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January 1 - New York City annexes The Bronx

January 23 - Marriage of the Duke of Edinburgh, second son of Queen Victoria, to Grand Duchess Marie Alexandrovna of Russia, only daughter of Emperor Alexander III of Russia.

January 23 - Camille Saint-Saëns' composition Danse Macabre is premiered.

January - Signing of the Pangkor Treaty (also known as the Pangkor Engagement), by which the British extended their control over, first the Sultanate of Perak and later the other independent Malay States.

February 21 - The Oakland Daily Tribune publishes its first newspaper.

February 23 - Walter Clopton Wingfield patents a game called "sphairistike" which is more commonly called lawn tennis.

March 18 - Hawaii signs a treaty with the United States granting exclusive trading rights.

March - founding of a Young Men's Hebrew Association in Manhattan which still operates today as the 92nd Street Y

9 May - The first horse drawn carriage made its début in the city of Mumbai, plying on two routes.

May 20 - Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis receive a US patent for blue jeans with copper rivets

June 5 - The Students Rowing Club Njord was founded in Leiden (The Netherlands)

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July-December

July 1 - The first public zoo in the U.S. opens, at Philadelphia.
July 24 - Mathew Evans and Henry Woodward patent the first incandescent lamp with an electric light bulb.
October 19 - Modern University of Zagreb founded in Zagreb
November 4 - Democrats regain the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time since 1860.
November 7 - Harper's Weekly publishes a cartoon by Thomas Nast considered the first important use of an elephant as a symbol for the Republican Party. *.
November 10 - John Ernst Worrell Keely demonstrates his "induction resonance motion motor" (later investigation reveals fraud behind another perpetual motion machine).
November 25 - The United States Greenback Party is established as a political party made primarily of farmers financially hurt by the Panic of 1873.

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Unknown date

Iceland is granted a constitution and limited home rule.
Home Rule Movement created to protest British Government control over Ireland. (see History of Ireland)
First Impressionist exhibition, Paris; name coined in hostile review of Claude Monet's Impression, Sunrise
Opening of the Agra canal in India.
Charles Russell's Bible Students group (Now known as Jehovah's Witnesses) first claims this year to be the invisible return of Jesus Christ to earth, before shifting to the currently believed year of 1914.

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January-February

January 1 - Gustav Albin Weißkopf, German-born aviation pioneer (d. 1927)
January 4 - Josef Suk, Czech composer and violinist (d. 1935)
January 5 - Joseph Erlanger, American physiologist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1965)
January 16 - Robert W. Service, American poet (d. 1958)
January 20 - Steve Bloomer, English footballer, cricketer and baseball player (d. 1938)
January 21 - Frederick Madison Smith, American religious leader and author (d. 1946)
January 25 - William Somerset Maugham, English author (d. 1965)
January 29 - John D. Rockefeller, Jr., American entrepreneur (d. 1960)
February 1 - Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Austrian writer (d. 1929)
February 3 - Gertrude Stein, American writer and patron of the arts (d. 1946)
February 9 - Amy Lowell, American poet (d. 1925)
February 11 - Elsa Beskow, Swedish writer (d. 1953)
February 11 - Fritz Bennicke Hart, English-born composer (d. 1949)
February 15 - Sir Ernest Shackleton, Irish explorer (d. 1922)
February 17 - Thomas J. Watson, American computer pioneer (d. 1956)
February 23 - Konstantin Päts, Estonian president (d. 1956)
February 24 - Honus Wagner, baseball player (d. 1955)

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March-June

March 20 - Börries von Münchhausen, German poet (d. 1945)
March 24 - Harry Houdini, Hungarian-born magician (d. 1926)
March 26 - Robert Frost, American poet (d. 1963)
March 29 - Lou Hoover, First Lady of the United States (d. 1944)
April 8 - Stanisław Taczak, Polish general, commander-in-chief of the Greater Poland Uprising (d. 1960)
April 15 - Johannes Stark, German physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1957)
April 19 - Ernst Rudin, Swiss psychiatrist and geneticist (d. 1952)
April 25 - Guglielmo Marconi, Italian inventor, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics (d. 1937)
May 3 - François Coty, French perfume manufacturer (d. 1934)
May 9 - Howard Carter, British archaeologist (d. 1939)
May 14 - Polaire, French actress and singer (d. 1939)
May 19 - Gilbert Jessop, English cricketer (d. 1955)
May 29 - Gilbert Keith Chesterton, English author (d. 1936)
June 11 - Lyman Gilmore, American aviation pioneer (d. 1951)
June 16 - Arthur Meighen, ninth Prime Minister of Canada (d. 1960)
June 19 - Peder Oluf Pedersen, Danish engineer and physicist (d. 1941)

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July to December

July 14 - Abbas II, last khedive of Egypt (d. 1944)
July 26 - Serge Koussevitsky, Russian conductor (d. 1951)
July 29 - J. S. Woodsworth, Canadian politician (d. 1942)
August 6 - Charles Fort, writer and researcher into anomalous phenomena (d. 1932)
August 27 - Carl Bosch, German chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1940)
September 13 - Arnold Schoenberg, Austrian composer (d. 1951)
September 21 - Gustav Holst, English composer (d. 1934)
October 15 - Prince Alfred of Edinburgh and Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (d. 1899)
October 20 - Charles Ives, American composer (d. 1954)
October 26 - Martin Lowry, English chemist (d. 1936)
November 15 - August Krogh, Danish zoophysiologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 1949)
November 29 - Egas Moniz, Portuguese physician and neurologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 1955)
November 30 - Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature (d. 1965)
November 30 - Lucy Maud Montgomery, Canadian author (d. 1942)
December 13 - Josef Lhévinne, Russian pianist (d. 1944)
December 17 - William Lyon Mackenzie King, Prime Minister of Canada (d. 1950)
December 22 - Franz Schmidt, Austrian composer (d. 1939)

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Deaths

January 8 - Abbé Charles-Étienne Brasseur de Bourbourg, French writer and historian (b. 1814)
January 17 - Chang and Eng Bunker, siamese twins and sideshow performers.
January 19 - August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben, German poet (b. 1798)
February 8 - David Friedrich Strauss, German theologian (b. 1808)
March 8 - Millard Fillmore, 13th President of the United States (b. 1800)
March 20 - Hans Christian Lumbye, Danish composer (b. 1810)
June 20 - John Ruggles, American politician
June 21 - Anders Jonas Ångström, Swedish physicist (b. 1814)
July 24 - Gijsbert Haan, Dutch-American religious leader (b. 1801)
August 14 - Jonathan Clarkson Gibbs, African-American minister and politician (b. 1821)
October 6 - Samuel M. Kier, American oil magnate (b. 1813)
December 7 - Constantin von Tischendorf, German Biblical scholar (b. 1815)