1880S

Contents

Events and Trends

Technology

Science

Literature and Arts

Other

People

World Leaders

Events and Trends

Technology

★ Development and commercial production of electric lighting

★ Development and commercial production of gasoline-powered automobile by Karl Benz, Gottlieb Daimler and Maybach

★ First commercial production and sales of phonographs and phonograph recordings.

★ First steel frame construction of "sky-scrapers"

★ American Society of Mechanical Engineers founded 16 February 1880, New York, N.Y.

★ Construction begins on the Panama Canal by the French. This is the first attempt to build the Canal.

Science

★ Heinrich Hertz discovers the photoelectric effect

★ Michelson-Morley experiment, which suggested that the speed of light is invariant

★ James-Lange theory of emotion

Literature and Arts

★ Friedrich Nietzsche publishes Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

★ Mark Twain publishes Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

★ Fyodor Dostoevsky writes The Brothers Karamazov.

★ Robert Louis Stevenson publishes Treasure Island and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

★ First edition of Oxford English Dictionary published.

★ Arthur Conan Doyle publishes his first Sherlock Holmes tale.

Other

★ Krakatoa, a volcano in Indonesia, erupts cataclysmically; 36,000 people are killed, the majority by the resulting tsunami

★ About 300,000 Swedes emigrate to the United States

★ A major step in Seventh-day Adventist's understanding of Righteousness by Faith occurred in 1888.

People

★ The last surviving person born in the 1880s, María Capovilla, died on August 27, 2006.

World Leaders

★ Emperor Franz Josef (Austria-Hungary)

★ Prime Min Sir John A. Macdonald (Canada)

★ Guangxu Emperor (China)

★ Emperor Wilhelm I (German Empire)

★ Emperor Wilhelm II (German Empire)

★ Chancellor Otto von Bismarck (German Empire)

★ King Umberto I (Italy)

★ Pope Leo XIII

★ Emperor Meiji (Japan)

★ General Porfirio Díaz (Mexico)

★ Czar Alexander II (Russia)

★ King Alfonso XII (Spain)

★ Queen - Empress Victoria (United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland)

★ Prime Min William Ewart Gladstone (United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland)

★ Prime Min Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland) President James Garfield (United States)

★ President Rutherford B. Hayes (United States)

★ President Chester A. Arthur (United States)

★ President Grover Cleveland (United States)

★ Nasser-al-Din Shah of Qajar dynasty (Persia)

★ Emperor Pedro II (Brazil)