Timeline from 1880 to 1890

Significant Events in the Decade Spanning 1880 to 1890

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Updated on August 16, 2019

1880

The word "boycott" enters the English language when tenant farmers in Ireland organize and refuse to pay landlord agent Captain Charles Boycott. The term quickly spreads to America, and after appearing in newspapers, its usage becomes widespread.
Spring 1880: British troops under General Frederick Roberts march from Kabul to Kandahar during the Second Anglo-Afghan War, relieving a threatened British garrison and securing a victory over Afghan fighters.
April 18, 1880: William Ewart Gladstone defeats Benjamin Disraeli in a British election to become Prime Minister for a second time.
July 1880: The French-American Union announces that enough money has been raised to complete the construction of the Statue of Liberty, although further funding will be required to construct the pedestal on which it will sit in New York Harbor.
November 2, 1880: James Garfield defeats Winfield Hancock in the U.S. Presidential election.
November 11, 1880: Notorious Australian outlaw Ned Kelly is hanged in Melbourne, Australia.
December 1880: Inventor Thomas A. Edison uses electric Christmas lights for the first time, hanging them outside his lab in Menlo Park, New Jersey.

January 19, 1881: John Sutter, owner of the sawmill where a gold discovery launched the California Gold Rush, dies in Washington, D.C.
March 4, 1881: James Garfield is inaugurated as President of the United States.
March 13, 1881: Alexander II, son of Nicholas I, is assassinated.
April 1881: Pogroms began in Russia after Jews are blamed for the assassination of Czar Nicholas II. When the refugees from the Russian pogroms arrive in New York City, poet Emma Lazarus is inspired write her poem, "The New Colossus."
April 19, 1881: British novelist and politician Benjamin Disraeli dies at the age of 76.
May 21, 1883: The American Red Cross is incorporated by Clara Barton.
July 2, 1881: President James Garfield is shot and wounded by Charles Guiteau at a Washington, D.C. train station.
July 14, 1881: Outlaw Billy the Kid is shot and killed by lawman Pat Garrett in the New Mexico territory.
September 19, 1881: President James Garfield succumbs to the gunshot wound he'd received 11 weeks earlier. Vice President Chester A. Arthur succeeds him as President

October 13, 1881: Irish political leader Charles Stewart Parnell is arrested and imprisoned by British authorities.
October 26, 1881: The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral takes place in Tombstone, Arizona, pitting Doc Holliday along with Virgil, Morgan, and Wyatt Earp against Tom and Frank McLaury, Billy and Ike Clanton, and Billy Claiborne.

April 3, 1882: Outlaw Jesse James is shot and killed by Robert Ford.
April 12, 1882. Charles Darwin, author of "On the Origin of Species", dies in England at the age of 73.

April 27, 1882: Influential American author and Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson dies at the age of 78.
May 2, 1882: Irish political leader Charles Stewart Parnell is released from prison.
June 2, 1882: Italian revolutionary hero Giuseppe Garibaldi dies at the age of 74.
September 5, 1882: The first commemoration of Labor Day is held in New York City when 10,000 workers hold a labor march.
December 1882: The first Christmas tree with electric lights is created by Edward Johnson, an employee of Thomas Edison. The tree is notable enough to be written about in newspapers. Within decades, electric Christmas tree lights became commonplace in America.
December 10, 1882: Photographer Alexander Gardner, who took notable photographs of the Civil War, dies at the age of 61. His photographs of Antietam, displayed for the public in late 1862, changed the way the public thought of warfare.

August 6, 1884: The cornerstone for the Statue of Liberty's pedestal is placed on Bedloe's Island in New York Harbor.
November 4, 1884: Despite a paternity scandal, Grover Cleveland defeats James G. Blaine (whose gaffe about "rum, Romanism, and rebellion" likely cost him the presidency) in the Presidential election of 1884.
December 10, 1884: Mark Twain publishes "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn."

March 4, 1885: Grover Cleveland is inaugurated as President of the United States.
June 19, 1885: The disassembled Statue of Liberty arrives in New York aboard a French freighter.

July 23, 1885: Former U.S. President and hero of the Civil War Ulysses S. Grant dies at the age of 63. His enormous funeral procession in New York City signals the end of an era.
September 7, 1885: Labor Day celebrations are held in cities across America, with tens of thousands of workers participating in marches and other commemorative events.
October 29, 1885: George B. McClellan, the Union commander at the Battle of Antietam who challenged President Lincoln in the election of 1864, dies at the age of 58.

May 4, 1886: The Haymarket Riot erupts in Chicago when a bomb is tossed into a mass meeting called in support of striking workers.
May 15, 1886: American poet Emily Dickinson dies at the age of 55.
June 2, 1886: President Grover Cleveland weds Frances Folsom in a White House ceremony, becoming the only president to be married in the executive mansion.
October 28, 1886: The Statue of Liberty is dedicated in New York Harbor.
November 18, 1886: Former U.S. President Chester A. Arthur dies in New York City at the age of 57.

March 8, 1887: American clergyman and reformer Henry Ward Beecher dies in Brooklyn, New York at the age of 73.
June 21, 1887: Britain celebrates the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria, commemorating the 50th year of her reign.
November 2, 1887: Swedish opera singer Jenny Lind, whose sensational 1850 American tour was promoted by P. T. Barnum, dies at the age of 67.

November 19, 1887: Poet Emma Lazarus, whose inspirational poem "The New Colossus" is inscribed at the foot of the Statue of Liberty as an anthem to immigration, dies in New York City at the age of 38.
December 1887: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's iconic detective Sherlock Holmes makes his debut in a story published in Beeton's Christmas Annual magazine.

March 11, 1888: The Great Blizzard of 1888 strikes the East Coast of the United States.
August 31, 1888: Jack the Ripper's first victim is discovered in London.
November 6, 1888: President Grover Cleveland loses his bid for reelection to Benjamin Harrison.

March 4, 1889: Benjamin Harrison takes the oath of office as President and delivers an uplifting inaugural address.
May 31, 1889: A poorly constructed dam in Pennsylvania bursts open, resulting in the devastating Johnstown Flood.

November 14, 1889: Nellie Bly, star reporter for Joseph Pulitzer's New York World, departs on her 72-day race around the world. Bly, who set out to circumnavigate the entire globe in less than 80 days in order to beat the record of Phileas Fogg, the fictional protagonist of Victorian novelist Jules Verne's "Around the World in Eighty Days," succeeds, closing out her adventure via a cross-country train trip from San Francisco to New York City.
December 1889: Pierre de Coubertin, who would go on to organize the modern Olympic games, visits the campus of Yale University to study its athletic programs.
December 6, 1889: Former President of the Confederate States of America Jefferson Davis dies at the age of 81.
December 25, 1889: President Benjamin Harrison holds a festive Christmas celebration for his family at the White House, after which newspaper accounts regale the public with tales of lavish gifts and decorations—including a Christmas tree.

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