Major Events
- Mar 31 Eiffel Tower officially opens, for dignitaries and an award ceremony, in Paris, France; designed by Gustave Eiffel and built for the Exposition Universelle, at 300m high it retains the record for the tallest man made structure for 41 years
- May 6 Exposition Universelle (World's Fair) in Paris opens with the recently completed Eiffel Tower serving as the entrance arch; the lifts in the tower are not ready, intrepid visitors need to climb 1,710 stairs to get to top
- More 1889 Events
1889 in Film & TV
- Apr 6 George Eastman begins selling his Kodak flexible rolled film for the first time
- Sep 23 Nintendo Koppai (Later Nintendo Company, Limited) founded by Fusajiro Yamauchi to produce and market the playing card game Hanafuda
1889 in Sport
- Jul 8 John L. Sullivan successfully defends last officially sanctioned, bare-knuckle world heavyweight prizefighting championship; Jake Kilrain's trainer throws in towel after 75 x 1-minute rounds near Hattiesburg, Mississippi
- Dec 24 Daniel Stover & William Hance patent bicycle with back pedal brake
Did You Know?
The first General Conference on Weights and Measures (CGPM) defines the length of a meter as the distance between two lines on a standard bar of an alloy of platinum with ten percent iridium, measured at the melting point of ice
Adolf Hitler
António de Oliveira Salazar
Igor Sikorsky
Jawaharlal Nehru
Edwin Hubble
Alexander Patch
Victor Fleming
Warner Baxter
Charlie Chaplin
Jean CocteauMore People Born in 1889
Fun Fact About 1889
Louisa Woosley first women to be ordained as a minister in any Presbyterian denomination (US Cumberland Presbyterian Church).
Rudolf, Crown Prince of Austria
John Ericsson
Jefferson Davis
Robert BrowningMore 1889 Deaths
Articles About 1889
Lovesick Prince in Suicide Pact
Two lovers, a pact, then tragedy. But what really happened at Mayerling in 1889 remains a mystery despite 130 years of rumour, speculation – and three movies.January 30
Nature Blows Gunboat Diplomacy Out of the Water
The world's superpowers were prepared to use the power of their warships to control the Samoan Islands in the 1880s. But nature had other ideas.March 15
Eiffel Tower Opens
The Eiffel Tower on opening day in ParisMarch 31
Famous Weddings in 1889
- May 31 Polish pianist, and politician Ignacy Jan Paderewski (38) weds Polish baroness, social activist, and humanitaran Helena Maria von Rosen (32) in Warsaw, Russian Empire, until her death in 1934
- Jun 1 Architect Frank Lloyd Wright (21) weds socialite Catherine Tobin
- Sep 6 Explorer Fridtjof Nansen (27) weds mezzo-soprano singer Eva Nansen (30)
More Weddings in 1889
Claude Monet
Giuseppe Verdi
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Benjamin Harrison
Otto von Bismarck
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil