In the 1888 US presidential election, Democratic Party incumbent Grover Cleveland wins the popular vote, but loses the Electoral College vote to Republican challenger Benjamin Harrison.
Elsewhere in the USA, Anne Sullivan begins teaching Helen Keller, Susan B. Anthony organizes a Congress for Women’s Rights in Washington, D.C., George Eastman registers the trademark Kodak, and receives a patent for his camera which uses roll film, and in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, the first Groundhog Day is observed.
In Germany, Gottlieb Daimler unveils his first automobile and Frederick III becomes German Emperor and King of Prussia.
The British Empire celebrates Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee, marking the 50th year of her reign. Elsewhere in the UK, the Whitechapel murders take place, the first 6 Football League matches are played, and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn is founded.
In France, the construction of the iron structure of the Eiffel Tower starts in Paris, The French Riviera is hit by a large earthquake, killing around 2,000, and Vincent van Gogh cuts off the lower part of his own left ear in a brothel and is removed to the local hospital in Arles.
King Kalākaua of Hawai’i is forced by anti-monarchists to sign the ‘Bayonet Constitution’, stripping the Hawaiian monarchy of much of its authority as well as disfranchising most native Hawaiians, all Asians and the poor.
In Asia, the 1887 Yellow River flood in China kills between 900,000 and 2,000,000 people, and Laos and Cambodia are added to French Indochina.
Max Ritter von Müller, German World War I fighter ace (d. 1918)
Chico Marx, American comedian and actor (d. 1961)
Fatty Arbuckle, American actor (d. 1933)
Shoeless Joe Jackson, baseball player (d. 1951)
Marcel Duchamp, French-born artist (d. 1968)
Rupert Brooke, British war poet (d. 1915)
Erwin Schrödinger, Austrian physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1961)
Marcus Garvey, American publisher, entrepreneur, and Pan Africanist (d. 1940)
Le Corbusier, Swiss architect (d. 1965)
Chiang Kai-shek, 1st–5th President of the Republic of China (d. 1975)
L. S. Lowry, English painter (d. 1976)
Arnold Zweig, German writer (d. 1968)
Georgia O’Keeffe, American painter (d.1986)
Bernard Montgomery, World War II British commander (d. 1976)
Boris Karloff, English actor (d. 1969)
Conrad Hilton, American hotelier (d.1979)
Thomas Sopwith, English aviation pioneer and yachtsman (d. 1989)
Huddie William Ledbetter (Lead Belly), American folk and blues singer (d. 1949)
Otto Stern, German physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1969)
Anita Loos, American writer (d. 1981)
Irving Berlin, American composer (d. 1989)
Raymond Chandler, American-born novelist (d. 1959)
John Logie Baird, Scottish inventor (d. 1946)
T. E. Lawrence (“Lawrence of Arabia”), British liaison officer during the Arab Revolt, writer, and academic (d. 1935)
T. S. Eliot, British (American-born) writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1965)
Henry A. Wallace, 33rd Vice President of the United States (d. 1965)
Eugene O’Neill, American writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1953)
Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr., American politician (d. 1969)
Gustav Kirchhoff, German physicist (b. 1824)
Alexander Borodin, Russian composer (b. 1833)
Jenny Lind, Swedish soprano (b. 1820)
Doc Holliday, American gambler and gunfighter (b. 1851)
Emma Lazarus, American poet (b. 1859)
Edward Lear, British artist and writer (b. 1812)
Louisa May Alcott, American novelist (b. 1832)
Wilhelm I, German Emperor and King of Prussia (b. 1797)
Friedrich III, German Emperor and King of Prussia (b. 1831)
Paul Langerhans, German pathologist and biologist (b. 1847)
John Pemberton, American founder of Coca-Cola (b. 1831)
Carl Zeiss, optician and founder of company now known as Carl Zeiss AG (b. 1816)