istoryworld
All Events
Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel patents dynamite, making the volatile explosive nitroglycerine safer by combining it with kieselguhr
The first collection of 'Negro Spirituals' is published in book form in the US as Slave Songs of the United States
Kew Gardens station is built, as a two-storey building in the style of a domestic Victorian villa
Ferdinand Cohn publishes Researches on Bacteria, providing a coherent taxonomy subsequently regarded as the starting point of modern bacteriology
Benjamin Disraeli becomes British prime minister for the first time, at the head of a Conservative government, but only for a few months
Britain annexes Basutoland (now Lesotho), the kingdom of the Sotho leader Moshoeshoe
US president Andrew Johnson escapes impeachment (for dismissing his secretary of war) by a single voite
Executions take place in public for the last time in London, being moved from outside Newgate Gaol to inside the prison
An uprising against Spanish rule in Cuba sparks off a Ten Years' War
Richard Wagner's opera The Mastersingers of Nuremberg has its premiere in Munich
US author Louisa May Alcott begins serial publication of her book for children, Little Women (in book form 1869)
Dostoevsky publishes The Idiot, a novel about the simple-minded and truthful Prince Myshkin
An armed uprising against Spanish rule takes place in the town of Lares in Puerto Rico, becoming known as the Grito de Lares ('Cry of Lares')
Liberal leader William Ewart Gladstone becomes British prime minister, for the first of four times, and remains in office for six years
George Custer leads federal troops in the massacre of more than 100 American Indians, on an official reservation beside the Washita river
Civil War hero Ulysses S. Grant wins the US presidential election, as the Republican candidate against Democrat Horatio Seymour
The first train arrives at Kew Gardens Station, on a line used both by L&SWR and the North London Line
Friedrich Miescher isolates DNA from the pus in discarded hospital bandages and calls it 'nuclein' because he has found it in the nuclei of cells
Johannes Brahms' German Requiem, setting passages from Luther's translation of the Bible, has its first complete performance in Leipzig
The Fifteenth Amendment to the US Constitution (ratified in 1870) makes it illegal to deny the right to vote on racial grounds
Dmitry Mendeleyev reads to the Russian Chemical Society in St Petersburg his formulation of the periodic table
Cincinnati, Ohio, fielding the first baseball team in which every member is a hired professional, wins every match of the year
English author Matthew Arnold publishes Culture and Anarchy, an influential collection of essays about contemporary society
British prime minister William Gladstone introduces a bill to disestablish the Anglican church in Ireland
The Union Pacific and the Central Pacific railroads meet at Promontory Summit in Utah, completing the first transcontinental line
