January •
January 3 –
Abdur Rahman Khan is defeated at Tinah Khan, and exiled from
Afghanistan. •
January 5 – Scotland's second oldest professional
football team,
Kilmarnock F.C., is founded. •
January 20 –
Elizabeth Cady Stanton is the first woman to testify before the
United States Congress. •
January 21 – The
P.E.O. Sisterhood, a philanthropic educational organization for women, is founded at
Iowa Wesleyan College in
Mount Pleasant, Iowa. •
January 27 – The
Republic of Ezo is proclaimed on the northern Japanese island of Ezo (which will be renamed
Hokkaidō on
September 20) by remaining adherents to the
Tokugawa shogunate.
February •
February 5 – Prospectors in
Moliagul, Victoria, Australia, discover the largest
alluvial gold nugget ever found, known as the "
Welcome Stranger". •
February 20 –
Ranavalona II, the
Merina Queen of
Madagascar, is baptized. •
February 25 – The
Iron and Steel Institute is formed in London. •
February 26 –
Mahbub Ali Khan, 2½, begins a 42-year reign as
Nizam of Hyderabad.
March •
March 1 • The
North German Confederation issues 10
gr and 30gr value stamps, printed on
goldbeater's skin. • (O. S. February 17) –
Dmitri Mendeleev finishes his design of the first
periodic table and sends it for publishing. •
March 18 (O. S. March 6) –
Dmitri Mendeleev makes a formal presentation of his
periodic table to the Russian Chemical Society. •
March 24 –
Tītokowaru's War ends with the surrender of the last
Māori troops at large, in the
South Taranaki District of New Zealand's
North Island. •
March – In Japan, the
daimyōs of the
Tosa,
Hizen,
Satsuma and
Chōshū Domains are persuaded to return their domains to the
Emperor Meiji, leading to creation of a fully centralized government in the country.
April •
April 6 – The
American Museum of Natural History is founded in New York. •
April 17 – The State of
Morelos is created in Mexico.
May •
May 4–
10 –
Naval Battle of Hakodate: The
Imperial Japanese Navy defeats adherents of the
Tokugawa shogunate. •
May 6 –
Purdue University is founded in
West Lafayette, Indiana. •
May 10 – The
first transcontinental railroad in North America is completed at
Promontory, Utah, by the driving of the "
golden spike". – The
First transcontinental railroad in North America is completed •
May 15 –
Women's suffrage: In New York,
Susan B. Anthony and
Elizabeth Cady Stanton form the
National Woman Suffrage Association. •
May 18 – One day after surrendering at the land
Battle of Hakodate (begun
4 December 1868),
Enomoto Takeaki turns over
Goryōkaku to Japanese forces, signaling the collapse of the
Republic of Ezo. •
May 22 –
Sainsbury's first store, in
Drury Lane, London, is opened. •
May 24 –
John Wesley Powell departs
Green River, Wyoming, with a company of nine other men, on a trip down the Green and Colorado Rivers. •
May 26 –
Boston University is chartered by the
Commonwealth of Massachusetts. •
May – In
elections in France, the opposition, consisting of republicans, monarchists and liberals, polls almost 45% of the vote.
June •
June 1 – The
Cincinnati Red Stockings open the
baseball season as the first fully professional team. •
June 2 –
Sherwood College is founded in
Nainital, India. •
June 15 –
John Wesley Hyatt patents
celluloid in
Albany, New York. •
June 27 – The fortress of
Goryōkaku is turned over to Imperial Japanese forces, bringing an end to the
Republic of Ezo, the
Battle of Hakodate and the
Boshin War, the military phase of the
Meiji Restoration. •
June 30–
July 2 – The first
Estonian Song Festival takes place in
Tartu.
July •
July 10 –
Gävle, Sweden, is destroyed in a city fire; 8,000 people become homeless. •
July 15 –
Hippolyte Mège-Mouriès files a patent for
margarine in France. •
July 20 •
The Innocents Abroad, by
Mark Twain, goes on sale after printing by the American Publishing Company. It becomes Twain's bestselling work during his lifetime. •
Children's Hospital Boston is founded by Dr. Francis Henry Brown and other
Harvard Medical School graduates, as a 20-bed facility in the
South End of
Boston,
Massachusetts. •
July 26 – The
Irish Church Act 1869 is given
royal assent by
Queen Victoria,
disestablishing the
Church of Ireland effective January 1, 1871.
August •
August 9 –
August Bebel and
Wilhelm Liebknecht found the
Social Democratic Workers' Party of Germany (SDAP). •
August 27 – The
University of Oxford wins the first international boat race held on the
River Thames, against
Harvard University. •
August 31 – Irish scientist
Mary Ward is killed by a
steam car.
September •
September 5 – The foundation stone is laid for
Neuschwanstein Castle in
Bavaria (southern Germany). •
September 11 – Work on the
Wallace Monument is completed in
Stirling, Scotland. •
September 12–
13 –
P&O's runs aground and sinks in the
Red Sea; 31 drown. •
September 24 –
Black Friday: The
James Fisk–
Jay Gould Scandal causes a financial panic in the United States.
October •
October 11 • The
Red River Rebellion breaks out against British forces in Canada. • Gamma Sigma becomes the first high school fraternity in North America at Brockport Normal School,
Brockport, New York. •
October 16 – England's first residential university-level
women's college, the College for Women (predecessor of
Girton College, Cambridge), is founded at
Hitchin, by
Emily Davies and
Barbara Bodichon. •
October – The '
Edinburgh Seven', led by
Sophia Jex-Blake, start to attend lectures at the
University of Edinburgh Medical School, the first women in the United Kingdom to do so (although they will not be allowed to take degrees).
November •
November 4 – The first issue of the scientific journal
Nature is published in London, edited by
Norman Lockyer. •
November 6 –
The first game of American football between two American colleges is played.
Rutgers University defeats
Princeton University 6–4, in a forerunner to
American football and
College football. •
November 17 – In
Egypt, the
Suez Canal, linking the
Mediterranean Sea with the
Red Sea, is inaugurated in an elaborate ceremony. •
November 19 – The
Hudson's Bay Company surrenders its claim to
Rupert's Land in Canada, under its
letters patent, back to the
British Crown. •
December 10 •
Women's suffrage: The
Wyoming territorial legislature gives women the right to vote, the first such law in the world. • The first American chapter of
Kappa Sigma is founded at the
University of Virginia. •
December 31 –
Paraguayan War: Triple Alliance forces take
Asunción. •
December –
Leo Tolstoy's novel
War and Peace is published in complete book form, in Russia.
Date unknown • The investment bank
Goldman Sachs is founded in New York. • The capital of the
Isle of Man moves from
Castletown to
Douglas. •
Arabella Mansfield became the first woman in the United States awarded a license to practice law, at
Mount Pleasant, Iowa. •
James Gordon Bennett Jr. of the
New York Herald asks
Henry Morton Stanley to find Dr.
David Livingstone. • The Co-operative Central Board (later
Co-operatives UK) is founded in
Manchester, England. •
Friedrich Miescher purifies nuclein, which was then identified as
deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). • The
Ladies National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts is founded in Great Britain. • French
missionary and
naturalist Père
Armand David receives the skin of a
giant panda from a hunter, the first time this species becomes known to a Westerner; he also first describes a specimen of the "pocket handkerchief tree", which will be named in his honor as
Davidia involucrata. • New Zealand's first university, the
University of Otago, is founded. •
Thomas Henry Huxley coins the word "
Agnostic". •
Campbell Soup Company is founded in
New Jersey, United States. •
Heinz, as predecessor of
Kraft Heinz, a worldwide
food processing and
cheese brand, founded in
Pennsylvania, United States. •
St. Ignatius College Prep in
Chicago is founded, and construction on the school's main building began. It is one of only five buildings that survived the
Great Chicago Fire of 1871. The building was designed by the Canadian architect Toussaint Menard in the
Second Empire architecture style. • The
Timișoara horse-drawn railway, opened in 1869. " in
Vanity Fair', 1869 - Carlo Pellegrini (25 March 1839 – 22 January 1889), who did much of his work under the pseudonym of Ape == Births ==