This Year in History:
1877
Discover what happened in this year with HISTORY’s summaries of major events, anniversaries, famous births and notable deaths.
On January 8, 1877, Oglala Lakota warrior Crazy Horse and his men—outnumbered, low on ammunition and forced to use outdated weapons to defend themselves—fight their final losing battle against the U.S.…
On March 3, 1877, Rutherford B. Hayes is sworn in as the 19th president of the United States in the Red Room of the White House. Two days later, Hayes…
Nearly a year after the Battle of the Little Bighorn, Sitting Bull and a band of followers cross into Canada hoping to find safe haven from the U.S. Army. On…
On May 10, 1877, President Rutherford B. Hayes has the White House’s first telephone installed in the mansion’s telegraph room. President Hayes embraced the new technology, though he rarely received…
Henry Ossian Flipper, born into slavery in Thomasville, Georgia, in 1856, becomes the first African American cadet to graduate from the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York…
On July 9, 1877, the All England Croquet and Lawn Tennis Club begins its first lawn tennis tournament at Wimbledon, then an outer‑suburb of London. Twenty‑one amateurs showed up to…
Having refused government demands that they move to a reservation, a small band of Nez Perce tribesmen clash with the U.S. Army near the Big Hole River in Montana. The…
Though only a teenager at the time, Billy the Kid wounds an Arizona blacksmith who dies the next day. He was the famous outlaw’s first victim. Just how many men…
Oglala Sioux leader Crazy Horse is fatally bayoneted by a U.S. soldier after resisting confinement in a guardhouse at Fort Robinson, Nebraska. A year earlier, Crazy Horse was among the Sioux…
Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce peoples surrenders to U.S. General Nelson A. Miles in the Bear Paw mountains of Montana, declaring, “Hear me, my chiefs: My heart is sick…
On October 10, 1877, the U.S. Army holds a West Point funeral with full military honors for Lieutenant‑Colonel George Armstrong Custer. Killed the previous year in Montana by Sioux and…
Thomas Edison announces his invention of the phonograph, a way to record and play back sound. Edison stumbled on one of his great inventions—the phonograph—while working on a way to…
