The World in 1891

Here's some perspective on the world at the time of Robert Horace Walpole's 1891 appeal of a ruling in favor of Valerie Wiedemann, a decision that was overturned in the Court of Appeal. I'd meantl to post this before leaving town for Christmas and simply forgot. Here it is…

Deaths in 1891 included author Herman Melville, painter Georges Seurat, U.S. General William Tecumseh Sherman, poet Arthur Rimbaud, and Circus magnate P.T. Barnum.

Notable 1891 births included author Zora Neale Thurston, U.S. Chief Justice Earl Warren, painter Max Ernst, composer Sergei Prokofiev, songwriter Cole Porter, wrestler Man Mountain Dean, Field Marshall Erwin Rommel, author Henry Miller, and the last verified living person born in 1891, Emiliano Mercado del Toro.

Events that occurred in 1891 included New Scotland Yard being named HQ of the London Metropolitan Police, James Naismith inventing basketball, the founding of Philadelphia's Drexel University and California's Stanford University, Maria Skłodowska [later Curie] entering the Sorbonne, Eugène Dubois discovering Java Man, John Heath scoring the first penalty kick awarded in a football [soccer] match, Liliuokalani being proclaimed queen of Hawaii, Thomas Edison displaying his prototype kinetoscope, Carnegie Hall opening in New York City with a concert conducted by maestro Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky [pictured, above left, in 1891], Nikola Tesla inventing the Tesla coil, and a New Orleans mob storming the Old Parish Prison and lynching 11 Italians arrested but found innocent of the murder of Police Chief David Hennessy.

In the world of art, Henri Matisse began his studies at Académie Julian, Claude Monet completed his Poplar Series [pictured, right] and began his Haystack Series, Paul Gauguin painted Femmes de Tahiti, ou Sur la plage [below, left], and the work of the Pre-Raphaelites was in bloom.

In music, Brahms debuted Clarinet Quintet in B Minor, Opus 115, a fourteen-year-old Pablo Casals performed a solo cello recital in Barcelona, the Chicago Symhony Orchestra first performed, and Henry J. Sayers wrote the words and music of "Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay".

The U.K.'s Strand Magazine debuted a new character, Sherlock Holmes, by Arthur Conan Doyle.

Also published during 1891 were Ambrose Bierce's An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Grey, and Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles, and a single performance of the controversial play Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen was performed at the Royalty Theatre in London to avoid censorship.

In the U.S., the Wrigley Company was founded in Chicago. Abroad, the Paris-London telephone system was opened, fees for primary schooling in the U.K. were abolished, and the Great Blizzard of 1891 sunk 14 ships and killed 220 in South and West England.