In Berlin, Robert Koch announces the discovery of the bacterium that causes tuberculosis, strengthening the germ theory of disease.
Tsar Alexander II is killed by a bomb thrown by members of the revolutionary group Narodnaya Volya in Saint Petersburg.
Karl Marx dies in London, where he had lived in exile and written Das Kapital.
The treaty places Tonkin and Annam under French protectorate.
European powers met in Berlin to set rules for colonial claims in Africa, accelerating the "Scramble for Africa" without any African representation.
The physicist Albert Einstein, author of the theory of relativity, is born in Ulm, Germany.
Louis Pasteur administers his rabies vaccine to Joseph Meister, a boy bitten by a rabid dog, who survives.