1891 1892 1893 1894 1895 1896 1897 1898 1899 1900
Crete proclaims union with Greece February 6 following months of strife between Christians and Muslims, Athens sends ships and troops February 10, the world powers announce a blockade of Crete March 18, a Greek-Ottoman war begins April 7, the Turks prevail, the Greeks withdraw, an armistice ends hostilities May 19, and a peace treaty is signed December 4 at Constantinople, but the Turks will withdraw from Crete next year.
Queen Victoria celebrates her Diamond Jubilee June 22, braving the heat at age 78 in her usual black silk moiré dress and wearing a wreath of acacia leaves and an aigrette of diamonds in her black lace bonnet as she reviews regiments who have come from all over the Empire, which now covers one-fifth of the world's land surface and includes nearly one quarter of the world's population.
The first Zionist congress opens August 31 at Basel as Theodor Herzl arouses support for his dream of a Jewish homeland in Palestine that will provide a refuge for oppressed Jews worldwide (see 1894). Herzl writes September 3, "In Basel, I have founded the Jewish state." He will obtain an appointment with the Ottoman sultan Abdul Hamid, and although he has scant financial backing he will offer to buy up the Turkish national debt in exchange for Jewish rights in "the Promised Land" of Palestine (see Balfour Declaration, 1917).
Belgian forces reach the Nile at Rejaf in February, defeat the Sudan Dervishes, occupy Loda and Wadelai, reach the Bahr-el-Ghazal region in August, but are challenged in September by a great mutiny as the Batetelas revolt on the upper Congo in an insurrection that will continue until 1900.
Madagascar's Hova queen Ranavalona is deposed at the end of February by General Joseph Gallieni, the French soldier who last August proclaimed the country a colony of France and now ends the 110-year-old Hova dynasty, exiling Queen Ranavalona to the island of Réunion, from which she will be relocated to Algeria.
The French 75-millimeter gun revolutionizes field artillery and will become standard in all armies by 1914. The quick-firing cannon boasts a quick-acting breech mechanism, an on-carriage hydropneumatic recoil-control system, fixed ammunition, modern sighting, and a shield to protect the gunners, but teams of horses can pull only so much weight, so the piece must be dismantled into components and reassembled after being moved to new firing positions.
A Franco-German agreement signed July 23 defines the boundary between Dahomey and Togoland.
British colonial officer Sir Alfred Milner, 43, is appointed high commissioner of southern Africa and governor of the Cape Colony as tensions between Britain and the Transvaal threaten to erupt into open war (see 1899).
French forces take Nikki November 30 (they took Busa February 23), bringing vigorous protests from Britain and raising the threat of war between Britain and France (see 1898).
President McKinley assumes office March 4 with an inauguration address in which he says, "We want no wars of conquest. We must avoid the temptation of territorial aggression. War should never be entered upon until every agency of peace has failed," but tensions have been growing between the United States and Spain (see 1898).
A convention at Tejeros in March appoints revolutionist Emilio Aguinaldo president of a new Philippines Republic (see 1896). Rebel leader Andres Bonifacio refuses to recognize the convention's choice and tries to establish his own government in defiance of Spanish rule, but Aguinaldo has him arrested in April. Tried on charges of treason, Bonifacio is found guilty and executed by a firing squad at Mt. Buntis May 10 at age 33. The pact of Biak-na-Bato December 15 brings a temporary halt to the revolution; Aguinaldo accepts terms that require him to lay down his arms, go into exile at Hong Kong, and receive 400,000 pesos, but the Spaniards will renege on their promises to make significant governmental reforms, and Aguinaldo will use the money to buy arms (see 1898).
The United States annexes the Hawaiian Islands under terms of a June 16 treaty that is ratified by the Hawaiian Senate September 9. Sugar planters who proclaimed the Republic of Hawaii in 1894 have pushed for annexation, but Japan has some 25,000 nationals in the islands and files a formal protest, warning of grave consequences (see 1898; 1941).
Cubans reject an offer of self-government and other concessions from Spain's Liberal prime minister Práxades Mateo Sagasta, insisting on complete independence (see 1896). An Italian anarchist assassinates the 69-year-old former prime minister Antonio Cánovas del Castillo at Santa Agueda, Guipuzcoa, August 8 as he tries to find a peaceful settlement of the Cuban issue; U.S. pressure on Madrid forces the recall of Valeriano Weyler y Nicolau in October (see 1898).
Puerto Rico gains autonomy from Spain November 15 through the efforts of patriots who include notably publisher Luis Muñoz Rivera, 38, who founded the newspaper La Democracia in 1889 (see 1898).
Honduras in Central America has a revolution with help from U.S. soldier of fortune Lee Christmas, who has been working as a locomotive engineer in the country. His journalist friend Richard Harding Davis, 33, celebrates him in the novel Soldiers of Fortune (see Zemurray, 1911).
German forces in China occupy Qingdao (Tsingtao) November 14 following the murder of two German missionaries in Shandong (Shantung) Province. The Germans have selected Qingdao as their reward for having intervened in behalf of China against Japan in 1895, but their action precipitates a scramble for concessions in China by most of the great European powers (see 1895; 1899).
Zanzibar abolishes slavery April 6 by decree of the sultan whose country has been a British protectorate since 1890 (see 1873; 1884; 1892).
"There never will be complete equality until women themselves help to make laws and elect lawmakers," writes Susan B. Anthony in "The Status of Women, Past, Present and Future," published in the May issue of the Arena.
The Associazione Nazionale per le Donne is founded at Rome to advance the cause of Italian women (see 1899).
Alfred Dreyfus's brother Mathieu demands a new trial for Alfred after learning that the handwriting on a key piece of evidence in the 1891 trial was not that of Alfred but of former Austrian army officer Marie Charles Ferdinand Walsin Esterházy, now 50. The finding was made early last year by French intelligence chief Colonel Georges Picquart, 43 (see politcs [Zola], 1898).
New York's University Settlement moves into a $200,000 "castle" at the corner of Eldridge and Rivington streets. The settlement house started by Stanton Coit in 1886 has built public baths that will serve as models for municipal baths and leads the fight for a city subway system.
Explorer-archaeologist James T. Bent dies at London May 5 at age 45, having made investigations in Ethiopia, Nilotic Sudan, the southern Arabian peninsula, the Aegean, and southern Anatolia as well as of Great Zimbabwe in eastern Rhodesia.
Swedish scientist Salomon August Andree, 43, takes off from Spitsbergen July 11 with three crew members in a balloon supplied and equipped by Oskar II with a view to reaching the North Pole. The balloon disappears into the sky, it crashes some 325 miles from takeoff, the men set out to trek back, and their frozen corpses will be discovered in 1930 on White Island along with photographic film and Andree's journal bearing the notation, "Shall we be thought mad or will our example be followed?" (see Cook, Peary, 1909).
News of last year's Klondike gold discoveries reaches the United States in January and starts a new gold rush. The ship Excelsior arrives at San Francisco in July with $750,000 in Klondike gold, the Portland arrives at Seattle 3 days later with $800,000 in gold, and by year's end the Klondike field has yielded $22 million worth of gold.
World gold production reaches nearly 11.5 million ounces, up from 5 to 6 million per year between 1860 and 1890 but still little more than half the 22 million that it will reach by 1910.
Russian finance minister Sergei Yulievich Witte, 48, introduces the gold standard.
Japan adopts the gold standard March 29.
South African mining magnate Barney Barnato jumps overboard from a ship bound for England June 14 and drowns at age 45 (see 1889). He engineered a boom in mining stocks 2 years ago but has lost his mind; his Johannesburg Consolidated Investment Ltd. (JCI) will continue for 100 years.
Estate manager Charles Cunningham Boycott dies at Flixton, Suffolk, June 19 at age 65, having contributed his name to the language.
Grand Rapids, Mich.-born Chicago machine operator Agnes Nestor, 16, leads a strike at the Eisendrath Glove factory whose management accedes to the workers' demands after seeing production halted through 10 days of picketing. The owners agree to establish a union shop and stop charging "machine rent," a practice that has required operators to repay the company our of their meager wages for the machines they use. Nestor has been working in factories since age 14, putting in 10 hours per day 6 days per week (see 1902).
U.S. bituminous-coal miners leave the pits July 5, beginning a 12-week walkout. They win an 8-hour day, semimonthly pay, biennial conferences with mine operators, and abolition of company stores that charge premium prices and keep them forever in debt. A posse organized by the sheriff of Pennsylvania's Luzerne County kills 19 unarmed strikers September 10 and wounds 36; originally brought in as strike breakers, the men later form their own union (most are shot in the back; see Virden, 1898; United Mine Workers, 1899).
The Dingley Tariff Act passed by Congress July 24 raises U.S. living costs by increasing duties to an average of 57 percent. It hikes rates on sugar, salt, tin cans, glassware, and tobacco, as well as on iron and steel, steel rails, petroleum, lead, copper, locomotives, matches, whisky, and leather goods, but the influx of gold from the Klondike helps end the 4-year economic recession and begin a decade of prosperity.
Dow Chemical Company is founded by Herbert H. Dow at Midland, Michigan (see 1891; 1922).
E. I. du Pont de Nemours buys the smokeless powder patents and Squankum, New Jersey, powder plant of engineer-powder maker Hudson Maxim, 44, whose brother Hiram invented the first fully automatic machine gun in 1883 (see Du Pont, 1872; 1899).
U.S. railroads are subject to the 1890 Sherman Anti-Trust Law, says the Supreme Court March 22 in a 5-to-4 decision handed down in the Trans-Missouri Freight case, but the court nullifies the "long and short haul" clause of the 1887 Interstate Commerce Act November 8 in Interstate Commerce Commission v. Alabama Midland Railway.
German-born banker Otto (Hermann) Kahn, 29, joins with his Kuhn, Loeb partner Jacob H. (Henry) Schiff, 49, and speculator Edward H. (Henry) Harriman, 49, in reorganizing the bankrupt Union Pacific Railroad, pruning away unprofitable branch lines, and creating a simplified bond structure to replace the company's old tangle of debts (the Union Pacific will soon be able to buy control of Southern Pacific and a 40 percent interest in Northern Pacific) (see 1901).
Boston's Boylston Street subway line begins service September 1 between the Public Gardens and Park Street (see Budapest, 1896). The first U.S. subway line, it will be extended within a year to the 3-year-old North Station (see New York, 1904).
Trolley service begins across New York's 14-year-old Brooklyn Bridge.
Chicago's "Loop" elevated train service begins October 3 (see 1886). Promoter Charles T. Yerkes has bribed aldermen to let him run his elevated structures right down the middle of streets; now 60, he will sell his Chicago interests in 1899, move to London in 1900, and take over the syndicate that built the London Underground system that began service in 1890. The South Side Elevated Railway employs the first "multiple-unit" system, invented by Richmond trolley-car pioneer Frank J. Sprague to control trains whose cars each have their own motors and do not have to be pulled by a locomotive; this not only eliminates slipping of locomotive driving wheels when trains start up but also assures rapid acceleration and permits long trains to operate at high speeds. A master switch in any car enables an engineer to control all the cars in the train, and Sprague organizes the Sprague Electric Company to develop the system (see New York subway, 1904).
Sleeping-car inventor George M. Pullman dies at Chicago October 19 at age 66, leaving $1 million to found a free manual-training school at his company town, Pullman. He has been embittered by the criticism of his treatment of labor in 1893 and 1894; by the early 1900s some 100,000 passengers will be sleeping each night in Pullman-car berths, and the Pullman Palace Car Company will be the largest U.S. employer of black men (Pullman has had a reputation for selecting the blackest men with the whitest smiles to serve passengers as porters and waiters; see porters, 1915).
A new steel arch railroad bridge completed across the Niagara River Gorge replaces earlier suspension bridges and will remain in use into the 21st century. Engineer Leffert Lefferts Buck has designed the span, having earlier supervised renovation of the Roebling bridge that opened in 1855.
A projected Cape Town-to-Cairo Railroad reaches Bulawayo in Southern Rhodesia November 4.
The Oldsmobile motorcar has its beginnings in the Olds Motor Vehicle Company founded August 21 at Lansing, Michigan, by Ransom E. Olds, 34, and a group of investors. Olds will soon start producing cars at Detroit (see 1901).
Bicycle maker Albert A. Pope switches to motorcar production (see 1896; Pope-Tribune, 1904).
Scottish-born bicycle maker Alexander Winton, 37, at Cleveland builds the first large U.S. automobiles, organizes Winton Motor Carriage Company, and drives one of his cars 800 miles over dirt roads to New York. He will have a patent for his vehicle by the end of next year and will have sold nearly 30 cars.
Total U.S. auto production rises to 100 vehicles, up from 25 last year (see 1898).
The 33-year-old Travelers Insurance Company of Hartford, Connecticut, writes the first automobile insurance policy.
The Automobile Club of Great Britain and Ireland that will be renamed the Royal Automobile Club (RAC) in 1907 is founded at London by Frederick H. Simms, whose Motor-Car Club has become a mouthpiece for promoter Harry J. Lawson. Popularity of the motorcar has grown, but Britain has some 400,000 horse-drawn carriages, and every large town has at least one coachbuilder. The new club encourages motoring and will offer assistance to motorists (see AAA, 1902)
Engineer Octave Chanute obtains fresh capital for his aeronautical experiments from Elmira banker Matthias Arnot and sends some assistants on further glider flights in the dunes of Lake Michigan (see 1896; Wright brothers, 1903).
The first vessel to be propelled by a steam turbine attains a speed of 34.5 knots (see Parsons, 1884). Such speeds have been impossible with piston-engined ships, whose engines were subject to severe damage if driven too hard, but the Parsons turbine uses only rotating parts in place of reciprocating engines; a jet of steam turns blades inside a rotating cylinder to drive multiple propellers on the experimental yacht Turbinia, which makes its way at dazzling speeds through fleets of international navies assembled for Queen Victoria's Jubilee, making it clear to knowledgeable Navy officers that turbine-driven ships can be lighter, faster, lower in profile (presenting less visible targets), and will make piston-driven ships obsolete (see politics [Dreadnought], 1906). When the Cunard Line builds the 650-foot Caronia and Carmania for service on the transatlantic crossing it will find that the Carmania, fitted with a steam-turbine engine, is nearly a full knot faster than the Caronia, which has been fitted with quadruple-expansion piston engines (see R.M.S. Mauretania, 1907).
The Argonaut designed by Pleasantville, New Jersey-born naval architect Simon Lake, 31, is the first submarine to operate successfully in open waters (see politics [Bushnell], 1776; Holland, 1900).
The full-rigged, five-masted "tall ship" Preussen launched by the 69-year-old Hamburg maritime transport company F. Laeisz begins an era of windjammers. Few British shipowners have recognized the value of the Jarvis winch patented in 1891, but founder's son Carl Heinrich Laeisz, now 69, puts it to the test on the steel-hulled Preussen, whose sails are smaller than those on earlier sailing ships (its topgallant has been divided into an upper topgallant and a lower topgallant, and there is no studding sail). Laeisz finds that the winch not only saves labor but also makes it safer for the men who handle a square-rigger's braces, since they can operate from the middle of the ship instead of from her sides. Windjammers will average 300 feet in length (a clipper ship measured only 150) and will sometimes reach 400 feet, their masts will be three feet in diameter at the base and soar as high as 200 feet, they will have as many as 34 sails with an area of nearly 45,000 square feet, the larger sails will weigh as much as a ton when dry, and the ships will carry cargoes of up to 8,000 tons. Before his death in 1901 Laeisz will install the Jarvis winch on every vessel in his fleet, using windjammers thus equipped to carry nitrates around Cape Horn from Chile (see grain race, 1939).
French chemist-physicist Georges Claude, 27, shows that acetylene can be transported safely if dissolved in acetone, thus giving impetus to use of acetylene gas torches for cutting metal (see 1895; 1903).
The first U.S. commercial high-carbon ferrochrome for plating steel is produced by acetylene promoter James T. Morehead with help from French-born U.S. metallurgist Guillaume de Chalmot (see 1892).
The New Lowe Coke Oven invented by Thaddeus S. C. Lowe improves manufacture of high-grade coke for steel making (see 1873).
The Swiss Army Knife patented June 12 is an officer's knife with a red fiber case that encloses blades of various sizes and a corkscrew. Swiss inventor Karl Elsener discovered 6 years ago that the knives supplied to Swiss Army recruits were imported from Germany, so he devised a wood-handled pocketknife containing a screwdriver, can opener, and punch in addition to its blade and sold it to the army for use by enlisted men. His red-handled knife is a refined version.
"Commentary on Numbers" ("Zahlbericht") by German mathematician David Hilbert, 35, at the University of Göttingen consolidates what is known on the subject of invariants (entities that remain unchanged during geometric alterations such as dilation, reflection, and rotation). Hilbert has earlier proved that all invariants can be expressed in terms of a finite number (see 1900).
The atom that ancient Greeks believed to be indivisible turns out to have a nucleus orbited by one or more electrons (see Democritus, 330 B.C.; Stoney, 1874; Perrin, 1895). Modifying the idea formulated by John Dalton in 1803 and tabularized by Dmitri Mendeléev in 1870, English physicist Joseph John Thomson, 41, shows that the structure of each element is characterized not merely by a different atomic weight but also by an atomic number, and shows that this number is the number of electrons orbiting the nuclei of the element's atoms (see Wien, 1898; Bragg, 1904; Rutherford, 1911; neutron, 1932). Thomson's finding has no known practical application, but it will lead within 20 years to the start of an electronics industry that will change many people's lives (see 1904). Thomson's Irish-born research assistant John S. E. (Sealy Edward) Townsend, 29, devises a falling-drop procedure for measuring the unit electrical charge (e) in the electrical conduction of gases, using saturated clouds of water (see Millikan, 1917; Townsend, 1901).
Physicist Galileo Ferraris dies at Turin February 7 at age 49; botanist Julius von Sachs at Würzburg May 29 at age 64; analytical chemist Carl Remigius Fresenius at Wiesbaden June 11 at age 78.
The parasite that causes malaria is carried by the Anopheles mosquito, says British physician Ronald Ross, 40, in famine-stricken India (see Laveran, 1880). Ross has been investigating the possibility that mosquitoes may spread malaria, as was suggested in the case of yellow fever by Carlos J. Finlay in 1881; he shows that the Anopheles mosquito is the vector for malaria, and his discovery will lead to the draining of swamps where mosquitoes breed, to expanded use of window screens and mosquito netting, and—eventually—to widespread use of insecticides (see Reed, 1900; DDT, 1943).
The International Medical Congress publishes a report by Danish bacteriologist Johannes (Andreas Grib) Fibiger, 30, confirming the effectiveness of a serum he has developed to help children resist diphtheria (see Ehrlich's antitoxin, 1891). Persuaded to undertake doctoral work at the University of Copenhagen on the virulent childhood disease, Fibiger has found two distinct forms of the bacillus that causes it and produced an experimental serum (see cancer, 1907).
Cleveland-born Johns Hopkins pharmacologist and physiological chemist John Jacob Abel, 30, isolates adrenaline in the form of a chemical derivative (see Takamine, 1901).
Chemist Felix Hoffmann of the 47-year-old German dyestuffs firm Farbenfabriken vorm. Friedrich Bayer und Company succeeds August 10 in acetylating the phenol group of the compound salicylic acid (see Gerhardt, 1853). Concerned about his father's arthritis, Hoffman 4 years ago obtained a substance from willow tree bark that suppressed the enzyme cyclo-oxygenase, which plays a major role in pain and inflammation; he and his colleague Hermann Dreser will go on to develop a powdered analgesic (painkiller) and fever reducer from coal tar (see Aspirin, 1899).
Studies in the Psychology of Sex by English physician (Henry) Havelock Ellis, 38, is published in the first of seven volumes that will appear in the next 31 years. The work provides the first detached treatment of the subject untainted by feelings of guilt but creates a storm of controversy and is banned in Britain.
French nun Thérèse of Lisieux (Therèse Martin) dies of tuberculosis at age 24 in the Carmelite convent of Lisieux, Normandy, which she entered at 15. Her History of a Soul (Histoire d'une âme), published posthumously, will illustrate her "little way" of simple, trusting Christianity. It will gain wide popularity, she will be canonized in 1925, and in 1947 she will be associated with Joan of Arc as patron saint of France.
The Parent-Teachers' Association (PTA) has its beginnings in the National Congress of Mothers founded by 2,000 U.S. women February 17. PTAs will provide a useful means of communication between teachers and parents.
Northwestern University cofounder John Evans dies at Denver July 3 at age 83, having served as governor of the Colorado Territory from 1862 to 1865 (Mount Evans will be named in his honor); American Association to Promote the Teaching of Speech to the Deaf vice president Gardiner G. Hubbard dies at Washington, D.C., December 11 at age 75. His hearing-impaired daughter Mabel is the wife of telephone inventor Alexander Graham Bell, now 50.
American Telephone & Telegraph Company (AT&T) erects the first telephone poles, using wooden poles up to 50 feet tall for a line that it opens between Washington, D.C., and Norfolk, Virginia.
A cathode-ray tube (Braun tube) invented at Strasbourg by German physicist (Karl) Ferdinand Braun, 47, pioneers development of television and other electronic communications. Having earlier helped to develop use of crystals in radios, Braun this year invents the oscillograph; he has improved the Marconi wireless by increasing the energy of sending stations and arranging antennas to control the direction of effective radiation (see 1895; 1907).
"All the News That's Fit to Print" appears February 10 in a box to the left of the title of the New York Times, where it will remain for more than a century (see 1896). Adolph S. Ochs has offered a $100 prize to anyone who could think up a better slogan, but the motto devised by Ochs and his editors in October of last year and run on the editorial page has not been topped.
The Jewish Daily Forward (Vorwert) begins publication in April at 175 East Broadway under a sign that reads, "Arbeiter Ring" ("Workmen's Circle") (the Yiddish-language paper takes its name from that of a Berlin paper and has close ties to the Socialist Party). Novelist Abraham Cahan has started the paper with help from Russian-born journalist William H. Leaf, 22, and will hold the position of editor until his death in 1951, gaining readership with his advice column "Bintel Brief" ("packet of letters"), which allows readers and editors to exchange views on ethics, love, money, and getting along in America as he works to assimilate immigrants. Newsboys will buy the papers at two for a penny and sell them for 1¢ per copy, hawking them at meeting halls and on the streets (see real estate, 1912; the Day, 1914).
The New York Tribune prints halftones on a power press and on newsprint for the first time, employing techniques developed by Frederick E. Ives and Stephen Horgan (see Ives, 1886).
"The report of my death was an exaggeration," Mark Twain cables the New York Times June 2 from London. Now 61, Twain is on a world lecture tour that will help him recoup part of the fortune that he lost in the panic of 1893.
New York Evening Sun reader Virginia O'Hanlon of 115 West 95th Street writes to the paper's editor saying, "I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, 'If you see it in The Sun it's so.' Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?" Former New York Times Civil War correspondent Francis Parcellus Church, 58, childless himself, replies in an unsigned front page editorial published September 21: "Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see . . . Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist . . . Not believe in Santa Claus? You might as well not believe in fairies . . . No Santa Claus! Thank God, he lives, and he lives forever." The Sun will reprint the editorial each year until it is merged with the World Telegram in January 1950.
New York Evening Sun editor-publisher Charles A. Dana dies at Glen Cove, Long Island, October 17 at age 78 and is succeeded at the Sun by his son Paul (see 1887). His name will be commemorated in the Charles A. Dana Foundation, which beginning in 1986 will confer awards "for pioneering achievements in health and education" (seeSun, 1916).
William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal hires Sunday World editor Arthur Brisbane, 32, who quits the Pulitzer paper. Circulation of Joseph Pulitzer's New York World has reached 360,000 as compared to 309,000 for Hearst's Journal (the Evening Sun and Evening Telegram each has 100,000; Henry Villard's Evening Post 25,000). Richard Outcault's cartoon figure "The Yellow Kid" appears in strip form in the Journal's Sunday supplement beginning October 24. Brisbane builds Sunday Journal circulation from 40,000 to 325,000 in 6 weeks, Pulitzer and Hearst will battle over rights to the cartoon, and the contest for readership between the two will be marked by sensationalism that will be called "yellow journalism," a term that will be applied to other sensationalist papers (see 1895; 1898).
"The Katzenjammer Kids" by German-born cartoonist Rudolph Dirks, 21, begins appearing in the New York Journal December 12. The antics of Hans und Fritz (who torment der Captain, der Inspector, und Momma) ape those of the German cartoon characters Max und Moritz that Wilhelm Busch began drawing for the comic weekly Fliegende Blätter in 1859 (see 1917).
The Woman's Home Companion begins publication at Springfield, Ohio. Publisher John S. Crowell started the magazine in 1873 under the name Home Companion, renamed it the Ladies' Home Companion in 1886, and has changed its name to avoid confusion with Cyrus H. K. Curtis's magazine, published since 1883. It will continue until 1956, attracting readers with serialized fiction.
Ladies' Home Journal publisher Cyrus H. K. Curtis pays $1,000 to acquire the 76-year-old Saturday Evening Post (see 1883). He will invest $1.25 million in profits from his women's magazine to revitalize the failing Post, whose circulation will grow in the next 25 years to exceed 2 million (see Lorimer, 1899).
Country Life magazine begins publication at London.
English vicar's son Fred T. (John Frederick Thomas) Jane, 32, establishes a business that will survive into the 21st century as a prime source of information about naval strength and aircraft. He started as a teenager to sketch what he called "Ironclads of the World," a magazine commissioned him in 1889 to cover Kaiser Wilhelm's inspection of the combined fleets at Spithead. He sketched nearly 100 ships and paid his mess bill by painting murals on the bulkheads of his host ship's wardroom. The first edition of his Jane's All the World's Fighting Ships (later simply Jane's Fighting Ships) will appear next year, and his Jane's All the World's Airships (later Jane's All the World's Aircraft) will debut in 1909. Jane himself will die at age 51, but his company will go on to publish Jane's Defence Weekly along with other weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual reports plus updates about twice each week.
A massive, ornate Library of Congress is completed at Washington, D.C. Built to house the books that have piled up in a room at the Capitol since 1851, the Renaissance-style structure will be augmented in future years by additional buildings.
Publishers Weekly reports that 5,703 new books and new editions were published last year in the United States.
The Monotype typesetting machine introduced by inventor Tolbert Lanston, now 53, is more practical for book publishers than the Merganthaler Linotype of 1884 (see 1887). Lanston obtained his first patents for the machine in 1885, it incorporates a 120-key keyboard machine that perforates paper rolls in certain patterns, each pattern representing a character; the perforations go into a caster and release matrices from which the characters are cast in single metal types (but not in complete lines), the Monotype assembles the types automatically to form lines, and the lines are then made up into pages.
Nonfiction: Following the Equator by Mark Twain, whose humorous account of his round-the-world lecture tour enjoys so much popularity that its sales will enable him to pay off the $35,000 debt that has hung over his head since 1893; History of Canada by poet Charles G. D. Roberts, who moves to New York, where he will work as a journalist until his return in 1911.
Dictionary of Phrase and Fable compiler Ebenezer C. Brewer dies at his native London March 6 at age 86; Historian-art critic Jacob Burckhardt dies at his native Basel August 8 at age 79.
Fiction: Liza of Lambeth by English novelist W. (William) Somerset Maugham, 23; Captains Courageous by Rudyard Kipling; Dracula by Dublin-born English writer Bram (originally Abraham) Stoker, 50, who is secretary and business adviser to English actor Sir Henry Irving, now 59 (the first actor to be knighted). Stoker has read up on vampire folklore and Transylvania at the British Museum and embellished the historic Vlad Dracula, who did not drink blood but did have hordes of people impaled on spears, high or low depending on their rank, and had other victims blinded, strangled, and boiled alive (see politics, 1476); The Nigger of the 'Narcissus' by Joseph Conrad; The Spoils of Poynton and What Maisie Knew by Henry James; The Invisible Man and The Platiner Story (short stories) by H. G. Wells; The Understudy (La Doublure) by French novelist Raymond Roussel, 20; The Horses of Diomede (Les Chevaux de Diomède) by Rémy de Gourmont; Patience Sparhawk and Her Times by San Francisco-born novelist Gertrude (Franklin) Atherton (née Horn), 39; The Skipper's Wooing by W. W. Jacobs.
Author William Taylor "Oliver Optic" Adams dies at Dorchester, Massachusetts, March 27 at age 74; novelist-short story writer Alphonse Daudet at Champrosay December 16 at age 57, having suffered excruciating pain in recent years from a spinal cord illness related to the venereal disease that has plagued him for decades.
Poetry: Fruits of the Earth (Les Nourritures terrestres) by French writer (and hedonist) André Gide, 28, whose prose poem becomes almost a bible to restless young pleasure seekers (Gide married his cousin Madeleine in October 1895 and they will remain unhappily married until her death in 1938); Jeanne d'Arc by French poet Charles Péguy, 24; Lou Pouèmo dóu Rose by Frédéric Mistral, now 67; "Recessional" by Rudyard Kipling on the occasion of Queen Victoria's second jubilee (in the Times July 17): "God of our fathers, known of old/ Lord of our far-flung battle-line,/ Beneath whose awful Hand we hold/ Dominion over palm and pine/ Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,/ Lest we forget—lest we forget!"
Painting: The Sleeping Gypsy by Henri Rousseau; Large Interior with Six Figures by Edouard Vuillard; Boulevard des Italians, Morning, Sunlight and Paris, the Boulevard Montmartre at Night by Camille Pissarro; Reclining Nude by Pierre-Auguste Renoir; Science and Charity by Pablo Picasso; The Kiss by Edvard Munch; Sunset, Hudson River (Near Hastings-on-Hudson) by Jasper Francis Cropsey, now 74.
The Caillebotte Room opens at the Luxembourg Palace in Paris with the first exhibition of Impressionist paintings ever displayed in a French museum. The will of the late Gustave Caillebotte left his collection to the government.
Theater: John Gabriel Borkman by Henrik Ibsen 1/10 at Helsingfors; The Seats of the Mighty 4/28 at London's newly-opened Her Majesty's Theatre, built by Herbert Beerbohm Tree; The Little Minister by James M. Barrie 9/27 at New York's Empire Theater, with Salt Lake City-born actress Maude Adams (originally Maude Kiskadden), 25, who has adopted her mother's maiden name, 300 perfs.; The Devil's Disciple by George Bernard Shaw 10/4 at New York's Fifth Avenue Theater, with Richard Mansfield, 64 perfs.; The Liars by Henry Arthur Jones 10/6 at London's Criterion Theatre; A Marriage of Convenience by English playwright Sydney Grundy, 49, 11/8 at New York's Empire Theater, with John Drew, New York-born actress Elsie DeWolfe (originally Ella Anderson de Wolfe), 31 (Grundy's play about Louis XV opened earlier in the year at London's Haymarket Theatre); The Bombastic Actors (La farándula) by Jacinto Benevente 11/30 at Madrid's Teatro da Lara; Cyrano de Bergerac by French playwright Edmond Rostand, 29, 12/28 at the Théâtre de la Porte-Saint-Martin, Paris, 200 perfs.
The Théâtre du Grand Guignol opens in Montmartre under the direction of Paris theatrical manager Oscar Metenier, 38, whose bloodcurdling horror plays will overshadow his farces (see 1815).
Costa Rica's Teatro Nacional opens at San José October 21 with 1,050 seats—the largest structure in the capital except for the cathedral. Miffed because Adelina Patti did not perform at San José on her 1890 tour, coffee merchants raised export taxes to finance the design by Belgian architects and construction by German architects of the magnificent theater in cast iron and Italian marble with a sandstone façade, Italianate arched windows, marble columns, and frescoes (by Milanese painter Aleardo Villa) depicting coffee and banana production.
The Orpheum Circuit is founded by German-born theatrical promoter Gustav Walter, who arrived at San Francisco in 1874, opened the Orpheum Theater in 1887 with a 22-piece Hungarian electrical orchestra, introduced Weber and Fields of New York to California 2 years later, leased Child's Opera House at Los Angeles last year, opened a booking office at Chicago, and now opens a third theater at Kansas City. Walter will die next year on his return from a tour of Europe in search of new talent.
Opera: Fervaal 3/12 at the Théâtre de la Monnai, Brussels, with music by Vincent d'Indy. Viennese soprano Fritzi Scheff, 18, makes her debut at the Munich Royal Opera singing the role of Maria in the 1840 Donizetti opera La Figlia del Reggimento.
Librettist Henri Meilhac dies at his native Paris July 6 at age 66; soprano Giuseppina Stropponi at Sant'Agata, near Busseto, November 14 at age 82.
First performances: Istar Symphonic Variations by Vincent d'Indy 1/10 at both Brussels and Amsterdam; Symphony No. 1 in D minor by Sergei Rachmaninoff 3/15 at St. Petersburg; The Sorcerer's Apprentice (L'Apprenti sorcier, Scherzo d'après une ballade de Goethe) by French composer Paul Dukas, 31, 5/18 at Paris; "Thanksgiving and Forefathers Day for Orchestra and Chorus" by Yale undergraduate Charles (Edward) Ives, 23, 11/25 at New Haven's Centre Church on the Green. The congregation is not receptive.
Composer Johannes Brahms dies of liver cancer at Vienna April 3 at age 63.
Broadway musicals: The Good Mr. Best 8/3 at the Garrick Theatre, with book by John J. McNally and a demonstration in the third act of the new cinematograph (see 1895); The Belle of New York 9/18 at the Casino Theater, with Edna May, 17, as the Salvation Army girl Violet Gray, Harry Davenport, music by Gustave A. Kecker, book and lyrics by Hugh Martin, songs that include "The Anti-Cigarette Society," "You and I," 56 perfs.
Congress broadens U.S. copyright laws to give copyright owners exclusive rights to public performances of their works, but the new law will be widely flouted (see 1909; ASCAP, 1914; Victor Herbert, 1917).
March: "The Stars and Stripes Forever" by John Philip Sousa, who quit the Marine Corps in 1892. He has been touring the world with his own band and wrote the new march last year while returning from England.
Popular songs: "Take Back Your Gold" by U.S. composer Monroe H. Rosenfeld, lyrics by Louis W. Pritzkow; "On the Banks of the Wabash Far Away" by Indiana-born songwriter Paul Dresser (originally Dreiser), 40; "Asleep in the Deep" by U.S. minstrel composer Henry W. Petrie, 40, lyrics by English-born writer Arthur J. Lamb, 27.
The world heavyweight boxing title changes hands March 17 in the 14th round of a match held at Carson City, Nevada (see 1892). English-born New Zealander Robert Prometheus "Bob" Fitzsimmons, 34, knocks out champion James J. Corbett with a "solar plexus punch" (see Jeffries, 1899).
The first Boston Marathon is run April 19. The Boston Athletic Association insists that the 25-mile Patriot's Day foot race be free of "professionalism, politics, and plugs" (see 1908).
Reginald Frank Doherty, 22, wins in men's singles at Wimbledon, Mrs. Hillyard in women's singles; Robert Wrenn wins in U.S. men's singles, Juliette Atkinson in women's singles.
The United All-England Croquet Association is founded as improved mallets, wickets, and balls revive popularity for the game (see 1868).
John Peter "Honus" Wagner, 23, joins the National League's Louisville team to begin a notable career in baseball. The Pennsylvania-born "Flying Dutchman" will lead the league five times in stolen bases, accumulate a total of 722 stolen bases, and have a lifetime batting average of .329.
The Cheyenne Rodeo July begins an annual Wyoming tradition.
Steeplechase Park opens at Coney Island, New York, under the management of real estate operator George C. (Cornelius) Tilyou, 35, who has invented many of the rides and fun houses himself for the large amusement area. Competing attractions will spring up in the next decade to cover 20 acres and make Coney Island the greatest amusement area in the world.
Vienna's 131-year-old Prater Park installs a 210-foot high Ferris wheel designed by an English engineer (see 1893). Riders get a panoramic view of the Danube and the city from the Riesenrad's spacious cabins (see St. Louis, 1904).
Lifebuoy soap is introduced by Sunlight soap producer W. H. Lever, whose strong soap will be promoted as a safeguard against body odor (see 1886; Lux Flakes, 1906).
London's Moss Bros. of Covent Garden goes into the dresswear hire business to accommodate a customer who has gone broke as a stockbroker and obtained a professional engagement as a monologuist. Started by Moses Moss in 1860 and managed by his eldest son, Alfred, the secondhand clothing shop will serve generations of Englishmen, including the nobility, who will hire from Moss Bros. not only morning dress and evening wear but also coronation robes, court dress, ball gowns, wedding dresses, ski clothes, and theatrical costumes.
Birkenstock sandals have their beginning as German cobbler Konrad Birkenstock designs the first shoe with a contoured insole for use by shoemakers in the production of custom footwear. Birkenstock's grandfather, Johann Adam, started the family business in a small village in 1774, but shoes have always been flat inside and Konrad has theorized that since the soles of people's feet are curved their shoes would be more comfortable if the shape of the shoes reflected the shape of the feet. He will develop the first flexible arch supports in 1902, and they will be inserted in factory-made shoes sold throughout Germany (see 1964).
Mail Pouch tobacco has its beginning in the West Virginia Mail Pouch chewing tobacco introduced October 15 by Wheeling, West Virginia, stogie makers Aaron and Samuel Bloch, who started making stogies in the back of Samuel's wholesale grocery and dry goods store in 1879. Farmers will be paid for more than half a century to let Bloch Brothers use their barns as advertising billboards for the Mail Pouch brand made from flavored stogie wrapper clippings.
London's Connaught Hotel has its beginnings in the Coburg Hotel, opened in May on Grosvenor Square with a dining room that seats 75 (named for the late Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg, it will become the Connaught in 1915) (see 1935).
New York's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel is opened by John Jacob Astor IV, 30, who has had architect Henry Janeway Hardenbergh design a 17-story Astor House at 34th Street and Fifth Avenue and combined it with the 13-story Hardenbergh-designed Waldorf Hotel opened by his estranged cousin William Waldorf Astor in 1893. The 1,000-room hotel has 765 private baths and is the largest, most luxurious hotel in the world (see new Waldorf-Astoria, 1931).
President Cleveland signs legislation February 22 establishing the Washington and Mount Rainier Forest Preserves in Washington State plus 11 other such western forest reserves totaling 20 million acres (see Harrison, 1891). Congress has passed the Forest Service Organic Act, enabling legislation for the establishment of a national forest system (it forbids government sale of National Forest timber not dead or fully mature and individually marked for felling). Some senators demand his impeachment, but Cleveland vetoes bills passed to reverse his proclamation and Congress adjourns without overriding the vetoes (see Pinchot, 1898).
New York and New Jersey fishermen land more than 1.2 million pounds of sturgeon, but pollution begins to reduce the Hudson River's "Albany beef" industry.
East Coast fishermen land 49 million pounds of shad.
The drought that began on the U.S. western plains in 1886 finally comes to an end.
Europe's wheat crop falls short of its needs, and speculators bid up wheat futures on the Chicago Board of Trade as Joseph Leiter, 29, makes a spectacular effort to corner the market. Son of the onetime Marshall Field partner Levi Z. Leiter, young Leiter has recovered $1 million by his father to start a real estate business but instead has started to buy wheat futures at 65¢ per bushel and made a neat profit which he invests in more futures, continuing to buy until he has acquired 12 million bushels for December delivery, 9 million of them from meat packer P. D. Armour. Leiter refuses to take his profit of several million dollars in hopes of still higher profits, but Armour discovers that grain elevators at Duluth are bulging with wheat, charters 25 lake vessels and tugs that can break through the ice to Duluth, and sends them north to get wheat that will break Leiter's corner in the market (see 1898). U.S. farmers reap profits of millions of dollars as wheat prices rise to $1.09 per bushel, highest since 1891, partly as a result of Joseph Leiter's buying of futures.
The Berlin Exchange bans trading in futures after seeing what has gone on in Chicago; German grain traders, merchants, and speculators shift their operations to Amsterdam and Liverpool.
Joseph Campbell Preserve Company chemist John T. Dorrance, 24, develops his idea of a double-strength "condensed" soup that will give Campbell's Soup dominance in the industry. A nephew of company president Arthur Dorrance, John is an MIT graduate with a doctorate from the University of Göttingen, has worked at some famous Paris restaurants to study the proper flavoring of soup, has passed up faculty positions at Göttingen, Columbia, Cornell, and Bryn Mawr, and persuades his uncle to hire him as a research chemist. He receives $7.50 per week and within the year has succeeded in producing condensed soup in four varieties: Beefsteak Tomato, Consommé, Chicken, and Oxtail (see 1898).
The introduction of double seams and improved crimping of body and ends makes tin cans more reliable (see 1876; 1895; aluminum, 1960).
American Sugar Refining makes a deal with Claus Spreckels in San Francisco to eliminate competition (see 1891; 1899).
Purina breakfast cereal is introduced by the 3-year-old St. Louis livestock food company Robinson-Danforth which names its product Purina to signify purity (see Ralston, 1902).
Grape Nuts is introduced as a health food by C. W. Post of 1895 Postum fame, who will claim that his ready-to-eat cold cereal (a mixture of whole wheat, malted barley flour, salt and yeast, baked in the form of bread sticks, shredded, baked again, very slowly, and then ground up) prevents appendicitis, helps cure tuberculosis and malaria, and makes loose teeth tighter. Post believes that grape sugar (dextrose) is formed during the repetitive baking process, recommends that his cereal be sprinkled on salad at dinner as well as being consumed at breakfast and lunch (he also recommends deep breathing, exercise, and drinking lots of water) and includes a copy of his pamphlet The Road to Wellville with each brown and tan box (see Post Toasties, 1904).
J. M. Smucker Company has its beginnings at Orrville, Ohio, south of Cleveland, where local farmer Jerome M. Smucker, 39, makes apple butter in a copper kettle over a wood fire, puts it up in stoneware crocks, and has his wife peddle it to Wayne County housewives from the tailgate of wagon. His descendants will acquire other firms, building an enterprise that will be the largest U.S. producer of jams, jellies, and preserves.
Jell-O is created at Le Roy, New York, near Rochester, by cough-syrup manufacturer Pearl B. Wait, whose wife, May, gives the product its name (see Knox, 1890). Wait has acquired the patent obtained by Peter Cooper in 1845; his fruit-flavored powdered gelatin is made from a recipe adapted from one developed by Cooper (the powder is 88 percent sugar; see Woodward, 1899).
Hobart Electric Manufacturing Company is incorporated July 21 at Troy, Ohio (it will be reincorporated as Hobart Manufacturing in 1903) with Herbert Lincoln Johnston, 28, as designer, pattern maker, and test engineer. In 2 years he will invent the world's first electric coffee mill for store use, and he will invent an electric meat chopper in 1911 (see mixing machine, 1918; everyday life [KitchenAid dishwasher], 1949).
The Bottled-in-Bond Act signed into law by President William McKinley requires that whiskey be aged in charred white-oak barrels for at least 4 years in government-bonded rack warehouses and bottled at 100 proof (50 percent alcohol) under government supervision to prevent the kinds of abuses revealed in last year's congressional hearings (see definition of bourbon, 1964).
Tennessee distiller Jack Daniel begins bottling his whiskey in square bottles to distinguish it from other brands (see 1866). Now 48, the five-foot-two-inch promoter has petitioned the state legislature to let him call his product Tennessee whiskey rather than bourbon (see 1904).
H. P. Hood at Boston begins distributing milk in glass bottles instead of ladling it from large cans into customers' pitchers (see 1890; Brooklyn, 1879; Borden, 1885). Hood stables more than 1,200 horses, his routemen must harness their horses and load their wagons before driving to the often distant points at which their rounds begin, and they must start work shortly after midnight in order to commence deliveries at 4 o'clock in the morning.
Welch's Grape juice production moves to Westfield, New York (see 1896). Charles Welch processes 300 tons of grapes at Westfield, a stronghold of the Women's Christian Temperance Union in the heart of the 90-mile Chautauqua and Erie grape belt along the southeastern shore of Lake Erie.
Britons begin to eat lunch, dooming the classic British breakfast that still often includes kippers (smoked herring, split open and fried in butter), finnan haddie (smoked haddock, often from the Scottish fishing port of Findhorn), kedgeree (rice mixed with fish, usually salmon, and hard-boiled egg—a dish introduced from colonial India), roast beef, kidneys, bacon, sausages, porridge, snipe (Scotland), scones (Scotland), cold toast, butter, marmalade, treacle, eggs, and tea with milk.
Chef Auguste Escoffier at London creates cherries Jubilee à la reine to celebrate the occasion of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee.
Japan gets her first railroad dining car. For first-class passengers only, it has a Western-style menu. Economy-class dining cars will open within a year or two, offering only Japanese foods (available for years from vendors walking through the cars selling wooden boxes called bento containing rice with seafood, vegetables, fruit, and the like).
A new Delmonico's restaurant that will survive until 1923 opens November 15 at the northeast corner of New York's Fifth Avenue and 44th Street (see 1876). Charles Crist Delmonico (he has received permission from the state legislature to add his great uncle's name) plays host to more than 1,000 patrons, who dine in the Ladies' Restaurant, the Palm Garden, the Gentlemen's Elizabethan Café, the private dining and banquet rooms, the ballroom, and the Roof Conservatory.
"Diners" make their first appearance as Boston, New York, and Philadelphia replace their horsedrawn trolleys with electric cars; obtained by enterprising promoters for $20 each, the discarded trolleys are fitted with stoves and dishes and resold as lunch wagons (see 1919).
1891 1892 1893 1894 1895 1896 1897 1898 1899 1900
People's Chronology. Copyright © 2005 by The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
