Explore 1429 historical events from 1880–1889.
Daniel Harvey Hill, commonly known as D. H. Hill, was a Confederate general who commanded infantry in the eastern and western theaters of the American Civil War.
D. H. Hill, American general and academic (born 1821)
Charles Leroux was an American balloonist and parachutist.
Charles Leroux, American balloonist and skydiver (born 1856)
Louis Léon César Faidherbe was a French general and colonial administrator. He created the Senegalese Tirailleurs when he was governor of Senegal.
Louis Faidherbe, French general and politician (born 1818)
James Prescott Joule was an English physicist. Joule studied the nature of heat and discovered its relationship to mechanical work. This led to the law of conservation of energy, w…
James Prescott Joule, English physicist and brewer (born 1818)
Antonio Santi Giuseppe Meucci was an Italian inventor and an associate of Giuseppe Garibaldi, a major political figure in the history of Italy. Meucci is best known for developing …
Antonio Meucci, Italian-American engineer (born 1808)
Nikolay Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky was a Russian literary and social critic, journalist, novelist, democrat, and socialist philosopher, often identified as a utopian socialist and l…
Nikolay Chernyshevsky, Russian philosopher and critic (born 1828)
Dom Luís I, known as "the Popular" was King of Portugal from 1861 to 1889.
Luís I of Portugal (born 1838)
Guillaume Victor Émile Augier was a French dramatist. He was the thirteenth member to occupy seat 1 of the Académie française on 31 March 1857.
Émile Augier, French playwright (born 1820)
The Treaty of Wuchale was a treaty signed between the Ethiopian Empire and the Kingdom of Italy. The signing parties were King Menelik II of Shewa, acting as Emperor of Ethiopia, a…
The Treaty of Wuchale was signed, ending the Italo-Ethiopian War, but differences in translation later led to another wa
The Wham Paymaster robbery was an armed robbery of a United States Army paymaster and his escort on May 11, 1889, in the Arizona Territory. Major Joseph W. Wham was transporting a …
Bandits attacked a U
Bangui is the capital and largest city of the Central African Republic. It was established as a French outpost in 1889 and named after its location on the northern bank of the Uban…
Bangui, the capital and largest city of the present-day Central African Republic, was founded in French Congo
Hyde Park Township is a former civil township in Cook County, Illinois, United States that existed as a separate municipality from 1861 until 1889 when it was annexed into the city…
Hyde Park and several other Illinois townships voted to be annexed by Chicago, forming the largest city by area in the U
The 1888–89 New Zealand Native football team was a New Zealand rugby union team that toured Britain, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand in 1888 and 1889. It mostly comprised player…
The New Zealand Native football team, predominantly comprising Māori players, concluded their 107-game tour, the…
Sir Henry Parkes, was a colonial Australian politician and the longest-serving non-consecutive premier of the Colony of New South Wales, the present-day state of New South Wales in…
Sir Henry Parkes, Premier of the Colony of New South Wales, gave a speech in which he called for the federation of the…
The Lei Áurea, officially Law No. 3,353 of 13 May 1888, is the law that abolished slavery in Brazil. It was signed by Isabel, Princess Imperial of Brazil (1846–1921), an opponent o…
With the passage of the Lei Áurea ("Golden Law"), the Empire of Brazil abolishes slavery
Nikola Tesla was a Serbian-American engineer, futurist, and inventor. He is known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current (AC) electricity supply syst…
Nikola Tesla delivers a lecture describing the equipment which will allow efficient generation and use of alternating cu
The 1888 Río de la Plata earthquake occurred on 5 June measuring 5.5 on the Richter scale, and shook the upper Río de la Plata at 3:20 UTC-3. The epicentre was located 15 kilometre…
The Rio de la Plata earthquake takes place
The White Rajahs of Sarawak were a hereditary monarchy of the Brooke family, who founded and ruled the Raj of Sarawak as a sovereign state, located on the northwest coast of the is…
The White Rajahs territories become the British protectorate of Sarawak
George Edward Gouraud was an American Civil War recipient of the Medal of Honor who later became famous for introducing the new Edison Phonograph cylinder audio recording technolog…
George Edward Gouraud records Handel's Israel in Egypt onto a phonograph cylinder, thought for many years to be the olde
A stratovolcano, also known as a composite volcano, is a typically conical volcano built up by many alternating layers (strata) of hardened lava and tephra. Unlike shield volcanoes…
The stratovolcano Mount Bandai erupts, killing approximately 500 people in Fukushima Prefecture, Japan.
An adding machine is a class of mechanical calculator, usually specialized for bookkeeping calculations. Consequently, the earliest adding machines were often designed to read in p…
The first successful adding machine in the United States is patented by William Seward Burroughs.
Mary Ann Nichols, known as Polly Nichols, was the first canonical victim of the unidentified serial killer known as Jack the Ripper, who is believed to have murdered and mutilated …
Mary Ann Nichols, the first of Jack the Ripper's confirmed victims, is murdered.
Peral was the first successful submarine powered entirely by electric batteries and the first fully military-capable submarine in history. It was built by the Spanish engineer and …
Isaac Peral's submarine is first tested.
Bertha Benz was a German automotive pioneer. She was the business partner, investor and wife of automobile inventor Carl Benz. On 5 August 1888, she was the first person to drive a…
Bertha Benz drives from Mannheim to Pforzheim and back in the first long distance automobile trip, commemorated as the…