Directory

1882 CE

Polygamy is made a felony by the Edmunds Act, passed by the United States Congress. The Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal service organization, is founded in New Haven, Connecticut. 13 – Anglo-Egyptian War: The British Mediterranean Fleet carries out the Bombardment of Alexandria, its forces capturing the city of Alexandria, Egypt, and securing the Suez Canal.

Geopolitics & Diplomacy

  • March 6 (February 22 Old Style) – The Principality of Serbia becomes the Kingdom of Serbia following a proclamation.source
  • May 2 – The Kilmainham Treaty, an agreement between the British government and Irish nationalist leader Charles Stewart Parnell to abate tenant rent arrears, is announced; Parnell is released from Kilmainham Gaol in Dublin.source
  • May 20 – The Triple Alliance is formed between Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy.source
  • June 28 – The Anglo-French Convention of 1882 is signed, marking territorial boundaries between Guinea and Sierra Leone.source
  • July 26 – Boers establish the republic of Stellaland in southern Africa.source
  • August 18 – The Married Women's Property Act 1882 receives royal assent in Britain; it enables women to buy, own and sell property, and to keep their own earnings.source
  • Carolyn Merrick is elected president of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union in the United States.source
  • A peace treaty is signed between Paraguay and Uruguay.source
  • Zulu king Cetshwayo kaMpande returns to South Africa from England.source

Conflict & Security

  • March 2 – Roderick Maclean fails in an attempt to assassinate Queen Victoria, at Windsor.source
  • March 20 – British gunboats enter Monrovia, with Arthur Havelock demanding that Liberia cede disputed territory to the British colony of Sierra Leone, of which he is Governor.source
  • June 6 – Battle of Embabo: The Shewan forces of Menelik II defeat the Gojjame army.source
  • June 11 – The 'Urabi revolt breaks out in Egypt against Khedive Tewfik Pasha and European influence in that country.source
  • July 23 – The Imo Incident occurs in Seoul, Korea, as a result of bad rations and late payment for soldiers of the Joseon Army.source
  • August 29 – The Australian cricket team historically defeats England at The Oval for the first time on English soil, a humiliation for the English and the origin for The Ashes test series.source
  • September 13 – Anglo-Egyptian War: British troops occupy Cairo, and Egypt becomes a British protectorate.source
  • November 16 – The British Royal Navy's destroys Abari village in Niger.source
  • Pogroms in Southern Russia end.source
  • The Personal Liberty League is established to oppose the temperance movement in the United States.source

Exploration & Expansion

  • January 2 – Irish-born author Oscar Wilde arrives in New York at the beginning of a lecture tour of the United States and Canada.source

Religion & Belief

  • March 29 – The Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal service organization, is founded in New Haven, Connecticut.source
  • St Andrew's Ambulance Association is founded in Glasgow, Scotland; St. John Ambulance Canada is also founded this year.source
  • July 31 – The Hebrew Moshava of Rishon LeZion in Palestine is founded.source
  • December – Zikhron Ya'akov is founded in northern Israel.source

Economy & Finance

  • January 2 – The Standard Oil Trust is secretly created in the United States to control multiple corporations set up by John D. Rockefeller and his associates.source
  • March 28 – German medical products company Beiersdorf is founded.source
  • August 3 – The United States Congress passes the Immigration Act of 1882, imposing a head tax on immigrants to the U.S. and excluding undesirables.source
  • August 5 – Standard Oil of New Jersey, the company later known as ExxonMobil, is established.source

Technology & Infrastructure

  • January 12 – Holborn Viaduct power station in the City of London, the world's first coal-fired public electricity generating station, begins operation.source
  • April 29 – The Elektromote, the world's first trolleybus, begins operation in Berlin.source
  • May 1 – The Berlin Philharmonic orchestra is founded in Germany, as Frühere Bilsesche Kapelle.source
  • July 11–13 – Anglo-Egyptian War: The British Mediterranean Fleet carries out the Bombardment of Alexandria, its forces capturing the city of Alexandria, Egypt, and securing the Suez Canal.source
  • September 4 – Thomas Edison flips the switch to the first commercial electrical power plant in the United States, lighting one square mile of lower Manhattan. This is considered by many as the day that begins the electrical age.source
  • September 5 – The first United States Labor Day parade is held in New York City.source
  • October 10 – The Bank of Japan opens in Tokyo City.source
  • October 16 – The New York, Chicago and St. Louis Railroad ("Nickel Plate Road") runs its first trains over the entire system between Buffalo, New York, and Chicago. Nine days later the Seney Syndicate sells the road to William Henry Vanderbilt, for US$7.2 million.source
  • The British Chartered Institute of Patent Agents (the modern-day Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys) is founded.source
  • Redruth Mining School opens in Cornwall.source
  • Nikola Tesla claims this is when he conceives the rotating magnetic field principle, which he later uses to invent his induction motor.source

Science & Discovery

  • September 18 – Great Comet of 1882: Her Majesty's Astronomer at the Cape, David Gill, reports watching the comet rise a few minutes before the Sun, describing it as "The nucleus was then undoubtedly single, and certainly rather under than over 4″ in diameter; in fact, as I have described it, it resembled very much a star of the 1st magnitude seen by daylight."source
  • December 6 – A transit of Venus, the last until 2004, occurs.source
  • The first International Polar Year, an international scientific program, begins.source

Health & Medicine

  • March 22 – Polygamy is made a felony by the Edmunds Act, passed by the United States Congress.source
  • March 24 – Robert Koch announces the discovery of the bacterium responsible for tuberculosis (Mycobacterium tuberculosis).source
  • May 6 – The Chinese Exclusion Act, prohibiting the immigration of Chinese laborers, is the first law which restricts immigration into the United States.source

Crime & Justice

  • February 4 – Charles J. Guiteau, the murderer of President James A. Garfield, is sentenced to death (found guilty on January 25), despite an insanity defense raised by his lawyer.source
  • April 3 – Old West outlaw Jesse James is shot in the back of the head and killed by Robert Ford in St. Joseph, Missouri.source
  • May 1 – Édouard Manet exhibits his painting A Bar at the Folies-Bergère at the Paris Salon.source
  • May 6 – Phoenix Park Murders in Ireland: Lord Frederick Cavendish, the newly appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland, and Thomas Henry Burke, his Permanent Undersecretary, are fatally stabbed in Phoenix Park, Dublin, by members of the Irish National Invincibles (militant Irish republicans).source
  • June 30 – U.S. presidential assassin Charles J. Guiteau is hanged in Washington, D.C.source
  • November 14 – Franklyn Leslie shoots Billy Claiborne dead in the streets of Tombstone, Arizona.source
  • Waterloo F.C., a rugby union club, as Serpentine on Merseyside in the north of England.source
  • Glentoran F.C. in Belfast in the north of Ireland;source
  • Albion Rovers F.C. (through the amalgamation of two Coatbridge clubs, Albion and Rovers) in the urban west of Scotland;source

Disasters & Accidents

  • November 2 – The Great Fire of Oulu destroys 27 buildings in the downtown of Oulu, Finland.source

Climate & Environment

  • June 6 – Supposedly, the Bombay Cyclone of 1882 in the Arabian Sea causes flooding in Bombay harbor, leaving about 100,000 dead; this alleged event has, however, been proved a hoax.source

Culture & Society

  • February 3 – American showman P. T. Barnum acquires the elephant Jumbo from the London Zoo.source
  • March 28 – Republican Jules Ferry makes primary education in France free, non-clerical (laique) and obligatory.source
  • May 18 – Burnley F.C. in Northern England changes codes, from rugby football to association football.source
  • Ferdinand von Lindemann publishes his proof of the transcendentality of pi.source
  • July 26 – Richard Wagner's opera Parsifal debuts, at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus in Bavaria.source
  • August 20 – Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture debuts in Moscow.source
  • September 5 – Tottenham Hotspur F.C. is founded (as Hotspur F.C.) in London.source
  • September 13 – Selwyn College, Cambridge, is founded after Queen Victoria grants a Charter of Incorporation.source
  • October 5 – The Society for Ethical Culture of Chicago (the modern-day Ethical Humanist Society of Chicago) is founded by Felix Adler.source
  • October 14 – The University of the Punjab at Lahore (British India), is founded in modern-day Pakistan.source
  • October 21 – Waseda University is founded by Shigenobu Ōkuma in Japan as Tokyo Specializing School.source
  • Christchurch Rangers, the earliest predecessor of Queens Park Rangers F.C., in London;source
  • Founding of the following sports clubs:source
  • Thames Ditton Lawn Tennis Club, the oldest lawn tennis club still on its original site, in the outer London suburbs;source

Births

  • January 6 – Sam Rayburn, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives (d. 1961)source
  • January 23 – Anna Abrikosova, Soviet Roman Catholic religious sister and servant of God (d. 1936)source
  • January 25 – Virginia Woolf, English writer (d. 1941)source
  • February 1 – Louis St. Laurent, 12th Prime Minister of Canada (d. 1973)source
  • February 12 – Walter Nash, 27th Prime Minister of New Zealand (d. 1968)source
  • April 24 – Hugh Dowding, commander of the RAF Fighter Command during the Battle of Britain (d. 1970)source
  • May 2 – James F. Byrnes, American politician, Secretary of State and Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States (d. 1972)source
  • May 20 – Sigrid Undset, Norwegian author, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1949)source
  • June 16 – Mohammad Mosaddegh, Iranian politician, 35th Prime Minister of Iran (d. 1967)source
  • August 26 – James Franck, German-born physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1964)source
  • September 12 – Ion Agârbiceanu, Romanian writer, journalist, politician and priest (d. 1963)source
  • November 15 – Felix Frankfurter, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States (d. 1965)source
  • December 11 – Max Born, German physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1970)source
  • December 28 – Arthur Eddington, English astronomer, astrophysicist and mathematician (d. 1944)source

Deaths

  • January 6 – Richard Henry Dana Jr., founder of Dana Point, California (b. 1815)source
  • March 24 – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, American author (b. 1807)source
  • April 9 – Dante Gabriel Rossetti, English poet, painter (b. 1828)source
  • April 27 – Ralph Waldo Emerson, American philosopher, writer (b. 1803)source
  • June 30 – Charles J. Guiteau, American preacher, writer, lawyer, assassin of James A. Garfield (executed) (b. 1841)source
  • June 30 – Alberto Henschel, German-Brazilian photographer, businessman (b. 1827)source
  • July 16 – Mary Todd Lincoln, First Lady of the United States (b. 1818)source
  • July 23 – George Perkins Marsh, American diplomat, philologist and pioneer environmentalist (b. 1801)source
  • August 13 – William Stanley Jevons, English economist and logician (b. 1835)source
  • October 13 – Arthur de Gobineau, French writer, demographist (b. 1816)source
  • December 3 – Archibald Campbell Tait, Archbishop of Canterbury (b. 1811)source
  • December 6 – Alfred Escher, Swiss politician, railroad entrepreneur (b. 1819)source
  • December 6 – Anthony Trollope, British novelist, postal service official (b. 1815)source
  • December 9 – Lucy Smith Millikin, early Latter Day Saint and sister of Joseph Smith (b. 1821)source