Steampunk Era

The **Steampunk Era**, also known as the **Gaslight Era**, is a period of history, part of modern times. It begins in 1891, following the Gilded Age, and lasts until 1914, with the start of the Great War.

## Timeline

### 1891

**May 4:** Holmes apparently killed in a battle with Professor Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls.

The horse Clever Hans begins showing off his mathematical skills in tours across Germany.

Death of Dorian Gray (b. 1853).

### 1892

**August 4:** Lizzie Borden gives her mother and father 40 whacks--Fall River, Massachusetts

Arsene Lupin begins his life of crime.

The Virginian backs the cattle barons while Shane sticks up for small ranchers in the Johnson County Range War--Wyoming

The boll weevil crosses the Rio Grande.

### 1893

**January 17:** U.S. Marines invade the kingdom of Hawai’i, overthrowing the government of Queen Liliuokalani.

**February 23:** George Diesel patents his engine.

**May 3:** Jonathan Harker arrives at Castle Dracula to do business with the Count.

**May 10:** The U.S. Supreme Court declares the tomato to be a vegetable.

**June 21:** George Ferris debuts his Wheel at the Columbian Exposition--Chicago

**August 6:** Count Dracula arrives in England aboard the ghost ship *Demeter*--Whitby

**September 17:** Lucy Westenra killed and turned by Count Dracula.

**September 21:** First gas-powered motorcar driven on public roads--Springfield, Massachusetts

**October 3:** Dracula and Mina Harker exchange blood.

**November 6:** Dracula slain by Abraham Van Helsing--Castle Dracula, Transylvania

### 1894

**April 3:** Sherlock Holmes reappears--London

**October 15:** Captain Alfred Dreyfus arrested for treason.

### 1895

*The King in Yellow* first performed; authorities afterwards attempt to destroy all copies--France

H.G. Wells travels into the year 802,701.

Charles Foster Kane (b. 1864) decides it would be fun to run a newspaper.

**March 19:** The Lumiere brothers invent cinema.

### 1896

**April 6:** Olympic Games are revived--Athens

**May:** George Melies begins shooting films--Paris

Butch Cassidy (1866-1908?) recruits the Sundance Kid (1867-1908?) into his Wild Bunch.

**November 3:** William McKinley elected president.

### 1897

**February:** Jack Griffin concocts a potion that turns him into an Invisible Man (and drives him mad)--Iping, England

**April 13:** Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol opens--Paris.

**April 27:** Grant is buried in Grant's Tomb--New York City

**June:** The Sleeper goes into a cataleptic trance that will last until 2100--Cornwall

**June 2:** Mark Twain notes that reports of his death are greatly exaggerated.

**July 17:** Klondike gold rush begin--Yukon

### 1898

Dorothy Gale transported via tornado to Munchkinland.

**January 13:** Emile Zola j'accuses France of antisemitism in the Dreyfus Affair.

**February 17:** The USS *Maine* explodes in Havana Harbor, sparking the Spanish-American War (with a little help from William Randolph Hearst).

**May 1:** Commodore George Dewey destroys the Spanish fleet in the Battle of Manila Bay.

**July 1:** Teddy Roosevelt (1858-1919) leads his Rough Riders in a charge up San Juan Hill--Santiago de Cuba.

**December 26:** Marie and Pierre Curie discover Radium--Paris.

### 1899

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) discovers the Id--Vienna.

**June 27:** Paperclip invented.

Boxer Rebellion begins--China

Boer War begins--South Africa

**October 14:** Dr. Cavor invents Cavorite and becomes one of the First Men in the Moon--Lympne, Kent

### 1900

**February 14:** Disappearances at Hanging Rock--Victoria, Australia.

**April 30:** Casey Jones dies with his hand on the whistle--Vaughan, Mississippi

**November:** Robert Scott and Ernest Shackleton make their first expedition to Antarctica.

### 1901

**September 14:** Teddy Roosevelt becomes president when William McKinley (b. 1843) is assassinated by anarchist Leon Czolgosz--Buffalo, New York.

**November 25:** Dr. Alois Alzheimer encounters the first documented case of his Disease--Frankfurt, Germany

### 1902

Martian invaders land in southeast England, devastating the countryside before succumbing to bacterial infection.

### 1903

Holmes retires to Sussex to raise bees.

The Wright Brothers invent the airplane.

**September 3:** Tinker, Evers and Chance make their first double play--New York City.

### 1904

**February 8:** Russo-Japanese War begins.

Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) establishes the Ordo Templi Orientalis.

Wendy and her brothers taken to Neverland by Peter Pan.

**June 16:** Writer Stephen Dedalus and advertising agent Leopold Bloom wander about--Dublin.

### 1905

Russian Revolution of 1905

Mata Hari (b. 1876) begins dancing in Paris.

Ivan Pavlov trains his dog to drool.

**June:** Albert Einstein (1879-1955) discovers the theory of relativity.

### 1906

An Invisible Man returns.

**April 18:** The Great San Francisco Earthquake

### 1907

**November 1:** Cthulhu cultists captured near New Orleans.

### 1908

Tom Swift (b. 1892) begins his inventing career--upstate New York.

**June 30:** A multi-megaton explosion occurs in Tunguska, Siberia.

**August:** Hans Geiger invents his counter--Manchester, England.

**August 12:** Henry Ford (1863-1947) produces the first Model T.

**November 6:** Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid declared dead in Bolivia.

### 1909

Jane Porter meets Tarzan in the jungle.

Robert Peary reaches the North Pole (or does he?).

### 1910

Mexican Revolution begins.

Tarzan discovers the Lost City of Opar.

Mary Poppins is hired to look after Jane and Michael Banks--London.

Professor George Edward Challenger (1863-1938) discovers the Lost World--Brazil.

### 1911

Casper Gutman begins searching for the Maltese Falcon.

**December 14:** Roald Amundsen reaches the South Pole.

### 1912

**March 29:** Robert Scott dies on his return march from the South Pole, which he reached after Admundsen.

**April 15:** The unsinkable *Titanic* strikes an
iceberg; 1,517 perish, including John Jacob Astor IV and Jack Dawson; 706 survive, including Molly Brown and Rose DeWitt Bukater.

**November 5:** Woodrow Wilson elected president.

### 1913

**May 29:** The audience riots at the premiere of Stravinsky’s *The Rite of Spring*.

### 1914

Pauline Marvin is in peril.

Carl Jung (1875-1961) splits with Freud

Discovery of Pellucidar at the Earth's core.

Charlie Chaplin becomes "The Tramp."

May 14: Rube Goldberg begins inventing devices--New York City.

**August 2:** Sherlock Holmes’ last case.

**August 15:** Panama Canal opened

**September 1:** Passenger pigeon extinct.