Events
- January 4 – Life magazine is founded in Los Angeles, United States.
- January 19 – The first electric lighting system employing overhead wires begins service in Roselle, New Jersey, installed by Thomas Edison.
- February – The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi is first published complete in book form, in Italy.
- February 28 – The first vaudeville theater is opened, in Boston, Massachusetts.
- April 5 – Oxygen is liquefied for the first time.
- May 23 – Robert Louis Stevenson‘s children’s pirate adventure novel Treasure Island is first published in book format, in London.
- May 24 – Brooklyn Bridge is opened to traffic in New York City, after 13 years of construction.
- May 30 – A rumor that the Brooklyn Bridge is going to collapse causes a stampede, which crushes 12 people.
- July 4 – The world’s first rodeo is held in Pecos, Texas.
- August 12 – The last quagga dies at the Artis Magistra zoo in Amsterdam.
- August 26–27 – 1883 eruption of Krakatoa: The volcanic island of Krakatoa erupts at 10:02 AM (local time); 163 villages are destroyed, 36,380 killed by tsunami.
- September 1 – Pope Leo XIII publishes the encyclical Supremi apostolatus officio (“On Devotion of the Rosary”).
- October 4
- The Orient Express train begins to run through from Paris Gare de l’Est to Giurgiu in Romania, with onward ferry and train connections to Istanbul (the train has been running since June 5 as far as Vienna).
- November 3 – The 14th Century AH begins in the Islamic calendar on the 1st of Muharram, 1201 AH.
Date unknown
- German bacteriologist Robert Koch discovers the cholera bacillus.
- Antoni Gaudí begins to work on the Sagrada Família Cathedral in Barcelona (it will be consecrated in 2010).
- Otto von Bismarck pushes the first social security law through the Reichstag.
