On April 24, the heir NICHOLAS ALEXANDROVICH fell ill and died in Nice of consumption, leaving behind a grieving fiancée, the Danish princess DAGMAR, who, however, later found consolation and married her fiancé’s brother—ALEXANDER ALEXANDROVICH, born in 1845. Before this, the second son, Alexander Alexandrovich, had not been destined to reign and was brought up as an ordinary grand duke who was to pursue a military career. In appearance and in an awareness of his own greatness he strongly resembles Paul I. From childhood he cannot stand studying and writes with an almost unbelievable illiteracy. Extremely hot-tempered, though toward the end of his life his character will improve.
On August 6, a law was published introducing compulsory smallpox vaccination in Russia, but how to put it into practice was still being discussed in the 1870s.
On June 15, Tashkent was taken by storm by a Russian detachment under the command of General M. G. CHERNYAEV.
Smoking was permitted on the streets of St. Petersburg.
On February 6, a custom was introduced in St. Petersburg: a cannon shot from the Admiralty (later—from the Peter and Paul Fortress) would announce the lunch break. The custom would last until 1938.
From this year in Moscow, in the White City, lanterns used kerosene instead of hemp oil.
The press was freed from prior censorship, but a system of three warnings was introduced. Instructions of August 23 ordered censors to ban works directed against the truths of the Christian faith in general and against the doctrine and dignity of the Orthodox Church in particular. On September 1, the press appeared for the first time without prior censorship, full of jubilation.
There is no cleanliness in the streets at all. In winter, snow and frozen manure are not removed, and by spring all Moscow is full of ruts. A moment comes when the prudent townsman stays at home—there is no passage either on wheels or in sleighs. In summer the streets are not watered down, and the dried manure is not scraped off the paving stones. In the Alexander Garden no flowers are planted, but the walls inside the grotto are covered with poetic and simple inscriptions of very poor content.
Convoys of filth often consist of tubs not covered with anything, sloshing their contents as they move. Their movement begins after midnight and lasts until morning. In courtyards there are often no cesspits at all. Cabmen’s stands, the yards of “post” eateries, lowbrow taverns, and almost all street corners are hotbeds of foul air.
In January, Congress approved the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, banning slavery throughout the United States.
Abraham Lincoln — the 16th President of the United States. One of the organizers of the Republican Party, which opposed slavery. Killed by an agent of the planters.
VALENTIN ALEXANDROVICH SEROV was born, the son of the composer Alexander Nikolaevich Serov, a future artist; he would die in 1911.