Year 1881 (MDCCCLXXXI) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Thursday of the 12-day slower Julian calendar).

Events of 1881

January - March

• January 16-January 24 - Siege of Geok Tepe: Russian troops under General Mikhail Skobelev defeat the Turkomans.
• January 24 - William Edward Forster, the chief secretary for Ireland, introduces his Coercion Bill, which temporarily suspended Habeas Corpus so that those people suspected of committing an offence could be detained without trial; it goes through a long debate before it is accepted February 2.
• January 25 - Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell form the Oriental Telephone Company.
• February 2 - The Parkfield Earthquake occurs.
• February 5 - Phoenix, Arizona is incorporated.
• February 13 - The first issue of the feminist newspaper La Citoyenne is published by Hubertine Auclert.
• February 19 - Kansas becomes the first U.S. state to prohibit all alcoholic beverages.
• March 12 - Andrew Watson makes his Scotland debut as the world's first black international football player.
• March 13 - Alexander II of Russia is killed near his palace when a bomb is thrown at him. He is succeeded by his son, Alexander III.

April - June

• April 11 - Spelman College is established.
• April 14 - The Four Dead in Five Seconds Gunfight erupts in El Paso, Texas.
• April 15 - Temuco, Chile is founded.
• April 21 - The University of Connecticut is founded as the Storrs Agricultural School.
• April 25 - Caulfield Grammar School is founded in Melbourne, Australia.
• April 28 - Billy the Kid escapes from his 2 jailers at the Lincoln County Jail in Mesilla, New Mexico, killing James Bell and Robert Ollinger before stealing a horse and riding out of town.
• May 12 - In North Africa, Tunisia becomes a French protectorate.
• May 21 - The American Red Cross is established by Clara Barton.
• May 21 - The United States Tennis Association is established by a small group of tennis club members.
• June 12 - The U.S.S. Jeannette is crushed in an Arctic Ocean ice pack.

July - September

• July 1 - General Order 70, the culmination of the Cardwell-Childers reforms of the British Army's organization, comes into effect.
• July 2 - James Abram Garfield, President of the United States, is shot by lawyer Charles Julius Guiteau. He survives the shooting but suffers from infection of his wound, dying on September 19.
• July 4 - In Alabama, the Tuskegee Institute opens.
• July 14 - Billy the Kid is shot and killed by Pat Garrett outside Fort Sumner.
• July 20 - Indian Wars: Sioux chief Sitting Bull leads the last of his fugitive people in surrender to United States troops at Fort Buford in Montana.
• August 3 - The Pretoria Convention peace treaty is signed, officially ending the war between the Boers and Britain.
• August 27 - A hurricane hits Florida and the Carolinas, killing about 700.
• September 5 - The Thumb Fire in the U.S. state of Michigan destroys over a million acres (4,000 km²) and kills 282 people.
• September 12 - Francis Howell High School (Howell Institute) in St. Charles, Missouri, and Stephen F. Austin High School in Austin, Texas open on the same day, putting them in a tie for the title of the oldest public high school west of the Mississippi River.
• September 19 - U.S. President James A. Garfield dies eleven weeks after being shot. Vice President Chester Alan Arthur becomes the 21st President of the United States.

October - December

• October 26 - The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral occurs in Tombstone, Cochise County, Arizona, USA.
• October 29 - Judge (U.S. magazine) is first published.
• November 11 - The Clarkson Memorial in Wisbech is completed and unveiled to the public.
• November 19 - A meteorite strikes earth near the village of Großliebenthal, a few kilometers southwest of Odessa, Ukraine.
• December 8 - At least 620 die in a fire at the Ring Theatre, Vienna.
• December 28 - Virgil Earp is ambushed in Tombstone and loses the use of his left arm.

Undated

• New York City's oldest independent school for girls, the Convent of the Sacred Heart New York (91st Street), is founded.
• Edward Rudolf founds the 'Church of England Central Society for Providing Homes for Waifs and Strays' (now The Children's Society).
• The Pali Text Society is founded.
• University College Dublin is established in Ireland.
• The United States National Lawn Tennis Association (USNLTA) is founded, and the first U.S. Tennis Championships are played.
• The League of the Three Emperors is resurrected.
• Some Vatican archives are opened to scholars for the first time.
• Abilene, Texas is founded.
• The Newcastle United F.C. is founded as the Stanley F.C., with a further name change to Newcastle East End F.C. a few months later.
• The Leyton Orient F.C. is founded.
• Minto, North Dakota is founded.
• Rafaela, Argentina is formed.
• Culford School, a public school in Suffolk, United Kingdom, is founded.
• Anti-Semitic pogroms in Southern Russia start.

Births

January - June

• January 1 - Vajiravudh, King of Thailand (d. 1925)
• January 9
  • Lascelles Abercrombie, English poet and critic (d. 1938)
  • Giovanni Papini, Italian essayist, poet, and novelist (d. 1956)
• January 17 - Antoni Lomnicki, Polish mathematician (d. 1941)
• January 31 - Irving Langmuir, American chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1957)
• February 12 - Anna Pavlova, Russian ballerina (d. 1931)
• March 4
  • Maude Fealy, American stage and film actor (d. 1971)
  • Thomas Sigismund Stribling, American writer (d. 1965)
  • Richard C. Tolman, American mathematical physicist (d. 1948)
• March 9 - Ernest Bevin, British labour leader, politician, and statesman (d. 1951)
• March 10 - Thomas Quinlan (impresario) (d. 1951)
• March 17 - Walter Rudolf Hess, Swiss physiologist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1973)
• March 23
  • Roger Martin du Gard, French writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1958)
  • Hermann Staudinger, German chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1965)
• March 25
  • Béla Bartók, Hungarian composer (d. 1945)
  • Mary Webb, English writer (d. 1927)
• May 13 - Lima Barreto, Brazilian writer (d.1922).
• May 14 - G. Murray Hulbert, American politician (d. 1950)
• May 19 - Official birthday of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, founder and first President of Turkey (d. 1938)
• May 20 - W„adys“aw Sikorski, Polish general and politician (d. 1943)
• June 17 - Tommy Burns, Canadian-born boxer (d. 1955)

July - December

• July 2 - Royal H. Weller, American politician (d. 1929)
• July 4 - Ulysses S. Grant III, American soldier and planner (d. 1968)
• July 27 - Hans Fischer, German chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1945)
• July 30 - Smedley Butler, U.S. general (d. 1940)
• August 6 - Sir Alexander Fleming, Scottish researcher, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 1955)
• August 12 - Cecil B. DeMille, American film director and producer (d. 1959)
• August 19 - Georges Enescu, Romanian composer (d. 1955)
• August 20 - Edgar Guest, English poet (d. 1959)
• September 5 - Otto Bauer, Austrian Social Democratic politician (d. 1938)
• September 8 - Harry Hillman, American athlete (d. 1945)
• September 16 - Clive Bell, English art critic (d. 1964)
• September 17 - Alfred Francis Blakeney Carpenter, English soldier (d. 1955)
• September 26 - Hiram Wesley Evans, Ku Klux Klan Imperial Wizard (d. 1966)
• October 1 - William Boeing, American engineer and airplane manufacturer (d. 1956)
• October 11 - Hans Kelsen, Austrian legal theorist (d. 1973)
• October 15
  • William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury (d. 1944)
  • P. G. Wodehouse, English-born writer (d. 1975)
• October 22 - Clinton Davisson, American physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1958)
• October 25 - Pablo Picasso, Spanish painter (d. 1973)
• October 28 - Vin Coutie, Australian footballer
• November 5 - George A. Malcolm, American jurist & educator (d. 1961)
• November 14 - Nicholas Schenck, Russian-born film studio executive (d. 1969)
• November 24 - Al Christie, Canadian-born director and producer (d. 1951)
• November 25 - Pope John XXIII (d. 1963)
• November 28 - Stefan Zweig, Austrian writer (d. 1942)
• December 5 - René Cresté, French actor and director (d. 1922)
• December 3 - Henry Fillmore, American composer (d. 1956)
• December 24 - Juan Ramón Jiménez, Spanish writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1958)

Deaths

January - June

• January 3 - Anna McNeill Whistler, James Whistler's mother and subject of his painting (b. 1804)
• January 21 - Wilhelm Matthias Naeff, member of the Swiss Federal Council (b. 1802)
• February 5 - Thomas Carlyle, Scottish writer and historian (b. 1795)
• February 9 - Fyodor Dostoevsky, Russian novelist (b. 1821)
• February 14 - Fernando Wood, New York City Mayor (b. 1812)
• March 13 - Czar Alexander II of Russia (b. 1818)
• March 28 - Modest Mussorgsky, Russian composer (b. 1839)
• April 19 - Benjamin Disraeli, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (b. 1804)
• May 24 - Samuel Palmer, English artist (b. 1805)
• May 25 - Giuseppe Maria Giulietti, Italian explorer (b. 1847)
• June 6 - Henri Vieuxtemps, Belgian composer (b. 1820)

July - December

• ((July 6)) - (Kate Shelley), railroad heroine who saved the Midnight Express from falling into the Des Moines River in Ogden, Iowa
• July 14 - Billy the Kid, American gunslinger (b. 1859)
• July 17 - Jim Bridger, American explorer and trapper (b. 1804)
• September 7 - Sidney Lanier, American writer (b. 1842)
• September 8 - Prince Frederik of the Netherlands, Dutch noble and general (b. 1797)
• September 19 - James A. Garfield, 20th President of the United States (assassinated) (b. 1831)
• September 22 - Solomon L. Spink, U.S. Congressman from Illinois (b. 1831)
• October 3 - Orson Pratt, American religious leader (b. 1811)
• October 31 - George DeLong, American naval officer and explorer (starvation) (b. 1844)

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See also: Category: 1881 deaths