Directory

1869 CE

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. The Irish Church Act 1869 is given royal assent by Queen Victoria, disestablishing the Church of Ireland effective January 1, 1871. Leo Tolstoy's novel War and Peace is published in complete book form, in Russia.

Geopolitics & Diplomacy

  • 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.source
  • 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.source
  • April 17 – The State of Morelos is created in Mexico.source
  • May – In elections in France, the opposition, consisting of republicans, monarchists and liberals, polls almost 45% of the vote.source
  • August 9 – August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht found the Social Democratic Workers' Party of Germany (SDAP).source
  • November 13 – The Newfoundland Colony rejects confederation with Canada in election. The Anti-Confederates winning 21–9.source
  • December 10 – Women's suffrage: The Wyoming territorial legislature gives women the right to vote, the first such law in the world.source
  • The capital of the Isle of Man moves from Castletown to Douglas.source

Conflict & Security

  • January 3 – Abdur Rahman Khan is defeated at Tinah Khan, and exiled from Afghanistan.source
  • February 26 – Mahbub Ali Khan, 2½, begins a 42-year reign as Nizam of Hyderabad.source
  • 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.source
  • May 4–10 – Naval Battle of Hakodate: The Imperial Japanese Navy defeats adherents of the Tokugawa shogunate.source
  • 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.source
  • 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.source
  • October 11 – The Red River Rebellion breaks out against British forces in Canada.source
  • 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.source
  • December 31 – Paraguayan War: Triple Alliance forces take Asunción.source

Exploration & Expansion

  • February 5 – Prospectors in Moliagul, Victoria, Australia, discover the largest alluvial gold nugget ever found, known as the "Welcome Stranger".source
  • 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.source
  • 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.source

Religion & Belief

  • 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.source
  • July 26 – The Irish Church Act 1869 is given royal assent by Queen Victoria, disestablishing the Church of Ireland effective January 1, 1871.source
  • December 8 – The First Vatican Council opens in Rome.source
  • Thomas Henry Huxley coins the word "Agnostic".source

Economy & Finance

  • September 24 – Black Friday: The James Fisk–Jay Gould Scandal causes a financial panic in the United States.source
  • Campbell Soup Company is founded in New Jersey, United States.source
  • The investment bank Goldman Sachs is founded in New York.source
  • The Co-operative Central Board (later Co-operatives UK) is founded in Manchester, England.source
  • Heinz, as predecessor of Kraft Heinz, a worldwide food processing and cheese brand, founded in Pennsylvania, United States.source

Technology & Infrastructure

  • May 10 – The first transcontinental railroad in North America is completed at Promontory, Utah, by the driving of the "golden spike".source
  • May 22 – Sainsbury's first store, in Drury Lane, London, is opened.source
  • June 15 – John Wesley Hyatt patents celluloid in Albany, New York.source
  • July 15 – Hippolyte Mège-Mouriès files a patent for margarine in France.source
  • November 17 – In Egypt, the Suez Canal, linking the Mediterranean Sea with the Red Sea, is inaugurated in an elaborate ceremony.source
  • The Timișoara horse-drawn railway, opened in 1869.source

Science & Discovery

  • March 1 – (O. S. February 17) – Dmitri Mendeleev finishes his design of the first periodic table and sends it for publishing.source
  • March 18 (O. S. March 6) – Dmitri Mendeleev makes a formal presentation of his periodic table to the Russian Chemical Society.source
  • November 23 – In Dumbarton, Scotland, the clipper ship Cutty Sark is launched (it is one of the last clippers built, and the only one to survive in the United Kingdom).source
  • Friedrich Miescher purifies nuclein, which was then identified as deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA).source

Health & Medicine

  • March 1 – The North German Confederation issues 10gr and 30gr value stamps, printed on goldbeater's skin.source
  • July 20 – 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.source
  • October 11 – Gamma Sigma becomes the first high school fraternity in North America at Brockport Normal School, Brockport, New York.source
  • 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).source
  • James Gordon Bennett Jr. of the New York Herald asks Henry Morton Stanley to find Dr. David Livingstone.source

Crime & Justice

  • January 20 – Elizabeth Cady Stanton is the first woman to testify before the United States Congress.source
  • August 31 – Irish scientist Mary Ward is killed by a steam car.source
  • December 7 – American outlaw Jesse James commits his first confirmed bank robbery, in Gallatin, Missouri.source
  • Arabella Mansfield became the first woman in the United States awarded a license to practice law, at Mount Pleasant, Iowa.source

Disasters & Accidents

  • July 10 – Gävle, Sweden, is destroyed in a city fire; 8,000 people become homeless.source
  • September 12–13 – P&O's runs aground and sinks in the Red Sea; 31 drown.source

Culture & Society

  • January 5 – Scotland's second oldest professional football team, Kilmarnock F.C., is founded.source
  • January 21 – The P.E.O. Sisterhood, a philanthropic educational organization for women, is founded at Iowa Wesleyan College in Mount Pleasant, Iowa.source
  • February 20 – Ranavalona II, the Merina Queen of Madagascar, is baptized.source
  • February 25 – The Iron and Steel Institute is formed in London.source
  • April 6 – The American Museum of Natural History is founded in New York.source
  • May 6 – Purdue University is founded in West Lafayette, Indiana.source
  • May 15 – Women's suffrage: In New York, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton form the National Woman Suffrage Association.source
  • May 26 – Boston University is chartered by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.source
  • June 1 – The Cincinnati Red Stockings open the baseball season as the first fully professional team.source
  • June 2 – Sherwood College is founded in Nainital, India.source
  • June 30–July 2 – The first Estonian Song Festival takes place in Tartu.source
  • August 27 – The University of Oxford wins the first international boat race held on the River Thames, against Harvard University.source
  • September 5 – The foundation stone is laid for Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria (southern Germany).source
  • September 11 – Work on the Wallace Monument is completed in Stirling, Scotland.source
  • 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.source
  • November 4 – The first issue of the scientific journal Nature is published in London, edited by Norman Lockyer.source
  • 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.source
  • December 10 – The first American chapter of Kappa Sigma is founded at the University of Virginia.source
  • December – Leo Tolstoy's novel War and Peace is published in complete book form, in Russia.source
  • 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.source
  • The Ladies National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts is founded in Great Britain.source
  • New Zealand's first university, the University of Otago, is founded.source

Births

  • February 14 – Charles Thomson Rees Wilson, Scottish physicist, Nobel laureate (d. 1959)source
  • February 26 – Nadezhda Krupskaya, Russian Marxist revolutionary, Vladimir Lenin's wife (d. 1939)source
  • March 3 – Michael von Faulhaber, German cardinal, archbishop (d. 1952)source
  • March 12 – George Forbes, New Zealand Prime Minister, first leader of the New Zealand National Party (d. 1947)source
  • April 8 – Ignatius Maloyan, Armenian Eastern Catholic archbishop and blessed (d. 1915)source
  • June 27 – Hans Spemann, German embryologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 1941)source
  • July 11 – Pío Valenzuela, Filipino doctor, patriot (d. 1956)source
  • August 11 – Hale Holden, president of Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad (d. 1940)source
  • September 23 – Mary Mallon (Typhoid Mary), first known (in the United States) asymptomatic carrier of the pathogen associated with typhoid fever (d. 1938)source
  • October 2 – Mahatma Gandhi, Indian political leader, Father of the Nation (d. 1948)source
  • October 25 – John Heisman, American football coach (d. 1936)source
  • November 20 – Herbert Tudor Buckland, British Arts and Crafts architect (d. 1951)source
  • November 22 – André Gide, French writer, Nobel laureate (d. 1951)source
  • December 16 – Hristo Tatarchev, Bulgarian revolutionary, leader of the revolutionary movement in Macedonia and Eastern Thrace (d. 1952)source

Deaths

  • January 1 – James B. Longacre, fourth Chief Engraver of the U.S. Mint (b. 1794)source
  • February 15 – Ghalib, Indian poet (b. 1797)source
  • March 21 – Juan Almonte, Mexican general, diplomat and regent (b. 1803)source
  • July 18 – Laurent Clerc, French advocate for the American deaf (b. 1785)source
  • August 21 – Casto Méndez Núñez, Spanish admiral (b. 1824)source
  • August 31 – Mary Ward, Irish scientist, first car crash victim (b. 1827)source
  • September 4 – John Pascoe Fawkner, Australian pioneer, settler and politician, (b. 1792)source
  • October 8 – Franklin Pierce, 64, 14th President of the United States (b. 1804)source
  • October 13 – Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, French literary critic (b. 1804)source
  • October 23 – Edward Smith-Stanley, 14th Earl of Derby, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (b. 1799)source
  • October 31 – Charles A. Wickliffe, American politician, 14th Governor of Kentucky (b. 1788)source
  • November 10 – John E. Wool, general officer in the United States Army, who served during the War of 1812, Mexican–American War, and the American Civil War (b. 1784)source
  • December 18 – Louis Moreau Gottschalk, American composer, pianist (b. 1829)source
  • December 24 – Edwin Stanton, American lawyer, judge and politician (b. 1814)source