When Australia win the second Test match, in London, the Sporting Times declares that they will take home with them 'the ashes of English cricket'

English polymath Francis Galton publishes Inquiries in Human Faculty, developing the theme of eugenics and coining the term

In Thus Spake Zarathustra Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche envisages the Übermensch ('superman') enhancing human existence

Robert Louis Stevenson's adventure story, Treasure Island, features Long John Silver and Ben Gunn

French artist Claude Monet moves to Giverny, where he creates and paints a famous lily pond

Antoni Gaudí begins a life-long commitment to the building of a modern cathedral in Barcelona, El Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Familia

The British empire is first described as a 'Commonwealth of Nations', by Lord Rosebery speaking in Australia

Bismarck launches the colonial scramble for Africa by suddenly annexing three territories for Germany (Togo, Cameroon and Angria Pequena)

English socialists, including Bernard Shaw and Sidney Webb, found the Fabian Society as part of a long-term political strategy

A new Reform Act in Britain further reduces the financial threshold for voters in Britain, in effect extending the franchise to male workers in rural areas

Greenwich becomes accepted internationally as the prime meridian, or 0° longitude

The newly founded Fabian Society publishes Manifesto by George Bernard Shaw

The Gaelic Athletic Association is founded in Ireland to promote indigenous games such as hurling

Verlaine publishes Les Poètes maudits, short studies of various 'cursed poets' – including Rimbaud

German mathematician Gottlob Frege publishes Grundlagen der Arithmetik ('Foundations of Arithmetic'), linking mathematics and logic

Bismarck invites the European powers to a West Africa Conference in Berlin

Oxford University Press publishes the A volume of its New English Dictionary, which will take 37 years to reach Z

German engineer Karl Friedrich Benz builds the Tri-Star, a three-wheeled vehicle with an internal combustion that is considered the first commercial automobile

Explorer and orientalist Richard Burton begins publication of his multi-volume translation from the Arabic of The Arabian Nights

Bismarck pioneers in Germany state welfare policies such as sickness benefits and old-age pensions

A secret revolutionary group (Union and Progress, later known as the Young Turks) is formed in Salonika in the Ottoman empire

Gladstone resigns as British prime minister, after a defeat on the budget, and is followed by a minority government headed by Conservative leader Lord Salisbury

The Statue of Liberty, by Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi, is assembled in Paris before being shipped across the Atlantic

Louis Pasteur uses rabies inoculation to save the life of 9-year-old Joseph Meister, bitten by a rabid dog

The American portrait-painter John Singer Sargent makes London his home and begins an immensely successful career