1896: Information from Answers.com
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1891 1892 1893 1894 1895 1896 1897 1898 1899 1900
Bulgaria's Prince Ferdinand gains recognition from Russia and then from other powers following the conversion of his 2-year-old son, Boris, to the Orthodox faith, but Bulgaria remains a principality of the Ottoman Empire (see 1887; 1908).
Former Spanish general Manuel Pavía y Lacy dies at Madrid October 22 at age 82.
Assassins kill the shah of Persia Nasir-ad-Din at his native Teheran May 1 at age 65 after a 48-year reign that has seen the growth of Russian power in his country. Having curbed the power of the clergy, opened the country's first Western-style school, introduced telegraph and postal services, and launched the country's first newspaper, he has been impressed with the technology that he saw on three visits to Europe (1873, 1878, and 1889), but the shah has grown increasingly conservative and resistant to modernization in a changing world. He is succeeded by his incompetent 43-year-old son, who will reign until 1907 as Muzaffar-ad-Din (see 1906).
Armenian revolutionaries attack the Ottoman Bank at Constantinople August 26; Ottoman forces retaliate with a 3-day massacre of Armenians, killing at least 3,000.
Boer forces in South Africa defeat L. Starr Jameson at Krugerdorp January 1, force him to surrender January 2 at Doorn Kop, and turn him over to the British for trial in England, where he is convicted but receives only a light sentence (see 1895). A telegram of congratulations to President Paul Kruger of Transvaal from the German kaiser January 3 strains Anglo-German relations, and mutual suspicions set in among the Boers and British in South Africa, with Petrus Joubert gaining support for his opposition to President Kruger.
Cecil Rhodes resigns the Cape Colony premiership January 6, and a committee of the Cape Assembly finds him guilty of having engineered last year's Jameson raid. The Transvaal government signs a defensive alliance with the Orange Free State in mid-March; it fortifies Pretoria and Johannesburg with munitions ordered from Europe (see Anglo-Boer War, 1899).
British forces take Kumasi (Coomassie) January 18 and imprison the Ashanti king in the Fourth Ashanti War (see 1874; 1899).
Ethiopian warriors hand Italian troops a crushing defeat near Adwa March 2, forcing Rome to sue for peace (see 1887). Commander in chief of Italian forces in Africa since 1891, Oreste Baratieri, 54, was named governor of Eritrea 3 years ago and has opened that country to foreign investment, but his forces are no match for those of the Ethiopian emperor Menelek II, and they flee the field in panic (Baratieri will be court-martialed but acquitted). The only African country never to have been colonized, Ethiopia will remain independent. The Treaty of Addis Ababa October 6 withdraws the Italian protectorate (see 1898; Tripartite Pact, 1906).
Matebele tribesmen in Rhodesia begin a new uprising against British colonial settlers. The chimurenga (war of rebellion) will continue for 18 months before British troops suppress the bid for self rule, inflicting heavy casualties.
A French expedition to claim the Sudan sets out for Fashoda in the southern Sudan under the command of Jean Baptiste Marchand, 33, who has traced the Niger River to its source and explored the region from the Niger to Tengrela. The French have been working their way from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean with a view to establishing an area of influence that will counter British efforts to colonize the continent from Cape Town to the Mediterranean, and Marchand's group includes seven French officers and 100 Senegalese soldiers (see 1897). Anglo-Egyptian troops begin a reconquest of the Sudan under the command of General Horatio Herbert Kitchener, 46, who builds a railroad as he advances with an army of 25,000 British, Egyptian, and Sudanese soldiers (see 1885). He takes Dongola September 21, and although the Mahdi leader Abd Allah tries to resist he will find British machine guns insurmountable (see Battle of Omdurman, 1898).
France proclaims the African island of Madagascar a French colony August 6, having dispatched General Louis-H.-G. Lyautey from Tonkin to conquer the country (see 1897).
Manila-born patriot Andres Bonifacio, 33, leads a revolt in August against Spanish rule in the Philippines (see 1872). The nationalist Katipunan society that he founded 5 years ago has grown to have an estimated 100,000 members, drawn mostly from peasantry, with ceremonies modeled on those of the Masonic order and branches in central Luzon and on Panay, Mindoro, and Mindanao. Spanish friars have found evidence of the Katipunan's plans and forced it to start the uprising before it was ready; colonial forces suppress the insurrection, obliging Bonifacio to retreat to Montalban in the north while his 26-year-old lieutenant, the municipal mayor Emilio Aguinaldo, continues the resistance (see 1897).
Madrid appoints Valeriano Weyler y Nicolau, 57, marqués de Tenerife, governor general of Cuba (see 1895). Having fought against the Cuban rebels from 1868 to 1872, he became governor-general of the Canary Islands, then of the Balearic Islands, and then of the Philippines, where he helped suppress native uprisings 8 years ago. He imposes strict antirebel measures in Cuba (see 1897).
Canadian prime minister Sir Mackenzie Bowell resigns early in the year following the resignations of half his ministers. He is succeeded by former Nova Scotia premier Sir Charles Tupper, now 74, but the Conservative Party loses in the general elections in June, and the first French-Canadian premier takes office July 1. Quebec Liberal Wilfrid Laurier, 55, will hold power until late 1911.
Utah enters the Union as the 45th state January 4 following adoption of a state constitution banning polygamous marriage (although Mormons will not entirely abandon polygamy).
Lawyer (and former U.S. secretary of the treasury) Benjamin H. Bristow suffers an attack of appendicitis June 18 and dies at his New York town house June 22 at age 64.
"You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold," says Nebraska Christian fundamentalist William Jennings Bryan, 36, in a speech July 8 at the Democratic National Convention. His oratory in support of free silver wins him the nomination, and the Populist Party also nominates Bryan.
Ohio governor William McKinley, 53, gains the Republican nomination with support from Cleveland industrialist Mark Hanna. "All attempt to array class against class, the classes against the masses, section against section, labor against capital, poor against rich, or interest against interest, is in the highest degree reprehensible," says McKinley. Employers put pressure on workers to vote against "anarchy" and "revolution" lest they jeopardize their jobs, and a rise in wheat prices before election day alleviates agrarian discontent. Bryan fails to attract urban voters, and while he wins 176 electoral votes by carrying the South, the Great Plains states, and the Rocky Mountain states, McKinley wins 271 electoral votes and gains election with a 600,000 plurality in the popular vote.
Cuba's new governor general Valeriano Weyler y Nicolau herds rural peoples into urban concentrados lest they aid independence fighters in the countryside (see politics, 1895; 1898). Conditions quickly become unbearable, tens of thousands die, and U.S. newspapers call Weyler "the butcher" (see 1900).
The Supreme Court upholds racial segregation May 18, sustaining an 1890 Louisiana "Jim Crow car law" in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson (see 1883; Hall v. DeCuir, 1878; Ida B. Wells, 1884). New Orleans shoemaker Homer Adolph Plessy, now 34, bought a first-class ticket June 7, 1892, on the East Louisiana Railroad, took a seat in a car reserved for whites only, and announced to the conductor that he was black. An octoroon who can pass for white, Plessy acted in behalf of other New Orleans blacks and creoles (the Citizens' Committee to Test the Constitutionality of the Separate Car Law), he refused to leave, was arrested and booked overnight in a parish jail on charges that would have made him subject to a $25 fine and up to 20 days in jail if found guilty, was released on a $500 bond, filed suit, and went to trial in July 1892. Judge John Ferguson rejected the argument by Plessy's white New York lawyer Albion Winegar Tougee that the law violated the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution, ruling that state law permitted Louisiana to set laws regulating railroads within its borders, the state supreme court refused to grant a rehearing but did allow a petition for writ of error, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, and Justice Henry Brown's majority opinion lays down the doctrine that states may provide "equal but separate accommodations for the white and colored races" in education, transportation, and other public facilities without violating the equal protection provided by the Fourteenth Amendment. "The object of [that amendment]," he declares, "was undoubtedly to enforce the absolute equality of the two races before the law, but in the nature of things it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based on color, or to enforce social, as distinguished from political, equality, or a commingling of the two races on terms unsatisfactory to either . . . If the two races are to meet upon terms of social equality, it must be the result of voluntary consent of the individuals." "The Constitution is color-blind," says Justice John Marshall Harlan, who argues that segregated schools do not constitute equal treatment, but his vigorous opinion is the only dissent; the majority ruling sets off a wave of new segregation measures that designate drinking fountains, public benches, rest rooms, railroad cars, hospitals, and theater sections "Colored" or "Whites Only" (see 1954; Civil Rights Act, 1964).
Idaho women gain suffrage through an amendment to the state constitution. Speeches by Portland, Oregon, suffragist Abigail Duniway (see 1883) are credited with having helped gain passage of the amendment.
The Canadian Red Cross is founded.
Volunteers of America is founded by a son of the Salvation Army's founder, William Booth, now 67 (see 1878). Ballington Booth has been in charge of the Salvation Army's U.S. operations, but he has had a falling out with his father; his wife, Maud, joins him in organizing a rival group that resembles the Salvation Army.
Philanthropist Maurice, baron de Hirsch, dies at Ersekujvár, Hungary, April 21 at age 64, having contributed more than $100 million to Jewish and non-Jewish causes.
Miami, Florida, is incorporated at Fort Dallas, which last year had only three houses. H. M. Flagler extends his Florida East Coast Railway to the new town and dredges its harbor (see communications [Miami Herald], 1910; Miami Beach, 1913).
Arctic explorer Fridtjof Nansen's ship Fram breaks loose from the ice north of Svalbard, its scientists having collected a considerable amount of data (see 1895). Nansen left the ship last year, encounters British explorer Frederick Jackson in Franz Josef Land, and returns home in Jackson's ship (Jackson arrived in 1894 and will remain until next year, having remapped many of the islands of the Arctic Ocean).
Japan and Korea sign a commercial treaty giving the Japanese special tax exemptions and other trade and manufacturing privileges not available to China or the Western powers (see politics, 1895; 1897).
The Dow Jones Industrial Average is published for the first time May 26 (see 1884; Wall Street Journal, 1889). Charles H. Dow has added up the closing prices of shares in the only 12 companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange (shares in banks and insurance companies trade over the counter; the other companies listed on the NYSE consist of 53 railroads and six utilities); dividing the number by 12, he has come up with figure of 40.94. The 12 stocks include General Electric; American Sugar; American Tobacco; Laclede Gas; National Lead; Tennessee Coal & Iron; U.S. Leather (preferred), and U.S. Rubber. Dow predicted 14 years ago that the industrial market was "destined to be the great speculative market of the United States," and industrial stocks are still considered speculative, railroad stocks being regarded as much safer. The number of stocks used for the industrial average will be increased to 20 in 1916 and 30 in 1928 (see 1906).
A Workmen's Compensation Act adopted by Parliament July 29 makes British employers liable for compensation to employees injured on the job. Passed after nearly half a century of effort on the part of reformers, it has been pushed through with help from Joseph Chamberlain but is a watered-down version of original proposals and does not cover all workers (see unemployment insurance, 1911). Parliament will adopt new workmen's compensation laws in 1925 and thereafter.
A gold rush to Canada's Klondike region begins following the August 17 strike near the Alaskan border by U.S. prospector George Washington Carmack, 35, who has been in Alaska since 1888 (see 1897).
Carnegie Steel Corp. and Pittsburgh iron and steel mogul Henry W. Oliver buy the Mesabi Range holdings of John D. Rockefeller's Lake Superior Consolidated Iron Mines (see 1893; Oliver, 1892; United States Steel, 1901).
Yawata Steelworks, founded in March, is the first Japanese steelmaking firm. German engineers will complete a ¥25 million plant in Kyushu in 1901, and Japan will become a major world steel producer.
Russian revolutionary Aleksandra Mikhailovna Kollontai (née Domantovich), 24, visits a textile factory with her husband, is appalled at the working conditions and by her husband's callous attitude toward those conditions, becomes an active Marxist, and embarks on a career of distributing leaflets, writing, publishing, and speaking out both in Russia and abroad (see 1917).
The August 20 issue of Leslie's Weekly carries an advertisement for Prudential Life Insurance Company showing a picture of the Rock of Gibraltar and the slogan, "The Prudential Has the Strength of Gibraltar" devised by J. Walter Thompson (see commerce, 1875). Founder John Fairfield Dryden will head Prudential until his death in 1911, and it will become a mutual company in 1915.
Colorado authorities send state militia to Leadville September 21 to break a miners' strike.
Dynamite inventor Alfred B. Nobel dies of heart disease at San Remo, Italy, December 10 at age 63, leaving the bulk of his estate for the establishment of prizes to be awarded for peace (at the persuasion of Austrian novelist-pacifist Berthan von Suttner), chemistry, physics, medicine or physiology, and literature. In ill health all his life, Nobel has refused to take the nitroglycerin prescribed by his doctor for his chest pains; never having married, he has added to his fortune by investments in Russia's Baku oil fields. "Inherited wealth is a misfortune which merely serves to dull a man's faculties," he said last year, and he has willed that his fortune be invested in safe securities, "the interest accruing from which shall be annually awarded in prizes" (see 1901).
Wanamaker's New York opens in East 10th Street as merchant John Wanamaker takes over the cast-iron A. T. Stewart retail palace of 1862. Now 58 and the largest U.S. menswear retailer, Wanamaker has long since expanded his menswear shop of 1861 into a Philadelphia department store. He lures customers with bargain prices, good service, and concerts in the great Wanamaker Auditorium (see 1903).
New York merchants Nathan and Isidore Straus pay Charles Webster $1.2 million for the remaining 55 percent of Macy's, whose annual profits now exceed $250,000, and become sole owners (see 1888). Nathan Straus has introduced the practice of pricing merchandise at $4.98, $9.98, and so forth instead of $5 or $10, and this has helped boost sales, enabling the Strauses to build a wide nine-story building at 55 West 13th Street, east of Sixth Avenue, and a narrow nine-story building at 56 West 14th Street (see 1902).
Brooks Brothers executive John E. Brooks creates the button-down collar for dress shirts (see 1874). A grandson of founder Henry Sands Brooks, he has vacationed in Britain, seen such collars on athletic shirts worn by polo players, and adapted the idea (see 1909).
S. H. Kress & Company 5, 10, and 25-cent store opens at Memphis, where merchant Samuel H. (Henry) Kress, 33, has been inspired by F. W. Woolworth's success since 1879. His new store is an instant success. He will follow it with stores in other Southern cities, move to New York in 1900, and by 1907 have 51 stores in operation.
M. Goldwater & Sons opens at Phoenix in Arizona Territory under the direction of London-born merchant Morris Goldwater, 45, and his California-born brother Baron, 30, whose family has operated stores there and in the Arizona Territory since 1878, selling ammunition, belts, epaulets for army uniforms, knives, and tobacco.
The Curtis steam turbine patented by Boston-born inventor Charles G. (Gordon) Curtis, 36, will be used for more than a century to power ocean liners and naval vessels (see Parsons, 1884). An associate of Thomas A. Edison, Curtis will sell rights to General Electric for land applications, and GE will use it worldwide in its power-producing installations.
An improved diesel engine demonstrated by inventor Rudolf Diesel December 31 has a theoretical mechanical efficiency of 75.6 percent at a time when the efficiency of a steam engine is generally 10 percent less (see 1893). Commercial production of the engine will not begin until 1898, and by that time Diesel will have become a millionaire through franchising fees, many if not most of them from foreign interests who want to use diesel engines for various applications (see transportation [locomotive], 1913).
Astronomer Samuel P. Langley of the Smithsonian Institution at Washington, D.C., sends a steam-powered model airplane on a 3,000-foot flight along the Potomac May 6—the first flight of a mechanically propelled flying machine. Now 61, Langley made experiments some years ago while director of the Allegheny Observatory on the lift and drag of an aircraft moving through the air at a measured speed; he has been the first to offer a lucid explanation of how birds soar and glide without appreciable wing movement.
Aeronautical pioneer Otto Lilienthal dies at Berlin August 10 at age 48 from injuries sustained when his glider plunges 50 feet and crashes at Stölln, near Rhinow. He has made some 2,000 flights and taken voluminous notes, but some of his conclusions will prove faulty.
Engineer Octave Chanute sends an assistant in a glider with three banks of wings on an experimental flight August 29 from the top of a 95-foot Indiana sand dune on Lake Michigan (see 1894). He removes the lower wing for another flight August 31, and on September 5 has his assistants make 10 flights, the longest one 252 feet (see 1897).
Samuel P. Langley sends an improved model of his powered plane on a 4,200-foot flight in November (see 1903).
Daimler Motor Company Ltd. is founded by English businessman Harry J. Lawson, who registers the name January 14. Hoping to gain control of the nascent British industry, he persuaded Fredrick H. Simms last year to accept £35,000 in cash for his patent rights and 1 month later floated a £150,000 stock market offering for what he called British Motor Syndicate (see 1895). While Simms was out of the country Lawson found an old spinning mill at Foleshill, Coventry, and persuaded the new syndicate's board to pay a friend of his £18,000 for the site of a new factory (see 1897).
British Leyland has its beginnings in the Lancashire Steam Motor Company at the town of Leyland, where local engineer James Sumner built his first steam-driven wagon in 1884. He has obtained backing from the Spurrier family to start a company that will be renamed Leyland Motors Ltd. in 1907 after its first experiments with petrol-powered engines. The first British company to concentrate on making commercial vehicles, it will produce motorcars briefly from 1920 to 1923 but not thereafter until it acquires another company (see 1961).
Parliament repeals Britain's 1865 Locomotives on the Highway Act requiring that a man on foot carrying a red flag precede all road carriages. Influential friends of promoter Harry J. Lawson have supported the repeal, which raises the speed limit for "light locomotives" from four miles per hour to 14, but the suggestion that motorcars may come to rival "light railways" brings roars of laughter from the benches in the House of Commons. Motorists celebrate November 14 with a London-to-Brighton race organized by Frederick H. Simms's Motor-Car Club, Lord Winchilsea symbolically burns a red flag at the start of the run, only 14 of the vehicles that start out are able to reach Brighton, and there are suggestions that one of them arrived by train and was covered with mud before it crossed the finishing line.
The Haynes-Duryea motorcar is introduced by the Duryea Motor Wagon Company of Springfield, Massachusetts. Designed by inventor Elwood Haynes, 38, it is the first U.S. motorcar to be offered for public sale. Total U.S. motorcar production is 25 (see 1895; 1897).
Henry Ford drives his tiller-steered Quadricycle through the streets of Detroit in the early hours of June 4 (see 1893; 1899).
The Stanley Steamer motorcar is introduced at Newton, Massachusetts, by Francis Edgar Stanley, 47, and his twin brother Freelan, who have prospered in making photographic dry plates; they have been inspired by a DeDion Voiture à vapeur they saw demonstrated in Massachusetts last year (see 1899).
The U.S. bicycle industry has sales of $60 million, with the average bike retailing at $100 (see 1877; 1885). The diamond-pattern frame has become standardized, as have roller-chain drives and pneumatic-tired wheels; newer models have freewheeling and are easily braked but will not have gears until early in the next century. Pope Manufacturing turns out one bicycle per minute (see Pope motorcars, 1897).
The 63-year-old 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 Reading Company is organized as a holding company for the coal carrier that acquired 30 percent of Pennsylvania's anthracite lands in the 1870s and was forced into receivership in the 1880s. The new entity is also a holding company for the Philadelphia & Reading Coal and Iron Company. It will become an operating company in 1923 when it merges the railroad with some subsidiary lines that it will acquire, and the Reading will grow to be the largest U.S. carrier of anthracite coal (see Conrail, 1976).
The first underground rail service on the European continent begins at Budapest, where a 2.3-mile (four-kilometer) electric subway goes into operation under Andrassy Avenue with comfortable yellow coaches featuring interiors of polished wood and brass (see London, 1890). The emperor Franz Josef is among the first passengers on the new subway, whose opening corresponds with Hungary's millennium. It has single cars with trolley poles, and steel beams rather than brick arches support its roof; this has required shallower trenches (and made it cheaper to build) than the London Underground that began in 1863 (see Paris, 1900; Boston, 1897).
Railroad magnate James F. Joy dies at Santa Barbara, California, July 18 at age 85.
Tabulating Machine Company is founded by Herman Hollerith to market the punched-card system that he devised for the Census Bureau in 1890 (see Germany, 1910; Watson, 1912).
Dutch physicist Pieter Zeeman, 31, at the University of Leyden investigates the effect of magnetic fields on a spectrum of emitted light and find that each of the lines in a spectrum of emitted light splits into several lines, a phenomenon that will be called the Zeeman effect. A student of Hendrik A. Lorentz (see 1895), Zeeman has explored Lorentz's theory that a strong magnetic field ought to have an effect on the oscillations of charged particles in atoms and, as a consequence, on the wavelength of the light thereby produced (see Einstein, 1905; Minkowski, 1907).
French physicist (Antoine-) Henri Becquerel, 44, discovers radioactivity in uranium (see Klaproth, 1789; Péligot, 1841). Having learned late last year that a cathode ray beam made an area of a glass tube fluorescent when X-rays issued from it, he looked for a possible connection between this invisible radiation and visible light with the idea that any luminescent material would yield X-rays when thus stimulated. He reports to the Académie des Sciences February 24 that certain salts of uranium are particularly active (see Planck, 1900; Curie, 1904).
German biochemist (Ludwig Karl Martin) Albrecht Kossel, 42, studies nucleic acids and discovers the amino acid histadine. Kossel last year became professor of physiology and director of the Physiological Institute at Marburg.
Achaeologist Giuseppe Fiorelli dies at his native Naples, January 28 at age 72; Chemist F. A. Kekulé von Stradonitz at Bonn July 13 at age 66, having never fully recovered from a bout of measles he suffered in 1878; statistician Ernst Engel dies at Radebeul outside his native Dresden December 8 at age 75, having advanced the seemingly obvious idea (Engel's law, or the "Engel curve") that the lower a family's income the higher the percentage spent on food.
The mercury sphygmomanometer invented by Italian internist and pediatrician Scipione Riva-Rocci, 33, at a Turin clinic offers medical practitioners an efficient yet simple tool for measuring blood pressure, but in its initial version it can measure only systolic pressure.
Algerian-born French physician-bacteriologist (Georges-) Fernand-Isidore Widal, 34, devises a procedure for diagnosing typhoid fever based on his discovery that antibodies in the blood of some infected patients cause the bacteria to clump together (the Widal reaction) (see Eberth, Koch, 1880). His finding will prove useful in separating soldiers and others with typhoid fever from people who have not been infected. British pathologist Almroth Edward Wright, 35, originates a system of antityphoid inoculation that will be tested on more than 3,000 soldiers in India and used to good effect in the South African (Anglo-Boer) War that is brewing.
Rats infected with bubonic plague arrive at Bombay from China and begin an epidemic that will continue into the next decade (see 1898).
Princeton University assumes that name 250 years after being chartered as the College of New Jersey.
New York University assumes that name 65 years after being chartered as the University of the City of New York.
The London Daily Mail begins publication May 4 under the direction of Evening News publisher Alfred C. W. Harmsworth, who condenses news in "the penny newspaper for one halfpenny" (see 1894). Harmsworth's new morning paper gains wide circulation and he continues a campaign he has begun to warn Britons of the threat from Germany (see 1903).
Maine-born lawyer Alden J. Blethen, 50, acquires the Seattle Daily Times and will multiply its circulation (now only 6,000) to make it competitive with the 33-year-old Post Intelligencer. Orphaned at 6, Blethen was an indentured servant until 15, moved to Kansas City at 35, became part owner of the Minneapolis Tribune 12 years ago, and uses his new paper to support William Jennings Bryan's candidacy and Cuban independence; and his family will control the paper for more than a century.
"The Yellow Kid" appears in Joseph Pulitzer's NewYork World in March (see 1894). Richard F. Outcault, now 33, has created the one-panel cartoon (seeJournal, 1897).
The 46-year-old New York Times gets a face-lift from publisher Adolph S. Ochs, now 39, who has made his Chattanooga Times prosper; married since 1883 to the daughter of Cincinnati's Rabbi Isaac Wise, he has acquired control of the New York Times August 18 for $75,000, almost all of it borrowed. The other owners assure Ochs of a stock majority if he can make the paper profitable for 3 consecutive years; he throws out the paper's romantic fiction and tiny typefaces, improves neglected areas such as financial news, starts a weekly book review section and Sunday magazine, and adopts the slogan "All the News That's Fit to Print" (see 1898).
The editorial "What's the Matter with Kansas?" by Emporia Gazette editor William Allen White, 28, appears August 15 and attracts national attention to White's fledgling newspaper.
Marconi's Wireless Telegraph Company establishes the world's first permanent wireless installation in November at The Needles on the Isle of Wight, Hampshire, England (see 1895). Guglielmo Marconi's British relatives have set up the firm, which will be incorporated in 1899 (see 1901; Braun, 1897).
The first New York Times Book Review (initially called the Saturday Book Review Supplement) appears October 10 with a story about playwright-poet Oscar Wilde's plight in Reading Gaol (see 1911).
Nonfiction: Guide to the Study of American History by Albert Bushnell Hart and his Harvard colleague Edward Channing, 40; Agnosticism and Religion by philosopher Jacob Gould Schurman, who 4 years ago helped to found the Philosophical Review and became president of Cornell; The Materialist Conception of History (La concezione materialistica della storia) by Antonio Labriola; The Ruling Class (Elementi di scienza politica) by Gaetano Mosca, who says that societies are necessarily governed by minorities (e.g. the military, the clergy, hereditary oligarchies, aristocracies based either on merit or wealth). He dismisses as mythical such notions as divine will, the will of the people, the sovereign will of the state, and the dictatorship of the proletariat; Misused Feminine Power (Missbrukad Kvinnokraft) by Swedish reformer Ellen (Karolina Sofia) Key, 47, who says that since woman is by nature primarily a mother, if she persists in modern claims of "individualism" and equal rights with man to the point where she denies her fundamental, natural function she will not only destroy her own physical and spiritual development but also endanger the entire future of the race.
Fiction: Quo Vadis by Henryk Sienkiewicz, now 50, who will become world-famous for his story of Nero's Rome; Country of the Pointed Firs (stories) by Sarah Orne Jewett, who portrays the loneliness of the isolated and declining coastal town of South Berwick, Maine; The Island of Doctor Moreau by H. G. Wells; The Green Graves of Balgowrie by Scottish novelist Jane Findlater, 31; Many Cargoes by London-born short-story writer W. W. (William Wymark) Jacobs, 33; In His Steps by Topeka, Kansas, clergyman-author Charles M. (Monroe) Sheldon, 39, whose novel is serialized in the religious weekly Chicago Advance while Sheldon keeps his pews filled with readings to his parish. Subtitled What Would Jesus Do? the book will appear next year as a paperback, but although it will be translated into 45 languages and have sales of at least 8 million (and possibly 30 million) copies, most of them will be pirated editions (Sheldon's copyright is defective), and the author will derive only a few hundred dollars.
Novelist Harriet Beecher Stowe dies at Hartford, Connecticut, July 1 at age 85; Edmond Goncourt at Chamrosay July 16 at age 74, leaving a large bequest to establish the Académie Goncourt (see prix Goncourt, 1903); novelist and Punch caricaturist George du Maurier dies at London October 16 at age 62.
Poetry: A Shropshire Lad by University College Latin professor A. E. (Alfred Edward) Housman, 37, at London: "When I was one and twenty/ I heard a wise man say,/'Give crowns and pounds and guineas/ But not your heart away" (XIII, 1); Verses by English poet Ernest (Christopher) Dowson, 29, who writes, "I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion"; Green Fire by Scottish poet Fiona Macleod (William Sharp), 40, who has been promoting a Celtic revival ("But my heart is a lonely hunter that hunts on a lonely hill"); Lyrics of Lowly Life by Paul Laurence Dunbar, whose book has a sympathetic introduction by William Dean Howells that helps make the young man fashionable; Prosas profanas by Nicaraguan poet Rubén Darío (Félix Rubén Garcia-Sarmiento), 29.
Poet Paul Verlaine dies in poverty at Paris January 8 at age 51; Coventry Patmore at Lymington, Hampshire, November 28 at age 73.
Juvenile: The Bad Child's Book of Beasts by Hilaire Belloc; Frank Meriwell, or First Days at Fardale by Maine-born author Burt L. Standish (William Gilbert Patten), 30, who has written it at the suggestion of New York publishers Street and Smith (see Nick Carter, 1886). Patten will write 776 Frank Merriwell novels, whose weekly sales will average 125,000 copies (see Stratemeyer, 1899); The Little Colonel by Evansville, Indiana-born writer Annie Johnston (née Fellows), 33, begins a series of "Little Colonel" books; A Princess of the Gutter and Dr. Rumsey's Patient: A Very Strange Story by L. T. Meade.
Author-reformer Thomas Hughes dies at Brighton March 22 at age 73.
Painting: The Cello Player by Thomas Eakins; Daniel in the Lions' Den by Pittsburgh-born painter Henry Ossawa Tanner, 37, who arrived at Paris 5 years ago and will remain there; The Table: End of Lunch at the Vuillard Home by Edouard Vuillard; After the Bath by Edgar Degas; Ellen Mary Cassatt in a White Coat (niece of the artist) by Mary Cassatt; Revere Beach by St. Johns, Newfoundland-born postimpressionist Maurice (Brazil) Prendergast, 34, who grew up in Boston, worked his way to England on a cattleboat 10 years ago, and has studied at Paris. Sir John Everett Millais dies at London August 13 at age 67.
Craftsman-poet-esthete William Morris dies at Kelmscott House, Hammersmith, London, October 3 at age 62.
London's National Portrait Gallery (Tate Gallery) moves from Bethnal Green into a permanent home in Westminster completed with funds contributed by sugar magnate Sir Henry Tate, now 77, who has given £80,000 and donated 57 modern paintings. The Tate will be enlarged in 1899 and again in 1908 to house the works left by painter J. M. W. Turner at his death in 1851.
Photographer Matthew B. Brady dies in the charity ward of a New York hospital January 15 at age 72 (approximate).
Theater: Michael and His Lost Angel by Henry Arthur Jones 1/15 at London's Lyceum Theatre; The Dupe (Le dindon) by Georges Feydeau 2/8 at the Théâtre du Palais Royal, Paris; Salomé by Oscar Wilde 2/11 at the Théâtre de l'Oeuvre, Paris (Wilde wrote the play in French but cannot enjoy the furor it creates because he is confined to Reading Gaol); The Village Postmaster by U.S. playwrights Alice E. Ives and Jerome H. Eddy 4/13 at New York's Fourteenth Street Theater, with Forrest Robinson, Ohio-born actress Amelia Bingham, 27, M. A. Kennedy, 32 perfs.; Rosemary by French-born English playwright Louis Napoleon Parker, 44, and Murray Carson 8/31 at New York's Empire Theater, with Maude Adams, John Drew, Philadelphia-born ingénue Ethel Barrymore (originally Ethel Mae Blythe), 17, illustrator-actor Charles (Dana) Gibson, now 28, Barnesville, Ohio-born actor Arthur Byron, 20, 136 perfs.; Secret Service by William H. Gillette 10/5 at New York's Garrick Theatre, with Gillette as Captain Thorne, a secret agent for the Union Army, 176 perfs.; The Sea Gull (Chayka) by Anton Chekhov 10/17 at St. Petersburg's Alexandrinsky Theater (see 1898); People of Importance (Gente conocida) by Spanish playwright Jacinto Benavente (y Martínez) 30, 10/21 at Madrid's Teatro de la Comedia; The Sunken Bell (Die versunkene Glocke) by Gerhart Hauptmann 12/2 at Berlin's Deutsches Theater; Lorenzaccio by the late Alfred de Musset 12/3 at the Théâtre de la Renaissance, Paris; Emperor and Galilean (Kejsor og Galileer) by Henrik Ibsen 12/5 at Leipzig's Stadttheater; King Ubu (Ubu Roi) by French playwright Alfred Jarry, 23, (he wrote it at age 15) 12/10 at the Théâtre de l'Oeuvre, Paris.
French comedienne Anna Held, 23, makes her U.S. debut 9/21 at New York's Herald Square Theater in a lavish production of the 1884 Charles H. Hoyt play A Parlor Match mounted by Florenz Ziegfeld with help from 28-year-old Hartford-born New-York Sun drama critic Charles (Bancroft) Dillingham, 48 perfs.
The 8-year-old Klaw & Erlanger booking agency joins with Charles Frohman, Al Hayman, Samuel F. Nixon, and J. Frederick Zimmerman to create what will be called the Theatrical Syndicate. The six men control more than 500 theaters nationwide, supplying vaudeville acts and other attractions only to theaters that agree to let them be exclusive agents; Charles Frohman heads the Syndicate, but Marc Klaw and A. L. Erlanger are responsible for booking all attractions, and they arrange bookings only for performers who agree to be represented exclusively by the Syndicate (see Shubert brothers, 1900).
The first U.S. public showing of motion pictures April 20 at Koster and Bial's Music Hall in New York employs Thomas Edison's vitascope, an improvement on his 1893 kinetoscope, and a projector made by Thomas Armat (see 1903; Lumière, 1895).
The Biograph Company exhibits its first program at New York with footage of William McKinley being notified of his nomination. Boston-born cameraman Gottfried Wilhelm "Billy" Bitzer, 22, has photographed the scene.
Music hall comedienne May Irwin, now 34, is filmed in a brief episode from The Widow Jones, a farce in which she has been starring opposite actor John Rice. A long close-up of their kiss in the film The Kiss scandalizes audiences and brings the first demands for screen censorship (see 1934).
Films: The Cabbage Fairy (La Fée aux choux) is the first fictional film ever (it lasts only a few minutes). French film maker Alice Guy (later Guy-Blaché), 23, has worked as a secretary for motion-picture camera manufacturer Léon Gaumont, 32; she directs the film, and by 1905 she will be head of production for Gaumont, directing nearly all of his films.
Opera: Pepita Jiminez 1/5 at Barcelona's Liceo, with music by Isaac Albeniz; La Bohème 2/1 at Turin's Teatro Reggio, with music by Giacomo Puccini, libretto by Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica, who have adapted "Scenes de la Vie de Bohème" by the late Henri Murger, whose work appeared in the journal Le Corsair in the late 1840s; The Grand Duke (or The Statutory Duel) 3/7 at London's Savoy Theatre is the last Gilbert & Sullivan operetta, 123 perfs. (Sullivan will die in 1900, Gilbert in 1911); Andrea Chénier 3/23 at Milan's Teatro alla Scala, with music by Italian composer Umberto Giordano, 28; Der Corregidor 6/7 at Mannheim with music by German composer Hugo Wolf, 36, who is verging on insanity; Emma Albani, now 44, has the last and greatest triumph of her stage career 6/26 at Covent Garden singing the role of Isolde in the 1865 Wagner opera Tristan und Isolde.
Composer Ambroise Thomas dies at Paris February 12 at age 84, having written some 20 operas. His 1866 opera Mignon has been performed more than 1,000 times; tenor-composer-voice teacher Gilbert Duprez dies at his native Paris September 23 at age 89.
Brazil's $5 million Manaus Opera House opens 700 miles up the Amazon, where it has been built for rubber barons whose business has boomed with the growth of the bicycle industry and with increased use of motorcars and has not yet been made uneconomic by East Indian rubber plantations (see agriculture, 1876). The ballerina Anna Pavlova will dance at Manaus, and the entire company of Milan's Teatro alla Scala will cross the ocean and ascend the Amazon for annual appearances.
First performances: Suite No. 2 in E minor (Indian) by Edward MacDowell 1/23 at New York's Metropolitan Opera House; Concerto in B minor for Violoncello and Orchestra by Antonin Dvorák 3/19 at London; Concerto No. 5 in F major for Piano and Orchestra by Camille Saint-Saëns 6/2 at Paris on the 50th anniversary of the composer's first public appearance as a pianist; "Roland (The Saracens and Lovely Alda)" by Edward MacDowell 11/5 at Boston's Tremont Theater; Also Sprach Zarathustra (freely after Friedrich Nietzsche) (tone poem) by Richard Strauss 11/27 at Frankfurt-am-Main.
Composer Anton Bruckner dies at Vienna October 11 at age 72, leaving his Symphony No. 9 in D minor incomplete.
Stage musicals: El Capitán 4/20 at New York's Knickerbocker Theater, with De Wolf Hopper in a comic opera with book by London-born actor-turned writer Charles Klein, 29, music by John Philip Sousa, 112 perfs.; The Geisha 4/25 at Daly's Theatre, London, with Marie Tempest, San Francisco-born dancer (Angela) Isadora Duncan, 17, music by Sidney Jones, lyrics by Harry Greenback, 750 perfs., songs that include "Love, Love," and "The Amorous Goldfish" (Irish-born Gaiety Theatre manager George Edwardes (originally Edwards), now 44, built the house 4 years ago for New York producer Augustin Daly); Monte Carlo 8/27 at London's Avenue Theatre, with music by New York-born, London-educated composer Howard Talbot (originally Richard Lonsdale Munkittrick), 31; The Art of Maryland 9/5 at New York's new Weber and Fields Music Hall, with Joe Weber and Lew Fields in a burlesque of David Belasco's legitimate stage hit The Heart of Maryland (see 1895), music by New York-born composer John "Honey" Stromberg, 43 (whose 1895 song "My Best Girl's a Corker" has been a hit), lyrics by Edgar Smith; The Circus Girl 12/5 at London's Gaiety Theatre, with music by Ivan Caryll.
Songwriter Percy Gaunt dies at Palenville, New York, September 5 at age 44.
Popular songs: "Sweet Rosie O'Grady" by New York songwriter Maude Nugent, 19, who has been unable to find a publisher and introduces the song herself at Tony Pastor's Opera House; "Kentucky Babe" by German-born composer Adam Geibel, 41, lyrics by Richard Henry Buck, 26; "A Hot Time in the Old Town" by Prussian-born New York violinist-minstrel Theodore August Metz, 48, lyrics by end man Joe Hayden.
Hymn: "When the Saints Go Marching In" by James M. Black, lyrics by Katherine E. Purvis.
The Gibson Mandolin-Guitar Manufacturing Company has its beginnings at Kalamazoo, Michigan, where self-taught New York-born instrument maker Orville Gibson, 40, has designed mandolins and guitars that are louder and longer-lasting than previous fretted instruments due to Gibson's patented method of production. Using old furniture wood, mostly walnut, he borrows the idea of carved soundboards and backboards from European violin makers, employs unbent and unstressed wood for the rims, introduces raised pickguards, and gives his 10-string instruments baroque ornamentation that includes carved body scrolls, crescent- and moon-shaped inlays, and the like. The handmade instruments find a ready market, but Gibson can turn out only six or seven per year (see 1902).
The first modern Olympiad opens at Athens March 24 with 484 contestants from 13 nations to begin a quadrennial event that will be broadened to include athletic events undreamed of by the Greeks of ancient times. Greek nationalists and French educator-sportsman Pierre de Frédy, 33, baron de Coubertin, have taken inspiration from the classical Greek philosophy of kalokagathia, the harmonic combination of beauty and goodness, to revive the ancient games. Coubertin obtained support 2 years ago for bringing back the games that were banned by the Romans in 194 A.D. but held on a small scale by the Greeks in 1859, 1870, 1875, and 1889 and by the French in 1892. The late Greek-Romanian Evangelios Zappas has willed his entire fortune to reestablishing the games in Greece, the Greek government has added $100,000, and Greek merchant George Averoff of Alexandria has given $390,000 to complete restoration of the Panathenaic Stadium (see Boston Marathon, 1897; Paris, 1900).
Harold Mahoney, 29 (Ireland) wins in men's singles at Wimbledon, Charlotte Cooper in women's singles; Robert Wrenn wins in U.S. men's singles, Elizabeth H. Moore in women's singles.
The world's first public golf course opens in New York's Van Cortlandt Park.
Common Sense in Chess by chess master Emanuel Lasker will survive as a classic of its kind.
Atlantic City, New Jersey, completes a boardwalk 41 feet wide to replace a series of four narrower boardwalks built since 1870.
Ferris Wheel inventor George W. G. Ferris dies at Pittsburgh November 22 at age 37.
Miami's Royal Palm Hotel opens to begin the city's career as a winter resort. Henry M. Flagler adds the Royal Palm to the Alcazar, Royal Poinciana, Breakers, and other hotels that he has built at Palm Beach and Daytona (see 1903).
The Palace Hotel opens July 29 at St. Moritz, Switzerland, and gains quick popularity among European resortgoers (see 1856; Hanselmann, 1893). Attracted originally by the alleged health benefits of the town's rust-red springs, English visitors to St. Moritz have invented bobsledding and popularized tobogganing, curling, Viennese ice dancing, and Norwegian-style skiing. Johannes Badrutt's luxurious hostelry (his son Kaspar is managing director) will attract international celebrities for the next century, serving a sumptuous cuisine winter and summer, with New Year's Eve guests consuming 176 pounds of caviar and endless bottles of champagne (see Sevruta House, 1912).
Cripple Creek, Colorado, has a fire April 25 that begins when kerosene lanterns are knocked over during a dance-hall fight. The fire consumes more than 30 acres of buildings including the homes of new millionaires (see gold rush, 1891).
The deadliest U.S. tornado since 1840 strikes St. Louis and East St. Louis May 27, killing 255 people.
An offshore Japanese earthquake June 15 creates a tsunami (seismic wave) that kills an estimated 22,000.
Griffith Park at Los Angeles has its beginnings December 16 with a gift to the city of 3,015 acres of rocky scrubland on the Los Angeles River. Welsh-born miner Griffith J. (Jenkins) Griffith, now 44, arrived at New York 30 years ago without any money or education, found an elderly couple to give him room and board in exchange for doing odd jobs, attended public school, moved west in late 1870s, covered the mining fields for a San Francisco newspaper, found it more profitable to prepare confidential reports for rich investors, invested his own money, and by 1882 had made a fortune at age 30. The short, stocky "colonel" married the rich and dignified society belle Christina Mesmer, bought the Rancho Los Feliz, recouped his investment 2 years later (1884) by selling some its water rights to the city, and made huge profits from land speculation. The property he has donated is on the outskirts of town, but L.A.'s population is still only 110,000 and few of its citizens appreciate the value of having a public park (see crime, 1903).
Farmers plant Turkey Red wheat throughout much of Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Texas, where it will soon be the predominant winter wheat variety, and in Montana, Minnesota, and the Dakotas, where it is planted in spring for fall harvesting (see 1895), but the decline in the U.S. wheat crop last year has encouraged Australia, Canada, and Russia to enter the export market and compete actively for European sales (see Kubanka, 1899).
Failure of India's wheat crop raises world prices, but increased world competition keeps a lid on them.
Veterinarian Bernhard L. F. Bang discovers the bacterium of infectious abortion in cows (see 1892). Since it is one of several bacteria that cause undulant fever, or brucellosis, in humans, it will be called Brucella abortus (see medicine [Bruce], 1887), but the condition that it produces in cattle will be called Bang's disease (see consumer protection [U.S. regulations], 1900; consumer protection [Evans], 1917).
Missouri-born botanist George Washington Carver, 32, joins Alabama's Tuskegee Institute as director of its Department of Agriculture (see Booker Washington, 1881; peanuts, 1914; peanuts, 1921).
Dutch physicians Christiaan Eijkmann and Gerrit Grijns in Java find that chickens fed polished rice suffer from a disease resembling beriberi (see Takaki, 1887). They decide that the rice must contain a toxin which is neutralized by something in rice hulls (see 1906; Eijkmann, 1886).
German biochemist Eugen Baumann reports that the mineral iodine exists in appreciable concentration in the thyroid glands of people living in coastal areas but in far less concentration among people living farther inland (see science, 1811). Baumann discovered polyvinyl chloride (PVC) in 1872 but dies at Freiburg November 3 at age 49. Iodine is absent from all other human body tissues (see Marine, 1905).
The U.S. Department of Agriculture issues a bulletin entitled "Chemical Composition of American Food Materials" based on work by W. O. Atwater and others who have compiled data on the protein, fat, carbohydrate, ash, water, and refuse content of foods (see 1895). The bulletin will be revised in 1899 and 1906 (see 1950).
Congressional hearings on the whiskey trade reveal that U.S. distillers and rectifiers sell 105 million gallons of "Old Bourbon" whiskey per year but only 2 million are genuine, the remainder being "blends" which may contain anything from ethyl alcohol to prune juice (see Bottled in Bond Act, 1897).
S&H Green Stamps are issued for the first time by Sperry & Hutchinson Company, a Jackson, Michigan, company founded by local entrepreneurs Thomas A. Sperry and Shelly B. Hutchinson. Participating stores issue one S&H stamp for every 10¢ that a customer spends, books filled with S&H stamps are exchangeable for merchandise at "premium parlors" set up for the purpose, the A&P will soon be a major user of the stamps, and other companies will spring up to compete with S&H. By 1914 trading stamps will be given out with 6 percent of all U.S. retail purchases, primarily at grocery stores.
Tootsie Rolls are introduced at New York by Austrian-born confectioner Leo Hirschfield, 29, whose penny candy is the first to be wrapped in paper. Hirschfield names the chewy, chocolatey confection after his 6-year-old daughter Clara, whom he calls "Tootsie."
Cracker Jack is introduced at Chicago by German-born confectioner F. W. Rueckheim and his brother Louis whose molasses-covered popcorn candy gets its name when an enthusiastic salesman exclaims, "That's a crackerjack!" Packaging expert Henry Eckstein will join the Rueckheims in 1899 and develop a box lined with sealed wax paper to retain crispness, Rueckheim Bros. & Eckstein will adopt the slogan "The More You Eat, the More You Want," and the 1908 song "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" will help their sales. They will sell Cracker Jack in boxes containing coupons redeemable for prizes beginning in 1910 (the first redeemable prize will be a tan or gray flannelette baseball uniform), pack prizes (magnifying glasses, strings of beads, metal whistles, metal trains, spinning tops, and similar novelties) with the Cracker Jack beginning in 1912 (F. W. Rueckheim's idea), use Jack and his dog Bingo in advertising beginning in 1916, and show them on the box beginning in 1918.
Welch's Grape Juice production moves to Watkins Glen, New York, close to a vast grape growing region (see 1869). Charles Welch has been running his father's Unfermented Wine business since 1872 (see 1897).
Michelob beer is introduced by Adolphus Busch of 1876 Budweiser fame, whose St. Louis brewery Anheuser-Busch has become the largest in the country. Busch has reportedly discovered the beer in Bohemia, found it superior to his Budweiser, and ordered his technicians to reproduce it, but at 25¢ per glass it is so costly that it represents no real challenge to Budweiser (one New York barkeep will charge 40¢ and claim that it is imported). Michelob will be sold only on draft until 1961 (see 1933; 1956).
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