1883
Krakatoa Erupts
The volcanic island of Krakatoa in the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra exploded with the force of thirteen thousand Hiroshima bombs. The sound was heard three thousand miles away in Rodrigues Island. Tsunamis killed thirty-six thousand people. Sunsets turned blood-red around the world for a year. The telegraph carried the news in hours - the first global disaster.
Brooklyn Bridge Opens
After fourteen years of construction that had killed the designer and crippled his son and successor, the East River was spanned by the longest suspension bridge in the world. Twenty-one elephants from Barnum's circus walked across it to prove it safe. New York and Brooklyn, soon to merge, had been physically sewn together.
Orient Express Runs
Georges Nagelmackers's Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits inaugurated a through service from Paris to Constantinople in gilded sleeping cars. Diplomats, spies, demimondaines, and Agatha Christie's future victims boarded at the Gare de l'Est. For thirty-five years the train would be the glamorous spinal cord of Europe. It crossed seven borders and four time zones, serving five-course dinners while the Balkans slid past the curtained windows.
Pendleton Civil Service Act
In the wake of Garfield's assassination by a disgruntled office-seeker, Congress passed a civil service reform that required many federal jobs to be filled by competitive examination. It was modest - only a tenth of jobs initially - but it began the professional, non-patronage federal workforce of the twentieth century.