Around the World | 1861-1911

1859

  • Charles Darwin published: On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection

1860

  • Abraham Lincoln elected 16th U.S. President
  • First practical internal-combustion produced

1861

  • Italy (except Rome and Venice) united as a kingdom

1862

  • Otto von Bismarck becomes Prime Minister of Prussia
  • Victor Hugo publishes Les Miserables - dealing with the people of Paris

1863

  • Civil war in Afghanistan following the death of Dost Mohammed

1864

  • French chemist Louis Pasteur discovered killing disease-causing bacteria by boiling

1865

  • Genetics founded by the work of Austrian monk (botanist) Gregor Mendel

1866

  • Dynamite invented by Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel

1867

  • Volume I of Karl Marx’s Das Kapital was published

1869

  • Leo Tolstoy completed War and Peace
  • Suez Canal opened

1870

  • Infallibility of the Pope asserted by the First Vatican Council

1871

  • Britain annexed Kimberley diamond fields in South Africa

1874

  • Guiseppe Verdi’s magnificent Requiem first performed

1876

  • Korea established independence from China

1880

  • Transvaal declared independence; proclaim republic under Paul Kruger

1881

  • Boers in South Africa victorious over British; Battle of Majuba

1882

  • The Hague Convention fixed three-mile limit for territorial waters

1883

  • Paul Kruger becomes President of the ZAR (South African Republic)

1884

  • As anti-Semitism grew, the first Zionist Conference was convened in Prussia

1885

  • Congo Free State established under Leopold II of Belgium
  • German Karl Benz invented the automobile
  • Gottlieb Daimler patented the gasoline engine

1886

  • Gold discovered in South Africa
  • Death of Franz Liszt, the world’s greatest pianist

1887

  • Radio waves first produced by German physicist Heinrich Hertz

1888

  • Development of Kodak cameras - birth of mass amateur photography
  • Pneumatic tyre invented by British vet John Dunlop

1889

  • Treaty of Constantinople internationalized the Suez Canal
  • Eiffel Tower was raised in months (by Alexandre-Gustave Eiffel) for the Paris Centennial Exposition

1890

  • The Golden Bough, a landmark in anthropology, published by Scottish James George Frazer

1892

  • German engineer Rudolf Diesel patented the internal combustion engine

1893

  • Karl Benz built his first four-wheel car

1895

  • Italian physicist Guglielmo Marconi invented wireless telegraphy
  • German physicist Wilhelm Roentgen discovered X-rays

1897

  • Gold discovered and mined in the Klondike: Alaska and Canada
  • Emile Durkheim, the founder of French sociology, published his famous Suicide
  • Malaria shown to be transmitted by the mosquito, not foul air

1899

  • Start of the Boer War between South African Boers and British
  • The first Hague Peace Conference attended by 26 nations

1901

  • Australia established as a commonwealth with six colonies federated in equal status

1902

  • Treaty of Vereeniging ends the Boer War
  • Enrico Caruso, the legendary Italian tenor, made his first recording

1904

  • Louis Cartier creates the world’s first wristwatch

1905

  • The German sociologist Karl Weber studied the relationship between religion and social structure, publishing The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
  • British biologist Ernest Starling coined the term hormone

1909

  • The term “gene” was first used by Danish researcher Wilhelm Johannesen to describe material controlling heredity

1910

  • Formation of the Union of South Africa 

Sources - Inter Alia:
(1.) Beazley, Mitchell (ed.): Time Lines: World History Year by Year since 1492. New York Crescent Books, 1991
(2.) Grun, Bernard: The Timetables of History. New York, Simon Schuster/Touchstone, 1991

 

By Brian du Toit  - Transylvania Sesquicentennial Steering Committee
 

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