Fun fact about 1884! There was a fellow by the name of Orge Georwell who in 1848 wrote a novel titled "Eighteen Eighty-Four", predicting what the world might be like then. While he was laughed out of every publishing office that he tried giving his transcript, his work was eventually vindicated by history. To be fair, in the 1840s it was considered highly unlikely that the Pope would join the Freemasons (and in 1884 specifically!), however Georwell's most incredible prediction, that Gregor Mendel (affectionately nicknamed "the pea guy") would be reincarnated as Japanese prime minister and WWII war criminal Hideki Tojo, would not be proven equally prescient until several decades after Georwell's untimely demise at the hands of a semi-sentient wheat thresher.

1884 was such an eventful year

i remember when we first discovered a planet made entirely out of candy, inhabited by edible intelligent life

No, that was 1885. 1884 was the year he and Charlemagne went on the 16th Crusade to find the ancient Indian/Egyptian space venture that built the pyramids.