1842January Michael Alexander takes office, as the first appointee to the Anglican-German Bishopric in Jerusalem. American medical student William E. Clarke of Berkshire Medical College becomes the first person to administer an inhaled anesthetic, to facilitate a surgical procedure (dental extraction). January 6–13 – First Anglo-Afghan War – Massacre of Elphinstone's army (Battle of Gandamak): British East India Company troops are destroyed by Afghan forces on the road from Kabul to Jalalabad, Afghanistan, by Akbar Khan, son of Dost Mohammad Khan.
1891January 1 A strike of 500 Hungarian steel workers occurs; 3,000 men are out of work as a consequence. Germany takes formal possession of its new African territories. January 4 – The Earl of Zetland issues a declaration regarding the famine in the western counties of Ireland. January 5 The Australian shearers' strike, that leads indirectly to the foundation of the Australian Labor Party, begins. A fight between the United States and Indians breaks out near Pine Ridge agency.
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).
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.
1866January 1 Fisk University, a historically black university, is established in Nashville, Tennessee. The last issue of the abolitionist magazine The Liberator is published. January 6 – Ottoman troops clash with supporters of Maronite leader Youssef Bey Karam, at St. Doumit in Lebanon; the Ottomans are defeated. January 12 The Royal Aeronautical Society is formed as The Aeronautical Society of Great Britain in London, the world's oldest such society.
1884January 4 – The Fabian Society is founded in London. January 5 – Gilbert and Sullivan's Princess Ida premières at the Savoy Theatre, London. January 18 – William Price attempts to cremate his dead baby son, Iesu Grist, in Wales. Later tried and acquitted on the grounds that cremation is not contrary to English law, he is thus able to carry out the ceremony (the first in the United Kingdom in modern times) on March 14, setting a legal precedent. February 1 – A New English Dictionary on historical principles, part 1 (edited by James A.
