1869

1869 is a common year starting on Friday (link will take you to calendar).

Events

• March 1 – North German Confederation issues 10gr and 30gr value stamps, printed on goldbeater's skin
• May 4 – Naval Battle of Hakodate in Japan.
• 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 – Last public hanging in Britain – Fenian bomber Michael Barrett
• May 29 – British parliament passes the Capital Punishment within Prisons Bill ending public hanging
• August 4/12 – Emperor Norton I of the United States abolished both the Democratic and Republican parties.
• August 9 – Ferdinand Lassalle founds the SAP, the first socialist workers party in Germany.
• August 20 – Abergele Train Disaster – Irish Mail passenger train collides with cargo trucks loaded with paraffin – 33 dead; First major train disaster in Britain
• 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 Asuncion

• Basutoland becomes British protectorate
• British parliament ends transportation to Australia as punishment
• Venancio Flores murdered in Montevideo
• Ulysses S. Grant succeeds Andrew Johnson as President of the United States of America.
• Fire burns down about 75% of Hancock, Michigan
• Mahbub Ali Pasha begins a 42 year reign as Nizam of Hyderabad
• James Bennet 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.
• Heinz Established
• Abdur Rahman Khan is exiled from Afghanistan.
• The Roman Catholic Church prohibits abortion under any circumstance.

Births

• 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 (d. 1959)
• March 5 – Michael von Faulhaber, German cardinal and archbishop (d. 1952)
• 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 Hall of Famer (d. 1928)
• April 8 – Harvey Cushing, American neurosurgeon (d. 1939)
• April 11 – Gustav Vigeland, Norwegian sculptor (d. 1943)
• May 14 – Friedrich Karl Kleine, physician (d. 1951)
• June 17 – Flora Finch, silent film comedienne (d. 1940)
• August 10 – Lawrence Binyon, English poet and scholar (d. 1943)
• September 2 – Fritz Pregl, Slovenian chemist (Nobel prize 1923) (d. 1930)
• September 23 – Mary Mallon, "Typhoid Mary" (d. 1938)
• October 2 – Mohandas Gandhi, founder of the modern Indian state and proponent of nonviolence (d. 1948)
• October 25 – John Heisman, American football coach (d. 1936)
• November 22 – André Gide, French writer (d. 1951)
• November 25 – Herbert Greenfield, Premier of Alberta (d. 1949)
• December 18 – Louis Moreau Gottschalk, American pianist and composer (b. 1829)
• December 30 – Stephen Leacock, British-Canadian author and economist (d. 1944)
• December 31 – Henri Matisse, French painter (d. 1954)

Deaths

• 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)
• May 11 – Hijikata Toshizou, 2nd commander of the Shinsengumi (b. 1835)
• October 13 – Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, French literary critic (b. 1804)
• December 18 – Louis Moreau Gottschalk American composer and pianist (b. 1829)