1. Incumbents

2. Events
    Undated 

3. Publications

4. Births

5. Deaths

6. References

7. See also

Events from the year 1878 in the United Kingdom.

Incumbents

• Monarch – Victoria
• Prime Minister – Benjamin Disraeli (Conservative)
• Parliament – 21st

Events

• 14 January – Alexander Graham Bell demonstrates the telephone to Queen Victoria.^[1]
• 23 January – Disraeli orders British fleet to the Dardanelles.
• 8 February – the British fleet enters Turkish waters and anchors off Constantinople. Russia threatens to occupy Constantinople but does not act.
• 11 February – first weekly weather report published in the UK.^[1]
• 24 February – anti-Russian demonstrations in Hyde Park, London.
• 12 March – Britain annexes Walvis Bay.^[2]
• 15 March – restoration of the Scottish hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church, carried out on the instructions of Pope Leo XIII.
• 24 March – the Royal Navy frigate {{HMS|Eurydice|1843}} capsizes off the Isle of Wight, killing all but two of the 319 crew.
• 25 March – Russia rejects a British proposal to lay the Treaty of San Stefano before a European congress.
• 27 March – in anticipation of war with Russia, Disraeli mobilizes the reserves and calls Indian troops to Malta.
• 28 March – Stoke City F.C. move into their new stadium at the Victoria Ground, beating Talke Rangers 1-0 in a friendly in their first game there.^[3]
• 25 May – opening of Gilbert and Sullivan's opera HMS Pinafore, at the Opera Comique on the Strand, London^[2] with a first run of 571 performances.
• 31 May – the Imperial German Navy ironclad turret ship {{SMS|Grosser Kurfürst|1875}} is accidentally rammed and sunk by {{SMS|König Wilhelm}} on manoeuvres off Folkestone with the loss of more than 275 crew (an event witnessed by Arthur Sullivan).
• 1 June – the North British Railway's first Tay Bridge across the Firth of Tay at Dundee in Scotland is opened to public rail services; it is the world's longest bridge at this date.^[4]
• 4 June – Cyprus Convention: the Ottoman Empire cedes Cyprus to the United Kingdom but retains nominal title.^[1]
• 7 June – an underground explosion at Wood Pit, Haydock, kills at least 189.^[5][6]
• 10 June – Konrad Korzeniowski, the future novelist Joseph Conrad, sets foot on English soil for the first time, at Lowestoft from the SS Mavis.
• 4 July – Public Health (Water) Act obliges parishes to provide a supply of "wholesome water" within reasonable distance of every home.^[7]
• 7 August – the Christian Mission, co-founded by (the now) General William and Catherine Booth in London in 1865, has its name changed to The Salvation Army.^[8]
• 3 September – over 640 die when the crowded pleasure boat {{SS|Princess Alice|1865|2}} collides with the Bywell Castle in the River Thames.
• 11 September – an underground explosion at Abercarn in Monmouthshire kills 268 coal miners.^[9]
• 12 September – Cleopatra's Needle erected on the Victoria Embankment in London, having arrived in England on 21 January.^[1]
• October – the University of London becomes the first in the UK to admit women on equal terms with men.
• 14 October – the world's first recorded floodlit football fixture is played at Bramall Lane in Sheffield.
• 28 October – the first floodlit rugby match is played in Salford.^[10]
• 21 November – Second Afghan War commences when the British attack Ali Masjid in the Khyber Pass.
• 26 November – James McNeill Whistler's libel case against critic John Ruskin over a review of the painting of the Thames Nocturne in Black and Gold – The Falling Rocket (in which Whistler is described as "flinging a pot of paint in the public's face")^[11] is decided in the High Court of Justice in London. Whistler wins a farthing in nominal damages and only half of the substantial costs.^[12]
• 18 December – Joseph Swan of Newcastle announces his invention of an incandescent light bulb.^[13]
• 30 December – Henry Irving's production of Hamlet, with himself in the title rôle playing opposite Ellen Terry as Ophelia, opens at the Lyceum Theatre, London.^[14]

Undated

• Dentists Act limits the title of "dentist" and "dental surgeon" to qualified and registered practitioners.^[15]
• William Crookes invents the Crookes tube which produces cathode rays.^[16]
• The following English Association football clubs are formed:
  • Everton F.C. in Liverpool, formed as St Domingo.
  • Grimsby Town F.C., formed as Grimsby Pelham.
  • Ipswich Town F.C., formed as Ipswich Amateur Football Club (they will not turn professional until 1936).
  • Newton Heath Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway Football Club, the team that will become Manchester United.
  • West Bromwich Albion F.C..
• International Tea Co. Stores established.
• William Frederick Yeames paints And When Did You Last See Your Father?.

Publications

• A Dictionary of Music and Musicians edited by George Grove begins publication.
• Thomas Hardy's novel The Return of the Native is serialised.
• Richard Jefferies' collected essays The Gamekeeper at Home.

Births

• 4 January
  • A. E. Coppard, short story writer and poet (died 1957)
  • Augustus John, painter (died 1961)
• 6 January – Marian Ellis, later Marian Cripps, Baroness Parmoor, pacifist (died 1952)
• 7 January – Samuel James Cameron, obstetrician (died 1959)
• 19 January – Herbert Chapman, football manager (died 1934)
• 23 January – Rutland Boughton, composer (died 1960)
• 3 March
  • Richard Meinertzhagen, soldier, intelligence officer and ornithologist (died 1967)
  • Edward Thomas, poet and writer (killed in action 1917)
• 16 April – Owen Thomas Jones, geologist (died 1967)
• 26 April – Eric Campbell, silent film star (died 1917)
• 1 June – John Masefield, poet and novelist (died 1967)
• 28 June – Evan Roberts preacher (died 1951)
• 24 July – Lord Dunsany, author (died 1957)
• 23 November – Frank Pick, transport administrator and designer (died 1941)
• 3 September – Dorothea Douglass Lambert Chambers, née Dorothea Katherine Douglass, tennis player (died 1960)
• 31 December – Caradoc Evans, writer (died 1945)

Deaths

• 16 March – William Banting, undertaker and dietician (born c.1796)
• 27 March – Sir George Gilbert Scott, architect (born 1811)
• 25 April – Anna Sewell, author (born 1820)
• 28 May – Lord John Russell, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (born 1792)
• 6 June – Robert Stirling, clergyman and inventor (born 1790)
• 22 July – Samuel McGaw, VC recipient (born 1838)
• 30 August – James Geiss, businessman (born 1820)
• 30 September – Evan James, poet, lyricist of the Welsh national anthem (born 1809)
• 16 November – Sarah Harris Fayerweather, African-American-born whose 1832 admission to a Connecticut school resulted in the first integrated schoolhouse (born 1812)
• 20 November – William Thomas, poet (born 1832)
• 14 December – Princess Alice, member of the royal family (born 1843)
• 31 December – James Matheson, Scottish politician (born 1796)

References

See also

• Tokudaiji Sanetsune
• Tokuda Kyuichi
• Tokudane
• Tokudane!
• Tokuda Shusei
• Tokuda's mole
• Tokuda Station
• Tokudene!
• Tokugawa Art Museum
• Tokugawa family
• Tokugawa family of Owari
• Tokugawa (Fiction)
• Tokugawa (fiction)
• Tokugawa Fuun-roku
• Tokugawa Fūunroku Hachidai Shōgun Yoshimune
• Tokugawa Gorōta
• Tokugawa Haruaki
• Tokugawa Harutoshi
• Tokugawa Iesato
• Tokugawa Japan
• Tokugawa Kazuko
• Tokugawa Keiki
• Tokugawa Kiyoyasu
• Tokugawa Masayuki
• Tokugawa Mitsusada