1869

1869 (MDCCCLXIX) was a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar and a common year starting on Wednesday of the Julian calendar, the 1869th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 869th year of the 2nd millennium, the 69th year of the 19th century, and the 10th and last year of the 1860s decade. As of the start of 1869, the Gregorian calendar was 12 days ahead of the Julian calendar, which remained in localized use until 1923.

• The Periodic table was developed.

• 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

• 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 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)

• "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