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

• January 20 – Elizabeth Cady Stanton is the first woman to testify before the United States Congress.
• January 21 – The P.E.O. Sisterhood,a philanthropic educational organization for women, is founded at Iowa Wesleyan College in Mount Pleasant, Iowa.
• February 20 – Ranavalona II, the Merina Queen of Madagascar, is baptized.
• March 1 – North German Confederation issues 10gr and 30gr value stamps, printed on goldbeater's skin.
• March 4 – Ulysses S. Grant succeeds Andrew Johnson as the 18th President of the United States of America.
• March 6 – Mendeleev makes a formal presentation to the Russian Chemical Society.
• March 24 – Titokowaru's War ends with surrender of last M ori troops at large in the South Taranaki District of New Zealand's North Island.

April–June

• April 6 – The American Museum of Natural History is founded in New York.
• May 4–May 10 – Naval Battle of Hakodate in Japan: The Imperial Japanese Navy defeats the Tokugawa shogunate.
• May 6 – Purdue University is founded in West Lafayette, Indiana.
• May 10 – The Transcontinental Railroad is completed in Promontory, Utah.
• May 15 – Woman's suffrage: In New York, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton form the National Woman Suffrage Association.
• May 22 – Sainsbury's first store in Drury Lane, London, opened.
• May 26 – Boston University is chartered by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
• May 29 – The British Parliament passes the Capital Punishment within Prisons Bill, thus ending public hanging.
• June 1 – The Cincinnati Red Stockings open the baseball season as the first fully professional baseball team.
• June 2 – Sherwood College is founded in Nainital, India.
• June 15 – John Wesley Hyatt patents Celluloid in Albany, New York.
• June 18 – The first Estonian Song Festival takes place in Tartu.

July–September

• July 4 – The University of Bucharest is founded.
• August 9 – August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht found the Social Democratic Workers' Party of Germany (SDAP).
• August 31 – Irish scientist Mary Ward is killed in a car accident, possibly the first person ever to suffer this fate.
• September 5 – The foundation stone is laid for Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria (southern Germany).
• September 11 – Work on the Wallace Monument is completed in Stirling, Scotland.
• September 12–13 – The P&O's runs aground and sinks in the Red Sea; 31 drowned.
• September 24 – The Fisk-Gould Scandal (also known as Black Friday) causes a financial panic in the United States.

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 Asunci n in the Paraguayan War.

Date unknown

• Basutoland becomes a British protectorate.
• The British Parliament ends transportation to Australia as punishment for criminals.
• Mahbub Ali Pasha begins a 42-year reign as the Nizam of Hyderabad.
• Leo Tolstoy's novel War and Peace is published complete in book form.
• James Gordon Bennett, Jr. of the New York Herald asks Henry Morton Stanley to find Dr. Livingstone.
• The Meiji Emperor of Japan accepts the surrender of the four most powerful clans – (Ch sh , Tosa, Hizen, and Satsuma) – and reappoints the clan chiefs as Provincial Governors on reduced revenues.
• Abdur Rahman Khan is exiled from Afghanistan.
• Southern Illinois University, Carbondale is founded.
• The co-operative Central Board (later Co-operatives UK) is founded in Manchester.
• The Glasgow University Rugby Football Club (GURFC) is founded.
• The opposition, consisting of republicans, monarchists and liberals, polls almost 45% of the vote in France.
• Marcus Jastrow arrives in the United States to become rabbi of Congregation Rodeph Shalom in Philadelphia.
• Farmington Senior High School (Minnesota) is built

Births

January–June

• January 4 – Tommy Corcoran, American baseball player (d. 1960)
• January 10 – Grigori Rasputin, Russian mystic (d. 1916)proven 1872
• January 15 – Stanis aw Wyspia ski, 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)
• February 28 – William V. Pratt, American admiral (d. 1957)
• March 3
  • Michael von Faulhaber, German cardinal and archbishop (d. 1952)
  • Henry Wood, British conductor (d. 1944)
• 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 10 – Signe Bergman, Swedish suffragist (d. 1960)
• April 11 – Gustav Vigeland, Norwegian sculptor (d. 1943)
• April 12 – Henri D sir Landru, French serial killer (d. 1922)
• 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)
• October 31 – William A. Moffett, American admiral (d. 1933)
• 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 – Andr 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 Dal n, 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 (d. 1952)
• 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)

Date unknown

• Paul Behncke, German admiral (d. 1937)
• Harry Grant Dart, American cartoonist (d. 1938)

Deaths

January–June

• January 1
  • Martin W. Bates, American senator (b. 1786)
  • James B. Longacre, fourth Chief Engraver of the U.S. Mint (b. 1794)
• January 30 – William Carleton, Irish novelist (b. 1794)
• February 15 – Mirza Ghalib, Indian poet (b. 1796).
• March 8 – Hector Berlioz, French composer (b. 1803)
• March 20 – John Pascoe Grenfell, British admiral of the Brazilian Navy (b. 1800)
• March 24 – Antoine-Henri Jomini, French general (b. 1779)
• April – Louisa van Slyke, first person buried on Hart Island New York City Potter's Field
• April 20 – Carl Loewe, German composer (b. 1796)
• June 16 – Charles Sturt, Australian explorer (b. 1795)
• June 20 – Hijikata Toshizou, Japanese military commander (b. 1835)

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 Jes s 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

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