The Elberta peach is imported into the United States from China. The Red Delicious apple is discovered as a chance seedling in Iowa. It will become the leading U.S. apple variety. The Brooklyn Institute imports eight pairs of English sparrows to protect Brooklyn, N.Y., shade trees from caterpillars. Nearly 15 percent of the world's sugar supply now comes from beets.
Tea catches up with coffee in popularity among the English.
Salmon is taken for the last time from England's Thames River, which is fast becoming heavily polluted. The fish will not reappear in the Thames for more than 120 years. Ignaz Semmelweis enforces antiseptic practices in the obstetric ward of Budapest's St. Rochus Hospital. German chemist Robert Wilhelm Bunsen invents the Bunsen burner. Friedrich Bayer und Co. Silas Putnam, of Neponsit, Massachusetts, invents a trip hammer which will be used by the U.S. cavalry to make horseshoe nails.