istoryworld
All Events
The Ballot Act adds to the British electoral system the essential element of secrecy in voting
The US Congress establishes Yellowstone, with its famous geysers, as the world's first national park
The Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin splits the International Congress into rival camps at its meeting in the Hague
The Missouri, Kansas and Texas railroad cuts through the territory reserved for American Indians, bringing hordes of 'boomers'
Pragmatism emerges as a philosophical approach in meetings of the Metaphysical Club in Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cetshwayo becomes king of Zululand, on the death of his father Mpande
Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud move together to Brussels, and then to London, where they live a dissolute bohemian existence
The Gilded Age, by Charles Dudley Warner and Mark Twain, provides the familiar name for life in the US towards the end of the nineteenth century
The British consul in Zanzibar persuades the sultan to end the island's notorious slave trade
San Francisco merchant Levi Strauss receives a patent for denim jeans, soon to be known as Levi's
US shoe salesman and YMCA member Dwight L. Moody launches into a new career as a revivalist preacher
The Joint Committee of the Corporation of London and the Metropolitan Board of Works buy Kew bridge for £53,000 and on the eighth of February tolls are abolished
Verlaine is sentenced to two years in prison, at Mons in Belgium, after shooting and wounding Rimbaud in a drunken rage in Brussels
Prince Edward Island joins the Canadian confederation, completing the first batch of Canada's provinces
The North-West Mounted Police are formed, with the specific task of policing the wild Northwest Territories of Canada
St Nicholas, a monthly magazine of high literary quality for children, is launched in the USA
French painter Edgar Degas finds inspiration in the onstage and backstage world of ballet dancers
Modest Mussorgsky's opera Boris Godunov has its premiere in St Petersburg
Johann Strauss's operetta Die Fledermaus has its premiere in Vienna
A group of French artists, including Renoir, Monet and Degas, exhibit their work independently in the Paris studio of the photographer Nadar
French critic Louis Leroy uses the term 'impressionism' to ridicule Monet's Impression, Sunrise, and unwittingly names a movement
Conservative leader Benjamin Disraeli, at the age of 70, begins a 6-year term of office as Britain's prime minister
Major Walter Wingfield secures a patent for Sphairistike, a game he has developed at his home in Wales, from which lawn tennis evolves
The southern region of present-day Ghana becomes a British colony, to be known as the Gold Coast
Stanley sets off from Bagamoyo, intending to resume the exploration of central Africa where Livingstone left off
