Year 1890 (MDCCCXC) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar and a common year starting on Monday of the Julian calendar.

Florence Nightingale OM, RRC ( /ˈflɒrəns ˈnaɪtɨŋɡeɪl/; 12 May 1820 – 13 August 1910) was a celebrated English nurse, writer and statistician. She came to prominence for her pioneering work in nursing during the Crimean War, where she tended to wounded soldiers. She was dubbed "The Lady with the Lamp" after her habit of making rounds at night. An Anglican, Nightingale believed that God had called her to be a nurse.

Nightingale laid the foundation of professional nursing with the establishment, in 1860, of her nursing school at St Thomas' Hospital in London, the first secular nursing school in the world, now part of King's College London. The Nightingale Pledge taken by new nurses was named in her honour, and the annual International Nurses Day is celebrated around the world on her birthday.

Florence Nightingale was born into a rich, upper-class, well-connected British family at the Villa Colombaia, near the Porta Romana at Bellosguardo in Florence, Italy, and was named after the city of her birth. Florence's older sister Frances Parthenope had similarly been named after her place of birth, Parthenopolis, a Greek settlement now part of the city of Naples.

Grisha Goryachev is a Russian virtuoso flamenco and classical guitarist.

A native of St. Petersburg, Goryachev began to play the guitar at the age of six, taught by his father Dmitry, a master teacher of the guitar and learned quickly. He was a child prodigy, performing regularly in the top concert halls of St. Petersburg, Moscow, Minsk, Riga and other cities in the Soviet Union from the age of 9. He also performed as a child ond Soviet radio and television and participated in the T.V. marathon, Revival of St. Petersburg, broadcast across the world.

In 1991, Goryachev performed at the UN headquarters in New York City and toured the Nordic countries, performing for Icelandic royalty. In 1993, he represented St. Petersburg in the Days of St. Petersburg in Jerusalem Festival, and in 1994 he performed at an Andres Segovia memorial concert at the Festival International de Colmar in Colmar, France. In 1997 he toured Spain and met and performed with flamenco master Paco de Lucía who aided him in applying for a visa to come to the United States. He has since played with other Flamenco masters such as Vicente Amigo, Manolo Sanlucar and Rafael Riqueni.

Anton Grigorevich Rubinstein (Russian: Анто́н Григо́рьевич Рубинште́йн, tr. Anton Grigor'evič Rubinštejn) (November 28 [O.S. November 16] 1829 – November 20 [O.S. November 8] 1894) was a Russian pianist, composer and conductor who became a pivotal figure in Russian culture when he founded the Saint Petersburg Conservatory. This, together with the Moscow Conservatory founded by his brother Nikolai, were the first music schools of their type in Russia. This proved no less controversial than other aspects of Rubinstein's career, as Russian culture was deeply divided and the nation itself was going through an identity crisis that would last for the rest of the 19th century. Rubinstein drew a tremendous amount of criticism about the conservatory from nationalistically minded individuals such as critic Vladimir Stassov and members of the group of composers known collectively as The Five.

Joseph Carey Merrick (5 August 1862 – 11 April 1890), sometimes incorrectly referred to as John Merrick, was an English man with severe deformities who was exhibited as a human curiosity named the Elephant Man. He became well known in London society after he went to live at the London Hospital. Merrick was born in Leicester and began to develop abnormally during the first few years of his life. His skin appeared thick and lumpy, he developed an enlargement of his lips, and a bony lump grew on his forehead. One of his arms and both feet became enlarged and at some point during his childhood he fell and damaged his hip, resulting in permanent lameness. When he was 11, his mother died and his father soon remarried. Merrick left school at 12, and had difficulty finding employment. Rejected by his father and stepmother, he left home. In late 1879, aged 17, Merrick entered the Leicester Union workhouse.

In 1884, after four years in the workhouse, Merrick contacted a showman named Sam Torr and proposed that Torr should exhibit him. Torr agreed, and arranged for a group of men to manage Merrick, whom they named the Elephant Man. After touring the East Midlands, Merrick travelled to London to be exhibited in a penny gaff shop on Whitechapel Road which was rented by showman Tom Norman. Norman's shop, directly across the street from the London Hospital, was visited by a surgeon named Frederick Treves, who invited Merrick to be examined and photographed. Soon after Merrick's visits to the hospital, Tom Norman's shop was closed by the police and Merrick's managers sent him to tour in Europe.