• Tokugawa Yoshinobu, last of the Tokugawa shoguns, is induced by an alliance of tozama daimyo to abdicate his power to Emperor Meiji, clearing the way for the Meiji Restoration.
• Following victory over the Austrian Empire in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, Prussian hegemon Otto von Bismarck annexes newly ceded Austrian territory to establish a "North German Confederation" which serves as a transitional state until Bismarck's establishment of the German Empire in 1871. Meanwhile, defeat precipitates a constitutional crisis in Austria, which is forced to elevate Hungary to coequal status in the newly constituted state of Austria-Hungary.
• The War of the Triple Alliance rages in Paraguay, where the armies of the Alliance (Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay) find themselves locked in a stalemate with the fanatically loyal forces of Paraguayan dictator Francisco Solano López.
• The dominion of Canada is created when the British North America Act unites the provinces of Canada, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia into a single political entity. Ottawa becomes the capital, and John A. Macdonald is chosen the dominion's first prime minister.
• The British East India Company's "Straits Settlements" (Singapore, Penang, and Malacca) are turned into British Crown Colonies.
• War between France and Prussia is averted when Luxembourg is granted independence at the London Conference.
• "Radical Reconstruction" of the American South begins with the passage of the first and second Military Reconstruction Acts.
• In one of the greatest bargains in history, US secretary of state William Seward purchases Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million, or about 2 cents per acre. The American press, unaware of Alaska's vast oil reserves, derides the purchase as "Seward's Folly."
• Shocked by the plight of poor southern famers, Department of Agriculture employee Oliver Hudson Kelley founds the Order of the Patrons of Husbandry, better known as the Granger Movement.
• An unsuccessful Fenian Revolt in Ireland provides the last batch of British convicts to be forcibly relocated to Australia.
• The first ships pass through the newly opened Suez Canal.
• A yellow fever epidemic rages in New Orleans, killing 3,093.
• Christopher Sholes invents the typewriter.
• Alfred Nobel invents dynamite. Now the world can blow stuff up.
• Seeking stronger pots for his plants, French gardener Joseph Monnier invents reinforced concrete, making modern construction possible.
• English doctor Joseph Lister invents the first antiseptic, making surgery much safer.
• Ohio farmer Lucien Smith invents barbed wire, signalling the beginning of the end of the open range as an American way of life.
• Austrian human rights advocate Karl-Maria Benkert coins the term "homosexual."
• Charles Ranhofer, French chef at New York's famous Delmonico's restaurant, concocts the first "Baked Alaska" in celebration of America's purchase of said territory.
• Karl Marx publishes the first volume of Das Kapital.
• Viennese "Waltz King" Johann Strauss writes The Blue Danube.
• Nebraska is admitted to the Union as the 37th US state.
• Candy Cummings throws baseball's first curveball while pitching in a game for the amateur Brooklyn Stars.
• Filly Ruthless wins the first running of the Belmont Stakes with a time of 3:05.
• The Marquess of Queensbury Rules are published at the behest of John Douglas, ninth Marquess of Queensbury, forming the basis of the modern sport of boxing.

These people were born in 1867:

• Polish scientist Marie Curie
• American architect Frank Lloyd Wright
• American inventor Wilbur Wright, elder of the Wright Brothers
• Italian playwright Luigi Pirandello, winner of the 1934 Nobel Prize in Literature.
• Future British prime minister Stanley Baldwin.
• American writer Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of Little House on the Prairie.
• American pacifist Emily Greene Balch, winner of the 1946 Nobel Peace Prize
• American journalist Elizabeth Cochran Seaman, better known by her penname Nellie Bly.
• American outlaw Harry Alonzo Longabaugh, better known as The Sundance Kid.
• American baseball great Cy Young.

These people died in 1867:

• Japanese emperor Komei; his son Mutsuhito succeeds him, becoming the Meiji emperor.
• Mexican emperor Maximillian, executed by a firing squad on the orders of Mexican president Benito Juárez following his failed escape from the Siege of Querétaro, despite the pleas of much of Europe's nobility and intelligencia to spare his life.
• Japanese anti-shogunate activist Sakamoto Ryoma, assassinated in a Kyoto lodging house by the Shinsengumi.
• French poet and writer Charles Baudelaire
• English physicist and chemist Michael Faraday
• French painter Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres
• French physicist Jean Bernard Leon Foucault, inventor of the gyroscope.

1866 - 1867 - 1868

19th century