1881

Events

January

• January 1-24 - Siege of Geok Tepe: Russian troops under General Mikhail Skobelev defeat the Turkomans.
• January 13 - War of the Pacific - Battle of San Juan and Chorrillos: The Chilean army defeats Peruvian forces.
• January 15 - War of the Pacific - Battle of Miraflores: The Chileans take Lima, capital of Peru, after defeating its second line of defense in Miraflores.
• January 24 - William Edward Forster, chief secretary for Ireland, introduces his Coercion Bill, which temporarily suspends habeas corpus so that those people suspected of committing an offence can be detained without trial; it goes through a long debate before it is accepted February 2. Note that Coercion bills had been passed almost annually in the 19th century, with a total of 105 such bills passed from 1801 to 1921.
• January 25 - Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell form the Oriental Telephone Company.

  February

• February 13 - The first issue of the feminist newspaper La Citoyenne is published by Hubertine Auclert in Paris.
• February 16 - The Canadian Pacific Railway is incorporated.
• February 18 - Carlos Finlay introduces his discovery of the transmission of Yellow Fever by mosquitoes Aedes aegypti, in the Fifth International Sanitary Conference held in Washington, D.C.
• February 19 - Kansas becomes the first U.S. state to prohibit all alcoholic beverages.
• February 24 - Qing dynasty China signs the Treaty of Saint Petersburg with the Russian Empire providing for the return to China of the eastern part of the Ili Basin.
• February 25 - Phoenix, Arizona, is incorporated.

  March

• March 1 - The Cunard Line's, the first large steel transatlantic liner, is launched at Clydebank in Scotland.
• March 13 - Assassination of Alexander II of Russia: Emperor Alexander II of Russia is killed near his palace in Saint Petersburg when bombs are thrown at him, an act committed by the revolutionary socialist group Narodnaya Volya coordinated by Sophia Perovskaya but falsely blamed upon Russian Jews. He is succeeded by his son, Alexander III. The assassin Ignacy Hryniewiecki is also killed by his own bomb.
• March 23
• * The First Boer War comes to an end.
• * A fire caused by a gas explosion destroys the Opéra de Nice in the south of France with fatalities.
• March 26 - The Principality of Romania is proclaimed the Kingdom of Romania.
• March 31 - Edward Rudolf founds the 'Church of England Central Society for Providing Homes for Waifs and Strays'.

  April

• April 11 - Spelman College is established in Atlanta, Georgia.
• April 14 - The Four Dead in Five Seconds Gunfight erupts in El Paso, Texas.
• April 15
• * Temuco, Chile, is founded.
• * Anti-Semitic pogroms in Southern Russia begin.
• April 21 - The University of Connecticut is founded as the Storrs Agricultural School.
• April 25 - Caulfield Grammar School is founded in Melbourne, Australia.
• April 28 - Billy the Kid escapes from his 2 jailers at the Lincoln County Jail in Mesilla, New Mexico, killing James Bell and Robert Ollinger, before stealing a horse and riding out of town.
• April 30 - hits a reef and sinks off the coast of New Zealand's South Island with only 20 survivors of the 151 on board.

  May

• May 12 - In North Africa, Tunisia becomes a French protectorate by the Treaty of Bardo.
• May 13 - The Pacific island of Rotuma cedes to Great Britain, becoming a dependency of the Colony of Fiji.

• May 16 - The world's first regular electric tram service is started in Berlin, by Siemens & Halske.
• May 21
• * The American Red Cross is established by Clara Barton.
• * The United States Tennis Association is established by a small group of tennis club members; the first U.S. Tennis Championships are played this year.
• May 22 - Prince Karl of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen is crowned King of Romania.

  June

• June 12 - The USS Jeannette is crushed in an Arctic Ocean ice pack.
• June 18 - The League of the Three Emperors is resurrected.
• June 20 - The current Cincinnati Reds baseball team plays its first game.
• June 26 - War of the Pacific - Battle of Sangrar: Peruvian and Chilean forces battle to a draw.

  July

• July 1 - General Order 70, the culmination of the Cardwell–Childers reforms of the British Army's organization, comes into effect.
• July 2 - Assassination of James A. Garfield: United States President James A. Garfield is shot by lawyer Charles J. Guiteau in Washington, D.C. The wound becomes infected, killing Garfield on September 19.
• July 4 - Tuskegee Institute opens in Alabama.
• July 7 - The first episode of Carlo Collodi's The Adventures of Pinocchio is published in Italy.
• July 14–20 - The London Social Revolutionary Congress is held; delegates include Marie Le Compte, Peter Kropotkin, Errico Malatesta, Saverio Merlino, Louise Michel, Nikolai Tchaikovsky and Émile Gautier.
• July 14 - Billy the Kid is shot and killed by Pat Garrett, outside Fort Sumner, New Mexico.
• July 20 - American Indian Wars: Sioux chief Sitting Bull leads the last of his people in surrender to United States troops at Fort Buford in Montana.
• July 23 - The Boundary Treaty of 1881 between Chile and Argentina is signed in Buenos Aires.

  August

• August 3 - The Pretoria Convention peace treaty is signed, officially ending the war between the Boers and Britain.
• August 27 - The fifth hurricane of the Atlantic season hits Florida and the Carolinas, killing about 700.

  September

• September 5 - The Thumb Fire in the U.S. state of Michigan destroys over a million acres and kills 282 people.
• September 12 - Francis Howell High School in St. Charles, Missouri, and Stephen F. Austin High School in Austin, Texas, open on the same day, putting them in a tie for the title of the oldest public high school west of the Mississippi River.
• September 19 - President James A. Garfield dies eleven weeks after being shot. Vice President Chester A. Arthur becomes the 21st president of the United States.
• September 26 - Godalming becomes the first town in England to have its streets illuminated by electric light.

  October

• October 5-December 31 - The International Cotton Exposition is held in Atlanta, Georgia, USA.
• October 10 - Richard D'Oyly Carte's Savoy Theatre opens in London, the world's first public building to be fully lit by electricity, using Joseph Swan's incandescent light bulbs.
• October 13 - Determined to bring about the revival of the Hebrew language as a way of unifying Jews, Eliezer Ben-Yehuda has what is believed to be the first conversation in Modern Hebrew, with friends living in Paris.
• October 26 - The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral occurs in Tombstone, Cochise County, Arizona, USA.
• October 29 - The satirical magazine Judge is first published in the United States.

  November

• November 3 - The Mapuche uprising of 1881 begins with an attack on Quillem, Chile.
• November 9 - Brahms' Piano Concerto No. 2 premieres in Budapest with the composer as soloist.
• November 11 - The Clarkson Memorial to an anti-slavery campaigner in Wisbech is completed and unveiled to the public.
• November 19 - A meteorite strikes the Earth near the village of Großliebenthal, a few kilometers southwest of Odesa, Ukraine.
• November - Newcastle United F.C. is founded in the northeast of England as Stanley F.C., with a further name change to Newcastle East End F.C. the following year.

  December

• December 8 - At least 380 die in a fire at the Vienna Ringtheater.
• December 25 - Catholic religious congregation Mothers of the Forsaken and Saint Joseph of the Mountain is founded by Blessed Petra of Saint Joseph.
• December 25-27 - The Warsaw pogrom is carried out in Vistula Land, Russian Empire.
• December 28 - Virgil Earp is ambushed in Tombstone, Arizona, and loses the use of his left arm.

  Date unknown

• Kinshasa is founded by Henry Morton Stanley as a trading outpost called Léopoldville.
• On the Isle of Man, the House of Keys Election Act extends the franchise for the national legislature to spinsters and widows owning real estate of a certain value.
• The Pali Text Society is founded by British scholar Thomas William Rhys Davids, for the study of Pali texts.
• Some Vatican archives are opened to scholars for the first time.
• Abilene, Texas, is founded.
• Rafaela, Argentina, is formed.
• New York City's oldest independent school for girls, the Convent of the Sacred Heart New York, is founded.
• Culford School, a public school in Suffolk, England, is founded as the East Anglian School for Boys.
• Meiji Law School, predecessor of Meiji University, is founded in Yurakucho, Tokyo, Japan.
• Tokyo Law College, predecessor of Hosei University, is founded in Japan.
• The Vocational and Technical College of Tokyo, later Tokyo Institute of Technology, is founded in Japan.
• Hattori Watch Shop is founded by Kanetarō Hattori in Ginza, Tokyo, Japan, predecessor of watch brand Seiko.
• Leyton Orient F.C. is founded in London.

  Births

January

• January 9
• * Lascelles Abercrombie, English poet, critic
• * Giovanni Papini, Italian essayist, poet and novelist
• January 13 - Essington Lewis, Australian industrialist
• January 15 - John Rodgers, American naval officer, naval aviation pioneer
• January 23 - Luisa Casati, Italian heiress, artistic muse and patron of the arts
• January 26 – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Dana, American academic and activist
• January 30 - Whitford Kane, Irish-born American actor
• January 31 - Irving Langmuir, American chemist, Nobel Prize laureate