1869
Year 1869 (MDCCCLXIX) is a common year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar and a common year starting on Wednesday of the 12-day slower Julian calendar.
Events
January–March
April–June
July–September
October–December
- October 16 – England's first residential college for women, Girton College, is founded.
- October 25 – John B. Shelden (of Millville, New Jersey) claims to have discovered the North Pole.
- November 4 – The first issue of the scientific journal Nature is published.
- November 6 – The first game of American Football between two American colleges is played. Rutgers University defeats Princeton University 6–4 in a forerunner to American football and College football.
- 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 last surviving clipper ship, Cutty Sark, is launched.
- December 1 – The official transfer of Rupert's Land from the Hudson's Bay Company to the Dominion of Canada is executed.
- December 7 – American outlaw Jesse James commits his first confirmed bank robbery in Gallatin, Missouri.
- December 8 – First Vatican Council opens.
- December 10 – The first American chapter of Kappa Sigma is founded at the University of Virginia.
- December 10 – The Wyoming territorial legislature gives women the right to vote, the first such law in the world.
- December 31 – Triple Alliance forces take Asunción.
Date unknown
Births
January–June
- January 4 – Tommy Corcoran, American baseball player (d. 1960)
- January 10 – Grigori Rasputin, Russian mystic (d. 1916)proven 1872
- 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 and Nobel laureate (d. 1959)
- February 26 – Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya, Russian Marxist revolutionary and Vladimir Lenin's wife (d.1939)
- March 3
- March 12 – George William Forbes, New Zealand Prime Minister and first leader of the New Zealand 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, American theatrical producer (d. 1932)
- March 22 – Emilio Aguinaldo, first President of the Philippines (d. 1964)
- March 23 – Calouste Gulbenkian, Armenian businessman and philanthropist (d. 1955)
- March 29 – Edwin Lutyens, British architect (d. 1944)
- April 2 – Hughie Jennings, American 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)
- April 27 – May Moss, Australian women's rights activist (d. 1948)
- May 3 – Warren Terhune, United States Navy Commander, and the 13th Governor of American Samoa (d. 1920)
- 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 comedian (d. 1940)
- June 27 – Hans Spemann, German embryologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 1941)
July–December
- July 11 – Pio Valenzuela, Filipino doctor and patriot
- 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 – Mohandas Gandhi, Indian political leader, Father of the Nation (d. 1948)
- October 25 – John Heisman, American football coach (d. 1936)
- October 27 – Viola Allen, actress (d. 1948)
- November 10 – Wayne Wheeler, American temperance movement leader (d. 1927)
- November 11 – Victor Emmanuel III, King of Italy (d. 1947)
- November 20 – Herbert Tudor Buckland, seminal British Arts and crafts architect (d.1951)
- November 22 – André Gide, French writer and Nobel laureate (d. 1951)
- November 24 – Oscar Carmona, former President of Portugal (d. 1951)
- November 25 – Herbert Greenfield, Premier of Alberta, Canada (d. 1949)
- November 30 – Gustaf Dalén, Swedish physicist and Nobel laureate (d. 1937)
- December 5 – Ellis Parker Butler, American humorist (d. 1937)
- December 16 – Hristo Tatarchev, Bulgarian revolutionary and leader of the revolutionary movement in Macedonia and Eastern Thrace
- December 20 – Charley Grapewin, American vaudeville performer and stage and film actor (d. 1956)
- December 22 – Edwin Arlington Robinson, American poet (d. 1935)
- December 22 – Nathan Paine, American lumber baron (d. 1947)
- December 30 – Stephen Leacock, British-Canadian author and economist (d. 1944)
- December 31 – Henri Matisse, French painter (d. 1954)
Deaths
January–June
July–December
- July 18 – Laurent Clerc, American advocate for the deaf (b. 1785)
- July 22 – John A. Roebling, American bridge engineer (b. 1806)
- August 31 – Mary Ward, Irish scientist and the first car accident victim (b. 1827)
- September 4 – John Pascoe Fawkner, Australian pioneer, settler and politician, Melbourne, Victoria (b. 1792)
- September 12 – Peter Mark Roget, British lexicographer (b. 1779)
- October 8 – Franklin Pierce, 14th President of the United States (b. 1804)
- 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 8 – Narcisa de Jesús Martillo, an Ecuadorian saint (b. 1832)
- December 18 – Louis Moreau Gottschalk, American composer and pianist (b. 1829)
References
- American Annual Cyclopedia...for 1869 (1870), large compendium of facts, worldwide coverage online edition
- The American year-book and national register for 1869 (1869). focus on U.S. online edition