1874

Events

January

• January 1 - New York City annexes The Bronx.
• January 2 - Ignacio María González becomes head of state of the Dominican Republic for the first time.
• January 3 - Third Carlist War: Battle of Caspe - Campaigning on the Ebro in Aragon for the Spanish Republican Government, Colonel Eulogio Despujol surprises a Carlist force under Manuel Marco de Bello at Caspe, northeast of Alcañiz. In a brilliant action the Carlists are routed, losing 200 prisoners and 80 horses, while Despujol is promoted to Brigadier and becomes Conde de Caspe.
• January 20 - The Pangkor Treaty, by which the British extend their control over first the Sultanate of Perak, and later the other independent Malay States, is signed.
• January 23 - Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, second son of Queen Victoria, marries Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna of Russia, only daughter of Tsar Alexander III of Russia, in the Grand Church of the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg.

  February

• February 21 - The Oakland Daily Tribune publishes its first issue in California.
• February 23 - Walter Clopton Wingfield patents in Britain a game called "sphairistike", more commonly called lawn tennis.
• February 24–25 - Third Carlist War: First Battle of Somorrostro - Determined to raise the siege of Bilbao by the Pretender Don Carlos VII, Republican commander Marshal Francisco Serrano sends General Domingo Moriones with a relief force of 14,000 men. Carlists, under General Nicolás Ollo, entrenched at Somorrostro outside Bilbao, drive back a courageous assault by General Fernando Primo de Rivera and then the entire Republican army. The republicans lose 1,200 men, and Moriones loses his nerve, demanding reinforcements and a replacement for himself. Moriones's men entrench and wait.

  March

• March 14 - Third Carlist War: Battle of Castellfollit de la Roca - Appointed to command the Spanish Republican army in the north, General Ramón Nouvilas attempts to relieve the Carlist siege of Olot in Girona. But at Castellfollit de la Roca, in one of the Government's worst defeats, Nouvilas is routed by Carlist General Francesc Savalls, and captured along with about 2,000 of his men. Olot capitulates two days later.
• March 15 - France and Viet Nam sign the Second Treaty of Saigon, further recognizing the full sovereignty of France over Cochinchina.
• March 18
• *Hawaii signs a treaty with the United States, granting exclusive trading rights.
• *The Dresden English Football Club is founded, the first association football club on the European mainland.
• March 25 - The Republic of Ecuador is consecrated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, carried out by President Gabriel García Moreno and supported, blessed and specified by Pope Pius IX.
• March 25–27 - Third Carlist War: Second Battle of Somorrostro - In a renewed attempt to raise the siege of Bilbao by Don Carlos VII, Republican commander Marshal Francisco Serrano himself arrives with 27,000 men and 70 cannons. However, in three days of fierce fighting, the Carlist General Joaquín Elío, with just 17,000 men, once again drives off the attack at nearby Somorrostro, and it is another six weeks before Serrano manages to relieve Bilbao.
• March - The Young Men's Hebrew Association in Manhattan is founded.

  April

• April 15–May 15 - A group of young painters, Société Anonyme Coopérative des Artistes, Peintres, Sculpteurs, Graveurs, gives their first exhibition, at the studio of the photographer Nadar in Paris. Louis Leroy's critical review of it published on 25 April gives rise to the term Impressionism for the movement, with reference to Claude Monet's Impression, Sunrise.

  May

• May 2 - Third Carlist War: The siege of Bilbao is lifted.
• May 9 - The first commercial horse-drawn carriage debuts in the city of Bombay, plying two routes.
• May 14 - First admission charge at a football game: Harvard beats University of McGill 3–0.
• May 16 – The Mill River dam collapses in Massachusetts, killing 139 people.
• May 22 - Verdi's Requiem is first performed at San Marco in Milan on 22 May 1874, the first anniversary of Manzoni's death.
• May 23 - Passenger ship British Admiral, on a voyage from Liverpool to Melbourne, sinks after hitting rocks off King Island ; only nine of the 88 passengers and crew are rescued.
• May 27 - The first group of Dorsland Trekkers, a series of expeditions by Trekboere in search of political independence and better farming conditions, departs South Africa to settle in Angola, led by Gert Alberts.

  June

• June 14 - Michel Domingue becomes head of state of Haiti.
• June 22 - Andrew Taylor Still starts the movement for osteopathic medicine in the United States at Kirksville, Missouri.
• June 25–27 - Third Carlist War: Battle of Monte Muro - Carlist forces entrenched around Abárzuza, on the approach to Estella in Navarre, repel an attack by Isabelino/Liberal troops led by General Manuel Gutiérrez de la Concha, Marqués del Duero, who is killed on the third day of fighting.

  July

• July 1
• * The Universal Postal Union is established.
• * The Philadelphia Zoo opens, the first public zoo in the United States.
• * The Sholes and Glidden typewriter, with cylindrical platen and QWERTY keyboard, is first marketed in the United States.
• * The Bank of Spain issues the first peseta banknotes.
• July 14 - The Chicago Fire of 1874 burns down 47 acres of the city, destroying 812 buildings, killing 20, and resulting in the fire insurance industry demanding municipal reforms from Chicago's city council.
• July 24
• *Mathew Evans and Henry Woodward patent the first incandescent lamp, with an electric light bulb.
• * Third Carlist War: Sack of Cuenca - After Carlist forces successfully defend Estella, Don Alfonso de Bourbon, brother of the Don Carlos VII, leads 14,000 Catalan Carlists south to attack Cuenca, held by Republicans under Don Hilario Lozano. After two days the outnumbered garrison capitulates, but Don Alfonso permits a terrible slaughter. The city is sacked. Subsequently, another republican force defeats the disorderly Catalans, who flee back to the Ebro.
• July 31 - Patrick Francis Healy, S.J., the first Black man to receive a PhD, is inaugurated as president of Georgetown University, the oldest Catholic University in America, and becomes the first Black person to head a predominantly White university.

  August

• August 11 - Third Carlist War: Battle of Oteiza - Two months after Government forces were repulsed from Carlist-held Estella, in Navarre, Republican General Domingo Moriones makes a fresh diversionary attack a few miles to the southeast at Oteiza. In heavy fighting Moriones secures a costly tactical victory over Carlist General Torcuato Mendíri, but the war continues another 18 months, before Estella finally falls.

  September

• September 9 - Captain Lyman's wagon train besieged by Indians in Hemphill County, Texas.
• September 14 - Battle of Liberty Place: In New Orleans, former Confederate Army members of the White League temporarily drive Republican Governor William P. Kellogg from office, replacing him with former Democratic Governor John McEnery. U.S. Army troops restore Kellogg to office five days later.
• September 28 - Texas–Indian wars: U.S. Army Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie leads his force of 600 men on the successful raid of the last sanctuary of the Kiowa, Comanche and Cheyenne Indian tribes, a village inside the Palo Duro Canyon in Texas, and carries out their removal to the designated Indian reservations in Oklahoma.

  October

• October 9
• * The Treaty of Bern establishes the General Postal Union, to coordinate the exchange of international mail.
• * The San Diego Society of Natural History, originator of the San Diego Natural History Museum, is founded in California.
• October 19 - The modern University of Zagreb is founded.
• October 31 - The Quebra-Quilos Revolt starts in Paraíba, Empire of Brazil.

  November

• November 2 - The first issue of Japanese-language newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun is published in Tokyo, Japan.
• November 4 - Democrats gain control of the United States House of Representatives for the first time since 1860.
• November 6 - The University of Adelaide is founded in Australia.
• November 7 - Harper's Weekly publishes a cartoon by Thomas Nast which is the first use of an elephant as a symbol for the Republican Party in the United States.
• November 9 - The New York Zoo hoax, a supposed breakout of animals from the Central Park Zoo, is perpetrated on the public.
• November 10 - John Ernst Worrell Keely demonstrates his "induction resonance motion motor", a perpetual motion machine, which eventually turns out to be a fraud.
• November 11 - The Gamma Phi Beta sorority is founded at Syracuse University. This is the first women's Greek letter organization to be called a sorority.
• November 16 - Premiere of Alfred Cellier's comic opera The Sultan of Mocha at the Prince's Theatre, Manchester.
• November 18 - Sailing ship Cospatrick carrying emigrants from England bound for New Zealand, catches fire and sinks in the South Atlantic with the loss of all but three of the 472 persons on board.
• November 25 - The United States Greenback Party is established as a political party, made primarily of farmers financially hurt by the Panic of 1873.

  December

• December 1 - Iceland is granted a constitution and limited home rule from Denmark.
• December 9 - Passage de Vénus is released as the oldest "film" in history.
• December 29 - General Martínez and Brigadier General Luís Daban stage a pronunciamento at Sagunto, and proclaim Isabel's son Alfonso as King of Spain. Subsequently, the Madrid garrison follows suit, and the First Spanish Republic comes to an end.