1869

Events 
 The Periodic table was developed.

 Births 
 January 1 – Sigma Nu, First Anti-Hazing Honor/Social Fraternity
 January 4 – Tommy Corcoran, baseball player
 January 10 – Grigori Rasputin, Russian mystic
 January 15 – Stanisław Wyspiański, Polish dramatist, poet, painter, and architect
 February 11 – Helene Kroller-Muller, Dutch museum founder and patron of the arts
 February 14 – Charles Wilson, Scottish physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
 March 3 – Michael von Faulhaber, German cardinal and archbishop
 March 12 – George William Forbes, New Zealand Prime Minister and first leader of the New Zealand National Party
 March 14 – Algernon Blackwood, English writer
 March 18 – Neville Chamberlain, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
 April 2 – Hughie Jennings, baseball player
 April 5,6 – Tom Adam, Named number one in the world
 April 11 – Gustav Vigeland, Norwegian sculptor
 April 27 – May Moss, Activist
 May 5 – Hans Pfitzner, German composer
 May 20 – John Stone Stone, American physicist and inventor
 June 27 – Hans Spemann, German embryologist, won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
 August 10 – Lawrence Binyon, English poet and scholar
 September 3 – Fritz Pregl, Austrian chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
 September 17 – Christian Lous Lange, Norwegian pacifist, won the Nobel Peace Prize
 September 21 - Carlo Airoldi, Italian marathon runner
 September 23 – Mary Mallon, "Typhoid Mary"
 October 2 – Mahatma Gandhi, Indian political leader, Father of the Nation
 October 25 – John Heisman, American football coach
 November 11 – Victor Emmanuel III of Italy, King)
 November 25 – Herbert Greenfield, Premier of Alberta, Canada
 December 16 – Hristo Tatarchev, Bulgarian revolutionary, leader of the revolutionary movement in Macedonia and Eastern Thrace
 December 22 – Edwin Arlington Robinson, American poet
 December 30 – Stephen Leacock, British-Canadian writer and economist
 December 31 – Henri Matisse, French painter

 Deaths 
 July 18 – Laurent Clerc, co-founder of the first American school for the deaf.
 January 1 – Martin W. Bates, U.S. Senator from Delaware (b. 1786)
 January 30 – William Carleton, Irish novelist (b. 1794)
 February 15 – Mirza Ghalib, poet of Urdu (b. 1796).
 March 8 – Hector Berlioz, French composer (b. 1803)
 March 24 – Antoine-Henri Jomini, French general (b. 1779)
 April 20 – Carl Loewe, German composer (b. 1796)
 June 16 – Charles Sturt, Australian explorer (b. 1795)
 June 20 – Hijikata Toshizou, Japanese military commander (b. 1835)
 August 31 – Mary Ward (scientist), first car accident victim
 September 12 – Peter Roget, British lexicographer (b. 1779)
 October 8 - Franklin Pierce, 64, fourteenth President of the United States, liver cirrhosis (b. 1804)
 October 13 – Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, French literary critic (b. 1804)
 October 23 – Edward Smith-Stanley, 14th Earl of Derby, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (b. 1799)
 December 18 – Louis Moreau Gottschalk, American composer and pianist (b. 1829)

 Hit songs 
 "Little Brown Jug" by R.E. Eastburn
 "Now the Day is Over" by Joseph Barnby
 "Shoo, Fly! Don't Bother Me!" by T. Bringham Bishop
 "Sweet Genevieve" by Henry Tucker