WHAT ALL HAPPENED JANUARY TO AUGUST 1888
Find out what all happened January to August 1888

The National Geographic Society is founded in Washington, D.C. (27. January 1888)

An audio recording of English composer Arthur Sullivan's "The Lost Chord", one of the first recordings of music ever made, is played during a press conference introducing Thomas Edison's phonograph in London, England. (14. August 1888)

Bertha Benz drives from Mannheim to Pforzheim and back in the first long distance automobile trip, commemorated as the Bertha Benz Memorial Route since 2008. (5. August 1888)

The refracting telescope at the Lick Observatory, measuring 91 cm in diameter, is used for the first time. It was the largest telescope in the world at the time. (3. January 1888)

The first successful adding machine in the United States is patented by William Seward Burroughs. (21. August 1888)

Mary Ann Nichols is murdered. She is the first of Jack the Ripper's confirmed victims. (31. August 1888)

With the passage of the Lei Áurea ("Golden Law"), Brazil abolishes slavery. (13. May 1888)

The premiere of the very first Romani language operetta is staged in Moscow, Russia. (20. March 1888)

Thomas Green Clemson dies, bequeathing his estate to the State of South Carolina to establish Clemson Agricultural College. (6. April 1888)

The Rio de la Plata Earthquake takes place. (5. June 1888)

In England, The Football League, the world's oldest professional Association Football league, meets for the first time. (23. March 1888)

The Concertgebouw in Amsterdam is inaugurated. (11. April 1888)

The stratovolcano Mount Bandai erupts killing approximately 500 people, in Fukushima Prefecture, Japan. (15. July 1888)

The first of 11 unsolved brutal murders of women committed in or near the impoverished Whitechapel district in the East End of London, occurs. (3. April 1888)

The poem "Casey at the Bat", by Ernest Lawrence Thayer, is published in the San Francisco Examiner. (3. June 1888)

Start of the Anglo-Tibetan War of 1888. (15. March 1888)

Crown Prince Wilhelm becomes Kaiser Wilhelm II; he will be the last Emperor of the German Empire. Due to the death of his predecessors Wilhelm I and Frederick III, 1888 is the Year of the Three Emperors. (15. June 1888)

George Edward Gouraud records Handel's Israel in Egypt onto a phonograph cylinder, thought for many years to be the oldest known recording of music. (29. June 1888)

Nikola Tesla delivers a lecture describing the equipment which will allow efficient generation and use of alternating currents to transmit electric power over long distances. (16. May 1888)

The Great Blizzard of 1888 begins along the eastern seaboard of the United States, shutting down commerce and killing more than 400. (11. March 1888)