1872

Society

1872. Radical Republicans renominate President Grant despite the corruption of his administration. Grant wins reelection.

1872. Susan B. Anthony is arrested at Rochester, NY, for trying to vote in the election, November 5.

1872. The brig Mary Celeste clears New York harbor in mid-November for Genoa with 10 men who will never be seen again. The ship will be discovered December 4 sailing on a starboard tack with cargo and stores intact but without a soul aboard, a "ghost" ship whose mystery will never be solved.

1872. Louis Pasteur publishes a classic paper on fermentation showing that it is caused by microorganisms.

1872. An Australian telegraph line opens November 23 to connect Adelaide with Port Darwin and is soon extended to link Australia with Java, India and Europe.

1872. Sarah Bernhardt begins a 10-year career with the Comedie-Francaise at Paris. "The Divine Sarah" will gain world renown and continue acting even after having a leg amputated in 1914.

1872. Motion picture pioneer Eadweard Muybridge takes a sequence of photographs showing a horse running. Central Pacific Railroad president Leland Stanford has asked him to prove photographically that all four feet of a running horse are off the ground at the same time at some point in the animal's stride.

1872. The Jesse James gang robs its first passenger train.

1872. Yellowstone National Park is created by act of Congress setting aside a 2-million-acre tract of wilderness on the fast-developing frontier in Wyoming Territory.

Literature

Through the Looking Glass. Lewis Carroll. British. 1872. Children's story (?) Sequel to Wonderland; world behind the mirror, everything reversed. Alice is a white pawn in a chess game; eventually she becomes queen and wakes up. The Jabberwocky is in this supposed children's tale.

Martin Fiero. Jose Hernandez. Argentine. 1872. Narrative poem. Argentine national classic; Gaucho literature; illiterate gauchos vs. Buenos Aires edcuated.

The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music. Friedrich Nietzsche. German. 1872. Nonfiction. Attacks conception that Greek culture was perfectly static, blissful. Apollonian vs. Dionysiac. Apollonian = individuation, rationality, form, structure. Dionysiac = "will," directly opposed to the Apollonian. Enthusiasm, ecstasy; man gives up individuality and submerges himself in a greater whole.

Erewhon. Samuel Butler. British. 1872. Satiric Novel. Utopian. Satirizes English attitudes toward religion, science, crime, etc.