| 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. |
| 1889 | France [clothing and fashion] | The French corset-maker Hermine Cadolle creates the first bra, which frees women from the restrictions of corsets. |
| 1889 | UK [clothing and fashion] | The Fur and Feather group, later to become the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, is founded in Britain, largely in response to the fact that birds are being killed for the hat trade. |
| 1889 | UK [football] | Preston North End wins the inaugural English Football League Championship, and by also winning the Football Association (FA) Cup becomes the first team to complete the ‘double’. |
| 1889 | England [fiction] | The English writer Jerome K Jerome publishes his comic novel Three Men in a Boat. |
| 1889 | Germany [medicine] | German physiologists Oskar Minkowski and Joseph von Mering remove the pancreas from a dog, which then develops diabetic symptoms. It leads them to conclude that the pancreas secretes an antidiabetic substance, which is now known as insulin. |
| 1889 | USA [music] | The US composer John Philip Sousa completes his march Washington Post. |
| 1889–1890 | World [plagues and epidemics] | A pandemic of influenza, called the Russian flu, seeps the world. Beginning in Russia, it then spreads to the rest of Europe, China, and North America by 1890. It kills nearly 250,000 people in Europe and about 500,000 people worldwide. |
| 1889 | Denmark [plays] | The play Fröken Julie/Miss Julie by the Swedish writer Johan August Strindberg is first performed, in Copenhagen, Denmark. It was published in 1888. |
| 1889 | Germany [scientific publications] | German aeronautical engineer Otto Lilienthal writes Der Vogelflug als Grundlage der Fliegekumst/Bird Flight as a Basis of Aviation, a basic work on aeronautics in which he shows that the curved wings of birds are advantageous for flight. |
| 1889 | UK [statistics and demography] | The British are the largest consumers per capita of sugar in the world. |
| 1889 | New Zealand [suffrage] | Manhood suffrage, the right of adult male citizens to vote, is granted in New Zealand. |
| 1889 | UK [cinema and film] | British inventor William Friese-Greene develops a camera that takes ten photographs per second, on a roll of perforated film moving behind a shutter. The first true motion picture camera, he uses it to film scenes at Hyde Park Corner, London, England. |
| 10 January 1889 | Côte d'Ivoire, France [colonization] | France proclaims a protectorate over the Ivory Coast. |
| 1 April 1889 | France [elections] | General Georges Boulanger, fearing trial for treason, flees from France. In the subsequent elections the Republicans triumph. |
| 16 April 1889 | England, USA [births and deaths] | Charlie Chaplin, British-born US actor and director of the silent film era, who gains fame playing a pathetic but humorous character, born in London, England (–1977). |
| 20 April 1889 | Germany [births and deaths] | Adolf Hitler, German fascist leader of the National Socialist (Nazi) Party, dictator of Germany 1933–45, born in Braunau, Germany (–1945). |
| 26 April 1889 | Austria, UK [births and deaths] | Ludwig Wittgenstein, Austrian-born British philosopher, one of the most influential in the 20th century, born in Vienna, Austria (–1951). |
| 2 May 1889 | Ethiopia, Italy [treaties] | By the Treaty of Ucciali with Menelek of Ethiopia, Italy proclaims a protectorate over Ethiopia. |
| 31 May 1889 | UK [legislation] | The Naval Defence Act in Britain inaugurates an extensive naval building programme, the prime minister Lord Salisbury undertaking that Britain will maintain a navy equal to the combined strengths of the next two largest fleets according to his ‘two-power standard’. |
| 5 July 1889 | France [births and deaths] | Jean Cocteau, French writer, actor, and painter, born in Maisons-Lafitte, near Paris, France (–1963). |
| 11 October 1889 | England [births and deaths] | James Prescott Joule, English physicist who demonstrated that the various forms of energy can be transformed one into another, dies in Sale, Cheshire, England (70). |
| 14 November 1889 | India [births and deaths] | Jawaharlal Nehru, first prime minister of independent India 1947–64, born in Allahabad, India (–1964). |
| 15 November 1889 | Brazil [law and government] | Brazil is proclaimed a republic on the abdication of Dom Pedro II following a coup. |
| 20 November 1889 | USA [births and deaths] | Edwin Powell Hubble, US astronomer who provides the first proof that the universe is expanding, born in Marshfield, Missouri (–1953). |
