1890s

The 1890s were sometimes referred to as the "Gay Nineties", under the then-current usage of the word "gay" which referred simply to merriment and frivolity, with no connotation of homosexuality as in current-day usage.

Events and trends

Technology

• Early commercial production of automobiles.

Science

• Henri Becquerel discovers radioactivity
• Discovery of x-rays by Wilhelm Röntgen
• Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius and US geologist Thomas Crowder Chamberlain independently come to the conclusion that burning fossil fuels might cause global warming due to carbon dioxide emissions

War, peace and politics

• Second Boer War
• Spanish-American War
• Split in Irish nationalism over Irish leader Charles Stewart Parnell's affair with a fellow MP's wife, Kitty O'Shea
• The New Imperialism

Culture, religion

• Motion pictures
• Ragtime music
• Accession of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia in the world's first ever filmed coronation
• Lynchings of African Americans in the United States averaged 150 per year.

Others

People

World Leaders

• Prime Minister John Sparrow David Thompson (Canada)
• Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier (Canada)
• Emperor Franz Josef (Austria-Hungary)
• Kaiser Wilhelm II (Germany)
• Chancellor Leo von Caprivi (Germany)
• King Umberto I (Italy)
• Pope Leo XIII
• Czar Alexander III (Russia)
• Czar Nicholas II (Russia)
• Queen Victoria (United Kingdom)
• Prime Minister Lord Salisbury (United Kingdom)
• Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone (United Kingdom)
• Prime Minister Lord Rosebery (United Kingdom)
• President Benjamin Harrison (United States)
• President Grover Cleveland (United States)
• President William McKinley (United States)

Important People

• Thomas A. Edison

Entertainers

• Adelina Patti
• George W. Johnson
• Justin Smith
• Jonathan Booth

Books about the 1890s

• The Mauve Decade , by Thomas Beer (1926)

See Also

Gay Nineties