Boris Godunov
Jan 24 Modest Mussorgsky's opera "Boris Godunov" premieres in St Petersburg, Russia
Jesse James Robbery
Jan 31 Jesse James gang robs a train at Gads Hill, Missouri
PM Benjamin Disraeli
Feb 21 Benjamin Disraeli succeeds William Gladstone as British Prime Minister
- Feb 21 Oakland Daily Tribune begins publication in Oakland, California
- Feb 23 Major Walter Clopton Winfield patents a game called "sphairistike" (lawn tennis)
- Feb 27 Baseball 1st played in England at Lord's Cricket Ground
- Mar 2 National Association of Professional Baseball Players officially adopts the batter's box; decide any player betting on his own team will be expelled; any player betting on any other team to forfeit his pay
- Mar 10 Purdue University (Indiana) admits its 1st student
- Mar 14 English FA Cup Final, Kennington Oval, London: Oxford University beats Royal Engineers, 2-0
- Mar 18 Hawaii signs a treaty with the United States granting exclusive trading rights.
- Mar 22 Young Men's Hebrew Association organizes in NYC
- Mar 26 36th Grand National: Mr. J. M. Richardson wins his second consecutive GN aboard French 5/1 favourite Reugny
- Apr 5 Johann Strauss Jr's opera "Die Fledermaus" premieres in Vienna
- Apr 10 British Open Men's Golf, Musselburgh Links: Mungo Park wins first title by 2 strokes from Tom Morris Jr
1st Impressionist Exhibition
Apr 15 First 'Impressionist' exhibition opens in Paris, features Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Pierre Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro and Berthe Morisot
- Apr 15 NY legislature passes compulsory education law
Livingston's Body Arrives Home
Apr 16 Dr David Livingstone's body arrives in Southampton
- Apr 18 David Livingstone, African explorer, buried in Westminster Abbey
- Apr 19 Barracks on Alcatraz Island destroyed in fire
- Apr 27 White League, Paramilitary white supremacist organization, forms
- May 5 Dutch 2nd Chamber passes child labor law
- May 9 London's Victoria Embankment opens
- May 9 The first horse-drawn bus makes its début in the city of Mumbai, plying two routes
- May 12 US Assay Office in Helena, Montana, authorized
- May 13 Pope Pius IX encyclical "On Greek-Ruthenian rite"
- May 14 1st admission charge at a football game, Harvard beats Uni of McGill (Montreal) 3-0
- May 16 1st recorded dam disaster in US (Williamsburg, Massachusetts)
- May 26 2nd Preakness: William Donohue aboard Culpepper wins in 2:56.5
- May 29 Present constitution of Switzerland takes effect
- Jun 13 8th Belmont: G Barbee aboard Saxon wins in 2:39.5
- Jun 20 1st US Lifesaving Medal awarded (Lucian Clemons)
- Jun 22 American physician Dr Andrew T. Still founds the study of Osteopathy
- Jun 22 Game of lawn tennis introduced by Welsh Major Walter Clopton Wingfield, introducing a rubber ball to bounce on grass
- Jun 28 Freedmen's Bank closes
- Jun 29 Greek politician Charilaos Trikoupis publishes a manifesto in the Athens daily Kairoi entitled "Who's to Blame?" in which he lays out his complaints against King George. He is elected Prime Minister of Greece the next year.
- Jul 1 1st US kidnapping for ransom, 4-year-old Charles Ross, $20,000
- Jul 1 1st zoo in the United States opens in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
- Jul 1 Dutch 1st Chamber accepts law governing child labor in factories
- Jul 4 Social Democratic Workmen's Party of North America formed
- Jul 7 27th Postmaster General: James W Marshall of NJ takes office
- Jul 8 The Mounties (North West Mounted Police) begin their March West from Fort Dufferin
- Jul 12 Ontario Agricultural College founded
- Jul 23 Aires de Ornelas e Vasconcelos is appointed the Archbishop of the Portuguese colonial enclave of Goa
- Jul 29 Major Walter Copton Wingfield patents a portable tennis court
- Jul 30 1st baseball teams to play outside US, Boston-Philadelphia in British Isles
- Jul 31 Patrick Francis Healy, SJ, inaugurated as President of Georgetown University
- Aug 5 Japan launches its postal savings system, modeled after a similar system in England
- Aug 11 Harry S Parmelee patents sprinkler head
- Aug 26 16 blacks kidnapped from Gibson County Jail and lynched in Trenton, Tennessee
- Sep 1 28th US Postmaster General: Marshall Jewell of Connecticut takes office
- Sep 1 Sydney General Post Office opens in Australia
- Sep 3 The congress of the state of México elevates Naucalpan to the category of Villa, with the title of "Villa de Juárez"
- Sep 12 1874 The District of Maple Ridge, British Columbia, Canada is founded.
- Sep 26 1st Grand International Rifle match held
- Oct 1 Rotterdam opens drinking water pipes
- Oct 9 World Postal Union forms in Bern Switzerland
- Oct 10 Fiji becomes a British possession
- Nov 3 James Theodore Holly, elected bishop of Haiti
- Nov 4 Samuel J. Tilden elected governor of New York
Republican Party Symbol
Nov 7 First cartoon depicting an elephant as the Republican Party symbol is published by Thomas Nast
The Shaughraun
Nov 14 Dion Boucicault's stage drama "The Shaughraun" opens at Wallack's Theatre, NYC
- Nov 17 Emigrant ship Cospatrick catches fire & sinks off Auckland, New Zealand
- Nov 18 National Woman's Christian Temperance Union organizes in Cleveland, Ohio
- Nov 24 American inventor Joseph Glidden patents barbed wire
- Nov 25 The United States Greenback Party is established as a political party consisting primarily of farmers affected by the Panic of 1873.
- Dec 8 James-Younger gang led by Jesse James robs a train at Muncie, Kansas stealing $30,000
King Kalakaua's US Visit
Dec 12 Hawaiian King David Kalakaua is 1st king to visit the US as guest of Ulysses S. Grant at 1st US state dinner at the White House
- Dec 15 1st reigning king to visit US is the King of Hawaii, received by President Grant
- Dec 15 Henry Bergh, Eldgridge Gerry, and philanthropist John D. Wright found the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children in NYC, the world's first anti-child abuse agency. Later known as The New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NYSPCC).
- Dec 24 Pope Pius IX proclaims a jubilee for 1875
Admirals
Aviators
Gangsters
Generals
Industrialists
Suffragists