1876 (MDCCCLXXVI) was a leap year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian Calendar (or a leap year starting on Thursday of the 12-day slower Julian calendar).

Events of 1876

January–March

• February 2 - The National League of Professional Base Ball Clubs was formed at a meeting in Chicago, Illinois; it replaced the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players. Morgan Bulkeley of the Hartford Dark Blues is selected as the league's first President.
• February 22 – Johns Hopkins University is founded in Baltimore, Maryland.
• February 24 – Premiere of first stage production of the verse-play Peer Gynt by Henrik Ibsen with incidental music by Edvard Grieg, in Oslo (then called Christiania), Norway
• February 27 -The Third Carlist War (Spain):The Carlist forces did not succeed, and the promises were never fulfilled. The Carlist pretender (Carlos María de Borbón y Austria-Este-"duque de Madrid" y "conde de la Alcarria") AKA:Carlos VII went into exile in France bringing the conflict to an end after four years of war.
• Spring – Vast numbers of Indians move north to an encampment of the Sioux chief Sitting Bull in the region of the Little Bighorn River, creating the last great gathering of native peoples on the Great Plains.
• March 7 – Alexander Graham Bell is granted a patent for an invention he calls the telephone (patent #174,466).
• March 10 – Alexander Graham Bell makes the first successful call by saying "Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you.."

April–June

• April 16 – The Bulgarian April uprising occurs.
• May 1
  • Queen Victoria takes the title Empress of India.
  • The Settle-Carlisle Railway in England is opened to passenger traffic.
• May 10 – The Centennial Exposition begins in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
• May 11 – May 12 – Berlin Memorandum: Germany, Russia and Austria-Hungary propose an armistice between Turkey and its insurgents.
• May 16 – British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli rejects the Berlin Memorandum.
• May 18 – Wyatt Earp starts work in Dodge City, Kansas, serving under Marshal Larry Deger.
• June 4 – The Transcontinental Express arrives in San Francisco, California via the First Transcontinental Railroad, 83 hours and 39 minutes after having left New York City.
• June 17 – Indian Wars – Battle of the Rosebud: 1,500 Sioux and Cheyenne led by Crazy Horse beat back General George Crook's forces at Rosebud Creek in Montana Territory.
• June 24 First published review of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain, in a British magazine; the book's first edition had appeared earlier in June in England. (The book was published in the U.S. in December 1876.)
• June 25 – Indian Wars – Battle of the Little Bighorn: 300 men of the U.S. 7th Cavalry Regiment under Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer are wiped out by 5,000 Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho led by Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse.

July–September

Punch cartoon from June 17. Russia preparing to let slip the "Dogs of War," its imminent engagement in the growing Balkan conflict between Slavic states and Turkey, while policeman John Bull (Britain) warns Russia to take care. The Slavic states of Serbia and Montenegro would declare war on Turkey two weeks later.

• July 1 – Serbia declares war on Turkey.
• July 2 – Montenegro declares war on Turkey.
• July 4 – The United States celebrates its centennial.
• July 8 – Reichstadt Agreement: Russia and Austria-Hungary agree on partitioning the Balkan peninsula.
• July 13 – The prosecution of Arthur Tooth, an Anglican clergyman, for using ritualist practices begins.
• August 1 – Colorado is admitted as the 38th U.S. state.
• August 8 – Thomas Edison receives a patent for his mimeograph.
• August 13 – Richard Wagner inaugurates Bayreuth Festival
• August 31 – Murat V, sultan of the Ottoman Empire is deposed and succeeded by his brother Abdul Hamid II.
• September 5 – Gladstone publishes his Bulgarian Horrors pamphlet.
• September 7 – In Northfield, Minnesota, Jesse James and the James-Younger Gang attempt to rob the town's bank but are surrounded by an angry mob and are nearly wiped out.
• September 12 – King Leopold II of Belgium hosts the Brussels Geographic Conference on the subject of colonizing and exploring central Africa. By the event's conclusion a new international body named the International African Association is established.

October–December

• October 4 – Texas A&M University opens for classes.
• October 31 – A catastrophic cyclone strikes the east coast of India, killing 200,000.
• November 2 – A giant squid, 6.1 meters long, washes ashore at Thimble Tickle Bay in Newfoundland.
• November 4 – The long-awaited First Symphony of Johannes Brahms is premiered at Karlsruhe under the baton of Otto Dessoff.
• November 7 – U.S. presidential election, 1876: After long and heated disputes, Rutherford Birchard Hayes is eventually declared the winner over Samuel Jones Tilden. A failed grave robbery of the Lincoln Tomb took place on the same night.
• November 10 – The Centennial Exposition ends in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
• November 23 – Corrupt Tammany Hall leader William Marcy Tweed (better known as Boss Tweed) is delivered to authorities in New York City after being captured in Spain.
• November 25 – Indian Wars: In retaliation for the dramatic American defeat at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, United States Army troops under General Ranald S. Mackenzie sack Chief Dull Knife's sleeping Cheyenne village at the headwaters of the Powder River (the soldiers destroy all of the villagers' winter food and clothing, and then slash their ponies' throats).
• November 29 – Porfirio Díaz becomes President of Mexico.
• December 5 – The Brooklyn Theater Fire kills at least 278, possibly more than 300.
• December 6 – The first cremation in the United States takes place in a crematory built by Francis Julius LeMoyne.
• December 29 – The Ashtabula River Railroad bridge disaster occurs, leaving 92 dead.

Undated

• Dewey Decimal Classification invented by Melvil Dewey
• Charles Wells opens his brewery based in Bedford, England.
• Lyford House, by Richardson Bay, Tiburon, California is constructed.
• Construction of Spandau Prison is completed.
• The four-stroke cycle internal combustion engine is invented by Nikolaus Otto.
• Samurai are banned from carrying swords in Japan.
• The samurai's stipends are replaced by one-time grants of income bearings bonds.
• Japan brings a fleet to Inchon, the port of Seoul. The Japanese force the Korean government to sign an unequal treaty, open 3 ports to Japanese trade and cease considering itself a tributary of China. On China's urging Korea also signs treaties with the European powers in effort to counterbalance Japan.
• The Harvard Lampoon is founded.
• The Conchological Society of Great Britain & Ireland is founded.
• Lars Magnus Ericsson and Carl Johan Andersson start a small mechanical workshop in Stockholm, Sweden, dealing with telegraphy equipment, which grows into the worldwide company Ericsson.
• Friends Academy is founded by Gideon Frost.
• Adolphus Busch's brewery, Anheuser-Busch in St. Louis, Missouri, first markets Budweiser, a pale lager, as a nationally sold beer.
• Tanzimat ends in the Ottoman Empire.
• The Clontarf Cricket Club is established. The 2008 2nd XI calls their assault on all Senior II competitions "Operation 1876" in honour of this fantastic year.

Births