Chronology

1850 - 1894

Robert Louis Stevenson.

1850

The Pioneer Steam Coffee and Spice Mills Company is founded in San Francisco.

1850

Cotton is one of the staple crops of the South, yielding 3 million bales a year.

1850

San Francisco's Chinatown becomes the site of numerous opium dens.

1850

Gold is discovered in British Columbia, Canada.

1850 - 1859

The arrival of the railways opens up much of Canada for timber felling.

1850 - 1859

Lumbering starts in earnest in British Columbia.

1850

California is added as a state of the Union.

1850 - 1864

The Taiping Rebellion. A civil war in China ends in victory for the Qing dynasty with British and French support.

1850 - 1854

Robert McClure successfully traverses the Northwest passage, partly by land, partly by sea.

1850

A U Bergmans is founded in Stockholm, Sweden, to produce wheat crispbread.

1850

Increasing trend for early Chinese porcelain as art and collectors' pieces.

1851

Gold is discovered in Victoria, prompting the first Australian gold rush. Australia's population doubles in 10 years.

1851

Gold is discovered in Ophir, New South Wales.

1851

Victoria is created as a separate state of Australia.

1851 - 1853

Richard Burton undertakes the Hajj to Mecca in disguise.

1851

The Great Exhibition is held at the Crystal Palace.

1851 - 1880

China imports an annual average of about 64,000 to 68,000 chests of Indian opium.

1852

The Ghirardelli Chocolate Company is founded in San Leandro, California.

1852

The Second Anglo-Burmese war. Britain gains control of Rangoon and the Irrawaddy Delta. This marks the beginning of a significant trade in opium to Burma.

1852

A second Anglo-Burmese War ends with Britain holding Southern Burma.

1852

The African Slave Boy is written by Samuel Adjai Crowther.

1852 - 1853

David Livingstone explores southern Africa. He is the first European to see 'Mosi-oa-Tunya' (the smoke that thunders), which he renames Victoria Falls.

1852

John Fowler invents the steam plough.

1853 - 1890

Vincent Van Gogh.

1853

John and Benjamin Cadbury become manufacturers of drinking chocolate.

1853

During the Crimean War, British troops gain a liking for Turkish tobacco, which is much cheaper.

1853

There are 108 cotton mills in Manchester which is known as Cottonopolis.

1853

Levi Strauss moves to San Francisco and sets up a wholesale business selling clothing and other goods.

1853

Canada adopts the gold standard.

1853 - 1856

The Crimean War. Combined French, British and Ottoman forces defeat the Russian army who are made to withdraw military presence in the Black Sea area.

1853

The Gadsden Purchase acquires nearly 30,000 square miles of territory, in what is now Arizona and New Mexico, for the US from Mexico.

1853

New Zealand gains independence from Britain as a Commonwealth nation.

1854 - 1902

John Philip Sousa.

1854 - 1900

Oscar Wilde.

1854

Philip Morris starts selling Turkish hand-rolled cigarettes.

1854

The Canada Sugar Refining Company is founded in Montreal, refining sugar grown in the British West Indies.

1854

The Elgin-Marcy Treaty permits free trade of raw materials between Canada and the US, increasing Timber exports from Canada.

1854

The Chinese Maritime Customs Service is created to regulate trade and gather taxation. It continues until 1949, largely under British and American leadership.

1854 - 1856

David Livingstone crosses Africa from the West to the East, exploring the natural resources of the area. He believed in the efficacy of 'Christianity, Commerce and Civilisation.'

1854

First commercial oil well in the world is drilled in Poland by Ignacy Lukasiewicz for the purpose of extracting kerosene from the oil for his gas lamp business.

1855

Walt Whitman publishes his poetry collection Leaves of Grass.

1855

Johan Edvard Lundstrom of Sweden invents the safety match.

1855

A system of formal wine classification is introduced in Bordeaux.

1855

Benjamin Silliman discovers an advanced refining method, allowing petroleum to be converted into kerosene and lubricants for cooking and lighting.

1856 - 1925

John Singer Sargent.

1856 - 1950

George Bernard Shaw.

1856

William Perkin invents the first synthetic dye, mauveine, capable of producing purple and mauve fabrics.

1856 - 1860

Second Opium War between Britain and China. Britain prevails with assistance from France and the opium trade is legalised. Missionaries are allowed in China.

1856

New South Wales gains independent government from the UK.

1856 - 1860

Richard Burton explores East Africa looking for the Inland Sea, together with John Hanning Speke. Burton is the first European to see Lake Tanganyika and keeps its original name. Speke is the first European to see Nam Lolwe (which he calls Lake Victoria). They claim this to be the source of the Nile.

1856 - 1939

Sigmund Freud, Austrian psychoanalyst.

1856

Gregor Mendel starts his experiments on the Laws of Inheritance, pioneering genetic theory.

1857 - 1934

Edward Elgar. His 'Pomp and Circumstance' marches were written 1901-1930.

1857 - 1941

Robert Baden Powell, founder of the Scout Movement.

1857

Daniel Peter makes the first proper 'milk chocolate' drink using condensed milk and cocoa powder.

1857

Walter and Harry Gilbey found a business selling spirits and wines in London. They start with new wines from the Cape Settlement, but expand in 1875 by buying a vineyard in Medoc and distilleries in Scotland.

1857

The United Breweries Group is founded in India by Scotsman Thomas Leishman.

1857

The Indian Rebellion challenges British rule in India.

1857

Henry O'Neil paints Eastward Ho! capturing the spirit of western emigration.

1858

The Treaty of Tianjin permits the importation of tobacco into China.

1858

Seersucker cotton garments are popular with British forces in India.

1858

Silver ore is discovered in Nevada prompting a silver rush. The famous Comstock lode also contains gold.

1858

Henry Havelock leads British forces in the recapture of Lucknow, a decisive moment in the ending of the Indian Rebellion.

1858

The Government of India Act takes India out of the hands of the East India Company and makes it a Crown colony.

1858 - 1947

The British Raj. Britain controls India as a Crown colony.

1858

The Transatlantic cable is completed, improving communications.

1858

Minnesota is added as a state of the Union.

1858 - 1864

David Livingstone leads the Zambezi Expedition, but it is ineffective in opening up Africa.

1858

Narrative of the Indian Revolt is published by Colin Campbell.

1858

The Irish Republican Brotherhood is founded.

1858

Henri Mouhot explores South East Asia from his base in Bangkok.

1858

The first commercial oil well in North America is developed by James Miller Williams in Oil Springs, Ontario.

1859 - 1930

Arthur Conan Doyle.

1859

Charles Darwin publishes On the Origin of the Species by Natural Selection.

1859 - 1869

Construction of the Suez Canal which reduced journey times to India and China from Europe.

1859

The Pike's Peak Gold Rush in Colorado draws settlers to the west.

1859

Piedmont forces take control of most of northern Italy after a brief war with Austrian forces.

1859

Oregon is added as a state of the Union.

1859

Harpers Ferry raid by abolitionist leader John Brown in an attempt to start a slave revolt is suppressed by US marines under Robert E. Lee.

1859

Queensland is created as a separate state of Australia.

1859

Edwin Drake strikes oil in Titusville, marking the start of the Pennsylvania oil rush.

1860 - 1911

Gustav Mahler.

1860

Publication of Max Havelaar by Eduard Douwes Dekker, exposing the corruption and racism endemic in the Dutch East India Company (VOC).

1860 - 1904

Anton Chekhov.

1860

The first Food Adulteration Act is passed by Parliament.

1860

Eduard Dekker writes Max Havelaar and the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company exposing the greed of colonial planters.

1860

Manufactured cigarettes apperar in the US, including Bull Durham's.

1860 - 1869

Minks are raised on fur farms in North America.

1860 - 1869

Large scale logging commences in Mexico.

1860

Gaspari Campari founds Gruppo Campari to sell his eponymous aperitif.

1860

Giuseppe Garibaldi conquers most of southern Italy with his famous red shirts.

1860

Burke and Wills cross Australia from Melbourne to the Gulf of Carpentaria in the North, but both die on the return journey.

1860 - 1862

Speke explores East Africa with James Augustus Grant and tries to establish Lake Victoria as the source of the Nile. He travels north from the lake up a river and meets up with fellow British explorer Samuel Baker who has followed the Nile South from Kharthoum.

1860

The first Food Adulteration Act is passed by Parliament.

1861 - 1941

Rabindranath Tagore.

1861 - 1865

Tobacco is issued as rations to Union and Confederate soldiers, increasing its popularity.

1861 - 1865

The American Civil War is fought over the secession of the Confederate States from the Union, and in part over the exploitation of slaves on cotton, sugar and tobacco plantations in the South. Cotton exports are hit by the Union blockade of Southern ports.

1861

Julius Caesar Czarnikow establishes Czarnikow & Co. in London.

1861

Gold is discovered in Otago, New Zealand.

1861

Victor Emmanuel of Piedmont is made the first king of Italy and the northern and southern states are united.

1861

Kansas is added as a state of the Union.

1861

The Confederate States of America are established by 11 southern slave states under the leadership of Jefferson Davis.

1861 - 1865

Abraham Lincoln serves as US President.

1861

Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management was published.

1861

The Gorilla Hunters is written by R. M. Ballantyne.

1861

The Ship 'Elizabeth Watts' transports the first substantial amount of oil from Pennsylvania to England.

1862

Victor Hugo publishes Les Misérables.

1862 - 1918

Gustav Klimt.

1862

The revolving machine gun is invented by Richard J. Gatling.

1862

Rowntree's is founded in York.

1862

France turns to Egypt as an alternative source of cotton.

1862

Pre-Raphaelite model Lizzie Siddal dies of a laudanum overdose.

1862

French, Italian, Belgian and Swiss currencies join the Latin Monetary Union, defining their value in gold and silver.

1862

The Pacific Railroad Act gives railroad companies the right to cut timber for 10-20 miles either side of their tracks. This is needed for sleepers and for fuel.

1862

The navy ceases to demand large quantities of timber from the royal forests.

1862

Jerry Thomas writes How to Mix Drinks, known colloquially as The Bar Tender's Guide.

1862

Don Facundo Bacardi Masso establishes the Bacardi rum distillery in Cuba.

1862

Otto von Bismarck is made Prime Minister of Prussia under Wilhelm I. He proclaims the need for iron and blood to make Germany great.

1862

France acquires Cochin-China.

18620619

The Emancipation Proclamation bans slavery in all US federal territories.

1862

The Mekong and Yangtze rivers are explored by Marie Joseph François Garnier, a French official in Indochina.

1862

London International Exhibition.

1863

Gerardus Johannes Droste starts a confectionary business in Haarlem, the Netherlands.

1863

Jacobus Nienhuys establishes the Indonesian tobacco industry in Sumatra.

1863

Friedrich Bayer and Johann Weskott form pharmaceuticals company Bayer AG in Barmen, Germany.

1863

The Phylloxera louse spreads rapidly across Europe destroying the roots of vines.

1863

West Virginia is added as a state of the Union.

1863

Dr. James Caleb Jackson created the first breakfast cereal in 1863, which he called Granula.

1863

James Caleb Jackson invents 'Granula' the first mass-produced dry breakfast cereal.

1863

American artist James Whistler buys his first bit of Chinese porcelain. His artwork a year later featuring porcelain contributes to ‘chinamania’.

1864

Bismarck encourages Prussia and Austria to join forces to annex the Danish provinces of Schleswig and Holstein.

1864

Nevada is added as a state of the Union.

1864

Samuel Adjai Crowther becomes the first African Anglican Bishop.

1864

The Heineken Company opens its brewery in Amsterdam.

1865 - 1936

Rudyard Kipling.

1865 - 1939

William Butler Yeats.

1865

James Mason patented America's first coffee percolator.

1865

Sharecropping starts in the US. Free black farmers work on white-owned plantations.

1865

The Morant Bay Rebellion in Jamaica is one of many revolts which creates instability in the sugar trade.

1865

Abram Lyle moves into sugar refining in Greenock, Scotland.

1865

The John B. Stetson Company is founded in Philadelphia to make the Western hat.

1865

The China Inland Mission is founded.

1865

The velocipede or bone-shaker is introduced, the precursor of the modern bicycle.

1866 - 1944

Wassily Kandinsky.

1866 - 1946

H. G. Wells.

1866

Dynamite is invented by Alfred Nobel.

1866

J. S. Fry & Sons introduce the Fry's Chocolate Cream bar, introducing a fondant filling.

1866

Henri Nestlé founds what will become the Nestlé Company in Vevey, Switzerland. His initial interest is in milk formula drinks for babies.

1866

Jeremiah Colman is given a Royal Warrant to produce mustard.

1866

Italy take the Veneto region from Austria.

1866

The Civil Rights Act protects the rights of African-Americans. At the same time, the Ku Klux Klan is founded.

1866 - 1871

Livingstone searches for the source of the Nile, but becomes ill and seeks refuge in Ujiji on the shores of Lake Tanganyika. He is discovered there in 1871 by Welsh-American explorer Henry Stanley.

1866

Cadwallader Washburn builds a flour mill on the banks of the Mississippi in Minneapolis, the origin of General Mills.

1867

Joseph Lister publishes his findings on the reduction of infections by the use of antiseptics.

1867

Prussia defeats Austria at the battle of Königgrätz and Austria is excluded from the growing German Confederation.

1867

Diamonds are discovered in the Kimberley region, on the borders of British and Boer land.

1867

Nebraska is added as a state of the Union.

1867

Alaska is purchased for the US from Russia.

1867

The Constitution Act establishes Canadian self-government for the original provinces of Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.

1867

The Australian Inter-Colonial Exhibition.

1867

Ferdinand Hayden explores the Rocky Mountains.

1868 - 1926

Gertrude Bell, author, traveller and specialist on Arabia.

1868 - 1963

W. E. B. Du Bois.

1868

Cadbury's introduces the first chocolate box.

1868

A report on opium dens in East London appears in London Society.

1868

Gold is discovered in South Africa by George Harrison.

1868

Publication of John Grigor's Arboriculture showing how to manage forests.

1868 - 1894

William Ewart Gladstone is Prime Minister for four separate terms in this period.

1868 - 1880

Benjamin Disraeli is twice Prime Minister in this period.

1869

Tolstoy publishes War and Peace.

1869 - 1954

Henri Matisse.

1869 - 1951

Andre Gide.

1869

Henry Tate starts a sugar refining business in Liverpool.

1869

J. C. Parkinson describes opium smoking in London in Places and People.

1869

The completion of the Central Pacific Railroad eases the supply of timber across the US.

1869

The beginning of Aboriginal Removals characterised as the 'Stolen Generations'. This process of removing aboriginal children from their families goes on for over a hundred years.

1869

Sri Lankan coffee plantations are wiped out by disease and are subsequently replaced with tea plantations.

1869

The US transcontinental railroad is completed.

1869

Ferdinand Hayden publishes his Geological Report of the Exploration of the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers in 1859-1860.

1869 - 1948

Mohandas 'Mahatma' Gandhi.

1869

Henry John Heinz founds his food company in Pennsylvania. Ketchup became his most successful product which he developed in 1876.

1870

Mustard seeds are grown in California.

1870

Banana plantations begin to replace sugar cane plantations in Jamaica as the sugar cane market diminishes.

1870

Opium dens spring up in Chinatown in New York.

1870 - 1879

The crosscut saw becomes more common in the Timber felling industry.

1870 - 1871

The Franco-Prussian War ends when Napoleon III is captured after the battle of Sedan. The German state and empire was recognised by the French.

1870

Italian forces seize Rome when French forces depart to fight the Franco Prussian war. Rome becomes capital of Italy.

1870

The Suez-Bombay cable is laid by SS Great Eastern, providing faster communications links.

1870

Manitoba and the Northwest Territories become Canadian provinces.

1870

Cecil Rhodes arrives in South Africa for the good of his health.

1870

Nicolai Prezwalski explores Central Asia in four expeditions over 15 years.

1870

Deutsche Bank founded in Berlin which was created to focus on promoting and facilitating international trade.

1870

The New York Cotton Exchange is founded by a group of merchants in the city as a common point of trade for the commodity. Cotton exchanges are formed soon after in New Orleans, Memphis, Savannah and Mobile, Alabama.

1870 - 1924

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.

1870

Standard Oil is founded in Ohio - with John Davison Rockefeller as a founding member.

1870

Turkey Hard Red Winter Wheat is introduced to Kansas by Mennonite settlers.

1870

Oscar Wilde acquires two Chinese vases for his student room in Oxford and later exclaims “I find it harder and harder every day to live up to my blue China”.

1871

Charles Darwin publishes The Descent of Man.

1871

Albert Jones patents the use of corrugated paper as a packing material.

1871

Australian vineyards more than double in size between 1851 and 1871.

1871 - 1890

Otto von Bismarck is Supreme Chancellor of Germany.

1871

Formation of the French Third Republic.

1871

The Great Chicago Fire destroys much of the city, but provides an opportunity for a new high-rise cityscape to emerge.

1871

The Treaty of Washington between Britain and America resolved British-Canadian-US territorial disputes and brought all three parties closer together following the Civil War. It encouraged the commercial development of the Great Lakes and the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway.

1871

British Columbia becomes a Canadian province.

1872 - 1958

Ralph Vaughan Williams.

1872 - 1970

Bertrand Russell.

1872

Another Food Adulteration Act is passed by Parliament.

1872

The Pioneer Steam Coffee and Spice Mills Company is bought by James A. Folger and renamed as the Folger Coffee Company.

1872

Yellowstone National Park is created.

1872

The Dominions Law Act encourages settlers to move to the central prairies.

1872

Cecil Rhodes buys his first diamond mine in Kimberley with support from Rothschild's Bank.

1872 - 1876

Ernest Giles explores central Australia.

1872

C A Pillsbury & Co is founded in Minnesota manufacturing processed dough.

1872

Another Food Adulteration Act is passed by Parliament.

1872

Report of London’s South Kensington Museum (later the Victoria and Albert) declares that there had been no attmpt at a systematically-arranged collection of the art of Chinese porcelain.

1873

Jules Verne publishes Around the World in Eighty Days which follows the journey of fictional Englishman Phileas Fogg around the British Empire.

1873

Richard Benson and William Hedges found Benson & Hedges in London.

1873

Levi Strauss patents his famous blue denim jeans with metal rivets to give them strength.

1873 - 1878

America moves away from bimetallism, adopting a gold standard and rejecting silver. This causes silver prices to crash.

1873

The Pilgrim's Rest Gold Rush is the first of many gold rushes in South Africa, which is responsible for 40% of all subsequent gold produced from the ground.

1873

Germany adopts the gold standard but has to abandon it in 1914.

1873

Prince Edward Island becomes a Canadian province.

1873

Black Ivory is written by R. M. Ballantyne.

1873

The Asiatic in England is written by Joseph Salter.

1873

The Sydney Inter-Colonial Exhibition.

1873

William Gosse 'discovers' Uluru or Ayers Rock, in Australia.

1873

General Gordon becomes Governor of the Sudan.

1873

Lady Charlotte Schreiber (1812-95) states “The rage for everything ‘blue and white’ is truly ridiculous … The dealers own it to be so, but are not to blamed for the profiting from the madness of the hour.”

1874 - 1951

Arnold Schoenberg. He moved to the US in 1934.

1874 - 1963

Robert Frost.

1874

Washington Duke establishes a tobacco factory in Durham, North Carolina.

1874

DDT is synthesised.

1874

British Prime Minister Gladstone abolishes punitive taxes on tea and sugar, causing the price to fall and popular consumption to take off.

1874

English scientist Charles Wright is the first person to synthesize heroin.

1874

Prospectors rush to the Black Hills of Dakota to dig gold, ignoring Native Indian settlements and land rights promised by the US Government.

1874

The Women's Christian Temperance Union is founded in America to campaign against the consumption of alcohol.

1874

The East India Company (EIC) is wound up.

1874

Britain declares the Gold Coast province of Ghana as a British protectorate after the Dutch withdraw.

1874 - 1877

Henry Stanley follows the Congo from its source to the sea.

1874

The Anglo-Oriental Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade, Britain’s main anti-opium activist group, is founded.

1874

DDT is synthesised.

1875 - 1961

Carl Jung.

1875 - 1905

Edgar Rice Burroughs, author of Tarzan and John Carter.

1875 - 1940

John Buchan.

1875 - 1955

Thomas Mann.

1875

Charbonnel et Walker is founded in London and becomes a royal favourite.

1875

Henri Nestlé and Daniel Peter combine their talents to make the first Milk Chocolate bar.

1875

R. J. Reynolds establishes the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

1875

Allen & Ginter start to print pictures on one side of the card stiffener put in cigarette packs and text on the other, creating the first cigarette cards.

1875

Egypt is declared bankrupt having overspent during the cotton boom whilst the American Civil War continued. After the war, cotton prices collapse.

1875

The sugar cube is introduced.

1875

Jasper 'Jack' Daniel founds Jack Daniel's bourbon distellery in Lynchburg, Tennessee.

1875 - 1882

Pietro di Brazza explores central Africa.

1875

Disraeli buys Suez Canal shares from the Khedive.

1875

Joseph Rank establishes a flour milling business in Yorkshire.

1875

Robert Nobel begins producing paraffin in Baku. The Nobel brother's company, 'Branobel', becomes a serious competitor to Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company.

1876

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is published by Mark Twain.

1876

The petrol carburettor is invented by Gottlieb Daimler.

1876

Britain and France take control of Egypt.

1876

Bat Masterson, Billy the Kid and Butch Cassidy help to make the bowler hat the most popular hat in the American West.

1876

Colorado is added as a state of the Union.

1876

John Moresby explores New Guinea.

1876

Egypt's Bankruptcy results in Anglo-French control.

1876

The Anheuser-Busch Company introduces the Budweiser brand.

1876

The Branoble oil company is founded in Azerbaijan and takes the lead in world oil production in the late nineteenth Century.

1876

Wheat is shipped from the Prairies to Eastern Canada.

1877

George Gilbert Scott's St Pancras Railway Station marks a high point in neo-Gothic building in Britain.

1877

The phonograph is invented by Thomas Alva Edison.

1877

The Distillers Company is founded by six Scotch Whisky distillers including Haig.

1877 - 1878

The Russo-Turkish War. The Ottoman Empire is driven out of most of the Balkan region.

1877

Delhi Durbar.

1877

Cadwallader Washburn partners with John Crosby to form the Washburn Crosby Company.

1878

First performance of Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera HMS Pinafore.

1878

William Crookes develops Crookes tubes to investigate cathode rays.

1878

W. D. & H. O. Wills introduces the Three Castles and Gold Flake brands.

1878

Constantin Fahlberg discovers the artificial sweetener, Saccharin.

1878

San Francisco passes an Anti-Opium law to curb opium use.

1878

Britain passes the Opium Act which bans the import, transport, possession or sale of opium except where licensed to supply registered Chinese opium smokers and Indian opium eaters.

1878

The Paris International Exhibition.

1879 - 1940

Paul Klee.

1879 - 1940

Leon Trotsky.

1879

Swiss confectioner Rodolphe Lindt invents the 'conching process' - creating very smooth chocolate by grinding the paste between granite rollers for 72 hours.

1879

E. H. Dyer founds the Standard Sugar Manufacturing Company in California, producing sugar from sugar beet.

1879

The Zulu War, between Britain and the Zulu Nation, ends in the defeat of the Zulus.

1879

First Woolworth's store opens in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

1879 - 1953

Joseph Stalin.

1879

Japan establishes an effective domestic opium control regime.

1879

The start of two years of poor wheat harvests in the UK and Europe.

1880 - 1889

Coffee is planted in Ethiopia.

1880

Suchard opens a chocolate factory in Germany.

1880

Sugar beet replaces sugar cane as the world's main source of sugar and Germany is the largest producer.

1880 - 1889

The US replaces Britain as the principle market for Candian timber.

1880 - 1889

New sources of mahogany are discovered in West Africa, encouraging a rich timber trade.

1880 - 1889

Europe's vineyards are saved by grafting European vines onto American rootstock.

1880 - 1881

The First Boer War, between competing Boer (former Dutch) and British states in South Africa, ends in British defeat.

1881 - 1973

Pablo Picasso.

1881

Foundation of the Indian Tea Association.

1881

International Cotton Exposition in Atlanta, Georgia.

1881

The Hudson's Bay Company opens its first department store in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

1881

The Division of Forestry is created within the US Department of Agriculture.

1881

Tunisia becomes a French protectorate.

1881 - 1885

The Canadian Pacific Railway is built between Quebec, Ontario and British Columbia.

1881 - 1914

"The Scramble for Africa"; Europeans powers vie for control of African states.

1881 - 1891

Opiates appear in India and China as substitutes for opium smoking.

1882 - 1971

Igor Stravinsky. He moved to the US in 1939.

1882 - 1967

Edward Hopper.

1882 - 1941

Virginia Woolf.

1882

Robert Koch discovers the cholera virus.

1882

Weiss chocolate is founded in Saint-Étienne.

1882

British troops occupy Egypt and remain there until 1956.

1882

The abolition of Indian import duties leads to a boom in the Indian cotton spinning industry and accelerates the demise of spinning in the UK.

1882

British forces take control in Sudan.

1882

The Chinese Exclusion Act restricts Chinese presence in the US.

1882

A Coffee Exchange is founded in New York City.

1882

French consul in China, Georges Francisque Scherzer, visits Jingdezhen with the purpose of industrial espinonage for the Sèvres factory. He died in 1886 on his way back to France.

1883

Robert Louis Stevenson writes Treasure Island.

1883

British historian John Seeley writes his Expansion of England.

1883

Antoni Gaudi completes the Moorish inspired Casa Vicens in Barcelona.

1883

Charles Neuhaus founds the Côte d'Or brand in Halle, Belgium.

1883

Lucky Strike first appears as a form of chewing tobacco.

1883

Punjab Art & Industry Exhibition.

1883

The Canadian Government establishes industrial schools for First Nations children.

1883

American inventor Charles Fritts builds the first solar cell, using selenium as a semiconductor. Despite its lack of success, it paves the way for research and development in harnessing energy from the sun.

1883

The Niagara Falls Power Company is formed to build a hydro-electric power station. George Westinghouse is hired as chief designer.

1884

The Home Insurance Building in Chicago is the first steel structure skyscraper.

1884

German South West Africa is established in what is now Namibia.

1884

Germany settles in Kamerun, West Africa.

1884

Togoland is declared a German protectorate.

1884

Germany annexes the Bismarck Archipelago in the Pacific.

1885

Publication of King Solomon's Mines by H. Rider Haggard.

1885

The motor cycle is invented by Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach.

1885

Louis Pasteur uses a vaccination against rabies successfully for the first time.

1885

J. B. Duke licences the first automated cigarette machine from the inventor, J. A. Bonsack.

1885 - 1914

The British plant cotton in Africa and increase the size of Indian cotton plantations.

1885

Abram Lyle starts to produce Golden Syrup in tins.

1885

The Third Anglo-Burmese war. Britain seizes Mandalay and starts British colonial rule in Burma.

1885

A third Anglo-Burmese War sees Britain annexing Northern Burma.

1885

German East Africa is created by trader Carl Peters in what is now Tanganyika, Rwanda and Burundi.

1885

Germany declares the Marshall Islands as a German protectorate.

1885

The Indian National Congress Party is founded, representing liberal, centre-left and nationalist policies. It later became dominated by the Nehru and Gandhi families.

1885

Karl Benz invents the first practical automobile.

1885

General Gordon is beheaded by the forces of the Mahdi following a revolution in the Sudan.

1885

The Lever Brothers purchase their first soap works in Warrington.

1885

W & R Jacob found the Jacob's biscuit company in Waterford, Ireland, and become famous for their crackers.

1885

Hugh Mackay develops the Sunshine Harvester - the first successful commercial combine harvester.

1885

Oil is discovered in Sumatra by Royal Dutch (Shell).

1886

Heinrich Hertz begins research that demonstrates the existence of radio waves.

1886

Maxwell House coffee is invented by Joel Cheek in Nashville.

1886

The largest deposit of gold in the world is discovered in Witwatersrand, helping to provoke the Boer War.

1886

Casa San Matias is founded in Guadalajara to make Tequila.

1886

Pyotr Smirnoff is made vodka purveyor to the Russian court.

1886

Gold is discovered in Witwatersrand.

1886

The Colonial & Indian Exhibition.

1886

The Royal Niger Company is founded.

1886

German engineer Karl Benz produces the world's first automobile and forms Benz & Co. Later that year Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach mechanise a stagecoach and formed their own company which later introduced the name Mercedes. Both companies merged to form Daimler-Benz in 1926.

1886

Chinese domestic poppy cultivation fully legalizsed.

1887 - 1985

Marc Chagall.

1887

Densham & Sons introduce Mazawattee tea.

1887

Coffee is planted in Indo-China.

1887

Sherlock Holmes first appears in fiction and is a habitual user of cocaine and morphine.

1887

John MacArthur discovers the cyanation process to extract gold from ore, vastly improving extraction.

1887

The British East Africa Company is established.

1887

The Winnipeg Grain exchange is founded.

1887

Richard 'Stoney' Smith patents the Hovis bread process, which uses a rich wheat germ flour.

1888

Publication of The Man Who Would Be King by Rudyard Kipling.

1888

J. A. Froude writes his England in the West Indies travelogue which aroused much critique due to his opinions on colonial desire for self government. A year later the Trinidadian John Jacob Thomas published a rebuttal called Froudacity.

1888 - 1965

T. S. Eliot.

1888

Coffee is planted in the Sumatran highlands.

1888

W. D. & H. O. Wills introduces the Woodbines brand.

1888

Bayer AG introduce heroin tablets as a cough remedy, but they are withdrawn in 1913 after they are shown to be addictive.

1888

Uganda falls under British control.

1888

Fridtjof Nansen crosses Greenland.

1888

Cecil Rhodes founds De Beers diamond exploration company.

1888 - 1899

French Indochina replaces opium farms with government opium monopoly.

1888

American inventor Charles Brush is the first to use windmills to generate electricity. He created the 12kW DC windmill generator.

1889 - 1951

Ludwig Wittgenstein.

1889

The Eiffel Tower is completed in Paris at a height of 324m.

1889

India replaces China as the major supplier of tea to the UK.

1889

The Utah Sugar Company is established and helps to generate a major cash crop for the region.

1889

Italy annexes Somalia.

1889 - 1945

Adolf Hitler.

1889

North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana and Washington are added as states of the Union.

1889

Trinidad and Tobago are united as a British colony.

1889

Cecil Rhodes establishes a monopoly over the world diamond trade.

1889

The British South Africa Company is founded by Cecil Rhodes.

1889

William Moore founds the New York Biscuit Company by merging together a group of bakeries.

1890 - 1976

Agatha Christie.

1890

Thomas Lipton buys tea estates in Ceylon.

1890

J. M. Barrie writes My Lady Nicotine in praise of smoking.

1890

Controlled by Duke, the American Tobocco Company is made from the merger of W. Duke & Sons, Allen & Ginter and three other companies. It owns 90% of the US market.

1890

Louis Rothman starts his tobacco company with a small tobacco shop in London.

1890

Opium dens spring up in Chinatown in Vancouver and Victoria.

1890

US Congress imposes a tax on opium and morphine.

1890 - 1899

Gold is discovered in Western Australia.

1890

Robert Gair invents the pre-cut cardboard box and this is widely adopted as a form of packaging.

1890

Bismarck is forced to resign by the new kaiser, Wilhem II, who wants a more expansive foreign policy. Bismarck warns of the dangers of a major European war.

1890 - 1970

Charles de Gaulle.

1890

Idaho and Wyoming are added as states of the Union.

1890

Yosemite National Park is created.

1890

The Wounded Knee Massacre marks the end of the US Federal Government's wars against Native Indians.

1890

British interests in Zanzibar are recognised by the Heligoland-Zanzibar Treaty.

1890

In Darkest England is written by General Booth.

1890

General Federation of Women's Clubs is founded in US. Conservation and ecology are its top priorities.

1890

Yosemite National Park and General Grant national parks are authorized by Congress as is Sequoia National Park.

1890

Adolphus Green founds the American Biscuit & Manufacturing Company by merging together a group of bakeries in the Midwest.

1891

The zip is invented by Whitcomb L. Judson.

1891

The American Sugar Refining Company is established in New Jersey, combining many smaller sugar companies and controlling 98% of US sugar production.

1891

Julius Caesar Czarnikow establishes Czarnikow, MacDougall & Co in New York to import sugar.

1891

The Forest Reserve Act enables the President to create forest reserves from land in the public domain, to control the loss of woodland. Harrison puts aside 13 million acres.

1891

Philips Electronics is founded in The Netherlands.

1891

The Forest Reserve Act is passed by US Congress.

1891

Clarence Kemp of Baltimore patents the first commercial Climax Solar Water Heater.

1891

Massey Manufacturing and A Harris merge to create the largest agricultural machinery manufacturer in the British Empire.

1891

The first commercial solar water heater becomes available to the public. The 'Climax Solar-Water Heater' was invented by the American Clarence Kemp.

Poul La Cour makes significant advancements in transferring wind into electricity. By 1918, 120 of his turbines were in use in Denmark. Demand for wind power plummeted after the war as fossil fuel prices stabilised.

1892 - 1973

J. R. R. Tolkien.

1892

Foundation of the Darjeeling Tea Planters Association.

1892

Clémentine and Auguste Rouzaud found Marquise de Sévigné chocolates in Royat, in the Auvergne.

1892

Norwegian explorer Carl Larsen discovers fossils in the Antarctic.

1892

Foundation of General Electric through a merger of Edison General Electric and Thomson-Houston Electric Company.

1892

Inventor Aubrey Eneas founds the Solar Motor Company of Boston.

1892

The last great cholera outbreak occurs in Europe.

1892

The Sierra Club is founded in the US by John Muir, Robert Underwood Johnson and William Colby "to do something for the wilderness and make the mountains glad".

1892

Many Londoners die in a smog incident.

1892

McVitie & Price, Ltd invents the Digestive biscuit.

1892

Henry Perky of Denver invents Shredded Wheat cereal.

1893

Nikola Tesla demonstrates the use of short range wireless communication.

1893

Coffee is first planted in Kenya and Tanzania.

1893

George Cadbury establishes the Bournville estate for his workers.

1893

The Hottentot uprising challenges German rule in South West Africa.

1893

The British Central African Federation is established in Nyasaland.

1893

New Zealand is the first nation to grant women the vote.

1893

The Story of an African Farm is written by Olive Schreiner.

1894

Rudyard Kipling publishes the children's novel The Jungle Book.

1894

The Prisoner of Zenda is published by Anthony Hope.

1894 - 1963

Aldous Huxley.

1894

Lyon's opens its first tea shop in Piccadilly, London.

1894

Luigi Lavazza sets up a grocery store in Turin selling coffee and other produce.

1894

Milton Hershey experiments with making chocolate coated caramels and founds the Hershey Chocolate Company. He finds a way to make chocolate cheaply.

1894

Tobacco production begins in Zimbabwe.

1894

The Royal Commission on Opium looks at opium consumption.

1894 - 1895

The Sino-Japanese War results in Japanese victory and control over Korea.

1894

The Franco-Russian Alliance is announced, surrounding Germany.

1894

The Dreyfus affair rocks France.

1894

Thomas Gann explores Mayan ruins in Central America after being appointed district medical officer in British Honduras.

1894 - 1908

Sven Hedin explores Central Asia.

1894

A reform-oriented New York City administration appoints Colonel George E. Waring, Jr. to head the Department of Street Cleaning.

1895

The diesel engine is invented by Rudolf Diesel.

1895

Wilhelm Rontgen discovers X-rays.

1895

Foundation of Jacobs Coffee in Germany.

1895

The boll weevil enters Texas from Mexico and gradually spreads north and east.

1895

Foxes are raised on fur farms in Prince Edward Island.

1895

The Anti-Saloon League is founded in America to campaign against the consumption of alcohol.

1895

Kenya (British East Africa) falls under British control and many Asians are introduced to help build the country and plant new crops.

1895

J. M. Smucker establishes a business selling fruit spreads.

1895

The African Inland Mission is founded.

Lewis Mumford sees 19th century Europe as having had a "savagely deteriorated environment" but looks forward to a non-polluting age with solar and hydroelectric power.

1896

The first movie theatre in America opens in New Orleans.

1896

Antoine Becquerel discovers uranium is radioactive.

1896 - 1899

The Klondike Gold Rush draws prospectors to Canada's Yukon Territory.

1896

Utah is added as a state of the Union.

1896

The Philippine Revolution breaks out, resulting in a Republic being established in 1898.

1896

Samuel P. Langley writes The New Astronomy imagining a future when coal has run out and people turn to solar energy.

1896

Swedish chemist Svante August Arrhenius summarises the effects of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere predicting a global temperature increase of 8 or 9 degrees Fahrenheit for a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere.

1896

The first large-scale hydroelectric plant becomes operational on Niagara Falls.

1897

Dracula written by Bram Stoker.

1897

The Orchard Tea Gardens are founded in Grantchester, Cambridge.

1897

The Organic Act establishes the method for managing 'national forests'.

1897

The Belgian Antarctic Expedition under Adrian de Gerlache, and including Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, overwinters on an Antarctic ice shelf.

1897

London and Paris Through Indian Spectacles is written by G. P. Pillai.

1897

Travels in West Africa is written by Mary Kingsley.

1897 - 1955

Bernard de Voto, conservationist, writes about the threats of overgrazing, mining and lumbering on public lands.

1897

The steam powered donkey engine helps in the mechanisation of the Lumber industry.

1897 - 1941

Japan maintains a government opium monopoly in its colony of Taiwan.

1897

Will and John Kellogg found the Sanitas Food Company in Michigan to make breakfast cereals.

1898 - 1937

George Gershwin.

1898 - 1936

F. Scott Fitzgerald.

1898 - 1936

Federico Garcia Lorca.

1898 - 1956

Berthold Brecht.

1898

Manuel Rionda takes over as the head of the Rionda sugar business in Cuba.

1898

Birth of Julio Lobo, who will rise to become Cuba's premier sugar baron and founder of Galban, Lobo & Co.

1898

India pegs the value of the Silver Rupee against the British pound.

1898

Guam falls under US sovereignty.

1898

The Spanish-American war results in a victory for the US, with Cuba gaining independence from Spain and Guam and the Philippines being sold by Spain to the US.

1898 - 1900

The British Antarctic Expedition led by Carsten Borchgrevink is the first to overwinter on the Antarctic mainland.

1898

General Kitchener reasserts British control in the Sudan.

1898

Coal Smoke Abatement Society is formed in UK to pressure government agencies to enforce pollution laws.

1898 - 1980

William O. Douglas, who publishes A Wilderness Bill of Rights in 1965, is a strong activist for environmental causes in the US.

1898

William Moore and Adolphus Green merge their businesses to form the National Biscuit Company or Nabisco, headquartered in Chicago.

1898

A drought-resistant strain of durum wheat is introduced to America from Russia and grows successfully in the Dakotas, Midwest and Canada.

1899

Joseph Conrad publishes his Heart of Darkness. The plot centres on the Belgian colonial regime in the Congo.

1899 - 1961

Ernest Hemingway.

1899

Lucy Payne Gaston starts the Chicago Anti-Smoking League, which soon goes national, then international.

1899

Butler & Butler introduce the Pall Mall cigarette.

1899

Gold is discovered in Alaska.

1899

The Peel Commission majority and minority reports on the licensing of alcohol.

1899

Anglo-Egyptian Sudan is formed and ruled by the two powers in concert.

1899 - 1902

The Second Boer War, between British and Boer states ends in a British victory and Britain takes control of the Transvaal and Orange Free State.

1899 - 1901

The Boxer Rebellion was a war between Chinese Nationalists and the foreign legations and missions in China. The failure of the Rebellion led to greater foreign presence and control in China.

1899 - 1902

The Philippine-American war results in victory for the US and US dominance of the islands.

1899

Fedinand von Zeppelin invents the powered dirigible.

1899

Over 1.8m tons of chemical fertiliser are used worldwide.

1900 - 1990

Aaron Copland.

1900

Max Planck introduces the idea of 'quantizing energy'.

1900 - 1912

The practice of taking afternoon coffee takes off in Germany.

1900

Hills Brothers start packaging coffee in vacuum sealed tins.

1900

Coffee Robusta is planted in Java.

1900

Hershey's introduce the Hershey bar.

1900

The American Sugar Refining Company is renamed as Domino Sugar.

1900 - 1930

Britain and France attempt to suppress the production of opium in the 'Golden Triangle' region of South East Asia, covering Burma, Vietnam, Laos and Thailand.

1900

America passes the Gold Standard Act, matching its currency to the value of gold.

1900

The Ashanti Wars in Ghana. British forces suppress an African uprising.

1900

New foods introduced to America in 1900: Wesson Oil, Hershey bars, Hills Bros coffee.