"Centennial Mirror", showing events from 1776 (left) compared with similar events in 1876 (right)
January–March[]
February 2 – The National League of Professional Base Ball Clubs is formed at a meeting in Chicago, Illinois; it replaced the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players. Morgan Bulkeley of the Hartford Dark Blues is selected as the league's first President.
February 22 – Johns Hopkins University is founded in Baltimore, Maryland.
February/March – The Harvard Lampoon humor magazine is founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
March 7 – Alexander Graham Bell is granted a patent for an invention he calls the telephone (patent #174,466).
March 10 – Alexander Graham Bell makes the first successful call by saying "Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you.."
April–June[]
April 17 – Friends Academy is founded by Gideon Frost at Locust Valley, New York.
May 10 – The Centennial Exposition begins in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
May 18 – Wyatt Earp starts work in Dodge City, Kansas, serving under Marshal Larry Deger.
June 4 – The Transcontinental Express arrives in San Francisco, California via the First Transcontinental Railroad, 83 hours and 39 minutes after having left New York City.
June 11 – Rutherford B. Hayes selected by the Republicans as Presidential Candidate.
June 17 – Indian Wars – Battle of the Rosebud: 1,500 Sioux and Cheyenne led by Crazy Horse beat back General George Crook's forces at Rosebud Creek in Montana Territory.
June 24 – First published review of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain, in a British magazine; the book's first edition has appeared earlier in June in England. (The book is published in the U.S. in December 1876.)
June 25 – Indian Wars – Battle of the Little Bighorn: an army under Lieutenant ColonelGeorge Armstrong Custer is defeated by 1,500-2,500 Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho led by Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, suffering over 300 casualties.
June 27 – Samuel J. Tilden selected by the Democrats as Presidential candidate.
July–September[]
July 4 – The United States celebrates its centennial.
August 1 – Colorado is admitted as the 38th U.S. state (seeHistory of Colorado).
August 2 – Wild Bill Hickok is killed during a poker game in Deadwood, Dakota
August 8 – Thomas Edison receives a patent for his mimeograph.
September 6 – Southern Pacific line from Los Angeles to San Francisco completed.
September 7 – In Northfield, Minnesota, Jesse James and the James-Younger Gang attempt to rob the town's bank but are surrounded by an angry mob and are nearly wiped out.
October 6 – American Library Association founded in Philadelphia.
November 7 – The presidential election ends indecisively with 184 Electoral College votes for Samuel J. Tilden, 165 for Rutherford B. Hayes, and 20 in dispute. The new president was not decided until 1877.
November 10 – The Centennial Exposition ends in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
November 23 – Corrupt Tammany Hall leader William Marcy Tweed (better known as Boss Tweed) is delivered to authorities in New York City after being captured in Spain.
November 25 – Indian Wars: In retaliation for the dramatic American defeat at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, United States Army troops under General Ranald S. Mackenzie sack Chief Dull Knife's sleeping Cheyenne village at the headwaters of the Powder River (the soldiers destroy all of the villagers' winter food and clothing, and then slash their ponies' throats).
December 5 – The Brooklyn Theater Fire kills at least 278, possibly more than 300.
December 6 – The first cremation in the United States takes place in a crematory built by Francis Julius LeMoyne.
December 29 – Ashtabula River railroad disaster over the Ashtabula River near Ashtabula, Ohio kills 92 and injures 64.
Undated[]
Meharry Medical College is founded in Nashville, Tennessee as the Medical Department of Central Tennessee College; it is the first medical school for African Americans in the South.
Lyford House, by Richardson Bay, Tiburon, California is constructed.
Heinz Tomato Ketchup introduced.
Adolphus Busch's brewery, Anheuser-Busch in St. Louis, Missouri, first markets Budweiser, a pale lager, as a nationally sold beer.
First carousel at Coney Island built by Charles I. D. Looff.
Spring – Vast numbers of Indians move north to an encampment of the Sioux chief Sitting Bull in the region of the Little Bighorn River, creating the last great gathering of native peoples on the Great Plains.
November 23 – Thomas M. Storke, U.S. Senator from California from 1938 to 1939 (died 1971)
November 24 – Walter Burley Griffin, architect (died 1937)
November 29 – Nellie Tayloe Ross, 14th Governor of Wyoming from 1925 to 1927 and director of the United States Mint from 1933 to 1953; first female state governor in the U.S. (died 1977)
December 3 – Samuel Cooper, United States Army officer during the Second Seminole War and the Mexican–American War, highest-ranking Confederate general during the American Civil War (born 1798)