Centuries: 18th century - 19th century - 20th century
Decades: 1820s 1830s 1840s 1850s 1860s - 1870s - 1880s 1890s 1900s 1910s 1920s
Years: 1869 1870 1871 1872 1873 - 1874 - 1875 1876 1877 1878 1879
Events
- January 1 - New York City annexes The Bronx
- 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.
Births
- January 16 - Robert W. Service, poet (+ 1958)
- January 29 - John D. Rockefeller Jr., entrepreneur
- February 1 - Hugo von Hofmannsthal, lyricist, dramatist, narrator, and essayist (+ 1929)
- February 3 - Gertrude Stein, writer and patron of the arts (+ 1946)
- February 9 - Amy Lowell, poet (+ 1925)
- February 11 - Elsa Beskow (Maartman), Swedish children's book/fairy tales author.
- Fritz Bennicke Hart, composer.
- February 17 - Thomas Watson, computer pioneer, first president of IBM
- January 25 - William Somerset Maugham, (+ 1965)
- March 24 - Harry Houdini, magician
- May 29 - Gilbert Keith Chesterton, author
- September 13 - Arnold Schoenberg, Austrian composer
- September 21 - Gustav Holst, English composer
- October 20 - Charles Ives, American composer
- December 22 - Franz Schmidt, composer
- Guglielmo Marconi, italian inventor, "the father of radio"
Deaths
- David Friedrich Strauss, German theologian
- March 8 - Millard Fillmore, 13th President of the United States 1850-1853