Events

• January 16 - The Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act, establishing the United States Civil service, is passed
• January 19 - The first electric lighting system employing overhead wires begins service (Roselle, New Jersey) It was built by Thomas Edison.
• February 16 - Ladies Home Journal[?] is published for the first time.
• February 23 - Alabama becomes the first U.S. state to enact an antitrust law.
• February 28 - The first vaudeville theater is opened, in Boston, Massachusetts
• May 24 - Brooklyn Bridge is opened to traffic after 14 years of construction.
• May 30 - In New York City, a rumor that the Brooklyn Bridge was going to collapse causes a stampede which crushes twelve people.
• August 12 - The last quagga dies at the Artis Magistra zoo in Amsterdam.
• August 26 - Krakatau volcano eruption (local time)
• Heinrich Hermann Robert Koch (German bacteriologist) discovers the cholera bacillus.

Arts, Sciences, Literature and Philosophy

• 1883 in literature:

Births

• January 3 - Clement Attlee, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (+ 1967)
• January 6 - Khalil Gibran, poet, painter, novelist (+ 1931)
• January 10 - Francis X. Bushman[?], actor (+ 1966)
• January 10 - Aleksei Tolstoy[?], writer (+ 1945)
• February 15 - Sax Rohmer, author (+ 1959)
• February 7 - Eubie Blake, musician, composer (+ 1983)
• February 11 - Paul August von Klenau[?] Danish composer/conductor
• February 23 - Karl Jaspers[?], philosopher (+ 1969)
• February 23 - Victor Fleming, director (+ 1949)
• March 19 - Joseph Stilwell, American soldier (+ 1946)
• April 1 - Lon Chaney[?], actor (+ 1930)
• April 11 - Hozumi Shigeto, Japanese author
• May 18 - Walter Gropius, architect, founder of Bauhaus (+ 1969)
• May 20 - King Faisal I of Iraq (+ 1933)
• May 23 - Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., actor, cofounder of United Artists (+ 1939)
• July 4 - Rube Goldberg, cartoonist (+ 1970)
• July 29 - Benito Mussolini, fascist dictator of Italy
• August 23 - US General Jonathan Wainwright, Medal of Honor recipient
• November 8 - Arnold Bax, composer
• December 3 - Anton Webern, Austrian composer
• December 25 - Maurice Utrillo, a "Montmartre" artist
• Alberto Gerchunoff, Argentine writer

Deaths

• February 13 - Richard Wagner, German composer
• March 14 - Karl Marx, German philosopher
• April 30 - Edouard Manet, painter
• May 26 - Edward Sabine, astronomer