1880

Events in 1880 44

• 1793 – 1880 Lucretia Mott (1793-1880) Died 11 November 1880, aged 87 Lucretia Mott was an American Quaker abolitionist and a founding organizer of the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention on women's rights. She died at her home near Philadelphia on 11 November 1880. She remained active in reform causes throughout her long life.
• 1809 – 1880 Benjamin Peirce (1809-1880) Died 6 October 1880, aged 71 Benjamin Peirce was an American mathematician and astronomer who taught at Harvard for decades and helped establish the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory's early work in celestial mechanics. He died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on 6 October 1880. His son Charles Sanders Peirce became a noted philosopher and logician.
• 1819 – 1880 George Eliot (1819-1880) Died 22 December 1880, aged 61 George Eliot was the pen name of Mary Ann Evans, an English novelist whose works include Middlemarch and Silas Marner. She died in London on 22 December 1880, a few months after marrying John Cross. Her fiction is noted for its psychological depth and realism.
• 1819 – 1880 Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880) Died 5 October 1880, aged 61 Jacques Offenbach was a German-born French composer famed for operettas such as Orpheus in the Underworld. He died in Paris on 5 October 1880, months before the premiere of his final work, The Tales of Hoffmann. His music helped define the sound of comic operetta in the nineteenth century.
• 1821 – 1880 Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) Died 8 May 1880, aged 58 Gustave Flaubert was a French novelist best known for Madame Bovary, a landmark of literary realism. He died suddenly of a suspected stroke at his home in Croisset on 8 May 1880. His meticulous prose style influenced generations of later novelists.
• 1854 – 1880 Ned Kelly (1854-1880) Died 11 November 1880, aged 25 Ned Kelly was an Australian bushranger who led a gang blamed for police killings and bank robberies in Victoria. He was captured after a gunfight at Glenrowan in June 1880 and hanged at Melbourne Gaol on 11 November 1880. He remains a folk figure in Australian popular culture.
• 1880 – 1921 Alexander Blok (1880-1921) Died 7 August 1921, aged 40 Alexander Blok, a leading poet of the Russian Symbolist movement, died in Petrograd after a long illness worsened by wartime hardship. His poem "The Twelve," written after the 1917 revolution, remains one of the best-known works of Russian modernist verse. His death is often seen as marking the end of the Symbolist era in Russian poetry.
• 1880 – 1930 Alfred Wegener (1880-1930) Died November 1930, aged 50 German geophysicist and meteorologist who proposed the theory of continental drift, the forerunner of plate tectonics. He died on the Greenland ice sheet during a relief journey from the Eismitte research station. His body was found the following spring.
• 1880 – 1928 Alvaro Obregon (1880-1928) Died 17 July 1928, aged 48 Mexican revolutionary general and President of Mexico from 1920 to 1924. He had just been re-elected president when a Catholic militant, Jose de Leon Toral, shot him at a restaurant in Mexico City. His death led Plutarco Elias Calles to found the ruling National Revolutionary Party.
• 1880 – 1934 Andrei Bely (1880-1934) Died 8 January 1934, aged 53 Russian Symbolist poet and novelist. His novel Petersburg is regarded as one of the great works of modernist fiction.
• 1880 – 1946 Damon Runyon (1880-1946) Died 10 December 1946, aged 66 Runyon was an American journalist and short-story writer whose colorful tales of Broadway gamblers and gangsters later inspired the musical "Guys and Dolls". He died of throat cancer in New York City.
• 1880 – 1964 Douglas MacArthur (1880-1964) Died 5 April 1964, aged 84 MacArthur was an American general who commanded Allied forces in the Pacific during the Second World War and oversaw the postwar occupation of Japan. He also led United Nations forces during the early Korean War before being relieved of command by President Truman.
• 1880 – 1938 Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880-1938) Died 15 June 1938, aged 58 Kirchner was a German Expressionist painter and a founder of Die Brücke. The Nazis condemned his work as degenerate, and he took his own life in Switzerland.
• 1880 – 1916 Franz Marc (1880-1916) Died 4 March 1916, aged 36 Franz Marc was a German painter and co-founder of the Der Blaue Reiter expressionist group, known for his vivid depictions of animals. He was killed at the Battle of Verdun while serving in the German army.
• 1880 – 1918 Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918) Died 9 November 1918, aged 38 French poet and art critic Guillaume Apollinaire, a leading champion of Cubism and coiner of the term 'Surrealism', died of the Spanish flu in Paris two days before the Armistice. He had earlier been wounded in the head while serving at the front. His experimental poetry collections, including Calligrammes, influenced a generation of avant-garde writers.
• 1880 – 1956 H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) Died 29 January 1956, aged 75 American journalist, satirist, and cultural critic known for his acerbic commentary and coverage of the Scopes Trial. He was a longtime writer for the Baltimore Sun and edited The American Mercury magazine. He died in Baltimore after a long decline following a stroke in 1948.
• 1880 – 1968 Helen Keller (1880-1968) Died 1 June 1968, aged 87 Deaf and blind from infancy, Keller became a renowned author, disability rights advocate and political activist after being taught to communicate by her teacher Anne Sullivan. She died at her home in Connecticut. Her life and achievements made her one of the most widely recognized figures of the twentieth century.
• 1880 – 1932 Ivar Kreuger (1880-1932) Died 12 March 1932, aged 52 The Swedish "Match King" built a worldwide match monopoly and financial empire. He shot himself in Paris, and the collapse that followed revealed large-scale fraud.
• 1880 – 1959 Jacob Epstein (1880-1959) Died 19 August 1959, aged 78 Epstein was an American-born sculptor who became a leading and often controversial figure in early modernist British sculpture. His bold bronze and stone works, including portrait busts and monumental religious figures, frequently provoked public outrage. He was knighted in 1954 for his contribution to art.
• 1880 – 1932 Lytton Strachey (1880-1932) Died 21 January 1932, aged 51 The English biographer and member of the Bloomsbury Group changed the style of biography with Eminent Victorians.
• 1880 – 1960 Mack Sennett (1880-1960) Died 5 November 1960, aged 80 Film producer and director known as the "King of Comedy," who pioneered slapstick filmmaking and launched the Keystone Kops. He helped shape the early Hollywood studio system.
• 1880 – 1940 Manuel Azaña (1880-1940) Died 3 November 1940, aged 60 President of the Second Spanish Republic from 1936 until its defeat in the Civil War. He died in exile in Montauban, France.
• 1880 – 1958 Marie Stopes (1880-1958) Died 2 October 1958, aged 77 Stopes was a British author and campaigner who opened Britain's first birth-control clinic in 1921 and wrote the influential "Married Love." Her work reshaped public attitudes toward contraception, though her later advocacy of eugenics remains controversial.
• 1880 – 1936 Oswald Spengler (1880-1936) Died 8 May 1936, aged 55 Oswald Spengler was a German historian and philosopher. His two-volume The Decline of the West argued that civilisations follow a cycle of growth and decay. The book was widely read after the First World War.
• 1880 Pasteur develops a chicken cholera vaccine First laboratory-attenuated vaccine created Louis Pasteur found that aged cultures of the chicken cholera bacterium lost virulence yet still protected fowl from the disease. The discovery, reported in 1880, established the principle of deliberate attenuation for vaccine production. Pasteur applied the same method to anthrax and rabies vaccines soon after.
• 1880 – 1942 Robert Musil (1880-1942) Died 15 April 1942, aged 61 Robert Musil was an Austrian writer best known for his unfinished modernist novel The Man Without Qualities. He left Austria after the Anschluss and lived in exile in Switzerland. He died in poverty in Geneva.
• 1880 – 1964 Sean O'Casey (1880-1964) Died 18 September 1964, aged 84 O'Casey was an Irish dramatist known for plays depicting working-class Dublin life, including "Juno and the Paycock" and "The Plough and the Stars". His work remains a central part of the Irish theatrical canon.
• 1880 – 1940 Tom Mix (1880-1940) Died 12 October 1940, aged 60 American actor who starred in hundreds of silent Western films and was Hollywood's first great cowboy star. He died in a car crash in Arizona.
• 1880 – 1946 W. C. Fields (1880-1946) Died 25 December 1946, aged 66 Fields was an American comedian and actor known for his misanthropic persona and distinctive drawl in films such as "The Bank Dick" and "My Little Chickadee". He died in Pasadena, California, after years of heavy drinking had damaged his health.
• 1880 – 1939 Werner von Fritsch (1880-1939) Died 22 September 1939, aged 59 Fritsch was Commander-in-Chief of the German Army until 1938, when false homosexuality charges forced him out. He was killed near Warsaw during the invasion of Poland. He was one of the first German generals to die in the war.
• 1880 – 1940 Ze'ev Jabotinsky (1880-1940) Died 4 August 1940, aged 59 Zionist leader born in Odessa who founded Revisionist Zionism and the Betar youth movement. He died of a heart attack while visiting a Betar camp in New York State.
• 1880 Edison patents the incandescent lamp Long-lasting carbon-filament bulb secured for commercial use Thomas Edison received US patent 223,898 for an electric incandescent lamp on 27 January 1880, covering the carbon-filament design his laboratory had refined. The patent underpinned the rapid commercialization of electric lighting over the following decade. Edison Electric Light Company began installing systems in New York soon after.
• 1880 Winter Palace bombing fails to kill Alexander II Narodnaya Volya bombs the tsar's dining room Revolutionary Stepan Khalturin detonated a bomb beneath the dining room of the Winter Palace on 17 February 1880, hoping to kill Tsar Alexander II. The tsar was late to dinner and survived, but eleven guardsmen were killed. The attack was one of several by the Narodnaya Volya group before the tsar's assassination the following year.
• 1880 Ferry Decrees issued in France Anti-clerical laws target Catholic religious orders The French government issued decrees on 29 March 1880 restricting unauthorized religious congregations, most notably ordering the Jesuits to disband within France. The decrees intensified the Third Republic's conflict with the Catholic Church over control of education. Several orders had their property confiscated or were expelled in the months that followed.
• 1880 Battle of Tacna Chile defeats the Peru-Bolivia alliance Chilean forces defeated the combined armies of Peru and Bolivia at the Battle of Tacna, also called the Battle of the Alto de la Alianza, on 26 May 1880. The victory effectively removed Bolivia from the War of the Pacific. Chile went on to occupy Tacna province for decades afterward.
• 1880 – 1960 Otto Frederick Rohwedder Inventor of the bread slicer, 1880-1960 An Iowa jeweller who spent sixteen years, one factory fire and every penny he had on a machine to slice a loaf of bread.
• 1880 Bastille Day made French national holiday Third Republic adopts 14 July as its national day The French parliament voted on 6 July 1880 to make 14 July a national holiday, commemorating both the 1789 storming of the Bastille and the 1790 Fete de la Federation. The first official celebration took place on 14 July 1880 with a military review in Paris. It has been marked annually ever since.
• 1880 Battle of Maiwand Afghan forces rout a British-Indian brigade During the Second Anglo-Afghan War, Ayub Khan's Afghan army defeated a British-Indian force near Maiwand on 27 July 1880, inflicting heavy casualties. The defeat led to the famous relief march and siege at Kandahar. It remains one of the war's most studied engagements.
• 1880 Cologne Cathedral completed Construction finished after more than six centuries Cologne Cathedral was formally completed on 14 August 1880, ending a building process begun in 1248 and long left unfinished. Kaiser Wilhelm I attended the completion ceremony. It became the tallest building in the world at the time.
• 1880 Land League boycott of Captain Boycott Irish tenants coin a new word for social ostracism Tenant farmers in County Mayo, organized by the Irish National Land League, isolated land agent Charles Boycott after he evicted tenants for withholding rent. Boycott was shunned by laborers, merchants, and the postal service through the autumn of 1880. His name entered the English language as a verb for organized ostracism.
• 1880 Battle of Kandahar British victory ends the Second Anglo-Afghan War A British-Indian relief force under General Frederick Roberts decisively defeated Ayub Khan's army at Kandahar on 1 September 1880. The victory avenged the earlier defeat at Maiwand and effectively ended major fighting in the war. British troops withdrew from most of Afghanistan soon after.
• 1880 James Garfield elected president Republican wins closely contested US presidential election James A. Garfield defeated Winfield Scott Hancock in the November 1880 election, one of the closest popular votes in US history. Garfield took office in March 1881 but was assassinated within months. The election turned on tariff policy and patronage reform.
• 1880 International fleet forces Ottoman cession of Ulcinj Great power warships end the Dulcigno crisis A combined European naval squadron gathered off the Adriatic coast in autumn 1880 to pressure the Ottoman Empire into honoring the Congress of Berlin's border award to Montenegro. The Ottoman government ceded the port of Ulcinj (Dulcigno) to Montenegro on 26 November 1880 rather than face bombardment. It was one of the first uses of coordinated great-power naval coercion to enforce a treaty.
• 1880 First Boer War begins Transvaal Boers rise against British annexation Boer settlers in the Transvaal declared independence from British rule and attacked a British column at Bronkhorstspruit on 16 December 1880. The conflict exposed British forces to a string of defeats over the following weeks. It ended in 1881 with the restoration of Transvaal self-government.