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Lieutenant Governor of California: William Holden (Democratic) (until month and day unknown), Romualdo Pacheco (Republican) (starting month and day unknown)
Lieutenant Governor of Nevada: James S. Slingerland (political party unknown) (until January 2), Frank Denver (political party unknown) (starting January 2)
Lieutenant Governor of New York: Allen C. Beach (Democratic) (until end of December 31)
Lieutenant Governor of North Carolina: vacant
Lieutenant Governor of Ohio: John C. Lee (Republican) (until January 8), Jacob Mueller (Republican) (starting January 8)
Lieutenant Governor of Rhode Island: Pardon Stevens (political party unknown) (until month and day unknown), Charles Cutler (political party unknown) (starting month and day unknown)
Lieutenant Governor of Vermont: George N. Dale (Republican) (until October 3), Russell S. Taft (Republican) (starting October 3)
Lieutenant Governor of Virginia: John Lawrence Marye, Jr. (Conservative)
Lieutenant Governor of Wisconsin: Thaddeus C. Pound (Republican) (until January 1), Milton H. Pettit (Republican) (starting January 1)
Events[]
Brigham Young, photo circa 1870
Clarence King (1842-1901) as a young man
January 2 – Brigham Young is arrested for allegedly being an accessory to murder.
January 3 – First patent list issued by the U.S. Patent Office.
February 13 – Rex, the most famous parade on Mardi Gras, parades for the first time in New Orleans for Grand Duke Alexei Mikhailovich of Russia.
February 20 – The Metropolitan Museum of Art opens in New York City.
March – One of the first Personal Liberty League formed in the United States in response to the threat posed to the liquor industry by the growing political strength of the temperance movement.
March 1 – Yellowstone National Park is established as the world's first national park.
March 5 – George Westinghouse patents the air brake for railways.
March 26 – The 7.4–7.9 MwLone Pine earthquake shakes eastern California with a maximum Mercalli intensity of X (Extreme). Twenty-seven people are killed and fifty-six injured.
May 10 – Victoria Woodhull becomes the first woman nominated for President of the United States.
May 22 – Reconstruction: President Ulysses S. Grant signs the Amnesty Act of 1872 into law restoring full civil rights to all but about 500 Confederate sympathizers.
June 4 – Two men lead investors to land near the Wyoming-Colorado border claiming to have found diamonds there, starting a diamond craze in the western US (which is later revealed as a fraud).[1]
August – Aaron Montgomery Ward issues the first Montgomery Ward mail order catalogue from Chicago.
September 26 – The first Shriners Temple (called Mecca) is established in New York City.
October 1 – The Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College begins its first academic session (the university is later renamed Virginia Tech).
October 2 – Morgan State University founded.
November – Ulysses S. Grant defeats Horace Greeley in the U.S. presidential election
November 2 – Spiritualist, suffragette, and Free Love advocate Victoria Woodhull publishes shocking allegations in Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly claiming in "The Beecher-Tilton Scandal Case" article that Henry Ward Beecher had committed adultery with Theodore Tilton's wife. The subsequent trials and hearings, "drove Reconstruction off the front pages for two and a half years" and became "the most sensational 'he said, she said' in American history", in the words of Walter A. McDougall.[2]
November 5 – Women's suffrage: In defiance of the law, suffragist Susan B. Anthony votes for the first time (on November 18 she is served an arrest warrant and in the subsequent trial is fined $100 - which she never pays).
November 7 – The Mary Celeste sets sail from New York, bound for Genoa.
November 9 – Great Boston Fire of 1872: In Boston, Massachusetts, a large fire begins to burn on Lincoln Street. The two-day event destroys about 65 acres (260,000 m2) of city, 776 buildings, much of the financial district and causes US$60 million in damage.
November 28 – Geologist Clarence King uncovers the diamond hoax in Wyoming in The New York Times.[3]
November 29 – Indian Wars: The Modoc War begins with the Battle of Lost River.
December 4 – The crewless American-owned ship Mary Celeste is found by the British brig Dei Gratia in the Atlantic.
December 9 – P. B. S. Pinchback takes office as Governor of Louisiana, the first African American governor of a U.S. state.
William Lawrence, a dairyman of Chester (village), New York, creates the first American cream cheese.[4]
First known publication of spiritual "The Gospel Train", by Fisk Jubilee Singers.
Ongoing[]
William Bell, Perched Rock, western Arizona Territory, 1872 photo for Wheeler Survey
May 31 – Charles Greeley Abbot, astrophysicist (died 1973)
June 13 – Thomas N. Heffron, film director (died 1951)
June 27 – Paul Laurence Dunbar, African American poet, novelist, playwright and publisher (died 1906)
July 4 – Calvin Coolidge, 30th President of the United States from 1923 to 1929, 29th Vice President of the United States from 1921 to 1923 (died 1933)
July 8 – John H. Bankhead II, U.S. Senator from Alabama from 1931 to 1946 (died 1946)
August 2 – George E. Stewart, U.S. Army officer, Medal of Honor recipient (died 1946 in the United States|1946]])
August 4 – Ruth Ward Kahn, lecturer and writer (unknown year of death)
August 10 – William Manuel Johnson, African American dixieland jazz double-bassist (died 1972)
^Marx, Jeffrey A. (June 2012). ""The Days Had Come of Curds and Cream": The Origins and Development of Cream Cheese in America". Journal of Food, Culture and Society. 15 (2).
Further reading[]
"American Annual Cyclopaedia ... 1872", American Annual Cyclopedia and Register of Important Events of the Year, NY: D. Appleton & Co.: 14 v – via HathiTrust