1876

Society

1876. The Royal Titles Bill passed by Parliament makes Queen Victoria Empress of India.

1876. Apache leader Geronimo leads a band of his warriors into Mexico, beginning a 10-year reign of terror against white settlers in the Southwest.

1876. The Battle of Little Big Horn, June 25, ends in the massacre of a 264-man U.S. Seventh Cavalry force under Lieut. Col. George Armstrong Custer at the hands of Sioux chief Sitting Bull. The Sioux have been angered by the slaughter of buffalo in Montana Territory by the advancing whites.

1876. The U.S. Centennial Exposition opens at Philadelphia's Fairmount Park May 10.

1876. A train wreck, December 29, kills 83 at Ashtabula, Ohio, as a 13-year-old bridge on Cornelius Vanderbilt's Lake Shore and Michigan Southern gives way during a storm off Lake Erie and 10 cars plunge into a Creek 150 feet below, bursting into flames. The road's president fired a subordinate engineer in 1863 when he protested construction of the Howe truss bridge built by the road's chief engineer.

1876. "Mr. Watson, come here, I want you," says Alexander Graham Bell, March 10, in the first complete sentence to be transmitted by voice over wire.

1876. Western Union president William Orton turns down an offer to acquire the Bell telephone for $100,000, calling it a toy, a "scientific curiosity" that permits users to speak or listen, but not both at once.

1876. "A Classification and Subject Index for Cataloguing and Arranging the Books and Pamphlets of a Library" by Amherst College librarian Melvil Dewey originates the Dewey Decimal System.

1876. A player piano demonstrated at St. Louis by Scots-American inventor John McTammany produces music mechanically from perforated paper rolls.

1876. Northfield, Minn., citizens foil an attempt on a bank, September 7, by Frank and Jesse James and the Younger brothers. Two of the gang are killed in a hail of bullets, four are captured, including Cole Younger and his brothers. The James brothers escape.

Literature

"1601," subtitled: "Conversation As It Was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors" Mark Twain. American. 1876. Sketch. Twain freely uses Anglo-Saxon vocabulary.

Roderick Hudson. Henry James. American/British. 1876. Novel. American sculptor studies in Rome and becomes discouraged and disillusioned.

Clarel: A Poem and a Pilgrimage in the Holy Land. Herman Melville. American. 1876. Poetry. Asks if civilization can survive after science has caused a loss of faith. Characters interact on a pilgrimage from Jerusalem to Gethsemane, the Dead Sea, and Bethlehem. Faith vs. doubt.

The Dolliver Romance. Nathaniel Hawthorne. American. 1876. Novel. Unfinished. Dr. Dolliver prepares elixir of life so that he might live to care for his granddaughter; selfish Dabney overdoses, dies.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Mark Twain. American. 1876. Novel. Tom and Huck witness a murder, flee, return home to hear their own eulogies.

"The Afternoon of a Faun." Sephane Mallarme. French. 1876. Poetry. Wandering thoughts of a faun on a drowsy summer afternoon.