Charles Fort: A Fortean Chronology, 1895.

The year of 1895 (MDCCCXCV) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar.

January

 

  • January 5: Dreyfus Affair: French officer Alfred Dreyfus is stripped of his army rank and sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil's Island.
  • January 5: Fires at the home of Adam Colwell, Brooklyn. Policemen sent to investigate watch as furniture burst into flames; fires of an unknown origin. (Books920) 
  • January 21: The National Trust is founded in Britain by Octavia Hill, Robert Hunter and Canon Hardwicke Rawnsley.

 

February

  • February 7: "Mysterious sounds" and luminous effects in the sky above Florida. (Books478)
  • February 8: "Mysterious sounds" and luminous effects in the sky above Florida. (Books478)
  • February 9: "Mysterious sounds" and luminous effects in the sky above Florida. (Books478)
  • February 9: Mintonette, later known as volleyball, is created by William G. Morgan at Holyoke, Massachusetts.
  • February 11: The lowest ever UK temperature of -27.2°C (measured as -17°F) is recorded at Braemar in Aberdeenshire. This record is equalled in 1982 and again in 1995.
  • February 14: Oscar Wilde's last play The Importance of Being Earnest is first shown at St. James' Theatre in London.

 

March

  • March 1: William L. Wilson is appointed United States Postmaster General.
  • March 3: In Munich, bicyclists have to pass a test and display license plates.
  • March 4: Japanese troops capture Liaoyang and land in Taiwan.
  • March 10-11: Not a cloud; no mist - electric flashes like lightning are reported by a ship upon the Atlantic. (Books495) 
  • March 15: in County Tipperary, Ireland, Bridget Cleary is killed by her husband, believing her to be a fairy changeling.

 

April

  • April 6: Oscar Wilde is arrested after losing a libel case against the Marquess of Queensberry.
  • April 14: A major earthquake severely damages Ljubljana, Slovenia.
  • April 17: The Treaty of Shimonoseki is signed between China and Japan. This marks the end of the first Sino-Japanese War, and the defeated Qing Empire is forced to renounce its claims on Korea and to concede the southern portion of Fengtien province, Taiwan, and the Pescadores Islands to Japan.
  • April 22: Gongche Shangshu movement: 603 candidates sign a 10,000-word petition against the Treaty of Shimonoseki.

 

May

  • May 2: Gongche Shangshu movement: Thousands of Beijing scholars and citizens protest against the Treaty of Shimonoseki.
  • May 24: Anti-Japanese officials led by Tang Ching-sung in Taiwan declare independence from the Qing Dynasty, forming the short-lived Republic of Formosa.
  • May 25: Oscar Wilde is convicted of "sodomy and gross indecency" and is sentenced to serve 2 years in prison at Reading.

 

June

  • June 28: The union of Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador begins (ends in 1898).

 

July

  • July 10/11: The Doukhobors' pacifist protests culminate in the "Burning of the Arms" in their villages in the South Caucasus.
  • July 15: Archie MacLaren scores County Championship cricket record innings of 424 for Lancashire against Somerset at Taunton.
  • July 31: The Basque Nationalist Party (Euzko Alderdi Jeltzalea-Partido Nacionalista Vasco) founded by Basque nationalist leader Sabino Arana.

 

August

  • August 19: American frontier murderer and outlaw John Wesley Hardin is killed by an off-duty policeman in a saloon in El Paso, Texas.
  • August 24: Luminous object seen in the sky over Denegal, Ireland. (Books466) 
  • August 29: The sport of rugby league is formed at a meeting in the George Hotel, Huddersfield, England.
  • August 31: Something in the sky over Oxford, England; much bigger than Venus. (Books467) 

 

September

  • September 3: The first professional American football game is played, in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, between the Latrobe YMCA and the Jeannette Athletic Club (Latrobe wins 12-0).
  • September 4: A locust was caught in Yorkshire. There are no locusts indigenous to England. (Books747)
  • September 13: Four shocks are felt and sounds heard at Southampton, England. No shocks or sounds were reported from elsewhere! (Books473)
  • September 16: Three detonations heard by a M. de Schryvere of Brussels. (Books472) 
  • September 18: Booker T. Washington delivers the Atlanta Compromise speech.

 

October

  • Rudyard Kipling publishes the story Mowgli Leaves the Jungle Forever in The Cosmopolitan illustrated magazine.
  • October 1: French troops capture Antananarivo in Madagascar.
  • October 8-9: Locusts reported to have been found in great numbers across the British Isles, Pembrokeshire, Derbyshire, Glocestershire and Cornwall. (Books747) 
  • October 22: A train wreck occurs at Montparnasse Station in Paris.
  • October 23: The city of Tainan, last stronghold of the Republic of Formosa, capitulates to the forces of the Empire of Japan, ending the short-lived republic and beginning the Japanese rule era.
  • October 31: A major earthquake occurs in the New Madrid Seismic Zone, the last to date.
X-ray of Alfred von Kolliker's hand by Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen, 13th January 1896.
X-ray of Alfred von Kolliker's hand by Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen, 13th January 1896.

November

  • November 5: George B. Selden is granted the first U.S. patent for an automobile.
  • November 8: Wilhelm Röntgen discovers a type of radiation later known as X-rays.
  • November 15: An "alarming explosion" occured somewhere near Fenchurch Street, London. No damage was done and no trace of an explosion found. (Books468)
  • November 25: Oscar Hammerstein opens the Olympia Theatre, the first theatre to be built in NYC's Times Square district.
  • November 27: At the Swedish-Norwegian Club in Paris, Alfred Nobel signs his last will and testament, setting aside his estate to establish the Nobel Prize after his death.

 

December

  • 3,000 Armenians are burned alive in Urfa by the Ottoman troops.
  • December 7: A corps of 2,500 Italian troops, mostly Ascari, are crushed by 30,000 Abyssian troops at Amba Alagi.
  • December 24: George Washington Vanderbilt II officially opens his "Biltmore House" estate on Christmas Eve, inviting his family to celebrate his new home in Asheville, NC.
  • December 28: Auguste and Louis Lumière display their first moving picture film in Paris.