On 8 July 1869, the Hungarian town of Temesvar opened its first horse-drawn tramway. It lay in the Banat region, part of the Habsburg empire from 1716, populated mainly by German speakers and annexed by Hungary between 1860 and 1918. The opening was an early manifestation of Hungary's new economic and political freedom, an element of home-rule granted by the emperor under the Ausglech (compromise) of 1867 following his defeat in 1866 by Bismarck's Prussian army at Koeniggraetz. Temesvar later achieved fame when, in 1884, it became the first European town to have electric lamps light up its streets.
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