1871 1872 1873 1874 1875 1876 1877 1878 1879 1880
Britain's Conservatives suffer a crushing defeat in the general elections March 8 as voters blame the Tories for increased taxes and loss of trade; Lord Beaconsfield (Benjamin Disraeli), now 75, resigns April 18 (he has only 1 year to live), William Gladstone's Liberals will hold office until 1885, but Gladstone does not share the imperialist ideas of Disraeli and Queen Victoria, who accepts him as her prime minister only with reluctance.
France grants amnesty to those arrested and sentenced after the fall of the Paris Commune 9 years ago.
Bulgaria's Prince Aleksandr I dissolves the national assembly in an effort to undermine the state's constitution, which he considers far too liberal (see 1878; 1881).
Afghan leader Abdur Rahman gains recognition as emir July 22 in a durbar held at Kabul (see 1879). The Battle of Kandahar September 1 ends in a decisive victory for British troops under the command of General Frederick Sleigh Roberts over Afghan forces led by the Abdur Rahman's rival emir Ayub Khan in the Second Afghan War (see 1879). The British grant Abdur Rahman an annual subsidy, weaponry, and a guarantee of military support should any foreign power invade his territory without provocation, Abdur Rahman agrees to make no foreign-policy decisions without approval from London. The British in the next few years will be engaged in nonstop combat with fierce Chitrali, Pathan, and Waziri tribesmen on India's Northwest Frontier (see Durand Line, 1893).
France annexes the island of Tahiti in the South Pacific.
Moroccan independence gains recognition July 3 in the Madrid Convention signed by the leading European powers and the United States.
British and French authorities in Egypt impose the Law of Liquidation in July, dividing annual revenues into two roughly equal parts with one being assigned to the Caisse de la Dette (see Baring, 1879). The Assembly of Delegates is dissolved, but nationalists push for independence from British and French rule (see Arabi, 1881).
French Equatorial Africa has its beginnings in a protectorate established by Italian-born French naval officer Pierre (-Paul-François-Camille) Savorgnan de Brazza, 28. He explored the Ogowe (Ogooué) River from the Gabon coast to the interior from October 1875 to November 1878, the navy has ordered him back up the river, and he signs treaties with the Anziku king Iloo and the Bateke king Makoko, pointing out the advantages of being under the French flag and having support against attacks from rival tribes (see 1884; French Congo, 1891).
Transvaal farmer Pieter Arnoldus Cronjé, 44, begins a rebellion against British rule in November, gathering Afrikaan followers to resist the seizure of a fellow farmer's property after the man has refused to pay taxes; a Boer Republic independent of Britain's Cape Colony is proclaimed December 30 by politician Paul Kruger, 55 (see 1881).
Mexico's president Díaz engineers the election of his onetime general Manuel González, 47, to the presidency while continuing to control the government from behind the scenes, granting railroad and mining concessions to foreign capitalists and allowing large landowners to increase their holdings at the expense of poor mestizos and Indians, but the introduction of new nickel coins in an effort to rehabilitate the currency will bring on inflation and Díaz will distance himself from President González (see 1884).
Colombian politician Rafael Nuñez, 54, wins election as president for the first time, having failed in a presidential bid 4 years ago. Nuñez helped to draft the nation's first Liberal constitution in 1853, served in the cabinets of several presidents, went to Europe in 1863, studied other forms of government, gave up his radical ideas, and returned to Colombia in 1875. Moderates from both the Liberal and Conservative parties have supported his candidacy, and he will hold office until 1882.
Argentina's president Nicolás Avellaneda steps down after a 6-year term in which he has tried to cope with financial issues created in large part by the European economic crisis that began in 1873. General Julio Argentino Roca gained victory last year over Native Americans to end a long series of wars. He is a national hero and wins election to the presidency, which he will hold until 1886, and although his triumph at the polls produces a brief rebellion at Buenos Aires, it is quickly suppressed; the city is proclaimed a federal territory and made the national capital, while a new capital for the province of Buenos Aires is established at La Plata.
"War is hell," says General William Tecumseh Sherman, now 60, in an address to a Columbus, Ohio, reunion of the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR). "There is many a boy here who looks on war as all glory, but, boys, it is all hell. You can bear this warning voice to generations yet to come."
Old guard Republican "Stalwarts" try to gain a third term for President Grant, a deadlocked Grand Old Party (GOP) convention selects former Civil War general James Abram Garfield, 48, of Ohio on the 36th ballot. He wins 214 electoral votes to 155 for the Democrats, beating war hero Winfield S. Hancock, 56, by only 9,464 votes (but see 1881).
A federal circuit court calls Tennessee's 1875 "Jim Crow" law unconstitutional (but see 1881).
Japanese mistresses cease to enjoy official recognition under a new law (see 1870), but many men, including the emperor, continue to take mistresses, just as in Europe. Famous geisha sometimes become mistresses to rich noblemen.
Reformer Lucretia Mott dies at her home outside Philadelphia November 11 at age 87.
Pierre is founded in June as the western terminus of the Chicago and North Western Railway in what will become South Dakota 9 years hence (see 1743). Initially called Mato (Sioux for bear), it is renamed in December for the 18th century French fur trader Pierre Chouteau.
Juneau, Alaska, is founded by prospector Joe Juneau, who strikes gold in the area (see 1861; 1886).
California pioneer Johann Sutter dies bankrupt at Washington, D.C., June 18 at age 77. His fortunes declined after gold was discovered on his property in 1848 and prospectors overran his land, and he has been seeking financial relief from the federal government.
The United States has more than 100 millionaires, up from fewer than 20 in 1840 (see 1892).
The word boycott enters the English language through an incident in Ireland's County Mayo. Tenant farmers organized by the Irish Land League refuse to harvest crops on estates managed by Charles Cunningham Boycott, 48, a retired British Army captain (see Davitt, 1879). Boycott has tried to serve writs of eviction on tenants who insisted that he must reduce rents by 25 percent in light of the poor harvest. Land League president Charles Stewart Parnell urges tenants to desist from violence but avoid communicating with those who refuse their demands for lower rents. Captain Boycott is obliged to bring in workers from Ulster to harvest his crops under military guard. The Land League wages a campaign of economic and social ostracism against absentee landlords and their agents, Boycott leaves Ireland later in the year, but the word boycott will take on a wider meaning as a weapon in economic warfare (see Parnell, 1881).
Parliament passes Britain's first Employers' Liability Act September 13, granting compensations to workers for injuries.
De Beers Mining Corp. is founded by English diamond mine operator Cecil (John) Rhodes and Hamburg-born speculator Alfred Beit, both 27, to keep the market from being flooded by cheap "brilliants." Beit came to Johannesburg 4 years ago and controls the South African financial house Wernher, Beit & Company, whose connections with the Rothschild family and Dresdner Bank will help Rhodes and him to make fortunes. Barnato Diamond Mining Company is founded by onetime cockney London music-hall magician Barney Barnato (originally Barnett Isaacs), 28, who made a living as a comedian, boxer, and gambler before coming to South Africa 7 years ago with his brother Henry, now 30, and a small circus. He paid a high price some time later for the broken-down old horse of a retiring "koppie walloper" (a buyer who goes from hole to hole in the diamond "koppies," or hills, to buy from small diggers). The koppie walloper would not name his sellers, but Barnato guessed correctly that the horse would stop out of habit at every shack on his old route, giving its new owner an entrée to the business (see 1889).
Japan's Fuji Bank is founded at Tokyo, the Mitsubishi Bank is founded, and the Bank of Tokyo has its beginnings in the Yokohama Specie Bank.
Some 539,000 Singer sewing machines are sold, up from 250,000 in 1875 (see 1863; 1889).
Thomas Edison obtains a patent on his 1879 incandescent bulb (see Owens, 1903; Langmuir, 1912).
Electricity lights all of Wabash, Indiana, in an April demonstration of the Brush arc-light system, and a mile of New York's Broadway is illuminated by Brush arc lights December 20 (see 1879). But arc lights are glary and emit dangerous gases, making them unsuitable for indoor use.
Wood remains a major source of energy in the United States, but use of firewood begins to decline.
Dutch-born East Sumatra Tobacco Company chief executive officer Aeilko Jans Zijlker, 50, inspects his fields near the village of Pangkalan Brandan and discovers small pools of oil which the local inhabitants are using to light torches at night (see Reerink, 1872). Finding the oil to be rich in paraffin that can be used for kerosene, Zijlker will obtain the Telaga Said Mining Concession in 1883, bring in a successful well with help from the Dutch colonial government at Batavia in 1884, and go on to have some additional successes that will make Indonesia look like a promising new energy source. His first well will continue to produce oil for half a century (see Royal Dutch, 1890).
Petroleum pioneer Edwin L. Drake dies at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, November 8 at age 61.
New York financier Jay Gould buys up stock in the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railroad and makes himself president in January.
A pooling agreement signed February 2 resolves disputes among the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe, the Union Pacific, the Kansas Pacific, and the Denver Rio Grande and Western. The Denver, Rio Grande obtains exclusive rights to build a line from Pueblo through the Royal Gorge to Leadville via a three-foot narrow-gauge line, pays the Santa Fe $1.4 million for work done by the Santa Fe on the Royal Gorge, and agrees not to build a line to Santa Fe provided that the Atchison, Topeka keeps out of Denver and Leadville with its standard 56.5-inch track (see Moffat Tunnel, 1928).
The "Chattanooga Choo-Choo" gets its name March 5 from a newspaper reporter covering the resumption of through passenger service between North and South (see 1877). A Cincinnati Southern Railroad woodburner chugs out of Cincinnati and passes through Chattanooga, Tennessee, en route to New Orleans.
Elevated steam trains rumble up and down New York's Second, Third, Sixth, and Ninth avenues.
Parliament adopts Greenwich Mean Time officially August 2. Originally set up to aid naval navigation, it now becomes Britain's national standard, replacing local times in major towns and cities to standardize railroad schedules (see U.S., 1883).
Ship builder Donald McKay dies at Hamilton, Massachusetts, September 20 at age 70. His 11-year-old Glory of the Seas will continue to sail until 1923.
An effort to dig a tunnel beneath the English Channel ends after 1.5 miles; no tunnel will be completed until 1994.
A bush roller chain patented by Swiss-born Manchester mechanical engineer Hans Renold, 26, improves on the James Slater drive chain of 1864 and transforms the potential of the chain industry. Having acquired Slater's small textile machine chain factory at Salford, Renold has devised a chain with an arrangement of bushes that provide a much greater load-bearing surface than did the Slater chain (see safety bicycle, 1885).
E. I. du Pont de Nemours chemist Lammot du Pont, now 49, establishes the Repauno Chemical Company at Repauno, New Jersey, to make dynamite (see du Pont, 1861; Nobel, 1866).
Rubber manufacturer Stephen Moulton dies at his Bradford-on-Avon home in Wiltshire April 26 at age 85, having helped pioneer the industry in Britain; Winchester Repeating Arms Company founder Oliver F. Winchester dies at New Haven December 11 at age 70; mechanical engineer and pump manufacturer Henry R. Worthington at his native New York December 17 at age 63.
The bacillus of typhoid fever is identified simultaneously by German bacteriologist Karl J. (Joseph) Eberth, 45, and Robert Koch, who has accepted an appointment to head a Berlin University laboratory (see 1877; Budd, 1873). The bacillus will be named Eberthelia typhi, and German bacteriologist G. T. A. Gaffky, now 30, will confirm in 1884 that it is the agent of typhoid fever (see Wright, 1896).
Robert Koch discovers a vaccine against anthrax through the accident of an assistant (see 1881).
Chemist-geologist Charles T. Jackson dies in a Somerville, Massachusetts, mental asylum August 28 at age 75, having lost his mind in 1873.
French Army physician (Charles-Louis-) Alphonse Laveran, 35, in Algeria traces malaria to a blood parasite. He has conducted autopsies on malaria victims, observes under his microscope November 6 that their erythrocytes contain circular and cylindrical bodies with moving filaments, or flagella, and names the protozoan Oscillaria malariae (it replicates inside any organism it enters and will later be renamed Plasmodium). Laveran presents his discovery November 23 to the Academy of Medicine at Paris, but other scientists find his microscopic studies hard to replicate and it will take a few years to persuade them that bacteria are not responsible for spreading the disease that will continue into the 21st century to be a leading cause of death in much of the world (see Ross, 1897).
Italian nun Frances Xavier Cabrini, 30, founds the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart and is named mother superior of the new order. Mother Cabrini, who took her vows 3 years ago, is assigned by the Church to supervise an orphanage at Codogno. By 1887 her order will have seven convents, and the following year it will gain formal recognition from the Vatican (see 1889).
English-born U.S. Methodist preacher and temperance lecturer Anna Howard Shaw, 33, wins ordination as a minister of the Methodist Protestant Church. She used the proceeds of lecture fees to finance her studies at Boston University divinity school, will be pastor of two Cape Cod churches, and will obtain an M.D. from Boston University's medical school in 1886 before resigning to devote all of her efforts to woman suffrage (see 1916).
Women account for 32 percent of all U.S. college undergraduates, up from 21 percent in 1870 (see 1910).
Women account for 60 percent of the teachers in U.S. elementary and secondary schools, up from 25 percent before the Civil War.
For the first time high schools for girls open in Britain.
France opens her first secondary schools for girls.
Parcel Post service begins in Britain (see United States, 1913).
The first British telephone directory is issued January 15 by the London Telephone Company. It lists 255 names.
The photophone invented by Alexander Graham Bell transmits a voice signal on a beam of light (see science [Tyndall], 1854). He focuses sunlight with a mirror and speaks into a mechanism that vibrates the mirror, a detector at the receiving end picks up the vibrating beam and decodes it back into a voice; Bell transmits the first wireless telephone message on his photophone June 3, and although the device works only on sunny days and in ideal conditions it presages communication by optical fiber (see Hertz, 1887; Snitzer, 1961).
The Kansas City Evening Star begins publication in September. Indiana-born publisher William Rockhill Nelson, 39, is a lawyer who managed Samuel J. Tilden's campaign in his home state before buying the Fort Wayne Sentinel 2 years ago in partnership with Samuel E. Morss, who joins him in starting the new venture but will soon sell his interest to Nelson, who will increase circulation from an initial 3,000 to 50,000 by 1893 as he gains a reputation for campaigning against election fraud and other municipal corruption (see Times, 1901).
Higgins Ink is introduced by Brooklyn, New York, manufacturer Charles M. Higgins, who has succeeded in producing a carbon-based India ink that does not lose its consistency if kept from air and if thinned with water can be used for writing.
The Girl's Own Paper begins publication in January at London under the aegis of the Religious Tract Society. It will enjoy far more success than The Boy's Own Paper introduced last year, and by 1884 will have the largest circulation of any illustrated English magazine.
Leslie's Illustrated founder Frank Leslie dies at New York January 10 at age 59, leaving more than $250,000 in debts. His widow, Miriam, takes over his publications; Toronto Globe founder-publisher George Brown is shot to death May 9 at age 61 by an employee whom he has sacked; New York Tribune literary editor and social reformer George Ripley dies at New York July 4 at age 77. He has been literary critic of the Tribune since 1849.
Nonfiction: A Tramp Abroad by Mark Twain; Communism and Socialism by Theodore Dwight Woolsey, now 78; Economic Studies by the late Walter Bagehot; Stonehenge: Plans, Description, and Theories by archaeologist Flinders Petrie, now 27, who begins to survey and excavate the Great Pyramid at Giza.
Fiction: The Brothers Karamazov (Bratya Karamazov) by Fedor Dostoievsky, who caps his career with a literary masterpiece and makes a patriotic speech at the unveiling of the Pushkin memorial at Moscow; Nana by Emile Zola exposes the misery of life as a Parisian prostitute; "Ball of Fat" ("Boule de Suif") by French naturalist short-story writer (Henri-René-Albert-) Guy de Maupassant, 30, is about a patriotic prostitute in the Franco-Prussian War. De Maupassant has refused treatment for his syphilis, which also affects his younger brother and may be congenital; The Duke's Children by Anthony Trollope; The Grandissimes by George Washington Cable; Ben Hur, A Tale of the Christ by former Civil War general Lew (Lewis) Wallace, now 53, who is serving as governor of the New Mexico Territory. Inspired by a long conversation he had on a train trip with the agnostic orator Robert Green Ingersoll, Wallace's story of Christians in ancient Rome enjoys great popularity; Democracy by Henry Adams.
Novelist James De Mille dies at Halifax, Nova Scotia, January 28 at age 43, having written more than 30 novels (including Canada's first popular boys' adventure stories); Gustave Flaubert dies of a cerebral hemorrhage at Croisset May 8 at age 58, never having married; George Eliot marries her banker John Walter Cross, 39, May 6 and travels with him to Italy on a wedding trip but dies at her home in Chelsea December 22 at age 61.
Poetry: The City of Dreadful Night by Scottish-born London poet James Thomson, 45, whose title poem appeared 6 years ago; The Prince's Quest by Yorkshire-born poet William Watson, 22; Ultima Thule by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, now 73; Orion, and Other Poems by Canadian poet Charles G. (George) D. (Douglas) Roberts, 20.
Reformer-poet Lydia Maria Child dies at Wayland, Massachusetts, October 20 at age 78.
Juvenile: The Peterkin Papers by Boston author Lucretia Peabody Hale, 60, whose book The Last of the Peterkin will appear in 1886; Kate Greenaway's Birthday Book by Catherine Greenaway.
Painting: Place Clichy by Pierre-Auguste Renoir; Château de Medan by Paul Cézanne; Still Life with Brioche and Bunch of Asparagus by Edouard Manet; Man on the Balcony by Gustave Caillebotte; The Gypsies and Young Girl Defending Herself from Eros by William Bouguereau; Old Folks' Home in Amsterdam by German painter Max Liebermann, 33. Anselm Feuerbach dies at Vienna January 4 at age 50.
Sculpture: Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans by Edgar Degas. Constantino Brumidi dies at his Washington, D.C., home February 18 at age 74.
New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art moves in March into a new red-brick building in Central Park at 82nd Street designed by Calvert Vaux and Jacob Wrey Mould (see 1870; 1888).
The first photographic reproduction in a newspaper appears March 4 in the New York Daily Graphic. The picture of a shantytown is printed from a halftone produced by photographing through a fine screen with dots in the photograph representing shadows (see 1875; Ives, 1886; press halftones, 1897).
George Eastman perfects a process for making dry photographic plates (see Seed, 1880). Having dabbled in real estate, the 26-year-old Rochester, New York, bank clerk has purchased a bulky camera to photograph some land that he was thinking of buying, found that he would have to pay someone to teach him how to use the camera, and has worked at night in his mother's kitchen to find a better way than having to cart around the various chemicals needed for the wet-plate process. He quits his job to go into business producing his precoated glass plates for commercial photographers (see roll film, 1881; Kodak, 1888).
Theater: Hazel Kirke by Buffalo, New York-born actor-playwright (James Morrison) Steele Mackaye, 37, 2/4 at New York's Madison Square Theater, 486 performances (a new record). Fire destroys the drop curtain 2/26 as the audience is taking its seats, but firemen extinguish the blaze and the performance goes on as scheduled.
Playwright-actor-journalist Tom Taylor dies at London July 12 at age 62, having written or adapted more than 80 plays. He has edited Punch magazine since 1874.
Opera: Polish soprano Marcella Sembrich (Prakseda Marcellina Kochanska), 22, makes her London debut at Covent Garden 6/12 in the title role of the 1835 Donizetti opera Lucia di Lammermoor.
Composer Jacques Offenbach dies at Paris October 5 at age 61.
Stage musical: Billie Taylor 10/30 at London's Imperial Theatre, with book by Henry Pottinger Stephens, music by London-born composer Edward Solomon, 25, 83 perfs.
First performances: Tragic Overture (Tragische Ouverture) by Johannes Brahms 12/26 at Vienna.
Music teacher-publisher John Curwen dies at Manchester May 26 at age 63, having pioneered the tonic sol-fa system of musical notation that will remain in use, sometimes with variations, throughout Europe and North America for well over a century (see 1853). His son John Spencer, 32, succeeds him as director of the Tonic Sol-Fa College, which will be renamed Curwen Memorial College; violinist-composer Ole Bull dies at Lysöen, near Bergen, Augut 17 at age 70.
Anthem: "Oh Canada" is sung in public for the first time June 24 at Quebec City. Music is by composer Calixa Lavallée, French lyrics by Adolphe Basile Routhier. Robert Stanley Weir will write official English lyrics in 1908 (see 1980).
Popular songs: "Funiculi-Funicula" lyrics by journalist Peppino Turco (inspired by the first funiculor railroad on Mount Vesuvius; "Sailing (Sailing, Over the Bounding Main)" by English songwriter Geoffrey Marks (James Frederick Swift), 33.
Australian cricket legend Thomas Wentworth Wills commits suicide at Melbourne May 1 at age 44, having been taken to hospital with delirium tremens, grabbed a pair of scissors, and stabbed himself in the heart. Alcoholism and athletics will be closely associated in Australia's culture for generations to come.
Rev. John Hartley wins his second Wimbledon singles lawn tennis title.
The Amateur Boxing Association organized in Britain will hold its first official amateur championship bouts next year (see Queensberry, 1867; AAU, 1888).
Colorado silver king Horace Tabor meets Wisconsin-born divorcée Elizabeth "Baby Doe" McCourt, 25, in March, buys off her previous protector, moves out of his house July, and asks his wife, Augusta, for a divorce (see commerce, 1878). She will not agree to a divorce until early in 1883; meanwhile he will build "Baby Doe" a Denver opera house (see 1882).
New York inventor Edward B. Simpson introduces standardized shoe-last measurements for men, women, children, and infants. Shoes have for centuries been made throughout the world on straight lasts (no lefts and rights), and although size sticks have been used since ancient times the first uniform size stick appeared only 30 years ago, in France, and is only now coming into widespread use in America; shoes have come in just three sizes (small, medium, and large) and one or two widths (fat and slim), but Simpson introduces half sizes (measured in sixths of an inch) and a system of widths (measured in fourths of an inch). U.S. footwear manufacturers resist Simpson's system, saying that new lasts would be ruinously expensive and inventory costs prohibitive for retailers; the manufacturers will nevertheless adopt the system for leather (but not canvas) shoes in 1888. Retail clerks will measure customers' feet by using a wooden block (see Brannock Device, 1925).
Southall, Barclay, & Company of Birmingham, England, introduces sanitary napkins for women, each containing a pad of absorbent cotton wool. They are considered a convenience for women who may be traveling when their monthly periods come on and cannot wear the diapers that they use when at home (see Kotex, 1918).
A Louisville, Kentucky, druggist improves the flavor of chewing gum (see Adams, 1872). He finds that by adding the flavoring to the sugar before the sugar is added to the chicle he can make the flavor last longer (see Wrigley, 1892).
Inventor James Sargent connects one of his combination locks to a delay timer to create the first time combination lock to frustrate bank robbers (see time lock, 1874). The device remains locked for a predetermined length of time after the combination is dialed, making it impossible for a bank employee to open a vault even at gunpoint.
The Criminal Man (L'uomo delinquente) by Italian physician-criminologist Cesare Lombroso, 39, advances the theory that criminal types can be distinguished by physical characteristics (outstanding ears, great maxillaries and cheek bones, division of the frontal bone, premature wrinkles, a sinister look) from other humans. He will often be called to testify at trials, will be outraged when a jury exonerates a man in the absence of hard evidence, and will be taken seriously well into the next century.
A Melbourne court convicts Australian outlaw Ned Kelly, 25, of murder, and he goes to the gallows November 11. Kelly has robbed two banks in northeastern Victoria and New South Wales, fought the police in homemade armor, and killed three constables.
Cologne Cathedral is completed after 634 years of construction and is the largest Gothic cathedral in northern Europe. Located near the Hohenzollern Bridge in the oldest part of the city, the church has twin spires 515 feet high that make it the tallest structure in the world, a distinction that it will hold until 1889.
New York's 7th Regiment Armory opens April 26 on Fourth Avenue between 66th and 67th Streets with a 187- by 290-foot drill hall. Architect Charles Clinton has designed it for the regiment that protected Washington, D.C., in 1861 when it was cut off by rebel forces in Maryland.
Half of New York's population is packed into tenements on the Lower East Side, an area that accounts for a disproportionate 70 percent of the city's deaths (see Tenement Law, 1879).
Denver's Windsor Hotel, opened by Colorado cattle barons, is the most elegant hostelry between San Francisco's 5-year-old Palace and Chicago's 5-year-old Palmer House (see Brown Palace, 1892).
California's Hotel Del Monte opens June 10 on the Monterey Peninsula where the $325,000 structure financed by Central Pacific Railroad boss Charles Crocker, now 58, accommodates 750 and will rival the finest resort hotels in the East. Guests enjoy vegetables, melons, grapes, and other fruits, grown in the hotel's gardens or brought down from San Francisco, and fresh flounder, pompano, rock cod, salmon, and sole from the bay are served daily (see communications [Hearst], 1887).
Dublin opens St. Stephen's Green to the public after 116 years of private ownership. Brewing heir and philanthropist A. E. Guinness, Lord Ardilaun, pushed through a parliamentary measure 3 years ago authorizing the change and has financed creation of fountains and gardens for the 27-acre park.
New York's Riverside Park is completed in May along the Hudson River between 72nd and 153rd streets after 10 years of lawsuits and 7 years of changes in the design submitted by Frederick Law Olmsted in 1873. The city's 40,000 horses produce 400 tons of manure per day, to say nothing of 20,000 gallons of urine (and nearly 200 carcasses). The odor of horse droppings is everywhere, carried into houses in the form of dried manure that blows into the cuffs of trousers and the folds of skirts.
Tenant farmers work one-fourth of U.S. farms (which number just over 4 million).
The Northwest Alliance has its beginnings in a group founded by Ohio-born Chicago editor Milton George, 47, whose organization will become a leading political activist group among farmers (see Farmers' Alliance, 1882).
U.S. wheat production reaches 500 million bushels, up 221 percent over 1866 figures. Eighty percent of the wheat is cut by machine, but wheat prices have dropped 27 percent since 1866.
U.S. export of wheat and flour combined reach 175 million bushels, up from 50 million in 1871.
U.S. corn production reaches 1.5 billion bushels, up 98 percent over 1866 figures, and corn exports total 116 million bushels, but corn prices have dropped 15 percent since 1866. While many in Europe go hungry, Midwestern farmers burn corn for fuel, prices being too low to warrant shipping the crop to market.
Cattle drives up the Chisholm Trail reach their peak (see 1871; railroad, 1885).
U.S. farmers raise sugar beets on a commercial scale for the first time (see 1878) Paris Exposition; domestic cane and beet production meets only 10 percent of U.S. sugar needs, and less than 0.05 percent of this will come from beets until the end of the 1880s. Another 19 percent will come from the territories of Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines, but sugar imported from Cuba, Germany, and Java accounts for 71 percent of U.S. sugar consumption (see Spreckels, 1883; Havemeyer, 1887).
The Japanese government establishes a law making it a criminal offense to sell food or drink that is hazardous to health (see 1873).
The first totally successful shipment of frozen beef and mutton from Australia to England arrives in early February as the S.S. Strathleven docks with 400 carcasses. The meat sells in London at 5½ pence/lb. and is soon followed by the first cargo of frozen mutton and lamb from New Zealand (see 1877). Imported products account for 17 percent of British meat consumption (the figure includes livestock and preserved meat, most of it salted, along with dried "Hamburg" beef and tinned, boiled mutton and beef from Australia, eaten in quantity despite its poor quality because it is half the price of fresh meat).
U.S. ice shipments to tropical ports reach a high of 890,364 tons carried by 1,735 ships, up from 146,000 tons aboard 363 ships in 1856. On long voyages, 40 percent of the cargo may melt but the remaining ice will fetch as much as $56 per ton. New England's ice crop fails due to an unseasonably warm winter, ice prices soar, and the high prices spur development of ice-making machines (see 1889).
The Pillsbury A mill that goes up at Minneapolis will be the largest flour mill in the world (see 1878; 1949).
Washburn, Crosby Company of Minneapolis prepares to market Gold Medal Flour after winning a gold, a silver, and a bronze medal for flour samples that it has entered in the Miller's International Exhibition. It stencils the words "Gold Medal" on the heads of the 196-pound barrels that serve as flour dispensers in grocery stores (see 1879; 1905).
Thomas' English Muffins are introduced at New York by English-born baker Samuel Bath Thomas, who arrived from Plymouth 5 years ago with his mother's recipe for crumpet-like muffins baked on a griddle; he opens a retail shop at 163 Ninth Avenue, near 20th Street, delivering his muffins by pushcart to hotels and restaurants.
Heinz's white vinegar, apple cider vinegar, and apple butter are introduced by Pittsburgh's F. and J. Heinz (see 1886; ketchup, 1876).
"Philadelphia" brand cream cheese is introduced by a New York distributor named Reynolds, who has it made for him by Empire Cheese Company of South Edmeston, New York. William E. Lawrence and Son of Chester, New York in Orange County originated the concept of a packaged, rectangular cream cheese and by 1906 they will be producing Neufchâtel cream cheese in large volume.
R. T. French Company has its beginnings as New York entrepreneur Robert Timothy French goes into partnership with his eldest son, George J., to operate Jackson Spice Company, grinders and packers of spices. The Frenches will merge in 1883 with a Fairport, New York, baking-powder firm and relocate their operations to Fairport before moving in 1885 to Rochester, New York (see mustard, 1904).
More than 95 A&P grocery stores are scattered across America from Boston to Milwaukee (see 1871); cofounder George F. Gilman retired in luxury 2 years ago, Huntington Hartford will be supervising more than 200 stores by 1901, more than 5,000 A&P peddlers will be delivering directly to homes with standardized red-and-black A&P wagons, but the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company will not have a store on the West Coast for another 50 years (see 1907).
L'Ecole de Cordon Bleu is founded at the Palais Royal, Paris, by cooking teacher Marthe Distel, who takes a name derived from the blue ribbon worn by seniors at the school opened by Mme. de Maintenon in 1686 and undertakes to teach daughters of the bourgoisie. The Grand Diplôme awarded by the new school to its best pupils will be the highest credential that a cook can have.
Mark Twain's new book A Tramp Abroad lists American dishes that he has yearned for while in Europe: buckwheat cakes with maple syrup, squash, fried chicken, Sierra Nevada brook trout, Mississippi black bass, terrapin, coon, possum, soft-shelled crabs, wild turkey, canvasback duck, succotash, Boston baked beans, chitterlings, hominy, sliced tomatoes with sugar and vinegar, sweet corn, eight kinds of hot bread, fruit pies and cobblers, and porterhouse steak for breakfast.
Los Angeles has a population of 11,183, up from 5,728 in 1870, and more people continue to arrive, even though water shortages discourage growth (see 1890).
A Chinese Exclusion Treaty signed at Beijing (Peking) November 17 gives Washington power to "regulate, limit, or suspend" entry of Chinese laborers (see 1879; 1882).
Nearly 550,000 English and nearly 440,000 Irish immigrants enter the United States.
Pope Leo XIII declares abortion of any kind to be an excommunicatory sin.
A pharmacy to dispense pessaries (vaginal contraceptive suppositories based on quinine in cocoa butter) opens at Clerkenwell, England, under the management of Walter John Rendell (see Wilde, 1833). Leeds physician Henry Arthur Allbutt will popularize the commercial pessaries, but inventive housewives throughout Europe and America will devise homemade spermicidal barriers of cocoa butter and glycerine, douching afterward as an added precaution (see Place, 1882).
German gynecologist Wilhelm P. J. Mensinga (pseudonym of country doctor C. Haase) describes an improved diaphragm as vulcanization (discovered in 1839) and other advances make rubber more practical to use. Circular in shape, the soft rubber Mensinga Pessary is held in place over the cervix by a spring that pushes it firmly against the wall of the vagina, blocking entry of sperm to the uterus; it can be left in for a month but requires fitting by a qualified medical practitioner. Mensinga's avowed intent is to protect women from pregnancies that may jeopardize their lives because of pelvic malformations or other health problems (see 1882).
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