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

• First running of the Preakness Stakes horse race in Baltimore, Maryland
• February 11 - Spanish Cortes deposes King Amadeus I and proclaims the 1st Spanish Republic.
• February 12 - Emilio Cistelar y Ripoli[?], former foregin minister, becomes Prime Minister on 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[?] in 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 23 - The Canadian Parliament establishes the North West Mounted Police (which will be renamed the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in 1920).
• November 7 - Alexander Mackenzie becomes Canada's second prime minister.

• DDT first synthesized.
• Swedish defense industry 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.
• German troops begin to evacuate France
• Britain puts pressure on Sultan Barghash Sayyid who closes slave markets in Zanzibar
• Peter Tchaikovsky[?] composes The Tempest

Arts, Sciences, Literature and Philosophy

• 1873 in literature:

Births

• 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)
• November 16 - W.C. Handy - Blues composer
• December 11 - Josip Plemelj, Slovene mathematician

Deaths

• 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
• May 20 - Georges-Etienne Cartier, French statesman
• December 14 - Louis Agassiz, Swiss-American geologist and naturalist