1871 1872 1873 1874 1875 1876 1877 1878 1879 1880
The German Empire proclaimed January 18 in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles inaugurates the Second Reich that will continue until November 1918 (the First Reich began in 955 by some accounts and was ended by Napoleon in 1806). Prussia's Wilhelm I is emperor, and the first chancellor is Count von Bismarck, who has joined the four German kingdoms of Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, and Württemberg with the five grand duchies, 13 duchies and principalities, and three free cities (Bremen, Hamburg, and Lübeck) that have kept Germany fragmented.
Paris capitulates to German troops January 28 after 4 months of bombardment (see 1870). Some guerrilla warfare continues, but the French assembly elects Louis Thiers, now 73, president of the Third Republic February 16 and he accepts a peace treaty March 1. Napoleon III is formally deposed March 1 by the French assembly, meeting at Bordeaux because a communist uprising has taken over Paris; the assembly declares Napoleon "responsible for the ruin, invasion, and dismemberment of France," he is released from the castle of Wilhelmshöhe near Cassel, where the Germans have held him prisoner, and he retires to England, arriving March 20 at Dover, where he is reunited with his wife, Eugénie. He devotes his efforts to teaching the Prince Imperial about French politics but will die early in 1873 (see Prince Louis, 1879).
The Commune of Paris is established in March. Troops sent by President Thiers to seize the Commune's cannon refuse to fire; they fraternize with the crowd, which sets fire to buildings, tears down monuments, and seizes Generals Lecomte and Thomas, who are executed along with hostages who include the archbishop Georges Darboy. Veteran general Gaston-Alexandre-Auguste, marquis de Gallifet, 41, suppresses the Commune at the end of May in a "Bloody Week" that sees 20,000 to 30,000 Parisians killed at the barricades, a death toll exceeding that in the Reign of Terror of 1793 to 1794 (Gallifet is a republican but his methods antagonize the political left). Women have joined with men in resisting Gallifet's forces; "History has no comparable example of such greatness," says Karl Marx May 30. ". . . [The Commune's] martyrs are enshrined forever in the great heart of the working class," but Paris is in ruins.
France and Germany sign a definitive peace treaty at Frankfurt May 10: France agrees to cede Alsace and part of Lorraine, pay the Germans a staggering 5 billion francs in reparations, and permit an army of occupation to remain on French soil until the indemnity is paid.
Spain's regency under Francisco Serrano y Domínguez ends January 2 following the installation of the Italian duke of Aosta as king with the title Amadeo I (see 1868; 1870; Don Carlos, 1872).
Former Chechen-Dagestan imam and resistance leader Shamil dies in March at Medina at age 72 (approximate), having made a pilgrimage to Mecca with permission from the Russian czar Aleksandr II.
Ottoman forces seize control of the Arabian province of Hasa (see 1891). The Ottoman grand vizier Mehmed Emin Ali dies at his native Constantinople September 7 at age 56, having played a major role in reorganizing the government and advocating friendship with France and Britain. He is succeeded by the reactionary Mahmud Nedim, 54, whose hostility to reform will permit the sultan Abdul Aziz to reverse the country's westernization and rule as absolute monarch (see 1872; Tanzimat, 1839).
Japan's new Meiji government persuades Takamori Saigo to join it and gives him command of a newly created 10,000-man Imperial Guard (see 1869). Supported for the first time by a reliable military force (organized along German lines), the imperial government abolishes feudal fiefs (han) by imperial decree August 29, substituting prefectures; Saigo is appointed to the Dajokan (Council of State), he works with Takayoshi Kido to implement the program, and by year's end all potential military opposition has been eliminated (see 1874; universal military service, 1872; Korea, Okinawa, 1873).
Statesman Tomomi Iwakura, now 45, heads a mission of leading Japanese government officials to Western countries, ostensibly to work on treaty revisions. Members of the mission split up into teams to study Western methods of administration, finance, law, and education (see 1873).
Basutoland is absorbed by Britain's Cape Colony, and Britain annexes the diamond mines of Kimberley (see 1868). The Orange Free State, the South African Republic, the western Griqua headed by Nicolaas Waterboer, and southern Tswana chiefs all lay claim to the diamond fields. Natal's lieutenant governor Robert W. Keate holds a special hearing on the matter in October; he finds in favor of Waterboer, who is persuaded to seek British protection against rival Afrikaans, and his territory is annexed as Griqualand West (see Rhodes, Barnato, 1880).
The Treaty of Washington signed May 8 refers settlement of the Canadian-U.S. border to the German emperor, refers settlement of claims against Britain for damage by the Confederate cruiser Alabama in the Civil War to an international commission at Geneva (see 1872), and provides for partial settlement of a dispute in the North Atlantic fishery. Negotiated by U.S. Secretary of State Hamilton Fish, now 62, it provides for the first international arbitration in modern history (see 1877).
The New York Times begins running articles July 8 exposing the corruption of Boss Tweed and his Tammany Hall ring, whose members have brazenly cheated the citizenry of an estimated $200 million. Tweed is reelected chairman of Tammany's general committee and wins reelection as state senator in November, despite the fact that he has been served with an arrest warrant October 26. His New York real estate holdings are exceeded only by those of the Astors and merchant A. T. Stewart; he is indicted on criminal charges in December, rearrested, and at year's end deposed as grand sachem and expelled from Tammany Hall (see 1873). "Honest John" Kelly replaces Tweed as boss of Tammany Hall; the first Roman Catholic to head the "Wigwam," he will gain mastery over the city's Democratic Party by eliminating other party factions, control patronage with an iron fist, and transform Tammany Hall from a gang of cronies into a powerful political machine, with 23 assembly-district leaders appointing precinct captains who gain support by helping men find work, providing aid to families in emergencies, assisting them in any problems they may have with the law, and—above all—making sure they vote.
Former Confederate diplomat (and antebellum U.S. senator) James (Murray) Mason dies at Alexandria, Virginia, April 28 at age 72; onetime "Copperhead" Clement L. Vallandigham at Lebanon, Ohio, June 17 at age 50, having accidentally shot himself with a pistol during a trial while trying to demonstrate how a crime was committed. He had continued to oppose Republican Reconstruction efforts but had reconciled himself to the outcome of the Civil War. Former Confederate diplomat John Slidell dies at Cowes on the Isle of Wight July 29 at age 78.
British Columbia joins the Dominion of Canada July 1 with the understanding that a transcontinental railroad is to be started within 2 years and completed within 10.
Britain establishes the Leeward Islands Colony that will exist until 1956. It includes the British Virgin Islands, St. Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla, Dominica, and Montserrat.
The Rio Branco law adopted by Brazil's cabinet September 28 makes newborn children of slaves free from the moment they are born. The emperor Pedro II freed all of his own slaves some 30 years ago and proclaims the "law of the free womb," but at least 3,000 families have moved to Brazil from the former Confederate states; coffee and sugar planters fight outright abolition (see 1888).
Scottish missionary-explorer David Livingstone sees hundreds of African women shot dead by Arab slavers or drowned in the Lualaba River at Nyangwe while trying to escape (see 1869). He sends home an account of the incident to England where indignant efforts are made to force suppression of the slave trade by the sultan of Zanzibar (see 1873).
Japan's new Meiji government passes a law permitting intermarriage between people of different social classes. Up to now, the shi (samurai), the no (farmers), the ko (craftsmen), and the sho (merchants) have been kept separate, the groups being distinguished by different clothing, different haircuts, different food, different houses, and different ways of speaking. Under the new law, any girl can marry a samurai, but, as with all brides, any money or property she inherits belongs automatically to him, and should anything happen to her their children belong to the husband's family. As long as her mother-in-law is alive, her husband may turn his earnings over to his mother, the mother determines how the money is to be spent, and she may order her son to divorce his wife. The law permits anyone to cut their hair but is soon amended to prohibit women from cutting hair.
The Emancipation Act passed by Japan's Diet outlaws discrimination against the burakumin—outcasts who live in thousands of segregated ghetto-like communities throughout the country, working at ill-paid, unskilled jobs in abbatoirs, tanneries, and the like that others shun, just as they have done since feudal times. Despite the new law, the untouchables will for more than a century be denied access to other jobs, forced to wear distinguishing clothes and hair styles, and barred from public schools and non-ghetto residential areas (see 1922).
A race riot at Los Angeles leaves more than a dozen Chinese dead and many injured (see San Francisco, 1871; 1877).
The Indian Appropriation Act passed by Congress March 3 makes Indians wards of the federal government and discontinues the practice of according full treaty status to agreements made with tribal leaders. The act does not abrogate existing treaties, but it forbids recognition of Indian tribes as nations or independent powers.
General George Crook, 41, assumes command of the army in Arizona Territory, uses other Apache as scouts, tracks down the Chiricahua Apache chief Cochise, and forces him to surrender (see 1862; 1872).
Dodge City, Kansas, has its beginnings in a sod house built on the Santa Fe Trail five miles west of Fort Dodge to serve buffalo hunters. The settlement will grow within a year into a town with a general store, three dance halls, and six saloons, and it will soon be shipping hundreds of thousands of buffalo hides, buffalo tongues, and buffalo hindquarters to market via the Santa Fe Railroad that will reach Dodge City next year (see 1868).
Birmingham, Alabama, is incorporated at a site surrounded by iron ore, coal, and limestone deposits that were exploited in the Civil War to produce Confederate cannonballs and rifles. The town takes its name from Birmingham, England.
An Arctic expedition financed by Congress and commanded by explorer Charles Francis Hall sails from New York June 29 with 33 people (including eight Eskimo men, women, and children) aboard the naval steamer Polaris (see 1864). Perhaps the world's first icebreaker, the ship passes through two channels separating northwestern Greenland from the northeastern Canadian Arctic and reaches 82°11' North before turning south and anchoring off Greenland at 81°37' N. After charting both coasts, Hall establishes a base camp, proceeds by sledge to 83° N., returns after 2 weeks, and dies at Thank God Harbor, Greenland, November 8 at age 51, possibly having been poisoned with arsenic by the ship's Prussian medical officer Emil Bessels. Some survivors will be rescued by a sealer off Labrador in late April 1873, 14 others by a whaler thereafter.
Kimberley is founded in South Africa and is soon the center of a great diamond industry (see 1867).
New York Herald correspondent Henry M. Stanley finds David Livingstone in late October at Ujiji on Lake Tanganyika (see 1869). "Dr. Livingstone, I presume," says Stanley (or so he will later claim), and he joins Livingstone in exploring the northern end of the lake, proving conclusively that the Rusizi River runs into the lake and not out of it (see 1874; Livingstone, 1873).
Paris banker Alphonse de Rothschild, 43, heads a syndicate that places "Liberation Bonds" whose proceeds will enable France to recover economically from the Franco-Prussian War.
A study undertaken to refute charges that British land ownership is excessively concentrated reveals that 710 landlords own one quarter of all the land in England and Wales, and that fewer than 5,000 people own three quarters of the land in the British Isles.
Parliament abolishes purchase of British Army commissions (see Cardigan, 1854).
Parliament legalizes British trade unions, but the measure put through by the Liberal government falls short of what trade unionists have demanded (see Trade-Union Act, 1875).
The U.S. Supreme Court overturns its 1870 decision in Hepburn v. Griswold and rules 5 to 4 May 1 in Knox v. Lee and Parker v. Davis that the Legal Tender Act of 1862 is indeed constitutional. President Grant has appointed Justices Joseph P. Bradley, 58, and William Strong, 62, to the court, and he is accused of having named them specifically for the purpose of overturning last year's ruling.
State supervision of grain warehouses begins in Illinois with the legislature setting maximum limits on the rates that can be charged for storage. Chicago Board of Trade member Ira Y. Munn, now 53, and his partner George L. Scott started a small grain-storage business in northern Illinois 27 years ago. Munn became president of the Board of Trade in 1860, futures trading began on the Board 5 years later, and by 1868 the Munn & Scott elevator on the Chicago River was one of the city's chief businesses (see Supreme Court decision, 1877).
The national bond market collapses following the great Chicago fire in October. Philadelphia banker Charles Tyson Yerkes, 34, has specialized in the sale of federal, state, and city bonds but finds himself unable to pay the city what he owes in monthly interest; he loses his fortune, is convicted officially of having embezzled $400,000 in city funds (but actually of giving preference in his payments to someone other than the city), and is sentenced to a 33-month prison term. Yerkes will serve only 7 before some prominent Philadelphians persuade the governor to grant him a pardon, and he will recoup by the mid-1870s (see transportation [Chicago street railways], 1886).
The Chicago fire in October destroys not only most of Chicago but also much of Minneapolis and St. Paul, forcing many insurance campanies to go out of business and leave their policyholders without coverage.
Japan establishes a new yen-based currency system June 29. Equitable taxation laws are instituted October 8.
Germany goes on the gold standard December 4.
The first commercial Russian oil wells begin pumping in the Baku suburb of Balakany on the Apsheron Peninsula that juts into the Caspian Sea (see 1823; 1873).
Brooklyn, New York, oilman Henry Huttleston Rogers, 31, patents machinery for separating naphtha from crude petroleum. He went into the Pennsylvania oil fields in 1861 and has been operating a Brooklyn refinery for the past 4 years with Charles Pratt, 41. Both will join John D. Rockefeller in 1874, and Rogers will push the idea he has originated of pipeline transportation (see 1864).
Kerosene prices drop 25 percent but Standard Oil Company declares a 40 percent dividend and has a small surplus left over (see 1870). John D. Rockefeller and Henry M. Flagler meet in secret with Lake Shore Railroad official Peter H. Watson at New York's St. Nicholas Hotel November 30 and agree to establish the South Improvement Company, a holding company whose member refineries will receive substantially higher rebates than those of other refiners. Thomas Scott of the Pennsylvania Railroad has come up with the idea for the new shell company, Watson becomes its president, and the Rockefeller group controls 900 of its 2,000 shares (see 1872).
The first steam-powered elevated railway begins operating at New York April 20 (see West Side Elevated, 1868).
The Pennsylvania Railroad establishes a connection to New York 2 years after gaining entry to Chicago and St. Louis (see 1857; Pennsylvania Station, 1910).
A collision August 26 on the single-track line at Boston's Revere Railroad Depot leaves 32 dead. No telegraph communication has alerted the locomotive engineers that another train was on the line, and the disaster brings demands for reforms. Chapters of Erie and Other Essays by Boston historian Charles Francis Adams Jr., is based on his studies of the uncontrolled speculation in and manipulation of stocks in America's overbuilt and corruptly financed railroads. Now 36, Adams has been horrified by the disaster at Boston's Revere Railroad Depot.
Congress charters the Texas & Pacific Railroad that will end the Chisholm Trail cattle drives. Its chief engineer is Union Pacific builder Grenville M. Dodge, but while the road's 1,800 miles of main line will extend from New Orleans to El Paso via Shreveport, Texarkana, Dallas, and Fort Worth, it will never reach the Pacific (see 1885). Texans drive 700,000 longhorns 700 miles from San Antonio north to the Abilene stockyards, moving at 12 miles per day through open, unsettled country that provides abundant grass and water for the livestock on the "Long Drive" up the Chisholm Trail (see 1870). J. G. McCoy of Abilene has been unable to collect on his contract with the Kansas Pacific, whose officers say they never anticipated such volume, but McCoy has become mayor of Abilene and has profited in real estate ventures and other enterprises.
The Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad has its beginnings in the Denver and Rio Grande (D&RG) that constructs a line south from Denver to Colorado Springs. It will reach Pueblo next year, the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe will reach Pueblo from the southeast in 1876, and competition will be fierce (see pooling agreement, 1880).
South American railroad builder Henry Meiggs wins a contract from Costa Rican president Tomas Guardia to construct a national railway from Port Limón on the Caribbean 149 miles up to the capital of San José in the Central Valley. Still engaged in building railroads up and down the Peruvian coast and into the Andes (see 1870), Meiggs enlists the help of his nephew Minor (Cooper) Keith, 23, who will import 1,500 workers from New Orleans but will soon lose his three brothers to yellow fever (at least 4,000 men will die on the project). Keith will run out of money after building 60 miles of track, but bananas that he plants in the valley behind Limón will establish a new source of funds. He will marry a daughter of former president José Maria Castro, and by 1883 he will be supplying bananas to companies in Costa Rica, Panama, Nicaragua, and Colombia, earning enough to complete his jungle railroad in 1890. It will remain in service for more than a century. Meiggs will bribe California legislators in 1874 to pass a law over the governor's veto that makes it illegal for a grand jury to convict him of offenses committed before 1855 (see Meiggs, 1877; United Fruit, 1899).
The Mont Cenis Tunnel that opens in September is the first great Alpine tunnel and will remain the world's largest until 1882. Built under the Fréjus Pass under the direction of Germain Sommeiller, it has taken 14 years of work using dynamite and an improved rock drill, is 8½ miles (13.7 kilometers) in length, and connects Modane, France, with the Italian town of Bardonecchia (see St. Gotthard Tunnel, 1882).
Onetime "railway king" George Hudson dies at London December 14 at age 71, having repeatedly been returned to Parliament until 1859 despite revelations of his fraudulent stock dealings.
The 3,807-ton White Star passenger liner R.M.S. Oceanic arrives off Sandy Hook from Liverpool on her maiden voyage March 31 after a 15-day crossing in which she has averaged 13.5 knots per day and docks at Jersey City (see Ismay, 1868). Some 50,000 New Yorkers take ferries across the Hudson to view the great ship, which is 420 feet long and 41 feet wide at the beam. Her grand saloon and great square parlor are placed squarely amidships, instead of high in the stern as has been the practice heretofore, and span the full width of the ship. The saloon has coal-burning fireplaces at each end with marble mantlepieces; the ship has 1,200 berths; she even has bathtubs, and she is joined within the year by identical sister ships—the Atlantic, Baltic, and Republic, with the slightly larger Adriatic and Celtic soon to follow (see R.M.S. Atlantic, 1873).
The New York ferryboat Westfield explodes July 11, killing 104 people. Her boiler was so corroded that "a knife blade could cut through the metal," but steamboat inspection remains lax and there are no rigorous design or maintenance codes.
The first full shipload of bananas lands at Boston July 28 aboard Dow Baker's 85-ton schooner Telegraph, 14 days out of Kingston, Jamaica (see 1870). Seaverns & Company sells the fruit on commission, and the firm's buyer Andrew W. Preston, 25, assures Baker that a market exists for all the bananas that he can obtain (see 1885).
Inventor and manufacturer Henry Burden dies of heart disease at suburban Troy, New York, January 19 at age 79, having acquired full ownership of the Troy Iron and Nail Factory. A patented machine of his design produced virtually all of the horseshoes used by the Union Army in the Civil War, he has become Troy's leading citizen, the upstate city has become one of America's most important manufacturing centers, and the partnership of H. Burden & Sons will continue for years as one of Troy's major industrial concerns.
The Bailey plane patented March 3 by Boston tool designer Leonard Bailey is another variation on the Falconer Plough Plane of 1846 (see 1855). Employed since 1869 by Stanley Rule and Level Company (later Stanley Tools), Bailey obtained a patent in 1867 on a plane whose cutter moved along a 45-degree angle by means of a forked lever that could be activated by a knob. All future U.S. flexible-sole woodworking planes will be based on Bailey's design, and he will be credited with inventing the adjustable frog—the bed on which a plane's cutter rests—and the cap iron, a thin piece of metal with a curved edge that is fastened to the cutting blade to keep it rigid. Stanley Rule has purchased Bailey's company, thereby acquiring rights to manufacture tools under his patents (see 1875).
Cincinnati's 12-year-old Diebold company gains a reputation for quality when 878 of its safes are discovered in the ruins of the Chicago fire with their contents unharmed. Diebold will move next year to Canton, Ohio, where coal is less expensive, the labor situation and railroad facilities more favorable, and high-quality brick building material easily available. Sound banks at Canton have used the firm's vaults and are happy to loan it money; Diebold will produce the world's largest bank vault in 1875 for Wells Fargo.
Samuel Colt redesigns his 1836 Colt revolver to extend its effective range (see 1851). There is little demand for his weapon, but inventor Colt promotes sales by having a Currier & Ives scene of a settler defending his home engraved on the gun barrel to encourage the notion that handguns are socially desirable.
The Prussian Army adopts the "Mauser Model 1871" breech-loading rifle in place of the Dreyse "needle gun" that it has used since 1848. Gunsmith Peter Paul Mauser, 33, will invent the Mauser magazine rifle in 1897.
Aluminum production begins at Gard, France, where the Salindres chemical plant employs the Sainte-Claire Deville process of 1855. A. R. (Alfred Rangod) Pechiney will assume management of the plant in 1877. Salindres will remain virtually the sole producer of aluminum for nearly 20 years, Pechiney will establish an alumina plant at Gardanne in 1893, and Salindres will rename itself Pechiney in 1950 (see Hall, 1886).
Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex by Charles Darwin concludes that man evolved from ape- or monkey-like ancestors in Africa, probably 26 to 54 million years ago (see 1859). Published at London February 24, the book draws sharp criticism from Christian fundamentalists (see Scopes, 1925).
A prehistoric pterodactyl skeleton is identified for the first time by Lockport, New York-born Yale vertebrate paleontologist Othniel (Charles) Marsh, 39. A nephew of the late London financier and philanthropist George Peabody (who left him a bequest), Marsh is the first U.S. paleontologist. He has led the second annual Yale Scientific Expedition to explore Pliocene deposits on the western plains dating from between 2.5 million and 7 million B.C., and the party has discovered the first U.S. remains of the flying reptile.
Archaeological excavations begin October 11 on the hill of Hissarlik, thought by some to be the site of ancient Troy. German-born pastor's son Heinrich Schliemann, now 51, began his business career as a grocery clerk at St. Petersburg, acquired U.S. citizenship in California in 1850, amassed a large fortune in the next 13 years through usurious banking, speculation, and Crimean War profiteering in indigo and saltpeter, and has devoted himself in the past 2 years to studying sites mentioned in the writings of Homer. He divorced his second wife and married a Greek girl of 16 in September 1868 after studying photographs of possible candidates (she frankly admitted that she was marrying him to please her parents and because he was so rich), and has helped her learn French and German (she will later teach herself English as well). Sophia Engastrontenos Schliemann helps her husband in his work. He will persuade German archaeologist Wilhelm Dörpfeld, now 17, to assist him. The Schliemanns will antagonize professionals with their destructive, amateur diggings, their claim to have found Priam's city will prove questionable, but in 1874 they will uncover at Mycenae the world's greatest golden treasure trove.
Mathematician and computer pioneer Charles Babbage dies at London October 18 at age 79, having lost most of his friends through his irascibility.
Carl F. W. Ludwig at Leipzig and Boston-born physiologist Henry Pickering Bowditch, 31, formulate a law about cardiac muscle action, stating that the heart muscle will, under whatever stimulus, contract to the fullest extent or not at all (see 1867).
Congress establishes the position of Surgeon General of the United States. The post will be largely ceremonial for many years until some appointees make it a bully pulpit for improving public health (see 1964).
Utah Territory authorities arrest Mormon leader Brigham Young on charges of polygamy at Salt Lake City; now 70, he has 27 wives (see 1847). The polygamy issue will delay Utah statehood until 1896.
A Kulturkampf against Roman Catholics begins in Prussia (see Jesuits, 1872).
The Vatican excommunicates Roman Catholic theologian Johann von Döllinger for his opposition last year to the doctrine of papal infallibility; elected rector of Munich University, Döllinger joins with his colleagues to convene a congress at Munich September 21 that opposes the Vatican council's dogmas, attracting some 300 Old Catholics (Altkatholiken) along with Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, and Lutheran sympathizers. Döllinger is a member of the committee that devises a program with a doctrinal basis for a separate organization that will maintain traditions in opposition to the Ultramontanists who support infallibility.
The Austro-Hungarian emperor Franz Josef recognizes the Orthodox Hungarian Satmar hasidic sect as representatives of the realm's Jewish community. Begun in opposition to liberalizing and Reformist tendencies in Judaism, the sect will grow to have followers throughout Bohemia and Romania as well as in Hungary (see New York, 1947).
Japan reorganizes her ministry of education to promote universal, compulsory, fee-paid education.
Keio University opens at Shiba Mita in Tokyo under the direction of educator-author Yukichi Fukuzawa, now 37. Japan's first private college, the university will be certified as such in 1890.
Smith College is established at Northampton, Massachusetts, near Amherst. The late Sophia Smith inherited a fortune from her brother Austin in 1861, having outlived five other siblings, and when she died last year at age 73 left $393,105 to endow a college for women that will open in 1875. Deaf beginning at age 40, Smith had planned originally to found a school for deaf mutes, but after such a school was started by someone else in 1868 she decided instead to endow a college for women (see 1875).
Newnham College has its beginnings in Merton Hall, opened in the village of Newnham outside Cambridge for women who come to attend lectures in preparation for the new examination (see 1869). Millicent Garrett Fawcett, now 24, is one of the founders, as is Liverpool-born educator and feminist Jemima Clough, now 51, who begins with five students and will remain principal of the college until her death in 1892. Students are allowed to study for as short or as long a period as they wish, and to take what exams they like or none at all, an arrangement condemned by Emily Davies, who says women should be offered no such "soft" options and makes Greek compulsory. Newnham Hall will be built in 1875, and by the end of the decade half of Newnham's students will be taking the tripos (final examinations) in mathematics or the classics, but many women will hate the school because it repudiates the accepted role of a middle-class woman and is thought to violate the laws of God, of health, and of social conduct.
Cables laid from Vladivostok to Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Singapore via Nagasaki speed communications in the Far East.
The first regular Japanese government postal service begins between Tokyo and Osaka.
Metal type and printing presses are introduced into Japan and the first Japanese daily newspaper begins publication.
The Chicago Tribune resumes publication 2 days after the great October fire that has destroyed its building (see 1855). The reborn paper carries Joseph Medill's editorial "Cheer Up." Medill runs for mayor on the Republican "Fireproof" ticket; he wins, will work to remove the municipal government from politics, and in 1874 will buy a majority of the Tribune Company stock.
The Chicago Times does not resume publication until October 18; the fire destroyed its 5-year-old five-story plant, tempting publisher Wilbur F. Storey to retire, but he uses improvised equipment, will have a fireproof building completed in 1873, and establish a London bureau in 1877.
Nonfiction: The Dialogues of Plato by Oxford professor Benjamin Jowett, now 54, whose lectures have stimulated interest in the Greek philosopher and who last year was elected master of Oxford's Balliol College. His translation establishes him as one of the great classical scholars of his day; Fors Clavigera by John Ruskin, whose moralistic essays in the form of letters addressed to workingmen and laborers will appear under that title until 1884, supporting ideas such as labor organizations, old age pensions, and a national system of education; Self-Help, with Illustrations of Character and Conduct by Samuel Smiles, whose work is based on a series of lectures given to young men at Leeds and will have sales of 250,000 copies by the end of the century; Wake-Robin by Roxbury, New York-born naturalist-author John Burroughs, 34, whose title has been suggested by his Washington, D.C., friend Walt Whitman.
Author-educator George Ticknor dies at Boston January 26 at age 79, leaving his vast collection of books on Spain to the Boston Public Library that he helped to found in 1852; author-encyclopaedia cofounder Robert Chambers dies at St. Andrews, Fifeshire, March 17 at age 68.
Fiction: The Possessed or The Demons (Besy) by Fedor Dostoievsky; Checkmate by Joseph Le Fanu; The Cryptogram by James De Mille, who since 1864 has been professor of English at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Novelist Philippe Aubert de Gaspé dies at his native Quebec January 29 at age 84.
Poetry: Pacific Poems and Songs of the Sierras by Joaquin Miller, who has journeyed to London, met William Rossetti, and cut a figure with his frontier costumes and manners. His poem "Columbus" ("On, sail on!") will become familiar to millions of U.S. schoolchildren; "There was a little girl,/ Who had a little curl/ Right in the middle of her forehead;/ And when she was good/ She was very, very good,/ But when she was bad she was horrid," writes Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, now 64.
Juvenile: A Dog of Flanders by Ouida; Tattered Tom by Horatio Alger, who begins a new series; Little Men by Louisa May Alcott.
London's Slade School of Fine Arts opens at University College under the direction of classical painter Edward Poynter, now 35, who will establish the school's tradition of placing emphasis on drawing from the nude. When Yorkshire collector and patron Felix Slade died March 29, 1868, at age 77 he left the bulk of his art collection to the British Museum while leaving £35,000 to endow professorships for lectures to general audiences at Oxford, Cambridge, plus one at University College for practical teaching in painting, sculpture, and the graphic arts. The Slade has six art scholarships endowed under its benefactor's will, and it will grow to be one of the world's most prestigious art schools.
Painting: Crystal Palace, London by Camille Pissarro, who marries his mother's former maid. She has borne two of the seven children she will have by Pissarro; they return to France, where they find that his house at Louveciennes has been looted; The Dream of Dante by Dante Gabriel Rossetti; Max Schmitt in a Single Scull (The Champion in Single Sculls) by Paris-trained Philadelphia painter Thomas Eakins, 27; Woodland Scene by George Inness; The Parthenon by Frederick Edwin Church.
British inventor Richard L. (Leach) Maddox, 55, makes an emulsion of silver bromide using gelatin in place of collodion (see Sayce and Bolton, 1864). Gelatin emulsions reduce the exposure time a photographer needs from 15 seconds to as little as 1/200th of a second, and Maddox's lead will be followed by J. Kennett, who will market a dry, washed emulsion that a photographer can dissolve in water and use as a coating on glass to produce his or her own photographic plates (see Bolton, 1874).
Theater: The Forest (Les) by Aleksandr Ostrovsky 11/1 at St. Petersburg's Alexandrinsky Theater, with Prov Sadovsky; The Bells by English playwright Leopold Lewis (who has adapted the French melodrama Le Juif Polonaise) 11/25 at London's Lyceum Theatre, with Glastonbury-born English actor Henry Irving (originally John Henry Brodribb), 33, who gains star status for the first time with his performance as the complex villain Mathias. He has been acting since age 18 at Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, Glasgow, and Edinburgh as well as at London and will be Britain's most outstanding thespian for decades.
Barnum's Circus opens at Brooklyn, New York, and "The Greatest Show on Earth" grosses $400,000 in its first season. Showman P. T. Barnum has made a fortune promoting Jenny Lind (see music, 1850), will enlarge his show to two rings next year and make it the first circus to travel the country by rail (using 65 railcars), and by 1874 will be playing to 20,000 people per day, charging 50¢ and taking in twice his huge $5,100-per-day operating cost (see Barnum & Bailey, 1881).
Playwright-producer-director Thomas W. Robertson dies at London February 3 at age 42, having created new staging methods; magician Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin dies at St. Gervais, near his native Blois, June 13 at age 65 (see Houdini, 1900).
Opera: Indigo and the Forty Thieves 2/10 at Vienna's Theatre-an-der-Wien, with music by Johann Strauss, who includes his waltz "Ja, so singt man in der stadt wo ich geboren bin"; Aïda 12/24 at the Cairo Opera House, with music by Giuseppe Verdi, who completed it too late for the Suez Canal opening in 1869 and whose premiere has been delayed by the Franco-Prussian War.
Dancer-choreographer Filippo Taglioni dies at Como February 11 at age 93, having developed the Romantic style of ballet; composer Daniel-François-Esprit Auber dies at Paris May 12 at age 89, having written 48 operas.
Stage musical: Thespis or The Gods Grown Old 12/26 at London's 1,500-seat Gaiety Theatre, with music by Arthur S. Sullivan, book and lyrics by London barrister William Schwenck Gilbert, 35, 64 performances. The burlesque is the first Gilbert and Sullivan collaboration.
Hymn: "Onward Christian Soldiers" by Arthur S. Sullivan, lyrics by London clergyman Sabine Baring-Gould, 37.
Popular song: "Chopsticks" ("The Celebrated Chop Waltz") by English composer Arthur de Lulli (Euphemia Allen), 16.
London's Albert Hall (The Royal Albert Hall of Arts and Sciences) opens with seating for 6,036. Sir Henry Cole, chairman of the Society of Arts, has arranged financing for the immense, oval-shaped concert hall, partly by offering 999-year leases on choice seats, but the memorial to the late Prince Albert will be notorious for its poor acoustics until modifications are made in the late 1960s.
Piano manufacturer Henry E. Steinway dies at New York February 7 at age 73. His oldest surviving son, Theodore, 45, and fourth son, William, 35, take over the family concern.
The British yacht Livonia loses 4 to 1 in its bid to regain the America's Cup in ocean racing. The U.S. defenders Columbia and Sappho win two races each.
Poker is introduced to Queen Victoria at a royal party in Somerset by U.S. ambassador to Great Britain Robert Cumming Schenck, 62, who shows the queen how to play and at her request writes down the rules, the first written codification of the game (see 1821). Phrases such as ace in the hole, bluff, call a bluff, stand pat, four-flush, and pass the buck will be derived from poker.
Paris couturier Charles Frederick Worth reopens the atelier at 7, rue de la Paix that he started in 1858 (it served as a military hospital during the war with Prussia). His financial partner Otto Bobergh retires, Worth soon has 1,200 workers on his payroll, his customers are now mostly Americans, Britons, Italians, Russians, and Swedes, and by the 1880s he will be the authority not only in fashion but in all questions of taste, producing 6,000 to 7,000 gowns and 4,000 outer garments each year, paying as much attention to the quality and detail on the inside of a garment as to the outside, using the finest fabrics he can find, and sometimes buying a Lyons silk mill's output for an entire year. The Maison Worth will soon be supplying gowns to every royal court in Europe (including that of Queen Victoria), and selling to the nouveau riche not only of Europe and Britain but also of the United States (Astors, Carnegies, Rockefellers, and Vanderbilts will find its prices far lower than those charged in New York) (see 1895).
Bentwood furniture pioneer Michael Thonet dies at Vienna March 3 at age 74, having gained renown for his solid bentwood rocking chairs, hat stands, and settees (see 1851). His sons carry on the 18-year-old firm Gebrüder Thonet, which last year produced some 400,000 low-priced, utilitarian pieces, and will open new factories (see café chair, 1876).
The National Rifle Association founded at New York November 24 by former Union Army officers to encourage marksmanship and gun safety will become a potent political lobby of "sportsmen" with their own interpretations of the Constitution's Second Amendment. Civil War soldiers were often poorly trained and barely able to use their weapons; many returned home with their weapons, making America the most heavily armed nation in the world.
Fire consumes the Tuileries Palace at Paris during the "Bloody Week" in May, and much of the Louvre Palace is gutted.
The Chicago Fire that rages for 30 hours from October 8 to 9 destroys 3½ square miles of the largely wood-built city, destroying nearly 18,000 structures, killing perhaps 250 people and leaving 100,000 homeless. It has allegedly been started on the warm Sunday evening in DeKoven Street on the Southwest Side by a cow kicking over a kerosene lantern belonging to one Catherine (Mrs. Patrick) O'Leary, a working-class wife with five children, and did, in fact, start in the O'Leary barn (but she would hardly have been milking a cow at 9 o'clock at night). The city's new water tower survives, but burned to the ground in the general conflagration is the Palmer House, a $3.5-million hostelry built by local merchant Potter Palmer, now 45, who has made a fortune from dry goods and cotton during the Civil War and has put up the grand hotel as a wedding present for his Louisville-born bride, Bertha (née Honoré), now 22. Although he also loses most of his other 31 buildings, she persuades him not to leave Chicago but rather to stay and help rebuild it; he will borrow $1.7 million, erect larger buildings (including an even more luxurious new Palmer House), and turn the swampland north of the city's commercial district into the Lake Shore Drive area; she will become the city's society queen, as prominent as Mrs. Astor in New York, while making it fashionable for women to give their time and money to civic and charitable causes (see philanthropy, 1889).
Sparks from the Chicago Fire start forest fires that destroy more than a million acres of Michigan and Wisconsin timberland. They continue from October 8 to October 14, killing at least 1,200 people (and possibly 1,500) in the logging town of Peshtigo, Wisconsin, and in 16 surrounding communities, making this the worst fire tragedy in the recorded history of North America.
Passenger pigeons nesting in Wisconsin occupy 750 square miles and will continue such mass nestings until 1878 despite the great October fire, but fewer and fewer migratory birds return to their old habitats, possibly because market hunters have taken too large a toll, possibly because wetlands covering an area greater than New England are being drained and forests being cleared for farms and for fuel (see 1878).
Ice traps the U.S. Arctic whaling fleet at the end of August in the earliest winter anyone can remember. All but seven of 39 vessels are frozen fast, New Bedford loses $1.5 million in shipping, but the surviving ships are able to carry all 1,200 men of the fleet safely back to New England ports.
President Grant signs a congressional resolution "for the protection and preservation of the food fishes of the coasts of the United States" and names Spencer F. Baird to head a new U.S. Fish Commission.
The U.S. Fish Commission engages fish culturist Seth Green to transport newly-hatched Hudson River shad fry in eight large cans from Rochester, New York, across the continent to Tehama, California, where the fish (losa sapidissima) are released into the Sacramento River. Nearly two-thirds of the fry have survived the 7-day trip and within 9 years they will be spawning in Oregon's Umpqoua and Coos rivers, spawning in the river at San Francisco in April just as they do in the Hudson, but the fish will be popular on the West Coast only for its roe (see 1885; salmon, 1875).
Rancher Charles Goodnight works with John Chisum to clear a profit of $17,000 driving cattle north from Texas (see 1867). He established his Rock Canon Ranch 2 years ago on the Arkansas River five miles west of Pueblo, registered a PAT brand for his longhorns, has been using irrigation to farm, and has invested heavily in farmland and city lots. He joins with some neighbors in November to form the Colorado Territory's first stock raisers' association (see 1876).
U.S. wheat and flour exports total 50 million bushels, while corn exports total 8 million.
Germany raises tariff barriers against food imports in a move to remain independent of France or any other country in food supply. German wheat prices will nevertheless fall 27 percent in the next 20 years and will fall 30 percent in Sweden, ruining many farmers and encouraging emigration to America.
Land planted to grain in Britain will decline by more than 25 percent in the next three decades as railroads open up the western United States, making it unprofitable for British farmers to compete.
The Paris department store Au Bon Marché distributes free food to the poor during the siege of the city (see retail commerce, 1852; 1876).
Dutch margarine production begins in the spring at Oss in North Brabant as local butter merchants Jan and Anton Jurgens open the world's first fully operative margarine factory. Jan and his brother Henri have visited Paris in the wake of the Franco-Prussian War and met with Hippolyte Mège-Mouries in his laboratory at Pantin (see 1869); Mège agreed to show them his process, knowing that sooner or later they would be able to develop a similar process themselves. The Jurgens brothers acquired rights from Mège for 60,000 francs per year but found that his process was still primitive and have improved on it to create a product that they market under the name "butterine." British butter prices began rising in the 1860s when an outbreak of cattle disease produced a severe shortage of domestic butter, the Jurgens and other Dutch firms have benefited from increased British imports, but only the richest Britons can afford butter at 2s/lb., and the needs of working-class Britons have increased interest in a butter substitute (see United States, 1881; Jurgens, 1883).
C. A. Pillsbury & Company is founded by Minneapolis miller Charles Alfred Pillsbury, 29, with his brother Fred, their father, George, 53, and their uncle John Sargent Pillsbury, 43, a hardware merchant who will serve as governor of Minnesota from 1875 to 1881. The New Hampshire-born founder came to Minneapolis 2 years ago, leased a small flour mill, increased its daily capacity from 150 barrels to 200 by improving its equipment, has turned a profit of $6,000, and uses the money to start the new firm (see Pillsbury's Best XXXX, 1872). Millwright George T. Smith, 30, has made improvements in the 1865 LeCroix middlings purifier, employing a traveling brush that keeps the cloth clean and thus permits better control of air currents. C. A. Pillsbury & Company persuades Smith to join it as chief miller. George H. Christian retains Edmund LeCroix to install purifiers in the Minneapolis flour mill set up by C. C. Colden in 1866, and it becomes the first large mill to be so equipped (see 1874).
Glasgow grocer Thomas Johnstone Lipton, 21, opens his first shop May 10 (his birthday) on the ground floor of a Stobcross Street tenement. Lipton sailed to America at age 17, worked in Carolina rice fields, learned about merchandising while employed in the grocery section of a New York department store, returned earlier in the year with an American rocking chair and barrel of flour for his mother, but could not persuade his Irish-born parents to back him in a shop of his own. He has bought hams from a ship damaged by a storm, resold them at a profit of £18, and begins business, undercutting the competition by offering hams at 5 pence per pound. Wearing white overalls and an apron, he has profits of £2 6s. the first day, works long hours, hangs a painted wooden ham over his door, attracts customers with cartoons in his windows, and then has two fat pigs driven through the streets of Glasgow, stopping traffic: painted on the pigs' scrubbed sides are the words, "I'm going to Lipton's, The Best Shop In Town for British Bacon." By year's end Lipton has opened a second shop in High Street and will soon have shops in Edinburgh, Liverpool, London, and Manchester (see 1879; tea, 1890).
George F. Gilman and Huntington Hartford of the A&P send emergency rail shipments of tea and coffee to Chicago, most of whose grocery stores have burnt in the great October fire (see 1869). They also send employees to open A&P stores in the Midwest (see 1880).
New Orleans restaurant owner Antoine Alciatore sails for Marseilles, leaving Antoine's in the hands of his wife, Julie (see 1868). Now 61 and fatally ill, he will die within a year.
The Dominion of Canada created in 1867 takes its first census. The nation has 1,082,940 French; 846,000 Irish; 706,000 English; 549,946 Scots; and 202,000 Germans (see Ukrainians, 1891).
The U.S. population reaches roughly 39 million while Germany has 41 million, France 36.1 (with 1.8 million in Paris), Italy 26.8, Great Britain 26, Ireland 5.4, Japan 33, and Brazil 10 million, including 1.5 million slaves.
Abortion is punishable by up to 5 years in prison under the criminal code enacted by the new German Empire.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton calls infanticide and abortion "disgusting and degrading crimes" but does not condemn women for resorting to them, saying the problem lies in men being unable to control their desires and women's inability to resist.
1871 1872 1873 1874 1875 1876 1877 1878 1879 1880
