istoryworld
Events relating to europe
English actor Henry Irving plays what becomes one of his most famous parts, that of Mathias in the melodrama The Bells
French author Émile Zola publishes The Fortune of the Rougons, the first in a 20-novel series that he calls Les Rougon-Macquart
Stanley, finding Livingstone at Ujiji, greets him with four words which become famous – 'Dr Livingstone, I presume'
George Eliot publishes Middlemarch, in which Dorothea makes a disastrous marriage to the pedantic Edward Casaubon
Whistler begins to paint his Nocturnes, a revolutionary series of night-time images on the river Thames
The Ballot Act adds to the British electoral system the essential element of secrecy in voting
The Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin splits the International Congress into rival camps at its meeting in the Hague
Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud move together to Brussels, and then to London, where they live a dissolute bohemian existence
Verlaine is sentenced to two years in prison, at Mons in Belgium, after shooting and wounding Rimbaud in a drunken rage in Brussels
French painter Edgar Degas finds inspiration in the onstage and backstage world of ballet dancers
Modest Mussorgsky's opera Boris Godunov has its premiere in St Petersburg
A group of French artists, including Renoir, Monet and Degas, exhibit their work independently in the Paris studio of the photographer Nadar
French critic Louis Leroy uses the term 'impressionism' to ridicule Monet's Impression, Sunrise, and unwittingly names a movement
Conservative leader Benjamin Disraeli, at the age of 70, begins a 6-year term of office as Britain's prime minister
Major Walter Wingfield secures a patent for Sphairistike, a game he has developed at his home in Wales, from which lawn tennis evolves
The southern region of present-day Ghana becomes a British colony, to be known as the Gold Coast
Mussorgsky composes Pictures at an Exhibition as a piece for piano in memory of an exhibition by the Russian painter Victor Hartmann
English author Thomas Hardy has his first success with his novel Far from the Madding Crowd
Henrik Ibsen's play Peer Gynt has its premiere in Oslo, with incidental music by Edvard Grieg
The return to Spain of Isabella's son, as Alfonso XII, offers an end to forty years of royal feuding
Georges Bizet's opera Carmen has its premiere in Paris and meets at first with a lukewarm response
Charles Stewart Parnell takes his seat in the House of Commons at Westminster and immediately adds zest to the campaign for Home Rule
William Crookes invents the radiometer, in which light causes four vanes to rotate in a bulb containing gas at low pressure
Leo Tolstoy publishes the first volume of his novel Anna Karenina, in which the heroine develops a fatal love for Count Vronsky
After spending much time in Europe in recent years, Henry James moves there permanently and settles first in Paris
