1884

• 1884 The Blackwood Silver Rush ends as the mines are exhausted.
  
• 1884 Half the city of Devils Lake was destroyed by fire.
• 1884  Feb 14, Theodore Roosevelt's wife died 2 days after giving birth to Alice Lee Roosevelt. His mother, Martha, had died just a few hours earlier.
  
• 1884  Mar 6, Over 100 suffragists, led by Susan B. Anthony, presented President Chester A. Arthur with a demand that he voice support for female suffrage.
  
• 1884  Mar 12, Mississippi established the first U.S. state college for women.
  
• 1884   Mar 13, Standard Time was adopted throughout the United States.
  
• 1884  Mar 17, John Joseph Montgomery made the first glider flight in Otay, Calif.
  
• 1884  Mar 27, The first long-distance telephone call was made, between Boston and New York City.
  
• 1884  Apr 4, Isoroku Yamamoto, Japanese Naval commander, was born. He masterminded the attack on Pearl Harbor.
  
• 1884  Apr 24, Otto von Bismarck cabled Cape Town that South Africa had become a German colony.
  
• 1884  May 1, Construction began on the first skyscraper, a 10-story structure in Chicago built by the Home Insurance Co. of New York.
  
• 1884  May 8, Harry S. Truman, 33rd President of the United States, was born near Lamar, Mo. A history buff, President Harry Truman penned this description of Franklin Pierce, the 14th president, "Pierce was the best looking President the White House ever had-but as President he ranks with Buchanan and Calvin Coolidge." "If there is one basic element in our Constitution, it is civilian control of the military." He decided to drop the bomb that ended World War II and sent troops to Korea to halt communist aggression.
  
• 1884  May 13, The Institute for Electrical & Electronics Engineers (IEEE) was founded.
  
• 1884  Jun 5, Civil War hero General William T. Sherman refused the Republican presidential nomination, saying, "I will not accept if nominated and will not serve if elected."
• 1884  Jun 23, A Chinese Army defeated the French at Bacle, Indochina.
  
• 1884  Jun 28, Congress declared Labor Day a legal holiday.
  
• 1884  Jul 4, The Statue of Liberty was presented to the United States in ceremonies at Paris, France. The 225-ton, 152-foot statue was a gift from France in commemoration of 100 years of American independence. Created by the French sculptor Frederic Auguste Bartholdi, the statue was installed on Bedloe Island (now Liberty Island) in New York harbor in 1885. It was dedicated on October 28, 1886.
  
• 1884  Jul 4, 1st US bullfight was held in Dodge City, Ka.
  
• 1884  Aug 5, The cornerstone for the Statue of Liberty was laid on Bedloe's Island in New York Harbor.
  
• 1884  Sep 20, Maxwell Perkins, editor, was born. He was the first to publish F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe
  
• 1884  Sep 20, The Equal Rights Party was formed during a convention of suffragists in San Francisco. The convention nominated Belva Ann Bennett Lockwood of Washington, D.C., for president.
  
• 1884  Oct 4, Damon Runyon, journalist and short story writer, was born.
• 1884  Oct 6, The US Naval War College was established in Newport, R.I.
  
• 1884  Oct 11, Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, the niece of President Theodore Roosevelt and wife of President Franklin Roosevelt, was born in New York City. Orphaned as a child, she grew up shy and insecure.
  
• 1884  Oct 14, Transparent paper-strip photographic film was patented by George Eastman. He had invented a flexible paper-backed film that could be wound on rollers. To encourage amateur photography and film sales, Eastman developed a simple black box camera that cost $25 and came already loaded with a 100-exposure roll of film. When the roll was used up, the entire No. 1 Kodak camera was shipped back to Eastman's factory for developing and reloading, at a cost of only $10. Eastman's photographic improvements proved successful, with 13,000 cameras sold in 1888.
  
• 1884  Nov 4, Democrat Grover Cleveland was elected to his first term as president, defeating Republican James G. Blaine. The reference to the Democratic party as the party of "Rum, Romanism and Rebellion" played a large part in Republican candidate James Blaine's defeat in the election of 1884. The indiscreet reference made by one of Blaine"s supporters has been credited with causing the Blaine's loss of the crucial state of New York. Blaine lost the popular vote by less than 100,000 and lost New York by just 1,149, out of a total vote of 1,125,000 cast, to Grover Cleveland, the first Democrat since Buchanan to win a presidential election. Cleveland won by a margin of 30,000 votes.
  
• 1884  Prior to his first election to the presidency in 1884, Democrat Grover Cleveland, then a bachelor, admitted that Republican charges accusing him of fathering a child as a young man in Buffalo were true. His honesty helped to calm the issue, despite the popular campaign chant against him: "Ma, Ma, where's my Pa? Gone to the White House, Ha, Ha, Ha!" Cleveland married Frances Folsom in the White House in 1886.
  
• 1884  Nov 8, Hermann Rorshach, Swiss psychiatrist, was born. He was the inventor of the inkblot test.
  
• 1884  Nov, The novel "Ramona" by Helen Hunt Jackson was published. It was about a love affair between a half-Indian girl and a Luisea Indian in southern California. It also served a covert tract on Indian oppression in America. In 1990 Valerie Sherer Mathes published "Helen Hunt Jackson and Her Indian Reform Legacy." In 1998 Mathes edited: "The Indian Reform Letters of Helen Hunt Jackson."
  
• 1884  Dec 2, Ruth Draper, actress and writer, was born.
  
• 1884  Dec 6, Army engineers completed construction of the Washington monument.
  
• 1884  Dec 30, Tojo Hideki, Japanese Prime Minister during WWII, was born.
  
• 1884[1985] Edgar Degas began painting his series of pastels and oils of dancers. The first was done about this time and titled "Danseuses."
  
• 1884  Stanhope Forbes, English painter, began "A Fish Sale on a Cornish Beach." Completed 1885.
  
• 1884  Claude Monet painted "Corniche of Monaco."
  
• 1884  Claude Monet painted "Bordighera." It was done on the French Riviera to which he returned after a visit there with Renoir in late 1883. The paintings were marked by bold, pure color in contrast to his earlier subdued pastels.
  
• 1884  Berthe Morisot painted the impressionist work "En Bateau sur le Lac de Boulogne."
  
• 1884  John Singer Sargent painted "Madame X." It was a portrait of Mme. Pierre Gautreau. The painting was initially called monstrous and prompted Sargent to move from Paris to the US.
  
• 1884  Georges Seurat, French artist, painted "Bathers at Asnieres."
  
• 1884  During a lecture tour together, Southern writer George Washington Cable and Samuel Clemens were billed as the "Twins of Genius." Clemens, who used the pen name Mark Twain, joined the popular Southern local-colorist writer Cable in a 15-week lecture tour of the Northeast. Clemens later wrote of Cable, "With his platform talent he was able to fatigue a corpse."
  
• 1884  Helen Hunt Jackson wrote her novel "Ramona."
  
• 1884  The Leo Delibe ballet "Coppelia" was revised in St. Petersburg by Marius Petipa, the Franco-Russian genius of ballet.
  
• 1884  The New York Metropolitan Opera embarked on its first post-season national train tour, and began playing poker to pass the time.
  
• 1884  Elisha Babcock and H.L. Story decided to build a resort hotel on a flat peninsula in San Diego Bay. They built the Hotel del Coronado in 11 months and the town of Coronado grew up around it.
  
• 1884  H.W. Mudgett, alias H.H. Holmes, graduated from the Univ. of Michigan Medical School. He went on to build a large home in Chicago that came to be known as Nightmare Castle for its secret passages, trapdoors, chutes, and underground laboratories. Homes-Mudgett slew 20-30 victims, including several wives, young ladies and their husbands. He sold skeletons to medical schools.
  
• 1884  A Victorian mansion was built on the corner of Bush and Jones streets in SF.
  
• 1884  The first Veteran's Home in California was built in Yountville (Napa Ct.).
  
• 1884  Barbed wire that fenced the west is on display at Oracle Junction, Arizona, and includes Sunderland 'Kink.'
  
• 1884  The Grolier Club was founded to promote "enthusiasm for books and the books arts."
  
• 1884  Hillerich & Bradsby, makers of the Louisville Slugger bats, was founded.
• 1884  Pitcher Charles Radbourn, "Ol Hoss," led his team, the Providence Grays, to baseball's National League pennant.
  
• 1884  The Berlin Conference drew up borders for African countries.
  
• 1884  A US Federal Court forbade wives of Chinese laborers from entering America and perpetuated a Chinese bachelor society.
  
• 1884  A federal judge ruled that hydraulic mining must stop destroying the land.
  
• 1884  Frederick Douglass, Negro abolitionist, was lambasted when he married a white woman (32) from Germany.
  
• 1884  Former Yankee Hill Marshall Willie Kennard worked as the bodyguard of Barney Ford (aka the Black Baron of Colorado), a wealthy Denver businessman and former slave.
  
• 1884  British interests purchased half the California operations of Lazar Freres and this led to the establishment of the London, Paris and American Bank. This ultimately became part of Crocker National Bank and then Wells Fargo.
  
• 1884  The first pea whistle was dubbed the Acme Thunderer and was made by J. Hudson & Co. (Whistles) Ltd. in Birmingham, England.
  
• 1884  Alexander Winton came to Cleveland from Scotland and became a successful bicycle manufacturer.
  
• 1884  Philosopher John Dewey came to teach at the U of M.
  
• 1884  Leland Stanford Jr. (15) died of typhus. His death moved the Stanfords to found Stanford Univ.
• 1884  Joseph Burr Tyrell led the first expedition for the Geological Survey of Canada to Alberta, Canada where rich deposits of dinosaur remains were found along the Red Deer River.
  
• 1884  Greenwich, site of the Royal Observatory, was urged by the US and Brittain for international adoption as the site for the Prime Meridian, zero degrees longitude at a meeting in Washington D.C. Jerusalem and Paris were also proposed. Global time zones were also established.
  
• 1884  Hiram Stevens Maxim went to London and developed the first true machine gun.
  
• 1884  Ottmar Mergenthaler of Germany invented the Linotype machine that produced newspaper type. It was used until it was replaced by computers. In 1886 the Chicago Tribune began using the Linotype.
  
• 1884  The Salon des independents in France had no jury and gave no prizes, but all the entries were exhibited. This salon marked the last formal exhibition of Impressionist paintings.
  
• 1884  Germany under Chancellor Otto von Bismarck adopted a national workman's compensation program.
  
• 1884  In India Dabur India Ltd. was established by a doctor who prescribed mintleaf remedies to cure stomach aches. It later became the largest company in ayurvedic medicine.
  
• 1884  Kanehiro Takaki linked the Japanese sailor's diet of polished rice to the disease beriberi. He found that the addition of mild and vegetables to their diet eliminated the disease.
  
• 1884  In Italy Sotirio Boulgaris founded Bulgari, a silver-jewelry shop, on Rome's Via Sistina. He had descended from a family of Greek silversmiths.
  
• 1884  In Russia Czar Alexander III commissioned jeweler Carl Faberge to make an Easter egg for the Empress.
  
• 1884  Spain annexed the coastal area of Western Sahara.
  
• 1884  In Sudan British Gen'l. Charles "Chinese" Gordon was sent to Khartoum to evacuate the Egyptian garrison. Gordon decided to hold the city against El Mahdi.