Directory

1870 CE

The first message by electric telegraph using the Great Britain to India submarine cable is sent from London. Franco-Prussian War: Battle of Sedan – Prussian forces defeat the French armies and take Emperor Napoleon III and 100,000 of his soldiers prisoner at Sedan, France. Capture of Rome; With Bersaglieri soldiers entering Rome at Porta Pia, the unification of Italy is completed, ending the last remnant of the Papal States and Papal temporal power.

Geopolitics & Diplomacy

  • January 6 – The Musikverein, Vienna, is inaugurated in Austria-Hungary.source
  • January 15 – A political cartoon for the first time symbolizes the United States Democratic Party with a donkey (A Live Jackass Kicking a Dead Lion by Thomas Nast for Harper's Weekly).source
  • January 26 – Reconstruction Era (United States): Virginia rejoins the Union. This year it adopts a new Constitution, drawn up by John Curtiss Underwood, expanding suffrage to all male citizens over 21, including freedmen.source
  • February 3 – The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, guaranteeing African American men the right to vote, is passed.source
  • February 12 – Women's suffrage: Women gain the right to vote in Utah Territory.source
  • February 23 – Military control of Mississippi ends and it is readmitted to the Union.source
  • February 25 – Hiram Rhodes Revels, a Republican from Mississippi, is sworn into the United States Senate, becoming the first African American to sit in the U.S. Congress.source
  • February 28 – The Bulgarian Exarchate is established, by decree of Sultan Abdülaziz of the Ottoman Empire.source
  • March 19 – The Ohio Legislature passes the Cannon Act, thereby establishing the Ohio Agriculture and Mechanical College, later Ohio State University.source
  • March 30 – Reconstruction: Texas is readmitted to the Union.source
  • March 30 – The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, giving African American men the right to vote, is ratified.source
  • March 31 – Thomas Mundy Peterson is the first African American to vote in an election.source
  • April 27 – Antonio Guzmán Blanco begins his first term as President of Venezuela.source
  • June 22 – The office of the Solicitor General of the United States is set up, to supervise and conduct government litigation in the United States Supreme Court.source
  • June 22 – The U.S. Congress creates the United States Department of Justice.source
  • July 15 – Reconstruction Era: Georgia becomes the last former Confederate state of America to be readmitted to the Union.source
  • July 15 – The British government admits the former Hudson's Bay Company territory of Rupert's Land and the North-Western Territory to the Dominion of Canada.source
  • July 30 – The 'Diggers' Republic' is proclaimed at Klipdrift in South Africa by diamond miners, with Stafford Parker as president.source
  • October 6 – Rome becomes the capital of unified Italy.source
  • November 16 – The Spanish Cortes Generales proclaims Amadeo de Saboya as King Amadeo I of Spain.source
  • December 12 – Joseph H. Rainey of South Carolina becomes the second black U.S. congressman (following Hiram Rhodes Revels in February).source

Conflict & Security

  • January 23 – Marias Massacre: U.S. soldiers attack a peaceful camp of Piegan Blackfeet Indians, led by chief Heavy Runner.source
  • February 9 – The U.S. Army Weather Bureau is created within the Army Signal Corps.source
  • March 1 – Battle of Cerro Corá, Paraguay: Marshal Francisco Solano López's last troops are cornered by those of the Triple Alliance. López refuses to surrender and is killed, ending the Paraguayan War.source
  • March 4 – Red River Rebellion: Thomas Scott is executed by Louis Riel's provisional government, in modern-day Manitoba, Canada.source
  • May 12 – The Canadian province of Manitoba is created, in response to Louis Riel's Red River Rebellion.source
  • May 25 The Fenian Brotherhood attacks Eccles hill in Quebec.source
  • June 21 – The Tianjin Massacre of 17 foreigners (mostly European Christian priests and nuns) and 40 Chinese people who had converted to Christianity, takes place in China when an angry mob attacks churches established in the city.source
  • July 19 – Franco-Prussian War: France declares war on Prussia.source
  • August 8 – The Republic of Ploiești, an uprising against Domnitor Carol of Romania, fails.source
  • August 24 – The Red River Rebellion in Canada ends with the arrival of the Wolseley Expedition and the flight of Louis Riel.source
  • September 2 – Franco-Prussian War: Battle of Sedan – Prussian forces defeat the French armies and take Emperor Napoleon III and 100,000 of his soldiers prisoner at Sedan, France.source
  • September 4 – Emperor Napoleon III of France is deposed and the Third Republic is declared. Empress Eugénie flees to England with her son.source
  • September 19 – Franco-Prussian War: The Siege of Paris (1870–1871) begins. From September 23, balloon mail is sent out of the city.source
  • October 2 – A plebiscite held in Rome supports, by 133,681 votes to 1,507, the annexation of the city by Italy.source
  • October 8 – Léon Gambetta escapes besieged Paris in a hot-air balloon.source
  • October 26 – The Chinese leaders of June's Tianjin Massacre of foreigners are executed by China's Imperial government.source
  • October 27 – Franco-Prussian War: Siege of Metz – Marshal François Achille Bazaine, commanding the French left wing, is forced by starvation to surrender the fortifications of Metz.source
  • Just one of the 916 members of the Indian Civil Service is Indian.source

Exploration & Expansion

  • February 27 – The Nisshoki 'circle of the sun' flag of Japan is adopted as the national flag for Japanese merchant ships, by proclamation of the Daijō-kan.source
  • March 24 – A Chilean prospecting party led by José Díaz Gana discovers the silver ores of Caracoles in the Bolivian portion of Atacama Desert, leading to the last of Chilean silver rushes and a diplomatic dispute over its taxation between Chile and Bolivia.source
  • September 18 – Old Faithful Geyser is observed and named by Henry D. Washburn, during the Washburn–Langford–Doane Expedition to Yellowstone in Wyoming.source

Religion & Belief

  • July 18 – Pastor aeternus: Pope Pius IX declares papal infallibility, in matters of faith and morals.source
  • September 20 – Capture of Rome; With Bersaglieri soldiers entering Rome at Porta Pia, the unification of Italy is completed, ending the last remnant of the Papal States and Papal temporal power.source

Economy & Finance

  • January 10 – John D. Rockefeller incorporates Standard Oil.source
  • February 10 – Anaheim, California, is incorporated.source
  • February 26 – The German Commerzbank is founded in Hamburg.source
  • March 10 – Deutsche Bank is founded in Berlin.source
  • March – The Mitsubishi Company is established in Japan as a shipping firm, by Iwasaki Yatarō with Thomas Blake Glover.source

Technology & Infrastructure

  • January 1 – Plans for the Brooklyn Bridge are completed.source
  • January 3 – Construction of the Brooklyn Bridge begins in New York City.source
  • February 26 – In New York City, the first pneumatic subway, Beach Pneumatic Transit, is opened.source
  • June 8 – The final splice on the first telegraph submarine cable between Great Britain and India is made.source
  • June 23 –The first message by electric telegraph using the Great Britain to India submarine cable is sent from London.source
  • August 2 – The Tower Subway beneath the River Thames in London, the world's first underground passenger "tube" railway, officially opens. Although this lasts as a railway operation only until November, it demonstrates the technologically successful first use of the cylindrical wrought iron tunnelling shield, devised by Peter W. Barlow and James Henry Greathead, and of a permanent tunnel lining of cast iron segments.source
  • November 1 – In the United States, the newly created Weather Bureau (later renamed the National Weather Service) makes its first official meteorological forecast: "High winds at Chicago and Milwaukee... and along the Lakes".source
  • December 31 – The 12.8 km mi Fréjus Rail Tunnel through the Alps is completed.source
  • David Kenyon invents the fireman's pole in Chicago.source
  • Graeter's ice cream is originated in Cincinnati, Ohio.source

Science & Discovery

  • March 18 – Female Infanticide Prevention Act, 1870, passed in British India by Natalia Fish.source
  • July 28 – Start of Solar Saros 153. The final eclipse in this series will be in 3114.source

Crime & Justice

  • February 2 – It is revealed that the famed Cardiff Giant in the U.S. is just carved gypsum and not the petrified remains of a human.source
  • February – Denis Vrain-Lucas is sentenced to 2 years in prison for multiple forgery, in Paris.source

Climate & Environment

  • April 11 – A 7.3 magnitude earthquake shakes the Chinese county of Batang causing a fire that leaves about 5,000 dead.source
  • October 20 – A 6.6 earthquake shakes the Canadian province of Quebec, killing 6 people.source

Culture & Society

  • January 1 – The first edition of The Northern Echo newspaper is published in Priestgate, Darlington, England.source
  • February 1 – Goodna State School in Goodna, Queensland, Australia, is founded.source
  • February 2 – The Seven Brothers (Seitsemän veljestä), a novel by Finnish author Aleksis Kivi, is published first time in several thin booklets.source
  • February 14 – Schoolteacher Seraph Young Ford becomes the first woman to vote under a women’s equal suffrage law in the USA, casting her ballot in the Salt Lake City municipal election.source
  • March 5 – The first ever international Association football match, England v Scotland, takes place under the auspices of the Football Association at The Oval, London.source
  • March 24 – Syracuse University is established in New York (state) and officially opens.source
  • April 13 – The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City is established.source
  • April 29 – The Chicago Base Ball Club, later to be known as the Chicago White Stockings and ultimately the Chicago Cubs, play their first game against the St. Louis Unions of the National Association of Base Ball Players, an amateur league.source
  • May 12 – The Port Adelaide Football Club is founded.source
  • May 14 – The first rugby match is played in New Zealand, between the Nelson Football Club and Nelson College.source
  • June 26 – Richard Wagner's opera Die Walküre is first performed at Munich's National Theatre.source
  • June 28 – American President Ulysses S. Grant signs an act making the United States Independence Day, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day and New Year's Day federal holidays in the United States.source
  • July 14 – The Ems Dispatch is published, serving as casus belli for a war between Prussia and France.source
  • September 6 – Louisa Swain of Laramie, Wyoming, becomes the first woman in the United States to cast a vote legally since 1807.source
  • December 31 – Sir Henry Barkly is appointed Governor of the Cape of Good Hope and High Commissioner for Southern Africa.source

Births

  • February 7 – Alfred Adler, Austrian psychologist (d. 1937)source
  • March 20 – Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, German general (d. 1964)source
  • March 31 – James M. Cox, Democratic candidate for President of the United States in the election of 1920 (d. 1957)source
  • April 4 – George Albert Smith, 8th president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (d. 1951)source
  • April 19 – J. Howard Crocker, Canadian educator and sports executive (d. 1959)source
  • May 24 – Benjamin N. Cardozo, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States (d. 1938)source
  • June 13 – Jules Bordet, Belgian immunologist, microbiologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 1961)source
  • July 29 – George Dixon, Canadian boxer (d. 1909)source
  • August 12 – Hubert Gough, British general (d. 1963)source
  • August 31 – Maria Montessori, Italian educator (d. 1952)source
  • September 30 – Jean Baptiste Perrin, French physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1942)source
  • October 10 – Ivan Bunin, Russian writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1953)source
  • December 14 – Dirk Jan de Geer, Prime Minister of the Netherlands (d. 1960)source
  • December 31 (alleged) – Mbah Gotho, Indonesian man, alleged oldest human (d. 2017)source

Deaths

  • January 20 – Sir George Seymour, British admiral of the fleet (b. 1787)source
  • February 7 – Sylvain Salnave, Haitian general, 9th President of Haiti (b. 1827)source
  • March 1 – Francisco Solano López, 2nd President of Paraguay (killed in action) (b. 1827)source
  • March 4 – Thomas Scott, Canadian Orangeman, surveyor of the Red River Rebellion (shot by Louis Riel and the Métis) (b. c. 1842)source
  • March 28 – George Henry Thomas, American general (b. 1816)source
  • April 11 – Justo José de Urquiza, General, First constitutional President of Argentina (assassinated) (b. 1801)source
  • April 16 – Domnița Rallou Caragea, Greek princess, independence activist (b. 1799)source
  • May 6 – Sir James Young Simpson, Scottish physician, researcher (b. 1811)source
  • June 9 – English novelist Charles Dickens dies at Gads Hill Place in Kent, leaving his last book, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, unfinished.source
  • September 23 – Prosper Mérimée, French writer (b. 1803)source
  • November 23 – Giuseppina Bozzacchi, Milanese-born ballerina (b. 1853) (result of deprivation during Siege of Paris)source
  • December 5 – Alexandre Dumas, père, French author (b. 1802)source
  • December 5 – David G. Burnet, early politician within the Republic of Texas (b. 1788)source
  • December 27 – Juan Prim, Spanish general and prime minister (assassinated) (b. 1814)source