Modern Era
Dunlop Pneumatic Tyre (1888): Air-Filled Tyres for Bicycles
Dunlop's practical pneumatic tyre transformed cycling and founded a tyre industry that soon supplied the first motor cars.
Region
Europe
Modern Era
Cecil Rhodes and the British South Africa Company (1889)
The chartered British South Africa Company occupied Mashonaland in 1890 and Matabeleland in 1893, ruling the territories named Rhodesia until 1923-1924.
Modern Era
Forth Bridge (1890): Scotland's Great Cantilever Railway Bridge
The bridge opened a direct rail route between Edinburgh and the north-east of Scotland and became one of the world's most famous engineering landmarks.
Modern Era
Trans-Siberian Railway (1891-1916): Crossing Russia by Rail
Russia gained a continuous rail link to the Pacific, transforming Siberian settlement, trade and Russian strategy in East Asia.
Modern Era
Hamburg Cholera Epidemic (1892): Robert Koch and Clean Water
About 16,900 people fell ill and some 8,600 died; Hamburg built a sand-filtration plant and reformed its public health system.
Modern Era
Corinth Canal (1893): Cutting Through the Isthmus of Greece
A 6.4 km canal through solid rock separated the Peloponnese from mainland Greece, but proved too narrow for most large ships.
Modern Era
Diesel Engine (1893): Rudolf Diesel's Compression-Ignition Engine
Diesel's compression-ignition engine became the most efficient heat engine of its time and later powered most ships, trucks and locomotives.
Modern Era
Dreyfus Affair (1894-1906): The Scandal That Divided France
Dreyfus was convicted twice but finally cleared by France's highest court in July 1906 and reinstated in the army; the affair reshaped French politics.
Modern Era
Manchester Ship Canal (1894): Bringing the Sea to Manchester
Ocean-going ships could reach Manchester directly, making it one of Britain's leading ports and breaking Liverpool's grip on its trade.
Modern Era
Oscar Wilde Trials (1895): The Fall of a Victorian Celebrity
Wilde lost his libel case and was convicted of gross indecency, receiving the maximum sentence of two years' hard labour.
Modern Era
Kiel Canal (1895): Linking the North Sea and the Baltic
A 98 km canal let warships and merchant vessels pass between the North Sea and the Baltic without sailing around Denmark.
Modern Era
Lumière Brothers' First Film Screening (1895): Birth of Cinema
The first commercial projection of films to a paying audience launched cinema as a public entertainment that spread worldwide within months.