"The balance of power has been entirely destroyed."
--Benjamin Disraeli, on the founding of the Second German Empire

Born in 1871

• In New Zealand, physicist Ernest Rutherford
• Rosa Luxemburg, German socialist leader
• French author and playwright Marcel Proust
• John Millington Synge, Irish author and playwright
• Stephen Crane, American reporter and novelist
• Emily Carr, Canadian artist and diarist
• Florence Sabin, American medical researcher and feminist
• François Grignard, French chemist and Nobel Laureate
• Theodore Dreiser, American novelist
• Swedish composer and pianist Vilhelm Eugene Stenhammar

Died in 1871

• Charles Babbage, English inventor and mad scientist
• Paul Kane, Canadian painter
• Imam Shamil, Chechen warlord known as the Lion of Dagestan
• English teacher and mathematician Augustus De Morgan
• Baron József Eötvös, Hungarian writer and reformer
• Charles Forbes René, French theologian and author
• Texan independence leader José Antonio Navarro
• Lovisa of Nederländerna, Queen of Sweden and wife of Karl XV
• Piano maker Henry Steinway (né Steinweg).
• Sir William Harcourt, English parliamentarian and scientist

Events of 1871

• The Franco-Prussian war ends in a solid Prussian victory
  • Germany is united under the reign of Kaiser Wilhelm I
  • Otto von Bismarck, architect of the union, becomes Chancellor
  • Berlin becomes the capital of the Second Reich
  • In Germany the Mark, made up of 100 pfennig, is established as the sole currency of the realm
  • Napoleon III is deposed
  • The radicals of the Paris Commune take control of the city
  • The Third Republic of France becomes reality
• Brazil commences the emancipation of slaves. Children born to slave mothers from this year onward are born free.
• Chief Joseph succeeds his father as leader of the Nez Perce.
• The kingdom of Viti is proclaimed in Fiji as a British protectorate.
• Lewis Carroll publishes Through the Looking Glass.
• Union officers William C. Church and George Wingate found the NRA to "promote and encourage rifle shooting on a scientific basis."
• 18000 buildings are destroyed in the great Chicago Fire of October 8; 300 people die.
• The Peshtigo fire in Wisconsin breaks out on the same day. It claims five times as many victims but is overshadowed by the Chicago fire in the news and history books.
• The chain of fires around Lake Michigan also devastates Holland. The same year railroad arrives in town, connecting it with efficient transportation to the outside world and preparing it for its future role as networked geek capital of the world.
• The first volunteer firefighting unit is assembled in Los Angeles.
• P.T. Barnum's "Greatest Show on Earth" opens in Brooklyn.
• The administration of Emperor Meiji includes the wealthy zaibatsu families in the nobility of Japan and the country is redistricted into ken (prefectures).
• British Columbia joins the Canadian Confederation.
• Trade unions become legal in Great Britain.
• Giuseppe Verdi's Aida premieres in Cairo.
• United States: The Indian Appropriation Act is passed, eliminating the pretence of tribal sovereignty and effectively nullifying all treaties.
• Ernst Hoppe-Seyler discovers the enzyme invertase.
• The halftone process is invented, making the printing of pictures in newspapers possible.
• The Italian parliament passes the Law of Guarantees over the objections of Pius IX, annexing the territory of the Papal States as part of the united Italy.
• Ujiji, Africa (modern Tanzania): Henry Stanley finds Dr. Livingstone, or so he presumes.
• The Jubilee Singers of Fisk University go on their first tour.
• The innerspring mattress is invented. It combines a padded base and coil springs. A German gentleman by the name of Heinrich Westphal is credited with its invention but never saw a cent in royalties.
• The British House of Commons narrowly vote down a bill to introduce the metric system. It would be over a century before more headway was made.
• Australia and Europe are linked by telegraph.
• The United States launch their first amphibious martial escapade in Asia in the First Korean War
• 21-year-old Robert Louis Stevenson tells his father he is abandoning a career in engineering for writing.
• Dmitri Mendeleev devises the Periodic Table of Elements and predicts the existence of several undiscovered elements.
• Charles Darwin publishes The Descent of Man.

1870 - 1871 - 1872

How They Were Made - 19th Century