• Monarch – Victoria
• Prime Minister – Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (Liberal)

• 8 January – Yorkshire County Cricket Club is founded at the Adelphi Hotel in Sheffield.
• 10 January – the first section of the London Underground Railway opens to the public (Paddington to Farringdon Street).^[1]
• 7 February – HMS Orpheus sinks attempting to enter Manukau Harbour in New Zealand with the loss of 189 lives.
• 25 February – William Thomson enthroned as Archbishop of York.^[2]
• 2 March – Clapham Junction railway station opens in London.
• 10 March – marriage of Albert Edward, Prince of Wales (later Edward VII) to Princess Alexandra of Denmark (later Queen Alexandra) at St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle.^[3]
• 27 May – Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum at Crowthorne receives its first patients.
• 4 June – the Eton Boating Song is first performed.
• 15–17 August – Bombardment of Kagoshima: Royal Navy bombards the town of Kagoshima in Japan in retribution after the Namamugi Incident of 1862.
• 20 August – Ladies' London Emancipation Society established as an abolitionist group in support of the Union (American Civil War) by Clementia Taylor at Aubrey House.
• 23 October – Ffestiniog Railway in North Wales introduces steam locomotives into general service, the first time this has been done anywhere in the world on a public railway of such a narrow gauge (2 feet (61 cm)).^[4]
• 26 October – the Football Association is founded at the Freemasons' Tavern in Long Acre, London.^[1]
• 8 December – the Football Association laws are agreed.^[5]
• 10 December – Tom King, Heavyweight Champion of England, wins the last major bare-knuckle boxing match in England, against the American John C. Heenan at Wadhurst, East Sussex.^[6]
• 19 December
  • linoleum patented.^[1]
  • the first game is played under the new Football Association rules at Mortlake between Ebenezer Morley's Barnes Club and Richmond F.C., ending in a goalless draw.^[5]

Undated edit

• Before 30 March – the government rejects the Greek Assembly's choice of The Prince Alfred as the successor to the deposed Otto of Greece.^[1]
• The case of Byrne v Boadle introduces the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur into English tort law.^[7]
• Richard Owen publishes the first description of a fossilised bird, Archaeopteryx.^[1]
• A scarlet fever epidemic causes over 30,000 deaths.^[1]
• The Chōshū Five leave Japan secretly to study at University College London, part of the ending of sakoku.
• Beginning of Second Anglo-Ashanti war.
• Stoke City F.C. formed.

• Henry Walter Bates's work The Naturalist on the River Amazons.^[1]
• Charles Kingsley's children's novel The Water Babies (complete in book form).^[8]
• Charles Lyell's work Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man, endorsing the views of Charles Darwin.^[1]
• Mrs Oliphant's novel Salem Chapel, first of The Chronicles of Carlingford (in book form).
• Ouida's novel Held in Bondage.^[9]

• 17 January – David Lloyd George, Prime Minister (died 1945)
• 11 March – Andrew Stoddart, sportsman (died 1915)
• 17 March - Olivia Shakespear, novelist, playwright and patron of the arts (died 1938)
• 27 March – Henry Royce, automobile pioneer (died 1933)
• 5 April – Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine, member of the Royal Family (died 1950)
• 18 April – Linton Hope, Olympic yachtsman and yacht and aircraft designer (died 1920)
• 15 May – Frank Hornby, inventor, businessman and politician (died 1936)
• 17 May – Charles Robert Ashbee, designer (died 1942)
• 27 May – Arthur Mold, cricketer (died 1921)
• 13 June – Lucy, Lady Duff-Gordon, fashion designer (died 1942)
• 19 June – John Goodall, footballer (died 1942)
• 6 July – Reginald McKenna, Chancellor of the Exchequer 1915–1916 (died 1943)
• 21 July – C. Aubrey Smith, actor and cricketer (died 1948 in Beverly Hills)
• 13 September – Arthur Henderson, politician, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (died 1935)
• 16 October – Austen Chamberlain, statesman, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (died 1937)
• 17 December – Violet Bland, suffragette (died 1940)

• 6 January – Harriet Gouldsmith, landscape painter and etcher (born 1787)
• 9 March – John Gully, sportsman and politician (born 1783)
• 13 April – Sir George Cornewall Lewis, statesman (born 1806)
• 14 August – Colin Campbell, 1st Baron Clyde, soldier (born 1792)
• 24 June – Sir George Elliot, admiral (born 1784)
• 17 September – Charles Robert Cockerell, architect, archaeologist and writer (born 1788)
• 26 September – Frederick William Faber, poet, hymnodist, theologian and Catholic convert (born 1814)
• 6 October – Frances Milton Trollope, novelist and writer (born 1779)
• 8 October – Richard Whately, theologian and archbishop (born 1787)
• 28 October – William Cubitt, building and civil engineering contractor and politician (born 1791)
• 24 December – William Makepeace Thackeray, novelist (born 1811)
• 29 December – Joseph John Scoles, Catholic architect (born 1798)