In honor of the 125th anniversary of the U.S. Naval Institute, the parent organization of Naval History magazine, the editors have compiled the following information from various sources to give readers a feel for the time when a group of concerned naval officers met at the U.S. Naval Academy to discuss naval, military, and political issues of the day. Those discussions, published in the Naval Institute's now-monthly Proceedings, have continued, unabated and open, for a century and a quarter.
Republican President Ulysses S. Grant begins his second term, with Henry Wilson replacing Schuyler Colfax as his Vice President.
With an administration wracked by scandal and corruption but enjoying relatively high popularity, President Ulysses S. Grant began his second term with a new Vice President in 1873.
Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Dakota (not yet North and South), Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Utah, and Washington are not yet states but territories. Oklahoma is known as Indian Territory.
The Consolidated Virginia Mining Company strikes silver in Nevada in what becomes known as the Comstock Lode.
Frenchman Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is published.
Artists of note include Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Pierre Auguste Renoir, Paul Cezanne, Jean Carot, Edouard Manet, and James McNeill Whistler.
Notable names in the theater include Henrik Ibsen and Dion Boucicault.
The classical music world features the works of Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov and Johannes Brahms.
The most popular song is "Silver Threads Among the Gold," by Eben Eugene Rexford and Hart Pease Danks.
The literary world is dominated by the names of Jules Verne, Leo Tolstoy, Anthony Trollope, Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, Thomas Hardy, Louisa May Alcott, and William Dean Howells.
The Naval Institute Press recently released a new edition of Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, published orginally the same year the Naval Institute began.
Memorial Day becomes a legal holiday in New York.
The cable car is adopted for use over hilly streets of San Francisco.
James Clerk-Maxwell's Electricity and Magnetism contains the basic laws of electromagnetism and predicts such phenomena as radio waves and pressure caused by light rays.
England's Richard Anthony Proctor suggests that the craters of the moon were formed by the impact of meteorites.
The introduction of color sensitizing makes possible color photography.
Remington Fire Arms Company begins the manufacture of typewriters.
French pharmacist Limousin devises the first medicine tablet.
The family fruit orchard business of Chivers & Sons prepares the first jam.
Vienna's international trade exposition gives the first demonstration of electricity.
Bethlehem Steel Works is established in Pennsylvania.
For the first time on record, members of the California Geological Survey climb Mt. Whitney in the Sierra Nevada, the highest peak in the United States.
Grasshoppers plague the West.
The Nightingale System of nurses' training is established at Bellevue Hospital, New York City.
Cornelius Vanderbilt, leasing the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railroad, completes his railroad control from New York to Chicago.
Canada's Royal Montreal Golf Club is the first established in North America.
Tennis is introduced in the United States from England sometime between 1873 and 1874.
6 January—The House of Representatives adopts a resolution to investigate relations of the Credit Mobilier—a company formed by directors of the Union Pacific Railroad, shares of which were distributed to high government officials—and its obligations to the government.
7 January—The House appoints a committee to investigate Credit Mobilier and Union Pacific Railroad relations and dealings with high government officials.
8 January—Trial of Tammany Hall Boss William M. Tweed commences in New York City.
24 January—Congress abolishes Admiral and Vice Admiral grades in the Navy.
7 February—Congress passes an act demonetizing the silver-trade dollar.
12 February—The Fourth Coinage Act, the "Crime of 1873," drops the silver dollar, except the heavier trade dollar for use in the Orient, from the list of coins. The gold dollar is made unit of value.
18 February—In "Credit Mobilier of America" affair, House committee reports Oakes Ames and James Brooks are guilty of awarding all transcontinental railroad contracts to the Mobilier. The committee recommends expulsion, but the House censures nine days later.
24 February—Long Island lighthouse keepers and crew are awarded gold medals by Congress for saving passengers from the Metis, of the New York and Providence Line, on 31 August 1872.
3 March—Signal service stations are established at lighthouse and life-saving stations on the Great Lakes and sea coasts by act of Congress.
- In a move dubbed the "Salary Grab" act, the President's salary doubles. Salaries of the Congress increase by 50%. Salaries are fixed for the President at $50,000, Senators at $10,000, and Representatives at $7,500, including travel expenses.
- Life-saving stations are established by Congress along the coasts of Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Virginia, and North Carolina.
- The passing of obscene literature through the mails is prohibited by act of Congress. The action is sponsored by Anthony Comstock, Secretary of the Society for Suppression of Vice.
- The Timber Culture Act provides grants a "quarter section" of land to anyone who will set out trees on 40 acres of it.
1 April—The White Star Line liner Atlantic wrecks on Marr's Rock off the Nova Scotia coast with the loss of 560 lives. All women on board are lost.
11 April—Modoc Indians under their Chief, "Captain Jack," attack and massacre U.S. forces, including commander Major General Edward S. Canby, in the lava beds near Fort Klamath, Oregon.
14 April—In the "Slaughter-House" cases, the Supreme Court declares that the 14th Amendment does not give federal jurisdiction over the "entire domain of civil rights heretofore belonging exclusively to the States." It is the first Supreme Court interpretation of the 14th Amendment.
30 April—The sealing vessel Tigress rescues the crew of the Polaris from floating ice in Baffin Bay.
1 May—The U.S. government issues one-cent postal cards.
6 May—The National Cheap Transportation Association is organized in New York City.
1 June—Modoc Indians and Captain Jack surrender.
18 June—Susan B. Anthony, Vice-President-at-Large of the National Woman Suffrage Association, is arrested and fined $100 for illegal voting in the presidential election the previous year at Rochester, New York.
3 July—President Grant proclaims the Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia to open 19 April 1876.
4 July—A "Declaration of Independence" is read before hundreds of Grange audiences in the Northwest, protesting intrastate railroad freight rates.
5 September—After extensive arbitration in Geneva, Great Britain pays an award of $15,500,000 to the United States in compensation for its part in commerce lost as a result of the exploits of the Confederate raider Alabama during the Civil War.
18 September—Jay Cooke and Company, overinvolved in financing the Northern Pacific Railroad, fails, precipitating the Panic of 1873 and the the start of one of the longest recessions in U.S. history. By the end of the year, 5,000 businesses fail.
19 September—The New York Stock Exchange panic begins.
20 September—Stock Exchange closes.
30 September—Stock Exchange reopens after panic.
September—A system of international simultaneous weather observations, proposed at the congress of meteorologists in Vienna, is begun.
3 October—Captain Jack and others are executed for the massacre near Fort Klamath.
3-11 October—A world session of the Evangelical Alliance is held in New York.
9 October—In a two-story, white clapboard classroom building on the grounds of the U.S. Naval Academy, 15 committed naval officers gather and found the U.S. Naval Institute.
18 October—First football conference held by the colleges of Yale, Princeton, and Rutgers drafts a code of laws.
31 October—The U.S. schooner Virginius is captured by the Spanish gunboat Tornado. She was illegally flying the U.S. flag and was said to be carrying men and munitions destined for insurgents in Cuba.
Lieutenant Commander G. K. Haswell made the original sketch of this depiction of the schooner Virginius sinking in late 1873.
4-7 November—About 100 Cuban insurgents, including 30 Americans and 6 British, are shot. A second source claims that a total of 53 of the Virginius's passengers and crew were executed.
19 November—Tammany leader "Boss" Tweed is convicted in New York City, sentenced to 12 years in prison, and fined $12,000. He escapes to Spain in 1876. He is sent home by Spain and dies in jail in 1878.
29 November—Settlement of the Virginius affair is reached. The Spanish government will pay an indemnity of $80,000 to families of Americans executed.
December—The Women's Temperance crusade begins in Hillsboro, Ohio, near Cleveland.