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UK-related events during the year of 1878
Events from the year
1878 in the
United Kingdom.
Incumbents
Events
- 14 January –
Alexander Graham Bell demonstrates the
telephone to
Queen Victoria.
[1]
- 23 January –
Disraeli orders British fleet to the
Dardanelles.
- 8 February – the British fleet enters Turkish waters and anchors off
Constantinople.
Russia threatens to occupy Constantinople but does not act.
- 11 February – first weekly weather report published in the UK.
[1]
- 24 February – anti-Russian demonstrations in
Hyde Park, London.
- 12 March – Britain annexes
Walvis Bay.
[2]
- 15 March –
restoration of the Scottish hierarchy of the
Roman Catholic Church, carried out on the instructions of Pope Leo XIII.
- 24 March – the
Royal Navy frigate
HMS Eurydice (1843) capsizes off the
Isle of Wight, killing all but two of the 319 crew.
- 25 March – Russia rejects a British proposal to lay the
Treaty of San Stefano before a European congress.
- 27 March – in anticipation of war with Russia, Disraeli mobilizes the reserves and calls Indian troops to
Malta.
- 28 March –
Stoke City F.C. move into their new stadium at the
Victoria Ground, beating Talke Rangers 1–0 in a friendly in their first game there.
[3]
- 25 May – opening of
Gilbert and Sullivan's opera
HMS Pinafore, at the
Opera Comique on the
Strand, London
[2] with a first run of 571 performances.
- 31 May – the
Imperial German Navy ironclad
turret ship
SMS Grosser Kurfürst (1875) is accidentally rammed and sunk by
SMS König Wilhelm on manoeuvres off
Folkestone with the loss of more than 275 crew (an event witnessed by
Arthur Sullivan).
- 1 June – the
North British Railway's first
Tay Bridge across the
Firth of Tay at
Dundee in Scotland is opened to public rail services; it is the world's longest bridge at this date.
[4]
- 4 June –
Cyprus Convention: the
Ottoman Empire cedes
Cyprus to the United Kingdom but retains nominal title.
[1]
- 7 June – an underground
explosion at Wood Pit,
Haydock, kills at least 189.
[5]
[6]
- 10 June – Konrad Korzeniowski, the future novelist
Joseph Conrad, sets foot on English soil for the first time, at
Lowestoft from the SS Mavis.
- 4 July – Public Health (Water) Act obliges
parishes to provide a supply of "wholesome water" within reasonable distance of every home.
[7]
- 7 August – the Christian Mission, co-founded by (the now) General
William and
Catherine Booth in
London in 1865, has its name changed to The
Salvation Army.
[8]
- 3 September – over 640 die when the crowded pleasure boat
Princess Alice collides with the
Bywell Castle in the
River Thames.
- 11 September – an underground
explosion at
Abercarn in
Monmouthshire kills 268
coal miners.
[9]
- 12 September –
Cleopatra's Needle erected on the
Victoria Embankment in London, having arrived in England on 21 January.
[1]
- October – the
University of London becomes the first in the UK to admit women on equal terms with men.
- 14 October – the world's first recorded floodlit football fixture is played at
Bramall Lane in
Sheffield.
- 28 October – the first floodlit rugby match is played in
Salford.
[10]
- 21 November –
Syria–Lebanon campaign commences when the British attack
Ali Masjid in the
Khyber Pass.
- 26 November –
James McNeill Whistler's
libel case against critic
John Ruskin over a review of the painting of the Thames
Nocturne in Black and Gold – The Falling Rocket (in which Whistler is described as "flinging a pot of paint in the public's face")
[11] is decided in the
High Court of Justice in London. Whistler wins a
farthing in nominal damages and only half of the substantial costs.
[12]
- 13 December – Electric
street lighting introduced in London, initially on the
Thames Embankment, followed by
Waterloo Bridge.
[2]
- 18 December –
Joseph Swan of
Newcastle announces his invention of an
incandescent light bulb.
[13]
- 30 December –
Henry Irving's production of
Hamlet, with himself in the title rôle playing opposite
Ellen Terry as
Ophelia, opens at the
Lyceum Theatre, London.
[14]
Undated
Publications
Births
- 4 January
- 6 January – Marian Ellis, later
Marian Cripps, Baroness Parmoor, pacifist (died 1952)
- 7 January –
Samuel James Cameron, obstetrician (died 1959)
- 19 January –
Herbert Chapman, football manager (died 1934)
- 23 January –
Rutland Boughton, composer (died 1960)
- 3 March
- 16 April –
Owen Thomas Jones, geologist (died 1967)
- 26 April –
Eric Campbell, silent film star (died 1917)
- 1 June –
John Masefield, poet and novelist (died 1967)
- 28 June –
Evan Roberts, preacher (died 1951)
- 20 July –
Denis Eden, painter (died 1949)
- 24 July –
Lord Dunsany, author (died 1957)
- 23 November –
Frank Pick, transport administrator and exponent of industrial design (died 1941)
- 1 September –
J. F. C. Fuller, major-general and strategist (died 1966)
- 3 September –
Dorothea Douglass Lambert Chambers, née Dorothea Katherine Douglass, tennis player (died 1960)
- 5 September –
Barry Domvile, admiral and Nazi sympathiser (died 1971)
- 18 September –
Robert Brooke-Popham,
air chief marshal (died 1953)
[17]
- 31 December –
Caradoc Evans, writer (died 1945)
Deaths
- 12 March –
Sir William Gibson-Craig, advocate and politician (born 1797)
- 16 March –
William Banting, undertaker and dietician (born c.1796)
- 19 March –
Henry Liddell, 1st Earl of Ravensworth, politician (born 1797)
- 27 March –
Sir George Gilbert Scott, architect (born 1811)
- 18 April –
Charles Fox, Quaker scientist (born 1797)
- 25 April –
Anna Sewell, author (born 1820)
- 28 May –
John Russell, 1st Earl Russell,
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (born 1792)
- 6 June –
Robert Stirling, clergyman and inventor (born 1790)
- 17 June –
Sir William Miles, 1st Baronet, politician (born 1797)
- 22 July –
Samuel McGaw,
Victoria Cross recipient (born 1838)
- 30 September –
Evan James, poet, lyricist of the Welsh national anthem (born 1809)
- 20 November –
William Thomas, poet (born 1832)
- 14 December –
Princess Alice, member of the royal family (born 1843)
- 24 December
- 31 December –
Sir James Matheson, Scottish politician (born 1796)
References
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a
b
c
d Penguin Pocket On This Day. Penguin Reference Library. 2006.
ISBN
978-0-14-102715-9.
- ^
a
b
c Palmer, Alan; Palmer, Veronica (1992). The Chronology of British History. London: Century Ltd. pp. 301–302.
ISBN
978-0-7126-5616-0.
-
^
"Victoria Ground". Stoke City FC Official Website. Retrieved 25 May 2015.
-
^
Thomas, John (1969). The North British Railway. Vol. 1. Newton Abbot: David & Charles.
ISBN
978-0-7153-4697-6.
-
^
"Wood Pit Explosion Haydock, 1878". HealeyHero. Archived from
the original on 19 July 2011. Retrieved 14 October 2010.
-
^ Winstanley, Ian G. (1989). Weep Mothers, Weep: the Wood Pit Explosion, Haydock, 1878. Staining: Landy.
ISBN
978-0-9507692-4-0.
-
^
"Public Health (Water) Act 1878" (PDF). OPSI. Retrieved 27 June 2010.
-
^
"1878 Foundation Deed Of The Salvation Army". Salvation Army International Heritage Centre. 2003. Archived from
the original on 25 May 2012. Retrieved 26 August 2011.
-
^
"Abercarn Colliery". Welsh Coal Mines. Archived from
the original on 14 November 2012. Retrieved 14 October 2010.
-
^
"Rugby League: Shedding light on historic night match". Archived from
the original on 17 October 2007. Retrieved 18 March 2008.
-
^ Ruskin, John (2 July 1877).
Fors Clavigera.
-
^ Whistler, J. McNeill (1890).
The Gentle Art of Making Enemies.
-
^ van Dulken, Stephen (2001). Inventing the 19th Century: the great age of Victorian inventions. London:
British Library. p. 80.
ISBN
978-0-7123-0881-6.
-
^
Shearer, Moira (1998). Ellen Terry. Pocket Biographies. Stroud: Sutton Publishing. p. 69.
ISBN
978-0-7509-1526-7.
-
^ Gelbier, Stanley (2005).
"125 Years of Developments in Dentistry". British Dental Journal. 199 (7): 470–473.
doi:
10.1038/sj.bdj.4812875.
PMID
16215593.
-
^ The Hutchinson Factfinder. Helicon. 1999.
ISBN
978-1-85986-000-7.
-
^ Wykeham, Peter; Thomas Paul Ofcansky (2004).
"Popham, Sir (Henry) Robert Moore Brooke".
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press.
doi:
10.1093/ref:odnb/32096. Retrieved 11 September 2007. (Subscription or
UK public library membership required.)