Events of 1874

January–March

• January 1 – New York City annexes The Bronx.

• January 2 – Ignacio (Maria) Gonzalez becomes head of state of the Dominican Republic (for the first time).

• January 23 – Duke of Edinburgh, the second son of Queen Victoria, marries Grand Duchess Marie Alexandrovna of Russia, the only daughter of Emperor Alexander III of Russia.

• January 23 – Camille Saint-Saëns' composition Danse Macabre is premiered.

• January – The Pangkor Treaty (also known as the Pangkor Engagement), by which the British extended their control over, first the Sultanate of Perak and later the other independent Malay States, is signed.

• February 21 – The Oakland Daily Tribune publishes its first newspaper.

• February 23 – Walter Clopton Wingfield patents a game called "sphairistike" which is more commonly called lawn tennis.

• March 18 – Hawaii signs a treaty with the United States granting exclusive trading rights.

• March – The Young Men's Hebrew Association in Manhattan (which still operates today as the 92nd Street Y) is founded.

• March – The Aston Villa Football Club is formed.

April–June

• 25 April – Louis Leroy reviews the first Impressionist exhibition, held in Paris, and coins the term with reference to Claude Monet's Impression, Sunrise.

• 9 May – The first horse drawn carriage makes its debut in the city of Mumbai, plying on two routes.

• May 20 – Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis receive a U.S. patent for blue jeans with copper rivets. The price is $13.50 per dozen.

• June 4 – The flag of Estonia is consecrated as the flag of the Estonian Students Society in Otepää.

• June 14 – Michel Domingue becomes the head of state of Haiti.

• June 25 – Battle of Monte Muru: Third Carlist War of Spain.

July–September

• July 1 – Philadelphia Zoo opens, the first public zoo in the U.S.

• July 23 – Aires de Ornelas e Vasconcelos is appointed the Archbishop of the Portuguese colonial enclave of Goa.

• July 24 – Mathew Evans and Henry Woodward patent the first incandescent lamp with an electric light bulb.

October–December

• October 19 – The modern University of Zagreb is founded in Zagreb.

• November 4 – Democrats regain the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time since 1860.

• November 7 – Harper's Weekly publishes a cartoon by Thomas Nast considered the first important use of an elephant as a symbol for the Republican Party. .

• November 10 – John Ernst Worrell Keely demonstrates his "induction resonance motion motor" (a later investigation reveals fraud behind another perpetual motion machine).

• 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 25 – The United States Greenback Party is established as a political party, made primarily of farmers financially hurt by the Panic of 1873.

• December 1 – Iceland is granted a constitution and limited home rule.

• December 9 – A Transit of Venus occurs.

Undated

• The San Diego Natural History Museum is founded.

• The Home Rule Movement is created to protest British Government control over Ireland (see History of Ireland).

• The Agra canal opens in India.

• Charles Russell and the Bible Student movement claim this year to mark the invisible return of Jesus Christ to earth.

• The Bolton Wanderers Football club is founded (as Christ Church F.C.).

• The Aston Villa Football Club is founded.

• The Greenock Morton Football Club (Scotland) is founded.

• The Heart of Midlothian Football Club is founded.

• Gold is discovered in the Black Hills.

Births

January–June

• January 1 – Gustav Albin Weißkopf, German-born aviation pioneer (d. 1927)

• January 4 – Josef Suk, Czech composer and violinist (d. 1935)

• January 5 – Joseph Erlanger, American physiologist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1965)

• January 16 – Robert W. Service, American poet (d. 1958)

• January 20 – Steve Bloomer, English footballer, cricketer and baseball player (d. 1938)

• January 21 – Frederick Madison Smith, American religious leader and author (d. 1946)

• January 25 – William Somerset Maugham, English author (d. 1965)

• January 29 – John D. Rockefeller, Jr., American entrepreneur (d. 1960)

• February 1 – Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Austrian writer (d. 1929)

• February 2 – William T. Innes, American writer, ichthyologist, publisher (d. 1969)

• February 3 – Gertrude Stein, American writer and patron of the arts (d. 1946)

• February 9 – Amy Lowell, American poet (d. 1925)

• February 11

• *Elsa Beskow, Swedish writer (d. 1953)

• *Fritz Hart, English-born composer (d. 1949)

• February 15 – Sir Ernest Shackleton, Irish explorer (d. 1922)

• February 17 – Thomas J. Watson, American computer pioneer (d. 1956)

• February 20 – Mary Garden, American opera soprano of Scots descent (some sources state her birth year as 1877) (d. 1967)

• February 23 – Konstantin Päts, Estonian president (d. 1956)

• February 24 – Honus Wagner, baseball player (d. 1955)

• March 20 – Börries von Münchhausen, German poet (d. 1945)

• March 24 – Harry Houdini, Hungarian-born magician (d. 1926)

• March 26 – Robert Frost, American poet (d. 1963)

• March 29 – Lou Henry Hoover, First Lady of the United States (d. 1944)

• April 8 – Stanisław Taczak, Polish general, commander-in-chief of the Greater Poland Uprising (d. 1960)

• April 15 – Johannes Stark, German physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1957)

• April 19 – Ernst Rudin, Swiss psychiatrist and geneticist (d. 1952)

• April 25 – Guglielmo Marconi, Italian inventor, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics (d. 1937)

• May 3 – François Coty, French perfume manufacturer (d. 1934)

• May 9 – Howard Carter, British archaeologist (d. 1939)

• May 14 – Polaire, French actress and singer (d. 1939)

• May 19 – Gilbert Jessop, English cricketer (d. 1955)

• May 29 – Gilbert Keith Chesterton, English author (d. 1936)

• June 11 – Lyman Gilmore, American aviation pioneer (d. 1951)

• June 16 – Arthur Meighen, ninth Prime Minister of Canada (d. 1960)

• June 19 – Peder Oluf Pedersen, Danish engineer and physicist (d. 1941)

July–December

• July 14 – Abbas II, last khedive of Egypt (d. 1944)

• July 26 – Serge Koussevitzky, Russian conductor (d. 1951)

• July 27 – Frank Shannon, American actor (d. 1959)

• July 29 – J. S. Woodsworth, Canadian politician (d. 1942)

• August 6 – Charles Fort, Dutch-American writer and researcher into anomalous phenomena (d. 1932)

• August 10 – Herbert Hoover, 31st President of the United States (d. 1964)

• August 27 – Carl Bosch, German chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1940)

• September 13

• * Henry Fountain Ashurst, American politician (d. 1962)

• * Arnold Schoenberg, Austrian composer (d. 1951)

• September 21 – Gustav Holst, English composer (d. 1934)

• October 8 – Nance O'Neil, stage & film actress, friend of Lizzie Borden (d. 1965)

• October 13 – József Klekl, Slovene politician in Hungary (d. 1948)

• October 15 – Prince Alfred of Edinburgh and Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (d. 1899)

• October 20 – Charles Ives, American composer (d. 1954)

• October 26 – Martin Lowry, English chemist (d. 1936)

• November 9 – The New York Zoo hoax, a supposed breakout of animals from the Central Park Zoo

• November 15 – August Krogh, Danish zoophysiologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 1949)

• November 29 – Egas Moniz, Portuguese physician and neurologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 1955)

• November 30

• *Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature (d. 1965)

• *Lucy Maud Montgomery, Canadian author (d. 1942)

• December 13 – Josef Lhévinne, Russian pianist (d. 1944)

• December 17 – William Lyon Mackenzie King, Prime Minister of Canada (d. 1950)

• December 22 – Franz Schmidt, Austrian composer (d. 1939)

Deaths

January–June

• January 8 – Abbé Charles-Étienne Brasseur de Bourbourg, French writer and historian (b. 1814)

• January 17 – Chang and Eng Bunker, Siamese twins and sideshow performers (b. 1811)

• January 19 – August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben, German poet (b. 1798)

• February 3 – William Charles Lunalilo, last monarch of the House of Kamehameha (b. 1835)

• February 8 – David Friedrich Strauss, German theologian (b. 1808)

• February 24 – John Bachman, American Lutheran minister, social activist and naturalist, (b. 1790)

• March 8 – Millard Fillmore, 13th President of the United States (b. 1800)

• March 10 – Moritz von Jacobi, German engineer and physicist (b. 1801)

• March 20 – Hans Christian Lumbye, Danish composer (b. 1810)

• April 13 – Etō Shinpei, Japanese statesman (executed) (b. 1834)

• April 20 – Alexander H. Bailey, American politician (b. 1817)

• June 20 – John Ruggles, American politician (b. 1789)

• June 21 – Anders Jonas Ångström, Swedish physicist (b. 1814)

July–December

• July 8 – Agnes Strickland, English popular historian (b. 1796)

• July 12 – Fritz Reuter, German novelist (b. 1810)

• July 24 – Gijsbert Haan, Dutch-American religious leader (b. 1801)

• August 14 – Jonathan Clarkson Gibbs, African-American minister and politician (b. 1821)

• October 6 – Samuel M. Kier, American oil magnate (b. 1813)

• October 28 – William Henry Rinehart, American sculptor (b. 1825)

• November 29 – Ioan Manu, Russian politician (b. 1803)

• December 7 – Constantin von Tischendorf, German Biblical scholar (b. 1815)

• December 22 – Johann Peter Pixis, German pianist and composer (b. 1788)