- Jan 4 Sofia is emancipated from Ottoman rule
Leopold II and Stanley's Secret Meeting
Jan 8 Secret meeting of Belgian King Leopold II's agent and Henry Morton Stanley
- Jan 9 Umberto I becomes King of Italy.
- Jan 10 US Senate proposes female suffrage
- Jan 14 US Supreme court rules race separation on trains unconstitutional [1]
- Jan 16 Captain Burago with a squadron of Russian Imperial army dragoons liberates Plovdiv from Ottoman rule
- Jan 24 Revolutionary Vera Zasulich shoots at Fyodor Trepov, Governor of Saint Petersburg
- Jan 28 George Coy, Herrick Frost, and Walter Lewis open first commercial telephone exchange, in New Haven, Connecticut [1]
- Jan 28 Yale Daily News published, 1st college daily newspaper
- Feb 2 Greece declares war on Turkey
- Feb 10 Pact of Zanjón signed between Cubans rebels and the Spanish bringing the 10 Years War to an end
- Feb 11 1st US bicycle club, Boston Bicycle Club, forms
- Feb 11 1st weekly weather report published in UK
- Feb 12 Harvard player Frederick Thayer patents baseball catcher's mask (pat # 200,358)
- Feb 17 1st telephone exchange in San Francisco, California opens with 18 phones
- Feb 18 John Tunstall is murdered by outlaw Jessie Evans, sparking the Lincoln County War in Lincoln County, New Mexico.
Thomas Edison's Phonograph
Feb 19 Thomas Edison is granted a patent for his cylinder phonograph [1]
Symphony No. 4
Feb 22 Peter Tchaikovsky's 4th Symphony in F premieres at a Russian Musical Society concert in Moscow [February 10 O.S.]
Bland-Allison Act
Feb 28 Congress overrides US President Rutherford B. Hayes' veto of the Bland-Allison Act, requiring the Treasury to buy a certain amount of silver and put it into circulation as silver dollars
- Feb 28 US congress authorizes large-size silver certificate
- Mar 1 First winter ascent of Aneto, highest mountain in the Pyrenees
- Mar 3 Treaty of San Stefano signed by Russian and Ottoman empires grants independence to Bulgaria after 500 years of Turkish rule
- Mar 13 Oxford University defeats Cambridge University in their 1st golf match
- Mar 18 City of Anaheim in California incorporates for the 2nd time
- Mar 23 English FA Cup Final, Kennington Oval, London: Wanderers beat Royal Engineers, 3–1; Wanderers' back-to-back and 5th title overall
- Mar 24 British frigate Eurydice sunk; 300 lost
- Mar 26 Hastings College of Law founded in San Francisco, California
- Mar 29 40th Grand National: John Jones aboard 7/1 chance Shifnal wins by 2 lengths from Martha
- Apr 2 1st issue of Rotterdam's Newspaper
- Apr 10 California Street Cable Car Railroad Co starts service
- Apr 15 Harley Procter introduces Ivory Soap
- Apr 21 First Lady Lucy Hayes begins egg rolling contest on White House lawn
- Apr 21 NY installs 1st firehouse pole
Edison's Phonograph
May 4 Thomas Edison's Phonograph shown for 1st time at Grand Opera House
Carbon Microphone
May 8 David Edward Hughes' paper on the idea for a microphone is read before the Royal Society of London by Thomas Henry Huxley
- May 13 Danvers State Hospital, a psychiatric hospital in Massachusetts, opens—later serves as inspiration for Arkham Sanitorium in the work of H.P. Lovecraft, which in turn inspired Arkham Asylum of the D.C. Batman universe
- May 14 Vaseline is granted a patent (U.S. Patent 127,568)
- May 19 Blanche Kelso Bruce appointed register of treasury by President Garfield
- May 21 4th Kentucky Derby: Jimmy Carter aboard Day Star wins in 2:37.25
- May 23 Attorney John Henry Smyth named US minister to Liberia
- May 24 CA Parker (Harvard) wins 1st American bike race at Beacon Park in Boston
H.M.S. Pinafore
May 25 W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan's comic opera "H.M.S. Pinafore" premieres in London, their first international success
- May 27 6th Preakness: C. Holloway aboard Duke of Magenta wins in 2:41.75
Spofforth's 10-20
May 27 Australian cricket fast bowler Fred Spofforth takes 10-20 (6-4 and 4-16) in quick-fire 9 wicket tour match win over the MCC in London
- May 31 German battleship SMS Grosser Kurfürst sinks, 284 killed
- May 31 US Congress accepts decrease in dollar circulation
- Jun 4 Cyprus ceded by Turkey to Britain for administrative purposes
- Jun 5 American outlaw John Wesley Hardin convicted of the murder of Deputy Sheriff Charles Webb, sentenced to 25 years in prison
- Jun 8 12th Belmont: L Hughes aboard Duke of Magenta wins in 2:43.5
- Jun 11 DC is given a new government by Congress, 3 commissioners appointed by president (change in 1974)
- Jun 13 Congress of Berlin begins, determines the territories of the states in the Balkan peninsula following the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78
First Moving Images
Jun 15 World's first moving pictures caught on camera (used 12 cameras, each taking 1 picture) done to see if all 4 of a horse's hooves leave the ground
- Jun 22 Swedish ship SS Vega with explorer Nils Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld sets out to find the Northeast Passage (succeeds 1879)
- Jul 1 Canada joins the Universal Postal Union
- Jul 5 The coat of arms of the Baku governorate was established
- Jul 7 Social-Democratic United forms in Amsterdam
- Jul 9 American inventor Henry Tibbe patents an improved corncob pipe design
- Jul 12 Fever epidemic in New Orleans begin, it will kill 4,500
- Jul 13 Congress of Berlin ends, redrawing the terms of Treaty of San Stefano to give Russia less influence in old Ottoman Empire
- Jul 17 Nqwiliso, tribal chief of Western Pondoland and eldest son of Ndamase, signs a treaty with H.G. Elliott ceding sovereign rights and shipping in the Umzimvubu River mouth to the Cape government, Southern Africa
- Jul 18 Wimbledon Men's Tennis: Frank Hadow makes his lone Wimbledon appearance, and wins; beats defending champion Spencer Gore 7-5, 6-1, 9-7
- Jul 20 1st telephone introduced in Hawaii
- Jul 26 In California, poet and American West outlaw calling himself "Black Bart" makes his last clean getaway when he steals a safe box from a Wells Fargo stagecoach. The empty box found later with a taunting poem inside.
- Jul 30 German anti-semitism begins during the Reichstag election
- Aug 21 American Bar Association organizes at Sarasota, NY
- Aug 21 Surrey wicket-keeper Ted Pooley completes a then-1st class cricket record 8 stumpings in a County match against Kent at The Oval
- Sep 1 1st female telephone operator starts work, Emma Nutt for the Edwin Holmes Telephone Despatch Company in Boston
- Sep 2 Surrey left-arm slow round-arm bowler Ted Barratt takes 10-43 for the Players in Australia's 1st innings in a cricket tour match on his home ground at The Oval; all ten are caught or stumped; Australia wins by 8 runs
- Sep 3 British passenger paddle steamer Princess Alice sunk in a collision on the River Thames with the collier Bywell Castle; 645 die
- Sep 12 Cleopatra Needle installed in London
- Sep 25 British physician Dr. Charles Drysdale warns against the use of tobacco in a letter to The Times newspaper in one of the earliest public health announcements on the dangers of smoking
- Sep 30 1st Portuguese immigrants arrive in Hawaii
- Sep 30 Great Flood hits New Zealand's South Island
British Golf Open
Oct 4 British Open Men's Golf, Prestwick GC: Scotsman Jamie Anderson wins 2nd of 3 consecutive Championships; beats Bob Kirk by 2 strokes
- Oct 15 Edison Electric Light Company incorporated
Macdonald Re-elected
Oct 17 After serving as the opposition for five years, John A. Macdonald is re-elected as Prime Minister of Canada
- Oct 18 Anti-socialist laws are ratified in Germany
- Oct 18 Edison makes electricity available for household use
Anti-Socialist Law
Oct 21 German chancellor Otto von Bismarck delegates end of "Socialism"
Samfundets Stotter
Nov 6 Henrik Ibsen's play "Samfundets Stotter" (pillars of Society) premieres in Oslo
Without a Dowry
Nov 22 Aleksandr Ostrovsky's classic play "Without a Dowry" (Bespridannitsa) premieres in Moscow [OS 10 Nov]
Artist's 'Rocket' Shot Down in Flames
Nov 28 Whistler v. Ruskin, the most famous trial in art history, ends with artist James McNeill Whistler awarded a token farthing in compensation after suing the writer and critic John Ruskin for libel, seeking £1,000 damages [1]
- Dec 3 Settlers arrive at Petach Tikvah, Israel
Pulitzer Buys St. Louis Dispatch
Dec 9 Joseph Pulitzer buys the St. Louis Dispatch for $2,500
Anglo-Zulu War
Dec 11 Anglo-Zulu War: British high commissioner Henry Bartle Frere presents an ultimatum to the Zulu Kingdom to submit to British rule or face war
- Dec 12 Joseph Pulitzer begins publishing the "St. Louis Post-Dispatch"
- Dec 18 French SS Byzantin sinks after collision in Dardanelles, 210 killed
- Dec 18 John Kehoe, the last of the Molly Maguires, is executed in Pennsylvania
- Dec 26 1st US store to install electric lights, Philadelphia
- Dec 28 Pope Leo XIII publishes encyclical Quod apostolici muneris (socialism)
Authors
Civil Rights Activists
Inventors
Kings
Revolutionaries
Scientists