Events of 1883

February 16: Ladies Home Journal begins (photo 1906).

January–March

• January 10 – A fire at the Newhall Hotel in Milwaukee kills 73 people.

• January 16 – The Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act, establishing the United States civil service, is passed.

• January 19 – The first electric lighting system employing overhead wires begins service in Roselle, New Jersey (it was built by Thomas Edison).

• February 13 – The German composer Richard Wagner dies of a heart attack in Venice, Italy.

• February 16 – The Ladies Home Journal is published for the first time.

• February 23 – Alabama becomes the first U.S. state to enact an antitrust law.

• February 28 – The first vaudeville theater is opened, in Boston, Massachusetts.

• March 5 – The Gloucester City A.F.C. is formed.

April–June

May 24: Brooklyn Bridge is opened.

• April 5 – Oxygen is liquefied for the very first time.

• May 24 – Brooklyn Bridge is opened to traffic after 13 years of construction.

• May 30 – In New York City, a rumor that the Brooklyn Bridge is going to collapse causes a stampede which crushes 12 people.

• June 16 – Victoria Hall disaster: A rush for treats results in 183 children being asphyxiated in a concert hall in Sunderland, England.

• June 30 – The Black Arrow by Robert Louis Stevenson first appears as a serial in Young Folks; A Boys' and Girls' Paper of Instructive and Entertaining Literature. Stevenson completes the novel at the end of summer in France.

July–September

• July 3 – The SS Daphne disaster in Glasgow leaves 124 dead.

• July 4 – The world's first rodeo is held in Pecos, Texas.

• July 22 – Zulu King Cetshwayo barely escapes a rebel attack with his life.

• August – King William's College is opened on the Isle of Man.

• August 12 – The last quagga dies at the Artis Magistra zoo in Amsterdam.

• August 26–28 – Krakatoa or Krakatau volcano erupts at 10:02 AM (local time); 163 villages are destroyed, 36,380 killed.

• September 15

• *The Bombay Natural History Society is founded.

• *The University of Texas at Austin opens to students.

• September 29 – A consortium of flour mill operators in Minneapolis, Minnesota forms the Minneapolis, Sault Ste. Marie and Atlantic Railway as a means to get their product to the Great Lakes ports but avoid the high tariffs of Chicago.

August 26: Krakatoa volcano erupts.

October–December

• October 1 – Sydney Boys High School (the first boys public school) is founded in Sydney, Australia.

• October 4

• *The Boys' Brigade (the first uniformed youth organization in existence) is founded in Glasgow, Scotland.

• *The Orient Express begins operation.

• October 15 – The Supreme Court of the United States declares part of the Civil Rights Act of 1875 to be unconstitutional, since the Court allows private individuals and corporations to discriminate based on race.

• October 20 – Peru and Chile sign the Treaty of Ancón, by which the Tarapacá province is ceded to the latter, bringing an end to Peru's involvement in the War of the Pacific.

• October 24 – Cardiff University, Wales, opens (under the name of University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire).

• October 30- Two Clan na Gael dynamite bombs explode in the London underground, injuring several people. The next day, Home Secretary Vernon Harcourt drafts 300 policemen to guard the underground and introduces the Explosives Bill.

• November 1 – Amsterdam: The first international colonial and export exhibition closes, having had over 1 million visitors.

• November 3 – American Old West: Self-described "Black Bart the Po-et" gets away with his last stagecoach robbery, but leaves an incriminating clue that eventually leads to his capture.

• November 14 – Chile's National Library of Congress is founded.

• November 18 – U.S. and Canadian railroads institute 5 standard continental time zones, ending the confusion of thousands of local times.

• November 28 – Whitman College is chartered as a 4-year college in Walla Walla, Washington.

Undated

• The Kroger Co. founded

• The Wolf's Head Society (known as The Third Society until 1888) is founded at Yale University.

• Heinrich Hermann Robert Koch (German bacteriologist) discovers the cholera bacillus.

• Antoni Gaudí begins to build the Sagrada Família Cathedral.

• LIFE magazine is founded.

• Duncan, Arizona is founded.

• The suburb of Ingleburn, in Sydney, Australia is established.

• During construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1883, blasting and excavation reveal high concentrations of nickel–copper ore at Murray Mine on the edge of the Sudbury Basin located near Sudbury, Ontario, Canada.

• General Evelyn Baring, 1st Earl of Cromer (a British consul) starts to rule Egypt.

• Otto von Bismarck pushes through the Reichstag the first social security law.

• A depression starts in Seattle, United States.

• The British Parliament considers a major bill to allow Indian judges to try Europeans in India. The British community rises in protest and defeats the measure.

• Mexican government passes a law allowing real estate companies (controlled by general Porfirio Díaz's political cronies) to survey public and "vacant" lands and to retain 1/3 of the land they survey.

• Founding of:

• *Houghton College

• *Wagner College

• *Baltimore Polytechnic Institute

• *Footscray Football Club (now the Western Bulldogs).

• *Raith Rovers Football Club

• *The Black Arabs F.C (now Bristol Rovers)

• *Dunstable Town F.C.

Births

January–July

• January 1

• *Ichirō Hatoyama, Prime Minister of Japan (d. 1959)

• *Alberto Gerchunoff, Argentine writer (d. 1949)

• January 3 – Clement Attlee, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (d. 1967)

• January 5 – Döme Sztójay, prime minister of Hungary (d. 1946)

• January 6 – Khalil Gibran, Lebanese poet, painter, and novelist (d. 1931)

• January 10 – Florence Reed, American stage actress on Broadway (d. 1967)

• January 10 – Hubert Latham, pioneer aviator of the pre-World War I era (d. 1912)

• January 10 – Francis X. Bushman, American actor (d. 1966)

• January 10 – Aleksei Nikolaevich Tolstoi, Russian writer (d. 1945)

• January 16 – Hugh Oswald Short, British aviation pioneer and aircraft builder, youngest of the Short Brothers (d. 1969)

• January 20 – Bertram Ramsay, British admiral (d. 1945)

• January 21 – Olav Aukrust, Norwegian poet (d. 1929)

• February 9 – Fritz August Breuhaus de Groot, German architect, interior designer and designer (d. 1960)

• February 15 – Sax Rohmer, English author (d. 1959)

• February 16 – Elizabeth Craig, British writer (d. 1980)

• February 18 – Nikos Kazantzakis, Greek poet (d. 1957)

• February 22 – Marguerite Clark, American silent film actress (d. 1940)

• February 23

• *Karl Jaspers, German philosopher (d. 1969)

• March 3 – Cyril Burt, educational psychologist (d. 1971)

• March 4 – Sam Langford, Canadian boxer (d. 1956)

• March 19

• *Walter Haworth, British chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1950)

• *Joseph Stilwell, American soldier (d. 1946)

• April 1 – Lon Chaney, Sr., American actor (d. 1930)

• April 12 – Dally Messenger, Australian rugby league player (d. 1959)

• April 15 – Stanley Bruce, eighth Prime Minister of Australia (d. 1967)

• April 30 – Jaroslav Hašek, Czech writer (d. 1923)

• May 1 – Tom Moore, Irish-American actor (d. 1955)

• May 9 – José Ortega y Gasset, Spanish philosopher (d. 1955)

• May 10 – Eugen Levine, Communist leader of the Munich Soviet Republic (d. 1919)

• May 16 – Celal Bayar, Turkish politician, statesman and the third President of Turkey (d. 1986)

• May 18 – Walter Gropius, German architect (d. 1969)

• May 20 – King Faisal I of Iraq (d. 1933)

• May 23 – Douglas Fairbanks, American actor (d. 1939)

• May 31 – Lauri Kristian Relander, President of Finland (d. 1942)

• June 5 – John Maynard Keynes, English economist (d. 1946)

• June 7 – Sylvanus G. Morley, American scholar and World War I spy (d. 1948)

• June 21 – Lluís Companys i Jover, President of Catalonia (d. 1940)

• June 24 – Victor Franz Hess, Austrian-born physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1964)

• June 28 – Pierre Laval, Prime Minister of France (d. 1945)

• June 29 – Lothrop Stoddard, American eugenicist and racist (d. 1950)

July–December

• July 1 – Arthur Borton, English soldier (d. 1933)

• July 3 – Franz Kafka, Austrian writer (d. 1924)

• July 4 – Rube Goldberg, American cartoonist (d. 1970)

• July 10 – Johannes Blaskowitz, German general (d. 1948)

• July 16 – Charles Sheeler, American photographer and artist (d. 1965)

• July 19 – Max Fleischer, Austrian animator and film producer (d. 1972)

• July 25 – Alfredo Casella, Italian composer (d. 1947)

• July 26 – Edwin Balmer, American science fiction and mystery writer (d. 1959)

• July 28 – Angela Hitler, Austrian elder half-sister of Adolf Hitler (d. 1949)

• July 29 – Porfirio Barba-Jacob, Colombian writer (d. 1942)

• July 29 – Benito Mussolini, dictator of Italy (d. 1945)

• July 31 – Fred Quimby, American film producer (d. 1965)

• August 9 – Chester Gillette, American convicted of murdering his pregnant lover Grace Brown which became famous court case (d. 1908by execution)+-

• August 12 – Pauline Frederick, stage & screen actress, (d. 1938)

• August 19 – Coco Chanel, French stylist (d. 1971)

• August 19 – Elsie Ferguson, American actress (d. 1961)

• August 23 – Jesse Pennington, English footballer (d. 1970)

• August 23 – Jonathan Mayhew Wainwright IV, American general (d. 1953)

• August 30 – Theo van Doesburg, Dutch artist, painter, architect, and poet (d. 1931)

• September 14 – Gadicharla Harisarvothama Rao, one of the foremost freedom fighters of India

• September 15 – Esteban Terradas i Illa, Catalan mathematician, scientist, and engineer (d. 1950)

• October 8 – Otto Heinrich Warburg, German physician and physiologist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1970)

• October 26 – Paul Pilgrim, American athlete (d. 1958)

• November 4 – Nikolaos Plastiras, Greek general and politician (d. 1953)

• November 8 – Arnold Bax, English composer (d. 1953)

• November 9 – Edna May Oliver, stage & film character actress (d. 1942)

• November 11 – Ernest Ansermet, Swiss conductor (d. 1969)

• November 18 – Carl Vinson, U.S. Congressman (d. 1981)

• November 25 – Harvey Spencer Lewis, American Rosicrucian mystic (d. 1939)

• November 25 – Merrill C. Meigs, American newspaper publisher and aviation promoter (d. 1968)

• November 25 – Percy Marmont, British stage & screen actor (d. 1977)

• December 3 – Anton Webern, Austrian composer (d. 1945)

• December 13 – Belle da Costa Greene, librarian, bibliographer, archivist (d. 1950)

• December 14 – Morihei Ueshiba, founder of the martial art Style Aikido (d. 1969)

• December 16 – David Powell, Scottish-American stage and film actor (d. 1925)

• December 16 – Max Linder, French actor (d. 1925)

• December 17 – Raimu, French actor (d. 1946)

• December 22 – Edgard Varèse, French composer (d. 1965)

• December 26 – Maurice Utrillo, French artist and illustrator (d. 1955)

• probable – T. F. O'Rahilly, Irish academic (d. 1953)

• December 29 – Forrest Taylor, American stage, film and television actor (d. 1965)

Unknown date

• Lotte Herrlich, regarded as the most important female photographer of the German naturism.

Deaths

January–June

• January 10

• *Samuel Mudd, American doctor to John Wilkes Booth (b. 1833)

• *Elling Eielsen, Norwegian Lutheran leader (b. 1804)

• January 23 – Gustave Doré, French artist (b. 1832)

• January 24 – Friedrich von Flotow, German composer (b. 1812)

• February 13 – Richard Wagner, German composer (b. 1813)

• February 15 – Prince Kwacho Hiroatsu of Japan (b. 1875)

• February 17

• *Napoleon Coste, French guitarist and composer (b. 1806)

• *Vasudeo Balwant Phadke, Indian revolutionary (b. 1845)

• March 14 – Karl Marx, German communist philosopher (b. 1818)

• March 20 – Charles Lasègue, French physician (b. 1816)

• March 21 – Grigol Orbeliani, Georgian poet and soldier (b. 1804)

• April 4 – Peter Cooper, American industrialist, inventor and philanthropist (b. 1791)

• April 16 – Charles II, Duke of Parma (b. 1799)

• April 26 – Napoleon Orda, Belarussian composer and artist (b. 1807)

• April 30 – Edouard Manet, French painter (b. 1832)

• May 15 – Keelikolani, princess of Hawaii (b. 1826)

• May 26

• *Abdel Kadir, Algerian leader (b. 1808)

• *Edward Sabine, Irish astronomer (b. 1788)

• June 20 – John William Colenso, Bishop of Natal (b. 1814)

July–December

• July 15 – General Tom Thumb, circus midget (b. 1838)

• July 22 – Edward Ord, U.S. Army officer (b. 1818)

• July 27 – Montgomery Blair, American politician (b. 1813)

• August 24 – Henri, comte de Chambord, pretender to the French throne (b. 1820)

• September 3 – Ivan Turgenev, Russian writer (b. 1818)

• October 5 – Joachim Barrande, French palaeontologist (b. 1799)

• October 22 – Thomas Mayne Reid, Irish-American novelist (b. 1818)

• October 30 – Robert Volkmann, German composer (b. 1815)

• December 13 – Victor de Laprade, French poet and critic (b. 1812)