| 1845–1958 | Germany [earth sciences] | German naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt lays the basis of modern geography with the publication of Kosmos/Cosmos, in which he arranges geographic knowledge in a systematic fashion. |
| 1881–1890 | USA, UK [statistics and demography] | Emigration to the USA is 807,357 from Britain and 655,482 from Ireland. |
| 1885–1890 | South Africa [astronomy] | British astronomer David Gill photographs over 450,000 stars of 11th magnitude or brighter in the southern hemisphere, in South Africa. |
| 1887 | French Indochina, France [colonization] | France organizes Cochin-China, Cambodia, Annam, and Tonkin as the Union Indo-Chinoise (French Indochina). |
| 1887 | Scotland [fiction] | The Scottish writer Arthur Conan Doyle publishes A Study in Scarlet, the first Sherlock Holmes novel. |
| 1887 | Poland [language studies] | Polish philoligist Luwik Lejzer Zamenhof devises Esperanto: based on phonetic spelling and a very simple grammar, it becomes the most widely accepted of the artificial languages. He invents it as a way of combatting nationalism. |
| 1887 | USA [technology] | German-born US inventor Emil Berliner patents the flat phonograph disc or record, and develops a method of making them. Easier to manufacture than cylinders, they also minimize distortions caused by gravity since the stylus moves across the record rather than up and down as on the cylinders. |
| 1887 | Germany [media and communication] | German immigrant Emile Berliner patents his gramophone, a machine which plays discs, in the USA. Commercial production begins in Germany in 1889 and in the USA in 1894. |
| 1887 | Netherlands, France [painting] | The Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh paints Portrait of Père Tanguy. |
| 1887 | USA [physics] | US physicist Albert Michelson and US chemist Edward Williams Morley fail in an attempt to measure the velocity of the Earth through the ‘ether’ by measuring the speed of light in two directions. Their failure discredits the idea of the ether and leads to the conclusion that the speed of light is a universal constant, a fundamental premise of Einstein's theory of relativity. |
| 1887 | Germany [physics] | German physicist Heinrich Hertz discovers the photoelectric effect, in which a material gives off charged particles when it absorbs radiant energy, when he observes that ultraviolet light affects the voltage at which sparking between two metal plates takes place. Later work on this phenomenon leads to the conclusion that light is composed of particles called photons. |
| 1887 | USA [sports] | George Hancock of the Farragut Boat Club, Chicago, Illinois, invents softball as an indoor version of baseball. The game later becomes known as ‘mush-ball’ or ‘kitten-ball’; it is not called ‘softball’ until the 1920s. |
| 4 March 1887 | Germany [motor vehicles] | German mechanical engineer Gottlieb Daimler fits his engine to a four-wheeled carriage to produce a four-wheeled motorcar. During the same year he fits his internal combustion engine to a boat, creating the first motor boat. |
| 20 April 1887 | France [motor-racing and rallying] | The first motor race, organized by the French cycling magazine La Vélocipède, is held in Paris. The winner (and only entrant) is Georges Bouton on a four-seater steam quadricycle. |
| 18 June 1887 | Germany, Russian Empire [treaties] | A secret German–Russian Reinsurance Treaty is signed to replace the expiring Three Emperors' Alliance (including Austria-Hungary), which Russia refuses to renew. |
| 12 August 1887 | Austria [births and deaths] | Erwin Schrödinger, Austrian physicist who develops the wave theory of matter, born in Vienna, Austria (–1961). |
| 6 October 1887 | Switzerland [births and deaths] | Le Corbusier (assumed name of Charles-Edouard Jeanneret), Swiss architect and city planner whose designs combines expressionism and functionalism, born in Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland (–1965). |
| 31 October 1887 | China, Taiwan [births and deaths] | Jiang Jie Shi (Chiang Kai-shek), Chinese statesman, leader of the Nationalist government 1928–49, and then of the Chinese Nationalist government in exile on Taiwan, born in Zhejiang Province, China (–1975). |
| 2 December 1887 | France [law and government] | François-Paul-Jules Grévy resigns the presidency of France following financial scandals connected with his son-in-law Daniel Wilson, who trafficked in medals of the Legion of Honour. Marie-François-Sadi Carnot is elected president. |
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