wilde's club, and leaves a calling card on which he has written, "For Oscar Wilde posing Somdomite (sic)"; Wilde brings a libel action, and revelations appear about Wilde's personal morals. Arrested at London's Cadogan Hotel, Wilde is tried on morals charges, sentenced in May at the Old Bailey to 2 years' imprisonment at hard labor for indecencies committed, and files for bankruptcy soon after; Trilby by Gerald du Maurier (based on his novel) 5/20 at London's Haymarket Theatre, with Beerbohm Tree, ingénue Dorothea Baird, 20; The Swordsman's Daughter by Brandon Thomas and Clement Scott 8/31 at London's Adelphi Theatre, with W. L. Abingdon, William Terriss, Jessie Millward; The Heart of Maryland by David Belasco 10/22 at New York's Herald Square Theater, with Lexington, Kentucky-born actress Mrs. Leslie Carter (née Caroline Lee Dudley), 33, 229 perfs.; Beyond Human Power (Part II) by Bjornstjerne Bjornson 12/23 at Kristiania's (Oslo's) Kristiania Theater (see 1886).
Playwright-novelist Alexandre Dumas (fils) dies at Marly-le-Roi, outside Paris, November 27 at age 71.
The first theater showing of motion pictures takes place March 22 at the Grand Café, 44 rue de Rennes, Paris, where members of the Société d'Encouragement à l'Industrie Nationale see a film of workers leaving the Lumière factory at Lyons for their dinner hour (La Sortie des ouvriers de l'usine Lumière). The cinématographe camera and projector of inventors Louis and Auguste Lumière, 31 and 33 respectively, is a vast improvement over the kinetoscope peepshow introduced last year by Thomas A. Edison, whose film can be viewed by only one person at a time, and their 16-frame-per-second mechanism will be the standard for films for decades (see Muybridge, 1878). The Lumière brothers give a public showing December 28 at the Grand Café on the boulévard des Capucines and become the talk of Paris (see 1896).
The first commercial presentation of a film on a screen takes place May 20 at New York. An audience in a converted store at 153 Broadway views a 4-minute film of a boxing match.
A cine projector patented by U.S. inventor Charles Francis Jenkins, 28, has an intermittent motion.
A combination ciné camera and projector patented May 27 by Richmond, Virginia-born British inventor Birt Acres, 40, has an appliance for loop-forming. Acres has filmed the Oxford-Cambridge boat race March 30 and films the Derby, using film purchased from the American Celluloid Company of Newark, New Jersey, but his associate Robert Paul will challenge his claim to sole proprietorship.
Opera: Rosa Sucher makes her Metropolitan Opera debut 1/25 with the Damrosch Opera Company singing the role of Isolde in the 1865 Wagner opera Tristan und Isolde.
Stage musicals: An Artist's Model 5/28 at Daly's Theatre, London, with book by Owen Hall and James T. Tanner, music by Sidney Jones, lyrics by Harry Greenback, 392 perfs. Composer Edward Solomon has died at his native London January 22 at age 39.
Ballet: Swan Lake 2/8 at St. Petersburg's Mariinsky Theater, with choreography by Marius Petipa in a complete version of the 1877 ballet, music by the late Petr Ilich Tchaikovsky.
First performances: Symphony No. 2 in C minor (The Resurrection) by Gustav Mahler 4/14 at Berlin; "Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks" ("Till Eulenspiegels Lustige Streiche") by German composer Richard Strauss, 31, 11/5 at Cologne.
The Proms (Promenade Concerts) begin August 10 at London's new Queen's Hall with an 80-piece orchestra under the direction of London-born conductor Henry J. (Joseph) Wood, 26 (see Boston Pops, 1885). Queen's Hall impresario Robert Newman has arranged the event, with cheap tickets for classical music in an informal setting where the audience is permitted to eat, drink, and smoke. A new series will begin January 30, 1897; the concerts will move to the Royal Albert Hall after the Queen's Hall is destroyed in 1941, and they will continue into the 21st century, attracting performers from all over the world.
Conductor Sir Charles Hallé of Hallé Orchestra fame dies at Manchester, England, October 25 at age 76. Knighted in 1888, he played a major role in founding the Manchester College of Music 2 years ago and has been its first principal.
Popular songs: "Soldiers of the King" by English composer Leslie Stuart (Thomas A. [Augustine] Barrett), 27; "The Band Played On" by New York actor-composer John F. Palmer, lyrics by English-born actor Charles B. Ward, beginning, "Casey would waltz with a strawberry blonde." "America the Beautiful" by Wellesley College English professor Katharine Lee Bates, 36, is published in a newspaper July 4 and almost immediately set to the music by Newark, New Jersey, church organist Samuel Augustus Ward, becoming an unofficial national anthem. Ward's 1882 hymn "Materna" (or "O Mother, Dear Jerusalem") was inspired by paddlewheel voyage to Coney Island, New York; a climb up Pike's Peak in 1893 has inspired Bates to write her poem about America's "amber waves of grain" and "purple mountain majesties above the fruited plain . . . from sea to shining sea." Revised versions will appear in 1904 and 1911.
Composer-lyricist Frederick Root dies at Bailey Island, Maine, August 6 at age 74.
The United States Golf Association that was founded last year holds the first annual U.S. Amateur Championship tournament, opening it to male players with handicaps of three or less. Originally a match play contest, with first place going to the player with the most winning holes, it will be changed in 1965 to medal play, with the winner being the man with the fewest strokes (see liquid-center golf ball, 1899).
Pinehurst, North Carolina, is founded by Boston entrepreneur James W. (Walker) Tufts as a retreat from New England winters. Having purchased 5,000 acres in the Barrens for $1 per acre in June, he commissions Frederick Law Olmsted to design a planned community in the sandhills desert, a "village with open park spaces and winding streets that attain their usefulness by following lines of beauty." Tufts puts up a hotel, stables, stores, greenhouses, a church, and a post office; the Pinehurst Country Club opens in December and will grow to have five 18-hole golf courses.
Wilfred Baddely wins in men's singles at Wimbledon, Charlotte Cooper, 24, in women's singles; Fred H. Hovey, 26, wins in U.S. men's singles, Juliette P. Atkinson in women's.
The U.S. yacht Defender defeats Valkyrie II 3 to 0, thwarting the seventh English effort to regain the America's Cup.
The American Bowling Congress founded September 9 sets rules for a 10-pin bowling game devised to circumvent a congressional prohibition against nine-pin bowling. The new ABC will sponsor the first national tournament at Chicago in 1901, and the event will attract 41 five-man teams, 72 two-man teams, and 115 individual bowlers.
The University of Pennsylvania's Franklin Field opens for the Penn Relays. Equipped with the first football scoreboard, it will be rebuilt in 1930 and survive into the 21st century as the nation's oldest football stadium.
Lord Randolph Churchill dies of syphilis January 24 at age 43 after returning to England from a voyage to the Orient with his wife, Jennie, who stood by him after he revealed the nature of the disease that had exacerbated his already reckless and impetuous behavior, obliging him to resign from the Commons in December 1886 (see 1874). Their son Winston, now 20, graduates from Sandhurst, is gazetted to the 4th Hussars, and travels in the fall to Havana via New York to witness Spanish efforts to suppress the Cuban rebellion.
Designer and dressmaker Charles Frederick Worth dies at Paris March 10 at age 69, having imposed his taste in fashion on the world since 1858 and made Paris the world's fashion capital, charging American patrons even more than his European customers for his ornate designs (see 1871). His sons Gaston and Jean-Philippe take over management of Maison Worth, but although it will continue until 1956 it has already lost its monopoly and younger designers will soon be attracting the fashion-conscious haute monde (see Poiret, 1904).
Mary Victoria Leiter, 25, is married at her family's Washington, D.C., house on Dupont Circle April 23 to parliamentary under-secretary of state for India George Nathaniel Curzon, 36, Lord Curzon of Kedleston. The daughter of retired Marshall Field department-store tycoon Levi Z. Leiter of Chicago, she is considered beautiful. The bridegroom has spent 2 days with his prospective father-in-law's lawyers and been assured that his bride has been given $700,000 and that he, himself, will have a guaranteed income of £6,000 per year. The couple sails for England 4 days later, Curzon will become viceroy of India (see politics, 1898), and Mary will never see America again.
Railroad magnate William K. Vanderbilt's daughter Consuelo turns 18 March 2, and her parents give her a "Bal Blanc" August 28 in the ballroom of the family's $11 million Marble House "cottage" at Newport where footmen in powdered wigs usher in the 500 guests, who dance to the music of three orchestras, dine at midnight, and sup at 3. Consuelo is married November 6 at St. Thomas's Episcopal Church on New York's Fifth Avenue to Charles, 9th duke of Marlborough, who is 25 and has had to give up the woman he loved to wed Consuelo. Her match with the impoverished "Sunny" has been arranged by her mother, Alva, now 43, who in 2 months will become Mrs. Oliver H. P. Belmont (marrying a man 5 years her junior) and work for woman suffrage. Consuelo's intent to marry Winthrop Rutherfurd has been thwarted, her $2.5 million dowry produces $100,000 per year in interest. She will separate from the duke in 1911, obtain a divorce in 1920, set up homes for unwed mothers, and advocate woman suffrage.
The Gillette razor has its beginnings in a proposal by Fond-du-Lac, Wisconsin-born Baltimore bottle stopper salesman King Camp Gillette, 40, for a disposable razor blade. Gillette's boss, William Painter, has advised him to "invent something which will be used once and thrown away" so that "the customer will keep coming back for more" (see food, 1892) and while stropping his straight-edge razor Gillette has said to himself, "A razor is only a sharp edge, and everything back of it is just support. Why forge a great piece of steel and spend so much time and labor in hollow-grinding it when the same result can be obtained by putting an edge on a piece of steel only thick enough to hold an edge?" He comes up with the idea of a double-edged steel blade held in place between two plates by a T-shaped handle, but he is unable to find technical expertise or financial backing to develop his idea (see 1901).
San Francisco's Sutro Baths open at the base of some rocks below the Cliff House Hotel, where Mayor Adolph Sutro has financed construction of enormous protective breakwaters, saltwater baths nearly 500 feet long and more than 250 feet wide with the water changed on a daily basis, boiler plants to warm the water and provide hot water for the laundry, 56 arc lamps to keep the baths lighted on a 24-hour basis, 517 private dressing rooms, and a fresh-water plunge.
Chicago's Marquette building is completed to designs by Holabird & Roche with wide windows that flood the building's interior with light but create problems of partitioning office space.
The Prudential (Guaranty) building is completed at Buffalo, New York, to designs by Louis Sullivan and his partner Dankmar Adler. The exterior of the 13-story steel-framed skyscraper is covered with foliate terra-cotta ornamentation that looks from a distance like stone, the interior has intricate metalwork on elevator cages, door handles, and balusters, and a stained-glass skylight illuminates decorative mosaics.
New York's Washington Arch is completed at the foot of Fifth Avenue at a cost of $128,000. The 86-foot-high arch designed by architect Stanford White commemorates the first inauguration of President Washington.
Bavarian architect Georg (Carl Heinrich) von Dollman dies at Munich March 31 at age 69, having designed three extravagant and grandiose palaces for the eccentric king, Ludwig.
Biltmore House at Asheville, North Carolina, is completed for railroad heir George Washington Vanderbilt II, 33, to designs by Richard Morris Hunt. The world's largest private residence, it resembles a Loire Valley château, is located on an estate of 119,000 acres, was built in 5 years at a cost of $4.1 million, and has 250 rooms, including 34 bed chambers, 43 bathrooms that supply hot water on demand, 65 fireplaces, two elevators, electric fans, incandescent lights, 10 telephones, a fire-alarm system, call boxes for servants, an indoor swimming pool, a billiard room, a bowling alley and gymnasium, three kitchens, a dining room that seats 64 guests (who are expected to wear black tie and elegant gowns at dinner), a conservatory filled with tropical plants, a central heating system powered by a huge steam furnace, a library 72 feet long, 53 feet wide, and 27 feet high to house some of bibliophile Vanderbilt's collection of 23,000 books, and sitting rooms whose walls are hung with works by such artists as Albrecht Dürer, Auguste Renoir, and John Singer Sargent. Landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted has designed 250 acres of formal and informal gardens, and the house is surrounded by vast forests. Vanderbilt has had a special railroad spur built in order to bring in the tons of Indiana limestone and other materials used to construct the house.
The Breakers is completed at Newport, Rhode Island, for railroad heir Cornelius Vanderbilt II, now 52, who is president of the New York and Harlem Railroad, chairman of the boards of the New York Central & Hudson River and the Michigan Central, eldest brother of G. W. Vanderbilt II, and donor of an 1893 Yale dormitory that memorializes his son William Henry. Designed by Richard Morris Hunt, the four-story, 70-room summer "cottage" on Ochre Point Road is modeled on palazzos at Genoa and Turin and has been built in less than 3 years to replace the P. Lorillard house of the same name that burned down in November 1892. The fireproof Breakers has 33 servants' rooms (chambermaids never enter the kitchen, kitchen maids never see the bedroom suites) and a chef whose staff can prepare dinner for 200 and requires no help from caterers unless Mrs. Vanderbilt's guest list exceeds 100. Her main dining room is 58 feet long and 42 feet wide, and she often uses her Sèvres porcelain dinner service and Dresden teacups as servants wearing the Vanderbilt livery (to keep them from being confused with guests) serve from a two-tiered butler's pantry that opens into the kitchen.
The Breakers completed at Palm Beach, Florida, is a vast rambling winter hotel financed by Florida East Coast Railway promoter H. M. Flagler (see 1903; Royal Poinciana, 1894).
Richmond's 260-room Jefferson Hotel opens with electric lights and two toilets on every floor. Carrère & Hastings of New York has designed the structure with a stained-glass skylight over its huge Palm Court lobby and grand staircase; its electric system will cause a fire, destroying the hotel in 1901, but the Jefferson will reopen in 1910 with 300 rooms, each with private bath, and a cavernous lobby.
Connecticut-born forester Gifford Pinchot, 30, superintends the forests at Biltmore House; he has studied in France under Sir Dietrich Brandis, who founded forestry in British India, and has made long field trips (see 1898).
Britain's National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty is founded through the efforts of reformer Octavia Hill, now 56, Sir Robert Hunter, and Hardwicke D. Rawnsley, vicar of Wray, Westmorland. Supported initially by annual subscriptions of members, the new society's first acquisition is a four-and-a-half acre piece of cliff property overlooking Cardigan Bay at Dinas Oleu, Wales (see National Trust Act, 1907).
Massachusetts fishermen using a line trawl catch a record 211.5-pound cod measuring more than six feet in length.
Columbia River salmon canning reaches its peak of 634,000 cases (see 1866; CRPA, 1899).
The world wheat price falls to £5 per cwt as North American producers make large initial offerings, but the price rises when it turns out that the Kansas wheat crop totals only 18 million bushels—less than half a million metric tons.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture sends Kansas-born, agronomist Mark (Alfred) Carleton, 29, out to Kansas to investigate the wheat crop shortfall. Carleton reports that the only good drought-resistant wheat grown in Kansas is the Turkey Red introduced by Russian Mennonites in 1874, and his report creates a clamor for the "miracle" wheat that will soon completely replace spring wheat in Kansas (see 1896).
Wallace's Farmer begins publication at Des Moines, Iowa, under the rubric "Good Farming—Clear Thinking—Right Living." Former Presbyterian minister Henry Wallace is editor in chief (he moved to Iowa after his health failed some years ago and became a farmer); his son Henry C. (Cantwell) Wallace, 29, is associate editor; and his son John P. is advertising manager. Henry C. took over a 320-acre Iowa farm when he turned 21, saw corn sell for as little as 15¢/bushel, sold his farm machinery, entered the Iowa State College of Agriculture, received his B.S.A. degree 3 years ago, became assistant professor of agriculture in charge of dairying, and will campaign in the family journal for progressive agricultural practices (see 1921; Pioneer Hi-Bred, 1926).
Florida ships 30 million pieces of fruit, down from 1 billion last year. All the state's lemon trees have died in a freeze.
The California Fruit Growers Exchange cooperative is organized to market the produce of California growers in the face of discriminatory freight rates (see 1885; Sunkist, 1919).
Concord grape developer Ephraim Bull dies at Concord, Massachusetts, September 26 at age 89, having been a great friend of the late Louis Agassiz and Nathaniel Hawthorne.
The word calorie is applied to food for the first time by W. O. Atwater (see 1889), who takes the kilocalorie, or large calorie (the amount of heat needed to raise the temperature of a kilogram of water 1° Celsius—from 15° C. to 16° C. at a pressure of one atmosphere—or four pints of water 1° Fahrenheit), and he uses this calorie as a measure of the energy contained in foods for a guide to economical food buying based solely on calories per dollar. Atwater urges Americans to eat more white flour and fewer potatoes, since flour is a cheaper source of carbohydrate, and discards wheat bran and potato skins as refuse. The only milk that he favors is condensed milk laced with sugar. Tomatoes are used only sparingly as a flavoring and are overcooked to make them more digestible.
Belgian bacteriologist (Emilie) Pierre (Marie) Van Ermengem, 44, isolates the botulism bacterium Clostridium botulinum. The anaerobic bacterium produces a toxin that is twice as deadly as tetanus toxin and 12 times deadlier than rattlesnake venom; it has been associated in Europe with sausages whose cases provide an airless environment, but botulism in the United States stems largely from nonacidic foods that have been improperly bottled or canned (see 1920).
Canned foods keep from spoiling not because air has been driven out of the container but because bacteria have been killed or inhibited in their growth (see Appert, 1810; Pasteur, 1861). S. C. Prescott of MIT and William Lyman Underwood conduct studies that demonstrate the point and that will lead to safer canning methods by producing charts giving optimum processing times and temperatures.
Del Monte canned goods are introduced by California's Oakland Preserving Company, which also markets an ordinary line but identifies its premium grade with the name Del Monte and a label picture of Charles Crocker's hotel on Monterey Bay, which has been rebuilt since the 1887 fire that destroyed the original structure (see 1891; 1916).
Ohio glass maker Michael (Joseph) Owens, 36, patents an automatic bottle-blowing machine (see 1903).
Mechanical refrigeration gets a boost from German inventor Carl von Linde, who perfects a machine that liquefies air (see 1873). He sets up a large-scale plant for producing liquid air (see Freon 12, 1931).
British butter prices touch bottom as quantities of it pour in from Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand (see 1877). The lower butter prices have a severe impact on the "butterine" trade.
The world's first flaked breakfast cereal goes on sale in February under the brand name Granose. John Harvey Kellogg has run boiled wheat through his wife's machine for rolling out dough, baked the thin film in an oven, and been persuaded by his brother Will Keith, 35, not to grind the flakes into granules but to sell them instead as flakes (see 1894). Since they price a 10 oz. package at 15¢, Kellogg and his brother sell 60¢/bushel wheat at $12/bushel retail (see Sanitas Corn Flakes, 1898).
Shredded Wheat biscuits develop a market (see 1894). H. D. Perky acquires a large bakery at Worcester, Massachusetts, to satisfy the growing demand (see 1898).
Postum is introduced as a coffee substitute at Battle Creek, Michigan, by C. W. Post, who has quit "the San" uncured and discouraged but has taken up residence with a Christian Science family, embraced their religion, and begun almost immediately to feel better (see 1893). He has opened his own sanitarium, purchased a second-hand gasoline stove for $46.85, acquired a hand-operated peanut roaster and coffee grinder, spent $21.91 for ingredients, and produced his first commercial batch in a horse barn on his property January 1. Post sells his Postum in paper bags from hand carts, persuades local newspapers to give him advertising space on credit, writes most of his own advertising, and frightens readers by attributing "lost eyesight," "coffee neuralgia," grouchiness, and poor school grades to caffeine: "Does [the coffee habit] reduce your working force, kill your energy, push you into the big crowd of mongrels, deaden what thoroughbred blood you may have and neutralize all your efforts to make money and fame?" (see 1901; Grape Nuts, 1897).
"Coca-Cola is now sold in every state of the Union," boasts Asa Candler of Atlanta, but the beverage dispensed by the glass at soda fountains has yet to be bottled (see 1892; 1899).
The Anti-Saloon League of America organized at Washington, D.C., campaigns against beverage alcohol (see W.C.T.U., 1874; Carry Nation, 1900).
The first U.S. pizzeria opens in New York at 53½ Spring Street, serving slices of the open-faced cheese-and-tomato pie created at Naples in 1889.
Emigration of Russians increases to 108,000 from scarcely 10,000 in 1882 as population pressures force Czar Nicholas II to ease restrictions against travel. Most of the emigration is to Siberia and is encouraged by the Trans-Siberian Railway, whose construction began 4 years ago (see 1899).
1891 1892 1893 1894 1895 1896 1897 1898 1899 1900
Anthropology
Eugène Dubois brings the fossils he had found of Homo erectus, which he calls Pithecanthropus and the public calls "the ape man of Java," to Europe, where they are met with considerable skepticism.
On April 11, four boys in France who are playing in a cave called La Mouthe behind an old stone barn discover paintings of bison, ibex, and horses. Later investigation by an archaeologist also reveals a lamp decorated with an ibex, thought to have been used by the artist some time in the period from 15,000 to 13,000 bce.
Astronomy
James Edward Keeler [b. La Salle, Illinois, September 10, 1857, d. San Francisco, August 12, 1900] observes Saturn's rings and recognizes that they do not rotate as a unit, suggesting that they are formed of discrete particles, as James Clerk Maxwell had predicted.
Biology
Ivan Petrovich Pavlov [b. Ryazan, Russia, September 26, 1849, d. Leningrad (St. Petersburg), February 27, 1936] lectures on his work that demonstrates that the stimulus that causes secretions from the stomach is mediated by the nervous system. He has pioneered the use of openings (fistulas) to the interior of organs to observe the effect of a stimulus immediately after the stimulus occurs. See also 1903 Biology.
Carl Rabl [b. 1853, d. 1917] asserts that chromosomes keep their identity during cell division. This is an important point leading to the assumption that chromosomes are carriers of heredity. See also 1902 Biology.
Chemistry
William Ramsay discovers helium on Earth. It had been found in 1868 as an element in the Sun from observations of the Sun's spectrum. Earthly helium is also discovered independently by T. Cleve. See also 1868 Chemistry.
Communication
Guglielmo Marconi receives radio signals transmitted from a distance of 2 km (1.2 mi).
French chemist and inventor Auguste Lumière [b. Besançon, France, October 19, 1862, d. Lyon, France, April 10, 1954] and his brother Louis Lumière [b. Besançon, October 5, 1864, d. Bandol, France, June 6, 1948] patent the cinématographe, a projection version of Edison's Kinetoscope. The first public showing of a motion picture using their process to an audience takes place in a cafe in Paris in December (preceded in the United States by a crude projected version of a prizefight in the spring that entrepreneurs using modified Edison equipment show). The Lumières use 16 frames per second and 35-mm film, both of which become early standards for the industry. See also 1891 Communication; 1896 Communication.
In England, Karl Klietsch combines forces with printer Samuel Fawcett to develop an improved form of machine photogravure on copper plates. The method, nicknamed "Rembrandt" photogravure, is kept secret by the Liverpool firm that employs Klietsch and Fawcett, but others find essentially the same process and the method becomes generally used in the early 20th century. See also 1872 Communication.
Herman Castler patents the Mutoscope, inspired by Edison's first version of a Kinetoscope. The Mutoscope consists of a large number of cards mounted on a rotating drum, which when viewed one by one in rapid succession create a moving image. Coin-operated versions of such machines soon appear in "picture parlors" in resorts. See also 1888 Communication.
John T. Underwood [b. London, April 12, 1857, d. Wianno, Massachusetts, July 2, 1937] begins to manufacture a typewriter patented in 1893 by Franz Xavier Wagner [b. Heimbach, Germany, May 20, 1837, d. New York City, March 8, 1907] that, like the Oliver typewriter of 1892, allows the operator to see the words as they are typed. See also 1872 Communication.
The first ballpoint pen that is commercially introduced is produced, although patents for similar pens occur throughout the 20th century. It will be another half century, however, before a version of the ballpoint becomes popular. See also 1888 Communication; 1938 Communication.
Construction
In response to a request to improve the sound of a lecture hall, American physicist Wallace Clement Ware Sabine [b. Richwood, Ohio, June 13, 1868, d. Cambridge, Massachusetts, January 10, 1919] becomes the first acoustical engineer. He develops a method to measure the time of decay of pure tones in a room when empty and when absorbing materials are present. He will use acoustic principles to design Boston's Symphony Hall, which will open on October 15, 1900.
Energy
At Niagara Falls, hydraulic electric generators installed by the Westinghouse Electric Company start operation, producing a.c.(alternating current) electric power of 3750 kW at 25 Hz, supplying the town of Buffalo, 35 km (22 mi) away, with electric power. See also 1882 Energy.
Food & agriculture
Charles William Post [b. Springfield, Illinois, October 26, 1854, d. Santa Barbara, California, May 9, 1914] begins his first health food business by marketing Postum, described as a "cereal food coffee." See also 1897 Food & agriculture.
Materials
Independently, Karl von Linde and William Hampson [b. Cheshire, England, 1854, d. 1926] develop a regenerative (feedback) method of mass producing liquid air. The same method can be used to liquefy any gas except neon, hydrogen, or helium. See also 1784 Materials; 1908 Materials.
Mathematics
Giuseppe Peano's Formulaire de mathématiques ("formulation of mathematics") uses the special symbolism for symbolic logic developed by Peano to express many of the fundamental definitions and theorems of mathematics; by its fifth and last edition in 1908 (as Formulario mathematico) it contains about 4200 theorems. See also 1854 Computers.
"Beitrage zur Begründung der Transfiniten Mengehlehre" ("contributions to the founding of the theory of transfinite numbers") by Georg Cantor is a survey of Cantor's work that will initiate and develop set theory. About this time Cantor discovers the self-contradiction that comes to be known as the paradox of Burali-Forti, since Cesare Burali-Forti rediscovers it in 1897 and publishes it. The paradox concerns infinite ordinal numbers: The ordinal number of the series of ordinal numbers is not itself found in the series. See also 1899 Mathematics.
Emile Borel introduces the concept of a metric of a set, or Borel measure, the first effective way to measure sets of points. This becomes one of the fundamental ideas behind modern theories of integration as well as of such branches of mathematics as functional analysis and algebraic topology.
Analysis situs ("place analysis") by Jules Henri Poincaré [b. Nancy, France, April 29, 1854, d. Paris, July 17, 1912] founds topology as a branch of mathematics (although a few theorems now recognized as topology had been proved previously). See also 1882 Mathematics.
Medicine & health
G.V. Black standardizes procedures for dental filling and shows that mercury-silver amalgam is safe to use in dental fillings despite the poisonous nature of mercury.
Josef Breuer [b. Vienna, Austria, January 15, 1842, d. Vienna, June 20, 1925] and Sigmund Freud publish Studies in Hysteria, which describes their "talking cure" and is generally considered to be the beginning of psychoanalysis. See also 1885 Medicine & health; 1900 Medicine & health.
Physics
Wilhelm Konrad Roentgen [b. Lennep, Germany, March 27, 1845, d. Munich, Germany, February 10, 1923] discovers X rays on November 8; he finds that these rays pass through opaque matter, a property that immediately leads to their application in diagnostic medicine. See also 1896 Medicine & health. (See essay.)
Jean-Baptiste Perrin [b. Lille, France, September 30, 1870, d. New York, New York, April 17, 1942] shows that cathode rays deposit a negative electric charge where they impact. See also 1897 Physics.
Pierre Curie shows that as the temperature of a magnet is increased, there is a level at which the magnetism is disrupted and ceases to exist. This temperature is still called the Curie point.
George Fitzgerald proposes that distance contracts in the direction a body is traveling, keeping the velocity of light uniform. This effect has come to be known as the Lorentz-Fitzgerald contraction, as Hendrik Lorentz independently makes the same suggestion.
Hendrik Lorentz shows that a moving charged particle will have a force exerted on it by electric and magnetic fields (the Lorentz force).
Tools
Charles Thomson Rees Wilson [b. Glencorse, Scotland, February 14, 1869, d. November 15, 1959] invents a device that will produce a small cloud in a closed box -- the cloud chamber. See also 1899 Physics; 1925 Physics.
Transportation
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky publishes his first scientific papers about space flight. He proposes that liquid-fueled rockets can be used to propel vehicles in space. Because of his priority in this field, Russians refer to him as the father of space flight. See also 1892 Transportation.
Scottish engineer Percy Sinclair Pilcher [b. Bath, England, 1866, d. Stanford Park, England, 1899] starts experiments with kites and gliders in hopes of developing heavier-than-air craft. See also 1894 Transportation; 1900 Transportation.
Otto Lilienthal and his brother Gustav [b. Auklam, Prussia, October 9, 1849, d. Berlin, February 1, 1933] design and fly the first glider that can soar above the height of takeoff. See also 1889 Transportation; 1896 Transportation.