What Happened in 1884

Major Events

  • Feb 1 1st volume of the Oxford English Dictionary, A-Ant, published
  • Mar 13 Siege of Khartoum, Sudan begins by Mahdist forces, lasts 10 months
  • Jul 3 Dow Jones publishes its 1st stock index, the Dow Jones Transportation Average
  • Sep 23 American Herman Hollerith patents his mechanical tabulating machine, the beginning of data processing
  • Oct 13 International Meridian Conference in Washington DC establishes Greenwich in London, England as the universal time meridian of longitude
  • Oct 14 George Eastman patents paper-strip photographic film
  • Oct 22 International Meridian Conference in Washington, D.C. adopts Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) worldwide, creating 24 international time zones with longitude zero at the Greenwich meridian
  • Nov 15 European Colonization and trade in Africa is officially regulated at the international Berlin Conference, formalizing European powers "Scramble for Africa"
  • More 1884 Events

1884 in Sport

  • Jul 30 Nonpareil Dempsey [John Edward Kelly] fights George Fulljames, possibly the 1st middleweight fight with boxing gloves

Did You Know?

"Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain is first published in the UK and Canada (US Feb 1885, due to printing error)

December 10, 1884


More People Born in 1884
More 1884 Deaths

Famous Weddings in 1884

  • Jan 19 Painter Thomas Eakins (39) weds painter and photographer Susan Macdowell (32) in a Quaker ceremony
  • Jan 24 Abolitionist Frederick Douglass marries his second wife suffragist Helen Pitts
  • May 1 "Poems of Passion" author Ella Wheeler Wilcox (33) weds Robert M. Wilcox in Milwaukee, Wisconsin

More Weddings in 1884