Timeline August 1885

Events in August 1885 3

• 1885 US Championships 1885 Men: Richard Sears
• 1885 Congo Free State proclaimed Leopold II establishes personal rule over the Congo basin On 1 August 1885, Belgian King Leopold II formally proclaimed the Congo Free State as his private possession, distinct from Belgium itself. The territory, nominally governed for humanitarian and free-trade purposes under the Berlin Act, became notorious over the following two decades for forced labor and atrocities committed to extract rubber and ivory.
• 1885 Daimler and Maybach make it fast The Grandfather Clock and the Reitwagen Working in a garden shed in Cannstatt, Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach build a compact, vertical, high-speed petrol engine — nicknamed the Grandfather Clock for its shape — running at six hundred revolutions per minute where the Otto engines managed under two hundred. In August they bolt it to a wooden two-wheeler, the Reitwagen, and create the motorcycle. Speed, not size, is what makes the engine portable.