| 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. |
| 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. |
| 1873 | UK [legislation] | Legislation in Britain extends women's rights to claim custody of their children in divorce proceedings. |
| 1873 | France [painting] | The French artist Edgar Degas paints The Cotton Office. |
| 1873 | France [painting] | The French artist Paul Cézanne paints The House of the Hanged Man and A Modern Olympia. |
| 1873 | Germany [physics] | German physicist Ernst Abbe discovers that to distinguish two separate objects under the microscope the distance between them must be more than half the wavelength of the light that illuminates them. The discovery becomes important in the later development of electron and X-ray microscopes. |
| 1873 | Australia [physics] | English electrician Willoughby Smith confirms that the electrical conductivity of selenium increases with the amount of illumination; it proves to be an important discovery in the development of television. |
| 1873 | Scotland [physics] | Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell publishes A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism, in which he provides a mathematical model of electromagnetic waves and identifies light as being one such wave. |
| 1873 | France [poetry] | The French Symbolist poet Arthur Rimbaud publishes his prose poems Une Saison en enfer/A Season in Hell. |
| 1873 | Egypt [archaeology] | German Egyptologist George Maurice Ebers discovers a papyrus text at Thebes. Known as the Ebers papyrus, it is dated to 1500 BC and is the oldest medical work known, containing over 700 folk remedies for various afflictions. |
| 9 January 1873 | England, France [births and deaths] | Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte (Napoleon III), emperor of France 1852–71, dies in Chislehurst, Kent, England (64). |
| 16 February 1873 | Spain [political events] | A republic is proclaimed in Spain following the abdication of King Amadeo I. |
| 1 April 1873 | Russia [births and deaths] | Sergey Vasilevich Rachmaninov, Russian composer and piano virtuoso, born in Oneg, near Semenovo, Russia (–1943). |
| 4 April 1873 | UK, Africa [wars] | War breaks out between Britain and the Ashanti in west Africa (modern Ghana) as a result of British attempts to stop King Kofi Kari-Kari's slave trade. |
| 1 May 1873 | Zambia [births and deaths] | David Livingstone, Scottish missionary and explorer who explored much of East Africa in search of the source of the River Nile, dies in Chitambo, Barotseland (Zambia) (59). |
| 24 May 1873 | France [administration] | French president Adolphe Thiers is deposed by the monarchist Asembly, and the antidemocratic candidate Marie-Edme-Patrice-Maurice MacMahon, duc de Magenta, is elected in his place. |
| 12 August 1873 | Russian Empire, Central Asia [colonization] | Russia assumes suzerainty of the Khanates of Khiva and Bukhara, pushing further into central Asia. |
| 22 October 1873 | Germany, Russian Empire, Austria-Hungary [political events] | An alliance of the emperors of Germany, Russia, and Austria-Hungary (the Dreikaiserbund) formalizes the agreement between them of 1872 to uphold autocratic government in Europe. |
