1890s

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The 1890s were sometimes referred to as the "Mauve Decade," because William Henry Perkin's aniline dye allowed the widespread use of that colour in fashion, and also as the "Gay Nineties", under the then-current usage of the word "gay" which referred simply to merriment and frivolity, with no connotation of homosexuality as in present-day usage. The phrase, "The Gay Nineties," was not coined until 1926. This decade was also part of the Gilded Age, a phrase coined by Mark Twain, alluding to the seemingly profitable era that was riddled with crime. In America, the 1890s were marked by a severe economic depression sparked by the Panic of 1893, as well as several strikes in the industrial workforce.

Events and trends

• 1894: The workers of the Pullman Company went on strike in Illinois.

1895 Benz Velo. Along with its contemporary Duryea Motor Wagon, those vehicles were considered the earliest standardized cars. The 1890s also saw further developments in the history of the automobile.

Commerce

• The Panic of 1893 set off a widespread economic depression in the United States that lasts until 1896. This led to a realigning election in 1896 where the Republican Party took control of the White House. It interrupted the prosperity of the previous decade, and prosperity would not return until 1899.
• 1896: Gold was discovered in the Klondike; this caused a massive movement of people, goods and money to the new town of Dawson City, in the far northwestern corner of Canada; ultimately, cities such as Fairbanks, Alaska and Anchorage, Alaska, along with the Alaska Railroad, would be founded in later years as people continued to enter the interiors of Alaska and the Yukon Territory.

Technology

• Commercial production of automobiles began and was at an early stage.
• Lawrence Hargrave makes first stable wing design for heavier-than-air craft.

Science

• Henri Becquerel discovered radioactivity.
• X-rays were discovered by Wilhelm Röntgen.
• Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius and US geologist Thomas Chrowder Chamberlin independently suggested that human CO2 emissions might cause global warming.
• Albert Einstein began his revolution of science.
• 1894: Argon was discovered by Lord Rayleigh and William Ramsay.
• 1895: Helium was discovered to exist on the Earth by William Ramsay, 27 years after first being detected spectrographically on the Sun in 1868.
• 1896: One year after helium's terrestrial discovery, neon, krypton, and xenon were discovered by William Ramsay and Morris Travers.
• 1897: Social scientist Émile Durkheim published the groundbreaking study Suicide.

War, peace and politics

Boer guerrillas during the Second Boer War

• 1896 Republican Realignment
• Second Boer War
• First Franco-Dahomean War
• Second Franco-Dahomean War
• First Sino-Japanese War
• Spanish-American War
• A split erupted in Irish nationalism over a scandal involving the Irish leader Charles Stewart Parnell's affair with a fellow MP's wife, Kitty O'Shea.
• The New Imperialism

Culture, religion

• Motion pictures
• Ragtime music
• Settlement movement based on Jane Addams' Hull House in Chicago.
• For the first time in history, a coronation is filmed. The coronation is of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia.
• Lynchings of African Americans in the United States averaged 150 per year.^{[citation needed]}
• H. G. Wells created modern science fiction with his book The War of the Worlds.
• Hale Johnson was a major leader of the temperance movement.
• Itinerate evangelist, church founder, school founder and publisher Dwight L. Moody died.
• Department of Scientific Temperance Instruction, under Mary Hunt, achieved de facto control over all alcohol education in the USA.
• The Fin de Siècle (primarily in Paris and Brussels).
• Increasing importance of Art Nouveau style.
• France had the Dreyfus Affair to contend with.

Literature and arts

• Kate Chopin published The Awakening
• Oscar Wilde published The Picture of Dorian Gray.
• Thomas Hardy published Tess of the d'Urbervilles.
• Charlotte Perkins Gilman published The Yellow Wallpaper
• Anton Chekhov published Uncle Vanya.
• A. E. Housman published A Shropshire Lad.
• Rudyard Kipling published Barrack-Room Ballads.
• H. G. Wells published The Time Machine, The Island of Dr. Moreau, and The War of the Worlds.
• Bram Stoker published Dracula.
• Sir Arthur Conan Doyle published the first Sherlock Holmes in Strand Magazine.
• Joseph Conrad published Heart of Darkness.
• Frank Wedekind releases Spring Awakening in 1891.

Others

People

World leaders

• Prime Minister John Sparrow David Thompson (Canada)
• Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier (Canada)
• Emperor Franz Josef (Austria-Hungary)
• Kaiser Wilhelm II (German Empire)
• Chancellor Leo von Caprivi (German Empire)
• King Umberto I (Italy)
• Pope Leo XIII
• President Porfirio Díaz (Mexico)
• Czar Alexander III (Russia)
• Czar Nicholas II (Russia)
• Queen Victoria (United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland)
• Prime Minister Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland)
• Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone (United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland)
• Prime Minister Archibald Philip Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery (United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland)
• President Benjamin Harrison (United States)
• President Grover Cleveland (United States)
• President William McKinley (United States)
• Shahs of Persia (Qajar dynasty)

1. Nasser-al-Din Shah, 1848–1896
2. Mozzafar-al-Din Shah, 1896–1907

Important people

• Thomas A. Edison
• Charles Spurgeon
• Nikola Tesla

Entertainers

• Adelina Patti
• George W. Johnson
• Justin Smith
• Jonathan Booth
• George Gershwin

Sports

• Bob Fitzsimmons

Books about the 1890s

• The Mauve Decade, by Thomas Beer (1926)
• The Alienist, By Caleb Carr

See also

• Gay Nineties

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: 1890s

• Quiz: Victorian Etiquette — Educational Game, In the style of the Monty Pythons
• 1890s 1890s