1866 to 1870

1866

feb 02 - |USA ?| Fredrick Douglas leads a black delegation who meets with President Andrew Johnson at the White House to advocate black suffrage. The president expressed his opposition, and the meeting ended in controversy.
apr 09 - |USA| Congress overrides President Johnson's veto and passes the Civil Rights Act, conferring citizenship upon black Americans and guaranteeing equal rights with whites.
may 01 to 03 - |Tennessee| White civilians and police kill forty-six African-Americans and injured many more, burning ninety houses, twelve schools, and four churches in Memphis.
jun 13 - Congress approved the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, guaranteeing due process and equal protection under the law to all citizens. The amendment would also grant citizenship to blacks.
jul - The first functional underwater telegraph cable laid between America and Europe. It was followed by another line established two months later
jul 30 - |LOUISANNA| Police in New Orleans storm a Republican meeting of blacks and whites killing more than 40 and wounding more than 150.
x - |MEMPHIS| The Ku Klux Klan, an organization formed to intimidate blacks and other ethnic and religious minorities, first met in Maxwell House.
dec 4 - Wassily Kandinsky, [d.dec 13 1944] originator of Abstract Art, is born.
x - |USA| Western Union dominates the wires.
x - Feodor Dostoevsky writes "Crime and Punishment"
x - Bismark uses a dispute over Holstein to go to war with Austria.
x - The German Confederation is disbanded and Schleswig and Holstein are annexed by Prussia.
x - Beginning of the era of Texas trail drives to northern markets.

1867

jan 08 - |USA ?| Congress grants the black citizens of the District of Columbia the right to vote, overiding President Johnson's veto.
feb - |Ireland ?| Abortive raid on Chester Castle.
mar 02 - |USA| Reconstruction Acts are passed by Congress. These acts called for the enfranchisement of former slaves in the South.
mar - |IRELAND| Fenian rising.
dec - |IRELAND| Clerkenwell explosion.
x - Volume 1 of Das Kapital [eng.tran.1886] by Karl Marx is published
x - Dominion of Canada created.
x - John A Macdonald becomes prime minster of Canada.
x - Reform Bill extends suffrage in Britain.
x - Russia ?+ sells Alaska to the US.
x - Alfred Nobel ? invents dynamite.
x - Laura Ingalls Wilder is born.
x - |Japan| The last shogun, Hitotsubashi, resigns and the emperor regains the position as actual head of the government.
x - 21 German states north of the Main River join a North German Confederation led by Prussia.
x - |STATUS| The Singer Corporation, producer of sewing machines, has factories in Britian, France and Argentina.
x - Henry Sorby discovered (and named) carotene, the chemical that gives all plants and animals their red and yellow coloring.
x - |USA| Sholes builds a functional typewriter.
x - Ticker, printing on a paper tape fluctuations in stock prices, invented by E.A Callahan in New New York
x - Lucien B. Smith of Kent, Ohio, invents barbed wire by 1890 the open range will be only a memory.
x - English engineer Robert Whitehead developed a self-propelled mine, which he called the "automobile torpedo". The ancestor of the modern torpedo.

1868

jul 21 - The Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is ratified, granting citizenship to any person born or naturalized in the United States.
aug 11 - Thaddeus Stevens, Radical Republican leader in Congress and father of Reconstruction, dies
sep 28 - |LOUISANNA| The Opelousas Massacre occurred, an estimated 200 to 300 black Americans are killed.
nov 03 - Ulysses S. Grant becomes president.
x - Start of the Meiji Restoration in Japan.
x - Louisa May Alcott writes Little Women *
x - Writing machine is called a "Type-Writer"; so is the typist.
x - The telegraph ?+ links Malta and Alexandria, Egypt

1869

feb 26 - Congress sends the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution to the states for approval. The amendment will guarantee black Americans the right to vote.
apr 06 - Ebenezer Don Carlos Bassett was appointed minister to Haiti. He is the first black American diplomat and presidential appointmentee.
may 23 - American Frontiersman Christopher Houston Carson [aka.Kit Carsen +] dies [b.dec 24 1809]
x - Suez Canal completed.
x - Louis Riel leads the Metis against Canada.
x - |Ireland| Gladstone, Prime Minister, dis-establishes Protestant Church.
x - The doctrine of papal infallibility is established during the Vatican Council I.
x - The American transcontinental line was completed.
x - Carbon paper is invented.
x - Color photography, using the subtractive method.
x - From Austria, postcards.
x - Britain's private telegraph ?+ companies are taken into public control and absorbed by the Post
x - The US Navy beguns the manufacture of the Whitehead torpedo for use by a new class of surface ships, the torpedo boat.

1870

feb 25 - The first African-American senator Hiram R. Revels (reb) of Mississippi took his seat; He served only one year.
mar 30 - The Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution was ratified
mar 30 - The United States Congress readmitted Texas into the Union.
x - |USA ?| population c39,818,449, Black population c4,880,009.
x - |Ireland ?| Gladstone's first Land Act.
x - Manitoba enters the Canadian Confederation.
x - Hudson's Bay Company transfers the Northwest Territories into the Canadian Confederation.
x - John D. Rockefeller founds Standard Oil Company.
x - Franco-Prussian War.
x - The telegraph ?+ links Europe, Hong Kong, China and Japan
x - The 3 inch pneumatic mail tube becomes standard. It can move up to 60 messages at a time. One such tube is an equivalent of 7 telegraph wires and 14 operators working flat out
x - During the five-month-long [sep 1870 to jan 1871] siege of Paris during the Franco-Prussian War, balloons are launched from Paris to carry mail, passengers, and homing pigeons for carrying messages back to the city
x - The telegram sent from Ems by King Wilhelm I of Prussia is construed by Bismarck to justify the Franco-Prussian War
x - Scientific American publisher Alfred Ely Beach builds a pneumatic subway under Broadway in New York. The single subway car, which features upholstered chairs and chandeliers is driven along the 300 foot tunnel by a 100 horsepower blower.
x - Jewish ghettos abolished in Italy.
c - Indian Independence movement begins to grow.

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