1881
year
1881 (MDCCCLXXXI) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar and a common year starting on Thursday of the Julian calendar, the 1881st year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 881st year of the 2nd millennium, the 81st year of the 19th century, and the 2nd year of the 1880s decade. As of the start of 1881, the Gregorian calendar was 12 days ahead of the Julian calendar, which remained in localized use until 1923.
Events
January
January 1–24 – Siege of Geok Tepe: Russian troops under General Mikhail Skobelev defeat the Turkomans.
January 13 – War of the Pacific – Battle of San Juan and Chorrillos: The Chilean army defeats Peruvian forces.
January 15 – War of the Pacific – Battle of Miraflores: The Chileans take Lima, capital of Peru, after defeating its second line of defense in Miraflores.
January 24 – William Edward Forster, chief secretary for Ireland, introduces his Coercion Bill, which temporarily suspends habeas corpus so that those people suspected of committing an offence can be detained without trial; it goes through a long debate before it is accepted February 2. Note that Coercion bills had been passed almost annually in the 19th century, with a total of 105 such bills passed from 1801 to 1921.
January 25 – Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell form the Oriental Telephone Company.
February
February 13 – The first issue of the feminist newspaper La Citoyenne is published by Hubertine Auclert in Paris.
February 16 – The Canadian Pacific Railway is incorporated.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “1881” as year. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as year. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7808. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1881, 1923, 1801 and 1921.
A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “1881”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow 1881 primary sources, 1881 archive and year research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “1881”?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
- Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “1881” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.