A Victorian Timeline

[dime_novel_hero]

When I write, I like to be as accurate as I can. I wrote a story once about mountain climbing on Mars and convinced a reader that I was, in fact, a mountain climber. A reader of a Vampire RPG fictionalization I wrote was sure I was from Chicago. Even in my science fiction, I try to put as much science as I can to increase the plausibility. So, in writing steampunk or developing my period persona I want to be accurate about the world at the time and so I have amassed a random collection of dates and events, both actual and fictional. (Updated: 2 February 2013)

 

Victorian/Steampunk Timeline

1779 – Erasmus Darwin designs a hydrogen-oxygen rocket engine

1785 - Jean-Piere Blanchard crosses the English Channel in the first manually powered balloon.

1789 - Uranium

1794 - Ball bearings

1795 - First military use of aerial reconnaissance utilizing balloons.

1795 - Hydraulics

1795 - Impact of the Wold Newton Meteorite in Yorkshire

1797 - Top Hat

-----------------------------------------------

1800 - Infrared; metal submarine

1801 - Richard Trevithick constructs and demonstrates what is likely the first steam-powered road carriage.

1801 - Joseph Marie Jacquard invents a programmable powered loom that uses punch cards to direct the weaving of textiles.

1802 - First practical steamship, the Charles Dundas, used to tow barges

1802 - Albert Mathieu first proposes a tunnel under the English Channel

1803 - Spray gun

1804 - Earliest Steam Locomotive

1805 - Amphibious vehicle

1806 - Carbon paper

1806 - Francois Isaac de Rivaz creates the first internal combustion engine powered by hydrogen

1807 - Gas-driven automobile

1807 - First commercially viable steamship, the North River Steamboat

1808 - Start of the Great Trigonometric Survey of British India to establish the heights of the world's tallest mountains.

1809 – The oldest example of a postal mailbox

-----------------------------------------------

1812 - First commercially viable steam locomotive, The Salamanca

1815 - First steamship crosses the English Channel

1815 - Apr - Explosion of Mount Tambora in Indonesia leads to the Year Without a Summer

1816 - Rev. Robert Stirling's engine

1818 - Publication of "Frankenstein" by Mary Shelly

1818 – President John Quincy Adams approves an expedition by John Cleves Symmes, Jr. to the south pole in search of an entrance to the Earth's hollow interior. Congress never approves funding.

-----------------------------------------------

1820 - Hans Christian Orsted discovers electromagnetism

1821 - Electric motor

1821 - John Herapath attempts to apply his co-developed model of kinetic energy of gases to gravitation, assuming that the aether is heated by the bodies and looses density so that other bodies are pushed to these regions of lower density

1822 - Charles Babbage's Difference Engine #1 proposed

1824 – First 'dinosaur' fossils described and named

1825 - Binoculars

1825 - First permanent public railway, Stockton and Darlington Railway

1825 - William Sturgeon invents the electromagnet

1826 - "Symmes' Theory of Concentric Spheres" published by Jeremiah Reynolds

1826 - Gas stove

1827 - Microphone; water turbine; aluminum

1827 – Publication of “A Voyage to the Moon” by Joseph Atterley

1828 - Differential gear; stethoscope

-----------------------------------------------

1830 - First passenger railway driven entirely by steam power, the Liverpool and Manchester Railway

1830 - Events portrayed in "Dark Portals: The Chronicles of Vidocq"

1831 - Michael Faraday discovers electro-magnetic induction

1832 - Publication of "The Hidden Secrets of Most Europeans" by conspiracy theorist J. Edward Runcible ("Questionable Content" #905)

1833 - Charles Babbage begins work on his "analytical engine", a form of mechanical computer of a far more advanced nature and purpose than the difference engine

1833 - Eugène François Vidocq founds the Le bureau des renseignements (Office of Information), the first known detective agency

1835 - Automatic revolver

1835 – Madame Tussard's Wax Museum open on Baker Street in London

1837 - Daguerreotype; telegraph; Morse code

1837 - First reported sighting of Spring Heeled Jack in London.

1837 - June - Coronation of Queen Victoria

1838 - First regularly scheduled trans-Atlantic steamship crossings begun on the SS Great Western

1838 - Events portrayed in “Nosferatu”

1838 - Institution of London Prize Ring Rules

1839 - Vulcanization of rubber; fuel cell; protoplasm

1839 - First edition of "Unaussprechlichen Kulten" published in Düsseldorf ("The Children of the Night")

-----------------------------------------------

1840 – The first adhesive pre-payment postage stamp

1841 - Incandescent lamp

1841 - Murders at the Rue Mourge

1842 - Ether

1842 – Richard Owen coins the name 'dinosaur'

1843 - Opening of the Thames Tunnel

1843 - Oct – The News of the World begins publication in London by John Browne Bell, priced at just three pence. It quickly established itself as a purveyor of titillation, shock and criminal news.

1843 – Events portrayed in “A Christmas Carol”

1845 - First English translation of "Unaussprechlichen Kulten" (Nameless Cults) published by Bridewall in London ("The Children of the Night")

1845 – Events portrayed in “Dr. Doolittle”

1846 - Thomas Cochrane, tenth Earl of Dundonald, presents to the British admiralty a superweapon that affords "the infallible means of securing at one blow our maritime superiority and of thereafter maintaining it in perpetuity-of at once commencing and terminating a war by one conclusive victory." Known as Dundonald's Destroyer, it is deemed so destructive that it is locked away and never revealed.

1846 – Discovery of Neptune

1847 - Nitroglycerin; chloroform

1847 - Evaporated milk

1847 - Orrin Lindsay's antigravity machine from "Orrin Lindsay's plan of aerial navigation" by J. L. Riddell, M.D.

1847 – Discovery of the gorilla

1848 - Marx and Engels issue "Communist Manifesto"

1848 - Lord Kelvin determines absolute zero

1848 - First appendectomy

1848 - R. Porter & Company advertises aerial transport aboard "The Aerial Locomotive" from New York to California to begin by April 1st on 1849.

1849 - Austria launches a balloon to bomb Venice from the ship Volcano, marking the first offensive use of an aircraft carrier. After this attempt failed, the Austrians then launched a number of unmanned bomb-laden balloons, marking the first successful use of aerial bombing.

1849 - Four years of the Great Irish Famine has killed over a million

1849 - Dr. Solomon Andrews founds the Inventors Institute in Perth Amboy, NJ

1849 - The British Post Office encourages the installation of residential letterboxes

-----------------------------------------------

1850 - Telegraph cable under English channel

1850 - First steam battleship, Le Napoleon, is launched

1851 - Flash photography

1851 - Publication of "Moby Dick" by Herman Melville

1851 - The Great exhibition at the Crystal Palace in London.

1851 - Clockwork automaton Mustachio the Thinkonium attacks the Great Exhibition in London ("Skin Horse")

1851 - Events portrayed in "Larklight" by Philip Reeve

1851 - Events portrayed in the Doctor Who episode “The Next Doctor”

1852 - microfilm

1852 - Heterodyne Boys begin adventuring ("Girl Genius")

1852 - Henri Giffard conducts the first powered flight in a steam-powered dirigible

1852 - Last record of a duel being fought in England

1853 - Hypodermic syringe

1853 - Sir George Cayley conducts the first flight in a manned, but not powered or controlled, glider aircraft

1853 - Bernhard Riemann assumes that the gravitational aether is an incompressible fluid and normal matter represents sinks in this aether, so if the aether is destroyed or absorbed proportionally to the masses within the bodies, a stream arises and carries all surrounding bodies into the direction of the central mass

1853 - Opponents of smallpox vaccinations found the Anti-Vaccination League in England

1854 - Commodore Perry opens up Japan

1854 - First efficient internal combustion engine patented by Eugenio Barsanti and Felice Matteucci.

1855 - Feb – Allan Pinkerton founds the North-Western Police Agency

1855 - Stopwatch; safety match

1855 - Livingstone discovers Victoria Falls

1855 - Florence Nightingale begins hospital reforms

1855 - Publication of "Pilgrimage to Mecca" by Richard F. Burton

1855 - May - A 200 pound weight shipment of gold bar and coin is stolen from a train between London Station and Folkestone by William Pierce, Edward Agar and James Burgess.

1856 - Bessemer Converter

1856 - First Neanderthal skull found

1856 - Cocaine

1856 - The Great Trigonometric Survey of British India establishes the height  of Peak XV (later named Everest) at 29,002 ft.

1857 - Pasteur explains fermentation

1857 - Otis Elevator

1857 - First airship flight by the Sonora Aero Club

1858 - Cell-replication theory

1858 - Dissolution of the British East India Company

1859 - cathode rays; internal combustion engine

1859 - Publication of "On the Origin of Species" by Charles Darwin

1859 - Apr - Construction begins on the Suez Canal

1859 - Sep 17 - Joshua Abraham Norton declares himself Emperor of the United States

1859 - First steam traction engine

1859 - The first ironclad warship, La Gloire, is launched

1859 - Carrington Event, the largest solar flare on record producing Northern Lights as far south as Cuba, bright enough to read by in the NE US and setting fires as currents arced across telegraph wires.

-----------------------------------------------

1860 - Linoleum; snap buttons

1860 - Launch of HMS Warrior, Britain's first all iron warship

1860 - First widely produced internal combustion engine patented by Jean Joseph Etienne Lenoir.

1860 - First publication of Beadle's Dime Novels

1861 - Pneumatic drill

1861 - Start of the American Civil War

1861 - The Union Army Balloon Corps becomes the first military air force

1861 - First transcontinental telegraph system established in the United States

1861 - Johann Phillip Reis creates an early version of the telephone capable of transmitting sound, including music, but not speech

1861 - Pony Express discontinued

1862 - Gatling gun patented by Dr. Richard J. Gatling

1862 - The battle of Hampton Roads sees the first engagement between two ironclad warships, the USS Monitor and the CSS Virginia

1862 - Events portrayed in "Dinotopia" by James Gurney

1862 - Events portrayed in "The Amazing Screw-On Head"

1862 - Homestead Act

1863 - T.N.T.

1863 - Thames Tunnel converted to rail traffic

1863 - "Mary Jane, or Spiritualism Chemically Explained" published by Sameul Guppy

1863 - Jun – 25 year old Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin serves with the Army of the Potomac in skirmishes in the Loudoun Valley, VA

1863 - Jul - The Sioux shaman "Raven" performs the Ghost Dance, releasing supernatural monsters upon the American West. ("Deadlands")

1863 - Jul - Battle of Gettysburg

1863 - Abraham Lincoln is kidnapped and taken to the future. (“Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure”)

1864 - James Clerk Maxwell presents a series of equations describing the relationship between electric and magnetic fields

1864 - Red Cross established

1864 - Publication of "A Journey to the Center of the Earth" by Jules Verne

1864 - Publication of "A Voyage to the Moon" by Chrysostom Trueman

1864 - Abbe Charles-Etienne Brasseur de Bourbourg "translates" the Mayan Troano Codex

1864 - Solomon Andrews demonstrates his airship Aereon before the Smithsonian Institution

1865 - Genetics; electric arc-welding; reinforced concrete

1865 - Publication of "From the Earth to the Moon" by Jules Verne

1865 - Introduction of "Boneshaker" velocipede

1965 - March - The Confederacy launches a 15 foot ballistic rocket from the shores of the James river near Richmond with the intention of attacking Washington

1865 - The end of the American Civil War

1865 - Publication of "The Book of Were-wolves" by Sabine Baring-Gould

1865 - John Alexander Reina Newland proposes his Law of Octaves, the first periodic table of elements

1865 - First time travel experiments of Theodore Maxtible and Edward Waterfield (“Doctor Who - Evil of the Daleks”)

1866 - First Transatlantic telegraph cable

1866 - Events portrayed in "Steamboy"

1866 - Founding of the Aeronautical Society of Great Britain

1866 - Foundation Anti-Compulsory Vaccination League in the UK opposing the smallpox vaccine

1867 - Bicycle; typewriter

1867 - artificial limbs; hydraulic elevator; reinforced concrete presented at World's Fair, Paris

1867 - The Icteneo II converted into the first steam-powered submarine

1867 - Events portrayed in "Dinotopia: The World Beneath" by James Gurney

1867 - Karl Marx publishes "Das Kapital"

1867 - 1868 Events portrayed in “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea”

1867 - Institution of Marquess of Queensberry rules

1866 - Events portrayed in “A Princess of Mars”

1868 - Stapler; plywood; margarine

1868 - Publication of "The Steam Man of the Prairies" by Edward S. Ellis

1868 - Publication of "The Hollow Globe" by W.F. Lyons

1868 – Events portrayed in the first episodes of “Wild Wild West”

1869 - Color photography; celluloid

1869 - Publication of "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" by Jules Verne

1869 – May - Completion of transcontinental Pacific Railway

1869 - Nov - Opening of the Suez Canal

1869 - 3 meter tall fossil giant reportedly uncovered in Cardiff, NY by George Hull

-----------------------------------------------

1870 - Publication of "The Brick Moon" by Edward Everett Hale

1870 - Introduction of the Ordinary bicycle

1870 - Schliemann's excavation of Troy

1870 - Antonio Meucci creates a telephone capable of transmitting speech

1870 - John Hampden challenges the roundness of the Earth with an experiment at the Old Bedford Level and a bet against Alfred Russel Wallace

1870 – Fall of the French Second Empire and the Prussian Siege of Paris

1870 – First air combat in the form of a duel between French and Prussian balloonists (“Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines”)

1870 - (or earlier to 1867) Competition between John Henry and a steam powered hammer (or drilling machine) at the Big Bend Tunnel on the C&O Railroad (or the Lewis Tunnel) (or the Coosa Mountain Tunnel or the Oak Mountain Tunnel in 1887)

1871 - Publication of "Through the Looking Glass" by Lewis Carroll

1871 - Publication of "The Coming Race" by Lord Lytton

1871 - Publication of "The Battle of Dorking" by George Chesney

1871 - Henry Morton Stanly finds Dr. David Livingston on the shores of Lake Tanganyika

1871 – P.T. Barnum's Grand Traveling Museum, Menagerie, Caravan & Hippodrome opens in Brooklyn, NY

1871 – Events portrayed in “The Phantom of the Opera”

1872 - Paul Haenlin uses the first combustion engine powered airship, fueled by coal gas

1872 - George Davey founds the US branch of the Zetetic Society

1872 - John E. W. Keely founds the Keely Motor Company to develop the "Liberator" engine, a "vibratory generator with a hydro-pneumatic pulsating engine" fueled only with small quantities of water

1872 - Events portrayed in "Cowboys & Aliens"

1873 - Publication of "Around the World in 80 Days" by Jules Verne

1873 - Destruction of Castle Heterodyne ("Girl Genius")

1873 - Comstock Act criminalizes the delivery or transportation of both "obscene, lewd or lascivious" material as well as any methods of, or information pertaining to birth control.

1874 - Publication of "Mysterious Island" by Jules Verne

1874 - Felix du Temple's steam-powered glider Monoplane performs the first successful powered flight

1874 - Pinwheel mechanical calculator, capable of four function calculations, developed and made available for sale

1874 - Custer expedition discovers gold in the Black Hills of South Dakota

1875 - Mimeograph

1875 - The Channel Tunnel Company Ltd. begins preliminary trials and surveys towards the construction of a tunnel beneath the English Channel

1876 - refrigerator

1876 - Alexander Graham Bell succeeds in receiving the first telephone patent

1876 - typewriter; sewing machine presented at World's Fair, Philadelphia

1876 - Pavel Yablochkov patents an arc lamp initially used for electrical street lighting

1876 - Founding of the Society of Mutual Autopsy in France

1876 - Launching of the Redoubtable by France, the first pre-dreadnought to use steel as the main building material

1876 - June - General George Armstrong Custer makes his Last Stand at The Little Big Horn

1876 - Nicolaus Otto develops the first practical four-stroke combustion engine

1876 - Oct - The Great Backerganj Cyclone kills 200,000 in Bangladesh

1876 - Events portrayed in "Legend"

1876 - Setting for first edition of "Deadlands" RPG

1876 - Events portrayed in "Jonah Hex"

1877 - Phonograph; liquid oxygen; switchboard

1877 - First unmanned helicopter, created by Enrico Forlanini, flown under steam power

1877 - Giovanni Schiaparelli observes canali on the planet Mars

1878 - Cathode-ray tube; electric alternator; carbon filament

1878 - electric lighting; ice machine presented at Worlds Fair, Paris

1878 - David E. Hughes transmits Morse code over a basic wireless system

1878 - Charles Bush invents a significantly improved arc lamp

1878 - Three years of famine has killed 10 million in India

1878 – Events portrayed in “The Shadow in the North”

1879 - July - publication of first issue of “The Pearl, A Magazine of Facetiae and Voluptuous Reading”

1879 - Incandescent bulb; arc lighting; cash register; saccharine

1879 - Somerville and Lady Margaret Colleges (for women) founded at Oxford

1879 - Four years of drought in Northern China has killed 13 million

1879 - Ernst Heinrich Haeckel publishes "The History of Creation" detailing the migration of the Lemurian civilization

1879 - the Taughannock Giant, a 2 meter tall human fossil, unearthed near Ithica, NY by Ira Dean

1879 - Setting for "Deadlands: Reloaded" RPG

-----------------------------------------------

1880 - Jan 8 - Death of Emperor Norton I

1880 - Roll film; hearing aid

1880 - Start of the abortive French attempt to construct a canal across Panama

1880 - Allan Quatermain discovers the mines of Solomon ("King Solomon's Mines")

1880 - Events portrayed in "The Falling machine" by Andrew Mayer

1880 - Publication of “Across the Zodiac” by Greg Percy

1881 - Telephotography (fax); rechargeable battery

1881 - Brugsch begins excavations in the Valley of the Kings

1881 - British railway entrepreneur Sir William Watkin and French Suez Canal contractor Alexandre Lavalley begin excavation of the Channel Tunnel. Each dig on either side of the English Channel gets little over a mile before being abandoned due to politics. If successful, it would have been completed in 3 1/2 years.

1881 - First appearance of "Aztec" crystal skulls

1881 - "Zetetic Astronomy" published by Parallax (Samuel Birley Rowbotham)

1881 - Events portrayed in "That Darn Squid God" by Nick Pollatta and James Clay

1882 - British Chinese Exclusion Act

1882 - British occupation of Egypt and control of the Suez Canal

1882 – Apr – “Assassination” of Jessie James

1882 - Eltdown Shards, apparently pottery fragments dated to the Triassic period and covered with strange symbols, discovered in Southern England ("The Shadow Out of Time")

1882 - "Atlantis: The Antediluvian World" published by Ignatius Donnelly

1882 - Sep - The Great Comet of 1882 seen in the skies of the Southern hemisphere

1883 - Warren Herbert Frost patents the kazoo

1883 - Married Woman Property Rights Act

1883 - Parallax (Samuel Birley Rowbotham) founds the UK Zetetic Society (promoting a flat Earth)

1883 - "Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel" published by Ignatius Donnelly

1883 - Dr. Solomon Andrews' airship Aereon flies against the wind over NYC purportedly without an engine

1883 - Aug - Explosion of Krakatoa in Indonesia kills 40,000

1883 – Sep - Completion of Northern Pacific Railway

1883- Events portrayed in "Wild Wild West"

1883 - Mortimer Granville invents the electromechanical “percusser”, later known as the vibrator

1883 – First kazoo patented

1884 - Steam turbine

1884 - Publication of "Flatland" by Edwin Abbott

1884 - June 6 - Nikola Tesla arrives in the U.S.

1885 - gasoline engine presented at World's Fair, Antwerp

1885 - Introduction of the first mass-produced toothbrushes

1885 - Karl Benz receives the first patent for a gasoline-powered car, known as the Motorwagen, running on an internal combustion engine

1885 - Publication of "After London" by Richard Jefferies

1885 - Publication of "King Solomon's Mines" by H. Rider Haggard

1885 - Death of Allan Quatermain ("Allan Quartermain")

1885 - The Home Insurance Building of Chicago becomes the first building to use steel in its frame

1885 - Events portrayed in "Back to the Future 3"

1886 - Publication of "Robur the Conqueror" by Jules Verne

1886 - Statue of Liberty completed

1886 - Publication of the first Nick Carter story

1887 - Feb 2 – Celebration of the first Groundhog's Day in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania

1887 - Sep/Oct - Flood of Yellow River in China kills upwards of 2 million

1887 - Mach scale; contact lens

1887 - Heinrich Hertz discovers photoelectric effect

1887 - Eiffel Tower begins construction

1887 - Publication of "A Study in Scarlet", the first Sherlock Holmes story

1887 - Michelson-Morley experiment falsifies the luminiferous aether drag hypothesis

1887 - "Posthumous Humanity, or A Study of Phantoms" published by Adolphe d'Assier

1888 - Mar - The Great Blizard ravages the American Northeast coast with snowfalls of 40-50 inches and drifts as high as 50 feet

1888 - Data-processing computer; alternating-current motor; monorail

1888 - Publication of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" by Robert Louis Stevenson

1888 - Tesla licenses polyphase generator to Westinghouse

1888 - Scotts Act

1888 - Andrew Carnegie builds the first public library in Braddock, Pennsylvania

1888 - The serial killer known as Jack the Ripper murders five in London

1888 - Events portrayed in "Van Helsing"

1888 - Ivan Osipovich Yarkovsky, based on his aether stream model, argues that the absorbed aether might be converted into new matter, leading to a mass increase of the celestial bodies

1889 - phonograph; moving sidewalks presented at World's Fair, Paris

1889 - Nellie Bly travels around the world

1889 - Maxim machine gun adopted by British army

1889 - Opening of the Moulon Rouge in Paris

1889 - George A. Fuller constructs the Tacoma Building, the first skyscraper supported entirely by an internal metal frame

1889 - First direct encounter (footprints) between a Westerner, Major Lawrence Waddell and the so-called abominable snowman

1889 - Setting of "Space 1889" RPG

1889 - Events portrayed in "Tremors 4: The Legend Begins"

1889 - Eight ships are lost in six months in North Atlantic waters. (“The Arctic Marauder”)

-----------------------------------------------

1890 - Motion pictures

1890 - The City & South London Railway becomes the first electrified subway system

1890 - Events depicted in "Dracula"

1891 - Electric motorcar; silicone; flashlight; zipper

1891 - Nikola Tesla demonstrates wireless transfer of electricity

1891 - May 4 - Death of Sherlock Holmes and Prof. Moriarty at Richenbach Falls as depicted in "The Final Problem"

1891 - First appearance of Nick Carter's arch nemesis Dr. Jack Quartz

1891 - Events portrayed in "Sherlock Holmes"

1891 – Herman Ganswindt designs the “first” solid fuel spaceship

1892 - Jun - Homestead Strike

1892 - Events depicted in "Girl Genius"

1892 – The Somers Clarke and J.J. Tylor dig at Hierakonpolis discovers the oldest known sample of the Solanum virus ("The Zombie Survival Guide")

1892 - Setting of "Rippers" RPG

1892 - Publication of “Hartmann the Anarchist” by E. Douglas Fawcett

1892 - Erasmus Croach establishes the Ember Corporation, manufacturing automatons and clankbots (“The Clockwork Sky”)

1893 - Photoelectric cell; electric toaster

1893 - Rudolph Diesel patents the design for what will become the Diesel Engine

1893 - Publication of "On the Moon" by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky

1893 - May 23 - radio; motion pictures; mechanical man. unveiled at World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, exhibition powered by Tesla AC generators and lit by fluorescent lamps

1893 - Events portrayed in "The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr."

1893 – The melody that would become “Happy Birthday to You” composed by Patty and Mildred Hill of Louisville, Ky

1894 - Jun - The Tower Bridge opens in London

1894 - Helium; escalator

1894 - Publication of "The Jungle Book" by Rudyard Kipling

1894 - The return of Sherlock Holmes as depicted in "The Empty House"

1894 - Percival Lowell establishes his observatory at Flagstaff, Arizona

1894 - Dr. John Harvey Kellogg's invention of a flaked corn breakfast cereal

1894 - William Hooker patents the first spring-loaded mousetrap

1895 - X-rays; wireless telegraph; motorcycle

1895 - Feb-Aug - Campion expedition to Antarctica ("Boilerplate")

1895 - Publication of "The Time Machine" by H. G. Wells

1895 - the term "Yellow Peril" is coined

1895 - Publication of "Mars" by Percival Lowell

1895 – Konstantin Tsiolkovsky propose a space elevator

1896 - Jun - The Meiji-Sanriku Earthquake kills 22,000

1896 - Electrons; radioactivity

1896 - Publication of "Mars and its Canals" by Percival Lowell

1896 - Publication of "Island of Dr. Moreau" by H. G. Wells

1896 – Nov - Mystery airship spotted above California.

1896 - First modern Olympic games

1896 - Frank Munsey's Argosy Magazine published in an all-fiction format

1896 - Augustus Le Plongeon publishes "Queen Moo and the Egyptian Sphinx", another "translation" of the Mayan Troano Codex

1896 - Dr. H.H. Holmes arrested in Philadelphia and subsequently hung for the torture and murder of as many as 200 men, women and children in a Chicago “hotel” set up for that purpose.

1896 - Events portrayed in “Warlords of Atlantis”

1897 - Publication of "The Invisible Man" by H. G. Wells

1897 - Publication of "Dracula" by Bram Stoker

1897 - Joseph Thomson discovers the electron

1897 - Feb-May – Mystery airship sighted over American midwest; Kaansas through Michigan and south into Texas

1897 - Apr 17 - Mystery airship crash in Aurora, TX

1897 - Apr 19 - Mystery airship steals cattle from Leroy, KS (debunked)

1897 - First turbine powered boat, the Turbinia

1898 - Neon; krypton

1898 - Marie and Pierre Curie isolate radium and polonium

1898 - May-Sep - Spanish-American War

1898 - Publication of "The War of the Worlds" by H. G. Wells

1898 - Publication of "Edison's Conquest of Mars" by Garrett P. Serviss

1898 - Sinking of the cruise liner "Titan" as depicted in "Futility" by Morgan Robertson

1898 - British court ruling that men do not have the right to beat their wives

1898 - Alberto Santos-Dumont uses the first gasoline-powered dirigible

1898 - Nikola Tesla demonstrates a radio-controlled boat

1898 - "The Cellular Cosmogony" published by Koresh (Cyrus Reed Teed) promoting that the Earth is hollow and we are living on its interior

1898 - Arthur Schuster hypothesizes "antiatoms" possessing negative gravity and the possibility of matter and antimatter annihilating

1899 - Aspirin, paperclip

1899 - Tesla sets up lab at Colorado Springs

1899 - E.W. Barton-Wright opens the Bartitsu Academy of Arms and Physical Culture in London

1899 - Publication of "Kaitei Gunkan" (“The Undersea Battleship”) by Shunro Oshikawa

1899 - Oct - Start of Second Boer War

1899 - Oct 14 – Production of the first Cavorite (“First Men in the Moon”)

-----------------------------------------------

1900 - Jul - First zeppelin flight, the LZ-1

1900 - Publication of "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" by L. Frank Baum

1900 - Publication of "The Lost Continent" by C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne

1900 - Publication of "The Moon Metal" by Garrett P. Serviss

1900 - March or April - Cavor expedition to the Moon as depicted in "The First Men in the Moon"

1900 - Sir Arthur Evans purchases Knossos for excavation

1900 - Harry Houdini tours Europe and becomes known as “The Handcuff King”

1901 - Jan - Death of Queen Victoria, Coronation of King Edward VII

1901 - Publication of "The First Men in the Moon" by H. G. Wells

1901 - Electric Typewriter

1901 - June - Invasion from Mars ("The War of the Worlds")

1902 - The Bartitsu Club closes its doors

1902 - Richard Pearse of New Zealand succeeds in the first sustained long-range flights in a heavier-than-air aircraft

1903 - Premier of "A Trip to the Moon" a Film by George Méliès

1903 - Publication of "The Certainty of a Future Life on Mars" by Louis Pope Gratacap

1903 - Abner Perry expedition to Pellucidar. (“At the Earth’s Core”)

1904 - Publication of "Master of the World" by Jules Verne

1904 - Publication of “Peter Pan” by James Barrie

1904 - Construction begins on the Panama Canal

1905 - The Wright brothers perform the first documented sustained long-range flights in a heavier-than-air aircraft

1906 - Publication of "Phantom of the Poles" by William Reed

1906 - The launch of the HMS Dreadnought, the first all-big-gun warship

1906 - Publication of "Mars and its Canals" by Percival Lowell

1906 - Publication of “Doctor Omega” by Arnould Galopin

1907 - Patenting of caterpillar track steam tractor by David Roberts

1907 - Publication of "The Iron Heel" by Jack London

1907 - First manned helicopter flight by Paul Cornu

1908 - Publication of "The War in the Air" by H. G. Wells

1908 - Jun 30 - Tunguska Event

1908 - Production of the Model-T Ford automobile

1909 - The German Airship Travel Corporation founded as the first commercial airline

1909 - France forms the first air force to use aeroplanes rather than observation balloons

-----------------------------------------------

1910 - Premier of "Frankenstein" a Film by Thomas Alva Edison

1910 - The London Daily Post offers 10,000 pounds to the winner of an air race from London to Paris. (“Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines”)

1910 - May - Death of King Edward VII

1911 - First bombing from an aeroplane, by Giulio Gavotti during the Italio-Turkish War

1911 - Nov - Events portrayed in "The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec"

1911 - Dec – Amundson reaches the South geographical pole

1912 - Piltdown man hoax

1912 - Publication of "The Lost World" by Arthur Conan Doyle

1912 - Publication of "Under the Moons of Mars" by Edgar Rice Burroughs

1914 - Beginning of First World War

1914 - The Japanese seaplane carrier Wakamiya conducts the first ship-launched airplane attack

1914 - Completion of the Panama Canal

1914 - Events portrayed in "Atlantis: The Lost Continent"

1915 - First Zeppelin raids against England

1915 - Fokker synchronization gear developed, allowing for airplane-mounted machine guns to be fired forward through the propeller

1915 - First tank developed, the Little Willie

1916 - First tanks used in combat

1917 - Cottingley Faeries

1918 - End of First World War

1919 - First non-stop transatlantic flight