1882

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File:Decade.png ( 1880s: )     1882 link
File:Next-Standard-Oil-Puck-1904.jpg In a cartoon published in the magazine Puck, the Standard Oil Company is depicted as a menacing octopus
year 1882

Events

January–March

• January 2
  • The Standard Oil Trust is secretly created in the United States, to control multiple corporations set up by John D. Rockefeller and his associates.
• January 5 – Charles J. Guiteau is found guilty of the assassination of James A. Garfield (President of the United States) and sentenced to death, despite an insanity defense raised by his lawyer.
• January 12 – Holborn Viaduct power station in the City of London, the world's first coal-fired public electricity generating station, begins operation.
• February 3 – American showman P. T. Barnum acquires the elephant Jumbo, from the London Zoo.
• March 2 – Roderick Maclean fails in an attempt to assassinate Queen Victoria, at Windsor.
• March 18 (March 6 Old Style) – The Principality of Serbia becomes the Kingdom of Serbia following a proclamation.
• March 20 – British gunboats enter Monrovia, with Arthur Havelock demanding that Liberia cede disputed territory to the British colony of Sierra Leone, of which he is Governor.
• March 22 – Polygamy is made a felony by the Edmunds Act, passed by the United States Congress.
• March 24 – Robert Koch announces the discovery of the bacterium responsible for tuberculosis (Mycobacterium tuberculosis).
• March 28
  • Republican Jules Ferry makes primary education in France free, non-clerical (laique) and obligatory.
  • German medical products company Beiersdorf is founded.
• March 29 – The Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal service organization, is founded in New Haven, Connecticut.

April–June

• April 3 – Old West outlaw Jesse James is shot in the back of the head and killed by Robert Ford in St. Joseph, Missouri.
• April 29 – The Elektromote, the world's first trolleybus, begins operation in Berlin.
• May – Burnley F.C. in the north of England changes codes, from Rugby union to Association football.
• May 1 – The Berlin Philharmonic orchestra is founded in Germany, as Frühere Bilsesche Kapelle.
• May 2 – The Kilmainham Treaty, an agreement between the British government and Irish nationalist leader Charles Stewart Parnell to abate tenant rent arrears, is announced; Parnell is released from Kilmainham Gaol in Dublin.
• May 6 – Phoenix Park Murders in Ireland: Lord Frederick Cavendish, the newly appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland, and Thomas Henry Burke, his Permanent Undersecretary, are fatally stabbed in Phoenix Park, Dublin, by members of the Irish National Invincibles (militant Irish republicans).
• May 8 – The Chinese Exclusion Act is the first important law which restricts immigration into the United States.
• May 20 – The Triple Alliance is formed between Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy.
• June
  • Ferdinand von Lindemann publishes his proof of the transcendentality of pi.
  • St Andrew's Ambulance Association is founded in Glasgow, Scotland; St. John Ambulance Canada is also founded this year.
• June 11 – The 'Urabi revolt breaks out in Egypt against Khedive Tewfik Pasha and European influence in that country.
• June 28 – The Anglo-French Convention of 1882 is signed, marking territorial boundaries between Guinea and Sierra Leone.
• June 30 – U.S. presidential assassin Charles J. Guiteau is hanged in Washington, D.C.

July–September

• July 11–13 – Anglo-Egyptian War: The British Mediterranean Fleet carries out the Bombardment of Alexandria, its forces capturing the city of Alexandria, Egypt, and securing the Suez Canal.
• July 23 The Imo Incident occurs in Seoul, Korea as a result of bad rations and payment towards soldiers of the Old Korean Army.
• July 26
  • Boers establish the republic of Stellaland in southern Africa.
  • Richard Wagner's opera Parsifal debuts, at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus in Bavaria.
• July 31 – The Hebrew Moshava of Rishon LeZion is founded.
• August 3 – The U.S. Congress passes the 1882 Immigration Act.
• August 5 – Standard Oil of New Jersey is established.
• August 18 – The Married Women's Property Act 1882 receives royal assent in Britain; it enables women to buy, own and sell property, and to keep their own earnings.
• August 20 – Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture debuts in Moscow.
• September 4 – Thomas Edison flips the switch to the first commercial electrical power plant in the United States, lighting one square mile of lower Manhattan. This is considered by many as the day that begins the electrical age.
• September 5
  • The first United States Labor Day parade is held in New York City.
  • Tottenham Hotspur F.C. is founded (as Hotspur F.C.) in London.
• September 13
  • Anglo-Egyptian War: British troops occupy Cairo, and Egypt becomes a British protectorate.
  • Selwyn College, Cambridge is founded after Queen Victoria grants a Charter of Incorporation.
• September 18 – Great Comet of 1882: Her Majesty's Astronomer at the Cape, David Gill, reports watching the comet rise a few minutes before the Sun, describing it as "The nucleus was then undoubtedly single, and certainly rather under than over 4″ in diameter; in fact, as I have described it, it resembled very much a star of the 1^st magnitude seen by daylight."

October–December

• October 5 – The Society for Ethical Culture of Chicago (the modern-day Ethical Humanist Society of Chicago) is founded by Felix Adler.
• October 14 – The University of the Punjab is founded in modern-day Pakistan.
• October 16 – The New York, Chicago and St. Louis Railroad ("Nickel Plate Road") runs its first trains over the entire system between Buffalo, New York, and Chicago. Nine days later the Seney Syndicate sells the road to William Henry Vanderbilt, for US$7.2 million.
• October 21 – Waseda University was founded by Shigenobu Ōkuma in Japan, as predecessor name was Tokyo Specializing School.
• November 14 – Franklyn Leslie shoots Billy Claiborne dead, in the streets of Tombstone, Arizona.
• November 16 – The British Royal Navy's Template:Ship destroys Abari village in Niger.
• December – Zikhron Ya'akov is founded in northern Israel.
• December 6 – A transit of Venus, the last until 2004, occurs.

Date unknown

• The first International Polar Year, an international scientific program, begins.
• Zulu king Cetshwayo kaMpande returns to South Africa from England.
• A peace treaty is signed between Paraguay and Uruguay.
• Pogroms in Southern Russia end.
• Nikola Tesla claims this is when he conceives the rotating magnetic field principle, which he later uses to invent his induction motor.
• The British Chartered Institute of Patent Agents (the modern-day Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys) is founded.
• The Personal Liberty League is established, to oppose the temperance movement in the United States.
• Carolyn Merrick is elected president of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union in the United States.