Great events of the late 19th Century

[Coan]

So you've decided to run a Masque campaign. But there is a problem, Masque is set in a twisted historical Earth. You need material to work with. But it might be hard to find such a timeline of the late 19th early 20th century for inventions/discoveries/events.

So let us make it easy. Here will be posted some of the more interesting events in history. If it can be connected to the 1890's it can be used. So to start it off here I go with one.

1889 (from www.tour-eiffel.fr): Sunday March 31st 1889 at 1.30 p.m., Gustave Eiffel showed some of the famous personalities of the day around what was then the tallest tower in the world.On this inauguration day, Eiffel climbed the 1710 steps leading to the third level of the tower before unfurling the French flag and hearing the 21 canon salute marking the occasion. Eiffel later inscribed these words in a woman's fan : " the French flag is the only one with a 300 meter pole." The Eiffel Tower remained the highest monument in the world until the construction of New York's Chrysler Building in 1930.

Expect this page to be updated by myself for useful tidbits of info that can be used in Masque campaigns.

[Wiccy of the Fraternity]

The great stand of 22 Welsh Guard against 10,000 Zulu's at Rorke's Drift took place in the 19th century, I just can't remember when, lol. And no, Michael Caine wasn't really there, though he probably old enough to have been lol.

[Coan]

Science time (www.timelinescience.org):

1879: A young Spanish girl called Maria Sautuola is the first person to see Cro-Magnon cave paintings for 10,000 years. While exploring some caves with her father, she can stand where he has to crawl - so she can see the ceiling!

Louis Pasteur accidentally discovers that weakened cholera bacteria do not cause cholera in chickens, and that these infected chickens are then immune to the disease. This is the principle by which vaccines for many more diseases will be developed.

1887: The Belgian Edward-Joseph-Louis-Marie van Beneden discovers that each species has a particular, fixed number of chromosomes. He also shows that the sex cells have half the number of chromosomes of other cells.

1890: The English geologist Arthur Holmes uses radioactivity to date the Earth from rocks. He finds it is 4.6 billion years old.

Politics:

1890: Disputes over policy and power between Emperor William II of the German Reich and Power Statesman Otto Von Bismarck reach a climax as Bismarck is forced to resign. He spends the rest of his life criticising William II and his ministers only to die in 1898 (1815-1898).

[Quinn]

An interesting story, that I always figured would make a great seed for a MotRD adventure in San Francisco:

http://foolery.topcities.com/ship/sunk.html

A sunken ship buried in downtown San Francisco

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At the height of gold rush fever in 1849 the three-mast, 409-ton ship General Harrison, built in Newburyport,Ma(a fine town...lovely people) sailed around Cape Horn to San Francisco.

Upon arrival at Yerba Buena Cove it was promptly abandoned by its crew who were eager to find their fortunes in the gold fields. The ship was brought to shore and secured with pilings at Battery Street, along what was then the Clay Street wharf, and used as a "store ship," that is, a land-locked floating warehouse.

Hundreds of other ships were similarly abandoned, and many were towed to shore for conversion to hotels, taverns, or even jails.

The General Harrison burned to the water line in the city's first Great Fire during May 3-4, 1851, and was salvaged for most of its copper and brass fittings.

When construction began on an 11-story hotel at the corner of Clay and Sansome Streets in September of 2001, a portion of the ship's oak hull was revealed.

Archaeologist Allen Pastron, owner of Oakland's Archeo-Tec, received permission to excavate the site over several weeks. His study produced some 3000 slides and 50 hours of video. His team found several cases of European wine that salvagers from the 1851 fire had tossed overboard, some still packed in straw with four bottles in one crate still sealed. The wine and other artifacts -- such as bolts of cloth, wheat, tacks and other hardware and beads often used in trading with Native Americans -- are heading for displays in museums and the future hotel.

Building a foundation for the new hotel required shaving off anywhere from a couple of inches to about 2.5 feet from the top of the exposed remains of the ship's hull.

There was no attempt to recover the ship, because no adequate facility exists to preserve and display the more than 125-foot hull. It will be covered up, to lie below the basement of the hotel.

[Coan]

January 1, 1887: Queen Victoria becomes Empress of India

July 8, 1889: The first issue of the Wall Street Journal is published.

November 14, 1889:Female journalist Nellie Bly (Elizabeth Cochrane) begins an attempt to travel around the world in less than 80 days (Bly finished the journey in 72 days, 6 hours and 11 minutes).

March 17, 1890: The British steamship SS Utopia sinks off the coast of Gibraltar, killing 574.

May 1, 1890: The Fourmies Massacre takes place. Nine are killed and thirty wounded when troops fire on the workers' May Day demonstration in support of 8-hour day in Fourmies, France.

August 6, 1890: At Auburn Prison in New York, the first execution by electric chair is performed (murderer William Kemmler is successfully executed).

August 20, 1890: H. P. Lovecraft is born.

November 23, 1890: King William III of the Netherlands dies without a male heir and a special law is passed to allow his daughter Princess Wilhelmina to become Queen.

[William Blackmoor]

From my Campaigns timeline (mostly based in London):

1891
January: London, An individual named Colicott stabs about 6 women from behind over a month-long period.

1892
January: London: Prince Albert Victor dies of complications from influenza.

1897
Bram Stoker publishes “Dracula”
Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee

1899
The Ishtar Gate of Babylon is unearthed by german archeologists (until 1914), and reconstructed within the Pergamon Museum, Berlin.

1901
Death of Queen Victoria, King Edward VII rises to the throne.

1903
Pope Leo XIII dies (Pope since 1878)
Pius X becomes Pope

1908
Siberia: the Tunguska Event

1909
17 April : London, A “great darkness” that covered Wimbledon for ten minutes scared people into staying in their homes. There were a similar Darkness on the 19 August of 1763. London was briefly covered by a darkness during the day, blacker than an eclipse.

1912
14-15 April: Titanic sinks
20. April Bram Stoker dies, Coincidence?

1914
Pope Pius X dies
The Ishtar Gate is completed
28 June: Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to Emporor Franz Josef and his wife Sophie are assassinated by a faction of the Serbian "Black Hand", under the leadership of a "Colonel Apis" (the bee), whose real identity was Colonel Dragutin Dimitrievitch, no less than the head of Serbian military intelligence.
Start of World War I

[Wiccy of the Fraternity]

Here is something of interest to people who play in Gothic earth, it all happens in the latter parts of the 18th century and first half of the 19th, but this guy changed the way factories were run. His name was Robert Owen:

Robert Owen, the son of a saddler and ironmonger from Newtown in Wales, was born on 14th May, 1771. Robert was an intelligent boy who did very well at his local school, but at the age of ten, his father sent him to work in a large drapers in Stamford, Lincolnshire. After spending three years in Stamford, Robert moved to a drapers in London. This job lasted until 1787 and now aged sixteen, Robert found work at a large wholesale and retail drapery business in Manchester.

It was while Owen was working in Manchester that he heard about the success Richard Arkwright was having with his textile factory in Cromford. Richard was quick to see the potential of this way of manufacturing cloth and although he was only nineteen years old, borrowed £100 and set up a business as a manufacturer of spinning mules with John Jones, an engineer. In 1792 the partnership with Jones came to an end and Owen found work as a manager of Peter Drinkwater's large spinning factory in Manchester.

As manager of Drinkwater's factory, Owen met a lot of businessmen involved in the textile industry. This included David Dale, the owner of Chorton Twist Company in New Lanark, Scotland, the largest cotton-spinning business in Britain. The two men became close friends and in 1799 Robert married Dale's daughter, Caroline.

With the financial support of several businessmen from Manchester, Owen purchased Dale's four textile factories in New Lanark for £60,000. Under Owen's control, the Chorton Twist Company expanded rapidly. However, Robert Owen was not only concerned with making money, he was also interested in creating a new type of community at New Lanark. Owen believed that a person's character is formed by the effects of their environment. Owen was convinced that if he created the right environment, he could produce rational, good and humane people. Owen argued that people were naturally good but they were corrupted by the harsh way they were treated. For example, Owen was a strong opponent of physical punishment in schools and factories and immediately banned its use in New Lanark.

David Dale had originally built a large number of houses close to his factories in New Lanark. By the time Owen arrived, over 2,000 people lived in New Lanark village. One of the first decisions took when he became owner of New Lanark was to order the building of a school. Owen was convinced that education was crucially important in developing the type of person he wanted.

When Owen arrived at New Lanark children from as young as five were working for thirteen hours a day in the textile mills. He stopped employing children under ten and reduced their labour to ten hours a day. The young children went to the nursery and infant schools that Owen had built. Older children worked in the factory but also had to attend his secondary school for part of the day.

Owen's partners were concerned that these reforms would reduce profits. Unable to convince them of the wisdom of these reforms, Owen decided to borrow money from Archibald Campbell, a local banker, in order to buy their share of the business. Later, Owen sold shares in the business to men who agreed with the way he ran his factory.

Robert Owen hoped that the way he treated children at his New Lanark would encourage other factory owners to follow his example. It was therefore important for him to publicize his activities. He wrote several books including The Formation of Character (1813) and A New View of Society (1814). In 1815 Robert Owen sent detailed proposals to Parliament about his ideas on factory reform. This resulted in Owen appearing before Robert Peel and his House of Commons committee in April, 1816.

Robert Owen toured the country making speeches on his experiments at New Lanark. He also publishing his speeches as pamphlets and sent free copies to influential people in Britain. In one two month period he spent £4,000 publicizing his activities. In his speeches, Owen argued that he was creating a "new moral world, a world from which the bitterness of divisive sectarian religion would be banished". His criticisms of the Church of England upset many people, including reformers such as William Wilberforce and William Cobbett.

Disappointed with the response he received in Britain, Owen decided in 1825 to establish a new community in America based on the socialist ideas that he had developed over the years. Owen purchased an area of Indiana for £30,000 and called the community he established there, New Harmony. One of Owen's sons, Robert Dale Owen became the leader of the new community in America.

By 1827 Owen had lost interest in his New Lanark textile mills and decided to sell the business. His four sons and one of his daughters, Jane, moved to New Harmony and made it their permanent home but Owen decided to stay in England where he spent the rest of his life helping different reform groups. This included supporting organisations attempting to obtain factory reform, adult suffrage and the development of successful trade unions. He expressed his views in his journals, The Crisis and The New Moral World.

Owen also played an important role in establishing the Grand National Consolidated Trade Union in 1834 and the Association of All Classes and All Nations in 1835. Owen also attempted to form a new community at East Tytherly in Hampshire. However, like New Harmony in America, this experiment came to an end after disputes between members of the community. Although disillusioned with the failure of these communities and most of his political campaigns, Robert Owen continued to work for his "new moral order" until his death on 17th November, 1858.

Also, that Newtown where he was born is the town I live in, it has the Robert Owen memorial and musuem If anyone is interested, he's the m,an who had laws past in Britain and the British Colonies (and America) that stoppd children under the age of 12 working in factories and instead had them placed in a government funded education system.

[Coan]

Future science that could be achieved early in your campaigns:

1905: Clarence McClung shows that female mammals have 2 X chromosomes and that males have an X and a Y.

The first direct blood transfusion is performed by George Crile.

1909: The terms "gene", "genotype" and "phenotype" are used for the first time.

1911: The first chromosome maps are developed.

Ernest Rutherford presents his theory of the atom - a positively charged nucleus surrounded by negative electrons.


Interesting finds though likely hoaxes:

Human skulls with horns were discovered in a burial mound at Sayre, Bradford County, Pa., in the 1880s. Horny projections extended two inches above the eye-brows, and the skeletons were seven feet tall, but other than that were anatomically normal. It was estimated they were buried around AD 1200.

In 1888, seven skeletons were found in a burial mound near Clearwater Minn. They were anatomically correct, except that the skulls featured double rows of teeth in the upper and lower jaws and had been buried in a sitting position, facing the lake. The foreheads were unusually low and sloping, with prominent brows.

In 1898 the medium Morgan Robertson published the novel 'Futility' which featured a new monster liner called the Titan, the largest ever built. It was designed to be unsinkable with 19 watertight compartments yet it sank after hitting an iceberg on its first Atlantic crossing. The Titanic sank 14 years later.