1891 1892 1893 1894 1895 1896 1897 1898 1899 1900
Portuguese republicans revolt at Oporto in January to protest last year's British ultimatum that Portugal withdraw from certain African territories. A boundary treaty resolves differences between the two nations (see Windsor Treaty, 1899).
Former Prussian field marshal Helmuth K. Bernhard, Graf von Moltke, dies on a visit to Berlin April 24 at age 90. His victories in the Austro-Prussian War paved the way for German unification.
Katherine O'Shea is married June 25 to Charles Stewart Parnell, who continues his efforts to gain home rule for Ireland, but Parnell is rheumatic and exhausted by autumn after addressing crowds bareheaded in pouring rain and dies at Brighton October 6 at age 45 (see 1890). His widow will receive half her aunt's estate (minus court costs) next year, with some of it going to her ex-husband, a lawyer will abscond with much of the fortune in 1906, and "Kitty" O'Shea Parnell, now 46, will live to age 76.
Ottoman statesman-scholar Ahmed Vefik dies at his native Constantinople April 2 at age 67. Exiled leaders of the Young Turk reform movement that began at Constantinople 2 years ago convene at Geneva and endorse the provisions of the Ottoman Empire's 1876 constitution (see 1908).
The Rashid family that has controlled Arabia since 1818 exiles the Saud family to neighboring Kuwait on the Persian Gulf (but see 1902).
Hawaii's king David Kalakaua dies January 20 at age 54 after a 16-year reign and is succeeded by his 52-year-old sister, who will reign until 1893 as Queen Lydia Liliuokalani. The white elite that owns 80 percent of arable lands in the islands has united in the Hawaiian League to oppose Kalakaua, who has favored the interests of sugar magnate Claus Spreckels, and the sugar planters form an Annexation Club in a plot to overthrow the queen, who tries to restore the rights of the Hawaiian people (see Spreckels, 1883; abdication, 1893).
Former Union Navy admiral David D. Porter dies at Washington, D.C., February 13 at age 77; former Union Army general William Tecumseh Sherman at New York February 14 at age 71; former Confederate general Joseph Eggleston Johnston at Washington, D.C., March 21 at age 84.
Canada's prime minister Sir John Macdonald dies in office at Ottawa June 6 at age 76, having twice served as the nation's premier, dealing with rebellion in the west and opposing any talk of union with the United States ("A British subject I was born; a British subject I will die," he has said). He is succeeded by Senate leader Sir John (Joseph Caldwell) Abbott, 70, a compromise candidate who will resign next year for reasons of health.
Chile's president José Manuel Balmaceda tries to prevent congressional limitation of presidential powers and the nation is plunged into civil war. Balmaceda has pushed through anticlerical measures, improved public education, and promoted railroad construction, but the legislative revolt has been festering since the 1860s, congressional forces defeat Balmaceda's army with naval support in less than 8 months, the president commits suicide at his native Santiago September 19 at age 51, and parliamentarians will control the government until the mid-1920s.
Brazilians elect General Deodora da Fonseca president under a new constitution adopted 2 years ago to replace the charter drafted in 1824 and amended 10 years later; his dictatorial rule produces a naval revolt in late November, he is ousted from office, and Vice President Floriano Peixoto takes his place, but Peixoto's arbitrary rule will lead to rebellions that will break out for decades under future presidents. Former Brazilian emperor Pedro II dies at Paris December 5 at age 66.
Leander Starr Jameson, M.D., 38, wins appointment as administrator of the South Africa Company's territories. A friend of Cecil Rhodes, Jameson is a Scottish physician who came to Kimberley in 1878 and has been employed by Rhodes to negotiate with the Matabele chief Lobengula (see 1893).
The French protectorate established in equatorial Africa by Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza in 1880 becomes the French (Moyen [Middle]) Congo.
Jim Crow laws are enacted in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, and Tennessee (see Florida, 1887; Supreme Court decision, 1896).
The Australian Woman Suffrage League is founded at Sydney by local feminist Rose Scott, 44, who will lobby not only for enfranchisement but also for raising the age of consent, shortening hours of shop assistants, and similar causes. She will not marry, saying, "Life is too short to spend on the admiration of one man."
The British raj in India adopts an Age of Consent Act that raises the age of statutory rape for "consenting" Indian brides from 10 years to 12.
New York's University Settlement is founded by philanthropists to take over the work begun 5 years ago by Stanton Coit. He has gone to England as Ethical Culture minister to London and will head the West London Ethical Culture Society while the new society at New York urges university students to volunteer as settlers in the city slums (see 1897).
The Baron de Hirsch Fund is founded at New York by Munich-born businessman-philanthropist Maurice, baron de Hirsch, 59, who has multiplied his inherited wealth by constructing a railroad through the Balkans to Constantinople and engaging in other investments through the London-and-Paris banking house Bischoffsheim and Goldschmidt. The baron began his charities when he visited the Ottoman Empire and saw the living conditions of Jews there, gave 1 million francs to start the Alliance Israélite Universelle, contributes handsomely to it each year, and has established the English-based Jewish Colonization Association to establish Jewish agricultural colonies in countries that will permit them.
Swedish explorer Sven Anders Hedin, 26, visits Khorasan (northeastern Persia) and Russian Turkestan. Hedin traveled through Mesopotamia, the Caucasus, and Persia 6 years ago and last year was appointed interpreter for a Swedish-Norwegian mission to the Persian shah Naser ud-Din (see 1893).
Italian explorer Luigi Robecchi-Bricchetti, 36, leaves Mogadiscio (later Mogadishu) on the Indian Ocean and cuts across the Horn of Somalia and the eastern part of Ethiopia to Barbera on the Gulf of Aden, becoming the first European to do so. On his first expedition 5 years ago he reached the oasis of Siwa in western Egypt, where he discovered a vast necropolis, and last year he transversed the eastern section of Somalia, from Obbia in the south to Alula on the Horn.
British explorer-archeologist James T. (Theodore) Bent, 39, begins excavating remains of dzimbahwe (stone houses, or chiefs' graves) in eastern Rhodesia. Dating to as early as the 3rd century A.D., the ruins of Great Zimbabwe attest to the existence of a rich and flourishing Shona tribal culture whose history is largely unrecorded.
Oklahoma Territory lands ceded to the United States by the Sac, Fox, and Potawatomie open to white settlement September 18 under terms of a presidential proclamation that makes 900,000 acres available to whites (see 1889; 1892).
The Miners Union of the Coeur d'Alene is created January 1 by a merger of four Idaho lead miner unions (see gold strike, 1883). The Mineowners Association organized 7 weeks later by 13 mining companies resists the workers' demands for higher pay and better working conditions; the owners ask the Pinkerton National Detective Agency in September to infiltrate the union; and when the Northern Pacific and Union Pacific raise rates for ore shipped to Denver and Omaha smelters, the owners shut down their mines, throwing 2,000 miners out of work by year's end (see 1892).
Mining magnate George Hearst dies at Washington, D.C., February 28 at age 70. Elected to the U.S. Senate from California in 1888, he leaves a vast fortune to his journalist son William Randolph, now 27, who will soon make himself felt at New York (see communications, 1895).
Union Minière du Haut Katanga is organized April 15 to mine African copper under an agreement between Leopold II of Belgium and Cecil Rhodes aide Robert Williams, 31, who has sent an expedition north to study outcroppings observed by the late David Livingstone. The expedition has reported back that the copper lies across the border in Katanga territory owned by Leopold, so Williams has gone to the king and negotiated (see Benguela Railroad, 1903).
U.S. workers strike throughout the year for higher wages and shorter hours.
French troops open fire on strikers May 1 at Fourmies as workers of the Sans Pareille factory demonstrate in the streets for an 8-hour day. Among the nine dead are two children, and about 60 are injured.
German factory workers win the right June 1 to form committees that will negotiate with employers on conditions of employment, and factory inspection is made more efficient.
A new Colorado gold rush begins as thousands rush to Cripple Creek on the slopes of Pike's Peak following a strike by prospector Robert Wommack, who has found paydirt at Poverty Gulch. The Cripple Creek mines will grow in the next 20 years to become the fifth largest producer in world history. They will yield nearly $1 billion in the yellow metal, and by the end of this decade the town of Cripple Creek will have 60,000 people, 147 active mining companies, 40 grocery stores, 17 churches, 25 schools, 15 hotels, 88 doctors and dentists, nearly 100 lawyers, a stock exchange, streetcars, eight newspapers, and 139 24-hour saloons (see 1900).
Unadilla, New York-born mechanical engineer Frederick A. (Arthur) Halsey, 35, presents a paper at a meeting of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. "The Premium Plan of Paying for Labor" explains the system he put into place last year as general manager of the Canadian Rand Drill Company at Sherbrooke, Quebec: for every hour saved in performing any given piece of work, a worker receives a premium based on the saving, with the employer receiving another share of the saving. He will expand on the idea and see it widely adopted in America despite opposition from organized labor (British industry will be quicker to adopt it) (see Taylor, 1911).
The world's first old-age pension plan goes into effect in Germany. Introduced by Prince von Bismarck in the Old Age Insurance Act of June 1889, the plan compels workers to contribute if they are over age 16, are fully employed, and earn more than 2,000 marks ($500) per year. Employers must contribute equal amounts, and the pension is payable at age 70 (few workers live that long) to persons who have paid premiums for a minimum of 30 years (see Britain, 1908; U.S. Social Security Act, 1935).
Britain has 1.25 million women in "service" jobs; domestic servants find employment even in middle-class households.
The American Express Travelers Cheque copyrighted July 7 by the 41-year-old American Express Company will become an important means of protecting travelers' funds from theft and loss, but the company sells only 248 of the checks (total face amount: $9,120) its first year, mostly because they can be cashed only at company offices. American Express next year will contract with banks and hotels that will agree to cash the checks and offer a 14-page brochure listing establishments that will accept them. Sales next year will explode to $483,490, and by 1909 they will reach $23 million, with American Express agreeing to pay checks countersigned by the purchaser, paying banks a commission for selling the checks, receiving a 1 percent commission from the purchaser, and enjoying the use of vast sums of money interest-free. Thomas Cook & Son issued the first Travelers Cheques in 1874 but will agree next year to honor American Express cheques at its worldwide travel offices (see credit card, 1958).
Camden, South Carolina-born New York physician's son Bernard M. (Mannes) Baruch, 21, joins the brokerage firm A. A. Housman and Company as a bond salesman and customers' man. Tall and good looking, he will speculate on his own account, play his hunches, win big when he goes short before bear markets, and—after some early setbacks—be a millionaire by age 30 (see 1903).
New York's tax commissioner acknowledges that while his office has the power to collect property taxes it is in fact able to collect taxes on personal property only from "the widows and orphans," because their personal property is documented by the surrogate court.
An explosion at Nova Scotia's No. 3 Springhill coal mine February 21 kills 121 men and boys (see commerce [union], 1879). Mining of the region's enormous coal seams has been going on for more than half a century but remains dangerous work.
Brooklyn oil baron Charles Pratt dies at his Manhattan office in the Standard Oil Building May 4 at age 60 with John D. Rockefeller at his side, leaving an estate valued at more than $15 million.
Royal Dutch Company executive Jan (Baptist August) Kessler, 38, arrives at Langkat, Sumatra, and takes over the oil-drilling operation of the late A. E. Zijlker (see 1890). He uses his knowledge of the Indonesian countryside, entrepreneurial skills, and friendly relationship with the sultan to secure new petroleum leases in the surrounding area and in the next few years will drill more than eight successful wells, build a refinery at Pangkalan Brandan, and an eight-mile pipeline to export refined lamp oil under the trade name Crown Oil to Penang, Malaysia (see 1900).
German electrical engineer Oskar von Miller builds a cable that transmits alternating current at 25,000 volts over a distance of 180 kilometers (112 miles) (see 1882; German Edison, 1883). Now 36, Miller is technical director of a Frankfurt Electrical Exposition; his interest in converting water power to electrical energy will lead to the development of Bavarian hydroelectric stations.
The National Brotherhood of Electrical Workers founded November 28 by 10 linemen at a St. Louis dance hall receives a charter from the American Federation of Labor December 4 with jurisdiction over all electrical work and will become the International Brotherhood in 1899 when it extends its jurisdiction to Canada. Linemen work under hazardous conditions to string high-voltage lines, most earn only $8 per week (15¢ to 20¢ per hour at best), there is no apprenticeship, and the casualty rate is enormous (the union's Texas-born first president Henry Miller, 33, will be killed on the job at Washington, D.C., in July 1896 at age 38 after sustaining a severe electric shock and falling from a utility pole).
New York's first hansom cabs are introduced from London, where they have been in use since 1834.
The New York Central's Empire State Express travels 436 miles from New York to East Buffalo in a record-breaking 7 hours, 6 minutes.
The Canadian Pacific Railway reaches Strachcona, across the river from Edmonton, Alberta, which will soon begin a rapid growth as settlers pour into the area. The town developed in the late 1860s 20 miles upstream from the Hudson's Bay Company fur-trading post established in 1795 and abandoned 17 years later.
Construction begins at Vladivostok on a Trans-Siberian Railway that has been financed in part by French financiers and by London's Baring Brothers. Russian convicts will perform most of the labor on the railway that will link Moscow with the Pacific Coast (see 1900).
Civil engineer Sir John Hawkshaw dies at London June 2 at age 79 (approximate), having introduced steeper gradients on the Manchester and Leeds Railway than any previously built, worked on London's Underground, and designed India's nearly mile-long bridge over the Narmada River.
Ohio City, Ohio, inventor-entrepreneur John W. (William) Lambert, 31, drives the first gasoline-powered U.S. motorcar down the town's main street in January (see Benz, 1885; 1888). Owner of the local grain elevator and other enterprises, Lambert invented a successful corn planter at age 16 and is familiar with the Benz motorcar; he is also aware of its shortcomings, believing that its system of belts and pullies is responsible for its lack of power. When he learned last year that John B. Hicks of Cleveland's Lowell Machine Works was trying to build a stationary gasoline engine Lambert agreed to help finance it. He has invested $3,300 and obtained a license to the newly-issued patent on Hicks's three-cylinder engine, redesigned it to create a lightweight one-cylinder engine with a special carburetor and drive system, and uses it to power a three-wheeled vehicle that resembles a horsedrawn carriage without a horse. Lambert mails out sales brochures in February offering the vehicles for sale at $550 each (see 1900).
Internal combustion engine inventor Nikolaus A. Otto dies at Cologne January 26 at age 58.
The first actual sale of a motorcar takes place February 17. French bicycle maker Armand Peugeot, 41, of Les Fils des Peugeot Frères exhibited a steam-driven tricycle at the Paris Exposition of 1889, met Gustave Daimler and Emile Lavossor last year, began making cars at his bicycle factory in Valentigney in eastern France under license from Daimler, has built a three-wheeled car with a gasoline-powered Panhard engine, and sells it for 3,500 francs to one Léon Vurpillod. Peugeot's grandfather and great uncle converted a textile mill into a steel foundry in 1810, their sons adopted a lion trademark in 1858, and the Peugeots produced corset frames, coffee grinders, saws, and springs (including springs for pince-nez) before turning in 1885 to the production of velocipedes and quadricycles (see delivery van, 1895; Citroën, 1976).
Hamburg-born English entrepreneur Fredrick R. Simms, 27, negotiates a license to use Gottlieb W. Daimler's patented gasoline engine in an overhead railcar and market the engine in Britain. He met Daimler in 1888, they became friends despite the 30-year difference in their ages, and Daimler invited him last year to sit on Daimler Gesellschaft's board of directors (see British Daimler, 1893).
Chicopee, Massachusetts, bicycle designer Charles E. (Edward) Duryea, 29, and his toolmaker brother James F. (Franklin) design a gasoline engine that will power a road vehicle (see Haynes-Duryea, 1892).
The Michelin factory at Clermont-Ferrand receives a request from a cyclist in France's Auvergne region who cannot repair one of his English pneumatic tires, which is glued to its rim (see Michelin, 1889; Dunlop, 1888). Edouard Michelin fixes the tire, but it takes him 3 hours plus 6 hours for the glue to dry and he recognizes the need for something better; within a few months he has obtained a patent for a "removable tire" that can be repaired quickly in the event of puncture. Racing cyclist Charles Terront uses the new Michelin tires in a round-trip race between Paris and Brest, and although he does not win the race his tires prove themselves and within a year some 10,000 cyclists will be using Michelin tires (see 1895).
The Ocean Mail Subsidy Act passed by Congress March 3 authorizes subsidization of the U.S. merchant marine (see 1928; 1936).
The S.S. Empress of India, S.S. Empress of Japan, and S.S. Empress of China begin service out of Vancouver as the Canadian Pacific Railway moves into shipping (see 1888).
The Jarvis winch patented August 1 by Glasgow-born Scottish shipmaster John C. B. (Charles Barron) Jarvis, 33, is an "improved means for bracing the yards in square-rigged ships," it enables such ships to be manned by far fewer men, and it will permit development of the windjammer (see 1897).
Aluminum production gets a boost from Pittsburgh banker Andrew W. (William) Mellon, 36, who invests in Pittsburgh Reduction Company (it will soon be headed by his brother Richard) and finances the mortgage of a new plant at New Kensington, Pennsylvania, for the company that will become Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa) in 1907 (see 1888). Within 2 years the price of aluminum will be $2 per pound, down from $15 late in 1888; energy costs represent about a third of total production costs (see 1907).
The first commercial bromine to be produced electrolytically is introduced by Herbert H. Dow's Midland Chemical Company, established by Dow at Midland, Michigan, with backing from Cleveland sewing machine maker J. H. Osborn (see 1889). Financed by sales to the pharmaceutical and photographic industries, Dow begins work to develop a process for producing chlorine electrolytically (see 1897; ethyl, 1924).
Chemist Herman Frasch patents a process for extracting sulfur economically to permit production of cheap sulfuric acid for making superphosphate fertilizer and countless other purposes (see energy, 1888). Now 40, Frasch has noted that sulfur melts at a fairly low temperature and is not soluble in water (see 1895).
Anatomist-geologist Eugène Dubois in the Dutch East Indies discovers Java man fossils of a prehistoric human ancestor at Kedung Brebus, Java (see 1887). He finds fossil evidence (first a jaw fragment, then a skullcap and thighbone) of what he calls Pithecanthropus erectus in an earth stratum dating from the Upper Pleistocene era of 700,000 B.C. and determines that the upright-walking man had a small brain; massive brow ridges; a flat, retreating forehead; and other apelike features, all of which Dubois will publish in 1894 before returning to Europe; controversy will erupt over his discovery, and Dubois will withdraw his materials from all examination until 1923.
Berlin's Koch Institute for Infectious Diseases opens with great nationalistic fanfare despite revelations that Koch's 1882 tuberculosis vaccine is ineffective.
The diphtheria antitoxin produced last year by Emil von Behring has hopelessly variable results on test animals until Koch Institute bacteriologist Paul Ehrlich, 37, shows Behring how to standardize his vaccine. Ehrlich increases the amount of antitoxin produced in the blood of a horse by steadily raising the amount of toxin injected, the diphtheria vaccine is given its first human application Christmas Eve on a child dying in a Berlin hospital, the child recovers and is discharged a week later, but while Behring will be made a baron and will grow rich on royalties from commercial sale of the vaccine, he will trick Ehrlich out of his share by persuading him that he will be granted an institute of his own if he renounces commercial royalties (see syphilis drug, 1909).
Hackensack, New Jersey-born bacteriologist Anna W. (Wessels) Williams, 28, obtains her M.D. from the Women's Medical College of New York and accepts a position in the newly-created diagnostic laboratory of the city's Health Department, the first such lab in America. New York is in the grip of a diphtheria epidemic; the only available antitoxin is too weak to be effective and impossible to manufacture in the massive quantities needed (see 1894).
French bacteriologist Albert Calmette, 28, establishes the Pasteur Intitut at Saigon, Indochina, where he will discover a protective serum against snake venom. Calmette will return to France and in 5 years will become a director of the Pasteur Institute at Lille (see tuberculosis, 1908).
Maryland-born Johns Hopkins Hospital pathologist William T. (Thomas) Councilman, 37, investigates amoebic dysentery and produces a monograph on the amoeba and its parasite. Rarely seen in the United States but endemic in countries where drinking water is contaminated, dysentery will continue for more than a century to rival malaria as a leading cause of death. Councilman has worked in Africa and confirmed Alphonse Laveran's 1880 discovery that malaria is caused by a parasite.
Chicago's Provident Hospital is the first U.S. interracial hospital. Established by Hollidaysville, Pennsylvania-born black surgeon Daniel Hale Williams, 33, the new facility incorporates the first U.S. nurses training school for black women (see open heart surgery, 1893).
Gynecologist and obstetrician Fordyce Barker dies at New York May 30 at age 73, having traveled to Europe each year for 3 decades, become closely acquainted with literary leaders such as Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray, and by some accounts introduced the use of hypodermic syringes into U.S. medicine.
Theosophical Society cofounder Helena Blavatsky dies at London May 8 at age 59. Her followers carry on her pantheistic philosophical-religious system.
The lapidary encyclical "Of New Things" (Rerum novarum) issued May 15 by Pope Leo XIII points out that employers have important moral duties as members of the possessing class and that one of society's first duties is to improve the "terrible conditions to which the new and often violent process of [capitalist] industrialization" has reduced great multitudes of people. But the pope continues to condemn socialism and economic liberalism.
The American Museum of Natural History appoints Connecticut-born paleontologist Henry Fairfield Osborn, 34, curator of vertebrate paleontology. Osborn has just joined the faculty of Columbia University as professor biology.
Educator William Rainey Harper agrees in February to become president of the new University of Chicago (see 1890). The school receives additional land on the city's South Side from merchant Marshall Field, who will contribute $100,000 next year, but most of the funding comes from oilman John D. Rockefeller, who gave $124,000 in 1889, $304,000 last year, and gives $510,000 this year (see 1892).
California Institute of Technology (Caltech) has its beginnings in the Throop Polytechnic Institute founded at Pasadena. Devoted primarily to graduate and undergraduate teaching and research in pure and applied science and engineering, it will change its name in 1920.
The first full-service advertising agency opens March 15 at New York. George Batten, 36, offers "service contracts" under whose terms his agency will handle copy, art, production, and placement, relieving clients of any need to maintain their own elaborate advertising departments. He receives compensation from the media, which pay him commissions on space rates (see ANPA, 1893).
The Strand Magazine begins publication at London. The monthly journal offers light reading with lots of illustrations and will continue until 1950.
The weekly London newspaper News of the World published since 1843 is acquired by the Carr family, whose members will control it for nearly 80 years (see Murdoch, 1969).
The newspaper Jornal do Brasil begins publication at Rio de Janeiro April 9 under the direction of Rodolfo Dantas, Joaquim Nabuco, Constancio Alves, and Aristides Espinola.
Automatic Electric Company is founded to exploit a dial telephone patented by Kansas City undertaker Almon B. Strowger, who has convinced himself that "central" is diverting his incoming calls to a rival embalmer (see AT&T, 1919).
Electromagnetic telegraph co-inventor and "wave theory" pioneer Wilhelm E. Weber dies at Göttingen June 23 at age 86.
Nonfiction: Introduction to the Study of Federal Government by Pennsylvania-born Harvard history professor Albert Bushnell Hart, 37; Ancient Cures by Lady Jane Francesca Wilde.
Historian George Bancroft dies at Washington, D.C., January 17 at age 90.
Fiction: Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy portrays human tragedies rooted in the conflict between the changing society of industrial England and the rural ways of an earlier age; The Story of Gosta Berling (Gosta Berlings Saga) by Swedish novelist Selma (Ottiliana Lovisa) Lagerlöf, 32; The Heritage of QuincasBorba (Quincas Borba) by Joachim Machado de Assis; New Grub Street by English novelist George (Robert) Gissing, 33; The Light That Failed by Rudyard Kipling, who has returned to England from India; The Little Minister by English novelist James M. (Matthew) Barrie, 31, who will turn to writing for the stage next year; Peter Ibbetson by Paris-born Punch staff artist George (Louis Palmella Busson) du Maurier, 57, whose novel is autobiographical (the loss of the sight in his left eye forced him at an early age to give up his idea of being a painter and turn instead to drawing); The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, who writes, "It is better to be beautiful than to be good, but it is better to be good than to be ugly." Some critics attack his novel as "decadent" and "unmanly" for portraying a beautiful hedonist who retains his youthful good looks while his portrait shows the marks of time and dissipation; Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories by Oscar Wilde; News from Nowhere (stories) by William Morris, now 57, who describes an English socialist commonwealth; Main-Travelled Roads: Six Mississippi Valley Stories by Wisconsin-born short story writer (Hannibal) Hamlin Garland, 31, includes "The Return of the Private"; Tales of Soldiers and Civilians by Ambrose Bierce is based on the author's Civil War experiences and contains the story "Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge"; "A Scandal in Bohemia" by A. Conan Doyle in the July issue of The Strand Magazine begins regular publication of Sherlock Holmes stories.
Novelist Ivan Goncharov dies at St. Petersburg September 27 at age 79. Herman Melville dies at his native New York September 28 at age 72, with many of his works still in manuscript; he received his final royalty statement from Harper Brothers more than 4 years ago; Omoo, White-Jacket, and Moby-Dick are all out of print, and lifetime earnings from his books have totaled only $5,900 from U.S. publishers, $4,500 from British.
Poetry: "The English Flag" by Rudyard Kipling: "And what should they know of England who only England know?"
Poet James Russell Lowell dies at Cambridge, Massachusetts, August 12 at age 72; Arthur Rimbaud at Marseilles November 10 at age 37 (he sailed for Marseilles in April and had his infected leg amputated to no avail).
Juvenile: A Sweet Girl Graduate by L. T. Meade.
Painting: The Good Judges and Skeletons Quarreling Over the Body of a Dead Man by James Ensor; The Star of Bethlehem by Edward Coley Burne-Jones; Hail Mary (La Ora na Maria) by Paul Gauguin, who settles in Tahiti, where he will live until 1893; The Bath, The Fitting, The Letter, The Parrot, and La Toilette by Mary Cassatt; Sardine Fishing, Concarneau by Paul Signac; Le Cirque by Georges Seurat; The Concert Singer by Thomas Eakins; Cab Stand at Night, Madison Square and Evening Star (pastel) by Childe Hassam. Ernest Meissonier dies at Paris January 31 at age 75, having aspired to greatness but achieved only prominence and wealth; Dutch painter Johann Barthold Jongkind dies at Côte-St.-André, Isere, February 9 at age 71; George Seurat of diphtheria at Paris March 20 at age 31.
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec produces his first music hall poster.
Sculpture: Memorial to Mrs. Henry Adams by Augustus Saint-Gaudens for Washington's Rock Creek Park Cemetery. Local historian Henry Brooks Adams has commissioned the work in memory of his wife, Clover (née Marian Hooper), to whom he was married in June 1872 and who killed herself in December 1885 at age 42 by swallowing potassium cyanide that she had used in her photographic darkroom. The sculpture is an approximation of Kwannon, the Buddhist goddess of compassion, which Adams has seen on a visit to the Japanese Imperial Shrine at Nikko.
Eastman Kodak chemist Henry Reichenbach and some colleagues take steps to start their own company (see 1889). George Eastman fires them but cannot find replacements capable of producing good-quality film emulsions, customers begin complaining, and Eastman halts production of film (see 1893).
Theater: The Duchess of Padua by Oscar Wilde 1/26 at New York's Broadway Theater; Hedda Gabler by Henrik lbsen 2/26 at Kristiania's (Oslo's) Kristiania Theater; The American by Henry James 7/26 at London's Opera Comique,with Edward Crompton, Sidney Paxton, Kate Bateman, 69 performances (see 1877) novel; A Trip to Chinatown by Concord, New Hampshire-born playwright Charles H. (Hale) Hoyt, 31, 11/9 at New York's Madison Square Theater, with Kansas-born actress Trixie Friganza, 20, 657 performances. Music by Philadelphia-born composer Percy Gaunt, now 39, will be added next year with songs that include "The Bowery," (lyric by Hoyt), "Reuben, Reuben," "Push the Clouds Away," and "After the Ball" by songwriter Chester K. Harris, now 26, whose song will be the first to have sheet music sales of more than 5 million copies.
Sarah Bernhardt embarks on a world tour in which she will perform the roles of Phaedra, Marguerite Gautier (in La Dame aux Camellias), Fedora, Tosca, and Cleopatre for audiences in North and South America and Australia (see 1872).
Shakespearean actor Lawrence Barrett dies at New York March 20 at age 52; showman P. T. Barnum at Philadelphia April 7 at age 80; playwright John Maddison Morton at his native London December 19 at age 80, having become a Charterhouse pensioner.
Opera: Griseldis 5/15 at the Comédie-Française, Paris, with music by Jules Massenet.
Emma Eames makes her London debut at Covent Garden 4/7 and her Metropolitan Opera debut 12/14 singing the role of Marguerite in the 1859 Gounod opera Faust; Lilian Nordica makes her Metropolitan Opera debut at age 34 singing the role of Leonora in the 1853 Verdi opera Il Trovatore (see 1879).
Composer Léo Delibes dies at Paris January 16 at age 54, having written 23 operas.
Stage musicals: The Nautch Girl, or The Rajah of Chutneypore 6/30 at London's Savoy Theatre, with Lenore Snyder, Courtice Pounds, book by George Dance, music by Edward Solomon, lyrics by Dance and Frank Desprez, 200 performances; London-born dancer-singer Lottie Collins, 24, opens 11/7 at the city's Tivoli Music Hall performing a number by Canadian-born songwriter-minstrel show manager Henry J. Sayers, 38: "Ta-ra-ra-boom-der-ay: did you see my wife today. No I saw her yesterday: ta-ra-ra-boom-der-ay." Collins has sung the number earlier in a pantomime at the Grand Theatre, Islington, and must rush back and forth between the two theaters to make her appearances, giving the song a popularity it has never had before. Audiences go wild as she segues from a demure beginning to an uninhibited version of the skirt dance in which she reveals scarlet stockings held up by sparkling garters; the Puritan League objects, but Collins will perform the dance in engagements all over Britain and America; Robin Hood 9/22 at New York's Standard Theater, with music by Middletown, Connecticut-born, English-educated composer (Henry Louis) Reginald De Koven, 32, book and lyrics by Buffalo, New York-born writer Harry B. Smith, 41, songs that include De Koven's 1889 number "Oh Promise Me" (lyric by English drama critic Clement Scott, now 50), "Brown October Ale," "The Tailor's Song," and "The Armorer's Song," 77 performances; Cinder-Ellen up-too-late 12/24 at London's Gaiety Theatre with Collins in a cameo role and Nellie Farren, now 43, in the last successful presentation of burlesque, the light musical entertainment that has been popular for half a century but that will be replaced by musical comedy, 181 performances. (U.S. forms of burlesque will make the term disreputable with nudity and vulgarity.)
English music-hall comedian George Robey (originally George Edward Wade), 21, begins a career that will continue for nearly 60 years as he assumes various character roles (notably a collarless cleric with a red nose, heavy black eyebrows, ribald smile, and indignant stare) that will make him known as "the prime minister of mirth."
Chicago-born circus entertainer Marie Louise "Loie" Fuller, 29, becomes a stage dancer and creates a sensation with an exotic solo skirt dance like that of Lottie Collins, using multi-directional colored lights to illuminate her yards of silk (see 1892).
Musical comedy composer Alfred Cellier dies at London December 28 at age 47.
New York's Carnegie Hall opens May 5 at the southeast corner of 57th Street and Seventh Avenue with a concert conducted in part by Petr Ilich Tchaikovsky (he leads the orchestra in a performance of his Marche Solennelle). Tchaikovsky has come from Russia at the persuasion of Oratorio Society director Walter Damrosch, now 29, who has left the Metropolitan Opera after 6 years and urged steel magnate Andrew Carnegie to contribute funds for construction of what is initially called simply "The Music Hall." An audience of 3,000, plus several hundred standees, fills the new house that has been built with private contributions, including a $2 million gift from Carnegie, whose income for the year is $4.3 million and who 3 years ago became president of the Oratorio Society. Designed by architect William Burnett Tuthill, the auditorium has marvelous acoustics and will be New York's preeminent concert hall for more than a century.
The Chicago Symphony is founded under the direction of German-born conductor Theodore Thomas, who has been bringing orchestras to Chicago since 1862 (see Orchestra Hall, 1904).
First performances: Concerto No. 1 in F sharp minor for Piano and Orchestra by Moscow Conservatory student Sergei Vassilievich Rachmaninoff, 18, who will revise the work drastically 25 years hence; "March of the Dwarfs" by Edvard Grieg; Orchestral Suite in A minor by Edward MacDowell in September at England's Worcester Festival.
Wilfred Baddely, 19, wins in men's singles at Wimbledon, Lottie Dod in women's singles; Oliver Campbell wins in U.S. men's singles, Mabel E. Cahill in women's singles.
A new Polo Grounds opens for the New York Giants baseball club to replace a small 6,000-seat polo stadium first used by the Giants in 1883. By 1894 the Giants will have set a league attendance record of 400,000 for the year (see 1958; Yankee Stadium, 1923).
John Joseph McGraw, 18, joins the Baltimore Orioles to begin a 41-year career in major league baseball. McGraw will be named manager of the New York Giants in July 1902 and continue as player-manager until 1906, when he will retire with a lifetime batting average of .334, having helped the Giants win two National League pennants and a World Series victory; he will continue as manager of the Giants until June 1932.
Former world bantamweight boxing champion George Dixon wins the world heavyweight championship July 28, knocking out Australian Abe Willis in the fourth round of a title bout at San Francisco (see 1890). Dixon will hold the title until October 1897, regain it in November 1898, and hold it again until January 1900.
Walter Camp writes the first football rule book (see 1889); he has invented the scrimmage line, the 11-man team, signals, and the quarterback position (see 1898).
Basketball has its beginnings in a game invented at Springfield, Massachusetts, by Canadian-born physical education director James Naismith, 30, who is taking a course at the YMCA Training School in Springfield and has been assigned with his classmates the project of creating a game that will occupy students between the football and baseball seasons. Adapting a game played by the Maya and Olmec in pre-Colombian Central America, Naismith sets up fruit baskets atop ladders and establishes rules that will be used in the first publicly held game in March of next year and will never be substantially changed (although the fruit baskets will be replaced by open-ended cotton nets) (see Mikan, 1946; NBA, 1948; 24-second rule, 1954).
A New Orleans jury hears testimony about violence among rival gangs of Italian dockworkers in connection with last year's murder of police superintendent David C. Hennessy. The defense lawyer has succeeded in having all 19 indictments quashed, three of the cases have ended in mistrial, the jury brings in a not-guilty verdict for the other 16, jurymen deny that they have been bribed or threatened, but a vigilante mob of outraged citizens estimated to number 6,000 storms the city jail March 14, drags out 11 of the prisoners, and although they really may be innocent brutally massacres them—the worst mass lynching in U.S. history. Italian workers are at the bottom of the U.S. social heap and receive lower wages than any other workers, black or white. Extortion continues on the New Orleans waterfront and the Mafia will grow in power elsewhere.
Chicago's new Monadnock building at 53 West Jackson Street relies completely on functional form. Burnham & Root of 1886 Rookery fame has made a clean break with traditional styles of architecture and employed advanced techniques of steel frame construction and utter simplicity of design, but architect John Wellborn Root has died January 15 at age 41.
Boston's Ames building goes up at the corner of Tremont and Washington Streets. The city's first skyscraper, it rises 13 stories above the street.
Ochre Court at Newport, Rhode Island, is completed for New York real estate magnate Ogden Goelet. Architect Richard Morris Hunt has designed the "cottage" in late Gothic French château style.
Florida's Tampa Bay Hotel goes up as railroad magnate Henry Bradley Plant of Atlanta's Southern Express Company tries to make Tampa a popular winter resort rivaling the East Coast resorts of H. M. Flagler (see 1888). Now 71, Plant has organized the Savannah, Florida, and Western Railroad; architect J. A. Wood has modeled the ornate $3 million hotel with its 13 minarets (and 225 rooms) on Granada's Alhambra Palace of 1354.
Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann dies at his native Paris January 11 at age 81, having transformed his city with boulevards, parks, sewer and water systems, street lights, and the like in ways that will be imitated by city planners at Cairo, Mexico City, and elsewhere; civil engineer Sir Joseph W. Bazalgette dies at Wimbledon, Surrey, March 15 at age 71, having designed London's main drainage system (along with Thames embankments and various bridges). His contributions gained him a knighthood in 1874.
The Forest Reserves Act passed by Congress March 3 authorizes withdrawal of public lands for a national forest reserve as lumber king Frederick Weyerhaeuser expands his holdings (see 1870). Weyerhaeuser moves his Weyerhaeuser Company headquarters to St. Paul, Minnesota, having acquired land from his neighbor, railroad baron James J. Hill, and will expand his timberland holdings to control more than 2 million acres of forest land from Wisconsin and Minnesota to the Pacific Northwest, the largest holding of any U.S. company. Some 13 million acres will be set aside in President Harrison's administration, beginning a policy that will set aside more than 185 million acres of national forests in 40 states in the next 80 years (see 1905).
Norwegian-born logger Simon Benson, 38, builds the first logging railroad at Cathlamet on the lower Columbia River. He has been using oxen to log on a small scale on the Washington side of the river, and although others have failed in their efforts to use steam power for the work he will find a way to succeed.
The New York Botanical Garden opens in the Bronx.
Tight money conditions bankrupt Kansas farmers (see 1890); some 18,000 prairie schooners (covered wagons) cross the Mississippi headed back east (see 1894).
The four-masted ship Shenandoah sets sail from San Francisco with a record 5,200 tons of wheat, but although California wheat has remained competitive through reduced freight rates as larger and larger vessels entered the trade, the state's wheat exports now begin to fall precipitously (see transportation [windjammers], 1897).
U.S. Department of Agriculture scientists in this decade will begin planting date palms in the California's Coachella Valley; by 1915 the trees will be firmly rooted and receiving irrigation with Colorado River water delivered by the All-American Canal.
Russian crops fail, reducing millions to starvation; the rural peasantry raids towns in search of food. Responding to an appeal by Cassius Marcellus Clay, now 81, who was Abraham Lincoln's minister to St. Petersburg, President Harrison orders that U.S. flour be shipped to the Russians (see 1892).
British butchers convicted of selling meat unfit for human consumption may be required on a second offense to put up signs on their shops stating their record. A Public Health Act passed by Parliament provides for the public exposure of wrongdoing.
U.S. merchants continue with impunity to misrepresent their food products, selling "deviled ham" that is really minced tripe dyed red. North Dakota alone consumes 10 times as much "Vermont" maple syrup as the state of Vermont produces. Congress enacts a law requiring the country of origin to appear prominently on product labels following revelations that Maine herring is being labeled "imported French sardines" and sold in fancy boxes with labels in French.
British consumers are so accustomed to having their pepper adulterated that a store selling pure ground pepper may have it returned because the color is "too dark" and the flavor "too strong." Europeans on the Continent prefer white pepper, which has only one quarter of the strength of black pepper (most of the pungency of black pepper comes from volatile oils and other properties found near the outer husks). Despite Britain's Pure Food law of 1875, ground pepper is so commonly adulterated that knowledgeable consumers buy only whole peppercorns, but shops are obliged by public taste to sell ground pepper mixed with pepper dust (composed of dried, powdered autumn leaves), hot pepper dust (made from the ground hulls of black mustard), or white pepper dust (ground from rice) (see 1900).
Britain's food industry employs nearly 600,000 workers; the number of jam makers has increased 80 percent since 1881, the number of greengrocers has increased by 40 percent, and there have been corresponding increases in the numbers of grocers, fishmongers, and other traders in food.
American Sugar Refining begins taking over the entire U.S. sugar industry in one colossal trust. Incorporated in New Jersey by H. O. Havemeyer, it replaces the 4-year-old Sugar Refineries Company that has been dissolved by the New York courts (see 1892).
The "Del Monte" label that will become the leading label for U.S. canned fruits and vegetables is used for the first time. Oakland Preserving Company executives at Oakland, California, have been inspired by Charles Crocker's 11-year-old Del Monte Hotel at Monterey and use its name to identify their premium quality fruit ("extras") (see 1865; 1895).
The first electric oven for commercial sale is introduced at St. Paul, Minnesota, by Carpenter Electric Heating Manufacturing Company.
Quaker Oats Company is created by seven independent millers, who form what critics will call the "oatmeal trust." They hire five stout men to dress as Quakers, ride atop the engines and cars of a train running between Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and Portland, Oregon, and jump down at each stop to distribute free sample boxes of Quaker Oats (see 1893; 1901).
Candy maker Milton S. Hershey verges on bankruptcy until his cousin William L. Blair agrees to invest some of his inheritance in Hershey's caramel company, whose factories will soon employ 2,000 workers at Lancaster and another 400 at Chicago (see 1876; 1892).
Atlanta wholesale pharmacist Asa G. (Griggs) Candler, 39, acquires full ownership of Coca-Cola April 22 (see Pemberton, 1888); he will achieve great success only when he reformulates the product with more sugar, reduces its cocaine content (in 1903), eliminates its medicinal taste, and changes Coca-Cola advertising to end claims such as "Wonderful Nerve and Brain Tonic and Remarkable Therapeutic Agent" and "Its beneficial effects upon diseases of the vocal chords are wonderful." He will make Coca-Cola syrup the basis of a popular 5¢ soft drink (see 1892).
New York City has more soda fountains than saloons. Harper's Weekly reports that marble chips from the construction of St. Patrick's Cathedral on Fifth Avenue are being used to make sulfuric acid for the production of 25 million gallons of soda water.
Britons in this decade will switch from cognac-and-soda to whisky-and-soda as good brandies grow prohibitively expensive due to the devastation of France's Cognac region by grape phylloxerae. The newly blended Scotch whiskies are more palatable to many than the old single-grain malt whiskies and have more character than the grain whiskies produced in the patent still of 1830 (see 1850; lawsuit, 1905).
Hiram Walker's Club Whisky becomes "Canadian Club" following passage of U.S. legislation (see 1857). Imitations marketed by Kentucky distillers have also played a role in making the company decide to rename its brand.
Congress votes March 3 to establish a U.S. Office of Superintendent of Immigration, founding what will come to be called the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) (see 1894).
Canada gets her first Ukrainian immigration influx (see Mennonites, 1874). Ukrainians will be Canada's fourth largest population group after the French, Irish, and English.
Overpopulation begins to cause worry in Japan.
"No human law can abolish natural and inherent rights of marriage," says Pope Leo XIII in Rerum novarum, "or limit in any way its chief and principal purpose . . . which is to increase and multiply."
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