1879 in the United Kingdom
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1879 in the United Kingdom:

Other years

1877 | 1878 | 1879 | 1880 | 1881

Sport

1879 English cricket season

1878-79 in English football

Events from the year 1879 in the United Kingdom.

Incumbents

• Monarch - Victoria of the United Kingdom
• Prime Minister - Benjamin Disraeli, Conservative

Events

• 8 January - British army occupies Kandahar in Afghanistan.^[1]
• 11 January - Anglo-Zulu War begins.
• 22 January - Zulu troops massacre British troops at the Battle of Isandlwana. At Rorke's Drift, outnumbered British soldiers drive the attackers away after hours of fighting.^[2]
• 12 March - Anglo-Zulu War: At the Battle of Intombe, a British force over one-hundred strong is ambushed and destroyed by Zulu forces.
• 13 March - Marriage of The Duke of Connaught and Strathearn, third son of Queen Victoria, to Princess Louise Marguerite of Prussia.
• 28 March - Anglo-Zulu War: British forces suffer a defeat at the Battle of Hlobane.^[2]
• 29 March - Anglo-Zulu War: Battle of Kambula: British forces defeat 20,000 Zulus.
• 3 April - Anglo-Zulu War: British forces successfully lift the two-month Siege of Eshowe.
• 26 May - Russia and the United Kingdom sign the Treaty of Gandamak establishing an Afghan state.
• 14 June - Sidney Faithorn Green, an Anglican priest in the Church of England, is tried and convicted for using Ritualist practices.
• 4 July - The Anglo-Zulu War effectively ends with British victory at the Battle of Ulundi.^[1]
• 19 August - The foundation of Eddystone Lighthouse laid by the Duke of Edinburgh and the Prince of Wales.^[2]
• 18 September - Blackpool Illuminations lit for the first time.^[2]
• October - First female students admitted to Oxford University.^[1]
• November–March 1880 - probably the longest ever fog in the city's history engulfs London.^[3]
• 27 October - Liverpool Echo newspaper first published.^[2]
• 15 December–23 December - Second Anglo-Afghan War: British victory at the Siege of the Sherpur Cantonment.
• 28 December - The Tay Bridge Disaster: The central part of the Tay Rail Bridge in Dundee, Scotland collapses as a train passes over it, killing 78.^[1]
• 30 December - The Pirates of Penzance is first performed in Paignton, Devon.^[2]

Undated

• Electric street lighting introduced in London, initially on the Thames Embankment and Waterloo Bridge.^[1]

Publications

• Serialisation of the Anthony Trollope novel The Duke's Children.

Births

• 1 January - E. M. Forster, writer (died 1970)
• 26 February - Frank Bridge, composer (died 1941)
• 5 March - William Beveridge, economist and social reformer (died 1963)
• 26 April - Owen Willans Richardson, physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1959)
• 29 April - Thomas Beecham, conductor (died 1961)
• 19 May - Viscount Waldorf Astor, businessman and politician (died 1952)
• 25 May - Max Aitken, 1st Baron Beaverbrook, Canadian-British business tycoon, politician and writer (died 1964)
• 30 May - Colin Blythe, cricketer (died 1917)
• 13 August - John Ireland, composer (died 1962)
• 27 December - Sydney Greenstreet, actor (died 1954)

• Joseph Campbell, poet and lyricist (died 1944)
• Robert Wilson Lynd, essayist and writer (died 1949)

Deaths

• 25 February - Charles Peace, criminal (executed) (born 1832)
• 10 August - George Long, classical scholar (born 1800)
• 5 November - James Clerk Maxwell, physicist (born 1831)
• 6 December - William Cavendish-Scott-Bentinck, 5th Duke of Portland, (born 1800)

References

See also