1895

Society

1895. The name Rhodesia is given to the territory of the South Africa Co., south of the Zambezi River to honor the prime minister of the Cape Colony, Cecil Rhodes.

1895. Russian Marxist Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov, 25, travels to Geneva, goes on to Zurich, Berlin, and Paris, returns with illegal literature in a false-bottomed trunk, organizes strikes and prints anti-government leaflets and manifestoes, is arrested and will be exiled to Siberia for 3 years in 1897. Ulyanov will adopt the pseudonym Lenin.

1895. The "diesel" engine invented by German engineer Rudolf Diesel operates on a petroeum fuel less highly refined and less costly than gasoline.

1895. The first U.S. pneumatic tires are produced by the Hartford Rubber Works at Hartford, Conn.

1895. The first U.S. automobile race takes place Thanksgiving Day on 53.5-mile course between Chicago and Milwaukee. Herman Kohlsaat's Chicago Times-Herald has offered a $2,000 first prize, some 80 constestants enter, only six are able to start, average speed over the snowy roads is 5.25 miles per hour, and the winner is James Franklin Duryea, driving the only American-made gasoline-powered entry. The car also has Hartford pneumatic tires.

1895. The X-ray or roentgen ray, discovered by Bavarian physicist Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen, will revolutioize diagnostic medicine by making it possible to photograph the inner organs and bone structures of animals and humans.

1895. Guglielmo Marconi, 21, pioneers wireless telegraphy. In September he transmits a message to his brother who is out of sight beyond a hill.

1895. The first theater showing of motion pictures takes place March 22 in Paris where members of the Societe d'Encouragement a' l' Industrie Nationale see a film of workers leaving the Lumiere factory at Lyons for their dinner hour. The cinematograph of inventors Louis and Auguste Lumiere is a vast improvement over the kinetoscope peepshow introduced last year by Thomas Edison, whose film can be viewed by only one person at a time. The Lumieres' 16-frame-per-second mechanism will be the standard for films for decades.

1895. The first commercial presentation of a film on a screen takes place May 20 at New York. An audience in a converted store at 153 Broadway views a 4-minute film of a boxing match.

1895. "America the Beautiful" by Wellesley College English professor Katharine Lee Bates will be set to the music of Samuel A. Ward's "Materna" and become an unofficial national anthem.

1895. The Gillette razor has its beginnings in a proposal by U.S. bottle stopper salesman King Camp Gillette for a disposable razor blade.

1895. The word "calorie" is applied to food for the first time by Wesleyan University professor Wilbur Olin Atwater.

1895. Canned foods are shown to keep from spoiling not because air has been driven out of the container but because bacteria have been killed or inhibited in their growth.

1895. The first U.S. pizzeria opens in New York at 53 1/2 Spring Street.

Literature

The Red Badge of Courage: An Episode of the American Civil War. Stephen Crane. American. 1895. Novel. Psychological study of fear. Romantic notions about war are soon destroyed. "Red badge" is from the gun butt of a fellow soldier. Merges with the body of soldiers.

"Waltzing Matilda." Andrew Barton Paterson. Australian. 1895. Ballad. Swagman (hobo) steals and butchers a jambuck (sheep) leaps to death in a billabong (pond after heavy rains) when pursued by squatter (landowner) and police. Pack bouncing as he hikes is nicknamed "Waltzing Matilda." Rollicking verse epitomizes Australian gusto. Theme is of little man against repressive Establishment. Australia's unofficial national anthem.

Jude the Obscure. Thomas Hardy. British. 1895. Novel. Dramatizes conflict between carnal and spiritual life. Traces Jude's life from boyhood aspiration of intellectual achievment to miserable early death.

The Black Riders and Other Lines. Stephen Crane. American. 1895. Poetry. Inspired by Emily Dickinson. After watching waves beat on the shore, dreamed of black horses coming from the surf.

Light o' Love. Arthur Schnitzler. German. 1895. Play. Man torn between two women, one of low, the other of high social standing.

The Importance of Being Earnest. Oscar Wilde. British. 1895. Play. Satire of the British nobility and clergy. Apparently lower class, Worthing is found to have had noble parents.

The Black Tulip. Alexandre Dumas. French. 1895. Historical Romance. Set in Holland in the 17th century. Tale revolves about the struggle between two political factions.

The Time Machine. H. G. Wells. British. 1895. SciFi. Travels into the future and visits stages in the evolutionary degeneration of life.

Jean Santeui (unfinished). Marcel Proust. French. 1895/99. Novel. Adapted version of his own life to 1895. Characters, incidents prototypes of Remembrance....