In 1880, on the sixth of September, Mary Ann Nichols, known to her friends as Polly, moved, with her husband, William, and their kids to a home on Blackfriars Road, in London. They paid a weekly rent of five shillings.
Unfortunately, they had marital problems and shortly after this, William left Polly and took the kids with him. Over the next several years, she would live mostly in poorhouses, struggling with alcoholism, and supplementing her meager income from cleaning houses with occasional sex work. She would build up a fairly lengthy rap sheet, all related to drunkenness and prostitution.
In 1888, on the 30th of August, late in the evening, she visited the Frying Pan pub on Brick Lane. When she left, she happened to meet her friend, Emily Holland. Emily would be the last person to see Polly alive.
An hour after she spoke with Emily, a carman found her body on Buck's Row (now known as Durward Street), about fifty yards from the current Whitechapel Tube Station.
She was the third victim in a series of murders known as the Whitechapel Murders, but the first to be positively identified as a victim of a still unknown serial killer called Jack the Ripper.
On the other side of the world, in Kyoto, Japan, lived a craftsman by the name of Yamauchi Fusajirô. Fusajirô had previously worked in his father-in-law's business, which he had inherited, selling limes. But, due to the Meiji Restoration, playing cards, which had previously been banned in Japan, became legal, and he had developed an interest in card games.
And so, the next year on the 23rd of September, he founded a playing card company called Yamauchi Fusajirô Shôten. Using his skills as a craftsman, he designed a wood-block printing machine to print the cards, which were made of mulberry bark.
His company had another name, which is somewhat better known, however: Nintendo.
And this is how the birthplace of Mario and Kirby was founded the same year that Jack the Ripper was going on his killing spree.