1883

From ArticleWorld

1883 was a year in which a huge natural disaster would shake large parts of the Southern Hemisphere and an American engineering landmark was finally opened.

Important Events

January 19th marked the first time that overhead electrical wires were used to power a lighting system. The illustrious inventor Thomas Edison performed this experiment in electrical lighting in the town of Roselle, New Jersey in the United States.

The Brooklyn Bridge was officially opened to traffic on May 24th after a huge construction period lasting 14 years. At the time the Brooklyn Bridge was the largest suspension bridge in the world, stretching 6,016 over the East River between Manhattan and Brooklyn.

August 26th saw the start of a series of catastrophic eruptions from the Krakatau volcano in the Indonesian islands. The eruptions would continue for two days and destroy hundreds of villages and kill an unprecedented 36,380 people. Many of the deaths were caused by the gigantic tsunamis that were created as a result of the gigantic seismic energy created by the eruption. The sound created remains the loudest in recorded history, with the eruption being heard hundreds of miles away in Perth, Australia.

October 4th saw the first journey of the famous luxury continental train service the Orient Express. The first journey was between Paris and the Romanian town of Giurgiu, taking passengers via Munich and Vienna. Once in Romania passengers would cross the Danube to pick up a train to Varna, Bulgaria and then a ferry to their final destination of Istanbul in Turkey.

In the American Old West the infamous self-styled ‘Black Bart the Po-8’ performed his last successful stagecoach robbery on November 3rd. Unfortunately for Black Bart he left an incriminating clue, which would ultimately lead to his successful capture.

Births and Deaths

The year 1883 also saw some important arrivals and departures in literary, political and entertainment circles. Former British Prime Minister Clement Attlee (D. 1967) was born January 3rd also born in this year was a politician with wildly different views in Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini (D. 1945) on 29th July. American actor Douglas Fairbanks (D.1939) was born on May 23rd and Austrian writer Franz Kafka (D. 1924) was born on the 3rd of July. Amongst those notable persons who died in this year, were the founding father of communism Karl Marx who passed away on March 14th and German composer Richard Wagner on February 13th.