1881

• 1881 Fall: The Blackwood Section is completed all the way to town and a depot is built near the riverboat landing.
• 1881  Feb 5, Phoenix, Ariz., was incorporated.
  
• 1881  Feb 10, The Offenbach opera "Les Contes d'Hoffman" (Talesof Hoffman) had its premiere at the Opera-Comique.
  
• 1881  Feb 19, Kansas became the first state to prohibit all alcoholic beverages.
  
• 1881  Mar 13, Tsar Alexander II was assassinated when a bomb wasthrown at him near his palace.
  
• 1881  Mar 18, Barnum and Bailey's Greatest Show on Earth openedin Madison Square Gardens.
  
• 1881  Apr 1,  Anti-Jewish riots took place in Jerusalem.
  
• 1881  Apr 1,  Kingdom post office in Netherlands opened.
  
• 1881  Apr 28, Billy the Kid was held in Lincoln County Courthouse jail, near Carizozo N.M., but escaped and killed two guards. He used an1876 single-action army revolver made by Samuel Colt. The gun sold for$46,000 in 1998.
  
• 1881  May 12, The Treaty of Bardo established Tunis [Tunisia] asa French protectorate.
  
• 1881  May 17, Frederick Douglass was appointed recorder of deedsfor Washington, D.C.
  
• 1881  May 21, Clara Barton founded the American Red Cross.
  
• 1881  May 24, Some 200 people died when the Canadian ferry Princess Victoria sank near London, Ontario.
  
• 1881  Jul 2, Less than four months after his inauguration, JamesGarfield, the 20th President of the US, was assassinated by Charles J.Guiteau, who wished to be appointed consul to France, at the Washingtonrailroad station. Garfield lived out the summer with a fractured spineand seemed to be gaining strength until he caught a chill and died on September19. Guiteau was apprehended at the time of the shooting and, in spite ofan insanity defense, was convicted of murder. Chester Alan Arthur becamethe 21st President.
  
• 1881  Jul 4, In Alabama Tuskegee Institute enrolled 30 students.It was founded by former slave Booker T. Washington as a "normal" schooland industrial institute where "colored" people with little or no formalschooling could be trained as teachers and skilled workers.
  
• 1881  Jul 14, Outlaw Billy the Kid (21), aka William Bonney orKid Antrim, was shot and killed by Sheriff Pat Garrett in Fort Sumner,New Mexico. Billy had been held in Lincoln County Courthouse jail but escapedand killed two guards. The Kid had fled to Fort Sumner and on a tip, Garrettset out toward Fort Sumner to find him, with lawmen John Poe and ThomasC. "Kip" McKinney. According to some, Pete Maxwell had alerted Poe to theKid's whereabouts. Many details about Billy the Kid's death are controversialbut, apparently, as he was returning to Maxwell's house he came upon Poeand McKinney outside, unsure of whether they were friends or foes. Garrettwas awaiting inside, and as the Kid entered the room, Garrett shot himabove the heart. His tombstone read: "Billy the Kid, boy bandit king. Hedied as he lived."
  
• 1881  Jul 20, Sioux Indian leader Sitting Bull, a fugitive sincethe Battle of the Little Big Horn, surrendered to federal troops.
  
• 1881  Jul 22, The first volume of "The War of the Rebellion," acompilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies,was published.
  
• 1881  Jul, US Army Lt. Augustus W. Greely led a scientific expedition to Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic and called the site Ft. Conger. 25 American soldiers set forth to establish a scientific base in the Arctic. There were only 6 survivors. In 2000 Leonard Gurttridge authored "Ghostsof Cape Sabine," which told their story.
  
• 1881  Aug 6, Alexander Fleming (d.1955), British (Scottish) bacteriologist who co-discovered penicillin in [1928] 1929, was born..
  
• 1881  Aug 12, Pioneering motion picture director Cecil B. DeMille was born. Before becoming a household name in the early days of movie-making, he attended the New York Academy of Dramatic Arts and in 1900 began working on plays with his older brother William. The director, producer and screenwriter was most famous for his movie "The Ten Commandments."
  
• 1881  Aug 13, The first African-American nursing school openedat Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia.
  
• 1881  Sep 4, The Edison electric lighting system was switched onand went into operation as a generator serving 85 paying customers.
  
• 1881  Sep 19, The 20th president of the United States, James A.Garfield, died of wounds inflicted by assassin, Charles J. Guiteau.
  
• 1881  Sep 20, Chester A. Arthur was sworn in as the 21st president of the United States, succeeding James A. Garfield, who had been assassinated.
  
• 1881  Oct 25, Pablo Picasso (d.1973), painter and sculptor, wasborn in Malaga, Spain. He worked in France and a painter and sculptor.Francoise Gilot was the mother of 2 of his children. His work includes"Gilot," and "Self-Portrait with a Palette" (1906). He immortalized theFrench aperitif Pernod by including it in many paintings. "Picasso andDora" was written by James Lord.
  
• 1881  Oct 26, Wyatt Earp, his two brothers and "Doc" Holliday showed up at the OK Corral in Tombstone, Arizona, to disarm the Clanton and McLaury boys, who were in violation of a ban on carrying guns in the city limits. Billy Clanton and Tom and Frank McLowery were killed; Earp's brothers were wounded. This was the notorious "Showdown at the OK Corral." In 1992 the"Encyclopedia of Western Lawmen and Outlaws" by Jay Robert Nash was published.In 1999 Allan Barra published "Inventing Wyatt Earp: His Life and ManyLegends."
  
• 1881  Nov 7, Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday, two participants in Tombstone, Arizona's, famous Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, were jailed as the hearings on what happened in the fight grew near.
  
• 1881  Nov 14, Charles J. Guiteau went on trial for assassinatingPresident Garfield. Guiteau was convicted and hanged the following year.
• 1881  Nov 15, The American Federation of Labor was founded. [seeNov 17]
  
• 1881  Nov 17, Under Samuel Gompers (d.1924), the Federation ofOrganized Trades and Labor Union of the United States was formed--a precursorto the American Federation of Labor. Gompers emigrated from England toNew York with his family as a boy. He grew up working in a sweatshop andamid discussion about labor reform. Gompers led the AFL for 40 years, sometimesusing strikes and boycotts to demand workers' rights. He successfully changedthe unionism of the 19th century in the United States, uniting differentlabor groups and keeping away from political influence to guide Americanlaborers. [see Nov 15]
  
• 1881  Nov 25, Pope John the 23rd was born Angelo Roncalli nearBergamo, Italy.
  
• 1881  Dec 1, Virgil, Wyatt and Morgan Earp were exonerated in court for their action in the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Ariz.
  
• 1881  Dec 10, Viscount Alexander of Tunis, British soldier, wasborn. He took his title from his part in the Allied victories in NorthAfrica.
  
• 1881  Dec 20, Branch Ricky, President of the Brooklyn Dodgers who made Jackie Robinson the first black to play in the modern major leaguesin 1947, was born.
  
• 1881  Dec, German-born illustrator Thomas Nast made his familiarillustration of "Merry Old Santa Claus" in Harper's Weekly.
  
• 1881  Claude Monet painted his landscape "Paysage Dans L'Ile Saint Martin." It later ended up in the corporate collection of Reader's Digest.
  
• 1881  Pierre-Auguste Renoir painted "On the Terrace," a pictureof a young woman and a pink-cheeked child with the Seine in the background.
  
• 1881  Rodin sculpted his "Eve."
  
• 1881  In Japan Shibata Zeshin made a book of lacquer paintingson paper, a medium that he alone mastered.
  
• 1881  "What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Southern Cooking" by Abby Fisher was published by the Women's Co-operative Printing Office.
  
• 1881  Helen Hunt Jackson (1831-1885) wrote "A Century of Dishonor: The Early Crusade for Indian Reform."
  
• 1881  Henry James wrote his novel "The Portrait of a Lady." Healso wrote his novella "Washington Square." Both books were later madeinto films.
  
• 1881  Dankmar Adler, Chicago engineer, invited Louis Sullivan toform a partnership. There was much work in Chicago after the Great Firethat destroyed 18,000 buildings and covered three square miles.
  
• 1881  Rev. F.M. Warrington described the mining town of Bodie,Calif., as "a sea of sin, lashed by the tempests of lust and passion."
  
• 1881  Judge James Logan (d.1928) produced the loganberry, sayingthat he invented it and raised it from a seed.
  
• 1881  The only recorded 19th-century incident in which Indian scouts turned against the U.S. Army occurred at Cibicue Creek in Arizona Territory. At Cibicue Creek, White Mountain Apache scouts were asked to campaign against their own kin, resulting in a mutiny against the army soldiers. Three ofthe mutinous scouts were later court-martialed and executed.
• 1881  MJB Inc., a coffee concern, was established in SF.
  
• 1881  The Tennessee Coal and Railroad Co. was renamed to the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Co.
  
• 1881  Alice Freeman Palmer became the forward-thinking presidentof Wellesley College after graduating from the Univ. of Mich. in 1876.
  
• 1881  The USS Constitution (aka Old Ironsides) last sailed underfree sail. It was restored in 1931 and visited ports on both coasts until1934. It sailed again in 1997.
  
• 1881  The city directory of San Francisco indicated 233,959 residents, 428 restaurants, 342 oyster saloons, 18 oyster dealers, 90 coffee saloons, 299 bakeries, 254 retail butchers, 205 fresh fruit sellers, some 1400 grocers and an equal number of bars, 40 brewers and 15 champagne importers.
  
• 1881  The area around Bosnia was annexed by the Austro-HungarianEmpire and Pope Leo XIII reasserted the Catholic Church with dioceses inSarajevo, Banja Luka and Mostar.
  
• 1881  In Chile the Mapuches Indians made peace with the government. Their name means "people of the earth."
  
• 1881  The French state finally relinquished its hold on the artsand turned power over to the Societe des artistes Francais.
  
• 1881  Heinrich Schliemann, German entrepreneur and archeologist,donated the treasure he found at the site of Troy to Germany in 1881. Hehad dubbed the collection "Priam's Treasure." The archeologist bequeathedthe treasure "to the German people for undivided and eternal preservationin the capital of the Reich" in 1880.
  
• 1881  In Japan the Asahi Shimbun newspaper became jointly ownedby Ryuhei Murayama ans Riichi Ueno.
  
• 1881   Ottoman forces crushed Albanian resistance fightersat Prizren. The League's leaders and families were arrested and deported.
  
• 1881 The currency base of the US declined some 60% as the old Civil War bonds are paid off. This led to panics and instability.
• 1881 Chester A. Arthur, Vice-President under Garfield, was the21st President of the US.
  
• 1881 Fort Hays, Kansas, was the temporary home to the black "buffalo soldiers."
  
• 1881 Some 59 laborers, mostly Chinese immigrants, were killed inexplosions at the California Powder Works in Hercules. They were paid 12.5cents per hour.
• 1881  Mary Webb, Scottish religious leader: The more anybody wants a thing, the more they do think others want it. "The well of Providence is deep. It's the buckets we bring to it that are small."
  
• 1881 In Germany Ernst Paul Lehmann made tin toys over this period in Brandenburg. His toys included a toy mule that kicked while pullinga cart driven by a clown called "the balky mule." The toy was valued at$1,500 in 1997.
  
• 1881 Bela Bartok, Hungarian composer. His works include the opera: "Bluebeard's Castle," and his pantomime score: "The Miraculous Mandarin," which first premiered in Cologne in 1926. Also he wrote: a Concerto forOrchestra, a Solo Violin Sonata, Third Piano Concerto, Four Pieces forOrchestra, the Contata Profana, a folk ballad for chorus and soloists.