This Year in History:
1873
Discover what happened in this year with HISTORY’s summaries of major events, anniversaries, famous births and notable deaths.
Influential English writer Dorothy Richardson, whose stream-of-consciousness style will influence James Joyce and Virginia Woolf, is born on May 17, 1873. Richardson, though seldom read today, was widely read and discussed in her own time. The daughter of a grocer who went bankrupt when she was 17, Richardson was well-educated and highly independent. After her […]
On May 20, 1873, San Francisco businessman Levi Strauss and Reno, Nevada, tailor Jacob Davis are given a patent to create work pants reinforced with metal rivets, marking the birth of one of the world’s most famous garments: blue jeans. In San Francisco, Strauss established a wholesale dry goods business under his own name and […]
While protecting a railroad survey party in Montana, Custer and his 7th Cavalry clash for the first time with the local Sioux Native Americans, who will defeat them three years later at the Little Big Horn. During the previous two years, Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer and his 7th Cavalry had not fought a single […]
William Henry Jackson becomes the first person to photograph Colorado’s elusive Mount of the Holy Cross, providing reliable proof of its existence. Rumors had abounded for years that a natural cross of snow lay hidden high in the rugged mountains of Colorado. Many claimed to have seen the cross, but others were unable to find […]
On October 3, 1873, the United States military hangs four Native Americans found guilty of murdering the Civil War general Edward Canby during the Modoc War in Oregon. Canby was the highest ranking military official and one of the only generals ever killed by Native Americans. As with most of the American military conflicts with Native […]
On October 27, 1873, a De Kalb, Illinois, farmer named Joseph Glidden submits an application to the U.S. Patent Office for his clever new design for a fencing wire with sharp barbs, an invention that will forever change the face of the American West. Glidden’s was by no means the first barbed wire; he only […]
Bridget Landregan is found beaten and strangled to death in the Boston suburb of Dorchester. According to witnesses, a man in black clothes and a flowing cape attempted to sexually assault the dead girl before running away. In 1874, a man fitting the same description clubbed another young girl, Mary Sullivan, to death. His third […]
