• January 1 - New York City annexes The Bronx
• January 23 - Marriage of the Duke of Edinburgh[?], second son of Queen Victoria, to Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna of Russia[?], only daughter of Emperor Alexander III of Russia.
• February 23 - Walter Winfield[?] patents a game called "sphairistike" which is more commonly called lawn tennis[?].
• March 18 - Hawaii signs a treaty with the United States granting exclusive trading rights.
• May 20 - Levi Strauss[?] markets blue jeans with copper rivets
• July 24 - Mathew Evans and Henry Woodward patent the first incandescent lamp with an electric light bulb.
• Home Rule Movement created to protest British Government control over Ireland. (see History of Ireland)
• First Impressionist exhibition, Paris; name coined in hostile review of Claude Monet's Impression, Sunrise
• Opening of the Agra canal in India.

Arts, Sciences, Literature and Philosophy

• 1874 in literature:

Births

• January 16 - Robert W. Service[?], poet (+ 1958)
• January 21 - Frederick Madison Smith, American religious leader and author.
• January 25 - William Somerset Maugham, (+ 1965)
• January 29 - John D. Rockefeller Jr.[?], entrepreneur
• February 1 - Hugo von Hofmannsthal, lyricist, dramatist, narrator, and essayist (+ 1929)
• February 3 - Gertrude Stein, writer and patron of the arts (+ 1946)
• February 9 - Amy Lowell, poet (+ 1925)
• February 11 - Elsa Beskow (Maartman), Swedish children's book/fairy tales author.
• February 11 - Fritz Bennicke Hart[?], composer.
• February 17 - Thomas J. Watson, computer pioneer, first president of IBM
• February 21 - The Oakland Daily Tribune[?] publishes its first newspaper.
• March 20 - Börries von Münchhausen[?], poet (+ 1945)
• March 24 - Harry Houdini, magician
• March 26 - Robert Frost, poet (+ 1963)
• March 29 - Lou Hoover[?], First Lady (+ 1944)
• April 25 - Guglielmo Marconi, Italian inventor, "the father of radio", recipient of the Nobel Prize in physics 1909 (+ 1937)
• May 29 - Gilbert Keith Chesterton, author
• June 16 - Arthur Meighen, the ninth Prime Minister of Canada.
• July 14 - Abbas II, a khedive of Egypt.
• September 13 - Arnold Schoenberg, Austrian composer
• September 21 - Gustav Holst, English composer
• October 20 - Charles Ives, American composer
• October 26 - Martin Lowry, English physical chemist.
• October 30 - Bin Ueda[?], Japanese writer.
• November 30 - Lucy Maude Montgomery, Canadian author.
• December 15 - Shoken Kamitsukasa[?], Japanese writer.
• December 22 - Franz Schmidt, composer

Deaths

• February 8 - David Friedrich Strauss, German theologian
• March 8 - Millard Fillmore, 13th President of the United States 1850-1853