1874

Events in 1874 40

• 1787 – 1874 Francois Guizot (1787-1874) Died 12 September 1874, aged 86 Guizot was a historian and statesman who served as prime minister of France under King Louis Philippe. His conservative policies and resistance to electoral reform contributed to the 1848 revolution that toppled the July Monarchy. He later devoted himself to historical writing.
• 1798 – 1874 Jean-Baptiste Elie de Beaumont (1798-1874) Died 21 September 1874, aged 75 Elie de Beaumont was a French geologist known for his theories on mountain formation and his geological mapping of France. He served as a professor at the College de France and permanent secretary of the French Academy of Sciences. His mountain-building theories, though later superseded, were influential in nineteenth-century geology.
• 1800 – 1874 Millard Fillmore 13th President — last Whig president Millard Fillmore (Jan 7, 1800 – Mar 8, 1874) was the 13th President 1850-1853, the last Whig president. He signed the Compromise of 1850 including the Fugitive Slave Act, which damaged his legacy.
• 1811 – 1874 Chang and Eng Bunker (1811-1874) Died 17 January 1874, aged 62 Born conjoined in Siam, the Bunker twins toured internationally as performers before settling as farmers in North Carolina, marrying two sisters and fathering twenty-one children between them. Their fame gave rise to the term Siamese twins for conjoined twins generally. Chang died first, from a blood clot, and Eng died a few hours later.
• 1811 – 1874 Charles Sumner (1811-1874) Died 11 March 1874, aged 63 Sumner was a leading Radical Republican senator from Massachusetts and a lifelong opponent of slavery. He was infamously beaten nearly to death on the Senate floor in 1856 by a pro-slavery congressman. He later championed civil rights legislation for freed slaves during Reconstruction.
• 1814 – 1874 Anders Jonas Angstrom (1814-1874) Died 21 June 1874, aged 59 Angstrom was a Swedish physicist and a founder of the science of spectroscopy. His precise measurements of the solar spectrum used a unit of length later named the angstrom in his honor. He also produced an early atlas of the solar spectrum.
• 1874 Bengal famine relief effort Colonial relief effort averts mass starvation in eastern India Following drought and crop failure in Bihar and Bengal, the British Indian government under Lieutenant Governor Richard Temple organized large-scale grain imports and public works relief. The effort is credited with preventing mass deaths, in contrast to earlier and later Indian famines, though its high cost drew criticism in London. A good harvest later in the year ended the emergency.
• 1874 – 1952 Chaim Weizmann (1874-1952) Died 9 November 1952, aged 77 Chaim Weizmann, a chemist and Zionist leader who became the first President of Israel, died on 9 November 1952 in Rehovot. He had played a key role in securing the 1917 Balfour Declaration and led the World Zionist Organization for decades. He took office as Israel's president in 1949.
• 1874 – 1954 Charles Ives (1874-1954) Died 19 May 1954, aged 79 Ives was an American composer who blended traditional hymn and folk tunes with experimental harmonies and polytonality decades ahead of his time. He worked for most of his career as an insurance executive, composing largely outside the musical establishment. He posthumously won recognition as one of the most original American composers.
• 1874 – 1922 Ernest Shackleton (1874-1922) Died 5 January 1922, aged 47 Ernest Shackleton, the Anglo-Irish Antarctic explorer who led the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, died of a heart attack aboard his ship Quest off South Georgia at the start of a new expedition. He was buried on the island at his wife's request. He is remembered chiefly for the survival of his entire crew after the loss of the Endurance in 1915.
• 1874 – 1945 Ernst Cassirer (1874-1945) Died 13 April 1945, aged 70 Cassirer was a German-Jewish philosopher known for his work on symbolic forms, epistemology, and the philosophy of the Enlightenment. He fled Nazi Germany in the 1930s and taught in exile in Britain, Sweden, and the United States. He died of a heart attack in New York shortly before the war's end.
• 1874 – 1939 Franz Schmidt (1874-1939) Died 11 February 1939, aged 64 Schmidt was an Austrian composer, cellist and teacher. He is best known for his four symphonies and the oratorio The Book with Seven Seals. He also played cello in the Vienna Court Opera orchestra under Mahler.
• 1874 – 1936 G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936) Died 14 June 1936, aged 62 G. K. Chesterton was an English writer, journalist and Christian apologist. He created the priest-detective Father Brown and wrote Orthodoxy and The Man Who Was Thursday. He was known for his use of paradox.
• 1874 – 1946 Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) Died 27 July 1946, aged 72 Stein was an American writer and art collector whose Paris salon brought together Picasso, Hemingway, and other leading modernists. Her experimental prose and patronage helped define modernist literature and art in the early twentieth century. She died in France following surgery for stomach cancer.
• 1874 – 1934 Gustav Holst (1874-1934) Died 25 May 1934, aged 59 English composer best known for the orchestral suite The Planets. He was also an influential music teacher at St Paul's Girls' School and Morley College.
• 1874 – 1926 Harry Houdini (1874-1926) Died 31 October 1926, aged 52 Harry Houdini, the escape artist and illusionist who became the most famous magician of his age, died of peritonitis in Detroit after a ruptured appendix, worsened by a punch to the stomach days earlier. He remains one of the most recognisable names in the history of stage magic.
• 1874 – 1939 Howard Carter (1874-1939) Died 2 March 1939, aged 64 Carter was a British archaeologist and Egyptologist. In 1922 he discovered the almost intact tomb of Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings. He spent a decade recording its contents.
• 1874 – 1929 Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874-1929) Died 15 July 1929, aged 55 Austrian poet and dramatist who wrote the libretti for several Richard Strauss operas, including Der Rosenkavalier. He co-founded the Salzburg Festival.
• 1874 – 1936 Karl Kraus (1874-1936) Died 12 June 1936, aged 62 Karl Kraus was an Austrian writer and satirist who edited the journal Die Fackel. His huge anti-war drama The Last Days of Mankind attacked the press and the militarism of the First World War. He was one of the leading critics of language and journalism of his time.
• 1874 – 1942 Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874-1942) Died 24 April 1942, aged 67 Lucy Maud Montgomery was a Canadian author best known for Anne of Green Gables, published in 1908, and its sequels. Her books, set on Prince Edward Island, have been translated into dozens of languages. She died in Toronto.
• 1874 – 1928 Max Scheler (1874-1928) Died 19 May 1928, aged 53 German philosopher known for his work in phenomenology, ethics and philosophical anthropology. His major works include Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values. He influenced Edith Stein and Karol Wojtyla.
• 1874 – 1963 Robert Frost (1874-1963) Died 29 January 1963, aged 88 Robert Frost was an American poet celebrated for his depictions of rural New England life in plain, accessible language. He won four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry and read at John F. Kennedy's presidential inauguration in 1961. He died in Boston at age 88.
• 1874 – 1940 Vsevolod Meyerhold (1874-1940) Died 2 February 1940, aged 65 Russian theatre director and innovator of avant-garde staging. He was arrested during the Great Purge, tortured, and shot in Moscow.
• 1874 – 1965 W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) Died 16 December 1965, aged 91 W. Somerset Maugham was an English novelist and playwright, one of the most popular and highly paid authors of the interwar period, known for works including Of Human Bondage and The Razor's Edge. He also worked as a British intelligence agent during World War I. He died at his home in Nice, France, on 16 December 1965.
• 1874 Treaty of Fomena ends Anglo-Ashanti War Britain and Asante conclude the Third Anglo-Ashanti War After British forces under General Garnet Wolseley burned the Asante capital Kumasi, the two sides signed the Treaty of Fomena. Asante agreed to pay a large war indemnity and renounce claims over neighboring coastal states. The war ended Asante's regional dominance and expanded British influence on the Gold Coast.
• 1874 Disraeli becomes Prime Minister Conservatives win a general election majority Benjamin Disraeli formed his second government after the Conservative Party won a decisive majority in the general election, ending William Gladstone's first ministry. Disraeli's government went on to pursue an assertive imperial policy, including the purchase of Suez Canal shares. He remained prime minister until 1880.
• 1874 First Impressionist Exhibition Monet, Renoir, Degas and others exhibit independently in Paris A group of independent French painters, later dubbed Impressionists after Claude Monet's Impression, Sunrise, held their first exhibition in the studio of photographer Nadar on Boulevard des Capucines. The show broke from the official Paris Salon and introduced a new style of loose brushwork and everyday subject matter. It ran for one month and included work by Monet, Renoir, Degas, Pissarro, Cezanne and Morisot.
• 1874 – 1937 Guglielmo Marconi Inventor of Radio The physicist and inventor who sent the first transatlantic radio transmission.
• 1874 Battle of Adobe Walls Comanche and allied warriors attack a Texas buffalo hunters' outpost A large force of Comanche, Kiowa and Cheyenne warriors led by Quanah Parker attacked a trading post of buffalo hunters in the Texas Panhandle. The hunters, armed with long-range rifles, repelled the attack despite being heavily outnumbered. The battle helped trigger the Red River War, the US Army's campaign to force the southern Plains tribes onto reservations.
• 1874 Custer's Black Hills Expedition confirms gold Military expedition finds gold on Lakota treaty land An expedition led by Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer explored the Black Hills of Dakota Territory, land guaranteed to the Lakota Sioux by treaty. Expedition geologists confirmed the presence of gold, and news of the find triggered a rush of prospectors into Sioux territory. The resulting treaty violations were a major cause of the Great Sioux War of 1876.
• 1874 Eads Bridge opens First major bridge across the lower Mississippi River The Eads Bridge, designed by engineer James Buchanan Eads, opened at St. Louis as the first bridge to cross the Mississippi River south of the Missouri confluence. It was among the earliest large-scale uses of steel as a primary structural material and pioneered pneumatic caisson foundations. The bridge remains in use for road and rail traffic today.
• 1874 – 1964 Herbert Hoover 29th President — the Great Depression Herbert Hoover (Aug 10, 1874 – Oct 20, 1964) was the 31st President 1929-1933. He took office just months before the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and was blamed for the Great Depression. He lived to age 90.
• 1874 – 1951 Arnold Schoenberg 12-tone music inventor Austrian composer who invented the 12-tone technique, one of the most influential — and controversial — compositional methods of the 20th century.
• 1874 Universal Postal Union founded Treaty of Bern creates a single postal territory Representatives of twenty-two countries signed the Treaty of Bern, establishing the General Postal Union to simplify international mail exchange. It replaced a tangle of bilateral postal agreements with a single set of rules for cross-border post. The body was renamed the Universal Postal Union in 1878 and later became a specialized agency of the United Nations.
• 1874 Fiji ceded to Britain Fijian chiefs sign the Deed of Cession Paramount chief Cakobau and other Fijian leaders signed a deed ceding the islands to the British Crown, ending a period of internal conflict and settler pressure. Fiji became a Crown colony under governor Sir Arthur Gordon. British rule lasted until independence in 1970.
• 1874 Woman's Christian Temperance Union founded American women organize against alcohol Delegates meeting in Cleveland, Ohio founded the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, dedicated to campaigning against alcohol consumption. Under later leader Frances Willard the organization grew into one of the largest women's organizations in the United States and expanded internationally. It also became an early vehicle for the women's suffrage movement.
• 1874 – 1955 Egas Moniz Nobel in Medicine The first Portuguese person to win a Nobel Prize, awarded for the development of cerebral angiography.
• 1874 – 1965 Churchill British PM, WW II leader Winston Churchill served as British Prime Minister during World War II, rallying the nation with his oratory and strategic leadership.
• 1874 – 1965 Winston Churchill Wartime Prime Minister Led Britain to victory during World War II.
• 1874 First Spanish Republic falls General Martinez Campos declares Alfonso XII king General Arsenio Martinez Campos led a military pronunciamiento at Sagunto proclaiming Alfonso XII, son of the deposed Isabella II, as King of Spain. The move ended the short-lived First Spanish Republic and began the Bourbon Restoration. Alfonso returned from exile and entered Madrid in January 1875.