Major Events
- Jan 1 Ambrose Bierce is appointed editor of "The Wasp" magazine
- Jan 1 Dr John Watson is first introduced to Sherlock Holmes in story written by Arthur Conan Doyle
- Jan 2 Camille Saint-Saëns' 3rd Violin Concerto in B, premieres in Paris, France, with Spanish virtuoso Pablo de Sarasate as soloist and dedicatee
- Jan 4 Johannes Brahms' "Academic Festival Overture" premieres in Breslau
- Jan 22 "Cleopatra's Needle", a 3,500-year-old Ancient Egyptian obelisk is erected in Central Park, New York [1]
- Jan 25 Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell form the Oriental Telephone Company.
- Jan 26 Union of Baptists Communities forms in Foxholl
- Jan 28 Battle at Laing's Neck Natal: Boers beat superior powered British
- Feb 1 US Assay Office in St Louis, Missouri authorized
- Feb 5 Phoenix, Arizona incorporates
- More 1881 Events
1881 in Sport
- Jun 1 Ridden by outstanding English jockey Fred Archer, Iroquois wins the Epsom Derby to become first American-owned and bred horse to take out a European classic race
Did You Know?
Gunfight at the OK Corral: The most famous shootout in the Wild West occurs, between lawmen (including Wyatt Earp) and the Cowboys, with Tom and Frank McLaury and Billy Clanton killed
Béla Bartok
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
Alexander Fleming
Pablo Picasso
Enver Pasha
John XXIII
Cecil B. DeMille
Francis Ford
Ed Walsh
Tommy Burns
Branch RickeyMore People Born in 1881
Fun Fact About 1881
Andrew Watson makes his Scotland debut as the world's first black international football player and captain
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Alexander II
Benjamin Disraeli
Billy the Kid
Ambrose Burnside
James GarfieldMore 1881 Deaths
Claude Monet
Giuseppe Verdi
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Otto von Bismarck
William Gladstone