1869 - What happened in 1869 ?

January 1869

Friday 01:

Sigma Nu fraternity is officially founded at the Virginia Military Institute

Wednesday 13:

National convention of black leaders meets in Washington D.C.

March 1869

Saturday 06:

Dmitri Mendeleev presents the first periodic table to the Russian Chemical Society.

Sunday 14:

Defeat of Titokowaru.

April 1869

Tuesday 06:

Celluloid is patented.

May 1869

Saturday 01:

The Folies Bergères open in Paris.

Tuesday 04:

The Naval Battle of Hakodate takes place in Japan.

Monday 10:

The First Transcontinental Railroad, linking the eastern and western United States, is completed at Promontory Summit, Utah (not Promontory Point, Utah).

Saturday 15:

Woman's suffrage: In New York, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton form the National Woman Suffrage Association.

Tuesday 18:

Surrender and dissolution of the Ezo Republic to Japan.

June 1869

Tuesday 01:

Thomas Edison of Boston, Massachusetts, receives a patent for his electric voting machine.

July 1869

Sunday 25:

The Japanese daimy? begin returning their land holdings to the emperor as part of the Meiji Restoration reforms. (Traditional Japanese Date: June 17, 1869)

August 1869

Monday 02:

Japan's samurai, farmer, artisan, merchant class system is abolished as part of the Meiji Restoration reforms. (Traditional Japanese date: June 25, 1869).

September 1869

Saturday 11:

Work completed on the Wallace Monument.

Wednesday 22:

Richard Wagner's opera Das Rheingold debuts in Munich.

Friday 24:

"Black Friday": Gold prices plummet as Jay Gould and James Fisk plot to control the market.

October 1869

Friday 01:

Austria issues the world's first postcards.

Tuesday 05:

A strong hurricane devestates the Bay of Fundy region of Maritime Canada. The storm had been predicted over a year before by a British naval officer.

Saturday 16:

England's first residential college for women, Girton College, Cambridge, is founded.

November 1869

Thursday 04:

The first issue of the scientific journal Nature is published.

Saturday 06:

In New Brunswick, New Jersey, Rutgers University defeats Princeton University, 6-4, in the first official intercollegiate American football game .

Tuesday 23:

In Dumbarton, Scotland, the clipper Cutty Sark is launched -- one of the last clippers ever to be built, and the only one still surviving to this day.

December 1869

Wednesday 08:

Timothy Eaton founds the T. Eaton Co., in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, which would later become the Eaton's department store chain.

Friday 10:

Wyoming grants women the right to vote