1874
1874 (
MDCCCLXXIV) was a
common year starting on Thursday (see link for calendar).
January - June
*
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)
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. [
1].
*
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.
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.
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)
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)
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 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 - Sir
Winston Churchill,
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, recipient of the
Nobel Prize in Literature (d.
1965)
*
November 30 -
Lucy Maude 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)
*
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)
