WHAT ALL HAPPENED APRIL TO DECEMBER 1869
Find out what all happened April to December 1869

"Black Friday": Gold prices plummet after Ulysses S. Grant orders the Treasury to sell large quantities of gold after Jay Gould and James Fisk plot to control the market. (24. September 1869)

Celluloid is patented. (6. April 1869)

Battle of Acosta Ñu: A Paraguayan battalion made up of children is massacred by the Brazilian Army during the Paraguayan War. (16. August 1869)

The Japanese daimyo begin returning their land holdings to the emperor as part of the Meiji Restoration reforms. (Traditional Japanese Date: June 17, 1869). (25. July 1869)

Chinese and Irish laborers for the Central Pacific Railroad working on the First Transcontinental Railroad lay 10 miles of track in one day, a feat which has never been matched. (28. April 1869)

The Saxby Gale devastates the Bay of Fundy region of Maritime Canada. The storm had been predicted over a year before by a British naval officer. (5. October 1869)

The Meiji government in Japan establishes six new ministries, including one for Shinto. (15. August 1869)

Japan's samurai, farmer, artisan, merchant class system (Shinōkōshō) is abolished as part of the Meiji Restoration reforms. (Traditional Japanese date: June 25, 1869). (2. August 1869)

Woman's suffrage: in New York, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton form the National Woman Suffrage Association. (15. May 1869)

The First Transcontinental Railroad, linking the eastern and western United States, is completed at Promontory Summit, Utah (not Promontory Point, Utah) with the golden spike. (10. May 1869)

Boston University is chartered by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. (26. May 1869)

The Victorian Aboriginal Protection Act is enacted in Australia, giving the government control of indigenous people's wages, their terms of employment, where they could live, and of their children, effectively leading to the Stolen Generations. (11. November 1869)

The Kappa Sigma Fraternity is founded at the University of Virginia. (10. December 1869)

The Mount Washington Cog Railway opens, making it the world's first rack railway. (29. August 1869)

In Egypt, the Suez Canal, linking the Mediterranean Sea with the Red Sea, is inaugurated. (17. November 1869)

The Folies Bergère opens in Paris. (1. May 1869)

Girton College, Cambridge is founded, becoming England's first residential college for women. (16. October 1869)

Imperial Japanese forces defeat the remnants of the Tokugawa shogunate in the Battle of Hakodate to end the Boshin War. (17. May 1869)

In Dumbarton, Scotland, the clipper Cutty Sark is launched – one of the last clippers ever built, and the only one still surviving today. (22. November 1869)

American outlaw Jesse James commits his first confirmed bank robbery in Gallatin, Missouri. (7. December 1869)