1879

1879 (MDCCCLXXIX) was a common year starting on Wednesday in the Gregorian calendar and a common year starting on Monday in the Julian calendar.

 Events 
 Thomas Edison invents the light bulb.
 Rutherford B. Hayes State of the Union Address.
 The Anglo-Zulu War took place.

 Births 
 March 14 – Albert Einstein, German scientist (died 1955)
 August 8 – Emiliano Zapata, Mexican revolutionary
 August 15 – Ethel Barrymore, American actress (died 1959)
 November 7 – Leon Trotsky, Ukrainian revolutionary and Marxist (died  1940)
 December 22 – Sydney Greenstreet, British actor (died 1958)
 Samuel Goldwyn, movie producer
 Simon Rodia, creator of the Watts Towers

 Deaths 
 January 26 - Julia Margaret Cameron, British Indian photographer (b. 1815)
 February 11 – Honoré Daumier, French caricaturist and painter (b. 1808)
 February 23 – Albrecht Graf von Roon, Prime Minister of Prussia (b. 1803)
 February 25 – Charles Peace, British criminal (executed) (b. 1832)
 March 1 – Joachim Heer, Swiss politician (b. 1825)
 March 30 – Thomas Couture, French painter and teacher (b. 1815)
 April 30 – Sarah Josepha Hale, American writer (b. 1788)
 June 1 – Napoleon Eugene, Prince Imperial, son of French Emperor Napoleon III (b. 1856)
 June 27 - Sir John Lawrence, British Indian administrator (b. 1811)
 August 30 – John Bell Hood, America Confederate general (b. 1831)
 November 5 – James Clerk Maxwell, Scottish physicist (b. 1831)
 August 11 – George Willison Adams, Ohio abolitionist (b.1799)