The World in 1889 the year Paris built the tallest thing on earth

The Eiffel Tower reached 1,024 feet. The tallest thing people had put up before it, the Washington Monument, stopped at 555 feet, so Paris nearly doubled the record in about two years of building.

Life back then

Streets still glowed yellow from gas lamps, and a lamplighter walked the same route every evening with a pole to light them one by one. Electric light was the loud new thing. The Paris fair ran thousands of bulbs after dark, and crowds paid just to stand and look at buildings that stayed bright without a flame. A few city blocks in New York and London already had arc lamps on tall poles, so harsh that people said they turned midnight into a grey afternoon. Most homes were nowhere near a wire and still read by kerosene lamp.

The year in 8 events

• 📜Feb 11 Japan adopts the Meiji Constitution, its first written constitution.
• 🗼Mar 31 The Eiffel Tower is finished in Paris. Many artists and writers hate it.
• 🐎Apr 22 Thousands of settlers race into Oklahoma at noon to claim land taken from Native nations.
• 🕯️May 31 A dam gives way above Johnstown, Pennsylvania. More than 2,200 people die in the flood.
• 🥊Jul 8 John L. Sullivan beats Jake Kilrain after 75 rounds in the last bare-knuckle title fight.
• ⚓Aug 14 Dock workers walk out across the port of London. They stay out for a month and win the sixpence an hour they asked for.
• 🃏Sep 23 A small workshop in Kyoto starts making hand painted playing cards. It is called Nintendo.
• 🌎Nov 15 Army officers depose the emperor of Brazil. The country becomes a republic.

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