1879

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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)