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Development and commercial production of electric lighting

Development and commercial production of gasoline-powered automobile by Karl Benz, Gottlieb Daimler and Maybach

First commercial production and sales of phonographs and phonograph recordings.

First steel frame construction "sky-scrapers"

American Society of Mechanical Engineers founded 16 February 1880, New York, N.Y.

Construction begins on the Panama Canal by the French. This is the first attempt to build the Canal.

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Heinrich Hertz discovers the photoelectric effect

Michelson-Morley experiment, showing that the speed of light is invariant

James-Lange theory of emotion

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First Boer War

The New Imperialism

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Mark Twain publishes The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Feodor Dostoevsky writes The Brothers Karamazov.

Robert Louis Stevenson publishes Treasure Island and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

First edition of Oxford English Dictionary published.

Arthur Conan Doyle publishes his first Sherlock Holmes tale.

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Krakatoa, a volcano in Indonesia, erupts cataclysmically; 36,000 people are killed, the majority by the resulting tsunami

About 300,000 Swedes emigrate to the United States

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Emperor Franz Josef (Austria-Hungary)

Prime Min Sir John A. Macdonald (Canada)

Guangxu Emperor (China)

Emperor Wilhelm I (German Empire)

Emperor Wilhelm II (German Empire)

Chancellor Otto von Bismarck (German Empire)

King Umberto I (Italy)

Pope Leo XIII

Emperor Meiji (Japan)

General Porfirio Díaz (Mexico)

Czar Alexander II (Russia)

King Alfonso XII (Spain)

Queen - Empress Victoria (United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland)

Prime Min William Ewart Gladstone (United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland)

Prime Min Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland)

President Rutherford B. Hayes (United States)

President Chester A. Arthur (United States)

President Grover Cleveland (United States)

Nasser-al-Din Shah of Qajar dynasty (Persia)

King Booker