Events January–March January 3–4 – Sino-French War – Battle of Núi Bop: French troops under General Oscar de Négrier defeat a numerically superior Qing Chinese force, in northern Vietnam. January 4 – The first successful appendectomy is performed by Dr. William W. Grant, on Mary Gartside. January 17 – Mahdist War in Sudan – Battle of Abu Klea: British troops defeat Mahdist forces. January 20 – American inventor LaMarcus Adna Thompson patents a roller coaster. January 24 – Irish rebels damage Westminster Hall and the Tower of London with dynamite. January 26 – Mahdist War in Sudan: Troops loyal to Mahdi Muhammad Ahmad conquer Khartoum; British commander Charles George Gordon is killed. February 5 – King Leopold II of Belgium establishes the Congo Free State, as a personal possession. February 9 – The first Japanese arrive in Hawaii. February 16 – Charles Dow publishes the first edition of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The index stood at a level of 62.76, and represented the dollar average of 14 stocks: 12 railroads and two leading American industries. February 20 – The Richmond Football Club was officially formed at the Royal Hotel in the Melbourne suburb of Richmond, Victoria. February 21 – United States President Chester A. Arthur dedicates the Washington Monument. February 23 Sino-French War – Battle of Đồng Đăng: France gains an important victory over China, in the Tonkin region of modern-day Vietnam. An English executioner fails after several attempts to hang John Babbacombe Lee, sentenced for the murder of his employer Emma Keyse; Lee's sentence is commuted to life imprisonment. February 26 – The final act of the Berlin Conference regulates European colonization and trade, in the scramble for Africa. February 28 – February concludes without having a full moon. March 3 – A subsidiary of the American Bell Telephone Company, American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T), is incorporated in New York. March 4 – Grover Cleveland is sworn in, as the 22nd president of the United States. March 7 – The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Madrid is founded. March 14 – Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera The Mikado opens, at the Savoy Theatre in London. March 26 Prussian deportations: The Prussian government, motivated by Otto von Bismarck, expels all ethnic Poles and Jews without German citizenship from Prussia. The North-West Rebellion in Canada by the Métis people, led by Louis Riel, begins with the Battle of Duck Lake. First