January–March • February 6 –
A train collision in New York kills 22. • February 21 –
District of Columbia Organic Act of 1871 • March 22 • In
North Carolina,
William Woods Holden becomes the first governor of a
U.S. state to be removed from office by
impeachment. • The
U.S. Army issues an order for the abandonment of
Fort Kearny,
Nebraska.
April–June • April 20 – The U.S President
Ulysses S. Grant signs the
Ku Klux Klan Act. • May 4 – The first supposedly
Major League Baseball game is played. • May 8 – The first Major League Baseball
home run is hit by
Ezra Sutton of the
Cleveland Forest Citys. • June 10 – Captain McLane Tilton leads 109
U.S. Marines in a naval attack on the
Han River forts in
Korea.
July–September • July 21–August 26 – First ever photographs of
Yellowstone National Park region taken by the photographer
William Henry Jackson during
Hayden Geological Survey of 1871. • July 30 – An explosion on the
Staten Island Ferry kills 72 and injures 135. • September •
Whaling disaster of 1871: 1,219 people abandon 33 whaling ships caught in the ice pack off the northern coast of
Alaska. •
Seawanhaka Yacht Club founded at
Centre Island, New York, one of the earliest surviving yacht clubs in the Western Hemisphere. • September 2 – The disastrous
Polaris expedition reaches 82°45N, the northernmost latitude of any ship to this time. • September 3 – New York City residents, tired of the corruption of the "
Tammany Hall" political machine and "Boss"
William M. Tweed, its "Grand Sachem", meet to form the '
Committee of Seventy' to reform local politics.
October–December • October 8 – Four major fires break out in the
Upper Midwest in
Chicago, Illinois,
Peshtigo, Wisconsin,
Holland, Michigan, and
Manistee, Michigan. The
Great Chicago Fire is the most infamous of these, killing 300 people, destroying 17,500 buildings and leaving nearly 100,000 people homeless, although the
Peshtigo Fire in
Wisconsin kills as many as 2,500 people, making it the deadliest fire in United States history. • October 24 –
Chinese massacre of 1871 18
Chinese immigrants in
Chinatown, Los Angeles, are killed by a mob of 500 men. • October 27 –
Boss Tweed of
Tammany Hall is arrested for bribery, ending his grip on New York City. • c. November – The
South Improvement Company is formed in Pennsylvania by
John D. Rockefeller and a group of major railroad interests, in an early effort to organize and control the petroleum industry in the U.S. • November 5 –
Wickenburg massacre: Six men traveling by stagecoach are reportedly murdered by the
Yavapai Indians in
Arizona Territory. • November 17 – The
National Rifle Association of America is granted a charter by the state of
New York. • December 19 • The city of
Birmingham, Alabama, is incorporated with the merger of three pre-existing towns. • Albert L. Jones of
New York receives a patent for
corrugated paper.
Ongoing •
Reconstruction era (1865–1877) •
Gilded Age (1869–c. 1896) ==Births==