1871

January–March

• January 3 – Battle of Bapaume, a battle in the Franco-Prussian war occurs.
• January 18 – Founding of the German Empire: The member states of the North German Confederation and the south German states unite into a single nation state, known as the German Empire. The King of Prussia is declared the first German Emperor as Wilhelm I of Germany, in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles.
• January 21 – Giuseppe Garibaldi's group of French and Italian volunteer troops, in support of the French Third Republic, win a battle against the Prussians in Dijon.
• February 9 – The United States Commission on Fish and Fisheries is founded.
• February 21 – The District of Columbia Organic Act of 1871 was signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant.
• March 7 – José Paranhos, Viscount of Rio Branco, becomes Prime Minister of the Empire of Brazil, serving for four years.
• March 21 – John Campbell, Marquess of Lorne (whose father, the 8th Duke of Argyll, is the serving Secretary of State for India), marries Princess Louise.
• March 21 – Otto von Bismarck becomes the first Chancellor of the German Empire.
• March 22
  • In North Carolina, William Holden becomes the first governor of a U.S. state to be removed from office by impeachment.
  • The United States Army issues an order for the abandonment of Fort Kearny, Nebraska.
• March 26 – The Paris Commune is formally established in Paris.
• March 27 – The first Rugby Union International results in a 4–1 win, by Scotland over England.
• March 29
  • The first Surgeon General of the United States (John Maynard Woodworth) is appointed.
  • The Royal Albert Hall in London is opened by Queen Victoria; it incorporates a grand organ by Henry Willis & Sons, the world's largest at this time.

April–June

• April – The Stockholms Handelsbank is founded.
• April 4 – The New Jersey Detective Agency is chartered, and the New Jersey State Detectives are initiated.
• April 20 – U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant signs the Civil Rights Act of 1871.
• April 24 – Servant girl Jane Clouson is murdered in Eltham, England.
• May 4 – The first supposedly Major League Baseball game is played in America.
• May 8 – The first Major League Baseball home run is hit by Ezra Sutton, of the Cleveland Forest Citys.
• May 10 – The Treaty of Frankfurt is signed, confirming the frontiers between Germany and France.
• May 11 – The first trial in the Tichborne case begins, in the London Court of Common Pleas.
• May 21 – The first rack railway in Europe, the Vitznau–Rigi Railway on Mount Rigi in Switzerland, is opened.
• May 28 – Following the invasion of the Paris Commune by Government troops, 147 Communards, the last defenders of the workers' district of Belleville, are shot, on the last day of the Bloody Week (Semaine Sanglante), in which the Commune is crushed.
• May 30 – French Third Republic: Government suppression of the Paris Commune rebellion is completed.
• June 1 – Bombardment of the Selee River Forts: Koreans attack two United States Navy warships.
• June 10 – United States expedition to Korea: Captain McLane Tilton leads 109 members of the United States Marine Corps, in a punitive naval attack on the Han River forts, on Ganghwa Island in Korea.
• June 18 – The University Tests Act removes restrictions limiting access to Oxford, Cambridge and Durham universities to members of the Church of England.

July–September

• July 13 – The first cat exhibition is held at the Crystal Palace of London.
• July 20
  • British Columbia joins the confederation of Canada.
  • C. W. Alcock proposes that "a Challenge Cup should be established in connection with the Association", giving birth to the FA Cup.
• July 21 – August 26 – The first ever photographs of Yellowstone National Park region are taken by photographer William Henry Jackson, during the Hayden Geological Survey of 1871.
• July 22 – The foundation stone of the first Tay Rail Bridge is laid;^[1] the bridge collapses in a storm eight years later.
• July 28 – The Annie becomes the first boat ever launched on Yellowstone Lake, in the Yellowstone National Park region.
• August 9 – One of the few known major hurricanes to strike what become the US state of Hawaii caused significant damage on Hawai'i and Maui^[2][3]
• August 29 – The abolition of the han system is carried out in Japan.
• August 31 – Adolphe Thiers becomes President of the French Republic.
• September 2 – Whaling Disaster of 1871: The Comet, a brig used by whalers, becomes the first of 33 ships to be crushed in the Arctic ice by an early freeze.^[4] Remarkably, all 1,219 people on the abandoned ships are rescued without a single loss of life.^[5]
• September 3 – New York City residents, tired of the corruption of Tammany Hall and Boss Tweed, meet to form the Committee of Seventy to reform local politics.^[6]

October–December

• October 8 – Four major fires break out on the shores of Lake Michigan in Chicago; Peshtigo, Wisconsin; Holland, Michigan; and Manistee, Michigan. The Great Chicago Fire is the most famous of these, leaving nearly 100,000 people homeless, although the Peshtigo Fire kills as many as 2,500 people, making it the deadliest fire in United States history.
• October 12 – The Criminal Tribes Act is enacted by the British Raj in India, naming over 160 communities as "Denotified Tribes", allegedly habitually criminal (it will be repealed in 1949, after Indian independence).
• October 20 – The Royal Regiment of Artillery forms the first regular Canadian army units, when they create two batteries of garrison artillery, which later become the Royal Canadian Artillery.
• October 24 – Chinese massacre of 1871. In Los Angeles' Chinatown, 18 Chinese immigrants are killed by a mob of 500 men.
• October 27
  • British forces march into the Klipdrift Republic, and annex the territory as Griqualand West Colony.
  • Henri, Count of Chambord, refuses to be crowned "King Henry V of France" until France abandons its tricolor, and returns to the old Bourbon flag.
  • Boss Tweed, the Grand Sachem of Tammany Hall, is arrested.
• November 5 – Wickenburg Massacre: Six men travelling by stagecoach, in the Arizona Territory, are reportedly murdered by Yavapai people.
• November 7 – The London–Australia telegraph cable is brought ashore at Darwin.^[7]
• November 10 – Henry Morton Stanley, Welsh-born correspondent for the New York Herald, locates missing Scottish explorer and missionary Dr. David Livingstone in Ujiji, near Lake Tanganyika, and greets him by saying, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?"^[8]
• November 17
  • The National Rifle Association is granted a charter by the state of New York.
  • George Biddell Airy presents his discovery that astronomical aberration is independent of the local medium.
• December 10 – German chancellor Otto von Bismarck tries to ban Catholics from the political stage, by introducing harsh laws concerning the separation of church and state.
• December 19 – The city of Birmingham, Alabama, is incorporated with the merger of three existing towns.
• December 24 – The opera Aida opens in Cairo, Egypt.
• December 25 – The Reading Football Club is formed.
• December 26 – Thespis, the first of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas, premières. It does modestly well, but the two composers will not collaborate again for four years.

Date unknown

• Gold is discovered at Pilgrim's Creek in the Pilgrim's Rest area.
• When an 83.50 carats (16.700 g) diamond is discovered, a diamond rush results, and the town of New Rush springs up.
• The provinces of Alsace and Lorraine are transferred from France to Germany.
• British trade unions are legalized.
• Heinrich Schliemann begins the excavation of Troy.
• Japan forms its own nationwide police force based on the French model.
• William M. Tweed serves his last year as the "Boss" of the Tammany Hall political machine in New York.
• The South Improvement Company is formed by John D. Rockefeller and a group of major railroad interests, in an early effort to organize and control the American petroleum industry.
• The Harvard Summer School is founded.
• The Danish Women's Society is founded in Denmark.
• The Constitution of the German Empire abolishes all restrictions on Jewish marriage, choice of occupation, place of residence, and property ownership. Exclusion from government employment and discrimination in social relations remain in effect.
• The American minister to China takes five warships to attempt to "open up" Korea, but his forces leave after exchanges of fire result in 250 Koreans dying, and the Korean government still unwilling to make any concessions.
• Virginia adopts a new Constitution, taking into account, among other things, all of the counties that had left Virginia in 1863 to form the new non-slave state of West Virginia. No other state has ever formed by breaking off from another without the consent of the legislature of the parent state, as in the cases of Vermont, Kentucky, and Maine.
• In Hanover, the German company Continental AG is founded.
• Izumo Taisha officially renames from Tsutsuki Taisha, in Shimane Prefecture, Japan.
• Modern "neoclassical economics" is born (See William Stanley Jevons, Eugen Böhm von Bawerk, and Carl Menger).

January–June

James Weldon Johnson

Friedrich Ebert

Birdie Blye

• January 7 – Félix Édouard Justin Émile Borel, French mathematician, politician (d. 1956)
• January 9 – Eugène Marais, South African lawyer, naturalist, poet and writer (d. 1936)
• January 17
  • David Beatty, 1st Earl Beatty, British admiral (d. 1936)
  • Nicolae Iorga, 34th Prime Minister of Romania (d. 1940)
• January 28 – Olga Rudel-Zeynek, Austrian politician (d. 1948)
• January 30 – Wilfred Lucas, Canadian-born actor (d. 1940)
• February 4 – Friedrich Ebert, President of Germany (d. 1925)
• February 9 – Howard Taylor Ricketts, American pathologist (d. 1910)
• February 14 – Florence Roberts, American actress (d. 1927)
• February 15 – John W. Nordstrom, Swedish-born American co-founder of the Nordstrom department store chain (d. 1963)
• February 18 – Harry Brearley, English inventor (d. 1948)
• February 27 – Otto Praeger, American postal official, implements U.S. Airmail (d. 1948)
• February 28 – Manuel Díaz Rodríguez, Venezuelan writer (d. 1927)
• March 1 – Ben Harney, American composer and pianist (d. 1938)
• March 4 – Boris Galerkin, Russian mathematician (d. 1945)
• March 5 – Rosa Luxemburg, German politician (d. 1919)
• March 6 – Afonso Costa, Prime Minister of Portugal (d. 1937)
• March 12 – Kitty Marion, German-born actress and women's rights activist in England and the United States (d. 1944)
• March 15 – Constantin Argetoianu, 41st Prime Minister of Romania (d. 1955)
• March 17 – Konstantinos Pallis, Greek general (d. 1941)
• March 19 – Schofield Haigh, English cricketer (d. 1921)
• March 24 – Birdie Blye, American pianist (d. 1935)

Heinrich Mann

• March 27 – Heinrich Mann, German writer (d. 1950)
• March 31 – Arthur Griffith, President of Ireland (d. 1922)
• April 4 – Luke McNamee, American admiral (d. 1952)
• April 8 – Clarence Hudson White, American photographer (d. 1925)
• April 12 – Ioannis Metaxas, Prime Minister of Greece (d. 1941)
• April 15 – Jonathan Zenneck, German physicist, electrical engineer (1959)
• May 2 – Francis P. Duffy, Canadian-born American Catholic priest (d. 1932)
• May 3 – Walter Robinson Parr, English-born American Congregational pastor (d. 1922)
• May 6
  • Victor Grignard, French chemist, Nobel Prize in Chemistry laureate (d. 1935)
  • Christian Morgenstern, German author (d. 1914)
• May 7 – Gyula Károlyi, 29th Prime Minister of Hungary (d. 1947)

Christian Morgenstern

• May 15 – Kōzō Satō, Japanese admiral (d. 1948)
• May 27 – Georges Rouault, French painter, graphic artist (d. 1958)

Ernst Stromer von Reichenbach

• June 12 – Ernst Stromer, German paleontologist (d. 1952)
• June 14 – Jacob Ellehammer, Danish inventor (d. 1946)
• June 17 – James Weldon Johnson, American author, politician, diplomat, critic, journalist, poet, anthologist, educator, lawyer, songwriter and early civil rights activist (d. 1938)
• June 18 – Edmund Breese, American actor (d. 1936)
• June 23 – Jantina Tammes, Dutch plant biologist (d. 1947)
• June 26 – Reginald R. Belknap, United States Navy rear admiral (d. 1959)

July–December

Marcel Proust

Orville Wright

Ernest Rutherford

Pietro Badoglio

• July 7 – Richard Carle, American actor (d. 1941)
• July 10 – Marcel Proust, French writer (d. 1922)
• July 17 – Lyonel Feininger, German painter (d. 1956)
• July 18 – Sada Yacco, Japanese stage actress (d. 1946)
• July 25 – Richard Ernest Turner, Canadian soldier (d. 1961)
• August 1 – John Lester, American cricketer (d. 1969)
• August 10 – Aino Sibelius, wife of Finnish composer Jean Sibelius (d. 1969)
• August 12 – Gustavs Zemgals, 2nd President of Latvia (d. 1939)
• August 13 – Karl Liebknecht, German politician (d. 1919)
• August 14 – Guangxu Emperor of China (d. 1908)
• August 19
  • Orville Wright, American aviation pioneer, co-inventor of the airplane with brother Wilbur (d. 1948)
  • Joseph E. Widener, American art collector (d. 1943)
• August 23 – Sofia Panina, Russian politician (d. 1956)
• August 25
  • Nils Edén, 15th Prime Minister of Sweden (d. 1945)
  • Ross Winn, American anarchist writer, publisher (d. 1912)
• August 27 – Theodore Dreiser, American writer (d. 1945)
• August 29 – Albert François Lebrun, French politician (d. 1950)
• August 30 – Ernest Rutherford, New Zealand physicist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (d. 1937)
• September 1 – J. Reuben Clark, Under Secretary of State for U.S. President Calvin Coolidge (d. 1961)
• September 10 – Charles Collett, English Great Western Railway chief mechanical engineer (d. 1952)
• September 17 – Eivind Astrup, Norwegian Arctic explorer (d. 1895)
• September 19 – Frederick Ruple, Swiss-born American portrait painter (d. 1938)
• September 24 – Lottie Dod, English athlete (d. 1960)
• September 26 – Winsor McCay, American cartoonist, animator (d. 1934)
• September 27 – Grazia Deledda, Italian writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1936)
• September 28 – Pietro Badoglio, Italian general, prime minister (d. 1956)
• October 2 – Cordell Hull, United States Secretary of State, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (d. 1955)
• October 19 – Walter Bradford Cannon, American physiologist (d. 1945)
• October 11
  • Harriet Boyd Hawes, American archaeologist (d. 1945)
  • Johan Oscar Smith, Norwegian Christian leader, founder of the Brunstad Christian Church (d. 1943)
• October 17 – Dénes Berinkey, 21st Prime Minister of Hungary (d. 1944)
• October 25 – John Gough, British general, Victoria Cross recipient (d. 1915)
• October 30
  • Buck Freeman, American baseball player (d. 1949)
  • Paul Valéry, French poet (d. 1945)
• November 1 – Stephen Crane, American writer (d. 1900)
• November 3 – Albert Goldthorpe, English rugby league footballer (d. 1943)
• November 23 – William Watt, Australian politician, Premier of Victoria (d. 1946)
• December 9 – Joe Kelley, American Baseball Hall of Famer (d. 1943)
• December 13 – Emily Carr, Canadian artist (d. 1945)

Date Unknown

• Sevasti Qiriazi, Albanian educator, women's rights activist (d. 1949)
• Qiu Yufang, Chinese revolutionary, writer and feminist (d. 1904)

January–June

John Herschel

• January 8 – José Trinidad Cabañas, Honduran general, president and national hero (b. 1805)
• January 13 – Kawakami Gensai, Japanese swordsman of the Bakumatsu period (b. 1834)
• January 15 – Edward C. Delavan, American temperance movement leader (b. 1793)
• January 19 – Sir William Denison, Governor of New South Wales (b. 1804)
• January 25 – Jeanne Villepreux-Power, French marine biologist (b. 1794)
• February 10 – Étienne Constantin de Gerlache, 1st Prime Minister of Belgium (b. 1785)
• February 12 – Alice Cary, American poet, sister of Phoebe Cary (b. 1820)
• February 20 – Paul Kane, Irish-born painter (b. 1810)
• February 22 – Sir Charles Shaw, British army officer and police commissioner (b. 1795)
• March – Emma Fürstenhoff, Swedish florist (b. 1802)
• March 18 – Augustus De Morgan, English professor of mathematics, mathematician (b. 1806)
• April 7
  • Prince Alexander John of Wales (b. April 6, prematurely)
• April 7 – Wilhelm von Tegetthoff, Austrian admiral (b. 1827)
• April 25 – Jane Clouson, teenaged British murder victim (b. 1854)
• May 11 – John Herschel, English astronomer (b. 1792)
• May 12 – Elzéar-Henri Juchereau Duchesnay, Canadian politician (b. 1809)
• May 18 – Constance Trotti, Belgian salonniére, culture patron (b. 1800)
• May 23 – Jarosław Dąbrowski, Polish general (b. 1836)
• June 9 – Anna Atkins, British botanist (b. 1799)

July–December

Cristina Trivulzio Belgiojoso

• July 5 – Cristina Trivulzio Belgiojoso, Italian noble, patriot, writer and journalist (b. 1808)
• July 15 – Tad Lincoln, youngest son of American President Abraham Lincoln (b. 1853)
• July 31 – Phoebe Cary, American poet, sister to Alice Cary (b. 1824)
• August 9 – John Paterson, politician in the New South Wales Legislative Assembly (b. 1831)
• September 16 – Jan Erazim Vocel, Czech poet, archaeologist, historian and cultural revivalist (b. 1803)
• September 20 – John Coleridge Patteson, Anglican bishop, missionary (martyred) (b. 1827)
• September 21 – Charlotte Elliott, English hymnwriter (b. 1789)
• September 23 – Louis-Joseph Papineau, Canadian politician (b. 1786)
• October 4 – Sarel Cilliers, Voortrekker leader, preacher (b. 1801)
• October 7 – Sir John Burgoyne, British field marshal (b. 1782)
• October 18 – Charles Babbage, English mathematician, inventor (b. 1791)
• November 2 – Athalia Schwartz, Danish writer, journalist and educator (b. 1821)
• November 22 – Oscar James Dunn, Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana (b. 1825)
• December 21 – Luise Aston, German author, feminist (b. 1814)
• December 28 – John Henry Pratt, English clergyman, mathematician (b. 1809)