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January 20 - Elizabeth Cady Stanton is the first woman to testify before the United States Congress.

February 15 - Mirza Ghalib, a famous Indian poet of Urdu and Farsi dies in Delhi, Awadh, on this day.

February 20 - Ranavalona II, Merina Queen of Madagascar is baptized.

March 1 - North German Confederation issues 10gr and 30gr value stamps, printed on goldbeater's skin

March 4 - Ulysses S. Grant succeeds Andrew Johnson as President of the United States of America.

April 8 - The American Museum of Natural History opens in New York.

May - Naval Battle of Hakodate in Japan.

May 6 - Purdue University founded in West Lafayette, Indiana.

May 10 - Transcontinental Railroad completed at Promontory, Utah.

May 15 - Woman's suffrage: In New York, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton form the National Woman's Suffrage Association.

May 26 - Boston University is chartered by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts

May 29 - British parliament passes the Capital Punishment within Prisons Bill ending public hanging

June 1 - The Cincinnati Red Stockings open the baseball season as the first all professional (paid, no amateurs) team.

June 15 - John Wesley Hyatt patents the first plastic, Celluloid, in Albany, New York.

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July 4 - University of Bucharest is founded.

August 4/August 12 - The self-proclaimed, "Emperor Norton I of the United States" abolished both the Democratic and Republican parties.

August 9 - August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht founded the Social Democratic Workers' Party of Germany (SDAP)

August 20 - Abergele Train Disaster - Irish Mail passenger train collides with cargo trucks loaded with paraffin - 33 dead; First major train disaster in Britain

August 31 - Mary Ward is killed in a car accident, possibly the first person ever to suffer this fate

September 11 - Work completed on the Wallace Monument

October 16 - England's first residential college for women, Girton College, is founded.

November 4 - The first issue of scientific journal Nature is published.

November 6 - The first intercollegiate American football game is played. Rutgers defeats Princeton, 6 to 4.

November 17 - In Egypt, the Suez Canal, linking the Mediterranean Sea with the Red Sea, is inaugurated in an elaborate ceremony.

November 23 - In Dumbarton, Scotland the clipper ship Cutty Sark is launched (it was one of the last clipper ships to be built, and the only one surviving to the present day).

December 10 - First American chapter of Kappa Sigma founded at the University of Virginia.

December 31 - Triple Alliance forces take Asunción

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Basutoland becomes British protectorate

British parliament ends transportation to Australia as punishment

Venancio Flores murdered in Montevideo

Fire burns down about 75% of Hancock, Michigan

Mahbub Ali Pasha begins a 42 year reign as Nizam of Hyderabad

James Gordon Bennett, Jr. of the New York Herald, asks Henry Morton Stanley to go and find Dr Livingstone, despite him not being lost or in difficulty.

The Meiji Emperor of Japan accepts the surrender of the four most powerful clans (Choshu, Tosa, Hizen and Satsuma) and reappoints the clan chiefs as Provincial Governors, on reduced revenues.

Invention of barbed wire, see ranching.

H. J. Heinz Company established.

Abdur Rahman Khan is exiled from Afghanistan.

"Michigan relics" appear

Goldman Sachs and Co. was founded

Glasgow University Rugby Football Club (GURFC) founded.

Thomas Bramwell Welch invents a way to pasteurize grape juice to halt the fermentation, eventually leading to the founding of Welch's Grape Juice Company.

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January 1 - Sigma Nu, First Anti-Hazing Honor/Social Fraternity

January 4 - Tommy Corcoran, baseball player (d. 1960)

January 10 - Grigori Rasputin, Russian mystic (d. 1916)

January 15 - Stanisław Wyspiański, Polish dramatist, poet, painter, and architect (d. 1907)

February 11 - Helene Kroller-Muller, Dutch museum founder and patron of the arts (d. 1939)

February 14 - Charles Wilson, Scottish physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1959)

March 3 - Michael von Faulhaber, German cardinal and archbishop (d. 1952)

March 12 - George William Forbes, New Zealand Prime Minister and first leader of New Zealand's National Party (d. 1947)

March 14 - Algernon Blackwood, English writer (d. 1951)

March 18 - Neville Chamberlain, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (d. 1940)

March 21 - Florenz Ziegfeld, theatrical producer (d. 1932)

April 2 - Hughie Jennings, baseball player (d. 1928)

April 4 - Mary Colter, American architect (d. 1958)

April 8 - Harvey Cushing, American neurosurgeon (d. 1939)

April 11 - Gustav Vigeland, Norwegian sculptor (d. 1943)

May 5 - Hans Pfitzner, German composer (d. 1949)

May 20 - John Stone Stone, American physicist and inventor (d. 1943)

June 17 - Flora Finch, English-born comedienne (d. 1940)

June 27 - Hans Spemann, German embryologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 1941)

August 10 - Lawrence Binyon, English poet and scholar (d. 1943)

September 3 - Fritz Pregl, Austrian chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1930)

September 17 - Christian Lous Lange, Norwegian pacifist, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (d. 1938)

September 23 - Mary Mallon, "Typhoid Mary" (d. 1938)

October 2 - Mahatma Gandhi, Indian political leader, Father of the Nation (d. 1948)

October 25 - John Heisman, American football coach (d. 1936)

November 10 - Wayne Wheeler, American temperance movement leader (d. 1927)

November 11 - Victor Emmanuel III of Italy King (d. 1947)

November 20 - Herbert Tudor Buckland, seminal British Arts and Crafts architect (d.1951)

November 22 - André Gide, French writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1951)

November 25 - Herbert Greenfield, Premier of Alberta (d. 1949)

November 30 - Gustaf Dalén, Swedish physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1937)

December 16 - Hristo Tatarchev, Bulgarian revolutionary, leader of the revolutionary movement in Macedonia and Eastern Thrace

December 30 - Stephen Leacock, British-Canadian author and economist (d. 1944)

December 31 - Henri Matisse, French painter (d. 1954)

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January 1 - Martin W. Bates, U.S. Senator from Delaware (b. 1786)

January 30 - William Carleton, Irish novelist (b. 1794)

February 15 - Mirza Ghalib, Indian poet (b. 1796).

March 8 - Hector Berlioz, French composer (b. 1803)

March 24 - Antoine-Henri Jomini, French general (b. 1779)

April 20 - Carl Loewe, German composer (b. 1796)

June 16 - Charles Sturt, Australian explorer (b. 1795)

June 20 - Hijikata Toshizou, Japanes military commander (b. 1835)

August 31 - Mary Ward (scientist), first car accident victim

October 13 - Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, French literary critic (b. 1804)

October 23 - Edward Smith-Stanley, 14th Earl of Derby, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (b. 1799)

December 18 - Louis Moreau Gottschalk, American composer and pianist (b. 1829)

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December 24 - The events of the Doctor Who episode The Unquiet Dead occur.