A war of liberation against Turkey wins full independence for Serbia

English physicist Joseph Swan demonstrates a practical electric light bulb, using an incandescent carbon filament in a vacuum

21-year-old Joseph Conrad, a Polish subject, goes to sea with the British merchant navy

Tchaikovsky's opera Eugene Onegin, based on Pushkin's poem, has its premiere in Moscow

The young daughter of an amateur archaeologist discovers the first known example of prehistoric art, in a cave at Altamira in Spain

The ancient Irish game of hurling is formalized by the newly founded Irish Hurling Union

A congress in Paris, with Ferdinand de Lesseps as president, decides to construct a canal from coast to coast in Panama

English physicist Joseph Swan receives a patent for bromide paper, which becomes the standard material for printing photographs

Henrik Ibsen's play A Doll's House signals a new direction in drama in its frank treatment of tensions within a marriage

An entire train, full of passengers, falls into the river Tay in Scotland when a bridge collapses in a winter gale

Henry James's story Daisy Miller, about an American girl abroad, brings him a new readership

For the second time Gladstone replaces Disraeli as Britain's prime minister, following a Liberal election victory over the Conservatives

Gustave Flaubert dies, with his novel Bouvard et Pécuchet incomplete

Russian composer Alexander Borodin writes In the Steppes of Central Asia as part of the silver jubilee celebrations for Alexander II

Dostoevsky publishes his novel The Brothers Karamazov, featuring the four sons of the depraved Feodor Pavlovich Karamazov

Johannes Brahms' Academic Festival Overture is performed first at Breslau university, which has conferred on him an honorary Ph.D.

The first pogroms, or officially sanctioned attacks on Jews and their property, take place in Russia

Russia's reforming tsar, Alexander II, is killed by hand-made grenades thrown at his carriage in St Petersburg

The Tynwald in the Isle of Man becomes the first parliament to give women the vote

London's new Savoy Theatre is the first public building in the world to be lit throughout by electricity

The Aesthetic Movement and 'art for art's sake', attitudes personified above all by Whistler and Wilde, are widely mocked and satirized in Britain

Eadweard Muybridge projects slow-motion images of a trotting horse as a demonstration at London's Royal Institution

German bacteriologist Robert Koch announces his discovery of the bacillus that causes tuberculosis

Irish chief secretary Lord Frederick Cavendish and a colleague are assassinated in Phoenix Park in Dublin

Italy, previously non-aligned, signs a Triple Alliance with Germany and Austria-Hungary