1885

Society

1885. Anti-Chinese rioting breaks out in the Washington Territory.

1885. The world's first successful gasoline-driven motor vehicle reaches a speed of 9 miles per hour at Mannheim. German engineer Karl Benz has built the single-cylinder, chain-drive three-wheeler.

1885. English-American electrical engineer Leo Daft installs the world's first electric trolley line at Baltimore using double overhead wires from which the passenger cars draw electricity through a small carriage called a "troller."

1885. The first-class U.S. postal rate doubles to 2 cents after a century.

1885. English scientist Francis Galton devises an identification system based on fingerprints. He proves that fingerprints are permanent and no two people ever have the same prints.

1885. Chicago's Home Insurance Building at LaSalle and Monroe Streets is the world's firsst skyscraper, a 10-story marble structure.

Literature

The Rise of Silas Lapham. Wm. Dean Howells. American. 1885. Novel. Self-reliant business man becomes wealthy, moves to Boston; embarrases himself in attempt to be accepted by the social elite. Eventually sees himself for what he is.

Germinal. Emile Zola. French. 1885. Novel. Bitter suffering of workers in French mines. Pleads for social reform. Sympathy for the lower classes.

"Little Orphant Annie." James Whitcomb Riley. American. 1885. Poem. Hoosier dialect. Orphant Annie tells hair-raising tales about goblins.

Marius the Epicurean. Walter Pater. British. 1885. Romance. Roman noble at the time of Marcus Aurelius. Records ideas rather than events. Drawn to Christianity.

"The Swan." Sephane Mallarme. French. 1885. Poetry. Swan trapped in frozen lake; held in pure, mysterious state of unrealized possibility. Can't fly.

A Child's Garden of Verses. Robert Louis Stevenson. British. 1885. Poetry. Written from the child's point of view. "My Shadow." "The Lamplighter."