Major Events
- Feb 5 King Leopold II of Belgium establishes the Congo as a personal colonial possession
- Feb 5 News of the fall of Khartoum reaches London
- Feb 18 Mark Twain publishes the "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" in the US
- Feb 26 Berlin Conference gives Congo to Belgium and Nigeria to Great Britain
- May 19 German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck takes possession of Cameroon and Togoland
- Jul 6 Louis Pasteur successfully give an anti-rabies vaccine to 9-year-old Joseph Meister, saving his life
- Nov 10 German engineer Gottlieb Daimler unveils the world's first motorcycle
- Dec 22 Samurai Itō Hirobumi, becomes the first Prime Minister of Japan
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1885 in Music
- Mar 14 W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan's comic opera "The Mikado" premieres in London at the Savoy Theatre
Did You Know?
Leo Daft opens America's 1st commercially operated electric streetcar in Baltimore
More People Born in 1885
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Articles About 1885
Suicide Woman Floats To Safety
Nobody could expect to survive a fall from the 100-metre high Clifton Suspension Bridge. But one woman was saved on this day by her billowing skirt.May 8Ulysses S. Grant’s Race Against Time
One newspaper called Ulysses S. Grant America’s ‘most corrupt’ President. Historians now doubt that and admire his courage in telling his remarkable story.July 23
Famous Weddings in 1885
- Apr 29 Novelist Edith Wharton (23) weds Edward Robbins Wharton (35)
- May 5 German author and future Nobel Laureate Gerhart Hauptmann (22) weds Marie Thienemann in Radebeul, Saxony; separate in 1893, divorce in 1904
- Jun 24 College professor and future 28th US President Woodrow Wilson (28) weds Presbyterian minister's daughter and artist Ellen Louise Axson (25) in Savannah, Georgia, until her death in 1914
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