1868
| File:Decade.png ( 1860s: ) 1868 link | |
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 The Ethiopian fortress of Magdala is burning, after being conquered by a British punitive expedition against Emperor Tewodros. | |
| year 1868 |
Events
- January 2 – British Expedition to Abyssinia: Robert Napier leads an expedition to free captive British officials and missionaries.
- January 5 – Paraguayan War: Brazilian Army commander Luís Alves de Lima e Silva, Duke of Caxias enters Asunción, Paraguay's capital. Some days later he declares the war is over. Nevertheless, Francisco Solano López, Paraguay's president, prepares guerrillas to fight in the countryside.
- January 9 – Penal transportation from Britain to Australia ends, with arrival of the convict ship Hougoumont in Western Australia, after an 89-day voyage from England. There are 62 Fenians among the transportees.
- February 24 - Impeachment of Andrew Johnson: Three days after his action to dismiss United States Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, the United States House of Representatives votes 126–47 in favor of a resolution to impeach Andrew Johnson, President of the United States, the first of three Presidents to be impeached by the full House. Johnson is later acquitted by the United States Senate.
- March 12 - Alfred, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Duke of Edinburgh, is shot in the back in Sydney, Australia, at a fundraising event for the Sydney Sailors Home, by Irishman Henry James O'Farrell. The prince survives and quickly recovers; O'Farrell is executed on April 21, despite attempts by the prince to gain clemency for him.
- April 9–13 – Battle of Magdala: A British-Indian task force under Robert Napier inflicts 700 deaths and a crushing defeat on the army of Emperor Tewodros II; the British and Indians suffer 30 wounded, two of whom die subsequently. Tewodros commits suicide and Magdala is captured, ending the British Expedition to Abyssinia.
- May 16, May 26 – President Andrew Johnson is twice acquitted during his impeachment trial, by one vote in the United States Senate.
- May 26 – Fenian bomber Michael Barrett becomes the last person publicly hanged in the United Kingdom.
- May 31 - Thomas Spence declares himself president of the Republic of Manitobah in Canada; he soon alienates the locals.
- June 2 – The first Trades Union Congress is held in Manchester, England.
- June 10 – Mihailo Obrenović, Prince of Serbia is assassinated in Košutnjak,
- July 28 – The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution is adopted, including the Citizenship Clause and the Equal Protection Clause, legally, if not actually, guaranteeing African Americans full citizenship and equal protection, and all persons in the United States due process of law.
- August 22 – The Yangzhou riot in China targets a station of the China Inland Mission, and nearly leads to war between Britain and China.
- September 24 – Croatian–Hungarian Settlement is concluded, governing Croatia's political status in the Hungarian-ruled part of Austria-Hungary until 1918.[1]
- October 10 – Carlos Manuel de Céspedes declares a revolt against Spanish rule in Cuba, in an event known as El Grito de Yara, initiating a war that lasts ten years (Cuba ultimately loses the war at a cost of 400,000 lives and widespread destruction).
- October 23 – The current Japanese era name is changed to the Meiji period. The 265-year-long Edo period ends.
- November 3 – U.S. presidential election, 1868: Republican Ulysses S. Grant defeats Democrat Horatio Seymour.
- December 25 – U.S. President Andrew Johnson grants unconditional pardon to all Civil War rebels.
Date unknown
- Scottish merchant Thomas Blake Glover develops Japan's first coal mine on Hashima Island.
- The population of Japan reaches c. 30 million.