1893

Events in 1893 51

• 1817 – 1893 Benjamin Jowett (1817-1893) Died 1 October 1893, aged 76 British classical scholar and theologian who served as Master of Balliol College, Oxford. He is best remembered for his influential English translations of Plato's dialogues.
• 1818 – 1893 Charles Gounod (1818-1893) Died 18 October 1893, aged 75 French composer best known for the opera "Faust" and the widely performed setting of "Ave Maria." He died at Saint-Cloud, near Paris.
• 1820 – 1893 John Tyndall (1820-1893) Died 4 December 1893, aged 73 Irish-born British physicist known for explaining why the sky is blue, a phenomenon named the Tyndall effect. He died from an accidental overdose of chloral hydrate administered by his wife.
• 1822 – 1893 Rutherford B. Hayes 19th President — ended Reconstruction Rutherford B. Hayes (Oct 4, 1822 – Jan 17, 1893) was the 19th President 1877-1881. His disputed election of 1876 was resolved by a congressional commission. He ended Reconstruction by withdrawing federal troops from the South.
• 1825 – 1893 Jean-Martin Charcot (1825-1893) Died 16 August 1893, aged 67 French neurologist regarded as a founder of modern neurology, known for his work on hysteria and multiple sclerosis at the Salpetriere hospital. His teaching influenced a young Sigmund Freud.
• 1830 – 1893 James G. Blaine (1830-1893) Died 27 January 1893, aged 62 American statesman who served as U.S. Secretary of State and Speaker of the House of Representatives, and was the Republican presidential nominee in 1884. He was one of the most prominent political figures of the Gilded Age.
• 1840 – 1893 Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Russian Romantic composer Russian composer whose Swan Lake, Nutcracker, Sleeping Beauty ballets and 1812 Overture are among the most beloved works in classical music.
• 1850 – 1893 Guy de Maupassant French writer Maupassant mastered the short story form with realistic depictions of human nature and society.
• 1893 – 1943 Chaïm Soutine (1893-1943) Died 9 August 1943, aged 50 Chaïm Soutine was a Belarusian-born French painter of the School of Paris, known for his distorted, intensely coloured Expressionist works. As a Jew he spent the German occupation in hiding. He died in Paris after surgery for a perforated ulcer.
• 1893 – 1943 Conrad Veidt (1893-1943) Died 3 April 1943, aged 50 Conrad Veidt was a German actor who starred in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and The Man Who Laughs. He left Germany after the Nazis came to power and worked in Britain and Hollywood. His last famous role was Major Strasser in Casablanca.
• 1893 – 1971 Dean Acheson (1893-1971) Died 12 October 1971, aged 78 Dean Acheson served as US Secretary of State under President Harry Truman, helping to design the Marshall Plan, NATO, and the broader containment strategy of the early Cold War. He remained an influential foreign policy advisor to later presidents. His memoir Present at the Creation won the Pulitzer Prize.
• 1893 – 1957 Dorothy L. Sayers (1893-1957) Died 17 December 1957, aged 64 English author and translator best known for her Lord Peter Wimsey detective novels. She was also a noted scholar of medieval literature and translated Dante's Divine Comedy.
• 1893 – 1967 Dorothy Parker (1893-1967) Died 7 June 1967, aged 73 The American writer and critic was celebrated for her caustic wit as a founding member of the Algonquin Round Table. She died of a heart attack in New York City.
• 1893 – 1973 Edward G. Robinson (1893-1973) Died 26 January 1973, aged 79 Romanian-born American actor Edward G. Robinson, famed for gangster roles including Little Caesar, died in Los Angeles shortly after being awarded an honorary Academy Award. He was one of the defining stars of early Hollywood sound cinema.
• 1893 – 1939 Ernst Toller (1893-1939) Died 22 May 1939, aged 45 Toller was a German Expressionist playwright and a leader of the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic of 1919. He went into exile after the Nazis came to power. He took his own life in New York.
• 1893 – 1932 Farabundo Martí (1893-1932) Died 1 February 1932, aged 38 The Salvadoran communist leader was executed by firing squad after the failed uprising of January 1932. El Salvador's FMLN later took his name.
• 1893 – 1947 Hans Fallada (1893-1947) Died 5 February 1947, aged 53 Hans Fallada was a German novelist known for Little Man, What Now? and Every Man Dies Alone. His work described ordinary Germans during the Weimar and Nazi eras. He died in Berlin shortly before his final novel was published.
• 1893 – 1971 Harold Lloyd (1893-1971) Died 8 March 1971, aged 77 Harold Lloyd was one of the most popular and prolific stars of silent-era comedy, known for death-defying physical stunts such as hanging from a clock face in Safety Last!. He rivaled Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton in box-office popularity during the 1920s. He later became a philanthropist and photography enthusiast.
• 1893 – 1952 Hattie McDaniel (1893-1952) Died 26 October 1952, aged 59 Hattie McDaniel, the actress and singer who became the first African American to win an Academy Award for her role in Gone with the Wind, died of breast cancer on 26 October 1952 in Los Angeles. She had built a career on stage, radio and screen despite the constraints of the era's racial segregation. Her Oscar win in 1940 remained a landmark for Black performers in Hollywood.
• 1893 – 1946 Hermann Goering (1893-1946) Died 15 October 1946, aged 53 Goering was Adolf Hitler's designated successor and commander of the Luftwaffe, convicted at Nuremberg of war crimes and crimes against humanity. He took a smuggled cyanide capsule in his cell hours before his scheduled execution.
• 1893 – 1935 Huey Long (1893-1935) Died 10 September 1935, aged 42 The populist Louisiana senator and former governor was shot in the Louisiana State Capitol on 8 September and died two days later. His Share Our Wealth programme had made him a likely challenger to Roosevelt.
• 1893 – 1936 José Calvo Sotelo (1893-1936) Died 13 July 1936, aged 43 José Calvo Sotelo was a Spanish monarchist politician and former finance minister. He led the parliamentary right in 1936. He was murdered by members of the Republican security forces, and his killing helped trigger the military uprising days later.
• 1893 – 1947 Karl Mannheim (1893-1947) Died 9 January 1947, aged 53 Karl Mannheim was a Hungarian-born sociologist and a founder of the sociology of knowledge. His best-known work is Ideology and Utopia. He taught at the London School of Economics after fleeing Nazi Germany.
• 1893 – 1943 Leslie Howard (1893-1943) Died 1 June 1943, aged 50 Leslie Howard was an English actor and director known for Gone with the Wind, Pygmalion and The Scarlet Pimpernel. German fighters shot down his civilian airliner, BOAC Flight 777, over the Bay of Biscay while he was flying home from Lisbon. Everyone on board was killed.
• 1893 – 1933 Mykola Khvylovy (1893-1933) Died 13 May 1933, aged 39 Leading Ukrainian writer of the 1920s who called for Ukrainian culture to turn towards Europe rather than Moscow. He killed himself in Kharkiv during the famine and the crackdown on Ukrainian intellectuals.
• 1893 – 1964 Palmiro Togliatti (1893-1964) Died 21 August 1964, aged 71 Togliatti led the Italian Communist Party for nearly four decades, building it into the largest communist party in Western Europe. He died while visiting the Soviet Union, and the city of Tolyatti was later named in his honour.
• 1893 – present PepsiCo From a North Carolina pharmacy to a global food and drink empire PepsiCo traces its roots to 1893 when pharmacist Caleb Bradham invented "Brad's Drink" in New Bern, North Carolina. Renamed Pepsi-Cola in 1898, the brand became one of the most recognised in the world. After merging with Frito-Lay in 1965, PepsiCo grew into a global food and beverage giant operating in over 200 countries.
• 1893 – 1930 Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893-1930) Died 14 April 1930, aged 36 Russian Futurist poet and playwright who became the leading poetic voice of the early Soviet state. His works include The Bedbug and The Bathhouse. He died by suicide in Moscow.
• 1893 – 1918 Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) Died 4 November 1918, aged 25 English war poet Wilfred Owen was killed in action crossing the Sambre-Oise Canal in France, exactly one week before the Armistice ended World War I. His poems, including Dulce et Decorum Est and Anthem for Doomed Youth, portrayed the horror of trench warfare with unflinching realism. Most of his work was published posthumously and became central to the canon of war literature.
• 1893 Independent Labour Party founded Keir Hardie leads new British socialist party Delegates meeting in Bradford, England, founded the Independent Labour Party to represent working-class interests in Parliament. Keir Hardie was elected its first chairman, and the party later became a founding element of the Labour Party.
• 1893 Overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii Queen Liliuokalani deposed by American-backed committee A group of American and European businessmen, supported by the U.S. minister to Hawaii and armed U.S. Marines, overthrew Queen Liliuokalani and established a Provisional Government. The coup ended the Hawaiian monarchy and set the stage for the Republic of Hawaii and later U.S. annexation.
• 1893 – 1980 Jimmy Durante (1893-1980) Died 29 January 1980, aged 86 American entertainer, singer, and comedian famous for his distinctive gravelly voice and large nose, which he nicknamed "the Schnozzola." He built a decades-long career across vaudeville, radio, film, and television. His signature sign-off phrases became part of American pop culture.
• 1893 – 1981 Omar Bradley (1893-1981) Died 8 April 1981, aged 88 American general Omar Bradley, who commanded US ground forces in the invasion of Normandy and later served as the first Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, died in New York on 8 April 1981. He was the last surviving five-star general of the US Army. He was widely known as "the soldier's general" for his reputation among enlisted troops.
• 1893 – 1987 Andres Segovia (1893-1987) Died 2 June 1987, aged 94 Segovia was a Spanish virtuoso guitarist widely credited with establishing the classical guitar as a respected concert instrument. He inspired composers to write new works for the guitar and trained generations of players. He died in Madrid.
• 1893 Rudolf Diesel patents the diesel engine German patent granted for a new compression-ignition engine Rudolf Diesel received a German patent for his compression-ignition internal combustion engine. The design proved far more fuel-efficient than existing steam and gasoline engines and later transformed shipping, rail, and heavy industry.
• 1893 Grover Cleveland begins second presidential term Only U.S. president to serve non-consecutive terms Grover Cleveland was inaugurated as the 24th President of the United States, having previously served as the 22nd. He remains the only U.S. president to serve two non-consecutive terms.
• 1893 – 1983 Joan Miro (1893-1983) Died 25 December 1983, aged 90 Joan Miro was a Spanish painter and sculptor associated with Surrealism, known for his distinctive style of abstract, biomorphic shapes and bold color. His work spanned painting, sculpture, and ceramics over a career of more than six decades. He is considered one of the twentieth century's most important artists.
• 1893 – 1981 Harold Urey (1893-1981) Died 5 January 1981, aged 87 American chemist Harold Urey, who won the 1934 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for discovering deuterium, died in La Jolla, California, on 5 January 1981. He also contributed to the Manhattan Project and later pioneered research into the chemical origins of life. His work with student Stanley Miller produced the influential Miller-Urey experiment.
• 1893 World's Columbian Exposition opens in Chicago World's fair marking Columbus's arrival in the Americas The fair opened on May 1, 1893, on Chicago's South Side, drawing over 27 million visitors before closing that October. It introduced the first Ferris wheel, built by George Ferris, and showcased new technologies including alternating-current electric lighting.
• 1893 Panic of 1893 Stock market crash triggers severe U.S. depression A wave of railroad bankruptcies and bank failures culminated in a stock market crash in early May 1893, including the collapse of the National Cordage Company. The resulting depression brought widespread unemployment and business failures across the United States for several years.
• 1893 Franco-Siamese crisis French gunboats force the Chao Phraya, Siam cedes Laotian territory French warships forced their way past Siamese forts at Paknam to anchor off Bangkok, prompting a naval blockade and diplomatic standoff. Siam ultimately signed a treaty on October 3, 1893, ceding its claims to territory east of the Mekong River to France.
• 1893 Corinth Canal opens Sea-level canal cuts across the Isthmus of Corinth The Corinth Canal opened to shipping, connecting the Gulf of Corinth with the Saronic Gulf and separating the Peloponnese from mainland Greece. Construction had taken over a decade to complete.
• 1893 – 1980 Mae West (1893-1980) Died 22 November 1980, aged 87 American actress, playwright, and screenwriter known for her bawdy humor and sexually forward persona in an era of strict censorship. She was one of the most popular Hollywood stars of the 1930s. Her wit and double entendres influenced generations of comedians.
• 1893 Second Irish Home Rule Bill defeated Passed the Commons, rejected by the House of Lords William Gladstone's bill to grant Ireland domestic self-government passed the House of Commons on September 1, 1893. The House of Lords rejected it by an overwhelming margin a week later, ending the effort until the next home rule bill in 1912.
• 1893 New Zealand grants women the vote Electoral Act 1893 receives royal assent New Zealand became the first self-governing country in the world to grant women the right to vote in parliamentary elections. The Electoral Act 1893 followed years of campaigning led by Kate Sheppard and the Women's Christian Temperance Union. Women voted for the first time in the general election that November.
• 1893 First Matabele War begins British South Africa Company forces invade Matabeleland Forces of Cecil Rhodes's British South Africa Company invaded the Ndebele Kingdom under King Lobengula in present-day Zimbabwe. Superior firepower, including Maxim guns, gave the Company a decisive advantage, and fighting continued into early 1894 with the conquest of Matabeleland.
• 1893 – 1993 Lillian Gish (1893-1993) Died 27 February 1993, aged 99 Lillian Gish was a pioneering actress of American silent cinema, celebrated for her roles in D.W. Griffith films including "Birth of a Nation" and "Broken Blossoms." Her career spanned over 75 years, from the earliest days of film through television in the 1980s. She died in New York City.
• 1893 Durand Line agreement signed Britain and Afghanistan fix their shared frontier Sir Mortimer Durand and Amir Abdur Rahman Khan signed an agreement establishing the boundary between British India and Afghanistan. The Durand Line remains the disputed border between Afghanistan and Pakistan today.
• 1893 Sherlock Holmes killed off in "The Final Problem" Arthur Conan Doyle ends his detective series at Reichenbach Falls Arthur Conan Doyle published "The Final Problem" in The Strand Magazine, depicting Sherlock Holmes apparently dying in a struggle with Professor Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls. Public outcry over Holmes's death eventually led Conan Doyle to revive the character years later.
• 1893 Dvorak's "New World" Symphony premieres Symphony No. 9 debuts at Carnegie Hall Antonin Dvorak's Symphony No. 9, "From the New World," premiered in New York under conductor Anton Seidl. Composed during Dvorak's stay in the United States, it drew on African American spirituals and Native American melodies and became one of the most performed symphonies ever written.
• 1893 – 1976 Mao Zedong (1893-1976) Died 9 September 1976, aged 82 Mao Zedong, the founding leader of the People's Republic of China and Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, died in Beijing. He had led China through the Communist revolution, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, shaping the country for nearly three decades. His death was followed within weeks by the arrest of the Gang of Four and the end of the Cultural Revolution.