1881
Calendar year
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1881 (MDCCCLXXXI) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar and a common year starting on Thursday of the Julian calendar, the 1881st year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 881st year of the 2nd millennium, the 81st year of the 19th century, and the 2nd year of the 1880s decade. As of the start of 1881, the Gregorian calendar was 12 days ahead of the Julian calendar, which remained in localized use until 1923.
Calendar year
Events
January–March
- January 1–24 – Siege of Geok Tepe: Russian troops under General Mikhail Skobelev defeat the Turkomans.
- January 13 – War of the Pacific – Battle of San Juan and Chorrillos: The Chilean army defeats Peruvian forces.
- January 15 – War of the Pacific – Battle of Miraflores: The Chileans take Lima, capital of Peru, after defeating its second line of defense in Miraflores.
- January 24 – William Edward Forster, chief secretary for Ireland, introduces his Coercion Bill, which temporarily suspends habeas corpus so that those people suspected of committing an offence can be detained without trial; it goes through a long debate before it is accepted February 2.
- January 25 – Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell form the Oriental Telephone Company.
- February 4 – Linnington Manor burns to the ground; only William Linnington remains unharmed.
- February 13 – The first issue of the feminist newspaper La Citoyenne is published by Hubertine Auclert.
- February 14 – Pine City, Minnesota is incorporated.[1]
- February 16 – The Canadian Pacific Railway is incorporated.[2]
- February 18 – Carlos Finlay introduces his discovery of the transmission of Yellow Fever by mosquitoes Aedes aegypti, in the Fifth International Sanitary Conference held in Washington D.C..
- February 19 – Kansas becomes the first U.S. state to prohibit all alcoholic beverages.
- February 24 (February 12 Old Style) – Qing dynasty China signs the Treaty of Saint Petersburg with the Russian Empire providing for the return to China of the eastern part of the Ili Basin.
- February 25 – Phoenix, Arizona is incorporated.
- March 1 – The Cunard Line's SS Servia, the first steel transatlantic liner, is launched at Clydebank in Scotland.[3]
- March 4 – James A. Garfield is sworn in, as the 20th President of the United States.
- March 12 – Andrew Watson makes his Scotland debut, as the world's first black international football player.
- March 13 – Alexander II of Russia is killed near his palace, when a bomb is thrown at him, an act falsely blamed upon Russian Jews. He is succeeded by his son, Alexander III.
- March 23
- The First Boer War comes to an end.
- A fire caused by a gas explosion destroys the Opéra de Nice in the south of France with fatalities.
- March 26 (March 14 Old Style) – The Principality of Romania is proclaimed the Kingdom of Romania.
April–June
July–September
- July 1 – General Order 70, the culmination of the Cardwell–Childers reforms of the British Army's organization, comes into effect.
- July 2 – Assassination of James A. Garfield: United States President James A. Garfield is shot by lawyer Charles J. Guiteau in Washington, D.C. The wound becomes infected, killing Garfield on September 19.
- July 4 – Tuskegee Institute opens in Alabama.
- July 7 – The first episode of Carlo Collodi's The Adventures of Pinocchio is published in Italy.
- July 14–20 – The International Anarchist Congress is held in London; delegates include Marie Le Compte, Peter Kropotkin, Errico Malatesta, Saverio Merlino, Louise Michel, Nicholas Tchaikovsky and Émile Gautier.
- July 14 – Billy the Kid is shot and killed by Pat Garrett, outside Fort Sumner, New Mexico.
- July 20 – American Indian Wars: Sioux chief Sitting Bull leads the last of his people in surrender to United States troops at Fort Buford in Montana.
- July 23 – The Boundary Treaty of 1881 between Chile and Argentina is signed in Buenos Aires.[4]
- August 3 – The Pretoria Convention peace treaty is signed, officially ending the war between the Boers and Britain.
- August 27 – The fifth hurricane of the Atlantic season hits Florida and the Carolinas, killing about 700.
- September 5 – The Thumb Fire in the U.S. state of Michigan destroys over a million acres (4,000 km2) and kills 282 people.
- September 12 – Francis Howell High School (Howell Institute) in St. Charles, Missouri, and Stephen F. Austin High School in Austin, Texas open on the same day, putting them in a tie for the title of the oldest public high school west of the Mississippi River.
- September 19 – President James A. Garfield dies eleven weeks after being shot. Vice President Chester A. Arthur becomes the 21st President of the United States.
- September 20 – President Chester A. Arthur is sworn in.
- September 26 – Godalming in England becomes the first town to have its streets illuminated by electric light (hydroelectrically generated).[5]
October–December
- October 5–December 31 – The International Cotton Exposition is held in Atlanta, Georgia, USA.
- October 10 – Richard D'Oyly Carte's Savoy Theatre opens in London, the world's first public building to be fully lit by electricity, using Joseph Swan's incandescent light bulbs.[3][6][7] The stage is first lit electrically on December 28.[8]
- October 13 – Determined to bring about the revival of the Hebrew language as a way of unifying Jews, Eliezer Ben-Yehuda has what is believed to be the first conversation in Modern Hebrew, with friends living in Paris.
- October 26 – The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral occurs in Tombstone, Cochise County, Arizona, USA.
- October 29 – The satirical magazine Judge is first published in the United States.
- November – The Newcastle United F.C. is founded in the north east of England as the Stanley F.C., with a further name change to Newcastle East End F.C. the following year.
- November 3 – The Mapuche uprising of 1881 begins, with an attack on Quillem, Chile.
- November 9 – Brahms' Piano Concerto No. 2 premieres in Budapest.
- November 11 – The Clarkson Memorial to an anti-slavery campaigner in Wisbech (England) is completed, and unveiled to the public.
- November 19 – A meteorite strikes the Earth near the village of Großliebenthal, a few kilometers southwest of Odessa, Ukraine.
- December 8 – Ringtheaterbrand: At least 380 die in a fire at the Vienna Ringtheater.
- December 25–27 – The Warsaw pogrom is carried out in Vistula Land, Russian Empire.[9]
- December 28 – Virgil Earp is ambushed in Tombstone, Arizona, and loses the use of his left arm.
Date unknown
- Kinshasa (the capital of the modern-day Democratic Republic of the Congo) is founded by Henry Morton Stanley, as a trading outpost called Léopoldville.
- On the Isle of Man (an internally self-governing dependent territory of the United Kingdom), the House of Keys Election Act extends the franchise for the national legislature, to spinsters and widows owning real estate of a certain value.
- Edward Rudolf founds the Church of England Central Society for Providing Homes for Waifs and Strays (modern-day The Children's Society).
- The Pali Text Society is founded by British scholar Thomas William Rhys Davids, for the study of Pali (Ceylonese) texts.
- Some Vatican archives are opened to scholars for the first time.
- Abilene, Texas, is founded.
- Minto, North Dakota, is founded.
- Rafaela, Argentina, is formed.
- New York City's oldest independent school for girls, the Convent of the Sacred Heart New York (91st Street), is founded.
- Culford School, a public school in Suffolk, England, is founded as the East Anglian School for Boys.
- Leyton Orient F.C. is founded in London.
- Meiji Law School, as predecessor of Meiji University, founded in Yurakucho, Tokyo, Japan.[page needed]
- Tokyo Law College, as predecessor of Hosei University was founded in Japan.[page needed]
- The Vocational and Technical College of Tokyo, later Tokyo Institute of Technology was founded in Japan.[page needed]
- Hattori Watching Shop (服部時計店) founded by Kanetarō Hattori in Ginza, Tokyo, as predecessor of watch brand in Japan Seiko.[citation needed]
