1873
Centuries: 18th century - 19th century - 20th century
Decades: 1820s 1830s 1840s 1850s 1860s - 1870s - 1880s 1890s 1900s 1910s 1920s
Years: 1868 1869 1870 1871 1872 - 1873 - 1874 1875 1876 1877 1878
Events
- Britain declares war against Ghana's King Kofi KariKari, who was involved in the trading of slaves. The war ended by July and the British established the Gold Coast Colony.
- February 11 - Spanish Cortes deposes King Amadeus I and proclaims the first Spanish Republic.
- February 12 - Former foreign minister Emilio Cistelar y Ripoli becomes prime minister of the new Spanish Republic.
- February 20 - The University of California opens its first medical school in San Francisco, California
- March 1 - E. Remington and Sons of Ilion, New York start production of the first practical typewriter.
- March 3 - Censorship: The United States Congress enacts the Comstock Law, making it illegal to send any "obscene, lewd, or lascivious" books through the mail.
- April 1 - The British steamer SS Atlantic sinks off Nova Scotia killing 547.
- May 9 Der Krach: Vienna stock market crash heralds Long Depression
- May 23 - The Canadian Parliament establishes the North West Mounted Police (which will be renamed the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in 1920).
- July 21 - At Adair, Iowa, Jesse James and the James-Younger gang pull off the first successful train robbery in the American West (US$3,000 from the Rock Island Express).
- August 4 - Indian Wars: While protecting a railroad survey party in Montana, the United States 7th Cavalry, under Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer, clash for the first time with the Sioux (near the Tongue River; only one man on each side is killed).
- September 16 - German troops leave France upon completion of payment of indemnity for Franco-Prussian War.
- September 18 - New York stock market crash.
- November 7 - Alexander Mackenzie becomes Canada's second prime minister.
- DDT first synthesized.
- Swedish arms company Bofors is incorporated.
- Prince Edward Island joins the Canadian Confederation.
- In Mexico, Veracruz to Mexico City railroad completed.
- Royal Montreal Club in Montreal, Quebec is founded, becoming the first permanent golf club in North America.
- Henry Rose exhibits barbed wire at an Illinois county fair, which is taken up by Joseph Glidden and Jacob Haish, who invent a machine to mass-produce it.
- Britain puts pressure on Sultan Barghash Sayyid who closes slave markets in Zanzibar
- Peter Tchaikovsky composes The Tempest
- First running of the Preakness Stakes horse race in Baltimore, Maryland
- January 7 - Adolph Zukor, motion-picture studio pioneer (+ 1976)
- January 28 - Colette, writer (+ 1954)
- February 13 - Feodor Chaliapin, operatic bass (+ 1938)
- February 27 - Enrico Caruso, opera singer (+ 1921)
- March 3 - William Green, labor union leader, President of the American Federation of Labor (+ 1952)
- March 19 - Max Reger, composer (+1916)
- April 1 - Sergei Rachmaninov, composer and pianist
- April 7 - John McGraw, baseball coach, manager, player
- April 22 - Ellen Glasgow, Pulitzer Prize winning author
- May 4 - - Joe De Grasse, pioneer Hollywood film director (+ 1940)
- May 9 - Anton Cermak, mayor of Chicago, Illinois (+ 1933)
- May 9 - Howard Carter, British archaeologist (+ 1939)
- May 17 - Henri Barbusse, French novelist and journalist (+ 1935)
- May 17 - Dorothy Richardson, writer (+ 1957)
- May 26 - Olaf Gulbransson, painter (+ 1958)
- August 26 - Lee DeForest, American inventor
- September 20 - Sidney Olcott, pioneer film director (+ 1949)
- October 26 - Thorvald Stauning, Prime Minister of Denmark (+1942)
- November 16 - W.C. Handy - Blues composer
- December 11 - Josip Plemelj, Slovene mathematician
- January 9 - Napoleon III, last emperor of France, in exile in England
- January 18 - Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, author
- February 7 - Sheridan Le Fanu, writer
- April 11 - Gen E. R. S. Canby, US Army General
- May 20 - Georges-Etienne Cartier, French statesman
- October 6 - Sir Paul Edmund Strzelecki, Polish explorer and geologist
- December 14 - Louis Agassiz, Swiss-American geologist and naturalist
