2008-03-17T07:41:00.001-07:00

Literature

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Literature

"Ariel." Jose Enrique Rodo. Spanish. 1900. Essay. Aspire to spirituality, idealism, rationality symbolized by Shakespeare's Ariel (Tempest).

Dom Casmurro. Joachim de Assis Machado. Brazil. 1900. Novel. "Mr. Peevish." Middle class lawyer reflects on his adolescence and his youthful romance.

The Flame of Life. Gabriele D'Annunzio. Italian. 1900. Novel. Passion consumes and destroys both lovers. Based on novelist's affair with Eleanora Duse.

"In the Ravine." Anton Chekhov. Russian. 1900. Story. Brutal lives of the peasantry in a small provincial town.

Leutnant Gustl. Arthur Schnitzler. German. 1900. Novel. Early experiment in the stream of consciousness. Mind of conceited officer who must decide between suicide or resignation for lost honor. Satire on the military honor code.

Lord Jim. Joseph Conrad. British. 1900. Novel. Lifelong effort to atone for an act of instinctive cowardice. Wandering outcast. Betrayed by whites who kill Jim's best friend, the son of an old chief. Jim gives himself up to tribal justice and regains honor as he loses his life.

"The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg." Mark Twain. American. 1900. Story. Comic story with grim ending. People abandon their integrity to gain a treasure that turns out to be lead.

Sister Carrie. Theodore Dreiser. American. 1900. Novel. Innocent country girl exposed to the impersonal cruelty of Chicago in the 1890s. Rescued first by a traveling salesman. Then a wealthy married man embezzles funds and takes her to New York. As her star rises, his sinks. He commits suicide, a destitute Bowery bum.

When We Dead Awaken. Henrik Ibsen. Norwegian. 1900. Play. Artist had feared to love because he thought it would interfere with his art. Meets again the model for his masterpiece. She says they have both been dead for many years. To regain the spirit of life, they go up into the mountains and are swallowed up in a storm. Spiritual death is the price of denying love.

Whilomville Stories. Stephen Crane. American. 1900. Stories. Thirteen stories set in a town thought to be Port Jervis, New York. Realistic, unsentimental sketches of childhood. Less nostalgic than most stories about childhood.

1900 Society

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Society

1900. The Boer War continues in South Africa.

1900. Johannesburg falls to the British, May 31.

1900. A "Boxer Rebellion" rocks China, beginning June 20, as foreign legations at Beijing are besieged.

1900. V.I. Lenin returns from exile, January 29, after 3 years in Siberia with his wife and mother-in-law. Goes to Switzerland where he is editor of a newspaper published in Munich for distribution in Russia.

1900. Only 3.5% of the U.S. work force is organized.

1900. Only 144 miles of U.S. roads are hard-surfaced, but by year's end there are 13,824 motor cars on the road.

1900. Firestone Tire and rubber is founded at Akron, Ohio, by Harvey Firestone who has patented a method for attaching tires to rims.

1900. The Trans-Siberian Railway opens between Moscow and Irkutsk.

1900. Illinois Central engineer Jonathan Luther "Casey" Jones pulls his six-coach Cannonball Express into Memphis on the night of April 29, learns that the engineer for the return run is ill, and volunteers to replace him. Highballing at 75 miles per hour through Mississippi to make up for lost time, Jones rounds a curve at four i the morning and sees a freight train stalled on the track ahead. Hand upon the throttle, Jones yells at his fireman to jump, plows into the freight, is killed. While the collision is only one of 27 rear-end collisions on U.S. railroads in the month of April, a ballad will make it famous.

1900. Trolley cars provide transportation in every major U.S. city.

1900. The U.S. Navy purchases the first modern submarine.

1900. Retired German general Ferdinand von Zeppelin launches the first rigid airship.

1900. A new quantum theory enunciated by German physicist Max Planck: Bodies that radiate energy do not emit the energy constantly but rather in discrete parcels which he calls quantums.

1900. Genetic laws revealed by Gregor Mendel in 1865 become generally known for the first time.

1900. A U.S. Public Health Commission headed by Major Walter Reed of the Army Medical Corps shows that the yellow fever virus is transmitted by the aedes aegypti mosquito.

1900. Infant mortality in the U.S. is 122 per 1000 live births; in England and Wales, 154, and in India, 232.

1900. Average age at death in the U.S. is 47.

1900. Bubonic plague strikes Honolulu in epidemic form. The first U.S. bubonic plague epidemic begins at San Francisco.

1900. The U.S. Census shows 12 million Roman Catholics, 6 million Methodists, 5 million Baptists, 1.5 million Lutherans, 1.5 million Presbyterians, 1 million Jews, 700,000 Episcopalians, 350,000 Mormons, 80,000 Christian Scientists and 75,000 Unitarians.

1900. A U.S College Entrance Examination Board is founded to screen applicants to colleges. The College Board Scholastic Aptitude Tests will be graded on a scale of 200-800 and colleges will use SAT scores as a supplement to secondary school records and other relevant information. The scores will never be more than approximate and will have a standard error of measurement in the area of 32 points.

1900. "The Great Houdini" gains wide publicity by executing an escape from London's Scotland Yard and by feats such as having himself shackled in irons, locked in a roped and weighted box, dropped overboard from a boat, and emerging with a smile before baffled audiences.

1900. One U.S. home in seven has a bathtub; showers are even rarer.

1900. A hurricane strikes Galveston, Tex., September 8, killing between 6,000 and 8,000 people.

1900. Typical U.S. food prices: sugar 4 cents a pound; eggs, 14 cents a dozen; butter 24 cents a pound. Boarding houses offer turkey dinners at 20 cents and supper or breakfast at 15 cents, but a male stenographer earns $10 a week and an unskilled girl $2.50.

1900. The hamburger is pioneered at New Haven, Conn.

1900. Kansas prohibitionist Carry Moore Nation declares that since the saloon is illegal in Kansas, any citizen has the right to destroy liquor, furniture, and fixtures in any public place selling intoxicants. She begins a campaign of hatchet-wielding through Kansas cities and towns, and although she will be arrested, fined, imprisoned, clubbed, and shot at, she will persevere.

1900. The U.S. population reaches 76 million with 10.3 million of the total foreign born, roughly 9 million black or of mixed blood, 237,000 native American Indians, 90,000 Chinese, 24,000 Japanese.

1899

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Society

1899. Two U.S. privates open fire on Filipino soldiers outside Manila on the night of February 4, beginning a 3-year war between U.S. troops and Filipino national forces led by Emilio Aguinaldo. U.S. forces secure Luzon November 24, but many Americans oppose the "imperialist" war.

1899. The Boer War begins in South Africa, October 12, as President Kruger of the Boer Republic acts to block suspected British moves toward acquiring the rich Transvalla with its gold mines.

1899. The United Mine Workers of America is organized under the leadership of Illinois coal miner John Mitchell.

1899. Capt. Dreyfus wins a pardon, September 19, after a French Army retrial forced by public opinion.

1899. U.S. auto production reaches 2,500, up from 1,000 last year.

1899. Aspirin, perfected by German researchers Felix Hoffman and Hermann Dreser, will be marketed by prescription under the trade name Bayer Aspirin.

1899. The School and Society by University of Chicago philosopher-psychologist John Dewey, 39, pioneers progressive education by challenging traditional teaching methods based on lectures, memorization, and mechanical drill. Dewey suggests that education is a process of acculturation, an accumulation and assimilation of experience whereby a child develops into a balanced personality with wide awareness.

1899. Scott Joplin's "Original Rag" and "Maple Leaf Rag" are the first ragtime piano pieces to appear in sheet music form. Joplin, 30, has developed a ragged-type style, heavily syncopated (shift in accent when normally weak beat is stressed), that publisher John Stark discovers and other pianists will soon exploit.

1899. The boll weevil crosses the Rio Grande from Mexico and begins to spread north and east through U.S. cotton fields. The weevil will destroy vast acreages of cotton, devastating Southern agriculture.

Literature

"Twenty-six Men and a Girl." Maksim Gorky. Russian. 1899. Story. Bakery workers' day is made when young girl comes to buy their buns. Disillusioned when a boor bets he can seduce her and he succeeds.

Uncle Vanya. Anton Chekhov. Russian. 1899. Play. Drudge manages estate for a scholar whom he admires. Becomes disillusioned. Love for the scholar's young wife is unreturned. Scholar decides to sell the estate. Drudge is unsuccessful in trying to kill the scholar. Becomes reconciled to his drudgery.

Resurrection. Leo Tolstoy. Russian. 1899. Novel. Spiritual regeneration of a young nobleman. When he seduces a girl, she becomes a prostitute. He is determined to marry her. At first, she rejects him because of his reforming zeal. Finally, she accepts his friendship. Weakest of Tolstoy's major novels.

The Theory of the Leisure Class. Thorstein Veblen. American. 1899. Nonfiction. Two classes: wealthy employ themselves uselessly. The leisure class. Conspicuous leisure and conspicuous consumption. The lower classes support the whole of society. Waste - any activity not contributing to material productivity. His analysis of business cycles and emerging technocracy are increasingly prophetic.

The Awkward Age. Henry James. American/British. 1899. Novel. Emergence of an English society girl into maturity. She is a rival of her mother for the love of a young man. Disillusioned.

War Is Kind. Stephen Crane. American. 1899. Poetry. Good example of dramatic irony used by Crane in both poetry and prose.

Fables in Slang. George Ade. American. 1899. Sketches. Humorous tales illustrate the common sense of ordinary people. Rendering of contemporary American speech.

Drayman Henschel. Gerhart Hauptmann. German. 1899. Play. Man who promised to be faithful to his late wife is trapped into marriage, bullied and commits suicide.

Richard Carvel. Winston Churchill. American. 1899. Novel. One of the most popular novels ever written about the American Revolution.

McTeague. Frank Norris. American. 1899. Novel. Phony dentist kills wife and the man who has informed on his lack of credentials. However, he is handcuffed to the corpse in the desert and dies of thirst.

Stalkey and Co. Rudyard Kipling. British. 1899. Stories. Pranks and adventures of three schoolboys.

"The Blue Hotel." Stephen Crane. American. 1899. Story. Swede in the West expects violence, provokes it and is killed. Universe that cares not for man's fate?

Caesar and Cleopatra. George Bernard Shaw. British. 1899. Play. Wise, unsentimental Caesar. Cleo is a "giddy teenager." Caesar amused by Cleo, history and himself.

1897

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Society

1890. Kaiser Wilhelm forces Bismarck to resign as prime minister. He is caricatured for having "dropped the pilot" who united the German states and inaugurated signal reforms in German society.

1890. The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 by U.S. naval officer-historian Alfred T. Mahan demonstrates the decisive role of naval strength and will have enormous influence in encouraging the world powers to devleop powerful navies.

1890. Cecil Rhodes becomes prime minister of Africa's Cape Colony.

1890. The United Mine Workers of America is organized as an affiliate of the AF of L.

1890. Mississippi institutes a poll tax, literacy tests, and other measures designed to restrict voting by blacks. Other Southern states will impose similar restrictions.

1890. The "Battle" of Wounded Knee, December 29, ends the last major Indian resistance to white settlement in America. Nearly 500 well-armed U.S. troopers massacre an estimated 300 out of 350 Sioux men, women and children in South Dakota.

1890. The Sherman Anti-Trust Act curtails the powers of U.S. business monopolies.

1890. Nellie Bly boards the S.S. Oceanic at Yokohama January 7 and sails for San Francisco after having crossed the Atlantic, Europe and Asia in her well-publicized attempt to girdle the earth in fewer than 80 days. The New York World reporter is advised at San Francisco that the purser has left the ship's bill of health at Yokohama and that nobody may leave the ship for 2 weeks. She threatens to jump overboard and swim. She is put on a tug and taken ashore. Her train across the continent detours to avoid blizzards and is almost derailed when it hits a handcar, but she pulls into Jersey City at 3:41 in the afternoon of January 25 after a journey of 72 days, 6 hours, 11 minutes, 14 seconds.

1890. Railroad-related accidents kill 10,000 Americans and seriously injure 80,000.

1890. The U.S. has 125,000 miles of railroad in operation, Britain 20,073 miles, and Russia, 19,000.

1890. U.S. engineer Herman Hollerith pioneers punchcard processing by adapting techniques employed in the Jacquard loom of 1801 and the player piano of 1876 to devise a system for punching holes in sheets of paper to record U.S. census statistics.

1890. Only 3% of Americans age 18 to 21 attend college. The figure will rise to 8% by 1930.

1890. Cy Young signs with the Cleveland team of the National League to begin an outstanding pitching career that will continue for nearly 23 years. He will be the first pitcher to win 500 games.

1890. The first Army-Navy football game begins a long rivalry.

1890. How the Other Half Lives by New York Evening Sun police reporter Jacob August Riis portrays slum life and the conditions that make for crime, vice and disease.

1890. New York introduces the electric chair for capital punishment. It is considered more modern and humane than hanging.

1890. Yosemite National Park is created by act of Congress, which also creates Sequoia National Park.

1890. Cattlemen and sheep hereders engage in open conflict as the once "inexhaustible" range of 17 western states and territories becomes fully stocked with 26 million head of cattle and 20 million head of sheep competing for grass on the prairie.

1890. Milk is pasteurized by law in many U.S. communities despite opposition by some dairy interests and people who call pasteurization "unnatural."

1890. Peanut butter is invented by a St. Louis physician who has developed the butter as a health food.

1890. Canada Dry ginger ale has its beginnings in a small Tronto plant opened by local pharmacist John J. McLaughlin.

1890. The U.S. population reaches 62.9 million with two-thirds of it rural, down from 90% rural in 1840.

Literature

Thais. Anatole France. French. 1890. Novel. Debauched man becomes a monk, converts a courtesan who joins the convent. Can't withstand his dreams of her and urges her to flee the convent. She dies. Abbess is horrified by the savagery finally revealed on his face.

Youma. Lafcadio Hearn. American. 1890. Novel. Black girl's devotion to the daughter of her dead mistress during a slave insurrection in Martinique.

"The Raggedy Man." James W. Riley. American. 1890. Poetry. Hoosier dialect. Boy's admiration for the farm's hired man.

"Narcissus Speaks." Paul Valery. French. 1890. Poetry. Narcissus in love with his reflection in water symbolizes the self seeking its own perfect image.

A Hazard of New Fortunes. Wm. Dean Howells. American. 1890. Novel. Plot focuses on a newly rich family's social, moral difficulties in scaling the New York social ladder.

Hedda Gabler. Henrik Ibsen. Norwegian. 1890. Play. Ruthless, neurotic woman borred with dull scholarly husband; destroys others and then herself with a bullet.

The Golden Bough. George Frazer. Scottish. 1890/1915. Nonfiction. Comparative religion and mythology. Cross-cultural analysis. Archetypal elements in religion and magic.

1889

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Society

1889. The British South Africa Co. headed by Cecil Rhodes receives almost unlimited rights and powers of government in the area north of the Transvaal and west of Mozambique.

1889. The first Pan-American Conference opens October 2 at Washington, D.C., to cement relations among Western Hemisphere nations.

1889. Oklahoma Territory lands formerly reserved for Native Americans are opened to white homesteaders at high noon April 22, and a race begins to stake land claims. "Sooners," who have entered the territory prematurely, claim prior rights in many areas.

1889. Electric lights are installed at the White House, but neither President Harrison nor his wife will touch the switches.

1889. France's Compagnie Universelle du Canal Interoceanique goes bankrupt after having spent the equivalent of $287 million in an effort to build a Panama Canal. Thousands lose their savings in the canal company's collapse.

1889. Nellie Bly leaves Hoboken, NJ, November 14, in an attempt to outdo the hero of the 1873 Jules Verne novel Around the World in Eighty Days. New York World reporter Elizabeth "Nellie Bly" Cochrane, 22, has earlier feigned madness in a successful attempt to gain admission for 10 days to New York's insane asylum on Blackwell's Island.

1889. The Mayo Clinic has its beginning in Rochester, Minn.

1889. The Wall Street Journal begins publication July 8.

1889. Boston pugilist John L. Sullivan, 30, defeats Jake Kilrain at Richburg, Miss. in July. The 75-round fight lasts for 2 hours, 16 minutes in 106-degree heat; it is the last major bare-knuckle prizefight.

1889. The first All-America football team selected by Yale athletic director Walter Camp.

1889. The Flexible Flyer sled introduced by Philadelphia farm-equipment maker Sam Leeds Allen has runners that can be flexed over their entire length to permit turns twice as tight at twice the speed possible with other sleds.

1889. Former Texas outlaw Belle Starr is shot dead February 3 in Oklahoma Territory by person or persons unknown.

1889. The Eiffel Tower designed by French engineer Alexander Eiffel is completed at Paris for the Universal Exhibition that opens May 6.

1889. New York's first real skyscraper opens September 27, a 13-story structure.

1889. The Johnstown Flood May 31 kills 2,000 to 5,000 Pennsylvanians in a city of 30,000. An earthen dam 90 feet high on the Conemaugh River has given way 14 miles away in the mountains, a torrent of water roars down on the city at 50 miles per hour, and its force toses a 48-ton locomotive 1 mile.

Literature

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Mark Twain. American. 1889. Novel. Blow sends Yankee back to the days of King Arthjur. His Yankee ingenuity and "know how" vs. medieval superstition.

"A Dreary Story." Anton Chekhov. Russian. 1889. Story. Difficulty of real communication btween people. Professor and his ward see life as fragmented, aimless and worthless. Despair. They fail to communicate to each other and remain isolated.

"The Man Who Would Be King." Rudyard Kipling. British. 1889. Story. Man sets himself up as god/king. He is betrayed, tortured and killed.

"Crossing the Bar." Alfred Lord Tennyson. British. 1889. Poetry. Metaphor for death; putting out to sea on a calm evening.