Princesses Beatrice and Alexandra during an amateur dramatic production with Hon. Mary Hughes

Events of 1895back to top

Current affairs

Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest is first performed, the same year that he is imprisoned for homosexual offences following accusations made against him by the eighth Marquess of Queensbury. Whilst in prison, Wilde wrote De Profundis, a letter addressed to his former lover, Queensbury's son Lord Alfred Douglas, attacking him for his role in Wilde's imprisonment.
Prime Minister Lord Rosebery resigns and is succeeded by Salisbury.

Art and science

The Lumiere brothers hold the first public screening of movies at Paris's Salon Indien du Grand Café, featuring ten short films recorded with Leon Bouly's cinematographe device, recognised as the birth of cinema as a commercial medium.
Henry Irving, the celebrated actor and theatre manager, becomes the first actor to receive a knighthood.

International

In South Africa, prompted by the growing unrest of unfranchised British immigrants (Uitlanders) drawn to the Transvaal by the discovery of gold, Rhodes and other members of the South African mining community begin to plot the republic's overthrow. As a result, the disastrous Jameson Raid takes place, carried out on Paul Kruger's Transvaal Republic by Leander Starr Jameson and his Rhodesian and Bechuanaland policemen: it fails to bring about an Uitlander uprising.

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