1885

• 1885 Nov-Dec: the Great White Ruin begins: the worst winter in human memory.
• 1885 The first meeting of the Territorial Legislature was held at Bismarck and the Marquis de Mores was acquitted of murder in a trial at Bismarck. The Hospital for the Insane (now North Dakota State Hospital) was opened at Jamestown and the territorial prison (now the State Penitentiary) opened at Bismarck. The great "Dakota Boom" in settlement increased the territory's population during this era and the territorial census was taken.
• 1885  Jan 3, Anna Pavlova Russia's premier ballerina, was born.
  
• 1885  Jan 4, Dr. William W. Grant of Davenport, Iowa, performed what is believed to have been the first appendectomy; the patient was 22-year-old Mary Gartside.
  
• 1885  Jan 26, In Sudan General "Chinese" Gordon was killed on the palace steps in the garrison at Khartoum by the forces of El Mahdi.
  
• 1885  Jan 28, Gen'l. Garnet Wolseley arrived at Khartoum to relieve Gen'l. Gordon, but arrived 2 days late. El Mahdi died soon thereafter but was succeeded by the Khalifa.
  
• 1885  Jan 30, John Henry Towers, naval and aviation hero, was born.
  
• 1885  Jan, Grover Cleveland entered the White House as a bachelor.
  
• 1885  Feb 18, Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was published and became one of the writer's most famous works. Samuel Clemens, born in 1835, first used the pseudonym of Mark Twain when he wrote a humorous travel account in 1863. Books such as Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer made Mark Twain a popular American author because people could relate to his stories of boyhood adventures colored with social commentary. As a satirical, critical voice of the United States, Twain continued to write and lecture across the country and the world.
  
• 1885  Feb 21, The Washington Monument was dedicated.
  
• 1885  Feb 23, John Lee survived three attempts to hang him in Exeter Prison, as the trap failed to open.
  
• 1885  Feb 24, Chester Nimitz, was born. He was the U.S. admiral who commanded naval forces in the Pacific during WWII.
  
• 1885  Mar 3, The U.S. Post Office began offering special delivery for first-class mail.
  
• 1885  Mar 21, Raoul Lufbery, French-born American fighter pilot of World War I, was born.
  
• 1885  Mar 26, The Eastman Film Co. of Rochester, N.Y., manufactured the first commercial motion picture film.
  
• 1885  Mar 28, The Salvation Army was officially organized in the U.S.
  
• 1885  Mar 30, In Afghanistan, Russian troops inflicted a crushing defeat on Afghan forces Ak Teppe despite orders not to fight.
  
• 1885  Mar 31, Madame Blavatsky was hoisted in an invalid chair onto a steamer in the Madras harbor of India and departed for London. In England she wrote The Secret Doctrine and had as guests to her salon William Butler Yeats, Annie Besant and the young Mohandas K. Gandhi.
• 1885  Apr 18, The Sino-Japanese war ended.
  
• 1885  May 12, In the Battle of Batoche, French Canadians rebelled against Canada.
  
• 1885  May 19, First mass production of shoes (Jan Matzeliger in Lynn, Massachusetts).
  
• 1885  May, Richard Schmitt bought his brewery in Singen, Germany.
  
• 1885  Jun 17, The Statue of Liberty arrived in New York City aboard the French ship Isere.
• 1885  Jun 19, The Statue of Liberty arrived in New York City from France.
  
• 1885  Jun 23, Ulysses S. Grant, commander of the Union forces at the end of the Civil War and seventeenth president of the United States, died at the age of 63.
  
• 1885  Jul 6, French scientist Louis Pasteur successfully tested an anti-rabies vaccine on a boy bitten by an infected dog.
  
• 1885  Jul 23, Ulysses S. Grant, commander of the Union forces at the end of the Civil War and the 18th president of the United States, died in Mount McGregor, N.Y., at age 63. He had just completed the final revisions to his memoirs, which were published as a 2 volume set by Mark Twain.
  
• 1885  Aug 10, Leo Daft opened America's first commercially operated electric streetcar, in Baltimore.
  
• 1885  Sep 2, In Rock Springs, Wyoming Territory, 28 Chinese laborers were killed and hundreds more chased out of town by striking coal miners.
  
• 1885  Sep 18, A coup d'etat in Eastern Rumelia led directly to a war between Serbia and Bulgaria. The Balkan peace settlement established by the 1878 Treaty of Berlin was undone when a coup d'etat in the disputed province of Eastern Rumelia resulted in Eastern Rumelia (separated from Bulgaria in 1878) announcing its re-unification with Bulgaria. Serbian prince Milan responded by demanding Bulgaria cede some of its territory to Serbia. An international conference convened and became deadlocked in November and Serbia declared war.
  
• 1885  Sep 20, Ferdinand "Jelly Roll" Morton, jazz pianist, composer and singer, one of the first to orchestrate jazz music, disputed W.C. Handy's claim to be the originator of jazz and blues, was born.
  
• 1885  Oct 1, Special delivery mail service began in the United States.
  
• 1885  Nov 2, Harlow Shapley, astronomer, was born. He discovered the Sun is not at the center of the galaxy.
  
• 1885  Nov 7, The Canadian Pacific Railroad reached the Pacific Ocean.
  
• 1885  Nov 10, Paul Daimler, son of Gottleib Daimler, became the first motorcyclist when he rode his father's new invention on a round trip of six miles.
  
• 1885  Nov 11, George Patton, U.S. Army commander in World War II, was born.
  
• 1885  Nov 16, Canadian rebel Louis Riel was executed for high treason after he led another uprising that was crushed by a powerful militia.
  
• 1885  Nov 17, The Serbian Army, with Russian support, invaded Bulgaria.
  
• 1885  Nov 19, Bulgarians, led by Stefan Stambolov, repulsed a larger Serbian invasion force at Slivinitza.
  
• 1885  Nov 26, Bulgaria moved into Serbia.
  
• 1885  Dec 2, Nikos Kazantzakis, Greek writer and lawyer, was born. His work included "Zorba the Greek."
  
• 1885  Cezanne painted his watercolor of "Madame Cezanne with hydrangeas."
  
• 1885  Winslow Homer painted "Lost on the Grand Banks." It was reportedly sold to Bill Gates in 1998 for $30 million.
  
• 1885  Renoir, French painter, painted "In the Garden." It was a lush double-portrait in which the artist's future wife, Aline, calmly accepted the embrace of a suitor whose face says everything about love's sweet delusions.
  
• 1885  Ethel Reed, graphic artist, designed the poster for Folly or Saintliness by Jose Echegaray. A print by Ellen Thayer Fisher titled Sumac & Milkweed was made the same year.
  
• 1885  A tapestry study was done by Sir Edward Cowley Burne-Jones and William Morris.
  
• 1885  Vincent Van Gogh painted "The Potato Eaters."
  
• 1885  Thomas Mellon published privately his autobiography, which included much detail on the expanding US economy after the Civil War.
  
• 1885  J.R. McCulloch wrote his book "Taxation and the Funding System." In it he stated that: "The moment you abandon the cardinal principle of exacting from all individuals the same proportion of their income or their profits, you are at sea without a rudder or compass and there is no amount of injustice of folly you may not commit."
  
• 1885  Emile Zola wrote "Germinal," a fictional account of a French mining strike.
• 1885  The opera "Le Cid" by Massenet had its premier in Paris. It included text from the playwright Corneille's "Le Cid."
  
• 1885  Gilbert and Sullivan created their opera "The Mikado."
  
• 1885  Architect William Le Baron Jenney began to use steel a steel frame skeleton for the first skyscrapers.
  
• 1885  The Home Insurance Building in Chicago was built and is considered the first skyscraper. It stood 9 stories and had 2 added in 1891.
  
• 1885  Thomas Hardy, English writer, built his own home, Max Gate, outside Dorchester on the Wareham Road. It was here that he wrote "Tess of the D'Ubbervilles" and "Jude the Obscure."
  
• 1885  The Norment-Parry Inn was built in Orlando, Florida. It is now the oldest house in Orlando and serves as a bed-and-breakfast inn. It is part of a 3 building complex called The Courtyard at Lake Lucerne.
  
• 1885  The Detroit Institute of Arts opened.
  
• 1885  Isaac Mayer Wise united pockets of Jewish immigrants and assembled 15 rabbis in Pittsburgh to articulate a platform for the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, the Hebrew Union College, and the Central Conference of American Rabbis. The organization of Reform Judaism discussed the Mitzvot,  the 613 commandments in the Torah, and accepted only the moral laws as binding.
  
• 1885  The soft drink Dr Pepper was introduced.
  
• 1885  Annie Oakley joined Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show and toured Europe.
  
• 1885  John Montgomery Ward and fellow baseball players secretly formed the Brotherhood of Professional Base Ball Players.
  
• 1885  To escape a federal crackdown on polygamy, hundreds of Mormon families fled to Mexico and established the first of five Mormon colonies in the state of Chihuahua.
• 1885  The US Mail began a Special Delivery service and issued the first $.10 stamp for the guaranteed immediate delivery.
  
• 1885  Princeville, North Carolina was chartered. It had been founded by a community of newly freed slaves and originally called Freedom Hill or Liberty Hill on the south side of the Tar River. It was named after Turner Prince, a carpenter who was one of its early leaders.
  
• 1885  George Westinghouse , who eventually held more than 400 patents, turned his interest to electricity and later formed the Westinghouse Electric.
  
• 1885  Charles Cretors of Chicago invented the first popcorn popping machine. It was powered by steam and first drawn by a team of horses.
  
• 1885  Philip Handel started working with glass in Meridan, Conn.
  
• 1885  Stanford Univ. was begun with David Starr Jordan as the first president. The 1st class began in 1891.
  
• 1885  Sylanus Bowser invented the kerosene pump. Twenty years later he modified it into a self-regulating gasoline pump.
  
• 1885  The cigar lighter was invented.
  
• c1885  The founder of Johnson Controls invented an electric room thermostat.
• 1885  Carl Friedrich Benz invented the first operable auto with an internal combustion engine.
  
• 1885  The Varney model of the miner's candlestick was patented.
  
• 1885  The clipper ship James Stafford crossed the Pacific Ocean in 21 1/2 days.
  
• 1885  A new star appeared in the Great Nebula of Andromeda.
  
• 1885  Victor Hugo (b.1802), French novelist and poet, died. In 1998 Graham Robb published the biography: "Victor Hugo."
  
• 1885  Titian Ramsey Peale (b.1799), American naturalist and painter, died. He and his nephew developed and patented the kinematoscope, a forerunner of the motion picture camera.
  
• 1885  The Canadian Pacific Railway completed its transcontinental rail line.
  
• 1885  In BC, Canada, St. Paul's Church was built at Fulford. It was the first church on Salt Spring Island.
  
• 1885  In England John Starley introduced the safety bicycle.
• 1885  English scientist Francis Galton proved that no two 2 fingerprints were identical.
  
• 1885  In Germany a treaty made in Berlin called for the humane treatment of Africans.
• 1885  In Japan the first Shakespeare production was a Kabuki adaptation of a Japanese novel inspired by a Charles Lamb narrative based on "The Merchant of Venice."
  
• 1885  In the Netherlands the façade of the Rijksmuseum was completed.
  
• c1885  Geneva rubies were sold in Switzerland. They were supposedly made by processing small bits of real rubies into larger gemstones.
  
• 1885-1889 Grover Cleveland became the 22nd President of the US.