Year 1885 (MDCCCLXXXV) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Tuesday of the 12-day slower Julian calendar).
Events of 1885
January - March
April - June
July - September
October - December
Undated
Births
January - June
- January 6 - Florence Turner, American actress (d. 1946)
- January 8 - John Curtin, Prime Minister of Australia (d. 1945)
- January 11
- January 16 - Zhou Zuoren, Chinese writer (d. 1967)
- January 21 - Umberto Nobile, Italian politician and airship designer (d. 1978)
- January 27
- February 1 - Friedrich Kellner, German diarist, (d. 1970)
- February 7 - Sinclair Lewis, American writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1951)
- February 9 - Alban Berg, Austrian composer (d. 1935)
- February 13 - Bess Truman, First Lady of the United States (d. 1982)
- February 14 - Syed Zafarul Hasan, Muslim philosopher (d. 1949)
- February 15 - Princess Alice of Battenberg (d. 1969)
- February 21 - Sacha Guitry, Russian-born dramatist, writer, director, and actor (d. 1957)
- February 24
- March 6 - Ring Lardner, American writer (d. 1933)
- March 7 - John Tovey, British admiral of the fleet (d. 1971)
- March 11 - Sir Malcolm Campbell, English land and water racer (d. 1948)
- March 14 - Raoul Lufbery, World War I American pilot (d. 1918)
- March 31 - Pascin, Bulgarian painter (d. 1930)
- April 1 - Wallace Beery, American actor (d. 1949)
- April 3 - Allan Dwan, Canadian-born film director (d. 1981)
- April 13 - Vean Gregg, American baseball player (d. 1964)
- May 2 - Hedda Hopper, American columnist (d. 1966)
- May 7 - George 'Gabby' Hayes, American actor (d. 1969)
- May 9 - Eduard C. Lindeman, American social worker and author (d. 1953)
- May 14 - Otto Klemperer, German conductor (d. 1973)
- May 21
- May 24- Susan Sutherland Isaacs, educational psychologist and psychoanalyst (d.1948).
- May 22 - Toyoda Soemu, Japanese admiral (d. 1957)
- June 5 - Georges Mandel, French politician and World War II hero (d. 1944)
- June 9 - John Edensor Littlewood, British mathematician (d. 1977)
- June 14 - E. L. Grant Watson, writer, anthropologist, and biologist (d. 1970)
- June 22 - Milan Vidmar, Slovenian electrical engineer and chess player (d. 1962)
July - December
- July 4 - Louis B. Mayer, American film producer (d. 1957)
- July 14 - King Sisavang Vong of Laos (d. 1959)
- July 28 - Monte Attell, American boxer (d. 1960)
- August 1 - George de Hevesy, Hungarian chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1966)
- August 7 - Billie Burke, actress (d. 1970)
- September 11 - D. H. Lawrence, English author (d. 1930)
- September 22 - Ben Chifley, Prime Minister of Australia (d. 1951)
- September 22 - Erich Von Stroheim, motion picture actor & director (d. 1957)
- October 3 - Sophie Treadwell, American playwright and journalist (d. 1970)
- October 7 - Niels Bohr, Danish physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1962)
- October 11 - François Mauriac, French writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1970)
- October 30 - Ezra Pound, American poet (d. 1972)
- November 2 - Harlow Shapley, American astronomer (d. 1972)
- November 5 - Will Durant, American philosopher and writer (d. 1981)
- November 8 - Eva Morris, last surviving person documented as born in 1885 (d. 2000)
- November 9 (October 28 (O.S.)) - Velimir Khlebnikov, Russian poet (d. 1922)
- November 11 - George Patton, American general (d. 1945)
- November 15 - Frederick Handley-Page, British aviation pioneer & aircraft company founder (d. 1962)
- November 20 - Heinrich Brüning, Chancellor of Germany (d. 1970)
- December 2 - George Minot, American physician, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 1950)
- December 19 - Joe "King" Oliver, American jazz musician (d. 1938)
Deaths
January - June
- January 11 - Mariano Ospina Rodríguez, President of Colombia (b. 1805)
- January 26 - Charles "Chinese" Gordon, British general (killed in battle) (b. 1833)
- February 1 - Sidney Gilchrist Thomas, inventor (b. 1850)
- February 8 - Nikolai Severtzov, Russian explorer and naturalist (b.1827)
- March 12 - Próspero Fernández Oreamuno, President of Costa Rica (b. 1834)
- April 2 - Justo Rufino Barrios, Central American leader (b. 1835)
- April 25 - Queen Emma of Hawaii (b. 1836)
- May 22 - Victor Hugo, French author (b. 1802)
- June 17 - Edwin Freiherr von Manteuffel, German field marshal (b. 1809)
- June 22 - Muhammad Ahmad, Mahdi, (b. 1844).
July - December
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