1870

January 1 The first edition of The Northern Echo newspaper is published in Priestgate, Darlington, England. Plans for the Brooklyn Bridge are completed. January 3 – Construction of the Brooklyn Bridge begins in New York City. January 6 – The Musikverein, Vienna, is inaugurated in Austria-Hungary. January 10 – John D. Rockefeller incorporates Standard Oil. January 15 – A political cartoon for the first time symbolizes the United States Democratic Party with a donkey (A Live Jackass Kicking a Dead Lion by Thomas Nast for Harper's Weekly). January 23 – Marias Massacre: U.S. soldiers attack a peaceful camp of Piegan Blackfeet Indians, led by chief Heavy Runner. January 26 – Reconstruction Era (United States): Virginia rejoins the Union. This year it adopts a new Constitution, drawn up by John Curtiss Underwood, expanding suffrage to all male citizens over 21, including freedmen. January 28 – British departs Halifax, Nova Scotia, on a transatlantic passage on which it will be lost with all 191 aboard. February – Denis Vrain-Lucas is sentenced to 2 years in prison for multiple forgery, in Paris. February 1 – Goodna State School in Goodna, Queensland, Australia, is founded. February 2 It is revealed that the famed Cardiff Giant in the U.S. is just carved gypsum and not the petrified remains of a human. The Seven Brothers (Seitsemän veljestä), a novel by Finnish author Aleksis Kivi, is published first time in several thin booklets. February 3 – The 15th Amendment to the United States Constitution, guaranteeing African American men the right to vote, is passed. February 9 – The U.S. Army Weather Bureau is created within the Army Signal Corps. February 10 Anaheim, California, is incorporated. The YWCA is founded in New York City. February 12 – Women's suffrage: Women gain the right to vote in Utah Territory. February 23 – Military control of Mississippi ends and it is readmitted to the Union. February 25 – Hiram Rhodes Revels, a Republican from Mississippi, is sworn into the United States Senate, becoming the first African American to sit in the U.