1883 (MDCCCLXXXIII) was a common year starting on Monday (see link for calendar).

Events

• January 10 - A fire at the Newhall Hotel in Milwaukee kills 71
• 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 (Roselle, New Jersey) It was built by Thomas Edison.
• February 16 - 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 - An Australian Catholic school, Star of the Sea College is founded in Elsternwick, Victoria (now known as Gardenstown) by the Irish Presentation Sisters.
• 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 was going to collapse causes a stampede which crushes twelve people.
• June 30 - First appearance of The Black Arrow by Robert Louis Stevenson as a serial in Young Folks; A Boys' and Girls' Paper of Instructive and Entertaining Literature. Stevenson would complete the novel at the end of summer in France.
• July 3 - SS Daphne disaster in Glasgow leaves 124 dead.
• July 4 - Worlds first rodeo held in Pecos, TX.
• July 22 – Zulu king Cetshwayo barely escapes 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 - Krakatau volcano eruption (local time)- 163 villages destroyed, 36380 dead.
• September 15 - The Bombay Natural History Society is founded.
• September 29 - A consortium of flour mill operators in Minneapolis, Minnesota form 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, Illinois.
• October 1 - Sydney Boys High School is founded in Sydney, Australia. It is the first boys public school in Australia.
• October 4 - The Boys' Brigade is founded in Glasgow, Scotland. It is the first Uniformed Youth Organisation in existence.
• October 4 - 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 it allowed individuals and corporations to discriminate based on race.
• October 20 - Peru and Chile signed the Treaty of Ancón, by which the Tarapacá province was ceded to the latter, bringing an end to Peru's involvement in the War of the Pacific.
• October 30 - Two Clan na Gael dynamite bombs explode in the London underground, injuring several people. Next day Home Secretary Vernon Harcourt drafts 300 policemen to guard the underground and introduces the Explosives Bill. Public continues as before.
• November 1 - Amsterdam: The first international colonial and export exhibition closed having had over 1 million visitors.
• November 3 - American Old West: Self-described "Black Bart the Po-8" gets away with his last stagecoach robbery, but leaves an incriminating clue that eventually leads to his capture.
• November 18 - US and Canadian railroads institute five standard continental time zones, ending the confusion of thousands of local times.
• November 28 - Whitman College is chartered as a four-year college in Walla Walla, Washington.

Unknown date

• Heinrich Hermann Robert Koch (German.bacteriologist) discovers the cholera bacillus.
• Antonio Gaudi begins to build Sagrada Familia cathedral.
• Fabian Society founded.
• University of Texas at Austin is founded.
• Houghton College is founded.
• Baltimore Polytechnic Institute is founded.

Births

January-June

• January 1 - Ichirō Hatoyama, Prime Minister of Japan (d. 1959)
• January 3 - Clement Attlee, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (d. 1967)
• January 6 - Khalil Gibran, Lebanese poet, painter, and novelist (d. 1931)
• January 10 - Francis X. Bushman, American actor (d. 1966)
• January 10 - Aleksei Nikolaevich Tolstoi, Russian writer (d. 1945)
• January 20 - Bertram Ramsay, British admiral (d. 1945)
• January 21 - Olav Aukrust, Norwegian poet (d. 1929)
• February 7 - Eubie Blake, American musician and composer (d. 1983)
• February 15 - Sax Rohmer, English author (d. 1959)
• February 22 - Marguerite Clark, American silent film actress (d. 1940)
• February 23 - Karl Jaspers, German philosopher (d. 1969)
• February 23 - Victor Fleming, American film director (d. 1949)
• March 4 - Sam Langford, Canadian boxer (d. 1956)
• March 19 - Walter Haworth, British chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1950)
• March 19 - Joseph Stilwell, American soldier (d. 1946)
• April 1 - Lon Chaney, Sr., American actor (d. 1930)
• April 11 - Hozumi Shigeto, Japanese author (d. 1951)
• April 15 - Stanley Bruce, eighth Prime Minister of Australia (d. 1967)
• April 30 - Jaroslav Hašek, Czech writer (d. 1923)
• May 1 - Tom Moore, Irish actor (d. 1955)
• 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)

July-December

• July 3 - Franz Kafka, Austrian writer (d. 1924)
• July 3 - Shafiqah Shasha, Lebanese-Australian Matriarch (d. 1953)
• July 4 - Rube Goldberg, American cartoonist (d. 1970)
• July 29 - Porfirio Barba-Jacob, Colombian writer (d. 1942)
• July 29 - Benito Mussolini, dictator of Italy (d. 1945)
• 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 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 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)
• December 3 - Anton Webern, Austrian composer (d. 1945)
• December 13 - Belle da Costa Greene, librarian, bibliographer, archivist (d. 1950)
• December 16 ? Max Linder, French actor (d. 1925)
• December 22 - Edgard Varèse, French composer (d. 1965)
• December 25 - Maurice Utrillo, French artist and illustrator (d. 1955)

Unknown date

• Alberto Gerchunoff, Argentine writer (d. 1949)
• St. John Greer Ervine, Northern Irish dramatist and author (d. 1971)
• Eugen Levine, Communist leader of Bavarian Soviet Republic (d. 1919)
• T. F. O'Rahilly, Irish academic (d. 1953)
• Lothrop Stoddard, American eugenicist and racist (d. 1950)

Deaths

• January 10 - Samuel Mudd, American doctor to John Wilkes Booth (b. 1833)
• 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 17 - Napoleon Coste, French guitarist and composer (b. 1806)
• February 17 - Vasudeo Balwant Phadke, Indian revolutionary (b. 1845)
• March 14 - Karl Marx, German philosopher (b. 1818)
• April 30 - Edouard Manet, French painter (b. 1832)
• May 24 - Abdel Kadir, Algerian leader (b. 1808)
• May 26 - Edward Sabine, Irish astronomer (b. 1788)
• July 22 - Edward Ord, U.S. Army officer (b. 1818)
• September 3 - Ivan Turgenev, Russian writer (b. 1818)
• October 30 - Robert Volkmann, German composer (b. 1815)
• December 13 - Victor de Laprade, French poet and critic (b. 1812)

1883

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