1881 1882 1883 1884 1885 1886 1887 1888 1889 1890
Prince von Bismarck warns Europe against war January 11 in a speech advocating a much larger German army while France is agitated by nationalist sentiment and demands for revenge against her victor in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871 (see 1886). Various European countries form ententes, the Triple Alliance of 1882 is renewed for another 5 years, and a secret Russian-German treaty is signed June 18 following Russia's refusal to renew the expiring 1881 Alliance of the Three Emperors.
Former Polish insurrectionist leader Marian Langiewicz dies at Constantinople May 11 at age 59.
Bulgaria's assembly (Sobranye) elects a new prince July 7 (see 1886): statesman Stefan N. Stambolov has resisted Russian intervention and secured the election of Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg, 25, a grandson of France's late Louis Philippe, but the prince will not gain recognition from any of the Great Powers until 1896. Stambolov forms a ministry in September that will rule the country with an iron hand until May 1894, suppressing conspiracies and armed uprisings, spreading Bulgarian influence in Macedonia, and establishing a rapprochement with Constantinople.
France's President Grévy resigns under pressure December 2 at age 80 following revelations that his son-in-law Daniel Wilson has been trafficking in medals of the Légion d'honneur. He is succeeded by Marie François Sadi-Carnot.
An Italian-Ethiopian War begins in January. The Ethiopians annihilate an Italian force January 25 at Dogali, but Italy strengthens her position by backing Menelek, king of Shoa, and attacks from Mahdist forces in the north divert Ethiopia's king of kings, Johannes (see 1896).
Britain promises to evacuate Egypt within 3 years in the May 22 Drummond-Wolff Convention with Constantinople, but only if conditions are favorable; Britain retains the right to reoccupy Egypt should that country be menaced by invasion or internal disorder. Egypt's khedive, Tewfik, refuses to ratify the convention.
Britain annexes Zululand to block the Transvaal government from establishing a link to the sea.
Macão off the Chinese coast is formally ceded to Portugal, which has occupied the island since 1557 and will hold it until the end of 1999.
Former Japanese feudal lord Koshaku Shimazu Hisamitsu dies at his native Kagoshima in Satsuma Province (Kyushu) December 6 at age 70. An imposing figure in his time, he has stood six feet tall and weighed upwards of 200 pounds.
Former U.S. minister to France Elihu Washburne dies at Chicago October 23 at age 71.
The Dawes General Allotment Act adopted by Congress February 8 provides for the distribution of 138 million acres of Indian reservation lands among individual tribesmen (see Amelia Stone Quinton, 1883). Recipients considered suitable by the president are to become U.S. citizens, subject to all federal, state, and local laws, and to receive land, generally 160 acres per head of household and 80 acres per unmarried adult, with the stipulation that the grantee must hold his or or her land for 25 years. Sponsored by Sen. Henry L. Dawes (R. Mass.), now 70, its purpose is to encourage creation of responsible Native American farmers, but amendments to the measure provide that any land remaining after allotment to the tribesmen shall be available for public sale, and land speculators have joined with genuine supporters of Native American rights to lobby for passage of the bill. Many nomadic tribes will be unable to adjust to farm life, however; swindlers will cheat others out of their land; and since the law provides that any "surplus" land be made available to whites, two-thirds of the land will be in white hands within 45 years (see Meriam Report, 1928).
A "Jim Crow" law passed by the Florida legislature requires segregation of black railway passengers from whites (see 1881; 1891).
The Tennessee Supreme Court rules in April that Ida Wells's intent in 1884 was to harass, not to obtain a comfortable seat for the short ride between Woodstock and Memphis, thus reversing the lower court's decision against the C&O Railroad (see 1892).
Mound Bayou, Mississippi, is founded in July by Davis Bend-born entrepreneur Isaiah Montgomery, 40, who grew up as a slave on the plantation of former Confederacy president Jefferson Davis's brother and was a partner in one of the state's most profitable cotton firms until falling prices put it out of business 11 years ago. The Louisville, New Orleans, and Texas Railroad hired him in 1877 to sell land on either side of river, and he has persuaded a group of black pioneers to settle on a tract of swampland, where they battle mosquitoes, snakes, and wild animals to drain parcels of property, build log cabins, and create 40-acre farmsites. Montgomery and his maternal cousin Benjamin Green will soon open a general store, a country emporium, and a sawmill, and within 20 years the self-governing all-black community will have about 800 families occupying an area of close to 30,000 acres.
Louisiana militiamen shoot 35 unarmed black sugar workers October 4 with help from bands of "prominent citizens" and lynch two strike leaders. The workers have struck for a wage of $1 per day.
The Indian National Social Conference founded by Brahman jurist-historian Mahadev Govind Ranade, 45, urges the British raj to initiate industrialization and state welfare programs. Ranade will not achieve anything in that regard, but as a judge of the High Court at Bombay (Mumbai) will work for reform in the areas of child marriage, widow remarriage, and women's rights.
Reformer Dorothea Dix dies July 17 at age 85 in a hospital she has founded at Trenton, New Jersey.
A "Protest" dated September 17 and presented to President Cleveland on the centennial of the Constitution by feminist writer Lillie Devereux Blake (née Olmsted), now 54, is less militant in its language than the NWSA's "Declaration" of 1876 but says its signers "cannot allow the occasion to pass without reminding you that one-half the people who obey the laws of the United States are unjustly denied all place or part in the body politic." Susan B. Anthony, Matilda Joslyn Gage, Rachel G. Foster, and Mary Wright Sewall join Blake in signing the protest.
Burbank, California, is laid out by the Providential Land, Water & Development Company. It names the town after Los Angeles dentist David Burbank, who established a sheep ranch in the area 20 years ago.
Lancashire women miners march to London May 17 demanding the right to work.
Lloyd's of London writes its first nonmarine insurance policy after 199 years of insuring only maritime carriers (see 1870). The great 120- by 340-foot Lloyd's underwriting room in Lime Street continues to be dominated by the Lutine Bell salvaged in 1859 from the frigate H.M.S. Lutine, captured from the French in 1793 and sunk off the Dutch coast 6 years later with more than £1 million gold and silver. The bell is still rung before important announcements—once for bad news, twice for good. Marine insurance underwritten by Lloyd's "Names" will continue to exceed nonmarine insurance until 1949.
Richard Sears moves to Chicago, hires watchmaker Alvah C. Roebuck, and sells watches through clubs and by mail order, advertising in rural newspapers (see 1886; 1889; Sears, Roebuck, 1893).
The Hudson Bay Company opens a Vancouver retail store, beginning what will become a chain of department stores throughout Canada. The company has been prospering from the sale of land to settlers along the new Canadian Pacific Railway tracks across the western prairie.
Tokyo Electric Light Company (Tokyo Dento Kaisha) brings electricity to Japan in January.
Marathon Oil Corp. has its beginnings in the Ohio Oil Company founded at Lima in northwestern Ohio by entrepreneurs who include Henry M. Ernst. It soon becomes the state's largest petroleum producer. John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Trust will acquire it in 1889; it will move its headquarters in 1905 to Findlay, Ohio, and establish itself 3 years later as a major pipeline company as it gains control over half of the field production in three states.
The Interstate Commerce Act approved by Congress February 1 orders U.S. railroads to keep their rates fair and reasonable. The new law takes effect February 4, making it illegal for a railroad to give rebates to favored customers, but the practice will continue on at least a limited basis for another 16 years (see ICC, 1888; Elkins Act, 1903).
Engineer-inventor James B. Eads dies at Nassau, the Bahamas, March 8 at age 66 while Congress debates funding a project that he has proposed to build tracks that could carry ships across the Mexican isthmus between the Atlantic and Pacific. His Mississippi River jetty system has resulted in New Orleans becoming a major U.S. seaport once again, second in importance only to New York.
The Canadian Pacific Railway (CP) reaches Vancouver May 23 (see 1885). Built by James J. Hill and W. C. Van Horne with 2,095 miles of track, the CP is the first single company transcontinental railroad in America, joining the east and west coasts of Canada, and it will spur migration to the western provinces (see 1888; Canadian National, 1923).
The first Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe train to reach Los Angeles via Santa Fe track arrives May 31 and a rate war begins between the Santa Fe ani Collis P. Huntington's Southern Pacific. The Santa Fe has bought the Los Angeles and San Gabriel Valley Railroad to gain access to the city, passenger fares from Kansas City to Los Angeles drop as low as $1, and Los Angeles enjoys a land boom as 120,000 new arrivals pour into the city (see 1888).
The Sessions vertical end frame designed by Pullman Palace Car Company superintendent H. H. Sessions reduces railroad-car sway and makes it safer to move from one car to another, as when going to the dining car. The company will refine the end frame to close vestibules and make a train one continuous unit.
A railroad trestle on the Toledo, Peoria & Western near Chatsworth, Illinois, gives way in August and a passenger train bound for Niagara Falls with more than 600 passengers plunges into a ditch, killing more than 70, injuring nearly 300.
Scotland's 11,653-foot Tay II Bridge is completed; it will remain the world's longest bridge of any kind until 1963.
San Francisco shipping company head William Matson sells his sailing ship Emma Claudine and buys a large freighter that he names for his daughter Lurline and uses it to transport Hawaiian sugar to California refineries. He will later use her to carry canned pineapple and then convert her for passenger service (see 1882; 1908; energy [California pipelines], 1901).
The first Daimler motorcar is introduced March 4, employing the gasoline-powered internal-combustion engine patented last year. Gottlieb Daimler sells French manufacturing rights to Belgian lawyer Edouard Sarazin, whose engineer friend Emile C. Levassor of Panhard et Levassor will manufacture the machine (see 1890).
Karl Benz exhibits his motorcar at the Paris Exposition and sells bicycle maker Emile Roger a license to assemble the self-propelled three-wheeler in France (see 1886; 1888).
Cabot Corp. has its beginnings in a lampblack firm founded by Boston entrepreneur Godfrey Cabot, 36, who breaks away from the family paint company to start a business that will be the basis of a vast fortune. Cabot has found that the oil and gas fields of western Pennsylvania are plagued by the sooty carbon debris of gas blowoffs and refining. He begins to build and acquire carbon black plants, will branch off into natural gas production and distribution, and will make his Cabot Corp. the major supplier of carbon black for electric lamp filaments, telephones, and other uses.
The machine à calculer invented by French engineering student Leon Bolle, 18, is the first machine to automate multiplication using a direct method (see Baldwin's "arithmometer," 1875). Bolle's machine has a multi-tongued plate that constitutes a multiplication table and represents a marked advance over calculators that employ multiple additions for multiplication.
The Comptometer introduced by the new Felt & Tarrant Manufacturing Company of Chicago is the first multiple-column calculating machine to be operated entirely by keys and be absolutely accurate at all times. Local inventor Dorr Eugene Felt, 25, has gone into partnership with Robert Tarrant to produce the machine (see Burroughs, 1888).
The hammerless safety revolver patented April 12 by Daniel Wesson of Smith & Wesson Company prevents accidental firing and will help make the company one of America's largest producer of firearms (see 1869).
Industrialist Alfred Krupp dies at his native Essen July 14 at age 75. Having produced the first seamless steel railway tire and introduced modern steelmaking processes to Europe, he has become known as the Cannon King (Der Knonenkönig).
Kiev-born Russian microbiologist Sergei Nikolaievitch Winogradsky, 30, at Strasbourg studies the microorganism Beggiatoa and demonstrates that in the absence of light this colorless form of sulfur bacteria can create sulfuric acid, using inorganic hydrogen sulfide as an energy source and carbon dioxide as a carbon source; by establishing the specific physiology of sulfur bacteria, Winogradsky establishes the concept of autotrophy and its relationship to natural cycles, helping to found bacteriology as a major science (see 1890).
The Petri dish introduced by researcher Julius Richard Petri for culturing bacteria in the laboratory is for semi-solid media such as agar and has an overhanging lid to keep out contaminants (see agar-agar, 1882). Petri is employed by Robert Koch at Berlin.
Swedish chemist Svante August Arrhenius, 26, advances the ionic theory that electrolytes (substances that conduct electricity) split up in solution into electrically charged particles (ions) (see 1923).
Physicist Albert A. Michelson, now 35, and his Newark, New Jersey-born colleague Edward W. (Williams) Morley, 49, publish the results of an experiment demonstrating that the speed of light in a vacuum is the same in all inertial reference systems (coordinate systems moving at constant velocity relative to each other) (see interferometer, 1881). Their effort to measure the velocity of the Earth through the hyopothetical luminferous ether by comparing the velocities of light from different directions produces negative results, but the work of Michelson and Morley will lead directly to the special theory of relativity (see FitzGerald, 1892; Einstein, 1905).
German physicist Heinrich Rudolph Hertz, 30, shows the existence of electric or electromagnetic waves in the space around a discharging Leyden jar (see 1745). Investigating James Clerk Maxwell's 1873 electromagnetic theory of light, Hertz finds that the waves are propagated with the velocity of light as Maxwell had predicted.
Austrian physicist Ernst Mach, 49, announces his discovery of a sudden change in airflow over an object moving at close to the speed of sound. The speed of sound in air will be named for him.
Physicist Gustav R. Kirchhoff dies at Berlin October 17 at age 63.
University of Vienna psychiatrist-neurologist Julius Wagner-Jauregg, 30, observes that patients suffering from certain nervous disorders improve markedly after contracting infections that produce fevers; he suggests that mental patients be deliberately infected with such things as malaria, which can be controlled with quinine (see 1917). Italian cytologist Camillo Golgi, now 44, has been studying malaria since 1885 and will demonstrate that the two types of intermittent malarial fevers (tertian and quartan, occurring every third and fourth day, respectively) are caused by different species of the protozoan parasite Plasmodium and that the spasms of fever coincide with the release of the parasitic spores from red blood cells.
London physiologist Victor Horsley successfully removes a spinal tumor, becoming the first to do so. Now 30, he develops operative techniques that make brain surgery practical and by 1890 will have performed 44 successful operations.
Scottish physician David Bruce, 32, identifies the source of "Malta fever" or "Mediterranean fever," which has caused illness and even death among British troops. He finds that milk from local goats transmits a bacterium that will later be found in cows' milk and causes undulant fever, or brucellosis (see agriculture [Bang], 1896).
The National Institutes of Health have their beginnings in a Hygienic Laboratory established by the 89-year-old U.S. Public Health Service at its marine hospital on Staten Island, New York, to help diagnose infectious diseases among passengers on incoming passenger ships (see 1884; 1902).
"Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely," writes John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, 53, April 5 to Cambridge University professor Mandell Creighton. Lord Acton is a liberal Roman Catholic and a leader of the opposition to the papal dogma of infallibility (see 1871).
The Perkins Institution founded in 1829 receives a request from telephone pioneer Alexander Graham Bell to examine 6-year-old Helen (Adams) Keller, who lost her sight and hearing at 19 months of age (see Bridgman, 1837). Massachusetts-born teacher Anne (originally Joanna) Sullivan, 20, of the Perkins Institution travels to the Keller home in Alabama, starts work with young Helen March 2, and quickly teaches her to feel objects and associate them with words spelled out by finger signals on the palm of her hand; Helen soon can feel raised words on cardboard and make her own sentences by arranging words in a frame (see 1904).
Pratt Institute opens at Brooklyn, New York, to provide training for artisans and draftsmen. The school has been funded by Charles Pratt, 57, who sold his oil refinery to John D. Rockefeller in 1874; he has been a benefactor to Amherst College and the University of Rochester.
Educator Mark Hopkins dies at Williamstown, Massachusetts, June 17 at age 85.
The A. B. Dick Diaphragm Mimeograph goes on sale March 17 (see 1875). Thomas Edison has licensed Chicago lumberman Albert Blake Dick, 31, to use his stencil invention, Dick has constructed a flat-bed duplicator suitable for office use, employing a strong stencil fabric made from a species of hazel bush that grows only in certain Japanese islands, and his machine will soon be used in offices worldwide (see typewriter stencil, 1888; Xerox, 1937).
Dr. Esperanto's International Language (Lingvo Internacia) by Polish oculist-philologist Ludwig Lazarus (Ludwik Lejzer) Zamenhof, 27, expresses hope that his universal language will help achieve world peace and understanding. The first Esperanto magazine will begin publication in 1889, and an organization to propagate the language will be formed in 1893 (see 1905; Ogden, 1929).
Heinrich Hertz's electric waves will be the basis of radio communications (see Marconi, 1895).
San Francisco Evening Examiner publisher William Randolph Hearst, 23, scores his first big scoop April 1 by chartering a special train to cover the fire that destroys the 7-year-old Hotel Del Monte built by Charles Crocker at Monterey. Hearst has inherited the paper from his late father, George Hearst of 1859 Comstock Lode fame (see 1890).
Ohio-born Washington, D.C., inventor Tolbert Lanston, 43, receives three patents June 7 for "producing justified lines of type," one for a "type forming and composing machine," and one for a new form of type (see Linotype, 1883). He obtains British patent No. 8183 on the same mechanisms, resigns from his job at the Pension Office, organizes the Lanston Type Machine Company, and will work for the next 10 years to create a commercially practical machine (see Monotype, 1897).
The Paris Herald begins publication October 4 with the last of its four pages devoted to advertisements directed toward English and American visitors and émigrés. The paper is a European edition of James Gordon Bennett's New York Herald (see 1967).
"INSIDE THE MADHOUSE," says a New York World front-page headline October 16. "Nellie Bly's Experience in the Blackwell's Island Asylum." The World has run editorials July 3 and July 9 demanding a probe of alleged mistreatment of patients at the charitable and penal institutions on Ward's Island, just north of Blackwell's Island, and two keepers on Ward Island have been indicted for manslaughter following the killing of a "lunatic." Former Pittsburgh Dispatch reporter Nellie Bly (Elizabeth Cochrane), 20, has persuaded the World's managing editor to hire her (no paper in the city has a female reporter) by accepting his dare and feigning madness in order to gain admission for 10 days to the asylum on Blackwell's Island. Other papers have been taken in by her ruse, and it required the World's lawyer to obtain her release October 4. "Pink" Cochrane adopted her nom de plume (taken from a Stephen Foster song) while working on the Dispatch, and her articles exposing conditions at the "madhouse" create a sensation, launching their author on a career of "stunt" journalism (see transportation, 1889). They will also lead to significant reforms.
Saturday Night magazine begins publication at Toronto with a 12-page issue that sells for 5¢. Sunday newspapers are not permitted, and the weekly is designed initially for businessmen, but it will grow to become a general-interest periodical with a national circulation of more than 400,000.
U.S. telephone listings reach 200,000 by December 31, with 5,767 in Boston and neighboring towns; 1,176 in Hartford; and 1,393 in New Haven.
The Pratt Institute Free Library of the new Pratt Institute at Brooklyn, New York, is the first free library in New York State.
Nonfiction: The Emancipation of Massachusetts by Boston historian Brooks Adams, 39, who protests the ancestor worship in earlier New England history; In Russian and French Prisons by Petr A. Kropotkin, who says that prisons are "schools of crime" and urges penal reform; Ancient Legends of Ireland by London author-salon hostess Lady Jane Francesca Wilde, 61, whose poetry and prose has for years been published at Dublin (under the pen name "Speranza") and whose son Oscar has gained fame as a wit.
Sociologist-author (and Punch magazine cofounder) Henry Mayhew dies in obscurity at his native London July 25 at age 75.
Fiction: The Aspern Papers by Henry James; The People of Hemso (Hemsoborna) by August Strindberg; Sjur Gabriel and Two Friends (To enner) by Amalie Skram are the first two of seven novels in her series The People of Hellemyr (Hellemyrsfolket) that will continue until 1898; She and Allan Quatermain by H. Rider Haggard; A Study in Scarlet by Scottish physician-novelist Arthur Conan Doyle, 28, who has written the book to supplement his small income. His otherwise undistinguished work has been serialized in London's new Strand magazine and introduces the master detective Sherlock Holmes.
Poetry: Poésies Complètes by Stéphane Mallarmé; The Story of a Race (La Légende d'un peuple) by Louis-Honoré Fréchette is an epic chronicle of Canadian history.
Poet Emma Lazarus dies at her native New York November 19 at age 38.
Juvenile: The Birds' Christmas Carol by Philadelphia-born writer Kate Douglas Wiggin (née Smith), 31, who in 1878 became head of San Francisco's Silver Street Kindergarten (the first free kindergarten on the West Coast), organized the California Kindergarten Training School 2 years later with the aim of spreading the ideas of Friedrich Froebel in America, and in 1881 married lawyer Samuel B. Wiggin, who will die in 1889 Rules of Paradise by Howard Pyle.
Painting: Moulin de la Galette, Portrait of the Scottish Art Dealer Alexander Reid, Self-Portrait (with a straw hat), and Self-Portrait with a Felt Hat by Vincent van Gogh, who has come to Paris and met with some of the Impressionists; The Flax Spinners by Max Liebermann; A Little Girl by French painter Cecilia Beaux, 32; Along the Seine, Winter and Grand Prix Day by Childe Hassam; Robert Louis Stevenson by John Singer Sargent; Walt Whitman by Thomas Eakins, who was dismissed last year from his teaching job at the Pennsylvania Academy for removing the loincloth from a male model in a class whose students included women as well as men.
Sculpture: Seated Lincoln by Augustus Saint-Gaudens for Chicago's Lincoln Park; Amor Caritas by Saint-Gaudens.
Theater: Rosmersholm by Henrik Ibsen 4/12 at Kristiania's (Oslo's) Kristiania Theater; The Father (Fadren) by August Strindberg 11/14 at Copenhagen's Cosmo Theater; Ivanov by Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, 27, 11/19 at Moscow's Korsk Theater; La Tosca by Victorien Sardou 11/24 at the Théâtre de la Porte-Saint-Martin, Paris, with Sarah Bernhardt (see opera, 1900); A Gown for His Mistress (Tailleur pour dames) by French playwright Georges Feydeau, 24, 12/17 at the Théâtre de la Renaissance, Paris.
Stage musicals: Place aux Jeunes opens at the 18-year-old Folies-Bergère in Paris, where the revue creates a sensation as the music hall broadens its repertory, which will soon include musical comedies, vaudeville sketches, acrobats, eccentric dancers, magicians, and jugglers in addition to revues and operettas (see music [nudity], 1894).
Opera: Ruddigore (or The Witch's Curse) 1/22 at London's Savoy Theatre, with comic actor Henry Alfred Lytton (originally Jones), 22, singing new Gilbert and Sullivan songs, 288 performances (Lytton has changed his name at Gilbert's suggestion and will be a mainstay of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company for nearly 30 years, appearing in The Mikado as Ko-Ko, in Iolanthe as the Lord Chancellor, and in more than two dozen other roles); Otello 2/5 at Milan's Teatro alia Scala, with music by Giuseppe Verdi, libretto from the Shakespeare tragedy of 1604; The Reluctant King (Le Roi malgré lui) 5/18 at the Opéra-Comique, Paris, with music by Emmanuel Chabrier. Australian soprano Nellie Melba (Helen Mitchell), 26, makes her operatic debut at the Brussels Opera singing the role of Gilda in the 1851 Verdi opera Rigoletto.
Soprano Jenny Lind dies at Stockholm November 2 at age 67.
First performances: Suite in D for Trumpet, Flutes, and Strings by Vincent d'Indy 1/7 at Paris; Symphonie No. 1 for Orchestra and Piano (Symphonie sur un air montagnard français) by Vincent d'Indy 3/20 at Paris; Double Concerto in A minor for Violin, Cello, and Orchestra by Johannes Brahms 10/18 at Cologne; Capriccio espagñol by Nikolai Rimski-Korsakov 10/31 at St. Petersburg's Imperial Opera House; Suite No. 4 (Mozartiana) by Petr Ilich Tchaikovsky 11/26 at Moscow; Pictures at an Exhibition by the late Modest Mussorgsky 11/30 at St. Petersburg.
Thomas Edison invents the first motor-driven phonograph and opens a new laboratory at West Orange, New Jersey, that is 10 times the size of his Menlo Park laboratory of 1876. Edison's new phonograph plays cylindrical wax records (see 1877; Tainter, Bell, 1886).
Emile Berliner obtains a patent on a gramophone that improves on Edison's phonograph by substituting a disk and a horizontally moving needle for Edison's cylinder and vertically moving needle (Americans will call the machines phonographs, Britons gramophones). Berliner's machine has grooves in its disks that propel the arm automatically, eliminating the need for the separate drive mechanism that Edison's machine requires, but the pivoted tone arm of the gramophone has a fixed head, and a tracking error causes distortion in the music amplified through the large horn attached to its tone arm (see 1900; Victrola, 1906).
Herbert Lawford, 36, wins in men's singles at Wimbledon, Charlotte "Lottie" Dod, 15, in women's singles; Richard Sears wins in U.S. men's singles, Ellen F. Hansel in women's singles.
Tipperary beats Galway at hurling; Limerick beats Louth at football in the first All-Ireland Championships (see Croke Park, 1910).
Britain's Thistle loses 2 to 0 to the U.S. defender Volunteer in the America's Cup ocean yacht races.
Atlanta's Piedmont Driving Club is founded by local gentlemen who restrict membership to men. The exclusive club admits members by invitation only and will exclude blacks and most Jews.
The first U.S. social register is published by New York golf promoter Louis Keller, 30, the son of a patent lawyer who owns a farm at Springfield, New Jersey, on which he has founded the Baltusro Golf Club. Keller has earlier helped start the scandal sheet Town Topics. His 100-page book sells for $1.75, contains roughly 3,600 names based largely on telephone listings that it prints in larger type than the type used in the phone company directory, draws on the membership list of the Calumet Club at 29th Street and Fifth Avenue, and will be followed by social registers published in most major U.S. cities, with preference given to white, non-Jewish, non-divorced residents considered respectable by the arbiters who compile the books.
Bon Ami cleansing powder is introduced by the J. T. Robertson Soap Company of Manchester, Connecticut. Scottish-born entrepreneur Robertson has seen the success of Sapolio, a scouring soap made from finely ground quartz and tallow, but he has observed that the quartz must always be separated by hand from feldspar, and someone has suggested to him that instead of discarding the softer feldspar he could use it in place of quartz to produce a less abrasive product. Taking over an idle grist mill, Robertson grinds feldspar into a fine powder, mixes it in wooden troughs with liquid soap, cures the product, uses piano wire to cut it into cakes, stamps them with the Bon Ami name, and packs the wrapped cakes in boxes of 36 cakes each. Bon Ami will have distribution throughout the Northeast by 1896, and the 10¢ bar with the yellow chick on its label will gain fame with the slogan, "Hasn't Scratched Yet" (see Old Dutch Cleanser, 1905).
Gambler-gunman and sometime dentist John H. "Doc" Holliday dies of tuberculosis at Glenwood Springs, Colorado, November 8 at age 35, having abandoned his wife, Kate Elder, if indeed he ever really married her.
Pittsburgh's Allegheny Courthouse and jail are completed to designs by the late Henry Hobson Richardson.
Chicago's Glessner house is completed at 1800 Prairie Avenue to designs by the late Henry Hobson Richardson, who gave it no windows facing the street (the location is at a smoky corner not far from the railroad tracks) but arranged for most of the rooms on its L-shaped first floor to face south on a quiet, interior garden. Built for manufacturer John J. Glessner and his wife, Frances (née Macbeth), the house has no front lawn, it is decorated with furnishings by the English craftsman-poet William Morris, and Glessner will occupy it until his death in 1936.
The Grand Hotel opens July 10 on Mackinac Island, Michigan, with 262 rooms and a wide front porch that is 660 feet long. Built by the Grand Rapids, Indiana, and Michigan Central Railroads and the Detroit and Cleveland Navigation Company, the hotel is located on a high bluff with views of ships passing through the Straits of Mackinac between Lakes Michigan and Huron. It attracts visitors who arrive by lake steamer from Chicago, Detroit, Erie, and Montreal, horse-drawn carriages meet guests at the pier (into the 21st century only horse-drawn vehicles are used on the island), room rates are $3 to $5 per night, and additions will expand the hotel's size to 343 rooms.
Architect Thomas U. Walter of Capitol Dome fame dies at his native Philadelphia October 30 at age 83, having served as the president of the American Institute of Architects since 1876.
The Boone & Crockett Club is organized to protect U.S. wildlife from ruthless slaughter by commercial market hunters. Its founders are a group of "American hunting riflemen" who include George B. Grinnell and Theodore Roosevelt, who was defeated last year in a New York mayoralty election (see Grinnell, 1885). Membership in the club will be limited to 100.
Congress makes Yellowstone country a refuge for buffalo (bison) and big game at the persuasion of Theodore Roosevelt (see Pelican Island, 1903).
China's Huanghe (Yellow River) floods its banks. The resulting crop failures and famine kill 900,000.
The Hatch Act voted by Congress March 2 authorizes the establishment of agricultural experiment stations in all states having land-grant colleges. The legislation is based on a bill drafted 5 years ago by Seaman Knapp when he was professor of agriculture at Iowa State College of Agriculture and Mechanical Arts professor at Ames.
Blizzards continue in America's northern Great Plains (see 1886). The worst storm of the hard winter rages for 72 hours at the end of January, and millions of head of open-range cattle are killed in what will be remembered as the "Great Die-Out" in Montana, Kansas, Wyoming, and the Dakotas. Whole families are found frozen to death in tar-paper cabins and in dugouts, the big ranching syndicates go bankrupt, and the homesteaders who move in to start farms include former cowboys. Friction will soon begin between the farmers and the surviving ranchers.
Rancher and butcher Charles Lux dies of pneumonia at San Francisco March 15 at age 64; his partner Henry Miller will survive until 1916, and by 1900 the firm of Miller & Lux will be the largest integrated U.S. cattle and meatpacking company, employing more than 100 ranch foremen, cattle and irrigation bosses, office workers, and bookkeepers at $40 to $75 per month.
U.S. wheat prices fall to 67¢ per bushel, lowest since 1868, as the harvest reaches new heights. Britain and other importers of American wheat enjoy lower food prices.
The hand separator comes into use on U.S. dairy farms, enabling farmers to separate their cream by machine in their own creameries (see 1877). Dairy farming has grown by leaps and bounds in the Midwest in this decade, enabling more Americans to enjoy milk, butter, and cheese all year round.
Agricultural chemist Jean Baptiste Boussingault dies at his native Paris May 12 at age 85, having discovered that nitrogen is essential to plants and animals.
Beriberi can be prevented by proper diet, says Baron Takaki in a report of his 1884 Japanese Navy study published in the British medical journal Lancet (see Eijkmann and Grijns, 1896).
Britain's Margarine Act establishes statutory standards for margarine, but dairy magnate George Barham fails in his demand that if any coloring be allowed in margarine it should be pink, green, or—preferably—black (see U.S., 1950).
New York sugar refiner Henry Osborne Havemeyer, 40, founds Sugar Refineries Company. His 17 refineries account for 78 percent of U.S. refining capacity (see American Sugar Refining, 1891).
German chemist Emil Fischer, 35, isolates the isomeric hexose sugar mannose and works with an associate to synthesize the fruit sugar fructose. Other sugars have already been isolated, including glucose, galactose, and sorbose.
Log Cabin Syrup is introduced by St. Paul, Minnesota, grocer P. J. Towle, who blends maple syrup (45 percent) and cane sugar syrup to produce a product much lower in price than pure maple syrup. He markets it in a tin container shaped and decorated to look like the boyhood home of his boyhood hero Abraham Lincoln (see Postum Co., 1927).
Bovril creator John Lawson Johnston demonstrates his "fluid beef" product at another Colonial and Continental Exhibition, publicizing it with frosted-glass simulations of the ice palaces built at Montreal winter carnivals (see 1886). He enjoys such phenomenal success with his free tastings that he contracts with the Midland Railway to supply "twenty best and ten common urns" for dispensing Bovril at railway stations .
Rowntree & Company introduces Elect Cocoa, a powdered dark chocolate (see 1862). Joseph Rowntree's son John Wilhelm has been working with his father in the business since 1885, and John's brother (Benjamin) Seebohm, now 16, will soon join it (see 1897).
Chocolate pioneer Coenraad Van Houten dies at Amsterdam May 27 at age 86.
White Rock Mineral Springs Company is founded in Wisconsin by Charles Welch with an initial capitalization of $100,000 (see 1868). Welch has purchased the spring outside Waukesha and will promote "White Rock Lithia Water" throughout the country (see "Psyche," 1893).
Ball-Mason jars are introduced by Ball Brothers Glass Manufacturing Company of Muncie, Indiana (see Mason, 1858). William Charles Ball, 35, and his brothers Lucius Lorenzo, Frank C., Edmund Burke, and George Alexander began making tin oil cans at Buffalo, New York, 10 years ago, switched to glass oil and fruit jars in 1884, and have moved to Muncie, where natural gas has been discovered and whose civic leaders have offered free gas and a generous land site. Green, aqua, and clear glass Mason jars bearing the mark "Patented Nov. 30, 1858" will continue to be marketed well into the next century.
Western Cold Storage Company in Chicago installs ice-making machines, but cold stores in most places continue to be cooled by harvested ice cut from lakes and hauled ashore by teams of horses (see 1878). Hundreds of icehouses dot the banks of the Hudson River north of New York, Maine's Kennebeck River, ponds in the Midwest, and small lakes in Massachusetts (Wenham Lake is so well known as a source of ice that Norwegian harvesters label ice from Lake Keopegaard "Wenham") (see 1889).
Hovis bread has its beginnings in Smith's Patent Germ Flour, registered October 6 by English flour miller Richard "Stoney" Smith, 51, of Stone, Staffordshire, and Macclesfield miller Thomas Fitton of the firm S. Fitton & Sons. A strong believer in the nutritive virtues of wheat germ (the heart of the wheat kernel), Smith has devised a process for separating the germ from the flour, cooking it lightly in steam, adding a little salt, and returning it to the flour, which is used to produce a good-tasting brown loaf with a longer shelf life than ordinary brown bread. Analytical chemist William Jago stated last year that the "prepared germ meal and flour yield a bread far superior in nutritive value, flavour and texture" to conventionally-made breads.
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