1875

In The Year 1875

Grandfather Gregory C. Emmanuel was born in the year 1875; offhand, this doesn't mean much, except that it was a long time ago. But when we take a look at what else was going on in that year, 1875 becomes more real. It gains perspective and depth--we can imagine how very different Grandfather's life was from ours, and we begin to understand the amazing changes he witnessed during the span of his long life. Somehow time compresses as we realize that many of the key events that shaped today's world happened in the not so distant past. Below is a list (by no means complete) of what was happening in 1875.

By Gregory C. Emmanuel, January 2001

What came before 1875?

The Greek War of Independence against the Ottoman Turks (1821). Much of Greece, including Grandfather Gregory's home islands of Moskhonisia and Tenedos, remained under Ottoman Turkish rule.
Charles Dickens published Oliver Twist (1838).
The Crimean War (1853-1856) and the charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava.
The U.S. Civil War (1861-1865).
The U.S. Congress approved the Thirteenth Amendment outlawing slavery in the U.S. (1865).
Lewis Carroll published Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865).
The Franco-Prussian War and the siege of Paris (1871).
Heinrich Schliemann begins excavations at Hissarlik, the site of the ancient city of Troy (1871).
Barbed wire was invented (1874).

Who else was born then?

Dr. Albert Schweitzer (d.1965), winner of the 1952 Nobel Prize for peace, French theologian who set up a native hospital in French Equatorial Africa, was born in Germany.
Maurice Ravel (d.1955), composer of the Bolero, was born in France.
Carl Jung (d.1961), Swiss psychiatrist and analytical psychologist, was born in Switzerland.
Walter Chrysler (d.1940), founder of the Chrysler automobile company, was born in Kansas, U.S.
Thomas Mann (d.1955), German novelist and essayist.
Edgar Rice Burroughs (d.1950), novelist and author of Tarzan, the Ape Man, was born in Chicago, U.S.
Rainer Maria Rilke (d.1926), Austrian poet.
Albert I (d.1934), King of the Belgians.

Who passed away that year?

Hans Christian Andersen (b.1805), author of 150 fairy tales.
Andrew Johnson (b.1808), seventeenth president of the United States, the only president ever to be impeached.
Georges Bizet (b.1838), composer, died the same year that his opera, Carmen, premiered in Paris.

How old were they then?

Winston Churchill (1874–1965) was 1 year old.
Jean Sibelius (1865-1957) was 10 years old.
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901) was 11 years old.
Mohandas Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1947) was 6 years old.
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) was 19 years old.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) was 19 years old.
Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) was 8 years old.
Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) was 18 years old.
Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) was 35 years old.
Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) was 47 years old.
Karl Marx (1818-1883) was 57 years old.
Paul Cezanne (1839-1906) was 36 years old.
Herman Melville (1819-1891) was 56 years old.
Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) was 47 years old.
Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) was 34 years old.
Paul Gauguin (1843-1903) was 32 years old.
Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) was 22 years old.
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1890) was 31 years old.
Tz'u Hsi (1834-1908) dowager empress of China, was 41years old.
Charles Darwin (1809-1882) was 66 years old.
Billy the Kid (1859-1881) was 16 years old.
Wyatt Earp (1848-1929) was 27 years old.
Wilbur (1867-1912) and Orville (1871-1948) Wright were 8 and 4 years old.
Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1885) was 53 years old.
Britain's Queen Victoria (1819-1901) was 56 years old.
Lewis Carroll (1832-1898) was 43 years old.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) was 16 years old.

What did they paint, what did they publish that year?

Edgar Degas (1834-1917) painted Place de la Concorde, considered to be his greatest picture.
Claude Monet (1840-1926) painted The Seine at Argenteuil.
Renoir (1841-1919) painted Woman at the Piano.
Christian Scientist Mary Baker Eddy (1821-1910) published Science and Health.
Mark Twain (1819-1891) published Tom Sawyer.
Jules Verne (1828-1905) published The Mysterious Island.
Victor Hugo (1802-1885) published collections of his political speeches and essays.

Science and technology in 1875

Thomas Edison invented an early version of the mimeograph machine.
John P. Holland began work on the first submarine.
Werner Siemens demonstrated that electricity travels along a wire.
Richard Caton was the first to record the brain's electrical activity.
Karl Benz (of Mercedes-Benz fame) received a patent for a three wheel automobile in Germany.
Frank Stephen Baldwin patented an "arithmometer" (or calculator) that could add, subtract, multiply and divide.
The typewriter was invented.
French Colonel Mangine invented the Perigraphe Instantane camera, which made a 360º sweep with a special lens that gave a long strip photograph.
Charles Coulomb demonstrated how electric charges repel each other.
George F. Green invented the electric dental drill (ouch).

Exploration at the time

Sir Henry Morton Stanley (1841-1904), of "Dr. Livingstone I presume..." fame, explored Lake Edward (Uganda) and surveyed Lake Tanganyika.
Verney Lovett Cameron (1844-1894), became the first European to traverse equatorial Africa from east to west.
Allen Young, in the steam yacht Pandora, conducted an unsuccessful private expedition to navigate the Northwest Passage in a single season.

What was going on in the world?

In Vevey, Switzerland, Daniel Peter and Henri Nestle revolutionized chocolate by adding milk, thus creating the first milk chocolate.
The Third Republic came to power in France; the new French constitution was finalized.
Peasants in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the Balkans rebelled against the Ottoman army.
Captain Matthew Webb became the first person to swim across the English Channel (38 miles in 21 hours).
Construction was completed on London's first main sewage system.
Hashish cultivation was introduced to Greece.
Disraeli (Britain's Prime Minister during the reign of Queen Victoria) bought Suez Canal shares from Egypt, gaining a controlling interest for Britain.
Grace Annie Lockhart (a Canadian) was awarded the first university degree ever awarded to a woman in Canada and in the British Empire.
Dr. Jennie Trout became the first licensed woman physician in Canada.
Egypt invaded Ethiopia (without much success).
Russia yielded the Kuril Islands to Japan in exchange for southern Sakhalin Island.
Sir Neville Chamberlain invented the game of snooker.

What was happening in the U.S.?

Pinkerton agents hunted the outlaw Jesse James.
Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, guaranteeing blacks equal rights in public places and banning their exclusion from jury duty. But in the same year Tennessee passed a "Jim Crow" law segregating blacks and whites on railroads (which were private and so not covered by the Civil Rights Act).
First running of the Kentucky Derby.
U.S. Commissioner on Indian Affairs ordered the Lakota nation on to the Black Hills reservation.
Second Sioux War erupted after the Sioux nation refused to sell lands north of the Platte to the federal government.
Blanche K. Bruce became the first African-American elected to the U.S. Senate.
The population of Portland, Oregon, was recorded as 20,000.
Special Commissioner C. A. Wetmore wrote that the only right guaranteed to California's Mission Indians was "the right to beg."
A blizzard trapped John Muir and his companions near the summit of Mount Shasta. They survived by immersing themselves in hot springs.
Doc Holliday killed a man for the first time, during a gunfight.
The Pacific Mail Steamship Company began service connecting California with the Orient, via the Kingdom of Hawai'i.
The first immigration exclusionary act was passed, barring the entry of convicts, prostitutes, and "coolies" (Chinese contract laborers) into the United States.
The "Whiskey Ring" conspiracy of distillery owners was revealed.
Camp Verde Reservation in Arizona was revoked and the Yavapai people were relocated to the San Carlos Apache Reservation. More than 100 people died on the 180-mile trip.
In the case of Minor v. Happersett the Supreme Court defined women as "persons," but added that women born in the USA were "a special category of non-voting citizens."
The Santa Fe railroad reached Dodge City.
The Molly Maguires were convicted for the anthracite coalfield murders.
Arthur A. Libby and William J. Wilson developed the tapered can for corned beef in Chicago.

Yet to come…

Custer's Last Stand at Little Bighorn (1876).
Alexander Graham Bell's invention of the telephone (1876).
The Panama Canal (construction started in 1880).
Invention of the machine gun (1880).
The linotype machine, the first mechanical typesetter (1884).
The first modern Olympic games (Athens, 1896).
Jack the Ripper, in London (1889).
First ascent of Mt. Kilimanjaro by Hans Meyer and L. Purtscheller (1889).
Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson (1894).
Adolf Hitler (b.1889).
First ascent of Mt. Kenya by Halford Mackinder (1899).
The Boer (or South African) War (1899-1902).
First successful dirigible (1900).
The discovery of the palace complex at Knossos, Crete, by Sir Arthur Evans (1900).
The first powered flight by the Wright brothers (1903).
Frank Epperson invents the eppsicle, which was later renamed popsicle by his children (1905).
World War I (1914-1918).
The modern country of Turkey (1923).
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