1879January 1 – The Specie Resumption Act takes effect. The United States Note is valued the same as gold, for the first time since the American Civil War. January 11 – The Anglo-Zulu War begins. January 22 – Anglo-Zulu War – Battle of Isandlwana: A force of 1,200 British soldiers is wiped out by over 20,000 Zulu warriors. January 23 – Anglo-Zulu War – Battle of Rorke's Drift: Following the previous day's defeat, a smaller British force of 140 successfully repels an attack by 4,000 Zulus.
1892In Samoa, this was the only leap year spanned to 367 days as July 4 repeated. This means that the International Date Line was drawn from the east of the country to go west. January 1 – Ellis Island begins accommodating immigrants to the United States. February 1 – The historic Enterprise Bar and Grill is established in Rico, Colorado. February 27 – Rudolf Diesel applies for a patent, on his compression ignition engine (the Diesel engine). February 29 – St. Petersburg, Florida is incorporated as a town.
1894January 4 – A military alliance is established between the French Third Republic and the Russian Empire. January 7 – William Kennedy Dickson receives a patent for motion picture film in the United States. January 9 – New England Telephone and Telegraph installs the first battery-operated telephone switchboard, in Lexington, Massachusetts. February 12 French anarchist Émile Henry sets off a bomb in a Paris café, killing one person and wounding twenty.
1895January 5 – Dreyfus affair: French officer Alfred Dreyfus is stripped of his army rank, and sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil's Island. January 12 – The National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty is founded in England by Octavia Hill, Robert Hunter and Canon Hardwicke Rawnsley. January 13 – First Italo-Ethiopian War: Battle of Coatit – Italian forces defeat the Ethiopians. January 17 – Félix Faure is elected President of the French Republic, after the resignation of Jean Casimir-Perier.
1888In Germany, 1888 is known as the Year of the Three Emperors. Currently, it is the year that, when written in Roman numerals, has the most digits (13). The next year that also has 13 digits is the year 2388. The record will be surpassed as late as 2888, which has 14 digits. January 3 – The 91-centimeter telescope at Lick Observatory in California is first used. January 12 – The Schoolhouse Blizzard hits Dakota Territory, the states of Montana, Minnesota, Nebraska, Kansas, and Texas, leaving 235 dead, many of them children on their way home from school.
1887January 11 – Louis Pasteur's anti-rabies treatment is defended in the Académie Nationale de Médecine, by Dr. Joseph Grancher. January 20 The United States Senate allows the Navy to lease Pearl Harbor as a naval base. British emigrant ship Kapunda sinks after a collision off the coast of Brazil, killing 303 with only 16 survivors. January 21 The Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) is formed in the United States. Brisbane receives a one-day rainfall of (a record for any Australian capital city).
1900As of March 1 (O.S. February 17), when the Julian calendar acknowledged a leap day and the Gregorian calendar did not, the Julian calendar fell one day further behind, bringing the difference to 13 days until February 28 (O.S. February 15), 2100. The year 1900 also marked the Year of the Rat on the Chinese calendar. January 1900 January 2 – U.S. Secretary of State John Hay announces the Open Door Policy, to promote American trade with China. January 3 – The United States Census estimates the country's population to be about 70 million people.
1889January 1 The total solar eclipse of January 1, 1889 is seen over parts of California and Nevada. Paiute spiritual leader Wovoka experiences a vision, leading to the start of the Ghost Dance movement in the Dakotas. January 4 – An Act to Regulate Appointments in the Marine Hospital Service of the United States is signed by President Grover Cleveland. It establishes a Commissioned Corps of officers, as a predecessor to the modern-day U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. January 5 – Preston North End F.
1898January 1 – New York City annexes land from surrounding counties, creating the City of Greater New York as the world's second largest. The city is geographically divided into five boroughs: Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, The Bronx and Staten Island. January 13 – Novelist Émile Zola's open letter to the President of the French Republic on the Dreyfus affair, J'Accuse...!, is published on the front page of the Paris daily newspaper L'Aurore, accusing the government of wrongfully imprisoning Alfred Dreyfus and of antisemitism.
1886January 1 – Upper Burma is formally annexed to British Burma, following its conquest in the Third Anglo-Burmese War of November 1885. January 5–9 – Robert Louis Stevenson's novella Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is published in New York and London. January 16 – A resolution is passed in the German Parliament to condemn the Prussian deportations, the politically motivated mass expulsion of ethnic Poles and Jews from Prussia, initiated by Otto von Bismarck.
