| 1845–1958 | Germany [earth sciences] | German naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt lays the basis of modern geography with the publication of Kosmos/Cosmos, in which he arranges geographic knowledge in a systematic fashion. |
| 23 October 1871 - 14 March 1872 | Africa [exploration] | Welsh-born US journalist Henry Stanley reaches Lake Tanganyika in Africa in search of the lost Scottish explorer David Livingstone, who he finds at the trading settlement of Ujiji. Together they explore the lake's northern reaches, and establish that it is not the source of the Nile. Livingstone refuses to leave Africa with Stanley. |
| 1872 | England [fiction] | The English writer Samuel Butler publishes his satirical novel Erewhon. |
| 1872 | UK [newspapers] | The Times becomes the first national newspaper in Britain to be set using a mechanical type-composing machine. |
| 1872 | France [painting] | The French artist Edgar Degas paints Dancing Class at the Ballet School. |
| 1872 | USA [painting] | The US artist Winslow Homer paints Snap the Whip. |
| 1872 | France [painting] | The French artist Claude Monet paints Impression: Sunrise. It is this painting that gives Impressionism its name. |
| 1872 | USA [painting] | The US artist James Abbot McNeill Whistler paints Arrangement in Grey and Black No 1: The Artist's Mother. |
| 1872 | USA [religion] | The US religious leader Charles Taze Russell founds the religious movement the Jehovah's Witnesses, their main belief being that the end of the world is imminent. Their zeal in finding converts helps them to grow quickly. |
| 1872 | USA [shops and shopping] | Lyman Bloomingdale and his brothers Gustave and Joseph, the family behind the great US department store Bloomingdale's, open their Great East Side Store in New York City. |
| 1872 | USA [astronomy] | The US astronomer Henry Draper develops astronomical spectral photography and takes the first photograph of the spectrum of a star – that of Vega. |
| c. 1872 | Russia [births and deaths] | Grigory Yefimovich Rasputin, Siberian peasant and mystic who influences the Russian tsar Nicholas II and tsarina Alexandra, born in Pokrovskoye, Siberia, Russia (–1916). |
| 16 March 1872 | UK [cricket] | A crowd of 2,000 at the Oval cricket ground in London, England, watch Wanderers, a team of ex-public school players, defeat the Royal Engineers 1–0 to win the inaugural Football Association (FA) Cup final. |
| 2 April 1872 | USA [births and deaths] | Samuel Finley Breese Morse, US painter and inventor of Morse Code, dies in New York City (80). |
| 26 April 1872 | Spain [wars] | The proclamation of Don Carlos, Duke of Madrid, as Charles VII of Spain leads to the Second Carlist War as his followers dispute the authority of the ruling king Amadeo I. |
| 1 July 1872 | UK, Australia [postal services] | A telegraph line is established between Britain and Australia. |
| 16 July 1872 | Norway, Antarctica [births and deaths] | Roald Amundsen, Norwegian explorer who was the first person to reach the South Pole, born in Oslo, Norway (–1928). |
| 7 September 1872 | Germany, Russian Empire, Austria-Hungary [political events] | A meeting of the three emperors Wilhelm, Alexander, and Franz Josef in Berlin, Germany, leads to a tacit entente between Germany, Russia, and Austria-Hungary to uphold authoritarian rule in Europe. |
| 5 November 1872 | USA [elections] | In the US presidential election, Ulysses S Grant (Republican) is re-elected with 286 electoral votes over Horace Greeley (Liberal Democrat) with 62 votes. |
| December 1872 | USA [transport disasters] | The US ship the Mary Celeste is found adrift without crew in the Atlantic Ocean, undamaged and with its cargo intact. |
| 7 December 1872 - 26 May 1876 | UK [earth sciences] | The British ship Challenger undertakes the world's first major oceanographic survey. Under the command of the Scottish naturalist Wyville Thomson, the crew collect marine animals and water samples, dredge and core samples of the ocean bottom, and make hundreds of temperature and depth measurements. |
